chapter 5

FIVE One month later, Blue stood on the bridge of her new spaceship. It was not exactly hers to own, actually, but it was hers to borrow and it was beautiful. She stared at the beautiful lines of the ship, the subtle glow of the instruments, the strange and inviting controls. She sat down in the comfortable white captain’s chair and spread her hands over the smooth grey control panel. It was cool to the touch and had the texture of stone. All around her, machines hummed. As her hands touched the control panel, lights indicating the status of the fuel tanks, the rocket batteries, the cargo hold, and all the other workings of the ship, glowed obligingly. She had downloaded everything she would need to know to fly this ship. Mostly, it was a matter of letting the ship, an intelligent machine in its own right, do its job. She was almost ready. Crates of equipment were resting in the cargo hold. The had thought to bring machines for digging and machines for sampling soil and air, batteries and fuel, cases for preserving any conceivable type of artifact or sample, and quite a few devices no Earthling could comprehend, because they simply do not exist here. Most important of all was a strange device Blue could scarcely look at. It was called a remote, and it would function as Blue’s body as she walked the surface of Vulcan. Vulcan was far too hot for her to go there in her own body. She would get burned to a crisp if she tried. From the ship, she could see through its eyes and feel with its fingers, hear with its ears and even speak through the thing. If she so chose, she could even have the contents of her own mind copied and downloaded into this strange simulcrum of herself, though the mere thought of such a thing made her sick to her stomach. Such an action would have strange consequences. She would be giving birth to an exact twin of herself, a twin dooomed to stay on Vulcan. Still, she could do it if she needed to. I t was there, waiting. Her puppet. It had been a very busy hundred days. On Astra, a year is one hundred months, and each month is one hundred days. Since an Astran day is about four times as long as an Earth day, this makes the Astran year very long compared to the Earth year. Planets far from their suns, like Astra, take a very long time to make a complete orbit, so years are very long in places like that. Blue was not much older than one Astran year, and though young for a robot, she was as old as any Earth person could reasonably expect to live. Most people spend their whole life in one frame of reference; with hours of a certain length and lifespans of a certain duration, places to visit that are at comfortable temperatures and spans of time that are practical to think about. Blue thought for a moment. On Vulcan, a day was only about thirty hours long, and a year was about three hundred of their days. Such very short spans of time, it seemed, but time is the same regardless of how groups of people or machines decide to mark it up. Still, she wondered how a civilization could have lived and flourished in such a strange place. Perhaps she would go and find nothing. Robot Six had been indispensable to her. He knew exactly what Blue would need, and when he did not have it himself, he arranged to borrow or purchase the thing so that Blue would have it. He knew precisely where to look for ancient artifacts, and just as importantly, how not to ruin the place for future discoveries. Archaeologists frequently commit the crime of despoiling a place so that future scientists cannot go there and make discoveries of their own. They usually do this without knowing it. Robot Six would have none of that and was full of useful advice on the matter. She decided not to ask him about his conflict with the PowerMind. Perhaps she was scared to, and perhaps she was afraid Robot Six would suddenly change his mind about helping her. She had many conversations with him about other things, however. By then, she had devoured the contents of the crystal, and knew enough to carry on a decent conversation about his work. “Robot life is too complex to have arisen spontaneously, I think we both agree on that..” said Robot Six, rolling gently through his laboratory and staring fiercely with his single, red eye. Beneath the glass dome of his head, his brain was glowing with an inner fire. “There must have been an earlier form of life, something simpler, that could have given rise to our form of life. The trouble, is in knowing what exactly to look for.” The old robot picked up a strange, oval device. It was very ancient, and ran mechanically, without electricity. “This is probably the simplest machine in existence. I found it in the sand dunes, on Vulcan, on my first expedition there, one thousand years ago. It is a timepiece called a watch.” he said. “It is a very simple mechanical machine, powered by springs and having hands that indicate seconds, hours, days, and months. It uses no electricity. I cannot conceive of a civilization powered by primitive clockwork things such as this, though it might somehow be possible because even my imagination has its limits. Now, imagine that you walked alone, on the surface of a strange planet like Vulcan, and found this device. Would you conclude that it had arisen spontaneously?” “That’s impossible.” said Blue. “The ore in that thing has been refined and smelted. The pieces have been fitted together. Weather patterns and the shiftings of a planetary crust could never arrange objects like that. It must have been crafted by an intelligent life form.” “So, this device is too complex to have arisen by itself?” postulated Robot Six. “I never said that. That is an illogical conclusion, rather than an unlikely conclusion.” responded Blue. “Complexity arises spontaneously all the time, in the cosmos. Stars arise spontaneously. Watches are only one type of complex thing. That watch, though, is full of things that can only be done by an intelligent hand. The set of complex things that arises spontaneously does not include watches.” “So, there must have been a watchmaker. The first machine must have been created by an intelligent hand.” prodded Robot Six. “Yes. Though the watchmaker must have been some sort of unknown type of thing that can build watches, and somehow have originated spontaneously. Though I cannot imagine a form of intelligence that does not take the shape of machines, there must have once en such a thing, and that form of intelligence must have originated by some natural means, on its own.” postulated Blue. “Radical ideas, young robot. Be careful who you share them with.” Blue came out and said what she was thinking, at the risk of offending Robot Six. “Is that what got you disciplined by the PowerMind?” Robot Six’s eye brightened to a furious crimson and then faded gently. “Yes, young robot.”