Aliens Alien Harvest - By Robert Sheckley Page 0,34
things were always the most desirable ones. This was an error in Stan's judgment, for how do you price a sunset or a mountain at dawn? How much for the song of the swallow? Still, he realized that he himself was no doubt guilty of the typical human error of overvaluing what he liked and undervaluing what others liked.
Talking with Gill was also limiting. Gill had formidable training in the sciences and knew a great deal about history and philosophy. This didn't give him judgment and compassion, however. For Gill, the proposition that the unexamined life was not worth living had no more relevance than e=mc2 . He wasn't equipped to examine the emotional dimension, though Stan thought he saw signs of promise.
After showering and changing, Julie fluffed her hair and rejoined Stan in the main control room. "How'd I do, Stan?" she asked.
Stan pulled himself together. In a voice that strove to be casual he said, "Quite well, Julie. You shaved fifteen seconds off yesterday's time. Keep on like this and you'll soon break your old mark of three minutes in the hold with Norbert."
"Norbert's getting too good," Julie said. "He's learning faster than I am. I'm sure he's smarter than the real thing."
The real thing, in this case, was the aliens Norbert so resembled, and who had caused such strange and deadly events on Earth.
Despite his appearance, however, Norbert was not an alien. He was a perfectly simulated robot model of an alien, equipped with a number of computer driven programs, among which was the predator mode that Julie had been testing out. At the moment Norbert was in the control room with them, showing no sign of his former ferocity.
"How are you, Norbert?" Stan asked.
"I am fine, Doctor, as always."
"That was quite a little run you gave Julie. Did you think you were going to catch her this time?"
"I do not anticipate such things," Norbert replied.
"What would you have done if you had caught her?"
"What my programming told me to do," Norbert said.
"You would have killed her?"
"I cannot anticipate. I would have done what I had to do. Without feeling, I might add. But let me further add, if remorse were possible for a creature like myself, I would have felt it. Is there an analogue of remorse that does not involve feeling?"
"You have a complicated way of expressing yourself," Stan said.
Norbert nodded. These matters require considerable thought and recalculation. And when they are expressed in words, they sometimes come out differently from what was intended."
"I've noticed that myself," Stan said. Just at that moment a large brown dog came racing into the hold from a corridor. Stan had named him Mac. No one was quite sure how he had gotten aboard, but no one had gotten around to putting him off and now he was taking the voyage with them.
Mac ran to Norbert's feet and released a blue rubber ball he was holding in his jaws. The ball bounced three times and came to a rest at the monster's instep.
Stan and Julie watched to see what Norbert would do. The robot alien bent down and his long black arm, which somehow resembled an ant's chitinous appendage, brushed past the dog and picked up the ball. The monster's arm came back, then forward, and he threw the ball through the open door into the corridor. Barking furiously, the dog went chasing after it.
"All right, Norbert," Myakovsky said, "you've had your fun. Go to the laboratory. I'll want to scan some of your response codes. And get Mac to shut up. The crew is still in hypersleep."
"Yes, Dr. Myakovsky," Norbert said, and walked quietly out of the room.
22
A door slid open and Captain Hoban walked through. He had a dazed look in his eyes, and Stan knew he could not have been awake for long.
"You're early out of the hypersleep, Captain:"
"Yes, sir. I had my dial set to get me up before the crew so I could pull myself together and have a talk with you."
"I suppose it is time we had that," Stan said. "I want to thank you again for throwing in your lot with me. I don't know where this will end up, but I'm glad to be on this adventure with you."
"Yes, sir. Could you tell me what it is exactly we are going to tell the crew?"
Julie, seated nearby, said, "Yes, Stan, I'd like to know myself."
Stan nodded. "We'll give a slightly altered version of what's going on."