The Caterpillars Question

Chapter 11

"Now we must have a council of war," Jack said hours later, when he and Tappy were rested. "Let me be sure I have it straight: Candy has a great deal of specific knowledge about the Imago, but no real initiative; she acts on the directives of the Imago as relayed through its host or someone designated by the host. In this case, me."

"This is true," Candy said.

"And Garth has a great deal of knowledge about the Gaol and their empire, and about the mechanics and organization of their space vessels. But his newfound empathy for other living things has played havoc with his concentration, and in any event he was not a decision-maker, he was a technician deemed to be expendable. So he, too, lacks initiative."

The Gaol whistled. "That is correct," Candy said.

"But we do all want to serve the interests of the Imago to the best of our abilities," Jack said. "So since I seem to be the one with initiative, and Tappy trusts me, is it agreed that I serve as temporary leader of this group?"

Garth whistled. "What is a leader?"

"A creature who acts as the originator of the actions taken by the group. As the guide for others to follow. The one with initiative."

There was no response. So Jack prompted it. "Garth?"

"Agreed," the Gaol whistled.

"Candy?"

"Agreed."

"Tappy?"

"I love you."

Jack smiled. He was still slightly startled to hear Tappy talking. She was quite pretty now, with her face clear and her hair nicely done; Candy was taking excellent care of the host of the Imago. And, for whatever reason, Tappy did look older; her breasts showed more clearly under her sweater (where had Candy found a sweater for her?) and there was an aura of maturity about her. She had the attitude of adult confidence. "Apart from that."

"Yes, agreed, of course." She glanced sidelong at him. "Now will you initiate a kiss for me?"

"You aren't going to try to seduce me again, and fall asleep before we get there?"

She shook her head, smiling. "No, Jack."

He leaned over and kissed her. That had really worked out well, last night. (He chose to call a period of sleep night, regardless of the clock. The clock hardly mattered now.) He had not denied Tappy, she had denied him, and he still wasn't guilty of another statutory rape. But he knew that he would not luck out that way again, and wasn't sure he wanted to. They were far from Earth now, and no one else cared about the detail of age. Certainly the conversion of the galaxy was more important than the precise timing of an act of love between two creatures. Still, his Earthly inhibitions remained. So he loved and desired Tappy, and yet also felt guilty for those feelings, irrational as that might be.

"At least, not right now," Tappy added, crossing her legs so that her thighs showed under her skirt. (Skirt? Candy must have a clothing generator similar to the food generator!) Her legs, too, seemed to have added flesh. If she intended to incite his interest, she was succeeding. She must have had considerable experience in this, and learned exactly how to push his buttons— in her seven years of fantasy. Maybe her empathy, because of the wakening of the Imago, enabled her to understand his desire in a way she otherwise would not have.

Had it really been only three or four days— or had it been seven years, and the brevity of the time span was his fantasy? He looked at Candy, who was now quite demurely clothed, her former sex appeal damped down. She would know— but could he trust her answer? If this were another dream, she would respond in the manner required by the dream, which might have no relation to the truth.

Jack shook himself. There was no profit in such speculation. He still had to assume that this was reality, and make it work. As reality, this presented a considerable challenge.

"All right. So here we are in isolation, the only free folk in this stellar system, with a Gaol empire ship standing guard five light-hours away to blast any intruder into oblivion. What happens if we try to make this ship leave this system, Garth?"

"Nothing," the Gaol whistled. "It is incapable of interstellar travel."

"Then suppose we make it travel toward the Gaol ship?" Then, when the Gaol did not answer, he added: "When I look directly at you, when speaking, as I am doing now, this has the same effect as naming you."

"It would take this ship several Earth years to traverse that distance— and when it did, the Gaol ship would simply move away across the system in one hop."

"So we can neither escape this system nor approach the Gaol ship," Jack concluded. "How, then, can we accomplish our purpose?" He looked at Garth, who had no answer, so he looked at Candy.

"We can bring the Gaol to us," Candy said. "They will come if the host of the Imago requires attention."

"Say, you are capable of original thought after all!" Jack exclaimed.

"No, only of assessing prospects in a given situation, when required to do so," she clarified. "The AI have become proficient at avoiding the attention of the Gaol, and therefore know what draws that attention."

"Still, I'm glad we brought you along. You are good for Tappy, and perhaps good for the mission."

"This is my purpose in existence," she reminded him.

It was no use trying to compliment the emotionless AI! "So what is the best way to bring the Gaol ship to us?" he asked. "By 'best' I mean to take into consideration brevity of time, concealment of our motive, and our chances of converting its personnel to empathy."

"I am unable to assess these values with competence."

Jack looked at Garth. "Are you?"

"Yes. It would not be wise to try to bring the full ship here, as it would apply stasis to this craft and investigate it in detail from a secure distance. Any living creature who boards this ship, or who approaches closer to it than one light-hour, will be destroyed after completing its business."

"You have a point," Jack agreed. "The big ship is not going to let us near it. But how about a small ship— or a robot ship? Could we take over that, and use it, without the big ship knowing?"

"I could accomplish this," Garth agreed.

"And because it's a robot ship, with no living creatures aboard to be corrupted, they may not even check it," Jack continued. "Now, Candy— what can you do to make them worry about the security of the Imago host, without alarming them enough to take precautions we couldn't circumvent?"

"A minor equipment failure— perhaps a malfunctioning sensor, suggesting that there is no problem, but the sensor is giving a false indication. A robot ship would routinely but promptly replace the sensor. The Gaol leave little to chance."

"Garth, can you cause a sensor to malfunction? Do you know which one is minor enough to generate no real alarm?"

"Yes. Yes."

"And is there room on such a robot repair ship for the four of us?"

"No."

Jack's heart sank. "For three? Two?"

"No. No."

"One?" Jack asked despairingly. Their plan was coming apart already.

"No."

"Not even one? Then how can we use the robot ship?"

"We can remove its robot and substitute one of us."

Oh. "And then that one can convert the Gaol battlewagon, single-handed, and return here to rescue the others," Jack said.

"Yes."

He would have to watch that irony; these creatures tended to take him literally. "Which one? Tappy?"

"Yes. Only the Imago can convert the ship, and she is the host. She must take the facilitator, because she will not be able to maintain close contact with any personnel for the requisite time."

"But Tappy knows nothing of a Gaol ship," Jack protested. "She would get lost or caught immediately."

"My empathy indicates that your argument is specious," Garth whistled. "You do not desire to risk the host, because of your special feeling for her."

Right on target! But Jack realized that if this was the only way out, and they didn't try it, their alternative would be to float here forever in space, leaving the Imago as effectively isolated as the Gaol intended. Maybe they could set up another dream realm and have it a lifetime of love on a garden planet, but that wouldn't do the galaxy any good.

"The host must be confined in the life-support container when the robot comes," Candy said. "Otherwise the robot will know as it approaches and uses its detail scanners that something serious is wrong, and will withdraw and send an alarm before making physical contact."

"Then Tappy can't be the one to go," Jack said, feeling mixed frustration and relief.

"She must be confined until the robot boards, then unconfined after it has been incapacitated," Garth whistled.

Jack saw that it had to be. He could not let his personal feeling for Tappy, which was romantic, interfere with the mission of the Imago. It was that mission which had brought them to this realm of super-science. He had been close to Tappy from the time he first met her, and the ambience of the Imago had been working on him all this time; he had to do what was best for it.

They worked on Tappy for the next several hours, drilling her on the interior of the Gaol guard ship, which it seemed was similar to the one in which they had first encountered Malva. Garth clarified that the robot would dock at a special port, where it would be cleaned in vacuum, so she would have to wear a space suit. But because that area did not have life sensors, she would be ignored by the machines, and could make her way inside. There she would have to remove the suit, but retain a face mask, because the ship was pressured with Gaol atmosphere that she couldn't breathe.

"But you are breathing our air!" Jack protested.

"I am not. I am wearing a transmutation filter." Garth unfolded an arm to tap himself at his base, between the wheels. Jack had assumed that this was part of the creature's transmission, since the axles for the wheels projected from it, but realized that he had been anthropomorphizing. Men did not breathe from their bases, but it seemed that the Gaol did. And of course they did not use the same kind of air; they were alien creatures. Maybe the honkers could share air with the human beings; that was why both species lived on the honker planet. But that must be a rarity of compatibility. He just hadn't thought about it before.

What about Malva, then? She hadn't worn a mask. But she hadn't been in the company of any Gaol, either; she probably had her own sealed atmospheric chamber. He really had taken too much for granted.

He returned to the present situation. Once Tappy was aboard the big ship, she would have to make her way to the Nexus Gaol, or what Jack called the captain. She would use the facilitator to corrupt that individual, and then he would help her corrupt the rest of the ship. Jack didn't argue about the term "corrupt"; he knew that Garth did not mean any affront.

But how could Tappy ever accomplish such a thing? The odds were against her. There were so many things that could go wrong!

"What are the odds?" he demanded grimly. Then he had to explain to them what he meant.

Candy and Garth held a dialogue, and came to agreement. "The odds of the host's success in this endeavor are approximately one in three. But if she fails, the odds are nine to one that the host will be dead, and the Imago will be free. That, too, is success. So the endeavor, taken as a whole, is worthwhile."

"Great," Jack said, sick at heart.

"If I am to leave you, perhaps forever," Tappy said, "I want to make love with you one last time."

"Of course," Jack said numbly.

But when they went to the bed, the specter of her death loomed so large in his mind that he was impotent. It was as if he were sending her into it, and somehow it seemed that if he renounced this part of it, she would not suffer the other part. "I'm sorry, Tappy," he said.

"I know. I feel your guilt and sorrow. Just hold me."

That much he could do.

"If I do not return," she said after a while, "you must take Candy as your lover. It will not mean anything to her, but it will help you to forget."

"I don't want to forget!" he exclaimed.

"You would not be here, except for me. I could not live or die in peace if I left you to the emotions you now feel. Promise me that you will take her."

"I promise," he said. Because otherwise she would have been even more unhappy, and it would be his fault. There were ways in which this newly adult Tappy was harder to accept than the lame blind child had been.

Then they slept, embraced but without great solace

They set it up. Tappy gave Jack the hatchling, which had come back to her after converting Garth. It was able to eat human food, because its flesh was from a human being. She returned to the coffin and Candy locked her in. Then Garth selected a sensor and sent a piercing whistle through it. Jack was aware of no change, but both Garth and Candy assured him that the sensor was now malfunctioning, and would attract the attention of the monitoring ship.

They assumed their stations. Since no one was supposed to be aboard the isolation ship except Tappy, they had to hide in shielded areas so that their life forces would not be detected by the robot. Jack's station was by the entrance port; he would use a tiny wire Garth had provided to nullify the robot's programming switch from behind. Then Garth would fix the sensor, and Tappy would take the hatchling and enter the other ship in lieu of the robot. Then they would wait. Perhaps for a long time.

Suddenly a small alarm sounded for the approach of a body in space. This was in order; the robot would pick up that alarm and know that the isolation ship was functioning properly, despite the one bad sensor. The robot ship was not velocity limited; it had passed from the master ship to the isolation ship almost instantaneously. But the final approach was slower, so that the locks could be merged. Though the robot did not require atmospheric pressure, the isolation ship was pressured for the sake of the drugged host, and that pressure and composition would be maintained throughout.

The lock opened— and a man stepped through.

Jack gaped. It was supposed to be a robot! What had happened? His little wire was useless, because the man had no external programming switch. And he was not alone; there was the sound of footsteps behind him.

The man turned and saw Jack. His eyes seemed to widen in similar surprise. His mouth opened to cry warning to his companion.

Jack threw the hatchling. It struck the man on the forehead and clung, quickly fading out of sight. Then Jack ducked around the man and flung himself into the other ship, hoping to catch the second man by surprise.

He did. He plowed right into the other, wrapped his arms around him, and bore him down. Jack scrambled to put a hand on the other's chest, to hold him down long enough to look at.

And discovered that it was a woman. Her face was petite, and her chest was—

Embarrassed, Jack removed his hand. "I don't suppose you speak my language?" he asked.

"We are programmed for the language of the host of the Imago," she replied.

"And I don't suppose I can trust you not to attack me if I let you up?"

"We are not attack androids. We are maintenance personnel."

Oh. No wonder it had been so easy. She had not fought him at all. Then something else registered. "Androids— you mean you're not alive?"

"We are not alive," she agreed.

"And you could lift me off you with one hand?"

"Like this?" She grasped him by the belt and lifted him into the air with one hand.

"But you obey the directives of living creatures?" he cried desperately.

"We do."

"Well, I'm a living creature. You must obey my directives."

"Of course. What are they?"

"First, put me down. Then vacate your ship. Then signal the home ship that all is well."

She put him down. She got to her feet. She walked to the other ship. There stood the android man.

"Give me the hatchling— unharmed," Jack directed him. Because of course the hatchling had had no effect. He had to describe the hatchling.

The man reached up to strip something from his forehead. He handed it to Jack. The hatchling did not seem to be harmed. Jack realized that this arrival of the androids instead of the robot was better than what they had anticipated. Not only did this allow two individuals to return with the ship, one of them could be a human-seeming woman without causing any alarm.

After that it was easy, physically. Tappy emerged from the coffin, and she and Garth took the places of the two androids. With Garth's direct guidance, they judged that the odds of success were now three to one in their favor.

The locks sealed and the ships separated. Jack settled back to wait. He was now the only living thing in the isolation ship, but the three others looked human and would obey his directives. He would be fine, if he could just keep his mind from the challenges facing Tappy. Since he couldn't do anything about them at the moment, there was no point dwelling on them. He needed to distract himself.

"Say, do you folk want to learn to play strip poker?" he inquired brightly.