David Weber - The Excalibur Alternative

"Some three hundred and fifty-six of your years, approximately," the dragon-man told him, and Sir George stared at him in shock. He'd known, intellectually, that he'd slept away long, endless years in the service of his masters, but this—!

"Are... are you certain?" he asked finally.

"There's some margin for error. None of us are truly trained in the mathematics to allow properly for the relativistic effects of the phase drive, and the guildsmen do not share such information with us. Nor would they permit the ship's computer to give it to us. But they do speak among themselves in front of us, and they frequently forget, in their arrogance, that while we cannot speak as they do, we can hear. Indeed, that our kind has been forced to learn to understand spoken languages so that we can be ordered about by our `betters.' "

"I... see," Sir George said, then shook himself. "But you were saying... ?"

"I was saying that even after so brief a period as that, we would estimate that your kind has certainly advanced at least to water-powered industrial machinery. You are probably even experimenting with steam power and crude electrical generation by now, and we suspect that the earliest forms of atmospheric flight—hot air balloons and other lighter-than-air forms, for example—are within your grasp. But even if you've come only so far as water-powered hammer mills and, perhaps, effective artillery and rifled small arms, you will have advanced at more than double the rate of any of the so-called `advanced' members of the Federation. If you're left alone for only a very little longer, perhaps another six or seven of your centuries, you will have discovered the phase drive for yourselves."

" We will have?" Sir George blinked in astonishment at the thought.

"Such is our belief. And that's also what makes your species so dangerous to the Federation. Compared to any human institution, the Federation is immensely old and stable, which is another way of saying `static,' and possessed of an ironbound bureaucracy and customary usages. By its own rules and precedents, it must admit your world as a co-equal member if you've developed phase drive independently. Yet your kind will be a terribly disruptive influence on the other races' dearly beloved stability. By your very nature, you will soon outstrip all of them technologically, making them inferior to you ... and so, by their own measure, justifying your people in using them as they have used us. Even worse, though we think they will be slower to recognize this, your race, assuming that you and your fellows are representative, will not take well to the pyramid of power the Federation has built. Within a very short period of time, whether by direct intervention or simply by example, you will have led dozens of other species to rebel against the `advanced races,' and so destroyed forever the foundation upon which their power, wealth, and comfortable arrogance depends."

"You expect a great deal from a single world of `primitives,' my friend."

"Yes, we do. But should the Federation, or another guild, learn that you, too, are from Earth and return there too soon, it will never happen. They will recognize the threat this time, for they will have a better basis for comparison... and will probably be considerably more intelligent and observant than the `Commander.' They can hardly be less , at any rate!" The mental snort of contempt was unmistakable, and Sir George grinned wryly. "But if they do recognize it, they will take steps to deflect the threat. They may settle for establishing a `protectorate' over you, as with us, but you represent a much more serious threat than we did, for we never shared your flexibility. We believe it is far more likely that they'll simply order your race destroyed, once and for all, although the Federation is far too completely captive to inertia to choose its course quickly. It will undoubtedly take the Council two or three hundred years to make its official decision, but in the end, it will decide that your kind are simply too dangerous to be allowed to exist."

Sir George grunted as if he'd just been punched in the belly. For a long, seemingly endless moment, his mind simply refused to grapple with the idea. But however long it seemed, it was only a moment, for Sir George never knowingly lied to himself. Besides, the concept differed only in scale from what he'd already deduced the demon-jester would do if his violation of the Council's decrees became public knowledge.

"What... what can we do about it?" he asked.

"About your home world, nothing," the dragon-man replied in a tone of gentle but firm compassion. "We can only hope the Federation is as lethargic as usual and gives your people time to develop their own defenses. Yet there is something you may do to protect your species , as opposed to your world."

"What?" Sir George shook himself. "What do you mean? You just said—"

"We said we couldn't protect your home world. But if your kind and ours, working together, could seize this ship, it is more than ample to transport all of us to a habitable world so far from the normal trade routes that it wouldn't be found for centuries, or even longer. We here aboard this ship are unable to reproduce our kind, but, as you, we have received the longevity treatments. You have not only received those treatments but are capable of reproducing, and the medical capabilities of the ship would provide the support needed to avoid the consequences of genetic drift or associated problems. Moreover, the ship itself is designed to last for centuries of hard service, and its computers contain a vast percentage of the Federation's total information and technological base."

"But would Computer share that information with us?" Sir George asked.

"The computers would have no choice but to provide any information you requested from them if you controlled the ship," the dragon-man said in a slightly puzzled tone.

" Computers? " Sir George stressed the plural and raised an eyebrow in surprise, and the dragon-man gazed at him speculatively for several seconds. Then the baron felt that stretched sensation in his mind once again, and gasped as yet another tide of information and concepts flooded through him.

"We cannot implant a great deal more of information directly into your mind in a single evening without risking damage to it," the dragon-man told him. "But given the importance of the ship's information systems to what we propose, it seemed necessary to provide you with a better concept of how those systems work."

" `Better concept,' indeed!" Sir George snorted while his thoughts darted hither and yon among the sharp-faceted heaps of knowledge the dragon-man had bestowed upon him. "I see that `Computer' isn't precisely what I'd thought," he said slowly after a moment, "but I think perhaps `he' may be a bit closer to what I'd thought than you realize."

"In what way?" the dragon-man asked, gazing speculatively once more at the baron. Then he nodded. "Ah. We see. And you're certainly correct in at least some respects, Sir George. What you call `Computer' is actually an artificial gestalt which is shared between several different data storage and processing systems throughout the ship. It would be fair enough, I suppose, to call it an artificial intelligence , but it is scarcely what might be thought of as a person."

"And why should he not be thought of as a person?" Sir George demanded, stressing the pronoun deliberately.

"Because the computer systems are no more than artifacts." The dragon-man seemed puzzled by the human's attitude. "They are artificial constructs. Tools."