Robert Asprin - Phule Me Twice

Maybe it was starting to get to him, though. He hadn't touched the ball, and yet he could swear he'd heard the bell jingling again very softly. The ball wasn't visibly moving. His nerves must be starting to fray. They said that solitary confinement could drive a person mad. They didn't say anything about confinement with one's butler, but Phule was beginning to think it must be at least as bad.

"Sir, would you please stop that?" snapped Beeker, as if to reinforce Phule's thoughts.

"Stop what?" said Phule. "Can't a fellow sit and think without you complaining?"

"You're doing something to the ball, sir," said Beeker, glaring at him. "I hear the bell ringing."

Phule sat up straight. "Do you hear it, too? I thought it was my imagination."

"No-look, sir, it's moving," said Beeker, pointing. Sure enough, the ball was wobbling slightly, as if the floor below it were shaking.

They both stood, instinctively moving away from the vibrating gravball; whatever was happening, it was something new. The previous changes in their cell, when their captors had delivered food or the ball, had been accompanied by almost no noise or vibration. As they looked, the wall at the far end of the cell began to change color-or rather, its color seemed to become more diffuse, almost like paint being diluted by a colorless liquid.

After the phenomenon continued for a few moments, shapes could be seen through the wall. Phule clapped his hands and said, "I think they're going to let us out, Beek."

"You may be right, sir," said Beeker. "Equally possible is that they intend to come in here and interrogate us."

"There's not enough room in here," said Phule. "Well, maybe if they're the size of Synthians..."

"Yes," said Beeker. "They've done very little so far to indicate what race they are-if in fact they are any race we know."

Phule put a hand on Beeker's arm. "I think we're about to find out," he said. The opening was almost transparent now, and the shapes outside seemed to be moving closer.

To their surprise, one of the figures bent over to look through the opening and said, "Hey, Beeker! Is that you in there?"

"I know that voice!" said Phule, leaning forward. "Sushi, what are you doing here?"

"Captain!" said Sushi, now plainly visible through the opening. "What are you doing here? Or maybe I should ask, if you're here, who's that back at the camp?"

"I haven't the vaguest idea what you're talking about," said Phule. He and Beeker scrambled quickly out of their prison. They found themselves in the shade of a small hill, just outside a sort of cave dug into the sandy soil. In front of them were Sushi, Flight Leftenant Qual, and a group of other legionnaires. But as glad as they were to see their comrades, Phule and Beeker's gaze inevitably turned to the other figure standing there.

Phule's first impression was that he was seeing a mechanical man born of an illicit union between a hoverjeep and a portable computer...with a very bad hangover thrown on top of it.

On second impression, the thing looked even more like the offspring of an illicit union between a hoverjeep and a portable computer-although it had a curious shimmer about it, as if it were a badly focused holo. But he had a strong suspicion he'd have plenty of other things to worry about, and for the moment he was enjoying just being out of his cell.

Harsh reality would undoubtedly assert itself before he got too comfortable.

Journal #580

Unpleasant as our confinement had been, my employer and I had never entirely lost confidence in our eventual rescue. Still, when we learned the amount of time that had actually passed, we were surprised at how short it had been. Time inside a closed space, without clues to events in the exteral world, goes much more slowly than outside. This might account for the unusual trepidation with which even hardened criminals regard solitary confinement. In fact, even with each other as companions, my employer and I were quite relieved to learn that our captivity was at an end.

As attentive readers will have anticipated, once we were released into the light of day, we were thoroughly astonished to learn the nature of our captors.

"I don't understand it," said Phule, pointing to the robotlike being standing next to Sushi. "If this creature is what captured us, why didn't we ever see it?"

Sushi shrugged. "I wasn't here, Captain, but I don't think it existed in this form before we started talking to it.

"It didn't exist?" said Beeker. "How, then, Mr. Sushi, did it manage to take us captive?"

"I said, `in this form,' Beeker," said Sushi. "The creatures that captured you are nanotech intelligences: tiny machines that can combine into various larger units to accomplish specific tasks. Until we started talking to them, they didn't have any reason to make themselves visible to us."

"This explains much," said Flight Leftenant Qual. "Not only why our instruments could not detect them but why they thought that your machines were the intelligent creatures, and you some sort of captive animal companions."

Phule's jaw dropped so far it looked for a moment as if it had been dislocated. "What?" he blurted out. "They think that Beeker and I are...pets?"

Sushi managed to keep from grinning. "Yeah, that's about as close as I can describe what seems to be their basic assumption. As far as I can tell, when they saw you two leaving the hoverjeep, they thought you were running away, and so they captured you and took care of you until they could find out what your master-the jeep or the computer-wanted done with you. Apparently, Sir, they have a hard time imagining intelligent animal life..."

"Machines?" Beeker interrupted. "I beg your pardon, young Sir, but I cannot accept the notion of a machine intelligence evolving independently of some original organic creator."

"I'm with you on that, believe me," said Sushi. Then he shrugged. "Maybe they evolved from mechanical junk left behind by some off-world visitors. But that's just a guess. Bottom line is, we're dealing with a civilization of nanomachines. Individually, they're general-purpose units with fairly low intelligence, but when they combine, the larger unit-the macro, I'd call it-can have a total intelligence as high as ours."

"Theoretically higher, if your premise is correct," said Beeker grudgingly. "But I've never heard of such a thing evolving independently."

"Neither have I," said Sushi. "First time for everything, isn't there?"

"Sushi's right," said Phule. "We've got to accept the situation as we find it. And I think he was about to tell us just what that situation is." He turned to Sushi with an expectant smile.

"OK, like Qual was saying, they thought the hoverjeep and the Port-a-Brain were the intelligent beings, and they've been spending their time trying to communicate with them. If you'd been wearing your translators, you might have been able to make sense of the noise on the jeep's communicator. But once you were out of the jeep, not even that would've helped."

"And so they took us prisoner and tried to negotiate with the jeep," said Phule. "I imagine they didn't get very far with that."

"Well, they kept getting back a signal from the Port-a-Brain's modem trying to download your stock quotes," said Sushi. "They could tell it was intelligent, but they couldn't get any useful response from it. And of course they had no way to know that you guys were really in charge of the machines. They apparently had you in some sort of holding pen, being kept alive and healthy but not really getting much of their attention."

"That's not very flattering, I must say," grumbled Beeker.

"It could've been worse," said Phule. "Remember, for a while we were worried that they might decide to have us for lunch."

"I don't think they're interested in organics, anyway," said Sushi. "They were more likely just to turn you loose in the desert to go fend for yourself."