"We did. We found something that appears to be a communication system. Unfortunately, we cant get it to work yet."

Frowning, I turned that statement over in my mind. He led me into a large, dark chamber. There, deep in the guts of the mountain, was a strange workshop. Something was down there-something that moved.

Thats when the light went on in my head. "You arent telling me youve got one of the native machine-creatures down here, are you?"

"Yep. How else could we be testing the translation system?"

That was what Id been thinking about. "When you said you hadnt got it to work yet, I was wondering how you would know if it was working at all."

"This little guy. Hes the answer. Only, hes not talking."

Carlos approached a small native machine-creature. It was one of the young that Id met up with back along the river and had a drawing contest with. He was a few meters long and about half a meter thick. Like a metal caterpillar, he wormed his way over the stony floor, making scrabbling sounds.

There was a chain welded to his carapace and burn-marks all around the chain.

"We had a h.e.l.l of a time getting him under control," Carlos said. "Weve spent all last night trying to get this moron to talk, but no dice. He might be a dud."

He gave the machine a kick, and it humped and scrambled away to the limits of its chain-which wasnt very far.

"Have you been abusing this thing?" I asked, frowning.

"Abusing it? Sure. Whatever works-but nothing does. Weve tried to tell it to eat, to turn around, to play dead. Weve worked this translation box sixteen different ways, and this dips.h.i.t-"

He moved to give the machine another kick, but I grabbed him and gave him a shaking instead. I wanted to do more, but he was pretty well beat up already.

"Carlos," I said, controlling myself, "I think someone with a gentler hand might do better."

"Thats what Kivi said. Thats why I brought you down here. But James, please, if you do get him to talk, youve got to let us have some of the glory. Dont hog it all, okay? I didnt even tell Kivi I was going to show you. She doesnt trust you at all."

"Dont worry."

To start with, I drew pictures. The machine looked at them, but didnt dare draw its own. It had been traumatized. It shook and squirmed, but wouldnt draw a d.a.m.ned thing in response.

"How much did you beat on him?" I demanded.

"Hardly any," Carlos said. "Okay, maybe a little. But I dont think it was us. I think it was the squids who really did a number on him. See his tail-section and his undercarriage? There are burn-marks and dents everywhere. Maybe he wouldnt work, so they tortured him."

"Im glad that wasnt all you," I said.

I spent several hours with the little machine that day. I even took out t.i.tanium shavings and fed them to him. That got him interested. After a while, I came up with a plan.

"Hes not going to communicate out of curiosity," I said. "Weve got to get him to cooperate with rewards."

"And punishments?"

"No. Just the withholding of rewards."

Carlos heaved a sigh. "Sounds slow."

"Go get me a bag of t.i.tanium shavings. Im going to run out."

He left, and I tried my best. I drew simple shapes then fed a shaving to the machine when I showed him a circle, for instance. The machine studied it, ate the shaving-but that was about it. I began to think maybe we did have a dud like Carlos had said.

But I kept at it. After drawing the same circle, feeding it a shaving, then erasing the circle and drawing it again about four times, I stopped feeding the machine and began to pretend to feed myself.

Each time I pretended to eat a shaving, I drew a square instead of a circle on the ground. The machine watched raptly as I did this. I slowly drew the square and fed myself another, then another.

The machine watched me move chip after chip up to my faceplate. I secretly dropped them into a fold of my suit, then took another out of the bag.

Finally, the machine lost it. The poor thing was starved. He scuttled forward and erased the square Id drawn, and scratched out a circle with his feet. As with the first machine Id managed to contact, his circle was perfectly round. I promptly fed him a shaving. We had made a breakthrough. Circles meant the machine was fed, squares meant I was fed. We had a language of our own.

By the time Carlos returned with a fresh bag of shavings for the machine, we were drawing things back and forth. I would draw a shape then it would draw the same thing-only better than my version. Then I would feed him a shaving.

The machine backed away when Carlos came near, and I pushed Carlos back.

"He doesnt trust you," I said. "Stay over there."

Eventually, Kivi showed up. She was p.i.s.sed off immediately.

"You brought McGill down here?" she demanded. "Weve been working on making a breakthrough ever since we were first posted on the planet, and youre going to let him show it to the bra.s.s and take all the credit again, arent you?"

"Im just drawing things," I said. "Relax, Kivi."

"No girl can relax around you," she said.

I gave her a glance then shrugged. She was glaring at me. She might have heard about my recent dating activity with Anne. That was typical for Kivi. Shed carry on with other men, but when I dated a new girl she may or may not display a fit of jealousy. If she was in the mood, shed get mad at everything I did without bringing up what was really bothering her. I guess that came with the territory when you had an on-again, off-again relationship with a girl.

Eventually, I had the machine performing a wide range of tricks. I even managed to have a primitive conversation with it. Wed established that the squids and the machines were interacting, but when this little guy drew the squids, it was with a chain connected to the machines. He didnt seem to be under any illusions. The machines were slaves to the squids, not friends or allies.

"It makes sense," I said. "The squids consider themselves conquerors. They enslave creatures and alter them. Back on Dust World, they did it with humans. Here, theyve been doing it with these machines. I wonder if these machines have been altered in design to better meet the squid requirements."

"That would be easier than doing it with selective breeding, you would think," Kivi said.

"Yeah, maybe. But we dont even know how these creatures reproduce yet."

"Why dont you draw two machines s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g?" Carlos asked. "Maybe that will jog this little perverts mind."

"Youre the pervert," Kivi said.

"You should know."

I had to step in before Carlos got himself punched again-by Kivi this time. "Okay, okay, thats enough. Lets stay on task. How does this translation box you stole from the squids work?"

They showed me an odd device. It wasnt entirely made of metal. Parts of it were slimy, like gelatin or thick, pasty oil. When you rubbed it in various ways, the thing produced odd, rasping sounds. The machine took note when we worked the interface, but didnt respond in any sensible way.

"How the h.e.l.l are we supposed to figure out what this device is saying?" I asked.

"Now you know why were still working on this," Kivi said.

"Hmm. We should probably bring Natasha in at this point. You guys probably should have as soon as you found this thing. Shes better at this stuff than I am."

"No!" Kivi shouted. "You promised, James! Natasha will hog everything."

"Look," I said, "we might be able to get help from the machines if we figure this out. Isnt that more important than a promotion?"

"Not really," Kivi said stubbornly. "Youve already got rank, James. This is our best shot."

"But we might all die down here," I said. "The saurians are going to attack, and they outnumber us six to one."

"Leeson said theyll get trashed if they try to come in here," Carlos said.

"And you believed him?"

"No, not really," he admitted. He turned to Kivi, looking disappointed. "He might be right, Kivi. Weve failed."

"I know what this is about," Kivi said with sudden anger. "Youre just trying to make Natasha happy again. She found out about Della and Anne, didnt she?"

I heaved a sigh and walked out of the tunnel. "Ill be back in about an hour," I said. "If you can make it talk by then, youll get full credit. Have at it."

I left them behind, cursing my name.

When I returned with Natasha, it was a full ninety minutes later. Kivi was there, but Carlos had gone.

So had the machine.

"What happened?" I asked, shaking my head.

"We tried everything," Kivi said. "We were desperate. Carlos thought this was the last chance we had to get credit for the discovery."

"You guys are crazy," Natasha said. "Kivi, you just have to go through the training and show apt.i.tude. When a slot opens up and your skill level is high, youll get it. Advancement isnt always about showing off for bra.s.s."

"Oh yeah? Is that why McGill, the biggest screw-up in the legion, is two ranks above us? And what about Winslade? Are you telling me hes not a royal kiss-up?"

She had us there, so Natasha stopped arguing. She examined the squid translation box. Id honestly a.s.sumed that when she checked it out, shed p.r.o.nounce it to be a squid masturbation aid, or something like that. But she didnt.

"I think this is a translation system. It produces sounds like a machine. The interface is strange, but not unlike those that Ive seen before. Now, why did you let the machine go, Kivi?"

"Like I said, we were getting desperate. The machine wasnt reacting much other than to draw a few shapes on the ground. We finally realized that it was drawing things that matched the noises the translator was making."

"Ah," I said, catching on. "Did you feed it t.i.tanium shavings?"

"Yes, once we figured it out."

Together, Natasha and I examined the drawings. There were dozens of them.

"Did you record this?" Natasha asked. "Do we have data to a.n.a.lyze?"

"Yes," Kivi said. "Im not an idiot."

"But what happened to Carlos?" I demanded.

Kivi looked down, shamed. "We ran out of room on the floor. It was at the limits of its chain. We decided to cut the chain, to let it have more s.p.a.ce. We figured it would stay because we were feeding it t.i.tanium."

"Let me guess," I said. "The second you cut the chain, it took off."

"Not exactly. It waited until we ran out of chips."

I rolled my eyes. "So Carlos is chasing after it?"

"I made him go. It was his stupid idea to cut the chain in the first place."

"All right, Id better go find him," I said.

I left the two women going over the remaining data. Kivi had meticulously recorded the interactions, matching sounds and drawings. She also had many vids of past efforts to communicate, which she grudgingly pa.s.sed over to Natashas tapper. I was happy to see them working together. Natasha was wisely heaping Kivi with praise, and Kivis mistrust seemed to be melting.

The trail left behind by Carlos and the chain-dragging machine wasnt difficult to follow. I found them less than a kilometer farther down in the tunnels.

Unfortunately, the scene wasnt a happy one. Carlos was dead, with his faceplate cracked open. Hed asphyxiated.

The machine was perched on his chest, feasting on the metal bits in his suit.

-45-.

The disastrous result of our communication attempts was probably a good lesson for me. Id come to think of these machines-the small, young ones at least-as harmless. But they werent. They were like wild animal cubs. It was so easy to forget they were predatory creatures. Just like any lion cub or bear cub, theyd eat you if they could.

I almost killed the machine. It would have been fairly easy to do. Unlike Carlos, I had a heavy beamer on me. I unslung it and aimed it at the head-section of the animal-thats how I thought of these machines now, as semi-intelligent animals-but I didnt fire.

The baby machine didnt flee. Instead, it made a rasping sound. It might have been growling, telling me to get lost. A large number of its cameras studied me, and it kept on chewing while it did so. The machine was feeding, but it wasnt eating Carlos. That would have been too much for me. It was eating his suit. Thats all it had wanted, after all.

The poor thing had been starved and abused for who knew how long down here in these tunnels. I could hardly expect civilized discourse after the squids and Carlos had kept it on a chain. Would it be possible to negotiate with these creatures later, when we werent fighting over who was going to steal their resources? Maybe. One thing was for sure, killing them for eating metal wouldnt help bring peace.

"All right," I said stepping closer and prodding at its hindquarters. "Im not going to hurt you, but you have to move on. Scram."

The machine was unconvinced. It rasped and whirled on me, threateningly. It was like a feral dog, snarling over a carca.s.s. I gave it a kick, and it tried to bite my foot. I knew as long as I didnt let it get to my faceplate, I was going to be all right. The thing hadnt killed Carlos directly. His faceplate had cracked and the air was poisonous, which was the only reason hed succ.u.mbed.

But I couldnt very well let it chew on Carlos air tanks forever. That was just going to teach it the wrong thing. So I cranked down the power level on my weapon and gave it a jolt in the b.u.t.t. Just enough to spot-weld its hind plates together.

It didnt like that at all. It lunged at me, and I zapped it twice more. Finally, the creature got the message and ran off into the dark tunnels.

Grabbing Carlos by the collar, I dragged him back to the chamber where Natasha had been working with Kivi. They looked at Carlos in horror-but they didnt seem all that surprised.

"Ive got the data off his tapper," I said. "h.e.l.l catch a revive when I report his death to the bio people."

"Did you kill the machine?" Natasha asked.

"No-it wasnt really at fault. The poor thing was only hungry."

Natasha looked worried, as did Kivi.