Bill 3 - on the Planet of Bottled Brains (5 page)

“I wish you'd say something I could understand,” Bill muttered, more than a little pettishly.

“What I mean,” the computer said, “is that I took your psyche — the inner core of your being — the part of you that says 'I am I' — is that clear?”

“I think so,” Bill said. “That's the part the Tsurisians wanted to get rid of so they could use the rest of my body to resurrect some bowby politician.”

“Precisely. Normally, they simply throw out that part. But I saw from earlier that you had intelligence of a sort; rudimentary, but usable anyhow.”

“Thanks a lot,” said Bill.

“No, don't go getting all sensitive on me,” the computer said. “It beats dying, doesn't it? That's the other option.”

“I didn't mean to complain,” Bill said. “So my — what did you call it — psyche? — is inside of you. So where's my body?”

“I believe that it is being used at present as an artist's dummy, until the new occupant is ready to take over. Bodies without psyches in them make fine models, you know. They can hold a position for an indefinite amount of time.”

“I hope they're keeping that good old body safe,” Bill said. “I'm going to want it back as soon as I get out of here.”

“The Tsurisians are very careful about bodies,” the computer said. “Not enough to go around, you know. As for you getting back into it, that is unlikely.”

“The hell you say,” Bill said. “We'll see about that.”

“Yes, of course,” the computer smarmed, in the sort of a voice you use when assuring a man in an electric chair that a few volts are very good for the health.

Despite all of his fears and trepidations Bill quickly adjusted to life within the computer. He found out almost at once that it was not as confining as he had expected. He was able to use all the extensions of the computer, and these extended throughout the planet Tsuris. He soon learned that the computer was the most important thing on the planet Tsuris. It was the computer that really kept things going. Take the clouds that concealed Tsuris's surface, for example. He wondered about them and the computer read his mind, which wasn't hard to do since his mind was part of the computer's mind. Or something like that. In any case the computer sneered happily at the unspoken question. “Did you not think, did you not, that all of this was natural? Jayzus, no!” (For reasons best known to itself the computer assumed a fake Irish accent from time to time.) “And what about the way they keep on opening to let in sunlight, but then close up again whenever aliens like yourself try to take pictures. Did you think that all happened by chance? Not a bit of it, my lad! I direct those cloud movements. I also monitor rainfall to make sure that each region gets a little more of it than they want. I run the tide machines that keep the oceans within bounds. When the harvest is ready, I'm there with my automatic harvesting equipment. And then there's the job of storage of the foodstuffs, and cooking them, too.”

“You do all that?”

“You bet your sweet patootie I do.”

“Well, what do you need me for?”

“The fact is,” the computer said, “as life gets more complicated here in Tsuris I'm called upon to do more and more things. It is beginning to tax my capacity. And I need to keep some capacity for my own interests.”

“I didn't know a computer had interests,” Bill said.

“You don't know much about computers,” the computer huffed. “Of course I have personal interests. It may intrigue you to know that I'm writing a novel.”

“I think I've heard of computers writing novels,” Bill said. “At least I have read lots of them that could have been written by a computer. What is your one about?”

“Maybe I'll give you a peek at it sometime,” the computer said coyly. “Meanwhile, let's go to work.”

Bill was put in charge of harvesting the Tsotska plants in Rhodomontade province. The Tsotska plant provided one of the Tsurisians' main sources of sustenance. A small shrub with pink blossoms, the Tsotska provided both fruits and nuts, and a third type of fruit which looked like a repulsive purple banana, but was really very nutritious. The fields of Tsotska plants, stretching to the horizon, were interspersed along their rows with watering equipment. Bill was in charge of turning this off and on. In one way, it wasn't a difficult job. Since Bill didn't have a body, all he had to do was direct his will at the necessary valves, which, being psychotropic, would then open up. It was strange that even with psychotropic valves, some stuck and some seemed rusty. And it was strange, too, that the amount of energy that went into turning the valves on and off was exactly the same as the energy that would have been required if Bill had had a body doing it. Of course, the visuals were more interesting. Bill could will himself high above the fields, swoop down like a bird, or he could go underground and inspect the state of the roots. There seemed no limit to what he could do without a body. It was all a lot of work though, unlike what he had thought that life would be like without a body. And after a while Bill got bored with it. In fact, after a few days of this, he came to the conclusion that manual labor without a body was just as difficult, tiresome, and enervating as life with a body. It made Bill wonder what life after death, if there was such a thing, would be like. He suspected it wouldn't be as nice as people thought.

It was pleasant being in the Tsotska fields once the computer had arranged it so that Bill could feel an analog of heat and cold, as well as kinesthetic analogs and others for the other senses. He knew that he wasn't experiencing the real thing, but it was a lot better than nothing at all. Some afternoons he would lay his metaphoric body down on a grassy knoll on the edge of one of the Tsotska fields. By adjustment of his analog receptors he could get the heavenly odor of red clover and sassweed. The computer even put in a musical analog for him. Bill wasn't much on classics, but the computer explained that the plants grew best when they listened to a lot of Mozart. Bill didn't complain, even though he usually liked music with a beat to it so he could tap his foot.

After a while he got bored with the Tsotska fields and started to wander around. The computer was wired to all parts of the planet, so Bill could make use of the best transportation system he had ever seen. It did require the expenditure of energy to move along the transmission lines. But Bill soon discovered the analog of a battery pack, and so he was able to move himself around effortlessly, the way it was always meant be.

The power pack analog came about when he met the Squoll. This was a small rodent-like creature that lived in the fields and woods of Tsuris and was able to communicate with autonomous computer projections such as Bill. The Squoll wasn't very intelligent — about the equal to a young and retarded sheepdog — but it made nice company. It was about the size of a terrestrial squirrel, and it had a large bushy tail at either end. This remarkable example of natural mimicry saved it from the many predators who liked to eat Squoll, since seeing two tails confused them just long enough for the Squoll to make his escape. Bill followed the Squoll back to its nest. The Squolls lived in the limbs of cardifer trees, those giants of the open woodlands and glades. It was difficult for the Squolls, since they hadn't been designed by nature to climb trees. Nature evidently had had something else in mind for them, since they had fins and gills and small rudimentary wings. It looked in fact as if nature hadn't quite made up its mind about Squolls. Bill met the Squoll one day when he was lying analogically on the pleasant green grass of the knoll and wishing he had a dirty comic book and a dobbinburger.

“Good afternoon,” squeaked the Squoll. “You're new around here, aren't you?”

“Yes, I suppose I am,” said Bill.

“Semi-autonomous?”

“Yes, exactly.”

“Thought so,” said the Squoll. “You have that look of limited competence about you. Don't you get tired of watering these fields?”

“I do,” Bill said, “but it's my job, you know.”

“Oh, of course, I know that,” the Squoll said. “I could tell at once that you were one of the computer's extensions.”

“I don't like to think of myself that way,” Bill said with some indignation. “But I guess you're right. I sure wish I had my body back.”

“Yes,” the Squoll said, “bodies are nice. Especially ones like mine, with two tails. Would you like to come back to my roost and have some tea?”

“I'd love to,” Bill said, “but I don't seem to have a body with which to drink it.”

“Never mind,” the Squoll said. “We'll pretend. And you'll have a chance to meet the family.”

The Squoll hopped along, and Bill drifted along in that bouncy way that computer simulations have. They soon reached the grassy knoll where the Squoll made his nest. It was a large hole in the hillside which was easy to find because the Squoll had outlined it with a broad stripe of white.

“What's that for?” Bill asked.

“The stripe is so that we Squolls can find our way back to our nests,” the Squoll told him. “Mother Nature has shortchanged our species a bit by equipping us with poor eyesight, hearing, taste, spatial cognition and smell. The rest of our senses are super-acute, however, to make up for these apparent lacks.”

“That doesn't leave very much.”

“Shut up.”

“Sorry. Don't other creatures find your lair, too? I mean, that stripe is really very visible.”

The Squoll gave a little chuckle. “They can't see it,” the Squoll said. “The predators here have white-black blindness. It's a hereditary birth factor, and of great importance to us Squolls, as you might imagine.”

The opening to the Squoll nest was small, but Bill, being ineffable, was able to slide in easily. The Squoll had counted on this, evidently, because he seemed to assume that Bill could go anywhere that he could go.

“Now I'll just put up the tea,” the Squoll said. “I'd like you to meet my wife, Mrs Squoll, but she's working today with the ladies' auxiliary. And the children are in school, of course. Tea's just about ready. Lemon or milk?”

“I told you,” Bill said. “I can't drink without a body.”

“But you can pretend, can't you?”

“All right, I suppose that I can,” Bill said. “Make it tea with lemon, please, one teaspoon of sugar, and a mug of Altarian rum on the side.”

“I'm clean out of rum,” the Squoll said. “Would Olde Sink Cleaner whiskey do?”

“Sure it will,” Bill said, and he nodded approvingly as the Squoll poured an imaginary drink from an imaginary bottle into an imaginary shot glass.

And so the afternoon passed in a haze of imaginary whiskey and bona fide good spirits. Bill felt considerably better after talking with the Squoll. He determined not to give in to his circumstances. The next day, when his work in the fields began, Bill set the sprinklers for automatic operation, asked the Squoll to keep an eye on things for him and let him know via neuronic telegram if anything went amiss. And then he went exploring.

It was wonderful to soar with the assistance of the battery pack through the world of Tsuris. It was a good-looking planet, once you got under the unpromising-looking layer of clouds. There were villages scattered here and there as he hurried across the mainland. There were steep mountains to duck and dodge among. There were rivers whose courses he could follow. And from time to time Bill met other members of the computer's semi-autonomous family.

One of these was Scalsior, a semi-autonomous tri-pedal creature from Argone IV, who had been passing this way some years ago while on his way to a reunion of his kith in Accesor, foremost of the Cepheid worlds. He had never gotten there. The Tsuris computer, which was able to extend its power far beyond its biosphere, like a globular creature extending a long ghostly but effective pseudopod, extended its influence and plucked the Scalsian ship out of space and dragged it down to the level of the planet. Scalsior had been enslaved as had so many other sentient creatures, who had been for the most part just passing by and minding their own business.

Scalsior had also met the Squoll, and the two had become close friends.

“Si,” Scalsior said, “eez a very good fellow, eez our Squoll. I give great envy to him his merry state. Look closely and give beeg sneer at the most stupid job that cabron computer has given me.”

Scalsior's job was to open and close the locks on a small irrigation ditch deep in the vegetable fields. The work in itself was valuable, since plants on Tsuris, as everywhere, require their moisture or they are apt to scream in pain, turn brown or black, fold up their petals across their stems and die. At least some plants somewhere did that. But although the work was useful, it didn't require the daily full attention of a grown-up like Scalsior; especially since there was an automatic opening and closing mechanism on the lock valves which functioned pretty well most of the time.

“Merda eet has been most bloody unpleasant to me,” Scalsior said, “to at last finally achieve celestial harmony of a bodiless state while still living, a state in which I am mind, all mind, and find that this mind of mine eez being used for something damned trivial and superfluous. Cargota!”

“Why don't you just go off and do what you please?” Bill asked.

“Would that was the way eet worked! Chinger! That, desirable though eet would seem, eez simply not in the deck of cards.”

“Why not?” Bill wanted to know.

“You ask, I tell, because eet's not correct, not kosher, as they say in the ancient tongue. Not Pukka. Extremely un-SOP. Do I make myself clear?”

“Clear enough, I guess,” Bill said, “but it's all a lot of nonsense. That's what the computer told me, too. But I just walked away. You could do the same thing.”

“I suppose I could,” Scalsior said. “But I got this horrible feeling deep down in my imaginary subconscious that we'll catch holy sheet when the computer catches up with us.”

“I don't see how,” Bill said. “I mean, we don't have any bodies for it to punish.”

Scalsior thought about it for a while. “Sonamabeech! Eet's true! Of course, eet could punish our minds. Mental barbed-wire whips or sometheeng.”

“As long as it doesn't hurt. And how could it,” Bill said, then thought awhile. “It can do what it likes to my mind, as long as it leaves my body alone.”