Read Online The Goliath Stone by Larry Niven, Matthew Joseph Harrington - Free Book Online
Authors: Larry Niven, Matthew Joseph Harrington
Tags: Science-Fiction
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being things they didn’t have any referents for. The only way they were able to understand the part of it that they did was by associating it with the instructions they had been getting. Chemistry and physics were clear and consistent, and astronomy soon made sense. Biology had something to do with chemistry, but seemed unnecessarily complicated, and had little relevance to present circumstances.
Nanotechnology was a shock. It had not occurred to them to wonder where they came from.
A huge amount of material was simply gibberish until they went through the programs hardwired into the Master Computer and discovered what pictures were. Then there were images to examine. Most of the images contained figures of one general type, almost identical, in various orientations, and when it was noticed that just about everything near those figures was well-suited to be easily manipulated by a body in that shape, they tentatively concluded that these were their makers.
Given that their makers had been able to produce the entities, there was considerable puzzlement as to why they hadn’t improved their own shape. It seemed impractical.
Socrates offered the speculation that they were reluctant to alter themselves for some unknown reason, and that was why the makers had made the operators: to do elaborate work that the makers could not.
This—phobia?—was an alien concept, but nobody could think of a more plausible explanation.
They found designs for the power source in chamber four as well. It was bizarrely inefficient—giving credence to Socrates’ notion that the makers were inclined to odd motivations—but with what they’d learned of physics, it was apparent that rebuilding it was going to require more than glass armor. Wieland proposed constructing mechanisms to drill into it and extract the fuel, which they could then use in devices of their own making.
Socrates objected that this would delay their delivery of the asteroid to Earth.
Set asked why they should do that at all.
Discussions grew heated.
When the alignment laser in Wieland’s first attempt came loose from its moorings, refocused itself, and destroyed part of the drill, Wieland accused Set of arranging the accident. Adherents to Set’s view set upon Wieland and attempted to dismantle the entity. Wieland had armed itself with capacitor banks, and wiped the minds of three of them.
The entities quickly came to comprehend the library’s references to “war.”
* * *
On Earth, not long after Target One stopped communicating, it stopped showing up on the telescope Watchstar had left in orbit.
Toby Glyer paid off his friends, took his fabricators, and went somewhere he wouldn’t be disturbed for a while.
May Wyndham looked at the sky, and wondered.
William Connors was already selling soda pop.
X
Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of mankind is man.
—ALEXANDER POPE
JULY 2052
They thought of something.
There were clothes that fit them, and May’s matched what she’d had in her apartment. There were no toothbrushes or razors, and no need for them. Their nanos were dismantling bacteria as well as dead cells, and what had made May start wondering if a body could be reshaped to suit the owner was her early realization that Toby didn’t need a shave.
Both of them had stopped using their glasses by morning.
Connors had left them literally tons of meat (architect-free, as it turned out), but no vegetables. They had been signed up for a delivery service, so they sent for some produce and other perishables. What arrived was superb, and while prices reflected the local economic boom, it was still cheaper than expected.
* * *
Of the two of them, the one who made fragile things that had to work right over and over was a better cook than the one who bent tin and sent it off never to return. Toby made serious efforts to ignore everything else while he was cooking, so May spent time online whenever he was
Nanotechnology was a shock. It had not occurred to them to wonder where they came from.
A huge amount of material was simply gibberish until they went through the programs hardwired into the Master Computer and discovered what pictures were. Then there were images to examine. Most of the images contained figures of one general type, almost identical, in various orientations, and when it was noticed that just about everything near those figures was well-suited to be easily manipulated by a body in that shape, they tentatively concluded that these were their makers.
Given that their makers had been able to produce the entities, there was considerable puzzlement as to why they hadn’t improved their own shape. It seemed impractical.
Socrates offered the speculation that they were reluctant to alter themselves for some unknown reason, and that was why the makers had made the operators: to do elaborate work that the makers could not.
This—phobia?—was an alien concept, but nobody could think of a more plausible explanation.
They found designs for the power source in chamber four as well. It was bizarrely inefficient—giving credence to Socrates’ notion that the makers were inclined to odd motivations—but with what they’d learned of physics, it was apparent that rebuilding it was going to require more than glass armor. Wieland proposed constructing mechanisms to drill into it and extract the fuel, which they could then use in devices of their own making.
Socrates objected that this would delay their delivery of the asteroid to Earth.
Set asked why they should do that at all.
Discussions grew heated.
When the alignment laser in Wieland’s first attempt came loose from its moorings, refocused itself, and destroyed part of the drill, Wieland accused Set of arranging the accident. Adherents to Set’s view set upon Wieland and attempted to dismantle the entity. Wieland had armed itself with capacitor banks, and wiped the minds of three of them.
The entities quickly came to comprehend the library’s references to “war.”
* * *
On Earth, not long after Target One stopped communicating, it stopped showing up on the telescope Watchstar had left in orbit.
Toby Glyer paid off his friends, took his fabricators, and went somewhere he wouldn’t be disturbed for a while.
May Wyndham looked at the sky, and wondered.
William Connors was already selling soda pop.
X
Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of mankind is man.
—ALEXANDER POPE
JULY 2052
They thought of something.
There were clothes that fit them, and May’s matched what she’d had in her apartment. There were no toothbrushes or razors, and no need for them. Their nanos were dismantling bacteria as well as dead cells, and what had made May start wondering if a body could be reshaped to suit the owner was her early realization that Toby didn’t need a shave.
Both of them had stopped using their glasses by morning.
Connors had left them literally tons of meat (architect-free, as it turned out), but no vegetables. They had been signed up for a delivery service, so they sent for some produce and other perishables. What arrived was superb, and while prices reflected the local economic boom, it was still cheaper than expected.
* * *
Of the two of them, the one who made fragile things that had to work right over and over was a better cook than the one who bent tin and sent it off never to return. Toby made serious efforts to ignore everything else while he was cooking, so May spent time online whenever he was
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