Chapter 18

Ikbar stood outside the laboratory of the great ship, waiting after having been summoned by the Chief Physician. He didn't knock, as the Chief Physician, Sibilius, would know, telepathically, the instant the Enforcer arrived. An instant later, the panel door slid open with a quiet hiss, allowing him entry.

"You wanted to see me personally?" Ikbar asked, wondering why Sibilius didn't simply access the Praetor's database mentally to find out what he wanted to know. The Praetor kept meticulous records on almost everything that happened, recording all activities and conversations within its range in three dimensions so that any individual mental connecting with the living machine could actually re-experience an event, if that individual desired.

The Chief Physician smiled and gestured for the Praetor's Enforcer to sit. Handing him a small crystal containing a bright green liquid, he sat as well, joining Ikbar at the little round table bolted into the steel decking of the floor.

Picking up his own drink, Sibilius said, replying to Ikbar's question, "Yes. I want to talk to you – to get your opinion on the Artificial you decided not to terminate. You were there, and I have already perused the incident – several times, in fact.

"In her mind, the Artificial in question killed two humans during your encounter, and she showed no remorse at having committed those murders," Sibilius added, "yet you chose not to strip her from her mortal shell and confine her spirit like you have all the others located by the Praetor. Your reasoning for letting this Artificial remain alive and free eludes me, as it was not evident in the Praetor's recording of the event. I would like to hear, in your own words, why you made that decision."

Ikbar smiled and took a sip of the green liquid and slowly exhaled as he felt the pleasant effects of the elixir seep into his system. Taking another breath, he began to speak.

"Yes. I was, more or less, expecting you to confront me about that." He leaned forward and set the half empty crystal on the table. "After all, you created these beings as part of the experiment to determine whether or not we could actually live on this world. The fact that they all went insane and began indiscriminant killing would indicate that there is something on this world that affects us mentally.

"I developed a ... test, I suppose you could call it ... developed between the Praetor and myself, when we first began to collect the Artificials released into this primitive world; a test to determine the true worth – you could call it the Basic Goodness, or the measure of degree of which a particular soul retains its respect for the value of life. A test of how selfish, or perhaps how selfless, its point of view is regarding the lives of those with which it interacts. In this manner, I can determine the degree of sanity or insanity of each."

"I thought it might be something like that," the Chief Physician replied, allowing the Enforcer to speak rather than simply raid his mind for the information. It was considered impolite and there were actually laws against entering another individual's mind without being invited. "So you determined that this particular Artificial was, unlike every other one you have ever hunted down, worthy of remaining free to continue to terrorize the local inhabitants of this world?"

"Yes," Ikbar replied, smiling at the Chief Physician's choice of words. "As you must have observed in the Praetor's recording, the Artificial was brutally tortured, even murdered, by myself and the two imagined criminal beings created in her mind. As with each of the Artificals, access to the Praetor was allowed in what it would perceive as the final moments of its life. And in that moment, each Artificial makes a final decision."

"And that is?" Sibilius asked, although he suspected he already knew the answer.

The Enforcer smiled and replied, "The decision is; To Kill, or, Not Kill, to save its own life." He continued, feeling pleased at the answer he had discovered in this particular Artificial's mind, "There was one incident, a few hundred years ago, where this Artificial indiscriminately murdered a few dozen villagers, seemingly in revenge for their attempting to burn her as a witch. The incident, as recorded by the Praetor, shows that the Artificial actually allowed the local inhabitants to tie her to a large post and set her afire. The Artificial was considerably damaged and may not have been sane when she broke loose and began murdering everyone she could catch."

Sibilius interrupted with a casually raised hand and replied, "I previewed that incident also, after learning of your decision to allow the Artificial to remain free. As well as I could determine, once it had retrieved enough blood from those who tried to burn her to allow itself to regenerate, it left the area and joined a tribe of Indigents living nearby. They also 'tested' the Artificial by capturing it and hanging it from a tree by the horn of a large quadruped actually screwed into its breastbone."

"Yes," replied Ikbar. "I reviewed that incident after I'd determined that she remain free. It enforced my decision to let her go."

"You keep referring to the Artificial as 'she'," Sibilius commented, "as though you believe it is a separate, living individual and not a Construct. I created these creatures, and I wonder at your allowance of this Artificial's status as, perhaps, comparably equal to our own."

Sibilius watched the Enforcer as the individual grouped his thoughts together for a valid answer. Ikbar had been the most vocal adherent of not allowing the Artificials, especially this one whom he had just allowed to remain free, to remain aboard the great ship. It had been the Enforcer's decision to abandon all of them to make their way in the primitive world below, as best they could, and to monitor their lives to determine the success and, more likely, the failure of each of what he considered the Chief Physician's created Abominations.

The apparent reversal of Ikbar's opinion regarding the 'Abominations', as he had previously referred to them, amused the Chief Physician. Sibilius had always had a deep affection for each of his creations, especially this last one, and had been secretly delighted that Ikbar, of all people, had decided that she remain free. He looked forward to hearing the Enforcer's reasoning.

"Well, the answer is simple, really," Ikbar replied, smiling. "The final test of sanity for each of them was the same. Unreasoned torture, then access to the Praetor. This last Artificial was the only one to pass the test. 'She', and I use the term affectionately, as I have grown to like her, took the time required to communicate with the Praetor in the middle of a life and death battle, and simply asked it to protect her."

At Sibilius' raised eyebrow, Ikbar continued." Every other Artificial I encountered who got their hands on the Praetor tried to murder me with it."

Sibilius smirked, then took a sip of the rich green elixir before pointing out, "As I recall, 'she' shot you in the head with a projectile emitter. Is that not considered attempted murder?"

Ikbar smiled and shook his head. "No. She felt she was defending herself against an unprovoked attack. She didn't know anything and was wildly confused by the events surrounding her."

"Granted she may not have understood the manner of the Praetor's weaponry," Sibilius pointed out, "but her attack was hardly unprovoked – she did actually come after you with murderous intent after she recovered from being killed."

"Yes, she did," Ikbar agreed. "But at the last instant, she changed her mind. Her curiosity won out over her hatred and fear of me. Thus, she is not insane. She is as capable of being rational as you or I."

"Since then," Ikbar added, "She did not kill another who attacked and restrained her, and is currently attempting to rescue another individual who fell into a ravine. I am beginning to develop an affinity for this particular Artificial, especially after having had to end Artificials who had men skewered and staked upright on long pikes to have sex with them as they died, or beheaded young virgin girls to bathe in their blood, or just generally capturing and torturing people for the sheer pleasure of listening to them scream as they died, simply because they dared to voice their beliefs."

"What, in your opinion, caused so many Artificials to go so murderously insane?" Sibilius asked.

Ikbar shrugged and took another sip of the green elixir. "From what I can determine from raiding the minds of several of them, it was the result of a long, purposeless life surrounded by beings who appeared similar to them, but had no advanced reasoning capabilities and poor constitution. The Artificials eventually stopped thinking of the indigents as living, feeling people, and began thinking of them as animals existing for their convenience and exploitation. Some Artificials took centuries to arrive at the point where killing or not killing a local human didn't matter one way or the other."

"So it is not something in the atmosphere or in the air that causes insanity," Sibilius wanted to know.

"No," the Enforcer replied. "In that respect, your experiment was a success. It was the Artificials' longevity and their advanced ability to heal, along with their failed attempts to help others whom they cared for, that caused their emotional deterioration and decline. It takes great emotional stability to watch everything around you constantly changing and dying while you remain untouched. Only one has refused to surrender, and she constantly seeks a purpose to her life; answers that are continually denied her. This last one only discovered a few days ago that you gave her the ability to fly. I found that out by looking into her mind when she implored the Praetor to protect her."

Sibilius leaned back in his chair and looked up at the monitors lining the wall of his lab, his mind idly wondering about the purpose of his original experiment of creating hybrids by mixing the genes of the indigent population with his own. It was to determine the possibility of resettling the remainder of the great ship's crew amongst the local population by creating bodies indistinguishable from the humans, but evolved enough for the crew to live in comfortably.

'But where did I get the original souls to put in the Artificials I grew?' he wondered idly.

'That answer is not important right now. You should concentrate on the relocation project and not worry about things that are not to be understood.' Sibilius could almost hear the words in his mind, and knew it was more important to think about the relocation project.

The Relocation Project included the transfer of the myriad array of life forms from this planet to the distant, artificial planetoid orbiting one of the gas giants in this solar system. The ship's cargo area needed to be filled with trees, dirt, animals, insects; whatever could be scooped up with the trees and their roots for transportation and reintegration. It would take a few months seeking out isolated areas that could be denuded of enough vegetation to fill the cargo hold.

In the several thousand years that the transference of life forms from Earth had been underway, enough plants, crops, trees and even people unfortunate enough to be caught, had been transferred to the artificial planetoid to populate several towns. A short delay was required to insure that the last remaining Artificial would continue her existence after her horrendous encounter with the Enforcer, then the 'reload' project could commence once again.

Béla dropped down near the old mining shack next to her backpack. She deposited the coil of rope there and took out the knife she used for skinning rabbits. She knew Jake would be very hungry (and probably very worried about her), so she decided to hunt before diving back down into the crevice.

After fifteen minutes of low flying, she flushed a rabbit. Diving downward, she crashed into the ground on top of it as it tried to flee. Usually, as she dove, the rabbit would leap in some unexpected direction just before her strike. After her first few failures, she had learned to transform her wings back into arms just as she reached her target, ready to grab in whichever direction the target leaped. This one didn't leap at all, so she missed it entirely with her hands, but killed it instantly, squashing it when she crash-landed. It was going to be a mess to skin.

Folding the skin around the rabbits' neck, she put it in her mouth, the dead rabbit dangling down in front of her. Her arms became wings once again as she reached skyward and launched herself up. She flew back toward the old mining shack while she contentedly sucked blood out of the rabbit. After the first couple of swallows, she noticed it tasted bad, so she spit it out of her mouth, hairy rabbit and all, and decided to hunt again.

It was another hour before she was ready to descend. Coil of rope around her neck and skinned, gutted rabbit clenched firmly in her teeth, she lifted off into the air. It was nearly sunset. The gorge where Jake was would already be dark.

As she sailed over the edge of the cliff and began her exhilarating dive downward, she saw a bright pinprick of light below her.

'Great! Jake has a fire going, ' she realized, relieved to see it. 'That means he's okay!'

She wished she could yell and let him know she was near, but she didn't want to risk losing the rabbit, clenched tightly in her teeth. Still, she was sure he was worried sick about her.