Bob
July 2182
Delta Eridani
[Alert! Activity outside normal paraters!]
I looked up, eyes wide. Guppy had standing orders to alert if anything unusual occurred in or around the village. Of course Guppy, being Guppy, was short on details.
I activated the village VR, and found myself in the middle of a full-scale battle. At first I thought it was a gorilloid attack, but quickly realized that no gorilloids were in evidence anywhere. Instead, Deltans battled Deltans with spears, clubs, and axes. I could see a dozen or more bodies, either unconscious or dead.
Archides!
I ordered the VR to zoom in on Archides and his family. To my relief, I found that their tent was just outside the edge of the riot. Archides and Buster stood with bows in hand and arrows nocked. Belinda and Diana stood to either side, holding spears. That sight, as much as anything else, unnerved . Neither female had ever shown interest in anything weapon-related.
I knew that father and son enjoyed a well-deserved reputation as expert shots, though. In fact, the edge of the battle seed to particularly avoid the area imdiately around his tent. Just as well. Fallout or not, if soone threatened Archides, they’d earn a visit from a personnel buster.
Marvin popped in. “What the hell? What caused this?”
“No idea, Marv. I was working on sothing else when Guppy alerted . I’ll review the surveillance when I have ti, but right now I just need to keep Archides safe.”
Marvin nodded, and took over control of a couple of busters just in case.
We waited, tense. Archides and Buster drew back on their bows and took aim a couple of tis, but in every case, whatever Deltans had attracted their attention thought better of it and moved off.
Eventually the action died down. Deltans began backing away from the lee, still brandishing weapons. And now we had a chance to see the carnage. Property damage in the area of the riot was total, of course. Hopefully the owners had managed to flee the scene, but they’d be rebuilding from scratch. I counted seventeen bodies lying motionless on the ground. More than twice that number were bleeding and calling for help.
I wanted to throw up. What could possibly justify this? What could have set it off?
Marvin and I exchange glances and, without a word, I shut down the VR.
“I hope the dicine people can handle the number of patients,” Marvin said.
“They’ll have to, Marv. I couldn’t do anything with drones, even if I could take the chance on exposing myself.”
Marvin sighed. “I guess I understand why you’re always going on about Bill’s androids. It’d be great to have one available right now.”
“Yeah, I know, but he’s just not to that point yet. I keep bugging him, though.”
We sat down and I called up the video recordings for the last couple of hours. Marvin and I spent several full seconds reviewing them.
Finally, we sat back and Marvin shook his head. “Rember when we thought the Deltans were smart?”
“Yeah, no kidding,” I said. “The stupid. It burns.”
The whole thing—the riot, the injuries, the deaths—had been started by an argunt over how to divvy up a small prey animal. Unbelievable.
We stared into space for a few more monts, getting over the shock. Finally, I found my voice. “I’m going to go with the idea of population pressure as a trigger, unless sothing better presents itself. And I’m going to have a talk with Archides.”
* * *
The drone sat on the ground in front of Archides, looking very much like a rock. Archides slowly turned a flint core over in his hands, pretending to examine it. Anyone observing him would assu he was working on his flint.
“I think you’re right, bawbe,” Archides said in a low voice. “Things seem to be the most tense when everyone is ho. When hunters are out, it’s more peaceful.”
“Not a surprise, Archides. We’ve known for a long ti that animals can be more stressed when things get crowded—even animals that like to live in groups.”
“So what do we do? Kick a bunch of people out of the village?”
I laughed. “Archides, let introduce you to sothing called marketing. You don’t tell them they have to do it; you convince them that they want to do it, and that you don’t want them to. Works especially well with teenagers.”
Archides looked thoughtful for a few seconds, then smiled back. “I think I see where you’re going. So how do we do this?”
I thought for a mont. “Okay, here’s what we need to do…”
“Reverse psychology,” I said. The translation routine rendered that as “backwards trickery,” and Archides looked confused.
I sighed and tried again. “Okay, here’s a story from my ho. A great leader wanted to introduce potatoes to his people, because they were a good thing to grow. He made announcents, he visited villages, but no one was interested or wanted to change. So he grew so himself and passed a law that potatoes were just for leaders, and villagers weren’t allowed to eat them. Within a couple of hands of days, all his potatoes had been stolen and people were growing them.” I watched Archides, trying to guess if he’d got the point.
Archides frowned. “Wait, they grew the tubers? Like, told the plants where to grow? Why not just go out and pick them?”
I sighed—a very human expression, but one that Archides had grown to understand. He grinned at my frustration.
“We’ve talked about farming, Archides. You can grow a lot of sothing in a small space if you’re organized about it. But the point…” I glared at him, but of course he couldn’t see that. “…is that he got people to do sothing by telling them that they couldn’t. Maybe your people aren’t stubborn that way—”
Archides interrupted with a laugh. “Yeah, we are. Do you rember Buster when he was young?”
We shared a chuckle over the mories. Headstrong didn’t begin to cover it.
“Okay bawbe, I get it. So we just tell the gangs they can’t go to a new village?”
“Er, no, that won’t really do it. We don’t tell them anything at all. We start talking among ourselves about repopulating the other village sites, and doing it before the gangs get the sa idea. And we talk loudly, and we do it where they might overhear.” I paused to let him consider what I was saying. “Get so of the council involved, to make it seem credible. Really, just pretend we’re actually thinking about sothing like that, and start making plans.”
“And this will work?” Archides shook his head. “I really wonder about your people.”
“Want to place a bet?”
Archides grinned and shook his head.
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