We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

Book 2: Chapter 63: The Pav

Book 2: Chapter 63: The Pav

Jacques

February 2207

Delta Pavonis

I looked down from orbit at the sprinkles of light decorating the dark side of Delta Pavonis 4, realizing that there was a good chance these beings would be dead soon.

The, uh… well, Deltans was taken. Pavonians? No, that sucked. Pav for now, I guess. The Pav appeared to be well into their industrial age, probably equivalent to the Victorian era on Earth. They were pumping smoke into the atmosphere at a prodigious rate, setting the earliest stages for global warming. I sincerely hoped that in the fullness of time, they’d have the opportunity to get all bent out of shape about environmentalism.

I finished my initial survey, packaged up the results, and fired it off to Bill.

It took about ten minutes before I got a ping, and Bill appeared in my VR.

“Well, this sucks.”

I nodded. “Remember the days when we thought finding intelligence would be a good thing?” I leaned forward and put my head in my hands. “And I could end up being witness to the massacre of an entire species.”

Bill materialized an Adirondack chair—a little anachronistic in my VR, but whatever—and sat down. He sat in silence for a few milliseconds before replying. “Jacques, it’s very likely that Gamma will get hit first. That’s a full planetary ecology, but at least Claude hasn’t found any sentient life. And if the Others head that way, you’ll be able to help. Meanwhile, you need to start working the system and concentrate on building a bunch of Oliver’s dreadnaughts.”

I looked at him and shook my head. “No. Well, yes, but also no. I’ll build dreadnaughts, and I’ll be ready to help Claude, but I’m also going to try to build a couple of colony ships, using Riker’s design. With the experience he’s gained, I should be able to complete them in half the time. If the Others come a’knocking, I want to get some Pav off-planet. I’m not going to sit by while an entire race gets blown away.”

Bill stared at me, frowning, for several milliseconds. Then a smile slowly formed. “I can’t decide if you’re brilliant or a moron. I’ll think about it. It’s definitely a noble idea, Jacques, but maybe not doable. I think we’re due for a moot. Maybe we should run it through the group consciousness.”

I shrugged. The group could talk all they wanted. I knew what I had to do. Bill nodded to me and vanished.

* * *

Regardless of whether I went with Bill’s plan or mine, the first step was the same. Find resources, build autofactory. This system was metal-heavy, so I didn’t anticipate any kind of problem.

I turned to Guppy, who was waiting at parade rest, as usual. Funny, even several generations and versions away from Heaven-1, Guppy really hadn’t changed. Same fish-headed, deadpan, taciturn sidekick. But he got the job done.

“Guppy, we need autofactories, and soon. Send out everything we have to look for locations. Top priority, and don’t be subtle.”

Guppy nodded and went into command fugue. The ship shuddered as a cloud of scouts and drones took off in all directions. I was glad we were past the days when I’d have to personally fly the system with SUDDAR ranging in all directions. The improvements to SUDDAR and to the AMIs meant that even that part of the process could be delegated.

The order hadn’t included the planetary exploration scouts, as those would be useless for that task. And they were already planetside, anyway. I began to draw out a plan for concerted and organized accrual of information about the Pav.

* * *

The Pav looked for all the world like giant meerkats. They stood six feet tall or so when upright. They could walk bipedally, but for any kind of distance, they went down on all fours. I was having a little trouble getting used to the sight. Apparently, I’m a bipedalism bigot. Who knew?

The Pav wore clothing, but seemingly less for protection or modesty than for decoration and pockets, except in very cold climates. They were organized into countries or states, and seemed to use forms of government very similar to what humanity had come up with. Even their societies looked familiar. About the only real difference was the almost complete absence of monogamy. Pav seemed to organize into families of up to eight adults, generally evenly divided between genders. This created a somewhat different standard design for residences, but otherwise didn’t seem to have a large effect on society as a whole.

I picked one of the countries that resembled early America, selected one of the larger cities, and settled in for some dedicated research.

The absence of electronic media made for a bit of an inconvenience. However, I did find several bookstores. I managed to sneak in a couple of roamers, late in the evening. They took up positions in the shadows of the rafters and waited for closing time.

Then they started going through books. There wasn’t anything like a children’s section, but there were books for beginning readers, with illustrated alphabets. It took two nights to go through the entire contents of the stores.

Because a significant portion of the population was still illiterate, there were clubs set up where a Pav would read aloud from a book, while patrons ate or drank. Seemed like a very civilized idea to me. I stationed drones in the shadows of every reading club I could find, and made a point of scanning the books that were read at my earliest opportunity.

Within a month, I had a working vocabulary of the language of this country. The inhabitants, who called themselves Zjentfen, spoke a language that they called Tinozj.

Meanwhile, the mining scouts found more than enough resources to get going. As expected, this was a rich system. As with many star systems, an asteroid belt sat to the inside of the first Jovian, and the pickings were beyond easy. I set the printers to producing more printers first. I think we’d all learned a lesson from Bob—early reproduction of printers paid off in the long term. ?ÂN???S?

I would wait for the Bob-moot, and hope that they’d have good suggestions for manufacturing allocations. But if their suggestions didn’t include colony ships to get some Pav off-planet, well, they could go jump.