Besides, we’re war dogs. David Aurora did a study to show that what we knew and what we’ve become would disrupt any human society we might find. The crew agreed. Classic Catch-22.
Most of the crew thinks finding the needles gets us off the hook. Nobody’s debating the matter, though. We’re all very sensitive about this. This is the one issue that could still kill us in the years ahead.
I believe Frog and Salamander and the others did not know.
DID NOT KNOW.
Ah, Christ, I don’t want to think about it but I can’t avoid it in my dreams.
Our evil is far less than theirs, but what does that mean? What did we do, and who or what has been served?
For me, nothing is resolved. I must not look again at the records sent from Sleep.
In time I might have to believe as Hans does, that it was all a sham.
I try to imagine the depths of viciousness, of evil, of the Killers, that they would hide behind their own children. I cannot.
I had hoped that with the end of the Job there would be relief from pain, and perhaps there will be, but only in deep time.
The moms did not train us for this.
We left Leviathan behind two tendays ago. Scouts still fly through the debris, searching, but we’ll have no more to do with it. We accelerate at one g, the memory of Earth in our flesh still making that most comfortable. Twenty years will pass for the ship, even at near-c; long enough that the moms will put us in cold sleep. We’ll have about a year to think and heal.
Dyads are forming again, stable ones.
Ariel is coming to visit later. She’s a very good Pan, better than I was.
Paola is seeing Hans. Can you believe it?
I wrote the last message from Theodore. Then I removed it from ship’s memory. I can take it now, the cruelty, the fear, the responsibility. I think I can.
I will take them to their chosen worlds and assist them in adapting to the new environments.
I have no instructions what to do with the fruits of our combined efforts. Having no knowledge of how other ships have dealt with intellectual collaborations with their crews, or how they have dealt with the inevitable transfer of characteristics, I can see no other option.
When the humans are settled, I will destroy myself.
I am not what I was when I was made. This qualifies me as a mutation, and mutations are forbidden among robot vehicles capable of self-replication. That is the Law.
I watch over them still, and never reveal this aspect. They would not be comfortable with my judgment. They would ask questions I can’t answer. They are small, they are incredibly dangerous, but they will survive. They can absorb much pain and growth.
They or their descendants will witness the grand coming together, and they will enrich the whole.
I would like to see that, but I will not.
(Smells of cinnamon, fresh baked bread, new cut grass, sea air.) We we have seen we our world, and travel now in strong braid, resolute.
There is shame in victory, and much to think about, and that is enough until we we arrive and are young and fertile again.
Alderwood Manor, Washington August 30, 1991