“Two heads are better than one, you mean.” Birdie was unsmiling. “Either one of them may win. Sounds like we ought to hear from both Steven and E. C. Tally before we make any decision.”
“There is a certain logic to that idea. The other surprise is in information storage. Steven has far slower access, but he has better information packing density. He knows many more facts than E. C. Tally, but he takes longer to retrieve them.” Graves thought for a few moments longer. “And, of course, the final weakness of E. C. Tally is unrelated to computation speed or to memory capacity. It is his inability to allow for the effects of emotion when considering human issues. He will always do his best to make the right decision — his makeup gives him no choice — but his judgment on both human and alien issues will always be impaired. And the farther he is away from the environment in which his principal experience was drawn, the more suspect his decision processes will be.” Graves peered around, making sure that Tally was not lurking somewhere near. “It occurs to me that you and I had better keep a close eye on him. Especially you. He will seek to hide his motives from me, because he knows that I am part of the Council. You must inform me at once if his actions ever appear dangerously simplistic, or insensitive to the subtleties of organic intelligence.”
Birdie nodded. At the first opportunity he went for a quiet chat with E. C. Tally.
“Your observations have merit,” Tally said carefully, after a few milliseconds’ pause for substantial introspection. “The minds of Julius and Steven Graves possess certain attributes that may supplement mine. There is virtue in massively parallel processing, although on the whole it does not compensate for the painfully sluggish speed of an Organic’s neural circuits.” Tally looked carefully around him. “However, Julius and Steven Graves possess one weakness that could be fatal. In an emergency they — especially Julius — will tend to make judgments that are clouded by emotion. I was warned of this by the council. Perhaps you can assist me here. Graves will seek to hide the effects of his emotions from me, because he knows that I will be reporting to the Council. You must tell me at once if his actions ever appear dangerously emotional, or unduly colored by the hormonal influences of organic intelligence.”
“Sure. You can count on me.”
“Hmm. Indeed?” There was a moment’s pause. “Aha! You employ the verb idiomatically, not literally.” E. C. Tally nodded with heavy satisfaction. “Yes, indeed you do. Logic, and the slowness of your arithmetic circuits, require that must be the case. It is rewarding to know that the ways of organic intelligence are becoming apparent to me.”
He wandered off through the interior, with its lingering aroma of rancid fat.
Birdie felt a moment’s satisfaction, which was quickly replaced by a disturbing thought: Graves is as crazy as a Varnian, and E. C. Tally is no better. What’s wrong with me, when both sets of weirdos take me into their confidence?
Entry 18: Varnian
Distribution: The Varnian cladeworld, Evarnor, orbits an F-type star near the center of the ellipsoidal gas cloud known in the Fourth Alliance as the Swan of Hercules. The cloud lies approximately 170 light-years from Sol, in a direction bisecting the angle between the galactic normal and the vector to the galactic center.
Varnians spread from their original home via sublight-speed ships to thirteen other planets prior to their discovery by human explorers. All fourteen of these Varnian worlds lie within or on the boundaries of the Swan of Hercules.
Subsequent to that first discovery (in E. 1983, by the members of the Dmitriev Ark), small groups of Varnians have been spread by human contact throughout the Fourth Alliance and the Cecropia Federation. Spiral-arm regulations prohibit the formation of any colony of Varnians in excess of four thousand members, except on Evarnor itself or on one of the original thirteen Varnian colony worlds. Despite Varnian petition, this edict is judged unlikely to change in the foreseeable future (see Culture, below).
The population of Varnians throughout the spiral arm is estimated at 220 million. Although in no danger of extinction, they represent one of the rarer intelligences of the region.
Physical Characteristics: The Varnians are versatile metamorphs, capable of extensive physical transformation. Since Evarnor is a low-temperature planet, close to the limit for oxygen breathers, the Varnians who live there adopt in repose a spherical configuration that maximizes heat conservation. They extrude variable-width pseudopods as required, but they rarely deviate far from the overall spheroid.
Varnians in warmer environments are less constrained in appearance. In the presence of members of another species they will often mimic their main features, from the basic elements of endoskeleton, limb structure, and epidermal appearance, to such refinements as eye color, hair follicles, and behavioral patterns. There are no known limits to such mimicry (“Don’t judge a Varnian by the warmth of her smile”).
History: The Varnian story appears as a constant battle with racial insanity. If any species points up the distinction between intelligence and rational behavior, this is it. Archeological records, obtained by human and Cecropian workers, show that Varnian civilization went through at least five sudden and total extinctions, with subsequent slow returns from barbarism. Each collapse occurred without warning, following a long stable period of peaceful development. The estimated cycle time has been as short as forty thousand years (Second Eclipse) and as long as seven hundred thousand (Fourth Eclipse).
The loss of all but scanty records of those five disasters makes reconstruction of past events difficult; however, the spread of Varnian civilization across fourteen planets of twelve suns during three different eras proves that an advanced technology was achieved in at least those cycles.
The continuous written history of the Varnians can be traced back for twenty-two thousand years, to the time of the beginning of the Sixth Emergence.
Culture: Today’s Varnian civilization is tranquil, unambitious, and apparently stable. It has been so for thirty thousand years, with no sign of an impending sixth species-wide disaster. However, the Per’nathon-Magreeu symbiote (PM) Suggested in E. 2731 that this is no cause for complacency. It was PM’s analysis of Varnian culture that finally led to the restriction on colony size to four thousand members anywhere beyond the original fourteen Varnian worlds.
PM, in a systematic analysis of Varnian languages, noted that although there are over 140 semantic groups, languages, and local dialects in use among Varnians, none of those possesses a word meaning cynicism, self-criticism, or skepticism. They also pointed out that the basic collapse of Varnian civilization took place only [Примечание изготовителя документа: часть текста потеряна]
CHAPTER 7
Without the aid of the beacon they would never have found Louis Nenda’s ship. Darya became convinced of that as the Summer Dreamboat crept closer to it. For the past hundred kilometers they had been flying through a cloud of debris — lumps of rock, water-ice, and ammonia-ice ranging from boulders the size of a house down to pea-sized hail. Even the smaller pieces could be dangerous. The clutter scattered radio signals, too, and determining the precise location of the Have-It-All became a trial-and-error process. No wonder the beacon had been so faint.