Klapaucius gave some thought to the matter before speaking. “We must exterminate these free-riders from the GHC and sterilize the surface, at the same time we protect Neu Trina. But we cannot cease the construction of our trans-chronal engine either. The dark matter and dark energy capacitors will rupture under their loads, if we delay too long past a certain point. And I won’t be thwarted by some insignificant burrs under my saddle!”
“What do you recommend then?”
“One of us will go below and resume construction alone. The other will remain topside, waging war and protecting our captain. We will alternate these roles on a regular basis.”
“Agreed, noble Klapaucius. May I suggest in deference to your superior mechanical utility that I take the more dangerous role first?”
Klapaucius’s emulators expressed disgust. “Oh, go ahead! But you’re not putting anything over on me! Just remember: no actions beyond mild petting are to be taken with this servomechanism.”
Trurl’s manipulators tightened around Neu Trina with delight. “Oh, never!”
Thus began the long campaign to cleanse the GHC of its parasites. Up and down the 317 million planets’ worth of territory, aided by innumerable repairbots-turned-destroyers, each master constructor raced during his shift aboveground. In their cleansing they employed acid, fire, hard radiation, epoxies, EMP, operating system viruses, quantum-bond disruptors, rust, grey goo, gentle persuasion, bribes, double-dealing, proxy warriors, mini-novas, quasar-drenchings, gamma-ray bursts and a thousand, thousand other strategies, tactics and weapons. And inbetween campaigns, the gyro-gearloose generals retreated for emotional and corporeal salving to the pilothouse, where lovely Neu Trina awaited to tend to every wound.
For any other team than the illustrious Klapaucius and Trurl, the task would have been a Sisyphean one. 317 million planets was a lot of territory from which to expunge all positronic life. But finally, after three centuries of constant battle, the end was in sight. And soon they would be making their journey to the past.
Now a century delayed from their original projections, Trurl and Klapaucius were anxious to finish. Had their memory banks not been self-repairing and utterly heuristic and homeostatic, they might have forgotten by now their original purpose: to return to the past to capture a paleface sample for reintroduction into the stolid, staid, static present.
One day during Trurl’s underground stint, he discovered what he suddenly believed was a potentially fatal flaw in their device.
“If,” he mused aloud, “our orrery must mimic all the bodies in this quadrant over a certain size, then the GHC must be represented in the orrery as well. An obvious point, and this we’ve done. But perhaps that miniature GHC must contain a miniature orrery as well. In which case this lower-level model of the orrery would have to contain another GHC and its orrery, and so on in an infinite regress.”
Trurl’s anti-who-shaves-the-barber protection circuits began to overload, and he shunted their impulses into a temporary loop. “I must discuss this with Klapaucius!”
Up to the surface he zoomed. Into the pilothouse, following the location beacon of his friend.
There, he noted that Klapaucius was seemingly alone. Immediately, Trurl forgot the reason for his visit.
“Where is Neu Trina?”
Klapaucius grew nervous. “She—she’s outside, gathering the pitted durasteel armatures of the slain mechanoids. She likes to build trellises with them for her hologram roses.”
“I don’t believe you! Where is she? Come out with it!”
“She’s far away, I tell you. One million, six-hundred-thousand, five-hundred-and-nineteen planetary diameters away from here! Just go look, if you don’t trust me!”
“Oh, I’ll look all right!” And Trurl deployed his X-ray vision on the immediate vicinity.
What he saw caused him to gasp! “You—you’ve let her dock inside you!”
From deep inside Klapaucius emerged a muted feminine giggle.
“This is beyond belief, Klapaucius! You know we pledged never to do such a thing. Oh, a little cyber-canoodling, sure. ‘Mild petting’ were your exact words, as I recall. But this—!”
“Don’t pretend you never thought of it, Trurl! Neu Trina told me how you dangled your USB plugs in front of her!”
“That was simply so she could inspect my pins to see if their gold-plating had begun to flake…”
“Oh, really…”
“Make her come out! Now!”
An enormous door in the front of Klapaucius gaped, a ramp extended, and the petite Neu Trina rolled out, just as she had that long-ago day from the birthing factory. Except today all her antennae were disheveled and hot liquid solder dripped from several ports.
Trurl’s emotional units went angrily asymptotic at this sluttish sight.
“Damn you, Klapaucius!”
Trurl unfurled a bevy of whip-like manipulators and began to flail away at his partner.
Klapaucius responded in kind.
“Now, boys, don’t fight over little old—squee!”
Caught in the middle of the battle, Neu Trina had her main interface pod lopped off by a metal tendril. If the combatants noticed this collateral damage, it served only to further inflame them. They escalated their fight, employing deadlier and deadlier devices—against which, of course, they were both immune.
But not so their surroundings. The pilothouse was soon destroyed, and Neu Trina rendered into scattered shavings and solenoids, tubes and transistors, lenses and levers.
After long struggle, the master constructors ground down to an exhausted halt. They looked about themselves, assessing the destruction they had caused with an air of sheepish bemusement. Trurl kicked half-heartedly at Neu Trina’s dented responsometer, sending that heart-shaped box sailing several miles away. Klapaucius pretended to be very interested in a gyno-gasket.
Neither spoke, until Klapaucius said, “Well, I suppose I did let my lusts get the better of my judgement. I apologize profusely, dear Trurl. What was this servo anyhow, to come between us? Nothing! No hard feelings, I hope? Still friends?”
Klapaucius tentatively extended a manipulator. After a moment’s hesitation, Trurl matched the gesture.
“Always friends, dear Klapaucius! Always! Now, listen to what brought me here.” Trurl narrated his revelation about the orrery.
“You klystron klutz! Have you forgotten so easily the Law of Retrograde Reflexivity!”
“But the Ninth Corollary clearly states—”
And off they went to their labours, arguing all the way.
THE FOURTH SALLY, OR,
THE ABDUCTION OF THE PALEFACES
One trillion AUs out from the planet that had first given birth to the race of palefaces, and millions of years deep into the past, relative to their own era, the pair of master constructors focused their bevy of remote-sensing devices on the blue-green globe. Instantly a large monitor filled with a living scene, complete with haptics and sound: a primitive urban conglomeration swarming with fleshy bipedal creatures, moving about “on foot” and inside enslaved dumb vehicles that emitted wasteful puffs of gas as they zoomed down narrow channels.
Trurl shuddered all along his beryllium spinal nodules. “How disagreeable these ‘humans’ are! So squishy! Like bags of water full of contaminants and debris.”
“Don’t forget—these are our ancestors, after a fashion. The legends hold that they invented the first machine intelligences.”
“It seems impossible. Our clean, infallible, utilitarian kind emerging from organic slop—”