Joe said, 'Space flight presents no difficulties, if you can tap into the orbiting Computers illegally - which has been done. As for the cylinder, that may make more sense when it is analysed back on Earth - downstairs, as you space buffs would say.'
'It doesn't make sense,' I said. 'Where's the point in trying to disable Computer-Two?' 'As part of a programme to cripple space flight.' 'Then everyone suffers. The dissidents, too.' 'But it gets everyone's attention, doesn't it, and suddenly the cause of whatever-it-is makes news. Or the plan is to just knock out Computer-Two and then threaten to knock out the other three. No real damage, but lots of potential, and lots of publicity.'
'I don't believe it,' I said. 'It's too dramatic.' 'On the contrary,' said Joe. 'I'm trying to be non-dramatic.' He was studying all parts of the interior closely, edging over it square centimetre by square centimetre. 'I might suppose the thing was of nonhuman origin.' 'Don't be silly.'
'You want me to make the case? The cylinder made contact, after which something inside ate away a circle of metal and entered Computer-Two. It crawled over the inside wall eating away a thin layer of metal for some reason. Does that sound like anything of human construction?'
'Not that I know of, but I don't know everything. Even you don't know everything.'
Joe ignored that. 'So the question is, how did it -whatever it is - get into the computer, which is, after all, reasonably well-sealed. It did so quickly, since it knocked out the resealing and air-regeneration capacities almost at once.'
'Is that what you're looking for?' I said, pointing.
He tried to stop too quickly and somersaulted backwards, crying, That's it! That's it!'
In his excitement, he was thrashing his arms and legs which got him nowhere, of course. I grabbed him and, for a while, we were both trying to exert pushes in unco-ordinated directions and that got us nowhere either. Joe called me a few names, but I called him some back and I had the advantage of him there. I understand English perfectly, better than he does, in fact; but his knowledge of Russian is - well, fragmentary would be a kind way of putting it. Bad language in an understood language always sounds very dramatic.
'Here it is,' he said, when we had finally sorted ourselves out.
Where the computer-shielding met the wall, there was a small circular hole left behind when Joe brushed aside a small cylinder. It was just like the one on the outer hull, but it seemed even thinner. In fact, it seemed to disintegrate when Joe touched it.
'We'd better get into the computer,' said Joe.
The computer was a shambles.
Not obviously. I don't mean to say it was like a beam of wood that had been riddled by termites.
In fact, if you looked at the computer casually, you might swear it was intact.
Look closely, though, and some of the chips would be gone. The more closely you looked, the more you realized were gone. Worse yet, the stores which Computer-Two used in self-repair had dwindled to almost nothing. We kept looking and every once in a while, one of us would discover something else was missing.
Joe took the cylinder out of his pouch again and turned it end for end. He said, 'I suspect it's after high-grade silicon in particular. I can't say for sure, of course, but my guess is that the sides are mostly aluminium but that the flat end is mostly silicon.'
I said, 'Do you mean the thing is a solar battery?'
Tart of it is. That's how it gets its energy in space; energy to get to Computer-Two, energy to eat a hole into it, energy to - do - I don't know how else to put it. Energy to stay alive.'
'You call it alive?'
'Why not? Look, Computer-Two can repair itself. It can reject faulty bits of equipment and replace it with working ones, but it needs a supply of spares to work with. Given enough spares of all kinds, it could build a Computer just like itself, when properly programmed - but it needs the supply, so we don't think of it as alive. This object that entered Computer-Two is apparently collecting its own supplies. That's suspiciously life-like.'
'What you're saying', I said, 'is that we have here a microcomputer advanced enough to be considered alive.'
'I don't honestly know what I'm saying,' said Joe.
'Who on Earth could make such a thing?'
'Who on Earth?
I made the next discovery. It looked like a stubby pen drifting through the air. I just caught it out of the corner of my eye and it registered as a pen.
In zero gravity, things will drift out of pockets and float off. There's no way of keeping anything in place unless it is physically confined. You expect pens and coins and anything else that can find an opening to drift their way through the opening eventually and go wherever air currents and inertia lead them.
So my mind registered 'Pen' and I groped for it absently and, of course, my fingers didn't close on it. Just reaching for something sets up an air current that pushes it away. You have to reach over it and sneak behind it with one hand, and then reach for it with the other. Picking up any small object in midair is a two-hand operation.
I know some people can do it one-handed, but they're space hounds and I'm not.
I turned to look at the object and pay a little more attention to retrieval, then realized that my pen was safely in its pouch. I felt for it and it was there.
'Did you lose a pen, Joe?' I called out.
'No.'
'Anything like that? Key? Cigarette?'
'I don't smoke. You know that.'
A stupid answer. 'Anything?' I said in exasperation. 'I'm seeing things here.'
'No one ever said you were stable.'
'Look, Joe. Over there. Over there.'
He lunged for it. I could have told him it would do no good.
By now, though, our poking around in the computer seemed to have stirred things up. We were seeing them wherever we looked. They were floating in the air currents.
I stopped one at last. Or, rather, it stopped itself, for it was on the elbow of Joe's suit. I snatched it off and shouted. Joe jumped in terror and nearly knocked it out of my hand.
I said, 'Look!'
There was a shiny circle on Joe's suit where I had taken the thing off. It had begun to eat its way through.
'Give it to me,' said Joe. He took it gingerly and put it against the wall to hold it steady. Then he shelled it, gently lifting the paper-thin metal.
There was something inside that looked like a line of cigarette ash. It caught the light and glinted, though, like lightly woven metal.
There was a moistness about it, too. It wriggled slowly, one end seeming to seek something blindly.
The end made contact with the wall and stuck. Joe's finger pushed it away. It seemed to require a small effort to do so. Joe rubbed his finger and thumb and said, 'Feels oily.'
The metal worm - I don't know what else I can call it -seemed limp now after Joe had touched it. It didn't move again.
I was twisting and turning, trying to look at myself.
'Joe,' I said, 'for heaven's sake, have I got one of them on me anywhere?'
'I don't see one,' he said.
'Well, look at me. You've got to watch me, Joe, and I'll watch you. If our suits are wrecked we might not be able to get back to the ship.'
Joe said, 'Keep moving, then.'
It was a grisly feeling, being surrounded by things hungry to dissolve your suit wherever they could touch it. When any showed up, we tried to catch them and stay out of their way at the same time, which made things almost impossible. A rather long one drifted close to my leg and I kicked at it, which was stupid, for if I had hit it, it might have stuck. As it was, the air current I set up brought it against the wall, where it stayed.
Joe reached hastily for it - too hastily. The rest of his body rebounded and as he somersaulted, one booted foot struck the wall near the cylinder lightly. When he finally managed to right himself, it was still there.
'I didn't smash it, did I?'
'No, you didn't,' I said. 'You missed it by a decimetre. It won't get away.'
I had a hand on either side of it. It was twice as long as the other cylinder had been. In fact, it was like two cylinders stuck together lengthwise, with a constriction at the point of joining.
'Act of reproducing,' said Joe as he peeled away the metal. This time what was inside was a line of dust. Two lines. One on either side of the constriction.
'It doesn't take much to kill them,' said Joe. He relaxed visibly. 'I think we're safe.'
'They do seem alive,' I said, reluctantly.
'I think they seem more than that. They're viruses. - Or the equivalent.'
'What are you talking about?'
Joe said, 'Granted I'm a computer technologist and not a virologist - but it's my understanding that viruses on Earth, or, downstairs, as you would say, consist of a nucleic acid molecule coated in a protein shell.
'When a virus invades a cell, it manages to dissolve a hole in the cell wall or membrane by the use of some appropriate enzyme and the nucleic acid slips inside, leaving the protein coat outside. Inside the cell it finds the material to make a new protein coat for itself. In fact, it manages to form replicas of itself and to form a new protein coat for each replica. Once it has stripped the cell of all it has, the cell dissolves and in place of the one invading virus there are several hundred daughter viruses. Sound familiar?'
'Yes. Very familiar. It's what's happening here. But where did it come from, Joe?'
'Not from Earth, obviously, or any Earth settlement. From somewhere else, I suppose. They drift through space till they find something appropriate in which they can multiply. They look for sizeable objects ready-made of metal. I don't imagine they can smelt ores.'
'But large metal objects with pure silicon components and a few other succulent matters like that are the products of intelligent life only,' I said.
'Right,' said Joe, 'which means we have the best evidence yet that intelligent life is common in the Universe, since objects like the one we're on must be quite common or it couldn't support these viruses. And it means that intelligent life is old, too, perhaps ten billion years old - long enough for a kind of metal evolution, forming a metal/silicon/oil life as we have formed a nucleic/protein/water life. Time to evolve a parasite on space-age artifacts.'
I said, 'You make it sound as though every time some intelligent life form develops a space culture, it is subjected before long to parasitic infestation.'
'Right. And it must be controlled. Fortunately, these things are easy to kill, especially now when they're forming. Later on, when they're ready to burrow out of Computer-Two, I suppose they will grow, thicken their shells, stabilize their interior and prepare, as the equivalent of spores, to drift a million years before they find another home. They might not be so easy to kill, then.'
'How are you going to kill them?'
'I already have. I just touched that first one when it instinctively sought out metal to begin manufacturing a new shell after I had broken open the first one - and that touch finished it. I didn't touch the second, but I kicked the wall near it and the sound vibration in the metal shook its interior apart into metal dust. So they can't get us, now, or any more of the computer if we just shake them apart now!'
He didn't have to explain further - or as much. He put on his gauntlets slowly, and then banged at the wall with one. It pushed him away and he kicked at the wall where he next approached it.
'You do the same,' he shouted.
I tried to, and for a while we both kept at it. You don't know how hard it is to hit a wall at zero gravity, at least on purpose, and do it hard enough to make it clang. We missed as often as not or just struck it a glancing blow that sent us whirling but made virtually no sound. We were panting with effort and aggravation in no time.
But we had acclimatized ourselves (or at least I had) and the nausea didn't return. We kept it up and then, when we gathered up some more of the viruses, there was nothing inside but dust in every case. They were clearly adapted to empty, automated space objects which, like modern computers were vibration-free. That's what made it possible, I suppose, to build up the exceedingly rickety complex metallic structures that possessed sufficient instability to produce the properties of simple life.
I said, 'Do you think we got them all, Joe?'
'How can I say? If there's one left, it will cannibalize the others for metal supplies and start all over. Let's bang around some more.'
We did until we were sufficiently worn out not to care whether one was still left alive.
'Of course,' I said, panting, 'the Planetary Association for the Advancement of Science isn't going to be pleased with our killing them all.'
Joe's suggestion as to what the PAAS could do with itself was forceful, but impractical. He said, 'Look, our mission is to save Computer-Two, a few thousand lives and, as it turned out, our own lives, too. Now they can decide whether to renovate this computer or rebuild it from scratch. It's their baby.
'The PAAS can get what they can out of these dead objects and that should be something. If they want live ones, I suspect they'll find them floating about in these regions. They can look for them if they want live specimens, but they'd better watch their suits at all times. I don't think they can vibrate them to death in open space.'
I said, 'All right. My suggestion is we tell Computer-Central we're going to jerry-rig this Computer and get it doing some work anyway, and we'll stay till a relief is up for main repairs or whatever in order to prevent any reinfestation. Meanwhile, they better get to each of the other Computers and set up a system that can set it to vibrating strongly as soon as the internal atmosphere shows a pressure drop.'
'Simple enough,' said Joe, sardonically.
'It's lucky we found them when we did.'
'Wait a while,' said Joe, and the look in his eyes was one of deep trouble. 'We didn't find them. They found us. If metal life has developed, do you suppose it's likely that this is the only form it takes? Just this fragile kind?
'What if such life forms communicate somehow and, across the vastness of space, others are now converging on us for the picking? Other species, too; all of them after the lush new fodder of an as yet untouched space culture. Other species! Some that are sturdy enough to withstand vibration. Some that are large enough to be more versatile in their reactions to danger. Some that are equipped to invade our settlements in orbit. Some, for the sake of Univac, that may be able to invade the Earth for the metals of its cities.
'What I'm going to report, what I must report, is that we've been found!'
Introduction to GOOD TASTE
In late 1975, Alan Bechtold, who ran a small semiprofessional publishing outfit he called Apocalypse Press, wanted to put out a series of limited printings of individual science fiction stories especially written for the purpose. After one year, all rights would revert to the author. I was intrigued by the proposition and, in January 1976, wrote 'Good Taste' which, frankly, pleased me a great deal. It seemed to me I had worked out a fascinating social background. Bechtold published the story, but others who had promised to deliver stories did not do so and the project failed, alas. Nevertheless, once the year was up, I submitted the story to George Scithers, for my own magazine had just started, and it appeared in the Fall 1977 Asimov's.
8
Good Taste
1
It was quite clear to everyone that it would not have happened - the family would not have been disgraced and the world of Gammer would not have been stunned and horrified - if Chawker Minor had not made the Grand Tour.
It wasn't exactly illegal to make the Grand Tour but, on Gammer at least, it was not really socially acceptable. Elder Chawker had been against it from the start, to do him justice, but then Lady Chawker took the side of her minor and mothers are, at times, not to be withstood. Chawker was her second child (both of them sons, as it happened) and she would have no more, of course, so it was not surprising that she doted on him.
Her younger son had wanted to see the Other Worlds of the Orbit and had p
romised to stay away no longer than a year. She had wept and worried and gone into a tragic decline and then, finally, had dried her eyes and spoken stiffly to Elder Chawker - and Chawker Minor had gone.
Now he was back, one year to the day (he was always a young man to keep his word, besides which the Elder's support would have ceased the day after, never fear), and the family made holiday.
Elder wore a new black glossy shirt but would not permit the prim lines of his face to relax, nor would he stoop to ask for details. He had no interest - no interest whatever - in the Other Worlds with their strange ways and with their primitive browsing (no better than the ways on Earth of which Gammerpeople never spoke).
He said, 'Your complexion is dirtied and spoiled, Chawker Minor.' (The use of the full name showed his displeasure.) Chawker laughed and the clear skin of his rather thin face crinkled. 'I stayed out of the sun as much as I could, Elder-mine, but the Other Worlders would not always have it so.'
Lady Chawker would have none of that either. She said warmly, 'It isn't dirtied at all, Elder. It breathes a warmth.'
'Of the Sun,' grumbled Elder, 'and it would be next that he would be grubbing in the filth they have there.'
'No farming for me, Elder. That's hard work. I visited the fungus vats at times, though.'
Chawker Major, older than Minor by three years, wider efface, heavier of body, but otherwise of close resemblance, was torn between envy at his younger brother's having seen different worlds of the Orbit and revulsion at the thought of it. He said, 'Did you eat their Prime, Minor?'
'I had to eat something,' said Chawker Minor. 'Of course, there were your packages, Lady-mine. Lifesavers, sometimes.'
'I suppose', said Elder Chawker with distaste, 'the Prime was inedible there. Who can tell the filth that found its way into it.'
'Come now, Elder-mine.' Chawker Minor paused, as though attempting to choose words, then shrugged. 'Well, it held body and soul together. One got used to it. I won't say more than that. - But Elder-Lady-mine, I am so glad to be home. The lights are so warm and gentle.'