Flight of the Maita Supercollection 3: Solving Galactic Problems Collector's Edition Read online

  Flight of the Maita

  supercollection three

  Solving Galactic Problems

  8 books

  Smashwords Edition

  © 2013

  all rights reserved: no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright holder/publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Machine Made

  Problem on Sentah

  After the Old Gods

  The T-K Casebook

  On the Dome

  How Odd!

  Vacations Don’t Always work Out

  Just Normal Business

  About the author

  CD was born in Lakeland, Florida. His education is in genetics and botany. He has traveled over much of the world, particularly when he was in music as a rock rhythm guitarist with some well-known bands in the late sixties and early seventies. He has worked as a high steel worker and as a longshoreman, clerk, orchidist, bar owner, salvage yard manager and landscaper – among other things.

  CD began writing fiction in 1984 and has more than 200 books published as of this time in SciFi, murder, orchid culture and various other fields.

  He now resides in Gualaca, Panamá, where he continues research into epiphytic plants. He loves the culture of the indigenous people and counts a majority of his closer friends among that group. Several have “adopted” him as their father. He funds those he can afford through the universities, where they have all excelled. “The Indios are very intelligent people, they are simply too poor (in material things and money. Culturally, they are very wealthy) to pursue higher education.” CD is involved in fighting to protect their rights. He is also involved in fighting the rampant corruption in the courts and politics there. (E-book, free download Fading Paradise) CD loves Panamá and the people. He plans to spend the rest of his life in the paradise that is Panamá

  Flight of the Maita

  Book 19

  Machine Made

  © 1987 by C. D. Moulton

  The Tlessonian berserker is B-A-A-C-C-K! – and as sneaky as ever.

  Critic comment

  Superintelligent machines pitted against each other! Great! I think that berserker idea is a good one

  – PA Rtng: If you like this stuff, very good buy!

  Contents

  What I Have to Put Up With

  Something Odd on Flimt

  Seeking Robots

  Following Your Shadow

  Too Many Possibilities

  Another Big Mess

  Too Easy

  Killit

  Let the Brain Think

  Little Trickeries

  Advantages

  Careful Steps

  Is That Smart?

  Clever Tricks

  Old Man of the Sea

  Messages

  Somebody Done Tricked Somebody

  Don’t Miss Anything

  T6 and TR

  Machine Made

  What I Have to Put Up With

  "Four thousand six hundred and thirty one worlds in the Maitan Empire, and you stick us out here on Perfect Three!" TR accused exasperatedly (How does it do that? TRD-60 is a spaceship, for crying out loud, and this is on internal circuitry!). "I'll never be able to understand, out of all those worlds, why we get stuck HERE!"

  TR's a saucer-type ship, about twenty some-odd meters across. It's also a part of me, Tabori R. DeSixtee, better known as Tab.

  I am, of course (If you haven't figured that out by now, you should be reading the See Spot Run books!), a robot, designed and built by Emperor Maita (I mean TR and myself both when I say "I"), another machine and a spaceship itself, as a matter of fact – but few know that.

  TR and I share everything through a sophisticated internal communications system, though we have our separate personality circuits. We are, as the Terran, Z, says, "A perfect example of a schizophrenic" personality.

  Don't worry about it. Z very rarely makes any sense. Z has been with Maita for nearly three hundred years now, as has Thing, the Mentan.

  That's another story altogether (In fact it's eighteen volumes of other stories to this point – or almost eighteen. I wrote some of them and Thing wrote one volume about several “little adventures” we shared from our individual perspectives).

  I always say that Perfect 3 is a perfectly accurate description of the planet if you're basing it on a scale of 1 to 10 (Get the play on "perfect" there?). It's a rather dull world that's fairly livable for many of the lifeforms in the empire, but the dull part is what TR was griping about.

  Maita chose that spot because it's near Empire Center, is at the connecting point of trade for two galactic spiral arms, and because there are three planets in the system in a livable range by all except those from very heavy worlds or the halogen based atmosphere lifeforms, none of which so far found have a very high intelligence – though I would argue their intelligence may be very different from CHON types. We tend to think of intelligence and technology as the same thing, and they very definitely are not!

  We all gripe about Perfect 3 and the dullness, but it really doesn't matter because, with our fast drives, we can go about anywhere in the galaxy in very short time. We just like to gripe, and that's as good a subject as any!

  We were about due for a vacation on EC, as we call Empire Center, and would see Maita and our organic friends.

  TR and I were really having fun. We bitch at each other all the time. Z taught all of us that type of humor, and we use it as a tension reliever. Thing has a pretended misunderstanding of words and phrases as a basis for its humor, Z is more tricky and somewhat slapstick, Maita is logical, and will use what is said against the sayer, TR is cynical, and I tend to be somewhere in between Thing and Maita.

  Thing's the most intelligent of our little group by far, Z can come up with novel approaches to problems, which he writes about (Get the play on "novel?"), TR has things figured out from the start (or so it would have us believe), Maita figures things by formula computation analysis, but has learned to see them from very different angles, and I'm a plodder in many ways and tend to work myself through a problem.

  I'm designed to look, act, feel, and react like the amphibian Swaz race. I'm exact, and have even taken a lover now and then, which shows how well I'm made. I've had some compliments about my abilities in various relationships, but I don't suppose too many would mention it if I were less than adequate. They'd probably simply not come back again, and I'm organic enough in my thoughts to brag about the fact that most of them DO come back for more!

  TR (who naturally "hears" what I'm thinking, made some remark about my colossal ego. Whatever does it mean?) can change me very radically when I'm on a case and need disguise (did I mention I'm a detective? The Tabori Detective Agency is on Perfect 3, which is what TR was bitching about).

  Normally, I'm about one point eight meters tall, shaped much like the reptilian Kheth or the mammalian Terrans, (K-form) have no hair, have vestigial gills that aren't noticeable unless I've extended the flaps, have some webbing between my fingers and toes (three fingers and a thumb on the hands and four toes per foot), dual-lidded eyes, am a tannish color, and have a short fin from the back of my neck to the cleft of the buttocks.

  I'm designed to eat and drink like the typical Swaz, having elementizer grids inside to break ingested matter down to its constituent elements, w
hich I can then remove whenever it's most convenient. Gases, I can vent off. (I'll forego that remark.)

  I have some limited ability to recombine elements in whatever form I want, and the process automatically analyzes whatever hits the grids. I can detect amazingly small quantities of poisons or such.

  Thing is a sort of squarish rubbery ball with four tentacles and eyes on stalks. It's about half a meter thick through the body, and the tentacles are about a meter in length. It isn't designed well to move on smooth surfaces, so rides around on one of us or on its own floater most of the time. The floater has circuits to carry its speech for others, as it's an empath and has no direct vocal abilities. It breathes through membranes, so speech would be even more limited. Vocal chords usually need air to drive them.

  Maita or TR or even the floater have circuits that directly "read" its directed thoughts and produce the words through their speakers.

  It tends to use the speech patterns of Maita, using no tonal inflections to indicate normal paragraphing, so its speech is one long paragraph. Maita uses the same speakers, so the tone of Thing's speech is higher than Maita's, and is preceded and ended with a tuning fork sound ( [ – ] ), while Maita's is begun and ended with a bell sound (*–*). I use the brackets and asterisks system when writing about them. Z started that tradition three hundred years ago, so we all do it now. They serve as speaker designations and quotation marks at the same time.

  I have a built-in receiver to "hear" Thing directly, but we must be in physical contact for it to work.

  Maita and TR are both "saucer" type ships. Maita is 60 meters across, and TR is about twenty meters across and is designed to resemble a Zeenan P-class ship, which is the best anywhere. TR has a few disguises it uses to change its outlines whenever we feel it's necessary in a case. It regularly invents new and different disguises.

  Maita has ten rooms plus the pilot's dome and the O dome. The pilot's dome is on the "bottom" of the ship when it's aground, and the gravity grids make for a startling effect when it's seen from outside on a planet. Everyone is seen walking around on the ceiling. The domes can be opaqued or transparenticized (my own word) as Maita sees fit.

  Room two is the medical and meeting room on Maita that also contains much of the communications and holovid equipment as well as all types of medical machinery. Thing has its private quarters in the room on the outer end of room two.

  Z uses the pilot's dome as his quarters when aboard because the pilot's chair is so comfortable and adjustable and all the equipment's there. Thing has the learning machines and computers in its quarters, too, with a bench designed for its comfort.

  Room one is the cargo hold, and is where the exit port is on Maita. There are power spheres stored on racks in the cargo bay – nineteen of them, where most ships have one.

  Room nine is the guest room, and contains bunks and sanitary facilities.

  Food can be delivered anywhere in the ship, and speakers are all over, so conversations can be held from any points.

  Z, the Terran, is shaped like the Kheth, though he's a mammal, while the Kheth are reptiles. I'm the same form, but amphibian. Z has brown hair instead of the crest on his head like the Kheth. He keeps himself in fairly good physical condition working on his private island on EC, where he raises plants from Earth called orchids and camellias and plants from other planets that resemble them closely.

  Thing has gardens under the oceans on EC between its private island and that of Z. Z planted the strangler fig, or Banyan tree, from Earth on Thing's island. It resembles the growth that covers Menta.

  Thing is from a dense world, and finds the pressures at three kilometers very comfortable.

  While Z can be modified to a certain extent by Maita's medical machines, Thing can't. Its organs are under too much pressure to screw around with so when we work together on a case it usually appears as an exotic pet, while Z and I can be modified to look, act, and smell like other races.

  Smell is very important in disguise, but we won't worry about that now.

  Many times we have others among the close crew, such as Kheth, Zeenans, and Vendans, but Maita, Thing, Z, and I are the basic unit of the crew of Maita. Two organics and two machines (three machines, but I said before, TR and I are one).

  It's sometimes strange the way many organics react to machine intelligences. That's why it's best few know about Maita being a machine – except the Zulians, but they're a special case in all cases. That's another story, too.

  We've found one completely mechanical society, and only a few intelligent independent machines. There's Theron, who now works with the Zulians, Searcher, who's a planoforming research machine who operates the station and ship, T6, or Ship, who deeded itself to Rimalt, the Inktan, Maita, TR and me, and a few others.

  Machines run the empire, which is really only a huge trading guild. The idea of an emperor is basically because a majority of the organics want a leader, so Emperor Maita's a figurehead in most ways, but can be very definitely the emperor when called upon.

  In so large an area of space, it isn't surprising to anyone they've never directly seen the emperor. The propaganda is that the emperor hides his race so all may think he's one of their own. It's only known he isn't Immin (who are as good as extinct, anyway) or Freenz.

  The Freenz are insectoids. Their queen declared it's obvious Maita's no Freenz, or it would be Empress Maita.

  So there!

  It's also known that Maita isn't a Maitan, but was named after that ancient race in respect. That's true, because Z named it after its inventors. Z didn't know at the time Terrans were from a lost Maitan colony and that he was of Maitan stock.

  That's enough background, except to say all of us in the crew are very close and share a deep affection one for the others. We say the most outrageous things about and to each other and play horrible tricks on one another. Many people think we're about to come to physical blows, but it's actually our deep affection. We know and love one another enough to where we can do this.

  Maita programmed a sense of humor into me (Oh? You noticed?) and learned it for itself, but we've discussed our other, deeper emotions such as our love, and have no idea where it comes from.

  T6 has a deep love and affection for Rimalt – and it wasn't programmed with anything at all in emotional response. It has its own sense of humor, too. It's forced to accept that Rimalt will die, and very soon now. All of us with very extended existences must accept that others will die and we will miss them terribly.

  It was harder for Z than for any of the rest of us when those original members of the group, such as Ape and Joe and Triss and many others died. Rimalt's like they were, in that he refuses to take the medical machine's offer of virtual immortality. Thing and Z take it because of their love for one another and for Maita and, now, me. For Thing, it's easy, as its vast mental capacity will never allow it to become bored, but for Z, it isn't so easy. He feels he can never have a family that's genetically his own, because he'd have to watch them grow old and die. After three hundred years he still retains inhibitions from his childhood on Earth, and doesn't know he's the father of Synteeven, who's now on the guiding council of Plamaita, the other Maitan colony.

  Z stayed with Clohress at his home on EC for six years, which is the general term of their "marriage" on Plamaita. He doesn't know Clohress was pregnant when she returned home and would be shocked to know about it, but that's their way. It was a typical and perfectly normal arrangement, as far as she was concerned.

  He would be even more shocked to know that his son and his son's mate had given him a grandson and a granddaughter. He knows all of them, but doesn't know his own part in it.

  I mention all of these things simply because I'm aware most of you have never studied Maitan Empire history, except cursorily. You've studied the history of your own race and of your own world with little interest in other worlds or empires.

  Most of the books written by Z, Thing, and myself are in the records, and few ever read them outside of Uni
versity. To assume you know what I write about without this background is ridiculous at best.

  I suppose you do know the basic facts about the empire, the Pweetoo wars that ended that tyranny, the petitioning by the Kheth Federation of Worlds to join the Maitan Empire at the time of the pirate wars – which started the whole idea of a Maitan Empire beyond the old Pweetoo Empire – and the pirate worlds, the discoveries of the Zulians, the establishing of Feach and their hospital ship, The Tabori R. DeSixtee (Named after yours truly!) that travels the galaxy, Hospital and University and Library, the Acnians as protectors running the empire's small battle fleet, the finding of the Freenz, and the myriad other things of which Maita and crew were a part. The destruction caused by the Immins and how they were eventually quarantined on their own home planet over a period of more than two hundred years is perhaps the best known part of Maitan Empire history because of what the Immins were.

  You possibly know about the establishing of the beacons to make travel anywhere in the galaxy safe and sure, and the time Maita and I were flung outside of the galaxy by the TTH14 drive. Only Maita and TR are using that drive now, because it's such a dangerous thing that only an intelligent ship can hope to handle it – and few of us, even. Decisions must be made in picoseconds, and non-independent minds are push-pull, which means as much as a millisecond in delay before a decision is reached, and that is far too long in TTH14!

  T6 may one day have it, but Theron and Searcher have flatly refused to consider it, though Searcher's mass would probably make it impossible to install.

  I've written about many of my detective agency cases, both the larger and smaller ones, and have enjoyed a bit of success as a chronicler. I've tried to use methods I found in books Z brought from Earth on several occasions, but find many of them aren't practical. It's rare for someone to show up at the last moment, such as in the Miss Marple mysteries, and it's rarer still for the tough guy approach to work, as in Mike Hammer and those. Sometimes simply thinking through the case will work, like in Nero Wolfe or Hercule Poirot, but it's usually a matter of moving around and finding clues and pointers, the majority of which lead nowhere, like in CD Grimes or Colombo.