The Second Experiment by J. O. Jeppson

Author:J. O. Jeppson [Jeppson, J. O.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Fantasy
ISBN: 9780395195048
Google: briuLQAACAAJ
Goodreads: 4026798
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Published: 1974-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

TOWARD CONCLUSION

During the nights Tec was soothed and healed by the presence of Ka, who slept beside him in the ancient Council Chamber of the Roiiss, and whose empathy was never failing, always ready to ease Tec’s anguish. Ka had come every night since Uru stole the Terran ship, thirteen years before.

During the days Tec was always included in the activities of the New Roiissans, as the humans and Ka called themselves. This was a rule instituted long ago by Asher Holladay—now in his late thirties and hoping to feel wise any day—who said that Tec was to be treated as if he were a crippled but conscious person. Which, thought Tec, was quite accurate.

They strapped an antigrav belt on Tec and took him with them, to each group discussion, each birth, on each exploratory expedition, picnic, and party. When the children were in school, which was held in the old Roiiss library found when the Tower of History was opened, Tec was there, too. He now understood Terran Basic and the Valosi version of Roiissan, and he knew all that the humans knew. He wished he knew more.

He was sane again, but he could remember nothing from his own experience before the night that a thirteen-year-old Valosi named Lorrz had come to the Sacred Grove of Valos to Listen. From his own notes found in the Roiiss laboratory, Tec knew that he was a Roiiss robot who had successfully grown the one surviving Roiiss embryo, R’ya.

That name tugged painfully at Tec’s mind, but worse than not remembering who she was or what had happened to her, if he had ever known, was the certainty that he could do nothing to help himself or anyone else. He had tried again and again to break the paralysis, but his body —and memory—remained inert.

There is nothing so tiring as being passive. Tec tried to keep his mind as active as possible and wondered why he had so many of the emotional, even physical reactions of protoplasmic creatures. He suspected that he had been designed to be as much like a protoplasmic creature as possible so that he could raise and teach their young, alone if necessary. Apparently, he had.

His makers had evidently given him an inexhaustible energy supply which Lucy and Sol said might be tuned to cosmic fields or even hyperspace. Lucy speculated that Tec was the end product of a self-engineered evolution of robots, and that those unknown protoplasmic dragon-beings, the Roiiss, would not have understood his mechanisms or been able to duplicate him. Perhaps no one could. That meant Tec was utterly unique—and alone.

“I have been alive for millions of years,” said Tec to himself. “Does my ability to survive mean that I will live until the collapse of the universe, when radiation increases enormously?” Now what did that remind him of?

He could not remember and felt growing panic at the thought of living endlessly, already paralyzed for longer than human beings had existed. The humans had told him

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