Chapter 4: The Trouble With Marionettes
Six months passed, and all was well in Gartlant.
Perhaps not all, Faust reflected as he strode toward the throne room, Tiger, Luchs, and Panther at his side as always. The economy could be going better; the earlier Fausts had done their best to strip the country of most of its natural resources, so establishing trade with the rest of Terra II hadn't been easy. However, the economists he'd hired were doing their job well enough, so he was confident things would improve on that front. The fact that unemployment had dropped to less than ten percent was a sure sign of that, he thought. Gartlant and its people were actually producing products to sell instead of weaponry these days, and according to news from the other nations, they were gaining a good reputation.
Gartlant was also looking better, he knew that - Hess had developed some kind of cloud-seeding satellite that had managed to clean up most of the industrial pollution, so that the sky over Gartlant was actually blue more often than not. Of course, Terra II's weather being what it was, the satellites had to be replaced every few months after being struck down by high plasma clouds, but there was more than enough money in the treasury to cover that, now that they didn't have to finance wars anymore.
However, not everything was going according to his plans, and that was what today's meeting was for, that was why it was imperative that the three marionettes were with him. As they reached the throne room doors, he stopped, and looked at them each in turn.
"I know you're used to being with me at the meetings," Faust began, and the three of them nodded. "I also know that you're usually bored." He grinned as Luchs blushed, Tiger looked sheepish, and Panther nodded firmly.
"It's not always that bad, Faust-sama," Luchs said, still looking oddly shy. "You have a country to run, and our place is with you."
"I know," Faust said. "And thanks for that." He lowered his voice. "Half the time I don't want to be there either; I wish they'd just do all their arguing before I showed up."
"It's what you have to do, Faust-sama," Tiger said. She looked up at him from under the brim of her cap, and smiled. "You told us that, remember?"
"In fact, I think your exact words were that all the idiots would spend all day arguing if you didn't show up to make the decisions," Panther said. She smirked when Faust glowered at her. "I'm sure Luchs could play it back if you wish, Faust-sama."
"I do have it recorded," Luchs said, giving him half a smile. By now, Faust was fully convinced that any innocence she portrayed was a complete and total act.
Faust started to say something, then sighed. "I know I've said I couldn't run the country without you," he said, a wry smile on his face, "but every once in a while, you three make me start to wonder."
Their reaction was not at all what he'd expected.
Within about two seconds, all three marionettes were clinging to him, and all he could make out was a blend of all three of them begging him not to turn them away, not to reject them. He paused, stunned, then frowned as he looked down at them.
It was so easy to forget that they weren't human. Calling them marionettes was more of a formality than anything else to him. But he knew that they weren't entirely here by choice; the programming they'd been given to be faithful to him and to stay by his side was something that they couldn't escape, something that they couldn't simply ignore. He'd never joked about doing his work without them before, and that, he thought, must be why they'd reacted so emotionally. He knew that he didn't want them to leave, not at all - it would feel like he didn't have anyone who saw him as more than just their ruler. He shuddered at the thought.
"I'm sorry," Faust said quietly, and managed to free his arms enough to wrap them around the three marionettes, pulling them close. "I didn't mean that." They looked up at him, together, and he could see something like sadness in their eyes, mingled with hope. "I'm not going to send you away," he said, and sighed heavily. "I'd never do that."
They didn't say anything. He almost expected to see tears in their eyes, but caught himself. That couldn't happen, even with the maiden circuit. The maiden circuit. . . .
Faust groaned, and freed one hand to hold it to his forehead. "I can't believe it," he said, mostly to himself. "I should have thought of that months ago."
"What is it, Faust-sama?" Tiger asked. She and the others were still clinging to him.
"You'll see, but we need to get the reports from this meeting first," he said. "I promise you three I'm not going to send you away. But I will ask you to let go of me so we can go take care of this."
For a moment, he thought they weren't going to listen to him. But they finally let him go, and he turned and opened the doors to the throne room.
As always during meetings, the room was set up differently. The raised platform that the throne sat upon was lowered to be even with the rest of the floor, and a long table with chairs for everyone sat before the throne. Faust, of course, still sat at the head of the table, but he'd found that it made for more comfortable meetings if everyone else didn't have to stand. A diplomat from Peterburg had made the suggestion, and Faust had gladly gone along with it, as it had taken three months to even get someone from Peterburg into the country for diplomatic discussions.
The men gathered at the table stood and saluted as Faust strode into the room, and he nodded at them all as he headed for the throne. Once he had seated himself, they took their seats again, and he leaned forward and put his hands on the table.
"Urmanov," Faust began, looking to the economist from Romana. The man had proven to be a great help in keeping Gartlant running smoothly and implementing the new programs that Faust wanted, so Faust had made him one of his chief advisors. "You have the report on the marionette situation?"
"Of course, fuhrer," Urmanov said. He picked up a pile of stacked papers and started reading from the first page. "We took a survey of the city's population, and the results are the same as they were last month, and the month before." He looked at Faust. "Most people still see marionettes as just for combat. Even the people who have enough money don't want to buy one. Some of them are afraid that their programming will kick in and they'll start destroying their houses, others don't think that they're safe." He cleared his throat. "Of those surveyed who said they might buy a marionette, which wasn't many, the main reason they wanted one was for help at work - accounting, data processing, the boring jobs."
"Tools," Faust said distastefully. "If they don't see marionettes as robot soldiers, they see them as tools." He frowned, and his right hand snapped into the position to hold a wine glass for a second before he caught himself. "Hauser, you were also on the committee for this. What do you think?"
Hauser folded his hands in front of himself, then unfolded them, then folded them again. The older advisor still had trouble saying what he thought, even after half a year.
Faust frowned at him. "Hauser," he said with some emphasis.
"Yes, fuhrer," Hauser said nervously, then swallowed. "If I may say so--"
"You always may, you know that," Faust said flatly.
"Right, fuhrer." Hauser paused. "I'm not sure how much you've seen of the marionettes that are being sold, fuhrer, but they aren't anything more than tools." He gestured toward Tiger, Luchs, and Panther. "They're dressed in fairly ordinary clothing, nothing like your three, and their faces are always so . . . blank, I suppose." He held up his hands, and shrugged.
"I've seen much the same, fuhrer," a younger advisor said from the end of the table - Faust recognized him as Murphy, from New Texas. "And I wanted to ask you what made yours different, and if it was possible to make other marionettes the same."
Faust started to smile. "Good idea. I was thinking of much the same thing," he said, then grinned at Murphy, who looked quite surprised. "Hess!"
"Yes, fuhrer?" Hess asked, stepping out of the shadows on the left side of Faust's throne. Several of the advisors jumped in surprise, but Faust didn't even blink.
"First," Faust began, "stop doing that. Second, meet me in your lab after this meeting is over. I'll have need of your expertise."
"Very well, fuhrer," Hess said, then turned and stepped back into the darkness.
"What makes Tiger, Luchs, and Panther different," Faust said to the group of advisors, "is some technology from our ancestors, something called a maiden circuit. It makes it so they can experience emotions, and I'm very grateful for it." He threw a smile to the marionettes, who stood proudly. "I don't know if we have the technology to duplicate it, but I'm sure that we can come up with something that can come close." He glanced at Urmanov. "Do you know of anyone from Romana who might have some expertise in this area?"
Urmanov put a hand to his mouth, and "hrrrrrm"ed. "I might, fuhrer, but I'd have to make some calls," he said.
"Do that," Faust said with a nod. He leaned back in the throne. There was still much to do, he thought. But if he could get this done, and get it done properly, then he would be one step closer to his vision for Gartlant.
Later that day, Faust stood with Hess down in the seven-floors-deep basement, in the same room that had held Luchs and Panther before he awakened them. Luchs and Panther were now back in the pods where they'd been sleeping, and Tiger lay in a third pod. Faust looked at a row of monitors showing diagnostics of the marionettes while Hess explained them to him.
"You see, fuhrer, their internal systems are designed to work and react at a much greater speed than your standard marionette, to say nothing of the quality of their construction. They're easily several generations above the military sabers." He turned and looked at Faust, though it was somewhat hard to tell with his unusual glasses. "My theory is that they were designed to withstand the rigors, physically and emotionally, that the maiden circuit could put them through. Your average marionette wouldn't be able to handle it."
"I see," Faust said, putting a hand to his chin. "If you were able to recreate one of the maiden circuits, and put it in a normal marionette, what would happen?"
Hess frowned, and the end of his long nose tilted slightly downward. "My guess is that it would cause the marionette to break down in a matter of weeks, perhaps days." He turned back to the monitors, and tapped on one of them. A new screen popped up, showing silhouettes of the three sleeping marionettes. He tapped the images over where their hearts would be, and the images zoomed in until three circle devices were showing.
"Those," Hess said, "are the maiden circuits."
Faust couldn't help staring. They looked so simple, yet there was something oddly complex about them, as though they weren't completely of this world. In the diagram, he could see the differences between the three circuits, as though each of their personalities and quirks were on display. "What does all that mean?" he asked, partly out of plain wonder.
"I'm still working on that," Hess said, seeming not to notice Faust's staring. "We don't have a great deal left of the creator's notes, so most of what I do know has come from what little I've been able to piece together. There are other countries that might have more information, but they might not be willing to give it to us."
"Which countries?" Faust asked without taking his eyes off the screen.
"Primarily Japoness," Hess said.
Faust grumbled under his breath. It would have to be Japoness. Even after six months, he still hadn't been able to establish diplomatic relations with them, and they were the only country that refused to trade with Gartlant. He knew he would have to deal with them eventually, but with something like this. . . . Perhaps, he thought, he could use it as a bargaining chip. But that would come later.
"What can we do with what we have now, if Japoness doesn't want to help us?" he asked. "Is there any way you can alter the design, make it so it would work in a regular marionette?"
Hess said nothing, but leaned closer to the monitors, and tapped on various things until another marionette diagnostic was on the screen next to Faust's three. He tapped the center of the single marionette diagram, and an emblem of a maiden circuit appeared in its chest. The circuit started flashing, and streams of color spread through the marionette's body. A number appeared next to the diagram, a percentage slowly rising.
"This," Hess said, "shows the emotional factors that come with having a maiden circuit." The streams of color slowly started to turn yellow, then orange, then red as the percentage number continued to rise. As the number reached sixty percent, the phrase 'system failure' popped up over the marionette diagram. "As you can see, as the maiden circuit grows, the emotional stress creates a physical stress--"
"Grows?" Faust interrupted, grabbing Hess's shoulder and forcing him to turn around. "What do you mean, grows? How does it grow?"
If Hess was at all surprised, he didn't show it. "I only know that it does, fuhrer. What causes it to grow, I still haven't figured out."
Faust let go of Hess and sighed. Damn. That was the one last mystery that the old man had left him, and he still wasn't any closer to figuring it out than he had been six months ago. Hess only knowing half of it, the half that didn't help, wasn't any better. "Go on," he said grudgingly.
Hess continued as though nothing had happened. "It creates a physical stress, one which will cause a regular marionette's body to break down in a matter of weeks."
"Right, you said that," Faust said, nodding. "What about making a simpler version of the circuit?"
"Making it simple could be complicated, fuhrer." Hess turned back to the screen that showed the three marionettes together. "As you can see, there are differences between the circuits themselves, and they're all at different places in their growth. I could put something together, possibly, but it would take time, and I would have to study them intensely." He glanced over his shoulder at Faust, and the blue light from the marionettes' pods shined on his glasses. "I would ask your permission for that."
Faust frowned, momentarily wished for a glass of wine, then shook his head to clear away the thought. Doing something like Hess was suggesting. . . . There was potential there, but he had to admit that he didn't like the idea of leaving the marionettes down here with Hess for any long period of time, especially when he couldn't be around. He did have a country to run, he couldn't afford to spend all his time in a basement lab. However, it could do a lot of good.
"I'll ask them," Faust said after a moment, "and see what they think. They're the ones with the circuits."
Hess gave him a strange look for just an instant, then said, "As you say, fuhrer."
"So that's the plan," Faust said, then turned and looked at the three marionettes. "But you're the ones who have the maiden circuits, so I wanted to talk it over with you three first."
The four of them had retired to Faust's room, the only place in the palace that he was sure didn't have any cameras in it. Something like this had to be private; they had to make their own decision. He wasn't sure how much privacy mattered to them - they'd shown themselves to be willing to say just about anything at any time, unless he was taking a meeting. Considering their comments sometimes, he was glad that they knew something of tact.
"You'd let us be alone with Hess for so long?" Luchs asked, putting a hand to her mouth and looking somehow scandalized. "Faust-sama. . . ."
"That's not what I mean," Faust said, suddenly getting a bad feeling about the entire situation.
"You can't get rid of us that easily," Panther said, and latched onto his arm.
"I wasn't trying to," Faust said, starting to grin. "But you heard what Hauser was saying about marionettes at the meeting today." He opened his arms, inviting Luchs and Tiger closer. Maybe this would be easier to explain with them close, he thought; things always seemed to work better, he always seemed to feel better, when they were near. They were never this affectionate when he was around other people. While he was a little grateful for that, as having them clinging to him all the time would cause questions at the very least, there were times when he wished that they didn't always act like . . . like marionettes when they were in public. Of course, he could just tell them to change that and they would, but that didn't feel right. They weren't dolls, he would let them make their own decisions. "It's like this," he said quietly. "I guess I want others to have . . . something like this."
"Like what, Faust-sama?" Tiger asked, looking up at him.
Faust looked down at her, then at Luchs, then at Panther. He slowly started to smile. "Happy," he said. "I want others to have someone to hold, and to be happy.
"Think about it. There's nobody in Gartlant but men, and I think a lot of them would like to have a woman who would smile at them, and be kind to them. And I think you three can help make that happen." He found that he liked the idea a great deal. Marionettes with emotions, even simple ones, could change the lives of the men of Gartlant, maybe even all the men of Terra II. "Will you do it?"
"Anything for you, Faust-sama," Tiger said. "You know that." Luchs and Panther nodded in unison.
Faust grinned. "The men of Gartlant will thank you," he said with a laugh. "But there's more to it than that. I want to know," he said, looking down at each of them in turn, "if you're going to be all right with this. You know how the maiden circuits work. I'd guess that whatever Hess comes up with is going to be drawn from your emotions. Are you all right with having that . . . copied?"
Tiger pulled back, and started to frown. "He'd just be copying emotions, right? Not memories?"
"It wouldn't work well if it was like that," Luchs said, though she didn't move away. "Something like that would be too close to what you had to deal with, Faust-sama. I'm sure you don't want dozens of marionettes all calling you their master."
Faust chuckled at that. It was an amusing image, but Luchs was right. He didn't even really want them to call him 'master,' but that wasn't something they'd been willing to change. "No, that wouldn't work," he said. He looked down at Panther, who'd been uncharacteristically quiet. "Panther, what do you think?"
Panther glowered, then let go of Faust's arm and stepped back to give him a hard look. "He better not start screwing around with us," she grumbled, "or I'll stuff him through the air ducts until his head pops out a smokestack."
They all laughed at that, which only made Panther glower even darker until she finally joined in. Faust shook his head, then pushed Luchs back a little and looked at all three of them again.
"I was thinking about that too." He gave them a serious look. "I'm not sure what Hess is going to be doing for you three, but I want you--" He pointed at Luchs. "-to find some way to back up the data on your maiden circuits before he does his thing. I want you to check and make sure that nothing has changed, that he's not messing with you in ways that I don't know about."
"Yes, Faust-sama," Luchs said. "I would have done that anyway."
"You're right on that one," Panther said, sneering. "Hess creeps me out sometimes."
Faust nodded. "I'm used to him by now, but I know what you mean. Anyway, figure that out, and soon, we can get started on this."
He dreamed of war again, for the first time in months.
Faust looked out over an army that numbered in the thousands, combat marionettes and foot soldiers and tanks and bizarre vehicles stretching out across the landscape, turning everything black and red under Gartlant flags. He stood on a balcony of the palace, and felt himself smiling. He knew it had to be a dream, but could do nothing but watch as he raised his hand, giving the order for the army to move forward.
As he watched, the army started to float upward. The men and marionettes were first, rising into the sky toward the stars, and the tanks followed. Faust watched as they rose.
"This is the reason," Faust heard from beside him. He looked over and saw himself, standing there dressed as the old man always had. "This is why Gartlant must rule, don't you know that?"
The other Faust turned and looked at him, frowning, glaring. His hair slowly started to turn grey, and his face became wrinkled, as the old man's had been. "You wouldn't know that, would you? You've given up, haven't you?"
Before Faust could say anything, the older him turned to the army and called out for them to fire. A burst of light flared around the floating army, and a beam shot forth into space. Far, far above them, there was an explosion, and something started to fall from the sky.
"You've forgotten," the elder Faust said, "and so you've denied Gartlant its proper glory. Someone else will get there first, and it'll be your fault."
The flaming wreckage of a spaceship became visible above, falling toward Terra II in a smoking heap. Just before it hit, Faust caught a glimpse of the woman whom he'd dreamed of.
Faust woke with a gasp, and clutched at his chest as he sat up. He was sweating, breathing hard, and his hair was matted to his forehead. "What. . . ." he muttered, then shook his head. The dreams of the woman in the ship were bad enough, but this was worse. At least they made some strange kind of sense.
"Faust-sama?"
Faust looked up to see Luchs silhouetted in the doorway, the only light in his darkened bedroom. He sighed. Seeing any of them after a dream like that was a relief.
"Are you all right, Faust-sama?" she asked, walking into the room.
Faust nodded, then coughed as he tried to get his heart to stop beating so fast. "I'm fine, Luchs," he said. "Just another bad dream."
"You seem to have those a lot, Faust-sama," she said, coming to stand next to his bed. "I've been worried about that, so have Tiger and Panther. We had an idea about how to help."
"Really?" Faust said, giving her a look in the dim light. He wished he could see her face, though he had a feeling that she was smiling. "What's that?" He had an idea, knowing how she and the others were sometimes, but. . . .
"Very simple, Faust-sama," Luchs said. "Scoot over."
Faust swallowed hard. For perhaps the first time in his life, he felt awkward. "I'll be fine," he said.
"You have a country to run, Faust-sama," Luchs said, not moving at all. "You need your rest, don't you?"
He found that he really didn't have an argument for that.
She crawled into bed with him, and curled up against him as he lay down, resting her head on his chest. Like Tiger, she was warm . . . if he hadn't known, he wouldn't have guessed that she was a machine.
Was she really? he thought. She and the others had maiden circuits, which could be seen as hearts, but did that make them alive? If what he wanted Hess to do worked, would he be creating living robots, or just making them more like people?
Faust sighed, and lay his head back on his pillow. That was a question for another time. He had enough to worry about. But as always, he had the marionettes. They were human enough, and that might be all that mattered.
He fell into a peaceful sleep, a small smile on his face.