Halo: First Strike by Eric S. Nylund Page B

little but mourn the dead, info-
    nets around the world converged on the scene, and billions
    watched, asking, why all together?  why now?  And to most it
    seemed that the mammals had come together in intelligent, silent
    protest.  Finally, shamed and guilty, humanity had looked at its
    planet like a drunk waking up in a slum hotel and asked itself,
    how did I get here?  The conclusion had been plain:  unless
    humanity really had lost its collective mind, at some point it had
    to agree:  enough.
     
    Standing in the shadowy corridor of a space station more than
    thirty thousand miles above Earth's surface, Gonzales thought how

difficult it all remained.  Though all nations served the letter
    of international laws that put Earth's welfare before their
    interests, and Preservationists roamed all of the world's
    habitatsthey had "friends of the court" status in all nations
    and served as advocates for endangered speciesthe war to save
    Earth from humankind was not over.  Grasping, corrupt, self-
    centered, the human species always threatened to overwhelm its
    habitats and itself with careless, powerful gestures and simple
    greed.
     
    However, though this station, like most all of humankind's
    settlements aloftthe settlements on the Moon and Mars, the
    Orbital Energy Grid, Halo Cityhad been conceived in the bad old
    twentieth century, they were sustained as products of New
    Millennium consciousness:  contrite, chastened, careful.
     
    He walked on.
    #
     
    The junction just ahead of Gonzales and the sam was marked by
    blinking red lights.  From around the corner came the sounds of
    scurrying small things.  "What's up?" Gonzales asked.
     
    "Follow me," the sam said. "We must not cross the marker, but
    we can stand and watch."
     
    A large group of sams, identical to the one next to Gonzales,
    filled the hallway beyond.  Some tried to work their way through
    informal mazes of furniture and stacked junk, coils of wire and
    angle-iron and the like; others worked to assist sams that had
    gotten tangled in the sections of the maze.  Still others shifted
    pieces of the maze to one side.  Amid clicking extensors and
    banging metal, the sams labored patiently, mostly unsuccessfully. 
    Gonzales was reminded of old twentieth century films satirizing
    assembly lines, robots, machines in general.
     
    "A nursery," the sam said.  "This group nears completion of
    its education.  This"it pointed with an extensor toward the
    struggling robots"is the prerequisite to training.  As small
    children must mature in their development, they must learn the
    essentials of perception, motion, and coordination.  At the same
    time they memorize the ten thousand axioms of common sense, and
    then they can develop their linguistic capabilities; at present
    they have a vocabulary of approximately one thousand words of
    SimSpeech."
     
    "What about thinking?" Gonzales asked.  "Where do they learn
    to do that?"
     
    "That comes later, if at all.  For sams as well as humans,
    thinking is one of the least important things the mind does."
     
    The two watched for some time, then Gonzales said, "I don't
    need any company," and walked on.  When he looked back, he saw the
    sam remained motionless, fascinated by the progress of its
    fellows.
     
    Gonzales returned to his small room, where a night-light
    glowed softly, and returned to bed.  He fell asleep quickly, oddly
    comforted by thinking about the robots busy at their school. 
     
     
     
     
    8. Halo City
     
     
     
    Blue jump-suited Halo personnel led Gonzales and Diana
    through the micro-gravity environments at Halo's Zero-Gate, then
    to an elevator at the hub of Spoke 6, where Tia Showalter,
    Director SenTrax Halo Group, and her assistant, Horn, were waiting
    for them.  The shuttle had arrived at Halo an hour before, late
    afternoon local time, and its passengers had waited impatiently as
    it went through docking and clearance procedures, all eager to
    leave the ship after a week spent