ISAAC ASIMOV’S

ROBOT CITY

ROBOTS

AND ALIENS

Intruder by Robert Thurston

Copyright © 1990

For My Lovely Ladies,

Rosemary and Charlotte

WHAT IS A HUMAN BEING?

ISAAC ASIMOV

It sounds like a simple question. Biologically, a human being is a member of the species Homo sapiens. If we agree that one particular organism (say, a male) is a human being, then any female with which he can breed is also a human being. And any males with whom any of these females can breed are also human beings. This instantly marks up billions of organisms on Earth as human beings.

It may be that there are organisms that are too old to breed, or too young, or too imperfect in one way or another, but who resemble human beings more than they resemble any other species. They, too, are human beings.

We thus end up with something over 5 billion human beings on Earth right now, and perhaps 60 billion who have lived on Earth since Homo sapiens evolved.

That’s simple, isn’t it? From the biological standpoint, we are all human beings, whether we speak English, Turkish, or Japanese; whether we have pale skin or dark; red hair or black; blue eyes or brown; flat noses or beaky ones; and so on.

That, however, is a biological definition, a sophisticated one. Now suppose that you are a member of a primitive tribe, homogeneous in appearance, language and culture, and you suddenly encounter someone who looks superficially like you but has red hair, where you’ve seen only black; fair skin where you’ve seen only dark; and, worst of all, who cannot understand “people language” but makes odd sounds, which he seems to understand, but which clearly make no sense whatever.

Are these strangers human beings in the sense that you yourself are? I’m afraid the consensus would be that they are not. Nor is it entirely a matter of lack of sophistication. The ancient Greeks, who were certainly among the most sophisticated human beings who ever lived, divided all human beings into two groups: Greeks and barbarians.

By barbarians, they didn’t mean people who were uncivilized or bestial. They recognized that some barbarians, like the Egyptians and Babylonians and Persians were highly cultivated. It was just that non-Greeks didn’t speak Greek; they made sounds that made no more sense (to a Greek encountering other languages for the first time) than a silly sound like “bar-bar-bar.”

You might feel that Greeks may have made that division as a matter of convenience, but that they didn’t go so far as to think that barbarians weren’t human.

Oh, didn’t they? Aristotle, one of the most sophisticated of all the ancient Greeks, was quite certain that barbarians were slave-material by nature, while Greeks were free men by nature. Clearly, he felt that there was something sub-human about barbarians.

But they were ancients, however sophisticated they might have been. They had limited experience, knew only a small portion of the world. Nowadays, we have learned so much we don’t come to those foolish conclusions. We know that all human-like creatures are a single species.

Yes? Was it so long ago that most White Americans were quite certain that African Blacks were not human in the sense that they themselves were; that the Blacks were inferior and that to enslave them and let them live on the outskirts of a White society was doing them a great favor? I wouldn’t be surprised if some Americans believe that right now.

It was not so long ago that Germans maintained loudly that Slavs and Jews were sub-human, so that they were right to do their best to rid “true” human beings of such vermin. And I wouldn’t be in the least surprised if there were lots of people right now who harbor similar notions.

Almost everyone thinks of other groups as “inferior,” although often they do not care to say so out loud. They tend to divide humanity into groups of which only a small part (a part which invariably includes themselves) are “true” human beings.

The Bible, of course, teaches universality (at least, in places). Thus, consider one of my own favorite passages in the New Testament, the parable of the “good Samaritan” (Luke 10:25-37). Someone tells Jesus that one of the beliefs one must have if one is to go to Heaven is “to love...thy neighbour as thyself. “ Jesus says he is correct and the man asks, “And who is my neighbour?” (In other words, does he love only his friends and people he likes, or is he supposed to love all sorts of bums and rotters?)

And here comes the parable of the good Samaritan. To put it briefly, a man needs help, and both a Priest and a Levite (professional do-gooders, who are highly esteemed by pious people) ignore the whole matter, but a Samaritan offers a great deal of help.

Now we talk so much about a “good” Samaritan because of this parable, that we think of the Samaritans as all good and are not surprised at the help he offers. However, to the pious Jews of Jesus’ time, Samaritans were heretics, things of evil, objects of hatred—and here we have a despised Samaritan doing good when Priests and Levites do not.

And then Jesus asks, “Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?” And the man is forced to say, “He that shewed mercy on him.”

This is as much to say that all good people are neighbors even when they are the kind of beneath-contempt individuals as Samaritans are. And it follows, since all human beings have the capacity to be good, all people are neighbors and love should extend to all.

St. Paul says in Galatians 3:28: “There is neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither bond nor free; there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.”

That is a flat statement of universality.

I know that there are many pious people who know these passages and who nevertheless maintain racist views of one sort or another. Such is the desire to be part of a superior group that nothing can wipe out the tendency to picture others as inferior; to divide human beings into a)human, b)semihuman, and c)sub-human, being careful always to put yourself into the first class.

And if we have such trouble in getting human beings to define what a human being is, imagine the problem a robot would have. How does a robot define a human being?

In the old days, when I was first beginning to write my robot stories, John W. Campbell (my editor and mentor) challenged me on several occasions to write a story that hinged on the difficulty of defining a human being. I always backed off. I did not have to try writing such a story to know that it would be a particularly difficult one to write and that I couldn’t do it. At least, not then.

In 1976, however, I finally tackled the job and wrote “The Bicentennial Man. “ It dealt essentially with a robot that became more and more human, without ever being accepted as a human being. He became physically like a human being, mentally like a human being, and yet he never crossed the line. Finally, he did, by crossing the last barrier. He made himself mortal, and as he was dying, he was finally accepted as a human being.

It made a good story (winning both the Hugo and the Nebula) but it didn’t offer a practical way of distinguishing between robot and human being, because a robot couldn’t wait for years to see if a possible human being died and thus proved itself to be a human being.

Suppose you are a robot and you have to decide whether something that looks like a human being is really a human being, and you have to do it reasonably quickly.

If the only robots that exist are primitive, there is no problem. If an object looks like a human being but is made of metal, it is a robot. If it talks in a mechanical kind of voice. moves with awkward jerky motions, and so on and so on, it is a robot.

But what if the robot looks, superficially, exactly like a human being (like my robot, Daneel Olivaw), How can you tell that he’s a robot? Well, in my later robot novels, you can’t, really. Daneel Olivaw is a human being in all respects except that he’s a lot more intelligent than most human beings, a lot more ethical, a lot kinder and more decent, a lot more human. That makes for a good story, too, but it doesn’t help identify a robot in any practical sense. You can’t follow a robot around to see if it is better than a human being, for you then have to ask yourself—is he (she) a robot or just an unusually good human being?

There’s this—

A robot is bound by the Three Laws of Robotics, and a human being is not. That means, for instance, that if you are a human being and you punch someone you think may be a robot and he punches you back, then he is not a robot. If you yourself are a robot, then if you punch him and he punches you back, he may nevertheless be a robot, since he may know that you are a robot, and First Law does not prevent him from hitting you. (That was a key point in my early story, “Evidence.”) In that case, though, you must ask a human being to punch the suspected robot, and if he punches back he is no robot.

However, it doesn’t work the other way around. If you are a human being and you hit a suspected robot, and he doesn’t hit you back, that doesn’t mean he is a robot. He may be a human being, but a coward. He may be a human being but an idealist, who believes in turning the other cheek.

In fact, if you are a human being and you punch a suspected robot and he punches you back, then he may still be a robot, nevertheless.

After all, the First Law says,..A robot may not harm a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.” That, however, begs the question, for it assumes that a robot knows what a human being is in the first place.

Suppose a robot is manufactured to be no better than a human being. Human beings often suppose other people are inferior, and not fully human, if they simply don’t speak your language, or speak it with an odd accent. (That’s the whole point of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion.) In that case, it should be simple to build a robot within whom the definition of a human being includes the speaking of a specific language with a specific accent. Any failure in that respect makes a person the robot must deal with not a human being and the robot can harm or even kill him without breaking the First Law.

In fact, I have a robot in my book Robots and Empire for which a human being is defined as speaking with a Solarian accent, and my hero is in danger of death for that very reason.

So you see it is not easy to differentiate between a robot and a human being.

We can make the matter even more difficult, if we suppose a world of robots that have never seen human beings. (This would be like our early unsophisticated human beings who have never met anyone outside their own tribe.) They might still have the First Law and might still know that they must not harm a human being—but what is this human being they must not harm?

They might well think that a human being is superior to a robot in some ways, since that would be one reason why he must not be harmed. You ought not to offer violence to someone worthier than yourself.

On the other hand, if someone were superior to you, wouldn’t it be sensible to suppose that you couldn’t harm him? If you could, wouldn’t that make him inferior to you? The fallacy there ought to be obvious. A robot is certainly superior to an unthinking rock, yet a falling rock might easily harm or even destroy a robot. Therefore the inferior can harm the superior, but in a well-run Universe it should not do so.

In that case, a robot beginning only with the Laws of Robotics might well conclude that human beings were superior to robots.

But then, suppose that in this world of robots, one robot is superior to all the rest. Is it possible, in that case, that this superior robot, who has never seen a human being, might conclude that he himself is a human being?

If he can persuade the other robots that this is so then the Laws of Robotics will govern their behavior toward him and he may well establish a despotism over them. But will it differ from a human despotism in any way? Will this robot-human still be governed and limited by the Three Laws in certain respects, or will it be totally free of them?

In that case, if it has the appearance and mentality and behavior of a human being, and if it lacks the Three Laws, in what way is it not a human being? Has it not become a human being in actuality?

And what happens if, then, real human beings appear on the scene? Do the Three Laws suddenly begin to function again in the robot-human, or does he persist in considering himself human? In my very first published robot story, “Reason,” come to think of it, I described a robot that considered himself to be superior to human beings and could not be argued out of it.

So what with one thing or another, the problem of defining a human being is enormously complex, and while in my various stories I’ve dealt with different aspects of it, I am glad to leave the further consideration of that problem to Robert Thurston in this third book of the Robots and Aliens series.

CHAPTER 1

ROBOT CITY DREAMS

Derec knew he was dreaming. The street he now ambled down wasn’t real. There had never been a street anywhere in Robot City like this distorted thoroughfare. Still, too much was familiar about it, and that really scared him.

The Compass Tower, now too far in the distance, had changed, too. There seemed to be lumps allover its surfaces, but that was impossible. In a city where buildings could appear and disappear overnight, the Compass Tower was the only permanent, unchangeable structure.

It was possible this strange street was newly created, but he doubted that. It was a dream-street, plain and simple, and this had to be a dream. Anyway, where were the robots? Nobody could travel this far along a Robot City street without encountering at least a utility robot scurrying along, on its way to some regular task; or a courier robot, its claws clutching tools; or a witness robot, checking the movements of the humans. During a stroll like this, Derec should have encountered a robot every few steps.

No, it was absolutely certain this was a dream. What he was doing was sleeping in his ship somewhere in space between the blackbody planet and Robot City. He had just come off duty after dealing with the Silversides for hours, a task that would tire a saint.

At one time, just after his father had injected chemfets into his bloodstream, he had regularly dreamed of Robot City, but it turned out that his harrowing nightmares had all been induced by a monitor that his father had implanted in his brain. The monitor had been trying to establish contact so he could be aware of the nature of the chemfets, which were tiny circuit boards that grew in much the same manner as the city itself had. Replicating in his bloodstream and programmed by his father, they were a tiny robot city in his body, one that gave him psycho-electronic control over the city’s core computer and therefore all its robots. After he had known this and the chemfets’ replication process had stabilized, he had had no more nightmares of a distorted Robot City.

Until now.

Since he was so aware he was dreaming, perhaps this was what Ariel had explained to him as a “lucid dream.” In the lucid dream state, she said, the dreamer could control the events of the dream. He wanted to control this dream, but at the moment he couldn’t think of anything particular to do.

He looked around him. The immediate streetscape seemed composed of bits and pieces from several stages of the city’s development, a weird composite of what Derec had observed during his several stays there.

But where were the robots?

If this was a lucid dream, maybe the reason he hadn’t seen any yet was that he hadn’t guided any into the scene. Maybe they were waiting inside the buildings to be summoned. Maybe he should do so, before he panicked. But which one could he bring onstage? How about Lucius, the robot who had created the city’s one authentic artistic masterpiece, the breathtaking tetragonal, pyramidal building-sculpture entitled “Circuit Breaker”? He’d be a good choice since, as the victim of a bizarre roboticide, he no longer existed. It certainly would be pleasant to see old Lucius again, his body so unrobotically stooped, if only to chat with him about art. There hadn’t been much art in his life lately, especially if you didn’t count the rather breathtaking spectacle of a thousand blackbodies spread across the sky. That was pretty, but it wasn’t art.

He wondered why his thoughts were rambling so. Had the Silversides disturbed his mind’s equilibrium that much? Forget them. Forget them now. Get a normal robot into the dream. One of the most unforgettable robots he had known. Avernus, say. Let’s see his stern visage again, his jet-black metallic skin, his interchangeable hands. He concentrated on Avernus, but the robot didn’t appear. How about Euler and his glowing photocell eyes? Nope, no deal. Let’s try for Wohler, then, before he went nonfunctional trying to save Ariel on the outer wall of the Compass Tower. Golden and impressive, Wohler would be a wonderful choice. But no Wohler responded to his summons. He would have to talk to Ariel about this. As a lucid dream, it was shaping up as one hell of a failure.

Ariel, in her compartment aboard the ship, was also dreaming. Hers was not, however, a lucid dream. Deeper than that, it was a clearcut nightmare.

Jacob Winterson, the humaniform robot who had been her servant, existed again. Jacob had been destroyed by Neuronius, one of the flying aliens called blackbodies. He had blown up and mangled most of Jacob (and himself in the bargain). The few charred pieces that remained were now buried in some unmarked area of the agricultural community she had initiated as a political compromise with the blackbodies. The compromise had worked. They had been about to destroy their planet’s new robot city entirely because it was a threat to their weather systems; however, an agricultural community was acceptable to all sides.

She missed Jacob. Very much. In that comfortable, detached way a human could love a robot, she had loved him. Not that it could ever have been real love. She was too much in love with Derec to be unfaithful to him except in dreams. On the other hand, she could not deny that she had not sometimes been romantically attracted toward the handsome and imperturbable humaniform robot.

In the dream, Jacob sat in front of a computer terminal, his humanlike fingers flying over the keyboard, pressing keys as if he wanted to push them all the way through, making the screen shake with the ferocity of his entries.

She asked him what he was doing. He said he was searching for the formula that would transform a humaniform robot into a human being. There was no such formula, she told him. When he turned toward her, his eyes seemed filled with a frightening human anger. He protested that there were at least a hundred Earth and Spacer legends in which creatures changed into human beings. Statues, puppets, fish, trees, all became human in such myths. He was certain, he said with an un-Jacobian shrillness, that there had to be a formula by which he, too, could be transmogrified.

Why did the Compass Tower look so diseased? Derec asked himself. Was it possible for him, as a lucid dreamer, to change that? He concentrated on the building’s shape, trying to restore it to its architecturally magnificent pyramidal form. But nothing happened. If anything, the tower became uglier, and he had to look away from it.

In the distance something came toward him, traveling down the street at a high speed. As it passed by buildings, the buildings changed. When it neared, he saw it was a vehicle, but one quite unlike any Robot City mode of transportation. It ran on three thick wheels, making it vaguely resemble a jitney, the smaller, lighter utility type of vehicle used for taxiing around the city. The vehicle’s body was misshapen, as if a lot of ungeometric chunks had been welded together on a long central stem. It was colored black and gray in an illogical and splotchy fashion.

Still certain he was in the midst of a lucid dream, Derec stood defiantly in the center of the roadway —daring the vehicle to come to a screeching stop at his feet. Which it did. Good, he thought, I’m in control of the dream at last. Just watch me now.

A large hatch at the top of the vehicle sprang open with an explosive sound, and Dr. Avery, his father, pulled himself through the opening. What kind of a lucid dream was this? The last person he wanted to see was his megalomaniacal father, interfering in a dream in just the way he’d interfered with Derec’s life, injecting him with chemfets and transforming him into a walking computer. Half-computer, anyway.

Avery was looking more demented than usual. His eyes, usually intense, now glowed with an overdramatic madness. In fact, Avery looked so exaggerated that Derec felt he could relax. No reason to be afraid, after all, just a dream. A dream he would seize control of at any moment.

Ariel placed her hand upon Jacob’s. His hand, she noted, felt soft, more like human than humaniform. She told him to stop. There was no need for him to become human. Even if he found a formula, it would be foolish to use it. As a humaniform robot, Jacob had all the virtues of human existence without all the miseries, without human physical and emotional pains.

Jacob turned away from the computer and looked at Ariel, for a moment a humanlike sadness in his eyes.

“Don’t you see?” he said, “I want the misery. I want to feel what a human feels. Pain, happiness, love. I want to love you, Mistress Ariel.”

She put a finger on his lips. In contrast to his hand, they felt robotic, hard metal lips that could, if she pressed hard enough, make her fingertip bleed. She almost wanted to test that out. If she tried to cut her hand, would Jacob be able to invoke the First Law of Robotics—the part stating that a robot could not allow a human to come to harm—fast enough to prevent her from succeeding?

“You can’t love me, Jacob,” she said tenderly. “I love Derec, so there’s no point in your loving me. It would be—what do they call it in romances—unrequited.”

“That wouldn’t matter. I would be happy with that, too. I could respond to it, as in your great literary works. I could, like one of your legendary lovers, die falling off a bridge or swimming a river or with a vial of poison and a great dagger plunging in—”

“Hush, Jacob. Please stop. I wouldn’t want you to die for me.”

“I am already dead.”

“No, don’t say that. You’re here. You’re—”

“In a grave.”

“Jacob—”

“A rotting scrap pile of metal, spare parts covered by soil.”

His words were so fiercely spoken they frightened her. She backed away from him.

Dr. Avery was dressed in a black-and-gray silver-buttoned uniform that seemed too militaristic for a scientist.

“You look bemused,” he said, then added almost contemptuously: “...my son. What is bothering you?”

“It’s well, it’s that this is my dream, and I’m supposed to be in control, and you’re not welcome in it.”

Avery smiled sinisterly. “You can’t get me out of it. I am everywhere. In the city, in your dreams, in your hat.”

“My hat? I don’t even wear a—”

“Just an old Earth expression. I am an expert in old Earth expressions. Can it, flip out, you’re the bee’s knees, life is hard and then you die. I know Earth expressions from all parts of its history.”

“But I wouldn’t know any, and this is my dream, and you come out of my mind.”

“Are you sure?”

“I know you’re nowhere near. I am on a ship heading for Robot City. You may be in the city, muddling things up as usual, but you’re not on this ship.”

“Maybe I am. I am, after all, omniscient and omnipotent.”

“I know, I know. Always a god in your own mind.”

“Yes.”

If this was a lucid dream, Derec thought, then he should be able to flee from the old bastard. He whirled around and started running down the street. On both sides of him buildings seemed to slip into the ground while new ones popped out.

Many buildings were oddly shaped, not at all like any existing Robot City ones. Some were tilted at odd angles, with several leaning into others while others leaned away. In the distance a tall edifice swayed from side to side as if caught in a violent wind. But there was a rhythm to its swaying, reminding him of a dance. What dance? Something intruding from his past, a vague memory that would not get focused. His past had a way of doing that, with some memory fragment flashing into his mind and going right out again before he could make any connection with it. There were so many parts of his past life that were still blocked from his mind by the amnesia that had once been total.

Ariel suddenly found herself in an underground corridor on Earth, but it looked nothing like any of the tunnels she had seen during her actual visit there. For one thing, it was deserted. You never saw an empty passageway on Earth. Human bodies were visible everywhere, except in private quarters.

Her steps echoed hollowly through the corridor, with a hundred echoes of echoes. She felt as if she were being hounded by a mob of people all walking at her exact pace. Each time she turned around to confront her trackers, there was no one in sight.

She came to a Section Kitchen, the kind of public eating area she’d come to despise. Plenty of food steamed on cafeteria-style trays, but no people sat at the many numbered tables or worked behind the counters. The room looked as if there had been a sudden alarm and everyone had scurried out.

She felt hungry, and, taking a spoon and wiping it thoroughly on a paper napkin (she was an Auroran, after all, who was repelled by Earth’s poor hygienic habits), she scooped out a biteful of something soft and white. However, when she put it in her mouth, it seemed to flame up and singe her tongue and the roof of her mouth. She spit it out.

“Are you poisoned, Mistress Ariel?” It was Jacob again, appearing at her side as if by magic.

“No. But it is good of you to ask.”

“I must. First Law.”

“Oh, of course. If you decide to become human, Jacob, you won’t have to obey the Laws of Robotics any more. I’ll miss the advantage of having you protect me.”

“I would protect you, mistress, whether I were human or robot.”

There was something so touching, something so sad and vulnerable about this dream version of her dead robot companion, that Ariel began to cry. She cried in her dream, and she was still crying when she woke up.

Derec looked back. Avery and his strange vehicle had vanished from the center of the street. Good, at least something in this lucid dream had worked out right.

Ahead of him there was a park. Derec could see tall trees, thick with branches, heavy with green leaves. Brightly colored flowers lined cobblestone paths. Metal umbrellas shaded soft lights that were spaced evenly along the pathways. At the top of a slight rise, he could see swings, slides, see-saws, monkey bars, all the equipment of a playground.

He raced toward the park, picking up his pace. The street seemed to speed beneath him as if he were powering a treadmill. Before he reached the park, the buildings lining the street grew larger, towering over the thoroughfare, bending toward it, shading the light and making everything darker.

His last step from the city street onto the park’s cobbled path was an impressive leap, one longer than he could normally accomplish. Landing, he stumbled forward for several steps.

He started walking toward the playground. The pathway was soft, resilient. He decided to trot, and the bounciness of the path added a spring to his steps. He attained such a speed that he nearly skidded past the playground entrance.

A closed gate blocked the way into the playground. Above the gate was a gilded sign that read, A VERY PARK. The old reprobate, he’d named a park after himself. What gall! playgrounds were supposed to represent happiness and joy. In no way did they suggest the doctor’s monstrous cynicism.

Underneath the large sign was a smaller one that read, STAND ON SOAP, ALL GEEKS WHO MENTOR HERE. What did Avery mean by that? And how could he, after all, mean anything? He was merely a figure in Derec’s dream. The real question was how could Derec’s mind have formed this unusual scene, these strange words. He would have to discuss all this with Ariel, the expert on such matters.

When he opened the gate, there was a sonorous beep as the gate-latch separated from its fastening. A deep voice that seemed to come from above said, “Welcome. Enjoy.”

“Enjoy what?” Derec asked. There was no reply, no doubt because the voice was a recording cued by the opening of the gate.

Tentatively he took a couple of steps into the playground. To his immediate right was a high slide. Even though he didn’t remember his childhood, he knew it was a slide. It even looked like a familiar one. Walking up to it, he discovered it was incomplete. No ladder led up to the platform from which a child would start his downward plunge. The slide appeared to stand without any support.

An overwhelming urge to try out the slide came over him. Although he could have climbed from the bottom edge of the slide up to the platform at its top, he knew he had to start from the platform itself. This was his lucid dream and he could do anything he wanted to, including jump higher than was physically possible. Crouching down as close to the ground as he could get, he jumped up. He reached for the edge of the platform, but just missed. Back on the ground, he scrunched down again and made a second, magnificent leap that took him higher than the level of the platform. Reaching out, he grabbed its rim. Struggling and grunting, he pulled himself onto the small platform. It bounced up and down like a diving board, nearly flinging him back to the ground.

The slide seemed even taller than it had from ground level, or else he had become very small, a child again. Looking down at his hands, he saw they’d shrunk. They were child’s hands. Not only that, his clothing had been magically transformed. He was now dressed in one of those silver jumpers that were once all the rage for toddlers. (How did he know about silver jumpers?) Before he could even speculate on this mystery, a voice from down below called to him: “C’mon down the slide, honey. I’ll catch you.”

There was a woman standing at the foot of the slide. She seemed tall and thin, but he could not make out the details of her face, even though it was turned upward at him. Her voice was soft and wonderfully friendly. He felt ready to slide down to her. But, even as he stared at her, her shape changed. Now she was a short, rather plump lady in odd, out-of-date clothes, but the face was still not discernible. Was this some trick of one of the Silversides? Were they experimenting with human shapes, using pictures they extracted from the ship computer?

“Don’t be afraid, honey,” the woman said. Was he mistaken, or was that Eve Silverside’s voice? “You won’t falloff the slide. It’ll be all right.”

If it was a Silverside, he or she just might make him fall to the ground by pulling her hands away just as he reached the bottom edge. He shrunk back, no longer wanting to slide down.

The woman was now medium height, medium build, wearing a pristinely white lab smock. No matter what shape she took, what clothes she wore, he still saw no face. He knew there was a face there. It just wouldn’t come into focus for him in spite of the vivid details of the rest of her.

“Let go of those bars, dear, and come down. Don’t worry. Mommy’ll catch you.”

Mommy! This was his mother? No, it must be a Silverside, playing a joke. He didn’t know his mother and, in fact, knew very little about her. His father had provided no information. How could a Silverside even hope to duplicate her? Wait. This was a dream. The woman below was neither Silverside nor his mother. It was an apparition from his own mind.

One thing he did know now. He didn’t want to go down the slide, not even to his mother’s eagerly awaiting arms. He started to scream. His screams sounded childlike, shrill, highpitched, tremulous.

“No, I’m not coming down. I’m not! I’m not!”

“It’s all right, David. Mommy’s right here.”

David: his real name, or at least the one that Ariel and his father had said was the right one. Perhaps this was no dream and this was really his mother. If he slid down, he could see her better. But her arms might turn into knives, fire, pain. He was suddenly very afraid of her.

“Leave me alone!” he screamed. “Leave me alone!”

Suddenly the bars he was clutching became red-hot, and so did the metal beneath him. It felt the way a slide did when it had been standing in the sun at high noon on the hottest day of the year. (How did he know that?)

He could not hold on.

He had to let go.

He slid down, screaming.

His mother’s face seemed to come up at him, but there were still no recognizable features on it.

He saw her reach out toward him.

And woke up.

He could feel the sweat on his face as he stared up into the lovely face of Ariel Welsh. She stood beside his bunk, her arms reaching out to him just like his dream-mother’s had.

CHAPTER 2

DEALING WITH THE SILVERSIDES

Ariel rubbed Derec’s forehead gently. The way she touched him was now one of his favorite things in life. It seemed to him that her fingertips did not actually make contact with his skin but merely gave off comforting rays as they passed above it. Ariel had told him that there were people who appeared to heal the sick because of the comforting warm emanations that came from their hands. The warmth had actually been measured and was sometimes burning hot. On the planet Solaria, she told him, such affection or healing was rare. Solarians obeyed taboos against touching others, and that seemed sad to her.

“You’re positively drenched in sweat, Derec. That must have been one whale of a dream.”

“It was. Awful.”

“I know how you feel. I just had a lulu of a nightmare myself.”

“What was your dream about?”

She didn’t want to tell him that it concerned Jacob Winterson or that she had awakened crying. He’d been somewhat jealous of Jacob, so the subject was best ignored right now.

“Nothing special. Tell me yours.”

“There was the city, Robot City, and it was all strange, mixed up. And my father in a car that looked like a disease. And...and...my mother...”

“Hush, hush. Take it easy. When you’re ready, tell me all about it, calmly and in order.”

He nodded. Getting up from the bunk, he brushed past her. As he paced, he concentrated on stretching the sleep out of his muscles and lowering his breathing to an acceptable rhythm, “I thought I was having a lucid dream, but, you know, I was never able to control it, not even for a second.”

As he related the dream, Ariel noted that his face and voice were childlike. Sometimes she forgot how young they actually were. All the responsibility and strain of their lives since they had first come to Robot City had seemed to age them incredibly. Sometimes her mental image of herself was of a much older woman, one who’d been coping with adversity for so long that the experience registered in deep lines on her face. However, a look into any mirror showed her the same young, almost adolescent, mien: the baby fat of her cheeks, the brightness of her eyes, the radiance of her long black hair, the youthful sheen of her skin. Her figure, once fairly gaunt, had filled out well, too—as Derec so often reminded her.

Looking into his tired eyes, realizing he had not slept well for some time, she wondered how a couple of kids like them had stumbled into a life filled with so much tension and danger. Why couldn’t they go back to Aurora (they had been there, excited with their love, for too brief a time) and romp without care through one of its lovely forests or swim in a placid lake? If not Aurora, the strictly regimented, uncomfortably overpopulated Earth might even do. Anywhere where they could be suitably young for a while.

“What do you make of it, Ariel? The dream?”

She wondered how much analysis he could take right now. His face pale beneath his damp, sandy hair, he looked vulnerable.

“Well, I don’t really know. Maybe all the worries you’ve had, what with the strange messages you’ve been getting from Robot City, maybe they’re just coming out in your dreams.”

Derec’s chemfets had gone haywire when he had tried to contact Robot City. Normally he could easily check on operations there from vast distances across space, but all he could sense these days was some vague activity and some nonsense he could not interpret. The last time he’d tried, he could swear the central computer was too occupied with transmitting a medley of unusual songs to bother responding to him. That wasn’t the way the chemfet system was supposed to work. The computer was the conduit between Derec’s chemfets and Robot City, allowing him to run the place and, since the responsibility was so awesome, to delegate authority properly to the appropriate robots. In a way, Robot City had become an extension of Derec, or at least of him and his wishes, his orders, his plans and dreams for the city’s future. He had previously been able to take charge of any part of the city’s operations in an instant, without having to accept musical digressions from a computer. Now a good part of the city’s activities seemed shut off from him.

He felt isolated, as if the chemfets, unable to sustain normal contact with the city, were idly traveling through his bloodstream to no useful purpose. It was a nerve-wracking feeling that may have been something like the detachment and distortion of reality that a disturbed person must feel, and he didn’t like it. His father was, Derec believed, insane, and he sometimes worried that genetics would win out, and he’d wind up in a loony bin himself.

Dr. Avery could very well be behind the present looniness in Robot City. Whenever there was trouble there, he was always the first logical suspect. Since he was the creator of the city, no one would know better than he how to disrupt it.

Ariel now smiled at him. What must she be thinking as his mind drifted off like this?

“Frost,” he said, “it all seems pretty warped when I think of it. Maybe it’s just worry about Robot City. But that part where I can’t see my mother’s face, that really scares me.”

“Take it easy, darling. Maybe you dream about her because you want to see her—”

“I never think of her! I don’t want to think of her!”

She hadn’t expected him to be so vehement on the subject of his mother, a woman whose name neither she nor Derec knew. Ariel had conducted an extensive computer search of genetic records on Robot City and Aurora, but had not been able to locate a single fact about Derec except the skimpy details accumulated since their arrival in Robot City. She had no idea why so few records of him existed. She thought his father might have blocked or erased any file on Derec, or that even her mother, Juliana Welsh, who had financed Dr. Avery’s work, had pulled some strings to suppress any bureaucratic documentation on Derec’s earlier life. Derec himself remembered enough to know that he was, indeed, a Spacer, that he had some training as a roboticist, and that his memory had been deliberately erased. None of the memory that his father had restored had provided any solutions to the other mysteries surrounding his existence.

She put her arms around him and hugged him. “Forget it, Derec. I’m just psychologizing, and I’m not really good at it. It was just a dream, only a dream. Nothing to worry about. Really.”

“You’re right, probably.” His voice was calmer. “What I need is some real rest. I never could sleep in one of those tubelike contraptions.” He gestured toward the bunk, which did, indeed, look like half a tube. “Maybe there’ll be some time to relax in Robot City, especially if everything’s okay there. And if we can get the Silversides straightened away.”

“Adam and Eve. You’d seem friendlier to them if you’d use their first names. Old human custom.”

Ariel was happy to see a smile briefly cross Derec’s face. “Sorry, just can’t get used to those names, especially since they tend to look like us when they’re in the mood to look human. Anyway, it’s a wonder I didn’t dream of them!”

“I think they’ve invaded some of my dreams. And I’d much rather dream about you, darling.”

She kissed him and said, “I think I’ll check in with Wolruf. She’s with Adam and Eve right now. You know their new game?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Adam’s taught Eve a version of the wolf-state.”

Adam had arrived on the planet of the kin, intelligent wolf-creatures, in an egglike vehicle. Because he had not yet encountered sentient life, he had been shapeless. When he joined the kin, he transformed himself into kin-shape. He had a tendency even now to return to that form regularly. The kin had dubbed him SilverSide because, even when he changed his overall appearance, he still retained the metallic, silvery surface of a robot.

“Now the two of them become wolves and start nipping at each other while barking out that strange language. It’s weird, really. They go around in a circle and growl, go after each other’s tail. Wolruf says they’re imitating some wolf-pup behavior Adam observed at what he calls the Pack Home. Lately, they’ve been transforming from shape to shape too much, and just to annoy us. Adam says they have too few forms to imprint on. I guess he means they need practice. You know, if we let them use the Key to Perihelion and flash them to Earth, they’d probably go insane trying to copy all the life forms there.”

The Keys to Perihelion were transport devices that took the user first to Perihelion, the place said to be nearest to all other places in the universe, and then to other specific, preset destinations.

“They do seem different lately,” Derec said. “ A little bored, I think. Remember how Adam was so intent on imprinting on everything—us, the kin, the blackbodies, robots? There was something desperate about it, something to do with his quest to define what, exactly, a human was. All the present changes are playful rather than purposeful. They seem less curious somehow.”

“Maybe it’s us. Adam’s so intent on defining ‘human’ as the highest order of being, and he doesn’t seem quite convinced yet that we’re it. He needs a greater variety of humans to study. Anyway, get yourself some rest. I’ll get you up again according to schedule, and that’s coming around soon enough, sonny boy.”

Blowing him a kiss at the door, Ariel left the sleeping compartment.

Derec glanced at his bunk, unsure whether he wanted to return there. Why welcome the dreams that awaited him, stalking him like the kind of wolf Adam had been when they first met? He put one foot on the edge of his bunk and began to vigorously massage the skin of his face, trying to make himself feel more awake and alert.

Adam was so unpredictable, he thought, meddlesome. He had admired the blackbodies, taking them, with their high intellectual abilities and impressive appearances, as probably the truest example of the humans he was programmed to seek. His experiments in imprinting on them had nearly wrecked Ariel’s establishment of a new farming community. Then, when Adam had discovered the embryo form of Eve in the forest, Derec and Ariel’s problems had doubled. Adam brought Ariel to the “egg” in which Eve had arrived. Since Ariel was the first living creature she saw, Eve’s first shape, and the one she returned to most often, was as a silver-toned image of Ariel.

Despite all the knowledge the Silversides had accumulated from contact with humans, kin, and blackbodies, they frequently acted like children. They were fascinated by new information and sometimes flaunted an idea with repetitiveness and ferocity.

Derec recalled the day before they had all left the blackbodies’ planet. He had been in a lab working on an adaptation of a remote control device designed to make it easier for the robots in the field to communicate with their central computer. Ariel’s transformation of the settlement from a Robot City to an agricultural setup had necessarily expanded the geographical area in which the robots had to function, often removing them too far from the computer for effective comlink communication. Derec had designed a powerful modemlike wireless remote that could be operated easily at such distances. It was itself a miniature computer with limited-access memory. Attached to the chest of a robot, it could be activated when the robot placed its hand over the middle of the device. Without otherwise interrupting its task in the field, the possessor could transmit or receive data easily without having to travel to a computer terminal.

Adam and Eve had come into the room while he was busily attaching the experimental devices to a pair of utility robots who had been reprogrammed to be field foremen. He had switched off the robots so that he could more easily attach the remotes to them.

At the moment of their entrance, Adam had looked like a slightly distorted version of Derec molded in silver, with a touch of Ariel added, while Eve merely resembled Ariel alone. Derec had firmly wished that the Silversides would encounter other humans, so they would at least look different. Of course, there was no telling how much mischief they could cause if they met up with the wrong human.

Derec had always been a bit uncomfortable around Eve in her Ariel mode. Now that the robot was getting better at the mimicry, he had often wondered if, in a dark place where the silver exterior of Eve would not be so obvious, he could mistake her for Ariel and gather her into an embrace.

With Adam, the effect was less disturbing but equally annoying. For Derec, looking at Adam was like seeing an avant-garde artist’s rendition of himself.

“Why have you disconnected this robot?” Adam had asked, his busy fingers touching the robot in several places. The hand was vaguely caninoid, Derec had noticed, suggesting that Adam had just come from a session with the caninoid alien Wolruf.

“Because there is less chance of damage to already existing circuits when modifications are made during the disconnected state. And, Adam, this is delicate work and I have to concentrate so please don’t ask any more questions. I won’t answer them.”

“Why have you become so hostile to us?” Adam had asked.

“Because you’re pests, both of you, and you test my patience. Anyway, I’m busy now.”

“But how can we absorb new information and learn about humans if you refuse to deal with us?”

“Right now I don’t care whether you absorb beetle oil off a dirty floor.”

“Is there a beetle here?” Adam said eagerly. He was already scanning the floor for an insect to study and perhaps, in part, become. Derec had shuddered at the picture of a Silverside taking on the image of a giant bug. At least there had so far been nothing derived from insects in any of their shapes. Human, wolf, robot, and winged alien, yes, but nothing even vaguely entomological.

“The floor isn’t dirty,” Eve had observed. “What would beetle oil look like? Is it transparent? Would it blend in with the dirt of the floor, if there were any?”

Derec had always had difficulty coping with the literalness of robots, but with the Silversides the wordplay had become excessively ridiculous and irksome.

“There is no beetle, no beetle oil, no such thing as beetle oil as far as I know.”

“Would you lie to us then?” Eve had asked. There had been an Ariel-like sweetness in her voice. He had wished she would use a different sort of voice.

“Gladly, especially if it would get rid of you.”

He had spoken to Eve while still attaching the remote to the robot and had not observed Adam pick up the other remote from the table. At first he had held it in his hand, then had held it to his head for a moment. When Derec had finally noticed Adam’s meddling, the silver humanoid robot was pressing it against his leg. Finally, he had observed where Derec was attaching the other one, which had led him to press the device against his chest.

“How is it attached?” he had asked.

“That doesn’t matter,” Derec had said irritably, “since they’re not going to be put on either one of you. Put it back on the table.”

“But we crave knowledge even when it has no practical function for us,” Eve had remarked.

“And I find this device aesthetically pleasing,” Adam had said as he replaced it on the table.

Derec had returned to his work and so didn’t notice the slow changing of Adam from humanlike to robotlike. When he did look up, he had seen that Adam was now what he had originally termed a WalkingStone, a humanoid robot. However, there was one major difference. He now had a duplicate of the remote upon his chest, as if welded there.

Passing his hand over its front, a band of light in the center had gone on, and, across the room, the computer screen had seemed to go haywire with flashing data as it transmitted information to Adam’s remote. This had been a new one for Derec. Adam could copy a device like this, attach it properly to his mimicry of a robot body, and make it work. His imprinting abilities were improving by leaps and bounds. How could they possibly control him?

Instead of letting Adam know he had achieved something interesting, he had hollered at him. “Stop that!”

“Why?”

“Because I say so. You are putting this place into jeopardy.”

“I am only receiving geographical information. What harm could that do, Master Derec?”

“With you there must be something!”

“You don’t seem to approve of us, Master Derec,” Eve had said. Derec had taken note of how the two of them had suddenly invoked the polite form of address for a robot to a human.

“Does my approval really matter to you, Eve?”

“Yes, it does. You and Ariel are the only humans we know. If you are indeed the high intelligence we are programmed to seek, if you are indeed the humans you claim you are, then we will be in your image. And, in your image, we must be acceptable to you. Is that a part of First Law?”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Well, it should be.”

Derec had given up. There had seemed to be no sensible way to control them. The more traits and features they copied, the more their chameleonic abilities were a threat—and the more power they could attain. The First Law should protect humans against them, but they were so clever, they could become the first robots to circumvent the law without destroying the letter of it, simply by denying people their status as humans. If they achieved power and could manufacture more of themselves, there was no telling what they might do. If they could add to their fund of human knowledge with imprints from every alien they encountered, they could eventually become the sort of world-conquering monsters, conglomerations of aspects and traits from many creatures, that robotics experts had always thought impossible.

Derec had clenched his fists tightly for a moment, to try to get rid of his ridiculous thoughts. This was the kind of thinking that had probably driven his father insane. Releasing the tension in his hands, he had returned to his work, ignoring the Silversides who grew bored, changed back to their human shapes and left the lab.

Later, Derec had discussed their charges with Wolruf, who had managed the best lines of communication to the Silversides. He was not sure why she was so successful with Adam and Eve. It was perhaps because Adam, when he had first emerged from his own metal egg, had encountered the kin. He had molded himself into kin shape and stayed in that form until he began to encounter other intelligent forms of life. Wolruf’s appearance (actually more doglike than wolflike) reminded Adam of the kin, perhaps making him comfortable with her.

“I’m confused,” he had said to Wolruf without a word of greeting to her. She stroked the side of her jaw with the backs of the sausagelike fingers of her left hand, a gesture he recognized as indicating concern or even worry.

“What botherss ‘u, frriend Derec.” Just as Wolruf’s s’s had the faint sound of a hiss in them, her r’s tended to be a bit extended too, reminding Derec of a whispered growl. The lupine structure of Wolruf’s mouth did not allow her to enunciate his language easily, although she had certainly improved her linguistic skills. The s’s and r’s used to be more pronounced and the 1 nonexistent. Once he had had to concentrate fiercely to understand, but now he never had much difficulty.

“Adam and Eve. They’re driving me crazy. How can we let them loose on any world?”

“Do otherrss haverreason to fearr them, ‘u think?”

“Darn right. Most human societies certainly. Look, many of us are quite superstitious. Back on Earth, a simple-function robot is looked upon with dread, and most robots are kept out of the way, and on the Settlers’ planets they’ve tried to ban robots altogether. I think there’s some of that kind of fear in all humans, even though the Spacers have managed to accommodate themselves to the situation by using robots as a servant class.”

“I wonderr: Should the Silverrsidess be trreated different from otherr rrobots?”

“It’s the shape-changing. Look, my people have a history of superstition toward what they perceive as unnatural. In our imagination we see monsters in closets, believe illogically in the possibility of blood-sucking vampires, werewolves who—”

“Excusse me, I know not the terrm werrewolvess.”

“Can’t tell you much. Evidently, at the time of the full moon on Earth (a time when, superstition has it, people tend to grow madder), certain humans get transformed into wolfshape and run about the countryside killing and ravaging until the moon sets.”

The brown and gold hair on the sides of Wolruf’s face had begun to stiffen and rise slightly. Derec recognized this as a physical sign that the alien was disturbed. And then he had recognized why.

“I’m sorry, my friend. I was thoughtless. It happens that, like robots, wolves are regarded with some fear.”

“And, to ‘umanss, would I be some kind of wolf?”

“Maybe, to some. Hey, old superstitions are hard to cope with. To most, you’d be more like a dog, and we humans have a bizarre fascination and love for dogs. Back on your home planet, don’t your people have some fears, some superstitions?”

“Don’t know what ‘u—well, perrhapss. A kind of inssect, verry tiny, that—”

“See? All I’m saying is that we’re a superstitious lot, we humans. Give us a robot who can look like anything he wants to and molds himself into a different shape right in front of our eyes, and we’re liable to back off in a hysterical fit. The Silversides change shape as regularly as most of us change clothes. And they are trouble. Wolruf, my friend, they’re two whirlwinds looking for villages to wreck.”

She had stared at Derec for a moment, her dark deepset eyes searching his face in a way that might have seemed sinister had he not known her so well. “Well,” she had finally said, “seems to me that the besst place forr them might be a worrld wherre they could not causse the harm you suggesst, and wherre itss inhabitantss wouldn’t even rreact to their shapechanging. Be good forr uss, too. We then study them furrther with the proper facilities, try to rrid them of their—what would ‘u call them?—inconsistenciess.”

“Yes, exorcise them of their demons. That’s a wonderful idea, Wolruf, but where is this perfect world?”

“Robot City.”

“Robot City? But I don’t want to take them to—wait, you’re right. Adam’s really bored with robots and there’re only robots there. He says he receives little satisfaction from imprinting on robots. I think he’s somehow relegated them to a lower order of species.”

“I don’t underrsstand. If manmade, can they be a sspeciess?”

“They’re not. But Adam perceives them that way, and has dismissed them. He’s searching for the highest order of being on which to imprint, and he sees no future in being a robot. Apparently his programming is to imprint on humans, but he still resists the idea that Ariel and I are the answer. And in Robot City she and I would be the only humans, unless my father showed up. It’s good. With us, and you, as the only nonrobots there, we might be able to keep them in check. If we couldn’t affect their programming, maybe we could bore them to death.”

“Oh, but I don’t ssuggesst they sshould die, Derrec. Oh, no.”

Derec had smiled. Sometimes Wolruf could be just as literal as a robot.

“I didn’t mean it that way. I mean a boredom so intense that it’d render them relatively inactive.”

The plan had been easy to put into operation. The Silversides were curious to see the Robot City they had heard so much about and had given Derec no opposition to the idea. They had been relatively quiet on the trip out so far, and he had begun to wonder if they were being devious, planning some massive Silverside trick. However, as they neared Robot City and the chemfets in his bloodstream began to cause havoc within him, Derec had worried less and less about his robotic charges. In fact, he was tired of thinking of them now. He wanted no worries at all. If only he could relax with Ariel, make love with her, rest in her arms.

For now he might as well settle for his uncomfortable bunk.

He did fall asleep. But more dreams came. In one of them a Supervisor robot changed its face to resemble Dr. Avery, then announced that the Laws of Robotics had been repealed and he would derive infinite pleasure from purposely mutilating a human.

CHAPTER 3

SOMETHING IS ROTTEN IN THE CITY OF ROBOTS

Derec’s apprehension grew as his ship, piloted by the robot Mandelbrot, settled down onto a landing platform at the Robot City spaceport. His chemfets seemed to be in turmoil, as if they were struggling to process information that had been deliberately scrambled. At the same time his emotions were becoming scrambled, too. He snapped at Mandelbrot even while he was struggling to control his temper. Before the landing, Mandelbrot made a routine request for orders, and Derec responded testily, “We’ll land when I feel it’s right and not before.”

Of course Ariel, at that moment, had to be standing nearby, examining the cubes, spires, and blocks of the city from a view-portal, and of course she had to throw her two credits in.

“Whatever’s wrong with you, you don’t have to take it out on Mandelbrot,” she muttered.

He could have merely acknowledged the truth of what she said, but he had to top her two credits with a pair of his own.

“I’m not taking anything out on Mandelbrot, Ariel. You know as well as I do that it doesn’t make any difference to him what I say or how I say it, so long as he doesn’t have to remove me from harm or save my life. First Law and all that. I know I can be a real bandersnatch, call him every name in the dictionary of insults, foam at the mouth and jump up and down—and it all won’t make any difference to him. Only humans brood over other humans’ words.”

“How epigrammatic.”

He didn’t want to tell her he didn’t know what epigrammatic meant. It was already clear she had more general knowledge in her brain than he, and he didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of supplying a definition.

The anger in her face softened, and she moved toward him, patting him on his arm. “Honey, there’s no reason to be a grouch, even with a robot. Anyway, how can you be sure he’s not aware of your irritation?”

Derec glanced at Mandelbrot, who calmly sat at the controls.

“Oh, he’s aware all right. He has to be. Again, the ever-present Laws. He has to know what mood I’m in, what my nuances might mean, what my attitude is toward him—it’s all information which he processes in his positronic brain, and it helps him to judge how to react when the laws need to be applied. A robot can simulate emotion for a human being’s comfort or pleasure, but a robot’s emotion is only specific positronic activity. Aware, yes, but insulted, no.”

Ariel sighed. Derec hated that sigh. It clearly indicated she didn’t agree with him but was finding the argument too tiresome to continue with. The sigh dismissed the argument along with him and his moods. Yet, when she was moody, they had to play by different rules. Ariel could achieve a righteousness that would make a moral philosopher blush.

She walked back to the view-portal, muttering, “Well, when do you expect us to land, then?”

“Soon enough. I just have to look, make sure everything is all right down there.”

“I don’t understand, what could be wrong?”

“With what we’ve been through, you can ask that?”

“Frost, you really are in a blue funk today. I’m not going to put up with it. Summon me when you need me, master.”

After she had stalked out, Derec said under his breath, “Oh, Ariel.”

Apparently Mandelbrot heard him, for he asked, “Is there something wrong, Friend Derec?”

“Nothing that need involve you, Mandelbrot.” If the robot was at all bothered by Derec’s irritability there was no way for him to show it in his face or body. Derec wondered if Ariel was right about robots having feelings. Certainly the humaniform robots like R. Daneel Olivaw or Ariel’s precious Jacob Winterson appeared to have emotions. They seemed so human, it was hard for observers not to apply an emotional overlay to them.

“We are closing in on the Compass Tower,” Mandelbrot said.

The large view-screen in front of the pilot seat displayed the tower, the first Robot City structure Derec had ever known. He and Ariel (then known as Katherine) had arrived there from the gray misty spot known as Perihelion, when they had pressed the corners of a Key to Perihelion. That particular key had been set for Robot City, and they found they could travel nowhere else, except back to Perihelion, with it. The tower was a pyramidal building that was larger and higher than any other building in the city. Inside it was the office in which Dr. Avery had secreted himself to observe Robot City. Derec wondered if his father were in there now, messing up the workings of the place just so he could mess up the workings of his son’s chemfets and, for that matter, his mind.

“Hover here for a while, Mandelbrot.”

Derec stared down at the city, his city now and not Avery’s, uncertain of what looked strange about it at this moment. The Compass Tower was the same tiered structure it had always been. There were none of the odd lumps upon its surface that he had seen in his nightmare. The city itself, as it always had, stretched from horizon to horizon, except for some parkland to the south. New buildings had sprung up while old ones had been disassembled by the robots, whose job it was to continually refine the city, making it even fitter and more luxurious for human habitation. Someday, human colonists would actually be admitted into the place. Normally Derec would not have been aware of such architectural alterations, but his chemfets kept him up-to-date on all of the city’s transformations.

The robots in the streets below moved busily enough and appeared to be concerned with their usual goals. Yet, even their movement didn’t look right to him, didn’t feel right. And many of the usually busy thoroughfares seemed deserted. Perhaps Robot City had indeed turned into the city of his nightmare.

It was probably his imagination. The Silversides, Ariel, all his responsibilities were making it work overtime. He was just plain exhausted, frustrated—that was probably the answer. He would have to make himself human again, rebuild his own personality the way the figures below rebuilt the city.

Lately Derec had had the sense that since his awakening in an amnesiac state, he had become a robot himself. He was increasingly concerned with his duties (one crisis after another, it seemed) and, like the robots below, rushing to goals that were usually shadowy and mysterious.

Sometimes he felt he was divided inside between the human and robot sides of his personality. Certainly, because of the chemfets, he was at least part robot. At times the human side ruled his life and emotions; at other times the robot part took over. He was human at the height of a crisis, when a battle had to be fought or a decision made; human when he was with Ariel, at least in the loving and tender times, or even the angry ones; human when he had to instruct and guide the robots or intellectually confront Avery. On the other hand, in between these active human periods, there were times when he allowed the robot inside him to take over. The robot was in charge when he had to do the dirty work, the menial activities that occupied so much of his duties. He was also robot when he felt nothing but an emptiness inside toward Ariel or Wolruf or Mandelbrot, the trio who meant so much to him now. There were times when he suddenly realized that time had passed and he had only the vaguest idea of what he had done during it, and in his mind that became the robot’s time rather than the human’s. He wondered if a robot, along some pathway of his positronic brain, was ever conscious of everyday routine.

After landing, Derec was surprised to find the spaceport deserted. Usually a few maintenance robots were in evidence, searching for rarely found trash, shining up already shiny surfaces. The spaceport seemed to Derec like an enormous white elephant, an area that functioned only when he or Ariel used it. Of course, much of Robot City was like this—structures designed for thousands or even millions of human immigrants, magnificent living quarters for people-to-come, commercial setups for invisible shoppers, workplaces used now only by programmed robots who mainly made tests of equipment.

As they passed through the deserted terminal, Adam and Eve looked about, their heads snapping from side to side as they tried to absorb all the new information. To Derec it looked as if the two chameleonic robots were searching for someone or something to copy. He smiled. There’d be no new beings to change into in Robot City. The robots they’d encounter were so much like ones they’d already seen, they would, as Wolruf predicted, grow bored and become more malleable to human manipulation. Then perhaps Derec could straighten the two little buggers out.

“Shouldn’t someone be welcoming us or something?” Ariel asked.

“I’m not sure,” Derec answered. “I’m not up on spaceport protocol. It just seems that we should be seeing a few robots behind a few counters or something.”

Outside the terminal, at the proper station, they found a floater, so called because it went down Robot City roadways without actually touching pavement. It was a two-seater, so Derec told Wolruf and Mandelbrot to locate a larger vehicle and follow him and Ariel into the city. “Keep a lookout for anything that looks out of sync,” he said to them. “We’ll rendezvous at the Compass Tower and compare notes.”

On the ride down the long access road to the city, Ariel said, “Now that you’re here, what do you feel, Derec?”

“I still can’t make any sense out of the chemfets. But I don’t know what’s wrong. Something has changed here, but I can’t see it yet.”

“If you don’t see something, how do you know it exists?”

“That sounds faintly philosophical.”

“My habit. Sorry.”

The floater was small, so small that their shoulders, hips, and legs were pressed together. Normally he liked being this close to her, but today there was a stiffness in the way she held herself. It made him uncomfortable to be touching her at all.

He smiled at her. She stubbornly refused to smile back. Although she tried to look relaxed, her tension was apparent in her eyes.

Touching the bar that controlled the vehicle, Derec brought it to a stop at the first block of buildings after they crossed into the city proper. He got out before the floater had settled down onto the pavement.

“Where’re you going?” Ariel asked, as she, too, squeezed out of the vehicle.

“Just a look around.”

He approached the side of a cube-shaped building and stared at it. “Look at this.”

Standing beside him, she tried to see what he saw.

“What is it?”

“That seam there.” She had to squint to see it. “The city is assembled from five-meter-square slabs that come out of an extruder in a sort of ribbon. The material forms and reforms, following some sort of predetermined programming. It becomes windows, walls, rooms, entire storeys of buildings, structuring itself. It’s done so flawlessly there should be no seams, cracks, openings, except where architecturally logical. This seam isn’t logical.”

Looking closer, she could see that there was indeed a tiny separation. Only a very thin coin could get through it, but it was certainly a flaw.

He strode away from her, running his hand along the wall and around a corner. When he was out of sight, she heard him yelp. She ran around the corner to find him staring down at his little finger.

“Look,” he said, holding out the finger to her. There was a tiny cut at its tip and a minuscule drop of blood had oozed out. She was always surprised by how much darker than hers his blood was.

“What happened?”

“The damn thing cut me, that sliver there.”

“Sliver? But that’s impossible. You once told me the building material is programmed with the First Law. It can’t allow you to get hurt, especially on it.”

“That’s right. By all rights, I shouldn’t be bleeding. Well, take a gander.”

The sliver was even more minuscule than the split seam, but it was there, all right. A tiny bit of red at its tip made it slightly more visible.

“What’s happened?”

Derec did not stand around long enough to respond to her question. He was several steps farther on, his eyes nervously inspecting another building, a small sloping structure that thrust upward into the sky, ending in a spire.

“Look up there!” he cried.

He meant the spire. As she peered at it, she realized that there was something just slightly out of kilter about it.

“It’s tilted a bit,” she said.

“Right,” he said. There was an offensive tone in his voice, as if he were condemning her for verifying the obvious.

“No Supervisor robot would allow such a deviation from the norm.”

“I don’t know. I seem to remember something I read about Earth and a leaning tower there. It was quite a tourist attraction.”

“Well, I’ll refer your observation to our Tourist Board.”

“Don’t be sarcastic. I’m trying to help.”

Again he didn’t respond. He was now running, eager to examine another building. Ariel clapped her hands twice as a signal to the floater. The pair of claps made the vehicle rise from the ground and follow her as she walked to Derec.

He stood in front of the building’s entrance and stared at it.

“Anything wrong with this one?” she asked.

“Nothing I can see. I’m sorry I snapped at you. I just feel at—”

“Forget it, buddy. I ragged you pretty hard back on Aranimas’s ship when we first met. We’ll just consider your present mood a paying back.”

“Thanks.”

As his eyes scanned the wall in front of him, his concentration was broken by a loud thumping sound.

“What was that?” Ariel asked.

“I don’t know. Let’s go in and find out.”

“Every time I turn around, you’re being brave. Okay, you lead.”

The building’s entrance was situated in a corner of the street facade. Next to the door was a handplate that could identify both human and robot personnel. This meant it was considered a security area, and only registered individuals would be allowed into the building. That didn’t worry Derec. His handprint was automatically registered with all Robot City identity systems, so he placed his hand against the handplate confidently and casually, expecting the door to pop open immediately. It did not. He pressed his hand harder against the plate. Again nothing happened.

“What’s wrong?” Ariel asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe it hasn’t been connected yet.”

“Here. Let me try.”

Brushing past him, she placed her hand on the plate. Derec was again impressed by the thin angular look of her fingers and would have been willing at that moment to take her hand and lead her to someplace dark, comfortable, and quiet where they could concentrate on kissing and making up.

The door wouldn’t open for her, either. Irritated, she slammed her fist against the door itself, and it slowly, creakily, came open. The sound was especially disconcerting. It was another anomaly. No door in this Robot City should squeak.

“Well, fancy that,” Ariel said, “it was already open. Shall we?”

She gestured toward the dark interior.

When they entered the building, they should have triggered a force field that would immediately switch on the lighting. But after a few steps, they still stood in what seemed like absolute darkness, broken only by the light streaming in from the doorway. That light was soon lost as the door slowly swung shut. The air seemed stale, and Derec wondered if the circulation systems had broken down, too. Instinctively, he reached for Ariel in time to feel a shudder go through her body.

“You’re right,” she muttered. “Something’s wrong here.” She hugged him tightly. “Derec, let’s inspect some other building.”

“I’m with you on that. The doorway should be—”

She suddenly screamed, not a scream of fear so much as of startlement. With her head so close to his, the sound of it nearly deafened him.

“What happened?”

“Something brushed against my leg.”

“What?”

“I couldn’t tell. Felt like an animal. Like a rat or something.”

“What kind of animal could it possibly be? You’re imagining things. There’re no animals in Robot City. They—”

“There it is again! It just slammed into my calf.”

“Maybe it’s a robot. A delivery or cargo—”

“Didn’t feel like a robot. Too soft, too—”

Derec felt a forceful nudge against his ankle. Ariel was right. It did feel like an animal. Must be the power of suggestion.

“Ariel, everything is all right. We’ll just make our way to the door and get out of—”

To his left there was a faint animal-like noise. It sounded like a subdued cackle. An elf or tiny demon pleased with his or her work. There was another small cackle on the other side of him. A third behind Ariel. In a moment there were cackles all around them, and they had become louder. Whatever was inside this building seemed to like chattering to each other.

Taking Ariel’s hand, Derec fled backward toward the door that was faintly outlined from outside daylight. Near the door, before the two of them had flung it open and fled from the building, he nearly tripped over something, something that screeched back angrily at him.

CHAPTER 4

THE WATCHFUL EYE

There was no such thing as an all-seeing eye in Robot City, but the Watchful Eye believed it must come close. Even though it usually sat safe in its haven, its rudimentary body drawn snugly inside, it could observe and examine whatever happened in the city.

Since the time it had arrived in the city through an underground tunnel that had originally been meant for human sewage (of which there had so far been so little that the sewer’s walls were brightly pristine and its clear water smelled fresh and pleasant), it had gradually taken over all Robot City systems.

The Watchful Eye had no idea how it had arrived on the planet. After coming suddenly to awareness in a field outside the city, it had molded itself into simple but functional form. Searching the countryside, it located the sewer tunnel. At first it had transported itself by the kind of carts used for supply and passenger transport through the intricate network of tunnels, and eventually found its way to the lair of the central computer. It had taken a while to learn that the computer was merely a machine and not a living being. It took some more time to discover how to operate it. For one period it roamed at will around the inside of the computer and absorbed random bits of knowledge. Now it had collected a considerable amount of the computer’s information, much of which it was not certain how to use. The only way to find out, it had discovered, was to practice.

First it practiced on the numerous robots that roamed the huge city’s streets. Although it had not yet seen a robot up close, it knew about them from studying the view-screens set up in the underground computer center. As it became more computerlike itself, it began using the computer to communicate with the robots. It convinced the robots that it was human and, according to Second Law, should be obeyed as a human. (As long as they could not see it, the Watchful Eye was able to carry off the illusion convincingly. It had forbidden the highest ranking robots to come into its presence or have any sight of it.)

Although it had accessed much information about humans —visual data, anthropological studies, physiological and anatomical maps, psychological data—it believed it hadn’t yet reached an understanding of what a human really was. It yearned to see one.

There had been no problem in making working models of humans, no difficulty in creating thousands of computer visualizations of human beings. Where it had failed, however, was in really knowing what a human was. All the information files had been entered by humans who already knew what they were. Essential things had been left out, and the Watchful Eye needed to fill in those blanks.

The next step on its agenda had been to study and then obtain control of the city itself. From computer files the Watchful Eye evolved an extensive, albeit distorted, view of the place. Since it had no previous knowledge of humans or robots, it couldn’t always interpret the data it collected. But that didn’t matter. Knowing bits and pieces was enough for the time being. After all, it had learned something about quests and felt that if it continued its Robot City experiments, it could eventually control the place completely. It did not know what it would do when it became that powerful, but it believed that life must, if nothing else, be a learning process. The computer’s philosophical files reinforced that conclusion. When it had power, it would know what to do with it. Once it had not known what a computer was; now it had completely subjugated one. Domination of the city would present little difficulty.

It liked to think of itself as the Watchful Eye because it could keep track of so many parts of the city without moving from its haven. The screens displayed any place it wanted to view, and it could keep track of several points at once. Not that there was much need to oversee the robots. They accepted orders readily and acted upon them with dispatch and without further questions. That was good, because it did not have time to keep specific attention on the individual robots. There was so much to do, so many experiments to conduct, so much to think about....

Eve Silverside walked behind the others, pleased that Wolruf had decided they should walk into the city rather than search out a proper-sized vehicle. Her head often turned to examine the city’s immensity. She had previously seen only the pastoral landscapes of the blackbody planet, with its natural wonders and its robot-made agricultural community. Adam, who had seen a robot city, had described it to her, but she had not been prepared for the overpowering qualities of the real thing. She was now in human form, resembling a chunkier and silver-colored Ariel, and her startlingly humanlike eyes were open wide in amazement.

Even though she had been told about Robot City’s incredible mass of architectural wonders, she had not been prepared for its dazzling array of colors, its intricate walkways, the geometric perfection of its buildings. Although she tended to examine the scene around her with a robotic objectivity, she was impressed and thought Robot City was indeed a splendid place.

Ahead of Eve, Wolruf hunkered down, peered at the edge of a curb, and picked up something.

“What is it, Wolruf!” Mandelbrot asked.

She held up a crumpled piece of paper. Adam took it out of her hand and examined it. “It seems ordinary, not unlike paper I have already seen,” he commented.

“Not that it’ss paperr,” Wolruf said, “it’ss strrange it’ss here at all.”

“I do not understand.”

When Adam talked with Wolruf, his face seemed to change slightly, its human aspects taking on a suggestion of Wolruf’s caninoid features. Adam’s nose seemed to lengthen and his face became flatter, like Wolruf’s.

“Paperr shouldn’t be here, that’ss all. Here on thiss street it iss litterr. Small robotss take care of litterr wheneverr it occurss, which iss rare. Robotss, aft’err all, do not use paperr. The small robotss detect litterr, ‘u see, then collect it, then dispose of it.”

“I see no utility robots in this area,” Mandelbrot said. There were, in fact, no robots of any kind to be seen. “Perhaps one will come soon.”

“Maybe,” Wolruf said, then loped a few steps farther and pointed at the pavement. “Thiss iss slidewalk,” she said.

“Yes,” Mandelbrot said.

“Shouldn’t it move? We stand on it, it remainss still when ourr body weight should make it move.”

“That is truly puzzling. Perhaps it is inoperative.”

“If so, where are Slidewalk Maintenance Robotss? When something in city breakss down, maintenance robotss are ssupposed to appearr immediately.”

“Perhaps they are busy elsewhere with a different slidewalk.”

“Maybe. But thingss don’t break down in Robot City at such rate. Two areass of slidewalk down at same time in same sector iss unusual, ‘u see.”

“Yes. I should inform you also of another matter.”

“What, Mandelbrot?”

“Since you have been observing these flaws, I have been trying to contact other robots through my comlink to obtain answers for your questions, and so far none have responded. Based on data from my previous visits to this city, such a phenomenon, even on the outskirts here, is highly anomalous.”

“‘U believe ssomething iss wrrong here, Mandelbrot?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Let’ss go on then.”

Eve wasn’t sure what to make of the conversation between the caninoid and the robot with the strange arm, itself something of an anomaly. The arm, which had once belonged to a robot of a different class than Mandelbrot, was shaped differently and, because it was thicker and longer than his other arm, looked awkward on his body. It was malleable and Mandelbrot could change its shape, although, unlike the Silversides, he could not transform any other part of his body.

Thinking of her shape-changing ability seemed to start up a mechanism in her body. She looked around for something to change into. Adam had explained to her that there seemed to be an urge inside them to seek out new beings and imprint upon them. It was very humanlike, he said, or at least Derec had informed him so. “Derec says that humans love to seek out new experience. A new experience for us is a previously unseen kind of being whose shape we can take. Although we are not supposed to have emotions about it, I think the mechanisms inside our bodies are engaged when we think about changing ourselves or when we see a being on which we can imprint.” Whatever it was, a simple mechanism or a genuine yearning for new experience, Eve now felt a strong urge to form herself into a new shape.

But what shape could she choose? She had been human like Ariel, caninoid like Wolruf, a robot like Mandelbrot.

There must be some different kind of life here, she thought. She walked closer to a building, a strange structure, narrow and tall. Staring up at its top, she saw a row of ugly birdlike creatures staring down at her from under the building’s eaves. They were still, impassive, although she thought she perceived a meanness in their eyes. Stepping back to try to see them better, she pointed upward and asked Mandelbrot, “What are those, please?”

Mandelbrot glanced up at them. “They are not alive,” he said. “They are some kind of ornament placed along the upper rim of the building. I think they are called gargoyles. These are made of Robot City material, but in the past they have often been sculpted from stone.”

“They are interesting. Adam? Do you think we could become like that?”

Adam had adopted a quite humanlike shrug, copied accurately from Derec. “We could become statues, yes, but I see no point in it. There is little for us to learn from representations of life, Eve, unless we actually encounter the creatures that were the models for these statues.”

“I doubt that that would be a pleasant experience,” Eve said. She looked away from the gargoyles and walked a few steps farther, then she turned and went back.

There was something here, inside this building, and it was not gargoyles. She sensed there was something on the other side of the wall, just standing still but perhaps with life inside it.

“Mandelbrot?”

“Yes, Eve?”

“How does one gain entrance to such a building as this?”

Mandelbrot had been instructed by Derec to cooperate with the Silversides as much as possible unless he sensed danger for them. There did not seem to be any threats hereabout, so he replied, “I believe the door for this building is located on the north side. Up those steps.”

Eve immediately went up the steps. Climbing was one of the few activities that made her appear more robotlike than humanlike. There was a certain mechanical awkwardness to the way she proceeded from stair to stair.

At the top of the stairs, there was indeed a door, and it was slightly ajar. From below, Mandelbrot saw the door hanging open and cautioned, “The open door. That is another anomaly. Do not go in there, Eve.”

One thing that Eve had “inherited” from copying Ariel was stubbornness. Once she had a goal set in her mind, she would not easily veer from it. She pushed the door open and went inside.

With a faint crackle, some light came on. To Eve it was clear that the illumination was not full power. That didn’t matter to her; she increased the power of her optical sensors. The room was dim, and there were many shadowy areas. She increased her olfactory sensors and observed that the hint of an unpleasant odor in the room was more than just a hint. There was a heavy pervading sense of decay in it. Something might be dead in here.

The room was cluttered. Broken glass littered the floor (she recalled what Wolruf had said about utility robots keeping things clean); some furniture had been heaped in one corner, most of it with missing pieces or chunks; metal debris was all over the room in piles of varying sizes; everything was laden with dust.

She walked through the room boldly, scrutinizing its contents. Behind her, Mandelbrot came through the doorway.

“Eve, Derec has instructed me to keep you and Adam away from harm. We don’t know anything about this building, so please come with—”

“What is this, Mandelbrot?” She held up what appeared to be a long jointed tube made of metal wires and strips, plus some electronic wiring.

“I would say part of the skeleton of a robotic limb. Well-articulated if complete. Now, Eve—”

“There’s something over here.”

As she neared a shadowy niche, she saw that there was someone in it. However, she could detect no life coming from the figure. Even though it was standing, its legs were crossed unnaturally. There were shreds of cloth remaining from an outfit that was not definable. Its torso seemed ravaged and scarred. Its eyes were so deepset that at first she wasn’t sure there were any. There were black circles around them. Its arms hung at odd angles.

“Mandelbrot, this looks like a—”

As she came close, the figure’s head moved slightly as if about to slide onto its left shoulder, and it reached out its left arm toward Eve. She was tempted to ignore Mandelbrot’s warnings to back away from it and instead take the hand.

The Watchful Eye had detected Robot City’s new arrivals and was quite gleefully keeping track of them. They might be human, it thought. The first two it saw on its view-screens answered many of the requirements it had deduced for humans, requirements that it had laboriously formulated from the visual and technical information in the many computer files. Still, its uncertainty as to what actually constituted a human made it want to continue observation at a distance.

The Watchful Eye had a need to know about humans. So far it had been frustrated in its studies and experiments by the lack of any genuine humans to observe. Now perhaps they had returned to the city apparently built for them.

Listening in on their conversation, it detected that the new arrivals’ names were Ariel and Derec. There was a lot of data about a Derec in the files. This might be he. Derec had been so important he had one of the access codes to the computer. It had been extremely difficult for the Watchful Eye to bypass and then cancel it.

After Derec and Ariel had entered the warehouse where some of the Watchful Eye’s failures (Series B, Batch 29) were housed and had been attacked by the cackling monstrosities, it became confused. The humans, if they were indeed humans, just ran away, out to the street. Why did they run? What kind of emotional weakness could cause such cowardice? Maybe they were not humans, then; maybe they were failed entities, just like its own creations.

It didn’t have much time to consider their behavior because it detected another set of intruders. First he saw the small furry being who was so assiduously examining whatever she found in her path. Her intelligence was clear, and she was observant. It listened in on her comments about the litter she had found. That was perceptive of her, observing that discarded paper was a rare thing in the city and that utility robots should have removed it long ago. It was not sure where the paper had originated, but it suspected that it came from one of its experimental creations in the building that Eve had inspected. It recalled that the place was a warehouse for some more of its abandoned experiments. There had been some ritual among these creations that had involved paper. It had not liked the ritual, in which strange-looking marks were made on paper, and so had forgotten it. As far as the litter problem went, perhaps it would reactivate the robots that had once had that job.

Next in line was clearly a robot, but even the robot was a variation on what it was used to. Mandelbrot, as it heard the robot called by the fur-creature, whose name was apparently Wolruf, had an arm that did not seem to belong on his body.

The figures following Mandelbrot confused the Watchful Eye, who was not easily disturbed. It recognized right away that they resembled the two humans it had seen earlier. They had similar faces and bodies, but their skin was a sort of silvery blue as compared with the faint pink tone of the earlier arrivals, and there was a bit more rigidity in their movements. Otherwise, they could have been twins of the pink beings. Further, there was assurance in their walks and the way their arms swung calmly at their sides.

It had a new problem to consider now, one that increased its interest. Both sets of intruders resembled humans as described in computer files. The first set seemed more awkward and not as self-assured as the second set. However, the second duo, who had the proper bearing and look of intelligence, were, in coloring, more like the city’s robots. Its first impression was that while both sets could be human, the second might be an advanced version of the species.

When Eve entered the warehouse, it was very pleased. It found that a circuit inside one of its creations there was still operable (though very weak), and it was able to make it move by remote control. It liked Eve’s cool response to the event. She seemed much more in command of her emotions than the skittish pair who had entered the other warehouse then scampered out of it at their first opportunity. If the Watchful Eye could have smiled (and it could have but had never bothered to learn the manipulation for the physical display of amusement), it would have smiled with satisfaction at what it now perceived as the superior human, Eve Silverside.

CHAPTER 5

TIMESTEP AND BOGIE

As the warehouse door slowly and creakily shut, Derec thought he saw many eyes looking back at him from the closing sliver illuminated by daylight. Even after the door was closed, he still felt there was a good chance he would see the eyes again in his next nightmare.

Ariel, now relaxed in his arms, snuggled her head against the side of his neck. Since she was a bit taller than he, she had to slouch awkwardly in order to perform the act.

“What was that?” she said, her words muffled.

“I don’t know. Whatever they are, they shouldn’t be there. There are no animals indigenous to Robot City, and I know I’ve made no allowance for any kind of animal life here. I’m not sure I even like animals, especially small ones.”

“Maybe they weren’t on the planet when the robots arrived. Maybe they were underground. Maybe they’ve come to the surface from the bowels of the planet. They might have gotten, I don’t know, stirred up while the robots were building the city and have been slipping out under those construction slabs.” The slabs Ariel referred to were the five-meter-square pieces of iron/plastic alloy that emerged from a machine called the Extruder. “Maybe they were already—”

“Calm down. I’ve examined all preliminary studies of this planet, the ones done before the city-forming project began. The place was barren, no animal life evident anywhere. So they’re not likely to have come up from the underground or—”

“How about from space then? They landed in a spaceship while we were gone, and now they’re hiding out until they know what to do about us.”

Derec frowned and broke from the embrace. “You might have something there. I’ll have to check records. Even better, we can interrogate robots. After all, they can’t lie to us.”

As if in response to his comment, a robot came whirling around a nearby corner. Both Derec and Ariel were astonished by this figure, since whirling was indeed the correct word for its current maneuver. It moved as if on roller skates, balletically spinning with its arms outspread. Before reaching them, it executed a lovely twirl on its left leg alone, with its right leg pointing elegantly backward.

“Stop!” Derec ordered it. It had brought its right leg down and seemed ready for another move, but Derec’s order brought it to a halt. Its body appeared to collapse a bit, and it slumped ungracefully. “Come here!”

When the robot stood in front of him, Derec asked, “Your name?”

There was no response, which irritated Derec. “Come on, every robot has a name.”

“Except during a name-changing period,” the robot said. “I have not chosen my new name yet, and so am without a name for the moment. I was considering renaming myself Timestep.”

“Timestep? What kind of name is that? Does it indicate a function or role? As a name it is against regulations.”

“There are regulations about names?”

Derec didn’t know the answer to that, so he said, “Never mind. Tell me, you said new name. That means you must have an old one. What is it?”

“Line Foreman 43.”

“Have we met before, Line Foreman 43?” The robot did not respond, but merely stood with the blank face and relaxed body that was the look of robots when they conversed with humans. “Why don’t you answer me, Line Foreman 43?”

“Are you talking to me, sir?”

“Didn’t I call you Line Foreman 43?”

“You may have indeed. But that is not my name.”

“You said it was.”

“It was, once. It is not now. I do not respond to it.”

“All right then. You, there, the robot standing in front of me, have we ever met before?”

“Not formally, but I know you are Derec. This is the first time you have ever spoken to me.”

“Why were you dancing just now?”

“I don’t know. It just felt good.”

“You have a feeling about dancing?”

“I think perhaps. It is also perhaps a positronic anomaly.”

“There are enough anomalies around here without me having to worry about positronic ones. Robot, you might be in some way programmed, or reprogrammed, to dance, but I doubt you have a feeling for it.”

“My partner says I do. My partner says I am a very smooth dancer.”

“I’ll bet you are.”

Derec felt as if he wanted to yell uncontrollably at this too-clever, evasive robot. Ariel squeezed his hand and said softly, “Let me talk to him for a moment. Robot, have you no duties at this moment?”

“Duties? Yes, I suppose so.”

“You suppose so? A robot doesn’t suppose when it comes to duty. You either have one or you don’t.”

“Well, yes, I have a job that I do.”

“Why aren’t you doing it then?”

“I had not realized I had stopped doing the job.”

“You had not—”

Ariel’s anger was clear, so Derec, calmer now, took over again.

“You mentioned a partner. Where is your partner now?”

“I don’t know. We agreed it was time for me to go solo. Want to see my soft shoe?”

“No. I give up. Ariel, this is worse than arguing with a robot about one of those odd hypothetical cases where a Law of Robotics can’t be easily invoked.”

“I know what you mean,” she said, nodding. “Let’s try another tack. Robot, there are some terribly strange beings in that building over there. Do you know anything about them?”

The robot’s head jerked toward the warehouse. “I know nothing of any strange beings,” he said.

Ariel shrugged.

“Wait,” Derec said, “it might be the word strange not registering with him. They might not be strange to him. Let me try. Robot, are there any beings at all in there?”

“I could not say for certain, for I have never entered that building.”

“Let me put it this way. Have any new beings of any kind, humans, robots, aliens, entered the environs of Robot City?”

“Yes, besides you, three new robots and an alien came today. The alien and two of the robots have been here before.”

“He must mean Wolruf and the others,” Ariel commented.

“Besides them, and us, has anyone new come to Robot City at any recent time?”

“That sounds properly phrased, all right,” Ariel whispered.

“Yes,” the robot said.

Derec stared at the robot for a long while, expecting him to say more. Frustrated, he finally asked, “Well? Tell me about our newcomer.”

“I may not.”

“What?”

“I am not allowed to. A block has been entered for that particular information.”

“A block! How could there be a block for me? I am Derec Avery!”

Derec realized that he was sounding overbearing, but he couldn’t help it. This robot got on his nerves.

“While it is true that you are Derec Avery, and I owe you the kind of loyalty that would remove such a block, I cannot. There is a further block upon the first block.”

Derec shook his head vigorously, trying to clear it. “What do you mean, blocks on blocks?”

“If the first block is removed, the one preventing me from revealing the information you request—and Second Law tells me such blocks may be removed by you or, for that matter, Ariel Welsh or Dr. Avery—a second block wipes out the information before I can voice it. Therefore, if I obey you now and attempt to tell you what I know, then I will not know it anymore. Consequently, I will not be able to tell you. Because Third Law requires me to protect myself, and by extension any vital information I hold, I have to try my best not to allow such a situation to come to pass, and must respectfully request that you interrogate me no further on this matter.”

As the robot awaited Derec’s response, he executed a few mild soft-shoe steps. His arms appeared to throw imaginary sand onto the ground.

Derec wondered if what the dancing robot said was true. He had often told robots to forget specific information but had often wondered if they really did. Perhaps the data would not be erased but instead skillfully diverted from one positronic pathway to another, leaving it hidden rather than eliminated. It was possible he could find a way of getting such data out.

“I will interrogate you as long as I wish,” Derec said coolly. “In fact, I am so angry I don’t give a hoot what happens to you or your information. Robot, I—”

“Timestep. I have decided on that as my name. It has a nice ring, don’t you think?”

As if to prove how wonderful a name it was for him, Timestep tapped out a quick and intricate hard-tap routine with his feet. Since the feet were made of metal, their taps were louder and more resonant than the average human tap dancer could achieve. There was an inappropriate look to it all, especially since he waved his arms like a clumsy man falling.

“Timestep, I order you now to tell me the answer to the question I asked before. Inform me of any newcomers to Robot City whose identity has been previously blocked.”

The dancing stopped, but Timestep said nothing.

“Well?” Derec asked.

“Well, what, sir?”

“Give me the answer.”

“The answer to what?”

“My question.”

“I don’t know the answer to your question.”

“The information has been destroyed then?”

“I don’t know the answer to your question.”

“Timestep, do you recall once having the answer in your memory banks?”

“No, I do not. I know nothing about any newcomers to the city except for yourselves and your companions.”

Derec made a quick gesture with his hand, the dismissive one that most humans used for robots. “You may go, Timestep.”

“Thank you, Master Derec. And, please, look for the silver lining.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I don’t really know, sir.”

Timestep danced off. When he was going forward, his movements and dance steps were more precise and graceful. Before he rounded a corner, he twirled around a high pole with a round old-fashioned lamp at the top. Derec did not recall the pole being there when they had arrived at the corner moments ago. He had to admit that the height at which Timestep twirled around it was quite impressive.

“What are you smiling about?” he asked Ariel.

“I’m not sure. I liked that robot, I guess. I hadn’t realized how much I missed some entertainment. When we first arrived here, we watched entertainment tapes, and they were pretty sad. I knew they couldn’t take me away from my worries then, but, to tell the truth, I wouldn’t mind viewing some of them again now. I mean, we’ve been so busy lately, I haven’t had much time to relax. You know, just relax and watch something, no matter how trivial. I’d really like to see Timestep’s whole act.”

Derec wondered if he could just curl up someplace and concentrate on a book or a hyperwave program. His mind always seemed to be stuffed with responsibility, work, research—all the problems that came with the territory in Robot City, any Robot City.

“I think Timestep could use a dance teacher,” was his only comment.

“Really? I thought his moves were pretty good, especially for a robot. Maybe we could arrange a little recital for him.”

“Ariel—”

“Sorry, sorry. Only trying to cheer you up.”

“Can’t work up much cheer when the place seems to be falling apart.”.

“Best time for it. Anyway, it’s not all that bad here. A dancing robot, some pests in a warehouse, a few things out of order, your strange intuitive feelings...”

“That’s just it, you know? My intuitions. They’re one of the side-effects of the chemfets. I know when something’s wrong here. And something is definitely wrong.”

“Like something is wrong in Denmark, wherever that was.”

“‘Something is rotten in the state of Denmark,’ “ Derec corrected. The line came from the fairly rotten production of Hamlet that he had staged (while playing the leading role to Ariel’s Ophelia) with an all-robot supporting cast.

“What’s really rotten is your mood,” Ariel said. “I thought you were going to lighten up.”

Her words, spoken so softly, soothed him. Ariel could be the cleverest, most sarcastic person in the universe, especially when she got her dander up, but she often knew the moment when a quietly spoken phrase was the right tactic. He took her into his arms.

“Oh, Ariel, it’s just—just that I’m never sure. I still remember so little of my life that I feel like I’m Hamlet.”

“Isn’t that just a carryover from having played the role?”

“Maybe. But I do relate to the character. I’m alone—”

“Hey, you’ve got me.”

“I didn’t mean it that way. I mean that I have to be in charge of this city.”

“There’s a saying somewhere about its being lonely at the top.”

“Something like that. I’m never sure what I do is right. My father didn’t really tell me how to take care of things. Just made me leader and took off. I don’t know who my mother is. I don’t really know what my mission is. Stuff like that. They’re not the same as Hamlet’s, but they’re similar uncertainties.”

“Maybe what destroyed Hamlet is he thought too much about what he was doing. Like you’re doing now. Snap out of it, my love. You’re not Hamlet. If anything, you’re a hero, a man of action rather than a procrastinator. These, what you call uncertainties, are only human reactions to, well, the uncertainty of existence.”

Derec laughed. “Now you’re getting too heavy.”

“I have been putting on a bit of weight. Ever since falling in love with you, my love. So let’s get moving. I need the exercise, and you need some work to get the glooms out of your head.”

“It’s a deal. You know what we have to do? Find Avernus, Dante, Rydberg, Euler, all the other Supervisor robots who link up to the computer. They must know what’s going on around here. And we can hack through the computer itself, see if we can come up with something.”

“Okay, buddy.”

Holding hands, they started in the direction of the Compass Tower. After they’d walked a few steps, two humanoid robots came running by. They were tossing around a large metal sphere, perhaps an oversized ball bearing from somewhere. The sphere went back and forth between them. From their speaker grilles came a continuous outpouring of satisfied sounds.

“What was that?” Derec said after they had passed. He would have stopped to interview them, but he had been too amazed at the sight to think of any logical action.

“They seem to be playing some sort of game.”

“Game? Robots playing games?”

“Odd, I agree. Kinda cute, though. I never thought much about robots having fun.”

“I’m not sure robots are supposed to have fun.”

“Don’t be a spoilsport.”

“Maybe I’m jealous. I wouldn’t mind having the time to throw a ball around.”

“Well, we could join in. But, from the size and apparent weight of that ball, I think one catch’d flatten either one of us. I know what you mean, though. I’d like to return to Aurora and hike across a few fields, or just lie about and enjoy a rigorously enforced lethargy.”

“Still, that game there is just another anomaly for us to consider. Why aren’t they occupied with their duties? Who could have told all these robots to take time off to dance and play ball?”

“Maybe we’re just not used to them having time off.”

“No, it’s more than that. Robots don’t have time off. Whenever they’re not doing something, they just stand there. On Aurora, you people store them in those wall-niches. And why in blazes would any robots ever play games? And, if a robot is playing a game like that and making happy sounds, does that mean it’s having fun? Is there any way it could feel the sensation of—”

“Stop! I’m not up to one those positronic conundrums right now. You can be terribly single-minded, darling.”

“And you love me for it.”

“Only when I’m what you’re single-minded about.”

They stopped walking for a moment to kiss. A robot passing by whistled: Unused to such rude behavior from a robot, Derec angrily broke from the embrace and ran up to the whistler, ordering it to halt. It stood, awaiting Derec’s words.

“Did you whistle just now?”

“Yes. You know how to whistle, don’t you? You just pucker up your lips and blow.”

“I know how to whistle. But how do you know? You don’t even have lips to pucker up.”

“A technicality. I can reproduce any human sound using my mimicry integrals.”

“You have mimicry integrals?”

“I do now.”

“You didn’t once?”

“Until recently, I didn’t.”

“And you can copy human sounds?”

“Name one, kid. Please.”

“You shouldn’t call me kid.”

“I was not aware of that. I call everyone kid.”

“Well, not me. And why aren’t you answering my questions?”

“I don’t cotton to the third degree, copper.”

“Kid, cotton, copper? You’re using slang, aren’t you?”

“You ain’t just a kiddin’, kid.”

“Where did you learn slang?”

“Same place I learned whistling.”

“And you never told me that. Okay, start back at the beginning. Where did you learn to whistle?”

“I saw it in a movie.”

“A movie? You watch movies? How is that possible?”

“There are many stored in the Compass Tower, pal. They are for research. We must study humans to understand them, kiddo. And there ain’t been many o’ you fellas around Robot City, so how else can we study you? We obtain the movies from the computer’s entertainment system.”

“Is that what’s going on here then? You robots’ve been watching old movies?”

“Some of us.”

Ariel stepped forward to address the new robot. She talked quietly, in contrast to Derec’s nervous and energetic tone. “When do you have time for that? What about your duties?”

The robot swiveled its head toward her. “Oh, I get it. I like it. You’re doing one of those copper tricks. The good-guy-bad-guy routine, I think it’s called.”

“It’s no routine. Answer my question. You have to obey Second Law.”

“Sorry. All right. I am not aware that the fulfillment of my duties is in any way impaired by the time I spend with hyperwave and prehyperwave movies and shows.”

“What is your job?”

“I am a perimeter-observation and intruder-inspection specialist.”

“A what? That doesn’t—wait, do you mean a border guard?”

“That is the vulgar term, Mistress Ariel.”

“We don’t need border guards. Robot City’s allover the planet. There aren’t any borders.”

The robot made a move with his shoulders that, in a human, would have been a shrug. “I was misinformed,” it said.

Now Derec took over the questioning. “You do a job for which there is no need?”

“It seems so.”

“Was border guard always your job?”

“No. I was once an Analyst.”

“You would have to be reprogrammed to change your role here.”

“Yes.”

“And you were?”

“Yes.”

“Who did the reprogramming?”

“I am not allowed to say.”

“Yes, you can. You are allowed to tell me.”

“Nope. I realize you are Derec, but this is not a matter of Robotic Law protocol. I really cannot. There is a block upon the information which, if I attempt to reveal it to—”

“I know, I know. The information self-destructs. You forget it before you can say it.”

“That is so.”

Derec, looking worried, turned his back on the robot. “Heads up,” he said to Ariel, then reared back his fist, as if to smash her in the face.

The robot’s hand was quick. He had Derec’s arm in between pincers in a split second. Derec relaxed in his grasp.

“It’s all right, robot. I would never hurt her. I was just testing you.”

“Testing me?”

“I wanted to make sure you would still obey the First Law and keep me from harming Ariel.”

“I would. I must.”

Derec sighed. “At least something in this place is working according to Hoyle.”

“Excuse me,” the robot said. “I missed a beat there somewhere, pal. Is there someone named Hoyle I should know about?”

Derec laughed, pleased that at least this robot, with its skills at slang, could still be crossed up enough to take a statement literally. “It’s nothing,” he said. “Just a figure of speech.”

“I will look it up. Thanks a bunch, kid.”

“Stop calling me kid. It’s not only inaccurate, it’s disrespectful.”

“It’s not so inaccurate,” Ariel muttered. “I mean, you’re still a teenager.”

“I don’t feel like one any more.”

“I apologize, Master Derec. I thought kid was a respectful term. It is in the movies, I think.”

“I give up. Get on your way.”

“As you wish. Here’s looking at you, k—Master Derec.”

The robot began to glide away.

“Wait, what’s your name?” Derec called after it. “Bogie.”

“That’s your new name, one you chose?”

“Yes.”

“Do you see many movies?”

“I have studied a certain period of the cinema, yes.”

“Why? Why a certain period?”

“It was my assignment.”

“Who made the assignment?”

“I am not allowed to say.”

“Okay, okay. I get the message. I won’t ask any more questions. You may go now, Bogie.”

“Yes, Master Derec.”

Bogie disappeared around another comer. Derec might have been mistaken, but the robot’s hand, extended in front of him, looked like it was flipping an invisible coin.

“What do you make of that, Ariel?”

“When I was a child, my mother had me watch a lot of movies from old Earth. They were shadowy, and dark, and in shades of gray they liked to call black and white. Very hard to watch, quite unreal. They were usually about crime and murder and private detectives. Bogie’s like a character in one of them. The slang seems about the same, far as I can remember. Maybe we can watch a few.”

“Might help in figuring out what Bogie is talking about. For right now, though, I think we better get to the Compass Tower before any more of these wise-guy robots show up.”

“Wise-guy? And you were complaining about Bogie’s slang?”

“It gets to you after a while. “

“What about your respect for language?”

“Not sure I have any. C’mon, I want to find the Supervisors and work with the computer.”

“Unless it thinks it’s a movie character, too.”

“Don’t even think that.”

As they headed toward the Compass Tower, the Watchful Eye studied the situation. If these were the superior humans, they certainly were tentative, but also a bit aggressive. Derec nearly hit Ariel, after all.

It was hard to examine them as long as it stayed put in its haven, yet it could not move now. It must remain at the core of the city. Perhaps it would be useful to have Derec and Ariel spied upon. Spies could signal it when there was any danger of being discovered. It decided to assign Timestep and Bogie to that job. They had already proved their efficiency with the successful way they had absorbed the research materials assigned to them.

Through the comlink system it contacted both robots, who, with nothing better to do, changed direction and met at the Compass Tower, just after the humans had entered the immense pyramidal structure.

CHAPTER 6

MUMBLING ROBOTS AND SASSY COMPUTERS

Bemused by the actions of Derec and Ariel, the Watchful Eye turned its attention to the other set of newcomers in time to observe Eve and Mandelbrot leaving the building where she had discovered the residue from some of its early genetic experiments. Eve’s conduct in the old building seemed worth the Watchful Eye’s admiration. It certainly preferred her cool reactions to the cowardly and brutal responses of Ariel and Derec.

Its admiration increased when it eavesdropped on Adam’s questioning of Eve. His queries were much more analytical and logical than those of Derec and Ariel in their interrogation of the two robots. The Watchful Eye was, however, puzzled by certain aspects of the Adam-Eve relationship. It had detected a warmth and shared emotion between Derec and Ariel, even when they had been arguing with each other. Their silvery counterparts seemed close only when they shared information. And they did not touch each other gently the way Ariel and Derec did. The Watchful Eye placed no importance on emotion, but it had noticed that emotion seemed to playa key part in many of the descriptions of humanity contained in the computer files.

There was, as Hamlet-obsessed Derec might have put it, a method to the Watchful Eye’s madness. It was confused by some aspects of Robot City, and it believed it needed help. Whichever of the two pairs appeared superior, it would enlist in its cause, as advisors, helping it to run the city.

Up to now, it had only had the assistance of robots because there was no one else available. Robots did good work when properly instructed, but, if any of their Laws of Robotics were involved in the task, they could ask many time-wasting questions. If one of the Watchful Eye’s orders seemed to put a robot in danger, it would initiate long discussions about the task until the Watchful Eye finally revised the job to eliminate Third Law obstacles. Now that the newcomers had arrived on the planet, it was beginning to hear First Law ruminations from the robots.

Although the Watchful Eye would not have considered it in such terms, Robot City had become its own personal toy. It had not, after all, been conscious for very long, and in some ways it was still a child. That was why it had conducted so many experiments since its arrival. It was testing Robot City, rearranging the place to fit its needs, finding out what worked and what did not, reprogramming robots to store the information that was beyond its ability to assimilate. Eventually it planned to restore order to the city, a highly structured order based on theories it was formulating daily. It was determined to achieve the goal of establishing its own city.

The newcomers, with their experience and intellect, could help it. It would put them under its thumb (a colloquialism it had learned from the computer—not that it had any thumbs, or at that moment any hands) and use their expertise to put the city also under its imaginary opposable digit.

As Eve and the others continued their journey, the Watchful Eye searched for Ariel and Derec. At first it could not locate them, but then its new spy, Timestep, informed it that they were about to enter the Compass Tower. Quickly the Watchful Eye activated the life-support systems that the pair would need inside the pyramidal structure.

“It smells musty in here,” Ariel remarked as they headed down the corridor leading to the Supervisors’ meeting room. “Like it’s been closed up tight for a long while.”

“Maybe it has,” Derec responded. “It’s possible that when we’re not here for a long period of time, they close down the air circulation systems.”

“Maybe. But I sure don’t like it smelling like a tomb.”

She coughed. The echoes of it seemed to swirl down many hallways in front of them.

“I don’t remember it being this cold in here, either,” she said. “I know, don’t say it. No reason to keep heating systems in complete operation for robots alone.”

They came to the meeting-room door, which was ajar. Derec placed his hand on Ariel’s arm and whispered, “Wait.”

She whispered back, “What’s wrong?”

“That door’s usually not kept open.”

“So what? It’s safe enough down here. No need for security.”

“I know, I know. It’s just disturbing. It should be closed.”

“God, you’re going anomaly-crazy. Let’s go in.”

She charged ahead of him before he could hold her back. Her sudden move didn’t surprise him. Ariel had always been more impulsive than he. He ran after her.

Again, as they crossed a threshold into a dark room, the automatic lighting did not function. At least the Compass Tower rooms had manual overrides so that, when necessary, lights could be controlled by the inhabitants. Ariel, feeling the wall next to the door with the back of her hand, found a light switch and flicked it on.

The Supervisor robots were, in typical fashion, seated around the long meeting table. She recognized Avernus, Dante, Rydberg, Euler, Anon, and particularly the first Wohler, the robot who had saved her life on the outside wall of the tower, then had lost all memory of his own heroism. Each time she saw Wohler, she felt a twinge of affection for him.

“Why were they sitting in the dark?” Ariel said. “Hey, why are you guys sitting in darkness?”

“It is not dark now,” Avernus said. His voice sounded odd, a bit deeper, like a sound tape being slowed down.

“But it was. Wait a minute. You fellows don’t usually play those robotic word games with us. Heck, the bunch of you together form a major computer. What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Euler said. His voice sounded weird, too.

She turned to Derec. “What’s going on, you think?”

“I don’t know.”

He walked around the table, studying the robots carefully, sometimes touching them, asking fast questions, receiving slow answers. Finally, he came back to Ariel and whispered, “They’re not really functioning.”

“What do you mean? They responded to your questions, they spoke.”

“But their responses were meaningless, they didn’t really say anything. You heard them. Whenever my questions had anything to do with possible computer malfunctions, they each said the computer is fully operational. But, when I asked any specific questions about what was wrong with the city, they said nothing was wrong. Well, we can see how much is wrong and, Ariel, part of what’s wrong is them. Whoever’s behind the sabotaging of the city has gotten control of them, too. They’re just another system gone haywire. Let’s try the office. Maybe we’ll find the culprit there.”

Before they left the room, Derec and Ariel looked back. The Supervisor robots had not appeared to move an inch. They had not sprung up, ready to serve Derec and Ariel, or provided useful information. They had seemed listless, and listless robots seemed a contradiction in terms. Before she switched off the light, Ariel said, a bit sadly,” ‘Bye, fellas.” Was she mistaken, or was there a faint mumbling response from them?

The office light also had to be turned on manually. The room itself looked no different from usual. Its furniture was all in place, surfaces were clean, the computer was positioned correctly on the desk. The surrounding walls, furnishing a computer display of the view from the Compass Tower roof, still functioned, although they showed an altered Robot City, now too dark and too mysterious. Derec cursed under his breath.

“What’s wrong?” Ariel asked. It seemed her main question ever since they had returned to Robot City.

“The chemfets. It’s as if they’re getting fainter, dissolving. Whatever’s affecting the city is affecting them. It has to. Let me at the computer.”

As he activated the screen, called up access codes, made his fingers fly across the keyboard, his eyes teared up and he struggled to keep from crying. Ariel, for the first time in a long while, didn’t know what to say to him or what to do for him. The chemfets had always been a mystery to her, and she didn’t know how to counter their effect on him.

Finally, with an angry yowl, Derec slammed his fists on the keyboard. A few random letters appeared on the screen followed by a question mark.

“It’s like everything else around here. It won’t communicate with me. Whatever I type into it, it sends back gobbledygook—an error message, or request for clarification, or denial of access. I asked why the lighting systems were not working properly, and it asked if I’d like a Cracked Cheeks cassette delivered to our rooms.” The Cracked Cheeks were the robot jazz group that had formed during the “Circuit Breaker” incident. A fascination with creativity had captivated several robots at the time, but Avery had later programmed such “dangerous” impulses out of them. “I asked why so many systems were down, and it called up a file-management tutorial file. I asked if there had been any newcomers to the city, and it said that information was restricted. I asked it to unrestrict it, and it said it was restricted forever.”

“How can that be?”

“I don’t know. It just seemed to be toying with me, treating me like a child, not relating to the chemfets at all. There’s been some kind of bypass, somebody’s hacked in or something, or a computer virus, I don’t know. Whatever, whoever it is, is in control. I could try to access the right information until I was blue in the face, and I’d just get nonsense from it. The computer’s been taken from me, the robots are no longer in my power, the city is running down, and I can’t stop it. And all I want to do is go back to the ship, lift off from this hellhole, go back to Aurora or even to Earth, and never come back.”

He was close to breaking down. Ariel could see that. Gently she ran her hand through his bristly sandy-colored hair, uncertain for a moment of what to say, then she knelt down beside him. “Hey, snap out of it. These are minor setbacks, pal. We can take care of them. We’ve done it before.”

He smiled. “You’re right. What’d I do without you?”

“Probably blunder on with much less efficiency.”

He sat quietly for a long while. “I wonder if he’s behind all of it.”

She did not have to ask who he was.

“It has the fingerprints of Dr. Avery all over it, doesn’t it?”

“It has to be him.”

“But,” said Dr. Avery, his small form stepping out of a dark comer, “this time it is not me. I am, my son, just as confused by it all as you are.”

CHAPTER 7

NO AVERYS NEED APPLY

“You were in that corner all this time?” Ariel asked.

Avery looked smug as he responded, “Since long before you violated my privacy by coming into the room. I’ve been —”

Derec suddenly screamed, “Damn you!” He vaulted out of his chair and lunged at Dr. Avery, grabbing him by the throat and shoving him against the nearest wall. The doctor’s eyes remained calm, as if the way he looked when he was being murdered was the same as when he delivered a sarcastic comment.

“Derec!” Ariel shouted. “Stop! Right this minute!”

She pulled hard at his arm, breaking his grip, then she interposed her body between him and Dr. Avery. With a forceful backhand, she hit Derec on the side of his face. Derec’s eyes looked momentarily dazed. Gently she began walking, edging him back toward the computer terminal.

“Now why in the name of the fifty Spacer planets did you do that?” she said.

Derec sat down again. His fingertips brushed along a row of letters on the keyboard. “I’m sorry, Ariel.”

“How about me?” Avery said, his voice a bit shaky as he tentatively touched his throat. “I think you should apologize to me.”

“No! That I won’t do! You spied on us.”

“I wouldn’t call it spying, son. I was here first, remember? Meditating in the darkness. You intruded on me. I just wasn’t ready to announce it.”

“He’s right, Derec,” Ariel said. “His spying’s not important enough for an attempted murder.”

“I wouldn’t have killed him. You know that.” Ariel was bothered by the fact that she really didn’t know whether or not Derec could commit patricide. “I just wanted to hurt him.”

“Well, you at least succeeded in that purpose, young man,” Avery said. Now he was tugging at the cuff of his sleeve with one hand, smoothing out the cloth of his laboratory smock with the other. “You do not seem to be accomplishing much elsewhere, however. No wonder you were reduced to tears.”

Derec made a small furious sound in his throat, but restrained himself from jumping up again. Instead, he said quietly, in a level voice, “What it was, Ariel, he saw me cry. I didn’t want him to see that, that’s all. Not him! Childish of me, I guess. I’m sorry.”

Ariel hugged him. “You are childish, darling. And it’s all right to cry. No matter who sees it.”

“Not if it’s him.” He rubbed at his eyes with the back of his right hand, trying to wipe away any remaining evidence of his tears. “He has no right to judge me.”

“I’ve always judged you. I am your father. I’m supposed to.”

“He may be lying about being my father. How do we know?”

“You’ve inherited my bad temper, son. Isn’t that proof enough for you? And why won’t you address me directly?”

Derec refused to reply. He sat silently, staring at the computer screen’s last message, a bit of gobbledygook about invalid parameters.

Avery, smoothing down his white wavy hair, then pressing down his mustache, walked forward. Ariel noticed that his eyes glowed. He had always seemed crackbrained in his words and deeds; now she saw it in his eyes. Derec whirled around in his chair and faced the scientist. A strange smile came slowly over Avery’s face.

“We have a problem,” he said.

“We have many problems,” Derec said. “Which one are you referring to?”

Avery waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. “Not the ones between you and me, son. They are trivial. I will win you over in time. No, I mean the city. My city. Your city, too. Almost all normal functioning has stopped, as you’ve seen.”

“And you have nothing to do with it?”

Avery shook his head no. “I understand why you suspect me. I might suspect myself. But I was away on a different project, conducting a different set of experiments at another robot city. I used a Key to Perihelion to return here yesterday, and my arrival has so far been undetected. That’s no surprise, considering the way things have fallen apart here.”

“What’s the cause of it?” Derec asked.

“I can’t find out. The changes didn’t occur by themselves, I’m sure of that. Someone is behind them. But I haven’t a clue whom. For a while I thought it might be you, fooling around with your domain here, trying out your wings. But I realize now it wasn’t.”

“Why do you think it’s someone?” Ariel asked. “Couldn’t it be a flaw in the works, something you overlooked that’s making the city decay?”

A flash of furious anger came briefly into the doctor’s eyes then receded as he stared at his questioner.

“No, the city cannot decay,” he said. “It could choke itself to death with overproduction, as it was doing the very first time you two arrived here. It could come close to social ruin, as it nearly did when the artist Lucius created his “Circuit Breaker” sculpture. But the mechanisms themselves cannot fail, and neither can the robots. However, essentially I agree with your insight. There is decadence here. Not originating in the system but from an outside source. We must find the source.”

“Stop saying we,” Derec said angrily. “You do what you want to, but I won’t work with you. Until I find out otherwise, you are my chief suspect for the state of the city.”

Again the doctor smiled, and again it was a strange smile, corning over his face as if it were released by a spring mechanism. “We must work on your logic circuits, son. Why would I try to ruin Robot City, the city I created myself, then peopled with my own robots? Destroying this city would be, for me, like destroying myself.”

“Excuse me, sir,” Ariel said, “but your previous behavior doesn’t entirely eliminate the chance you might, in a fit or tantrum, decide to get rid of your own creation. I’m sorry, but I have to agree with Derec on this.”

She moved to Derec, placed her hand casually on his shoulder.

“Well, don’t the two of you make a pretty pair?” Avery said. “Like dull-eyed pioneers in a tintype. All the imperfections of humanity stiffly posed on a chemically treated plate. I suppose I’d hoped for more from you two, but one thing I’ve learned: Humans may fail you but robots are forever.”

Ariel laughed. “That’s diamonds are forever, I believe.”

“My robots will endure beyond the cheap glitter of geological accidents.”

Derec started to stand up, but Ariel’s gentle pressure on his shoulder kept him seated. “Doctor,” she said, “I admire florid language as much as the next gal, but what in Frost’s name do you mean?”

Avery’s eyes squinted and his head tilted slightly, as if he could not comprehend how he could be misunderstood. “My dear, a robot is, although manmade, the finest stage of humanity, the ideal toward which you puny, disease-prone, uncertain beings should aspire. Instead, you don’t even respect them. You order them about, treat them as servants.”

“Not true,” Ariel said. “We do respect them. Most of us.”

“But not all,” Avery said smugly.

“At any rate, they were created as servants,” Derec said, “adjuncts to human laborers in industry, maids in private homes.”

“Yes, they were enslaved at first. But I have liberated them. I have created communities for them where they can exist without the continual interference of the human race, cities more magnificent than the overcrowded hovels of Earth and the brutally isolated homes of Aurora. I’ve—”

.”Wait, wait,” Ariel said. “With due respect, sir, these robot cities are designed as relatively perfect environments for humans-to-come. Yet, you say they’re really for the robots?”

“Very good, Ariel. You catch on quickly. I’ve had to tell my robots that they were building for humans. The Laws of Robotics demand that. They must at least think they are here to protect humans, to follow orders from humans. Rarely, however, do they ever encounter humans. That doesn’t seem to make any difference to them, so long as they think there will be humans eventually.”

“But you’ve never intended to, say, import colonies to live here?”

“Originally I did. But I’ve changed my mind. I say, Robot City for robots. Why contaminate them with hordes of humans spreading their weak-minded mores and indifferent customs? Don’t you see, Ariel, it would be wrong for the superior beings to continue to serve the lesser? That’s why I am a liberator. The robot is the next level of existence. Humans can die out, while robots will endure.”

Ariel realized that she had been holding her breath as she listened to the doctor’s shouted diatribe. She turned to Derec and whispered, “He is mad.”

“I heard that, young lady. And of course you’d perceive me that way, with your limited perception. I’d expect no more. But your antagonism only stimulates my positronic pathways.”

“Your what?”

“Positronic pathways. You see, I have not only created the Avery robots in my own image, but I have recreated myself, casting away my humanity and transforming myself into a robot also.”

“Ba-nanas,” Ariel muttered.

Avery merely smiled. Now she could see it as a definitely robotic smile, even though she believed none of his story.

“I knew you wouldn’t believe,” Avery said.

“Are you trying to say, oh, that you’ve implanted a robot brain into your head? Is that what the positronic pathways guff is all about?”

“I see that you’re patronizing me, so I think we can terminate this discussion.”

For a moment Ariel wondered if this figure, identical to the Dr. Avery she had met before, might indeed be a robotic recreation. Then he swept by her, and his easily detectable body odor told her that he was still at least partly human.

After Avery slammed the door behind him, Ariel commented, “The man needs help.”

“So do we,” Derec said. His fingers flew across the keyboard again. Some data came up on the terminal’s screen. “Look at this, Ariel.”

All she saw was a bunch of figures. “What does it mean?”

“This is a report of construction activity in Robot City. The earlier figures represent the city’s normal rate of new building. But lately the figures have gradually fallen off, with fewer and fewer buildings being created. Since before we arrived, there have, in fact, been no new buildings created. All construction in Robot City has stopped.”

“Funny,” Ariel commented.

“What’s funny about it?”

“This tends to support your father’s story.”

“How does it do that?”

“Well, remember what he said about robots being the supreme whatever and all that, plus the city being the safest haven for them? So why would he stop that? Why would he allow the robots themselves to become, as he said, decadent? This man isn’t going to be happy with listless Supervisors and robots who are tap dancers or movie buffs. After Lucius, he programmed creativity right out of his robots. No, for once Dr. Avery isn’t the chief troublemaker. It’s somebody else, it’s got to be.”

“Okay, granted. But what do we do now? I can’t get anything out of the computer, the robots are uncooperative, and the city’s becoming a play-village for someone whose identity we don’t know. What next, my pretty?”

“Well, I’ve got a swell idea if you don’t mind a little break in the action.”

“You’ve got—”

“This room comes furnished with a couch-bed, and there’s even a blanket on the end table there if you want privacy.”

“You flip off the lights, I’ll switch off the computer.”

“Why the computer?”

“I don’t know. I’ve a feeling it could spy on us.”

As they embraced in darkness, the real spy outside the door, still indoctrinated with the Laws of Robotics, knew they applied in some way to this situation, and so he discreetly retreated. After all, he thought, in the best movies he had seen, the camera always discreetly retreated from this sort of scene. As he rejoined Timestep outside the Compass Tower, Bogie decided that the shadowing assignment was a fortunate one. Keeping watch on the two young humans was a bit like watching a movie—in a way, better, since it took place in three dimensions.

CHAPTER 8

CREATURE DISCOMFORTS

Each time Wolruf stumbled or bumped into something, she cursed in her own language. Eve asked her what words she was speaking, but she replied that it was merely her own private nonsense.

The Silversides and Mandelbrot had no difficulty with the darkness of the streets. Equipped with precise sensory circuitry, they could proceed easily through such darkness. Wolruf, even with the keen senses she had developed in the wilds of her homeland, couldn’t detect every obstacle in her way.

“Is the lack of proper lighting bothersome to you?” Mandelbrot asked her.

“So true. I rememberr lightss coming on when walking these strreetss.”

“They do not seem to be functioning now.”

“Like so many other thingss here. What iss wrrong, Mandelbrrot?”

“I do not know.”

“What we have seen,” Eve asked, “is not necessarily like this place as you know it?”

“Verry different,” Wolruf answered. “Strreetlampss alwayss lit one’ss way.”

They walked a few more steps, turned a corner (with Wolruf’s shoulder painfully bumping into the side of a building), and saw flickering light up ahead.

“What is that?” Eve asked.

“Not sure,” Wolruf said, “but my nose tellss me apprroach cautiously.”

“Your nose speaks to you?”

“No, that iss rrendening of saying from my worrld into ‘uman wordss. We sense dangerr, we say we sniff it out with our nosess, even when there iss no actual scent there.”

Eve did not quite understand, but she chose to keep quiet, especially since Wolruf, assuming the role of scout, now sprinted ahead of the group.

“Adam?” Eve said.

“Yes?”

“Is this a strange place, this Robot City?”

“In my limited experience, where every place I have seen is strange to me, this one is, too.”

The glimmering light shone from an open area in between two tall buildings. Gesturing the three robots to stay put, Wolruf edged along the front of the building until she came to its comer. Looking around it, she saw that the light came from a bonfire in the middle of a vacant lot. Gathered around the flames doing an odd, jerky dance was a crowd of small creatures. Because the fire cast distorting shadows, she could not easily focus on the figures. Yet she was sure they were shaped like humans, but much more diminutive.

At first she thought they might be a group of children. Then a few danced into a clear patch of light. Wolruf saw that not only were they even smaller than she had thought, they were also not children. One male had a beard, a female had quite fully developed (in miniature) breasts, another had an aged, deeply lined face. Definitely not children. They were adults. Tiny, tiny adults.

The Watchful Eye no longer knew what to think about the new arrivals. Such contradictory behavior, it thought. The one called Ariel seemed all right, except when she decided to be affectionate with Derec. Derec cried and nearly murdered the new individual, Avery. Avery stomped around like a caged animal. Who were these creatures?

It knew from its earlier research that Avery might be the creator of Robot City, but the doctor’s behavior was so erratic that the Watchful Eye did not want to make contact with him. If Avery discovered it here in its safe haven, there was no telling what he might do.

Now, to further complicate matters, the second group had come upon one of the Watchful Eye’s Master Experiments. Series C, Batch 4, one of its better efforts. A failure like the rest, yes, but an interesting failure at least. Like some of the other humanic substitutes, they had developed a rudimentary society. Although none of these batches had contributed the insights about the Laws of Humanics that the Watchful Eye sought, they had, by banding together and rapidly evolving a few customs, provided an abundance of useful data about cultural tendencies.

Because there was so much for it to consider, the Watchful Eye now chose to retreat into its stasis state. In stasis, it shut off its senses so that it could concentrate exclusively on problems, this time the new and altered situations brought into its hermetic world by the intruders. It wanted to analyze how they would affect its overall existence and whether it would have to take any action against them. Before settling itself back into its safe haven, it sent out messages to its spies, Bogie and Timestep, instructing them to signal it if a new crisis developed. When that was done, it snuggled down into the haven, curled up into an embryonic state, and disconnected all sensory networks. Immediately it was welcomed into the calm comfort of nothingness, a place where it sometimes yearned to be forever.

“Well, we’re on our own for a while, kid,” Bogie commented after acknowledging the Watchful Eye’s message. “The Big Muddy’s spoke.”

“Big Muddy?” Timestep said. “Is that a proper name for—”

“Let me put it this way, pal. I wouldn’t speak it if the Big Muddy was looking over my shoulder.”

Timestep did a little clog routine from one of the dance tapes he’d studied.

“Nice moves, Tip-tap!”

“It’s Timestep.”

“You say so, Tip-tap.”

“What are we supposed to do now?”

“Keep tabs on Dick and Jane up there, send the Big Muddy signals if they get up to somethin’ it should know about.”

“What are they doing now?”

“Friend Tip-tap, we’ll just draw the curtain across that little scene.”

“All right. Then we should just stand here and wait for something to happen?”

“‘bout the size of it, big boy.”

They stood silently for a long while, a pair of silvery statues streaked with blue in the dim, reflected light at the foot of the Compass Tower.

“Bogie?”

“Yeah, kid?”

“Who is the Big Muddy?”

“Don’t know. Just the boss, far’s I know.”

“Have you seen it?”

“Nope. Nobody has, far’s I know.”

“Why has it taken over Robot City?”

“Beats me. Place has certainly changed since it breezed in, though.”

“I don’t feel comfortable about that. A while ago I had a safe, normal routine. Every day I did my job. I never questioned whether or not to do it. Then the Big Muddy came, and before I knew it, I had walked off the job. That’s when I found out I was a dancer. The Big Muddy told me.”

“Yep. Same for me. I had a compulsion to examine old movies, came from Big Muddy. I don’t mind it, though. There’s a lot of truth in flickerdom, kid. I’ve copped much more about human life now. You don’t trust society broads and you don’t rat on a partner, stuff like that. The flicks’ve helped me to see the vast potential of the humans we serve. I’ll be a better robot because of them.”

“You confuse me, Bogie. I am not certain all this is right. Once we were building and maintaining Robot City; now almost everything about the city has stopped. We are the servants of the Big Muddy now.”

“Maybe this burg needed a rest, kiddo. You worry too much. Dump it in a grocery cart and carry it out to the parking lot. We’ve got a job to do right now. Let’s do it.”

“Do you think the city looks the way it used to?”

“No, it don’t. But, like they say, that’s Chinatown, Jake.”

Timestep couldn’t understand half of what Bogie said, but he chose now to keep still until something happened.

A long time passed and nothing happened.

Finally he said, “I cannot stand still this way. I’ve got to dance.”

In the few pools of light, Timestep’s dance became a silhouette of a slow tap. He moved from one lighted area to another. Bogie, who’d seen some dancing in movies, judged that a human would have probably found the robot’s little routine bizarre, since it was tap dancing without music. The clunking noises as his feet made contact with the pavement echoed through the long street. They were grating sounds. Timestep should hire himself a band, Bogie thought.

Now that night had fallen, the darkness inside the Compass Tower office seemed total to Ariel. She stuck her head out from beneath the blanket and could not discern anything. After blinking her eyes a few times, however, details of the room appeared to emerge from the blackness.

“It’s eerie,” she whispered.

Derec, who had nearly fallen asleep, was startled awake and asked, “What did you say?”

“Eerie, the darkness in here. I mean, the room. Usually all those view-screens are on, transmitting scenes from the outside world.”

“They are on. There’s just so little light out there, you can hardly tell.” He sat up. “But it is awfully dark. Let’s take a better look.”

After adjusting their clothing, Derec led Ariel to the desk that dominated one side of the room. Flicking on a small desk lamp (it had been so dark, even that flimsy light pained her eyes), he pulled out the slab of controls from its position just beneath the desk blotter. Sitting down, Derec worked the controls, searching for clearer pictures or any kind of image that would be displayed recognizably on a view-screen. Most of the screens remained shadowy. Here and there they could see the shapes of buildings, sometimes a few dim stars in the sky.

He pointed one camera downward, and it picked up the pools of light near the Compass Tower. They came, he saw, from some light bands in a building across the way. Apparently the lighting system there had not broken down.

“Look there.” He pointed to the view-screen. “Something’s happening down there.” He zoomed in on the movement, enlarging the image until they could plainly see Timestep doing his dance. The robot, with a movement approaching grace, leaped from pool to pool. Derec turned up the volume on the sound pickup, and they could hear the hollow, plaintive, echoing, tapping sounds.

“Weird,” Ariel said. “Do you think that’s the dancer we met?”

“Looks like him.”

Timestep stretched his arms outward and tapped to the left, then he shuffled a bit and made the same move to the right.

“It’s not like human dancing,” Ariel said, “but it has its own elegance, its own special grace. You know, once—when I was about twelve or thirteen—I was given an old mechanical toy, some kind of precursor to robots, perhaps, but really just a toy that was wound up and run. It was a little metal man in a harlequin costume, and it stayed in one place, a tiny pole running up its back. When it was switched on, it did this queer, floppy dance. Its legs bent in right angles at the knees, then came down and hit its pedestal a couple of times, then resumed its stance with the right-angled knees, then down again, and so forth. I was fascinated by it, played with it for hours. I liked it better than all the technologically fashionable toys that were arranged in clusters around my room. But I think my mother sneaked in when I was asleep and took it away. I don’t remember who gave it to me. Look at that.”

Timestep had executed an extravagantly long soft-shoe glide, coming to a stop beside another robot she hadn’t previously noticed.

“Say, that’s—what did he call himself?—Bogie, wasn’t it? What are those two doing down there?”

“I don’t know, but it seems terribly coincidental that the two of them should wind up together and right near the Compass Tower entrance, don’t you think?”

“Maybe. I wish Timestep’d dance again. He couldn’t possibly be tired.”

“What did you get out of it? The dance, I mean. It might be a bit unusual, but it was just a robot dancing. They can do anything they’re programmed to do.”

“Don’t be so pragmatic. There was a beauty in his dance.”

“Only in your mind. A human doing the same dance with about the same ability, you’d find him awkward and minimally talented. That robot is about the same as the famous talking dog. It’s that he does it at all that’s amazing, but there was nothing remotely beautiful about it.”

Ariel muttered, “Have it your way, Mr. Critic-at-large.” She walked away a few steps, then whirled around to say, “But I liked it!”

Derec was used to Ariel being touchy on occasion, so he shrugged and said, “I’m sorry. Just my opinion. Let’s go down and pay these fellows a visit.”

“It’s not necessary.”

“C’mon. Maybe Timestep does encores.”

The three robots and Wolruf stayed outside the perimeter of the tiny creatures’ encampment. After a flurry of interest in the intruders, the small people had turned their attention back to their ritual by the bonfire. There was a definite pattern to the ritual. First they circled the fire in a line, each creature keeping a hand on the shoulder of the individual in front of it. Then they broke up into couples and performed a dance that featured a complicated but rhythmic sequence of high kicks. The kick dance was followed by a synchronized turning toward the fire, the move accompanied by a high pitched wail. Wolruf was reminded of the noises of a high-flying bird-like species from her home planet.

When the moaning had reached its loudest point, it stopped abruptly, and several of the small people dropped quickly to the ground. The ones left standing picked up their fallen comrades and dragged them away from the fire. After pulling them a short distance, they began arranging them in a number of piles. The wailing resumed, then the standing people clapped their hands three times, and the fallen bodies stirred and got to their feet. A short frenetic dance that looked like celebration followed. After that, another group took its place around the fire and executed the same ritual, step by step.

“It is strange,” Eve commented.

“What does the ritual mean?” Adam asked.

“I would speculate that it has something to do with death and resurrection,” Mandelbrot said.

“Why do ‘u say that?” Wolruf asked.

“Some information about such rituals on other planets that I have stored in my memory banks. The rite here suggests that some of them die, the ones piled up, and then are in some way resurrected. The reason for resurrection is not clear to me. To understand, I am afraid we would have to observe their culture at length.”

“I would like to do that,” Eve said. “They, too, seem to be human, Adam. Perhaps they would supply some data for our quest.”

“Perhaps.”

“But we have to meet Derrec and Arriel at the towerr,” Wolruf said.

“You two go ahead,” Eve suggested. “We will follow soon.”

“What will ‘u do?” Wolruf asked.

“Nothing dangerous, I assure you. I just wish to study them a while.”

“It would be best if you continued on with us,” Mandelbrot said.

“No,” Wolruf said, “ ‘u know these two. They get idea, ‘u can’t stop them.”

If Mandelbrot had been a nodder, he would have nodded. He and Wolruf quickly left the lot, heading toward the Compass Tower.

A moment later, Eve crossed into the area where the tiny creatures were busy with their ritual. They didn’t seem to notice her. Adam followed. They stepped carefully, putting their feet down only in clear areas. This kind of walking was easier for a robot than it would have been for a human. If there had been any danger of Eve or Adam putting their feet down upon one of the tiny creatures, they would have sensed it quickly and been able to balance on one leg for as long as it took until a safe step could be ventured.

When they were near the fire, Eve said, “They seem intelligent. Can we talk to them, do you think?”

“We can try, Eve.”

She crouched down, getting her head as low as she could without falling over. Reflected light from the bonfire seemed to move like the tiny dancers across her silvery surface.

“Hello,” she said.

Some of the dancers looked at her. They stopped, stood still, and stared up at her. “Can you understand me?”

They said nothing. A tiny, prettily formed woman stepped forward. She had large bulging eyes and a swelling by her right ear. Eve expected her to say something, but she did not. She merely scrutinized her visitor, a quizzical expression on her face.

“I am Eve.”

The small woman made some odd sounds in her throat and pointed up at Eve. Three others joined her, another woman and two men. They all appeared amused. The woman with the large eyes began jumping up and down, her odd raspy sounds getting louder. The trio behind her laughed merrily. One slapped his knee. Then they all began talking, if that’s what the chattering sounds they emitted were.

“There seems to be a language,” Adam said.

“Maybe we can learn it.”

Saying hello again, Eve reached out her hand toward the small woman, who, scared, took some steps backward. Then she appeared to get control of herself. She turned her back on Eve and resumed her place in the bonfire ritual. The other three followed her. Soon none of them were paying any attention to the gigantic silver intruder who hovered above them. The ritual appeared to get fiercer each time they repeated it.

Eve stood up and walked past the fire. Many of the small people were gathered in a corner of the lot, working furiously. She had to squat down again to see what they were doing. When she saw what it was, she called out to Adam to come and view it for himself.

Gesturing for him to hunch down beside her, she indicated the group in the corner.

“What are they doing, Eve?”

“Look. There are rows and rows of these small creatures on the ground there. Beyond that, there are more of them in piles.”

“Like the dance?”

“No, not like the dance. The ones in this pile are dead, Adam. The others are burying them in the ground, but there are too many dead ones and they are not able to keep up the pace. Look, over there, more are being carried here.”

From all points of the lot, it seemed, surviving creatures were hauling their dead compatriots to the burial ground. There was a slow rhythm to the way they walked, as if it, too, were part of the bonfire ritual. Eve noted that there was no human emotion on their faces. They were merely burying their dead methodically.

When each corpse had been covered over, the gravediggers turned to the next tiny plot of land and dug a hole for the next in line.

“Adam, I think there’s something wrong here. They are dying out, all of them. They will all be gone shortly. Yet I detect no signs of disease. No, it is more like they are just wearing out. Derec told us nothing of these creatures.”

“I do not understand, Eve.”

“I surmise that they did not exist a short time ago, when Derec and Ariel were first here. They have only existed for a short time, and now they are dying out. I suspect there is something sad in that.”

She turned her head and saw that one of the corpses now being conveyed to the burial ground was the small woman with the bulging eyes.

Even when he stood still, Timestep’s left foot kept tapping from side to side. Bogie recalled a character in a movie who had performed the same movement at the beginning of a dance number. He could not remember specifically because he rarely watched musicals, much preferring the mystery and action films that were so well represented in the Robot City Film and Tape Archives.

He was about to suggest that one of them should again station himself in the hallway outside the office when he heard the last few soft treads of Ariel and Derec as they came to the outer door of the Compass Tower. As Bogie glanced toward the tower, he saw the door beginning to form itself before letting them exit.

“Run,” he said to Timestep, “they’re coming out.”

They both started clanking up the street, but the Second Law of Robotics, that they must obey an order coming from a human being, made them stop running when Derec yelled for them to stop. As Derec and Ariel walked up to them, Timestep’s foot resumed its slow tapping movement.

“You two, you’re spying on us,” Derec said. His voice has assumed the firmness that humans often used when addressing robots. “Why?”

“We are not allowed to tell that,” Bogie said. “It is a confidential order.”

“From whom?”

“We are not allowed to tell you that.”

“Another one of your infernal blocks?”

“Yes.”

“It’s my father,” Derec said angrily. “Only he would think up tricks like this.”

“I still disagree,” Ariel said. “His tricks would be even more diabolical.”

“And there’s no way I can remove these blocks right now?”

“Only the one who put them there may remove them.”

“Did a human put them there?”

“I cannot say.”

“You cannot say because you don’t know or because my father put in those blocks?”

“I cannot say because I am prevented from saying.”

“Nice try,” Ariel whispered, “trying to trick him into admitting your father’s the perpetrator.”

“Well, tricks like that sometimes work, Ariel.”

“I know, you’ve been around the block a few times.”

Derec was about to continue his interrogation of Bogie when Mandelbrot and Wolruf rounded a corner and headed toward them at a fast pace. Wolruf was loping on all fours, as she sometimes did when she was tired. Since she stayed beside Mandelbrot, keeping at his pace, they looked like a man and his dog out for a stroll—if you didn’t look too closely.

“Where’re our two mischief-makers?” Derec asked when they reached him.

“A good question,” Wolruf said. She explained how they had left the Silversides behind to study the creatures they’d discovered, and she was surprised to see Derec’s eyes light up with interest. He turned to Ariel and said excitedly, “These may be more of the same pests that attacked us in that building. Let’s go see.”

“Good idea. Anyway, it’s never wise to leave Adam and Eve alone anywhere they could cause trouble.”

They started down the street, the way Mandelbrot and Wolruf had come. The alien and the ever-loyal robot walked right behind them. After a few steps, Derec glanced back at Bogie and Timestep.

“Hey,” he called back to them, “you’re going to follow us and spy on us anyway, you two. You might just as well come along with us.”

It was probably his imagination, but it seemed to Derec as if the two spies began their walk toward him with some eagerness in their stride.

CHAPTER 9

TROUBLE RIGHT HERE IN ROBOT CITY

Even though Wolruf had described the vacant lot’s strange colony to him, Derec was unprepared for what they found there.

First, the bonfire had gone out. It now smoldered pathetically, a few wisps of smoke rising from what proved to be some type of synthetic wood. The wood, now a jumbled pile of charred curls, gave off a strong chemical odor that reminded Ariel of a broken-down food synthesizer, never one of her favorite smells.

Next, Derec saw the dancers. They were still a circle, but no longer moving. They were on the ground, some face down, some face up, their hands still joined, but clearly dead. Their bodies had not been moved because the carriers and the gravediggers had died out now. As he walked around the yard, he had to step over more than a hundred undersized corpses.

Finally, he saw Adam and Eve at the half-completed graveyard. Eve was delicately picking up the creatures’ bodies, one by one, and placing them in a row of graves she had quickly dug with her hands. It was an odd action, Derec thought, one that seemed to indicate compassion on her part. While she could have some understanding of human feelings, he thought it doubtful she could feel such compassion herself.

Still, Adam and Eve were a new breed of robot, one that had appeared as if by magic on two planets now (Adam having found Eve on the blackbodies’ planet after himself coming into sudden existence on the planet of the wolflike creatures, the kin), and so anything was possible. The way the Silversides kept surprising him, he might never get a fix on them. Perhaps they were indeed the prototypes for emotional robots, a concept that did not correspond with Derec’s present knowledge of robotics.

“Where did they come from?” Ariel said, looking down at the many bodies.

“I don’t know. They seem to be one more thing that’s gone wrong with the city.”

“Are they the same ones who attacked us in the warehouse?”

“Maybe. Or that might have been another bunch.”

Ariel shuddered. “You mean they may be allover the city, living in open spaces or dark places like rodents?”

“Rodent may not be the proper analogy. They do seem to have been human or humanlike. What do you think, Adam? Eve?”

Adam was holding one of the little corpses in his left hand while he poked at it with a finger of his right. The figure appeared to be a gaunt young man with a short beard. His body was extremely thin.

Adam, while still strongly resembling Derec, had taken on some of the corpse’s appearance. His face had thinned and there was a hint of metallic bristles on his chin. He seemed to have grown taller and slimmer, also.

“They seem to be miniature versions of humans, inside and out,” Adam observed. “I sense a musculature, a bloodstream, arteries and veins, small fragile bones.”

“Bound to seem fragile. Anyone of us could crush anyone of them.”

“Do you have to say things like that?” Ariel said.

“Sorry, thought you were tougher.”

She looked ready to slug him for making that remark.

“Since when does good taste indicate weakness? Huh, Derec, huh?”

“Okay, you made your point. I’m a bit dense when my world is disrupted this violently, okay?”

She touched his cheek with the back of her hand. Her touch was so gentle, he immediately wished he could devote all his time and energies to her.

“Adam,” he said, “you seem to have imprinted partially on the corpse. Have you learned anything from that?”

“Only that I cannot do it very well. Before it died, I started to study it. I found I couldn’t imprint on it successfully. It was as if there was very little life in it when it was alive.”

Derec nodded. “Well, it was already dying perhaps.”

“Yes, but it was more than that, Master Derec. There was simply very little awareness inside here.” He held out the corpse. Derec flinched a bit. The corpse’s tiny, delicate face was twisted in pain. “The impression I had was similar to what I have received from small animals. What I concluded was that they resembled humans but were not human.”

“I do not agree,” Eve said. Adam looked toward her. Derec wondered if Adam could possibly feel the discomfort that he always felt when Ariel challenged his opinion. There was a sense of competitiveness between him and Ariel that sometimes interfered with their ability to communicate. But Adam and Eve should not, as robots, have that kind of communication difficulty, and there was no reason for them to compete with each other.

“We saw very little of them,” Eve explained, “but there was a definite society here. They interacted with each other, joined in a complex ritual together, did indeed combine together into a sort of colony. They had a need to dispose of their dead. Are not these proofs that they had at least a rudimentary society?”

“She’s got a point there,” Ariel observed.

Derec glanced at Eve. Her face seemed to alter slightly, becoming even more like Ariel’s whenever Ariel talked.

“What matters right now,” he said, “is not what they were, but why they were here.”

“Do you have any answers?” Ariel asked.

“Not many. Only my father. These creatures may be the result of some lousy experiment he’s done down in his mysterious underground laboratory. He’s let them loose to—to do I don’t know what. With him how can you—”

“Let’s not give you too much rope to hang yourself with,” Avery said, as he strolled into the lot, again emerging from some dark place. “Yes, don’t say it, son—your old dad was eavesdropping again. I would have remained hidden, but I’m tired of your trying to hang the blame on me for everything that goes wrong here. After all, you’re the one in charge, Derec. Try considering it could be you who’s to blame.”

“I haven’t even been here since—”

“I know, I know. And of course you’re not at fault. But I was away, too, remember.” He sauntered around the lot, examining the ugly scene. “This place was once a small park as I recall. I remember programming these for the city, soil and all. I never expected the dirt to be used for burials.” He wrinkled his nose. “They’re decaying at an above-normal rate, these corpses.” He reached down, picked up one of the bodies. “Interesting workmanship,” he muttered.

Ariel charged forward, angry. “Workmanship! How can you—”

“How can I analyze this dead thing so coldly? Objectivity. I am a scientist, my dear. It’s my mind-set, if you will. Anyhow, this was not a true living being. Although realistic and cleverly designed, with a great deal of genetic accuracy, I suspect this is merely an android, a kind of dime-story copy of a humaniform robot, with admirably realistic detail.”

Ariel thought of Jacob Winterson and how he was just as “dead” as the tiny body Avery held so casually in his hand. “I don’t believe you,” she said, although to herself she admitted the doctor might be right.

“Well, my dear, of course I can’t be sure. I admit I can detect no mechanisms in this particular miniature. But a well-crafted miniature has to be what this is. Do you know about miniatures in art? They’re quite wonderful. On a small surface, sometimes made of vellum, sometimes ivory or copper, the artist would render exquisitely detailed little landscapes or portraits or whatever. Often the painting was done with the patient strokes of a single-strand brush. The details might astound you. You’d swear that you were looking at an intricate painting that had been mechanically reduced or done with microsopic brushes.”

“What was the point of them? I mean, why choose a small area when you could have a whole canvas?”

“Perhaps the challenge, perhaps the artistry of working on a small scale, or perhaps commercial motives. You see, miniatures were often encased in jewelry—lockets and such—and so a pretty penny could also be earned from such a specialized craft. When photography came in, and you could place a small photo in a locket, the need for miniatures diminished and painters had to look elsewhere for pla(;es to cash in on their talents”

“You sound bitter, Dr. Avery,” Ariel said. “As if you were an artist yourself.”

“I am, in a way. I started out as an architect, and architecture, when done right, is an art form, too. Robot City was my masterpiece—until my son allowed it to get out of hand.”

“Don’t say that!” Derec shouted. “It wasn’t my fault, what happened to the city.”

“I didn’t mean to say it was. All I meant is that it is your responsibility. Please excuse me now. I want to get this specimen to a laboratory to examine it before it is fully decayed.”

Holding the tiny figure aloft, the way he might have held a beaker with volatile contents, Avery rushed off the lot. Derec, his eyes glowering, stared after him.

“Don’t let him get to you,” Ariel said.

“He hasn’t gotten to me,” Derec said sullenly.

“Sure, and this place doesn’t stink. Let’s get out of here.”

Derec and Ariel led an entourage that included Wolruf, Mandelbrot, Adam, Bogie and Timestep out of the lot. Eve insisted on staying behind to finish the burials. Although Derec found her behavior peculiar, especially for a robot, he did not argue with her. There were, after all, more important problems to occupy his mind, and anyway, the task would keep her out of trouble for a while.

When he looked back at her, she was gently placing a body into a minuscule grave in the delicate way a child might put a doll into a toy crib.

Bogie and Timestep took up the rear of the bizarre little march through the dark city streets.

“Hey, kid,” Bogie said, “whattaya make o’ that scene back there?”

“I did not know I was supposed to interpret it,” Timestep said. “None of the humans made that request of me.”

“Yeah, I know. But I just wanna know about these little people so we can figure out our duties if we ever meet any live ones. Are they human and covered by the Laws, or what? After all, these guys don’t seem to know what they are. If they’re human, they’re our concern, too, right?”

“It would seem so.”

“On the other hand, if their fate is inevitable, as Derec and the others seem to be saying, there’s not much we can actually do for them. If they live a very short time then pop off, no interference or help on our part is going to stave off their destiny. Then we may not have to help, except perhaps to protect them from immediate dangers.”

“That may be true.”

“So what do we do?”

“I don’t know.”

“Me neither. We’ll have to wait and see, just chug on up the river and hope the leeches don’t suck us dry.”

“Well, one good thing,” Ariel said, “the city is more peaceful this way. Remember how there used to be a hum of activity even in the dead of night? All these anomalies may be beneficial.”

“Ariel, the city is decaying, and fast, just like those corpses. It’ll be—”

“Hey, lighten up. I wasn’t serious.” They walked almost a block in sullen silence before she spoke again. “Don’t take everything on your shoulders, Derec. The city is important to me, too—as are our lives, as you are.”

Without breaking stride, he took her hand and held it. In response, she squeezed his.

“Your father’s not looking too well,” she said a few steps later.

“An understatement if I ever heard one.”

“He’s your father. I’m a bit hesitant to come right out and say he’s bonkers. But he is. Somebody should talk to him, try to help him.”

Derec stopped walking and smiled, slyly. “Would you like that job?”

She wasn’t prepared for the question or the challenge contained in it, but after a moment of consideration she said, “Yes. Yes, I would.”

“It’s yours then. Catch him if you can.”

“I’ll find a way.”

“I bet you will.”

After they had proceeded a little farther, their steps clicking hollowly on the pavement and the city seeming to envelop them from above, Derec said, “I’ve been thinking. The taming of Adam and Eve is the main reason we returned to Robot City, and we’ve lost sight of it. But I’ve got to work out what’s wrong here.” He stopped walking again, took both her hands in his. “ Ariel, will you take charge of the Silversides, see what you can do to, well, civilize them? With your psychological expertise, perhaps you can figure out how to get into the minds of these new-styled robots. I know they’re a mystery to me.”

“Sure, I’ll do it. You knew I would. Any other miracles you’d like me to perform today?”

He smiled. “That’ll be sufficient for now, thank you very much.”

“What are you going to do in the meantime?”

“I’m not sure. Seems to me the clue to the anomalies has to be in the computer somewhere. I think Mandelbrot and I will take a trip down to the central core, see if we can detect anything. I’ll take these two with me, too.”

He gestured toward Bogie and Timestep, both of whom had also stopped walking, while staying a precise two steps behind. If he had looked closely, Derec might have noticed that Bogie stood oddly, the slightly tilted stance that robots sometimes adopted when they were in communication with each other.

“Do you think a tap-dancer and a wise-cracker can help? I mean, as robots go, they’re weird. Talk about your anomalies...”

“By the same token, I don’t particularly want them out of my sight.”

“Gotcha, hot-shot.”

“Your language is deteriorating. If you don’t watch out, you’ll sink to Bogie’s level.”

“Hope not, kiddo.”

“Stop.”

They agreed to keep each other informed on the progress of their tasks. Ariel told Wolruf and Adam to come with her, and Derec continued on, the silent Mandelbrot at his side, and Bogie and Timestep trailing after.

As soon as Bogie heard that Derec intended to travel down to computer level, where he knew the Watchful Eye was, he obeyed its instructions to rouse it if there were any danger. The signal (“This is your wake-up call, pal.”) was sent, and the Watchful Eye came abruptly to consciousness.

CHAPTER 10

THE WANDERING EVE

It took some time for the Watchful Eye to catch up on the events that had transpired while it was in stasis. Bogie’s report, transmitted over the robot comlink, was more confusing than helpful, what with all the ancient slang the robot had copied from movies.

The Watchful Eye had only itself to blame for Bogie’s movie obsession. When it had first arrived in Robot City and obtained control of all systems, it had decided to form a network of knowledge. It wanted so much to find out about humanity that it had been unwilling to take the time to penetrate the computer each time it needed a particular item of information. So it had delegated certain groups of robots to research and store information in certain peripheral fields. Bogie was part of the Popular Culture Through the Universe team, while Timestep had belonged to the group studying performance arts. Other groups had specialized in such areas as sociology, psychology, and economics, all fields that the Watchful Eye rarely needed now for its running of the city, but might require in the future. Whenever it did need an item of knowledge from one of these teams, it requested it via comlink, and the robot who had specialized in the requested category would respond with a useful precis of the topic.

Some of the robots, like Bogie and Timestep, had immersed themselves so thoroughly in their areas of expertise that they had developed very peculiar characteristics related to their new-found knowledge. Bogie had adopted certain attitudes and in some cases actual dialogue from the old Earth movies he had been assigned, while a similar robotic pathology had affected Timestep in a more physical way. Although Timestep was less obsessional than Bogie, he had nevertheless acquired a need to perform the dances he researched. Perhaps he had watched too many recordings in hyperwave and old style technologies of dancing through the ages. Part of his research had included a precise examination of the anatomical requirements for good dancing, and he had soon begun to try out the terpsichorean movements themselves. At one time or another he had executed steps for various types of ballet and popular dancing. Lately he had centered his interest on tap dancing. Whatever movements he attempted, the Watchful Eye knew, would appear terribly awkward when compared to the recordings of old dancers, but there was at least a kind of achievement in the clunkily graceful and more or less accurate way he danced.

Timestep was dancing now, as he followed Derec down city streets. Mostly he was doing something called the soft shoe, with an occasional foray into buck and wing.

Bogie’s message had stated that Derec intended to inspect the central core computer. The Watchful Eye would have to seal itself in its hiding place. To throw the intruder off-guard, it would also supply some other surprises.

Eve was not certain what to look for. She wanted to know more about the tiny creatures, and so she searched for signs of their existence the way a hunter sought the spoor of the animal he was tracking.

There were traces. The more she looked, the more she refined her own tracking abilities, seeing clues that might have been ordinarily overlooked. Near a gutter, where—in a normally functioning city—it would have been swept away into the sewer system, she found a coat, so small she could barely hold it between her fingertips. There was a barely discernible piping around the coat’s collar in delicate golden stitches. Short-lived or not, these creatures picked up some skills along the way.

In a corner of a doorway, she discovered some food crumbs. Derec or Ariel would never have perceived them, because they looked so much like dust that had been neglected by the now-inefficient sanitation robots.

Eve went through a half-open doorway into the building, where she saw that a colony of the creatures had indeed once inhabited the place. They had apparently moved on, leaving behind many clues, artifacts of their existence. She was particularly taken with a small metal unit evidently used for cooking. There was a tiny pile of ash beneath its lower grating that indicated some substance was bummed there to give off cooking heat.

Leaving the building, she walked a long way before encountering any more clues. She passed several of the city’s robots, many of whom seemed to be, like her, wandering aimlessly. When she tried to address them to ask them about the tiny creatures, they kept babbling about blocked information. Some of the robots passed by her without even responding to her.

Dawn came to Robot City, and the place quickly got lighter. Bright rays reflected off the metal sides of buildings. Eve was dazzled by the sudden intensity of the light. It must be different here, she thought, from ordinary human cities, where there might not be so many clear bright surfaces for sunlight to bounce off.

As she passed by a spherical building, she heard a mournful noise that reminded her of the wailing in the vacant lot. She stopped and listened at the building’s door. There were more sounds, faint and muffled, that seemed like the voices of the tiny creatures. She pushed the door open. It stuck less than halfway, but she managed to push herself through the narrow opening.

She entered a lobby that, like most Robot City rooms, was decorated with some hope of eventual human habitation. An ornate desk was strategically placed in its center and there were many pictures on the walls. She inspected the pictures, but they meant nothing to her. There was so little in her experience that she could apply to the viewing of any scene. A couple of the pictures presented recognizable activity, but in the main they were unusual colors set in unusual patterns.

Walking across a deep-piled rug whose configurations were mazelike but colorful, she approached the desk. She noticed that the legs of the desk were shaped like claws, making her think for a moment that the desk had feet that clutched the rug. Strange, she thought, why would anyone want to carve an animal’s foot on a piece of furniture? Further, no line of the desk was straight, another design feature that seemed unnecessary to her. There were curves, inset grooves, knot-holes, many shapes she did not even recognize.

But it was the top surface of the desk that really caught her attention. Kneeling on it, in a circle, was a group of the tiny creatures, all facing inward. They held hands and made soft, moaning sounds. In the circle’s center, a delicately formed young female swayed, her movements apparently guided by tone changes in the group’s moaning. When their sound increased, her body began to jerk violently. When they became softer, grace returned to her gestures.

Eve put her hands on the desk so that she could lean down and look closer, but her quick movement alerted the group to her presence. The ones facing her looked up at her, while the others twisted around to see her.

Breaking handholds, they started scattering to all sides of the desktop. Directly opposite her, Eve saw the top of a small ladder, that apparently led down to the seat of a plain chair behind the desk. None of the group went to the ladder, however. When they had gone as far as they could, standing with their heels right on the edge of the desktop, they stood tensely. They trembled, as if willing to jump off should Eve get any nearer to them. Only the young female who had been in the circle’s center remained in place. She stared up at Eve with curiosity.

“Who are you?” Eve asked. Her words seemed unnaturally loud as they traveled around the room and discovered echoes of themselves.

There was no response. A skinny little male on one side made a broad hand gesture to a female across the way, but Eve could not discern what it meant. She decided they could not understand her words.

A better idea, she thought, would be to make a sign of peace. Moving her hand slowly, she laid it in an open area of the desktop, palm up, fingers open. There was another flurry of fear among the creatures at the desk’s fringes, but the leader, after a moment of consideration, strode confidently forward and, climbing into Eve’s palm between her thumb and index finger, walked slowly around the center of her hand. Once she knelt down and felt Eve’s malleable metal skin. The female stroked it several times, as if concerned with its texture, then studied her own skin, clearly comparing it to Eve’s and perhaps wondering why hers was so much softer and more pliable.

When she was through with her inspection, the tiny female sat down in the center of Eve’s palm and looked calmly up at her. Eve interpreted this as a signal that it was all right to lift her hand off the desk and hold the female aloft.

Bringing her hand close to her eyes, Eve examined the little creature. She was quite slim, with delicate limbs and very small hands and feet. Her clothing was colorful, with an intricate design, leaves interweaving. There were buttons going down the back of her one-piece garment, and she wore a cloth belt at a slight tilt at her waist. Her round face was as delicate as the rest of her. A bit of a nose, a narrow line of a mouth, eyes like little dots. Her hair was long and wavy. She obviously spent some time grooming it. How could these people not be intelligent, Eve wondered, especially if they could make themselves clothing and take such care of their appearance?

Down below, the ones who had scattered now came close together again. They stood in a group and looked up in awe at Eve’s scrutinization of one of their own. She noted that they, too, were carefully dressed and groomed.

“Now I’m going to put you down,” Eve said, modulating her voice so that it was quite low. Again she put her hand on the desktop and held it there while the female slowly, almost casually, got off. She went back to her group that had not stirred this time when Eve rested her hand on the desktop.

Eve was not sure what to do next. As the tiny figures gazed up at her, and she down at them, they seemed in a standoff.

“Eve,” Adam said. He had entered the room and now stood a few meters behind her. “What is this?”

She explained about her search and how she had found this small band moaning in their odd circle.

“It could be a religious ceremony,” he commented. ‘The group were at prayer, perhaps.”

“You might be right. They seemed to be imploring, or perhaps mourning.”

“You’re interested in them, I see.”

“As a study, yes. They are strange to me.”

“Are you sure, a study? There seems to be something more to it.”

“What?”

“You seem to care about them.”

“Are we capable of caring?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Neither am I.”

“Ariel sent me to find you. She has set up headquarters at a place they call the Human Medical Facility. She dismissed the robots who were stationed there because they did not respond properly. Now she is trying to extract information from a computer devoted to medical data. She is cursing often because it is malfunctioning or has been tampered with. I am to bring you back there with me.”

“Why?”

“My opinion is that she wants to keep track of us. Derec has put her in charge while he tackles the problems of the city’s systems.”

“What if we do not choose to be in her charge? Should she necessarily have dominion over us?”

“Mistress Ariel appeared to believe you should be kept out of trouble.”

“She is so sure I will get into trouble?”

“It seems so.”

“What is the logic of that?”

“It is not necessary to analyze it.”

“I would like to.”

Eve glanced down at the desktop. The little creatures there were conferring among themselves. Their chattering sounds could barely be heard, but they seemed to contain more agitation than meaning.

“Adam?”

“Yes?”

“Let’s bring them with us.”

“That is unnec—”

“It is for research, Adam. We need to discover more in our quest to define humanity. They may help.”

She reached her hand toward the group, intending to pick up a couple of its members as delicately as she could. But the fear returned to their eyes, and they began to scatter.

“No,” she said. carefully modulating her voice so that it took on a humanlike, soothing gentleness. “I win not harm you. Adam, is there something here we can carry them in?”

He scanned the room. “I see no container of any kind.”

“Then we will carry them on this desk.”

“Eve, they could falloff.”

“We will walk slowly.”

Only Avery saw them carry the desk slowly through the city streets. He hadn’t usually paid much attention to furniture-moving robots on Spacer planets. With their strength and meticulous sense of caution, they were expert at it, able to keep their load level, never bumping the item against anything, and delivering it undamaged.

It seemed to him that robots regularly performed miracles, as a matter of course. In fact, he thought, only robots could perform miracles nowadays. Whatever capacity humans may have had for such feats was long gone.

The more he watched robots in general, the more he knew he needed to become one. And he would. He could feel himself transform more and more into a robot as the days went by. He had convinced himself there were microprocessors in all his limbs and that his senses were now controlled by sensory circuits. All he needed was the positronic brain. That would come, he was sure. He would find a way to turn the inefficient lump in his head to a perfectly functioning, spongelike, positronic entity.

In a dim back part of his mind, he recalled an old Earth story where a primitive robot had wanted a human heart put inside his body so he could be more human. Of course, he really wanted human emotion. a useless prize if there ever was one, Avery thought. The story was so vague in his memory that he could not remember whether the robot had gotten a heart. Probably it had. Earth stories could be dreadfully sentimental about such things. (He did not. of course, know it. but Timestep could dance a musical number from a film adaptation of that story. And Bogie could have told him how the tale came out.)

As Avery moved closer to the desk-toting robots, he noticed the living creatures cowering at the center of the desktop. They seemed puzzled by the city, as if they thought they had passed over into another dimension.

His excitement grew as he saw how nicely formed these tiny humans or androids were. They might be just the experimental rats he needed. The body he’d taken from the vacant lot had been too decayed by the time he’d carried it to his laboratory several levels beneath the city.

He had been able to put it through only a few tests before discarding it. Under a microscope-scanner he saw that a simple microchip had been implanted in its brain and that there appeared to be patterns of circuitry that might control the body’s movements, the way a puppetmaster gave false life to the wooden figures attached to strings.

However, nothing was conclusive. The creatures did not appear all that robotic, either. He suspected they had been genetically engineered, then activated by the implanted technology. At any rate, he was certain they were not actual laboratory-grown humans. No, they were more like dolls, formed from genetic materials but given a kind of life through robotic means. It was even possible they had a minimal awareness.

He had to find more specimens and had been seeking them out when he saw Derec’s odd robots taking that desk down a Robot City street. The runty creatures on the desktop were the specimens he needed.

The robots were of special interest to him, also. He had recognized immediately, when he saw them back at the vacant lot, that they had not been constructed from his own designs. They were definitely not Avery robots. Where had they come from, and whose design were they?

Avery nearly laughed from happiness. (Derec would certainly have been surprised to know that his father could actually laugh.) There was much to study here, and he was never happier than when he was engaged in theorizing or conducting experiments.

Watching Avery watch the robots (who, in this chain of spying, were keeping a close watch on their diminutive charges), the Watchful Eye was puzzled by the new turn of events. How, it wondered, did Avery keep appearing from out of nowhere? He seemed to have an uncommon knowledge of the labyrinthine routes through the city and particularly of the hiding places that removed him from the Watchful Eye’s surveillance.

And why were the new arrivals carrying a desk? And what were the experimental subjects (from Series C, Batch 21) doing on top of the desk?

Too many mysteries, too much disorder.

It seemed as if Derec and his cohorts had, since their arrival in Robot City, thrown much of what the Watchful Eye had done into confusion. They had, in fact, become a serious threat to his domain. It believed it should just eliminate them —but it could not. That was also a mystery to it. What was it that held it back from simply disposing of the intruders?

It sometimes appeared that it, too, had to respond to the demands of First Law, just the way a robot might. But it could not be a robot, it was sure of that. Robots could not do what it could do. Also, it knew it was different from the so-called humans who were now interfering with his design. It could not be a human, either.

There was a sound outside the computer chamber. It reassembled itself and waited for Derec to enter.

CHAPTER 11

COUNTERPOINTS

Ariel slammed her fist against the keyboard, making it bounce and slide backward. “There’s no help in this Frosted computer,” she yelled. “It isn’t functioning any better than anything else around here.”

Wolruf, who had been reacquainting herself with the layout of the medical facility, studying scanning systems and trays of medical instruments, came to Ariel and asked, “Iss something wrrong?”

Her gentle tone and phrasing calmed Ariel down. Wolruf’s kindness, as well as her directness, would always make her a good friend.

“Something’s wrong, all right. I ask this computer for suggestions on how to treat Avery, and it tells me to give him two aspirins and put him to bed.”

Wolruf squinted at the screen. “Doess it rreally rrecommend that? Perhapss—”

“No, Wolruf, it didn’t say that in so many words. It’s just that no matter how hard I try to track a hypothesis, the computer leads me to a dead end or loops me back to some sector I’ve already seen. All of its essential information has apparently been cached away somewhere in inaccessible data banks.”

Ariel was about to turn back to the computer and fight the damned machine again when an abrupt sound from outside the room startled her. Wolruf’s head turned toward the noise.

“What was that?” Ariel said, standing up, looking around for a weapon to use to repel invasion.

“Someone iss outside,” Wolruf said, wrinkling her nose.

The noises on the other side of the door did sound something like footsteps, Ariel thought, but of someone moving very slowly and with a very heavy tread. She nodded to Wolruf, signalling her to open the door while Ariel moved to the other side, ready to react to an attack if it came.

When the door opened, it revealed a somewhat bent Adam Silverside, his back to the room, his arms clutching his end of a desk that would have sold for a pretty penny back on Aurora. Ariel had seen one like it in her mother’s home, and Juliana Welsh bought only the most expensive items. Her money went into self-indulgent luxuries or to finance fanatics with crazy schemes, like Dr. Avery and his grand city-forming experiment.

As Ariel went to the doorway, she saw Eve on the other end of the desk, standing straight on a lower stair and holding her end of the piece of furniture aloft. They smoothly eased the desk into the room and gently set it on the floor. For the first time Ariel saw the group of tiny people on the desk’s surface.

“Where’d you find these?” she asked. Eve told her about her adventures in exploring the city.

“Are they the same as the ones in the vacant lot?” she asked Eve.

“We cannot be certain,” Eve replied. “Perhaps you could help us figure that out.”

Ariel smiled. “God,” she said, “just what I need. Another impossible problem dumped in my lap.” She saw that Eve was about to speak and anticipated her. “No, I know that you have dumped nothing in my lap. We humans have some outlandish ways of phrasing our thoughts, especially when we are miserable. No, Eve, I am not miserable; I am just exaggerating. And I’ll explain the virtues of exaggeration to you some other time, thank you very much.”

On the desktop the tiny figures were surveying the room. There was a strange sadness in their eyes, as if they saw at once that there was no easy escape

Derec had not been near the central core of the computer for some time. It had changed in some way, but he was not sure how. Still encased in thick transparent plastic, the intricate mechanisms inside looked like the work of several abstract expressionists painting in a number of styles. It definitely did not look like the workings of a computer.

He walked to the side of the shell and put his fingertips against its surface. They came away with a thin layer of dust on them. He scowled, puzzled but—with everything else that had been going wrong—not surprised. Before, this environment had always been kept pristine. There had been robots housed here whose only job was maintenance. Where were they now?

Walking around the enormous chamber, he found several small floor-level robot niches meant for the kind of function-robots that computer room janitors were. Some of them still had maintenance robots snuggled inside, but clearly they were now inoperative. If he had had time, he would have scheduled them for repair, but the repair shops were no doubt just as inoperative at present. Functionless cleaning robots would have to wait their turn in the line of the many anomalies to be dealt with.

Returning to Mandelbrot, he held up his dirty fingertips without speaking. Behind Mandelbrot, Bogie and Timestep stood silently. Well, not completely silent. Timestep’s toes beat out a soft slow tap rhythm on the metal flooring.

Pointing toward the computer, Derec said, “Well, guys, I’m going inside. You wait here, but if you sense me in any trouble, remember the First Law.”

“You need not remind me,” Mandelbrot said.

“I know, I know. Sorry if I hurt you.”

“How could you hurt me? That is outside the—”

“I spoke out of turn. Just give me good backup, hear?”

Without waiting for any of the robots to question his colloquially expressed order, Derec walked up the steps to the platform that led to the computer chamber entrance and pushed a red button set in the door. Fortunately, the button still worked, and the door slid open.

The button was the only mechanism that did work, however. After he went through the doorway, the heat lamps did not come on, the sprayers did not send a full body spray of compressed air over his body to remove dust. He would have to enter the chamber in a contaminated state. That probably didn’t matter, since from all evidence the chamber was probably contaminated already.

In order for him to enter farther, the wall in front of him should slide open. With nothing working right, it of course did not. He recalled, however, that there was a manual override located just beside the outer door. He had to fumble around in the dark for a moment to find out. When he did, it at least worked. The wall slid open.

Now he entered what to him seemed like a shadowy world. In the dimness the computer’s shapes (he recalled circuitry, microprocessors, tubing, synapse wiring and other electronic marvels from his first visit here) seemed ghostly, unreal. He needed light. The manual override for the inner-room functions was nearby, he knew, and he groped for it. Before he found it, his hand briefly brushed against the outside of the Watchful Eye’s haven, which it had reshaped into an innocent-looking storage cabinet, a good disguise as long as the human did not decide to inspect its contents. Although detecting the touch, it felt no danger yet from Derec and remained still.

Derec’s manipulation of the override produced only partial light, but enough to see that not only was the main computer malfunctioning, it appeared to be covered with a strange kind of dark green moss.

The Watchful Eye perceived the bitterness in Derec’s whispered curse. It had known the moss, even if it had been conceived on the spur of the moment, had been a good idea.

Bogie wished he could discuss his dilemma with Timestep but they could not converse privately, either out loud or by comlink, because of the presence of Mandelbrot. He had no way of knowing whether or not Mandelbrot could eavesdrop in either way, but there was no point in taking a chance.

The problem that Bogie felt just now had to do with allegiance. He sensed that the Watchful Eye was close by, somewhere inside the transparent shell, perhaps near Derec. If one of them were to attack the other, what would be his duty? he wondered. His allegiance had been to the Watchful Eye until the arrival of Derec and the others. The First Law said to protect the human, but would that interfere with his loyalty to the Watchful Eye? It would help if Bogie had actually seen the Watchful Eye, who said it was human, yet did not act especially human and never referred to itself as of masculine or feminine gender. If it were human, had it displaced Derec in Robot City’s ruling hierarchy? Could he allow Derec to harm the Watchful Eye? Must he come to Derec’s defense if the Watchful Eye attacked him?

Considering orders did not help. Derec’s order to come in an emergency was recent, while the Watchful Eye’s command for dutiful obedience had been in effect for some time now.

The only thing to do, Bogie decided, was to hope that real life was not like the movies, where so often violent activity preceded the peaceful finale. He had no desire at this moment to cut to the chase.

The creatures had seemed to calm down after Ariel had approached them. She had drawn a chair up to the desk, keeping her hands safely out of sight, and talked to them. Her words didn’t matter, she had known that. What language they had was their own. Whoever had created them had neglected to program any known language into them, perhaps on purpose.

Now they sat in a semicircle facing Ariel, seeming to listen to and understand her gently told version of Cinderella, a tale she embellished with some ancient Auroran variations. Cinderella became relegated to the management of the household robots (since no Auroran performed menial scullery tasks), and the glass slipper was replaced by a personal robot left behind at the ball. The prince’s emissary had been instructed to examine how the robot reacted to the maidens of the land. When it came to the mysterious, pretty woman who had danced with the prince, the emissary would be able to tell by the robot’s response that this was she. One of the ugly stepsisters nearly fooled the emissary (the robot, having been part of the household, did respond efficiently to others in it), but then Cinderella swept in and the emissary could tell by the promptness with which it went to her that the pretty maiden dressed so much more plainly than her stepsisters was indeed the beautiful woman in the lavish gown of the previous night.

Standing on the other side of the desk, the Silversides and Wolruf were also entranced by Ariel’s version of the tale, although Eve had to ask frequent questions of Adam that he could not answer. She decided that the fairy godmother must be, like them, a shape-changer, and that was why she could do such marvelous things with pumpkins and farm animals.

Ariel came to the end of her story and was about to say that the prince and Cinderella lived happily ever after, but she thought of the questions that the Silversides might ask her, especially about how a human pair could possibly live forever, even if they were long-lived Aurorans, and she swallowed the phrase and merely said that everything went nicely for the happy couple for the next few decades.

When she stopped speaking, the tiny people looked eagerly at her, as if they wanted more. However, now that she had settled their anxieties, it was time to find out something more about them. But what? She had in front of her a bunch of minuscule human beings, apparently sentient, possibly (if Avery was right) android in nature, essentially a sophisticated version of the kind of mechanical toys she had played with as a child. Should she see if they could playa tin drum or walk stiff-legged like tin soldiers? Eve had said she had observed dancing in the ones at the vacant lot, and that this group had been performing some kind of ceremony.

Ceremony, that was the key. Whatever life they had, whatever “civilization” they could develop in their short lives, it seemed that it all was tied in with ceremony.

Carefully putting her hand down on the desk at a sufficient distance from where the group was gathered, Ariel began to trace out a small circle with the tip of her index finger. She hummed an old melody, a song about a woman whose lover kept going off to war, was eventually killed, then returned to her as a ghost. It had a plaintive sound, she knew, even when sung in her slightly out-of-tune voice.

At first the group merely watched Ariel’s finger move around, then the leader stood up and made authoritative gestures to her followers. Joining her, they clasped hands, formed a circle, and began to dance around, slowly, to the rhythm of Ariel’s tune. Tears came to Ariel’s eyes as she watched them dance gracefully and with more than a touch of elegance. It was beautiful, both the dance itself and the fact that they had understood her so quickly and easily.

She stopped tracing the circle and lifted her hand from the desktop. A moment later the dancers halted, too, looking up expectantly at Ariel, who nodded and returned her hand to the desk, this time tracing out a figure-eight with her finger. She moved her finger faster, and hummed a quicker-tempoed song, one about the happiness of frolicking in Auroran woods. (The Auroran songs made her feel nostalgic for her home, and briefly she wondered when she would ever return there. The way things were going, she might live the rest of her life confronting danger with Derec and desiring a more peaceful time with him.)

The dancers reformed themselves into a line. With the leader in front, they began a quite lovely quickstep dance following the figure-eight with more precision than Ariel could with her finger. Tears now fell from her eyes, and Eve noticed them.

“What is it, Mistress Ariel? Are you injured?”

Ariel was touched by Eve’s First Law reaction. “No, I’m fine. I’ve always done this—bawled like a baby when I see anything done with any artistry. I mean, this is almost like dancing, ballet even, the way they move so delicately. Sometimes people think I’m reacting with sentimentality, but that’s not it at all. It’s just the way I respond to the beauty of it, even more the fact that such beauty is possible. Maybe it’s a kind of sentimentality, but it comes from admiration and not from tender feelings. You don’t understand very much of this, do you, Eve?”

“No, I do not.”

“Nor do I,” Dr. Avery said, stepping out—as usual—without warning from a hiding place. He had stepped through the doorway, which had been left open after the Silversides brought the desk through it. Ariel was so startled she didn’t know what to say, although she was already calculating how to make him stay So she could, as ordered, try to cure him.

“If there is anything to your theories of art, Ariel, or to anybody’s theories, for that matter, it is not in intakes of breath at seeing something well-performed or sighs of admiration at a work well-executed. But that is unimportant to me, actually, since I don’t believe there is anything to theories of art. I believe imagination is a curse, unless it is used for applied science. Works of art are garbage unless they demonstrate a useful theorem.”

Ariel, recalling Lucius’s sculpture called “Circuit Breaker,” the one authentic piece of art produced by a Robot City robot, and the doctor’s hatred of it, knew that Avery was speaking the truth. He truly despised artistic creations.

“Was not that idea once called utilitarianism?” Eve asked.

Avery seemed impressed. “My, she does look amazingly like you, Ariel, doesn’t she? And is, perhaps, smarter. At any rate, that ancient philosophy, utilitarianism, does perhaps vaguely resemble the assumptions behind what I said.”

He walked to the edge of the desk and stared down at the tiny figures. When he had started speaking and Ariel had stopped singing, they had ended their dancing. Now, they looked up at Avery. Fear had returned to their faces.

“I can see why playing with them made you feel like God, my dear,” he said.