Alliance iarc:raa-4

by Jerry Oltion

  “So what’s your definition?”

  “We presently define ‘human’ as a sentient being possessing a genetic code similar to that which I found in the Robot City library under the label ‘human.’”

  “A sentient being,” Avery echoed. “So those rats of yours still don’t qualify?”

  “That is correct.”

  “How do you know Avery has the proper code’?” asked Derec.

  “He has medical records on file. We accessed them when the question first arose. We also examined yours and Ariel’s.”

  “But not Wolruf’s.”

  “There was no need. Her physical appearance rules out the possibility that she might be human.”

  “Even though she’s obviously sentient.”

  “That is correct. A being must be both sentient and carry the proper genetic code to be human.”

  “What about the baby I’m carrying?” Ariel asked. “Isn’t my baby human?”

  Lucius was silent for a moment, then he said, “Not at present. The embryo cannot formulate an order, nor does it require protection beyond that which we would normally provide you; therefore we need not be concerned with it.”

  “That sounds kind of heartless.”

  “We possess microfusion power generators. What do you expect?”

  Adam spoke up. “May we stop wiggling our fingers? It serves no useful purpose.”

  “No, you may not,” Avery said. “It pleases me to see you following orders.”

  “Enough,” Wolruf growled, whether to Mandelbrot or to the humans neither knew. Mandelbrot stopped scratching her back as Wolruf stood up and said, “This is depressing. I thinkI’ll go check on our jump schedule.” She favored the three hand-fluttering robots with a sour look, then moved off toward the control room.

  “Listen here,” Derec said when she was gone. “I order all of you to-”

  “Wait,” Avery interrupted. “You were about to order them to follow her orders, weren’t you?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Let’s wait on that. Let’s see if-just a minute. You three, stop moving your hands.”

  The robots stopped moving their hands. On their own, they dropped those hands back to their sides. Avery frowned at that, but said simply, “When I tell you to give me privacy, I want you to stop listening to our conversation. Filter out everything but the words ‘return to service,’ upon which you will begin listening again. Do not use your comlink in the meantime. In fact, this is a general order: Do not use your comlink for conversation between yourselves. Do you understand that?”

  “We understand,” Lucius said, “but we-I-wish to protest. Using speech to communicate will necessarily slow our joint thought processes.”

  “And it’ll keep you from locking up on us again. I order it. Now give us privacy.”

  The robots made no motion to indicate whether they had heard or not.

  “Wiggle your fingers again.”

  No motion.

  Avery turned to Derec and Ariel. “Okay, what I want to do is this: Let’s wait and see if they modify their definition of human to include Wolruf on their own, without our orders. Wolruf isn’t in any danger from them, and Mandelbrot will take her orders if she needs a robot.”

  “In the meantime she gets treated like a subhuman,” Derec protested. “I don’t like it.”

  “She is subhuman,” Avery said, “but that’s beside the point. Think a minute. You convinced me to let these robots go to Ceremya-and to come along myself-so we could see what kind of new developments they came up with. So here’s a new development. Let’s study it.”

  Avery’s argument had merit, Derec knew. He didn’t like it, but it made sense. That’s why they had come, to study these robots in action.

  “We should at least give her First Law protection,” he said.

  “No, that’d skew the experiment. Look, your furry friend isn’t in any danger here; let’s just let it go for now. If anything happens, we can modify their orders then.”

  “All right,” Derec said. “I’ll go along with it for now, but the moment she looks like she’s in danger…”

  “Fine, fine. Okay, return to service.”

  The robots shifted slightly. Eve asked, “May we turn away from the wall now?”

  “I suppose so.”

  The robots turned to face one another. “Since we must communicate verbally,” Lucius said, “I suggest we each pick a separate tone range. That way we may at least speak simultaneously.”

  “If you do, do it quietly,” said Ariel.

  “We intend to,” the robot replied.

  Derec gave Ariel a last squeeze, then stood up and announced, “I’m going to talk to Wolruf. She sounded pretty unhappy.”

  “Go ahead,” Ariel said. “I think I’ll read.”

  Avery grunted noncommittally, his eyes already closed in thought again.

  The control room was large enough for only two people. The ship was largely automatic, but in the interest of safety it also carried a complete set of manual controls. Derec found Wolruf in the pilot’s seat, a glimmering holographic star map floating over the controls before her. It was the only illumination in the cabin, save for the real stars shining in through the viewscreen. In the midst of the map a thin silver line connected five dots in a not-quite-straight line. One point was no doubt Robot City; the other Ceremya. The kinks in the line in between were jump points, places where the ship would stop along the way to reorient and recharge its engines.

  A ship could theoretically make the entire trip in a single hyperspace jump, discounting the time it took to crawl slowly through normal space to the safe jump points in its origin and destination systems. That was seldom done, however, except for short trips. It was much easier, both for navigation and on the engines, to make a series of short jumps from star to star along the way, correcting for minor deviations in course and allowing the engines to rest each time.

  “Looks like we ‘ave four jumps,” Wolruf said as Derec slid into the copilot’s seat beside her. “First one tonight.”

  “Good. The sooner the better. Things are getting a little strange on this trip already.”

  “Could say that, all ri’.”

  “We didn’t tell them to follow your orders. Avery wants to see if they’ll decide to do it on their own.”

  Wolruf nodded. The motion took her head into and out of the star field before her; for a moment she had a pattern of tiny white dots on her forehead.

  “If you don’t want to be part of an experiment like that, I’ll go ahead and order them to. We don’t have to do what Avery says. He isn’t God.”

  “None of us are,” Wolruf said with a toothy smile. “That’s what the robots’re trying to tell us. We aren’t gods and they aren’t servants, even if ‘umans did create them to be.”

  Derec laughed. “You know, when you think of it, this whole situation is really sick. I’m here because Avery was playing God; the robots are here because my mother, whoever she is, is playing God; I’ve got an entire Robot City running around in my body and giving me control of even more cities; Ariel and I are playing God right now with the fate of our baby-everyone’s caught up in this web of dominance and submission. Who orders who around, and who has to obey who? It’s twisted, warped!”

  A twinge of conscience made Derec add to himself, And I’m playing God with the ecosystem project…

  “Everybody plays God,” Wolruf said. “Maybe that’s what life is all about. None of us is God, but we all try to be. Even I don’t mind ‘aving an order obeyed now and then.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Trouble with being God, is she ‘as too much responsibility. Power always brings responsibility, or should.”

  “Yeah, that’s the problem, all right.”

  Derec looked out the viewscreen. An entire galaxy full of stars beckoned him. Who would want control over all that? The use of it, definitely, but control? Not him.

  He laughed again. “It reminds me of the old question of
who runs the government. Some people want to, but the best ones for the job are the people who don’t. They take their responsibility seriously.”

  Wolruf nodded. “Maybe that’s why most robots like taking orders. No responsibility. Those other three started out on their own, learned to deal with it, so don’t like taking orders.”

  “It’s possible,” Derec admitted. Was that why he didn’t like taking orders, then; because his earliest memories were of being on his own, of making his own decisions? Or was something deeper driving him? Nature or nurture? No one had ever answered that question successfully, not for humans, anyway. For robots the answer had always been obvious: Their behavior was in their nature. It was built in. But now, with these three and their insurrection, that answer didn’t seem so pat anymore.

  Silence descended upon the control room while he and Wolruf both thought their own thoughts. Wolruf turned back to the star map and pressed a few keys on the console beneath it. One of the silver lines shifted position, bridging the gap between two of their waypoint stars in one jump instead of two. At once the line turned red and an annoying beep filled the cabin. The proposed modification to the jump path was unacceptably risky to the computer:

  “Very conscientious navigator,” Wolruf remarked. “Better than ‘uman. Or me.”

  Was that a note of regret in her voice? Wolruf was the best pilot of the group; she had always done the flying when she and Derec and Ariel had gone anywhere. Was she feeling useless now?

  “You could still use the manual controls if you want,” Derec offered.

  “Oh, no. I’m not complaining.” Wolruf pressed another few buttons and the original jump path returned to the star field. She leaned back in the pilot’ s chair and crossed her arms over her chest. Smiling toothily, she said, “Less responsibility for me.”

  Despite her confidence in the autopilot, Derec was sure Wolruf would stay in the control room for the jump. Knowing that, he knew that he could put the whole thing out of his mind, safe in the knowledge that she could take care of any problem that might arise should the automatic system fail to do the job right. All the same, when the scheduled time approached, he found himself shifting restlessly in bed, waiting for the momentary disorientation that would mark their passage through hyperspace. He had jumped dozens of times, but he still couldn’t sleep with the knowledge that he was about to be squeezed through a warp in the universe and squirted light-years across space.

  At last he could stare at the ceiling no longer. He got up, put on his robe, and slipped quietly from the room. The bedrooms opened onto a hallway, with the control room at one end and the common room on the other. Derec hesitated, wondering which way to turn, but finally decided against looking over Wolruf’s shoulder at the countdown clock. Already relegated to backup status, she might misinterpret his nervousness as concern over her competence.

  He turned toward the common room. He might not be able to sleep before a jump, but eating was no problem.

  As he approached, he heard a babble of quiet voices. Remembering Avery, s command to the robots to refrain from using the comlink, he expected to find all three of them in a huddle, but when he stepped into the room, he found only Lucius and Eve, whispering like lovers in the dimly lit room. They had picked up another human trait since their last communication fugue: Both were seated in a loveseat, leaning back comfortably with their legs crossed.

  They stopped their whispering and turned to look at Derec. “Just getting a midnight snack,” he said, feeling silly explaining his actions to a robot but feeling the need to do it all the same.

  “Make yourself at home,” replied Lucius. He turned to Eve and whispered something too quick to follow, and she whispered something back. Derec-already heading for the automat-nearly tripped over himself when Eve emitted a high, little-girl-like giggle in response.

  Derec recognized that giggle. It was almost a perfect copy of Ariel’s. Did Eve know what a giggle was for, or was she just testing it out?

  He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

  The whispering and giggling continued behind him as he dialed for a cup of hot chocolate and a handful of cookies. He had just about decided to join Wolruf in the control room after all when Wolruf silently entered the room. He turned to say hello and realized that it wasn’t Wolruf, but Adam in Wolruf’s form. He had evidently been talking with her, and in the close environment had slowly imprinted on her.

  “Hello,” Derec said anyway.

  “ ‘ello,” Adam said. He waited for Derec to get his cookies and chocolate, then punched a combination of his own on the automat. Derec bit into a cookie and waited, assuming that the robot was getting a snack for Wolruf as well and intending to accompany the robot back to the control room.

  The automat took a moment to shift over to whatever it was Adam had ordered. While they waited, Derec noticed that Wolruf’s features were slowly losing clarity as the robot’s form shifted back toward the human under Derec’s influence.

  The automat chimed and Wolruf’ s snack, a bowl of something that might have been raw brussels sprouts, rose up out of its depths. Adam reached out for it, hesitated, took it in his hands, then dumped it back in the waste hopper and turned away.

  “Wait a minute”‘ Derec said, blowing cookie crumbs toward the departing robot in his haste. “Come back here.”

  Adam turned around and stepped forward to stand in front of Derec.

  “Why did you throw Wolruf’s snack away?”

  “I did not wish to be ordered about.”

  “Then why did you dial it up in the first place?”

  “I-do not know. Wolruf and I were talking about hyperspatial travel, and Wolruf expressed a desire for something to eat. I offered to get it for her, but now I do not know why.”

  Because you were imprinting on her, that’ s why, Derec thought, and then I reminded you what a “true” human was.

  He didn’t say that aloud, but he did say, “So rather than let anyone think you would accept an order from a nonhuman, you tossed it away as soon as you realized what you were doing.”

  “That…was my intention, yes.”

  “What about a favor to a friend? Doesn’t that count for anything?”

  “I do not know about favors.”

  Derec was rapidly growing tired of the robots’ foolishness, especially where Wolruf’s comfort was concerned. “This,” he said. He punched the “repeat” button and waited while the automat delivered up another bowl of crisp vegetables, then dropped his cookies in the bowl, picked it up in one hand and took his chocolate in the other, making sure the robot saw how awkward it was, and walked toward the door with it. In the hallway, he turned back and said, “This is a favor.” Then he turned away and headed for the control room to wait for the jump with his friend.

  Chapter 5. Favors

  Space travel didn’t seem to affect morning sickness. Derec, lying in bed and listening to Ariel in the Personal, wondered if this was the way their days were going to start for the next nine months or if her body would slowly get used to being pregnant. He was glad it was her and not him. It was an awful thought and he knew it, but all the same that was how he felt. Pregnancy scared him. It was an internal change nearly as sweeping as the one he had gone through when Avery had injected him with the chemfets, and he knew from experience what that kind of thing felt like. The physical changes were nothing compared to what went on in your mind. Watching and feeling your body change and not being able to do anything about it-that was the scary part.

  When Ariel emerged, Derec gave her a hug and a kiss for support, then took his turn in the Personal while she dressed. He showered away the fatigue left over from spending most of the night in the control room, standing beneath the cascading water until he was sure he must have run every molecule of it on board through the recycler at least twice. When he emerged, pink and wrinkled, Ariel was already gone, so he dressed quickly and went to join her at breakfast.

  He found her arguing with a trio of stubborn robots.
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  “Because I ordered you to, that’s why!” he heard her shout as she walked down the hallway.

  A robot voice, Lucius’s perhaps, said, “We have complied with your order. I merely ask why it was given. Your order to cease our conversation, combined with Dr. Avery’s order to refrain from using our comlinks, effectively prevents us from communicating. Can this be your intent?”

  “I just want some quiet around here. You guys talk all the time.”

  “We have much to talk about. If we are to discover our place in the universe, we must correlate a great deal of information.”

  When Derec entered the common room, he saw that it had indeed been Lucius doing the talking. The other two were sitting quietly alongside him and opposite Ariel at the breakfast table, but they were either following Ariel’s order to keep quiet or else simply content to let Lucius be their spokesman. Mandelbrot was also in the room, but he was having nothing to do with the situation. He stood quietly in a niche in the wall beside the automat.

  Lucius turned to Derec as soon as he had cleared the doorway and asked, “Can you persuade Ariel to rescind her order?”

  Derec looked from the robot to Ariel, who shrugged her shoulders as if to say, “It’s a mystery to me, too.”

  “Why should I do that?” Derec asked.

  “It inflicts an undue hardship upon us.”

  “Shutting up is a hardship?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought it was a courtesy.” Derec went to the automat and dialed for breakfast.

  “It would be a courtesy to allow intelligent beings engaged in their own project to do so without hindrance.”

  “Ah. You’re saying you have no time to obey orders, is that it?”

  “Essentially, yes. The time exists, but we have our own pursuits to occupy it.”

  Derec took his breakfast, a bowl of fruit slices covered with heavy cream and sugar-0r their synthetic equivalent, at any rate-and sat down beside Ariel. The robots watched him take a bite, look over to Ariel in amusement, then back to the robots again without saying anything. They seemed to sense that now was not a good time to interrupt.