by Jerry Oltion
Derec tried to increase the potential and turn it into a First Law conflict at the same time. “It may be that your definition of ‘human’ is wrong. You thought that you were one once, just because you were a thinking being. Now you’ve gone to the opposite extreme. Can you trust your new definition enough to toss another thinking being out the airlock?”
Lucius took a step backward until he stood beside Avery and turned his head to look straight at Wolruf. Derec could almost see the struggle of potentials within the robot’s positronic mind. He wouldn’t have been surprised if he locked up from it, but if it saved Wolruf, it would be worth the loss.
Avery shook his head. “A noble sentiment, but what’s the use in all of us dying when three of us can live? Do you want to see Ariel suffocate one day away from salvation? Carrying your child? I won’t ask how you’d feel about it happening to me, but how about yourself? Do you want to die for the sake of friendship?”
“Avery ‘as a point,” Wolruf said. “Better one of us dies so three of us live. I’d just rather it be ‘im, is all.” She grinned across the table at him, adding, “But I know ‘ow your robots work, too. No matter what you call ‘uman, I’m the least ‘uman of us all; it won’t take long before they ignore Derec’s order and toss me out on their own.”
As soon as the oxygen supply drops to the point where even three of us are in danger, Derec thought. That would probably happen sometime in the next couple of hours. That meant he would have to think of something fast if he wanted to save everyone.
But what could he possibly come up with that the robots wouldn’t have already considered and rejected? They would have been just as frantically trying to improve the odds even for three humans; yet they had come up with nothing.
Nothing that they could act upon, that is. Suddenly Derec smiled, for he saw the weak spot in the army of arguments aimed at Wolruf. They wouldn’t follow any course of action that would be riskier to the humans than spacing Wolruf, but that didn’t mean other courses of action didn’t exist. They just couldn’t act upon them, or even mention them to humans who might consider them the better alternative.
Nor would they allow the humans to discuss them in their presence, lest they become convinced to take an unacceptable risk
“All four of you, out,” Derec ordered suddenly. “Go back to the engine room. I’m not at all convinced that the recycler isn’t repairable. If all four of you work on it at once, then I’m sure you’ll come up with a solution we haven’t considered yet.”
Mandelbrot moved for the door immediately. Adam and Eve hesitated, and Adam said, “I do not see how our collaboration will make the unrepairable repairable.”
“Try it,” Derec said. “I order you to.” With a humanlike shrug, the robots moved after Mandelbrot.
Lucius, however, remained standing beside Avery. “I cannot follow Dr. Avery, s command to obey his every whim if I leave his presence,” he said.
“I release you,” Avery said. “Go with the others.”
“I echo Adam’s reservation. The recycler is damaged beyond repair.”
Avery thundered, “Damn it, you’ve been questioning every order you can this whole trip, and I want it stopped! When a human tells you to do something, you do it. Understand?”
“I understand your words, but not the reason. If I obey blindly, might I not inadvertently violate your true intent if your order was less than precise? I can better judge how to act if I know the reason the order is given.”
“You’re not supposed to think; you’re supposed to act. It’s my job to see that the order is clear. You can assume, if it makes things any easier for you, that I know what I’m doing when I give it, but your understanding is not required. In some cases-” this with a sidelong glance at Derec “-it’s not even wanted. It’s enough that I am human and I give you an order. Clear now?”
“I must think about this further.”
“Well, think about it in the engine room. Now go.”
Lucius followed the other three robots without another word. Avery waited until the door had closed behind them, then said, “Okay, I know what you’re trying to do. What kind of hare-brained scheme have you come up with?”
Derec spread his hands. “I haven’t, but there has to be one. The robots are thinking no-risk solutions. I reject that if it means sacrificing Wolruf.”
“Thank ‘u.”
“So now we think of low-risk solutions. And if we don’t come up with something, we think of medium-risk solutions. And if that-”
“We get the picture,” Ariel cut in. “So what’s risky and will get us some more air?”
Derec hmmmed in thought. “Electrolyze something else? There’s got to be oxygen bound up in something besides water.”
“As well as poisonous gasses,” Avery said. “Without the recycler to clean out the unwanted products, we’d die even faster than by suffocation. No, that goes in the extremely risky category.”
“How about suspended animation?” Ariel asked. “Freeze one of us, and revive him when we get to Ceremya.”
“Again, extremely risky. The odds of survival are barely twenty percent under the best of conditions. Here, we might achieve ten percent. That’s not what I call a solution. I would, however, allow Wolruf to try it as an alternative to certain death.”
“Very generous of ‘u,” Wolruf growled, “but there’s a better solution.”
“What is it?” Derec asked eagerly.
“Shorten the trip.”
“Shorten how? We still-oh! Do it all in one jump.”
“We’ve got three jumps left,” protested Avery. “You’re suggesting we triple our distance? I’d call that an extreme risk as well.”
Wolruf shook her furry head. “Not triple. Cut it to two jumps, each one and a ‘alf times normal. Seven and a ‘alf light-years instead of five. Save a day and a ‘alf coasting time between jump points. Not that dangerous; trader ships do it all the time.”
“There may not be a jump point exactly in between. “
“So we go eight and seven, or nine and six. Still not risky.”
“How risky is not risky? Let’s put some numbers on it. How many trader ships get into trouble with long jumps?”
“Almost nobody gets ‘urt from it. Maybe one in twenty goes astray, has to spend extra time getting’ ome.”
“Which would kill all of us.”
Derec said to Avery,” A minute ago you said a ten percent chance of success wasn’t good enough for you. Fine, I’ll grant that. But one in twenty odds is ninety-five percent in our favor! That’s an acceptable risk.”
“I agree,” said Ariel.
Avery pursed his lips in concentration, considering it. Now he drummed his fingers 01.1 the tabletop.
“Now’s the time to decide whether you’re cured or not,” Ariel added. “Can you make a personal sacrifice for someone else or do you still think only of yourself?”
“Your psychology is charmingly simplistic,” Avery said. He drummed a moment longer. “But unfortunately, it’s still correct. The risk seems slight. common decency seems to dictate that we take it.”
Wolruf let out a long-held breath.
“You’d better get to it,” Derec told her. “The robots are bound to realize what we’re doing behind their backs before long, and as soon as they do, they’re going to try to stop you.”
“I’m going,” Wolruf said, rising from her chair and rushing for the control room.
They were lucky the ship had been coasting all day toward a jump point, lucky they hadn’t already gone through it. If they had had to wait another day to carry out their plan, they would never have gotten away with it. As it was, Wolruf had only been gone a few minutes before the robots burst back into the room, all four cycling together through the mutable airlock that had once been a simple door.
Seeing the empty chair where Wolruf had been, Lucius became a blur of motion streaking toward the control room. “No!” he shouted. “You must not risk-”
Th
ere was a faint twisting sensation as every atom in the ship was tom asunder and rebuilt light-years away.
“Too late,” Derec said.
The robot skidded to a confused stop. “You…tricked us,” Lucius accused.
Avery let out the most sincere laugh Derec had ever heard him laugh. It went on and on in great peals of mirth, and when he finally calmed down enough to speak, he said, “Get used to it. To quote a famous dead scientist, ‘Old age and treachery will always overcome youth and innocence.”
Chapter 6. Shattered Dreams
Wolruf, realizing that the robots would not give her a second chance, had made the first jump a long one. The second one would thus be only a light-year or so longer than originally planned, well within the safety margin of a normal flight. When presented with such a fait accompli, the robots could only agree that it had, after all, worked out to everyone’s benefit to take the risk.
“But what if you had strayed off course?” Lucius asked once things had settled down somewhat. He was standing in the doorway to the control room, Derec by his side. Wolruf still sat in the pilot’s chair, watching as the autopilot made the routine post-jump scans for planets or other objects in the ship’s path.
“Then we’d have tried to correct for it on our next jump,” Wolruf replied.
“But what if you weren’t able to?”
When Wolruf didn’t respond immediately, Derec, sensing her embarrassment, answered for her. “Then we would all have died.”
Lucius had great difficulty with that statement, even presented as it was so calmly after the danger was over. His features lost their clarity, and he had to hold onto the doorjamb for support.
“You would have died. This does not distress you?”
“No more than losing a friend and knowing I could have done something to save her.”
“But…she is not human. Is she?”
“That depends on your definition. But it doesn’t matter. She’s a friend.”
Wolruf looked up, grinned, and looked back to her monitors. Lucius pondered Derec’s statement for a moment, then asked, “Is Mandelbrot your friend as well?”
That had come out of nowhere, but it was easy enough to answer. “Yes, he is,” Derec said. “Why?”
“You risked the lives of everyone on board the ship when you rescued him. You did not know that the engines were safe to use, yet you used them anyway. Did you do that because Mandelbrot was your friend?”
Derec nodded. “Wolruf did the piloting, and she was using the attitude jets, but I would have done the same thing and used the main engines if I had to. And yes, I’d have done it because Mandelbrot is my friend.”
“Even though he is not human.”
“Again, it doesn’t matter.”
Lucius’s features blurred still more, then suddenly returned to normal, or at least to clarity. Under the influence of both Derec’s and Wolruf’s presences, he took on the appearance of a werewolf caught in the act of changing from one form to the other.
He spoke with sudden animation. “Then I believe I have made a fundamental breakthrough in understanding the Laws of Humanics”‘
“What breakthrough is that?”
“If I provisionally regard Wolruf as human, at least in her motivations, then I believe I can state the First Law of Humanics as follows: A human may not harm a friend, or through inaction allow a friend to come to harm.”
Derec was tempted to be flip about it, to say, “That leaves Avery out then, doesn’t it?” but the robot’s sincerity stopped him. And in truth, Avery hadn’t been happy about spacing Wolruf, nor, come to think of it, did Avery even consider Wolruf a friend anyway. Derec doubted if he considered anyone a friend.
He shook his head. “I can’t refute it. It’s as good a guiding principle as any I’ve heard yet.”
Lucius nodded. “If, as you say, friendship can occur between human and robot, then I believe the law applies to robots as well.”
“It probably should,” Derec admitted. In fact, it already must to a certain extent, or the Robot City central computer would never have allowed him to cancel Avery’s order concerning the hunters when Lucius and the others were trying to make their escape. Now that was an interesting development in Avery, s robot society experiment: The robots had independently developed a sense of social responsibility. Lucius had not invented it with his law; he had only discovered its existence.
But that was evidently exciting enough in itself. “I must go tell the others,” Lucius said, then turned and hurried away toward the common area.
Wolruf leaned back in her chair, crossed her arms over her barrel chest, and asked, “Does this mean I ‘ave to make friends with all of them now?”
Derec, watching the retreating werewolf, said, “It probably wouldn’t hurt.”
The landing on Ceremya was smooth, so smooth that Derec didn’t even wake up until well after they were on the ground. He had been spending most of his time asleep, at first to conserve oxygen, but by the second day without a recycler, his motive was more to escape the foul odors building up in the air. And hunger. While asleep he was aware of neither. What woke him now was the sudden fresh smell of plant-scrubbed atmosphere filtering in through the open door.
He gently shook Ariel awake. “We’re there.”
“Mmm?”
“Clean air! Breathe deep.” He rolled out of bed, dressed quickly, and headed for the hatch.
He found Wolruf already outside and Mandelbrot as well. The ship had landed at a spaceport almost identical to the one from which they had taken off nearly a week ago. Derec wouldn’t have been able to tell it from the original save that this one was at the end of a long arm of building-material pavement reaching out from the edge of the city instead of surrounded by it, and the sky here was a subtly different shade than that over the original Robot City.
That wasn’t the way it should have been. The last time he had been here-the only time, before this-the city had been under a dome, a force dome dark as night with a single wedge-shaped slit in it. The Ceremyons had been about to enclose it completely, but Ariel had made an agreement with them to leave the city as it was if Derec stopped its growth and turned the robots into farmers for them. He had done that, but now it looked as if all his changes had been undone. The dome was gone and the city before him was bustling with robots again, and none of them looked like farmers.
“What happened?” he asked softly.
“They left before you awoke,” Mandelbrot said. “I was unable to stop them.”
“Who? What are you talking about?”
“The experimental robots. They are gone. “
“Oh. I wasn’t talking about-gone?”
“Yes.”
“Did they say where they were going?”
“No, they did not.”
Wolruf said, “I came outside just in time to see them all grow wings and fly off that way.” She pointed toward a line of hills in the distance, above which Derec could see a horde of tiny dark specks: the Ceremyons. The dominant lifeforms on the planet were night-black, balloon-shaped things with bat wings, electrically powered organic beings that converted solar energy or thermal gradients into electricity, with which they powered their bodies as well as electrolyzed water for the hydrogen that gave them lift. They spent their days in the air and their nights tethered to trees, and as far as Derec knew they spent all the time-day or night-thinking. Philosophers all, and the robots had come here to philosophize with them.
Small wonder they had gone off to do so at their first opportunity. Their duty to the humans over once they had delivered them safely to the city, they had taken off before they could be ordered to do something else that interfered with their wishes.
On a hunch, Derec sent via comlink, Adam, Eve, Lucius. Answer me.
He got no reply, which was just what he expected. Still under Avery’s orders not to use their comlinks among themselves, they had shut them off entirely.
He shrugged. “Let them go. They’ll come ba
ck when they’re ready.” Until then Derec had other things to do, like figure out what had happened to his careful modifications to the city.
Ariel came down the ramp, shaking her head and tugging at her hair with a brush. “I vote we go find us a shower,” she said vehemently.
“Food first, then shower,” Avery said from behind her. He stepped carefully down the ramp, holding onto the railing for support. Three and a half days without food was probably longer than he had ever fasted before, and his unsteadiness showed it.
Mandelbrot went to his side at once and helped him the rest of the way down to the paved ground. A row of transport booths waited patiently beside the terminal building, only a few paces away, and Mandelbrot led the way toward them without waiting to be ordered.
Another booth came out of the city, moving down the center of the road toward them. It arrived just as they reached the other booths, and a golden-hued robot stepped out of it. Derec recognized the robot immediately by its color and the distinctive markings on its chest and shoulders. He had dealt with this particular robot before, and one of his predecessors before that. This was a supervisor, one of the seven charged with keeping the city functioning smoothly.
“Wohler-9!” he said.
“Master Derec,” Wohler-9 replied. “Welcome back. We were not aware that you were returning.”
“We almost didn’t. We had a fire on the ship and lost our recycler. We just barely made it.”
“I am glad that you are safe. The entire city is glad and eager to serve you. What do you require?”
“Is our apartment still here?”