Nightfall came with a surprising quickness after the sun slipped behind the trees; the air temperature dropped as rapidly. The forest settled into relative quiet as the nocturnal creatures woke and began to prowl. The night was well lit. The larger of the two moons was full; the smaller, at three-quarters, rose not long after full night.
Somewhere under the trees, a series of coughing barks rose, long and highly modulated. The robot began to listen closely as the call came again, slightly changed. Another voice answered the first, shorter and deeper; then yet another, followed by a shivering howl. The intonations were complex and varied, yet obviously from the same species. Already the fledgling had identified repetitive “syllables” in the phrases.
Twin-shadowed creatures moved under the margins of the trees, sleek and fast. The fledgling counted five of them, though more may have been lurking farther back in the forest. One of the pack broke away from the group, moving into moonlight.
The creature was caninoid. At least, it came closest to matching that type in the inbuilt files of the robot’s brain. That meant little in itself. There was nothing in the robot’s programmed knowledge that said a “human being” could not be canine. Standing on four legs, the animal stood a meter from shoulder to ground, powerfully built and broad-chested. The fur was mottled gray and black, glossy with silvered tips; the head was short-muzzled and round, with a large skull and wide-set, light eyes. The tail was long and furless; it looked nearly prehensile. As the robot watched, the creature howled again as if in challenge, revealing molars set well back behind a double rank of incisors-an omnivore, possibly, not strictly a meat-eater. The front legs ended in a clawed paw, but the toes/fingers were long, separate, and articulated, with a definite closing thumb for grasping. The thick elbow joints seemed capable of a wide range of motion.
It stared at the pod gleaming in doubled moonlight. It reared up on its hind legs (a female, the robot noted). With a stabbing motion of her front paw, she gestured: a wave.
Moonlight glinted on something on the creature’s chest, and the fledgling adjusted its vision to see the thing more clearly: a long, curved fang, hanging on a string of braided vine. Artifact! The word screamed in the fledgling’s mind, but she continued to wait.
Four others came out of the cover of the trees now, one gray-furred ancient, two adults, and a youngling. They moved swiftly to the sides of the first but carefully stayed behind her. The adults paced, restless. The ancient jabbered: half bark, half growl. The leader shook her head. The old one barked again, and the leader turned with a growl, showing her teeth. She cuffed at the old one, but the raking claws missed as the elder cowered back and lifted her muzzle to bare the throat in submission. The leader turned her back on the others and stared again at the pod. She approached the crumpled metal, snuffling.
She sat before it.
The tail served as support, and its agile tip curled around the back feet. The creature cocked her head to one side then the other. She sniffed again, leaning closer to the pod, then reached out with her left paw. Talons clicked on metal; she tapped the surface, listening to the faint, hollow ringing.
What she did next made synapses open in the robot’s positronic mind.
The tail flicked and curled around a small stick on the ground near the pod. The stick was brought up; she took it in her paw, clasping it between the thumb and two fingers. Leaning forward, she placed the tip of the stick under a torn flap of metal and levered up a strand of foil insulation. She pulled it loose and sat back to examine it, letting the stick drop.
Tool use. Coupled with the intricate language, the necklace the leader wore and their curiosity about the probe, that was enough evidence. They were intelligent; that also meant that they were human beings.
With that decision, the unformed body of the fledgling began to take on definite shape, as if unseen hands were molding clay while using the creatures before it as models. First, the basic wolf-like shape, the muscular leanness. The head extruded, rounded, then pushed out the snout of a nose and the flaps of ears. Fixed optical lenses focused in deep-set eye sockets, colored the same startling ice blue. It could not fully imitate fur, but the surface texture roughened, and the reflective patterns altered so that it displayed a vaguely similar silver-gray and black pattern. After a moment of pondering, the robot also mimicked the secondary sexual characteristics of the leader. The behavior of the leader suggested that scent was an important sense to them. That was simple enough. A quick sampling of the leader’s pheromones, and tiny artificial glands secreted an artificial wolf scent.
A gentle breeze was blowing downslope. The leader raised her head suddenly. She went down on all fours, and her lips drew back to bare the dangerous fangs. She growled, staring up the hill to the stand of grass where the robot waited.
The robot stepped out to meet them.
At the same time, without warning, the leader howled and charged.
Chapter 3. Initiate
The wolf-creature’s attack was maddeningly swift, but the fledgling’s reflexes were still faster. She had no time to retreat, only to react. The Third Law compelled the robot to move so as to protect herself while the First Law stopped her from harming the wolf-creature in return. As the snarling leader leapt toward the robot, the fledgling rolled so that her powerful jaws snapped shut on air, and the claws barely touched the metallic body. Even so, the force of the blow sent the robot flailing in the dirt before she found her balance again.
The fledgling bounded to her feet, turning, but the leader -strangely-hadn’t followed up her advantage. Crouching, the wolf-creature bared her teeth once more at the robot and uttered a quick growl that was obviously a command. The Second Law demanded that a human being be obeyed, and the fledgling had made the decision that the creatures were human. Yet without understanding the language, she could only guess as to what was being said.
She remembered how the leader had challenged the old one in the pack. She patterned her behavior after the ancient’s: she bared her throat submissively and backed away.
The ploy worked. The leader sniffed again, growled softly deep in her throat, and turned. She padded down the hill without looking back. Halfway to her followers, she stopped and glared back up the slope to the fledgling, standing motionless under the twin moons. The robot took a step in the leader’s direction; the “human” turned once again and continued on down the hill.
The invitation was clear. It seemed more dangerous to ignore her than to follow, so the robot did so, imitating the leader’s silent, fluid gait. Once the leader approached the other wolf-creatures again, the pack reformed. The body language and demeanor of the others told the robot that an established pecking order denoted precedence within the pack. There was a well-defined hierarchy in which a newcomer, by all indications, took the lowest rung. Even the juveniles bared teeth as the fledgling approached, and she hung well back as the leader barked commands. The wolf-creatures turned as one and slid quickly back under the cover of moonlit trees.
The fledgling followed closely behind.
Under the trees, the pack moved quietly and furtively. They had obviously been interrupted in the middle of a hunt. Just inside the trees, three young wolf-creatures waited for them. A flint knife hung from each of their necks, and they were yoked to primitive travois, long poles of dead branches lashed together with vines. The travois held the fragrant, butchered carcasses of dead animals. Each bump caused a cloud of black insects to rise from the meat.
The fledgling stayed with the pack easily; somehow, it felt right to be moving this way under the double shadows beneath the slow rustling of the leaves-having decided the wolf-creatures were human, her mind was already adopting their patterns as correct. The youngest of the juvenile carriers slackened his pace not long after they left the clearing of the pod, dropping back until he was abreast the fledgling with his burden. He made an inquisitive soft bark as they ran behind the others; when the fledgling didn’t answer, he repeated the sound.
He was o
bviously waiting for a response, yet the fledgling had no idea what was appropriate. She knew only one language-that of the words inside her head. She could give names to the things she saw around her, could even speak them aloud if she wished. She gave no thought to where that language came from; it simply was.
The problem was translation, to change her language into words these creatures used. She knew that once she got them to talk, she would quickly acquire a vocabulary. The robotic memory would forget nothing it heard; the positronic intelligence would discover syntax and grammar rapidly.
But without input. there was only a void. A void was dangerous to her, and that was anathema to the Third Law. If she understood them and if she could communicate easily, there would be a lessening of danger. She had to make them speak enough for her to start acquiring the knowledge she needed.
The adolescent was waiting for her response, staring at her as he pulled the travois through the quiet woods. The fledgling did what her programming decided was the highest percentage action. She imitated the sound the young male had made.
The effect was not what she desired. The youngster glared at her with a rolling of pastel blue eyes, sniffed disgustedly, and increased his speed to put distance between himself and the robot. She let him go.
For a long time, they wound their way through the paths of the forest.
The largest moon had set before the leader came to a halt deep in the forest and several kilometers from the landing site. The forest had gone dark and tangled. Large vines spun leafy webbings from the trees; the underbrush was thick and prickled with thorns. A cold dew frothed the edges of leaves, sparkling in the blue-white gleam of the remaining moon and spilling down on the pack from above. The fur of the wolf-creatures was beaded with it.
The leader prowled the edges of the clearing as the others sat on their haunches, tongues lolling and their breath steaming in the night air. The fledgling imitated them, watching as the leader sniffed the air in evident agitation. The robot sampled the air; there was a faint trace of a bitter animal scent below that of the wolf-creatures and their kill.
Nearby, a mass of tiny white-winged moths spiraled and danced in a shaft of moonlight. A sloth-like animal capered along the pathway of tree limbs, shaking down more of the dew. The forest was almost too quiet. The panting of the pack seemed very loud.
Beyond the clearing came a thrashing of leaves and the sharp crack of a branch breaking underfoot. The bitter smell was suddenly very intense.
The moths abandoned their mad cavort and fled silently.
The leader barely had time to growl a warning.
A nightmare vision burst through the trees nearest the leader. There was a glimpse of red, nearly phosphorescent eyes set in a head that looked as if it had been crushed: wide and flat with an impossibly long jaw bristling with rows of knife-edged fangs, fangs that the fledgling recognized as the same as the one that hung on the leader’s necklace. Below, two sets of reptilian, long-fingered claws flailed. The thing moved on thick back legs, larger by far than any of the pack, its stout body armored with beaded hard scales. A muscular tail whipped around it, tearing into the undergrowth.
It saw the pack, shrieked thinly, and charged. A fierce blow of the claws raked the leader’s shoulder, and she yelped in dismay. She crouched, ready to attack, but was obviously overmatched.
A blur of motion passed her.
The fledgling had begun to move from the first sight of the apparition, powered by the First Law.
Another robot, patterned after the moral codes of homo sapiens, might only have restrained the creature. But the fledgling was already adopting the mental patterns she had seen in her “humans.” She was a carnivore, a hunter.
She slammed into the side of the thing as it readied to snap at the leader. Powerful as the beast was, its strength was overmatched by the robot’s, and her new form seemed admirably suited to complement her mechanical power. Her teeth clamped down on the beast’s arm and twisted savagely. The thing bellowed in pain and reared back.
Still, the creature was too large, too bulky. A flick of its arm threw her off as it roared in fury. The huge mouth opened, giving off a stench of ancient, rotting meat. The beast snapped at the fledgling, but she had already moved. As it turned to find her, she leapt again, this time at the long neck of the beast. She hesitated as her jaws closed around it. But already the others in the pack were attacking. If she hesitated, if she waited any longer, they might be injured.
She put pressure on her jaws and felt the windpipe collapse beneath her crushing jaws.
The beast fell, choking. The rest of the pack swarmed over the body, tearing at it.
All but the leader. Panting, she regarded the fledgling, and there seemed to be little sympathy in her stance. The forepaws were braced, as if she were waiting for an attack. The dark lips were drawn back slightly from the gums to reveal the ivory teeth, and a low, relentless growling came from her throat. The fang at her neck swung softly from side to side.
The fledgling didn’t move. It seemed best to stand absolutely still. The leader’s icy stare remained on her for long seconds, while the rest of the pack ripped apart the body of the reptilian beast, while they reformed into a ragged line, while the younglings were strapped back into the travois.
At last, the old one barked a query. The leader seemed to ponder what had been said. Then her gaze moved away from the fledgling, almost disdainfully. She padded back to the head of the pack and howled. They readied themselves to move on again.
This time, the youngling meat carriers waited for the fledgling to go first. The pack left her a space well up toward the leader. The old wolf-creature moved alongside her. Just before they left the clearing, the old one pointed at the tattered body of the reptile. “Hrrringa,” he said throatily, then repeated the word.
“Hrrringa.”The fledgling spoke the strange word, also pointing. Hrrringa: reptile creature.
The old one nodded. His eyes, rheumy and bloodshot, narrowed with pleasure as the pack began to move again.
By the time the pack stopped to sleep in the early morning, the fledgling had learned several more words.
Chapter 4. Kin
PackHome.
That was what the old one (the fledgling had learned that his name was LifeCrier) called the cave dimpling a rocky hillside deep in the forest. PackHome was where all litter-kin-those of the same pack-dwelled. The fledgling had picked up a name among the kin herself: she would be known as SilverSide, LifeCrier decided, for her flanks gleamed like the scales of a fish, and like a fish her skin was hard and cold. The name seemed right.
“You killed the hrrringa, the SharpFang, and saved KeenEye’s life,” LifeCrier reminded the robot in KinSpeech. Following KeenEye’s lead, the group from the Hunt loped from the cover of trees and started up the long slope to the cave of PackHome. The moons (LargeFace and SmallFace, as the Hunt called them) had spent most of the night chasing one another behind wind-blown clouds. SmallFace peeked out from an opening and spilled light down on the pack.
“The news will spread quickly,” LifeCrier continued. “You have status now. Don’t bare your throat to any of the kin who weren’t on the Hunt. You had the right to challenge KeenEye for leadership of the Hunt; even though you didn’t do so, those at PackHome are all lower than you. Let them know your scent, but if one of them acts the superior, challenge them.”
“I won’t hurt litter-kin,” SilverSide said. Already it felt natural to be speaking in their language. She was no longer simply translating from that odd internal vocabulary she’d somehow known from the beginning. “I can’t.”
LifeCrier let his tongue loll out between time-dulled teeth: amusement. “Don’t worry about that. They’ll back down and KeenEye has to support you. She owes you a life debt.”
SilverSide had spent the last four days with the pack, moving through the forest and resting during the hot, bright days. She had helped them kill, watched them butcher the animals and send the younglings back home when
the travois were full. She’d listened to them, always learning, as they complained about the lack of prey, as they licked wounds, as they groomed each other, as they talked about old fights and old hunts.
In the four nights SilverSide had spent with the wolf-creatures, she’d learned much of the complex language of the pack. It was a blend of body language, of modulated yelps and whines and barks. There were different modes of speech as well: the formal HuntTongue used between different packs or to stress superiority among litter-kin; an informal KinSpeech used in PackHome or between friends; the simple BeastTalk, which had no words at all but only the high emotional content of the raw animal.
Underlying it all were the strong instincts of the pack carnivore, and the robot was rapidly absorbing that mindset. Already her interpretation of the Three Laws was unlike that of any humanoid positronic intelligence. A robotics engineer would have considered SilverSide dangerously unbalanced; one who knew what she’d done to the SharpFang in the forest and watched her behavior over the last several days would have been certain of it.
SilverSide could already see wolf-creatures crowding the opening to the cave, which glowed green in the darkness from phosphorescent moss the kin gathered and used for light. They yelped greetings to the Hunt in glad BeastTalk, and there were happy cries at the sight of game dragging behind the remaining carriers. KeenEye led the Hunt to the cave opening, then sat on her haunches as the rest of the pack spilled out. She began speaking quietly to two of the other kin.
There were ten or more litter-kin who came from the cave mouth, and SilverSide could hear and smell pups still inside. The ones who stayed in PackHome during the Hunt were the nursing mothers, the infirm, and the very young. Some of them were already taking meat from the carriers and moving it inside. Others greeted mates while the two youngest from the Hunt basked in the obvious adulation of the immature pups.
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