by Isaac Asimov
“Mandelbrot!” he repeated.
“Oh, yes, Master Derec.” SilverSide unplugged and turned to face them. “Everything is under control.”
Derec glanced at SilverSide and then turned to walk toward the niche as he said again, “Mandelbrot, you okay?”
“He’s fine,” SilverSide said. “I deactivated him.”
“You what?” Derec’s voice reflected his astonishment that SilverSide would have had the temerity to shut down Mandelbrot’s microfusion reactor, risking partial loss of positronic memory.
“When you’re not around, he tends to give me unwanted advice,” SilverSide explained. “Here, I’ll bring him back up, since it apparently displeases you to have him down.”
“It does a lot more than displease me.” Derec’s voice shook with anger. “And stand back, I’ll reactivate him myself.”
SilverSide stopped. He had started walking toward Mandelbrot’s niche.
“Don’t you ever — I repeat —” and now Derec’s voice was strident, grating, “don’t you ever deactivate Mandelbrot again.”
“Certainly not,” SilverSide said, “if that is your wish, Master Derec.”
“That is most certainly my wish.”
“Very well, Master Derec.”
Derec had walked to the niche, and now reached around to swing open a plate set flush in Mandelbrot’s back that covered a switch panel. Carefully, watching for Mandelbrot’s reactions at each step, he reactivated the robot by flicking switches in a definite sequence.
Stabilizing the microfusion reactor was the most delicate part of the activation procedure and took the most time — almost half an hour. The robot’s eyes were designed to guide that operation, changing color in the spectral sequence whenever it was safe to move on to the next phase — from black through purple, blue, green, yellow, orange, red, and finally back to colorless black — Mandelbrot’s switch — induced standby state.
Completely ignoring Wolruf, SilverSide had gone back to the terminal and plugged himself in again after his exchange with Derec.
Wolruf had curled up on the davenport and was fast asleep when Derec finished.
Battery backup should have provided the low power needed to protect Mandelbrot’s positronic brain from serious harm, but there was always the possibility of a loss of long-term memory during the nanoseconds required to effect the switch from one power source to the other. Derec would never know until the gap revealed itself, perhaps at some juncture when that particular memory would be urgently needed.
As he pressed the power-reset button, he cursed himself for having left the two robots alone together. Mandelbrot’s eyes lit up with a red glow that pulsed rhythmically.
“How do you feel now, Mandelbrot?” Derec asked.
“Normal. The wild one deactivated me. I didn’t realize what he was doing until too late.”
The robot gave a small shudder.
“Was that a Third Law reaction just now?” Derec asked.
“I believe so, Master. I didn’t protect myself properly as the Third Law directs. I felt a momentary disturbance upon reaching that conclusion, which must have sent an associated potential wave through my motor control system. Is that the way it appeared?”
“Yes. I just wanted to be sure that it was not some damage from deactivation,” Derec said. “Ah, Wolruf, you’re awake.”
Wolruf yawned and stretched. “Mandelbrot okay?”
“It would appear so, except for a normal Third Law reaction,” Derec replied.
“It looks ass though anotherrr imprinting may not be ass likely ass ‘u’ad thought,” Wolruf observed.
The small hairy alien was looking at SilverSide, who was hunched over the terminal and seemingly absorbed in the information that was flowing into his brain.
“SilverSide has apparently put you down as an inferior,” Derec replied, “a variation on this planet’s wolf species.”
“That was my conclusion,” SilverSide said as he unplugged and swung around in the swivel chair to face them, “and I have been unable to find any ‘Wolruf’ biographical file or anything to contradict that conclusion.
“Would you tell me all about yourself, Mistress Wolruf?” SilverSide requested.
“No!” Derec said emphatically. “Not now. Plug back into the library. The rest of us have got some things we must take care of now.”
SilverSide turned back to the terminal, and Derec motioned for the other two to follow him outside.
When they were standing by the runabout at street level, Derec explained.
“As I suggested to you earlier, Wolruf, he’s coming along too fast now. Deactivating Mandelbrot confirmed that in my mind. 1’d consider that a violation of a sort of corollary to the Third Law. How does a robot view that, Mandelbrot?”
“The Laws are not infinitely rigid,” Mandelbrot said. “They are surrounded by side potentials that create what I can only call soft boundaries, foothill potentials that lead to the ultimate peak. The First Law has the hardest and sharpest boundaries of all, but even so, those boundaries are not absolutely and infinitely sharp.”
“Are you saying he violated the Third Law?” Derec asked.
“No, but he did something I would never do except to protect a human or myself.”
“Maybe ‘e was protecting’imself from ‘urn ideass, Mandelbrot,” Wolruf said.
“Not likely,” Mandelbrot said. “I do not consider words and ideas to be a source of injury to a robot.”
“But he is in a very sensitive and impressionable state right now,” Derec said. “And that’s another reason I want to get him out of the city and back to the forest where I found him, where he’s apt to be more comfortable and less perturbed by strange stimuli.
“We’ll take the runabout to the east exit and walk the rest of the way. It’s only a couple of miles to the place I have in mind; there’s a small grassy clearing in the forest near a clear pebbly brook — very peaceful and quiet. You and the wild one can trot along behind until we get to the east exit, Mandelbrot. Then we’ll all walk.”
“Very well, Master Derec. Shall I get the tent and other Survival gear from the storage locker?”
“Yes.”
Derec could not remember his childhood. He knew that somehow it must have been different from that of other children on Aurora, for he did not have the natural feel and easy, confident way of handling robots that was so much a part of a normal Spacer’s personality, something acquired beginning in earliest childhood. In all the nurseries and homes, robots were the only nannies to be found. On Aurora, for instance, the closest any adult ever got to a child was the human who supervised the nursery nannies.
Had he been raised by a human nanny, maybe even his own mother? Had that been a still earlier experiment of his eccentric father, Dr. Avery? Derec knew in intimate technical detail how robots worked — he was an expert roboticist — but he did not have that natural insight into the positronic brain that almost all Auroran children had by the age of five.
The only robot Derec felt really close to was Mandelbrot. It wasn’t a matter of trust or distrust. Robots were what they were programmed to be. You could trust even the Avery robots that built Robot City and the other robot cities, like the one here on the wolf planet, if you knew who had last worked with their insides. The only time you couldn’t trust them was when someone like the irrational Dr. Avery deliberately altered their programming. He had, for instance, excluded Wolruf from protection when he revised the programming of the Robot City robots.
But Derec seemed to lack the upbringing to deal naturally with robots — Mandelbrot being a possible exception, or as much of an exception as to make it a rule — and now he was confronted with SilverSide, a being he had concluded from behavior and appearance must be a robot, yet a robot as unpredictable and unsettling as any he had ever dealt with.
Like the Avery robots — and like Mandelbrot’s control of his arm — SilverSide had the ability to change shape by changing the orientation of his cells, wh
ich themselves appeared to be tiny robots — microbots — even smaller than the cells of Avery material. Derec had pretty well established that those microbots, during a metamorphosis, were being reprogrammed by SilverSide’s positronic brain, much like some living organisms — lizards and amphibians — seem to reprogram their own cells in order to grow a new limb or a new tail.
Yes, he was quite uncomfortable with SilverSide, and as he went around gathering up supplies for their outing, he realized for the first time that he had begun to consider SilverSide actually dangerous. He had never felt that way about any robot before, not on Aurora or anywhere else.
The fact that Mandelbrot’s remarks had distracted SilverSide and reduced his efficiency did not seem to be a reasonable cause, logically arrived at, for the quite serious offense of deactivating another robot. Robots could not go around knocking one another out — seriously risking amnesia in the victim — simply because the victim had been a source of distraction, no more than people could. SilverSide had done something Mandelbrot “would never do,” to use Mandelbrot’s own words.
SilverSide was an alarming phenomenon, yet exceedingly fascinating. Derec knew the robot should probably be deactivated, but that was a step Derec could no more take than could many other scientists who were on the cutting edge of their disciplines and involved in experiments dangerous to the society they lived in.
Chapter 9
INSIGHT
WHILE SHE WAS eating breakfast, Ariel queried Jacob on the results of his nightlong cogitations.
“I have made a list,” Jacob said, “of the technical features that jump technology and discrete modulation of hyperwave have in common. Would you like me to project it on the screen?”
“Heavens, no,” Ariel said. “I don’t understand that stuff. Transmit your list to Keymo over the comlink; see if he can deduce a parallel list that allows him to predict the characteristics of continuous modulation from the characteristics of Key technology, features they would likely share.
“And tell him I’d like an answer well before we go to the meeting with the aliens.”
She finished breakfast and stepped out onto the small open balcony to sample the fresh smells of morning. And she was assailed instead by the sterile, leftover smells from night in a brand new city; not even the yeasty smell of baking bread that characterized the city of Webster Grove at any time of day and was certainly to be preferred to the ozone and machine oil of Pearl City.
Until that moment she had not really come to grips with how much she disliked cities. She had put up with Robot City, and with Earth’s caves of steel, and now with this city, just to please Derec, disliking it all the time but kidding herself into thinking she was having a great time.
She disliked cities, any city, and she disliked them most in the morning. Without thinking, she had expected to sample the new-mown hay of Aurora. Instead she was oppressed by the smells of a city she disliked intensely and yet was compelled to try to save. The thought of that negotiation, less than two hours away, lay — in its anticipation — not like an idea in her mind, but like a brick in her stomach.
With her nose wrinkled and breakfast roiling her gut, she turned and went back inside to dress for the meeting.
An hour later, she was dressed and sitting in the living room, still groping for some solution to the dome problem. Jacob was standing in his niche. She even preferred that in her present mood. She wanted no distractions this morning.
Quite edgy, she decided she could wait no longer for Keymo to communicate with her. She needed a solution to take to the meeting, any solution, even one for a minor problem.
“Jacob, raise Keymo on the comlink,” she said. “See if he’s come up with anything on the hyperwave bit.”
“Keymo reports some limited success,” Jacob said. “He can now see certain features of Key teleportation that he had not seen before, features that might potentially serve as a method of instantaneous communication quite unlike current hyperwave communication.”
“Good. Could it be called continuous modulation?”
“Yes. But it modulates a sort of hybrid wave, not hyperwaves as we know them.”
“Good. That seems like a small distinction.” Particularly since she didn’t know what any of it meant. “That must be what the aliens are talking about.
“Let’s go,” she said.
“We’re well ahead of time,” Jacob said.
“Drive slow,” she said as she walked out of the apartment with Jacob trailing closely behind.
He had requisitioned a small nonautomated runabout the night before, but not without some difficulty. With the evacuation at its peak, transport vehicles were in short supply.
Main Street was bumper-to-bumper with traffic, but it was all moving briskly so that Jacob, following her instructions to drive slowly, parted the traffic like a rock in a turbulent river. All eight lanes were flowing northbound to expedite the transfer of materiel.
Still, they arrived at the dome opening at 9:40 AM, more than twenty minutes ahead of time. At the dome opening, the street narrowed to four lanes and then turned into a dirt road a few meters north of the dome.
Wohler-9 was already standing vigil on the west side of the opening where the meeting with the aliens would again take place. This time she did not plan to make Wohler-9 a participant.
“Drive on north, Jacob,” Ariel said. “I don’t want to appear anxious.”
She knew she must sound inconsistent, edgy to leave one moment, reluctant to arrive the next. She had to remind herself that he was just a robot and couldn’t care, and so didn’t judge her one way or the other. It was a good thing. She already felt inadequate enough.
Ten minutes later, Jacob said, “We are at the halfway turnaround point, Miss Ariel.”
She had been deep in her dome problem, still unable to think of anything that could serve to stall the aliens further. The closure of the dome seemed inevitable.
“Fine,” she said and glanced at him. “Let’s turn around.”
For just a second, a quick thrill of affection for Jacob coursed through her mind. He was such a handsome hulk and so thoughtful and caring.
He was clad in an attractive, short-sleeve top of loose weave that she had picked out. She had selected it for this occasion because of its casualness. She was clad informally as well. She didn’t want the aliens thinking she was toadying up to them, no matter that they might not be able to classify her attire one way or the other. It was more a matter of establishing the proper frame of mind — in her mind.
She reached over impulsively and patted him on the forearm. She put out of her mind the thought that he was incapable of not being thoughtful and caring, incapable of acting otherwise, and programmed so. And he was a handsome hulk.
He gave her a quick glance in turn.
“Is there something else, Miss Ariel?”
“Oh, yes, Jacob. There is. I just hadn’t anticipated it back on Aurora when I first asked for your companionship.”
After all, he was only a robot. She kept telling herself that, over and over.
“Then I can be of further service?” Jacob said, questioning.
“You could, indeed, Jacob. It’s just that I can’t accept that service, no matter how delightful I might find it.”
And then there popped into her mind the image of Derec, waving, standing far away at the end of a long row of waving green corn. And she wondered where that memory came from. She had never been in a cornfield with Derec. Not that she could remember.
And that brought her back to her present responsibility, which was more an obligation to Derec, to carry out his wishes, for she had only negative feelings for the robot city otherwise.
Still, the obligation remained.
“Do you see any sign of the aliens, Jacob?” she asked.
“Possibly,” Jacob said. “I see three blackbodies that have just descended into a circular flight pattern around the dome.”
“Can you time our return so that we arrive just
after they have landed?”
“I will endeavor to do so.”
He succeeded.
She got out of the runabout, walked over to face the aliens, and decided not to bow. Jacob stood to one side and slightly behind her.
Affecting a faint note of haughtiness, she said, “Good morning, ambassadors.”
They had called themselves leaders the day before, but she refused to use that term for fear they might misconstrue themselves to be her leaders.
“Gud mahnin’, Miz Ahyahl Wilsh,” the middle alien said.
Ariel could not help smiling broadly. The Webster Grove accent took her by surprise again, but she immediately set her mind to eliminate it from consideration so as to avoid the less-than-serious attitude she had briefly lapsed into the day before.
“This is my assistant, Neuronius,” the middle alien continued, bunching on the right side what looked like a shoulder in silhouette, “and this is my third in command, Axonius,” and he bunched his silhouette on the left.
Ariel responded by inclining her head in the appropriate direction as each was introduced, a casual, restrained acknowledgment short of a pronounced nod.
The alien did not use the grand gesture that Sarco had used the day before when he had introduced Synapo, but it still left Ariel wondering whether she was dealing with Synapo or Sarco.
Here she was, on thin ice already, and the meeting had just begun. She guessed that it must be Synapo. It was he who had dominated the meeting the day before. On the other hand, these others were subordinates. They did not rate the grand gesture, even if this were Sarco.
She had nothing with which to parley except the analysis of hyperwave modulation that Jacob and Keymo had concocted at her prodding. And if this were Synapo, and if she had construed properly — that his green flaming the day before was an impatient assessment of Sarco’s complaint — then it must have been a trivial complaint in Synapo’s mind and not much of a bargaining chip for her side.
Not knowing for sure whom she was dealing with, she decided to stall.
She said, “I trust that you have now concluded that closing the dome does not have any immediate importance since it is already ninety-nine-point-two percent effective.”