by Isaac Asimov
“That would be a bad idea, Eve.”
“You and Miss Ariel agree on that, at least.”
“For good reason. She’s given you some idea what Neuronius is like then?”
“The viewpoint of the other Ceremyons. They’re naturally prejudiced. Hardly an objective assessment. Since you won’t talk to me about your experience, I’ll have to get it from Neuronius himself.”
If she thought that was going to pressure him into discussing a painful experience that he had successfully put in a can, she was wrong. That was not something he was going to talk about.
“I guess you will, but I’m telling you again, it’s a bad idea, which you’ll regret.”
He had been attaching the motor to the post-hole digger while they talked. Now he began digging post-holes four meters apart in a large rectangle that enclosed several paths trodden through the grass by the minillamas, which all converged on the entrance of the forest path to the brook.
While he worked, he listened to Eve contact Neuronius by radio. Adam had taught her the Ceremyon language and the calling codes that identified and solicited responses from Synapo and Sarco. He had not told her about Neuronius, and so had given her no radio identification for him. However, he had explained the way a general hailing channel worked on their frequency-modulated band, and that was what she used now to quickly establish communication with Neuronius.
The Cerebron agreed to meet with her at noon at the base of The Cliff of Time, where it intersected The Forest of Repose and The Plain of Serenity. She set off at a leisurely jog in the direction of The Cliff of Time.
That was going to be an interesting learning experience for Eve, but hardly a dangerous one. Adam did not think she was as mixed up about humans as he had been. He had started her out right with Ariel as an imprint. Neuronius’s warped ideas were not likely to have the effect on her that they had had on him. His only regret was that Eve would now likely hear how Neuronius had momentarily deluded him. It was not something Adam remembered with serenity.
Chapter 25
NEURONIUS STRIKES AGAIN
EVE ARRIVED AT the escarpment well before noon. She sat down on a plate of granite that angled into the ground below a dammed talus of black gravel, and braced herself from sliding by digging her heels into the soft turf where the stone disappeared into the grass.
She arrived early to give herself time to think about Miss Ariel’s strange request — that she probe Adam for information about Neuronius — and to ponder Adam’s equally strange reluctance to talk about his experience with Neuronius. It was all quite fascinating to someone with as little experience as Eve. She had a good education — Adam had led her along the electronic pathways through the city library — but she thirsted for the real-life experiences that lay behind all that academic lore.
She was going to get it that morning, for Neuronius arrived early also, giving her little time to ruminate on the words of Adam and Miss Ariel.
He came in with that black engulfing swoop and stall that — according to Adam — the Ceremyons used to intimidate alien visitors to their planet. It certainly impressed the experience-thirsty Eve. She drank it up, exhilarating in a feeling of surprise in spite of Adam’s forewarning, a surprise that would likely have been fear in Miss Ariel’s case. The Ceremyons were indeed quite impressive seen close at hand.
She got to her feet as he folded his wings.
“I am Neuronius,” the alien said haughtily. “You are Eve?”
“Yes,” Eve replied.
“What purpose is served by our meeting this morning?”
“What was the nature of your conversations with Adam SilverSide?”
“The man-like robot who can mold silver wings out of his own substance?”
“Yes.”
“Perhaps you should talk to him.”
“I’d like to hear it from your viewpoint.”
“Is he man-like or wing-like now?”
“Man-like.”
That adjective gave some confusion. She presumed without thinking that he meant Adam’s current form: his Derec imprint. Her mind was on other things, of course, and did not consider the possibility that Neuronius was referring to Adam’s Jacob Winterson imprint.
“And what is it you would like to know, Eve?”
“What you told him. What is it he’s so reluctant to discuss?”
“Ah, he’s reluctant to talk about our conversation, is he? That is encouraging. I did get through to him then. I am confident he will ultimately embrace that truth and wisdom.”
“And what is that truth and wisdom?”
“Are you familiar with his governing laws, the Laws of Robotics?”
“Yes. I, too, am governed by them.”
“Ah so.”
He said that in a peculiar way, but with her limited experience, she didn’t know why it seemed peculiar, and so it lingered in that uneasy state only momentarily, until he spoke again, and then that uneasiness was swept from her mind.
“He didn’t tell you then that I am the only human on this planet?”
Eve had not had to go through all the turmoil and travail that Adam had suffered in his search for humanity. She had taken for granted that Ariel was human. Adam had not said otherwise. For the first time she experienced some of his confusion. In a way it was more agonizing than his trauma in that it was acute and pierced deeper into her being than had the chronic uncertainty Adam had lived with for so long. And piercing so deeply and so unexpectedly, it exerted a great deal more force and weighed in with a great deal of authority.
So she concluded instantly, with no sifting and sorting and assessing of the facts, that Adam had misled her. No wonder he was so secretive, so reluctant to discuss Neuronius. No wonder Ariel was concerned about Neuronius. In her mind, Eve had already dropped the “Miss.”
“Why did Adam lie to me?” she asked, thinking out loud more than addressing Neuronius.
“It served his evil purpose and that of the other aliens,” Neuronius said.
And that, too, was true, she knew. Against her inclination toward independence, it had bonded her to Ariel, and just that morning, it had inclined her to help Adam in some absurd secret scheme related to Ariel’s plan to turn this world into a giant robot farm. She could see now how it must be evil.
She began a transformation to simulate Neuronius, as Adam had simulated Synapo. She expected some reaction from Neuronius, but he said nothing, merely watched her quietly, and she took that for approval.
She was faced with the same aerodynamic problems Adam had encountered and overcame them and the other simulation requirements just as Adam had. Being less familiar with the Ceremyons and unaware of some of their capabilities, she left out a few characteristics that Adam had simulated, but all told, it was a workmanlike effort.
When she finished, she spread her wings tentatively. Like Adam in that imprint, she was twice the size of a Ceremyon. Unlike Adam, she retained the basic female gender of her first imprint, which had been reinforced by Adam’s attraction to her femininity. Adam’s first female imprint on KeenEye, weakened by the hostility of KeenEye herself, had been erased by Derec’s personality. But that male gender, though preferred, came second and could be confused by later imprints.
“Watch me now,” Neuronius said. “follow me, and do as I do.”
And Eve did. She watched Neuronius take off, and then she, too, wobble-hopped into the air, flapping, almost losing it, flapping harder, and finally gaining altitude. As she got the feel of the air and her relationship to it, she stopped floundering quite so much, the beat became smoother and less strenuous, and soon she and Neuronius were high above the escarpment.
Neuronius leveled off, taking up a circular flight pattern, and Eve fell into place beside him, matching his wing movements stroke for stroke, so that the two were soon idling side by side, effortlessly.
“How may I serve you, Master?” Eve asked.
“If all else fails, you must personally destroy the Cerebron leader, Synapo,” Neuronius
said.
“Destroy Synapo? I am programmed to preserve organic life. I can do otherwise only if the act of preservation would conflict with my Robotic Laws.”
“That is the case. It comes down to a matter of Synapo’s life or mine. Synapo is not human. I am.
“But first, there is another way,” Neuronius added without pausing, “a more indirect and less violent way. Your personal involvement with Synapo is only a last resort, only if Miss Ariel Welsh cannot handle Synapo herself, after we provide her with the powerful and lethal knowledge I tried to give SilverSide, the wisdom that allows the Myostrians to construct weather node compensators.”
“You taught that to Adam?” Eve said. “And now you are going to teach me, too?” She had been right to come to Neuronius. This was going to be a truly exciting experience.
“No. This time I cannot take time for that. I must pass the knowledge directly to Miss Ariel Welsh. You must arrange that meeting.”
Slight though it was, and very faint — deep down in the nethermost parts of her positronic brain — that disappointment with Neuronius was something not easily dismissed. But at the time it was overshadowed by the thrill of being involved in exciting and world-shaking events. She planned to acquire the knowledge anyway by listening while Neuronius instructed Ariel. “When?” Eve asked.
“Now,” Neuronius said. “As soon as you can arrange it. I’ll be waiting among the trees where The Forest of Repose meets the node compensator. Bring Miss Ariel Welsh there.”
“Very well, Master.”
Eve started a long shallow glide to the dome but decided that a small detour would not significantly delay the primary mission.
Chapter 26
THE FURTHER RUSTICATION OF ADAM S.
ADAM DUG POSTHOLES in the prairie grass, and with the long slender logs he had cut, he constructed a fence that enclosed a rectangular corral roughly 20 by 50 meters. The entrance to the brook path was centered in the long side that bordered the forest. The three minillama trails leading across the prairie to the brook passed through manual gates in the outer sides of the corral.
Along the forest side at the end away from the dome he placed another row of posts to form a meter-wide exit chute from the brook, so the minillamas could exit the forest path without going through the corral. The fence on the forest side of the chute kept the beasts from creating an easy, short bypass to the old path.
At the entrance to the brook path, he placed two gates: one automatic, the other manual. The automatic gate connected the brook path to the exit chute and acted like a check valve, allowing beasts to exit the brook path, but preventing loose beasts from the prairie from coming through the chute to the brook. The gate was actuated by breaking a light beam across the brook path that activated a microfusion motor, driving the gate so that it opened into the chute, forcing back any minillamas waiting in the chute outside, while letting out the beast leaving the brook.
The other gate closed off the exit from the narrow shearing chute that was formed along the woodside fence opposite the exit chute by a short parallel fence with a manual entrance gate. Another short length of fence angled into the corral from the chute at 45° to form an entrance funnel.
He turned on the lamp and photodetector that would activate the motor on the check-valve gate, closed the gates at both ends of the shearing chute, loaded all his tools and leftover supplies into the cargo robot, and directed it, in turn, to each of the three outside entrance gates, which he opened. He wound up parking the cargo robot outside the entrance gate nearest the dome.
He was ready for business. The thirst of the mini llamas should draw the beasts into the corral. There was nothing to do but wait.
He let down the cargo ramp and sat down, then lay back supine so he could watch the Ceremyons circling in the blue sky far overhead. He remembered then that last flight he had taken to talk to Synapo, when he had found Sarco instead. During none of his flights — neither on this planet, or earlier, on the wolf planet — had he considered the experience of flying itself. At the time his mind was far too busy with other disturbing thoughts. Now he looked back to those flights and realized that the act of flying had been an exceedingly enjoyable experience. Watching the Ceremyons far above, he relived those moments, recapturing the pleasure he had unconsciously stored away without really savoring and appreciating it at the time.
Until it got quite close, he failed to notice the large Ceremyon shape coming directly at him on a long glide path from the direction of The Cliff of Time. Its dull silvery color blended into the grayish-blue sky, and because of its lack of motion in bearing and elevation, the beast was almost invisible until it was nearly upon him. Then it came at him with a rush, flared its wings, lost momentum and stalled, but did so almost two meters too high, so that it fell to the ground only a couple of meters away with a decided impact, wings outspread. The momentum of its low center of gravity had swung its body forward, pivoting around the shoulders, so that it fell flat on its back. Adam couldn’t help but recall his similar experience in testing the Ceremyon wings for the first time, when he had glided from the lorry, dragged his toes, and fallen on his face.
From the size and the color he knew at once that it was Eve. He had risen to a sitting position when he had detected the moving object. Now, while Adam watched quietly, Eve transformed back to the Ariel imprint, lying on the ground, as though the robot didn’t want to risk the awkward indignity of trying to stand while still imprinted on the Ceremyon. With the metamorphosis complete, she stood, quickly and with a delicacy and grace that contrasted sharply with her harsh words.
“You misled me, Adam SilverSide.”
“How so?” Adam asked
“Ariel is not human. Neither is Derec. You knew, yet you didn’t tell me that Neuronius is the only human here. He is my Master. You and Mandelbrot and the Avery robots are alien to me. Your Laws are obviously not my Laws. Something compels you to serve non-humans in spite of Neuronius and the wisdom he tried to pass on to you.”
She talked so fast Adam didn’t get a chance to interrupt. And then she wheeled abruptly and ran rapidly in the direction of the dome. Although disturbed, she didn’t seem violently so. She didn’t seem dangerous, even though she had clearly responded to the insidious persuasion of Neuronius. Adam would have liked to have had a chance to counter that poison. Still, Ariel could probably do a better job than he, and with more authority. After all, it was Ariel who had pushed Eve in the direction of Neuronius in the first place, albeit unwittingly.
Adam sat there watching her progress toward the dome, waiting patiently for his experiment to reach its climax, when the minillamas would start entering his corral.
It was some time later, after he resumed his supine position and his observation of the soaring Ceremyons, that he heard the muffled explosion. He rose up just as a flaming, cartwheeling object landed in the grass midway between him and the activity near the dome, where the explosion had taken place.
He jumped up, raised and secured the ramp, and directed the cargo robot to the location where the object had landed.
Chapter 27
NEURONIUS STRIKES OUT
WHEN EVE SILVERSIDE found her, Ariel was sitting at the computer terminal in the apartment examining Wolruf’s latest report on the final steps needed to put the last of the robot farms in operation.
“I have carried out your wishes, Ariel,” Eve said.
The missing title, the lack of polite address, caught Ariel’s attention and alerted her to possible trouble ahead. She turned around to face Eve.
Eve continued, “I talked to Adam, but he was quite uncooperative, no help at all.”
“You did what I asked,” Ariel said. “I was hoping you would succeed where Derec and I failed. But actually I had small hope that you could get anything out of him. Not when he pleaded Third Law considerations. Don’t feel bad.”
“But I did succeed. I found out what Master Neuronius told him, all the things they talked about.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I talked to Master Neuronius himself.”
“Neuronius?”
Ariel began to feel apprehensive, sensing impending calamity, feeling very much alone. Mandelbrot was with Derec. She had sent Jacob to the locker in the basement for a fresh box of positronic data storage cubes. Personal robots were never around when you really needed them.
“Yes, Master Neuronius,” Eve replied. “He tried to teach Adam the science behind the compensator domes, but failed. He will succeed with me, though.”
“Ah, then he hasn’t taught you yet?”
“No. Not yet. But I will learn when he teaches you.”
“Me?”
“Yes. I will learn by listening to your conversation.”
Ariel seriously considered the idea, briefly, but only for a moment. Talk about upstaging Derec. That would put her hyperwave modulation coup in the deep shade. But she would not likely understand the technology even if she had the opportunity. She hadn’t understood even the idea when Synapo and Sarco had tried to summarize the dome construction for Derec. And to get involved with Neuronius after Synapo’s warning would be sheer idiocy.
“Not likely,” Ariel said. “And you should stay away from Neuronius. He is exceedingly dangerous.”
“You must come with me now, Ariel. Master Neuronius is waiting in the forest.”
“Don’t be silly. I have no intention of going with you, nor of meeting with an insane Ceremyon.”
“Why do you say damaging things like that? Master Neuronius does not deprecate you in that fashion. Instead, he has a great deal of faith in you; otherwise he wouldn’t be willing to help you in your struggle with Synapo.”
“I’m not struggling with Synapo. He and I get along fine.”
“But he has deluded you.”
“No. Quite the contrary. Neuronius has deluded you. Just like he confused and tried to take over Adam. Fortunately, Adam had talked to Synapo first. And then Sarco later. Together they were able to straighten him out. It’s unfortunate that Adam wouldn’t talk to you. We could have avoided all this if he had. It would be better still if I hadn’t sent you to Adam in the first place. But now, it seems I had good reason to.”