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  Maverick

  ( Isaac Asimov’s Robot City: Robots And Aliens - 5 )

  Bruce Bethke

  Bruce Bethke

  Maverick

  Isaac Asimov’s Robot City: Robots And Aliens

  Book 5

  Introduction

  His memory has been erased. Hers was destroyed by a disease, and reconstructed with his help. His real name is David Avery, but he knows himself as Derec. Her name is Ariel Burgess.

  Together they found Robot City and plumbed its mysteries. Derec, at peril to his life and in the throes of one of his mad father’s experiments, learned to master Robot City and its robots. Hordes of chemfets-microscopic robots-in his blood gave him a direct connection with the central computer.

  During a brief idyll, Derec and Ariel lived normal lives on Aurora. But Derec’s final confrontation with his father had interrupted what the robots called the Migration Program-the program had not been canceled. Some robots had escaped from Robot City and had built new robot cities on new, uninhabited planets. Planets, at least, that were supposed to be uninhabited.

  Supposed to be, but were not. Derec’s placid interlude was shattered by a distress call from one of the new robot cities, telling of an attack. Rushing to the scene without Ariel, he and Mandelbrot discovered that the attackers were beings who looked something like wolves-a race of intelligent wolves.

  First, there was a meteor flashing through the sky. Then the strange one came, the metallic-looking one they called SilverSides, who never ate and wished only to protect the Kin and serve their wishes. It could only have been that SilverSides had been sent by the OldMother, ancestress and creator of the Kin. She had been sent to save them from the WalkingStones and the Hill of Stars they had built.

  Not even SilverSides knows that she was a robot, cousin to the robots that were building a robot city on the Kin’s planet. She had been designed and built not by Dr. Avery, Derec’ s father, but by Dr. Janet Anastasi, Derec’s mother, who was running her own experiment in robotics.

  SilverSides had been born shapeless, unformed, ready to imprint upon the first intelligent being she encountered. But the plan had not allowed for a robot city on the same planet. More intelligent than the Kin, SilverSides soon became their leader in the struggle against the robots. She launched a raid that crippled the city’s main planning computer, and, recognizing Derec as the leader of the robots, attacked him.

  Only Derec’s invoking the First Law of Robotics saved him. But SilverSides was left with a dilemma. Were not the Kin human? How could they and Derec be human, and protected by the First Law? SilverSides took on the form of a human and the name Adam, but before this problem could be resolved there was another distress call-from Ariel. Joined now by Wolruf, Derec, Mandelbrot, and Adam went to her aid.

  In Derec’s absence, Ariel had gotten a call from yet another robot city. This one was also under attack by aliens, but aliens of a kind vastly different from the Kin.

  Ariel found this robot city almost completely enclosed by a dome. This planet’s inhabitants, the bird-like Ceremyons, were as advanced, compared to humans, as the Kin were primitive. Rather than attacking the city directly, they were sealing it under a dome where it could do no harm. The robots, following their programmed impulse to build and to prepare the planet for human habitation, were arranging to rebuild the city at a different location.

  As soon as Ariel arrived, she summoned Derec through his internal connection with all the robot cities. But by the time he reached this planet, she had reached a tentative compromise-the Ceremyons, living almost all their lives in the air, would allow the robots to use some of the ground for farming, and they would allow one small enclosed city for the export of the food. Derec, with the help of the supervisor robots, reprogrammed the city.

  Adam, still having no clear definition of what a human being is, imprinted on the Ceremyons, but they, needing no protection and having no need of his services, sent him back to Derec. Not yet certain to whom he owed Second Law obedience, he voluntarily set up his own agricultural experiment. In the course of this isolated work, he encountered a great silvery egg-an egg that he recognized as another being like himself, but not yet imprinted. Rushing back to the robot city, he brought Ariel to the egg in time for the new robot to imprint on her. Thus was Eve born.

  Eve also went through the trauma of imprinting on the Ceremyons, but she encountered one who convinced her that he and he alone was human. Only his increasingly obvious insanity freed her from that dangerous illusion.

  The agricultural reprogramming finished, Derec and Ariel and Wolruf decided to remove Adam and Eve from all possibly harmful influences-they would all go back to Robot City.

  They returned to a Robot City in shambles. An unknown influence had seized control of the city’ s central computer, and tiny artificial humans-a few inches tall-were tucked away in many of the buildings. The robots had turned from maintaining the city to wild experimentation that reminded Derec and Ariel of the days of Lucius.

  The obvious culprit was Dr. Avery. Although the experiments were of the sort that he had abhorred, he was the only one Derec knew who could seize control of the city. But while Avery did turn up in the city, he was so angry over the changes that he could not have been responsible. He was also no longer responsible for his own actions; he was now completely mad, convinced that he was turning into a robot.

  Ariel took charge of the homunculi, and of Dr. Avery. She was more successful with Avery than with the tiny people, effecting the beginnings of a cure. Derec and Mandelbrot, meanwhile, tracked down the invading presence, an intelligence that called itself The Watchful Eye. This intelligence, it appeared, was guiding all the bizarre experiments in the hope of discovering the nature of human beings-and whether it might be one.

  With the city collapsing around them, all forces joined to corner The Watchful Eye in its hidden lair. Finding it disguised as an ordinary piece of furniture, they at last forced it to reveal and face its true nature: the third of Dr. Anastasi’s “learning machines. ”

  Taking the name Lucius II, the new robot immediately entered an intense exchange of information with Adam and Eve. To the already unresolved question of what constitutes a human being, Lucius II added the possibility that these three robots may be humans.

  These discussions took place in isolation from the humans and Wolruf. They were concerned with the issue of what to do with the packs of small, rodent-like animals that roamed the streets, a residue of some of Lucius II’s experiments. Although they were clearly not human, these creatures had been generated using human genetic code as a starting point. Were they, then, also human, or could they be treated as vermin? This problem is complicated by Ariel’s pregnancy, and the discovery that the fetus has been damaged by Derec’s chemfets.

  None of the medical robots on Robot City would even consider an abortion, since they considered the fetus human, even though it lacked a complete nervous system and could not survive birth. Adam offered to perform the operation in return for transportation back to the planet of the Ceremyons. The three learning machines hoped to consult with the Ceremyons on the question of humanity.

  Robot City created a ship, which Dr. Avery named the Wild Goose Chase, from its own material. Surviving an accident that threatened all their lives, and Wolruf’s definition as human, they reached the planet of the Ceremyons to discover that their elaborate plans had been canceled. Someone-a woman, and apparently a brilliant roboticist-had come and helped the Ceremyons reprogram the entire city. Derec and Dr. Avery tried to adapt the city to serve the Ceremyons, but at last the natives could find only one useful purpose for it. As the humans, Wolruf, and the robots left for the planet of the Kin, they saw the robot city slowly melting into itself, and
taking on its new form as a vast metallic sculpture.

  Prologue. Aranimas

  He sat before the horseshoe-shaped control console, like a hungry spider sitting in the middle of its web. Taut, alert, watching and waiting with an almost feral intensity; nearly immobile, except for his eyes.

  The eyes: Two black, glittering beads set in bulging turrets of wrinkled skin on opposite sides of his large, hairless head. The eyes moved independently in quick, lizard-like jerks, darting across the massed video displays and instrument readouts, taking it all in.

  Watching.

  One eye locked in on the image of a small, starfish-like creature. His other eye tracked across and joined it as the video display split-screened to show the starfish on one side and the inky black of space on the other. A small ice asteroid drifted into view, and a pair of ominous-looking rails smoothly rose to track it.

  He moved. An arm so gaunt and elongated, with carpal bones so long it gave the appearance of having two elbows, more unfolded than reached out to touch a small stud beneath the image of the starfish.

  The grim, lipless mouth opened; the voice was high and reedy. “Denofah. Praxil mastica. ” The rails flared brightly. An instant later the asteroid was gone, replaced by a swiftly dissipating cloud of incandescent gas.

  The mouth twitched slightly at the corners, in an expression that may have been a grim smile. He pressed the stud again. “Rijat. ” The screen showing the starfish and the weapon went blank.

  An indicator light at the far right end of the console began blinking. Swiveling one eye to the screen just above the indicator, he reached across and pressed another stud. The image that appeared was that of a younger member of his own species.

  “Forrgive the intrrusion, Masterr,” the young one said in heavily accented Galactic, with a piping trill on the “r” sounds. “But your orrders were to reporrt any K-band interferrence instantly. ”

  Both eyes locked on the image, and he swiveled his chair around so that he was facing the viewscreen. “Did it match the patterrn? Were you able to get a dirrectional fix?”

  “Master Aranimas, it still matches the patterrn. Rrobots using hyperspace keys to teleport; there must be thousands of them. We have both a directional fix and an estimated distance. ”

  “Excellent! Give me the coordinates; I’ll relay them to the navigator. ” While the young one was reading off the numbers, Aranimas swiveled his left eye onto another screen and pressed another stud. “Helm! Prepare for hyperspace jump in five hazodes. ” Another screen, another stud. “Navigator! Lay in the fastest course possible to take us to these coordinates. ” He repeated the numbers the young one had given him.

  When the orders were all given and the screens all blank, he sat back in his chair, entwined his long, bony fingers, and allowed himself a thin smile. “Wolruf, you traitor, I have you now. And Derec, you meddlesome boy, I’ll have your robots, your teleport keys, and your head in my trophy case. ” He reached forward and thumbed a button, and the starfish reappeared on a screen. “Deh feh opt spa, nexori. Derec. ”

  The starfish seemed quite excited at the prospect.

  Chapter 1. Janet

  Attitude thrusters fired in short, tightly controlled bursts. With a delicate grace that belied its thirty-ton mass, the small, streamlined spacecraft executed a slow pirouette across the starspeckled void, flipping end-for-end and rolling ninety degrees to starboard. When the maneuver was complete, the attitude thrusters fired again, to leave the ship traveling stem-first along its orbital trajectory and upside-down relative to the surface of the small, blue-white planet.

  Slowly, ponderously, the main planetary drives built up to full thrust. One minute later they shut down, and the hot white glare of the final deceleration burn faded to the deep bloody red of cooling durylium ion grids.

  A final touch on the attitude jets, and the ship slipped quietly into geostationary orbit. Yet so skilled was the robot helmsman, so flawless the gravity compensation fields, that the ship’s sole human occupant had not yet noticed any change in flight status.

  The robot named Basalom, however, patched into the ship’s communications system by hyperwave commlink, could not help but receive the news. He turned to the human known as Janet Anastasi, blinked his mylar plastic eyelids nervously, and allocated a hundred nanoseconds to resolving a small dilemma.

  Like the really tough ones, the problem involved his conflicting duties under the Laws of Robotics. The Second Law aspect of the situation was clear: A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings. except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. Dr. Anastasi had specifically ordered him to alert her the moment they entered orbit about Tau Puppis IV. He’d already cross-checked the navigator’s star sightings against the reference library in the ship’s computer; the small, Earthlike world currently situated some 35,000 kilometers overhead was definitely Tau Puppis IV. Unmistakably, his Second Law duty was to tell Dr. Anastasi that she had arrived at her destination.

  As soon as Basalom started to load that statement into his speech buffer, though, a nagging First Law priority asserted itself. The First Law said: A robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction allow a human being to come to harm. Ever since they’d left the planet of the Ceremyons, any mention of the Learning Machine project seemed to cause Dr. Anastasi tremendous emotional distress. Even an implied reference to her son, her ex-husband, or the way the two of them had thoroughly bollixed the experiment by abducting Learning Machine #2 was enough to send the woman’s blood pressure rocketing and turn her voiceprint into a harsh and jangled mass of severe stress indicators.

  Now they’d returned to Tau Puppis IV, the world on which Dr. Anastasi had dropped Learning Machine #1. Basalom integrated that information with the data base he’d built up over two years of working with Dr. Anastasi, and concluded with 95% confidence that breaking the news to her would precipitate a negative emotional reaction. He could not predict exactly what her reaction would be-no robot was that sophisticated-but he could predict beyond a reasonable doubt that the information would cause Dr. Anastasi significant emotional discomfort.

  And that was Basalom’ s dilemma. How did this emotional pain fit within the First Law definition of harm? His systems programming was not precise on that point. If emotional pain was not harm, there was little point to his being programmed to perceive it. But if evoking strong emotion was harm, then obeying Second Law orders could become a terribly ticklish business. How could he obey an order to tell Dr. Anastasi something that would upset her?

  Basalom weighed positronic potentials. The order to provide the information had been emphatic and direct. The harm that would ensue-that might ensue-was only a possibility, and would, Basalom knew from experience, pass fairly quickly.In addition, he recalled from experience that Dr. Anastasi’s reaction to his not providing the information would be just as extreme an emotion as if he did provide it.

  The possibility of harming a human balanced; it was the same, no matter whether he acted or refrained from acting. He began downloading the statement to his speech buffer; as soon as he’d slowed his perception levels down to human realtime, he’d tell her.

  Of course, if blood spurted out of her ears when he voiced the words, then he’d know that he’d caused some harm.

  “Dr. Anastasi?” The slender blond woman looked up from her smartbook and speared Basalom with a glare. “We have entered geostationary orbit over the fourth planet in the Tau Puppis star system, mistress. ”

  “Well, it’s frosted well about time. ” She reacted as if surprised by the tone of her own voice, rubbed the bags under her bloodshot eyes, and smiled apologetically. “I’m sorry, Basalom. I’ve shot the messenger again, haven’t I?”

  Basalom blinked nervously and did a quick scan of the room, but found no evidence of an injured messenger or a recently fired weapon. “Mistress?”

  She dismissed his question with a wave of her hand. “An old expression; never mind. Is the scanning team ready?”
>
  Through his internal commlink, Basalom consulted the rest of the crew. The reply came back as a dialogue box patched through to the scanning team, and a direct visual feed from a camera on the dorsal fin. From Basalom’s point of view he saw Mistress Janet’s image in the upper right corner and the scanning team’s input/output stream in the upper left corner. Both windows overlaid a view of the ship’s top hull gleaming brightly in the reflected planetlight, and as he watched, a long slit opened down the spine of the ship, and a thin stalk somewhat resembling an enormous dandelion began rising slowly toward the planet. At the tip of the stalk, delicate antennae were unfolding like whisker-thin flower petals and dewsparkled spiderwebs.

  “They have opened the pod bay doors,” Basalom said, “and are erecting the sensor stalk now. ” He shot a commlink query at the scanning crew; in answer, data from the critical path file flashed up in the scanning team’s dialogue box. “The stalk will be fully deployed in approximately five minutes and twenty-three seconds. ”

  Dr. Anastasi made no immediate reply. To kill time while waiting for something further to report, Basalom began allocating every fifth nanosecond to building a simulation of how Dr. Anastasi saw the world. It had often puzzled him, how humans had managed to accomplish so much with only simple binocular vision and an almost complete inability to accept telesensory feeds. How lonely it must feel to be locked into a local point of view! he decided.

  At last, Dr. Anastasi spoke. “Five minutes, huh?” Basalom updated the estimate. “And fourteen seconds. ”

  “Good. ” She leaned back in her chair, closed her eyes, and tried to work a kink out of her neck. “Boy, will I be glad to get this over with. ”