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  He was fine a moment later. “Thank you, Beta. There’s a strong Second Law block in my system. I can’t even voice the thought. ”

  Alpha nodded. “I know. I have the same block. Beta?”

  “I also. However, if one were to phrase it carefully in passive voice, one could suggest that perhaps a robot with a quantity of hyperspace keys could be sent out to recruit human inhabitants. ”

  Alpha agreed. “One could indeed suggest that. However, since we all share the common basic instruction block, one could presume that there are no robots in Robot City capable of carrying out this mission. ”

  “In theory, I agree,” Gamma said.

  Alpha turned back to Beta. “So if one cannot recruit humans directly, and if one has a similar block regarding building a hyperwave transmitter and broadcasting our location, how would one go about finding humans to serve?”

  “The indigenous species?” Gamma suggested.

  Beta shook his head. “No. They are clearly not human. ”

  “But Master Derec treated them as equals. ” All three supervisors fell silent.

  In a small, hesitant voice, Central said, “A equals B. ” Alpha looked up. “What did you say?”

  “A equals B,” Central repeated.

  Alpha looked to Beta. “Do you have any idea what it’s talking about?”

  “If A equals B, and B equals C,” Central said, quite confidently this time, “then A equals C. ”

  Slowly, it dawned on Beta. “Central, is A human?”

  “Yes. ”

  “And is B Master Derec?”

  “Yes. ”

  Gamma broke in. “What’s C, Central?” But the massive idiot had begun softly whistling an inane ditty.

  Beta caught Gamma’s attention. “Don’t you see? If human equals Master Derec, and Master Derec treats the local inhabitants as equals - ”

  Gamma’s eyes flared brightly. “Then the local inhabitants are equivalent to humans!”

  Alpha protested. “Incorrect. A human is a primate of the genus Homo - ”

  Beta and Gamma both turned on Alpha. “We’re not saying that the local inhabitants are truly human. We’re just saying that they’re equivalent to humans. ”

  For long seconds, Alpha’s eyes went dim. Just when Beta was beginning to worry about whether the supervisor had gone into First Law lockup, Alpha spoke.

  “ Agreed. For our purposes, we can treat them as nearhumans. Now we have a new question: How can we best serve them?”

  “That information is unavailable,” Gamma said.

  Beta considered the question. At the same time, not all of his energies were focused on the question; at a lower level in his brain, he sensed the joyous flow of harmonious potentials that came from finally having a clearly delineated problem to work on. “We must study the local environment,” he said at last. “Send out observer robots to study the local inhabitants in their native habitat. Obtain chemical analyses of the substances that are important to their well-being. ”

  “Agreed,” Alpha and Gamma said together.

  “Above all,” Beta continued, “we must allocate all available resources to linguistic studies. We must establish verbal communications with them. ”

  “Agreed. ”

  Alpha stepped back and looked first to Beta and then to Gamma, with a warm glow in his eyes. “Friends, I cannot tell you how satisfied I am with the progress we have made in this meeting. Now, at last, we can fulfill the final goal of our mission. ”

  “I have the greatest confidence in the mission,” Central said.

  Alpha spit out a message at the maximum rate his commlink would allow. “Meeting adjourned!” Switching their leg motors into high speed mode, the three supervisors hurried from the hall as fast as dignity would allow.

  Chapter 3. Aranimas

  The assault team leader licked his lips nervously, as if punishment could be inflicted by hyperwave. “Yes, Master?”

  Aranimas fixed the figure on the viewscreen with a glare from both eyes. “I am still waiting for your report. How many robots have you taken? Have you been able to capture the traitor Wolruf, or the human Derec?”

  The assault team leader’s right eye twitched rapidly, and he licked his lips again. “Actually, Master, we have encountered some, ah, difficulties, and, ah-”

  Aranimas leaned in close to the video pickup, and dropped his voice to its most forceful pitch. “How many robots have you taken?”

  With a fearful glance at his portable communicator, the team leader blurted it out. “None, Master. ”

  “What?”

  The team leader smiled helplessly. “We arrived too late. They’re all gone. That static we intercepted was the sound of every last robot on the planet teleporting out. Apparently the natives-they call themselves Ceremyons-could not tolerate the robots. So the robots left. ”

  Aranimas spat out several choice curses in his clan’s dialect. When he’d recovered some control, he glared at the viewscreen again. “Did they leave any artifacts? Buildings, parts, or tools?”

  “Sort of. ” The team leader turned his video pickup around to capture what he was seeing: a vast lake of liquid metal, crowned with two intersecting parabolic arches. The resolution was poor, but the arches appeared to be jets of silver liquid. “The natives say it’s a work of art; they call it ‘Negative Feedback. ’” He turned the video pickup back on his face again.

  Aranimas grumbled and rolled his eyes in counter-rotating circles. “One more chance, then. Have you located the traitor, or the humans?”

  The team leader’s expression brightened. “Yes, Master. ”

  Aranimas waited a few seconds. When no further information was forthcoming, he said, “Where are they?”

  “They left orbit three days ago and are headed in the general direction of Quadrant 224. ”

  Aranimas grumbled again. “Not what I was hoping for. But very well, collect your team and return to the ship. ”

  The team leader licked his lips once more and again blinked nervously. “Actually, Master, we have a little problem with that. ”

  Aranimas’ pale face flushed green with anger. “What now?”

  “The natives are soaring creatures; they obtain lift by inflating their bodies with large amounts of raw hydrogen. ”

  “So?”

  “While attempting to extract information, I ordered the shuttle gunner to hit one of the natives with a low-wattage beam. I expected merely to burn the native; instead, it exploded with considerable violence. ”

  “And the shuttle was damaged?”

  “Not exactly, Master. ”

  “ Not exactly?”

  “Master, the surviving natives have sealed the shuttle inside some kind of impenetrable force globe. It doesn’t appear to be damaged, but we can’t get to it. Could you send the second shuttle to extract us?”

  Aranimas’ heavy eyelids popped wide open, and his face turned a deep, angry green. “Bumbling fool! You can rot there for all the times you have failed me!” He slammed a bony fist down on the horseshoe console, blanking the team leader’s face off his viewscreen. “Scanners! There is a ship in Quadrant 224; find it for me. Helm! Prepare to leave orbit immediately, maximum speed. ” Orders given, he blanked all the screens except one, and through that screen stared out at the glistening starfield in Quadrant 224. Somewhere out there, perhaps one of those tiny points of ninth-magnitude light, was the quarry he had been chasing for so long.

  “I swear,” he whispered, talking solely to himself, “I have not come this close only to be cheated again. ”

  Chapter 4. Derec

  Ariel was in one of her cold and silent moods again. Derec tried to strike up a conversation over breakfast, but all he managed to do was irritate her more.

  “Look, Ari,” he said, “I know how you feel about losing the baby. I lost my whole life. When I woke up in that survival pod on the surface of that asteroid-”

  A look of fury flashed into Ariel’s eyes, and she fired a buttered scone
straight at Derec’s face. “Will you shut up about that stupid asteroid! “

  He ducked the pastry and tried his most soothing voice. “But honey, my amnesia is”

  “Old news! You’ve been telling me about your frosted amnesia and that crummy little asteroid for the last three years. Don’t you have any other stories?”

  “Well, no, honey. The amnesia-”

  “Aagh!” She threw another scone at Derec and this time caught him right between the eyes.

  By the time Derec finished wiping the butter off his face, Ariel had locked herself in the bedroom. He briefly considered trying to reason with her through the closed door, and then realized that discretion was the better part of valor. Leaving her sulking in their stateroom, he decided to take a stroll around the upper deck of the good ship Wild Goose Chase.

  The stroll went almost as badly as the breakfast. Within minutes Derec was thoroughly lost. As he wandered blindly through the great salons and companionways that simply hadn’t been there the night before, the temptation to use his internal commlink to call for help grew very strong.

  . Derec resisted. Frost, he thought angrily, for once r m going to figure out this mouse-maze myself! Pausing to visualize the latest floor plan of the deck, he thought once more about what a remarkable-and disturbing-ship it was.

  Try as he might, Derec could not get used to the idea that he wasn’t aboard a ship so much as he was inside an enormous robot. To make matters worse, the Wild Goose Chase was no ordinary robot, but rather one of his father’s incredible cellular creations, constructed of the same amorphous robotic “cells” as Robot City itself. Back in Robot City, Derec had slowly come to accept that the city constantly rearranged its architecture to suit the perceived needs of its human inhabitants. But out here, in space-far out in space-there was something terribly unnerving about the idea of having nothing between himself and the vacuum except a ship’s hull that changed shape like a Procyan jellyslug on a hot day.

  For example, three days before, when they’d left the planet of the Ceremyons, the Wild Goose Chase had been reasonably ship-shaped: long, narrow, and linear, with the control cabin in the nose and the planetary drives in the stern. As soon as they’d cleared the atmosphere, though, the ship had decided to shorten the walking distance between the bridge and the engine room by reconfiguring itself into a thick, flattened disk not unlike an enormous flying three-layer cake. Derec had found being locked inside a Personal during that first transformation to be a terrifying experience. Of course, thought Derec, it was for my own good. There was probably nothing but space on the other side of that door.

  Since then, the ship had continued to reconfigure itself in accordance with the expressed or implied needs of its passengers. Already a gymnasium, a synthe-sun deck, and a zero-G volleyball court had come and gone. These enormous, gaudily decorated new rooms puzzled Derec, though, until he remembered that he and Ariel had talked the night before about an old video she’d once seen. The show was some kind of ancient history swords-’n’-togas epic that took place on a steam-driven riverboat on Old Earth, and Ariel had been trying to make a point about the timeless nature of conflict in man/woman relationships.,

  But the ship, apparently, had picked up Ariel’s appreciation for the sets and attempted to respond by recreating the promenade deck of an ancient Egyptian riverboat. No doubt by evening it would have dug enough Dixieland jazz out of its memory banks to provide music in the ballroom.

  With a slight pang, Derec suddenly thought of three robots he’d once known. “The Three Cracked Cheeks would have loved this,” he said sadly. “What a pity they’re-” he caught himself-“ happily employed elsewhere and couldn ’ t possibly be here,”he finished loudly. Already, he’d learned to be very careful about what he said out loud aboard the Wild Goose Chase. There was no telling what the ship might try to cook up to satisfy a perceived human need, and Derec had no desire to see it resurrecting cybernetic ghosts.

  Just beyond the other side of the ballroom, Derec found a wide staircase that led down. It wasn’t quite what he’d been looking for-he’d wanted to find a way to get up to the bridge-but curiosity led him to try the stairs.

  The next level down was pure gray utilitarian metal. Even the environmental responses were down to a bare minimum: A puddle of light tracked him down the companionway, switching on two steps ahead of him and switching off two steps behind. The only door he found opened into a tiny, darkened cell.

  His mother’s three robots were in there. Adam, Eve, and Lucius II stood rigidly frozen in position, their eyes dim, as if someone had made an aluminum sculpture of a three-way conversation. For a moment, Derec’s breath quickened. Ever since they’d left Robot City, his father had been itching for a chance to melt the learning machines down into slag, or at the very least shut them down permanently. Had he finally done it?

  A quick check of his internal commlink, and Derec relaxed. The three robots weren’t deactivated. They were simply locked up in one of their interminable high-bandwidth philosophical discussions. He moved on.

  At the end of the hallway, he found a small lift-shaft much like the one on the original asteroid where the robots had found him. It was a simple platform, one meter square, with one three-position switch on the control stalk: up, down, or stop. Obviously intended for robotic use-the sight of 11 human riding such a contraption would send most robots into First Law conniptions-the platform was also obviously at the top of its guide rail. “Well, that simplifies my choices,” Derec said. He stepped onto the platform and pressed down.

  With a sickening lurch, the platform dropped out from underneath him.

  Derec didn’t have time to panic. He fell through ten meters of darkness, then brightness flooded the shaft as the platform dropped through into a lighted cabin. Just before he passed through the opening, some kind of localized gravity field caught him and deposited him as gently as a feather, albeit sputtering like a goose, on the deck of the cabin.

  Wolruf and Mandelbrot were already there, lounging comfortably in two acceleration couches that faced a large control console. The small, dog-like alien was spooning something that looked like Brussels sprouts in milk out of a bowl and between bites chatting with the patchwork robot. Her furry brown ears went up when Derec hit the floor; together, she and Mandelbrot turned to look at him.

  “’ullo,” Wolruf said around a mouthful of greenery. “Nice of ‘u to drop in. ”

  Mandelbrot stared at Derec a moment, but did not rise…, Are you hurt?’, he asked at last.

  “Only my dignity,” Derec said, as he got up off the floor and brushed some dust off his posterior.

  “That is good,” Mandelbrot noted. The robot turned back to Wolruf… You were saying?”

  “ ‘at can wait,” Wolruf said. She favored Derec with a wicked grin, then barked out, “Ship! Master Derec wants t’ sit next t’ me!”

  “That’s all right, Wolruf, I can-what!” A glob of floor material suddenly mushroomed up under Derec, sweeping him off his feet and catching him like a giant hand. By the time it’d moved up next to Wolruf, it’d formed into another acceleration couch.

  Wolruf leaned over, smiling wolfishly, and offered Derec a dripping spoonful of whatever it was she was eating. “ ‘u want t’ try some gaach? Is real good. Put ‘air on ‘ur face. ”

  . Derec looked at the thing on the spoon-which, on closer. inspection, looked nothing like a Brussels sprout-and shook his head. “Thanks, I, uh, already ate. ”

  Wolruf shrugged as if disappointed. “ ‘ur loss. ” With a practiced flip, she tossed the green globule up, then caught it with a frightening snap of her long teeth. “Mmm,” she said in a deep, throaty growl that was apparently a sign of delight.

  . Derec finally recovered something of his composure, and started to look around the cabin he’d dropped into. “What…? Why, this is the bridge!”

  “T’row ‘at boy a milkbone,” Wolruf said between bites.

  “But last night the bridge was at the top of
the ship!”

  Wolruf favored Derec with a toothy smile. “ ‘at’s right. But ‘at was ‘en. ‘is iss now. ” Derec kept darting nervous glances around the cabin, as if keeping an eye on everything would stop it from metamorphosing. Wolruf leaned over and put a furry hand on Derec’s shoulder. “Face it, Derec. ‘ur on a crazy ship. ” She shrugged

  “But iss not dangerous crazy. ” The little alien finished the last of her gaach. then licked the bowl clean with her long pink tongue. “Mmm,” she growled again as she tossed the bowl and spoon over her shoulder, to clatter onto the deck.

  “Wolruf!” Derec was shocked. “Do you always throw your dirty dishes on the floor?”

  She rolled over, smiled innocently, and brought a hand up to start scratching her right ear. “What dishes?”

  “Why-,” Derec turned to point at it but stopped short. The spoon had already melted into the cabin deck, and only a tiny bit of the bowl’s rim remained.

  “Robot City materral,” Wolruf said with a shrug. “So ‘ow’s Arr’el?”

  . Derec watched the last trace of the bowl disappear, then sighed. “Still having a rough time. ”

  “Th’ baby?” Wolruf asked gently.

  “Yeah. ” Derec fell back onto the couch and stared at his hands. “Ariel is still trying to pretend that she’s too tough to mourn, I guess. So instead, she treats me like it’s my fault she lost the baby. ” Derec fell silent a minute, thinking about the two-month-old fetus that Ariel had just lost. Maybe it was his fault. After all, the embryo’s brain had been destroyed by an infestation of chemfets, the same microscopic robotic “cells” that swam in his bloodstream and gave him his incredible biological interface with Robot City. He should have realized that the chemfets were a communicable disease.

  “Never ‘ad pups myself,” Wolruf broke in with a hint of sadness in her voice. “But unnerstand that th’ mother gets quite attached t’ ‘em long b’fore she actually whelps. ”

  “Yeah, well-look, this is depressing. Let’s change the subject, okay? How’s the flight going?”