Alliance

Chapter 3. The Biological Laboratory

“I still think we ought to take one of them apart.” Avery was leaning over Lucius, positioning the internal scanner for yet another cross-section through the robot’s body. It may have resembled a robot on the outside, but that was as far as the similarity went; Lucius’s interior resembled a human body far more than it did a robot’s. It didn’t have any unnecessary internal organs, but those it did need were modeled after the human pattern. It had bunches of cells arranged like muscles, bones, and nerves, at least, rather than the more conventional linkages and cams.

Interesting as that discovery was, it had been hours since they had made it, and Avery was getting frustrated

“And I still say it won’t tell us anything we can’t find out indirectly,” Derec replied. He was sitting on a stool on the opposite side of the examination table, watching the screen and getting bored. “They’re obviously comparing notes, probably on their experience with humans. Why not let them go for a while? They might come up with something interesting.”

“Like some wonderful new way to disturb my cities,” said Avery.

“Your cities can take care of themselves. And if not, I can take care of them.”

“You think so. I think you’re just trying to protect your mother’s experiment.”

Derec considered that possibility. Was he trying to protect her experiment, or was he simply trying to protect three robots from being needlessly destroyed? He had thought it was the latter, but now that Avery mentioned it…

“Maybe I am,” he said.

“You don’t even know her.”

“That’s not my fault.”

“And it is mine. Guilty. I shouldn’t have wiped your memory. When I think of a good way to make it up to you, I will, but believe me, you’re better off without it.”

“I’d like to be the judge of that.”

Avery had been looking at the scanner display, but now he turned his head and looked his son straight in the eyes. “Of course you would. I can understand that. But bear in mind, if you got your memory back, what you’d have memories of. I told you once before that you had a fairly normal childhood, and that’s true enough, but it was a normal childhood in an Auroran family, which is the next best thing to no family at all. Your mother and I hardly saw one another after your birth. You hardly saw either of us. In fact, you spent most of your childhood with robots.”

“No wonder I fit in so well here,” Derec said drily.

Avery said nothing, and Derec sensed his embarrassment. At least he’s embarrassed, he thought, then chided himself for feeling vindictive. Learning to live with a recovering psychopath was almost as difficult as being the recoveree. The things his father had done while insane were not his fault, at least not in the sense that he could be held responsible for them, yet Derec still felt that he had been poorly treated. Somebody should feel bad about it, shouldn’t they?

Or was this another situation like the one they had just gone through with the laser? Was wishing for remorse just another way of mistreating a human?

No wonder the robots were having such a time trying to understand human interactions. The humans themselves didn’t understand them half the time.

But the robots were learning. Witness the cargo robots, still standing patiently around the lab, watching for signs of recurring violence. They had already learned not to trust a human’s stated intentions.

How could that be a good thing? Before long these robots of his father’s would decide that humans were not to be trusted at all, and hence not to be obeyed in any situation where trust was necessary to avoid an internal conflict with the Three Laws. As for his mother’s robots, if they ever came out of their communication fugue, who could predict what conclusions they would draw from their collective experiences? The only prediction Derec was willing to make with any certainty was that they would be even less useful than before.

That thought made Derec ask, “What were our house robots like?”

Avery looked up momentarily in surprise. “What do you mean, ‘what were they like?’ Like robots, of course. Old-style robots. I didn’t develop the cellular robot until after you’d left home, and your mother stole her design from me.”

“That’s what I thought. The point is, they did the mundane work for you, right? Cooking and cleaning and changing diapers and emptying the trash.”

“Of course they did,” Avery said. He sounded indignant, as if the very thought that he would have done any of those chores was obscene.

“They were useful, then.”

“What are you getting at?”

“I’m getting at the obvious observation that the robots around here, despite their advanced design-maybe because of their advanced design-aren’t as useful as the older models. They’re more trouble. Too much independence.”

Avery moved the scanner a fraction and keyed the display again. Another view into the nerve and musclelike masses of Lucius’s interior appeared on the screen. “Maybe my definition of useful is different from yours,” he said.

They had already had that conversation. Avery was simply not interested in immediate utility, and Derec was. There was no sense arguing over it. Derec got up off his stool with a sigh, stretched, and said, “I’m about to fall asleep here. Are you going to keep at it all day?”

“Probably,” Avery replied. “I think I’ll leave you to it, then.”

“Fine.”

“Just don’t cut any of them up, okay?”

Avery looked pained. “I’ll do with them whatever I please. If that includes cutting them up, then that’s what I’ll do.”

Derec and Avery stared at one another across the unmoving robot’s body for long, silent seconds. One of the cargo robots near the wall took a step toward them. Derec looked up at the robot, then back to Avery. He considered ordering the robot to keep Avery from harming the others, but decided against it. It would just escalate the war between them. Besides, there were better ways.

He shrugged and backed off. “It’s your conscience. But I’m asking you, please don’t cut any of them up. As a favor to me.”

Avery frowned. “I’ll think about it,” he replied.

Derec nodded. Now it was up to Avery to decide whether or not to escalate the war. It was a risk, but a calculated one. Derec had felt a spark of humanity in Avery a couple of times today; he was willing to bet his father was sick of confrontation, too.

“Thanks.” He turned away and said to the cargo robots, “Come on, the rest of you. You can take me back home and then get on with whatever else you were doing.”

He really had intended to go home, but on the way there the sight of Lucius’s creatures still scavenging in the streets reminded him that he still had to do something about them, and soon, or they were going to start eating each other. With Lucius himself out of commission, there was only one good place to start, and it wasn’t at home. “I’ve changed my mind,” he said to the robot driving the truck. “Take me to Lucius’s lab instead.”

The robot hesitated a long time-nearly the length of a block-then asked, “Which one do you wish to visit?”

“How many has he got?”

“The central computer lists thirty-seven separate laboratories.”

“ Thirty-seven?”

“That is correct.”

“What did he do with that many labs?”

The cargo robot was silent for a moment as it conferred with the computer again, then said, “Fifteen were dedicated to fabricating the artificial humans he called ‘homunculi’ and are now abandoned. The other twenty-two are engaged in fabricating humans.”

“ Areengaged? Still?”

“That is correct.”

“We told him not to continue with that!”

“That is also correct.”

The cargo robot offered no more explanation, but Derec could see plainly enough what the situation was. Lucius had interpreted his orders to mean only him, leaving the other robots who had been helping him free to continue the project. Well, he would put a stop to that soon enough.

But twenty-two labs! No wonder the city was full of rats.

“Take me to the one he showed us yesterday,” Derec said.

The driver evidently had no problem with Derec’s inclusive “us,” nor with finding the appropriate lab in the computer’s records. It slowed the truck and turned left at the next corner, made another left turn at the next block and they went back the way they had come for a while, then turned right and went on for block after block through the city. The rat population on the streets dwindled, then grew larger again as they left the sphere of influence of one lab and entered another. Evidently Lucius had felt no need to cluster his workplaces.

Derec, watching the towering buildings slide past, felt again how empty the city was without people in it. None of these buildings had any real purpose, nor did the robots in them, save for Avery’s nebulous experiment in social dynamics. And what could possibly come of that? The robots weren’t creating a society of their own; they were instead simply building and rebuilding in anticipation of someday having humans to serve. And some of them, he thought wryly, were busy building those humans. All because of the Three Laws of Robotics and the poorly defined quantity, “human,” those Laws directed them to protect and obey.

Derec had felt a great sadness pervading the city since he first arrived. It felt almost haunted to him, the robots wandering about like lost souls, purposeless. He was attributing human qualities to inhuman beings, he knew, but Frost, they didn’t have to be human to be lost, or to feel sad about it. Robots were intelligent beings, no matter what their origin, and it behooved their creators to treat them kindly. That included giving them a sense of purpose and letting them fulfill it. It seemed clear to Derec that none of these Robot City robots, nor the ones lying inert in Avery’s lab, had been treated well by their creators.

Humans make poor gods, he thought wryly.

The cargo robots dropped Derec off outside a low, nondescript warehouselike building. If it was the same one Lucius had shown them the day before, then it had been repaired, but not before a veritable horde of the rat-creatures had escaped. Two hordes, Derec decided as he watched them scurrying about through the streets. They had been thick in the other parts of town, but this was ridiculous.

He ran from the truck to the main door, sending rats squealing off in all directions, but none chased after him.

Yet, he thought.

Directly inside the main door a hallway led down the length of the building, with doors opening to either side. Derec walked down the hallway, expecting to find a laboratory sufficient in complexity to support a complete genetic engineering project, but when he peered through the first doorway to his right, he couldn’t help laughing. Avery was the mad scientist, but Lucius’s lab-at least this part of it-was the typical mad scientist’s lair. Vats of bubbling brew stood in various stages of incubation or fermentation or whatever was going on along one wall, while electrical devices of various natures hummed and clicked contentedly over them. A bank of cages along another wall held a bewildering array of small creatures, ranging from insects to something that might have been a mouse to one of the rodentlike creatures now overrunning the city. Another wall held trays of growing plants. In the center of the room, table after table held enough interconnected glassware to distill a lake. From the entire collection came a mixture of smells stronger and more varied than from an explosion in a kitchen automat.

The necessity of dealing with organic material had forced the lab into the configuration he saw, but Derec found it funny nonetheless. The gleaming robots who tended the equipment made it even more so by contrast. They should have been wearing dark robes and walking with stooped posture.

One of them walked past carrying a test tube filled with cloudy liquid. Derec cleared his throat noisily and said, “We’ve got a problem here.”

“That is unfortunate,” the robot answered without pausing in its stride. “How may I help?” It walked on over to a centrifuge, put the tube inside, and started it spinning.

Derec felt momentary annoyance at talking to a robot who was too busy to stop for him, but some remnant of his thoughts on the trip over kept him from ordering the robot to drop what it was doing. This robot, at least, had a purpose. A wrong one, but maybe they could do something about that without defeating it completely.

“To start with,” he said, “you can’t create any humans. That goes for all of you, in all of these labs. Is that clear?”

“Yes,” the robot replied. It looked at Derec, then back to the centrifuge. If it was disappointed, it didn’t show it.

“All right. Next, then, I need to know what those creatures” Derec waited until the robot looked to see where he was pointing, “-there at the end of the line-eat.”

“They are omnivorous,” the robot replied, gathering up a handful of empty tubes from a box and inserting them one by one into some sort of diagnostic instrument beside the centrifuge.

“There’s a whole bunch of them running loose in the city without a food supply. We need to give them one.”

“That would only increase their numbers. Is that what you wish to do?”

“No. But I don’t want them to starve, either.”

“We have discovered that if they do not starve, they will reproduce. There is no intermediate state. The number of creatures existing now are the result of a large food supply, which we have ceased providing.”

“You intend for them to starve, then?” Derec watched the robot push buttons on the face of the instrument.

“That is correct.”

“Why not introduce something that eats them?”

“That seems needlessly complex. Starvation will reduce their numbers equally well.”

“I see.” Derec felt somehow vindicated to hear the robot’s answer. Evidently robots didn’t make very good gods, either.

He thought of Avery’s suggestion to have the robots collect and kill them. A typical Avery idea, little better than the robots’ starvation plan. Much as he wanted to avoid conflict, Derec couldn’t let that happen, either.

“Look,” he said, going on into the lab and pulling up a stool, “even if you can’t make humans, this project of yours can still be good for something. Let me tell you about balanced ecosystems…”

The sun was long down by the time he made it home that night. Ariel was in the library, leaning back on a couch with her feet up on a stool and listening to one of Avery’s recordings of Earther music while she read a book. Neither Avery nor Wolruf were in evidence, though the loud snoring coming from down the hallway was suggestive of at least one of them. Mandelbrot stood in a wall niche behind Ariel, waiting for her to need his services.

Ariel put down the book and scowled at Derec in mock hostility when he entered the room. “Forget where you lived?” she asked.

“Almost.” Derec sat down beside her on the couch and nuzzled her neck playfully. “I’ve been trying to plan a simple ecosystem for the city, but it’s a lot tougher than I thought. Do you realize that you have to balance everything right down to the microbes in the soil? Pick the wrong ones, or not enough varieties of the right ones, and your whole biosphere goes crazy.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes, that’s so. I’ve been studying it all day.”

“Sounds exciting.” She yawned wide, and the book slipped from her fingers to land with a thump on the floor. “Oops. Tired.”

Derec scooped it up for her and laid it on the couch’s armrest. “It’s late. We should go to bed.”

“I guess we should.”

Derec took her hand and helped her up from the couch. She let him lead her into the bedroom, where he pulled down the covers and left her on the foot of the bed to undress and crawl in while he used the Personal.

When he came out, she was already asleep. He slid quietly into bed beside her and within minutes he was out as well, dreaming of food chains and energy flow.

But once again, he awoke to the sound of someone throwing up in the Personal. He sat up with a start, his heart suddenly pounding. The sun barely reached the window this time, but it was up. It was morning, and Ariel was sick.

His heart was still pounding when she opened the door and looked out at him. “Does this mean what I think it means?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “But I think we’d better find out.”

The urine test came up positive, as they knew it would. Even so, it was hard for either of them to remain standing when the medical robot said, “May I be the first to offer you congratulations on the occasion of-”

“Wow,” Derec murmured. He and Ariel had been holding hands in anticipation; now he squeezed hers tightly.

“Oh,” Ariel said, her hand suddenly going slack. “I don’t-”

“But how?”

“I wasn’t supposed to be able to-”

“The cure!” Derec wrapped his arms around her and picked her up off the ground in a hug. “When they cured your amnemonic plague on Earth, they must have ‘cured’ your birth control, too.”

“They might have warned me.”

Derec’s grin faltered. He set her back on her feet again.

“What’s the matter? Don’t you want-?”

Ariel took the two steps necessary to reach a chair and sat heavily. “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s just such a shock. I’m not ready for it.”

“Well, we’ve got plenty of time to get used to the idea. At least, I think we do.” Derec turned to the medical robot. “How far along is she?”

“Fifteen days, plus or minus a day,” answered the robot. “A blood test would be more accurate, but I discourage invasive testing for such minor gain.”

“Me too,” Ariel said. She held out her hand and Derec took it again. “Well. Two weeks. That leaves us a while yet.” She looked down the corridor into the empty expanse of the hospital, then back to Derec.

Derec squeezed her hand again for reassurance. He wouldn’t say he knew just how she felt, because he wasn’t the one whose body would swell with the developing baby, and he wasn’t the one who would have to go through the painful process of giving birth, but he did at least share the sudden confusion of learning that he was going to be a parent. Did he want to be a father? He didn’t know. It was too soon to be asking that sort of question, and at the same time, far, far too late. He was going to be one whether he wanted to be or not.

Well, it wasn’t like he couldn’t provide for a child. He had an entire city at his disposal, and more scattered throughout the galaxy, all full of robots who were hungry for the chance to serve a human. He certainly didn’t have to worry about food or housing or education. Childhood companions might be a problem, though, unless they could bring some more families to Robot City. Derec wondered if Avery would stand for it. If not, then Derec could build his own city. It wouldn’t take much; a few seed robots and a few weeks’ time. Or there was still their house on Aurora, come to think of it. Derec and Ariel had both grown up on Aurora; perhaps their child should as well.

All those thoughts and more rushed through Derec’s mind as he held Ariel’s hand in the hospital waiting room. He grinned when he realized how quickly he had begun planning for the baby’s future. It was an instinctive response; hormones that had been around since before humanity learned to use fire were directing his thoughts now. Well, he didn’t mind having a little help form his instincts. In this situation, it was about all he had to go on.

Looking at Ariel, he felt a sudden rush of warmth course through him. He wanted to protect her, provide for her, help her while she bore their child. Was that instinct, too? He had been in love with her before, but this was something else.

He certainly hadn’t learned it on Aurora. His father had been right: an Auroran family was the next thing to none. Permanent attachments, or even long-term relationships, were rare, even discouraged. An attachment as deep as he felt now for Ariel would be considered an aberration there.

Which meant that it wasn’t instinct, or Aurorans would have been feeling it, too. Somehow that made Derec feel even better. It was genuine love he was feeling, concern and care born of their experiences together, rather than simple chemicals in his bloodstream. Instinct was just intensifying what he already felt for her.

She was worried. He could feel it in her hand, see it on her face. She needed time to accept what was happening to her. On sudden impulse, he said, “Let’s go for a walk.”

She thought about it for a few seconds. “Okay.”

He helped her to her feet. The medical robot said, “Before you go, I need to impress upon you the importance of regular medical checkups. You should report for testing at regular two-week intervals, and before that if you notice any sudden developments. Your health is critical to the developing embryo, and its health is critical to your own. Also, your diet-”

Ariel cut him off. “Can this wait?”

“For a short time, yes.”

“Then tell me later. Or send it to our apartment and I’ll read up on it there.”

The robot hesitated, its First Law obligation to protect Ariel and her baby from harm warring against its Second Law obligation to obey her order. Evidently Ariel’s implied agreement to follow its instructions was enough to satisfy its First Law concern, for it nodded its head and said, “Very well. But do not overexert yourself on your walk.”

Derec led her out of the hospital and along the walkway beside the building, ignoring the row of transport booths waiting by the entrance. They walked in silence for a time, lost in their own thoughts, taking comfort from each other’s presence, but within a few blocks they had a silent host of Lucius’s rodents following them, their hungry stares and soft chittering noises sending shivers up Derec’s spine. He didn’t know how dangerous they might be, but if nothing else, they were certainly spoiling the mood. With a sigh, he led Ariel back inside another building and up the elevator to the top, where they continued their walk along enclosed paths high above the streets. The rats hadn’t yet reached these levels.

The tops of some of the buildings had been planted with grass and trees to make pocket parks; after passing three or four of them-all devoid of activity save for their robot gardeners unobtrusively tending the plants-they stopped to sit in the grass beneath a young apple tree and look out over the city. Ariel had been quiet for a long time now, but Derec couldn’t take the silence anymore. He felt an incredible urge to babble.

“I’m still not sure I believe it’s really happening,” he said. “It’s crazy to think about. A new person. A completely new mind, with a new viewpoint, new thoughts, new attitudes, new everything. And we’re responsible for its development. It’s daunting.”

Ariel nodded, “I know what you mean. Who are we to be having a baby?”

“Better us than Lucius, at least,” Derec said with a grin.

“I suppose. At least we know what one is.” Ariel tried to smile, but hers was a fleeting smile at best. She turned away, said to the city, “Oh, Derec, I don’t know. I don’t know if I want to do this. I keep thinking about having it, and then I keep thinking about not having it, and right now I’ve got to say that not having it sounds a lot better to me.” She looked back to Derec, and he could see the confusion written plain as words in her expression.

His own face must have mirrored her confusion. “Not having it,” he said. “You mean…you mean…aborting it?” The instincts, or hormones, or whatever they were, still had a strong grip on him. It was hard to even say the word that would take his child from him.

“Yes, that’s what I mean,” said Ariel. “Aborting it. Stopping it now, while we still can. It’s not like we wanted it, is it? We weren’t trying for one. We were happy without it. If we’d known I could get pregnant, then we would have been using birth control, wouldn’t we? So why should we change our entire lives because of some silly-accident?”

“Because it’s us! Our child. Because it’s a new person, a new mind, with a new viewpoint and all that. That’s why we should keep it.” Was that why? Derec fought for his own understanding even as he tried to explain it to Ariel. “It’s-do you remember what it was like when we first found ourselves here? Me without a memory at all, yours slowly slipping from you, neither of us with any idea what we were doing here? Remember how lost we felt?”

Ariel’s eyebrows wrinkled in concentration. “It’s fuzzy that far back. But I know what you’re talking about. I’ve felt lost often enough since then.”

“Right. We had no purpose; that’s why we felt that way. I spent my time trying to track down my father, thinking he could help restore my memory, but that was just a yearning for the past. We spent time searching for a cure for your disease, but that was just patching up the past, too. Now I find I’ve got a mother running around out here somewhere, too, and I was all set to spend however long it takes trying to find her, to see if she couldn’t do for me what Avery won’t, but now I don’t even care. Now all of a sudden we have something to look forward to, something in our future. Who cares about the past when we’ve got that?”

Ariel shook her head. “Why should we grab at the first thing that comes along? Derec, this is going to change our lives. Unless we want to put the baby in a nursery, and it’s obvious you don’t, then we’re going to have to take care of it. We’re going to have to live with it, like Earthers and settlers do. Do you really want that? I’m not so sure I do. And besides that-” she waved away his protest, “-it’s my body we’re talking about here. Pregnancy is dangerous. It can cause all sorts of problems in a woman; blood clots, kidney damage-you wouldn’t believe all the things that can go wrong. And for what? A future with a squalling brat in it? I can’t see risking my life for that.”

“But what about the baby’s life? Isn’t that a consideration?”

“Of course, it’s a consideration,” Ariel said angrily. “If it wasn’t, I’d have had the medical robot abort it this morning. I’m still trying to weigh it out; my life and my future versus the life and future of what at this point amounts to a few dividing cells. It’s a testament to how important I think it is that I’m considering it at all.”

Derec had been subliminally aware of the gardener going about its job somewhere behind him. The soft whirr of the robot’s grass-cutting blade had been a soothing noise at the edge of his perception, but the sudden silence when it stopped was enough to make him look around to the robot, just in time to see it topple onto its side, smashing a bed of flowers when it hit.

“What the-?” He stood, went over to the robot, and said, “Gardener. Do you hear me?”

No response.

Gardener,he sent via comlink.

Still nothing. He pulled it up to a sitting position, but it was like raising a statue. The robot was completely locked up. Derec let it fall on its side again. It made a quiet thud when it hit the ground.

“It couldn’t handle the conflict,” Derec said in wonder. “Its First Law obligation to protect you was fighting with its obligation to protect the baby, and it couldn’t handle it.”

“You sound surprised,” said Ariel. “I’m not. It’s tearing me apart, too.”

Derec left the robot and went back to Ariel, sitting beside her and wrapping her in his arms.

“I wish it wasn’t.”

“Me too.”

“What can I do to help?”

Ariel shook her head. “I don’t know. Yes, I do. Just don’t push me, okay? I know you want to keep it, but I’ve got to decide on my own whether or not I do. Once I know that, we can talk about what we’re actually going to do. Okay?”

“Okay.”

As if to confirm her independence, Ariel pulled away and closed her eyes in thought. Derec leaned back in the grass and looked up through a tangle of leaves at the sky. An. occasional cloud dotted the blue.

Did every new parent go through this? he wondered. Could what he and Ariel were feeling be normal? Did Avery and his mother agonize over whether or not to have him? He couldn’t imagine Avery agonizing over any decision. His mother must have, though. She must have wondered if Derec would be worth the effort of childbirth. Evidently she had decided so, probably before she became pregnant, come to think of it, since she’d had no reason to believe she was infertile as Ariel had.

She and Avery must have been in love then. What a concept; someone loving Avery. Or was she just like him? Had their decision to have a child been nothing more than the practical way to acquire someone to experiment on?

It didn’t matter. He and Ariel were in love; that was what mattered. The thought of staying with Ariel until their child grew up didn’t scare him. Derec knew that parents on most planets didn’t worry about that kind of responsibility-even parents more fond of one another than his own-but he intended to. The thought of raising a child gave his life direction, gave him a sense of purpose he hadn’t even realized until now he was missing.

Ariel, evidently realizing he wouldn’t pressure her whether he held onto her or not, lay down in the grass beside him, resting her head on his chest. His arms went around her automatically, and it felt perfectly natural to be holding her so. It felt right. For a time, as they watched the clouds drift past overhead, the rooftop garden seemed to become their whole universe, and it was a good universe.

Ariel’s thoughts had evidently been paralleling his own, but along a different track. “I’m glad we’re not on Earth any more,” she said suddenly. “I’d feel even worse there.”

“No kidding.” Derec shuddered. With a population in the billions, Earth was no place to be having children. There, where the population density in the enclosed cities could be measured easily in people per square meter, every new mouth to feed was a tragedy, not a blessing.

And what was worse, too few of the people there were worried enough to do anything about it. Here stood an entire planet covered with city, full of robots eager to share it, yet Derec doubted if he could find enough people in all of Earth to fill even the section he could survey from this one rooftop. Most of them hated space, hated robots, and on an even more fundamental level, hated change. They wouldn’t leave Earth even for a better world.

A few of them would. After a long hiatus, Earth had once again begun settling alien worlds, but the fraction of its population involved was insignificant. The birth rate there would replace its emigrants before they could achieve orbit.

It was a sobering thought. Derec recalled Lucius’s words to Ariel at their first meeting, his assertion that no thinking being would want every human who might possibly exist to do so, but it seemed as if Earthers were doing their best to ensure just that. They seemed intent on turning their entire biosphere into a teeming mass of humanity.

An irrational fear washed over him, the fear that Earth society would somehow intrude upon his happiness even here, that its riot of bodies could somehow threaten even Robot City. Derec felt his heart begin beating faster, his breathing tighten, as he considered his child’s potential enemies.

Hormones! he thought wryly a second later. Paranoia was evidently a survival trait.

“To space with Earth,” he said, tickling Ariel playfully in the ribs. “We’re beyond all that.”

The sun had shifted position considerably when Derec awoke. He couldn’t tell whether it was from the simple passage of time, or if the building had moved beneath them while they slept. Probably both, he decided. He lay in the grass, Ariel still sleeping with her head on his shoulder, while he decided whether or not to get up.

A noise from beyond the edge of the building made the decision for him. Someone had screamed! Derec was up in an instant, leaping for the railing around the edge and peering down.

A hunter-seeker robot-a stealthy; black-surfaced special-function ‘bot with advanced detection circuitry-stood in the center of an intersection, pivoting slowly around in a circle. A rustle of motion in a doorway caught its attention and it stopped. It raised its right hand, pointing with the forefinger extended, and a bright red laser beam shot out from its finger toward the doorway. Another scream echoed off the buildings.

Derec looked up the street. Every intersection, for as far as he could see, had a hunter-seeker standing in it. Avery had ordered them to clean up the rodents-his way.

Stop!he sent to them. Cease hunting activity.

The hunter closest to him looked upward, and Derec felt a momentary urge to back away from the railing. Any robot-and Derec as well, for that matter-could tell what general direction a comlink signal was coming from, but a hunter-seeker could pinpoint the source-and shoot at it. But the robot couldn’t fire at him. It would see instantly who he was, and the First Law would prevent it. Derec stayed at the railing and sent, You are ordered to cease killing those creatures.

I am sorry, master Derec. I already have orders to kill them.

“What’s going on?” Ariel asked sleepily from his side. She leaned against the railing and looked down.

“Avery’s ordered the robots to kill all of Lucius’s rodents. I’m trying to get them to stop.” I order you not to kill them, he sent. You should respect life.

I respect human life. That is all.

Those creatures carry human genes.

That has been explained to me. That does not make them human.As the hunter spoke, another rodent made a dash for safety, but the hunter twitched its hand in a blur of motion, the beam shot out, and the rodent tumbled end over end in the street, screaming. The hunter fired again and the screaming stopped.

They certainly have human vocal apparatus, Derec thought.

Damn it, you ’ re upsetting me. Stop it!

The hunter robot paused at that, but evidently Avery had warned it to expect such a ploy. I regret that I cannot,it said. Your displeasure is not as important as your safety. These creatures could pose a safety hazard.

You don ’ t know that.

I have been ordered to consider them as such.The hunter turned its attention back to the street. It resumed its search, shooting again at another rodent. This time the rodent died silently, and Derec realized that the robot was attempting to limit his discomfort by making a clean kill.

Derec tried to think of a way to get around Avery’s programming, but no solution came to mind. Avery had made his orders first and stressed that they were to be followed no matter what Derec said; there was very little Derec could do to counter them now.

How fickle a robot’s behavior could be under the three laws! A robot gardener could lock up at the mere mention of a life-threatening dilemma involving humans, but the hunter-seekers could shoot rodents all day long. None of them cared about life in general. Not even the gardener truly cared about his charges except for their potential to please a human.

How could that be right? Even the cruelest human cared about something. Derec was willing to bet even Avery had a soft spot for kittens or puppies or something. How could he ever expect a society of robots to mimic a human society if they held no reverence for life?

“Come on,” Derec said, seething with righteous indignation. “Let’s go home.”

His anger had mellowed a bit by the time they reached their apartment, but it flared to life again the moment he saw Avery standing by the living room window, watching his hunter-seekers at work. He was about to start a shouting match, but Mandelbrot’s sudden exclamation switched the topic of discussion before he ever had a chance.

“Congratulations, Ariel!” said the robot the moment he saw them enter the apartment.

“Shh!” she told him, forefinger to her lips, but the damage had been done.

Avery turned away from the window. “Congratulations? Whatever for, Mandelbrot?”

His question was a stronger order to speak than Ariel’s whispered command to be quiet. The robot said, “Mistress Ariel is preg-”

“Shut up!”

Mandelbrot stiffened, the conflict of orders creating a momentary Second Law crisis.

“Preg,” Avery said into the silence. “Pregnant perhaps? Are you, my dear?” His voice was all honey, but neither she nor Derec was fooled. Avery had opposed their association from the start, was instrumental in separating them when they had first become lovers on Aurora, and had done everything he could to keep them from redeveloping an affection for one another when circumstances had forced them back into close company. He was less than happy at the news, and they knew it.

“Don’t strain yourself smiling,” Derec growled.

Avery shook his head. “You sound overjoyed. One would suppose you weren’t ready for it. Is that it? Did it take you by surprise?”

“None of your business,” Ariel said.

“Of course not. However, as a father myself, I do have a certain interest in the situation. You may be happy to know that it is reversible.”

Ariel shot him a dark look. “I’m aware of that.” She turned away, heading down the hallway toward her and Derec’s room.

“Good,” Avery said to her receding back. He turned back to the window. “I ordered Lucius’s laboratories destroyed,” he said nonchalantly.

“You what?”

“Really, you should have your hearing checked. That ’ s twice in two days. I said I ordered Lucius ’ s laboratories destroyed, and all the robots in them as well. You didn ’ t really think I ’ d let you turn my city into a zoo, now, did you?”

“A balanced ecosystem is not a zoo.”

“Wrong. A zoo is not a balanced ecosystem, granted, but the converse is not necessarily true. To me, any ecosystem in this city-other than the minimum necessary to sustain the farm-would be a zoo, and I acted to prevent it.”

“Youacted. What about me? What about-”

“Alarm. Alarm. Alarm,” the living room corn console interrupted. “Experimental robots have awakened.”

“Ah, good. Keep them under restraint,” Avery commanded.

“Restraints ineffective. The robots have changed shape and slipped through them. They are now leaving the laboratory.”

“Where are they headed?”

“Destination uncertain. Wait. They have entered transport booths. Destination…spaceport.”