Changeling

Chapter 22. Best Laid Plans

Derec had forgotten what a bath felt like.

“I have died and gone to heaven,” he groaned as he sank back in the swirling warmth. Clouds of bubbles drifted over the enormous tub, and he lowered himself into the delicious heat until only his nose was out of the water. He could feel every bruised and aching muscle in his body starting to relax for the first time in days. Sitting up, he leaned back against the tiles, propping his broken arm (newly braced) on the edge. He motioned the attendant robot forward to scrub away the accumulated grime of his trek through this world.

Derec simply luxuriated, letting the robot do it all.

When it was over, he stepped out into the fluffiest, thirstiest towel he could imagine, allowed the robot to dry him, and put on a warm robe.

He felt soothed and comfortable as he went into the main room of the apartment.

The main room was as large and plush as the bathroom had been. Far up in one of the taller buildings of the city, immense windows on three sides offered a view of the sweeping expanse of the Compass Tower, by far the largest edifice in the city. Mandelbrot was standing there looking out at the landscape, along with another robot that Derec recognized as one of the Supervisor units. The antennae-studded globe of a witness robot hovered nearby.

“Master Derec, you look much better,” Mandelbrot said, turning.

Derec grinned. “A bath does wonders, doesn’t it. And I can certainly say the same for you.” The dings and dents in Mandelbrot’s body had been smoothed, his external linkages straightened, and his body polished. The robot’s optical circuits now gleamed brightly, and when he moved, servos no longer protested.

“I am again fully operational,” Mandelbrot said. “Master Derec, this is Supervisor Beta, one of the control units for this Robot City.”

“Beta,” Derec nodded. “There’re a hundred or so questions I want to ask you.”

“I can understand that, Master Derec,” the supervisor answered. “Mandelbrot has told me of your journey here. First, I should tell you that the medbots who examined you tell me that you have no serious internal injuries. Your arm has been reset, and a drug that accelerates the knitting of bones has been given to you. Most of your injuries are bruises and contusions that will heal with time. You should be fully recovered within the week. As for your companion, Mandelbrot has been serviced and repaired entirely from parts in city stocks.”

“For which we both thank you. But it’s entirely possible that none of it would have been necessary in the first place had your central computer answered me.”

Derec saw the distress his comment gave Beta; the robot’s eyes dimmed briefly, and it backed away slightly. “You sent out a distress call,” Derec continued, “but you wouldn’t respond to our answer, either through contact via the original Robot City or via the chemfets in my body. Had you done that, we might never have needed to come here at all.”

And Ariel and I might never have argued,he thought, and with the image of her that put in his mind, he felt again a deep sadness. I have to call her. I have to apologize.

“We deeply regret that, Master Derec,” Beta was saying.

“Then why? It doesn’t make any sense to ask for help and then ignore someone answering it.”

Beta gave an oddly human shrug. “I agree with you, Master Derec. In explanation, all I can tell you is that this city was to be self-sufficient; there were instructions against direct contact with the original Robot City, but that does not explain why we would not respond to a human’s inquiry. My fellow supervisors and I have conferred, and we assume the reason was a command in the central computer’s programming. When the rogue destroyed the central computer, it also wrecked that portion of the backup units. None of the supervisors had been activated at that time; as you can see, the city is not very large or complex yet.” Beta waved a glistening hand to the cluster of buildings below them. “There was no need to disperse city control. I cannot answer your question at this time, though we are attempting to reconstruct as much of the central computer’s core memory as possible. If we learn more, I will inform you.”

“It was Avery,” Derec said with certainty. He rubbed at his damp hair with the towel. “He has the Key of Perihelion. He could have come here and programmed the central computer.”

“That is possible. There is no way to be certain.”

“Dr. Avery might still be in the city,” Mandelbrot said to the supervisor. “In that case, Master Derec is still in danger.”

Beta gestured to the window and the horizon, where the city nudged up against what looked to be an endless forest. “This city, as I said, is very small. I doubt that a human could be in the city and not be noticed.”

“Your city let a rogue robot get in and destroy your central computer,” Derec reminded Beta.

“The rogue has very special abilities,” Beta answered. “We have taken steps to insure that it cannot do this kind of damage again. One of those steps was to activate myself and the two other supervisors so that city control no longer resides only in one place. And as you can see, a witness robot accompanies each of us, coded with instructions to return immediately to a haven should the supervisor be attacked. That way, very little of the city’s knowledge would be lost should the rogue manage to destroy one of us. There are other supervisor units waiting to take over should that happen. We are also building new Hunter-Seeker units with special detection devices.”

“Great, but I doubt it’ll help much. I’d make you a bet that this rogue came from Avery,” Derec said. “It has all his earmarks: inventive, cunning, and very, very dangerous. Which brings us to another problem. You’ve said that this rogue leads the wolf-creatures?”

“Yes. It was seen directing a pack of them that attacked workers on the edge of the city. They have given the city problems since the beginning, harassing our workers clearing the forest. As we felt them to be hindering our directives and to be dangerous both to ourselves and to any humans who would stay here, the Hunter-Seekers were directed to find and kill them.”

Mandelbrot had swiveled to face Beta. “No,” it said. “You cannot do that.”

“I do not understand. All three of the Laws of Robotics demand it. By the Third Law, we must protect our own existence: they have damaged and destroyed units of this city. By the Second Law, we must obey the commands given to us by humans: they hinder us from following our basic programming. By the First Law, we must above all protect humans, and these creatures are undeniably dangerous. They attacked Master Derec and would have killed him had you not been there. How can there be any question about this?”

“Because it’s not exactly that simple, Beta,” Derec answered for Mandelbrot. “They’re not just ‘creatures’ attacking you because you’re here. I expect that they’re protecting their home the same way I would. They’re not just animals, Beta. They’re sentient. They use tools; they have a language.”

“Are you saying that they built the rogue?”

Derec sniffed. “Not a chance. They’re barely at a Stone Age level. This rogue sounds more sophisticated than anything here. “

“Then how did they get involved with the rogue?”

“I don’t know that, but I’m willing to bet that Avery had a hand in it somewhere. The thing to do now is to figure out how to proceed without harming the wolf-creatures, There’s a way to do that, I think.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“The first thing that has to be done is to inform all city units to view the wolf-creatures as human. The First Law applies to them as well-you are to do nothing that does them harm. Will you do that?”

“You can do it yourself, Master Derec,” Beta said. “We have reprogrammed the city to respond to the chemfets in your body. This Robot City is now under your direction. All you need do is give us your orders.”

Derec had paid no attention to the chemfets, silent and useless so long. Now he opened his mind to the sub-miniature replicas of Robot City material. He could hear the city now, roaring in his blood. The flood of information was almost too much to comprehend, and he hastily closed down most of the channels, leaving open only the direct links to the supervisors.

You see, Master Derec?It was Beta, talking to him via the chemfets. All Robot City is now yours.

Good.Derec nodded and went to the window, looking out over the rooftops and up to the summit of the Compass Tower.

“Then we’ll let the rogue in if it wants in,” he said. “Avery didn’t know that I would come here. Even a rogue has the Three Laws built into it. Avery might be able to design a robot capable of destroying other robots, but I find it hard to believe that even he could build a robot that could knowingly hurt a human.”

SilverSide watched two of the cubs wrestling on the floor of PackHome. They rolled over and over on the dusty, broken stones, growling in high-pitched BeastTalk and nipping at each other with their sharp milkteeth. Finally one of them yelped in real pain and lay on his back, paws up and throat bared in submission.

It was ritual play modeled after the adults. SilverSide could hear one of the nursing mothers chuckling throatily as the victor gave a thin howl. She lunged and snapped at the triumphant pup from behind, and it screeched suddenly, leaping high into the air as the fur on its back ruffled in fright. The pup stumbled and fell, and the adults in the cavern laughed as it ran under SilverSide’s legs for safety. The pup peered out at them half-puzzled, half-embarrassed.

SilverSide reached down and lifted it in her hands. “You see, the leader always has to be ready for a new challenger,” she said to it in soft KinSpeech. She stroked the soft fur and set the pup down again.

The little one ran for its own mother.

“It’s always good to see the younglings playing,” LifeCrier said to SilverSide as the pup started to nurse. “It reminds you that even though our spirits leave here to go into the Void, OldMother will send them back again.” LifeCrier licked SilverSide’s face affectionately. “KeenEye will come back one day. She is not gone forever.”

“I am not concerned with KeenEye,” SilverSide said. “She is dead and doesn’t matter any more.” It was only true-there were no emotions in her positronic matrix, only the priorities built into it by the Three Laws. Yet SilverSide sensed that her uncaring words hurt LifeCrier, and she tried to explain to the gray-furred kin. “All that concerns me is how she died and why, and what I must do to stop that from happening again. You do not understand me, LifeCrier. You cannot see what is happening inside me.”

They were all staring at her now: LifeCrier, the rest of the adult kin, the younglings. Their obvious respect and dependence on her stirred the boiling cauldron inside. SilverSide felt pulled in a dozen different directions at once. Things had seemed very clear-cut and simple when she had hatched from the Egg. But now…

The part of her imprinted with the kin hated the VoidBeing who ruled the WalkingStones. Yet another part of her yearned to find this creature who seemed more advanced than the kin, who could fashion creatures from shiny stone and have them do its bidding.

LifeCrier had backed away a step in deference to SilverSide’s rank. He lowered himself slightly to indicate subservience. “I don’t understand KeenEye’s death,” he said. “The VoidBeing could have killed me or any of the others. Yet it didn’t. I saw it raise its hands and stop the WalkingStones from hurting the kin it had paralyzed. It held my head and did nothing but stroke it. It did not seem dangerous.”

“It killed KeenEye,” SilverSide repeated. “I could smell its presence on her fur.”

“I know. Still…”

“The WalkingStones seemed to obey it, you said. That would mean that the VoidBeing ranks higher than Central or these new Supervisors.”

“I suppose…”

“Then the VoidBeing must be an enemy of OldMother. It attacked you, even if it did not kill you. It saved the WalkingStones and left with them. It had a WalkingStone as a companion. It is an enemy.” SilverSide recited the facts in a monotone. Around her, the kin began to nod in agreement. Only LifeCrier seemed hesitant.

Inside SilverSide, synapses closed erratically. Her positronic mind no longer resembled that of any other robot; her life among the kin had changed it far more than her creator might have expected. In that sense, she was truly a rogue. No human standards worked for her anymore. She was an alien, and she had overlaid the Three Laws with an alien morality. She could not disobey them, but her vision of them was skewed.

“I must do what best protects us,” she told LifeCrier. “Nothing has changed. We still cannot leave PackHome; my attempt to destroy Central only made it more difficult to damage the WalkingStones. You tell me that this VoidBeing is a being of flesh, and flesh is very fragile and very tasty. It had its knife-stick, but even a SharpFang has its teeth and claws. If the gods had to send it from the Void, then we must have hurt the WalkingStones more than we know. Perhaps if we also kill the VoidBeing, then the OldMother will have won. What do you think, LifeCrier?-you are the one who knows the OldMother best.”

“SilverSide is the leader,” LifeCrier answered, using HuntTongue. “If she says that the OldMother wishes us to kill the VoidBeing, then we will kill it.”