Intruder

Chapter 13. Avery And The Silversides

Ariel awoke with a start. She hadn’t realized she’d been asleep, must have dozed off with her head on the back of the cushioned chair she’d drawn up beside the desk.

It was certainly disconcerting to come to consciousness and look down on about a half-dozen of the dancers staring up at you, while the rest played at some game that Ariel had not yet interpreted. (They showed each other their hands, palms up or down, any number of fingers extended, sometimes no fingers extended, sometimes a fist.) There was a questioning look on their faces, as if they’d been curious about why their god seemed to need sleep every once in a while. The dancers themselves never seemed to sleep. Ariel had watched them and delegated the Silversides to observe them, but no sleep had ever been detected. She sometimes wondered what it would be like to be awake for one’s entire life. Would you get a lot done or go mad from being conscious without respite?

As she always did when she hadn’t been studying the dancers for some time, she counted them. There were still fourteen of them. Good. Avery, then, had not somehow eluded Wolruf’s vigilance and, while she was asleep, sneaked to the desk to abduct one of the tiny creatures.

She glanced toward the other side of the room, where Avery slouched in a chair, apparently dozing himself. (When he was Ozymandias, he insisted that he never slept.) Wolruf sat on the floor, keeping an eye on the doctor while thumbing through a picture book about Auroran art that Ariel had found in the small library attached to the medical facility. She was studying it for practice in reading and to learn about human customs. In the time that Ariel had known her, Wolruf’s ability to read standard had improved significantly, as had her command of the language. The task of guarding Avery had given her free time to add to her education in the ways of humans and robots.

Ariel couldn’t think of what to do next with the dancers. She’d been studying their customs for several days, and there didn’t seem to be much more to learn. She had tried to communicate with them, but, except for the hand gestures needed either to get their attention or initiate games, most of her attempts had been unsuccessful.

All the dancers had been examined by a diagnostic scanner, the only piece of equipment in the medical facility that appeared to work successfully. She was not sure why. However, since the only systems Derec had been able to (or been allowed to) restore tended to be life-sustaining, she wondered if the scanner worked because it might be needed in an emergency. Derec was right about the presence in the city, she was sure of it. And that presence was doling out favors, stingily but with some sense. The scanner had revealed nothing new about the dancers. As Avery told her, they were anatomically consistent with full-sized humans. If there was robotic circuitry, the scanner didn’t detect it.

She missed Derec so. They had not really been together since that interlude at the Compass Tower. They checked in with each other every once in a while, but at those times he was detached, more concerned with reviving the city than with reviving their passion. And she couldn’t pin all the blame in that arena of life solely upon him. After all, as Derec had pointed out, her attention was just as fiercely fixed on the dancers, Avery, and the Silversides.

The two of them made a great pair, workaholics without much time for each other. But she did long for a moment alone with him, just a brief time of being held by him, kissing him, feeling his gentle touches upon her back.

Well, there was no time for romance now. Thing to do, she thought, is get the jobs done, restore equilibrium, then grab each other and race to the nearest dark place.

She raised her arms, trying to stretch weariness out of them. As always, the dancers were interested in her movement. Whatever she did, they watched her do it with absolute fascination. This time they imitated her, making ritualistic, slow stretching motions that duplicated her gestures. How, she wondered, could Avery keep saying that they were not living beings? With such grace, such skill, they could be nothing less than human.

Her mouth felt dry, and she was sure that her breath could cause an air-purification system to malfunction. There was the beginning of a headache at the back of her eyes. She needed to use the Personal.

“Eve?”

“Yes, Mistress Ariel.”

“Time.”

The word was all she needed to bring Eve to the desk to take over from her. Ariel stood up.

“Have you conceived a new game?” she asked Eve.

“Yes.”

“Of course. I should have known. Show it to me when I get back.”

When Ariel had left, Eve picked up one of the dancers, a short (for a dancer) stocky female. The female did not resist in any way (none of the dancers did, anymore) and merely sat calmly in Eve’s palm.

“Adam?” Eve called.

Adam, newly returned from his wanderings, stepped out of a dark corner of the room from which he had been watching her.

“Yes, Eve.”

“There seems to be something wrong with the dancers, this one and all of them.”

“I have not seen it yet.”

“You have to examine their faces. This one was young, like Ariel, when we first brought them here. Now look.”

Adam bent down toward the stocky female in Eve’s hand. He hadn’t studied the dancers with the same meticulousness that Eve had and wasn’t certain what she’d meant. Nevertheless, at least he was being asked to do something.

“What do you see, Adam?”

“One of the dancers, female category.”

“Besides that.”

“Her hair. It was once dark-colored and now it is mostly gray. Her face. Once it was unlined, now there are many lines in it. Her mouth. Once it was-”

“That is enough, Adam. It is what I see, too. Not only in this one, but in all of them. They have been here for four days, and none of them is young any more. Look at that one.”

Adam looked where she pointed. A male dancer, one of the game players, had left the group and was sitting alone, his knees pulled up, his arms around his knees. His face was old, pitted, sallow.

“He appears to be unwell,” Adam commented.

“I wonder what it means. Are they changing their shapes like we do?”

“Perhaps, but I do not think so.”

“They are going to die,” Avery said, sitting up in his chair. His movement forced Wolruf to push her book aside and tense her body.

Avery stood up and approached the desk. “I’m not sure why they have to die. I suspect that whoever created them was at least partly interested in human life cycles. Otherwise he could have made them as permanent as robots. That is, after all, one of the advantages we robots have. Their creator wanted them to die, or he messed up, I’m not certain which. When they do go, I hope to find out by examining them.”

“Ariel said ‘u can’t touch them,” Wolruf cautioned.

“Well, she must at least let me examine a corpse or two.”

“No!” Eve said suddenly, unsure of why she had spoken out at all.

The doctor’s eyebrows raised in surprise. “You don’t wish me to, Eve?”

“That is true.”

“How curious. Are you a robot with compassion then?”

“I do not know what you mean.”

“If you are, and I get a shot at you, we’ll have to program it right out. I don’t know sometimes why things happen as they do in Robot City. First we get robots with artistic leanings (another trait I had to get rid of) and now compassionate robots. Is that a tear in your eye, Eve, or just a trick of the light? Don’t respond, I was only joking.”

Ariel returned from the Personal in time to hear the last of Avery’s comments. She was about to speak, to tell Avery to zip up his mouth, when she noticed what was happening to Adam.

Adam stood at the side of the desk, just slightly behind Avery. He was staring at the doctor and at the same time undergoing a transformation, changing shape. It was fascinating to watch. First his body seemed to shrink as he lost a few inches of height. (Was he trying to become a dancer? she wondered. Could that be possible? Wouldn’t his mass have to be concentrated impossibly for him to change to that size?) Then the shrinking stopped, and Adam’s shorter body began to expand outward, making him look rounder. His arms became shorter and hung differently, in a sort of apelike way. Then his face, which had been almost an exact replica of Derec’s, began to undulate slightly, with his chin puffing out and his forehead narrowing, his chin coming to a point, then reshaping itself to a rounder contour. At the top of his head, his metallic version of Derec’s sandy hair lightened to white and got longer, messier. But it was not until the next change that Ariel realized what was happening. Resembling the hair in color and texture, a silver bushy moustache appeared to sprout under Adam’s transformed nose.

Ariel laughed abruptly, pleased at the first hint of merriment in her life for some time.

Adam had changed himself from a mimicry of Derec to a nearly exact rendition of the short, round, wavy-haired and moustachioed Dr. Avery!

Avery didn’t notice Adam’s transformation until Ariel laughed. At first he thought she was laughing at him, and he prepared a withering comment. (Avery could not abide being laughed at. The mockery of too many colleagues had made him sensitive to criticism and developed in him a lightning reflex to respond as cruelly as he could.) Then he saw where Ariel’s attention was directed.

He saw Adam’s robotic and (to him) nightmarish version of himself, and he screamed in anger. It was the kind of scream that rattled any loose item or emotional equilibrium in its vicinity. On the desktop the dancers scattered in fear.

Adam had not expected such a violent reaction from Avery, and it shocked as well as intrigued him. He had imprinted upon Avery several times already, but only twice in Avery’s presence. Each of those times the self-centered doctor had not noticed or even looked at him.

Although Avery knew about the Silversides’ shape-changing abilities, this was the first time he had observed an actual transformation.

“I won’t have this!” Avery yelled. “It is mockery! You have no right to take my shape! How is it possible even? What kind of material are you made of?” He touched Adam on his arm, his chest, his face. Adam’s skin was still like the syntheskin on any robot, except the few humaniforms. “There’s no human texture to your skin, no-”

Ariel stepped forward. “That’s because Adam is a robot.” She searched Avery’s face for reactions and saw deep confusion in his eyes, so she added slyly, “Like you, Ozymandias.”

Avery seemed momentarily confused. “Of course,” he said. “Like me.” He examined Adam more closely. “And robots are fixed, permanent. Not like humans, not like animals. Then Adam can’t be a robot. He’s something else in a robot’s clothing.”

“What am I?” Adam asked.

“I don’t know what you are.”

“If not human, what? If not robot, what?”

“Yes,” Ariel said, moving closer to Avery, “what is Adam?”

“Some new kind of creature, but I don’t know what. He is capable of changing his shape?”

“Yes, he is. He can be human, robot, animal, alien. But he is robot, Ozymandias.”

“He can’t be!”

“Oh, but he can. They both can. Derec’s not sure how they shape-change, but he thinks it’s facilitated by a kind of DNA or DNA-analog in their cells. Apparently they can gain voluntary control over their cells, even adjusting their sizes and shapes. They sort of think of the shape they’ll take, and its details are worked out in their positronic brains. Mandelbrot can drastically change the shape of his arm, but these two work miracles on their entire bodies. Adam says he started as a blob and knew how to alter his shape into a practical ambulatory form in his first few moments of awareness.”

“I refuse to accept that. Why did you laugh?”

“Because you are like me now. You accused me of being sentimental for believing the dancers to be human, and now you refuse to believe Adam is a robot. Nevertheless, it is true. Why does it bother you so, Ozymandias?”

“I won’t discuss it.”

“Of course. Because it would embarrass you. Now that you’re a robot, you’re annoyed when another one comes along who’s greater than you are.”

“That’s not it at all! And it’s not true! Transmogrification is no special achievement. It makes him no more than a circus freak.”

“Maybe you’re right. It isn’t true. Good thing you’re not Avery any more, Ozymandias. If you were, I’d have to say that maybe the great Dr. Avery, creator of the Avery robots, is jealous that someone else has designed and built a better model.”

For a moment Avery did not speak. Instead, he merely stared at Adam, which was like looking in a mirror that slightly distorted the image. Adam’s skin was silvery, and there were more sharp lines in the shape of his body than in Avery’s softly curved figure. Adam’s eyes had a serenity in them that Avery had not, when looking in a mirror, seen in many years. It forced him to consider a human Avery whose life had been more satisfactory, when he had been married and at the top of his profession, adored by many, certainly respected by almost everyone. Why had his eyes changed? he wondered.

Ariel saw the emotional disruption in Avery’s face, and at the same time saw a way to work with the man as Derec had urged. She moved to the other side of the desk, beside Eve, who had been busy calming the dancers with gestures and a soft humming that almost had a tune to it.

“Eve,” Ariel whispered.

“Yes?”

“Can you do one of those shape-changes for me?”

“Yes, into anything I know about.”

“Well, do what Adam did. Imprint on Avery. Can you do that?”

“Of course.”

Ariel watched with fascination as Eve went through the same transformations that Adam had. It was even stranger to view in her, since before Ariel’s eyes, Eve changed from a female to a male. While she had always known that Eve could change shape, and had been told that Adam had been a female when he was a member of the kin, she was still amazed by the process. Eve’s face changed earlier than Adam’s had, and then she rearranged her body from the shoulders down. When finished, she was even more uncomfortably like Avery than Adam was.

“Ozymandias,” Ariel said, breaking his concentration on Adam. As the man turned toward her, his jaw dropped open when he saw still another copy of himself.

“This is unfair!” he cried, furious.

“Why? Most of the time they go around looking like Derec and me, and it doesn’t bother us. Why does it so upset you, Ozymandias?”

“I feel like they’re taking something away from me.”

“What? Your soul?”

Ariel’s question came as such a shock to Avery that it made him laugh. “My soul? Hardly. What would a robot do with a soul? No, I mean my personality, all that constitutes me, my dignity.”

“Dignity? Personality? What do you care about those?”

As Ariel talked, Eve had gone to Adam, and now they stood side by side, twin Averys, with the same subtle differences between them that a set of identical twins showed.

Avery, uncharacteristically speechless, whirled around and strode back to where Wolruf stood. Ariel might have been mistaken, but she thought, from the way the caninoid alien stood at a slight tilt and from the faint gargling sound coming from her throat (usually an indication of amusement for her), that Wolruf found the proceedings funny.

“Come back here!” Ariel shouted.

“I refuse.”

“How can you refuse my order? You are a robot and I am human. You have to obey me. Second Law, Ozymandias.” She spoke this last with a lilt in her voice, mockingly. He stood still for a moment, then spun around and returned to the desk.

Meanwhile Ariel had sidled up to the Silversides. “Adam, Eve, I want you to do something for me.” They both glanced at her, awaiting their orders. “You’ve been around Avery for long enough. Imitate him all the way. Talk like him, sound like him, rant like him, move like him, strut like him, whatever you have stored in your memory banks that you can use to be like him. Can you do that?”

They both responded yes. Adam, particularly, welcomed the challenge. It was a use of his shape-changing ability, after all. In a world where there was little to imprint on, any challenge would do.

“All right,” Ariel said when Avery had returned to the desk. “Separate from each other, and when I give the signal, start.”

Adam went to one side of the room, Eve to the other. Avery, who had not heard Ariel’s command, looked back and forth from one to the other.

Then, at a gesture from Ariel, the assault began. Adam immediately launched a diatribe of Avery’s that he had stored in his memory. It was an especially ripe one, filled with florid phrases and a good deal of invective. The robot’s voice was a remarkable playback, catching the tones and inflections of the doctor’s voice so precisely that Ariel, if she had shut her eyes, would not have known it was not the real Avery.

The target of the assault merely watched Adam disbelievingly; his eyes widened, displaying less intensity and more confusion than perhaps anyone had ever seen in him before. He chewed on his lower lip, another uncharacteristic act. His fingers tapped against the side of his legs, a gesture Ariel had seen often. Avery did it a lot when he was angry.

Making a loud cough very like the one Avery made to get another person’s attention, Eve entered the fray. Avery’s head turned to watch her, while Adam’s diatribe continued, louder.

Eve began to mutter to herself in an Avery-like way and began to pace her side of the room in a strutting fashion. As she walked her fingers, too, tapped against her legs. Once she stopped and banged her fist into the palm of her other hand, yelling, “I will not have it! This isn’t the way things will be! I demand you let me have a dancer to experiment upon!”

Then she whirled around, just as Avery had earlier, and walked to the desktop to stare down sternly at the dancers. Now that she looked like the doctor, she was amazed to find that the dancers were fooled by her. They scattered just the way they did when Avery hovered over them.

Ariel saw Eve’s face lose its hostility, softening into a gentler look. Because the Silversides could only form aspects of facial expression, becoming much like an artist’s caricature, Eve’s present look disconcerted Ariel. She did not like Avery’s face appearing to be kind. Further, there was a suggestion of Ariel’s face, seemingly superimposed upon the Avery mien, that annoyed her.

“Eve,” she whispered, “they’re all right. They just think you’re him. Don’t worry about it. We’ll take care of them, and you can resume your familiar shape.”

Eve recalled her task. Her face became hard again, and she resumed muttering. Suddenly, in a move that Ariel could not have expected, Eve slammed her fist upon the desktop (well away from any of the dancers). Even Avery flinched at’ the fury of the move, as if he didn’t believe someone looking like him could do such a violent thing.

“What are they-” he began, but Adam came forward to stand next to Eve. They seemed an odd pair, like identical twins who had labored to differentiate themselves in any way possible, but just could not stop looking like each other.

“We should not even experiment on these,” Adam said. “They are just vermin, like most humans, not like robots. We should kill them.”

Eve, taken in for a moment by Adam’s act, was ready to rush to defend them until she recalled her command to playact.

“That’s going too far,” Avery shouted. “I would never say that.”

“Ozymandias,” Ariel said, “what you see is just their impression of what you say, how you act. In their minds, capable as they are of processing data, you’ve shown yourself to be unpredictable and quite likely to perform violent acts. That you’d think of killing the dancers seems within the realm of possibility to them. And, for that matter, to me.”

“You don’t understand. I’m not a destroyer, I’m a creator. Yes, if necessary I’d dissect an animal for scientific knowledge, but I’d never willingly kill for killing’s sake.”

“Now you’ve said it, they know it. They understand you better now. Tell them more.”

Avery smiled. “I see your ploy. Make me reveal myself so you can continue this charade. Well, Ariel, it won’t work.”

She shrugged. “Don’t know anything about charades.”

“Stop them, Ariel. You’re making me very nervous.”

His tone had become whiny. Ariel felt they were really getting to him now. She whispered across the desk to the Silversides, “Fight, you two. Fight.”

“Fight?” Adam asked. “We cannot fight each other.”

“Not a real fight. Fake it.”

It was a bizarre, awkward battle, especially since Adam and Eve had to use precise arm movements in order not to strike each other in any way that might hurt either-by dislodging a circuit or causing positronic damage. But Adam’s voice circuit was quite capable of any imitative sound, and when they just missed with a blow, he created the sound of one. Many of the punches appeared to land with a thunderous impact. After a well-simulated blow, the victim would convincingly reel backwards from the apparent force of it.

“Stop!” Avery hollered. Then he screamed to Ariel, “They can’t fight each other. It’s strictly against Third Law procedure. A robot must protect its own existence. That means they can’t be aggressive.”

“But Second Law allows me to order them to fight to the death, if necessary.”

“Well, yes, true, I guess, but consider the Laws of Humanics then. You should not give an order that endangers the preservation of robotic existence.”

“That’s just so much balderdash. There are no Laws of Humanics, they’re just theory. Back home we call them ethics -and, Ozymandias, as anyone can tell you, Ariel Welsh is not an ethical person.”

“You’re lying.”

“Maybe. No Law of Humanics to cover that, is there?”

Avery was momentarily bemused. Adam and Eve still struggled in their mock battle. Eve managed a skillful flip over Adam’s shoulder and he staggered forward, nearly into Ariel’s arms.

Ariel wished Derec could be in the room to watch the unprecedented scene of a pair of robots fighting. She almost forgot that the prodding of Avery had to be the main purpose of this theatrical display.

She whispered to Adam and Eve to quit the fray. Each of them returned to portraying Avery, muttering and castigating, pacing and gesturing.

“Ozymandias, you’re trembling,” Ariel said from a point just behind his back, startling him and making him even more angry.

“I am not trembling!”

“You’re shaking like a leaf.”

“You are right, Ariel, you’re not ethical. This whole attack on me is unethical. You’re trying to drive me crazy.”

“That’s just paranoia, the least of your madnesses, I think. And I’m not trying to drive you crazy. I’m trying to do just the opposite-drive you sane.”

“That in itself is crazy.”

“You bet.”

Adam came by, now doing a full-scale imitation of Avery, with the right walk, the tics, the jumpy inflections in his voice, the sarcastic tone. Avery yelled in frustration and took a swipe at Adam, landing a weak blow to his back.

“Ozymandias,” Ariel said, “you just tried to hit Adam.”

“That’s right. I wish I could mangle him into spare parts.”

“But you’re a robot.”

“Yes, what of it?”

“Well, you just said robots shouldn’t be aggressive. You just put yourself in danger by hitting Adam. You reacted to him in a very human way. How could you possibly be a robot?”

“I am a robot.”

“No, you’re a human being.”

“I was once, but I’m not now.”

Now Ariel was frustrated. The idea that he was a robot seemed fixed in Avery’s unpositronic brain. Yet she sensed that his anger over what the Silversides were doing could be used to shake him out of his delusion.

“Are ‘u all fright, Arriel?” Wolruf said.

“I’m okay. I just had a foolish idea I could do something here, that’s all.”

“Iss there anything I may do?”

“Take me home to Aurora.”

“If I could-”

“No, Wolruf, no. I didn’t really mean it anyway. I’m happy here in scenic Robot City. I plan to be president of the Chamber of Commerce.”

She was about to tell the Silversides that they could end their playacting, just as Eve passed her. Eve stopped in front of Avery and leaned in toward him, continuing her muttering in his voice. He pushed her away. She slid backward a few feet, then came close to him again.

“Stay away from me!” Avery cried. “That’s an order. Second Law.”

Ariel moved in closer, too.

“You’re a robot. You can’t invoke Second Law.”

“What? Oh? Yes. Get her away from me.”

“No. Go ahead, Eve. Stalk him. Whatever he goes, you go. You, too, Adam. Encroach.”

They surrounded Avery. Whenever he broke away from them, one of them zoomed in on him again. He flailed out at them, and they sidestepped his badly thrown blows.

Finally, he broke into a run, pursued by Adam and Eve. Near the desk he spun around, and Ariel saw he had something in his hand. A moment passed before she realized what it was. She had not seen it in a long time.

The weapon was Avery’s electronic disrupter, a device that emitted an ion stream that would interfere with the circuits of any advanced machine. Any machine, like the Silversides. And he was raising it to aim at them.

Ariel, who had been standing behind the Silversides, ran between them, and roughly pushed them away. In the back of her mind, she realized that she’d just violated another of the Laws of Humanics, the one that said humans must not harm robots. Both Silversides went flying sideways.

Her move came just in time. Avery’s shot went right over Ariel’s head and would undoubtedly have affected circuitry in Adam or Eve.

She continued her rush to Avery, jumping at him, knocking the electronic disrupter out of his hand and throwing him to the floor.

“Some robot you are,” she said, breathing heavily. “You don’t even make a decent human being.”

“Ariel,” Avery said weakly. He struggled to his feet. “I don’t-that is, I-I’m-I am-I-”

He looked sick. All the color had drained from his face. Ariel could see that it wasn’t the result of the fighting. It was something else. From the look of him, he could be dying.

“You better sit down,” Ariel said. “Adam?”

Adam picked up a chair and brought it to Avery, who settled heavily down upon it. Eve walked to Adam and the two took up a position behind Avery’s chair. The fact they looked so much alike was disconcerting to Ariel, as if she were about to talk to a group called the Avery Trio.

“Are you all right?” Ariel asked Avery.

“I-I think so.”

“Robots don’t get sick, you know. They don’t suffer from heart palpitations or exhaustion. They-”

“It’s okay, Ariel. You don’t have to speak to me as if I were a child. I know who I am. I may not like it. I may want to live forever. I may want to be a robot. But I know who I am.”

“And that is-”

“Ariel, please.”

“No, I’m a literalist. Are you a robot, Dr. Avery?”

“No.”

“Say it out.”

“I. Am. Not. A. Robot.”

Ariel smiled.

“Well,” she said, “that’s a start.”