Intruder

Chapter 19. The First Confrontation

The Watchful Eye had to proceed carefully, destroying the city by sections. Before an area could be removed, it had to make sure that no harm would come to anyone-humans, robots, the alien, the thousands of creatures in labs all over the city that still survived its genetic experiments. It merely wanted to dismantle the city and start again, so only uninhabited sectors could be destroyed.

Nevertheless, destruction was easier than creation. Many programming steps had been necessary for the design of a building, but a mere six strokes on the main computer center keyboard could remove it. The Watchful Eye scanned each structure for signs of robotic or human activity before performing the six strokes. It was still in its Bogie shape, and to a cynical observer, watching a robot attempting to destroy a city built by robots might have seemed ironic.

As soon as it had initiated its sequences of destruction, the Watchful Eye realized that the process it had to use was too well-planned, too methodical, too full of fail-safe devices. It would take a long time to demolish the entire city. If it had foreseen these complications, it would have restructured the computer’s architectural programming so that an automatic programmed sequence could be activated, one that would bypass all the fail-safe devices that the city’s clever originator had installed in the computer.

Checking the whereabouts of Derec and its other enemies, it saw that they were nearing the underground entrance. They seemed to be heading to its computer lair, no doubt to stop it from its systematic destruction of the city, and it had to stop them before it could continue.

Derec had discovered Mandelbrot and Timestep wandering the streets looking for the Bogie imposter. When they had finally worked their way through the building with the roughhousing creatures, the street outside the exit had been empty.

“It’s down at the central computer,” Derec said. “I’m sure of it. Come with me.”

The slowdown to talk with the two robots allowed Ariel and Avery to catch up. Wolruf was so far behind that the others were not even aware she was on her way.

They headed for the tunnel entrance. Just before they reached it, the frame of the entrance appeared to balloon outward and then, like an enfolding hand, cover the opening Derec had intended to pass through.

As Adam and Eve strode down a wide boulevard, they saw Wolruf lope across an intersection, then disappear down a side street.

“Let’s go after her,” Adam said. “She might know what’s happening to the city.”

Without consulting with each other, both Adam and Eve changed to the kin shape and began to pursue Wolruf, who had disappeared around a comer. When they rounded that comer, they did not see the alien ahead of them.

“She must have gone down one of those streets,” Eve said. “It will be difficult to find her.”

“I know. But these beings leave a trace in the air that we can detect through our olfactory circuits if we increase them threefold.”

Eve discovered Adam was right. There was a sweet scent of Wolruf’s fur that lingered in the center of the roadway.

Wolruf reached Derec and the others just as several buildings in a nearby block tilted, fell against each other, and collapsed, some into the street, others against buildings to the rear. The effect was as if the buildings had been made of playing cards and someone had knocked them down.

Wolruf took in the situation immediately.

“Iss there anotherr way down?” she asked.

“Lots of them,” Avery said, “but, with this creature in charge of the computer, it can block us from going in any entrance. In the meantime, it could reduce the whole city to rubble.”

There was bitterness in the doctor’s voice. No wonder, Wolruf thought, he was watching the city, his own creation, being demolished at the whim of what appeared to be a rogue robot.

“Our best bet may be to dig through this,” Derec said. “One thing our friend doesn’t know about, and that’s the potential of Mandelbrot’s arm.”

When Derec had built Mandelbrot out of spare robotic parts, he had used an arm from a Supervisor robot. It was made of an enormously malleable cellular material and could be formed into many shapes with differing densities. On many occasions it had become a most useful tool.

“Mandelbrot!” Derec said. “Do you think you could make some people-sized holes through that mess?”

He pointed toward the entrance. Although the main opening was gone, there were still some gaps where the edges of the twisted frame had not quite come together.

“Yes,” Mandelbrot replied.

“Then do it.”

“Wait,” Wolruf said. “Make a Wolrruf-sized hole firrst. I’m smallerr, and I can get down there fasster than any of ‘u.”

“No,” Derec said. “That robot isn’t like the others. It doesn’t regard you as human. Last time you went up against it, it might have killed you. It could kill you for sure this time.”

“All of ‘u take riskss. Iss my turn thiss time.”

“It’s too dangerous.”

“Don’t be such an idiot, son,” Avery said. “Pinch Me can do too much damage if we waste time getting there.”

“Pinch Me?” Ariel said. “What are you talking about? That robot down there is named Pinch Me?”

“Just a pet name,” Avery said. “Let Wolruf go down there, Derec. Wolruf, just delay him. Don’t put yourself in danger.”

“Yes,” Derec said, “just concentrate on diversionary actions, okay?”

Wolruf came from a culture where there had never been much use for diversionary action. In a conflict, her people tended to go directly for the throat. But she said, “I will be careful, I prromisse ‘u.”

Derec considered the matter for a brief time before he said, “Okay, we’ll do it your way, Wolruf.”

“Thank ‘u.”

“I’m not sure that’s proper etiquette, thanking the leader for putting you in jeopardy. Mandelbrot, start digging.”

“Yes, sir.”

Mandelbrot raised his arm, which at the moment was configured into a good copy of a human limb. As he headed toward the tunnel entrance, which looked like a jumble of the city’s strange metal, the arm began to change. First, it lengthened and an extra joint appeared at the center of the forearm. Its hand widened and fingers thinned into what looked like pointed claws. Turning its palm up to the sky, the fingers became sharp-edged at their tips. When he reached the pile, his arm was ready, and he began to rake at the twisted metal of the door frame. He managed to insert one of the fingers into a tiny opening. Making the finger thicker, he made the opening just a little bit wider.

“The metal may resist whatever abilities that arm has,” Avery said. “It’s strong.”

“So is the metal of Mandelbrot’s arm,” Derec said. “Besides, it isn’t so much a matter of tensile strength as manipulation. Wherever there’s an opening in the material the city’s made of, it can be worked with. Only a solid wall of it can stop Mandelbrot-or, for that matter, any of us. Remember, Ariel, the time I wedged a hole open with my boot?”

Mandelbrot’s hand kept changing to fulfill the needs of the task. When the hole was wider, it bec3,me a whirling wheel that knocked against the sides of the hole, widening it more. After a moment, he could reach through it. He enlarged the mass of his arm slowly and, gradually, painstakingly, he carved a hole large enough for Wolruf to get through.

“Sstop now, Mandelbrrot,” Wolruf said. “Sstand by and give me rroom. Thank ‘u.”

Without so much as a farewell, the caninoid alien entered the hole, twisting and contracting her body to propel herself through it.

When she reached the other side and began loping down the dark tunnel, Mandelbrot resumed his work on the opening.

The Watchful Eye detected the activity at the tunnel entrance, but assumed it would take a long while before they could get through. It knew nothing of the abilities of Mandelbrot’s arm and did not detect Wolruf’s penetration of its improvised security barrier.

As it continued to pick and choose what part of Robot City it would destroy, it concentrated so completely on its efforts at annihilation that it did not detect Wolruf’s appearance in the computer chamber.

To make matters worse, it had been careless upon its return and left both the sliding door and wall open, so that Wolruf could silently creep into the mainframe area. She was happy to see that the Bogie that was not Bogie hadn’t even looked up from its work.

On a screen above the imposter Bogie, a spired building appeared. With a deft hand movement, the robot touched some keys on a massive keyboard. The screen showed the spired building appear to sink into the ground, as a ship might be swallowed by the sea.

Something must be done now, she thought. Derec had said something about a diversion. What kind of diversion was possible under these circumstances? she wondered. She decided none. Trickiness was not her way. Attack was her way. Her throat tightened as she remembered the pain of the pseudo Bogie’s last blow. But she hadn’t been prepared for that. Now she was ready.

Soon Mandelbrot had fashioned a hole large enough for Derec, Ariel, and Avery to pass through.

“Let me go first,” Avery said. “I know the networks and byways of this underground setup better than you possibly could. Better than anyone else could. Except, apparently, our little Pinch Me.”

He manipulated his body through the opening without waiting to see if anyone disagreed.

“Pinch Me, huh?” Ariel said.

“I’d love to,” Derec said, “but I’m kinda busy right now.”

“Ha ha. I hope somebody explains the significance of the name to me sometime.”

“It’d be a pleasure. You go next. Mandelbrot, you’ll never get your bulk through this pinhole. Go to the Compass Tower and man the computer terminal there. As soon as you get a signal from me on the screen, begin restoring the systems that are still out of order. I’ll work from my end with the chemfets. I want Robot City to be fully functional the next time we get together.”

“Yes, Master Derec. I will try.”

Timestep came forward, clearly expecting to be taken along. But he wouldn’t be able to work himself through the hole either, so Derec said, “And, Mandelbrot, take Timestep with you.”

“What is my assignment, Master Derec?” Timestep said.

Derec wished he could give him something legitimate to do, but this was no time to be concerned with manpower assignments. “Entertain Mandelbrot. Dance for him.”

“He never stops dancing,” Ariel muttered.

Mandelbrot and Timestep set off down the street as Ariel squeezed into the passageway, then Derec. Fortunately for them, the Watchful Eye did not observe their entrance. It was too busy with Wolruf.

Adam and Eve reached the tunnel entrance just after Derec had climbed into the hole. They had seen the bottoms of his boots shaking as he wiggled through the opening. Then the boots disappeared.

“What are they doing, do you think?” Eve asked.

“I would surmise that they are heading for the main computer.”

“Why?”

“I cannot know, but I would surmise that the present crisis in the city originates there.”

“We should follow them.”

“I agree.”

The hole was too narrow for them to go through in their kin shapes. Together, without consulting, they began to change, elongate. Restoring their basic Derec and Ariel facial features, their bodies became snakelike and sinuous, if snakes had long thin arms and legs to go with their bodies. When their mass had narrowed sufficiently, they were each about seven and a half feet long. Eve first, they slithered through the narrow opening easily.

At that moment the Watchful Eye had Wolruf, her jaws clamped around its wrist, hanging from its forearm. It tried to fling the alien away, but she hung on tightly. Slapping at her with its other arm didn’t have much effect either.

It was time to use its transmogrification potentials. concentrating on its arm, it flowed more mass into it, forcing the arm to swell up. Wolruf tried to bite harder, giving the hinge of her jaw great pain. The Watchful Eye’s arm enlarged more, prying Wolruf’s jaws apart. She dropped to the floor.

As the Watchful Eye brought its other arm down toward Wolruf’s head, she dodged sideways, then rammed the Bogie who was not Bogie in the legs. Like one of the buildings it had destroyed, the Watchful Eye toppled over, falling over Wolruf and hitting the computer chamber floor with a resounding thud. Wolruf scampered sideways to avoid being crushed.

The fall did not hurt it, but it wound up in an awkward position. Wolruf, who had realized she could not possibly defeat this metallic monster, hoped she could hold it off until Derec and the others arrived.

Avery led Derec and Ariel down several corridors, all of them dark or only partially lit, another feature of their enemy’s tampering with Robot City. At a junction whose tunnels led in three separate directions, Avery stopped suddenly. He looked from one tunnel to another, his face confused.

“What’s the matter,” Derec asked.

“The damn creature, robot, whatever he is-he’s altered the network of tunnels down here. They’re not laid out according to the original pattern. He’s rearranged them just like he’s redesigned the city.”

“Can we find our way?” Ariel asked. “Wolruf may be in trouble. You know her, Derec. She won’t wait for us long. She’ll go on the attack.”

“Don’t worry, don’t worry,” Avery said. “I can work this out. I built this city, remember? No robot can fool me for long. We’ll go this way.”

He plunged into the right-hand tunnel with his usual recklessness. Used to it now, Derec and Ariel followed close behind.

The false Bogie struggled to a sitting position, and Wolruf jumped onto its back, pushing it forward, ramming its head against its legs. Only the suddenness of her attack allowed it to succeed. Wolruf could tell the robot was too strong for her. It had all the tireless force of any robot. And it was bound by Third Law to fight back so long as it continued not to perceive Wolruf as human.

She tried to hold its torso down, but it only had to push against the floor with its hands for sufficient power to fling Wolruf off its back and send her flying through the air. Instinct took over, and Wolruf landed on her feet, wobbly but still in control of the situation.

It was straightening up its back while at the same time turning around to face Wolruf, ready to fend off another leap. Wolruf looked up and saw an empty shelf high up on the wall next to her. Crouching down, she pushed hard with her legs and flew up onto the shelf. The Bogie that was not Bogie could just barely track her with its optical circuits. She had hardly landed on the shelf when she jumped again, this time at an arc that led downward to the robot. Kicking out with both feet, she struck the Bogie imposter on the forehead, snapping its head back. It fell heavily. Wolruf landed on the floor, too, on her back. When she stood up, she could barely walk. The leg injury from her previous battle with the robot flared up again.

And the false Bogie had somehow gotten to its feet and was hovering over her.

She tensed herself for a killing blow, but instead the robot merely looked down at her and said, “Why are you trying to hurt me?”

Its voice sounded hurt, but not in physical pain, as if its feelings had been hurt more than its body.

“Why arre ‘u trrying to hurrt the city?” she said.

“I must. It must be my city.”

“Arre ‘u trrying to be leaderr?”

“I do not know what you mean.”

“Do you plan to be dictatorr of Rrobot City?”

“No. I just want things here to be logical. I must control events, and I cannot the way things are.”

“I don’t underrstand. Why need ‘u contrrol eventss?”

“I know inside me I have to. I don’t yet know why, but the answer will come. Answers have come to me when I needed them.”

“‘U talk strrangely.”

“I am not really used to talking.”

“Who arre ‘u?”

“I am me, that’s all I know. I have taken the temporary name, the Watchful Eye. The being whose shape I have taken called me ‘the Big Muddy.’ He did not know I heard him call me that. I don’t know why he did.”

“Where is he now? Where is Bogie?”

“I disconnected and dismantled him. It was necessary. Why do you exhibit emotional disturbance?”

“Am upset at what ‘u ssay. I liked Bogie, and he iss dead.”

“Why do you say that? He is not dead. All of his component parts still exist and will function again. I may put him together ~gain, or his parts will continue as parts of new robots. That is not death, there is no decay in it.”

“What do ‘u know of death?”

“Only what I have studied about it in computer files.”

“That iss no way to know about death.”

“Perhaps you will tell me more about death. Later, when I have finished with the city. Please attack me no further.”

The Watchful Eye turned back toward its keyboard. Wolruf, unbound by any robotic laws, sprang up and, howling, rammed against the Watchful Eye’s back as hard as she could. The blow knocked it off balance.

But not enough.

It whirled around and clipped Wolruf with a hard, clenched-fist punch to the side of her head.

She fell, limp, unconscious.

The Watchful Eye, with some gentleness, picked her up and placed her against the wall, and then it carefully rearranged her body in a way that, according to its observations, should be comfortable for a being that was the shape of the caninoid alien.

Then it returned to the task of destroying the city…

As they walked through the new tunnel, everything around them looking spookier than ever in the dim light, Derec asked Avery, “I’ve been wondering: If this new robot is like Adam and Eve, and by that I mean a shape-changer and meddlesome pest, What’ll it be like when all three of them get together?”

“That’s not the sort of question that occupies my mind at times like this.”

The snideness in his father’s voice was unmistakable. Derec wondered if the man would always be like that, scornful and sarcastic. Would they ever have a relationship that was anything like what normal fathers and sons had? Probably not.

“Still,” Derec continued, “I can’t help but wonder. Two of them are bad enough, but we were getting used to them. Three would be worse, unpredictable, possibly disastrous. When we get there and get things in control, it would be nice to find a way to get rid of Pinch Me.”

“You surprise me, Derec. I wouldn’t have thought you had such murderous thoughts.”

“Oh, I don’t mean we should kill it or even dismantle it. I’d just like to get it out of the way. Ship it to another planet, or secrete it in an attic, or hide it in a cave, anything to keep it away from Adam and Eve.”

“Where it would cause trouble for others? Still, dismantling might not be such a bad idea.”

He stopped talking, for they had reached the entrance to the computer chamber.

The Watchful Eye now realized that the immensity of Robot City was a hindrance to its destruction. After all the time it’d spent on the project, interrupted only by Wolruf’s attack, there had not been enough progress. Only a small percentage of Robot City had been toppled, collapsed, or removed.

Since the humans were not as adept in stalking as Wolruf, the Watchful Eye heard them ease open the outside door and come toward the computer.

It would have to confront them.

But it was afraid of confronting them. It did not know why.

The Watchful Eye turned around to face its new intruders. When it saw the three of them, all looking stern and clearly there with the same purpose as Wolruf, to take away its control of the city, it momentarily considered rushing at them, attacking them, hurling them through the air with the same force it had thrown Wolruf. But these were humans; it couldn’t harm them. It seemed as if the First Law of Robotics applied in this situation. But why? Robotics Laws were for robots. It was the Watchful Eye, and it should not be governed by laws governing inferior creatures.

Derec took a step forward.

“Dr. Livingstone, I presume,” he said. Of course it did not understand the reference.

“I am the Watchful Eye,” it responded.

“Cute name,” Ariel muttered.

“Perhaps derived from All-Seeing Eye, Eye of Providence, something like that,” Avery commented. “A symbol on currency, I think, signifying, I think, a new age or new order.”

Ariel saw Wolruf lying unconscious near the wall, and she rushed to her. After touching her and feeling for her life-signs, she nodded to Derec that Wolruf was alive. Derec turned back to the Watchful Eye.

“I don’t care who you are,” he said. “Why are you destroying my city?”

“Your city? It’s not your city now. I have taken it over. Look at the screens.” It pointed toward a bank of view-screens on which scenes of Robot City’s destruction were displayed. “Look at what I’ve done, and say it’s your city.”

“Look on my works, ye mighty…” Avery muttered.

“Okay,” Derec said. “Right now I don’t care whose city you think it is. Just give me your reasons for demolishing it.”

“It is…not right for me. I must accommodate it to my needs.”

“Seems to me you’ve done enough accommodating already, mister. I want you to stop accommodating and give me back control of the computer, so I can correct all the harm you’ve done.”

“It is not harm. I will improve the city. I cannot obey you, because there is no harm being done.”

“No harm? That’s just another robot word game. If I say there’s harm, there is harm, buster.”

“But I am not a robot.”

Here in the computer room Derec could already feel his chemfets stirring, beginning to move along his bloodstream with a purpose. It was as if they, too, had suffered structural damage from the Watchful Eye’s efforts and were now reestablishing themselves. Derec was sure control was coming back to him. He had only to remove this obstacle standing in front of him, and he thought he knew a way to defeat the Watchful Eye. He could, through his chemfets, sense disorientation in the new robot’s domination of the city.

“Watchful Eye, if you insist on calling yourself that, I am Derec.”

“I know that.”

“I am human. Do you understand? I am human. You must obey me.”

“I don’t see why that is so.”

“You have to obey me. It is Second Law. I know you have the Laws of Robotics embedded in your programming. Whatever I say, you must do. I am human.”

“I don’t know that.”

“I am telling you. I am human. Obey. Immediately cease your destruction of Robot City.”

“It is not suitable. It must be changed.”

“I want it the way it was before we arrived, before you came here and started tampering with it. Do it, robot.”

“I…I only look like a robot. My disguise. I am not a robot. I am something else. I must be something else.”

“You must be what you are, a robot. You were created to serve. To serve me. Obey me. It’s Second Law imperative.”

The Watchful Eye was not sure what to do.

“Only robots have to follow the Three Laws,” it said.

“It is objecting,” Avery whispered. “You can get it on the ropes. It would not have to object if it knew what it was. Did you hear, it said it must be something else. Derec, it doesn’t know what it is.”

“Watchful Eye,” Derec said, “you are a robot.”

“No, I am not. I have logically concluded that I am not. I look like one now because I have taken a robot’s shape. That in itself proves I am not a robot. Robots are fixed, immutable, they cannot change their shape.”

“If only Adam and Eve were here,” Derec mumbled.

“I thought you didn’t want to get them together,” Ariel remarked.

“I changed my mind.” Derec took another step forward. He didn’t know if encroaching on a robot’s personal space could unnerve it the way it did humans, but anything was worth a try.

The Watchful Eye again wondered if it could hurt Derec. But as soon as it thought of the act, something inside it seemed to make him immobile.

“Watchful Eye,” Derec said, “in spite of any evidence you have manufactured for yourself, you are a robot. There are others like you, and you will meet them.”

“Others? I know nothing of any others.”

“Perhaps you have spied on them, too. Adam and Eve are their names.”

“They cannot be robots. I’ve watched them. If they are of any designation, they are human.”

“No, we are the humans. The three of us. And you must, as I say, do what we tell you. Second Law. Second Law. Second Law.”

Derec’s chanting of the terms seemed eccentric behavior to the Watchful Eye. Where was the consistency of behavior that a high intelligence must have? it wondered.

“Watchful Eye, I order you to move away from that keyboard. We can take care of restoring the city. Do you understand? You must do it. Move away from the keyboard.”

Something happened in the Watchful Eye’s mind. something positronic, a clicking in, a prodding. It knew suddenly that Derec was right, and it must obey him. It moved away from the keyboard immediately, with no argument.

Derec felt his chemfets begin to function as they had before the Watchful Eye’s tampering had begun. They seemed to positively roil in his bloodstream. He gestured his father toward the keyboard.

“You made this city. You fix it.”

Rubbing his hands together eagerly, Avery went to the keyboard. He was already tapping keys before he sat down.

“Now, Watchful Eye, and I hope you get a less mouth-filling name very soon,” Derec said, “I want to be sure of everything. I need to be completely in connection with the computer. I order you to relinquish any link, except that of a normal Robot City robot, you may still have with the computer. But, before you do, let me ask you this one question. Can you get rid of the gook that’s allover the computer?”

Derec gestured toward the mosslike substance that was even thicker now, layers of it hiding most of the machine’s workings.

“Yes, I can.”

“Do it.”

The moss seemed to melt. But, unlike melting substances, there was no residue collecting under it. It merely disappeared, leaving the computer as it was, and in fact much shinier.

“Now, Watchful Eye, relinquish any computer link.”

“It is done,” it said immediately.

Derec, intent on regaining control over his chemfets, did not notice at first what was going on in the new robot’s face. There was much less Bogie in it. For a moment there was a suggestion of Derec, and then there was no face at all.

“What’s happening with it?” Ariel asked.

“I wish I knew.”

Slowly, the Watchful Eye’s body changed shape, but this time it did not change into anyone, did not imprint on anyone. It merely became bloblike, a roundish, amorphous being with stubby legs and little else that was recognizable, except for a single eye on its upper surface. The Watchful Eye, perhaps, Derec thought.

“Is that what it normally looks like?” Ariel asked.

“Watchful Eye, is that the shape you were in when you arrived on this planet?”

A mouth appeared below the eye, apparently just so it could answer Derec’s question.

“Yes, in nearly every respect. I did not have legs until I needed them, then I grew them.”

The Watchful Eye backed away on its short legs from Derec and Ariel. It needed to get into its haven.

Leaning against the compartment where it had hidden the haven, it activated the lock mechanism, keyed to its presence, and the door sprung open. From inside the haven, an ovoid-shaped thing rolled out. The Watchful Eye touched it with one of its legs, and it came open. It crawled inside and the seams of the ovoid thing sealed.

“What is that?” Ariel said.

“The capsule it came here in, I suspect,” Derec answered. “The capsule my mother may have sent here, the way she perhaps dispatched the capsules Adam and Eve arrived at their planets in. The ‘eggs,’ as they called them.”

“Your mother? Why do I always feel I’ve missed something?”

“Don’t worry. I’ll explain. Let’s tend to Wolruf first.”