Intruder

Chapter 2. Dealing With The Silversides

Ariel rubbed Derec’s forehead gently. The way she touched him was now one of his favorite things in life. It seemed to him that her fingertips did not actually make contact with his skin but merely gave off comforting rays as they passed above it. Ariel had told him that there were people who appeared to heal the sick because of the comforting warm emanations that came from their hands. The warmth had actually been measured and was sometimes burning hot. On the planet Solaria, she told him, such affection or healing was rare. Solarians obeyed taboos against touching others, and that seemed sad to her.

“You’re positively drenched in sweat, Derec. That must have been one whale of a dream.”

“It was. Awful.”

“I know how you feel. I just had a lulu of a nightmare myself.”

“What was your dream about?”

She didn’t want to tell him that it concerned Jacob Winterson or that she had awakened crying. He’d been somewhat jealous of Jacob, so the subject was best ignored right now.

“Nothing special. Tell me yours.”

“There was the city, Robot City, and it was all strange, mixed up. And my father in a car that looked like a disease. And…and…my mother…”

“Hush, hush. Take it easy. When you’re ready, tell me all about it, calmly and in order.”

He nodded. Getting up from the bunk, he brushed past her. As he paced, he concentrated on stretching the sleep out of his muscles and lowering his breathing to an acceptable rhythm, “I thought I was having a lucid dream, but, you know, I was never able to control it, not even for a second.”

As he related the dream, Ariel noted that his face and voice were childlike. Sometimes she forgot how young they actually were. All the responsibility and strain of their lives since they had first come to Robot City had seemed to age them incredibly. Sometimes her mental image of herself was of a much older woman, one who’d been coping with adversity for so long that the experience registered in deep lines on her face. However, a look into any mirror showed her the same young, almost adolescent, mien: the baby fat of her cheeks, the brightness of her eyes, the radiance of her long black hair, the youthful sheen of her skin. Her figure, once fairly gaunt, had filled out well, too-as Derec so often reminded her.

Looking into his tired eyes, realizing he had not slept well for some time, she wondered how a couple of kids like them had stumbled into a life filled with so much tension and danger. Why couldn’t they go back to Aurora (they had been there, excited with their love, for too brief a time) and romp without care through one of its lovely forests or swim in a placid lake? If not Aurora, the strictly regimented, uncomfortably overpopulated Earth might even do. Anywhere where they could be suitably young for a while.

“What do you make of it, Ariel? The dream?”

She wondered how much analysis he could take right now. His face pale beneath his damp, sandy hair, he looked vulnerable.

“Well, I don’t really know. Maybe all the worries you’ve had, what with the strange messages you’ve been getting from Robot City, maybe they’re just coming out in your dreams.”

Derec’s chemfets had gone haywire when he had tried to contact Robot City. Normally he could easily check on operations there from vast distances across space, but all he could sense these days was some vague activity and some nonsense he could not interpret. The last time he’d tried, he could swear the central computer was too occupied with transmitting a medley of unusual songs to bother responding to him. That wasn’t the way the chemfet system was supposed to work. The computer was the conduit between Derec’s chemfets and Robot City, allowing him to run the place and, since the responsibility was so awesome, to delegate authority properly to the appropriate robots. In a way, Robot City had become an extension of Derec, or at least of him and his wishes, his orders, his plans and dreams for the city’s future. He had previously been able to take charge of any part of the city’s operations in an instant, without having to accept musical digressions from a computer. Now a good part of the city’s activities seemed shut off from him.

He felt isolated, as if the chemfets, unable to sustain normal contact with the city, were idly traveling through his bloodstream to no useful purpose. It was a nerve-wracking feeling that may have been something like the detachment and distortion of reality that a disturbed person must feel, and he didn’t like it. His father was, Derec believed, insane, and he sometimes worried that genetics would win out, and he’d wind up in a loony bin himself.

Dr. Avery could very well be behind the present looniness in Robot City. Whenever there was trouble there, he was always the first logical suspect. Since he was the creator of the city, no one would know better than he how to disrupt it.

Ariel now smiled at him. What must she be thinking as his mind drifted off like this?

“Frost,” he said, “it all seems pretty warped when I think of it. Maybe it’s just worry about Robot City. But that part where I can’t see my mother’s face, that really scares me.”

“Take it easy, darling. Maybe you dream about her because you want to see her-”

“I never think of her! I don’t want to think of her!”

She hadn’t expected him to be so vehement on the subject of his mother, a woman whose name neither she nor Derec knew. Ariel had conducted an extensive computer search of genetic records on Robot City and Aurora, but had not been able to locate a single fact about Derec except the skimpy details accumulated since their arrival in Robot City. She had no idea why so few records of him existed. She thought his father might have blocked or erased any file on Derec, or that even her mother, Juliana Welsh, who had financed Dr. Avery’s work, had pulled some strings to suppress any bureaucratic documentation on Derec’s earlier life. Derec himself remembered enough to know that he was, indeed, a Spacer, that he had some training as a roboticist, and that his memory had been deliberately erased. None of the memory that his father had restored had provided any solutions to the other mysteries surrounding his existence.

She put her arms around him and hugged him. “Forget it, Derec. I’m just psychologizing, and I’m not really good at it. It was just a dream, only a dream. Nothing to worry about. Really.”

“You’re right, probably.” His voice was calmer. “What I need is some real rest. I never could sleep in one of those tubelike contraptions.” He gestured toward the bunk, which did, indeed, look like half a tube. “Maybe there’ll be some time to relax in Robot City, especially if everything’s okay there. And if we can get the Silversides straightened away.”

“Adam and Eve. You’d seem friendlier to them if you’d use their first names. Old human custom.”

Ariel was happy to see a smile briefly cross Derec’s face. “Sorry, just can’t get used to those names, especially since they tend to look like us when they’re in the mood to look human. Anyway, it’s a wonder I didn’t dream of them!”

“I think they’ve invaded some of my dreams. And I’d much rather dream about you, darling.”

She kissed him and said, “I think I’ll check in with Wolruf. She’s with Adam and Eve right now. You know their new game?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Adam’s taught Eve a version of the wolf-state.”

Adam had arrived on the planet of the kin, intelligent wolf-creatures, in an egglike vehicle. Because he had not yet encountered sentient life, he had been shapeless. When he joined the kin, he transformed himself into kin-shape. He had a tendency even now to return to that form regularly. The kin had dubbed him SilverSide because, even when he changed his overall appearance, he still retained the metallic, silvery surface of a robot.

“Now the two of them become wolves and start nipping at each other while barking out that strange language. It’s weird, really. They go around in a circle and growl, go after each other’s tail. Wolruf says they’re imitating some wolf-pup behavior Adam observed at what he calls the Pack Home. Lately, they’ve been transforming from shape to shape too much, and just to annoy us. Adam says they have too few forms to imprint on. I guess he means they need practice. You know, if we let them use the Key to Perihelion and flash them to Earth, they’d probably go insane trying to copy all the life forms there.”

The Keys to Perihelion were transport devices that took the user first to Perihelion, the place said to be nearest to all other places in the universe, and then to other specific, preset destinations.

“They do seem different lately,” Derec said. “ A little bored, I think. Remember how Adam was so intent on imprinting on everything-us, the kin, the blackbodies, robots? There was something desperate about it, something to do with his quest to define what, exactly, a human was. All the present changes are playful rather than purposeful. They seem less curious somehow.”

“Maybe it’s us. Adam’s so intent on defining ‘human’ as the highest order of being, and he doesn’t seem quite convinced yet that we’re it. He needs a greater variety of humans to study. Anyway, get yourself some rest. I’ll get you up again according to schedule, and that’s coming around soon enough, sonny boy.”

Blowing him a kiss at the door, Ariel left the sleeping compartment.

Derec glanced at his bunk, unsure whether he wanted to return there. Why welcome the dreams that awaited him, stalking him like the kind of wolf Adam had been when they first met? He put one foot on the edge of his bunk and began to vigorously massage the skin of his face, trying to make himself feel more awake and alert.

Adam was so unpredictable, he thought, meddlesome. He had admired the blackbodies, taking them, with their high intellectual abilities and impressive appearances, as probably the truest example of the humans he was programmed to seek. His experiments in imprinting on them had nearly wrecked Ariel’s establishment of a new farming community. Then, when Adam had discovered the embryo form of Eve in the forest, Derec and Ariel’s problems had doubled. Adam brought Ariel to the “egg” in which Eve had arrived. Since Ariel was the first living creature she saw, Eve’s first shape, and the one she returned to most often, was as a silver-toned image of Ariel.

Despite all the knowledge the Silversides had accumulated from contact with humans, kin, and blackbodies, they frequently acted like children. They were fascinated by new information and sometimes flaunted an idea with repetitiveness and ferocity.

Derec recalled the day before they had all left the blackbodies’ planet. He had been in a lab working on an adaptation of a remote control device designed to make it easier for the robots in the field to communicate with their central computer. Ariel’s transformation of the settlement from a Robot City to an agricultural setup had necessarily expanded the geographical area in which the robots had to function, often removing them too far from the computer for effective comlink communication. Derec had designed a powerful modemlike wireless remote that could be operated easily at such distances. It was itself a miniature computer with limited-access memory. Attached to the chest of a robot, it could be activated when the robot placed its hand over the middle of the device. Without otherwise interrupting its task in the field, the possessor could transmit or receive data easily without having to travel to a computer terminal.

Adam and Eve had come into the room while he was busily attaching the experimental devices to a pair of utility robots who had been reprogrammed to be field foremen. He had switched off the robots so that he could more easily attach the remotes to them.

At the moment of their entrance, Adam had looked like a slightly distorted version of Derec molded in silver, with a touch of Ariel added, while Eve merely resembled Ariel alone. Derec had firmly wished that the Silversides would encounter other humans, so they would at least look different. Of course, there was no telling how much mischief they could cause if they met up with the wrong human.

Derec had always been a bit uncomfortable around Eve in her Ariel mode. Now that the robot was getting better at the mimicry, he had often wondered if, in a dark place where the silver exterior of Eve would not be so obvious, he could mistake her for Ariel and gather her into an embrace.

With Adam, the effect was less disturbing but equally annoying. For Derec, looking at Adam was like seeing an avant-garde artist’s rendition of himself.

“Why have you disconnected this robot?” Adam had asked, his busy fingers touching the robot in several places. The hand was vaguely caninoid, Derec had noticed, suggesting that Adam had just come from a session with the caninoid alien Wolruf.

“Because there is less chance of damage to already existing circuits when modifications are made during the disconnected state. And, Adam, this is delicate work and I have to concentrate so please don’t ask any more questions. I won’t answer them.”

“Why have you become so hostile to us?” Adam had asked.

“Because you’re pests, both of you, and you test my patience. Anyway, I’m busy now.”

“But how can we absorb new information and learn about humans if you refuse to deal with us?”

“Right now I don’t care whether you absorb beetle oil off a dirty floor.”

“Is there a beetle here?” Adam said eagerly. He was already scanning the floor for an insect to study and perhaps, in part, become. Derec had shuddered at the picture of a Silverside taking on the image of a giant bug. At least there had so far been nothing derived from insects in any of their shapes. Human, wolf, robot, and winged alien, yes, but nothing even vaguely entomological.

“The floor isn’t dirty,” Eve had observed. “What would beetle oil look like? Is it transparent? Would it blend in with the dirt of the floor, if there were any?”

Derec had always had difficulty coping with the literalness of robots, but with the Silversides the wordplay had become excessively ridiculous and irksome.

“There is no beetle, no beetle oil, no such thing as beetle oil as far as I know.”

“Would you lie to us then?” Eve had asked. There had been an Ariel-like sweetness in her voice. He had wished she would use a different sort of voice.

“Gladly, especially if it would get rid of you.”

He had spoken to Eve while still attaching the remote to the robot and had not observed Adam pick up the other remote from the table. At first he had held it in his hand, then had held it to his head for a moment. When Derec had finally noticed Adam’s meddling, the silver humanoid robot was pressing it against his leg. Finally, he had observed where Derec was attaching the other one, which had led him to press the device against his chest.

“How is it attached?” he had asked.

“That doesn’t matter,” Derec had said irritably, “since they’re not going to be put on either one of you. Put it back on the table.”

“But we crave knowledge even when it has no practical function for us,” Eve had remarked.

“And I find this device aesthetically pleasing,” Adam had said as he replaced it on the table.

Derec had returned to his work and so didn’t notice the slow changing of Adam from humanlike to robotlike. When he did look up, he had seen that Adam was now what he had originally termed a WalkingStone, a humanoid robot. However, there was one major difference. He now had a duplicate of the remote upon his chest, as if welded there.

Passing his hand over its front, a band of light in the center had gone on, and, across the room, the computer screen had seemed to go haywire with flashing data as it transmitted information to Adam’s remote. This had been a new one for Derec. Adam could copy a device like this, attach it properly to his mimicry of a robot body, and make it work. His imprinting abilities were improving by leaps and bounds. How could they possibly control him?

Instead of letting Adam know he had achieved something interesting, he had hollered at him. “Stop that!”

“Why?”

“Because I say so. You are putting this place into jeopardy.”

“I am only receiving geographical information. What harm could that do, Master Derec?”

“With you there must be something!”

“You don’t seem to approve of us, Master Derec,” Eve had said. Derec had taken note of how the two of them had suddenly invoked the polite form of address for a robot to a human.

“Does my approval really matter to you, Eve?”

“Yes, it does. You and Ariel are the only humans we know. If you are indeed the high intelligence we are programmed to seek, if you are indeed the humans you claim you are, then we will be in your image. And, in your image, we must be acceptable to you. Is that a part of First Law?”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Well, it should be.”

Derec had given up. There had seemed to be no sensible way to control them. The more traits and features they copied, the more their chameleonic abilities were a threat-and the more power they could attain. The First Law should protect humans against them, but they were so clever, they could become the first robots to circumvent the law without destroying the letter of it, simply by denying people their status as humans. If they achieved power and could manufacture more of themselves, there was no telling what they might do. If they could add to their fund of human knowledge with imprints from every alien they encountered, they could eventually become the sort of world-conquering monsters, conglomerations of aspects and traits from many creatures, that robotics experts had always thought impossible.

Derec had clenched his fists tightly for a moment, to try to get rid of his ridiculous thoughts. This was the kind of thinking that had probably driven his father insane. Releasing the tension in his hands, he had returned to his work, ignoring the Silversides who grew bored, changed back to their human shapes and left the lab.

Later, Derec had discussed their charges with Wolruf, who had managed the best lines of communication to the Silversides. He was not sure why she was so successful with Adam and Eve. It was perhaps because Adam, when he had first emerged from his own metal egg, had encountered the kin. He had molded himself into kin shape and stayed in that form until he began to encounter other intelligent forms of life. Wolruf’s appearance (actually more doglike than wolflike) reminded Adam of the kin, perhaps making him comfortable with her.

“I’m confused,” he had said to Wolruf without a word of greeting to her. She stroked the side of her jaw with the backs of the sausagelike fingers of her left hand, a gesture he recognized as indicating concern or even worry.

“What botherss ‘u, frriend Derec.” Just as Wolruf’s s’s had the faint sound of a hiss in them, her r’s tended to be a bit extended too, reminding Derec of a whispered growl. The lupine structure of Wolruf’s mouth did not allow her to enunciate his language easily, although she had certainly improved her linguistic skills. The s’s and r’s used to be more pronounced and the 1 nonexistent. Once he had had to concentrate fiercely to understand, but now he never had much difficulty.

“Adam and Eve. They’re driving me crazy. How can we let them loose on any world?”

“Do otherrss haverreason to fearr them, ‘u think?”

“Darn right. Most human societies certainly. Look, many of us are quite superstitious. Back on Earth, a simple-function robot is looked upon with dread, and most robots are kept out of the way, and on the Settlers’ planets they’ve tried to ban robots altogether. I think there’s some of that kind of fear in all humans, even though the Spacers have managed to accommodate themselves to the situation by using robots as a servant class.”

“I wonderr: Should the Silverrsidess be trreated different from otherr rrobots?”

“It’s the shape-changing. Look, my people have a history of superstition toward what they perceive as unnatural. In our imagination we see monsters in closets, believe illogically in the possibility of blood-sucking vampires, werewolves who-”

“Excusse me, I know not the terrm werrewolvess.”

“Can’t tell you much. Evidently, at the time of the full moon on Earth (a time when, superstition has it, people tend to grow madder), certain humans get transformed into wolfshape and run about the countryside killing and ravaging until the moon sets.”

The brown and gold hair on the sides of Wolruf’s face had begun to stiffen and rise slightly. Derec recognized this as a physical sign that the alien was disturbed. And then he had recognized why.

“I’m sorry, my friend. I was thoughtless. It happens that, like robots, wolves are regarded with some fear.”

“And, to ‘umanss, would I be some kind of wolf?”

“Maybe, to some. Hey, old superstitions are hard to cope with. To most, you’d be more like a dog, and we humans have a bizarre fascination and love for dogs. Back on your home planet, don’t your people have some fears, some superstitions?”

“Don’t know what ‘u-well, perrhapss. A kind of inssect, verry tiny, that-”

“See? All I’m saying is that we’re a superstitious lot, we humans. Give us a robot who can look like anything he wants to and molds himself into a different shape right in front of our eyes, and we’re liable to back off in a hysterical fit. The Silversides change shape as regularly as most of us change clothes. And they are trouble. Wolruf, my friend, they’re two whirlwinds looking for villages to wreck.”

She had stared at Derec for a moment, her dark deepset eyes searching his face in a way that might have seemed sinister had he not known her so well. “Well,” she had finally said, “seems to me that the besst place forr them might be a worrld wherre they could not causse the harm you suggesst, and wherre itss inhabitantss wouldn’t even rreact to their shapechanging. Be good forr uss, too. We then study them furrther with the proper facilities, try to rrid them of their-what would ‘u call them?-inconsistenciess.”

“Yes, exorcise them of their demons. That’s a wonderful idea, Wolruf, but where is this perfect world?”

“Robot City.”

“Robot City? But I don’t want to take them to-wait, you’re right. Adam’s really bored with robots and there’re only robots there. He says he receives little satisfaction from imprinting on robots. I think he’s somehow relegated them to a lower order of species.”

“I don’t underrsstand. If manmade, can they be a sspeciess?”

“They’re not. But Adam perceives them that way, and has dismissed them. He’s searching for the highest order of being on which to imprint, and he sees no future in being a robot. Apparently his programming is to imprint on humans, but he still resists the idea that Ariel and I are the answer. And in Robot City she and I would be the only humans, unless my father showed up. It’s good. With us, and you, as the only nonrobots there, we might be able to keep them in check. If we couldn’t affect their programming, maybe we could bore them to death.”

“Oh, but I don’t ssuggesst they sshould die, Derrec. Oh, no.”

Derec had smiled. Sometimes Wolruf could be just as literal as a robot.

“I didn’t mean it that way. I mean a boredom so intense that it’d render them relatively inactive.”

The plan had been easy to put into operation. The Silversides were curious to see the Robot City they had heard so much about and had given Derec no opposition to the idea. They had been relatively quiet on the trip out so far, and he had begun to wonder if they were being devious, planning some massive Silverside trick. However, as they neared Robot City and the chemfets in his bloodstream began to cause havoc within him, Derec had worried less and less about his robotic charges. In fact, he was tired of thinking of them now. He wanted no worries at all. If only he could relax with Ariel, make love with her, rest in her arms.

For now he might as well settle for his uncomfortable bunk.

He did fall asleep. But more dreams came. In one of them a Supervisor robot changed its face to resemble Dr. Avery, then announced that the Laws of Robotics had been repealed and he would derive infinite pleasure from purposely mutilating a human.