Maverick

Chapter 23. Battle Lines

The Warm, yellow streetlight was surrounded by a nimbus of clumsy insects. Grabbing the lamppost for a pivot, Derec swung off the slidewalk and followed Avery into the pocket park. Neither spoke until Avery had found a balcony overlooking the street below and taken a seat on the cold stone railing.

“Dad, I never thought I’d see the day when you ran away from a problem. ”

“I’m not running away. I’m thinking. ”

Derec glanced around the balcony, then put a foot up on the railing and looked out at the darkened city. The gentle night breeze carried faint hints of moisture and distant forests. “Care to explain the difference?”

Avery stopped scowling and looked up at Derec. “We can’t get anywhere with the supervisors. Circular logic: The kin have First Law status because the supervisors’ definition of human is corrupted, but the supervisors won’t let us fix the definition because that would violate the First Law. ”

“So why fix it? Aside from pure human chauvinism, that is. ”

Avery stroked his whiskery chin and tugged at the edge of his stiff white moustache. “Hard as this may be to believe, Derec, it’s for their own good. By the time we humans developed robots, we already had a mature, technological culture. We accepted robots as just better tools for carrying on life as we knew it.

“But what if back in the Stone Age, some alien race had come along and given us a magic box that delivered everything we asked for? Frost, you don ‘t have to imagine it; Old Earth history is littered with stories of Stone Age cultures that tried to make the leap directly to high technology. First the existing family and social structures were demolished. Then the local ecology was destroyed.

“And then the people had a choice: join the mainstream of human society-become exactly like every other technological culture-or become extinct. ” Avery ran a hand through his silvery hair and looked Derec straight in the eye. “Never mind how I feel about the kin personally. They deserve more of a choice than that, don’t they?”

Derec nodded. “Okay. Where do we start?”

“I’ve been thinking about that. ” Avery paused, and screwed his face up in a puzzled look. “You say it felt like Central was running on pure cron? No mentation at all?”

“Dad, I’ve met bricks with more on their minds. Central is a complete blank. ”

“ A tabula rasa,” Avery muttered to himself. He nodded. “Yes, that makes sense. That’s what I would do. ”

Derec peered at Avery. “A tubular what?”

“Not ‘tubular. ’ Tabula rasa. Latin for ‘erased tablet. ’ One old theory used to hold that the human mind started out as a blank tablet, and personality developed as a result of the impressions that life ‘wrote’ on the mind. ”

Derec laughed. “That’s ridiculous, Dad. For starters, you’re completely ignoring the influence of genetic-”

Avery waved a hand to cut Derec off. “I didn’t say that I subscribe to that theory-at least, not as it applies to humans. But tell me, what would you do if you had a robot that had suffered traumatic brain damage? Damage so profound that every time you repaired it, the very memory of that damage unbalanced the psyche module again?”

Derec thought it over a moment. “I’d erase the memory. ”

“That’d work for a conventional robot. But what if it was a cellular robot, and every cell held a complete set of backup memories in positronic microcode?”

Derec sat down heavily on the stone railing next to Avery and blew out a deep breath. “Oh boy. We’re talking about a complete system purge and rebuild here. ”

“Exactly. ” Avery favored Derec with a knowing smile. “ And what would the robot’s mind be like after the purge?”

Slowly, Derec turned to look at Avery. Slowly, very slowly, a matching smile lit up his face. “A tabula rasa. ” Picking up the thought, Derec ran with it. “If the supervisors are doing a complete system rebuild on Central, it’s in a very impressionable state right now. The merest suggestion could have incredibly far-reaching effects on the future of the city. ”

Avery nodded. “So the supervisors will try to isolate Central from unwanted influences. They’ve probably severed all the terminal input lines and buffered the 1/0 channels. ”

Derec’s face erupted in a sly grin. “But we know someone who’s got a direct commlink channel to Central’s brain, don’t we?”

Avery returned the grin. “How about it, son? Feel up to a little guerrilla computing?”

Derec looked around the balcony and shrugged. “This looks like as good a spot as any. ” Throwing his head back, he closed his eyes and began to concentrate. “Commlink activated. I’m hacking into the city network; okay, I’m in. I’m riding down the main data bus now, and I’m coming up to-uh oh. There’s a big black hole where Central should be. ”

“All the user-friendly stuff is deactivated,” Avery said. “You’ll have to feel your way in. ”

“Right. I’m going-no, wait, there’s an invisible barrier extending around the hole as far as I can reach. Cylindrical, not hemispherical. ”

“Can you find a seam?”

“Don’t have time. I’m going to see if it’s open at the top. ” Derec squinted for a moment as his concentration intensified. “Okay, that did it. I’ve jumped the barrier and I’m inside. Feels like I’m still falling; not accelerating, just falling. The hole is completely black. I can’t see a thing. ”

“You’re probably in the I-pipe,” Avery said. “Try reaching out with your right hand. You should feel - What the blazes is that?”

Derec broke concentration and returned to the analog world to find Avery staring slack-jawed at something in the distance. He looked where Avery was looking.

He saw a mob of kin with torches surging down the darkened street, coming closer with every step.

“Listen!” Avery gasped. Derec’s ears were still tuned to the subtleties of hyperwave, but he quickly adjusted and caught the chaotic noise of the mob. No, not noise. Voices. Chanting. In heavily accented Standard.

“TwoLegs out! TwoLegs out!”

“Oh, good grief,” Avery muttered.

Derec instantly switched back to commlink and sent out an urgent call. Lucius? Mandelbrot! What ’ s going on?

Eve’s commlink voice answered. Friend Derec? Where are you? Derec transmitted a location-and-range pulse. Please stay there. Eve said. Friend Wolruf and 1 will join you shortly.

A few moments later, Wolruf and Eve came dashing up the slidewalk.

“Eve! What-?” is as far as Avery got.

“Iss Adam,” Wolruf blurted out. “ ‘E’s gone over completely to being SilverSides, an’ ‘at means the natives are ‘umans to ‘im. ‘E’s whipped ‘em up int’ a frenzy. Keeps talkin’ ‘bout ‘ow th’ city can never serve ‘eir needs properly as long as th’ TwoLegs are ‘here. Wants t’ drive ‘u ‘umans off th’ planet. ”

Derec blinked. “That’s impossible. The First Law-”

“Is being interpreted by the standards of these natives, “ Avery completed. “Intimidation may well be a normal part of their lives. For Adam, it’s the tactics of indirection: If he can get the natives to scare us out, it’ll never become a First Law problem. ” He turned to Eve. “What about the city robots?”

“They appear to be backing Adam,” Eve reported. “We saw several security robots draw back into the shadows as we approached. “

Avery looked at the mob again, which was now quite close, and swore softly. “It’s that double-frosted Zeroth Law of theirs. So long as we aren’t in immediate danger, the interests of a few hundred kin outweigh the interests of three humans. But I do not share Adam’ s confidence that he can control the mob. ” Scowling darkly, he bit the corner of his moustache, “Son? I think this nonsense has gone far enough. ” Reaching into his coat pocket, Avery drew out the black, flashlight-sized welding laser and stepped up to the edge of the balcony. “You, robot! “

The mob reacted instantly, swirling to a noisy, hostile stop beneath the balcony. Everywhere Avery looked, he saw bobbing torches and wet fangs bared and clashing in a savage, angry chant: “TwoLegs out! TwoLegs out!” Then, from somewhere in the depths of the crowd a lone howl erupted, a long, drawn-out note that sent chills down Avery’s spine.

The mob fell silent. The ranks parted, and SilverSides stepped to the fore. The robot’s skin flashed and glowed like flaming chrome in the orange torchlight.

“Robot!” Avery shouted. “You have violated the First Law! You threaten harm to humans!”

The crowd began to chant again, but SilverSides waved a paw to silence them. “Avery!” she shouted back. “This is not your world! You are not wanted here! Your very presence prevents this city from adapting to the needs of the kin. Only your departure can permit it to learn what it must. ” The kin could not have understood what she said, but they howled in support anyway. “Leave now and no harm will come to you!”

The crowd fell silent as Avery raised the laser and pointed it straight at SilverSides’ head. “Stand clear of the natives, robot,” he said in a voice as cold and deep as Death. “You are a rogue and I intend to destroy you. ”

Their glares interlocked. For the first time, Avery realized that he was facing a will as strong as his own, and he began to feel sweat and raw fear.

“Destroy me,” SilverSides said softly, “and you are all dead. It’s my word alone that keeps the kin from ripping you to pieces where you stand. ”

For a moment, they were a frozen tableau: Avery on the balcony, holding the laser, surrounded by fear-stricken Derec, Wolruf, and Eve; SilverSides in the street below, glaring at Avery with naked defiance, three hundred angry faces dancing in the torchlight behind her.

They were still trying to stare each other down when the hyperwave pulse bomb went off.

As kinetic weapons go, it wasn’t much. Just a small airburst in the troposphere, about two miles above the city. All that Avery, Wolruf, and the kin saw was a tiny point of light that flared and was gone long before the gentle pop of its detonation reached their ears.

To anyone equipped with a commlink, though, it was a deafening flash of colorless light and a blinding shriek of silent noise that jangled every synapse in his entire nervous system. Across the city, all the lights flickered and went out for a fraction of a second. Thousands of robots ground to a halt. SilverSides and Eve simply locked up, frozen in place.

Derec had time to scream once before his brain was overwhelmed by the searing blast of pain.

When the light ebbed and he could see again, he was lying on the pavement. His father and Wolruf were bending over him, looks of deep concern on their faces, their mouths moving in words he could not hear. And he couldn’t answer. Instead, he felt curiously distant, as if there were something invisible and gauzy between him and the others. Another face was forming, like an afterimage on his retinas: a picture of a head, large and hairless, with two black, glittering eyes set in bulging turrets of wrinkled skin. The grim, lipless mouth opened. Even via hyperwave, the voice was high and reedy.

Hello, Derrec. 1 trrust 1 now have your full attention?

“Aranimas?” Derec gasped.

Verry good. Now forr my second question. Do you know what plutonium is?

Obliquely, as if in his peripheral vision, Derec felt Eve and SilverSides come back to life and tap into the transmission. Behind them, every robot in the city slowly began to revive and join in.

Radioactive metal,Derec answered via commlink. Very poisonous. Explosively fissionable in large quantities.

Excellent,Aranimas answered. Now forr my thirrd question. Do you know what will happen when 1 dump five tons of plutonium rreactorr waste on yourr city?

Derec was suddenly terrified and fully awake. “You can’t!” he screamed on both voice and commlink. “You’ll kill every living thing for a hundred kilometers around!”

Leaving the rrobots unharrmed,Aranimas noted. Goodbye, Derrec. Like a light going out, his image vanished.

Derec leapt to his feet. “Wait, Aranimas! We can make a deal!” The only answer was silence. Derec leaned over the edge of the balcony and caught SilverSides’ attention… SilverSides! Did you monitor that transmission?” The silver robot’s grim expression told him everything he needed to know.

Pulling himself back from the edge, Derec turned to Avery and Wolruf, who were still staring at him with confused looks on their faces. “Dad, can we put the civil war on hold for a while? We’ve got a real problem. ”