Mark Tiedemann - Chimera

She stood in the living room for a few minutes, quietly letting herself grow used to the idea of being here. It surprised her sometimes how difficult it was to continue knowing Derec. They got along well enough, but there were limits, and she did not know them all.

She looked around. Too little furniture, she judged. Austere. One sofa, one chair, a low table, and a subetheric. No carpet, just a plain tile. The table was still cluttered with glasses and dishes. A flatscreen reader stood like a piece of sculpture amid the mess. She placed a hand on the back of the sofa: the pillows showed the wrinkles and depressions of long use. She imagined him here, studying, till sleep pulled him out lengthwise, still clothed.

She snatched her hand away.

The bedroom was neat and orderly. A modest collection of clothes in the small closet, stark gray sheets, a clock and lamp on the lone nightstand.

More clutter in the kitchen sink, but virtually no food in the pantry. She scrolled through the menu on his autochef: coffee, various potato and pasta recipes, eggs, three meat dishes, juice. It was as abbreviated as his wardrobe.

The workroom, dominated by Thales' console, exhibited the most debris of occupation: papers, disks, three chairs, four or five readers…No dishes, though.

"Hello, Ambassador Burgess, " Thales said.

Ariel felt a wave of guilt. She swallowed. "Hello, Thales. Status?"

"I am linked to a positronic analysis station on Kopernik," the RI said. "We have ninety-nine percent capable dataflow, time delay negligible through subetheric router. Subject has been connected to diagnostics and I am running an excavation now. We have uncorrupted memory nodes isolated by collapsed positronic synaptic framework. Estimated retrieval time for first verifiable memories: two hours, twenty-nine minutes."

Fast work, Derec, she thought, impressed despite herself. Having Hofton no doubt had sped things along. Hofton's absence disturbed her, which came as a surprise. She felt vulnerable. "How much available memory do you and I have at our disposal, Thales?"

"I am using the buffers on Kopernik for the excavation, the commline buffer to maintain the link. For all practical purposes, you have all my available on-site memory."

"I see. Don't tell me anything precise, like a number."

"Would you prefer a specific? I have available 3 x 1023 kjC in three primary and six secondary nodes-"

"That's fine, Thales."

It amused Ariel at times, the way positronic entities tried to accommodate human wants, matching expectations with limitations. Flexible as they were, they sometimes provided either too little information or too much, their ability to accurately judge what constituted the necessary and the sufficient inadequate to the challenge of serving people. All in all, they were remarkable creations, among the best things humans had ever devised. But they were not flawless. Not flawless at all.

Ariel sighed. "All right, then. I want you to begin a records search, new file. Priority protect protocols in effect. Alert me to any attempt at eavesdropping. I want all available data on the history of Nova Levis. I also want to be kept updated on the excavation you're doing on Kopernik."

"Yes, Ariel. May I ask, what level of records search?"

"What do you mean?"

"Do you wish me to confine myself to those records without confidentiality protects or shall I acquire any and all documents pertinent to your request?"

Ariel considered. Thales wanted permission to violate protected files. She had no doubt it could do so. Privacy issues represented a gray area for robots-they required specific instructions in such cases, lacking any sense of how harm might attach to simple data.

"Do a survey of available documents of both kinds, " she said finally. "Give me a list, detailing their security status and source. We'll decide then."

"Yes, Ariel." A moment later: "Will you be staying here?"

She hesitated. "I'm not sure, Thales. What would you prefer?"

"It would simplify the security standards you have requested if I did not have to contact you via external comm for updates."

"Hm. True. Do you think Derec would mind?"

"I see no reason why he should. "

No, I don't suppose you would…

"In that case, yes. I'll leave for a short while to get some personal items." She thought a few moments. "In fact, from time to time I may have to leave anyway, depending on what you find out for me. "

"I understand, Ariel."

She went back to the kitchen. Perhaps she could bring R. Jennie down here. On the other hand, vacating her apartment completely might be a mistake. In either case, she needed to give Jennie instructions…

Details. She needed food in the kitchen, changes of clothes, her personal datum. She wondered if Derec ever had visitors, then dismissed the thought. She would have known; if nothing else, there would be signs here, in his living space, and she saw little enough even of Derec.

What has he been doing this past year?

Oddly, the idea that Derec had spent all this time alone-except for those few instances when they had shared a meal or attended a meeting together-saddened her. But then, she knew little enough of what he had been doing prior to last year. Perhaps this was his norm, the way he was used to living.

He had been bitterly angry over losing his company. That he had nearly ended up in prison had seemed relatively unimportant to him. Had she not moved to reinstate his Auroran citizenship, he might very well be living today in a private call in a Terran penal facility, the charges ranging from violation of Earther trade laws and the Positronic Prohibition Acts to murder. That he would have been no more guilty than any other Auroran on Earth made no difference-he would have been the perfect example. Even without a jail term, the Phylaxis Group, his firm, had been used as a club to beat the pro-positronic movement into submission and undermine all the work that had been done over the last several years to bridge the gaps dividing Earth and the Spacer worlds. Not the only club, to be sure, but a most effective one: Phylaxis had been held responsible for the failure of the entire Union Station positronics showcase and the subsequent events involving what the media had characterized as a "Killer Robot": Bogard.

Bogard. Derec's attempt at building a bodyguard. Ariel still shuddered when she thought of it. She had condemned the idea-unfairly, she realized. Bogard had worked. It had been subverted, tricked, and attacked-no other robot of which she was aware could have possibly continued functioning under such stress. And that had been Ariel's objection. She did not want robots to function after failure. If they did not adhere rigorously to the Three Laws, she wanted them incapacitated. Bogard had doggedly persisted in functioning, all the way up until the end, when it had taken a human life. Inadvertently, in the course of protecting Derec, but even for its remarkably flexible criteria an intolerable violation.

The thought had occurred to her that Derec might take the blame personally. She believed him more resilient than that, but you never knew how or which events might overwhelm a psyche. She was ashamed of herself that she had not checked, had left him alone while she embraced her own self-pity.

Maybe we can turn it all around with this, she thought. Baseless optimism irritated her as much as pointless cynicism, but sometimes the situation demanded an investment of faith.

She looked back at Thales. I could ask it what Derec's been doing…

But there were those privacy issues again.

"Ariel," Thales said, startling her. "I have a question. Which Nova Levis did you wish me to research?" "I have found two references under the heading 'Nova Levis; " Thales explained. "The first concerns a Settler colony, established thirty-two years ago in the Tau Secordis system. The second concerns a research laboratory here on Earth established twenty-eight years ago."