Jerry Oltion - Humanity

Or he could be after something completely different. He sounded more than simply curious, but whether he was concerned for the robots’ welfare or whether he had his own reasons for wanting to find them she couldn’t tell. He could even be on Janet’s side, for all she knew. She wondered if she should risk contacting him, finding out directly what his intentions were, but a few moments’ thought dissuaded her. No, she didn’t want to risk alerting him, not yet. She needed some kind of test, some way of gauging the benevolence of his interest first.

Hmm. The best way to tell would probably be to give him a part of what he was after and see what he did with that. Something fairly harmless, but interesting enough to draw him out.

Smiling, she got up from the desk, retrieved a memory cube from her personal belongings, plugged it into the reader, and used the keyboard and the pointer to recall a page from one of her personal files. It was a robotics formula, part of the program that allowed her learning machines to think intuitively.

“Send this to him,” she said, then immediately added, “No, wait, not on the screen. Put it on his desktop in raised lettering so he can’t record it. Don’t record it anywhere yourself, either, and don’t tell him who sent it. And don’t give him or anybody else any information that might lead him to me in the future, either. Clear?”

“Acknowledged.”

“Let me see his response.”

Derec’s face replaced the robotics formula on her screen. He was still speaking to Wolruf, saying, “-meet you there as soon as I can make it. “

“All right,” Wolruf replied. There was a faint hiss of static as Wolruf disconnected.

Derec reached down to push a key on his keyboard, no doubt his own disconnect button, but stopped in surprise. “What the…?” He blinked, ran his right hand over the raised surface, then asked, “Where did this come from?”

“That information is not available,” the computer responded.

“What is it?”

“Don’t tell him,” Janet warned.

“That information is not available. “

Derec’s eyes flicked left and right as he took in the formula. Janet watched his brows furrow at the nonstandard notation-notation she had devised herself to describe a nonstandard idea.

A shadow darkened the doorway behind his head, and a thin, dark-haired girl entered the room. Ariel Burgess. Janet had known she was traveling with Derec, but it was intuitive knowledge only. She wasn’t prepared for the shock of actually seeing her son’s lover so casually enter the picture.

“Wipe that off his desk!” Janet ordered, snatching her memcube from the reader in the same motion. She watched Derec’s face slip from puzzlement to frustration, then he heard Ariel and turned to ask her, “Did you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Put that formula on my desk?”

She came up behind him and looked over his shoulders. “What formula?”

“It disappeared when you came in. I don’t mean on the computer, either; it was molded right into the desktop.”

Ariel looked just as puzzled as he had. “No, I didn’t do anything like that. I was out in the living room reading. I heard you talking with someone and I came in to see what you were doing.”

Derec nodded. He looked at the desk, then up at Ariel again. “I’ve been trying to find Avery and the robots. I think he’s hiding out with them, probably trying to take them apart now that they’re locked up again. I think I’ve tracked them down, though. Want to come along and see?”

Ariel shook her head. “Doesn’t sound like it’s going to be much fun if that’s what’s really going on. You’ll probably just get in a fight with him. “

“Probably will.” Derec sighed. He turned back toward the desk, looking one last time for the phantom formula, and switched off the computer. Janet’s view didn’t even flicker; she watched Derec stand, put his arms around Ariel, and hug her tightly. She nearly ordered the computer to stop watching when they kissed, but her curiosity was too strong.

She wished she had, though, when Derec murmured softly, “Frost, why couldn’t I have had normal parents?”

Avery was watching the microscope monitor when the alarm went off. Someone had stopped in front of his laboratory door. He cursed at the interruption, cursed that it had happened now, of all times. He was just beginning to understand the changes Janet had made in the robot cell morphology and how those changes might affect the way they combined to make macroscopic structures. He didn’t want to deal with Derec just now, Derec and his whining about ruining his mother’s experiment. He knew that’s what Derec would say. He knew what he would say in return, that between them he and his mother and her stupid experiment had ruined just about everything he, Wendell Avery, had ever done, and that it was about time he turned the tables; but he wished he didn’t have to get into all that just now. He had better things to be doing.

Well, he supposed he didn’t have to stick around for it if he didn’t want to. It would take Derec a few minutes to get through the locked door; by then he could be long gone.

He picked up the sphere of undifferentiated robot material that had formerly been Lucius’s right leg, switched off the microscope, pocketed the memcube he’d been storing data in, and strode to the wall adjacent to the one with the door in it. “Make another doorway here,” he said, and as soon as it formed he stepped through into the next room beyond his lab. “Remove the doorway,” he ordered.

The room was an empty box with a single door opening out onto the slidewalks. Avery went to that door, eased it open a crack, and peered out to see if it was, indeed, Derec. The door made no noise that Avery could hear, but the figure in front of his lab turned as if startled by a sound, then immediately turned away and rushed off down the slidewalk, running at a speed that took him to the intersection with a cross-corridor in less time than it took Avery to shout, “Hey! Stop!” The figure turned left without slowing and vanished from sight.

It was a robot, then, one with prior orders. But the glimpse Avery had gotten of its face hadn’t suggested a robot at all. It had looked quite human.

Had Derec reprogrammed one of the city robots to take on a human appearance? They could do it if ordered to. But why would he have done that? Avery knew Derec; if he had found Avery’s lab he would have simply come here himself.

Who else could it have been, though? Neither Wolruf nor Ariel would have sent a robot to scout for them, either, and that exhausted the possibilities. There was nobody else on the planet.

Unless…

He shuddered at the thought. It made sense, though. She’d been on the other two planets they had visited, planets that had each been home to one of her infernal robots. She had left one of them here as well-it wouldn’t be surprising if she had come to check up on it.

Avery looked down at the lump of robot material in his hand. He felt a twinge of guilt steal over him, but he fought it off, scowling. She’d disrupted his experiment; he had every right to disrupt hers.

But it wouldn’t do to have her running around loose while he was doing it. Avery turned to the blank wall beside him, said, “Give me a comlink with Central.”

“Link established,” the wall replied.

“There’s a humaniform robot on the slideways somewhere near this location. I want you to find it, track it, and report its destination to me. “

“I have already received instructions not to reveal that information.”

Avery’s scowl deepened, then slowly twisted to a grin. “Were those instructions given by Janet Anastasi?”

“I cannot reveal that information either.”