Jerry Oltion - Humanity

“Treat him better,” Janet said. “Follow the Laws of Humanics they’ve set up for us.”

Derec couldn’t suppress a sardonic laugh. “That may be fine for us, but what about Dad? He’s not going to do anything he doesn’t want to.”

His mother tossed her head, flinging her blond hair back over her shoulders. “Leave your father to me,” she said.

Avery woke from the anesthetic with the impression that his tongue had swollen to twice its normal size. He tried to swallow, but his mouth was too dry for that. His vision was blurry, too, and when he tried to raise his right hand to rub his eyes, it didn’t respond.

He was in bad shape, that much was clear. Damn that meddlesome robot! Damn him and damn Janet for building him.

He was evidently sitting up in bed, judging from the few somatic clues he could gather. He opened his mouth and used his swollen tongue and dry mouth to croak out the single word: “Water.”

He heard a soft clink of glassware, the blessed wet gurgle of liquid being poured, and then a dark shape leaned over him and held the glass to his lips. He sipped at it, blinking his eyes as he did in an effort to clear them so he could see his benefactor.

She spoke and saved him the effort of identification. “Well, Wendy, it looks like we have a lot to talk about, and finally plenty of time to do it in.”

Turning his head away from the glass, he said, “We have nothing to discuss.” It came out more like, “We a uthi oo ithcuth.”

She understood him anyway. “Ah, well, yes we do. There’s us, for instance. I can’t really believe it’s just coincidence that brought us back together after all this time. “

Avery blinked a few more times, and his vision finally began to clear. Janet was sitting on a stool beside his bed, wearing a soft, light blue bodysuit with a zippered neck, which she’d pulled strategically low. Watch yourself, he thought as his eyes immediately strayed to the target she’d provided.

She smiled, no doubt recognizing her slight victory.

“I don’ know wha’ you’re talking abou’, “ he said carefully.

Her smile never wavered. “I think you do.” She held the glass to his lips and let him drink again while she said, “Face it; this whole city project of yours seems almost designed to attract my attention. You didn’t really think I’d ignore it once I heard about it, did you?”

Avery, s tongue seemed to be returning to normal. When Janet removed the glass, he said, “I tried not to think about you at all.”

“Didn’t work, did it? I tried the same thing.”

Her question made him distinctly uncomfortable. “What do you want from me?” he demanded. “I’m not going to take you back, if that’s it.”

“I didn’t ask that,” she said, frowning.

“What, then?”

Janet set the glass down. “Ah, Wendy. Always business. All right, then, we’ll start with my learning machines. I want you to leave them alone.”

“I told you I would before you had Lucius attack me. I’ll be glad to be rid of them.”

“I didn’t have Lucius attack you. He decided to do it on his own. Considering the provocation, I think he showed admirable restraint. “

“He injured a human to protect a robot. You call that restraint?” Avery looked down to his right hand, found the reason why it didn’t respond. I1 was encased in a sleeve of dianite from his elbow to the ends of his fingers. Tiny points of light winked on and off along its length, each one above a recessed slide control. No doubt tiny robot cells were busy inside his arm as well, repairing the damage Lucius had done.

“He injured a human to protect another human,” Janet said. “Or so he thought. Evidently that’s a trick you taught him.”

“Another of my many mistakes.”

Janet laughed. “My, how times do change us. The Wendell Avery I knew could no more have admitted a mistake than he could fly. “

“And the Janet Anastasi I knew could no more have cared about a robot than she did about her son. “

She blushed; he had scored a hit. She didn’t back away, though. “Let’s talk about David for a minute,” she said. “You wiped his mind after I left. Care to tell me why?”

Avery looked around for the medical robot, thinking maybe he could claim fatigue and get it to usher Janet out, but there was no robot in sight. No doubt she had given it some line of rationalization to convince it to leave them alone. He wished he’d had the forethought to hide a Key to Perihelion in his pockets; he’d have gladly taken his chances with the teleportation device rather than face any more of Janet’s questions. It looked like he was going to have to, though. She didn’t look like she was prepared to let him off the hook just yet.

Sighing in defeat, he said, “I wish I could tell you. I… went a little crazy there for a while, I’m afraid. He says I told him it was a test to see if he was worthy of inheriting my cities, but whether that was really it, or if I had a different reason, I don’t know.”

“You don’t suppose you could have been trying to eliminate his memory of me, do you?”

Avery shrugged. “I have no idea. Possibly. I was quite…angry with you.”

“Ah, yes, anger. 1t makes people do things they later regret. We’ll return to that in a minute, but let’s not change the subject again just yet. You and David had pretty much patched things up again, hadn’t you? You were getting along pretty well. Almost like a normal father and son. What happened to that?”

“He betrayed my trust,” Avery said. His voice came out harsh, and he held out his left hand for more water.

Pouring, Janet asked, “Betrayed how? What did he do?”

Avery accepted the glass and drank half of its contents in two gulps. “He turned my city into a zoo, that’s what. Worse, he turned it into a caricature of a zoo. Behind my back.”

Janet’s laugh was pure derision. “You were ready to sacrifice everything you’d gained with him because of that?”

“It wasn’t the act itself, but the betrayal.”

“Which you can’t bring yourself to forgive. Not even after all you did to him, and all the forgiving he had to do.”

Avery gulped down the rest of his water. He had no answer for her. He was thinking of all the times in the last few weeks he had tried to open up to Derec, tried to make up for his earlier failings as a father. At the time it had seemed the most difficult thing he’d ever done, which was why the sudden discovery of Derec ‘ s subterfuge had affected him the way it had.

Janet got up off her stool and stood beside the bed, looking down on him with angry eyes. “I wouldn’t come back to you even if you’d have me. Why do you think I left you in the first place? Because you could never forgive anything, that’s why. The least little mistake and you’d be sore for a week, and Frost help me if I made a big one. Is it any wonder I learned to prefer the company of robots?” She turned away and stalked to the window separating the recovery room from the rest of the hospital. Beyond it, Derec and Ariel were discussing something with the medical robot. Janet said, “You’ve learned to admit to your own mistakes; isn’t it time you learned to forgive other people for theirs?”

“Is that what you want from me, then? You want me to forgive our son for his…mistake?”

Janet turned back to face him. “That’s right, I want you to forgive him. I don’t think he even made a mistake, but that’s beside the point. The practice will do you good, because when you’re done forgiving David, then I want you to forgive Lucius for what he did, too.”

Avery looked for signs of a joke, but she seemed to be serious. He snorted. “You don’t ‘forgive’ robots. You melt them down and start over. Which is what I should have done with your three the moment I found them. “