Bruce Bethke - Maverick

“I think maybe you’re right. ” Derec yawned, rubbed his eyes, and gave the robotics lab one more once-over. “What do you say we catch some shut-eye?”

“An excellent idea. ” Avery looked up at the ceiling and raised his voice again. “Ship, convert these chairs into bunks, and then dim the lights. ” Smoothly and silently, the chairs flowed into their new shapes.

. Derec didn’t even get out of his chair. He simply kicked off his shoes, loosened his tunic buttons, and stretched out full-length on the bunk. “G’night, Dad,” he mumbled. The lights in the cabin dimmed down, and within a few minutes Derec’s breathing had shifted into the steady rhythm of sleep.

Dr. Avery watched his son until even the phosphorescent glow of the terminal displays had faded to pitch blackness. Then he kicked off his own shoes, removed his lab coat, and stretched out on his bunk.

“Nighty-night, Davey,” he whispered.

A cool spring morning in Robot City. The black limousine rolled swiftly through the empty streets, nearly silent save for the soft thrumming of its electric motor and the gentle hiss of rubberoid tires on pavement. Inside the vehicle, Janet Anastasi sat in the passenger compartment, her nose buried in a sheaf of fax pages, while Basalom sat in the chauffeur’s compartment, jacked into the vehicle’s master control panel, driving.

One of the advantages of being a robot with telesensory feeds was that Basalom could rotate his head 180 degrees and still keep an eye on the road. Confident that the vehicle was safely under control, Basalom swiveled around to look at Dr. Anastasi. He allocated every third nanosecond to introspection.

She certainly seems happier now that she ’ s stopped sleeping in the lander and has taken an apartment in the city. Briefly switching to thermographic vision, he felt a small glow of satisfaction in the part of his brain that Dr. Anastasi had taken to calling his “mother hen” circuit. Dr. Anastasi’s heat contours were a calm, relaxed study in blues and greens. There were no indicators of unpredictable endocrine activity, no hints of dangerous blood pressure or cardiac rate changes. And it ’ s been 52 hours since her last emotional outburst, Basalom noted with some pride. Yes, she ’ s definitely happier now that she ’ s adapting to the city.

Sure, mac, the limousine interjected, give the lady all the credit. Why don ’ cha ever notice how the city is adapting to her?

Will you kindly keep out of my private thoughts? Basalom asked, not for the first time.

Can ’ t help it, Mac, the car answered. You go around jacking your main data bus into other folk ’ s sensory feeds, your thought stream ’ s gonna become a party line.

Still, you could have the decency to pretend that you aren ’ t listening.

Yeah, I could, the car said. And on the other tire, if it bugs you that much, you could go back to letting me drive. After all, I am Personal Vehicle One.

You are a pile of steel and plastic with the simulated personality of a twentieth-century Chicago cabbie, Basalom corrected archly, and I will no longer tolerate your verbal abuse of Dr. Anastasi.

Suit yourself, Mac. I get recharged no matter who ’ s driving. The car’s positronic brain went back into idle mode, and Basalom once more resumed the task of trying to create a private security partition in his brain.

Erecting an encrypted buffer without verbally thinking about how he was doing it was a ticklish job, though. When he thought that he’d succeeded, he moved the stack of pointers that represented his consciousness into the secured partition and initiated a new thought stream. What in the name of Wendell Avery were the supervisors thinking of when they decided to create this mass of argumentative positrons, anyhow?

They were thinking of what Dr. Anastasi said in Tunnel Station # I 7, Personal Vehicle One answered, as clearly as ever. As she was returning via tunnel to the spaceport after her first meeting with Central, she said-and I quote: “Frost, Basalom, look at what the air blast has done to my hair. Why can ’ t they have some decent groundcars in this city?” She had but to speak, and voila! I was created.

Basalom gave up in defeat. Yes, you certainly were. But tell me, whatever possessed them to decide to give you a simulated personality ?

A slight drop in voltage on pin 16-the positronic equivalent of a shrug-came through the data bus. Dunno. Humans are rare here, all right? Guess they thought the doc might be happier with a little simulated companionship.

“Well,” Basalom said out loud, “they got that wrong. ”

In the back seat, Dr. Anastasi peered over the top edge of the papers she was reading. “Did you say something to me, Basalom?”

“No, madam. I was exchanging information with the vehicle’s onboard computer. ”

“Oh. Very well. ” She looked back to the papers and then glanced out the side window. ‘. Basalom? How much longer ‘til we get to the Compass Tower?”

Basalom called up an internal image of the city map, plotted their present position, and factored in the rate at which they were traveling.,. Approximately five minutes and twenty-three seconds, madam. ”

Iknow a shortcut, Personal Vehicle One broke in on the data bus.

I have had enough of your “shortcuts,” Basalom answered.

But this one ’ s really simple, the car protested. All you gotta do is turn east at the gasket factory -

The Compass Tower is to our south and west, Basalom pointed out.

Trust me. Hang a left at the gasket factory, go two blocks over, then up the freight ramp and catch the #204 southbound slidewalk -

You want me to drive on the slidewalk? Basalom’s shock was expressed as a sudden surge in amplitude on bus circuits 24 and 57.

Ow! Not so loud! Yeah, you drive on the slidewalk. There ’ s a bend to the west in about two kilometers; you get on here and it ’ s a nonstop shot to the tower plus you pick up 25 KPH from the moving pavement. What do you think? Neat, eh?

Basalom managed to redirect what he was thinking into a null buffer and flush it before Personal Vehicle I had a chance to intercept the words.

The limousine rolled on. A few blocks later, Janet folded the sheet she was reading, pursed her lips, and frowned.

“Basalom?”

“Yes, madam?”

“You’ve been in fairly frequent contact with the city robots over the last few days, haven’t you?”

“The term ‘frequent’ is an imprecise expression, madam. I have had 124 separate audio and commlink conversations at intervals ranging from 15 picoseconds to 6 hours. ”

“Oh. Well, in your conversations, have you noticed that the robots seem a little… odd?”

“ ‘Odd’ is a judgmental term, madam. In order to determine that behavior is odd, you must first establish a base level of normal behavior against which to judge. ”

Janet wrinkled her nose in a frown. “I don’t understand. ”

“Madam, since we have arrived here I have been unable to determine what is ‘normal’ behavior for these robots. Hence I am unable to adjudge anything as being ‘odd. ’ “

Dr. Anastasi smiled and shook her head. “I see. Serves me right for asking a vague question. Let’s try again.