Robert Thurston - Intruder

Because there was so much for it to consider, the Watchful Eye now chose to retreat into its stasis state. In stasis, it shut off its senses so that it could concentrate exclusively on problems, this time the new and altered situations brought into its hermetic world by the intruders. It wanted to analyze how they would affect its overall existence and whether it would have to take any action against them. Before settling itself back into its safe haven, it sent out messages to its spies, Bogie and Timestep, instructing them to signal it if a new crisis developed. When that was done, it snuggled down into the haven, curled up into an embryonic state, and disconnected all sensory networks. Immediately it was welcomed into the calm comfort of nothingness, a place where it sometimes yearned to be forever.

“Well, we’re on our own for a while, kid,” Bogie commented after acknowledging the Watchful Eye’s message. “The Big Muddy’s spoke.”

“Big Muddy?” Timestep said. “Is that a proper name for-”

“Let me put it this way, pal. I wouldn’t speak it if the Big Muddy was looking over my shoulder.”

Timestep did a little clog routine from one of the dance tapes he’d studied.

“Nice moves, Tip-tap!”

“It’s Timestep.”

“You say so, Tip-tap.”

“What are we supposed to do now?”

“Keep tabs on Dick and Jane up there, send the Big Muddy signals if they get up to somethin’ it should know about.”

“What are they doing now?”

“Friend Tip-tap, we’ll just draw the curtain across that little scene.”

“All right. Then we should just stand here and wait for something to happen?”

“‘bout the size of it, big boy.”

They stood silently for a long while, a pair of silvery statues streaked with blue in the dim, reflected light at the foot of the Compass Tower.

“Bogie?”

“Yeah, kid?”

“Who is the Big Muddy?”

“Don’t know. Just the boss, far’s I know.”

“Have you seen it?”

“Nope. Nobody has, far’s I know.”

“Why has it taken over Robot City?”

“Beats me. Place has certainly changed since it breezed in, though.”

“I don’t feel comfortable about that. A while ago I had a safe, normal routine. Every day I did my job. I never questioned whether or not to do it. Then the Big Muddy came, and before I knew it, I had walked off the job. That’s when I found out I was a dancer. The Big Muddy told me.”

“Yep. Same for me. I had a compulsion to examine old movies, came from Big Muddy. I don’t mind it, though. There’s a lot of truth in flickerdom, kid. I’ve copped much more about human life now. You don’t trust society broads and you don’t rat on a partner, stuff like that. The flicks’ve helped me to see the vast potential of the humans we serve. I’ll be a better robot because of them.”

“You confuse me, Bogie. I am not certain all this is right. Once we were building and maintaining Robot City; now almost everything about the city has stopped. We are the servants of the Big Muddy now.”

“Maybe this burg needed a rest, kiddo. You worry too much. Dump it in a grocery cart and carry it out to the parking lot. We’ve got a job to do right now. Let’s do it.”

“Do you think the city looks the way it used to?”

“No, it don’t. But, like they say, that’s Chinatown, Jake.”

Timestep couldn’t understand half of what Bogie said, but he chose now to keep still until something happened.

A long time passed and nothing happened.

Finally he said, “I cannot stand still this way. I’ve got to dance.”

In the few pools of light, Timestep’s dance became a silhouette of a slow tap. He moved from one lighted area to another. Bogie, who’d seen some dancing in movies, judged that a human would have probably found the robot’s little routine bizarre, since it was tap dancing without music. The clunking noises as his feet made contact with the pavement echoed through the long street. They were grating sounds. Timestep should hire himself a band, Bogie thought.

Now that night had fallen, the darkness inside the Compass Tower office seemed total to Ariel. She stuck her head out from beneath the blanket and could not discern anything. After blinking her eyes a few times, however, details of the room appeared to emerge from the blackness.

“It’s eerie,” she whispered.

Derec, who had nearly fallen asleep, was startled awake and asked, “What did you say?”

“Eerie, the darkness in here. I mean, the room. Usually all those view-screens are on, transmitting scenes from the outside world.”

“They are on. There’s just so little light out there, you can hardly tell.” He sat up. “But it is awfully dark. Let’s take a better look.”

After adjusting their clothing, Derec led Ariel to the desk that dominated one side of the room. Flicking on a small desk lamp (it had been so dark, even that flimsy light pained her eyes), he pulled out the slab of controls from its position just beneath the desk blotter. Sitting down, Derec worked the controls, searching for clearer pictures or any kind of image that would be displayed recognizably on a view-screen. Most of the screens remained shadowy. Here and there they could see the shapes of buildings, sometimes a few dim stars in the sky.

He pointed one camera downward, and it picked up the pools of light near the Compass Tower. They came, he saw, from some light bands in a building across the way. Apparently the lighting system there had not broken down.

“Look there.” He pointed to the view-screen. “Something’s happening down there.” He zoomed in on the movement, enlarging the image until they could plainly see Timestep doing his dance. The robot, with a movement approaching grace, leaped from pool to pool. Derec turned up the volume on the sound pickup, and they could hear the hollow, plaintive, echoing, tapping sounds.

“Weird,” Ariel said. “Do you think that’s the dancer we met?”

“Looks like him.”

Timestep stretched his arms outward and tapped to the left, then he shuffled a bit and made the same move to the right.

“It’s not like human dancing,” Ariel said, “but it has its own elegance, its own special grace. You know, once-when I was about twelve or thirteen-I was given an old mechanical toy, some kind of precursor to robots, perhaps, but really just a toy that was wound up and run. It was a little metal man in a harlequin costume, and it stayed in one place, a tiny pole running up its back. When it was switched on, it did this queer, floppy dance. Its legs bent in right angles at the knees, then came down and hit its pedestal a couple of times, then resumed its stance with the right-angled knees, then down again, and so forth. I was fascinated by it, played with it for hours. I liked it better than all the technologically fashionable toys that were arranged in clusters around my room. But I think my mother sneaked in when I was asleep and took it away. I don’t remember who gave it to me. Look at that.”

Timestep had executed an extravagantly long soft-shoe glide, coming to a stop beside another robot she hadn’t previously noticed.

“Say, that’s-what did he call himself?-Bogie, wasn’t it? What are those two doing down there?”

“I don’t know, but it seems terribly coincidental that the two of them should wind up together and right near the Compass Tower entrance, don’t you think?”

“Maybe. I wish Timestep’d dance again. He couldn’t possibly be tired.”

“What did you get out of it? The dance, I mean. It might be a bit unusual, but it was just a robot dancing. They can do anything they’re programmed to do.”

“Don’t be so pragmatic. There was a beauty in his dance.”