Robert Thurston - Intruder

“Run,” he said to Timestep, “they’re coming out.”

They both started clanking up the street, but the Second Law of Robotics, that they must obey an order coming from a human being, made them stop running when Derec yelled for them to stop. As Derec and Ariel walked up to them, Timestep’s foot resumed its slow tapping movement.

“You two, you’re spying on us,” Derec said. His voice has assumed the firmness that humans often used when addressing robots. “Why?”

“We are not allowed to tell that,” Bogie said. “It is a confidential order.”

“From whom?”

“We are not allowed to tell you that.”

“Another one of your infernal blocks?”

“Yes.”

“It’s my father,” Derec said angrily. “Only he would think up tricks like this.”

“I still disagree,” Ariel said. “His tricks would be even more diabolical.”

“And there’s no way I can remove these blocks right now?”

“Only the one who put them there may remove them.”

“Did a human put them there?”

“I cannot say.”

“You cannot say because you don’t know or because my father put in those blocks?”

“I cannot say because I am prevented from saying.”

“Nice try,” Ariel whispered, “trying to trick him into admitting your father’s the perpetrator.”

“Well, tricks like that sometimes work, Ariel.”

“I know, you’ve been around the block a few times.”

Derec was about to continue his interrogation of Bogie when Mandelbrot and Wolruf rounded a corner and headed toward them at a fast pace. Wolruf was loping on all fours, as she sometimes did when she was tired. Since she stayed beside Mandelbrot, keeping at his pace, they looked like a man and his dog out for a stroll-if you didn’t look too closely.

“Where’re our two mischief-makers?” Derec asked when they reached him.

“A good question,” Wolruf said. She explained how they had left the Silversides behind to study the creatures they’d discovered, and she was surprised to see Derec’s eyes light up with interest. He turned to Ariel and said excitedly, “These may be more of the same pests that attacked us in that building. Let’s go see.”

“Good idea. Anyway, it’s never wise to leave Adam and Eve alone anywhere they could cause trouble.”

They started down the street, the way Mandelbrot and Wolruf had come. The alien and the ever-loyal robot walked right behind them. After a few steps, Derec glanced back at Bogie and Timestep.

“Hey,” he called back to them, “you’re going to follow us and spy on us anyway, you two. You might just as well come along with us.”

It was probably his imagination, but it seemed to Derec as if the two spies began their walk toward him with some eagerness in their stride.

Even though Wolruf had described the vacant lot’s strange colony to him, Derec was unprepared for what they found there.

First, the bonfire had gone out. It now smoldered pathetically, a few wisps of smoke rising from what proved to be some type of synthetic wood. The wood, now a jumbled pile of charred curls, gave off a strong chemical odor that reminded Ariel of a broken-down food synthesizer, never one of her favorite smells.

Next, Derec saw the dancers. They were still a circle, but no longer moving. They were on the ground, some face down, some face up, their hands still joined, but clearly dead. Their bodies had not been moved because the carriers and the gravediggers had died out now. As he walked around the yard, he had to step over more than a hundred undersized corpses.

Finally, he saw Adam and Eve at the half-completed graveyard. Eve was delicately picking up the creatures’ bodies, one by one, and placing them in a row of graves she had quickly dug with her hands. It was an odd action, Derec thought, one that seemed to indicate compassion on her part. While she could have some understanding of human feelings, he thought it doubtful she could feel such compassion herself.

Still, Adam and Eve were a new breed of robot, one that had appeared as if by magic on two planets now (Adam having found Eve on the blackbodies’ planet after himself coming into sudden existence on the planet of the wolflike creatures, the kin), and so anything was possible. The way the Silversides kept surprising him, he might never get a fix on them. Perhaps they were indeed the prototypes for emotional robots, a concept that did not correspond with Derec’s present knowledge of robotics.

“Where did they come from?” Ariel said, looking down at the many bodies.

“I don’t know. They seem to be one more thing that’s gone wrong with the city.”

“Are they the same ones who attacked us in the warehouse?”

“Maybe. Or that might have been another bunch.”

Ariel shuddered. “You mean they may be allover the city, living in open spaces or dark places like rodents?”

“Rodent may not be the proper analogy. They do seem to have been human or humanlike. What do you think, Adam? Eve?”

Adam was holding one of the little corpses in his left hand while he poked at it with a finger of his right. The figure appeared to be a gaunt young man with a short beard. His body was extremely thin.

Adam, while still strongly resembling Derec, had taken on some of the corpse’s appearance. His face had thinned and there was a hint of metallic bristles on his chin. He seemed to have grown taller and slimmer, also.

“They seem to be miniature versions of humans, inside and out,” Adam observed. “I sense a musculature, a bloodstream, arteries and veins, small fragile bones.”

“Bound to seem fragile. Anyone of us could crush anyone of them.”

“Do you have to say things like that?” Ariel said.

“Sorry, thought you were tougher.”

She looked ready to slug him for making that remark.

“Since when does good taste indicate weakness? Huh, Derec, huh?”

“Okay, you made your point. I’m a bit dense when my world is disrupted this violently, okay?”

She touched his cheek with the back of her hand. Her touch was so gentle, he immediately wished he could devote all his time and energies to her.

“Adam,” he said, “you seem to have imprinted partially on the corpse. Have you learned anything from that?”

“Only that I cannot do it very well. Before it died, I started to study it. I found I couldn’t imprint on it successfully. It was as if there was very little life in it when it was alive.”

Derec nodded. “Well, it was already dying perhaps.”

“Yes, but it was more than that, Master Derec. There was simply very little awareness inside here.” He held out the corpse. Derec flinched a bit. The corpse’s tiny, delicate face was twisted in pain. “The impression I had was similar to what I have received from small animals. What I concluded was that they resembled humans but were not human.”

“I do not agree,” Eve said. Adam looked toward her. Derec wondered if Adam could possibly feel the discomfort that he always felt when Ariel challenged his opinion. There was a sense of competitiveness between him and Ariel that sometimes interfered with their ability to communicate. But Adam and Eve should not, as robots, have that kind of communication difficulty, and there was no reason for them to compete with each other.

“We saw very little of them,” Eve explained, “but there was a definite society here. They interacted with each other, joined in a complex ritual together, did indeed combine together into a sort of colony. They had a need to dispose of their dead. Are not these proofs that they had at least a rudimentary society?”

“She’s got a point there,” Ariel observed.