Robert Thurston - Intruder

“What are you going to do in the meantime?”

“I’m not sure. Seems to me the clue to the anomalies has to be in the computer somewhere. I think Mandelbrot and I will take a trip down to the central core, see if we can detect anything. I’ll take these two with me, too.”

He gestured toward Bogie and Timestep, both of whom had also stopped walking, while staying a precise two steps behind. If he had looked closely, Derec might have noticed that Bogie stood oddly, the slightly tilted stance that robots sometimes adopted when they were in communication with each other.

“Do you think a tap-dancer and a wise-cracker can help? I mean, as robots go, they’re weird. Talk about your anomalies…”

“By the same token, I don’t particularly want them out of my sight.”

“Gotcha, hot-shot.”

“Your language is deteriorating. If you don’t watch out, you’ll sink to Bogie’s level.”

“Hope not, kiddo.”

“Stop.”

They agreed to keep each other informed on the progress of their tasks. Ariel told Wolruf and Adam to come with her, and Derec continued on, the silent Mandelbrot at his side, and Bogie and Timestep trailing after.

As soon as Bogie heard that Derec intended to travel down to computer level, where he knew the Watchful Eye was, he obeyed its instructions to rouse it if there were any danger. The signal (“This is your wake-up call, pal.”) was sent, and the Watchful Eye came abruptly to consciousness.

It took some time for the Watchful Eye to catch up on the events that had transpired while it was in stasis. Bogie’s report, transmitted over the robot comlink, was more confusing than helpful, what with all the ancient slang the robot had copied from movies.

The Watchful Eye had only itself to blame for Bogie’s movie obsession. When it had first arrived in Robot City and obtained control of all systems, it had decided to form a network of knowledge. It wanted so much to find out about humanity that it had been unwilling to take the time to penetrate the computer each time it needed a particular item of information. So it had delegated certain groups of robots to research and store information in certain peripheral fields. Bogie was part of the Popular Culture Through the Universe team, while Timestep had belonged to the group studying performance arts. Other groups had specialized in such areas as sociology, psychology, and economics, all fields that the Watchful Eye rarely needed now for its running of the city, but might require in the future. Whenever it did need an item of knowledge from one of these teams, it requested it via comlink, and the robot who had specialized in the requested category would respond with a useful precis of the topic.

Some of the robots, like Bogie and Timestep, had immersed themselves so thoroughly in their areas of expertise that they had developed very peculiar characteristics related to their new-found knowledge. Bogie had adopted certain attitudes and in some cases actual dialogue from the old Earth movies he had been assigned, while a similar robotic pathology had affected Timestep in a more physical way. Although Timestep was less obsessional than Bogie, he had nevertheless acquired a need to perform the dances he researched. Perhaps he had watched too many recordings in hyperwave and old style technologies of dancing through the ages. Part of his research had included a precise examination of the anatomical requirements for good dancing, and he had soon begun to try out the terpsichorean movements themselves. At one time or another he had executed steps for various types of ballet and popular dancing. Lately he had centered his interest on tap dancing. Whatever movements he attempted, the Watchful Eye knew, would appear terribly awkward when compared to the recordings of old dancers, but there was at least a kind of achievement in the clunkily graceful and more or less accurate way he danced.

Timestep was dancing now, as he followed Derec down city streets. Mostly he was doing something called the soft shoe, with an occasional foray into buck and wing.

Bogie’s message had stated that Derec intended to inspect the central core computer. The Watchful Eye would have to seal itself in its hiding place. To throw the intruder off-guard, it would also supply some other surprises.

Eve was not certain what to look for. She wanted to know more about the tiny creatures, and so she searched for signs of their existence the way a hunter sought the spoor of the animal he was tracking.

There were traces. The more she looked, the more she refined her own tracking abilities, seeing clues that might have been ordinarily overlooked. Near a gutter, where-in a normally functioning city-it would have been swept away into the sewer system, she found a coat, so small she could barely hold it between her fingertips. There was a barely discernible piping around the coat’s collar in delicate golden stitches. Short-lived or not, these creatures picked up some skills along the way.

In a corner of a doorway, she discovered some food crumbs. Derec or Ariel would never have perceived them, because they looked so much like dust that had been neglected by the now-inefficient sanitation robots.

Eve went through a half-open doorway into the building, where she saw that a colony of the creatures had indeed once inhabited the place. They had apparently moved on, leaving behind many clues, artifacts of their existence. She was particularly taken with a small metal unit evidently used for cooking. There was a tiny pile of ash beneath its lower grating that indicated some substance was bummed there to give off cooking heat.

Leaving the building, she walked a long way before encountering any more clues. She passed several of the city’s robots, many of whom seemed to be, like her, wandering aimlessly. When she tried to address them to ask them about the tiny creatures, they kept babbling about blocked information. Some of the robots passed by her without even responding to her.

Dawn came to Robot City, and the place quickly got lighter. Bright rays reflected off the metal sides of buildings. Eve was dazzled by the sudden intensity of the light. It must be different here, she thought, from ordinary human cities, where there might not be so many clear bright surfaces for sunlight to bounce off.

As she passed by a spherical building, she heard a mournful noise that reminded her of the wailing in the vacant lot. She stopped and listened at the building’s door. There were more sounds, faint and muffled, that seemed like the voices of the tiny creatures. She pushed the door open. It stuck less than halfway, but she managed to push herself through the narrow opening.

She entered a lobby that, like most Robot City rooms, was decorated with some hope of eventual human habitation. An ornate desk was strategically placed in its center and there were many pictures on the walls. She inspected the pictures, but they meant nothing to her. There was so little in her experience that she could apply to the viewing of any scene. A couple of the pictures presented recognizable activity, but in the main they were unusual colors set in unusual patterns.

Walking across a deep-piled rug whose configurations were mazelike but colorful, she approached the desk. She noticed that the legs of the desk were shaped like claws, making her think for a moment that the desk had feet that clutched the rug. Strange, she thought, why would anyone want to carve an animal’s foot on a piece of furniture? Further, no line of the desk was straight, another design feature that seemed unnecessary to her. There were curves, inset grooves, knot-holes, many shapes she did not even recognize.

But it was the top surface of the desk that really caught her attention. Kneeling on it, in a circle, was a group of the tiny creatures, all facing inward. They held hands and made soft, moaning sounds. In the circle’s center, a delicately formed young female swayed, her movements apparently guided by tone changes in the group’s moaning. When their sound increased, her body began to jerk violently. When they became softer, grace returned to her gestures.