Robert Thurston - Intruder

“But that’s-I was about to say it was different, but you’re right, Adam, it’s not. I cared about Jacob the way Eve apparently cared for the dancers. You did care for them, didn’t you, Eve?”

“I am not sure what you mean. I performed rituals that I believed were appropriate.”

“Don’t go robotic on me now, Eve. You did feel compassion for them, sadness when they died.”

“There was an awareness of loss. Is that sadness, Ariel?”

“I don’t know, Eve. I’m not even sure I can get a sense of it.”

They watched each other silently for a time, then both looked down at the last dancer. She was still breathing.

“I must still order you, Eve,” Ariel said, “to allow Dr. Avery to perform his examination without interference. We need to know the facts that his work will show us.”

“Yes. That now seems logical.”

“Logical. Why logical now?”

“Enough information has been presented to me, and I understand the need. So I conclude agreement.”

“No wonder you are not sure what you are. I’m not sure what you are, both of you.”

When the last dancer had died, hours later, Avery gently picked it up from the desktop and went to a far comer of the room. A few minutes later he came back with a number of slides. Placing them under a microscopic scanner and transmitting images of his findings onto its large screen, he showed Ariel the infinitesimal microchips and circuit boards, miniature servo motors, linkages, wires.

“As I suspected,” Avery said, but without his usual smugness, “they are cleverly designed albeit ineffective robots capable of limited humanlike behavior. The use of genetic materials was skillful, but the maker could not compensate for their rapid aging process. If he had, these might have been quite successful little humaniform robots.”

Ariel stared at the screen without visible emotion. She didn’t know what to feel. Relief that they were not tiny humans or sadness that, whatever they were, they had existed and only for a very short time.

Finally, she took a cloth and wiped off the desktop. “Well,” she said, “that’s it then. Let’s go see if we can help Derec.”

Before they left, Avery handed Eve a small box. When Eve asked what it was, he said it was the remains of the last dancer. He was turning it over to her for whatever disposal she chose. She carried it away.

The Watchful Eye realized as it left Derec that its disguise had not fooled him. It had come to that conclusion by analyzing the purposes of his probing questions, reading his facial expressions, and interpreting his body language. (In its studies of humans, it had called up from the computer a file on metalinguistics and paralanguage.)

As it fled, the Watchful Eye wondered just where it had gone wrong in its Bogie portrayal. Perhaps the mistake had been to try to imitate a robot in the first place. After all, it was too complicated a being, too powerful an intellectual force, to get away with posing as a mere robot. On the other hand, the flaw in its behavior may have been an error of pride. It may have felt too easily superior to Bogie, and robots in general, to pretend to be one effectively. Somewhere in the research, it had read that actors often succeeded because they immersed themselves in their roles, losing their real identity in them. It should have studied Bogie more. Oddly enough, it thought, its failure in the robot guise reinforced its belief that it was definitely not a robot itself.

Perhaps its real error had been in leaving the safety of its haven in the computer chamber. The haven was where it belonged. Perhaps it was never meant to leave it, or at least not to stray too far from it. Perhaps its existence was that of an armchair observer, participating at a distance, pulling strings like a puppetmaster.

What should it do now? it wondered. Derec had ordered it to find Wolruf, but Wolruf was too much of a threat, and the caninoid alien might be with the other humans, all of whom might be able to detect that it wasn’t what it seemed to be. For a moment, as it had left the room, it had felt a compulsion to do what Derec said, treating it as a Second Law command. But if it wasn’t a robot, why should it obey Derec? It couldn’t even be sure Derec was a proper human, or a human at all.

At any rate, the order had been given to Bogie, and the Watchful Eye was not Bogie. If it were human, it had the power of choice; if it were robot, it did not have to follow orders given to another robot; if it were animal or alien, it could follow animal or alien instincts.

Since Derec might spread the word that it was not Bogie, there was no reason to stay out here in the streets, where the others could track it down and trap it.

As it headed toward the tunnel that led directly down to the central computer, it wondered if it could even continue its activities in Robot City. With Derec and Ariel there, it had enemies, and it could not abide enemies. Nevertheless, it didn’t want to eliminate them, as sensible a solution as that might be. Something inside it prevented it from killing.

Suddenly it realized how it could give the intruders a setback, assert its power, allow itself to maintain control of the city, mold an environment that would be suitable for it instead of humans, and make it the powerful entity it had decided to be.

It would just accelerate the program it had planned all along by skipping a few steps and going directly to the main goal.

It would destroy, then rebuild, Robot City.

Wolruf had left Ariel and the others for her nocturnal roaming of the city. She had come from a place whose inhabitants traveled through the night compulsively, searching for answers to questions they had not always known they had. While she subdued the urge at most times, tonight, after watching the end of the dancers, she had known she must be alone. She climbed over the smaller buildings, raced down dark streets in long loping strides, crouched at the edges of roofs.

Rounding a corner, she collided with a robot she recognized as Bogie.

“Bogie! What arre ‘u doing here?”

But the robot did not answer. It merely leaped over Wolruf and raced on, around the corner from which Wolruf had come.

“Stop!” said a voice. It was Mandelbrot, coming toward Wolruf so fast he would have run her down if she had not jumped adeptly out of the way. The robot Timestep tapped along behind Mandelbrot.

“There iss something wrrong, Mandelbrot, I can ssee,” Wolruf said. “ ‘0 only crush when ssomething iss wrrong.”

“Excuse me, Wolruf,” Mandelbrot said. “We are on urgent business. I cannot stop to explain.”

He sped past her. Her curiosity aroused, she raced after him on all fours. Timestep danced his way after them.

“I can help ‘u. Arre ‘u following Bogie?”

“No.”

They rounded the corner. Wolruf saw Bogie, still moving rapidly, up ahead.

“‘U sseem to be following Bogie.”

“No.”

“What arre ‘u doing?”

“Trying to overtake the Bogie that is not Bogie.”

“The Bogie not Bogie? Explain, pleasse.”

As they rushed along, Mandelbrot told the alien what had happened.

“Then ‘u arre to brring that rrobot back to Derec?”

“Yes.”

“Let me catch him forr ‘u.”

With a strong, leaping thrust, Wolruf surged ahead of Mandelbrot and Timestep. Her body low to the ground, she closed the gap between herself and the Watchful Eye in a matter of seconds. Her prey was not even aware of her pursuit.

With her last few powerful steps, Wolruf propelled herself into the air. Her leap was magnificent, a smooth arc that reached such an impressive height she was able to dive down upon the fleeing robot. Her forelegs hit its shoulders with a mighty impact, knocking it forward onto its face. Wolruf landed on top of it. She was able to hold it down long enough for the others to arrive.