Robert Thurston - Intruder

“We should follow them.”

“I agree.”

The hole was too narrow for them to go through in their kin shapes. Together, without consulting, they began to change, elongate. Restoring their basic Derec and Ariel facial features, their bodies became snakelike and sinuous, if snakes had long thin arms and legs to go with their bodies. When their mass had narrowed sufficiently, they were each about seven and a half feet long. Eve first, they slithered through the narrow opening easily.

At that moment the Watchful Eye had Wolruf, her jaws clamped around its wrist, hanging from its forearm. It tried to fling the alien away, but she hung on tightly. Slapping at her with its other arm didn’t have much effect either.

It was time to use its transmogrification potentials. concentrating on its arm, it flowed more mass into it, forcing the arm to swell up. Wolruf tried to bite harder, giving the hinge of her jaw great pain. The Watchful Eye’s arm enlarged more, prying Wolruf’s jaws apart. She dropped to the floor.

As the Watchful Eye brought its other arm down toward Wolruf’s head, she dodged sideways, then rammed the Bogie who was not Bogie in the legs. Like one of the buildings it had destroyed, the Watchful Eye toppled over, falling over Wolruf and hitting the computer chamber floor with a resounding thud. Wolruf scampered sideways to avoid being crushed.

The fall did not hurt it, but it wound up in an awkward position. Wolruf, who had realized she could not possibly defeat this metallic monster, hoped she could hold it off until Derec and the others arrived.

Avery led Derec and Ariel down several corridors, all of them dark or only partially lit, another feature of their enemy’s tampering with Robot City. At a junction whose tunnels led in three separate directions, Avery stopped suddenly. He looked from one tunnel to another, his face confused.

“What’s the matter,” Derec asked.

“The damn creature, robot, whatever he is-he’s altered the network of tunnels down here. They’re not laid out according to the original pattern. He’s rearranged them just like he’s redesigned the city.”

“Can we find our way?” Ariel asked. “Wolruf may be in trouble. You know her, Derec. She won’t wait for us long. She’ll go on the attack.”

“Don’t worry, don’t worry,” Avery said. “I can work this out. I built this city, remember? No robot can fool me for long. We’ll go this way.”

He plunged into the right-hand tunnel with his usual recklessness. Used to it now, Derec and Ariel followed close behind.

The false Bogie struggled to a sitting position, and Wolruf jumped onto its back, pushing it forward, ramming its head against its legs. Only the suddenness of her attack allowed it to succeed. Wolruf could tell the robot was too strong for her. It had all the tireless force of any robot. And it was bound by Third Law to fight back so long as it continued not to perceive Wolruf as human.

She tried to hold its torso down, but it only had to push against the floor with its hands for sufficient power to fling Wolruf off its back and send her flying through the air. Instinct took over, and Wolruf landed on her feet, wobbly but still in control of the situation.

It was straightening up its back while at the same time turning around to face Wolruf, ready to fend off another leap. Wolruf looked up and saw an empty shelf high up on the wall next to her. Crouching down, she pushed hard with her legs and flew up onto the shelf. The Bogie that was not Bogie could just barely track her with its optical circuits. She had hardly landed on the shelf when she jumped again, this time at an arc that led downward to the robot. Kicking out with both feet, she struck the Bogie imposter on the forehead, snapping its head back. It fell heavily. Wolruf landed on the floor, too, on her back. When she stood up, she could barely walk. The leg injury from her previous battle with the robot flared up again.

And the false Bogie had somehow gotten to its feet and was hovering over her.

She tensed herself for a killing blow, but instead the robot merely looked down at her and said, “Why are you trying to hurt me?”

Its voice sounded hurt, but not in physical pain, as if its feelings had been hurt more than its body.

“Why arre ‘u trrying to hurrt the city?” she said.

“I must. It must be my city.”

“Arre ‘u trrying to be leaderr?”

“I do not know what you mean.”

“Do you plan to be dictatorr of Rrobot City?”

“No. I just want things here to be logical. I must control events, and I cannot the way things are.”

“I don’t underrstand. Why need ‘u contrrol eventss?”

“I know inside me I have to. I don’t yet know why, but the answer will come. Answers have come to me when I needed them.”

“‘U talk strrangely.”

“I am not really used to talking.”

“Who arre ‘u?”

“I am me, that’s all I know. I have taken the temporary name, the Watchful Eye. The being whose shape I have taken called me ‘the Big Muddy.’ He did not know I heard him call me that. I don’t know why he did.”

“Where is he now? Where is Bogie?”

“I disconnected and dismantled him. It was necessary. Why do you exhibit emotional disturbance?”

“Am upset at what ‘u ssay. I liked Bogie, and he iss dead.”

“Why do you say that? He is not dead. All of his component parts still exist and will function again. I may put him together ~gain, or his parts will continue as parts of new robots. That is not death, there is no decay in it.”

“What do ‘u know of death?”

“Only what I have studied about it in computer files.”

“That iss no way to know about death.”

“Perhaps you will tell me more about death. Later, when I have finished with the city. Please attack me no further.”

The Watchful Eye turned back toward its keyboard. Wolruf, unbound by any robotic laws, sprang up and, howling, rammed against the Watchful Eye’s back as hard as she could. The blow knocked it off balance.

But not enough.

It whirled around and clipped Wolruf with a hard, clenched-fist punch to the side of her head.

She fell, limp, unconscious.

The Watchful Eye, with some gentleness, picked her up and placed her against the wall, and then it carefully rearranged her body in a way that, according to its observations, should be comfortable for a being that was the shape of the caninoid alien.

Then it returned to the task of destroying the city…

As they walked through the new tunnel, everything around them looking spookier than ever in the dim light, Derec asked Avery, “I’ve been wondering: If this new robot is like Adam and Eve, and by that I mean a shape-changer and meddlesome pest, What’ll it be like when all three of them get together?”

“That’s not the sort of question that occupies my mind at times like this.”

The snideness in his father’s voice was unmistakable. Derec wondered if the man would always be like that, scornful and sarcastic. Would they ever have a relationship that was anything like what normal fathers and sons had? Probably not.

“Still,” Derec continued, “I can’t help but wonder. Two of them are bad enough, but we were getting used to them. Three would be worse, unpredictable, possibly disastrous. When we get there and get things in control, it would be nice to find a way to get rid of Pinch Me.”

“You surprise me, Derec. I wouldn’t have thought you had such murderous thoughts.”

“Oh, I don’t mean we should kill it or even dismantle it. I’d just like to get it out of the way. Ship it to another planet, or secrete it in an attic, or hide it in a cave, anything to keep it away from Adam and Eve.”

“Where it would cause trouble for others? Still, dismantling might not be such a bad idea.”