Robert Thurston: Intruder

The Watchful Eye was so bloblike now that Derec had not missed the presence of a head on the body. Now a head appeared to rise out of the middle of the blob, in the area where the eye had been. The eye had disappeared and, in its place, as facial features became discernible, there appeared two eyes, both closed. When it had fully formed, its eyes opened and Derec saw it had the features of Adam on its face. Adam-as-Derec. Then the surface of its body started to undulate as it gradually formed itself into the humanoid state. As it became more and more humanoid, it stood up on two legs and sprouted normal-length arms.

As it became more and more like Adam, Adam started to change, too. In a moment he looked more like Avery than Derec.

Derec realized it could be difficult keeping track of these chameleons without a scorecard.

“I am you, the both of you,” the Watchful Eye said. “But who are we?”

“That we will have to find out,” Eve said.

Eve’s Ariel face had a suggestion of Derec in it. Adam changed to caninoid shape, a mimicry of Wolruf. The Watchful Eye made a try at Wolruf, too. Its Wolruf was less delineated, less convincing as a copy, than Adam’s. Eve became an effective Wolruf, too. Wolruf came and stood beside them, and Derec wondered if, should he close his eyes and then open them to find the quartet had shifted positions, he could tell which one was the true Wolruf. Well, that couldn’t happen. Whatever other miraculous transformations they could achieve, they could not simulate fur, nor could they imitate very well the normal coloring of the beings they imprinted on. A moment later, Adam resembled Derec with a caninoid overlay, the Watchful Eye looked like Avery doing his impression of Bogie, and Eve was simply looking like Ariel again.

On Derec’s part, on Ariel’s part, neither was sure what was making them uneasy. However, in the past they had both felt a sense of danger from the two Silversides, and now there were three. Three of them chatting together, as if they had so many questions to ask of each other, of themselves, of the worlds where they had been dropped so unceremoniously-and probably speculating about the havoc they could wreak if given half a chance.

Avery, who had been too busy with the computer to notice the Silversides’ entrance, turned around in his chair and finally saw the curious trio. He smiled.

“The situation is replete with challenges,” he said.

“For whom?” Derec said.

“Them or us?” Ariel said.

“Them. Us. Whatever, it’s quite wonderful.”

The three shape-changing robots, apparently oblivious to the remarks of the others, joined hands in a humanlike way and began to walk out of the computer chamber.

“Should we follow them?” Ariel asked.

“Let them go,” Derec said. “We’ve got too much to do.” Avery returned to the computer.

“Message from Mandelbrot,” he said without turning around. “Seems the Supervisors are all active again, out of the meeting room and starting to function like gang busters. Systems are running more efficiently. Robots are coming out of their holes and crowding the streets like usual. The city is returning to normal. What do your chemfets tell you, Derec?”

“What you’ve reported. They’re more active than normal. I think the crisis is definitely over.” He glanced toward the doorway the Silversides and the Watchful Eye had gone through. “The city’s crisis, anyway.”

His gaze stayed on the doorway for a short while. Then, his chemfets surging through his bloodstream, he returned to the task of putting Robot City back into order.

Robert Thurston has been writing science fiction and fantasy since the early 1970s, after attending the second and third Clarion SF Writing Workshops. When the first collection of stories from Clarion was published, his story “Wheels” was awarded first prize. The story later became the basis for his novel, A Set of Wheels . All in all, he has published fourteen novels and novelizations, including Alicia II , Q Colony , and Robot Jox . More than thirty of his short stories and novelettes have appeared in various magazines and anthologies. He lives in New Jersey with his wife Rosemary and their children, Jason and Charlotte.