Robert Thurston: Intruder

She hadn’t expected him to be so vehement on the subject of his mother, a woman whose name neither she nor Derec knew. Ariel had conducted an extensive computer search of genetic records on Robot City and Aurora, but had not been able to locate a single fact about Derec except the skimpy details accumulated since their arrival in Robot City. She had no idea why so few records of him existed. She thought his father might have blocked or erased any file on Derec, or that even her mother, Juliana Welsh, who had financed Dr. Avery’s work, had pulled some strings to suppress any bureaucratic documentation on Derec’s earlier life. Derec himself remembered enough to know that he was, indeed, a Spacer, that he had some training as a roboticist, and that his memory had been deliberately erased. None of the memory that his father had restored had provided any solutions to the other mysteries surrounding his existence.

She put her arms around him and hugged him. “Forget it, Derec. I’m just psychologizing, and I’m not really good at it. It was just a dream, only a dream. Nothing to worry about. Really.”

“You’re right, probably.” His voice was calmer. “What I need is some real rest. I never could sleep in one of those tubelike contraptions.” He gestured toward the bunk, which did, indeed, look like half a tube. “Maybe there’ll be some time to relax in Robot City, especially if everything’s okay there. And if we can get the Silversides straightened away.”

“Adam and Eve. You’d seem friendlier to them if you’d use their first names. Old human custom.”

Ariel was happy to see a smile briefly cross Derec’s face. “Sorry, just can’t get used to those names, especially since they tend to look like us when they’re in the mood to look human. Anyway, it’s a wonder I didn’t dream of them!”

“I think they’ve invaded some of my dreams. And I’d much rather dream about you, darling.”

She kissed him and said, “I think I’ll check in with Wolruf. She’s with Adam and Eve right now. You know their new game?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Adam’s taught Eve a version of the wolf-state.”

Adam had arrived on the planet of the kin, intelligent wolf-creatures, in an egglike vehicle. Because he had not yet encountered sentient life, he had been shapeless. When he joined the kin, he transformed himself into kin-shape. He had a tendency even now to return to that form regularly. The kin had dubbed him SilverSide because, even when he changed his overall appearance, he still retained the metallic, silvery surface of a robot.

“Now the two of them become wolves and start nipping at each other while barking out that strange language. It’s weird, really. They go around in a circle and growl, go after each other’s tail. Wolruf says they’re imitating some wolf-pup behavior Adam observed at what he calls the Pack Home. Lately, they’ve been transforming from shape to shape too much, and just to annoy us. Adam says they have too few forms to imprint on. I guess he means they need practice. You know, if we let them use the Key to Perihelion and flash them to Earth, they’d probably go insane trying to copy all the life forms there.”

The Keys to Perihelion were transport devices that took the user first to Perihelion, the place said to be nearest to all other places in the universe, and then to other specific, preset destinations.

“They do seem different lately,” Derec said. “ A little bored, I think. Remember how Adam was so intent on imprinting on everything-us, the kin, the blackbodies, robots? There was something desperate about it, something to do with his quest to define what, exactly, a human was. All the present changes are playful rather than purposeful. They seem less curious somehow.”

“Maybe it’s us. Adam’s so intent on defining ‘human’ as the highest order of being, and he doesn’t seem quite convinced yet that we’re it. He needs a greater variety of humans to study. Anyway, get yourself some rest. I’ll get you up again according to schedule, and that’s coming around soon enough, sonny boy.”

Blowing him a kiss at the door, Ariel left the sleeping compartment.

Derec glanced at his bunk, unsure whether he wanted to return there. Why welcome the dreams that awaited him, stalking him like the kind of wolf Adam had been when they first met? He put one foot on the edge of his bunk and began to vigorously massage the skin of his face, trying to make himself feel more awake and alert.

Adam was so unpredictable, he thought, meddlesome. He had admired the blackbodies, taking them, with their high intellectual abilities and impressive appearances, as probably the truest example of the humans he was programmed to seek. His experiments in imprinting on them had nearly wrecked Ariel’s establishment of a new farming community. Then, when Adam had discovered the embryo form of Eve in the forest, Derec and Ariel’s problems had doubled. Adam brought Ariel to the “egg” in which Eve had arrived. Since Ariel was the first living creature she saw, Eve’s first shape, and the one she returned to most often, was as a silver-toned image of Ariel.

Despite all the knowledge the Silversides had accumulated from contact with humans, kin, and blackbodies, they frequently acted like children. They were fascinated by new information and sometimes flaunted an idea with repetitiveness and ferocity.

Derec recalled the day before they had all left the blackbodies’ planet. He had been in a lab working on an adaptation of a remote control device designed to make it easier for the robots in the field to communicate with their central computer. Ariel’s transformation of the settlement from a Robot City to an agricultural setup had necessarily expanded the geographical area in which the robots had to function, often removing them too far from the computer for effective comlink communication. Derec had designed a powerful modemlike wireless remote that could be operated easily at such distances. It was itself a miniature computer with limited-access memory. Attached to the chest of a robot, it could be activated when the robot placed its hand over the middle of the device. Without otherwise interrupting its task in the field, the possessor could transmit or receive data easily without having to travel to a computer terminal.

Adam and Eve had come into the room while he was busily attaching the experimental devices to a pair of utility robots who had been reprogrammed to be field foremen. He had switched off the robots so that he could more easily attach the remotes to them.

At the moment of their entrance, Adam had looked like a slightly distorted version of Derec molded in silver, with a touch of Ariel added, while Eve merely resembled Ariel alone. Derec had firmly wished that the Silversides would encounter other humans, so they would at least look different. Of course, there was no telling how much mischief they could cause if they met up with the wrong human.

Derec had always been a bit uncomfortable around Eve in her Ariel mode. Now that the robot was getting better at the mimicry, he had often wondered if, in a dark place where the silver exterior of Eve would not be so obvious, he could mistake her for Ariel and gather her into an embrace.

With Adam, the effect was less disturbing but equally annoying. For Derec, looking at Adam was like seeing an avant-garde artist’s rendition of himself.

“Why have you disconnected this robot?” Adam had asked, his busy fingers touching the robot in several places. The hand was vaguely caninoid, Derec had noticed, suggesting that Adam had just come from a session with the caninoid alien Wolruf.

“Because there is less chance of damage to already existing circuits when modifications are made during the disconnected state. And, Adam, this is delicate work and I have to concentrate so please don’t ask any more questions. I won’t answer them.”