Robert Thurston: Intruder

“Why have you become so hostile to us?” Adam had asked.

“Because you’re pests, both of you, and you test my patience. Anyway, I’m busy now.”

“But how can we absorb new information and learn about humans if you refuse to deal with us?”

“Right now I don’t care whether you absorb beetle oil off a dirty floor.”

“Is there a beetle here?” Adam said eagerly. He was already scanning the floor for an insect to study and perhaps, in part, become. Derec had shuddered at the picture of a Silverside taking on the image of a giant bug. At least there had so far been nothing derived from insects in any of their shapes. Human, wolf, robot, and winged alien, yes, but nothing even vaguely entomological.

“The floor isn’t dirty,” Eve had observed. “What would beetle oil look like? Is it transparent? Would it blend in with the dirt of the floor, if there were any?”

Derec had always had difficulty coping with the literalness of robots, but with the Silversides the wordplay had become excessively ridiculous and irksome.

“There is no beetle, no beetle oil, no such thing as beetle oil as far as I know.”

“Would you lie to us then?” Eve had asked. There had been an Ariel-like sweetness in her voice. He had wished she would use a different sort of voice.

“Gladly, especially if it would get rid of you.”

He had spoken to Eve while still attaching the remote to the robot and had not observed Adam pick up the other remote from the table. At first he had held it in his hand, then had held it to his head for a moment. When Derec had finally noticed Adam’s meddling, the silver humanoid robot was pressing it against his leg. Finally, he had observed where Derec was attaching the other one, which had led him to press the device against his chest.

“How is it attached?” he had asked.

“That doesn’t matter,” Derec had said irritably, “since they’re not going to be put on either one of you. Put it back on the table.”

“But we crave knowledge even when it has no practical function for us,” Eve had remarked.

“And I find this device aesthetically pleasing,” Adam had said as he replaced it on the table.

Derec had returned to his work and so didn’t notice the slow changing of Adam from humanlike to robotlike. When he did look up, he had seen that Adam was now what he had originally termed a WalkingStone, a humanoid robot. However, there was one major difference. He now had a duplicate of the remote upon his chest, as if welded there.

Passing his hand over its front, a band of light in the center had gone on, and, across the room, the computer screen had seemed to go haywire with flashing data as it transmitted information to Adam’s remote. This had been a new one for Derec. Adam could copy a device like this, attach it properly to his mimicry of a robot body, and make it work. His imprinting abilities were improving by leaps and bounds. How could they possibly control him?

Instead of letting Adam know he had achieved something interesting, he had hollered at him. “Stop that!”

“Why?”

“Because I say so. You are putting this place into jeopardy.”

“I am only receiving geographical information. What harm could that do, Master Derec?”

“With you there must be something!”

“You don’t seem to approve of us, Master Derec,” Eve had said. Derec had taken note of how the two of them had suddenly invoked the polite form of address for a robot to a human.

“Does my approval really matter to you, Eve?”

“Yes, it does. You and Ariel are the only humans we know. If you are indeed the high intelligence we are programmed to seek, if you are indeed the humans you claim you are, then we will be in your image. And, in your image, we must be acceptable to you. Is that a part of First Law?”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Well, it should be.”

Derec had given up. There had seemed to be no sensible way to control them. The more traits and features they copied, the more their chameleonic abilities were a threat-and the more power they could attain. The First Law should protect humans against them, but they were so clever, they could become the first robots to circumvent the law without destroying the letter of it, simply by denying people their status as humans. If they achieved power and could manufacture more of themselves, there was no telling what they might do. If they could add to their fund of human knowledge with imprints from every alien they encountered, they could eventually become the sort of world-conquering monsters, conglomerations of aspects and traits from many creatures, that robotics experts had always thought impossible.

Derec had clenched his fists tightly for a moment, to try to get rid of his ridiculous thoughts. This was the kind of thinking that had probably driven his father insane. Releasing the tension in his hands, he had returned to his work, ignoring the Silversides who grew bored, changed back to their human shapes and left the lab.

Later, Derec had discussed their charges with Wolruf, who had managed the best lines of communication to the Silversides. He was not sure why she was so successful with Adam and Eve. It was perhaps because Adam, when he had first emerged from his own metal egg, had encountered the kin. He had molded himself into kin shape and stayed in that form until he began to encounter other intelligent forms of life. Wolruf’s appearance (actually more doglike than wolflike) reminded Adam of the kin, perhaps making him comfortable with her.

“I’m confused,” he had said to Wolruf without a word of greeting to her. She stroked the side of her jaw with the backs of the sausagelike fingers of her left hand, a gesture he recognized as indicating concern or even worry.

“What botherss ‘u, frriend Derec.” Just as Wolruf’s s’s had the faint sound of a hiss in them, her r’s tended to be a bit extended too, reminding Derec of a whispered growl. The lupine structure of Wolruf’s mouth did not allow her to enunciate his language easily, although she had certainly improved her linguistic skills. The s’s and r’s used to be more pronounced and the 1 nonexistent. Once he had had to concentrate fiercely to understand, but now he never had much difficulty.

“Adam and Eve. They’re driving me crazy. How can we let them loose on any world?”

“Do otherrss haverreason to fearr them, ‘u think?”

“Darn right. Most human societies certainly. Look, many of us are quite superstitious. Back on Earth, a simple-function robot is looked upon with dread, and most robots are kept out of the way, and on the Settlers’ planets they’ve tried to ban robots altogether. I think there’s some of that kind of fear in all humans, even though the Spacers have managed to accommodate themselves to the situation by using robots as a servant class.”

“I wonderr: Should the Silverrsidess be trreated different from otherr rrobots?”

“It’s the shape-changing. Look, my people have a history of superstition toward what they perceive as unnatural. In our imagination we see monsters in closets, believe illogically in the possibility of blood-sucking vampires, werewolves who-”

“Excusse me, I know not the terrm werrewolvess.”

“Can’t tell you much. Evidently, at the time of the full moon on Earth (a time when, superstition has it, people tend to grow madder), certain humans get transformed into wolfshape and run about the countryside killing and ravaging until the moon sets.”

The brown and gold hair on the sides of Wolruf’s face had begun to stiffen and rise slightly. Derec recognized this as a physical sign that the alien was disturbed. And then he had recognized why.

“I’m sorry, my friend. I was thoughtless. It happens that, like robots, wolves are regarded with some fear.”