Cordell Scotten - Renegade

Ariel had expected Derec to come in with her. She could have used his moral support on this one, but she was too proud to ask.

She walked over to Adam.

“Would it upset your positronics greatly if I asked you to return to an earlier imprint: the looser, less detailed one you did on Derec?”

“I am not giving satisfactory service, Miss Ariel?”

“The service is great, Adam. I wouldn't want your behavior in that regard to change, not in quality at least.”

“But then I would be serving Master Derec. Would that not be a drastic change in the quality of my service?”

“A change in direction, Adam, and a change I will regret, but it should not cause a change in the quality of your service. I would expect that to remain at the same high level I have enjoyed. In fact, if you could continue to serve me directly, I would find that most gratifying.”

“That would not be logical, Miss Ariel.” His tone was best described as haughty.

“I was afraid that would be the case.”

“In that light, do you still wish me to make such a change?”

“Yes. I think it would be best, Adam,” she said, “but would you do so in the bedroom. I find the process unsettling.”

“Perhaps for good reason, Miss Ariel.”

“Possibly, Adam. But there is little I can do about that.”

She rejoined Derec on the balcony as Adam went into the bedroom.

“Sorry,” Derec said. “I didn't see how my presence was going to make that any easier for either of you.”

“I suppose,” Ariel said. “But you better hope he's not the wild one again.”

After his final imprint on Derec, Adam SilverSide started taking long walks in the forest near the dome. He now had the lean muscular appearance of a silvery Derec without the clothes and the fine detail. His allegiance to Derec was weak. Derec must have recognized that, for he seldom gave Adam a direct order, never used him as a servant as Ariel tried to use Eve SilverSide -with only modest success-and never expected him to account for his whereabouts.

The walks in the forest brought to Adam a peace and serenity he felt nowhere else. He was comfortable with his Derec imprint, and with Derec himself, so long as Derec did not overdo his master role, but Adam was basically uncomfortable in the city and just as uncomfortable around the Avery robots as he was around Mandelbrot.

Derec never questioned his roaming around in the forest. For a while he did send a witness robot to watch him, but Adam always quickly eluded the witness by dropping to all fours and running along the low-canopied animal trails as though he were in his Wolruf imprint.

It was on one of his nature walks that an idea struck him of how he, too, might contribute to the robot farm project. He had come to the edge of the forest a kilometer or so away from the dome and had stood there in the shade of a large palm-like tree, watching a herd of wooly ruminants, the size of small llamas, as they munched the grass of the plain.

He christened them “minillamas” for want of a better name. They were quite tame. The animals of Oyster World were all vegetarians. These animals had no natural enemies except for parasitic insects that burrowed into their skin under the protection afforded by the dense wool.

The idea developed quickly. The next morning at sunup, Adam commandeered a small empty cargo robot, stepped aboard, and directed it to the city's small-tool crib where he requisitioned a laser saw, a hatchet, a shovel, a claw hammer, a bag of six-centimeter iron nails, six coils of rope in fifty-meter coils, an augered post-hole digger, an earth tamper, a microfusion-powered (MP) motor-for driving the digger and the tamper-another general purpose MP motor, a photo-sensitive switch and small MP lamp, and a pair of shears.

As the cargo robot with Adam and his supplies passed the apartment on Main Street, Eve SilverSide, standing on the sidewalk, hailed him to the curb.

“What are you up to?” she asked.

“A secret farm project,” Adam said.

“Why secret?”

“If it doesn't work, I won't have to explain that it didn't work,” Adam replied. “Want to come along?”

“Sure.”

Adam unlatched, and was going to let down, a small ramp formed from a hinged section of the meter-high sidewall of the cargo space, but just as he unlatched it, Eve belly-rolled over the wall.

“And what are you up to?” Adam asked as he latched the ramp back in place.

“Looking for you.”

Adam directed the cargo robot back into the Main Street traffic and then said, “You found me. Now what?”

“Whipping down the street in a cargo robot isn't the best place for a quiet conversation.”

“It's not likely to get much better this morning.”

“I'll take my chances. It can hardly get worse.”

“How did you get away from Miss Ariel?” Adam asked. “I'm here in her service.”

“Oh?”

Neither said anything more until they had left the city, crossed the plain, and were at the edge of the forest near where SilverSide had watched the minillamas the day before. The herd was now grazing farther out on the plain. He directed the cargo robot to park beside the entrance of a well-worn trail the minillamas had made through the forest to a small brook and then he led Eve SilverSide to that quiet place.

Adam had brought along the photo-sensitive switch, the MP lamp, and one of the MP motors. He sat down on a large rock beside the brook, placed the electrical parts on the ground in front of him, and began to wire them together with the long electrical leads that were attached to each.

“Now what has Miss Ariel got you up to this morning?” Adam asked as he began hooking the parts together.

“Neuronius,” Eve said. “What was the nature of your dealings with Neuronius?”

“That's a private matter, Eve. Both Miss Ariel and Master Derec recognized that and waived the Second Law when I claimed hardship under the Third Law.”

“Can't you tell me? I'm a robot. I can sympathize more closely with you than they can. Miss Ariel thinks you may have suffered positronic trauma which needs airing to be properly cleared away.”

“It doesn't need airing, and something like that doesn't need clearing away if it is viewed and contained in an orderly manner. I have succeeded in doing that.”

“How can you be sure? You can be no more objective in that regard than a human suffering psychological trauma.”

“The human brain and the positronic brain work on completely different principles. It's futile to try to draw analogies between them.”

“Is it, now!”

“Yes. You have no more basis for comparing the two than I do.”

“If that's so, why are you so secretive about it? That seems to take on a certain psychological twist.”

“Well, it doesn't. It's merely a positronic twist which humans aren't capable of understanding.”

“But I should be?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I'm not!”

“This isn't getting anywhere.” Adam stood up. “I've got to get on with my project.”

He picked up the wired parts and strode away down the path.

Eve emerged from the forest as he walked down the ramp of the cargo robot with the laser saw swinging from one hand. She followed him into the forest and watched as he cut through the ten-centimeter bole of a tall, slender hardwood species that seemed to thrive in the dense shade of the predominately conifer canopy.

“Get the hatchet,” he requested after the tree fell.

When she returned, he was cutting off the large branches.

“Trim off the small branches,” he said. “I'll take the big ones.”

They worked together silently, cutting down and trimming the slender hardwoods, spacing their selections throughout the forest so as to minimize the effect in anyone area, and dragging the long slender logs to a pile they created on the plain near the cargo robot.