William Wu - Cyborg

She looked away from him.

He hesitated, watching her. When she didn’t say anything else, he went on into his room.

She walked into her own room and collapsed on her bed to stare at the ceiling. Then she remembered: it would not do her any good. One of the effects of her disease, before causing death, was insanity. Even a transplant like Jeff’s would not help her escape her own brain.

Jeff stood on the stationary shoulder of a slidewalk, at the apex of a high, arching overpass. Robots and vehicles passed on a major boulevard several stories below him. On one comer, five humanoid robots were talking. He had watched three of them approach the other two, and had seen that the pair standing together had blocked their path to engage them in conversation.

He couldn’t tell what they were discussing at this distance, but normally robots would communicate privately among themselves through their comlinks. The most likely reason they were using spoken communication was that they were searching for him. His lack of a comlink was one identifying mark he could not disguise.

“You can’t go that way, either, Jeffrey,” he said into the slight breeze. It would carry his voice the other way, so that even their most sensitive robot hearing would not detect it. “They think they’re closing in. Well, maybe they are and maybe they aren’t. We’ll see.”

He stepped onto the slowest lane of the slidewalk and rode it standing still, carefully watching in all directions. With his vision magnified for distances, he was able to spot these little clusters of conversing robots before they noticed him. They were uncharacteristic of normal robot behavior.

As near as he could tell, these clusters were coming toward the center of the city from all directions. They had been slowed down, though, because the population was higher as they approached the heart of the urban area. That might give him time to figure out an escape.

“Time for another reconnoiter, Jeffrey ol' pal. Just keep it casual and don’t let anybody sneak up on you. Got it? Of course I’ve got it, you moron; I’m you.” He laughed at his little joke and prepared to change direction at an upcoming junction ramp with another slidewalk.

He knew, by this time, the routes that gave him the most visibility, either with raised sections of slidewalk or open areas that offered a broad vista of the city. The robots involved in the pattern search were direct, and made no attempt to disguise their efforts, so he was able to see how much progress they had made. The circle was surprisingly tight, and still closing in.

“Now it’s time to check out their procedure a little more closely. It’ll take some care, Jeff. Think you can handle that? Of course I can. Shut up and get to work.”

He was hoping to eavesdrop. The difficulty was in listening without attracting the attention of the search team. He continued to ride the slidewalks until he found a cluster of robots speaking below another slidewalk overpass. When he was close enough, he stepped off onto the shoulder again and turned up his aural sensitivity until he could hear them clearly.

“We have contacted all three of you through your comlinks,” one robot was saying. “We believe all three of you responded, but we wish to speak aloud with you as well.”

“Identify,” said another.

“I am Drainage Foreman 31. I am temporarily suspended from my regular duties. At the present time, I am leading this team of three robots in search of a human with the physical body of a robot. This is the purpose of our questions.”

An extended moment of silence followed. Jeff understood what was happening. The search team was matching up comlink communication with eye contact and spoken words so that they would have no chance of letting him through by mistake, or by his getting lost in the crowd.

“I am going to repeat my answer to you aloud,” Drainage Foreman 31 said to another robot. “This human had his brain successfully transplanted into the body of a robot. For this reason, he has the strength and appearance of a robot, but the authority of the Laws of Robotics. I am going to ask you a question aloud now. Please respond through your comlink.”

Another moment of silence followed, then more talk of a similar kind.

Jeff stepped back onto the slidewalk to ride away. He was convinced that he could not fake having a comlink. That one robot was being very thorough in his testing, and he was backed up by two more robots. Jeff couldn’t win a wrestling match with three robots, each with a strength equal to his own.

He was still wary as he approached a tunnel stop. If the robots did not shut down the system entirely, they would at some point stake it out, perhaps with checkpoints down in the tunnels themselves. They could not be careless enough to have forgotten it. However, they might not yet have set up their search there.

“This block is clear so far,” he muttered to himself, looking toward a tunnel stop. “And no one’s standing at the opening. All right, then. Casually, like before-and watch out for a checkpoint down in the tunnel itself. Right? Of course you’re right. So am I. I know you are. Shut up and let’s go. Okay, okay…”

He went on muttering to himself, seriously now, as he sauntered toward the stop. Several humanoid robots passed him on the way, as well as the normal crowd of function robots of all sizes and types, but he was not worried about any of them. The search teams had so far all been teams of threes, and they had stopped every humanoid robot they met. They did not just walk around normally, like this.

At the open tunnel stop, he paused to glance around. Everything seemed fine so far. He got on the ramp and rode down into the tunnel. “Maybe your luck will hold, Jeffrey ol’ friend. Of course it will; why wouldn’t it? Well, just don’t get overconfident.”

They were after him. He knew they were after him. They had no right to stop him; he hadn’t done anything wrong and he hadn’t hurt anyone, not even a robot. They were only robots, anyway. They had no reason to be after him.

What if something had gone wrong with them? What if they didn’t have to obey the Laws any more, either? They ran this city by themselves, didn’t they? They could change the rules. Surely they manufactured their fellow robots right here. What if they were making positronic brains that didn’t obey the Laws? They must be. Otherwise, how could they be chasing him at all? Trying to capture him had to break some Law or other.

That’s why they wanted him. He had the same freedom from the Laws, but he wasn’t one of them. They had just been pretending to obey the Laws before.

At the base of the ramp, he peered around suspiciously. Nothing appeared out of order around the siding loop. He stepped into one of the booths and punched the keys on the console for his destination.

Nothing happened.

Then a green instruction light appeared, reading, “Temporary adjustment in control system requires use of robotic comlink. Give standard destination code to activate booth.”

He sprang out of the booth, then looked around in embarrassment. If a searching robot had seen him fail to activate the booth, he would be identified on the spot. Fortunately, no one had noticed.

So, they had taken his beloved tunnel system away from him. All right. That didn’t mean he was finished. After all, they were just robots. He was human-”Right?” He spoke aloud. “Of course you’re right. Now shut up before you give yourself away.”

He rode up the ramp slowly, glancing in all directions when he reached the surface. “We are still in disguise, still in disguise. Let’s approach the enemy’s lair and see what we can see. Very good, very good.”