Isaac Asimov: Norby The Mixed-Up Robot

"To tell the truth, Jeff, I don't know how I come to understand the language. I didn't know it was in my memory banks until I heard it. And I don't remember ever having been here before-unless-unless this is the place I dreamed about."

"But what did you do to get here?" Jeff was scarcely aware that the dinosaur was nuzzling his hand. Automatically, he began stroking her head.

"I just shifted through hyperspace. That's why it's so hard to get back. I could always get you back through normal space, but…"

"You went through hyperspace without a transmit?" asked Jeff in a half-shout.

Norby retreated a step. "Is that illegal?"

"It's impossible. No one can do it."

"I did it."

"But that's true hyperspatial travel. How did you come to know how to do that?"

"I thought everyone knew how."

"Well, then, how do you do it?"

Norby thought awhile. Then he said, "I know how to do it, but I don't know how to do it."

"That doesn't make sense." Jeff was sitting on the grass, and the creature had her forepaws in his lap and her head resting on his shoulder. She was making a sound like a soft "Gruffle, gruffle, gruffle." Jeff was running his hand down her long neck, which had pointed projections all the way to the tip of her tail.

"Do you know how to raise your arm?" Norby asked.

"Certainly."

"Do you know how to raise it? Can you explain exactly what it is you do to raise your arm? What happens inside your arm that makes it go up?"

"I just decide to have my arm go up, and it does."

"Well, I just decide to jump through hyperspace, and I just do. I can go anywhere in an instant. But I don't know how I do it."

"But, Norby, that makes you the most valuable creature in the Solar System-"

"Oh, I know that."

"I mean, you really are. No one else knows how to go through hyperspace without transmits. It would be the greatest discovery of the age if any human being could make it." Jeff began stroking the dinosaur faster and faster. "It was my ambition to make the discovery myself. That's why I wanted to go through the academy and learn all I could about hyperspatial theory. It's my dream to invent hypertravel some day. Now, with you to help me-"

"I said I only know how to do it, nothing else. Is that why you want to be with me, Jeff? Because I know how to hypertravel?"

"No. I told you I was glad I was with you before you told me about it. But now I'm twice as glad." Jeff was pulling the creature toward himself, yet he still wasn't aware of it. "Well then, if you came here, where are we?"

"But that's the other thing, Jeff. I know how to do it, but I guess I don't know how to aim right. I intended to go to Space Command, and I miscalculated. I don't know where we are-and yet I know that creature's language."

Jeff looked down at the dinosaur and suddenly realized that she was softly licking his left ear with her warm, dry tongue. He went over backward, and she tumbled out of his lap. She got to her feet and unfurled the leathery ridges on each side of her back spines.

"Wings!" Jeff choked. "She's got wings! She's a pterodactyl or something."

"Nonsense," said Norby. "Any fool can see that she's a dragon."

"Dragons are mythical beasts."

"Not here."

"What makes you so sure? You don't even know where 'here' is."

"I think part of me knows, but I can't tune in to it. I'm sorry, Jeff. I'm so mixed up, I think I ought to be destroyed."

"Not before you get us back. And even then, I won't let anyone destroy you. But get us back, Norby. It's important."

"Don't get mad, Jeff, but I'm having a little trouble figuring out how. I may have moved far out of the Terran Solar System. If only I could remember where this was! Part of me seems to have been here before, or why would I dream of it?"

"You know…I'll bet it's the alien mechanisms McGillicuddy used in you. The alien thing, whatever it was, was once here, whenever that was, and you just snapped back to that place without really thinking."

"In that case-Hey!" Norby went over sideways as the little dragon broke into a sudden run and pushed past him. She ran into the small castle.

Jeff helped Norby up.

"Baby dragons never have manners," Norby said. "I remember when-" He paused. Then in a discouraged voice he said, "No, I don't remember. For a minute, I was sure I had remembered remembering dragons, but I don't."

"You're getting me confused again."

"I can't help it. Maybe we'll be stuck here too long to be able to help Fargo and Albany defeat Ing."

"I'm hungry, Norby. Maybe we can find some forms of life to eat. But what about you? You'll never be able to plug into an electric socket here. You'll starve. Maybe that will inspire you to remember how to get back. "

"Actually, I can't starve. Electric sockets give me between-meal snacks. For the real thing I dip into hyperspace, and I can do that anywhere, anytime. There's unlimited energy in hyperspace. You ought to try it."

"I would, if I were able to," Jeff said. "What's hyperspace like?"

"It's nothing."

"That's very helpful."

"I mean it. Hyperspace is nothingness. It isn't space or time, so it has no up or down or when or where. When I'm in it, I can sense a…well, sort of…I guess it's a pattern that isn't really there but is potentially there because that's what the actual universe is, the pattern that's sort of potentially there in hyperspace…"

"Norby!"

"Well, I didn't say I could explain it. I can't. All I know is that hyperspace is definitely potential-I mean, it's potentially something, as if it's got reserve energy that comes into use for creating a universe, that of course is actually part of itself…"

"You're losing me again. How is a universe created?"

"I think that a spot in hyperspace suddenly gains a where and a when. How it's done or happens is beyond even me, so of course it's beyond everyone in the Solar System, and even if I could explain it to you, you wouldn't know how to understand it."

"Thanks for your high estimate of my intelligence. All I really want to know is if you can figure out how to get back to our Solar System."

"Certainly. I just have to tune into the pattern in hyperspace and find out where to go."

"Then you'd better do it soon. There's a bigger dragon corning."

"Perhaps," Norby said, as he backed closer to Jeff, "the little dragon's mother wants to thank us for being nice to her baby."

"Don't count on it," Jeff said, snatching up Norby. There was no use running. The dragon had long, strong legs, and wings as well. She was only as high as Jeff's chin, but she had gleaming, pointed teeth in double rows, top and bottom.

She made the same kind of sounds the little dragon had made, only much louder.

"What's she saying?" whispered Jeff.

"She says we are aliens and we might have to be taken to the Grand Dragonship unless she can teach us to talk."

"Well, what are you waiting for, Norby? Tell her you can talk."

Norby delivered a rapid patter of sounds, and the dragon responded with similar sounds.

"Jeff," Norby squawked, "let's leave right now. That foul reptile insulted me."

"What did she say?"

"She said I was simply a barrel and that I smelled of nails."

"I suppose she's right. The barrel did once-"

"Don't finish that sentence. We're going."

"No, we're not. If we dash off somewhere, we'll be lost twice as bad. Let's listen to what she has to say."

But she said nothing more. Instead she plunged toward them, plucked Norby out of Jeff's arms, and then bit Jeff on the neck. She licked her chops and wrinkled her snout as if she had tasted something bad. Then she placed Norby carefully on the ground and went back to the castle.

"Help, Norby! I've been bitten by the dragon. She's probably rabid! I've been bitten by a rabid dragon vampire!"