Four million connections, Laura thought. Four million associations learned from their prior life. "The robot that you completely decharged… it was a she before, right?" Griffith nodded again.
"And what is it now?"
He hesitated, moistening his mouth before he spoke. "A she," he replied. "But look, we rig it so the odds of a robot coming up a given gender are roughly fifty-fifty. Plus, like I said, giving them a gender is just a little game we play. It has no scientific significance."
"And the two robots you didn't decharge — Hightop and Auguste — how many connections did they retain from before their reprogramming?"
Griffith frowned. "Maybe… sixty-four trillion, a hundred and twenty-eight trillion, something in that order."
"And you call that reprogramming?"
"Laura, that's only a small fraction of their nets' connections."
"But they remember!" Laura said, incredulous that such an obvious fact had been overlooked. "Maybe it's like a dream to them, or they don't know why they react the way they do to a given situation, or they think they've been somewhere they've never been before. Have you ever taken Hightop back to where he was trapped in those rocks for hours and hours?" Griffith shook his head slowly, staring at Auguste in his cage. "I bet you anything that Hightop would have a powerful reaction to seeing that place, even if he doesn't know why. They remember, Dr. Griffith, and that means they remember what you did to them. Hightop was reprogrammed after an accident, but Auguste was reprogrammed in that chair execution-style, and he fought it. Was he at all violent before the reprogramming, or was he just a slow learner?"
The visibly upset man drew a deep breath. "Auguste wasn't violent before."
Laura lowered her voice. "But now he's your prime suspect, isn't he?"
Griffith quickly looked up at her. He knew about the murder in the jungle. "I'd like to go visit Auguste, please," Laura said.
After a moment's hesitation, Griffith nodded and motioned for her to follow. The French soldier trailed them with his finger on the trigger of the machine pistol.
"He's in here," Griffith said as he stooped to peer into the dark hole of the retinal identifier. They had walked a long way down the corridors of Griffith's underground ghost town. The Model Eight facilities were enormous, and their vast size made the absence of people even more conspicuous. The high ceilings and doorways made it clear the place was designed for beings much larger than humans.
She felt like a visitor there — an alien.
The lock on the door in front of Griffith clicked open. The soldier raised his ugly black weapon and went in first. Griffith followed. Laura entered last.
The giant robot sat idle on the floor in the far corner of the room.
Its pose was strikingly human, and Laura couldn't tell whether she was more amazed at just how like a human the robot appeared, or at its size. The soldier kept his gun raised and leveled on the robot.
"You don't have to do that," Griffith said, waving his hand at the tense man, motioning for him to lower his gun. The soldier paid no attention. He never took his eyes or his gun off the robot.
Griffith frowned comically at Laura in mockery of the man's paranoia. He then walked over to the robot — his and the seated robot's heads on roughly the same level. "Auguste! How are you?"
It was only then that the Model Eight looked up. Laura knew that it must have sensed them enter, but it hadn't bothered to turn their way.
She stared at the robot and walked up behind Griffith.
"Auguste," she whispered to the man, looking at the robot's pose — at his head on his fist and his elbow on his knee. "Auguste Rodin, the sculptor?"
"He always sat like that — with his hand on his chin. I don't know who first noticed the similarities to the sculpture — to The Thinker." Griffith leaned over to get closer to the robot. "How are you?" he said, smiling. "Are you ready to get up?" He motioned up, up, with his hand, and like a circus elephant the robot labored to his feet.
The soldier backed away, keeping his gun raised. It was clear who he thought the enemy was.
The robot stood impassively before Griffith — towering over him. "Come on and get a closer look," Griffith said, motioning her toward the ten-foot-tall machine. She took a step, looking the massive robot up and down — as frightened of their notorious clumsiness as of their uncertain potential for violence. Auguste, however, seemed to have no problem with his balance. "Come on," Griffith said, waving her even closer. Griffith stood half turned away from the robot, and in her mind's eye she imagined the caged robot seizing its unsuspecting captor from behind. But the robot just stood there… still.
"That's all right. I can see him fine from here."
"Don't you want to touch him?" Griffith asked, reaching out without looking and resting his hand on the robot's stomach. The robot glanced down for an instant, but then his head rose to stare blankly across the room at the bare wall. "They've got pressure-sensitive membranes covering most of their bodies." He pushed with his fingertips against the machine's flat gray abdomen. "It gives them a sense of touch, but if they had body temperature it would feel almost like they've got skin. Come over here and check it out."
She shook her head. "That's okay. We can go now."
Griffith ignored her, kneeling down. He pulled back the black stockings covering the robot's large feet and extracted a ballpoint pen from his pocket. "He had a bit of mud right here." He was totally exposed in that position. All the robot would have to do would be to reach down and… Griffith held his glasses tilted at an angle. "All gone now," he said as he looked at a crevice in the metal panels along the robot's shin. "But like I told Mr. Gray, I don't think it was from any recent trips out. Must've been…" — he grunted as he rose to his feet, joints popping—"missed on our last detailing after a session out in the yard."
Griffith turned back to the Model Eight. "Bye-bye, Auguste," he said, waving. As soon as he turned to leave, the robot sank to the floor in the corner. The white concrete was cold and bare. The robots lived like animals in some cruel, primitive zoo of yesteryear. Modern zoos went to great lengths to re-create the natural habitats of their animals. But robots… they had no natural habitat. At least not yet.
But they clearly want out of this cave, Laura thought. To roam around outdoors — free. Laura watched the robot return to his contemplative pose, his chin resting heavily on his fist.
When Griffith joined her, she said, "Is he still resting or whatever — vegging?"
"Oh, no," Griffith said. "They've synchronized their pattern with our day and night. They're active during the manned shifts, and then they spend most of the third…" He twisted to look back over his shoulder and fell silent. He hadn't realized the robot had sunk to his place in the corner. "That's odd," Griffith said and he returned to Auguste. He pulled a small screwdriver from his breast pocket and pried open a panel on the robot's thigh. Griffith squinted and again tilted his glasses to read a glowing blue screen just above a large, three-pronged socket. "Hmmph!" he said, closing the panel with a click and standing upright. "Charge is good." He looked at the lethargic robot with a puzzled expression on his face. "I don't know what it could be."
"Maybe he doesn't like captivity," Laura suggested.
"What do you mean, 'captivity'?"
"I mean being locked up in here. In this room."
"He's not locked up," Griffith said. "He's free to go wherever he wants in these facilities."
"But there was a lock on the door. You had to use the retinal identifier."
"We have to unlock doors. They just use their microwave transmitters and beam the access codes. They have the run of the place, which is only fair."
"But surely you don't give them codes to the exits," Laura said with a laugh. Griffith didn't respond, and she smiled. "I mean, there is a lock on those, right?"
"Well… there's always the chance of a fire or another emergency down here. And, like I said, they're extremely valuable assets of Mr. Gray's…"
"Yo
u give them the codes to unlock the exterior doors?" Laura said in total amazement.
"Only the five robots in the 1.1 series — our most senior class — and Hightop, of course."
32
"Mr. Gray is in his study reading reports or some such," Janet said.
Laura continued up the staircase from the elevator. She felt shaken, but she couldn't tell why. Was it the ride up from the Model Eight facility, or what she'd seen in the eerie hollows down below?
Laura knocked on the study door, but there was no answer.
She went in. The fire crackled warmly. A freshly showered Gray sat in his thick leather chair, his feet propped up on his desk.
Papers were strewn all about. His head rested deep in the plush cushions.
He was sound asleep.
She smiled. So he's… sort of human, Laura thought. An afghan was draped over the sofa, and she got it and tiptoed to Gray's desk.
When she lifted the papers off his lap, he didn't even stir. He was so deep in sleep, she probably could've stuck the poker from the fireplace into his ribs and he wouldn't have budged. He'd rocked back so far he was fully reclined. She pulled the blanket up to his chin and covered him all the way down to his toes.
He looked like a child. Sleep softened the features of his face in some undefinable way. His eyelids were closed, smooth, relaxed.
His thick lashes were pressed together and his eyebrows like his hair were jet-black. When he woke, she felt sure, his eyes would again be ablaze with brilliance. She yearned to see them — to sense them drawn to her.
Laura looked up and saw Janet peering through the door. Janet smiled warmly and nodded before disappearing.
Laura didn't know what to make of Janet's stare, but she dared not let herself think about its meaning. She couldn't risk grappling with the nascent feelings that welled up inside her. Her emotional center was too unsteady — the result of a tension between the warm glow of happiness she felt just then and her anxiety over the mysteries surrounding its source. So Laura did the only thing she could manage.
She blanked out her mind, left the study, and wandered without thinking into the crisp morning air outside.
An empty car stood at the bottom of the steps. She knew it was time to go back to work, and she got into the car and strapped herself in.
"Please take me…" she said before hesitating, "to Mr. Hoblenz. But not if he's too busy… or if he is, you know, someplace dangerous." The door closed, and the car pulled away immediately, turning right at the gate toward the nuclear reactor.
The cooling tower and containment dome no longer seemed all that sinister to Laura. As they flashed by her car's windows she had trouble mustering any of the outrage she'd felt just the day before.
Yesterday I lived in the twentieth century, she realized. Today… the twenty-first. It's just more dangerous now, she told herself.
The road turned in the direction of the Village, hugging the foot of the tall mountain parallel with the shore. The car passed the tunnel leading down to Krantz's labs, and then inexplicably began to pull to a stop. Laura looked all around. On the narrow black-sand beach far below she saw a small rubber boat with two large outboard motors.
Three men knelt in a tight semicircle around a small patch of sand.
Two had rifles.
The door opened, and Laura got out. She headed down the steep hill. The descent was treacherous. In some places she slid on the seat of her jeans, with both hands dragging through the loose soil.
When she reached the bottom, the three men were waiting for her. One was Hoblenz.
"What the hell're you doin' here?" he asked.
"Looking for you," Laura replied, brushing the dirt off the back of her pants.
All three men watched the effort.
Hoblenz barked out an order, sending his two men down the beach in opposite directions. A gentle surf washed up onto the sand behind Hoblenz. "Well," he said in his Texas twang, "shoot."
Laura reached into her pocket and pulled out the card with the FBI's telephone number. She handed it to Hoblenz and told him about being approached by the agents. He listened in silence, glancing back and forth between her and the card. Laura also told him that she thought there'd been something fishy about the V-mail she'd gotten and about her equally suspicious telephone conversation with Jonathan.
"That's all pretty interestin'," Hoblenz said. He put the card in the breast pocket of his camouflage blouse. "Whattaya want me to do? Give ya a medal for bein' a good citizen?"
"I know about the Belgian soldier."
Hoblenz looked at her through squinting eyes, spat on the sand, and said, "Dutch."
"Not Belgian?"
Hoblenz craned his neck to look out to the sea, jabbing his thumb through the air over his shoulder. "Computer said Belgium doesn't have any submarines."
"There's a submarine out there?"
"Yep."
"How do you know that?"
"'Cause they landed some people a while ago lookin' for their man."
"In broad daylight?" she asked. Hoblenz sucked his cheeks in as he worked his jaw on something and nodded. "They landed right here?" she asked.
"Yep." He was chewing tobacco — his mouth was black with it. He spat again.
"How do you know they were looking for the soldier?"
"I asked 'em."
"Did you tell them what happened?"
"I told 'em he was dead. They asked could they have the body back, and I arranged for a boat at noon."
"Is that all that happened?"
He shrugged. "They asked if I'd give 'em their satellite equipment back."
"And what did you say?"
He snorted, and a smile passed briefly across a face otherwise devoid of humor. "Take a wild guess."
"Are there other submarines out there?"
Hoblenz looked down at his feet, growling out a chuckle that grated roughly as if from the throat of a heavy smoker. He raised a hand to rub the muscles in the back of his thick neck, then stretched his head to either side without a sound. "Honey, I got me 'bout fifty good men. They may be from all over, an' there not an Eagle Scout in the bunch, but I can say with pride that not one of 'em is getting on them planes today. But as far as subs go, there ain't a goddamn thing I can tell ya. Or on aircraft carriers either. Now, we got a few old Stingers I talked Mr. Gray into pickin' up for about ten times what they're worth, and I might be able to go toe to toe with the army of Luxembourg. But as far as any other NATO countries go, he-ere's the island." He waved his hand through the air in a broad sweep.
"What about… you know?" Laura nodded down the coast toward where the nuclear facility opened into the side of the mountain.
Hoblenz looked at her with an inscrutable smile before chuckling again and shaking his head. "You want to nuke 'em?"
"No!" she responded, blushing. "I mean, doesn't Gray have… something? Some high-tech thing that just incapacitates people or something?"
"There's no such thing, Dr. Aldridge. You either let 'em alone, or you kill 'em all. Ain't no thing in between."
He was getting suspicious of her questions, she realized.
"Look, I came down here to make peace with you. I know you don't trust me, but I swear I've told you everything. If you have any other questions" — she held her hands open—"shoot." She put her hand on her hips in imitation of Hoblenz's macho pose. When she looked back up, the skin around his eyes was crinkled. He was smiling for real this time.
"Well, now, I do have one question," Hoblenz said, glancing at his men. They were returning from their sweep of the beach at a slow pace and were still a good distance away. "Mr. Gray, do you think he's, you know, okay?"
Laura was puzzled. "What do you mean?"
"I mean" — he spat again—"is he playin' with a full deck?"
Laura cocked her head. "Are you asking me about Mr. Gray's sanity?"
"In yer professional opinion."
She shrugged. "But I don't have a professional opinion about Mr. G
ray."
He looked down at her without a trace of the smile remaining. "Then what the hell have you been doin' these last three days?"
She shook her head, shrugging. "I've been working on the computer like everybody else!"
"But you're a goddamn psychologist!" he said in a low and menacing voice. "Jeez, you cain't tell me you ain't figured it out, Miss… Harvard! Why, a two-year-old could've put it together by now!"
"Put what together?" she practically shouted, determined not to be intimidated.
"Sweep that beach again!" he boomed at his approaching men, searing Laura. The soldiers eyed him for a second, then wheeled and headed back the way they'd just come.
She waited as long as she could and then whispered, "Put what together?"
"I did the security check on you myself. I know who you are, and I know Gray didn't pick you — the computer did."
She waited for more, but that was it. "And?" she said in irritation.
He shook his head. "You egghead types pretty much need a road map and compass when it comes to common sense, don't you?"
"Just lay it out for me, won't you, Mr. Hoblenz? Just what is it you're trying to say?"
He smiled and shook his head slowly. "The computer didn't pick you out 'cause it was sick in the head! The damn thing don't even have a head! It's Gray! Cain't you get that into yer beach-ball-sized brain? The computer thinks Gray is crackin' up! It thinks he's gone over the edge! That the stress is too much for him! It brought you here to fix Gray, not the computer," Hoblenz said in a growl that for him passed for a soft but urgent voice.
Laura just stared back up at Hoblenz. "I thought you told Mr. Gray you don't trust me."
"Well… I don't."
"And you told him not to talk to me."
"I did."
"But why would you do that if you thought I was here to psychoanalyze him? Why would you tell him not to talk to me if he's having emotional difficulties?"
"I don't think Gray's going nuts. Mr. Gray's the sanest man I ever met in my life. I said the computer thinks he's going crazy. I was just tryin' to see whether you agreed, but it seems the question hadn't even occurred to you," he said, barking out a laugh and shaking his head.
Society of the Mind Page 36
