I’ll just lie here for an hour or so, he told himself, make sure that Aranimas isn’t going to show up, give Wolruf a chance to settle in. Then it’ll be safe. I can rest a little while. This poor excuse for a bed is too hard to sleep on anyway-
He was wrong. One moment he was closing his eyes against the uncomfortably bright light which he had not been told how to douse. The next, he was rubbing sleep out of those eyes, gingerly stretching sore muscles, and bemoaning his own foul breath. The room was in semidarkness, but Wolruf was crouching in the doorway, silhouetted against the well-lit corridor.
“Iss it done yet?” Wolruf asked brightly.
“Eat space and die,” Derec growled, and threw the nearest rock-sized bit of robot scrap in Wolruf’s direction. The caninoid snatched it neatly out of the air and threw it back in one motion.
“No thanks,” she said with a curled-lip grin. “I already ‘ad breakfast.”
Though there was running water in the Personal, there was no provision for a shower or bath. Derec settled for sponging himself off, though there were no blowers and the only toweling available was harsh and scratchy. By the time he emerged, Wolruf was nowhere in sight. Derec wondered if she had perhaps stopped by only to waken him and would not be coming back.
Thinking that it wouldn’t take him long to get tired of the fare, he carried another meal of biscuits, cheese, and honey back to the lab. Settling at the workbench, he resumed work on the robot’s right arm. The electrical connections were sound, but the servo linkages were damaged beyond Derec’s ability to repair. His efforts to do so only made things worse. Whatever skill he had was cybernetic, not electromechanical.
“Alpha, I don’t think I can fix your arm. I’m wondering if you can, with your good arm. I could get a mirror so you could see inside-”“I am sorry. Without a Robotech cube in my library, my abilities in this area are limited to diagnosis only, sir.”
“I figured as much,” Derec said. “But it never hurts to ask.”
“Sir, I detect a deactivated robot in the room. Perhaps it would be possible to salvage the appropriate parts from its mechanism to repair me.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to do,” Derec said gruffly. “I can’t do it, not without micromanipulators. Besides, there’s some structural damage in the shoulder mount, which isn’t replaceable.”
Sighing, Derec pushed himself back from the bench and crossed to where his paltry inventory of robot parts lay spread out on the floor. As it had many times before, his gaze fell on Monitor 5’s arm. For the first time, he picked it up and examined it closely.
“I guess you’re just going to have to make do with one wing,” he said. “There’s a lot of it going around.”
The robot made no reply. Derec turned the Monitor’s arm over and tried to flex the elbow. It resisted-consistent with the fact that the hand had been locked in a literal death grip on the silver artifact.
Consistent, Derec realized with a sudden shock, except that the arm contained no joints. Not at the elbow, not at the wrist, not at the knuckle. Oh, the elbow was bent at an obtuse angle, the wrist twisted slightly, the fingers curled. But insofar as he could tell from looking at it, the arm was incapable of movement.
There were any number of syntheskin coverings which would flex and wrinkle realistically while masking joints. But this was no covering. It was rigid to the touch and absolutely seamless, like a plastic casting. Puzzled, Derec carried it back to where the robot sat.
“What magnification are your optical sensors capable of?”
“Only a limited amount, sir-one hundred power.”
“At what resolution?”
“That would vary with the distance of the object being observed, sir. The maximum resolution is approximately ten micrometers.”
“That’s better than I can do with that thing,” Derec said, nodding toward the inspection scanner. “See what you can tell me about the structure of this arm.”
“Sir, I am not knowledgeable in this area.”
“You can see and you can describe. I’ll settle for that at the moment.”
“Yes, sir. May I hold the limb?”
Derec surrendered the arm, and the robot held it at eye level in its rock-steady grip. “At ten power, the surface is undifferentiated. Increasing magnification now. Granularity becoming evident. There seems to be a regular pattern. Pattern resolving now into hexagonal planar surfaces. Maximum magnification.” The robot paused for a fraction of a second. “The surface appears to consist of twelve-sided solids in close association.”
“What?”
“The surface appears-”
“I heard you. Look at another spot.”
The robot turned his head slightly to the left. “I observe the same pattern.”
“The end,” Derec snapped. “Look at the end, where it broke off.”
“The surface is much more irregular, but it is made up of the same dodecahedral units.”
“All the way through?”
“Yes, Derec.”
Derec stood staring, dumbfounded. What the robot had described suggested a completely new approach to robotic design-not an evolution, but a revolution. It sounded as though the Supervisor robots had been built-no, it couldn’t be.
“Kill your right shoulder control bus,” Derec snapped.
“The circuits are now inert,” the robot said.
Derec separated the three-conductor control wire from the damaged right arm and threaded it out through the opening where he had been working. He touched the connector to the stump end of the Supervisor arm, and it clung there as though it belonged.
“Activate the control circuit. Send a command to bend the elbow.”
Almost instantly, the disembodied Supervisor arm slowly began to flex. “Look at the joint,” Derec demanded. “Tell me what’s happening.”
“The changes are taking place more quickly than my scan rate allows me to observe,” the robot said. “However, I infer that the dodecahedrons are undergoing some type of directed rearrangement.”
“Flowing into a new shape. The material of the arm is transforming itself.”
“Those descriptors are imprecise but consistent with my observations. The technical term for such reorganization is morphallaxis.”
Derec felt for his chair and sat down shakily. The Supervisors had been built out of billions of tiny crystalshaped modules-a cellular structure. Each had to contain kilometers of circuit connections, megabytes of programming. It was the cells that were the robots. The robots were more like organisms.
What a feat of engineering they represented-the essence of a robot in a package a few microns in diameter. Properly programmed, they could take on any shape. A Supervisor was an infinity of specialized forms held within one generalized package.
As he marveled, Derec was reminded of something he had not thought about for several days. The cellular design bore the same distinctive stamp that the asteroid colony’s lifts and environmental system had. Superficial simplicity-achieved on the strength of hidden complexity. Elegance of design, novelty of approach. It was another brush with the minimalist designer, and it gave Derec one more reason to seek to escape from the raiders.
Because somehow, somewhere, he had to meet the designer.
Chapter 10. More Than Semantics
After a short break for a late lunch of the same monotonous foods, Derec set about installing the cellular arm in place of the robot’s original limb.
It was not an easy task, requiring both structural and functional marriages between two wildly divergent technologies. Derec worried about the functional link first, and not only because he expected it to be the tougher challenge. If the robot could not control the new arm, there was no point in going to the trouble of attaching it.
But the cellular arm apparently used the standard command set and carrier voltages. Though there was no evidence of any contacts or wiring in the stump end, the arm responded no matter where Derec attached the control bus.
Experi
menting, he found that the arm responded even if he attached the control bus to the skin of the forearm, the palm of the hand, even the tips of two fingers. It seemed as though the cellular microrobots were smart enough to accept the command input from any location and channel it to the appropriate sites.
Once attached, the arm responded not only to all the robot’s basic motor commands, but even to some novel commands. With coaching from Derec, the robot was able to “think” an additional joint onto his arm between the elbow and wrist. In another test, Derec asked the robot to try to modify the cellular thumb and forefinger into long, slender microclamps.To his delight and amazement, it could. With the right command codes, the material of the arm seemed to be infinitely malleable.
But no matter how Derec prepared the mounting ring the arm was connected to, the right shoulder joint remained weaker than the left was or the original had been. At one point, the cellular arm broke loose completely when the robot tried to lift an object weighing less than twenty kilos. Even after he reattached it, Derec had doubts it would withstand the stresses of, for instance, a brawl.
“Looks like you’re going to have one strong arm and one smart one,” he told the robot. “Try not to forget which is which.”
“It is not possible for me to forget, sir.”
“This isn’t an off-the-shelf replacement,” Derec said sternly. “Until you’ve burned what it can do and can’t do into your pathways, you be careful with it. And never let anyone but me see you doing tricks with it, understand?”
While Derec was talking, the robot went rigid and its eyes dimmed. Derec knew what that meant, and fell silent. A moment later her heard the soft padding of Wolruf’s footsteps in the corridor. It was becoming a familiar sound, for it was Wolruf’s third visit to the lab that day. Aranimas, apparently occupied with the duties of “ship’s boss,” had managed only two.
Like the previous visits, this one was casual. Wolruf had no messages for him and no burning curiosity about what he was doing with the robot. It was almost as though she was using checking on him as an excuse to avoid other work, or trying to cultivate his friendship. But Derec kept up his guard. Wolruf was Aranimas’s lieutenant, no matter how sympathetic she might seem. Even her concern for him while he was being tortured, he had decided, was nothing more than a good cop, bad cop stage show meant to speed his surrender.
As before, Wolruf stayed but a few minutes, then continued on to some other task. As soon as she was out of earshot, the robot reanimated.
“I understand, sir,” it said, as though there had been no interruption.
“The next time you have to go down like that, you might spend your time trying to analyze the arm’s command set. Can you do that?”
“I can try, sir. It should be possible to separate those command codes which are valid from those which are nulls. However, I will have to be fully functional to test the valid codes and determine their function.”
“Let’s wait on that until we know we’re going to have some privacy.” He paused a moment to decide what he needed doing next. There was still the matter of reprogramming the robot, but that was also a job which required some assurance of privacy. The best opportunity seemed to be during shipboard night, which was also the best time to explore the ship.
Too much to do, too little time, Derec thought. But if he was going to make better use of the night hours than he had last night, he needed to be better rested. “Alpha.”
“Yes, Derec.”
“What time is it?”
“I do not know what time it is, since my temporal register has not been reset since I was deactivated. However, it has been fourteen decads since reinitialization.”
Decads were units of Auroran decimal time, Derec recalled. “I’m going to take a nap. Wake me in a Standard hour.”
“Yes, sir.”
But it was Aranimas, not the robot, who woke him.
“Are you finished? Is my servant ready?” he demanded, looming over Derec like some long-limbed water bird.
“Not yet,” Derec said sleepily, sitting up. He noted with satisfaction that the robot was standing inert by the workbench. It, at least, had not been taken by surprise.
“Then why do you rest? To keep me waiting?”
“I rest so I don’t get so tired that I make a mistake that’ll damage the robot,” Derec said. “Maybe your kind doesn’t have that need, but humans do.”
Aranimas did not take offense at Derec’s tone. “I have observed that humans are even less efficient than Narwe. You would make very poor workers, wasting one third of your time in rest.” He turned his back on Derec and went to where the robot stood. “But then perhaps that is why you have invented such machines, which labor in your service tirelessly. How is it done?”
“What do you mean?” Derec asked, coming to his feet.
“What is the source of energy?” Aranimasasked, tracing a line down the robot’s torso with his long fingers.
Derec knew that being evasive or pretending ignorance would only anger the alien. “A microfusion powerpack,” he said. “There’s one on the bench there, just to the left of the scanner.”
Aranimas picked up the damaged powerpack and studied it. “So small. How days’ service does it contain?”
“It depends on how hard the robot is working. The fuel capsule is good for several hundred days of light duty, like domestic service. A laborer would obviously need refueling more often.”
“Remarkable,” Aranimas said, returning the powerpack to the bench. One of his eyes seemed to focus briefly on the transplanted arm, then swung back toward Derec. “You are making progress?”
“I am.”
“How long until you are ready to activate it?”
“I’ll be ready to start testing its systems tomorrow or the next day. How soon it’ll be ready will depend on how much is wrong.”
Aranimas seemed to accept that. “The first job of this robot will be to help you make more robots.”
Frowning, Derec stepped forward. “How many more?”
“We will begin with fifty.”
Derec wondered if that figure represented the number of Narwe on board. He briefly enjoyed the thought of Aranimas replacing his browbeaten crew with an array of obedient robots, only to discover that, at a word from Derec, he couldn’t command them at all. But he could not kid himself or allow Aranimas to entertain unreasonable expectations.
“I don’t think you understand the complexity of these machines,” Derec said. “They’re not something you put together as a hobby, no matter how good a materials lab you have. And frankly, this isn’t a very good one. I’ll probably be able to get this robot put together and keep it repaired. But if you want fifty robots, you’re going to have to look somewhere else for them. I’m not magician enough to pull positronic brains or microfusion cells out of a hat.”
“If you had not destroyed your robot colony-,” Aranimas said, his voice rising.
“I told you before, the robots did that on their own,” Derec insisted. “But that doesn’t mean you’re stuck. You take this ship to any Spacer world and you’ll find millions of robots. And you won’t have to steal them, either. Robots are a major trade item between the worlds. Any one of them would be happy for a new customer.”
That was not entirely true, of course. It was highly doubtful the Spacers would willingly turn over examples of their most advanced technology to an alien race, and even if they were willing, there was the problem of what Aranimas could offer as payment. But if Derec could make Aranimas believe it was the truth, coax him to take the ship to a human world, he would at least have succeeded in alerting them to the aliens’ existence, and possibly have laid the groundwork for his own release.
“If commerce is so welcome, why did your robots destroy themselves?”
“Because you came in firing your weapons and declared yourself an enemy,” Derec said. “If you’d come in as a friend, it would have been different. Take me to your navigator. I’ll help him set a course
for the nearest Spacer world.” And find out where we are in the process, he added silently.
“I will evaluate the options,” Aranimas said, moving toward the corridor. “In the meantime, you will continue your work. I will return tomorrow to see my robot activated.”
The reprogramming could not be postponed any longer, Derec decided, He did not think Aranimas would return soon. He would have to hope that Wolruf would not, either.
Unfortunately, Derec did not have the equipment to alter the robot’s programming directly, which would have been risky anyway. Since it was intimately bound up in the Laws of Robotics, the robot’s definition of what a human was comprised some of the most crucial and most deeply engraved patterns within its brain. What needed doing would have to be done more indirectly.
“Alpha,” he said. “Did you scan the organism that was just here?”
“Yes, Derec.”
“And earlier today, did you scan another type of organism visiting the lab?”
“Yes, Derec.”
“What’d you think of them?”
“I have no previous knowledge of humans of this type-”
That was the kind of response Derec had been fearing. “Stop. They’re not humans.”
“Sir, I am aware that my data library is not complete. However, I am unable to categorize them in any other fashion unless you can provide me with evidence for your assertion.”
“Compare their appearance with mine.”
“Sir, I acknowledge that there are numerous anomalous differences. However, those differences fall in areas where the definition of a human has a wide latitude, such as skin color and covering, dimensions, and vocal timbre. The similarities are in more fundamental areas such as bilateral symmetry, bipedal locomotion, oxygen respiration-”
“They are humanoid, as you are. But they are not human.”
“I note your assertion, sir, but I am unable to confirm it.”
Derec understood that he was not being called a liar. When it had no independent knowledge, a robot would ordinarily accept the word of a human as gospel. But a robot was under no obligation to accept a human’s claim that it was raining when its own sensors told it otherwise.
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