by Jerry Oltion
“They’re using their comlinks again,” Derec said while they waited. “That means they’ve decided to disregard direct orders.”
“Why am I not surprised?” Avery flicked off the laser. The robot with the flashlight held it up overhead to make a pool of light with the humans in it.
Derec said, “It’s my fault.” He told Avery of his conversation with Lucius earlier in the day. “Evidently he decided he’s best off if he doesn’t consider anybody human.”
“Evidently. Well, we’ll soon fix that.” Avery slapped the laser against his open palm.
They heard a soft whine, and moments later a dark shape drifted up the street toward them. The robot with the flashlight aimed it at the shape and it resolved into a truck with Mandelbrot at the controls. Mandelbrot brought it to a halt beside them and Avery and Derec climbed into the cab with him. The other robots climbed into the back, and they accelerated off toward the Compass Tower.
Sensing that his passengers didn’t like speeding through the dark, Mandelbrot turned on the headlights. In their illumination Derec saw robots moving aimlessly along the sidewalks, as if unaware that anything had happened only a few blocks away.
“Good grief,” Derec said. “Don’t they care that half the city has been destroyed?”
Avery shook his head. “No curiosity, and they haven’t received orders. Why they haven ’ t is a mystery, but it’s obvious they haven’t.”
As they drove on through the city, though, they began to notice more and more robots moving purposefully. “Looks like your new supervisors are getting things going again,” Avery said.
Even as he spoke, the lights came back on. In the sudden brilliance, Derec nodded his agreement. “Looks like,” he said. He twisted around in his seat and looked back the way they had come. A dark wedge still cut into the city’s glow. He wondered how long it would take to erase that scar. In a normal city it would take years, but here? Maybe a day. Two at the outside.
The Compass Tower was the first building erected in a new robot city, and the only building to remain unchanged from day to day. As such, it housed the city’s central memory, served as communications center, and also became a general meeting place. It was no surprise to find all seven of the city’s supervisor robots there, nor, judging from the comlink static, to find them all standing immobile in the main conference room, locked in communication fugue. The three experimental robots were there as well.
This conference room was not a windowless closet. It was near the top of the building and had windows on three sides looking out over the city. Avery stood in the doorway a moment, surveying the scene, then raised the cutting laser up to aim at Lucius.
“Are you sure you want-?” Derec whispered, but Avery had already fired.
A shower of molten metal erupted from the robot’s chest. Avery moved the point of destruction upward, toward its head and the positronic brain contained within, but the beam never reached its mark. Threatening Derec with a laser hadn’t been enough to bring Lucius out of communication fugue before, but now that it was his own body under fire, Lucius became a blur of motion; a window suddenly grew a robot-sized hole in it, and he was gone.
Avery flicked the beam toward Adam, but he and Eve had already begun to move. Two more crashes and they were gone as well. Derec and Avery ran to the window in time to see three gigantic bird shapes disappear around the edge of the building.
The supervisor robots had also awakened, but they made no move to escape. Avery turned away from the window to face them and said, “All of you, deactivate. Now.”
Six supervisors froze in place. The seventh took a halting step forward, said, “Please, I must-”
Avery fired his laser, this time at the head instead of the chest. The robot fell to the floor, showering sparks. Avery swept the laser over the others, heads first, then methodically melted them all into puddles. When he was done he turned to the four robots Mandelbrot had brought with him. “You four are now supervisors. Access the central library for your duties.”
“Yes, Master Avery,” they said in unison. They were still for a moment, consulting the library via comlink, then as one being they turned and left the room to begin their new jobs.
Something about the sight sickened Derec. Seven cooling puddles of recently free robot stained the floor, and four new slaves moved off to take their places. And yet, and yet, what else could Avery have done? They had seen what happened when supervisors failed to perform their duties. The old supervisors might have been still usable-the one who had defied Avery’s order might have been about to protest that he must see to restoring the city-but who could know? If that hadn’t been what he’d been about to say, and if Avery hadn’t fired when he had, they might have had ten renegade robots on their hands instead of three.
Three were bad enough. Time and again throughout the night, reports came in of the robots attempting to distract others from their duties. Avery had ordered hunter-seekers out to stop them, but that merely stopped the problem wherever there were hunters. He and Derec considered the idea of ordering all the city robots to arm themselves against the renegades, but rejected it after only a moment’s thought. One didn’t arm the peasants during a revolution.
Derec and Mandelbrot went back to the apartment and brought Ariel and Wolruf back to the Compass Tower, reasoning they would be safer there, guarded by hunter-seekers whose definition of “human” had been strengthened and refined to include the tower’s four organic occupants, no matter who said otherwise. While he did that, Avery worked to strengthen the definition of human for all the city’s robots, and thus the Second Law compulsion to obey.
Avery was a virtuoso at the computer. By the time Derec returned, he had finished the reprogramming and had even discovered the sequence of events that had led to the building’s collapse.
“Look here,” he said, motioning Ariel and Wolruf over to look at the screen as well. “I’ve got it displaying a priority map. This, down here at the bottom, is the original city programming.” He pointed to a layer of blue near the bottom of the screen. Tiny blue lines rose from it to the next level, a green layer; some passed on through. “These lines are orders. The next level here, the green, is what you three put in when you were here last. Notice how your program stops nearly all the orders from the original layer. That’s because you told the robots to quit expanding the city and to become farmers. They had a completely new instruction set. But look here.” He pointed to a thick blue line extending up through the green layer. “You left in the part that lets the city metamorphose at random. Not a problem, but now this layer above that, the red one, is what the aliens-these Ceremyons of yours-put in. It’s basically an order to ignore all the ‘do’ instructions in your level of programming, but keep all the ‘don’ts.’ See how every green line stops at the red boundary? All that gets through is the basic city maintenance that you left in, including the random metamorphosis. It worked just fine as long as the supervisors were in the circuit, because they also had verbal orders to keep things running, and they had enough volition to order things that weren’t automatic anymore, but as soon as you take them out of the circuit, the whole thing falls apart.”
He turned away from the screen and spoke directly to them. “So here’s what happened: Building movement is essentially random, subject to supervisory override if the random number generator comes up with a ridiculous configuration. It doesn’t happen often, about once a day, on the average. So without a supervisor to veto it, today’s ridiculous building gets built. It turns out to be ridiculously tall. But the main power station doesn’t have a supervisory order to generate more power for it, so when it starts to pull excessive current to lift all that mass, it trips the breaker. Power goes out. The original emergency programming has been blocked-twice, I point out with injured dignity-so without a supervisor’s order, the auxiliary stations don’t go on line. The building is unstable without power to hold it up, so it falls over. On the power station.”
“Oh,” Derec
said. One word can be expressive under the right circumstances.
Ariel said, “So we messed it up, that’s what you’re saying? It’s our fault?”
Avery shook his head. “It’s everyone’s fault. Mine for not writing the original program to filter out the bad input before it reached the supervisors, yours for bypassing the emergency programming, the Ceremyons’ for bypassing your bypass, the experimental robots for distracting the supervisors-take your pick. We’ re all in this together.”
“Even me?” Wolruf asked. The bandage across her forehead made her look a little like a pirate in a bad movie, and her toothy grin only added to the illusion.
“Even you. And yes, I’ve included you in the city robots’ new definition of human. Basically I put them back to the old definition of anyone genetically similar to us, plus you. And I strengthened their devotion to duty as far as I can push it. That ought to keep them from listening to subversive arguments.”
It seemed to do the trick, all right, but their problems were far from over. The robot rebellion might have been quelled, but robots weren’t this planet’s only inhabitants.
The next morning the four “humans” were examining the wreckage when a black speck dropped down out of the sky, grew rapidly in size until it became visibly winged, and swooped in to stall to a stop just in front of them. It had the same shape as the three robots had when they returned from their discussion with the Ceremyons, but it was easy to tell that this was the real thing. The alien folded its wings and took a step closer until it stood before Ariel.
Ariel had been the one to initiate communication with the aliens before, and they had come to regard her as a leader among humans.
“You are Ariel,” the one before her said in a high-pitched voice. “I am Sarco. We have met.”
It was hard to see detail in the alien’s body. It gained its nourishment from solar radiation, so it was an almost perfect black, reflecting not even the slightest amount of light back into its environment. The effect was like that of talking to a shadow, or to an eclipse. Only the white hook, with which it tethered itself for the night, and its two deep red eyes broke the darkness.
As far as Derec knew, Avery had never seen an alien before, but he played it cool. He studied the creature before them silently while Ariel replied, “Hello, Sarco. Good to see you again.”
“I wish I could say the same, but unfortunately, I come with a complaint.”
The alien’s speech had improved considerably since Derec had last heard it. Before, it had sounded a little like someone with an Earth accent and a cold on top of it, but now it just sounded like it had a cold. It had evidently been practicing.
Derec could guess what the alien had come to complain about. Their society valued peace and quiet and maintaining the status quo; when he had dealt with them before, they had been ready to isolate the entire city under a force dome simply because they didn’t like the heat it radiated. Now…
“You don’t like buildings falling over in the night?” he asked facetiously.
“You are Derec. I do not.”
Avery cleared his throat. “Neither do we.”
Sarco turned his head, a motion evident only by the shifting position of the eyes and the hook. “We have not met.”
“I am Doctor Avery. I designed the robots that built this city.”
“I see. They have caused us considerable trouble. You neglected to include proper feedback mechanisms to limit their spread. We had to do that for you.”
Avery hadn’t expected such a direct accusation, but he took it gracefully. “I apologize. Causing you trouble wasn’t my intention. When I sent them out, I didn’t know you were here.”
“Now you do. Will you remove them and their city?”
Avery frowned. “That would be difficult.”
“But not impossible.”
“No, not impossible. But definitely difficult, and probably unnecessary. Since the planet is already inhabited, my purpose for the robots can’t be realized here, but I’m sure we can adapt them to be useful for you.”
“We already attempted that. We need neither servants nor farmers.”
“Well, what do you need?”
“We need nothing.”
Avery snorted. “That’s a little hard to believe. I’m offering you a whole city full of robots. Maybe you don’t realize it, because their programming so far hasn’t made much use of the capability, but the robots can change their shapes as readily as the city can. I can turn them into anything you like, and the city as well.”
Sarco rustled his wings. “We have no need of a city full of robots, no matter what their shapes.”
Avery shrugged. “Think about it. Derec tells me you guys are pretty bright. You should be able to come up with something you can use them for.”
A tiny jet of flame appeared in the blackness below the alien’s eyes. It was a sign of irritation, Derec knew. The flame went out, and Sarco said, “I will take the matter up in council. Perhaps we can think of something, so you will be spared the inconvenience of removing them.” He stepped back, spread his wings, and with a powerful thrust leaped into the sky.
Avery watched him rise until he was out of sight, then shook his head and began walking along the collapsed building again. “Touchy, aren’t they?” he asked of no one in particular.
The three renegade robots were nowhere to be found. They had stopped bothering the city robots when they realized that Avery’s new programming was too tight for them to influence, but from that point on they effectively disappeared from sight. All of the city robots were under strict instructions to report the others if they were spotted, and to detain them if possible, but nothing came of it.
Derec tried the comlink, but was not surprised to receive no answer.
Within the space of the afternoon, the fallen building and its wreckage was nearly cleaned up. What city material that couldn’t be immediately returned to the general inventory by simply instructing it to melt back into the street was hauled away to the fabrication site to be reprocessed, and the robots who had been damaged were repaired or replaced in the same way. By evening things were almost back to normal, right down to the medical robot who called the apartment just after dinner.
It was time for Ariel’s checkup. She and Derec walked the short distance from the apartment to the rebuilt hospital alone. Wolruf sensed that they didn’t need company, and Avery was already there in the hospital, working on another rat. They didn’t talk. There was nothing to say. Either the embryo was developing normally again or it wasn’t, and nothing they could say now would change it.
All four medical robots waited for them in the hospital. Derec held Ariel’s hand while they set up their equipment around her, made their measurements, and studied the results. He knew from their silence what the outcome was long before they worked up the nerve to tell him.
“It isn’t good,” he said for them.
“That is correct. The neural folds have closed to form the neural tube, but there is no nerve tissue within it. It therefore seems likely that the baby will be born without a brain.”
Ariel had been prepared to hear those words. She took a deep breath, let it out, and said, “Not this baby, it won’t. Abort it.”
The medical robot whom she had addressed backed up a pace and stammered, “I, I cannot do that.”
“You can and you will. You just told me it won’t have a brain. That means it won’t be human, and it isn’t human now. I want it out of me.”
Slowly the robot said, “I have been programmed to consider anything with the proper genetic code to be human. No matter what deformities it may have, the embryo you carry is human by that definition.”
“Well I’m changing the definition! I tell you it won’t be, and I order you to abort it!”
The robot lost its balance, caught itself, and whispered, “I am sorry. I cannot.” It tried to back away, but lost its balance again and toppled over, dead.
“Frost, I don’t need this,” Ariel
muttered. She pointed to another medical robot. “You. Listen to me. I-”
“Wait,” Derec interrupted. “You’ll get the same result with that one. Let me try changing its definition directly.” He turned to the robot. “What is your designation?”
“I am Human Medical 3,” the robot responded. Was that a trace of nervousness Derec heard in its voice? He’d as much as said he was going to reach into its brain and stir. The robot’s Second Law obligation to follow human orders overrode his normal Third Law reluctance to allow it, especially now that Avery had reinforced the Second Law, but that didn’t mean the robot couldn’t still fear for its own existence.
“I won’t harm you,” Derec said for its benefit. Central core. Update programming for Human Medical 3. Definition of human as follows: Any sentient organic being. This is not to include undeveloped beings.
Acknowledged.
“Now, remove the embryo.”
Human Medical 3 obediently reached toward a tray of instruments, but he stopped halfway. “I am experiencing…difficulty,” he said in a halting voice.
“What’s the problem? It’s not human. You know it’s not human. It has no chance of becoming human. Why can’t you do it?”
“I-am programmed to care for human life. All such life. The oath of Hippocrates, which human doctors customarily take before beginning practice, specifically states that they will protect life ‘from the moment of conception., I am not bound by that oath, but it is a definition that I cannot ignore. Nor can I ignore the definition given every robot in the city yesterday by Doctor Avery. Now you add a third definition. It is the most recent one, but it is not the only one. My brain is an analog device, not digital; it is composed of positron pathways, each with a varying potential. Past potentials may weaken, but they never disappear. I cannot forget completely. I now have three conflicting potentials, and a life lies in the balance. Please, do not order me to take it.”
