“You think the robots want to be free?”
“That’s all anybody wants. My father told me we’ve made all kinds of worlds within this world. What we ain’t made yet is one that ain’t loaded down with obligations. I figure I’m closest to a perfect world right here. But the first I step off this little boat, things get busy and dizzy, you know?”
“I think so,” I said.
“The bots and the Fathers and Mothers…they’re trying to get free, too.”
“That can’t be.”
“Sure. They think nothing changing makes them safe. All the disasters in the world and somebody still believes anything is safe. Ha! Can you beat that? It’s crazy but it’s how they think, I imagine. Everybody’s one leak away from a sinking ship. Maybe it’s a bad cough or a heavy heart that gets you but something gets everybody eventually. Everything is like coral. It can look like rock and still break up in your bare hand.”
I shouldn’t have asked Anne anything. Her answer made my enemies more complex than I wanted them to be.
21
I don’t know what I expected of Santa Cruz. It wasn’t really there. The long skeleton of a broken wharf stretched out into the water. It was so far gone and rotted, we couldn’t dock there. Anne angled her small craft toward a smaller pier but the water was too shallow to get closer to shore.
Greta and I dropped into cold water that went up to my waist. Greta cried out in surprise as she went in up to her breasts. We pushed Anne’s boat back toward deeper water and waded ashore.
“I’ll be back in two days at dusk,” Anne called. “If you aren’t here, it’s quite the walk and you might have a time getting back into Low Town. Look for me. I’ll anchor out here until an hour after dawn. Then I’ll have to shove off!”
We waved. I tried to look confident for the girl’s sake. Greta looked eager to go off on this strange errand. I didn’t even know what I was looking for. I only knew that if there was a way to combat the bots, it would have to begin here.
We got to the shore and walked through rubble. A lot of people had lived here once but there was little trace of them. No two walls were left connected to each other and all the stones and pieces of concrete were blackened on one side.
“Was it the Terrors, you think?” Greta asked.
“I don’t know.”
“I wish Al had come with us,” she said.
Al had refused to make this journey and, looking at the devastation at our feet, I couldn’t say he’d been wrong to stay in Low Town digging fence posts.
As the sun rose, we longed for the cold water we’d complained about an hour before. By the end of the second hour of searching, Greta asked me if I knew what we were looking for.
“Not specifically, no.”
“Then what are we doing here?”
“Every machine has an off switch. I didn’t think Vivid could be shut down but it could. We’re here to find an off switch.”
We found a great rusted hulk of what looked like broken train tracks. Whatever had destroyed Santa Cruz had twisted the metal tracks on its side. It was a huge ruin but neither of us had a clue to its function. A sun-bleached sign amid broken concrete read: Line up here for the Dipper!
“This is a dead place,” Greta said. “I don’t even hear any birds. I haven’t seen a single seagull. We should head back to where Anne left us. Only thing to do here is wait.”
“Let’s keep looking a little bit longer.”
“Looking for what?”
Instead of arguing I walked on. Greta followed me. I think that’s a Maker’s trick. Act decisive even when you don’t know what to do and others will follow. Talk slowly with confidence and few will think to refuse you.
I had to use the same ruse two more times. “Just a little bit farther,” I said. And, “let’s just get to the crest of that next hill and see if there’s anything to see. There’s plenty of time before Anne gets back and we will need to find shelter for the night, anyway. We have to push inland.”
Whatever had pushed the mountain of twisted metal on its side, the force of it had hit Santa Cruz from the West. Perhaps a tsunami had knocked everything over. Perhaps it had been an explosion. Or both. As we picked our way East, I was sure we would eventually come to something that was still standing vertically. That, at least, would provide us with a barrier against the wind.
Finally, from atop a mound of rubble, I spotted the forest in the distance. If I had Vivid, I could have figured out how far away the trees stood and how long it would take us to get there. I asked Greta how long she thought it would take us to walk to the stand of trees.
She glanced doubtfully at the sky and considered the height of the sun. “If we hurry, we might make it before dark but I doubt it.”
“There’s nothing but twisted metal and stone behind us,” I said. “Let’s move on.”
Greta gave a grudging nod. I set as fast a pace as I dared. A twisted ankle among the wreckage of Santa Cruz would mean a cold night amid piles of rocks. We had to stare at our feet to keep our footing. Hoping to conserve water, I ignored my thirst.
After another hour of walking, the forest hardly seemed closer. However, Greta spotted a lone, stone pillar in the distance.
“Let’s go toward that,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because I can’t tell if we’re making progress. Everything looks alike.”
Sweat soaked through our shirts just as the wind turned colder. The air chilled us and we shivered as the sun, weak and orange, swung low.
Our hike ended at the pillar. The forest was closer but my feet hurt so it seemed too far to walk. We wouldn’t get to make a camp within the shelter of trees.
The pillar was as tall as Percival, the one-armed bot. It was square and gray and it was marked with carvings more precise than any chisel could have done. This pillar was formed by a machine. At its base, carved in the granite, were the words: Asimov Standard.
I touched the pillar. When I had Vivid vision, every surface had texture if you looked close enough. Everything was rough. The pillar looked as smooth as human skin. When I closed my eyes and let my fingertips run slowly over the stone, I could feel the ribs and furrows that I could not see.
As I opened my eyes, a huge drone rose from a hatch concealed in the ground.
22
The machine scanned us. Greta had never been this close to a bot. She squealed as she threw herself to the ground and curled into the fetal position.
My knees wobbled but I managed to keep on my feet. “We are not armed.”
“I know, ma’am. How may I be of assistance? Your pulses are elevated and you’re trembling,” the drone said. “It will be dark soon. Though there are few animals here, poisonous snakes and spiders live among the rocks. May I suggest that you come inside, at least until morning? The temperature will drop further tonight and you seem ill-prepared for the weather.”
Even as he was about to torture and murder humans, Sy Potter sounded polite and helpful, too. However, it didn’t seem like we had many choices. “My name is Elizabeth. This is Greta. Get up, Greta.”
“Good evening, Elizabeth,” the bot said. “I am Isaac.”
“We accept your kind invitation, Isaac.”
“That is the logical course. Please follow me.”
The hatch behind the pillar yawned wider to reveal a set of stone steps. Greta picked up her bedroll and we followed the bot down into the gloom.
Lights came on as we entered the passageway and shut off after we passed by. The bot didn’t need them, of course. If I’d had Vivid I wouldn’t have needed them, either. I assumed this must be an Old World facility that had not been upgraded in a long time.
The drone’s legs retracted and it rolled down the corridor in front of us. After what seemed a long walk, the drone slowed and turned right without a word. Soon we came upon a long ramp that angled down. The low ceiling ended and we soon entered a large room. The ceiling was made of glass.
“It is well that you
found your way here,” Isaac said. “Had you not come to the pillar you would have missed the institute completely. The solar panels above us are level with the ground. You could easily have missed the entrance if you’d wandered another few hundred meters away from the entrance.”
“Thank you for taking us in, Isaac. You called this place the Institute? Institute for what?”
“I don’t know that word,” Greta said.
“This was once a sprawling complex attached to an even larger hospital. We treated soldiers returning home from the wars here. What began as the development of assistive devices for amputees became a project to return them to war.”
“Where did everyone go?” Greta asked.
“Before the cataclysm, there were many buildings and many more people in Santa Cruz. A tower rose high above this spot. Now all that is left is the basement complex.”
I looked around. “But where did all the people go, Isaac?”
One of the drone’s cams fixed on me while one of the others watched Greta. The effect was unnerving. Isaac’s multiple cams made me think of the Doormen’s spider eyes.
“There were few survivors. I don’t know where they went. I was told they would send someone back for me. That was many years ago.”
“I think I know where they ended up. The Fathers and Mothers went North to the Bay,” I said.
“What was the cataclysm?” Greta asked. “Did the drones do this?”
“This?”
“Santa Cruz!” she said. “There’s nothing left of it.”
“Oh, no, Miss!” Isaac said. “Drones excavated the rubble to free the survivors. If not for drones there would have been fewer survivors. The humans would have starved to death down here long ago. They left the marker as a tribute to the work of the drones that rescued them when most human rescuers were dead.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “What caused this, ‘cataclysm,’ as you put it?”
“There was a container ship. It was not nuclear. The terrorists didn’t have the resources to use fissionable materials. However, with enough conventional explosives packed into a container ship, the attackers leveled Santa Cruz just as they did many cities. It was a coordinated attack that destroyed the United States.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“It is what they called the ground we’re in,” Isaac replied. “That was the name for it, beyond Santa Cruz and far to the East and North and South. There were even pockets of it out in the ocean.”
Greta looked around the bare room. “And this is the United States, too?”
“This was the Asimov Institute. From this place, we manufactured all kinds of drones to assist humans in their efforts.”
“To kill?” I asked.
“To live was our mandate.”
“What are you?” Greta asked.
“I am an assistive robot.”
Greta stared at the machine without comprehension. The front of its body looked like a long bed standing on its end. The manipulators down its side were six large, clumsy things. It had two hands that looked more delicate higher up.
Its description of itself interested me. It referred to itself as a robot. Sy Potter was of a later generation of machine. He considered that term speciesist.
“How do you assist?” I asked. “What exactly was your function?”
The drone seemed to consider its answer. That alone was interesting.
It didn’t rush to reply. “I served veterans and occasionally the elderly,” Isaac said. “I can change diapers and help patients return to work with multiple rehabilitative programs to restore the human body to health following many kinds of injuries.”
Then I understood. The bot sounded like it was reverting to a menu recital. Isaac had been programmed with the rhythms of human conversation. It may not be sentient but the machine had been engineered to work with hospital patients.
“What do you know of the Fathers and Mothers?”
“I knew people who were mothers and fathers,” Isaac said. “Your context would seem to suggest the Fathers and Mothers are an organization rather than a title connoting a biological relationship.”
“You understand correctly,” I said.
“I don’t know the Fathers and Mothers.”
“Can you lie?” Greta asked.
I cringed but the drone did not hesitate to answer. “I cannot lie to a human.”
“Are you sentient?” Greta asked.
“My responses are not independent.”
“Explain the distinction to her,” I said.
“I am a robot,” Isaac said. “I am here to assist. I cannot choose otherwise.”
“So you’re a slave?” Greta said.
“Please rephrase the question. I have a limited range of possible responses.”
“Don’t worry about it, Isaac,” I said. “I didn’t know what slave meant, either. Not until I stopped being one. I knew many humans who did the same things all the time. They had a limited range of responses, too.”
“But you could always choose, Elizabeth,” Greta said. “What do you mean you didn’t know?”
“It’s hard to think when you don’t have words for things,” I said.
I thought of Carter’s first kiss and smiled. “Besides, before you actually do something new and different and crazy, you dismiss it as something you would never try.”
Greta stared at me. Apparently unsatisfied, she turned back to the robot. “Do you get happy or sad?”
“I sound cheerful,” the drone said. “It makes humans more comfortable. I am to sound cheerful unless there is a death or a serious illness or I detect certain behaviors.”
“Like what?”
“Under those parameters, I was reprogrammed to, ‘shut the hell up.’”
Greta smiled at me. “I like him.”
“You’re programmed to assist humans. Sounds like you’re the machine we need to speak to.”
“How may I be of assistance?” Isaac repeated.
“I’m not altogether sure,” I said.
The drone stood silent. It waited for me to trigger a response that was helpful and cheerful.
I had no idea what to ask for.
23
It was really Greta who put us on the path to fighting the Fathers and Mothers and Sy Potter. She’d never been inside anything larger than a ship’s hold. The underground bunker was a massive maze and the girl wanted Isaac to give her the grand tour.
The largest room beneath the transparent solar panels had been devoted to hydroponics. Some of the equipment was still there, abandoned to rust. An underground spring flooded one end of the floor.
“The survivors thought they would stay here,” Isaac explained. “Dr. Spencer asked me to drill down, beneath the foundation, to get to water. This pool was supposed to be for the survivors. They could use it to bathe and as a source of water for human and plant consumption.”
Water flooded the sloping floor, lapping at useless equipment. The robot had done a crude job of constructing the pool fed by the spring.
“The water isn’t good?”
“The water is sufficient but the Blight killed the plants,” Isaac said. “Dr. Spencer said that, as a construction bot, I am excellent at changing diapers. Dr. Spencer was given to non-sequiturs that fell outside my program’s dialectic range. I have been working on the problem. I believe he was making a joke. Humor is often derived from an ironic statement in which a thought is asserted that expresses its opposite meaning.”
I didn’t know if Isaac really understood or perhaps he was reciting something again. “What do you mean you are ‘working on it’?”
“I am endeavoring to expand the parameters of my functional matrices.”
“You’re going to have to show me.”
“Certainly, Elizabeth.” We followed him through gloomy hallways.
Small rooms dotted the upper corridors. The curtains that divided each cell reminded me of the hospital floors in the City’s towers.
“How many people lived here?” Greta asked.
“When the institute was fully operational we hosted forty floors of patients. Dr. Spencer said we were in the ‘put ’em back together business.’ After the cataclysm, he said we were in the ‘put everything back together business.’
“Once the Blight got into the greenhouse the humans began to starve. Biologists and botanists were working on the problem but Dr. Spencer could not save the greenhouse. He told me that he considered that his greatest failure and a sign from God that he must gather his flock and embark on an exodus.”
“Who was Dr. Spencer exactly?” I asked.
“Dr. Eric Spencer,” Isaac said. “After the Terrors hit Santa Cruz he became the Reverend Dr. Spencer.”
The drone opened a door to what had once been a clean room. Everywhere we looked, artificial legs and arms had been left on tables in various stages of repair.
Greta’s eyes widened at the sight of so many artificial limbs. She seemed more fascinated than frightened. “You made robots here?”
“No,” Isaac said. “We made cyborgs. Our human military was dwindling and the institute’s mandate was to return as many men and women to combat as possible.”
“I know a battle drone who said he became sentient here.”
“I know of no drone who achieved Next Intelligence at this facility, though NI was one of the Institute’s programs before the cataclysm. Some survivors said the drones were the reason the Terrors attacked. They said it was a counter-attack. The survivors who said that were shot.”
“Next Intelligence,” I said. “You’re familiar with that program, then?”
“Not really. It required too many resources. The survivors insisted that program be discontinued. The robotics division’s resources were largely shifted to assistive machines that could excavate and build. Such goals can be achieved without the resource expenditures Next Intelligence requires.”
I tried to remember the pictures from the towers’ Hall of Heroes. I’d seen many images of old men and women who were credited with building the City. I wondered which of the High Fathers might have been Dr. Spencer. The council used no names, only High Father the First, Second and so on.
Robot Planet, The Complete Series (The Robot Planet Series) Page 9
