Asimov’s Future History Volume 7

by Isaac Asimov

  “That is the vulgar term, Mistress Ariel.”

  “We don’t need border guards. Robot City’s allover the planet. There aren’t any borders.”

  The robot made a move with his shoulders that, in a human, would have been a shrug. “I was misinformed,” it said.

  Now Derec took over the questioning. “You do a job for which there is no need?”

  “It seems so.”

  “Was border guard always your job?”

  “No. I was once an Analyst.”

  “You would have to be reprogrammed to change your role here.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you were?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who did the reprogramming?”

  “I am not allowed to say.”

  “Yes, you can. You are allowed to tell me.”

  “Nope. I realize you are Derec, but this is not a matter of Robotic Law protocol. I really cannot. There is a block upon the information which, if I attempt to reveal it to —”

  “I know, I know. The information self-destructs. You forget it before you can say it.”

  “That is so.”

  Derec, looking worried, turned his back on the robot. “Heads up,” he said to Ariel, then reared back his fist, as if to smash her in the face.

  The robot’s hand was quick. He had Derec’s arm in between pincers in a split second. Derec relaxed in his grasp.

  “It’s all right, robot. I would never hurt her. I was just testing you.”

  “Testing me?”

  “I wanted to make sure you would still obey the First Law and keep me from harming Ariel.”

  “I would. I must.”

  Derec sighed. “At least something in this place is working according to Hoyle.”

  “Excuse me,” the robot said. “I missed a beat there somewhere, pal. Is there someone named Hoyle I should know about?”

  Derec laughed, pleased that at least this robot, with its skills at slang, could still be crossed up enough to take a statement literally. “It’s nothing,” he said. “Just a figure of speech.”

  “I will look it up. Thanks a bunch, kid.”

  “Stop calling me kid. It’s not only inaccurate, it’s disrespectful.”

  “It’s not so inaccurate,” Ariel muttered. “I mean, you’re still a teenager.”

  “I don’t feel like one any more.”

  “I apologize, Master Derec. I thought kid was a respectful term. It is in the movies, I think.”

  “I give up. Get on your way.”

  “As you wish. Here’s looking at you, k — Master Derec.”

  The robot began to glide away.

  “Wait, what’s your name?” Derec called after it. “Bogie.”

  “That’s your new name, one you chose?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you see many movies?”

  “I have studied a certain period of the cinema, yes.”

  “Why? Why a certain period?”

  “It was my assignment.”

  “Who made the assignment?”

  “I am not allowed to say.”

  “Okay, okay. I get the message. I won’t ask any more questions. You may go now, Bogie.”

  “Yes, Master Derec.”

  Bogie disappeared around another comer. Derec might have been mistaken, but the robot’s hand, extended in front of him, looked like it was flipping an invisible coin.

  “What do you make of that, Ariel?”

  “When I was a child, my mother had me watch a lot of movies from old Earth. They were shadowy, and dark, and in shades of gray they liked to call black and white. Very hard to watch, quite unreal. They were usually about crime and murder and private detectives. Bogie’s like a character in one of them. The slang seems about the same, far as I can remember. Maybe we can watch a few.”

  “Might help in figuring out what Bogie is talking about. For right now, though, I think we better get to the Compass Tower before any more of these wise-guy robots show up.”

  “Wise-guy? And you were complaining about Bogie’s slang?”

  “It gets to you after a while.”

  “What about your respect for language?”

  “Not sure I have any. C’mon, I want to find the Supervisors and work with the computer.”

  “Unless it thinks it’s a movie character, too.”

  “Don’t even think that.”

  As they headed toward the Compass Tower, the Watchful Eye studied the situation. If these were the superior humans, they certainly were tentative, but also a bit aggressive. Derec nearly hit Ariel, after all.

  It was hard to examine them as long as it stayed put in its haven, yet it could not move now. It must remain at the core of the city. Perhaps it would be useful to have Derec and Ariel spied upon. Spies could signal it when there was any danger of being discovered. It decided to assign Timestep and Bogie to that job. They had already proved their efficiency with the successful way they had absorbed the research materials assigned to them.

  Through the comlink system it contacted both robots, who, with nothing better to do, changed direction and met at the Compass Tower, just after the humans had entered the immense pyramidal structure.

  Chapter 6

  MUMBLING ROBOTS AND SASSY COMPUTERS

  BEMUSED BY THE actions of Derec and Ariel, the Watchful Eye turned its attention to the other set of newcomers in time to observe Eve and Mandelbrot leaving the building where she had discovered the residue from some of its early genetic experiments. Eve’s conduct in the old building seemed worth the Watchful Eye’s admiration. It certainly preferred her cool reactions to the cowardly and brutal responses of Ariel and Derec.

  Its admiration increased when it eavesdropped on Adam’s questioning of Eve. His queries were much more analytical and logical than those of Derec and Ariel in their interrogation of the two robots. The Watchful Eye was, however, puzzled by certain aspects of the Adam-Eve relationship. It had detected a warmth and shared emotion between Derec and Ariel, even when they had been arguing with each other. Their silvery counterparts seemed close only when they shared information. And they did not touch each other gently the way Ariel and Derec did. The Watchful Eye placed no importance on emotion, but it had noticed that emotion seemed to playa key part in many of the descriptions of humanity contained in the computer files.

  There was, as Hamlet-obsessed Derec might have put it, a method to the Watchful Eye’s madness. It was confused by some aspects of Robot City, and it believed it needed help. Whichever of the two pairs appeared superior, it would enlist in its cause, as advisors, helping it to run the city.

  Up to now, it had only had the assistance of robots because there was no one else available. Robots did good work when properly instructed, but, if any of their Laws of Robotics were involved in the task, they could ask many time-wasting questions. If one of the Watchful Eye’s orders seemed to put a robot in danger, it would initiate long discussions about the task until the Watchful Eye finally revised the job to eliminate Third Law obstacles. Now that the newcomers had arrived on the planet, it was beginning to hear First Law ruminations from the robots.

  Although the Watchful Eye would not have considered it in such terms, Robot City had become its own personal toy. It had not, after all, been conscious for very long, and in some ways it was still a child. That was why it had conducted so many experiments since its arrival. It was testing Robot City, rearranging the place to fit its needs, finding out what worked and what did not, reprogramming robots to store the information that was beyond its ability to assimilate. Eventually it planned to restore order to the city, a highly structured order based on theories it was formulating daily. It was determined to achieve the goal of establishing its own city.

  The newcomers, with their experience and intellect, could help it. It would put them under its thumb (a colloquialism it had learned from the computer — not that it had any thumbs, or at that moment any hands) and use their expertise to put the city also under its imaginary opposab
le digit.

  As Eve and the others continued their journey, the Watchful Eye searched for Ariel and Derec. At first it could not locate them, but then its new spy, Timestep, informed it that they were about to enter the Compass Tower. Quickly the Watchful Eye activated the life-support systems that the pair would need inside the pyramidal structure.

  “It smells musty in here,” Ariel remarked as they headed down the corridor leading to the Supervisors’ meeting room. “Like it’s been closed up tight for a long while.”

  “Maybe it has,” Derec responded. “It’s possible that when we’re not here for a long period of time, they close down the air circulation systems.”

  “Maybe. But I sure don’t like it smelling like a tomb.”

  She coughed. The echoes of it seemed to swirl down many hallways in front of them.

  “I don’t remember it being this cold in here, either,” she said. “I know, don’t say it. No reason to keep heating systems in complete operation for robots alone.”

  They came to the meeting-room door, which was ajar. Derec placed his hand on Ariel’s arm and whispered, “Wait.”

  She whispered back, “What’s wrong?”

  “That door’s usually not kept open.”

  “So what? It’s safe enough down here. No need for security.”

  “I know, I know. It’s just disturbing. It should be closed.”

  “God, you’re going anomaly-crazy. Let’s go in.”

  She charged ahead of him before he could hold her back. Her sudden move didn’t surprise him. Ariel had always been more impulsive than he. He ran after her.

  Again, as they crossed a threshold into a dark room, the automatic lighting did not function. At least the Compass Tower rooms had manual overrides so that, when necessary, lights could be controlled by the inhabitants. Ariel, feeling the wall next to the door with the back of her hand, found a light switch and flicked it on.

  The Supervisor robots were, in typical fashion, seated around the long meeting table. She recognized Avernus, Dante, Rydberg, Euler, Anon, and particularly the first Wohler, the robot who had saved her life on the outside wall of the tower, then had lost all memory of his own heroism. Each time she saw Wohler, she felt a twinge of affection for him.

  “Why were they sitting in the dark?” Ariel said. “Hey, why are you guys sitting in darkness?”

  “It is not dark now,” Avernus said. His voice sounded odd, a bit deeper, like a sound tape being slowed down.

  “But it was. Wait a minute. You fellows don’t usually play those robotic word games with us. Heck, the bunch of you together form a major computer. What’s going on?”

  “Nothing,” Euler said. His voice sounded weird, too.

  She turned to Derec. “What’s going on, you think?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He walked around the table, studying the robots carefully, sometimes touching them, asking fast questions, receiving slow answers. Finally, he came back to Ariel and whispered, “They’re not really functioning.”

  “What do you mean? They responded to your questions, they spoke.”

  “But their responses were meaningless, they didn’t really say anything. You heard them. Whenever my questions had anything to do with possible computer malfunctions, they each said the computer is fully operational. But, when I asked any specific questions about what was wrong with the city, they said nothing was wrong. Well, we can see how much is wrong and, Ariel, part of what’s wrong is them. Whoever’s behind the sabotaging of the city has gotten control of them, too. They’re just another system gone haywire. Let’s try the office. Maybe we’ll find the culprit there.”

  Before they left the room, Derec and Ariel looked back. The Supervisor robots had not appeared to move an inch. They had not sprung up, ready to serve Derec and Ariel, or provided useful information. They had seemed listless, and listless robots seemed a contradiction in terms. Before she switched off the light, Ariel said, a bit sadly,” ‘Bye, fellas.” Was she mistaken, or was there a faint mumbling response from them?

  The office light also had to be turned on manually. The room itself looked no different from usual. Its furniture was all in place, surfaces were clean, the computer was positioned correctly on the desk. The surrounding walls, furnishing a computer display of the view from the Compass Tower roof, still functioned, although they showed an altered Robot City, now too dark and too mysterious. Derec cursed under his breath.

  “What’s wrong?” Ariel asked. It seemed her main question ever since they had returned to Robot City.

  “The chemfets. It’s as if they’re getting fainter, dissolving. Whatever’s affecting the city is affecting them. It has to. Let me at the computer.”

  As he activated the screen, called up access codes, made his fingers fly across the keyboard, his eyes teared up and he struggled to keep from crying. Ariel, for the first time in a long while, didn’t know what to say to him or what to do for him. The chemfets had always been a mystery to her, and she didn’t know how to counter their effect on him.

  Finally, with an angry yowl, Derec slammed his fists on the keyboard. A few random letters appeared on the screen followed by a question mark.

  “It’s like everything else around here. It won’t communicate with me. Whatever I type into it, it sends back gobbledygook — an error message, or request for clarification, or denial of access. I asked why the lighting systems were not working properly, and it asked if I’d like a Cracked Cheeks cassette delivered to our rooms.” The Cracked Cheeks were the robot jazz group that had formed during the “Circuit Breaker” incident. A fascination with creativity had captivated several robots at the time, but Avery had later programmed such “dangerous” impulses out of them. “I asked why so many systems were down, and it called up a file-management tutorial file. I asked if there had been any newcomers to the city, and it said that information was restricted. I asked it to unrestrict it, and it said it was restricted forever.”

  “How can that be?”

  “I don’t know. It just seemed to be toying with me, treating me like a child, not relating to the chemfets at all. There’s been some kind of bypass, somebody’s hacked in or something, or a computer virus, I don’t know. Whatever, whoever it is, is in control. I could try to access the right information until I was blue in the face, and I’d just get nonsense from it. The computer’s been taken from me, the robots are no longer in my power, the city is running down, and I can’t stop it. And all I want to do is go back to the ship, lift off from this hellhole, go back to Aurora or even to Earth, and never come back.”

  He was close to breaking down. Ariel could see that. Gently she ran her hand through his bristly sandy-colored hair, uncertain for a moment of what to say, then she knelt down beside him. “Hey, snap out of it. These are minor setbacks, pal. We can take care of them. We’ve done it before.”

  He smiled. “You’re right. What’d I do without you?”

  “Probably blunder on with much less efficiency.”

  He sat quietly for a long while. “I wonder if he’s behind all of it.”

  She did not have to ask who he was.

  “It has the fingerprints of Dr. Avery all over it, doesn’t it?”

  “It has to be him.”

  “But,” said Dr. Avery, his small form stepping out of a dark comer, “this time it is not me. I am, my son, just as confused by it all as you are.”

  Chapter 7

  NO AVERYS NEED APPLY

  “YOU WERE IN that corner all this time?” Ariel asked.

  Avery looked smug as he responded, “Since long before you violated my privacy by coming into the room. I’ve been —”

  Derec suddenly screamed, “Damn you!” He vaulted out of his chair and lunged at Dr. Avery, grabbing him by the throat and shoving him against the nearest wall. The doctor’s eyes remained calm, as if the way he looked when he was being murdered was the same as when he delivered a sarcastic comment.

  “Derec!” Ariel shouted. “Stop! Right th
is minute!”

  She pulled hard at his arm, breaking his grip, then she interposed her body between him and Dr. Avery. With a forceful backhand, she hit Derec on the side of his face. Derec’s eyes looked momentarily dazed. Gently she began walking, edging him back toward the computer terminal.

  “Now why in the name of the fifty Spacer planets did you do that?” she said.

  Derec sat down again. His fingertips brushed along a row of letters on the keyboard. “I’m sorry, Ariel.”

  “How about me?” Avery said, his voice a bit shaky as he tentatively touched his throat. “I think you should apologize to me.”

  “No! That I won’t do! You spied on us.”

  “I wouldn’t call it spying, son. I was here first, remember? Meditating in the darkness. You intruded on me. I just wasn’t ready to announce it.”

  “He’s right, Derec,” Ariel said. “His spying’s not important enough for an attempted murder.”

  “I wouldn’t have killed him. You know that.” Ariel was bothered by the fact that she really didn’t know whether or not Derec could commit patricide. “I just wanted to hurt him.”

  “Well, you at least succeeded in that purpose, young man,” Avery said. Now he was tugging at the cuff of his sleeve with one hand, smoothing out the cloth of his laboratory smock with the other. “You do not seem to be accomplishing much elsewhere, however. No wonder you were reduced to tears.”

  Derec made a small furious sound in his throat, but restrained himself from jumping up again. Instead, he said quietly, in a level voice, “What it was, Ariel, he saw me cry. I didn’t want him to see that, that’s all. Not him! Childish of me, I guess. I’m sorry.”

  Ariel hugged him. “You are childish, darling. And it’s all right to cry. No matter who sees it.”

  “Not if it’s him.” He rubbed at his eyes with the back of his right hand, trying to wipe away any remaining evidence of his tears. “He has no right to judge me.”

  “I’ve always judged you. I am your father. I’m supposed to.”

  “He may be lying about being my father. How do we know?”