by Isaac Asimov
Wolruf and Mandelbrot were already there, lounging comfortably in two acceleration couches that faced a large control console. The small, dog-like alien was spooning something that looked like Brussels sprouts in milk out of a bowl and between bites chatting with the patchwork robot. Her furry brown ears went up when Derec hit the floor; together, she and Mandelbrot turned to look at him.
“’ullo,” Wolruf said around a mouthful of greenery. “Nice of ‘u to drop in.”
Mandelbrot stared at Derec a moment, but did not rise.., Are you hurt?’, he asked at last.
“Only my dignity,” Derec said, as he got up off the floor and brushed some dust off his posterior.
“That is good,” Mandelbrot noted. The robot turned back to Wolruf... You were saying?”
“‘at can wait,” Wolruf said. She favored Derec with a wicked grin, then barked out, “Ship! Master Derec wants t’ sit next t’ me!”
“That’s all right, Wolruf, I can-what!” A glob of floor material suddenly mushroomed up under Derec, sweeping him off his feet and catching him like a giant hand. By the time it’d moved up next to Wolruf, it’d formed into another acceleration couch.
Wolruf leaned over, smiling wolfishly, and offered Derec a dripping spoonful of whatever it was she was eating. “‘u want t’ try some gaach? Is real good. Put ‘air on ‘ur face.”
Derec looked at the thing on the spoon-which, on closer. inspection, looked nothing like a Brussels sprout-and shook his head. “Thanks, I, uh, already ate.”
Wolruf shrugged as if disappointed. “‘ur loss.” With a practiced flip, she tossed the green globule up, then caught it with a frightening snap of her long teeth. “Mmm,” she said in a deep, throaty growl that was apparently a sign of delight.
Derec finally recovered something of his composure, and started to look around the cabin he’d dropped into. “What...? Why, this is the bridge!”
“T’row ‘at boy a milkbone,” Wolruf said between bites.
“But last night the bridge was at the top of the ship!”
Wolruf favored Derec with a toothy smile. “‘at’s right. But ‘at was ‘en. ‘is iss now.” Derec kept darting nervous glances around the cabin, as if keeping an eye on everything would stop it from metamorphosing. Wolruf leaned over and put a furry hand on Derec’s shoulder. “Face it, Derec. ‘ur on a crazy ship.” She shrugged
“But iss not dangerous crazy.” The little alien finished the last of her gaach. then licked the bowl clean with her long pink tongue. “Mmm,” she growled again as she tossed the bowl and spoon over her shoulder, to clatter onto the deck.
“Wolruf!” Derec was shocked. “Do you always throw your dirty dishes on the floor?”
She rolled over, smiled innocently, and brought a hand up to start scratching her right ear. “What dishes?”
“Why —,” Derec turned to point at it but stopped short. The spoon had already melted into the cabin deck, and only a tiny bit of the bowl’s rim remained.
“Robot City materral,” Wolruf said with a shrug. “So ‘ow’s Arr’el?”
Derec watched the last trace of the bowl disappear, then sighed. “Still having a rough time.”
“Th’ baby?” Wolruf asked gently.
“Yeah.” Derec fell back onto the couch and stared at his hands. “Ariel is still trying to pretend that she’s too tough to mourn, I guess. So instead, she treats me like it’s my fault she lost the baby.” Derec fell silent a minute, thinking about the two-month-old fetus that Ariel had just lost. Maybe it was his fault. After all, the embryo’s brain had been destroyed by an infestation of chemfets, the same microscopic robotic “cells” that swam in his bloodstream and gave him his incredible biological interface with Robot City. He should have realized that the chemfets were a communicable disease.
“Never ‘ad pups myself,” Wolruf broke in with a hint of sadness in her voice. “But unnerstand that th’ mother gets quite attached t’’em long b’fore she actually whelps.”
“Yeah, well-look, this is depressing. Let’s change the subject, okay? How’s the flight going?”
“‘u got ‘ur depressors, I got mine.” Wolruf sat up, and made a wide sweeping gesture that took in the control panel. “Look a’ it. Perfect automation. Don’t need a pilot ‘r navigator. I ‘aven’t touched a button in t’ree days, and probably won’t until we jump tonight. No way I could everr fly ‘er ‘alf so good.” Wolruf’s upper lip curled in a silent snarl. “‘ur father ever puts this design on the market, ‘ur lookin’ at one bitch ‘oo’s seriously out 0’ work.”.
“That’s okay,” Derec said. “We still love you anyway.” To prove the point, he started giving her a reassuring scratch behind the ears.
“Oo! Oo! Don’ stop!” When her left foot began twitching reflexively, though, Wolruf got embarrassed and pulled away from Derec’s hand.
Presently, a new thought came to Derec. “Say, speaking of my father, have either of you seen him this morning?” Wolruf shook her head, but Mandelbrot’s eyes dimmed for a moment as he checked his internal links.
“Dr. Avery is in the ship’s robotics lab,” the patchwork robot announced.
“Robotics lab?” Derec repeated.
“Yes. Dr. Avery had it constructed at 0137 hours last night. It is currently on the port side, two levels up.”
“Thanks, Mandelbrot.” Derec bounced off his acceleration couch, said goodbye to Wolruf, then stepped over to the lift plate-and paused, to glare at the lift plate with obvious misgivings. “Oh, ship?” he said at last. “I don’t suppose you could cook up a stairway, could you?” In response, a blank wall resolved into an arched passage that led to the bottom end of a spiral staircase. “Thanks, ship.” Derec stepped through the passage and started up.
Chapter 5
MAVERICK
DUSK CAME TO the mountainside forest with the soft chittering of waking nightclimbers and the plaintive cooing of lovesick redwings. It came on a gentle southerly breeze that spoke of young green shoots bravely thrusting up through the warm, damp soil, and twisted old trees grudgingly coming to life again after yet another long dormant season.
Like the silent gray ghost of the winter just past, Maverick padded quietly through the lengthening shadows of the tall trees, alert to the soft sounds and drinking in the earthy smells of the warm spring evening.
He moved quickly and confidently across the needle-covered forest floor, as befitted an eighty-kilo carnivore with something on his mind. Yet there was a nervous twitch in his naked, whiplike tail that suggested different emotions at work; an occasional darting glance over his shoulder suggested he was not as brave as he seemed. At the edge of a clearing, as he stopped and stood up on his hind legs, it became apparent that he was favoring his left rear leg. For a moment the breeze ruffled his mottled grayish-brown fur, exposing the long pink scar of a recently healed wound; he was leaning against the tree trunk for support, not cover. Closing his ice-blue eyes, he lifted his muzzle and tasted the air.
A faint, acrid scent caught his attention. “Sharpfang!” He added a guttural curse in BeastTongue; as if in answer, a deep bellow echoed across the valley.
Maverick’s long, fur-covered ears shot up, and a look of puzzlement crossed his wolf-like face. “That’s not right.” He closed his eyes again, cocked his head sideways, and tried to concentrate on what the wind was telling him. “A female scent, but a male roar?’, The bellow sounded again-quite nearby now-this time accompanied by the loud, rending crack of a fair-sized tree being knocked flat.
Maverick’s eyes snapped wide open, and he grabbed for the stone knife in the scabbard on his left shoulder as if a knife could really be of use against a hungry sharpfang. A moment later the beast leaped into view not fifty trots away across the clearing, and Maverick froze.
The giant reptile charged across the clearing on its two massive hind legs, ploughing through the undergrowth and crushing everything in its way like a scaly brown juggernaut. Maverick stood rooted in one spot, staring at onrushing death.
The sharpfang’s head was huge; long, armored, and bristling with teeth, it whipped back and forth as if the beast had brain enough to feel fury. Long-taloned hind feet slashed through the brush; the thick, muscular tail trailing behind thrashed whatever had survived the talons into a pulpy green mass.
The sharpfang did not even break stride as it raised its head and opened its great jaws to roar again.
For a long fraction of a second, Maverick watched the dying sunlight flash off the beast’s long wet fangs. Then he sniffed the air again, let out an anxious little whine, and dropped his ears in hope. Maybe, just maybe, the toothy monster wasn’t interested in him. Allowing for windage, there was a family-minded female sharpfang down in the marsh about six hundred trots off to his left.
And if he were wrong?
Maverick carefully loosened the knife in its scabbard. With his injured leg, he knew he couldn’t outrun the sharpfang. That left him only one other option: Wait until the beast was close enough to lick, and then hope that a fast and intelligent counterattack could overcome its overwhelming but mindless strength. He shifted his weight onto the balls of his feet. Reflexively, his naked, whip-like tail tucked itself between his legs and coiled around his thigh. He had to wait for the right moment; exactly the right moment....
A moment later the advancing sharpfang apparently caught a whiff of the female and had a change of heart. It veered off toward the marsh. Saplings crunched; redwings screeched; Maverick stood his ground and pretended to be a tree stump. The beast passed close enough for him to take a long look straight into the fiery, bottomless red pit of its left eye.
Another moment later, and it was gone. Ears erect, Maverick listened to the crunching and roaring as it receded into the distance. Then he lolled out his long pink tongue, wuffed out a little laugh, and cracked into a wide, extremely relieved, panting grin. “They say love has no sense of smell. I’d guess it’s blind, too.”
He dropped to all fours, nosed around the base of the tree, marked it with his scent, and gave the male sharpfang more time to see if it was coming back for another pass or being followed by any competitors. When the forest at last grew quiet again, save for the thrashing and bellowing of giant lizards in love, he slipped the knife back into its scabbard and set off toward the northwest at a rapid trot.
“Well, Mavvy old boy,” he told himself as he jogged along, “I’d say you handled that pretty well. There’s not many kin who’d stand up to a charging sharpfang like that.
“Of course, the old ones always said that it’s the running away that attracts their attention.”
He paused to sniff around the base of a rock outcropping and mark it with his scent. Then he went on.
“But here’s another thought: Their eyes are on opposite sides of their heads. Maybe the reason sharpfangs swing their heads when they walk is because they can’t see what’s straight in front of them.
“Interesting idea, Mavvy. So the best way to attack a sharpfang is from right under its chin? That little piece of information ought to be worth something to the next pack we run into.”
At the thought of a pack, his left rear leg gave him a little twinge to remind him of the last pack he’d run into. “Ooh. A bad night for rock climbing, old boy. Still, it’s got to be done.”
After a year as a packless outcast, Maverick had stopped noticing that his silent thoughts had turned into one-kin conversations.
He detoured around a patch of stingwort, stopped to mark another tree, and then continued. “But while we’re on the subject of sharpfangs: Mother, they sure are noisy things, aren’t they? It’s a wonder they ever manage to surprise a hunting pack.
“Actually, no it isn’t. The kin in hunting packs spend so much time arguing with each other and bickering over status, the wonder is that they are ever able to surprise anything.”
As the last ebb of the sunlight slipped away, Maverick finally broke out of the tall forest and reached the foothills. He sat down, paused for a reflective scratch, and stared up at the forbidding, rocky crags.
“Yes,” he told himself, “running solo is definitely the way to go. No status fights, no orders, no drooling little pups slowing you down.”
His voice took a darker turn. “No food, no warm cave to sleep in, no family.” Maverick’s voice dropped to a breathy whisper, as if he had finally become aware that he was talking to himself. “Let’s face it, lad. We’ve been on the run too long. We-l have got to find a pack to join.” He thought back on the winter he’d just lived through and shuddered involuntarily. “I’ve got to find a pack soon.” Taking a deep breath, he dug his paws into the loose gravel and started up the side of the mountain. Smallface, the lesser of the two moons, was just rising. He had a lot of climbing to do before Largeface rose.
Halfway up the slope, he surprised a feeding whistlepig. The stupid little furball tried to hide in plain sight; scrabbling and clawing, Maverick fell on it and bit its head off with one snap of his long, toothy jaws. The meat was tough and nearly tasteless, but he carefully chewed and swallowed each bite.
Excluding carrion, it was the first meal he’d eaten in three days.
Chapter 6
JANET
ROBOTIC LAW POTENTIALS danced and capered in Basalom’s positronic brain like fireflies on hyperdrive. Impulses and reactions chased each other through his circuits, laughing riotously as molecular relays burst open and slammed shut like hallway doors in an old comedy routine. As much as a robot can be said to enjoy anything, Basalom was beginning to enjoy the incredibly complex nets of conflicting potentials that wove themselves inside his brain. Now, with the latest news just in from the scanning team, an entirely new dimension was added to his decision matrix, imparting a wonderful sense of energy to his cognition circuits. The potentials glittered in his mind like an Auroran filterbug’s web on a dewy morning.
Dr. Anastasi was not going to like the scanning team’s report.
First and Second Law conflicts skirmished in his brain, fighting for priority. Each time his decision gate flip-flopped, the stress register escalated. When the register hit 256, the accumulated potential was shunted to ground through his optical perceptor membrane actuator.
In simpler terms, he blinked.
Dr. Anastasi finished her business in the Personal and emerged into the companionway. Basalom blinked once more to clear his stress register and then addressed his mistress.
“Dr. Anastasi? The scanning team reports finding no trace of Learning Machine #1.”
“What?”
Again, a surging clash of potentials! How could he obey the implied Second Law command to repeat and clarify the message without violating the First Law by insulting her intelligence?
Basalom settled for slowing his voice clock rate by ten percent and augmenting his speech with “warm” harmonics in the two-kilohertz range. “For the past eight hours, the scanning team has worked outward in an expanding radial pattern from the landing site. Within the limits of their equipment, they have not been able to find any evidence of Learning Machine #1’s existence.”
Dr. Anastasi ran a hand through her hair. “That’s impossible. It was powered by a cold microfusion cell. Even if the learning machine was completely destroyed, they still should be able to pick up residual neutron radiation from the power pack.” Then a thought crossed her mind, and she frowned. “Unless Derec...”
She shook her head. “No, a coincidence like that would strain credulity. The scanning crew must have made some mistake.” She turned and started up the companionway toward the bow of the ship. “Well? Come along, Basalom.”
Basalom was almost disappointed. His lovely, complex decision matrix resolved to simple Second Law obedience, and he dutifully fell in behind.
To minimize the effect of stray radiation from the ship’s engines on delicate equipment, the scanning team’s cabin was located in a blister on the underside of the uttermost bow of the ship. To get to the blister, Basalom and Dr. Anastasi had to leave the cargo bay laboratory, walk the enti
re length of the living quarters, and then drop down one level to the low-ceilinged companionway that ran beneath the bridge. For the last ten meters, they had to pull themselves along handholds through a narrow, zero-gravity access tube.
Along the way, to keep his mind busy, Basalom reopened his human viewpoint simulation file. He had more observations to add to the file and more data to correlate. In particular, Basalom wanted to record an effect that he had noticed twice before: That Dr. Janet, when given information she did not like, would insist on traveling to the source and verifying the information herself.
This must be a corollary effect of having a purely local viewpoint, Basalom decided. Dr. Anastasi would rather believe that a severe failure has occurred in her information gathering systems than accept unpleasant information.
Basalom logged, indexed, and stored the observation. Someday 1 will meet robots who have been observing other humans in a similar fashion. Perhaps then we will be able to integrate our data and formulate fundamental laws of human behavior.
Perhaps someday, Basalom repeated. But given the way Dr. Anastasi shunned human society, it was not likely to be any time soon.
Puffing with exertion and the indignity of it all, Dr. Anastasi pushed off the last handhold in the access tube and floated into the scanning blister. A moment later Basalom followed; he immediately noted that the four robots that made up the scanning team were still jacked into their consoles. He fired off a quick commburst suggesting that they turn around and look sharp. Slowly, awkwardly, the four robots began disconnecting their umbilical cables, detaching themselves from their consoles, and switching over to their local senses.
Looking at the squat, blocky machines, Basalom felt a surge of the positronic flux that he identified as a feeling of superiority. The scanning team robots were plain metallic automatons designed expressly for work in zero-G. They had ungainly, boxlike bodies, no heads to speak of, and in place of proper arms and legs, eight multi-jointed limbs that ended in simple metal claws. Since the bulk of their sensory data was routed through the scanning consoles, they came equipped with the bare minimum of human-interface hardware: one audio input! output membrane and a pair of monochrome optics on stalks. The effect, Basalom decided, resembled nothing so much as a quartet of giant softshell crabs.
