by Isaac Asimov
One way or another, I’m coming aboard —
Suddenly the entire surface of the asteroid seemed to shudder and rise up in a convulsion. The robots had triggered their self-destruct at last, and the explosion sent a hailstorm of fragments blasting outward like space shrapnel.
Almost immediately, the weapons pods of the raider ship sprang to life. At first Derec thought that they were aiming at him, trying to get him before he was lost in the deluge of ice and rock boulders which had erupted from the asteroid. Then it seemed as though the gunners were targeting the debris itself, the smaller and faster-moving bits of which were already overtaking him.
Whichever was their goal, the net effect was the same: when he was within about a hundred meters of the nearest part of the ship and beginning to scan for a place to latch on with his free hand, the entire bubble faceplate of the augment lit up with a blue light that crawled in all directions like something alive.
Derec’s limbs went numb and his senses went wild. He had only enough time to think Not again! before the light faded and darkness took him away once more.
Despite all the tumult which had surrounded him as he had lost consciousness, Derec came back to awareness calmly and easily. He could not say how long he had been unconscious, but it had to have been more than a few minutes. He was no longer outside the alien ship. For that matter, he was no longer in the augment. Instead, he was lying on his back on hard decking, staring up at a ceiling filled with small doors.
Propping himself up on his elbows, Derec surveyed his surroundings. He was in a narrow room, almost a corridor. The long walls were covered with more doors — storage bins? — and there was an exit at each end — or at least a tall metal ellipse which might be an exit.
Derec did not spend much time wondering about the exits or the contents of the storage bins. A large animal covered with mottled brown and gold fur squatted on its haunches nearby, watching Derec. It reminded Derec of a dog, like an undersized Saint Bernard with the alert eyes of a wolf. But the face was too flat, the ears too high and pointed, and the forelegs ended not in paws but in grayskinned sausagelike fingers.
Whatever it was, he had never seen anything like it before. Moving slowly so as not to alarm the creature, Derec sat up. When he did, the creature sidled forward a step and cocked its head.
“Arr ‘u aw right?” it asked in a guttural voice.
Derec could not have been more surprised if the creature had suddenly molted and turned into a butterfly. Not only speech, but Standard — however curiously accented —
I — I think so,” he stammered.
“That iss good,” the creature said. “Aranimas will be pleased. ‘Ee did not want ‘u ‘armed.”
“The best way to guarantee that is not to shoot at people.”
“Eff we ‘ad been shooting at ‘u, we would ‘ave ‘it ‘u,” the alien said with a tooth-bearing grimace that might have been a smile or a threat display.
Though that message was garbled, other body language was coming through more clearly. The alien’s crouch struck Derec as a posture from which it could spring quickly. Seated, he was at a disadvantage both in agility and reach, a fact which he felt keenly when he met the alien’s gaze. Their eyes were on the same level, but Derec felt threatened, intimidated.
Still moving slowly, Derec felt for the wall behind him and hauled himself to his feet. The alien’s only reaction was to rise with him. When both were standing, the tips of the alien’s ears reached only to Derec’s chest, and the psychological comfort that went with being the taller shifted to Derec.
“What are you?” he demanded.
“’Urr friend,” the alien said. “What morr do ‘u need to know?”
“There’s a hundred forty colonized worlds, and there’s nothing like you on any of them.”
“Wherr I come from therr arr two ‘undred colonized worlds, and nothing like ‘u on any of them,” the alien said, grimacing again. This time, the circumstances seemed to call more clearly for a smile, and Derec decided that’s what it was. “Come. Aranimas iss waiting.”
“Who is Aranimas?”
“Aranimas iss ship’s boss. ‘Ull see,” the alien said, turning away and starting toward the far door.
“Wait,” Derec called. “What’s your name?”
The alien stopped and turned. It opened its mouth and out poured a torrent of sounds not in any human alphabet — like a growl punctuated with a sibilant hiss and sounds like bubbles popping. Then the alien smiled-grimaced. “Can say?”
Derec shook his head sheepishly. “No.”
“Thought not. Come, then. Not wise to keep Aranimas waiting.”
Taking a brisk loping pace, the alien led Derec through three more compartments identical to the one he had awakened in. Derec wondered briefly about the mismatch between his escort and the design of the ship they were in. The overhead storage bins were far above Derec’s head; he doubted if he could reach them even by jumping. Unless the caninoid alien were as agile a climber as a terrestrial primate, it would need a ladder to get to their contents.
Efficient use of space — terrible ergonomic design, Derec thought critically.
They came to a tiny hexagonal room barely large enough for both of them to stand in. It seemed to be a hub between intersecting corridors, since each wall framed an identical door. The alien paused for Derec to catch up, then continued on through.
“Where do the other doors lead?”
“Can’t tell ‘u,” the alien said cheerfully.
Beyond the hub, the interior of the ship had a different character. There were just as many walls and small spaces, but the walls were either of a coarse mesh, almost more like fencing, or had large windowlike cutouts. Together the mesh and the cutouts provided long lines of sight and the feeling not of small spaces but of a large busy one.
The largest space within this deck seemed to be straight ahead. Peering over the alien’s shoulder, Derec caught glimpses of what seemed to be a control center, and of a figure seated at the console with its back to them. There was something familiar and human about the figure, and something wrong and disturbing at the same time.
As soon as the caninoid led him into the control center, Derec knew why he was getting mixed messages, and who — or what — the storage corridors had been designed for. The alien sitting at the console was decidedly humanoid, and Derec could describe him in very human terms — a slender build, thin neck, almost hairless head, pale skin.
But even sitting down, Aranimas was as tall as Derec, and he had the arm span of a condor. The entire horseshoe-shaped console, easily three human arm spans wide, was within his comfortable reach.
Beyond and above Aranimas was a huge curved viewing screen on which eight different views of the asteroid’s surface were being projected. Superimposed on most of them were blue-lined targeting grids and small characters Derec took to be numbers. Some of the characters were changing constantly, and others seemed to change in response to Aranimas’s hands moving over the console and to the endless pattern of explosions and groundslides on the surface.
“Praxil, denofah, praxil mastica,” he was saying, apparently into a microphone. “Deh feh opt spa, nexori.”
Derec took a step forward. “Aranimas?”
The alien turned his head slightly to the left, and a chill went through Derec. The lizardlike eye that peered back at him was set in a raised socket on the side of Aranimas’s head. From behind, Derec had mistaken the eye bumps for ears.
“Sssh!” the caninoid alien said nervously, grasping Derec’s hand and pulling him back. “Don’t interrupt the boss. ‘E’ll talk to ‘u when ‘e’s ready.”
Aranimas turned back to his work and resumed speaking. Derec had the impression that he was issuing orders, chiding, prodding, reprimanding, assigning targets and grading gunners. There was nothing moving on the surface and nothing stirring below, and yet the carnage went on.
After a few minutes of watching, Derec could no longer restrain himself.
“There’s nothing down there anymore,” Derec blurted. “They blew it all up. What are you doing this for?”
“Prrractice,” Aranimas said. His voice was high-pitched and he trilled the “r” sound.
It went on for another ten minutes that way, millions of watts of energy expended uselessly against an inert and lifeless world. Then Aranimas ran a fingertip along a row of switches, and the screens went blank.
“Rijat,” he said, and turned his chair to face them. “What is your name?”
“Derec.” Only one of Aranimas’s eyes was trained on him; the other glanced around randomly. Derec could not imagine what it would be like to view the world that way. Did the alien’s brain switch back and forth between the two inputs, like a director choosing a camera shot? Or did it somehow integrate the two images into one?
“This device you used to attack my ship,” Aranimas continued. “What was it?”
“An augmented worksuit — altered to allow the leg servos to operate at full power. But I wasn’t attacking you. I was escaping.”
Aranimas’s other eye pivoted forward and focused on Derec. “Were you a prisoner?”
“I was stranded on the asteroid in a survival pod. The robots found me and then wouldn’t let me go. I had to steal that equipment from them to get away.”
“And where did you come from before you were stranded?”
“I don’t know,” Derec said, frowning. “I can’t remember anything before that.”
“Don’t lie to ‘im,” the caninoid whispered. “It makes ‘im angry.”
“I’m not lying,” Derec said indignantly. “As far as I can tell, five days ago I didn’t exist. That’s how much I know about who I am.”
While Derec spoke, Aranimas reached inside the folds of his clothing and extracted a small golden stylus. Seeing it, the caninoid cringed and turned half away.
“Oh, no,” it whined. “Too late.”
Aranimas pointed the stylus at Derec’s side, and a pale blue light began to dance over the entire surface of Derec’s hand. He screamed in pain and dropped to his knees. It was as though he had trust his hand into a raging furnace, except that no skin was being destroyed and no nerve endings deadened. The pain just went on and on, sapping his strength until even the screams caught in his throat, too feeble to free themselves.
“I know something of the rules of governing robots and humans,” Aranimas said calmly while Derec writhed on the floor. “Humans build robots to serve them. Robots follow human direction. If you were the only human on this asteroid, then it follows that the robots here were under your command, and serving your purpose.”
Aranimas tipped the stylus ceilingward, and the blue glow vanished. The pain vanished with it, except for the memory. Derec lay on his side and sucked in air in great gasping breaths.
“I will know who you are and what you know about the object you brought aboard,” Aranimas said quietly. “To end the pain, you need only tell me the truth.”
His face as emotionless as his trilling voice, Aranimas pointed the stylus at Derec once more.
Chapter 8
TEST OF LOYALTY
AT SOME POINT, it ended. But by that time Derec was in no condition to know clearly why Aranimas had interrupted his torture. He had only a vague awareness of Aranimas’s going away, and of being dragged away from the control center by the caninoid.
Unable to either resist or help, he was taken to another section of the subdivided compartment and laid on a thinly padded board. He lay there drifting in and out of consciousness, sometimes aware of the caninoid crouching solicitously beside him, sometimes aware of nothing but his own confusion and fatigue.
In one of his lucid moments he became aware that the alien was holding a cup of clear liquid for him, and struggled up on one elbow.
“’U bettrr tell Aranimas what ‘e wants to know,” the caninoid whispered as it offered the cup.
Derec tipped his head forward and reached for the cup. His right hand trembled uncontrollably, so he had to use his left to steady the cup as he sipped at the cool liquid. It was sweet, like a thin honey, and bathed his ravaged throat with relief.
“How tough do you think humans are?” he croaked. “If I knew anything I’d have told him in the first five minutes. If he keeps this up he’s going to kill me. Why won’t he believe me?”
The caninoid glanced nervously around before answering. “Do ‘u know Narwe?”
Derec could not tell if the name was of a species or an individual, but it did not matter to his answer. “No.”
“Aranimas knows Narwe. Narwe ‘ass to be forced to be honest. If ‘u ask Narwe a question, it will lie or pretend it doesn’t understand or hass forgotten. Hurt Narwe enough and it always tell.”
“I’m not a Narwe!” Derec protested weakly. “Is he too stupid to see that?”
“Aranimas thinks ‘u use the Narwe trick,” the caninoid said. “Besides, Aranimas iss very angry.”
“Why is he angry at me? I didn’t do anything to him.”
“When Aranimas iss angry, everyone in trouble,” the alien said. “Gunners werr not supposed to destroy robot nest.”
“They didn’t. The robots did it themselves.”
“Doesn’t matter. Aranimas wanted to capture robots to work forr ‘im.”
Derec closed his eyes and laid back. “I’m afraid there won’t be much to capture.”
“Aranimas went to see what salvage team brought back,” the alien said. “Eff truly not much, ‘e’ll be worse when ‘e comes back.”
“Can’t you help me?” Derec pleaded. “You believe me, don’t you?”
“Not my job to believe or not believe,” the caninoid shrugged. “Can’t ‘elp.”
With a sigh, Derec lowered himself back to a reclining position and closed his eyes. “Then he is going to kill me, because I don’t have anything to tell him. And maybe that’s just as well.”
The caninoid reclaimed the cup from Derec’s hand and stood up. “Perfect Narwe thought. Don’t let Aranimas ‘ear ‘u.”
Dozing, the first Derec knew of Aranimas’s return was when the alien seized him by the arm and hauled him roughly to a sitting position.
“It’s time to stop playing,” Aranimas said. “I grow impatient.”
“That was playing?” Derec said lightly. “You people have some funny ideas about games. Remind me not to play cutthroat eight-card with you.”
At that, the caninoid, crouching in a doorway a few meters away, closed its eyes and began to shake its head. Aranimas’s answer was to reach inside his clothing for the stylus.
“Wait,” Derec said quickly, holding up a hand palm out. “You don’t need that.”
“Have you decided to share your knowledge after all?”
“I always was willing to. You just didn’t want what I had to offer.”
“I will know who you are and what you know about the object you brought aboard,” Aranimas said.
Derec slid off the edge of the bench and found his feet. Aranimas still dwarfed him, but even so, he felt better standing. “The fact is, you know as much as I do about who I am, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you knew more than I do about the silver box. But there is something I know more about than you do, and that’s robots. How did your prospecting go?”
One of Aranimas’s eyes cast a baleful glance in the direction of the caninoid, which hunched its shoulders and retreated from the doorway. “They brought back fragments only,” Aranimas said. “Your robots were very efficient about destroying themselves.”
“They weren’t my robots,” Derec said. “But why don’t you show me what you have?”
Aranimas lowered his arms to his side and slowly massaged his knees with his hands while he weighed Derec’s proposition. “Yes,” he said finally. “That will be a good test of your intentions and usefulness. I will have you build me a robot.”
Derec’s face paled. “What?”
“If you truly do not know who you are, then you have no loyalties or obligatio
ns to any other master. When you have built me a robot servant I will know that you have accepted your place serving me.”
Derec knew better than to pick that moment to make a noble speech about freedom and choice, but he still could not simply accept Aranimas’s terms. “What if I can’t build you a robot out of what you have? I said I knew a lot about them. I didn’t say I could manufacture one out of good intentions. I need certain key parts —”
“If you fail, I will know that you are either unreliable or have no usefulness to me at all,” Aranimas said, “and that I should not waste valuable consumables keeping you alive.”
Derec swallowed hard. “What are we waiting for? Show me your inventory.”
Aranimas had not been minimizing the problem when he termed what the scavengers had recovered from the asteroid “fragments.” I would have said scrap, he thought as he stood in the ship’s hold surveying the raiders’ paltry booty. The largest intact piece was the one Derec himself had brought aboard — Monitor 5’s arm. The next largest was a Supervisor’s knee joint. Chances were that it was from Monitor 5 as well.
No other piece was bigger than the palm of Derec’s hand: a badly scorched regulator, an optical sensor with a cracked lens, bits of structural forms like shards of broken pottery. There were no positronic brains and no microfusion powerpacks — the two absolutely indispensable items.
And all the Crown’s horses and all the Crown’s men couldn’t put the robots together again, he thought. “Is this all you have?” he asked with a heavy heart.
Mercifully, it was not. In one of the storage corridors, he was shown two tall lockers, each of which contained a nearly intact robot.
“I see this isn’t a new hobby of yours,” Derec said, stepping forward to examine the collection. The new robots were of a familiar domestic design. He would know more about where they had come from and what they had been used for when he used a microscanner on the serial number plates found at various sites on the robots’ bodies. Clearly, though, he was not the first human the raiders had encountered.
