"Asimov, Isaac - Robot City - Robots and Aliens 01 - The Changeling - Stephen Leigh" - читать интересную книгу автора (Asimov Isaac)

A choice had to be made: let Ariel take the lifepod and escape, or send Jeff back. Ariel insisted that Jeff must be the one to go.

Robot City continued its fascinating evolution. Not long after Jeff?s departure, the behavior of the robots began to show definitely odd tendencies. Circuit Breaker appeared: a building like two four-sided pyramids stuck together at their bases and balanced on one point. The building, the first work of creative art built by a robot, reflected ever-changing colors as it rotated. Three robots, calling themselves the Three Cracked Cheeks, formed a Dixieland jazz band. All this came about as an effort by the city to formulate what it called the Laws of Humanics?corollaries to the Three Laws of Robotics. The Laws of Humanics were supposed to govern?or at least explain?the actions of human beings as the Three Laws of Robotics governed those of positronic intelligence.
The most serious and unusual event in all the strangeness was that a robot was murdered by another robot. Lucius, the creator of Circuit Breaker, was found with all its positronic circuitry deliberately destroyed, so that the brain could never be reconstructed. It seemed a deliberate attempt to stifle the advances made by the Avery robots.
In the midst of this, Avery himself returned to the city, and Derec, Ariel, Wolruf, and Mandelbrot quickly discovered that the doctor was a dangerous megalomaniac. All that mattered to Avery was his work; he could not have cared less about Ariel?s illness or the plight of the others. All that mattered to him was Robot City. He had stationed Hunter-Seeker robots around the area to take all of them prisoner until he could analyze all that had happened here?in whatever way was most convenient to him.
They were taken prisoner, and Derec, unknowingly, was given a dose of chemfets: miniature replicas of the city material that took residence in his bloodstream.
Escaping at last, Derec, Ariel, Wolruf, and Mandelbrot left Robot City on Dr. Avery?s ship. There, in a hidden compartment, they found a Key to Perihelion.
It was obvious that Avery anticipated their escape, for the ship was sabotaged. Without the ability to home in on the navigational beacons, they could not program the jumps through hyperspace. Ariel had also taken a definite turn for the worse. Derec decided that he and Ariel must use the Key to Perihelion to try to get help for her. Wolruf and Mandelbrot would remain with the ship and try to complete repairs or attract help from another ship.
Derec activated the Key, and he and Ariel found themselves in an apartment on Earth. They found Earth society paranoid and isolated, with extremely xenophobic attitudes toward Spacers. However, Ariel was getting progressively weaker, and Derec in desperation took her to a local hospital. If Earth was backward in some ways, it seemed that its medical facilities were better than Aurora?s. They recognized her disease?amnemonic plague?and cured her.
Unfortunately, the chemfets in Derec?s body were asserting their presence, and he was rapidly getting weaker himself. With the help of R. David, an Earth robot, they stole a ship from an Earth spaceport and headed out to rescue Wolruf and Mandelbrot.
Another spaceship followed them: Aranimas, who had tracked the bursts of Key static to Earth. In a tense battle, Derec and Ariel, with Mandelbrot and Wolruf, managed to destroy Aranimas?s ship at great cost to their own vessels. They had only one option left to them with Derec growing weaker: use the Key to jump back to Robot City.

They emerged from the Compass Tower into Avery?s vacant office, intending to force the doctor into helping Derec. To find him, Wolruf and Mandelbrot went into the city, while Derec and Ariel began searching the tunnels underneath the tower.
Mandelbrot and Wolruf found that the robots were all following the orders of what they called the Migration Program. They were leaving the first Robot City and seeking new worlds on which to build. And when they returned to Compass Tower, they found that Hunter-Seeker robots were searching for Derec and Ariel, who had fled.
Above the planet, a small spacecraft arrived, carrying Jeff Leong. Back to normal, he was returning to rescue the others. Meeting with Derec and company, he was determined to help them find Dr. Avery.
It was actually Dr. Avery who found them, the Hunter-Seeker robots capturing the company one by one. The Doctor revealed that Derec was actually David Avery, Dr. Avery?s son, and that the chemfets in his body would one day allow him to control every Avery robot in existence. Derec would become Robot City.
But Avery had believed Derec would be a willing partner in his plans. He was very wrong in that. Derec used his new control of the city to free his companions; Dr. Avery triggered a Key to Perihelion before he could be captured. He fled into the void.
Derec and the others gave no thought to pursuit. At last, they were safe and free to leave.
It seemed reward enough....


ISAAC ASIMOV?S
ROBOT CITY

ROBOTS
AND ALIENS

Changeling

CHAPTER 1
BIRTH

?I feel uneasy about this, Dr. Anastasi.?
Janet Anastasi glanced up with a half-smile. She brushed blond hair back from bright, hazel eyes cupped in smile lines. ?And just how does a robot feel ?uneasy,? Basalom?? she asked with a laugh.
Basalom?s eyes blinked, a shutter membrane flickering momentarily over the optical circuits. Janet had deliberately built in that random quirk. She built idiosyncrasies into all her robots-eccentricities of speech, of mannerisms. The foibles seemed to make Basalom and the rest less mechanically predictable. To her, they lent the robots individual personalities they otherwise lacked.
?The term is simply an approximation, Doctor.?
?Hmm.? She wiped sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand and wiped it on the leg of her pants. ?Give me a hand with this, will you, my friend??
The two were in the cargo hold of a small ship. A viewscreen on one wall showed the mottled blue-and-white curve of the planet they were orbiting. Twin moons peered over the shoulder of the world, and the land mass directly below them was green with foliage. It seemed a pastoral land from this distance, no matter what the reality might actually be. Janet knew that the atmosphere of the world was within terran norms, that the earth was fertile, and that there was life, though without any signs of technology: the ship?s instruments had told her that much. The world, whatever the inhabitants might call it, fit her needs. Beyond that, she didn?t care.
Her husband of many years ago, Wendell Avery, had said during their breakup that she didn?t care about anything made of simple flesh?not him, not their son. ?You?re afraid to love something that might love you back,? he?d raged.
?Which makes us exactly the same, doesn?t it?? she?d shouted back at him. ?Or can?t the genius admit that he has faults? Maybe it?s just because you don?t like the fact that I?m the one who?s considered the robotic expert? That?s it, isn?t it, Wendell? You can?t love anyone else because your own self-worship takes up all the space in your heart.?
His remark had made her furious at the time, but time had softened the edges of her anger. Avery might be a conceited, egocentric ass, but there had been some truth in what he?d said. She?d looked in that mirror too often and seen herself backing away from contact with other people to be with her robots. Surely she?d been content here on this ship for the last few years, with only Basalom and a few other robots for company.
Avery she missed not at all; her son sometimes she missed terribly. Basalom and the others had become her surrogate children.
?Gently,? she cautioned Basalom. A spheroid of silvery-gray metal approximately two meters in diameter sat on the workbench before her, its gleaming surface composed of tiny dodecahedral segments. She?d just finished placing the delicate, platinum-iridium sponge of a positronic brain into a casing within the lumpy sphere. Now Basalom draped the sticky lace of the neural connections over the brain and sealed the top half of the casing. The geometric segments molded together seamlessly.
?You can put it in the probe,? Janet told the robot, then added: ?What?s this about being uneasy??
?You have built me very well, Doctor; that is the only reason I sense anything at all. I am aware of a millisecond pause in my positronic relays due to possible First Law conflicts,? Basalom replied as he carefully lifted the sphere and moved it to the launching tube. ?While there is no imminent danger of lock-up, nor is this sufficient to cause any danger of malfunction or loss of effectiveness, it?s my understanding that humans feel a similar effect when presented with an action that presents a moral conflict. Thus, my use of the human term.?
Janet grinned, deepening the lines netting her eyes. ?Longwinded, but logical enough, I suppose.?
Basalom blinked again. ?Brevity is more desired than accuracy when speaking of human emotions??
That elicited a quick laugh. ?Sometimes, Basalom. Sometimes. It?s a judgment call, I?m afraid. Sometimes it doesn?t matter what you say so long as you just talk.?
?I am not a good judge when it comes to human emotions, Doctor.?
?Which puts you in company with most of us, I?m afraid.? Janet clamped the seals on the probe?s surface and patted it affectionately. LEDs glowed emerald on the launching tube?s panel as she closed the access.