"Renegade" - читать интересную книгу автора (Scotten Cordell)

Chapter 8. The Wolf Planet

“I'm grateful you took the time to come,” Derec said.

He glanced at his companion sitting next to him in the runabout.

“Wouldn't 'ave, 'cept 'u sounded urgent,” Wolruf said.

They were heading east on Main Street toward Derec's apartment. He had just picked up Wolruf at the wolf planet's primitive spaceport at the west edge of the robot city.

Wolruf had arrived in the Xerborodezees, a Minneapolis-class hyperspace jumper that the wealthy Ariel had given the small alien the year before to speed her return home. The Xerborodezees could accommodate ten passengers, and as it turned out, it was the only way that Derec and his robotic companions were going to get off the planet. He had accidentally demolished his means of transportation when he arrived.

Wolruf was the size of a large dog with sleek, well-groomed, brown and gold fur; and she was shaped like a dog except for the fat-fingered hands and the flat face which, despite its flatness, bore unmistakable lupine characteristics.

Farther east on Main Street, a half-kilometer beyond Derec's apartment, a large pyramidal edifice-the Compass Tower-was at that moment strikingly displayed in a glowing frame, redshafted by the morning sun still hidden behind it.

“You mean Ariel,” Derec said. “I sent my call for help through Ariel.”

“'u signed it. Not Ariel. Wouldn't 'ave come if 'u 'adn't signed it, 'Situation desperate, Derec.' Goin' call 'u 'Desperate Derec' from now on.”

She gave a funny gargling bark, not a growl, more a sharp rattling gargle, as though her throat were laden with phlegm.

Derec had become so accustomed to her in times past he had forgotten that extraordinary chuckle and her uncommon treatment of Galactic Standard. The imperfections in her pronunciation of Standard had regressed somewhat during the past year on her home planet, but her rolling of the letter “r” had been almost entirely eliminated after prolonged exposure to Ariel and Derec, and that improvement seemed to be still largely in place except for a trailing burr. The left-out and chopped-off pronouns, the missing aitches, and the sibilant hiss for the “zee” sound were still evident. And the “ 'u” pronunciation of “you”-not at all an “ooh” sound, but a sort of choked and swallowed bark that masked off the initial “y”-could only come from the throat of a lupine alien, something a human was unlikely ever to match.

“I'd never label this situation desperate,” Derec said. “That's not the message I sent. I contacted Robot City on my internal monitor link, and they hyperwaved our house computer on Aurora. At least that's the routing I set up. I expected Ariel to relay my message to you, but that doesn't sound like Ariel, either. Sounds more like someone with a vital interest in this planet, which is nobody I know of.”

“Doessn't matter 'ow I 'eard. 'u succeeded, I'm 'ere. Now what's so desperate 'u've got to call 'alf across the galaxy?”

“I've got a rogue robot on my hands, Wolruf.”

“Doessn't follow the Lawss of Robotics?”

“Yes and no. It's got the laws but doesn't seem to know for sure what a human is. It's like a dam chameleon. The way I've got it figured, it changes itself to match as best it can whoever it thinks might be human at the moment.”

“Like Mandelbrot's arm?”

“Yes and no. The stuff it's made of isn't as coarse as the Robot City material. Its cells are a lot smaller than the variety in Mandelbrot's arm.

“I've got the feeling we're seeing micromolecular robotics here; and I've got no way to reprogram it. It's self-programmed and seems to imprint like a newly hatched chicken at the drop of a hat, and on anything it takes a mind to.”

“So 'ow can I 'elp?” Wolruf asked.

“It had a wolf form when I first arrived. It was the leader of a pack of intelligent wolf-like creatures which it must have thought were human. They were attacking the city's Avery robots. The wolf robot gutted one of the Averies. Robot City relayed their call for help over my internal monitor.

“When I got here, it imprinted on me, after giving me a really hard time-and I mean a really hard time. It was still humanoid when I left it this morning, and soaking up information from the city library like a second-generation Settler on a mission to Earth.”

“What iss it 'u think I can do?” Wolruf asked.

“It was wolf-like when it came into the city, after I arrived, and then it imprinted on me. Now it's coming along a little too fast, too much personality change too quickly. With your wolfish characteristics, you make a natural model for imprinting, a nice compromise between wolves and humans.”

“Amazing! Why do 'u 'umans persist in thinking of us ass wolves? There'ss a species on my world-the dongeedows-that arrr a great deal like the gorillas in 'urn ssoos, but I don't think of 'u…now wait a minute. I take that back. 'u arrr beginning to resemble a dongeedow a great deal. “

She gave that phlegm-rattling gargle again. And yes, the trailing burr was definitely still part of the pattern.

“You can joke all you want, Wolruf, but I don't regard this situation as very humorous.”

Derec was not in the best of spirits. It was good to see Wolruf again, and that had cheered him momentarily. They had known each other for a long time, ever since she had been more or less a slave-an indentured servant-of the alien pirate Aranimas. Derec had freed her with the help of Mandelbrot, the robot he had put together from the pirate's supply of spare parts.

But Wolruf was hardly a stand-in for Ariel. Just seeing a good friend like Wolruf made him yearn for Ariel even more. If it had just been her and not Wolruf who had run down the ramp of the Xerborodezees, life wouldn't seem so grim right now.

He shouldn't have reacted adversely to Wolruf's weak attempt at humor. He should at least give her credit for trying. But he missed Ariel, and he wasn't about to let anything cheer him up.

“'u arrr in a foul mood,” Wolruf said. “A rogue robot couldn't make 'u feel that bad. Why issn't Ariel with 'u?”

It was eerie the way Wolruf could sense his mood, interpret it, and put her finger on what was bothering him.

“Let's not go into that. Let's just say she wasn't too pleased with me when I left her on Aurora. So she's probably pouting back there in a snit.”

And he added as a bitter afterthought, “With her playboy Winterson. You've never met him. Jacob Winterson. As revolting a bundle of simulated muscle as you'll ever see.”

“A cyborg? Like Leong?”

Wolruf was referring to Jeff Leong, a young man whose brain had spent a rather unpleasant period in a mechanical robotic body while the Avery robots on Robot City had repaired and healed his damaged human body.

“No, a humaniform robot,” Derec said. “Looks exactly like a human. Almost impossible to tell from the real thing.”

“'u're jealous of a robot?”

Wolruf gave that phlegm gargle again.

Derec said nothing. The conversation was veering in an unpleasant direction.

“Ah, a sorrr point,” Wolruf said. “My apologies.”

“We're here,” Derec said as he pulled the runabout to the curb in front of the apartment.

He looked up anxiously to the second floor.

“ 'u're expecting trouble?” Wolruf said.

She was reading his mind again.

“No. Mandelbrot would have phoned me,” Derec said, not quite truthfully, for he did feel just a shade anxious as he got out of the small vehicle. Mandelbrot and SilverSide didn't seem to understand one another. Perhaps he should not have left a robot to babysit another robot.

But everything seemed normal when they walked into the small two-bedroom apartment on the second floor. Mandelbrot was standing in his storage niche in the wall near the door. SilverSide was plugged into Derec's terminal and didn't even turn around when they came in.

“Impressive,” Wolruf said, her eyes going wide as she stared at the robot at the terminal. “ 'e's certainly got 'urrr scrawny shape.”

SilverSide's lustrous silvery exterior only approximated the details of Derec's appearance, but in size and proportions, it was, indeed, an excellent approximation.

Wolruf was exaggerating, of course. Derec was not scrawny. He was thin, but well endowed with sinewy biceps and with the hard plates of muscle across chest and abdomen typical of an older teen's torso.

But with that humorous barb, Wolruf had hit that sensitive nerve again. Derec did feel inadequate whenever he thought of Jacob Winterson.

“Everything under control, Mandelbrot?” Derec asked. He had walked to the center of the room, hesitated when SilverSide did not respond to their entrance, and then turned to address Mandelbrot.

He got no answer from the robot in the niche.

“Mandelbrot!” he repeated.

“Oh, yes, Master Derec.” SilverSide unplugged and turned to face them. “Everything is under control.”

Derec glanced at SilverSide and then turned to walk toward the niche as he said again, “Mandelbrot, you okay?”

“He's fine,” SilverSide said. “I deactivated him.”

“You what?” Derec's voice reflected his astonishment that SilverSide would have had the temerity to shut down Mandelbrot's microfusion reactor, risking partial loss of positronic memory.

“When you're not around, he tends to give me unwanted advice,” SilverSide explained. “Here, I'll bring him back up, since it apparently displeases you to have him down.”

“It does a lot more than displease me.” Derec's voice shook with anger. “And stand back, I'll reactivate him myself.”

SilverSide stopped. He had started walking toward Mandelbrot's niche.

“Don't you ever-I repeat-” and now Derec's voice was strident, grating, “don't you ever deactivate Mandelbrot again.”

“Certainly not,” SilverSide said, “if that is your wish, Master Derec.”

“That is most certainly my wish.”

“Very well, Master Derec.”

Derec had walked to the niche, and now reached around to swing open a plate set flush in Mandelbrot's back that covered a switch panel. Carefully, watching for Mandelbrot's reactions at each step, he reactivated the robot by flicking switches in a definite sequence.

Stabilizing the microfusion reactor was the most delicate part of the activation procedure and took the most time-almost half an hour. The robot's eyes were designed to guide that operation, changing color in the spectral sequence whenever it was safe to move on to the next phase-from black through purple, blue, green, yellow, orange, red, and finally back to colorless black-Mandelbrot's switch-induced standby state.

Completely ignoring Wolruf, SilverSide had gone back to the terminal and plugged himself in again after his exchange with Derec.

Wolruf had curled up on the davenport and was fast asleep when Derec finished.

Battery backup should have provided the low power needed to protect Mandelbrot's positronic brain from serious harm, but there was always the possibility of a loss of long-term memory during the nanoseconds required to effect the switch from one power source to the other. Derec would never know until the gap revealed itself, perhaps at some juncture when that particular memory would be urgently needed.

As he pressed the power-reset button, he cursed himself for having left the two robots alone together. Mandelbrot's eyes lit up with a red glow that pulsed rhythmically.

“How do you feel now, Mandelbrot?” Derec asked.

“Normal. The wild one deactivated me. I didn't realize what he was doing until too late.”

The robot gave a small shudder.

“Was that a Third Law reaction just now?” Derec asked.

“I believe so, Master. I didn't protect myself properly as the Third Law directs. I felt a momentary disturbance upon reaching that conclusion, which must have sent an associated potential wave through my motor control system. Is that the way it appeared?”

“Yes. I just wanted to be sure that it was not some damage from deactivation,” Derec said. “Ah, Wolruf, you're awake.”

Wolruf yawned and stretched. “Mandelbrot okay?”

“It would appear so, except for a normal Third Law reaction,” Derec replied.

“It looks ass though anotherrr imprinting may not be ass likely ass 'u 'ad thought,” Wolruf observed.

The small hairy alien was looking at SilverSide, who was hunched over the terminal and seemingly absorbed in the information that was flowing into his brain.

“SilverSide has apparently put you down as an inferior,” Derec replied, “a variation on this planet's wolf species.”

“That was my conclusion,” SilverSide said as he unplugged and swung around in the swivel chair to face them, “and I have been unable to find any 'Wolruf' biographical file or anything to contradict that conclusion.

“Would you tell me all about yourself, Mistress Wolruf?” SilverSide requested.

“No!” Derec said emphatically. “Not now. Plug back into the library. The rest of us have got some things we must take care of now.”

SilverSide turned back to the terminal, and Derec motioned for the other two to follow him outside.

When they were standing by the runabout at street level, Derec explained.

“As I suggested to you earlier, Wolruf, he's coming along too fast now. Deactivating Mandelbrot confirmed that in my mind. 1'd consider that a violation of a sort of corollary to the Third Law. How does a robot view that, Mandelbrot?”

“The Laws are not infinitely rigid,” Mandelbrot said. “They are surrounded by side potentials that create what I can only call soft boundaries, foothill potentials that lead to the ultimate peak. The First Law has the hardest and sharpest boundaries of all, but even so, those boundaries are not absolutely and infinitely sharp.”

“Are you saying he violated the Third Law?” Derec asked.

“No, but he did something I would never do except to protect a human or myself.”

“Maybe 'e was protecting 'imself from 'urn ideass, Mandelbrot,” Wolruf said.

“Not likely,” Mandelbrot said. “I do not consider words and ideas to be a source of injury to a robot.”

“But he is in a very sensitive and impressionable state right now,” Derec said. “And that's another reason I want to get him out of the city and back to the forest where I found him, where he's apt to be more comfortable and less perturbed by strange stimuli.

“We'll take the runabout to the east exit and walk the rest of the way. It's only a couple of miles to the place I have in mind; there's a small grassy clearing in the forest near a clear pebbly brook-very peaceful and quiet. You and the wild one can trot along behind until we get to the east exit, Mandelbrot. Then we'll all walk.”

“Very well, Master Derec. Shall I get the tent and other Survival gear from the storage locker?”

“Yes.”

Derec could not remember his childhood. He knew that somehow it must have been different from that of other children on Aurora, for he did not have the natural feel and easy, confident way of handling robots that was so much a part of a normal Spacer's personality, something acquired beginning in earliest childhood. In all the nurseries and homes, robots were the only nannies to be found. On Aurora, for instance, the closest any adult ever got to a child was the human who supervised the nursery nannies.

Had he been raised by a human nanny, maybe even his own mother? Had that been a still earlier experiment of his eccentric father, Dr. Avery? Derec knew in intimate technical detail how robots worked-he was an expert roboticist-but he did not have that natural insight into the positronic brain that almost all Auroran children had by the age of five.

The only robot Derec felt really close to was Mandelbrot. It wasn't a matter of trust or distrust. Robots were what they were programmed to be. You could trust even the Avery robots that built Robot City and the other robot cities, like the one here on the wolf planet, if you knew who had last worked with their insides. The only time you couldn't trust them was when someone like the irrational Dr. Avery deliberately altered their programming. He had, for instance, excluded Wolruf from protection when he revised the programming of the Robot City robots.

But Derec seemed to lack the upbringing to deal naturally with robots-Mandelbrot being a possible exception, or as much of an exception as to make it a rule-and now he was confronted with SilverSide, a being he had concluded from behavior and appearance must be a robot, yet a robot as unpredictable and unsettling as any he had ever dealt with.

Like the Avery robots-and like Mandelbrot's control of his arm-SilverSide had the ability to change shape by changing the orientation of his cells, which themselves appeared to be tiny robots-microbots-even smaller than the cells of Avery material. Derec had pretty well established that those microbots, during a metamorphosis, were being reprogrammed by SilverSide's positronic brain, much like some living organisms-lizards and amphibians-seem to reprogram their own cells in order to grow a new limb or a new tail.

Yes, he was quite uncomfortable with SilverSide, and as he went around gathering up supplies for their outing, he realized for the first time that he had begun to consider SilverSide actually dangerous. He had never felt that way about any robot before, not on Aurora or anywhere else.

The fact that Mandelbrot's remarks had distracted SilverSide and reduced his efficiency did not seem to be a reasonable cause, logically arrived at, for the quite serious offense of deactivating another robot. Robots could not go around knocking one another out-seriously risking amnesia in the victim-simply because the victim had been a source of distraction, no more than people could. SilverSide had done something Mandelbrot “would never do,” to use Mandelbrot's own words.

SilverSide was an alarming phenomenon, yet exceedingly fascinating. Derec knew the robot should probably be deactivated, but that was a step Derec could no more take than could many other scientists who were on the cutting edge of their disciplines and involved in experiments dangerous to the society they lived in.