RC2 - Suspicion, Isaac Asimov's Robot City Book 2 - Mike McQuay

VIP免费
2024-12-22 0 0 527.86KB 108 页 5.9玖币
侵权投诉
Isaac Asimov's ROBOT CITY - Book Two: Suspicion
ISAAC ASIMOV’S
ROBOT CITY
Books in the Isaac Asimov’s Robot CityTM series from Ace
BOOK 1: ODYSSEY by Michael P. Kube-McDowell
BOOK 2: SUSPICION by Mike McQuay
BOOK 3: CYBORG by William F. Wu
BOOK 4: PRODIGY by Arthur Byron Cover
BOOK 5: REFUGE by Rob Chilson
BOOK 6: PERIHELION by William F. Wu
ISAAC ASIMOV’S
ROBOT
CITY
BOOK 2: SUSPICION
MIKE MCQUAY
A Byron Preiss Visual Publications, Inc. Book
ACE BOOKS, NEW YORK
This book is an Ace original edition, and has never been previously published.
ISAAC ASIMOV’S ROBOT CITY
BOOK 2: SUSPICION
An Ace Book/published by arrangement with Byron Preiss Visual Publications, Inc.
PRINTING HISTORY
Ace Edition/September 1987
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1987 by Byron Preiss Visual Publications, Inc.
Introduction copyright © 1987 by Nightfall, Inc.
file:///E|/Documents%20and%20Settings/Princess%2...0Robot%20City%20Book%202%20-%20Mike%20McQuay.htm (1 of 108)11/19/2005 3:49:05 AM
Isaac Asimov's ROBOT CITY - Book Two: Suspicion
Cover art and illustrations by Paul Rivoche.
Edited by David M. Harris.
Book design by Alex Jay/Studio J.
This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission.
ROBOT CITY is a trademark of Byron Preiss Visual Publications, Inc.
For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group, 200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016.
ISBN: 0-441-73126-0
Ace books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group, 200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016.
The name “Ace” and the “A” logo are trademarks belonging to Charter Communications, Inc.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3
For Brian Shelton And the “bruised banana”
THE LAWS OF HUMANICS
ISAAC ASIMOV
I am pleased by the way in which the Robot City books pick up the various themes and references
in my robot stories and carry on with them.
For instance, my first three robot novels were, essentially, murder mysteries, with Elijah Baley as
the detective. Of these first three, the second novel, The Naked Sun, was a locked-room mystery,
in the sense that the murdered person was found with no weapon on the site and yet no weapon
could have been removed either.
I managed to produce a satisfactory solution but I did not do that sort of thing again, and I am
delighted that Mike McQuay has tried his hand at it here.
The fourth robot novel, Robots and Empire, was not primarily a murder mystery. Elijah Baley
had died a natural death at a good, old age, the book veered toward the Foundation universe so
that it was clear that both my notable series, the Robot series and the Foundation series, were
going to be fused into a broader whole. (No, I didn’t do this for some arbitrary reason. The
necessities arising out of writing sequels in the 1980s to tales originally written in the 1940s and
1950s forced my hand.)
In Robots and Empire, my robot character, Giskard, of whom I was very fond, began to concern
himself with “the Laws of Humanics,” which, I indicated, might eventually serve as the basis for
the science of psychohistory, which plays such a large role in the Foundation series.
Strictly speaking, the Laws of Humanics should be a description, in concise form, of how human
beings actually behave. No such description exists, of course. Even psychologists, who study the
matter scientifically (at least, I hope they do) cannot present any “laws” but can only make
lengthy and diffuse descriptions of what people seem to do. And none of them are prescriptive.
When a psychologist says that people respond in this way to a stimulus of that sort, he merely
file:///E|/Documents%20and%20Settings/Princess%2...0Robot%20City%20Book%202%20-%20Mike%20McQuay.htm (2 of 108)11/19/2005 3:49:05 AM
Isaac Asimov's ROBOT CITY - Book Two: Suspicion
means that some do at some times. Others may do it at other times, or may not do it at all.
If we have to wait for actual laws prescribing human behavior in order to establish psychohistory
(and surely we must) then I suppose we will have to wait a long time.
Well, then, what are we going to do about the Laws of Humanics? I suppose what we can do is to
start in a very small way, and then later slowly build it up, if we can.
Thus, in Robots and Empire, it is a robot, Giskard, who raises the question of the Laws of
Humanics. Being a robot, he must view everything from the standpoint of the Three Laws of
Robotics — these robotic laws being truly prescriptive, since robots are forced to obey them and
cannot disobey them.
The Three Laws of Robotics are:
1 — A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to
harm.
2 — A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would
conflict with the First Law.
3 — A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the
First or Second Law.
Well, then, it seems to me that a robot could not help but think that human beings ought to
behave in such a way as to make it easier for robots to obey those laws.
In fact, it seems to me that ethical human beings should be as anxious to make life easier for
robots as the robots themselves would. I took up this matter in my story “The Bicentennial Man,”
which was published in 1976. In it, I had a human character say in part:
“If a man has the right to give a robot any order that does not involve harm to a human being, he
should have the decency never to give a robot any order that involves harm to a robot, unless
human safety absolutely requires it. With great power goes great responsibility, and if the robots
have Three Laws to protect men, is it too much to ask that men have a law or two to protect
robots?”
For instance, the First Law is in two parts. The first part, “A robot may not injure a human
being,” is absolute and nothing need be done about that. The second part, “or, through inaction,
allow a human being to come to harm,” leaves things open a bit. A human being might be about
to come to harm because of some event involving an inanimate object. A heavy weight might be
likely to fall upon him, or he may slip and be about to fall into a lake, or any one of uncountable
other misadventures of the sort may be involved. Here the robot simply must try to rescue the
human being; pull him from under, steady him on his feet and so on. Or a human being might be
threatened by some form of life other than human — a lion, for instance — and the robot must
come to his defense.
But what if harm to a human being is threatened by the action of another human being? There a
robot must decide what to do. Can he save one human being without harming the other? Or if
there must be harm, what course of action must he pursue to make it minimal?
It would be a lot easier for the robot, if human beings were as concerned about the welfare of
human beings, as robots are expected to be. And, indeed, any reasonable human code of ethics
file:///E|/Documents%20and%20Settings/Princess%2...0Robot%20City%20Book%202%20-%20Mike%20McQuay.htm (3 of 108)11/19/2005 3:49:05 AM
Isaac Asimov's ROBOT CITY - Book Two: Suspicion
would instruct human beings to care for each other and to do no harm to each other. Which is,
after all, the mandate that humans gave robots. Therefore the First Law of Humanics from the
robots’ standpoint is:
1 — A human being may not injure another human being, or, through inaction, allow a human
being to come to harm.
If this law is carried through, the robot will be left guarding the human being from misadventures
with inanimate objects and with non-human life, something which poses no ethical dilemmas for
it. Of course, the robot must still guard against harm done a human being unwittingly by another
human being. It must also stand ready to come to the aid of a threatened human being, if another
human being on the scene simply cannot get to the scene of action quickly enough. But then,
even a robot may unwittingly harm a human being, and even a robot may not be fast enough to
get to the scene of action in time or skilled enough to take the necessary action. Nothing is perfect.
That brings us to the Second Law of Robotics, which compels a robot to obey all orders given it
by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. This means that
human beings can give robots any order without limitation as long as it does not involve harm to
a human being.
But then a human being might order a robot to do something impossible, or give it an order that
might involve a robot in a dilemma that would do damage to its brain. Thus, in my short story
“Liar!,” published in 1940, I had a human being deliberately put a robot into a dilemma where its
brain burnt out and ceased to function.
We might even imagine that as a robot becomes more intelligent and self-aware, its brain might
become sensitive enough to undergo harm if it were forced to do something needlessly
embarrassing or undignified. Consequently, the Second Law of Humanics would be:
2 — A human being must give orders to a robot that preserve robotic existence, unless such
orders cause harm or discomfort to human beings.
The Third Law of Robotics is designed to protect the robot, but from the robotic view it can be
seen that it does not go far enough. The robot must sacrifice its existence if the First or Second
Law makes that necessary. Where the First Law is concerned, there can be no argument. A robot
must give up its existence if that is the only way it can avoid doing harm to a human being or can
prevent harm from coming to a human being. If we admit the innate superiority of any human
being to any robot (which is something I am a little reluctant to admit, actually), then this is
inevitable.
On the other hand, must a robot give up its existence merely in obedience to an order that might
be trivial, or even malicious? In “The Bicentennial Man,” I have some hoodlums deliberately
order a robot to take itself apart for the fun of watching that happen. The Third Law of Humanics
must therefore be:
3 — A human being must not harm a robot, or, through inaction, allow a robot to come to harm,
unless such harm is needed to keep a human being from harm or to allow a vital order to be
carried out.
Of course, we cannot enforce these laws as we can the Robotic Laws. We cannot design human
file:///E|/Documents%20and%20Settings/Princess%2...0Robot%20City%20Book%202%20-%20Mike%20McQuay.htm (4 of 108)11/19/2005 3:49:05 AM
Isaac Asimov's ROBOT CITY - Book Two: Suspicion
brains as we design robot brains. It is, however, a beginning, and I honestly think that if we are to
have power over intelligent robots, we must feel a corresponding responsibility for them, as the
human character in my story “The Bicentennial Man” said.
Certainly in Robot City, these are the sorts of rules that robots might suggest for the only human
beings on the planet, as you may soon learn.
CHAPTER 1
PARADES
It was sunset in the city of robots, and it was snowing paper.
The sun was a yellow one and the atmosphere, mostly nitrogen/oxygen blue, was flush with the
veins of iron oxides that traced through it, making the whole twilight sky glow bright orange like
a forest fire.
The one who called himself Derec marveled at the sunset from the back of the huge earthmover
as it slowly made its way through the city streets, crowds of robots lining the avenue to watch
him and his companions make this tour of the city. The tiny shards of paper floated down from
the upper stories of the crystal-like buildings, thrown (for reasons that escaped Derec) by the
robots that crowded the windows to watch him.
Derec took it all in, sure that it must have significance or the robots wouldn’t do it. And that was
the only thing he was sure of—for Derec was a person without memory, without notion of who
he was. Worse still, he had come to this impossible world, unpopulated by humans, by means that
still astounded him; and he had no idea, no idea, of where in the universe he was.
He was young, the cape of manhood still new on his shoulders, and he only knew that by
observing himself in a mirror. Even his name—Derec—wasn’t really his. It was a borrowed
name, a convenient thing to call himself because not having a name was like not existing. And he
desperately wanted to exist, to know who, to know what he was.
And why.
Beside him sat a young woman called Katherine Burgess, who had said she’d known him,
briefly, when he’d had a name. But he wasn’t sure of her, of her truth or her motivations. She had
told him his real name was David and that he’d crewed on a Settler ship, but neither the name nor
the classification seemed to fit as well as the identity he’d already been building for himself; so
he continued to call himself by his chosen name, Derec, until he had solid proof of his other
existence.
Flanking the humans on either side were two robots of advanced sophistication (Derec knew that,
but didn’t know how he knew it). One was named Euler, the other Rydberg, and they couldn’t, or
wouldn’t, tell him any more than he already knew—nothing. The robots wanted information from
him, however. They wanted to know why he was a murderer.
The First Law of Robotics made it impossible for robots to harm human beings, so when the only
other human inhabitant of Robot City turned up dead, Derec and Katherine were the only
file:///E|/Documents%20and%20Settings/Princess%2...0Robot%20City%20Book%202%20-%20Mike%20McQuay.htm (5 of 108)11/19/2005 3:49:05 AM
Isaac Asimov's ROBOT CITY - Book Two: Suspicion
suspects. Derec’s brief past had not included killing, but convincing Euler and Rydberg of that
was not an easy task. They were being held, but treated with respect—innocent, perhaps, until
proven guilty.
Both robots had shiny silver heads molded roughly to human equivalent. Both had glowing
photocells where eyes would be. But where Euler had a round mesh screen in place of a human
mouth, Rydberg had a small loudspeaker mounted atop his dome.
“Do you enjoy this, Friend Derec?” Euler asked him, indicating the falling paper and the
seemingly endless stream of robots that lined the route of their drive.
Derec had no idea of what he was supposed to enjoy about this demonstration, but he didn’t want
to offend his hosts, who were being very polite despite their accusations. “It’s really . . . very
nice,” he replied, brushing a piece of paper off his lips.
“Nice?” Katherine said from beside him, angry. “Nice?” She ran fingers through her long black
hair. “I’ll be a week getting all this junk out of my hair.”
“Surely it won’t take you that length of time,” Rydberg said, the speaker on his head crackling.
“Perhaps there’s something I don’t understand, but it seems from a cursory examination that it
shouldn’t take you any longer than . . . ”
“All right,” Katherine said. “All right.”
“ . . . one or two hours. Unless of course you’re speaking microscopically, in which case . . . ”
“Please,” she said. “No more. I was mistaken about the time.”
“Our studies of human culture,” Euler told Derec, “indicate that the parade is indigenous to all
human civilizations. We very much want to make you feel at home here, our differences
notwithstanding.”
Derec looked out on both sides of the huge, open-air, V-shaped mover. The robots lining the
streets stood quite still, their variegated bodies giving no hint of curiosity, though Derec felt it
quite possible that he and Katherine were the first humans many of them had ever seen. Knowing
nothing, Derec knew nothing of parades, but it seemed to be a friendly enough ritual, except for
the paper, and it made him feel good that they should want him to feel at home.
“Is it not customary to wave?” Euler asked.
“What?” Derec replied.
“To wave your arm to the crowd,” Euler explained. “Is it no customary?”
“Of course,” Derec said, and waved on both sides of the machine that clanked steadily down the
wide street, the robots returning the gesture with more nonreadable silence.
“Don’t you feel like a proper fool?” Katherine asked, scrunching up her nose at his antics.
“They’re just trying to be hospitable,” Derec replied. “With the trouble we’re in here, I don’t
think it hurts to return a friendly gesture.”
“Is there some problem, Friend Katherine?” Euler asked.
“Only with her mouth,” Derec replied.
Rydberg leaned forward to stare intently at Katherine’s face. “Is there something we can do?”
“Yeah,” the girl answered. “Get me something to eat. I’m starving.”
Rydberg swiveled his head toward Euler. “Another untruth,” he said. “This is very discouraging.”
file:///E|/Documents%20and%20Settings/Princess%2...0Robot%20City%20Book%202%20-%20Mike%20McQuay.htm (6 of 108)11/19/2005 3:49:05 AM
Isaac Asimov's ROBOT CITY - Book Two: Suspicion
“What do you mean?” Derec asked.
“Our hypotheses concerning the philosophical nature of humanics,” Rydberg said, “must have
their foundation in truth among species. Twice Katherine has said things that aren’t true . . . ”
“I am starving!” Katherine complained.
“ . . . and how can any postulate be universally self-evident if the postulators do not adhere to the
same truths? Perhaps this is the mark of a murderer.”
“Now wait a minute,” Derec said. “All humans make . . . creative use of the language. It’s no
proof of anything.”
Rydberg examined Katherine’s face closely. Then he pressed a pincer to her bare arm, the place
turning white for a second before resuming its natural color. “You say you are starving, but your
color is good, your pulse rate strong and even, and you have no signs of physical deterioration. I
must conclude, reluctantly, that you are not starving.”
“We are hungry, though,” Derec said. “Please take us where we might eat.”
Katherine fixed him with a sidelong glance. “And do it quickly.”
“Of course,” Euler said. “You will find that we are fully equipped to deal with any human
emergency here. This is to be the perfect human world.”
“But there are no humans here,” Derec said.
“No.”
“Are you expecting any?”
“We have no expectations.”
“Oh.”
Euler directed the spider-like robot guiding the mover, and the machine turned dutifully at the
next corner, taking them down a double-width street that was bisected by a large aqueduct, whose
waters had turned dark under the ever-deepening twilight.
Derec sat back and stole a glance at Katherine, but she was busily pulling bits of paper from her
hair and didn’t notice him. He had a million questions, but they seemed better left for later. As it
was, he had conflicting emotions to analyze and react to within himself.
He was a nonperson whose life had begun scant weeks before, when he’d awakened without past
or memory to find himself in a life-support pod, stranded upon an asteroid that was being mined
by robots. They had been searching for something, something he had accidentally stumbled upon
—the Key to Perihelion, at least one of the seven Keys to Perihelion. It had seemed of incredible
import to the robots on the asteroid. Unfortunately, he had had no idea of what the Keys to
Perihelion were or what to do with them.
After that was the bad time. The asteroid was destroyed by Aranimas, an alien space raider, who
captured Derec and tortured him for information about the Key, information that Derec could not
supply. There he had met Katherine, just before the destruction of Aranimas’s vessel and their
dubious salvation at the hands of the Spacers’ robots.
The Spacers also wanted the Key, though their means of attaining it seemed slightly more
civilized and bureaucratic than Aranimas’s. Katherine and Derec were polite prisoners of
bureaucracy for a time on Rockliffe Station, their personalities clashing until they were forced to
file:///E|/Documents%20and%20Settings/Princess%2...0Robot%20City%20Book%202%20-%20Mike%20McQuay.htm (7 of 108)11/19/2005 3:49:05 AM
Isaac Asimov's ROBOT CITY - Book Two: Suspicion
form an alliance with Wolruf, another alien from Aranimas’s ship, to escape their gentle captivity
with the Key.
They found that if they pressed the corners of the silver slab and thought themselves away from
the Spacer station, they were whisked bodily to a dark gray void that they assumed to be
Perihelion. Pressing the corners again, another thought brought them to Robot City. And then
their thinking took them no farther, stranding them in a world populated by nothing but robots.
And that was it, the sum total of Derec’s conscious life. He had reached several conclusions,
though, scant as his reserve of information was: First, he had an innate knowledge of robots and
their workings, though he had no idea from where his knowledge emanated; next, Katherine
knew more about him than she was willing to tell; finally, he couldn’t escape the feeling that he
was here for a purpose, that this was all some elaborate test designed especially for him.
But why? Why?
It was worlds that were being turned here, physical and spatial laws that were being forced upside
down—all for him? Nothing made sense.
And then there was the Key, the object that everyone wanted, the object that was safely hidden by
the person who couldn’t control it. The robots here didn’t know he had it. Were they looking for
it, too? He’d have to find out. The Key seemed to be the one strain that held everything else
together.
Keeping that in mind, he determined to move slowly, to try always to get more in the way of
information than he gave. He’d been at a disadvantage for the entire length of his memory. From
this point, he wanted to keep the upper hand as far as possible.
But there was, of course, the murder.
Derec stood on the balcony of the apartment given to him and Katherine by the robots, looking
out over the night city. A stiff, cold wind had come up, the starfield totally obscured by dark,
angry clouds that seemed to boil up out of nowhere. Lightning flashed in the distance, electrons
seeking partner protons on the surface. It was a beautiful sight, and frightening. Derec watched
the distant buildings light to near daytime before plunging once more into darkness.
“There,” he said, pointing to a distant tower. “It wasn’t there a centad ago.”
Katherine walked up beside him, leaning against the balcony rail. “Where was it?” she asked,
mocking.
“It wasn’t anywhere,” he replied, turning to take her by the shoulders. “It didn’t exist.”
“That’s impossible,” she replied, then turned and walked back into the large, airy apartment that
sat at the top of another tower like the one Derec said had sprung from nowhere. “I wish they’d
get here with our food.”
“They’re probably fixing us something extra special,” Derec said, joining her in the living room.
“And impossible seems to be the way of our lives right now, doesn’t it? I’m telling you,
Katherine, that along with everything else that doesn’t make sense, this . . . city is growing,
changing right before our eyes.”
“How can that be?” she asked, and looked around uneasily. “I mean . . . cities are built, aren’t
file:///E|/Documents%20and%20Settings/Princess%2...0Robot%20City%20Book%202%20-%20Mike%20McQuay.htm (8 of 108)11/19/2005 3:49:05 AM
Isaac Asimov's ROBOT CITY - Book Two: Suspicion
they? They don’t just grow.”
Derec stared a circle around the room. It was hexagonal, like standing on the inside of a crystal,
with no visible line of demarcation for the ceilings and floor. The furniture seemed to flow from
the walls, as the table seemed to flow upward from the floor. Light concentrated from the ceiling
and lit the room comfortably, but it seemed the ceiling itself that was alight, with no external
apparatus to make it happen.
“Look around you,” Derec said. “Everything’s connected to everything else, and connected
seamlessly. And it all seems to be made from the same material.” He walked to a sofa that flowed
out of the wall and sat on the cushion that formed its base. “Comfortable,” he said, “but I think
it’s made from the same material as the harder stuff—some kind of steel and plastic alloy—just
in different measure.”
Katherine had walked to the table and was staring at it. “If you look closely,” she said, “you can
see a pattern to the material.”
Derec stood and walked up beside her, leaning down on the table to get a close look. The pattern
was faint, but readable. The table was made up of a collection of trapezoidal shapes, interwoven
and repeated over and over.
“Interesting,” Derec said.
“How so?”
“Is the shape familiar to you?” She narrowed her brows in concentration for a moment, then
looked at him with wide eyes. “The same shape as the Key,” she said.
He nodded.
Katherine left him standing there and hurried back out to the balcony.
“It’s almost like individual pieces stuck together,” he called to her. “I wonder how they
connect . . . ”
“It’s gone!” she shrieked, and Derec hurried onto the balcony. “Your tower from before, it’s
gone!”
“No it’s not,” he said, pointing farther to the east.”
It’s moved?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so.” He pointed to the huge, pyramidal structure that dominated
the landscape to the west. It was at the top of that place where they were first brought by the Key.
“That’s the only building I think doesn’t change. And we couldn’t see it from the balcony a
moment ago.”
“You mean, we’ve changed?”
“Something like that.”
She put a hand to her head. “I didn’t see . . . feel, I . . . ”
“It’s kind of like watching clouds,” he said. “If you stare at them from moment to moment, they
seem to be solid and stationary, but once you turn away and then look back, they’ve changed. It’s
almost like some sort of evolutionary growth . . . ”
“In a building?”
“If you stay out there much longer, you will probably get wet,” came a voice from behind them.
file:///E|/Documents%20and%20Settings/Princess%2...0Robot%20City%20Book%202%20-%20Mike%20McQuay.htm (9 of 108)11/19/2005 3:49:05 AM
Isaac Asimov's ROBOT CITY - Book Two: Suspicion
They turned to see Euler’s glowing eyes staring at them in the darkness.
“We’ve gotten wet before,” Katherine returned, looking past Euler to the food being set out on
their table. “Ah, a last meal for the condemned.”
“The rain here is particularly cool,” the robot said, and watched as Katherine shoved past him and
ran into the dining area, “perhaps uncomfortably cool for the human body temperature.”
Thunder rumbled loudly in the distance, a brilliant shaft of lightning striking the top of the
towering pyramid. Derec turned from the spectacle and moved toward the doorway, Euler
stepping aside to let him pass.
He walked to the table, sitting across from Katherine, who was already piling food from a large
golden bowl onto her plate, also gold-colored. The food seemed to be of a uniform, paste-like
consistency, its color drifting somewhere between blue and gray. Golden cups filled with water
sat beside the plates.
“Are these utensils made of gold?” Derec asked, clanging a spoon melodiously against his plate.
“Correct,” Rydberg said. “It’s a relatively useless soft metal that is a by-product of our mining
operations. Its one major virtue besides its use as a conductor is the fact that it doesn’t tarnish,
making it ideal for human eating utensils. We made these things for David’s visit.”
Derec watched the serving spoon slip from Katherine’s grasp to clang loudly against her plate.
And for just a second her face turned white.
“That’s what you told me my name was,” Derec said, finding the coincidence a little too close for
his comfort.
She fixed him with unfocused eyes, then shrugged, looking normal again. “It’s a common enough
name on Spacer worlds,” she said, returning her attention to her plate.
She picked up the spoon and went back to the job at hand. Derec looked up at the robots who
stood beside the table and the small servo Type-I:5 robot waiting patiently near the door for the
return of the utensils.
“Would you care to sit with us while we eat?” Derec asked, and felt Katherine kick him under the
table.
“Delighted,” Euler said without hesitation, and the two robots sat at table attentively, apparently
enjoying in their way the human familiarity.
Derec took the serving spoon and began filling his own plate. “I take it that David was the other
human who came here?” he asked.
“That is correct,” Rydberg said.
“Then he came in a ship?” Derec pressed.
“No,” Euler said. “He simply walked into the city one day.”
“From where?”
“I don’t know.”
“Aaaahhh!” Katherine yelled, spitting out food and grabbing for the glass of water, drinking
furiously. The robots swiveled their heads to watch, then exchanged glances. “Are you trying to
feed us or kill us?” she demanded.
“Our programming would never allow us to kill you,” Rydberg said. “That would be quite
file:///E|/Documents%20and%20Settings/Princess%...Robot%20City%20Book%202%20-%20Mike%20McQuay.htm (10 of 108)11/19/2005 3:49:05 AM
摘要：

IsaacAsimov'sROBOTCITY-BookTwo:SuspicionISAACASIMOV’SROBOTCITYBooksintheIsaacAsimov’sRobotCityTMseriesfromAceBOOK1:ODYSSEYbyMichaelP.Kube-McDowellBOOK2:SUSPICIONbyMikeMcQuayBOOK3:CYBORGbyWilliamF.WuBOOK4:PRODIGYbyArthurByronCoverBOOK5:REFUGEbyRobChilsonBOOK6:PERIHELIONbyWilliamF.WuISAACASIMOV’SROBOT...

展开>> 收起<<
RC2 - Suspicion, Isaac Asimov's Robot City Book 2 - Mike McQuay.pdf

共108页,预览22页

还剩页未读， 继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

相关推荐

更多
立即下载
分类：外语学习 价格：5.9玖币 属性：108 页 大小：527.86KB 格式：PDF 时间：2024-12-22

开通VIP享超值会员特权

  • 多端同步记录
  • 高速下载文档
  • 免费文档工具
  • 分享文档赚钱
  • 每日登录抽奖
  • 优质衍生服务

作者详情

相关内容

更多

热门标签

人际关系 配电装置 动力学连接体 力的合成 高考理综 全宋诗作者索引 公务员考试
/ 108
评分 收藏
分享
立即下载 VIP免费下载
客服
关注