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Isaac Asimov's Robots And Aliens 6, Humanity
ISAAC ASIMOV’S
ROBOT CITY
ROBOTS AND ALIENS
Book 6
Humanity by Jerry Oltion
Copyright © 1990
ROBOTS AND EVOLUTION
BY ISAAC ASIMOV
In general, there are two types of change that take place in the Universe: catastrophic and evolutionary.
A catastrophic change is characterized by a large alteration of conditions in a short period of time. An evolutionary
change is characterized by slow alterations of conditions over a long period of time.
Clearly, catastrophic change is more dramatic, but if we observe the Universe around us, it is equally clear that
evolutionary change is the rule.
A star shines for anywhere from many millions to many billions of years, slowly evolving, until it reaches a point
where (if it is large enough) there is an overbalancing, so to speak, and, in the space of a few minutes or a few hours,
it explodes as a supernova and collapses. Catastrophe! But, thereafter, it exists as a white dwarf, neutron star, or
black hole, and returns to prolonged evolutionary change.
Again, a huge cloud of dust and gas slowly circling and condensing undergoes evolutionary change, until its center
reaches the level of temperature and pressure where nuclear fusion can begin. There is then ignition and a sun is
born. Catastrophe! But, thereafter, a planetary system evolves over the space of a few million years, achieves
equilibrium, and continues to evolve over the space of a few billion years.
Still again, a planet like Earth can evolve, geologically, over a period of millions of years, perhaps even billions,
undergoing slow changes that result in sea-floor spreading, moving plates and shifting continents, rising and eroding
of mountain chains, and so on. There are punctuations in the form of minor catastrophes, an earthquake here, a
volcanic eruption there, a sudden flooding yon, but, beyond and between such events, evolutionary change proceeds.
There is even, once in a while, the chance of a cometary or asteroidal collision that may bring about a far greater
catastrophe, but after that, too, evolutionary change continues.
Catastrophic changes, because they occur at long intervals (the greater the catastrophe, the longer, in general, the
intervals), because they are sudden, and because they are often unpredictable, are difficult to study. Evolutionary
changes, however, are always at our doorstep, always available for detailed and prolonged study.
Following the line of least resistance, then, let us forget about catastrophe—in this introduction, at least—and
concentrate on evolution.
There are two types of evolution that need concern us. First, there is evolution that is non-directed but takes place
only in response to the blind forces of nature. These are governed, we might say, by the generalizations we have
observed which we call “the laws of nature.”
Second, there is directed evolution, changes that take place in response to the guiding needs of some intelligence.
Non-directed evolution is what we generally study—the slow changes that take place in the Universe, in individual
stars, in the planet we live on.
Yet, if we consider the daily lives of human beings, surely directed evolution is the more important. Over the four or
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five million years of hominid evolution, human beings have learned to make stone tools, use fire, develop herding
and agriculture, form pottery, invent metallurgical techniques, and guide technology in multifarious directions. Over
the last two and a quarter centuries we have industrialized the world, and now we have at our disposal such things as
computers and spaceships. In addition, we have developed cultural as well as technological techniques—and have
created literature, art, and philosophy.
All this has not been in blind and direct obedience to the laws of nature. We are controlled by those laws, yes, and we
have limits set for us by them. Within those laws, however, humanity and its ancestors have made advances directed
by their own intelligent responses to the needs of life.
You can see the evolutionary nature of human technology if you imagine a display of all the mechanical devices
intended for transportation that have been produced by humanity—starting with the wheeled carts of the Sumerians
right down to the rocket ships of today.
If you were to study a vast array of these devices carefully arranged in the direction of increasing complexity and
efficiency and allowed to branch off in different directions—land vehicles, water vehicles, air vehicles, those dragged
by human beings, those dragged by animals, those powered by wind or water, those powered by engines of various
shapes—what would your conclusions be?
If you were a disembodied intelligence from elsewhere, who did not know those devices were human-made, you
might suppose that some non-directed evolutionary process had taken place; that somehow there was an inherent
drive in transportation devices that would lead them to fill various technological niches and to do so with increasing
specialization and expertise. You would study ancestral forms, and note how aircraft developed from landcraft, for
instance, and find intermediate forms. Or if, in some cases, you found no intermediate forms, you would blame it on
the incompleteness of the record. You would devise all sorts of technological forces (other than intelligence) that
would account for the changes you see.
But then, when you were all finished and had a complete theory of technological evolution, someone might tell you,
“No, no, you are dealing with directed evolution. All these objects were created by human intelligence. All these
changes are the result of human experience learning bit by bit to manufacture devices that more efficiently take care
of human needs.”
That might make you think that scientists may have misinterpreted the records of biological evolution in the same
way. We have a vast array of fossils representing ancient and now-extinct forms of life. We arrange them in such a
way as to show a steady change from simpler to more complex forms, from lesser to greater variety, from those less
like us to those more like us, and from it all we induce a theory of non-directed biological evolution that involves
forces acting in blind response to the laws of nature.
But can we now say that, as in the case of transportation devices, we were fooled? Can we imagine the history of life
on Earth to be a case of directed evolution with intelligence (call it “God”) behind every one of the changes?
No, there is a fundamental difference. In the case of technological evolution, every device, every single device, is
human-made. No technological device (of the kind we have had hitherto) can make others like itself. If human beings
withheld their hands and brains, therefore, technological evolution would stop at once.
In the case of biological evolution, each device (if we can use the term for a living organism) produces many more or
less like itself, and with no sign of any direction from outside. It is the imperfection of the process, the fact that the
offspring are not exactly like the parents or like each other, that directs the evolution.
But can undirected evolution become directed under some conditions?—Clearly, yes.
Through almost all of Earth’s history, living things had no choice but to change blindly as a result of random gene
mutations, and of slow evolutionary changes in living conditions. Catastrophes sometimes resulted in mass
extinctions—also unavoidable.
It was only with the coming of Homo sapiens sapiens that a brain finally existed that was capable of deliberate
interference with evolutionary development. Beginning about ten thousand years ago, human beings began to breed
plants and animals in such a way as to emphasize those characteristics they considered most valuable. Grains were
developed that yielded more food per acre; animals that produced more meat, or milk, or eggs, or wool; that were
larger, stronger, and more docile.
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In a way, we even guided our own evolution, making ourselves more social beings, more capable of surviving in
crowded cities, or in the grip of a fearfully complex technology. (Not that we fit in very well, but we’ve only had a
short time in which to evolve these characteristics.)
Now we are beginning to be capable of genetic engineering, and our direction of evolution may become more precise
and efficient (if we can make up our minds as to the particular direction in which it will be safe to proceed).
That brings us to robots, which represent what is perhaps a peculiar middle-ground between technology and life.
The robots I have pictured in my early robot stories were machines. However intelligent they seemed, they were as
helpless in the grip of technology as a wheelbarrow was. They were devices that could not reproduce themselves and
that, therefore, could not engage in non-directed evolution. If an improved robot was desired, a different robot, a
more specialized robot, a more versatile robot, such a thing would have to be constructed by human designers.
Sure enough, as I continued to write my stories, robots did advance, grow more complicated, more intelligent, more
capable—but their evolution remained directed.
What about the robotic brains? As they approached the human brain in character, might they not eventually take
matters into their own hands? The brains of my robots, however, are tied tightly to the Three Laws of Robotics, and
that limits them as human brains are not.
But let’s think again. Evolution is a matter of generations, of numerous individuals, each one slightly different from
all the others, coming and going. A single organism in a single lifetime does not evolve in the biological sense. An
individual chimpanzee does not become a human being, or even make any step, however small, toward becoming a
human being in the course of its own lifetime.
If an individual organism cannot evolve by itself, it can learn, and the more complex the brain, the more efficiently
and radically it can learn. Learning is a form of change, if not biologically, then at least culturally. This point does
not have to be belabored in connection with human beings, but what about robots?
I reached a turning point in my own robot stories with the appearance of R. Daneel Olivaw in The Caves of Steel and
of R. Giskard Reventlov in Robots and Empire. Daneel was a humaniform robot, indistinguishable from human
beings if you don’t count the fact that it was far superior to human beings in a moral sense. Giskard was metallic but
possessed the power of adjusting human emotions.
Each was sufficiently complex to be capable of learning, despite the weight of the Three Laws of Robotics. In Robots
and Empire, Daneel and Giskard learned friendship for each other. They also labored with the concept of working for
the good of humanity as something superior to the task of working for the good of individual human beings, thus
groping toward what I called the “Zeroth Law of Robotics.”
In a way, robots can even offer mental complexities far beyond those in human beings. What if the “wiring” of a
robot brain is replaced with another set but imperfectly so, so that a robot is aware of two sets of impressions—a kind
of robotic schizophrenia? What if a robot originally intended for a particular society is forced to perform its functions
in an entirely different society? How does its brain react to that? (This volume of the Robot City series involves
questions of this nature.)
Can the undirected nature of robot evolution also become directed? For instance, suppose it is the task of robots to
form other robots and, in particular, to design the brain patterns of other robots. This would be the robotic equivalent
of genetic engineering, and robots in this way could direct their own evolution.
Or if you had humaniform robots like Daneel, and divided them into male and female with the ability of self-
propagation, human fashion, a form of biological evolution might result—but then the distinction between robots and
human beings would tend to disappear, and with it the possibility of meaningful robot stories.
CHAPTER 1
HOMECOMING
They had named the starship the Wild Goose Chase, for when they’d left home in it some of them had doubted that
the trip would be of any value. Now the ship once again orbited its world of origin, and its passengers still wondered
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whether they had accomplished anything useful.
They had accomplished plenty; no one disagreed about that. During their travels they had transformed one of Dr.
Avery’s mutable robot cities into a toy for intelligent aliens, had reprogrammed another robot city to serve an
emerging civilization on yet another alien world, had formulated a set of rules describing the motivations behind
human behavior, had nearly found the mother to four of the group’s members, and had ended the career of the alien
pirate who had dogged their steps for years. All the same, the operative word was “useful,” and not one of their
actions received the unanimous approval of the entire crew.
None of them supposed that turning a city into a toy was anything other than an irritating lesson in futility. Derec and
Ariel also had grave reservations about leaving the other robot city in the hands of the pre-technological Kin. None of
the human complement—nor even Wolruf, their alien companion—cared a bit for the robots’ “Laws of Humanics,”
and though Derec was excited at the prospect of finding his mother, his father harbored a contrary emotion, and
besides that, they had lost her trail.
Even removing the pirate Aranimas from the picture was only a qualified success, for though they hadn’t killed him,
the moral implications inherent in their method of dealing with him had driven three of the robots into the positronic
equivalent of catatonia.
It was high time to go home and think about things for a while.
Home in this case meant the original Robot City, an entire planet covered with Dr. Avery’s mutable, ever-changing
cybernetic metropolis. At least it had been covered in city when they left. Now, however, from their vantage point in
close orbit, it looked like a newly terraformed planet still waiting for settlers.
Three humans, one alien, and a robot crowded into the starship’s control cabin to watch it drift by in the viewscreen.
They were a motley-looking group by anyone’s standards. The alien, Wolruf, occupied the pilot’s chair, the demands
of her canine body warping the chair into a configuration a human would have considered uncomfortable at the very
least. Her brown and gold fur had been carefully brushed, but she wore no clothing or ornamentation over it.
To her right stood Derec, a thin, narrow-faced, blond-haired young man who carried the impatient look common to
explorers. His clothing was utilitarian: loose pants of soft fabric suitable for anything from Yoga exercises to wiping
up oil spills while dismantling machinery, capped by a plain pullover shirt of the same material, both in light blue.
Snuggled close to his right stood Ariel, equally thin—though in a softer sort of way—dark-haired, and not as
transparently impatient as her companion. It was obvious she had spent more time on her wardrobe than he. She, too,
wore pants and a blouse, but her blouse clung where it was supposed to cling, hung loose where loose suited her
figure better, exposed enough skin at neck and waist to suggest but not to provoke, and together the pale yellow and
brown hues of blouse and pants provided a splash of color to offset Derec’s uniformity.
On the other side of Wolruf stood Dr. Avery.He was an older version of Derec: shorter, rounder, grayer, moustached,
his face not yet wrinkled but showing the effects of time and much experience. He wore his usual baggy trousers,
white shirt with ruffled collar, and oversized coat today, as most days, in gray. His expression was one of puzzlement
shading over into concern.
Behind the humans stood Mandelbrot, the only one of the four robots on board present in the control room. He was
an old-model robot of steel and plastic construction—save for his more recently repaired right arm—and he wore no
clothing over his angular body plating, nor did his visual sensors or speaker grille convey a readable expression.
Derec, his eyes drifting from the viewscreen to his companions and back, was the first to voice the question all of
them were thinking: “You’re sure this is the right planet?”
Wolruf, swiveling slightly around in the pilot’s chair, nodded her toothsome head. “Positive.”
“Then what happened to it?” Ariel asked.
“That’s ‘arder to say.” Wolruf pushed a button to lock the viewscreen picture in place, then moved a slide control
upward, increasing the screen’s magnification until the planet’s mottled surface began to show detail. Where they
had expected to see the sharp angles of buildings and streets, they saw the tufted tops of trees instead. Narrow
pathways wound among the trees, and as Wolruf increased the magnification still further they saw that the paths
occasionally joined at landmarks ranging from boulders to dead tree stumps to natural caves. There were no buildings
in evidence at all.
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The angle of view changed steadily as the ship continued to move in orbit, until they were looking out rather than
down over a sea of treetops. The picture grew less and less sharp as the angle changed, and after a moment Derec
realized it was because the lower their view angle got, the more atmosphere they had to look through.
“Try another view,” he said to Wolruf, and the golden-furred alien backed off the magnification and released the
hold. The camera tracked forward again and the picture became a blur of motion until they once again looked directly
downward from the ship.
A ragged boundary line between the green forest and a lighter green patch of something else caught Derec ‘ s
attention. “There,” he said. “Zoom in on that.”
When Wolruf did so, they could see a vast meadow of waving grass. It wasn’t like a farmer’s field, all of one type
and all the same height, but rather a patchwork of various species, some tall, some short, with bushes and the
occasional tree scattered among them. Again there were paths, though fewer than in the forest, and again the scene
lacked any sign of human habitation. There were inhabitants, though: small knots of four-legged animals grazing
under the watchful eyes of circling hawks or eagles.
“How did they get there?” Dr. Avery demanded.
Derec glanced over at his father, opened his mouth to answer, then thought better of it. He turned back to Wolruf and
said instead, “Let’s try another view.”
Wolruf provided it. This one showed a barren expanse of sand, punctuated sporadically by lone stands of cactus.
Near the edge of the screen a single tree cast its shadow across a pool of water. A smallish four-legged animal of
some sort lapped at the water, looking up frequently to check for predators.
“They really took it seriously,” Derec muttered, scratching his head in bemusement.
“Took what seriously?” Avery demanded. “This is your doing, isn’t it?”
Derec nodded. “I suppose it must be, though I certainly didn’t expect this.”
“What did you expect? What did you order them to do?”
Derec faltered for a starting point, said at last, “You remember our argument just before we left, when I wanted to
use the animals Lucius had created as the starting point for a real biological ecosystem, but you had the hunter robots
kill all of them instead? Well, when we boarded the ship, I told the computer to access my files on balanced
ecosystems, and to...well...to make one based on what it found there.”
Avery visibly considered his response to that revelation. His fists clenched and unclenched, and the tendons in his
neck worked as he swallowed. Mandelbrot took a step toward Derec, readying to protect his master should Avery
decide to attack him physically.
Avery noticed the motion, scowled, and lashed out with a kick to the robot’s midsection instead. The hollow clang of
shoe against metal echoed in the control room. Concurrent with the kick, Avery shouted, “Why do you always have
to do this to me? Just when I think I’ve got something running smoothly, you go and throw sand in the works.
Literally.” He waved at the screen, still showing desert, but at such a low angle now that the atmospheric
disturbances between it and the ship made it shimmer as though they were actually standing in its midday heat.
Mandelbrot had rocked back with the kick, absorbing the blow so Avery wouldn’t hurt his foot, but that was his only
move. Derec looked from his father to the robot and back again. In a way, Mandelbrot was Derec’s first real
achievement in life. He had reconstructed the robot from parts, and in the years since then the robot had grown from
a servant to a companion. Perhaps for that reason, Avery had mistreated the poor thing since the day they had met.
Derec had been about to apologize for his mistake with the city, but now, in answer to Avery’s question, he said
simply, “Maybe it’s a family trait.”
They stared at one another for long seconds, their anger weighing heavy in the room, before Ariel said in disgust,
“Boys.” Dismissing them and their argument, she stepped around Derec to stand beside Wolruf’s chair, saying, “Can
you find any sign of the city at all?”
“Not visually,” the alien admitted, “but we ‘ave other methods.” She spent a moment at the controls, during which
the viewscreen image zoomed out again, blurred, shifted to false color imaging, and displayed what might have been
a color-coded topographic map.
“Definitely getting neutrino activity,” she said. “So something’ s still using microfusion powerpacks. “
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Derec relinquished the staring match in order to see the viewscreen better. “Where?” he asked.
“Everywhere,” Wolruf said. “Many sources, scattered allover the planet. Even more beneath the surface. “
“Has the city gone underground?” asked Ariel.
“We’ll see. “ Wolruf worked a few minutes longer at the controls, explaining as she went. “I’m trying penetration
radar, looking for ‘ollow spots. And sure enough, there they are.” On the screen a shadowy picture showed the
familiar rectangular forms of a city.
“What’s on the surface above them?” It was Avery, his tone almost civil.
Perhaps as a reward, or perhaps out of her own curiosity, Wolruf replaced the radar image with the visual once again
and they found themselves looking down on a wide, flatbottomed river valley. The river that had carved it meandered
lazily through stands of trees, past low bluffs covered with grass and bushes, and on without hindrance out of the
viewscreen’ s reach. No remnant of the city that once covered the planet’s entire surface marred the now perfectly
natural setting, and nothing visible in normal light indicated that below it lay anything but bedrock.
The sight of bare ground without city on it rekindled Avery’s ire. “And just how are we supposed to get inside?” he
demanded.
Without looking up at him, Ariel said, “There must be access hatches or something. “
“And how do we find them?”
“By asking.” Mandelbrot paused for the half second or so it took for everyone to look at him, then added, “I am now
in communication with the city’s central computer. It confirms Ariel ‘ s assertion: elevators to the surface have been
provided in the new city plan. It can direct us to anyone of them we wish to use.”
Wolruf laughed the gurgling laugh of her kind. “What difference does it make? It’s all the same anyway.”
“All except the Compass Tower,” said Avery. He looked from Wolruf to Derec. “Provided it’s still there.”
“It is,” Mandelbrot replied. “The original city programming was inviolate in its case. It is the only building on the
planet that remains above the surface. “
“Then that’s where we’ll go.”
Wolruf turned to the controls. “Easy enough,” she said. “Zero degrees latitude, zero longitude. It’s just after dawn
there, so we have light. We can make it on this orbit if we go now. “
“Then do it. The sooner we get down, the sooner I can get my city back to normal.” Avery favored Derec with a last
crusty look, then stalked out of the control room.
Derec grinned at Ariel and shrugged his shoulders. “Oops.”
She giggled. “ ‘Oops,’ “ he says. “You changed the surface of an entire planet with a single order, and that’s all you
have to say about it? Oops?”
Coming from Avery, those words would have stung, but Ariel meant no harm and Derec knew it. She thought it was
funny, as did he. Robots were always misinterpreting their orders, always doing things you didn’t expect them to do;
this was just an extreme case. Even so, it wasn’t anything to get upset over. They would figure out why the city had
done what it had, correct the problem, and that would be that.
“Deceleration coming up in seven minutes,” Wolruf warned.
Derec looked out the viewscreen. Wolruf had aligned the ship so they were aimed just above the horizon behind them
in orbit. Internal gravity had kept the ship’s occupants from feeling any of her maneuvering, as it would keep them
from feeling the braking thrust, but Wolruf’s warning carried with it an implicit suggestion: time to strap in. Cabin
gravity compensated for planned motion like rocket thrust, but it was slow to react to unexpected shifts. Air buffeting
on reentry would still throw them around, as would any last-minute maneuvering the gravity generator couldn’t
anticipate.
The ship understood Wolruf’s meaning as well. A week earlier it wouldn’t have—while attempting to keep the
starship from responding to every comment as if it were an order, Derec and Avery had inadvertently made it ignore
the alien’s orders as well—but they had since fixed that. The ship had functioned perfectly the entire way home, and
it did so now. When Wolruf issued her warning, two bumps rose up in the floor behind and to either side of her
control chair, molded themselves into more human-style chairs, and swiveled around to allow Derec and Ariel to seat
themselves. When they were comfortable, waist and shoulder restraints extruded themselves from the arm and back
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rests, crossed over the chairs’ occupants, and joined seamlessly to hold them in.
Mandelbrot remained standing, but the ship grew a holding bar beside him, which he gripped with his left hand. It
seemed inadequate, but with the energy of a microfusion powerpack behind that hand, he wasn’t going anywhere
either.
No doubt Avery, wherever he happened to have gone, was also being coaxed into a chair, and the three unresponsive
robots in the hold were probably being restrained in some way as well.
The observers in the control cabin watched the planet roll by beneath them while the countdown ran out; then the
descent engine fired and they watched it roll by a little slower. They could hear the soft roar of the nuclear engines
through the not-quite-soundproof hull, but that and the changing perspective as they began to fall toward the planet
were the only indications that something was happening,
As they lost orbital velocity and picked up downward velocity, their apparent speed began to increase. The horizon
grew flatter, and they seemed to be rushing away from it faster and faster. Wolruf turned the ship around until they
were again facing in the direction of motion, and they fell the rest of the way into the atmosphere. The howl of air
rushing past replaced the roar of the descent engine.
Wolruf was an excellent pilot. She had to be; if she were anything less, the robotic ship wouldn’t have let her near the
controls, for the ship could have landed itself perfectly without her assistance. That it allowed her to do so without its
assistance was a supreme compliment, one which Wolruf proved she deserved only seconds from landing.
They had dropped down through a layer of high, thin cloud, and were gliding now on wings the ship had grown once
they’d reached air thick enough to use them in. The ship had reconfigured its engine into an atmospheric jet, which
Wolruf let idle while they bled off the last of their orbital speed. Through the viewscreen they could see an
undulating sea of treetops rushing by beneath them, and off in the distance a glittering flat-topped pyramid that had to
be the Compass Tower. Wolruf steered to the right of it, swinging the ship in a wide circle around the tower while
she examined the forest for landing sites.
There were none. The canopy of trees was complete. As she completed the circle, Wolruf turned her head toward
Mandelbrot and asked, “So where are we supposed to land?”
“On the—” Mandelbrot started to reply, but Derec, who had not looked away from the viewscreen, saw a sudden
flash of movement directly ahead and shouted, “Look out!”
There came a loud thump and a lurch not quite compensated for by internal gravity. Wolruf snapped her head back
toward the viewscreen just as another fluttering black shape swept toward them and another thump shook the ship.
In the next instant the air seemed filled with frantic, flapping obstacles. They were huge birds of some sort, easily
three or four meters across. The ship shuddered under impact after impact, and ragged sections of the viewscreen
went dark as the outside sensors were either obliterated or simply covered up by their remains. Wolruf howled what
was no doubt a colorful oath in her own tongue, pushed the throttle all the way forward, and pulled back on the flight
controls to take the ship above the flock. Three more birds swept toward them. Wolruf ducked, but so did the birds;
there came a triple hammer blow to the ship, and suddenly they heeled over and began falling.
“Engine failure,” the autopilot announced.
“Grow another one,” Wolruf commanded it.
“Fabricating. “
Wolruf struggled to right the ship, got it into a glide again, and peered out between the dark patches in the
viewscreen. “We’re too low,” she muttered. “ ‘urry up with that engine.”
“I am transmogrifying at top speed. Engine will be operational in four minutes. “
“We don’t ‘ave four minutes!” Wolruf howled, then immediately added, “Give me more wing.”
“Expanding wing surface.”
Derec looked over to Ariel, found her looking back at him with wide eyes. “We’ll make it,” he said, surprised at how
calm his voice sounded. She nodded, evidently not trusting her own voice, and reached out a hand toward him. He
realized that no matter how calm he had sounded, he was gripping his chair hard enough to leave finger depressions
in its yielding surface. He unclenched his hand and took hers in it, holding more carefully. Together they looked back
to the viewscreen.
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The treetops looked as if they were only a few meters below the ship. The view directly ahead was obscured; Wolruf
weaved the ship back and forth to see what was in their path. Between one weave and the next an especially tall tree
loomed up seemingly from out of nowhere, giving her only time enough to swear and bank sharply to miss it. The
ship lurched as the lower wing clipped another treetop, but wing proved stronger than wood, and they flew on.
Wolruf leveled them out again and pulled back gently on the flight control to give them more altitude. They were still
moving fairly fast, but slowing noticeably now.
“We really need that engine,” Wolruf said.
“Two and a half minutes,” the autopilot responded.
“We’ll be down by then,” she muttered. She looked to her left, out a relatively unobscured section of viewscreen, and
came to a decision. With a cry of “ ‘ang on!” she banked the ship to the left, held the bank until they were aimed
directly at the Compass Tower, then leveled off again.
“The tower is too narrow,” the computer began. “You have too much airspeed to land on it without reverse thrust—”
but it was too late. The Compass Tower came at them, a slanting wall rising well overhead, visible now through the
clear spots to either side and above. Wolruf held their angle of approach until it seemed they were about to smash
headlong into it, then at the last moment pulled back hard on the control handle and brought them up almost parallel
to the slanting wall.
The pyramid-shaped tower rose up out of the jungle at about a sixty-degree angle. They hit at about fifty, give or take
a few degrees. The violent lurch of impact threw everyone against their restraints, and even Mandelbrot took a step to
avoid losing his footing; then with a screech of metal sliding on metal they skidded up and over the top edge of the
tower.
Cabin gravity had died completely in the collision. They felt a sickening moment of weightlessness, then another
lurch as they smashed sideways onto the flat top and continued to skid along its surface. All four of the control
room’s occupants watched with morbid fascination as the far edge drew nearer.
“Frost, I should’ve gone comer to comer,” Wolruf growled, and for a moment it seemed as if that would be their
epitaph, but as they slid across it the surface of the tower grew rougher ahead of them, and the ship ground to a halt
with four or five meters to spare.
Derec found that he had nearly crushed Ariel’s hand in his own. He would have if she hadn’t been gripping him
almost as fiercely herself. Breathing hard, neither of them willing to test their voices yet, they loosened their hold on
each other and flexed their bruised fingers.
Wolruf let out a sigh, pulled her seat restraints loose, and braced herself to stand on the tilting floor. “Well,” she said,
“welcome ‘ome.”
Some hours later, Wolruf stood at the base of the tower and peered out into the dense jungle surrounding it. She had
begged off from the congratulatory dinner Ariel had suggested, claiming stomach cramps from the anxiety and
excusing herself to go take a run to stretch her muscles. She fully intended to go for a run, if only to guarantee her
solitude, but in truth the reason she wished to be alone was not stomach cramps but shame. Despite her companions’
congratulations—even Avery had commended her for her flying skill, while making a not-so-subtle jab at Derec for
creating the birds that had made that skill necessary in the first place—despite their heartfelt thanks, Wolruf knew
that it was she, not Derec, who was ultimately responsible for the accident in the first place.
Stupid, stupid, stupid, to circle low above a forest and not watch out for birds. Especially an unfamiliar forest, full of
unfamiliar and unpredictable species. If she’d pulled a stunt like that at home, she’d have been kicked out of the
training academy so fast her tail wouldn’t even have been caught in the slammed door.
Yes, she’d shown some quick thinking afterward, had pulled their collective fat out of the fire, but all the praise she
got for that bit of fancy flying simply galled her all the more. Her initial mistake had nearly killed them all.
“So you learn from your mistakes,” she growled in her own language, quoting one of her old instructor’s favorite
phrases, but hearing the guttural gnashing and snarling of her native tongue brought a sudden pang of homesickness,
and she cocked back her head and let fly a long, plaintive howl.
An echo bounced back at her from the trees. Then, faintly, coming from far deeper in the jungle, she heard an
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answering cry.
A cold shiver ran down her back at the sound of it. It wasn’t exactly an answer—not in words, at any rate—but the
meaning was just as clear as her own howl had been. You are not alone.
And just who might be making so bold an assertion on this planet so recently filled only with robots? Wolruf had no
idea. The odds of it being a member of her own species were no odds at all; she was the only one of her kind in
human space, and she knew it. But whatever mouth had voiced that cry belonged to a creature at least similar to
herself, and it had given her an open invitation for companionship.
At the moment she wasn’t feeling picky. She took a deep breath, tilted her head back and howled again, forgoing
words for deeper meaning: 1 am coming. Not waiting for an answer, she struck off into the trees.
Ariel heard the howling from her room in the apartment they had chosen practically at random from among
thousands in the underground city. The windows were viewscreens, currently set to show the scene from partway up
the Compass Tower, and they evidently transmitted sound as well. Ariel had been brushing out her hair; she stopped
with the brush still tangled in a stubborn knot of dark curls, stepped to the window, and listened. Another howl
echoed through the forest, and another. One was recognizably Wolruf, but not both. A bird added a shriek of alarm—
or perhaps derision—to the exchange.
Some primitive instinct triggered her hormonal reflexes, dumping adrenaline into her bloodstream, readying her to
fight or flee should either need arise. She felt her pulse rate quicken, felt the flush of sudden heat in her skin.
The howls came again.
She swallowed the taste of fear. She was ten levels below ground! “So strange, to hear live animal sounds here,” she
whispered.
Derec lay on the bed, one arm draped over his eyes and the other sprawled out at his side. He shifted the one enough
to peer under it at Ariel and said, “It is. I think I like it, though.”
“Me too.” Another howl made her shiver, and she added, “As long as I’m inside, anyway.”
“Don’t get too attached to it. Avery’ll probably have the whole thing covered in city again inside of a week.”
Ariel tugged at her brush again, got it through the tangle, and took another swipe at it. “Do you really think he will?”
“I imagine. He sounds pretty intent on it.”
“Couldn’t you stop him? Your order has precedence. If you tell the robots you want it to stay the way it is, they’ll
obey you, won’t they?”
“Maybe. I don’t know if it’s worth it.”
“Hmm,” she said. Maybe it wasn’t. Easy come, easy go, and all that. Besides, Avery had just been beginning to act
like a human being before he discovered Derec’s ecosystem project; maybe it would be worth it to let him put the
city back the way he’d originally planned it if it would keep him easy to get along with.
“Where’d he go, anyway?” she asked.
Derec let his arm flop down over his eyes again. “Computer center, where else?”
“Of course.” Ariel turned away from the window and walked back over to stand in front of the mirror. She continued
to brush her hair, but she watched Derec’s reflection, not her own. She could have stared at him directly, since he had
his eyes closed, but somehow she liked using the mirror, as though she might see something in it that she wouldn’t
otherwise.
What she saw pleased her well enough no matter which way she viewed it. Derec was trim, well-muscled, attractive
by nearly anyone’s standards. Certainly he was attractive by Ariel’s. She had fallen in love with him twice now,
without the complication of falling out of love in between. Amnesia had its good points.
And he had fallen in love with her twice, too. At least she thought so. Once, definitely, and that was this time, so
what did it matter if the first was merely infatuation, as she suspected it had been? He loved her now, didn’t he?
As if he could read her mind, she saw him raise his arm up again and peek out at her from under it, and the openly
appreciative smile that spread across his face told her all she needed to know. He raised up off the bed in one smooth
motion, came over to nuzzle his face in the hollow between her neck and shoulders, and whispered, “So why don’t
we take a blanket and go for a walk in the forest while it’s still there?”
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Dr. Avery had indeed gone to the computer center, but only long enough to use a private terminal to direct the city to
create a fully stocked robotics lab for him. While that was being done, he commandeered a team of six general
service robots and led them back up to the wreckage of the starship at the top of the tower.
“In the cargo hold of that mess,” he told them, pointing in its general direction, “you’ll find three robots in
communications fugue. I want you to bring them out and take them to my lab. Under no circumstances are you to try
to wake them. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Master Avery,” the robot nearest him said.
“Good. Go to it.”
The robots filed into the ship, using a convenient rent in the hull rather than the airlock. Avery smiled at the sight, for
the still-crumpled presence of the wreckage signaled that his plan was proceeding smoothly. He had ordered the ship
not to repair itself, not to do anything until he got the robots removed. They hadn’t awakened during the crash, but
who knew what might trigger it? Better to err on the safe side. This was only the second time they had gone into
fugue in his presence, and he had blown his chance to study them in detail the first time. He wasn’t going to let this
opportunity pass unused as well.
Derec wouldn’t approve—he’d been the one who convinced Avery not to the first time, pleading with him not to
interrupt their development—but Avery really couldn’t care less about Derec’s wishes now. Not any more. For a
while there he’d come close to thinking he might actually care about his son again, but to discover that all this time
the boy had been deceiving him, distracting him with his silly trip off planet while his insidious program wiped out
Avery’s greatest creation—that betrayal extinguished any feeling he may have had for him.
And by association, for Janet as well, though he had never fooled himself into thinking he cared for her again.
Her robots, on the other hand...
Yes, he cared a great deal about her robots. Not necessarily for them, but definitely about them. Such strange
creations they were! Infinitely malleable, even more so than his own proteiform robots; these three robots of Janet’s
were not only physically mutable but mentally mutable as well. You never knew what strange notion they might
come up with next. Their initial programming was radically different from a normal robot’s, and they had the
uncanny ability to integrate their life’s experiences directly into that programming, modifying their basic motivations
with each new situation they faced. They were the first truly heuristic learning machines Avery had ever seen.
They weren’t without flaws, of course. Janet’s typically scatterbrained execution of a brilliant idea had left their
psyches scarred beyond repair, but the idea itself was exquisite. Like the concept of cellular robots in the first place,
the possibilities it opened up were endless, but it would take Avery’s own genius to realize them.
The general service robots emerged from the wreck in pairs, each pair carrying an inert robot like a rigid statue
between them. Avery examined each one as they brought it past.
First came Lucius II, the self-named successor to Robot City’s first creative robot. Since the original was gone, no
one bothered with the numeral. Lucius looked a little like the robots carrying him: smooth and featureless in the torso
and limbs, little more than an idealized humanoid figure optimized for efficiency. He wasn’t quite as well defined as
they, though. Without conscious direction, his physical form had begun to drift back toward the shape of his first
imprinting, but for Lucius that had been late in coming. He had spent his first few weeks as a formless blob, and that
experience showed now in the rounded, almost doughy shape of his body.
His face was better articulated. It, too, had smoothed somewhat, like that of a wax figure left too long in the sun, but
it was still recognizably based upon Derec’s.
Avery wasn’t surprised. The boy had always been a strong influence on the robot. Lucius had even proposed that the
two treat one another as friends, with all the rights and obligations that entailed; it was no wonder the imprinting
process had gone down to the instinctual level.
Next came Adam. A casual examination would have led an observer to believe that Adam had first imprinted on
Wolruf, for that was who the robot most resembled, but the casual observer would have been mistaken. Adam’s
canine features came from his early imprinting on the Kin, the backward, Stone Age, wolflike aliens who even now
marked their territory in one of Avery’s cast-off cities. Wolruf’s resemblance to the Kin was purely coincidental—
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