RA5 - Maverick, Isaac Asimov's Robot City-Robots and Aliens Book 5 - Bruce Bethke

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Maverick, Isaac Asimov's Robots And Aliens -- Book 5

ISAAC ASIMOV’S ROBOT CITY

ROBOTS AND ALIENS

Maverick

By Bruce Bethke

For John Sladek, Roderick, and Clifford,

The world’s stupidest springer spaniel.

INTRODUCTION

His memory has been erased. Hers was destroyed by a disease, and reconstructed with his help. His real name is

David Avery, but he knows himself as Derec. Her name is Ariel Burgess.

Together they found Robot City and plumbed its mysteries. Derec, at peril to his life and in the throes of one of his

mad father’s experiments, learned to master Robot City and its robots. Hordes of chemfets—microscopic robots—in

his blood gave him a direct connection with the central computer.

During a brief idyll, Derec and Ariel lived normal lives on Aurora. But Derec’s final confrontation with his father

had interrupted what the robots called the Migration Program—the program had not been canceled. Some robots had

escaped from Robot City and had built new robot cities on new, uninhabited planets. Planets, at least, that were

supposed to be uninhabited.

Supposed to be, but were not. Derec’s placid interlude was shattered by a distress call from one of the new robot

cities, telling of an attack. Rushing to the scene without Ariel, he and Mandelbrot discovered that the attackers were

beings who looked something like wolves—a race of intelligent wolves.

First, there was a meteor flashing through the sky. Then the strange one came, the metallic-looking one they called

SilverSides, who never ate and wished only to protect the Kin and serve their wishes. It could only have been that

SilverSides had been sent by the OldMother, ancestress and creator of the Kin. She had been sent to save them from

the WalkingStones and the Hill of Stars they had built.

Not even SilverSides knows that she was a robot, cousin to the robots that were building a robot city on the Kin’s

planet. She had been designed and built not by Dr. Avery, Derec’ s father, but by Dr. Janet Anastasi, Derec’s mother,

who was running her own experiment in robotics.

SilverSides had been born shapeless, unformed, ready to imprint upon the first intelligent being she encountered. But

the plan had not allowed for a robot city on the same planet. More intelligent than the Kin, SilverSides soon became

their leader in the struggle against the robots. She launched a raid that crippled the city’s main planning computer,

and, recognizing Derec as the leader of the robots, attacked him.

Only Derec’s invoking the First Law of Robotics saved him. But SilverSides was left with a dilemma. Were not the

Kin human? How could they and Derec be human, and protected by the First Law? SilverSides took on the form of a

human and the name Adam, but before this problem could be resolved there was another distress call—from Ariel.

Joined now by Wolruf, Derec, Mandelbrot, and Adam went to her aid.

In Derec’s absence, Ariel had gotten a call from yet another robot city. This one was also under attack by aliens, but

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Maverick, Isaac Asimov's Robots And Aliens -- Book 5

aliens of a kind vastly different from the Kin.

Ariel found this robot city almost completely enclosed by a dome. This planet’s inhabitants, the bird-like Ceremyons,

were as advanced, compared to humans, as the Kin were primitive. Rather than attacking the city directly, they were

sealing it under a dome where it could do no harm. The robots, following their programmed impulse to build and to

prepare the planet for human habitation, were arranging to rebuild the city at a different location.

As soon as Ariel arrived, she summoned Derec through his internal connection with all the robot cities. But by the

time he reached this planet, she had reached a tentative compromise—the Ceremyons, living almost all their lives in

the air, would allow the robots to use some of the ground for farming, and they would allow one small enclosed city

for the export of the food. Derec, with the help of the supervisor robots, reprogrammed the city.

Adam, still having no clear definition of what a human being is, imprinted on the Ceremyons, but they, needing no

protection and having no need of his services, sent him back to Derec. Not yet certain to whom he owed Second Law

obedience, he voluntarily set up his own agricultural experiment. In the course of this isolated work, he encountered

a great silvery egg—an egg that he recognized as another being like himself, but not yet imprinted. Rushing back to

the robot city, he brought Ariel to the egg in time for the new robot to imprint on her. Thus was Eve born.

Eve also went through the trauma of imprinting on the Ceremyons, but she encountered one who convinced her that

he and he alone was human. Only his increasingly obvious insanity freed her from that dangerous illusion.

The agricultural reprogramming finished, Derec and Ariel and Wolruf decided to remove Adam and Eve from all

possibly harmful influences—they would all go back to Robot City.

They returned to a Robot City in shambles. An unknown influence had seized control of the city’ s central computer,

and tiny artificial humans—a few inches tall—were tucked away in many of the buildings. The robots had turned

from maintaining the city to wild experimentation that reminded Derec and Ariel of the days of Lucius.

The obvious culprit was Dr. Avery. Although the experiments were of the sort that he had abhorred, he was the only

one Derec knew who could seize control of the city. But while Avery did turn up in the city, he was so angry over the

changes that he could not have been responsible. He was also no longer responsible for his own actions; he was now

completely mad, convinced that he was turning into a robot.

Ariel took charge of the homunculi, and of Dr. Avery. She was more successful with Avery than with the tiny people,

effecting the beginnings of a cure. Derec and Mandelbrot, meanwhile, tracked down the invading presence, an

intelligence that called itself The Watchful Eye. This intelligence, it appeared, was guiding all the bizarre

experiments in the hope of discovering the nature of human beings—and whether it might be one.

With the city collapsing around them, all forces joined to corner The Watchful Eye in its hidden lair. Finding it

disguised as an ordinary piece of furniture, they at last forced it to reveal and face its true nature: the third of Dr.

Anastasi’s “learning machines. ”

Taking the name Lucius II, the new robot immediately entered an intense exchange of information with Adam and

Eve. To the already unresolved question of what constitutes a human being, Lucius II added the possibility that these

three robots may be humans.

These discussions took place in isolation from the humans and Wolruf. They were concerned with the issue of what

to do with the packs of small, rodent-like animals that roamed the streets, a residue of some of Lucius II’s

experiments. Although they were clearly not human, these creatures had been generated using human genetic code as

a starting point. Were they, then, also human, or could they be treated as vermin? This problem is complicated by

Ariel’s pregnancy, and the discovery that the fetus has been damaged by Derec’s chemfets.

None of the medical robots on Robot City would even consider an abortion, since they considered the fetus human,

even though it lacked a complete nervous system and could not survive birth. Adam offered to perform the operation

in return for transportation back to the planet of the Ceremyons. The three learning machines hoped to consult with

the Ceremyons on the question of humanity.

Robot City created a ship, which Dr. Avery named the Wild Goose Chase, from its own material. Surviving an

accident that threatened all their lives, and Wolruf’s definition as human, they reached the planet of the Ceremyons to

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Maverick, Isaac Asimov's Robots And Aliens -- Book 5

discover that their elaborate plans had been canceled. Someone—a woman, and apparently a brilliant roboticist—had

come and helped the Ceremyons reprogram the entire city. Derec and Dr. Avery tried to adapt the city to serve the

Ceremyons, but at last the natives could find only one useful purpose for it. As the humans, Wolruf, and the robots

left for the planet of the Kin, they saw the robot city slowly melting into itself, and taking on its new form as a vast

metallic sculpture.

PROLOGUE

ARANIMAS

He sat before the horseshoe-shaped control console, like a hungry spider sitting in the middle of its web. Taut, alert,

watching and waiting with an almost feral intensity; nearly immobile, except for his eyes.

The eyes: Two black, glittering beads set in bulging turrets of wrinkled skin on opposite sides of his large, hairless

head. The eyes moved independently in quick, lizard-like jerks, darting across the massed video displays and

instrument readouts, taking it all in.

Watching.

One eye locked in on the image of a small, starfish-like creature. His other eye tracked across and joined it as the

video display split-screened to show the starfish on one side and the inky black of space on the other. A small ice

asteroid drifted into view, and a pair of ominous-looking rails smoothly rose to track it.

He moved. An arm so gaunt and elongated, with carpal bones so long it gave the appearance of having two elbows,

more unfolded than reached out to touch a small stud beneath the image of the starfish.

The grim, lipless mouth opened; the voice was high and reedy. “Denofah. Praxil mastica. ” The rails flared brightly.

An instant later the asteroid was gone, replaced by a swiftly dissipating cloud of incandescent gas.

The mouth twitched slightly at the corners, in an expression that may have been a grim smile. He pressed the stud

again. “Rijat. ” The screen showing the starfish and the weapon went blank.

An indicator light at the far right end of the console began blinking. Swiveling one eye to the screen just above the

indicator, he reached across and pressed another stud. The image that appeared was that of a younger member of his

own species.

“Forrgive the intrrusion, Masterr,” the young one said in heavily accented Galactic, with a piping trill on the “r”

sounds. “But your orrders were to reporrt any K-band interferrence instantly. ”

Both eyes locked on the image, and he swiveled his chair around so that he was facing the viewscreen. “Did it match

the patterrn? Were you able to get a dirrectional fix?”

“Master Aranimas, it still matches the patterrn. Rrobots using hyperspace keys to teleport; there must be thousands of

them. We have both a directional fix and an estimated distance. ”

“Excellent! Give me the coordinates; I’ll relay them to the navigator. ” While the young one was reading off the

numbers, Aranimas swiveled his left eye onto another screen and pressed another stud. “Helm! Prepare for

hyperspace jump in five hazodes. ” Another screen, another stud. “Navigator! Lay in the fastest course possible to

take us to these coordinates. ” He repeated the numbers the young one had given him.

When the orders were all given and the screens all blank, he sat back in his chair, entwined his long, bony fingers,

and allowed himself a thin smile. “Wolruf, you traitor, I have you now. And Derec, you meddlesome boy, I’ll have

your robots, your teleport keys, and your head in my trophy case. ” He reached forward and thumbed a button, and

the starfish reappeared on a screen. “Deh feh opt spa, nexori. Derec. ”

The starfish seemed quite excited at the prospect.

CHAPTER 1

JANET

Attitude thrusters fired in short, tightly controlled bursts. With a delicate grace that belied its thirty-ton mass, the

small, streamlined spacecraft executed a slow pirouette across the starspeckled void, flipping end-for-end and rolling

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Maverick, Isaac Asimov's Robots And Aliens -- Book 5

ninety degrees to starboard. When the maneuver was complete, the attitude thrusters fired again, to leave the ship

traveling stem-first along its orbital trajectory and upside-down relative to the surface of the small, blue-white planet.

Slowly, ponderously, the main planetary drives built up to full thrust. One minute later they shut down, and the hot

white glare of the final deceleration burn faded to the deep bloody red of cooling durylium ion grids.

A final touch on the attitude jets, and the ship slipped quietly into geostationary orbit. Yet so skilled was the robot

helmsman, so flawless the gravity compensation fields, that the ship’s sole human occupant had not yet noticed any

change in flight status.

The robot named Basalom, however, patched into the ship’s communications system by hyperwave commlink, could

not help but receive the news. He turned to the human known as Janet Anastasi, blinked his mylar plastic eyelids

nervously, and allocated a hundred nanoseconds to resolving a small dilemma.

Like the really tough ones, the problem involved his conflicting duties under the Laws of Robotics. The Second Law

aspect of the situation was clear: A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings. except where such orders

would conflict with the First Law. Dr. Anastasi had specifically ordered him to alert her the moment they entered

orbit about Tau Puppis IV. He’d already cross-checked the navigator’s star sightings against the reference library in

the ship’s computer; the small, Earthlike world currently situated some 35,000 kilometers overhead was definitely

Tau Puppis IV. Unmistakably, his Second Law duty was to tell Dr. Anastasi that she had arrived at her destination.

As soon as Basalom started to load that statement into his speech buffer, though, a nagging First Law priority

asserted itself. The First Law said: A robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction allow a human being

to come to harm. Ever since they’d left the planet of the Ceremyons, any mention of the Learning Machine project

seemed to cause Dr. Anastasi tremendous emotional distress. Even an implied reference to her son, her ex-husband,

or the way the two of them had thoroughly bollixed the experiment by abducting Learning Machine #2 was enough

to send the woman’s blood pressure rocketing and turn her voiceprint into a harsh and jangled mass of severe stress

indicators.

Now they’d returned to Tau Puppis IV, the world on which Dr. Anastasi had dropped Learning Machine #1. Basalom

integrated that information with the data base he’d built up over two years of working with Dr. Anastasi, and

concluded with 95% confidence that breaking the news to her would precipitate a negative emotional reaction. He

could not predict exactly what her reaction would be-no robot was that sophisticated—but he could predict beyond a

reasonable doubt that the information would cause Dr. Anastasi significant emotional discomfort.

And that was Basalom’ s dilemma. How did this emotional pain fit within the First Law definition of harm? His

systems programming was not precise on that point. If emotional pain was not harm, there was little point to his

being programmed to perceive it. But if evoking strong emotion was harm, then obeying Second Law orders could

become a terribly ticklish business. How could he obey an order to tell Dr. Anastasi something that would upset her?

Basalom weighed positronic potentials. The order to provide the information had been emphatic and direct. The harm

that would ensue-that might ensue-was only a possibility, and would, Basalom knew from experience, pass fairly

quickly. In addition, he recalled from experience that Dr. Anastasi’s reaction to his not providing the information

would be just as extreme an emotion as if he did provide it.

The possibility of harming a human balanced; it was the same, no matter whether he acted or refrained from acting.

He began downloading the statement to his speech buffer; as soon as he’d slowed his perception levels down to

human realtime, he’d tell her.

Of course, if blood spurted out of her ears when he voiced the words, then he’d know that he’d caused some harm.

“Dr. Anastasi?” The slender blond woman looked up from her smartbook and speared Basalom with a glare. “We

have entered geostationary orbit over the fourth planet in the Tau Puppis star system, mistress. ”

“Well, it’s frosted well about time. ” She reacted as if surprised by the tone of her own voice, rubbed the bags under

her bloodshot eyes, and smiled apologetically. “I’m sorry, Basalom. I’ve shot the messenger again, haven’t I?”

Basalom blinked nervously and did a quick scan of the room, but found no evidence of an injured messenger or a

recently fired weapon. “Mistress?”

She dismissed his question with a wave of her hand. “An old expression; never mind. Is the scanning team ready?”

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Maverick, Isaac Asimov's Robots And Aliens -- Book 5

Through his internal commlink, Basalom consulted the rest of the crew. The reply came back as a dialogue box

patched through to the scanning team, and a direct visual feed from a camera on the dorsal fin. From Basalom’s point

of view he saw Mistress Janet’s image in the upper right corner and the scanning team’s input/output stream in the

upper left corner. Both windows overlaid a view of the ship’s top hull gleaming brightly in the reflected planetlight,

and as he watched, a long slit opened down the spine of the ship, and a thin stalk somewhat resembling an enormous

dandelion began rising slowly toward the planet. At the tip of the stalk, delicate antennae were unfolding like

whisker-thin flower petals and dewsparkled spiderwebs.

“They have opened the pod bay doors,” Basalom said, “and are erecting the sensor stalk now. ” He shot a commlink

query at the scanning crew; in answer, data from the critical path file flashed up in the scanning team’s dialogue box.

“The stalk will be fully deployed in approximately five minutes and twenty-three seconds. ”

Dr. Anastasi made no immediate reply. To kill time while waiting for something further to report, Basalom began

allocating every fifth nanosecond to building a simulation of how Dr. Anastasi saw the world. It had often puzzled

him, how humans had managed to accomplish so much with only simple binocular vision and an almost complete

inability to accept telesensory feeds. How lonely it must feel to be locked into a local point of view! he decided.

At last, Dr. Anastasi spoke. “Five minutes, huh?” Basalom updated the estimate. “And fourteen seconds. ”

“Good. ” She leaned back in her chair, closed her eyes, and tried to work a kink out of her neck. “Boy, will I be glad

to get this over with. ”

Basalom felt a tickle in his Second Law sense and formulated a suggestion. “Mistress? If there is another place you’d

rather be, we can leave for it right now. ”

Dr. Anastasi opened her eyes and smiled wistfully at the robot; the expression did interesting things to the

topography of her face. Basalom quickly scanned and mapped the wrinkles around her eyes, stored the image for

later study, and then backed down to normal magnification.

“No, Basalom,” Janet said, in that curiously slow output-only mode that humans used so often. “This is where I want

to be. It’s just... ” Her voice tapered off into a little sigh.

Mistress Janet’s last sentence didn’t make immediate sense, so Basalom tried to parse it out. It’ s just. That broke out

to It is just. Substituting for the pronoun, he came up with Being in orbit around Tau Puppis IV is just. Quickly

sorting through and discarding all the adverbial meanings of just, he popped up a window full of adjective

definitions. Reasonable, proper, righteous, lawful, see Fair

Ah, that seemed to make sense. Being in orbit around Tau

Puppis N is fair. Basalom felt a warm glow of satisfaction in his grammar module. Now if he only understood what

Mistress Janet meant.

Janet sighed again and finished the sentence. “It’s just, I’ve been thinking about old Stoneface again, that’s all.

Sometimes I swear that man is the albatross I’ll be wearing around my neck the rest of my life. ”

Basalom started to ask Janet why she wanted to wear a terran avian with a three-meter wingspan around her neck,

then thought better of it. “Stoneface, mistress?”

“Wendy. Doctor Wendell Avery. My ex-husband. ” Basalom ran a voiceprint across the bottom of his field of view

and watched with familiar alarm as the hostility markers erupted like pimples in Or. Anastasi’s voice. “Derec’s

father. My chief competitor. The little tin god who’s out to infest the galaxy with his little tin anthills. ”

“By which you mean the robot cities, mistress?” Janet put an elbow on the table and rested her chin in the palm of

her hand. “I mean exactly that, Basalom. ” She sighed, frowned, and went silent again.

Basalom stood quiet a moment, then switched to thermographic vision. As he’d expected, Or. Anastasi’s skin

temperature was rising, and the major arteries in her neck were dilating. He recognized the pattern; she was building

up to another angry outburst.

He was still trying to sort out the First Law implications of defusing her temper when it exploded..

“Oammit, Basalom, he’s an architect, not a roboticist!” Janet slammed a wiry fist down on the table and sent her

smartbook flying. “That’s my nanotechnology he’s using. My cellular robots; my heuristic programming. But do you

think he ever once thought of sharing the credit?”

She kicked the leg of the table and let out a little sob. “The Learning Machine experiments were beautiful. Three

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