“I am Eve.”
The small woman made some odd sounds in her throat and pointed up at Eve. Three others joined her, another woman and two men. They all appeared amused. The woman with the large eyes began jumping up and down, her odd raspy sounds getting louder. The trio behind her laughed merrily. One slapped his knee. Then they all began talking, if that’s what the chattering sounds they emitted were.
“There seems to be a language,” Adam said.
“Maybe we can learn it.”
Saying hello again, Eve reached out her hand toward the small woman, who, scared, took some steps backward. Then she appeared to get control of herself. She turned her back on Eve and resumed her place in the bonfire ritual. The other three followed her. Soon none of them were paying any attention to the gigantic silver intruder who hovered above them. The ritual appeared to get fiercer each time they repeated it.
Eve stood up and walked past the fire. Many of the small people were gathered in a corner of the lot, working furiously. She had to squat down again to see what they were doing. When she saw what it was, she called out to Adam to come and view it for himself.
Gesturing for him to hunch down beside her, she indicated the group in the corner.
“What are they doing, Eve?”
“Look. There are rows and rows of these small creatures on the ground there. Beyond that, there are more of them in piles.”
“Like the dance?”
“No, not like the dance. The ones in this pile are dead, Adam. The others are burying them in the ground, but there are too many dead ones and they are not able to keep up the pace. Look, over there, more are being carried here.”
From all points of the lot, it seemed, surviving creatures were hauling their dead compatriots to the burial ground. There was a slow rhythm to the way they walked, as if it, too, were part of the bonfire ritual. Eve noted that there was no human emotion on their faces. They were merely burying their dead methodically.
When each corpse had been covered over, the gravediggers turned to the next tiny plot of land and dug a hole for the next in line.
“Adam, I think there’s something wrong here. They are dying out, all of them. They will all be gone shortly. Yet I detect no signs of disease. No, it is more like they are just wearing out. Derec told us nothing of these creatures.”
“I do not understand, Eve.”
“I surmise that they did not exist a short time ago, when Derec and Ariel were first here. They have only existed for a short time, and now they are dying out. I suspect there is something sad in that.”
She turned her head and saw that one of the corpses now being conveyed to the burial ground was the small woman with the bulging eyes.
Even when he stood still, Timestep’s left foot kept tapping from side to side. Bogie recalled a character in a movie who had performed the same movement at the beginning of a dance number. He could not remember specifically because he rarely watched musicals, much preferring the mystery and action films that were so well represented in the Robot City Film and Tape Archives.
He was about to suggest that one of them should again station himself in the hallway outside the office when he heard the last few soft treads of Ariel and Derec as they came to the outer door of the Compass Tower. As Bogie glanced toward the tower, he saw the door beginning to form itself before letting them exit.
“Run,” he said to Timestep, “they’re coming out.”
They both started clanking up the street, but the Second Law of Robotics, that they must obey an order coming from a human being, made them stop running when Derec yelled for them to stop. As Derec and Ariel walked up to them, Timestep’s foot resumed its slow tapping movement.
“You two, you’re spying on us,” Derec said. His voice has assumed the firmness that humans often used when addressing robots. “Why?”
“We are not allowed to tell that,” Bogie said. “It is a confidential order.”
“From whom?”
“We are not allowed to tell you that.”
“Another one of your infernal blocks?”
“Yes.”
“It’s my father,” Derec said angrily. “Only he would think up tricks like this.”
“I still disagree,” Ariel said. “His tricks would be even more diabolical.”
“And there’s no way I can remove these blocks right now?”
“Only the one who put them there may remove them.”
“Did a human put them there?”
“I cannot say.”
“You cannot say because you don’t know or because my father put in those blocks?”
“I cannot say because I am prevented from saying.”
“Nice try,” Ariel whispered, “trying to trick him into admitting your father’s the perpetrator.”
“Well, tricks like that sometimes work, Ariel.”
“I know, you’ve been around the block a few times.”
Derec was about to continue his interrogation of Bogie when Mandelbrot and Wolruf rounded a corner and headed toward them at a fast pace. Wolruf was loping on all fours, as she sometimes did when she was tired. Since she stayed beside Mandelbrot, keeping at his pace, they looked like a man and his dog out for a stroll-if you didn’t look too closely.
“Where’re our two mischief-makers?” Derec asked when they reached him.
“A good question,” Wolruf said. She explained how they had left the Silversides behind to study the creatures they’d discovered, and she was surprised to see Derec’s eyes light up with interest. He turned to Ariel and said excitedly, “These may be more of the same pests that attacked us in that building. Let’s go see.”
“Good idea. Anyway, it’s never wise to leave Adam and Eve alone anywhere they could cause trouble.”
They started down the street, the way Mandelbrot and Wolruf had come. The alien and the ever-loyal robot walked right behind them. After a few steps, Derec glanced back at Bogie and Timestep.
“Hey,” he called back to them, “you’re going to follow us and spy on us anyway, you two. You might just as well come along with us.”
It was probably his imagination, but it seemed to Derec as if the two spies began their walk toward him with some eagerness in their stride.
Chapter 9. Trouble Right Here In Robot City
Even though Wolruf had described the vacant lot’s strange colony to him, Derec was unprepared for what they found there.
First, the bonfire had gone out. It now smoldered pathetically, a few wisps of smoke rising from what proved to be some type of synthetic wood. The wood, now a jumbled pile of charred curls, gave off a strong chemical odor that reminded Ariel of a broken-down food synthesizer, never one of her favorite smells.
Next, Derec saw the dancers. They were still a circle, but no longer moving. They were on the ground, some face down, some face up, their hands still joined, but clearly dead. Their bodies had not been moved because the carriers and the gravediggers had died out now. As he walked around the yard, he had to step over more than a hundred undersized corpses.
Finally, he saw Adam and Eve at the half-completed graveyard. Eve was delicately picking up the creatures’ bodies, one by one, and placing them in a row of graves she had quickly dug with her hands. It was an odd action, Derec thought, one that seemed to indicate compassion on her part. While she could have some understanding of human feelings, he thought it doubtful she could feel such compassion herself.
Still, Adam and Eve were a new breed of robot, one that had appeared as if by magic on two planets now (Adam having found Eve on the blackbodies’ planet after himself coming into sudden existence on the planet of the wolflike creatures, the kin), and so anything was possible. The way the Silversides kept surprising him, he might never get a fix on them. Perhaps they were indeed the prototypes for emotional robots, a concept that did not correspond with Derec’s present knowledge of robotics.
“Where did they come from?” Ariel said, looking down at the many bodies.
“I don’t know. They seem to be one more thing that’s gone wrong with the city.”