“I do. Schoolbook stuff back on Aurora. But I don’t agree that an invention without a true inner life or without feelings is worth being, no matter how long it exists.”
“Well, I did. In some ways I still do. I’ve always wanted a life of the mind, not of the emotions. And I’ve wanted to live longer than our natural lifespans.”
“An Auroran lives so long, I’m surprised you’d even worry. Isn’t the real issue your fear of death?”
He laughed scoffingly. “More schoolbook stuff, Ariel. If one wants to live forever, you reality-distorters automatically knee-jerk the idea of fear of death.”
“Hey, I’m young and I fear death.”
“That attitude is only sensible. We all have it. But I don’t care about death itself. If it comes, I’ll shake its hand and lead it off. No, it’s the chance to watch history, to see what will happen further in science, that’s the reason I want the long life of a robot. I want to see if the Settler worlds will succeed or perish from their own boorish and violent ways. I want to see if Earth can somehow survive its terrible, claustrophobic ways of life, or will decay and be destroyed from the inside, becoming a ghost planet, a worn-out memorial to what humanity once was. I want to see if Spacers-”
“Don’t get carried away by your own rhetoric, Dr. Avery. I get the message. It’s not fear of death, it’s a need to know the future.”
“Simplistically stated, but essentially correct. At any rate, I spent so much time with robots and thought so much about them that eventually I wanted to be one, needed to be one. I’d still like to be one. The difference is I no longer believe I am one.”
She turned the care of Avery back to Adam and took a short walk across the room to confront her other problem. Eve, now restored to her Ariel form, sat beside the desk, merely staring at the dancers, the five who were left. The other nine had all died quietly or, as Avery would have it, “ceased operation.”
Just looking at the remaining quintet made Ariel sad. She had hoped for great communicative advances when she had started working with the tiny creatures. So little had really been accomplished. The games were cute, and some of their behavior showed a minimal intelligence, but no language had been conveyed, only a few hand signals. The gestures were significant, but not enough for Ariel.
She had this faint sense that she had failed. And the apparent success of her other project, Avery, somehow did not compensate for her failure with the dancers.
“Anything new, Eve?” she said as she sat down in her customary chair.
“Nothing. They merely sit, holding hands like that. They never even look up at us anymore.”
“Perhaps they think that their gods are punishing them.”
“I do not understand. Their gods?”
“Us, Eve.”
“Would you explain?”
“Well, we-never mind. Ignore the comment.”
There was something morbid about Eve’s vigil over the remaining dancers. Each time one died, she insisted on taking it away, presumably to bury it. Ariel had never asked her where she went or exactly how she had performed the ritual. She did not want to know. The thought of Eve in a lonely, dark area, performing death rites for a dancer made Ariel shudder.
Avery, still demanding that one be handed over to him for study, had fussed over the first four or five deaths. Ariel’s adamant support of Eve had apparently discouraged him. He had been silent on the matter for some time. Once she tried to introduce the subject, but he h’dd dismissed it with a wave of his hand.
At times Ariel wished the dancers would finish their dying. Then she could return to Derec and help him in restoring the city. He had made some progress lately, managing to convince the computer to make all the lights of the city work again. And some utility robots had been seen picking up street debris. Water no longer tasted brackish, and the food coming out of the processors actually had flavor. But Derec wasn’t satisfied, he said. There were still so many things out of whack, and the essential mystery of why the city had deteriorated in their absence remained.
Wolruf came into the room. She was returning from stilt another meal with Derec and Mandelbrot. Ariel didn’t blame her for spending more time with them. Since Adam had begun working with Avery, there had been little for Wolruf to do here.
Coming to the desk, Wolruf glanced down at the dancers. “They look worrse, ‘u think?”
“Much worse.”
“What can I do?”
“Nothing much anyone can do.”
“Could ‘u just sset them loosse?”
“Why?”
“They could die in peace, alone. On my worrld, there iss a custom of dying alone.”
“Perhaps you’re right. But I think it’s too late for such a compassionate act. They’re too far gone.”
“Yess, I ssee, I think.”
When she turned her attention back to the desktop, Ariel saw one of the dancers, a once-chubby, now-emaciated male, break his grip on two of the others and fall backward.
Eve, now so used to a dancer’s passing, immediately scooped up the corpse and strode out of the room. Ariel, staring after her, said, “And then there were four. Soon, none. It won’t be long now.”
She glanced over toward Avery. He was now looking at her with some concern in his face. How sane of him, she thought.
Timestep, in his corner, had seen Bogie leave. Then, a short time later, he witnessed his return. After Bogie had gone back to his corner, Timestep catalogued the oddities. First, if not summoned by Derec or even Mandelbrot, why had Bogie left the corner in the first place? Second, where had he gone? Third, why was his return so secretive? Fourth, an important fourth, what was it that looked so wrong about Bogie?
Derec reentered the room, followed by Mandelbrot. He was silent, his index finger tapping on his chin thoughtfully. Timestep studied the tap. It was too slow, unrhythmic. He would not have been able to use it for any dancing step he knew. (All the while he stood in his corner he called up from his memory banks the dances he had memorized and visualized how he would do them if his feet were not forbidden to move just now.)
Across the way, Bogie appeared to lean forward, which seemed odd to Timestep. But then Bogie had left the corner and returned to it on his own, so a simple bending at the waist should not seem so out of the ordinary.
“Bogie!” Derec called, and Bogie came out of his corner. Did Timestep observe a hesitation before his companion moved?
“Did you think we’d forgotten you, Bogie?” Derec asked.
Bogie hesitated before saying, “That you would forget about me would not occur to me, Master Derec.”
“You seem a little sluggish. And what’s this Master Derec? What happened to ‘kid,’ ‘kiddo,’ ‘pal’?”
“I felt momentarily respectful, Mast-kiddo.”
Derec narrowed his eyes as he stared at Bogie. “Are you functional? Should I send you to the Robot Repair Facility for a diagnostic scan or a tune-up?”
“That will not be necessary. Pal.”
For a moment Derec seemed unsure. “That’s okay,” he finally said. “Tell me, Bogie, what do you know about our mysterious controller?”
“I know nothing of a mysterious controller, sir.”
“Weren’t you supposed to tell me there was a block on that information, something like that?”
Again Bogie hesitated. “The nature of the block upon information does not include such a question as the one you asked. Kid.”
Derec smiled. “Very good. It was a sort of ‘do you still beat your wife’ question, wasn’t it?”
“I do not have a wife. Kiddo.”
“It’d be an idea, though. Robot husbands and wives. Robot families. I might work on it when the mess here is cleared up. Would you like a family, Bogie?”
“I cannot have a family.”
“Isn’t there a family feeling among robots?”
“No, sir. Pal.”
“Okay, okay. You’ll have to forgive me. I’m bone-weary, and my mind isn’t even forming casual conversation effectively. Bogie?”