For a moment Avery did not speak. Instead, he merely stared at Adam, which was like looking in a mirror that slightly distorted the image. Adam’s skin was silvery, and there were more sharp lines in the shape of his body than in Avery’s softly curved figure. Adam’s eyes had a serenity in them that Avery had not, when looking in a mirror, seen in many years. It forced him to consider a human Avery whose life had been more satisfactory, when he had been married and at the top of his profession, adored by many, certainly respected by almost everyone. Why had his eyes changed? he wondered.
Ariel saw the emotional disruption in Avery’s face, and at the same time saw a way to work with the man as Derec had urged. She moved to the other side of the desk, beside Eve, who had been busy calming the dancers with gestures and a soft humming that almost had a tune to it.
“Eve,” Ariel whispered.
“Yes?”
“Can you do one of those shape-changes for me?”
“Yes, into anything I know about.”
“Well, do what Adam did. Imprint on Avery. Can you do that?”
“Of course.”
Ariel watched with fascination as Eve went through the same transformations that Adam had. It was even stranger to view in her, since before Ariel’s eyes, Eve changed from a female to a male. While she had always known that Eve could change shape, and had been told that Adam had been a female when he was a member of the kin, she was still amazed by the process. Eve’s face changed earlier than Adam’s had, and then she rearranged her body from the shoulders down. When finished, she was even more uncomfortably like Avery than Adam was.
“Ozymandias,” Ariel said, breaking his concentration on Adam. As the man turned toward her, his jaw dropped open when he saw still another copy of himself.
“This is unfair!” he cried, furious.
“Why? Most of the time they go around looking like Derec and me, and it doesn’t bother us. Why does it so upset you, Ozymandias?”
“I feel like they’re taking something away from me.”
“What? Your soul?”
Ariel’s question came as such a shock to Avery that it made him laugh. “My soul? Hardly. What would a robot do with a soul? No, I mean my personality, all that constitutes me, my dignity.”
“Dignity? Personality? What do you care about those?”
As Ariel talked, Eve had gone to Adam, and now they stood side by side, twin Averys, with the same subtle differences between them that a set of identical twins showed.
Avery, uncharacteristically speechless, whirled around and strode back to where Wolruf stood. Ariel might have been mistaken, but she thought, from the way the caninoid alien stood at a slight tilt and from the faint gargling sound coming from her throat (usually an indication of amusement for her), that Wolruf found the proceedings funny.
“Come back here!” Ariel shouted.
“I refuse.”
“How can you refuse my order? You are a robot and I am human. You have to obey me. Second Law, Ozymandias.” She spoke this last with a lilt in her voice, mockingly. He stood still for a moment, then spun around and returned to the desk.
Meanwhile Ariel had sidled up to the Silversides. “Adam, Eve, I want you to do something for me.” They both glanced at her, awaiting their orders. “You’ve been around Avery for long enough. Imitate him all the way. Talk like him, sound like him, rant like him, move like him, strut like him, whatever you have stored in your memory banks that you can use to be like him. Can you do that?”
They both responded yes. Adam, particularly, welcomed the challenge. It was a use of his shape-changing ability, after all. In a world where there was little to imprint on, any challenge would do.
“All right,” Ariel said when Avery had returned to the desk. “Separate from each other, and when I give the signal, start.”
Adam went to one side of the room, Eve to the other. Avery, who had not heard Ariel’s command, looked back and forth from one to the other.
Then, at a gesture from Ariel, the assault began. Adam immediately launched a diatribe of Avery’s that he had stored in his memory. It was an especially ripe one, filled with florid phrases and a good deal of invective. The robot’s voice was a remarkable playback, catching the tones and inflections of the doctor’s voice so precisely that Ariel, if she had shut her eyes, would not have known it was not the real Avery.
The target of the assault merely watched Adam disbelievingly; his eyes widened, displaying less intensity and more confusion than perhaps anyone had ever seen in him before. He chewed on his lower lip, another uncharacteristic act. His fingers tapped against the side of his legs, a gesture Ariel had seen often. Avery did it a lot when he was angry.
Making a loud cough very like the one Avery made to get another person’s attention, Eve entered the fray. Avery’s head turned to watch her, while Adam’s diatribe continued, louder.
Eve began to mutter to herself in an Avery-like way and began to pace her side of the room in a strutting fashion. As she walked her fingers, too, tapped against her legs. Once she stopped and banged her fist into the palm of her other hand, yelling, “I will not have it! This isn’t the way things will be! I demand you let me have a dancer to experiment upon!”
Then she whirled around, just as Avery had earlier, and walked to the desktop to stare down sternly at the dancers. Now that she looked like the doctor, she was amazed to find that the dancers were fooled by her. They scattered just the way they did when Avery hovered over them.
Ariel saw Eve’s face lose its hostility, softening into a gentler look. Because the Silversides could only form aspects of facial expression, becoming much like an artist’s caricature, Eve’s present look disconcerted Ariel. She did not like Avery’s face appearing to be kind. Further, there was a suggestion of Ariel’s face, seemingly superimposed upon the Avery mien, that annoyed her.
“Eve,” she whispered, “they’re all right. They just think you’re him. Don’t worry about it. We’ll take care of them, and you can resume your familiar shape.”
Eve recalled her task. Her face became hard again, and she resumed muttering. Suddenly, in a move that Ariel could not have expected, Eve slammed her fist upon the desktop (well away from any of the dancers). Even Avery flinched at’ the fury of the move, as if he didn’t believe someone looking like him could do such a violent thing.
“What are they-” he began, but Adam came forward to stand next to Eve. They seemed an odd pair, like identical twins who had labored to differentiate themselves in any way possible, but just could not stop looking like each other.
“We should not even experiment on these,” Adam said. “They are just vermin, like most humans, not like robots. We should kill them.”
Eve, taken in for a moment by Adam’s act, was ready to rush to defend them until she recalled her command to playact.
“That’s going too far,” Avery shouted. “I would never say that.”
“Ozymandias,” Ariel said, “what you see is just their impression of what you say, how you act. In their minds, capable as they are of processing data, you’ve shown yourself to be unpredictable and quite likely to perform violent acts. That you’d think of killing the dancers seems within the realm of possibility to them. And, for that matter, to me.”
“You don’t understand. I’m not a destroyer, I’m a creator. Yes, if necessary I’d dissect an animal for scientific knowledge, but I’d never willingly kill for killing’s sake.”
“Now you’ve said it, they know it. They understand you better now. Tell them more.”
Avery smiled. “I see your ploy. Make me reveal myself so you can continue this charade. Well, Ariel, it won’t work.”