“You’ve got to be kidding,” Derec said, throwing his hands in the air. “I’m not sure I’m going to be able to do it at all, much less in an hour or two.”
“Explain the problem,” Aranimas said.
Derec bit back a laugh. In the hopes of loosening the noose Aranimas had around his neck, Derec had been rehearsing complaints that the equipment in the lab was ill suited, too crude, anything to lower Aranimas’s expectations.
But his dismay was real, not manufactured. He had prepared himself for instruments designed for nonhuman hands, to having to have one of the raiders at his elbow coaching him. But he had not been prepared to do without what he thought of as the basics.
“The problem is you don’t have the right tools,” Derec said. “I need a diagnostic bench, an etcher, micromanipulators-There’s nothing in here that would even pass for a chip mask or circuit tracer-”
Even as he spoke, he realized that he should not have been surprised. Aranimas would not be so curious about robots, would not need to have Derec repair them, if the culture which he represented were capable of making them. The fact that the raiders employed gunners instead of autotargeting systems should have tipped him off that their computer technology was deficient.
Aranimas stood. “Such tools as are available will be brought to you. Describe what you need to Rrullf”-Aranimas’s shortened version of the caninoid’s name was almost pronounceable-”and she will bring them to you or take you to them.”
She?Derec cast a surprised glance at the caninoid.Interesting.
“Thank you,” he said to Aranimas, and started to turn away. As he did, a thousand bees settled between his shoulder blades and began to sting him wildly. Gasping, his knees buckling, he grabbed for the edge of the workbench to keep from collapsing on the floor. He did not need to see to know that Aranimas had the stylus trained at the middle of his back.
“Do not make the mistake of trying to deceive me,” Aranimas said coldly as the pain held Derec firmly in its grip. “I may be ignorant of your art, but I am not foolish.”
“I-I-”
“Save your words of apology,” Aranimas said as the bees flew away. “Show me results.”
Doubled over the workbench, Derec turned his head in time to see Aranimas return the stylus to whatever hidden pocket was reserved for it. Clearing the phlegm from his throat, he nodded weakly. “Right, boss.”
When Aranimas was gone, the caninoid’s face twisted into its macabre grin. “ ’Urr lucky Aranimas wants robots so bad. Otherwise I guess ‘u be dead now.”
“Thanks for the cheery thought,” Derec said. “What exactly does he want them for?”
“Can’t ‘u figure? Aranimas wants to replace Narwe with robots. Aranimas iss sick of Narwe crying scenes.”
“Do the Narwe know what he has in mind?”
“Narwe been on best behavior since the boss told them,” the caninoid said cheerfully. “What ‘u need to work?”
But Derec had been thinking about something else. The caninoid was treating him in a way that could only be called friendly, and was the best prospect for an ally aboard the raider ship besides. If they were going to be working together, it was time for Derec to stop thinking of the alien as it. Or even she.
“First things first. I can’t say your name even as well as Aranimas does-”
“Thass pretty low standard.”
“-but I have to call you something. Can you live with Wolruf?”
“Iss not my name, but I know who ‘u mean when ‘u say it.”
“That’s all I wanted. Wolruf, I’ve got some fine print to read. What can you find me to read it with?”
“I get ‘u something,” she promised.
The magnifying scanner that Wolruf came up with was an inspection instrument of some sort. It had a display screen rather than an eyepiece, a fixed focus, and a tiny field of view. But the incident lighting at the aperture highlighted perfectly the fine grooves of the serial number engraving, making up for all the other shortcomings.
With Wolruf peering over his shoulder, Derec scanned the fifteen lines of data. “Do you read Standard, too?”
“No,” Wolruf said. “Tell ‘u a secret-I learn Standard so I not ‘ave to lissen to Aranimas mangle my language.”
Derec laughed, and the sound startled Wolruf. “What I’m looking at is one of the robot’s identification gratings. It’ll tell me several things that will help me fix the damage the manufacturer, the model, the date of initialization, any customization parameters,” he said breezily.
He went on like that awhile longer, loading his explanation with as many technical terms as he could in the hopes of appearing to be open and cooperative while actually explaining nothing. He did not mention that if the robot were from Earth, the grating would also tell who owned it, or that the three cryptic lines of symbols at the bottom of the screen were the programming access codes and the initialization sequence, the keys that would allow him to do more than merely repair the robot, but to alter its programming.
“What does it say?”
“This one is a Ferrier Model EG,” Derec said, scanning. “Customized for valet service.” And personal defense, he added silently. A bodyguard robot. “Initialization date, Standard Year ‘83-”
Then he scanned a few words ahead and was struck dumb.
“What is it?” Wolruf asked. “Is something wrong?”
“No,” Derec managed to say. “The robot was registered on Aurora.”
“That iss one of ‘urr worlds?”
“Yes.”
“Iss that important?”
“No,” Derec said. “Let’s look at the other one.” But it was important, and his hands were trembling as he took the scanner in them and rose from his seat. He remembered Aurora. He remembered the World of the Dawn. Not the things that everyone knew-that it was the first Spacer world and long the preeminent one, that it was home to the highly regarded Institute of Robotics from which most advances in robotic science had emerged.
No, like a ray of light sneaking past the black curtain, Derec remembered Aurora as a place he had been: glimpses of a spaceport, a parklike city, a pastoral countryside. He was connected with it in some way, some way strong enough that the word alone had the power to break through the wall separating him from his past.
At last, he knew something about himself. He had been to Aurora. It was not much of a biography, but it was a beginning.
Chapter 9. Ally
Without a diagnostic board or even a computer at his disposal, Derec had no choice but to activate the robot and rely on its own self-diagnostic capabilities. But before he could get even that far, he had a jigsaw puzzle to assemble.
The headless robot was an EX series, but the differences did not affect the parts Derec needed to borrow to make the EG whole. The active systems-as opposed to the merely structural-of any mass-produced robot were modular and standardized. It would not have been possible to produce them economically any other way. So the kidney-sized microfusion powerpack of the EX was a plug-compatible replacement for the damaged one inside the EG.
But the powerpack’s mounting cradle, which contained the interface for the primary power bus, had also been damaged by the fight which had downed the robot. Regrettably, the cradle had not been designed for field replacement, and it seemed to be attached to every other component inside the EG’s torso-and not by convenient micromagnetic fields. The manufacturer had settled for the less costly alternative of sonic welds.
Lacking the proper tools, swapping the cradles was a challenge. He practiced on the damaged cradle inside the EG, then used his hard-won expertise to transfer the undamaged one into the vacancy. That alone took more than two hours. But when he was done, it took less than two minutes to swap powerpacks.
Unfortunately, that did not end the matter. In all Ferrier models, the basic data library used by the robot was contained in removable memory cubes placed in a compartment just behind its “collarbone.” The robot’s extensive positronic memory was reserved completely for the business of learning from experience.