“Too long a story to explain.”
“You’re not on board by choice, are you.”
“Too complicated to explain.”
“I’ve got the time-and I really want to know.”
Wolruf hesitated, then advanced a few steps into the room. “Should go sleep,” she said gruffly.
“Why not do what you want to instead of what you ought to?”
Crouching an arm’s length away, Wolruf grinned. “That the secret of ‘ur success?”
It took longer than it should have to sort out the story. Wolruf had never had to talk about her home and life to someone who did not know the thousand and one things that a person living within a culture knows without thinking. Again and again, Derec had to ask her to go back and fill in some clarifying detail.
Beyond that, there were language problems, as some of what Wolruf was trying to convey ran up against the limits of her Standard vocabulary. At other times she seemed to be talking around some fact or idea that she did not feel comfortable disclosing.
Piecing together what he heard and filling in a few of the blanks on his own, Derec gained a reasonably coherent answer to his question. Despite Wolruf’s boast of two hundred inhabited worlds, the crew of the ship was from a single solar system. Aranimas’s kind-the Erani-and the Narwe lived on the second planet, Mrassdf, which by Wolruf’s description was a hot, windswept, unpleasant world. Wolruf’s kind-the name was just as unpronounceable as Wolruf’s own-and the elusive star-creatures were from the temperate fourth planet.
The relationship between the Narwe and the Erani was like that between sheep and their shepherds, except that the Narwe were more intelligent and physically adept than sheep. But the comparison was still apt. The Narwe vastly outnumbered the Erani, but the Erani-aggressive, inventive, acquisitive-were completely dominant.
The relationship between the two worlds was rather more complex, and Derec did not completely understand it. Neither planet seemed to have a unified government. That might have been the only thing that kept them from going to war, for there clearly was a basic antipathy between them. Despite that, there was active commerce between the worlds. At the center of it were trading companies operatedoperated by several factions of Erani and goods produced by several families of Wolruf’s people.
Wolruf would not talk much about Aranimas in particular, but he seemed to be a younger member of one of the more powerful Erani factions. Derec gleaned that somehow Wolruf’s family had run afoul of Aranimas’s trading company.
“My service on this mission lifts thedhierggra from my family,” she explained.
Thedhierggra, Derec determined after much questioning, was equivalent to a blacklist-while it was in effect, no Erani would deal with the family. That made Wolruf, in essence, an indentured servant-a slave, working off her family’s debt.
“Why were you chosen?”
“I am youngest, least valuable to my family.”
Derec did not want to rush to judge an entire culture on one story from one member, but he found himself getting angry over the injustice. “Is that why Aranimas treats you the way he does? Is that part of the deal, that he gets to push you around?”
“That iss the Erani way. They treat everyone so.”
“Not each other,” Derec said. “That’s what makes it wrong.”
It was then that Derec realized that somewhere in the course of the conversation, something unexpected had happened. He had drawn Wolruf out selfishly, calculating. It was just another angle to exploit. But as he had listened to her, his false sympathy for her plight became real empathy for her pain. She was a victim, just as he was.
But she seemed uncomfortable with his concern. “Not ‘ur trouble.”
“Wolruf-you said you were my friend. Let me be yours.”
“What do ‘u mean?”
“Aranimas is working you like a slave and abusing you like an animal. It doesn’t have to be that way. We can put a stop to it, together.”
“How?”
“I have a tool,” he said, nodding toward the robot. “And I have some ideas. But I need you to tell me some things-about Aranimas, and about how this ship is controlled.”
Wolruf looked uncomfortable, and Derec was afraid that he had gone too fast and frightened her. “You want the jewel back,” she said.
Honesty was an imperative. “I do.”
“ ’U will take it and leave me to face Aranimas.”
Derec shook his head emphatically. “I do have to get away. I can’t let Aranimas take me back to Mrassdf. But if I can’t leave you in a better situation than you’re in now, I’ll take you with me. Wolruf-we’re the only ones who can help each other. If we don’t try, then we deserve what happens to us.”
The caninoid met Derec’s questioning gaze unblinkingly. “That iss true. Okay-friend. Less try.”
There seemed to be something in the biology of Wolruf’s kind which sharpened the imperative for sleep and rejuvenation. It was almost as though there was within them a metabolic switch which, once tripped, told them in no uncertain terms that the primary energy fund had been exhausted and it was time to withdraw.
A half-hour after they began talking, with only some of Derec’s questions answered and their plan barely sketched out, Wolruf’s alarm went off. Her eyes narrowed to slits, her breath took on a sour tang, and her fur lay flat and seemed to lose luster.
Though he still had many urgent questions, Derec did not even get a chance to try to coax her to stay. With no more explanation than a muttered “must sleep,” she rose and was gone.
Wolruf’s departure made Derec suddenly aware of his own weary limbs. But there was one further task he had to see to before he could think about curling up on the thin mattress.
The robot was waiting where it had settled after completing Derec’s last order several hours ago, but that was no surprise. There had been an unnatural passiveness to the robot’s behavior ever since Derec had activated it, a passiveness above and beyond the wait-states he had prescribed. A normal robot had a variety of duties it attended to without external direction, following the default orders built into it for its primary function: domestic, laborer, engineer, and the like.
The robot’s initiative had apparently fallen victim to the burned-out memory cubes and the cold powerdown. But it still had the Second Law, and so it sat and waited patiently for the words from Derec that would give it something to do.
Derec’s first act was to pull the Mathematics cube and replace it with the Personal Defense cube. The additional pathways in the PD cube would enhance the robot’s sense of impending harm and its anxiety to act to prevent it. But they would also suppress the robot’s normal inclination to protect him from immediate, concrete risks without regard to the consequences of doing so. The First Law did not have any exceptions built into it for taking well-intentioned gambles; the PD cube provided them.
“Alpha,” Derec said when he was done. “My previous instructions for you to go into a wait-state when one of the aliens approaches are now cancelled. But where possible, you are still to avoid revealing the unique capabilities of your right arm.”
“I understand, Derec.”
“I am now going to give you a block of instructions which will not become operative until you hear the initiate code. The initiate code, which must come from me, is the question, ‘Who is your master?’ The disable code is the word ‘Aurora.’ ”
“I understand, Derec.”
“Begin instruction block. You will answer the initiate code with the reply ‘Aranimas.’ You’ll go with Aranimas wherever he wishes you to go. You are to follow his orders except where they conflict with the First, Second, or Third Laws or this instruction block. You will not follow orders given by Wolruf or any other nonhuman member of the crew. You will not accept any additional orders from me unless preceded by the disable code. You will respond to informational inquiries from Wolruf or myself. However, you will not relate, replay, or in any way communicate to Aranimas this conversation or any other conversation with me which he did not witness.”