Wolruf had curled up on the davenport and was fast asleep when Derec finished.
Battery backup should have provided the low power needed to protect Mandelbrot's positronic brain from serious harm, but there was always the possibility of a loss of long-term memory during the nanoseconds required to effect the switch from one power source to the other. Derec would never know until the gap revealed itself, perhaps at some juncture when that particular memory would be urgently needed.
As he pressed the power-reset button, he cursed himself for having left the two robots alone together. Mandelbrot's eyes lit up with a red glow that pulsed rhythmically.
“How do you feel now, Mandelbrot?” Derec asked.
“Normal. The wild one deactivated me. I didn't realize what he was doing until too late.”
The robot gave a small shudder.
“Was that a Third Law reaction just now?” Derec asked.
“I believe so, Master. I didn't protect myself properly as the Third Law directs. I felt a momentary disturbance upon reaching that conclusion, which must have sent an associated potential wave through my motor control system. Is that the way it appeared?”
“Yes. I just wanted to be sure that it was not some damage from deactivation,” Derec said. “Ah, Wolruf, you're awake.”
Wolruf yawned and stretched. “Mandelbrot okay?”
“It would appear so, except for a normal Third Law reaction,” Derec replied.
“It looks ass though anotherrr imprinting may not be ass likely ass 'u 'ad thought,” Wolruf observed.
The small hairy alien was looking at SilverSide, who was hunched over the terminal and seemingly absorbed in the information that was flowing into his brain.
“SilverSide has apparently put you down as an inferior,” Derec replied, “a variation on this planet's wolf species.”
“That was my conclusion,” SilverSide said as he unplugged and swung around in the swivel chair to face them, “and I have been unable to find any 'Wolruf' biographical file or anything to contradict that conclusion.
“Would you tell me all about yourself, Mistress Wolruf?” SilverSide requested.
“No!” Derec said emphatically. “Not now. Plug back into the library. The rest of us have got some things we must take care of now.”
SilverSide turned back to the terminal, and Derec motioned for the other two to follow him outside.
When they were standing by the runabout at street level, Derec explained.
“As I suggested to you earlier, Wolruf, he's coming along too fast now. Deactivating Mandelbrot confirmed that in my mind. 1'd consider that a violation of a sort of corollary to the Third Law. How does a robot view that, Mandelbrot?”
“The Laws are not infinitely rigid,” Mandelbrot said. “They are surrounded by side potentials that create what I can only call soft boundaries, foothill potentials that lead to the ultimate peak. The First Law has the hardest and sharpest boundaries of all, but even so, those boundaries are not absolutely and infinitely sharp.”
“Are you saying he violated the Third Law?” Derec asked.
“No, but he did something I would never do except to protect a human or myself.”
“Maybe 'e was protecting 'imself from 'urn ideass, Mandelbrot,” Wolruf said.
“Not likely,” Mandelbrot said. “I do not consider words and ideas to be a source of injury to a robot.”
“But he is in a very sensitive and impressionable state right now,” Derec said. “And that's another reason I want to get him out of the city and back to the forest where I found him, where he's apt to be more comfortable and less perturbed by strange stimuli.
“We'll take the runabout to the east exit and walk the rest of the way. It's only a couple of miles to the place I have in mind; there's a small grassy clearing in the forest near a clear pebbly brook-very peaceful and quiet. You and the wild one can trot along behind until we get to the east exit, Mandelbrot. Then we'll all walk.”
“Very well, Master Derec. Shall I get the tent and other Survival gear from the storage locker?”
“Yes.”
Derec could not remember his childhood. He knew that somehow it must have been different from that of other children on Aurora, for he did not have the natural feel and easy, confident way of handling robots that was so much a part of a normal Spacer's personality, something acquired beginning in earliest childhood. In all the nurseries and homes, robots were the only nannies to be found. On Aurora, for instance, the closest any adult ever got to a child was the human who supervised the nursery nannies.
Had he been raised by a human nanny, maybe even his own mother? Had that been a still earlier experiment of his eccentric father, Dr. Avery? Derec knew in intimate technical detail how robots worked-he was an expert roboticist-but he did not have that natural insight into the positronic brain that almost all Auroran children had by the age of five.
The only robot Derec felt really close to was Mandelbrot. It wasn't a matter of trust or distrust. Robots were what they were programmed to be. You could trust even the Avery robots that built Robot City and the other robot cities, like the one here on the wolf planet, if you knew who had last worked with their insides. The only time you couldn't trust them was when someone like the irrational Dr. Avery deliberately altered their programming. He had, for instance, excluded Wolruf from protection when he revised the programming of the Robot City robots.
But Derec seemed to lack the upbringing to deal naturally with robots-Mandelbrot being a possible exception, or as much of an exception as to make it a rule-and now he was confronted with SilverSide, a being he had concluded from behavior and appearance must be a robot, yet a robot as unpredictable and unsettling as any he had ever dealt with.
Like the Avery robots-and like Mandelbrot's control of his arm-SilverSide had the ability to change shape by changing the orientation of his cells, which themselves appeared to be tiny robots-microbots-even smaller than the cells of Avery material. Derec had pretty well established that those microbots, during a metamorphosis, were being reprogrammed by SilverSide's positronic brain, much like some living organisms-lizards and amphibians-seem to reprogram their own cells in order to grow a new limb or a new tail.
Yes, he was quite uncomfortable with SilverSide, and as he went around gathering up supplies for their outing, he realized for the first time that he had begun to consider SilverSide actually dangerous. He had never felt that way about any robot before, not on Aurora or anywhere else.
The fact that Mandelbrot's remarks had distracted SilverSide and reduced his efficiency did not seem to be a reasonable cause, logically arrived at, for the quite serious offense of deactivating another robot. Robots could not go around knocking one another out-seriously risking amnesia in the victim-simply because the victim had been a source of distraction, no more than people could. SilverSide had done something Mandelbrot “would never do,” to use Mandelbrot's own words.
SilverSide was an alarming phenomenon, yet exceedingly fascinating. Derec knew the robot should probably be deactivated, but that was a step Derec could no more take than could many other scientists who were on the cutting edge of their disciplines and involved in experiments dangerous to the society they lived in.
Chapter 9. Insight
While she was eating breakfast, Ariel queried Jacob on the results of his nightlong cogitations.
“I have made a list,” Jacob said, “of the technical features that jump technology and discrete modulation of hyperwave have in common. Would you like me to project it on the screen?”