Asimov’s Future History Volume 7 Read online

  “I agree with you, Master Derec. Send for Wolruf.”

  “Good.” Derec nodded. “It’s about time I made a decent decision.” Which hasn’t been since Aurora.

  Still holding the empty glass, he went out to the balcony again and stared out at the darkness into which the rogue had disappeared. The sound of the rogue’s howling still seemed to echo. He felt the skin of his back prickling at the memory.

  He didn’t mention all the other reasons for wanting to make the call, though he knew Mandelbrot would also be aware of them, if too concerned with causing a human pain to mention them. Wolruf’s outlook would help them, yes, but Wolruf would also bring a ship which would allow them to leave the world if they needed to. And Derec wanted very badly to call Ariel. He wanted Ariel more than Wolruf in many ways.

  Wolruf could also bring Ariel.

  He sighed again.

  Derec felt in his head for the chemfet channels and called: Alpha. Beta. Status on Supervisor Gamma.

  Beta responded immediately. Gamma unit inactive after fall. Positronic brain has been taken to repair station and will be reinstalled in a new body if possible. Extent of damage to brain is unknown; a new supervisor unit has been activated. Alpha reports that Hunter-Seekers have lost rogue. Instructions regarding rogue and wolf-creatures?

  You will continue to regard the wolf-creatures as human, Derec answered. The rogue is not to be harmed if you do find it, but there’s no need to send the Hunter-Seekers past the city boundaries. The rogue will be back.

  Derec was certain of that much.

  Understood. Derec could almost imagine distaste in the flat, emotionless response.

  In the meantime, I need access to the city hyperwave transmitters. You should have coordinates for Aurora in the city memory banks. Please transmit the following message:

  Ariel: Find Wolruf Send her immediately — imperative! And... I’m sorry. I love you. Please send an answer to these coordinates. And Ariel — 1 would like you to come with her. Derec.

  The message arrived at Aurora as a highly compressed squirt emanating from the Aurora system’s wormhole, punched through the incredible distances and the space-time anomaly by the powerful transmitters in Robot City.

  The weakened signal was received by Aurora’s orbiting communications complex, the charges billed against Ariel’s family’s account, and transferred down to the planetary net decoded and strengthened. There it was posted to Derec and Ariel’s computer terminal.

  That was exactly as Derec had intended, except that Ariel was no longer there to receive it.

  Someone else was.

  “Wolruf? Who or what is Wolruf? You must answer me. It is extremely important.”

  The household robot didn’t seem inclined to answer the query. The inbuilt command against revealing an owner’s business was perhaps the most highly stressed program code in its memory, the Second Law priority reinforced to the best of factory’s technicians’ abilities.

  But there was one higher priority that could always be invoked, and the speaker was very skilled with positronic logic. The words simply had to be carefully chosen and constantly repeated.

  “It is very important that you tell me, Balzac. Mistress Ariel is not on Aurora, as you know. She has left this world and cannot help. Master Derec is in trouble; that is implied by the message. He needs this Wolruf to aid him. I will contact Wolruf, but I first must know where to begin looking. You must tell me all that you know. This is a First Law situation, Balzac. First Law. Ariel and Derec are in danger, and your refusal to speak increases that danger. This supersedes any previous instructions you may have received. Do you understand?”

  It took an hour of careful argument and resulted in a badly damaged robotic mind. Balzac would never be of much use to its owners again.

  But it did speak, the words halting and slurred....

  Chapter 25

  DECISIONS

  FOR THE NEXT two days, Derec checked with the city communications center every hour or so, though he knew that he would have been alerted via chemfet if a message had been received.

  There was never an answer. Ariel said nothing.

  That was very unlike her. Derec was certain that even if she’d been furious, she would have sent back some scathing reply. But the hyperactive frequencies were silent coming from Aurora.

  He hoped that she’d simply decide to head for the planet with Wolruf, that any day a ship would appear in orbit around the world. He instructed the city to turn its attention to the sky, to search the night for the faint glimmer of a ship’s drive. Maybe she was out there already, a day or two away after the jump.

  But the sky was devoid of ships. Derec waited for eight days, not eating or sleeping well and leaving control of the city entirely in the Supervisors’ hands after giving them firm orders: The city is to cease any new construction and any clearing of land. Remember that the wolf-creatures are to be regarded as human insofar as harming them. Do not destroy the rogue.

  As the days passed, the wolves grew less cautious. The rogue appeared every night on the hillside outside the city, pacing the perimeter and howling in the speech of the wolf-creatures. Derec didn’t need to know what it was saying; that was obvious enough. And the wolf-creatures seemed to realize that the city was doing nothing to resist them. On the third day after the rogue’s challenge, the pack made a blitzkrieg attack on a party of workers, destroying most of them before the Hunter-Seekers arrived and the wolves fled. Following Derec’s last orders, the Hunters didn’t pursue the wolves but simply let them go back into the safety of the forest.

  The rogue itself made a dash into the city on the fifth night, and it destroyed Delta, the replacement Supervisor for Gamma. The positronic brain was wrecked beyond repair; Gamma was restored to working status in a different body.

  On the sixth night, a Hunter-Seeker managed to sneak up on the pack and sedate one of the wolves from a distance. But when two Hunters went to capture the creature, the rogue attacked from the shadows. The Hunter-Seekers were disabled; the rogue seemed unharmed.

  It was apparent to Derec that the stalemate could not continue. It was also apparent that Wolruf, if she were coming at all, would not be there soon, and that Ariel had either never received the message or had ignored it and was not going to answer.

  That left very little choice for Derec. He was entirely healed now, the broken arm knitted if still a little tender after the accelerated treatment. He had no excuses not to confront the problem directly. Anything was better than brooding.

  Despite that, he was not at all pleased with the prospect.

  Mandelbrot woke Derec from his sleep. “The rogue is outside the city again,” the robot said softly. “I saw it in the distance, walking along the edge of the trees.”

  “Did you try ordering it in again?” Derec asked. With the help of the city’s technical library, Mandelbrot had been trying to subvert the rogue’s base programming, since it evidently had a comlink to the city. The robot had been broadcasting orders over various frequencies, but to no effect.

  “Yes. In the Robot City program code once more and also in human speech using a recording of your voice. It used the comlink to growl.”

  “Maybe you should offer it a biscuit,” Derec grumbled.

  “If you think that will work, Master Derec. One moment —”

  Derec grimaced. The robot was already moving swiftly toward the door.

  “No! Mandelbrot, come back here. Frost, can’t you tell when a person’s joking? Wait a second and let me get ready.” Derec rolled out of his bed and rubbed at his eyes. “It’s time I went to see it personally. It’s time I answered the damned thing’s challenge. The rogue’s right; one of us has to be in control of things.”

  Mandelbrot’s eyes glittered at him from the night darkness. Beyond the robot, the wide archway to the balcony was open. Neither of the moons was up; the sky beyond Mandelbrot’s head was dusted with stars. The wolves would be out there now, and the rogue would be with them.
r />   “Master Derec, I do not like this.”

  “I don’t either, believe me.” Derec pulled on his pants, tugged a loose-fitting tunic over his head.

  “The rogue is dangerous. It has destroyed city robots, it has damaged the central computer, it has harmed the Supervisors. It has even threatened you.”

  “None of which necessarily violates the Three Laws,” Derec pointed out. “Not even the threat. It’s in the shape of those wolf-creatures; it thinks like them, too.”

  “In which case it is very dangerous. And I must disagree. No robot in a sane state could say what the rogue said to you on the balcony. Such a statement would cause extreme reactions within my positronic potentials. Even contemplating such an act now sets up vibrations that I can sense. To actually make such threats meaningfully would be impossible. The damage to my brain would cause an immediate dysfunction if not an outright freeze.”

  “The rogue follows the Laws,” Derec insisted.

  “The rogue is insane. It must be. Its interpretations of the Laws cannot be trusted. It injured you the first time you met.”

  “Nevertheless, I’m going to go meet it.”

  Mandelbrot stepped in front of Derec, blocking his path. “Master Derec, I cannot allow that. I am sorry. The First Law forbids it.”

  “This is a direct order, Mandelbrot, and I’ve already told you your assumptions are in error. This isn’t a First Law matter. Step out of my way.”

  “I... am sorry.” The robot’s voice was slightly slurred, hesitant; the delicate balances between the Laws shifted, but it remained in place before the door.

  “Mandelbrot, the rogue hasn’t harmed me. Not really. It was protecting its own existence, and it made a judgment call that it could move past me. You might have made the same decision — a small bump against the likelihood of destruction. It could as easily have taken my head off with those claws.”

  “I... do not... know …”

  Derec saw that the robot’s resolve was visibly weakening. He pressed his argument. “The rogue could have killed me in an instant, Mandelbrot. It chose not to. That tells me that the Three Laws are still functioning. And we’re not going to resolve anything here unless we confront it. If we just order the city to build us a ship and leave — assuming the city’s even capable of such a task at this point, and I seriously doubt that — then we’ve abandoned these wolf-creatures. They’re going to continue to try to attack the city, and once we’re gone, who knows what will happen? They may well die. We’ve certainly disrupted their society already, and if the city continues to grow, it will contact other packs as well. They’re sentient beings, Mandelbrot. You know it yourself. I can’t and won’t just leave them, and just sitting here is useless.”

  As he spoke, Derec realized that he was also talking to himself. He had just been sitting there, moping about Ariel and Wolruf and doing nothing. It was time to confront the rogue, one way or the other. He had to face the challenge.

  “Mandelbrot, I’m ordering you again to move.”

  The robot took a hesitant step aside. “I would like... to accompany you.”

  Derec smiled. “Of course. You always need a second in a duel.” Then, before Mandelbrot could say anything else: “Just kidding, of course.”

  Chapter 26

  A CHALLENGE MET

  SILVERSIDE WATCHED THE city as she’d watched it every night since SmallFace was a crescent horn. The moon was entirely gone now, waiting for the OldMother to birth it once more in its endless cycle. Still the GodBeing ignored her. But SilverSide came every night and renewed her challenge.

  The GodBeing would come to her. It must.

  At least some of what it said had been true. The city had changed; it no longer pursued the kin when they attacked. Only a few nights past, LifeCrier had led the pack down to kill. Though the Hunters had come to protect the worker WalkingStones, they had not followed the pack when the kin retreated.

  Then the youngling SlowPaw had been caught straggling as usual, and one of the Hunters had shot him. SilverSide had been certain that SlowPaw was dead. But the Hunters came after the body, and after SilverSide disabled them, she found that they had only made SlowPaw sleep. She had been certain that the Hunters would follow her for revenge and had been ready to lead them away from PackHome again.

  But the rest of the Hunters remained in the city. The GodBeing — whose name was Derec, as she knew from listening to the city’s VoidTongue — had ordered it so.

  What kind of creature would stay hidden in its cave for so long? How could it hunt there, when all the game had been driven elsewhere? The GodBeing was flesh like the kin; it must eat.

  Which meant that it would come out.

  Most strangely of all, SilverSide could feel the urge in her to meet this GodBeing again. The remembrance of it stirred odd thoughts in her mind. She felt a pull, a yearning.

  It has knowledge. It is intelligent. It is a toolmaker far superior to any of the kin. I have heard the city say that the one WalkingStone was built by this Derec.

  There were moments when she did not want to fight it at all. But the challenge was demanded by the OldMother’s commands inside her. Above all else, she could let no harm come to the kin, and the city harmed kin simply by its existence. She must control the city as she controlled the kin, and the GodBeing prevented that.

  That meant it must be challenged. If it refused her that privilege, it must die.

  The edge of the city was well defined, like the boundaries of a cooled lava flow. Derec stepped from a hard level walkway and with the next step, he was on grass. Outside.

  He suddenly, foolishly, felt unprotected.

  That’s silly, he told himself. Mandelbrot’s alongside you, and Alpha’s monitoring the whole thing through Witness robots. There are a half-dozen Hunters waiting back in the city; they’ II get to you in seconds if anything happens. You’re as safe as you can be. Besides, you’re the one who insisted that the Three Laws protected you from the rogue.

  He suddenly didn’t feel very confident at all.

  A low rumbling came from his right. Derec turned.

  The rogue was there.

  It crouched fifty meters up slope where a stand of trees had been cleared by workers from the city. Perched atop one of the fallen logs and in wolf shape, the rogue looked bigger than Derec had remembered. Its claws were displayed, its mouth slightly open to reveal the metal teeth set there. It reared up on its back legs as Derec turned to it, standing perhaps a half-meter taller than Derec himself. Mandelbrot had come alongside Derec without prompting, the implicit threat in the rogue’s pose forcing the robot to stay close enough to intervene.

  It’s a robot. It follows the Laws. Derec took a deep breath, motioning Mandelbrot back. “I’ve come to talk with you,” he said to the rogue.

  It growled, then spat out in Standard: “I have challenged you already. I did not come to talk.”

  “At least tell me your name.”

  “I am called SilverSide,” the rogue answered, and Derec could have sworn there was a hint of bravado in its voice, far more inflection than any robot he had ever heard before. Whoever had programmed it had been good. “I am the Chosen of the OldMother, the Bane of WalkingStones. Tell your WalkingStone to leave so that we may decide who is the leader.”

  Derec looked at Mandelbrot, who had taken yet another step closer at the rogue’s words. “Mandelbrot is compelled to protect me, SilverSide. Tell him that you’re not going to hurt me, and I can send him back.”

  “It is no protection to you at all,” SilverSide answered, and her pale eyes glanced at Mandelbrot. “I have already defeated it once. I will do it again, and then you and I will settle this.”

  “No, I order you —” Derec began, but it was already too late.

  The rogue moved faster than Derec thought possible. If Mandelbrot had not been there, Derec would not have had a chance. Derec felt a wind as Mandelbrot shot by him and met SilverSide.

  The rogue collided with the onrushing Mand
elbrot in a thunderous, resounding crash. There was a blur of violent motion, and Mandelbrot was suddenly down in the dirt, his legs thrashing helplessly from a severed cable held in the rogue’s claws. The rogue itself had a long scratch in its flank but otherwise seemed unharmed.

  Derec opened his mouth to shout, to protest, to scream. The chemfets told him that the Hunter-Seekers were coming, but they would be too late.

  Much too late.

  SilverSide growled terribly, flung the cable away, and was on him. He tried to raise his hands, hopelessly. Claws raked Derec’s sides as she grappled him and bore him down. “No!” he screamed. “You can’t hurt me! I’m a human —”

  The rogue wailed.

  “I’m a human —” the GodBeing Derec cried. The word set off a bewildering spark of reactions in SilverSide’s mind. Human! The resonance from that VoidTongue word was stunning, and SilverSide reeled from its effects.

  A human being is an intelligent life form.

  Intelligence. Human.

  “You are not human,” SilverSide roared in denial, but she spoke in HuntTongue — the language of “humans” — and no answer came to her. Taking advantage of SilverSide’s confusion, the GodBeing had rolled to its feet, and now she struck at it once more, intending to slash it open with her claws for its lie.

  She could not. Could not. It was as if the OldMother controlled her hand and brought the claws back at the last instant so that she missed the GodBeing. She leapt at it instead, bearing it down again to roll it gasping in the dirt, then moving away a step so that it could stay on its back, submissive and beaten.

  It either did not know to submit, or it would not. The GodBeing staggered up once more, defiant. SilverSide rushed at it again. The GodBeing screeched with pain as her arms wrapped around its chest and squeezed.

  “Submit!” she whispered to it, and it was as if the OldMother’s will made the words a plea. She wanted this to end. She wanted the GodBeing to go limp and end this farce.

  She was so much stronger than this thing of flesh. The GodBeing was weak, weaker than the sickest of the kin. And yet it still struggled.