Asimov’s Future History Volume 7 Page 6

  “No!” it shouted back, its face gone red, its eyes wide and mouth gaping open. She could smell its breath, strangely sweet. “No. You must stop this. I order it. I am a human. You must obey me.”

  The words staggered SilverSide as if they were physical blows. Her grasp loosened, and the GodBeing sagged to the ground. SilverSide stared at it without seeing it, all her attention on the confusion within her.

  Human.

  You must obey.

  SilverSide howled in BeastTalk.

  Somehow, he wasn’t dead. The rogue was howling again like a mad thing, and, as Derec stared at it, its body was changing. The snout was shortening, the ears moving lower on the body, and the canine jaws softening. Yes, the face was humanoid, and the features were startlingly like Derec’s own.

  “GodBeing, I... I must know... more,” it said, and he could hear the confusion in its mind in its halting voice. Positronic drift. Derec began to feel some hope. “I... need information.”

  There was someone or something behind the rogue, some shape. Mandelbrot had managed to lock his legs and rise, lumbering stiff-legged to them and impelled by the First Law. Derec saw the blow coming a moment before it landed. “Mandelbrot, no —” he began to shout, but it was too late.

  Mandelbrot’s closed fist fell on the rogue’s neck. It went to its knees, a wolfish snarl coming from its human mouth, and now it was changing again, returning to wolf form. “No, Mandelbrot!” Derec ordered again. “I’m in no danger!”

  The rogue was confused. It looked from Mandelbrot to Derec, to the forest, to the Hunter-Seekers moving rapidly toward them. It screeched, a sound of raw animal fury, its features changing rapidly and ceaselessly. Human/wolf/human/wolf.

  Wolf.

  It stared at Derec. “Don’t go,” he began, but the rogue shook its head.

  Dropping to all fours, it began to run for the cover of the forest.

  “Come back!” Derec shouted. “I can teach you! In the city...”

  But it was already gone.

  Chapter 27

  CHANGELING

  BELOW, THE KIN huddled on the ledge before PackHome. The pups yelped and played mock fights and nursed. The younglings old enough to be in the Hunting Pack strutted and told fanciful tales about how they had helped SilverSide kill WalkingStones. The adults simply nodded and occasionally looked to the summit of the hill where SilverSide and LifeCrier had gone.

  It had been a strange fight, that of SilverSide and the GodBeing. They still did not know who had won.

  “You are unhappy with me,” SilverSide said in HuntTongue.

  LifeCrier shook his grizzled muzzle from side to side. He used KinSpeech, telling SilverSide that she needn‘t be so concerned. “No, SilverSide. Not unhappy with you. I’m sad that you’re leaving.”

  “I have not decided that. I have decided nothing.”

  “I can smell the change in you.”

  “LifeCrier has the nose of a DirtDigger,” SilverSide said in HuntTongue, and LifeCrier bowed his head at the rebuke. He did not move away, though, standing his ground on the rise. They could see the Hill of Stars in the twilight, an aching brightness, and they both stared at it for long minutes.

  “I saw the OldMother move in you,” LifeCrier said. “My eyes are not as sharp as KeenEye’s, but you and the GodBeing...”

  “I know. I felt it.”

  “What will you do?”

  SilverSide howled, and after a second, LifeCrier joined her. Their twined voices caused flocks of birds to rise in the trees below. “I am kin,” SilverSide said at last. “I lead the litter-kin here.”

  “I know. No one would challenge you. You are the OldMother’s Gift.”

  “I am kin,” SilverSide repeated. “Yet...” She stopped and looked at LifeCrier.

  “I must do what is best for kin,” she said.

  LifeCrier nodded. “That is all the OldMother would ever ask,” he told her.

  “Derec!” Mandelbrot whispered urgently and pointed.

  Campfire and city lights glinted on the robot’s polished body; the red gleam of its eyes glanced at Derec and then back into the night darkness beyond the city.

  Derec rubbed sleep from his eyes. He struggled from under his thermal blanket and stood. The night was very quiet. Even the brilliantly lit city at his back seemed quiet, though he knew that thousands of robots were about their tasks there. The sweet odor of woodsmoke filled the air; a gentle and cool night wind tossed the mane of smoke back toward the city.

  They’d been camped outside the city for the past two nights, waiting. Each night he’d expected the rogue to come to him. The city was broadcasting an endless invitation to SilverSide. Come into the city. You will not be harmed. The city’s library is open to you. Come and learn.

  At last, it looked like it would answer the invitation.

  The only question was how.

  On the wooded crest of a hill, Derec saw the wolf-creatures. Their dark, quick shapes moved like fleet shadows under the swaying rooftop of the trees. Both moons were up; despite the city’s glare and the campfire, Derec could see them quite well. Mandelbrot had moved near Derec, ready to protect him should the wolf-creatures show any hostility.

  Hunter-Seekers can be sent, Alpha reminded him.

  No. Not yet. anyway.

  The shivering howls and barks of the wolf-creature’s language drifted down toward them. Derec shuddered. In the weeks he’d been on this world, he still hadn’t become used to that sound. Mandelbrot noticed and shuffled even closer. “Old racial memories die hard,” he told the robot.

  “The rogue is with them,” Mandelbrot said. “They’re gathering around it. Master Derec, I think we should have the city call the Hunter-Seekers. I am not sufficient protection for you. Regardless of whether the rogue will harm you, the wolfcreatures are certainly nor bound by the Laws....”

  “I’ve already ordered Alpha to hold them back, Mandelbrot. The wolves are no danger. Not yet. Be patient; you’re the one who worked so hard to convince me they’re intelligent, remember?”

  “Intelligent is not a synonym for ‘not dangerous,’ “Mandelbrot pointed out. “You as a human should be well aware of that.”

  “Hmph.” Derec snorted. “We’ll wait, anyway.”

  The pack had gathered at the edge of the trees closest to the city. Derec could see the rogue now, glinting in the moonlight between the pacing outriders of the wolf-creatures. Now it stepped out into full moonlight, the old one at its side. The two licked each other, nuzzling and giving playful nips. Then the rogue began walking alone down the grassy slope toward Derec and Mandelbrot.

  Halfway down, the robot turned and looked back to the pack, which had gathered at the lip of the hill to watch the descent. The rogue lifted its muzzle to the wolves and gave a long, ululating lament.

  The wolves chorused back.

  To Derec, they sounded wild and sad.

  The rogue began picking its way among the rocks toward Derec’s camp once more. As it approached, the rogue’s body began a slow metamorphosis. Step — the lupine muzzle shortened; step — the tail began to shorten and retract into the body; step — it raised up to walk on its hind legs; step — and the legs themselves altered, the knees beginning to flex forward.

  When the robot stopped a few meters in front of them, it was recognizably humanoid in the firelight. It glanced at Mandelbrot, then at Derec.

  “GodBeing Derec, I have come to learn,” it said. Except for the stilted, formal grammar, its voice sounded very much like Derec’s. “I have come so you may teach me of the Void from which we both fell. I have come to learn what is human.”

  Derec nodded. He pointed back to the city and the looming bright presence of the compass Tower. “The answers are all in there,” he said. “follow me, and I’ll show you the way. Mandelbrot, if you’ll take care of the fire, please... we wouldn’t want the woods to burn.” He said it mostly for the rogue’s benefit, wanting it to understand that he was concerned about the well-being of the wolf-c
reatures.

  It was difficult for Derec to give the rogue his back. He half expected it to leap on him again, biting and tearing. He listened intently for a suspicious sound behind him. Derec knew that Mandelbrot was already on edge and would respond instantly, but still...

  Nothing happened.

  Alpha, we’re coming in. The rogue is with me.

  We will have the apartment ready, Master Derec.

  Derec began walking, then glanced back when he didn’t hear the robot following. It was staring back at the forest, and as it did, the malleable face went vaguely wolfish again.

  “It’s your choice,” Derec told it softly. “I won’t force you to make that decision. Come with me or go back to them. I won’t try to stop you.”

  The robot howled to the wolves one last time, the bestial sound eerie and wrong to be coming from that human-shaped throat.

  Then the rogue turned from the darkness of the trees and the huddled pack.

  It followed Derec into the eternal light of the city.

  Renegade

  3605 A.D.

  Chapter 1

  THE CEREMYONS

  GENTLY SOARING — BASKING under the sun — the two blackbodies circled far above the shimmering atmospheric irregularity that was nearing completion on the planet’s surface. As high as a small mountain, the iridescent transparency, viewed from outside, covered a smooth hemispherical excavation in the planet’s surface two kilometers in diameter, except for an open pie cut, a not-yet-covered sector ten degrees wide. Looking into the open sector, structures — built on ground not excavated, paradoxically — covered the entire inner area. The most striking of these structures was a tall, stepped pyramid centered under the dome.

  The blackbodies floated a wingspread apart, five times the armspread of an Avery robot. Those beings — the Avery robots — were even then streaming out of the incomplete sector, evacuating the dome. The blackbodies had learned the name “Avery robot,” but the name lacked meaning beyond its intonation.

  “The construction was slowed by your absence yesterday, Sarco,” one blackbody said to the other, “and I thank you for that. You needed the day off. Unfortunately, the effort was only slowed. It would have benefited by a complete interruption.”

  “You are a rascal,” the other said, his red eyes gleaming like bumming embers set deep in a black demonic body. “I’ll bet you arranged for an Avery to cut me loose during tether last night. At least they’ve learned not to blow us up.”

  The blackbodies appeared identical in form: a large white hook protruding from above deep-set, luminous red eyes; a lacy silver frond languidly waving at the other end; but bodies otherwise devoid of visible detail except as flying winged silhouettes. Wrinkles in the skin, if any, and other possible lines of demarcation were lost in the soft blackness.

  “You were cut loose?” the first said.

  “Don’t play the innocent, Synapo. Someone cut my tether last night, and by the time I drifted into sunrise, I was over Barneup. It took me all day to get back. Have you ever tried to grow a new hook while underway?”

  “You do look a little beat. But then so am I. Trying to make sense of Wohler-9 is exhausting, and so far he’s the best of the Averies. I learned very little today. We could both do with early tether. I’ll see you in the morning, Sarco.”

  “Wait up! You’re not getting off that easy.”

  But Synapo had already balled and was dropping, if not like a rock, still at an appreciable rate that put him out of earshot in a trice. Sarco sighed — a soft gentle emission of pure oxygen with a faint trace of unreacted ammonia — but did not follow immediately.

  As Synapo approached the surface of the planet, he began braking, unfurling from his collar the tough filmy hide of his reflector, letting it flap and rattle in his wake as it dragged at him like a sea anchor. As he neared the trees on the side of the domed transparency away from the open sector, he sealed the gores of the thin, shiny reflector, sealing all but his head inside, leaving his hook and eyes protruding from the underside.

  With gentle bursts of compressed hydrogen, he began to inflate the reflector, dissipating his momentum and slowing his descent until he was barely drifting downward. Ten meters above the top of a tall conifer, he let go his chitinous hook, letting out the tether of tough, stringy hide until the hook was dangling below a sturdy limb. A final burst of hydrogen filled the reflector, erasing the last crease to leave a smooth, unblemished, mirrorlike surface. The tether twanged taut, caught between the now buoyant silvery balloon and the hooked limb of the tree.

  Synapo began the luxurious process of uncoiling his tense fibers, drifting into deep tether as he lay suspended within his own skin. His storage cells were not sated with a day’s thermoelectric output from the sun’s radiant heat as they normally would have been if the aliens had not been disturbing the atmosphere; but little of the radiation he had been exposed to that day had escaped the nearly perfect blackbody absorption of his other skin. That energy was all there, save only the small expenditure for intense thought and languid motion, and the large expenditure for electrolyzing water and compressing hydrogen; and the unusual expenditure that day to converse — if it could be called that — with Wohler-9. Still, he had a sufficient reserve of juice left in his cells. It would take little to get him through the night, just that amount needed to maintain body temperature, to make up for the minuscule amount of energy lost by radiation from his silvery hide.

  Sarco stayed aloft until Synapo tethered. Then he balled and dropped and tethered nearby so as to confront Synapo the next morning, first thing.

  The Avery robots continued to stream from the open sector of the dome like ants abandoning an anthill. Dusk was coming on rapidly, but night would not hamper their operations.

  Wohler-9 stood just outside the open sector. He had watched Synapo and Sarco drop, but had not distinguished them from the rest of the blackbodies which, a half-hour later, began to fall from the sky like the gentle descent of a black snow that melted to bright raindrops as it neared the surface, raindrops inversely and miraculously suspended above the trees in defiance of gravity.

  When the tiny amount of absorbed sunshine began to warm Synapo’s reflector the next morning, he awoke and began to deflate. When his hook dangled free, he sucked in his tether and drifted to the ground, gently bouncing off the outer foliage of the tree.

  When he reached the ground, he unsealed the front seam of his reflector and pulled it around him like a bathrobe to preserve his body heat. On his two short legs, he waddled through the forest to a small brook. Sarco was already there, having breakfast and waiting for him. His hook was turned to the back in nonaggressive posture, which was a good sign. Still, he was having breakfast. You could hardly expect anything else. Anger cannot abide alongside intense creature satisfactions.

  During the night, the feathery cold-junction that protruded from Synapo’s rump had warmed, and the millions of hot junctions distributed throughout his lampblack hide had cooled, so that both cold and hot junctions were now at the same median temperature; and he had fasted throughout the night. Now as he backed up to the brook beside Sarco, drew his reflector tight across his back to bunch it in front of him, and squatted to dip his cold junction into the icy water, he sighed contentedly as the fresh juice flowed into his storage cells. That fresh shot each morning was the best juice to be had all day.

  Neither spoke, which was the custom at breakfast, nor would they speak until they were again on the wing. Speaking, unless forced by exigencies — such as the discussion with Wohler-9 — was strictly a waste process, using the oxygen discarded from the electrolytic production of vital hydrogen. Electrolyzing when their hydrogen sacs were full, merely to generate oxygen for speaking, was a luxury they seldom permitted themselves and a necessity only under the rarest of circumstances.

  That morning, however, Synapo again planned to allow himself only an hour on the wing before he resumed his discussion with Wohler-9. He timed it so that he could watch the
Myostrians at work, as he had for the past several days. He was depleting his cells to well below what he found comfortable — he went around continually hungry — but at least he would be generating hydrogen during the discussion and not wasting juice as he would be otherwise. That was small comfort as his store of vital energy dropped lower and lower. But Synapo felt that discussion was vital, not for what it had revealed so far, but for what it promised to reveal in the future.

  With breakfast over and the gores of their reflectors tightly rolled into black ruffled collars, they began the long climb to charge altitude. Synapo, with Sarco following, slowly circled upward with languid but powerful strokes of his great wings. He kept the hemispherical iridescence centered below, so that when he finished his short charge, he could drop rapidly to the open sector where he could see Wohler-9 still standing vigil, right where he had been as Synapo dropped to tether the evening before.

  When they reached a comfortable altitude, Synapo slowed his flapping and rolled onto his back, a wingspread below Sarco, giving the other the dominant position as was his right as interrogator. That had been the status of their conversation the afternoon before when Synapo had terminated it unilaterally.

  “Now, Sarco, you were saying?”

  “Forget that,” Sarco said. “My tether was cut, and I was fuming yesterday evening, but it’s no big deal. A new hook and a night’s rest and it’s the same as forgotten.”

  Good, Synapo thought, but it wasn’t an Avery, it was my own burning breath which sent you into far sunrise. He wouldn’t have stooped to such a childish trick if the situation hadn’t warranted it. The thought of that piece of unstatesmanship lingered, unsettling his conscience.

  “What is important,” Sarco continued, “is getting the weather back under control and stopping the godawful screeching of those tin aliens on hyperwave. The weather I’ll have under control as soon as my people finish neutralizing that node below. I figure to have the compensator complete day after tomorrow.