At the moment, Adam mimicked Derec’s features and Eve mimicked Ariel’s. Lucius II, his imprinting programming struggling for control in unfamiliar company, was a more generic blend of features.
Derec found it unnerving to watch the robot’s face shift uncertainly between a copy of a copy of his own and of Ariel’s. He decided to get the thing to focus its attention on him, and said, “One thing you all have in common is that you’re all a lot of trouble. Lucius-Lucius II,” he added, emphasizing the “II” as if making a great distinction between the former robot and his namesake, “-did you give any thought to what you were destroying when you started this-this project of yours?”
“I did.”
“Didn’t you care?”
“I do not believe I did, at least not in the sense you seem to give the word. However, you may be surprised to know that my motive was to restore the city to normal operations. “
“By destroying it?” Avery demanded.
“By rebuilding it. The city was not functioning normally when I awakened here. It was designed to serve humans, but until you arrived, there were no humans. Therefore, I set out to create them. In the process, I found that the city required modification. I was engaged in making those modifications when you stopped me.”
“What you made was a long way from human,” Ariel said.
Lucius II had nearly adjusted his features to match Derec’s; now they began to shift toward Ariel’s again. “You saw only the homunculi,” he said. “They were simple mechanical tests run to determine whether complete social functions could be programmed into the later, fully protoplasmic humans. Unfortunately, they proved too limited to answer the question, but the human-making project has enjoyed better success.”
In the voice of someone who wasn’t sure she wanted to know, Ariel asked, “What do you mean? What have you done?”
By way of answer, the robot turned toward the computer terminal at Avery’s side. He didn’t need the keyboard, but sent his commands directly via comlink. By the time everyone else realized what he was doing, he had an inside view of a large, warehouselike building on the monitor. The building was missing a corner, torn completely away in the destruction of only a few minutes earlier, but they could still see what Lucius had intended to show them.
The floor was acrawl with small, furry, ratlike creatures. Lucius II said, “Whereas the homunculi you saw and dissected were completely robotic, and were, as you said, ‘a long way from human,’ these are actual living animals. In fact, they each carry in their cells the entire genetic code for a human being-all twenty-three chromosome pairs-but certain genes for intelligence and physical appearance have been modified for the test run. Once I am convinced that the process has no hidden flaws, I will use the unmodified genes to create humans for the city to serve.”
“You will do no such thing!” Dr. Avery demanded. “That is an order. When I want humans here, I will put them here myself.”
“I will comply with your order. However, you should know that there was no indication of your wishes in the central computer’s programming.”
“There will be,” Avery promised. Derec suppressed a grin. No matter how much he denied it, his father’s city was still in the experimental stages as well. He and Derec had both had to make many modifications in its programming to keep it developing properly. True, the complications Lucius II had brought about were not Avery’s doing, but the city robots’ underlying desire to find and serve humans-and thus, in a sense, Lucius’s project-was.
Ariel was staring, horrified, at the creature on the screen as it picked up a scrap of something between its teeth and scuttled out the hole in the wall and out of sight. “That’s human?” she whispered.
“Not at all,” Lucius II said. “It merely uses altered human genes.”
“That’s-that’s awful. It was human, but you twisted it into something else.”
“It was never anything other than what it is.”
“It could have been!”
“Certainly. The raw materials making up this city could also have been used to produce more humans. So could a large percentage of the atmosphere. However, the depleted resources that would result from such a usage would not support those humans in any degree of comfort. I made a logical deduction that no thinking being would wish for every combination of chemicals that could possibly become human to actually do so. Was I in error?”
“Yes!” Ariel stared at him a moment, slowly realizing the true meaning of what she’d said, and went on, “I mean, no, you weren’t in error in that particular conclusion, but to apply it to already-formed genes is different.”
“The genes existed only as information patterns in a medical file until I synthesized them.”
“I don’t care! They were still-”
“Hold it,” interrupted Derec. “This is neither the time nor the place for a philosophical discussion of what makes a human. We can do that just as well at home, where we’re more comfortable.” Of his father, he asked, “Have you finished your reprogramming?”
“For the time being,” Avery replied. “There’s more yet to be done, but there’s no sense fiddling with the details until the major features are restored.”
“Then let’s go home. Come on.” Derec led the way out of the computer center, through the jumble of wreckage in the corridors-wreckage that robot crews were already at work cleaning up and repairing-and out into the street.
The destruction outside was less evident than what they had seen in the computer center. Entire buildings were missing, to be sure, but in a city that had changed its shape as often as Adam or Eve changed their features, that was no indication of damage. Only the pieces of buildings lying in the street revealed that anything was amiss, and even as they watched, those pieces whose individual cells were still functional began to melt into the surface, rejoining with the city to become part of its general building reserve once again. A few fragments were too damaged to rejoin, but robots were already at work cleaning those up as well, loading them into trucks and hauling them back to the recycling plant.
Avery smiled at the sight, and Derec knew just what was going through his mind. Transmogrifying robots meant nothing to him; entire cities were his palette.
A row of transport booths waited at the curb just outside the computer center’s doorway. The booths were just big enough for one passenger each, little more than meter-wide transparent cylinders to stand in while the magnetic levitation motors in the base whisked their passengers to their destinations. They were a new design, completely enclosed and free-roaming rather than open to the air and following tracks like the booths Derec was used to. Either the destruction had been too great to allow using the track system immediately, and these booths were a temporary measure until the old system was restored, or the City had taken advantage of the opportunity to change the design and this was to be the style from now on. It didn’t matter to Derec either way. The booths were transportation, whatever their shape.
Derec boarded one, felt it bob slightly under his weight, and grasped the handhold set into the console at waist level. “Home,” he said to the speaker grille beside the handle, trusting the central computer to recognize his voice and check his current address.
Through his internal link with the city computers, he expanded the order. Bring the others to the same destination, he sent, turning around to focus on the other members of the group, who were each boarding booths of their own. He sent the image with his order, thus defining which “others” he was talking about.
It was probably unnecessary in all but Lucius II’s case, since everyone else knew where they were going, but it never hurt to be certain.
Acknowledged,came the response.
On a whim, Derec sent, Patch me into receivers in the other booths in this party.