“They’re machines,” Avery insisted.
“So are we all,” Sarco said. “Biological machines that have become self-aware. And self-replicating as well. Do you maintain that our value is also zero, that we need not be concerned with individual lives, because they are so easy to replace?”
Avery took a deep breath, working up to an explosive protest, but Ariel’s response cut the argument from under him.
“No,” she whispered. “They’re all important.” She turned to Avery, and her voice grew in intensity as she said, “We just went through all this. Didn’t we learn anything from it? Derec and I aborted our own baby because it was going to be born without a brain. Without that, it was just a lump of cells. Doesn’t that tell us something? Doesn’t that tell us the brain is what matters?”
Lucius said to Derec, “You told me that adding a robot brain to the baby at birth would not have made it human.”
Ariel looked surprised, and Derec realized she hadn’t been in on that conversation. Even so, it only slowed her down for a moment. “That’s right,” she said. “It wouldn’t have. I1 would have been a robot in a baby’s body, and we didn’t want a baby robot. But the one question you didn’t ask was whether or not we would have aborted it if it was already as intelligent as a robot, and the answer is no… We wouldn’t have, because even a robot is self-aware. Self-awareness is what matters.”
“You are more civilized than we thought,” Synapo said.
“We try.” Ariel reached out a hand toward Wohler. “Come on,” she said. “I owe you a favor. The original Wohler lost his life saving me from my own stupidity; the least I can do is save his namesake.”
The golden-hued robot alien stepped closer to her, its features twisting from Ceremyon form to humanoid form as it moved, until by the time it stood before her, it was again a normal., Avery-style robot. One of the three others also made the change, becoming the philosopher Plato, formerly Transport Systems Coordinator 45.
Synapo shifted his weight, as if unused to standing so long. “In light of our discussion, I will repeat my question. What do you intend to do with them?”
“Send them back to the original Robot City, I guess,” Avery said. “There’s room for them there.”
“And the city itself?” Synapo tilted his head to indicate the one before them, not the original. “It is self-aware also, is it not?”
“To a very limited degree,” Avery replied. “It’s aware of its own existence, but just enough so it can obey the same three laws the robots do. Everything else; the metamorphosis, the growth, the coordination, is all straight programming.”
“Then you may leave the city, if you wish.”
“What will you do with it? I didn’t think you had any more use for a city than you have for robots.”
“We don’t. But if you remove all but its most basic programming, then it need not remain a city.”
Avery looked back over his shoulder at the grand collection of tall spires, pyramids, geometric solids, and elevated walkways connecting them all. Sunlight glinted off one face of the Compass Tower. Tiny specks of motion on the walkways were robots going about their assigned duties, keeping the city functioning. Derec, watching him, could read Avery, s thoughts as well as if he’ d heard them by comlink.
How can they not need all that?
Avery turned back to the Ceremyons. Shadows with red eyes waited for him to speak. “All right,” he said at last. “What do I care what you do with it? It’s yours.”
“Thank you.”
“You’ll need some kind of control mechanism,” Avery pointed out.
“We have already developed that capability,” Sarco said.
“Oh?”
“Our technology is not as obvious as yours, but that is only because we choose not to let its presence spread unchecked.”
Avery was working himself up to an explosive reply, but he got no chance. Before he could speak, the aliens bobbed up and down once each, turned, and took wing. This time Adam and Eve followed immediately. Lucius watched them rise up into the sky, and as he watched, his arms flattened toward wing shape and his body shrank in size to allow more bulk for the wings. He took a couple of clumsy steps, flapped his wings, and completed the transformation in the air.
“Hey!” Derec shouted. “Where are you going?” Lucius circled around, swooped low, and as he swept past, shouted, “I will return!” Then with powerful strokes he flew off after his two siblings.
“Better return soon, or you’ll be stranded here,” Avery muttered, turning away and heading back toward the transport booths and the city. Without looking back to see if anyone followed, he said, “Wohler! Get our ship ready for space.”
The robots didn’t travel by ship. Under Avery’s direction the city built a new Key center, a factory in which the tiny individual jump motors he called Keys to Perihelion were manufactured, and within hours each robot in the city had his own Key, its destination preset for the original Robot City. On Avery’s command, they all formed up in a line, began marching down the main avenue toward the Compass Tower, and as they reached the intersection directly in front of it, jumped.
Their motion was hypnotic, and it lasted for hours. There had been a lot of robots in the city.
“So why don’t we just use Keys to go back home ourselves?” Derec asked.
“Because I don’t trust them.”
“What do you mean, you don’t trust them? You invented them yourself, didn’t you?”
“An inventor is supposed to trust everything he makes?”
Wolruf, who had just keyed in an order on the automat for something Derec didn’t recognize, looked at her plate with theatrical suspicion. Derec laughed.
“I’d use one in an emergency,” Avery went on, “and I’ve done so in the past, but not without apprehension. If you think getting lost by jumping too far in a ship is dangerous, imagine it with just a key.”
“You mean some of those robots won’t make it home?” Ariel asked, shocked.
Avery rolled his eyes. “Of course they’ll make it home, eventually. Some of them just may have to spend a day or two floating in space while they wait for the Key to recharge for a second shot at it. No problem for a robot, but a little more difficult for a human.”
Derec felt a chill run up his back. He and Ariel had used the Keys half a dozen times, once jumping all the way from Earth’s solar system to Robot City. They had thought they were in perfect safety all the while, but now to find out they weren’t…
What did it matter, after the fact? It shouldn’t have mattered at all, but it did to Derec. It filled him with anger. Too many things were not what they seemed. It sometimes felt as if the universe were playing a game with him, challenging him to figure it out before a wrong assumption killed him. Well, he no longer felt like playing.
But it wasn’t a game you could quit. You could only lose. Eventually something-a mistake, a wrong assumption, bad luck-would happen to you and you would lose the game.
Derec seemed to be losing it in pieces. First his family, then his memory, then his chance to start a family of his own. Now he could feel his self-confidence starting to go as well. How much more could he afford to lose?
And what was the point in that kind of existence, anyway? Perhaps Wohler and Plato knew, but Derec doubted it. He doubted that the Ceremyons knew, either. That was no doubt one of their unanswered questions they had wanted the robots to answer for them.
He was looking out the window in his bleak mood when he noticed three silver-gray Ceremyon forms dropping down out of the sky toward the city. They drew nearer, dipping and weaving in the unstable air over the buildings, until they fluttered to a stop on the balcony. Derec went to the door to let them in.
Lucius went through the transformation to humanoid form and stepped through the doorway. Adam and Eve followed him. Once inside, Lucius said to Derec, “We bring information which you may find useful. And we come to ask a favor in return.”