“We understand,” Lucius said, “but we-I-wish to protest. Using speech to communicate will necessarily slow our joint thought processes.”
“And it’ll keep you from locking up on us again. I order it. Now give us privacy.”
The robots made no motion to indicate whether they had heard or not.
“Wiggle your fingers again.”
No motion.
Avery turned to Derec and Ariel. “Okay, what I want to do is this: Let’s wait and see if they modify their definition of human to include Wolruf on their own, without our orders. Wolruf isn’t in any danger from them, and Mandelbrot will take her orders if she needs a robot.”
“In the meantime she gets treated like a subhuman,” Derec protested. “I don’t like it.”
“She is subhuman,” Avery said, “but that’s beside the point. Think a minute. You convinced me to let these robots go to Ceremya-and to come along myself-so we could see what kind of new developments they came up with. So here’s a new development. Let’s study it.”
Avery’s argument had merit, Derec knew. He didn’t like it, but it made sense. That’s why they had come, to study these robots in action.
“We should at least give her First Law protection,” he said.
“No, that’d skew the experiment. Look, your furry friend isn’t in any danger here; let’s just let it go for now. If anything happens, we can modify their orders then.”
“All right,” Derec said. “I’ll go along with it for now, but the moment she looks like she’s in danger…”
“Fine, fine. Okay, return to service.”
The robots shifted slightly. Eve asked, “May we turn away from the wall now?”
“I suppose so.”
The robots turned to face one another. “Since we must communicate verbally,” Lucius said, “I suggest we each pick a separate tone range. That way we may at least speak simultaneously.”
“If you do, do it quietly,” said Ariel.
“We intend to,” the robot replied.
Derec gave Ariel a last squeeze, then stood up and announced, “I’m going to talk to Wolruf. She sounded pretty unhappy.”
“Go ahead,” Ariel said. “I think I’ll read.”
Avery grunted noncommittally, his eyes already closed in thought again.
The control room was large enough for only two people. The ship was largely automatic, but in the interest of safety it also carried a complete set of manual controls. Derec found Wolruf in the pilot’s seat, a glimmering holographic star map floating over the controls before her. It was the only illumination in the cabin, save for the real stars shining in through the viewscreen. In the midst of the map a thin silver line connected five dots in a not-quite-straight line. One point was no doubt Robot City; the other Ceremya. The kinks in the line in between were jump points, places where the ship would stop along the way to reorient and recharge its engines.
A ship could theoretically make the entire trip in a single hyperspace jump, discounting the time it took to crawl slowly through normal space to the safe jump points in its origin and destination systems. That was seldom done, however, except for short trips. It was much easier, both for navigation and on the engines, to make a series of short jumps from star to star along the way, correcting for minor deviations in course and allowing the engines to rest each time.
“Looks like we ‘ave four jumps,” Wolruf said as Derec slid into the copilot’s seat beside her. “First one tonight.”
“Good. The sooner the better. Things are getting a little strange on this trip already.”
“Could say that, all ri’.”
“We didn’t tell them to follow your orders. Avery wants to see if they’ll decide to do it on their own.”
Wolruf nodded. The motion took her head into and out of the star field before her; for a moment she had a pattern of tiny white dots on her forehead.
“If you don’t want to be part of an experiment like that, I’ll go ahead and order them to. We don’t have to do what Avery says. He isn’t God.”
“None of us are,” Wolruf said with a toothy smile. “That’s what the robots’re trying to tell us. We aren’t gods and they aren’t servants, even if ‘umans did create them to be.”
Derec laughed. “You know, when you think of it, this whole situation is really sick. I’m here because Avery was playing God; the robots are here because my mother, whoever she is, is playing God; I’ve got an entire Robot City running around in my body and giving me control of even more cities; Ariel and I are playing God right now with the fate of our baby-everyone’s caught up in this web of dominance and submission. Who orders who around, and who has to obey who? It’s twisted, warped!”
A twinge of conscience made Derec add to himself, And I’m playing God with the ecosystem project…
“Everybody plays God,” Wolruf said. “Maybe that’s what life is all about. None of us is God, but we all try to be. Even I don’t mind ‘aving an order obeyed now and then.”
“Hmm.”
“Trouble with being God, is she ‘as too much responsibility. Power always brings responsibility, or should.”
“Yeah, that’s the problem, all right.”
Derec looked out the viewscreen. An entire galaxy full of stars beckoned him. Who would want control over all that? The use of it, definitely, but control? Not him.
He laughed again. “It reminds me of the old question of who runs the government. Some people want to, but the best ones for the job are the people who don’t. They take their responsibility seriously.”
Wolruf nodded. “Maybe that’s why most robots like taking orders. No responsibility. Those other three started out on their own, learned to deal with it, so don’t like taking orders.”
“It’s possible,” Derec admitted. Was that why he didn’t like taking orders, then; because his earliest memories were of being on his own, of making his own decisions? Or was something deeper driving him? Nature or nurture? No one had ever answered that question successfully, not for humans, anyway. For robots the answer had always been obvious: Their behavior was in their nature. It was built in. But now, with these three and their insurrection, that answer didn’t seem so pat anymore.
Silence descended upon the control room while he and Wolruf both thought their own thoughts. Wolruf turned back to the star map and pressed a few keys on the console beneath it. One of the silver lines shifted position, bridging the gap between two of their waypoint stars in one jump instead of two. At once the line turned red and an annoying beep filled the cabin. The proposed modification to the jump path was unacceptably risky to the computer:
“Very conscientious navigator,” Wolruf remarked. “Better than ‘uman. Or me.”
Was that a note of regret in her voice? Wolruf was the best pilot of the group; she had always done the flying when she and Derec and Ariel had gone anywhere. Was she feeling useless now?
“You could still use the manual controls if you want,” Derec offered.
“Oh, no. I’m not complaining.” Wolruf pressed another few buttons and the original jump path returned to the star field. She leaned back in the pilot’ s chair and crossed her arms over her chest. Smiling toothily, she said, “Less responsibility for me.”
Despite her confidence in the autopilot, Derec was sure Wolruf would stay in the control room for the jump. Knowing that, he knew that he could put the whole thing out of his mind, safe in the knowledge that she could take care of any problem that might arise should the automatic system fail to do the job right. All the same, when the scheduled time approached, he found himself shifting restlessly in bed, waiting for the momentary disorientation that would mark their passage through hyperspace. He had jumped dozens of times, but he still couldn’t sleep with the knowledge that he was about to be squeezed through a warp in the universe and squirted light-years across space.