Such tactics were horribly ill-suited for their current foe.
It required no effort for SilverSide to picture what would happen if the WalkingStone used its laser on any of the kin. The urgent First Law need to respond drove everything else from SilverSide’s mind.
With the left side of her body still shut down, there was only one possibility. With anything fashioned to resemble a living creature, the joints-neck, elbows, knees-are the most fragile area. SilverSide knew that: as a shapechanger herself, structural dynamics were part of her core knowledge. Her malleable body shifted, altered. The mostly immobile left side she rounded as best she could; everything else she metamorphosed into a massive, coiled muscle.
She gathered herself. Aimed.
Leapt.
Metal boomed against metal like a thunderclap.
The WalkingStone’s neck was stabilized with supports, but none were designed to withstand the tremendous hammer blow SilverSide represented. There was a screech and a wail of stressed steel. Welds popped as the head was suddenly canted at an acute angle. The glowing eyes dimmed. The thing staggered, the laser fired wildly and high. Its knees buckled, it seemed to wheeze mechanically.
It fell.
As it fell, SilverSide heard its voice in her head. Oddly, SilverSide understood it, for the thing spoke in the language she’d been born with. Central, under attack, badly damaged and shutting down……The voice trailed off. None of the kin looked as if they’d heard it.
SilverSide had fallen herself, resuming her wolf shape. As her body cooled, control returned. She managed to limp slowly to her feet, and stood on her hind legs over the fallen WalkingStone. It twitched spasmodically, but seemed no threat. Its mental voice was silent. As SilverSide watched, a plume of thin, acrid smoke came from the broken neck, and all movement stopped.
SilverSide lifted her muzzle and gave a BeastTalk howl of triumph as she’d seen the other kin do after a kill. The others howled with her.
LifeCrier and KeenEye padded over. Both groveled in front of SilverSide, baring their necks in ritual submission. “You are the Bane of WalkingStones,” LifeCrier declared. “You saved our lives and the lives of all the kin here.”
“Yes,” SilverSide answered. It was not immodesty; it was simply truth.
KeenEye rose, her eyes unreadable. “I was wrong,” she said. “What LifeCrier said of you is true. You are the wisest of us. You are the OldMother’s gift.” She paused “You are now the leader of kin.”
“Yes,” SilverSide said.
The decision echoed in all her judgment circuits. “Yes, I am,” she repeated.
Chapter 8. A Hurried Departure
The hard thing under his cheek seemed to be a foot. It was attached to a very smooth and shapely leg, and at the top of the leg…
“Derec,” a woman’s sleepy contralto said warningly from farther down the bed. A warm breath tickled his shin. “I’m very, very cross when rudely awakened.”
“You don’t like it?”
Ariel wriggled under his attention. “It’s not…0” she breathed, then sighed. “I’m just tired.”
“Too tired?”
She gasped. “Oh, you…” In a flurry of bedcovers, she whirled around. Her mouth touched his. She rolled him on his back.
Much later, they snuggled together. Derec reached out from the cover to touch the contact that caused the wall of the bedroom to become one-way transparent. Though in the middle of Aurora’s largest city, there was nothing to be seen but green, open expanse. They looked out over an expanse of a lush rolling meadow, crowned with a stand of magnificent trees. The orange-red sun of Aurora slashed through the branches, wedges of light outlined in a miasma of morning fog.
A native whose whole life had been spent on the planet might have shrugged-beautiful Auroran sunrises were commonplace enough to have become the norm-but in the year since Derec and Ariel had been on the planet, they hadn’t yet become blast. They gazed at the display as if the awakening world had arranged it strictly for their benefit.
“It’s very lovely,” Ariel whispered.
“Like you.”
“Flatterer.”
“Will it get me anywhere?”
“We’ll see. Maybe. A little later, anyway.”
“There’s no reason to wait.”
“Greedy this morning, aren’t we? Well, you’ll just have to cultivate a little patience.”
Ariel kissed him again and rolled from the bed. With a lithe grace, she moved across the room. She’d recovered entirely from her ordeal in Robot City, or at least it seemed that way. The disease that had warped her personality had been cured, her injuries healed. She had left Robot City and returned to normal.
But not Derec. The chemfets-tiny viral replicas of the Robot City material developed by his father, Dr. Avery-had been implanted in Derec. Though he’d gained control of the chemfets after they’ d threatened to take him over, the ordeal had left him permanently linked to the city. Even now he could, ifhe wished, listen to the inner conversations in his body and hear the sounds of the Robot City central computer, across light-years of distance. He could give the city orders, direct the actions of its myriad robots, alter its programming…
Derec did not enjoy playing god, no matter how minor a one. He didn’t enjoy being shackled to his father’s mad creation. He especially didn’t enjoy the fact that he didn’t yet know the full extent of that inner universe.
They were still chained to Avery, even now. Their return to Aurora and the tale of Robot City had made news everywhere on that world. They were celebrities. Even now, they could not go out in the public areas of the city without someone coming up to them.
The thoughts drove away his good humor. He looked out at the Auroran dawn and suddenly saw nothing. The dawn might as well have been a computerized image projected on a wall. He sighed.
“I know that look,” Ariel said from the open door of the personal. “You’re brooding again.”
“No, I’m not.”
“You are too. I’ve been with you too long not to know. You’re thinking about Robot City again.”
There was an edge to her voice that made Derec grimace. Theirs had been a roller-coaster ride of a relationship: they never seemed to be able to settle into any semblance of normalcy. When things were good, they were very good indeed. And when they were bad…
That was Avery’s legacy as well-many of the memories Derec and Ariel shared were not pleasant. For the months they’d been trapped in Robot City, Ariel’s personality had been in a steady, disintegrating spiral, fluctuating between vivacious and darkly sullen.
At least she’d escaped. At least she’d escaped from that planet and been cured.
Derec could never leave Robot City. It would always be there within him. It was his, his responsibility, whether he wanted it or not.
“Derec, stop it,” Ariel said warningly.
“Stop what?”
“I’m not going to answer something that obvious. Figure it out yourself.”
He knew he should have apologized then. He knew he should have smiled deprecatingly and shrugged, should have risen himself and kissed her until she forgot the argument and the dawn was again something beautiful to see.
But he didn’t.
“Sorry I’m so stupid,” he said bitterly.
Ariel’s face was red with irritation, her eyes narrowed and her hands clenched into angry fists. “Derec, don’t spoil the morning, please.”
“I ’ mnot the one who knows what everyone else is thinking. It seems to me that you claimed that ability. I thought everything was going fine.”
“You’re being childish.”
“And you’re being arrogant.”
“Arrogant? Damn it, Derec…Derec?” She stopped. Derec was no longer listening to her. He was standing in the middle of the room, his gaze inward and blind.
The call had entered Derec’s mind with an urgency that was almost painful. Aurora, the dawn outside the window, Ariel’s voice: they’d all disappeared in the frantic need of the message. The chemfets relayed the message to him.