Basalom nodded and smiled. “What kind of loopholes, Mi-Janet?”
She smiled back at him. He was learning. “Oh, there are thousands of them. For instance, there’s the First Law override. If following Wendell’s order would hurt me directly, then Central would have to ignore it. So it will have to provide me with an automat, for instance, so I won’t starve.” Janet stepped around a high-backed, overstuffed couch in the middle of the room as she spoke, putting it between herself and Basalom. “ And of course Central can’t let me hurt myself, even if that means obeying my orders. Thus: Central, I order you to cushion my fall.” So saying, she leaned over backwards, making no effort to catch herself.
Basalom leaped to her aid, but the couch kept him from reaching her in time. It didn’t matter; the floor softened beneath her, absorbing her fall like a deep pillow. Basalom helped her up, his eyes blinking furiously as he processed the new information.
Janet straightened her blouse. “Thank you, Basalom. And thank you, too, Central.”
“My pleasure, Janet,” the disembodied voice said. “I do enjoy serving you when I may, though I must point out that the dianite in the floor would have reacted without my intervention.”
Of course it would have, but Janet still had her confirmation. She nodded to Basalom. “That’s the key, you know. Central’s pleasure. The Three Laws govern its actions as much as they do yours; it wants to serve me. Avery’s order is no doubt causing it considerable conflict right now, aren’t I right?”
“You are correct,” Central said.
“So there’s our loophole,” Janet said triumphantly. “Central wants to serve me, but can’t follow my orders. Wendell didn’t say a thing about my wishes, though. So as long as I don’t make a direct order when I tell it what I want, we’re fine.”
Basalom blinked a few more times, then his eyelids stilled. “That does seem logical,” he replied.
“Of course it does. I thought of it. So, Central, I’d like to know if anybody tried to find me. I’d also like to know what happened to my learning machines, and how to get them back. Anything you can tell me that might help me do that would be a big favor.”
“They have been revived,” Central responded. “They and Derec are returning to Derec’s apartment.”
“Excellent.” Janet turned to the desk, sat down in the chair before it. “Show me-uh, I’d like to see them.”
Nothing happened. She frowned. Evidently that still sounded too much like a command. She cocked her head, dredging for a long-unused word that was supposed to be good in situations like this. Of course; how silly of her to have forgotten it. “I’d like to see them, please.”
Ariel was bored to tears. The only thing that kept her from crying was the somewhat blurry sight of Mandelbrot standing in his niche beside her. She knew if he suspected she was unhappy he would start asking questions, trying to find the cause and fix it for her, and she just didn’t feel up to explaining boredom to a robot.
She pushed the page button on her book reader every few minutes to make him think she was absorbed in her field guide, but she was really just letting herself drift. Maybe she should take a nap, she thought. It was going to be a long day if she wanted to adjust to local time by sunrise tomorrow; a few hours sleep would be just the thing to ease the transition.
She scowled. No, she wasn’t sleepy. She was just bored. There was nothing to do here. There was a limit to how much walking in the forest you could take, just as there was a limit to how much reading or eating you could do. She wasn’t interested in any of those things, nor in anything else she could think of to do. Derec had already picked up a project-it seemed he could find something to do instantly, no matter where they went-but Ariel had no interest in what he was doing, either. He was off searching for Avery and the troublesome robots, and she was tired of all of them.
Robots, robots, robots. It seemed that was all anybody could think about anymore. What about the other things in life? What about friends? What about hyperwave movies? What about fast spaceships and whooping it up on a Saturday night? Didn’t that count for anything? Ever since she’d linked up with Derec, their lives had been dominated by one thing: Robot City. For a brief moment there on Aurora, before the city on Tau Puppis IV had once again insinuated itself into their lives, they had had an almost normal existence-as normal an existence as two castaway amnesiacs could have, at any rate-but that had come to a sudden end with the trouble Derec’s mother’s robots had caused, and Ariel saw no sign that they would regain it any time soon.
There had been one brief glimmer of hope, one ray of sunshine in the gloomy day of her life, when she’d discovered herself pregnant with his baby. She hadn’t been sure at first if she’d wanted it, but the change it had precipitated in Derec had made up her mind for her. He had suddenly started spending more time with her, had begun talking about going back to Aurora and living a more normal life among real people again-how could she argue with that?
But then Derec’s chemfets-the robotic cells Dr. Avery had injected into him when they’d first encountered him here in the city-had destroyed the fetus, and she was left with nothing at all. Derec had again gotten tied up in his dealings with the robots, and she had gone back to reading a book a day and wondering if she would ever make any use of it all.
To give credit where credit was due, Derec had really had little choice in the matter. He’d been just as much a pawn to events as she had; he was just better equipped to deal with them. But Ariel wished he could solve this whole robot business so they could leave for home again.
Sighing, she looked down at the reader, flipped back a few pages in the field guide to where she’d left off, and began to read.
She looked up again when Derec entered the apartment, three mirror images of himself in tow. Despite her mood, she laughed at the sight, saying, “You look like a mother duck with a line of ducklings following you.”
“I feel a little like one, too,” he said. “They’ve been watching every move I make.”
“We must relearn much of what we have forgotten,” the first robot in line behind him said in Derec’s voice. “We have received damage to our memories.”
Ariel frowned. Damage to their memories? And the robot who had spoken was smaller than the others, as if it had lost some mass as well. “What happened?”
“Avery put them inside magnetic containment vessels,” Derec said. “He got a pretty good recording of their brain activity before he threw the switch, but a lot of the stuff they weren’t thinking about when he made the recording is pretty vague now.” He waved his hand to indicate the living room with its chairs for humans and niches in the walls for robots. Mandelbrot still stood silently in one of the niches. “Go on, relax,” Derec said.
The robots filed past him, hesitated when faced with the choice, then finally settled into the chairs. Derec raised his eyebrows and glanced over at Ariel. “Do you know who she is?” he asked.
“Ariel Burgess,” another of the robots said immediately. Its features began to shift, the cheekbones becoming more prominent and the chin less so, the eyes drifting just a few millimeters farther apart, the hair lengthening until it reached its shoulders, shoulders narrowing, chest developing breasts, breasts covered discreetly behind a copy of Ariel’s blouse. Its waist narrowed, hips widened, legs retracted a few centimeters, the pants covering them also changing from Derec ‘ s baggy trousers to Ariel ‘ s more formfitting tights.
“Hello, Eve,” Ariel said.
“Hello.” Eve’s voice rose slightly to mimic Ariel’s.
Derec went into the kitchen and returned a moment later with a glass of something clear and bubbly to drink. He sat down beside Ariel and offered her some, but she shook her head. “So what did Avery do it for?” she asked.
“Spite,” the smaller of the other two robots-both still mimicking Derec-said.