What was she after? Not his city programming; she could have gotten that anywhere. He hadn’t exactly been discreet in its deployment. No, she’d been following him, and there could only be one reason for that.
Avery laughed. The thought of Janet harboring affection for him after all this time seemed somehow pathetic. She’d been so careful to let him know how she felt only contempt for him when she’d left-but she’d evidently been fooling herself all along.
Well, if she expected some kind of reconciliation, she was due for a disappointment. Avery had no intention of including her in any of his future plans. Her underutilized robot material, yes; he would find a use for that, but Janet would have to take care of herself.
Derec sat alone in his study, contemplating the scenery in the viewscreen. He had instructed it to display a realtime image from directly overhead: what he would see out a real window if the apartment were on the surface instead of underground. It was a peaceful sight, the last few rays of golden light from the setting sun peeking through gaps in the forest canopy, spotlighting leaves or vines or gnarled tree trunks at random-but Derec felt far from peaceful even so.
He couldn’t get his mind off his mother. She was here; she had to be, but other than that one fact he knew nothing at all. Was she here merely to collect her robots, or did she have more than that in mind? If she did, did he want to help her do whatever it was she had come to do, or not? Was she as cold and cruel as Avery had insinuated in those few moments when Derec had managed to get him talking about her, or was she more…maternal? He didn’t know. He had racked his memory for traces of her, but whatever Avery had done to induce his amnesia had been especially thorough in wiping out references to that part of his life. She was a complete mystery to him. He didn’t even know her name.
He could probably find her through the computer, but every time he’d made a move to do it; he had stopped, the command dying on his lips. He really didn’t know if he could handle meeting her. Life with Avery was such a struggle, swinging from aloofness to trust to anger to contempt almost at random; he didn’t think he could bear another relationship of that sort. If his mother were just another Avery, then maybe he was better off without her.
What sort of person would marry a man like Avery, have a son with him, and then leave? What sort of person would create a kind of baby robot and abandon three of them on three different worlds? When he expressed the question like that, he didn’t much like the answer, but he knew those acts didn’t necessarily define the person. She might have had a perfectly good reason for doing them. No doubt she did; she had come back for her robots, after all. That implied a purpose.
But had she come back for him as well? He didn’t know.
He might never know if he didn’t make some move to find out. And not knowing was just as bad as knowing she hadn’t.
“Central,” he said suddenly, swiveling around in his chair to face the monitor. “See if you can find-” He stopped, mouth agape. His desktop was covered in formula again.
“Find what, Master Derec?”
“Who did this?”
“That information is-”
“Unavailable. Right. I think we’ve gone through this before. Can you record it?”
“I regret that I may not.” May not, Derec noticed. Someone had ordered it not to. It was a test, then, to see what he’d do. That smacked of Avery, but somehow this didn’t have the flavor of an Avery test. Avery would have carved the formula on the door to the Personal and ordered it not to let him in until he solved it. No, this had come from someone else, and Derec knew who that someone had to be. She had to be watching him, then, to have known he was in his study.
Well, he’d already made the decision, right? He looked into the monitor, smiled, and said, “Hi, Mom.”
Janet couldn’t help laughing. He’d seen right through her little subterfuge in an instant. The way he stared out of the screen at her, she almost thought he could see through that as well, but she knew her earlier order not to allow two-way communication was still in effect.
“I know you’re watching me,” he said.
Should she respond? She rejected the idea immediately. She couldn’t bring herself to do it, knowing all the questions and accusations and…emotions…it would lead to.
“I’ve got your robots here.” He paused, frowning, then said, “I don’t mean that like it sounds. I’m not holding them hostage or anything; this is just where they are.” He rubbed his chin in thought, then added, “They’re really mixed up, you know? They have to follow the Three Laws, but they don’t know what ‘human’ is, so their loyalty varies with every new situation. They’re trying to figure out the rest of the rules, too, but they don’t even know what game they’re playing. I think they’d like to know what you made them for. For that matter, r d like to know what you made them for.”
Derec looked down at his desktop, still displaying the bas-relief image of the robotics formula, and whispered” And while you’re at it, I’d like to know what you made me for, too.”
“Oh, spare me,” Janet said. “I’ve seen enough.” Her monitor obediently went gray, and she leaned back in her chair. “See what happens?” she asked Basalom, who stood just to her left. “The minute you get two people together-even when the conversation is one-way-things start to get mushy. People are so…so… .biological.”
“Yes, they are.”
Janet laughed. “You’ve noticed, eh? And what conclusions have you drawn?”
Basalom made a great show of pursing his vinyl lips and blinking before he said, “Biological systems are less predictable than electromechanical ones. That can be both a handicap and an asset, depending upon the circumstances. “
“Spoken like a true philosopher. And which do you think is preferable in the long run? Biological or electromechanical?”
Basalom attempted a smile. “To quote a popular saying: ‘The grass is always greener on the other side.”
Janet laughed. “Touche, my friend. Touche.”
Chapter 5. Human Nature
Wolruf woke to bright sunlight striking her full in the face. She raised her head, sniffing the air, but it was the same dead, boring, metallic-smelling air she’d come to associate with the city. She squinted into the sunlight and saw that it came from a viewscreen. She growled a curse. She’d been dreaming of home again, a home full of others of her own kind; a busy, happy place full of the noise and smells and sights of people doing things. To wake up here in this silent metal cell was an insult to the senses.
She stretched her arms and yawned, still tired. Despite the dreams of home, she had slept poorly, as she had for-how long? Months? She hadn’t been counting. Still, she didn’t think she’d ever been so restless in her life. She knew what was causing it: too much time away from her own kind and her recent experiences with a species that was close to her both physically and socially-but knowing the cause didn’t make it go away. And hearing Derec talk about his mother didn’t help, either. His open enthusiasm at the prospect of regaining a bit of his past had only reminded Wolruf of what she still missed.
But she didn’t need to stay away any longer. Now that Aranimas was out of the picture, and with him her obligation to work off the family debt in his service, she could go back any time she wanted. Her family would welcome her openly, especially so if she brought with her this robot technology of Avery’s.
That was the problem, the one factor in the equation that refused to come clear for her. Should she take robots home with her and start an economic and social upheaval that would surely disrupt the normal pace of life there, or should she keep them secret, forget about her time among robots, and just go back to the home she remembered so fondly? And what would happen if she did that? Was Ariel right? Would her home become a backward place, an enclave of curiously anachronistic behavior, while the rest of the galaxy developed in ways her people would eventually be unable even to comprehend?