“Well, they’re better than they might have been.”
There was a rustling at the door, and Avery stood there, bare-footed, clothed in a hospital robe, his arm with its dianite regenerator held to his chest in a sling, with a medical robot hovering anxiously behind him. “I’m glad to hear somebody thinks so,” he said.
“Dad!”
The sight of his father in such a condition wrenched at Derec as nothing had since he’d watched Ariel go through the delirium of her disease. A part of his mind wondered why he was feeling so overwhelmed with compassion now, and not a couple of hours ago when he’d first seen Avery in the operating room, but he supposed it had just taken a while to sink in that his father had been injured. Maybe being with his mother for the last couple of hours had triggered something in him after all, some hidden well of familial compassion he hadn’t known existed.
Avery favored Derec with a nod. “Son,” he said, and Derec thought it was probably the most wonderful thing he’d ever heard him say. Avery took a few steps into the room and made a great show of surveying the entire scene: his gaze lingering on Janet perhaps a fraction of a second longer than upon Derec, then shifting to Ariel, to Wolruf, to the inert robot on the exam table and to the other four standing off to the side. He locked eyes with Lucius, and the two stared at one another for a couple of long breaths.
Lucius broke the silence first. “Dr. Avery, please accept my apology for injuring you.”
“I’m told I have no choice,” Avery said, glancing at Janet and back to Lucius again.
“Oh,” Lucius said, as if comprehending the situation for the first time. He hummed as if about to speak, went silent a moment, then said, “ Accepting my apology would help repair the emotional damage.”
“Concerned for my welfare, are you?”
“Always. I cannot be otherwise.”
“Ah, yes, but how much? That’s the question, eh?” He didn’t wait for a reply, but turned to Janet and said, “I couldn’t help overhearing your little anecdote as I shuffled my way down here. Very amusing, my dear. I should have guessed you’d do something like that.”
Janet blushed, but said nothing.
“I came to discuss terms,” Avery said. “You have me over a barrel with your damned patent and you know it. You said you didn’t like what I’m doing with my cities. All right, what do you want?”
Derec hadn’t heard about any patent, but he knew immediately what had to have happened. Janet had patented dianite when she’d left home, or else Avery in his megalomania had neglected to do it later and she had done so more recently. Either way it added up to the same thing: Avery couldn’t use the material anywhere in the Spacer-controlled section of the galaxy, or use the profit from sales to outside colonies, for fifty years.
Janet didn’t gloat. Derec Was grateful for that. She merely said, “We were just discussing that. Ariel and Wolruf just brought up an intriguing problem, but we think we may have solved it. Why don’t we run it past you and see what you think?”
“I know already what I’m going to think,” Avery said. He folded his good arm over his injured one, which brought the medical robot a step closer, checking to make sure he hadn’t bumped any of the regenerator settings. “Back off,” he told it, and it stepped back again, but its gaze never left his arm.
Derec could see him counting to a high imaginary number, but when he spoke it was only to say, “Give me a chair here.”
The floor mounded up and flattened out into a cushiony seat, grew a back and padded sides, and moved up to bump softly into the back of his legs. Avery sat and leaned back, resting his left arm on his leg. “Let’s hear it,” he said.
Janet mentioned casually that she would like a chair for herself, and after it formed she sat and began explaining about capricious city behavior and the Zeroth Law and moral dilemmas with large and small factions on either side of the issue. Derec and Ariel and Wolruf soon joined in, and the topic shifted to their concerns.
“I worry about w’at introducing robots will do to life back ‘orne,” Wolruf said. “We ‘ave a fairly complex system. We ‘ave four separate species on two planets, all interdependent. W’at’s good for one is usually not so good for another in the short term, but in the long term we need each other.”
“Even the Erani?” Avery asked. Aranimas had been Erani, one of the four races Wolruf spoke about.
Wolruf nodded. She seemed surprised to have Avery listening to her so intently. “Erani ‘ave their place. They keep Narwe for slaves, and sometimes us, but without Erani, Narwe would probably starve. They’re ‘ardly more than intelligent sheep. “
“ And your own people have a trading empire, don’t they?” Ariel asked.
“ ‘at’s right. Once robots start making everything everyone needs, our economy will collapse.”
“But those same robots will provide anything you want. Let it collapse! “
“ ‘Aving everything done for us wouldn’t be ‘ealthy,” Wolruf said.
“That’s right,” said Ariel. “If everybody started doing everything the easy way, it would wipe out their individuality. All four cultures would decline. That’s what I’m worried about, that robot cities are eventually going to make every civilization in the galaxy the same. “
“Wait a minute. I’m supposed to worry about homogenizing the galaxy? That’s not my problem!”
“You’re right, it’s not,” Janet said. “That’s because I’ve solved it for you already.” She explained about providing each city with a positronic mayor, one who would have the best interest of all its inhabitants at heart. Including the long-term effects of having too much done for them.
“So in Wolruf’s situation, we’d use four learning machines, one for each species. Let them learn the separate mores of each culture, and then have them get together and coordinate their work so they wouldn’t step on each other’s toes.”
Derec watched his father watching his mother as she spoke. Avery’s jaw seemed to be dropping lower and lower with each word, until when she finally stopped, his mouth was hanging open in astonishment. He closed it just long enough to take a breath, then bellowed out a laugh that shook the walls.
“Oh, that’s rich,” he said when he could talk again. “I can’t believe it. I wouldn’t inflict these…these walking conglomerations of simulated neuroses on my worst enemies, and you talk about giving them to paying customers?”
“I do indeed,” Janet said. “Obviously, the final version will need to have the Zeroth Law programmed in from the start, but now that these three-excuse me-these four, “ with a nod to Mandelbrot, “have already worked it out, that shouldn’t be too much of a problem. “
“My God,” Avery said. “You really mean it, don’t you? You’d provide every city with a mechanical dictator who’s capable of slicing off a man’s hand just for shooting a robot.”
“I was protecting a being whose humanity is still not clear,” Lucius said, and Derec, hearing the emotion behind his words, suddenly realized that Lucius would be trying to solve that problem for the rest of his life, however many millennia that might be.
And thus are obsessions generated,he thought.
Avery waved his free hand expansively. “Oh, right, well, that makes it okay. It might have been human, after all.” To Janet he said, “Sorry, I’m not buying it. I’d rather do nothing at all than be part of your ridiculous scheme.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.” Janet’s tone of voice was a little too glib, her mouth just hinting toward a smile as she spoke.
“What?” Avery demanded. “I know that tone, woman! How many other nasty little surprises do you have in store for me?”