“Let’s start with a medium-class residential district,” Avery said, and Lucius sent, Plan A residential. Execute.
At once his comlink filled with the intense high-speed whine of incoming data. Morphallaxis was proceeding smoothly on all fronts; giant trees melting down to become tastefully spaced mansions with a few acres of grounds each, surrounded by a somewhat-thinned forest of living vegetation-
Priority stop, sections2534, 2535, and 2536.
Identify.
Predator I. We have a newborn fawn here, either too young to move or too scared to.
Redirect the building to avoid that area.
Affirmative.
The exchange took a few milliseconds. Within the next few seconds Lucius redirected fifteen more buildings, canceled five altogether, and modified the neighboring structures to account for the extra space so they wouldn’t look so isolated. He carefully monitored the expression on Juliana Welsh’s face for signs of disapproval, but in all the time it took to make the necessary changes, he noticed not a hint of anything but amazement.
Within five minutes of Avery’s command, there before them stood a residential district that might have been medium-class in a society composed entirely of Juliana’s peers. Jungle had given way to a lighter, more friendly forest with glades and houses and ponds scattered not at random but with an architect’s sense of proportion and scale. At least Lucius hoped he had understood the texts correctly. In a moment he would know for sure.
Avery surveyed the cityscape below him critically. Perfect. Absolutely perfect. But it wouldn’t do to let that supercilious positron-pusher know that. And besides, he could use the opportunity to make a good impression on Julie. “Hmmm,” he said, pointing. “That one over there looks a little out of place. How about moving it over about ten meters or so to the left?”
“To the left, sir?” Lucius asked.
“Yes, to the left,” Avery said calmly, wanting to shout, What did you think I said, idiot?
“That would present a problem, sir.”
Oh, frost, not now!He managed to say, “What problem, Lucius?”
“One of the natural trees there has grown a mass of feeder roots down into the subsoil of that area. Moving it would not be in the best interest of the tree. “
“It wouldn’t?”
“No, sir. In fact, it would probably ruin it.”
Juliana was looking at Avery with a strange gleam in her eye. “Who told you?” she asked.
“Who told me what?”
“That I refused to cut down my apple tree to expand the swimming pool.”
Avery nearly fell off the edge of the tower; he would have if Basalom hadn’t caught him. “I-didn’t know that, madam.”
“You sure you didn’t tell him?” Juliana asked of Janet. “No, ma’am. I didn’t know that myself.”
Juliana nodded. “I don’t see how you could have, since we only spoke briefly by vidphone, and I’m not in the habit of discussing my domestic difficulties with near-strangers. However, I find the coincidence, if that’s what it is, just a little too pat. “
“Dr. Avery had no knowledge of the incident,” Lucius said.
Juliana looked to the robot for the first time. “How do you know?”
“Had he known, he would not have been so blatant in using the information. He is more subtle in his deviousness.”
“Ha! You’re absolutely right, master robot. Well, then, you’ve scored a point by accident, Avery.”
Avery managed to keep his teeth from grinding audibly. Bowing slightly, he said, “Thank you, madam. Now if you’d like to look over this way, perhaps we can design a place where you and your company can be comfortable during your stay?”
Wolruf surveyed the scene before her with a sense of amusement she hadn’t felt in years. They had moved from the top of the tower to Juliana Welsh’s new palace, where she had decided to test the city’s catering facilities by throwing an impromptu cocktail party where the entire group of eight humans-counting Wolruf-and seven personal robots could engage in calculated debate amid a sea of hors d’oeuvres while dozens of service robots milled about making sure that everyone had a fresh drink and a taste of fish eggs on toast.
At least it had started out that way, but the party had finally broken into groups. Now Ariel and her mother stood a little to one side, whispering furiously to one another while everyone else pretended not to notice. Derec and Juliana’s two male companions, Jon and Ivan, sat in high-backed recliners with their feet up on puffy stools, laughing loudly at Derec’s stories of his adventures among the aliens of the Fringe worlds. Janet and Dr. Avery stood beside the champagne fountain, refilling their glasses often and shifting from side to side as they spiraled around and around the topic neither had dared to broach while sober.
The robots-learning machines, Mandelbrot, Basalom, and Juliana’s two valets-stood silently in the periphery, neither in the traditional robot niches in the walls nor venturing into the middle of the party. The learning machines could probably have gotten away with it, after successfully passing Ms. Welsh’s ad-lib Turing test, but they chose instead to remain unobtrusive and exchange their ideas with the other robots instead.
Wolruf was nominally a part of Derec’s group, but she hadn’t contributed a story for half an hour at least. She was having too much fun just people-watching and letting her mind drift. Derec’s stories had gotten her to thinking about her own adventures, most of them the same as his but a few of which he hadn’t shared. She was thinking about her childhood dream of cruising the stars in her own spaceship, deliberately seeking adventure and fabulous riches on strange, alien worlds. It hadn’t quite worked as planned; she’d started out her travels as a slave in Aranimas’s ship, and from then on adventure had more often than not come seeking her rather than the other way around. Still, she supposed some of the dream had worked out as planned. She would be returning home with riches enough to destabilize a two-world economy-enough for any voyager.
She would return with robots, she had decided. Four blank learning machines, modified to have the Zeroth Law of robotics included from the start, just as Janet had suggested. Wolruf would ask for one other modification as welclass="underline" an off switch in the form of a time-bomb cell like the one that had given Mandelbrot his name. She wasn’t sure just what the trigger would be yet, but she imagined it would have something to do with accumulated responsibility. When the mayor began to edge over into behavior more appropriate to a dictator-and Wolruf wasn’t so naive as to believe that wouldn’t be possible-then it would be time for a new learning machine to take over the job.
Even so, the system wouldn’t be perfect. There were bound to be other bugs to work out, just as Derec had indicated to Juliana. The prospect excited Wolruf, just as she knew it would excite those at home. Perfection had been her biggest worry. She had heard enough Utopia stories in her life to know that the curse, “May you live in interesting times,” had been misquoted.
Derec and the two gentlemen from Aurora laughed again at something one of them had said. Wolruf leaned forward again to catch up on the topic of conversation, but Derec spared her the effort by saying, “Hey, Wolruf, why don’t you tell these guys about the time we had to talk the learning machines out of throwing you out the airlock?”
Had that really happened? Wolruf had to pause a moment and shuffle through her memories, but sure enough, she had actually been within a few minutes of breathing vacuum because of those very robots in the comer. Only quick thinking on Derec’s and Wolruf’s parts had saved her golden hide. She felt a thrill of remembered terror raise the fur over her entire body-a reaction that delighted her audience immensely. She smoothed herself down and began the tale, wondering as she did what other stories were still to come.