“Why arre ‘u trrying to hurrt the city?” she said.
“I must. It must be my city.”
“Arre ‘u trrying to be leaderr?”
“I do not know what you mean.”
“Do you plan to be dictatorr of Rrobot City?”
“No. I just want things here to be logical. I must control events, and I cannot the way things are.”
“I don’t underrstand. Why need ‘u contrrol eventss?”
“I know inside me I have to. I don’t yet know why, but the answer will come. Answers have come to me when I needed them.”
“‘U talk strrangely.”
“I am not really used to talking.”
“Who arre ‘u?”
“I am me, that’s all I know. I have taken the temporary name, the Watchful Eye. The being whose shape I have taken called me ‘the Big Muddy.’ He did not know I heard him call me that. I don’t know why he did.”
“Where is he now? Where is Bogie?”
“I disconnected and dismantled him. It was necessary. Why do you exhibit emotional disturbance?”
“Am upset at what ‘u ssay. I liked Bogie, and he iss dead.”
“Why do you say that? He is not dead. All of his component parts still exist and will function again. I may put him together ~gain, or his parts will continue as parts of new robots. That is not death, there is no decay in it.”
“What do ‘u know of death?”
“Only what I have studied about it in computer files.”
“That iss no way to know about death.”
“Perhaps you will tell me more about death. Later, when I have finished with the city. Please attack me no further.”
The Watchful Eye turned back toward its keyboard. Wolruf, unbound by any robotic laws, sprang up and, howling, rammed against the Watchful Eye’s back as hard as she could. The blow knocked it off balance.
But not enough.
It whirled around and clipped Wolruf with a hard, clenched-fist punch to the side of her head.
She fell, limp, unconscious.
The Watchful Eye, with some gentleness, picked her up and placed her against the wall, and then it carefully rearranged her body in a way that, according to its observations, should be comfortable for a being that was the shape of the caninoid alien.
Then it returned to the task of destroying the city…
As they walked through the new tunnel, everything around them looking spookier than ever in the dim light, Derec asked Avery, “I’ve been wondering: If this new robot is like Adam and Eve, and by that I mean a shape-changer and meddlesome pest, What’ll it be like when all three of them get together?”
“That’s not the sort of question that occupies my mind at times like this.”
The snideness in his father’s voice was unmistakable. Derec wondered if the man would always be like that, scornful and sarcastic. Would they ever have a relationship that was anything like what normal fathers and sons had? Probably not.
“Still,” Derec continued, “I can’t help but wonder. Two of them are bad enough, but we were getting used to them. Three would be worse, unpredictable, possibly disastrous. When we get there and get things in control, it would be nice to find a way to get rid of Pinch Me.”
“You surprise me, Derec. I wouldn’t have thought you had such murderous thoughts.”
“Oh, I don’t mean we should kill it or even dismantle it. I’d just like to get it out of the way. Ship it to another planet, or secrete it in an attic, or hide it in a cave, anything to keep it away from Adam and Eve.”
“Where it would cause trouble for others? Still, dismantling might not be such a bad idea.”
He stopped talking, for they had reached the entrance to the computer chamber.
The Watchful Eye now realized that the immensity of Robot City was a hindrance to its destruction. After all the time it’d spent on the project, interrupted only by Wolruf’s attack, there had not been enough progress. Only a small percentage of Robot City had been toppled, collapsed, or removed.
Since the humans were not as adept in stalking as Wolruf, the Watchful Eye heard them ease open the outside door and come toward the computer.
It would have to confront them.
But it was afraid of confronting them. It did not know why.
The Watchful Eye turned around to face its new intruders. When it saw the three of them, all looking stern and clearly there with the same purpose as Wolruf, to take away its control of the city, it momentarily considered rushing at them, attacking them, hurling them through the air with the same force it had thrown Wolruf. But these were humans; it couldn’t harm them. It seemed as if the First Law of Robotics applied in this situation. But why? Robotics Laws were for robots. It was the Watchful Eye, and it should not be governed by laws governing inferior creatures.
Derec took a step forward.
“Dr. Livingstone, I presume,” he said. Of course it did not understand the reference.
“I am the Watchful Eye,” it responded.
“Cute name,” Ariel muttered.
“Perhaps derived from All-Seeing Eye, Eye of Providence, something like that,” Avery commented. “A symbol on currency, I think, signifying, I think, a new age or new order.”
Ariel saw Wolruf lying unconscious near the wall, and she rushed to her. After touching her and feeling for her life-signs, she nodded to Derec that Wolruf was alive. Derec turned back to the Watchful Eye.
“I don’t care who you are,” he said. “Why are you destroying my city?”
“Your city? It’s not your city now. I have taken it over. Look at the screens.” It pointed toward a bank of view-screens on which scenes of Robot City’s destruction were displayed. “Look at what I’ve done, and say it’s your city.”
“Look on my works, ye mighty…” Avery muttered.
“Okay,” Derec said. “Right now I don’t care whose city you think it is. Just give me your reasons for demolishing it.”
“It is…not right for me. I must accommodate it to my needs.”
“Seems to me you’ve done enough accommodating already, mister. I want you to stop accommodating and give me back control of the computer, so I can correct all the harm you’ve done.”
“It is not harm. I will improve the city. I cannot obey you, because there is no harm being done.”
“No harm? That’s just another robot word game. If I say there’s harm, there is harm, buster.”
“But I am not a robot.”
Here in the computer room Derec could already feel his chemfets stirring, beginning to move along his bloodstream with a purpose. It was as if they, too, had suffered structural damage from the Watchful Eye’s efforts and were now reestablishing themselves. Derec was sure control was coming back to him. He had only to remove this obstacle standing in front of him, and he thought he knew a way to defeat the Watchful Eye. He could, through his chemfets, sense disorientation in the new robot’s domination of the city.
“Watchful Eye, if you insist on calling yourself that, I am Derec.”
“I know that.”
“I am human. Do you understand? I am human. You must obey me.”
“I don’t see why that is so.”
“You have to obey me. It is Second Law. I know you have the Laws of Robotics embedded in your programming. Whatever I say, you must do. I am human.”
“I don’t know that.”
“I am telling you. I am human. Obey. Immediately cease your destruction of Robot City.”
“It is not suitable. It must be changed.”
“I want it the way it was before we arrived, before you came here and started tampering with it. Do it, robot.”
“I…I only look like a robot. My disguise. I am not a robot. I am something else. I must be something else.”
“You must be what you are, a robot. You were created to serve. To serve me. Obey me. It’s Second Law imperative.”
The Watchful Eye was not sure what to do.
“Only robots have to follow the Three Laws,” it said.
“It is objecting,” Avery whispered. “You can get it on the ropes. It would not have to object if it knew what it was. Did you hear, it said it must be something else. Derec, it doesn’t know what it is.”
“Watchful Eye,” Derec said, “you are a robot.”