Eve immediately went up the steps. Climbing was one of the few activities that made her appear more robotlike than humanlike. There was a certain mechanical awkwardness to the way she proceeded from stair to stair.
At the top of the stairs, there was indeed a door, and it was slightly ajar. From below, Mandelbrot saw the door hanging open and cautioned, “The open door. That is another anomaly. Do not go in there, Eve.”
One thing that Eve had “inherited” from copying Ariel was stubbornness. Once she had a goal set in her mind, she would not easily veer from it. She pushed the door open and went inside.
With a faint crackle, some light came on. To Eve it was clear that the illumination was not full power. That didn’t matter to her; she increased the power of her optical sensors. The room was dim, and there were many shadowy areas. She increased her olfactory sensors and observed that the hint of an unpleasant odor in the room was more than just a hint. There was a heavy pervading sense of decay in it. Something might be dead in here.
The room was cluttered. Broken glass littered the floor (she recalled what Wolruf had said about utility robots keeping things clean); some furniture had been heaped in one corner, most of it with missing pieces or chunks; metal debris was all over the room in piles of varying sizes; everything was laden with dust.
She walked through the room boldly, scrutinizing its contents. Behind her, Mandelbrot came through the doorway.
“Eve, Derec has instructed me to keep you and Adam away from harm. We don’t know anything about this building, so please come with-”
“What is this, Mandelbrot?” She held up what appeared to be a long jointed tube made of metal wires and strips, plus some electronic wiring.
“I would say part of the skeleton of a robotic limb. Well-articulated if complete. Now, Eve-”
“There’s something over here.”
As she neared a shadowy niche, she saw that there was someone in it. However, she could detect no life coming from the figure. Even though it was standing, its legs were crossed unnaturally. There were shreds of cloth remaining from an outfit that was not definable. Its torso seemed ravaged and scarred. Its eyes were so deepset that at first she wasn’t sure there were any. There were black circles around them. Its arms hung at odd angles.
“Mandelbrot, this looks like a-”
As she came close, the figure’s head moved slightly as if about to slide onto its left shoulder, and it reached out its left arm toward Eve. She was tempted to ignore Mandelbrot’s warnings to back away from it and instead take the hand.
The Watchful Eye had detected Robot City’s new arrivals and was quite gleefully keeping track of them. They might be human, it thought. The first two it saw on its view-screens answered many of the requirements it had deduced for humans, requirements that it had laboriously formulated from the visual and technical information in the many computer files. Still, its uncertainty as to what actually constituted a human made it want to continue observation at a distance.
The Watchful Eye had a need to know about humans. So far it had been frustrated in its studies and experiments by the lack of any genuine humans to observe. Now perhaps they had returned to the city apparently built for them.
Listening in on their conversation, it detected that the new arrivals’ names were Ariel and Derec. There was a lot of data about a Derec in the files. This might be he. Derec had been so important he had one of the access codes to the computer. It had been extremely difficult for the Watchful Eye to bypass and then cancel it.
After Derec and Ariel had entered the warehouse where some of the Watchful Eye’s failures (Series B, Batch 29) were housed and had been attacked by the cackling monstrosities, it became confused. The humans, if they were indeed humans, just ran away, out to the street. Why did they run? What kind of emotional weakness could cause such cowardice? Maybe they were not humans, then; maybe they were failed entities, just like its own creations.
It didn’t have much time to consider their behavior because it detected another set of intruders. First he saw the small furry being who was so assiduously examining whatever she found in her path. Her intelligence was clear, and she was observant. It listened in on her comments about the litter she had found. That was perceptive of her, observing that discarded paper was a rare thing in the city and that utility robots should have removed it long ago. It was not sure where the paper had originated, but it suspected that it came from one of its experimental creations in the building that Eve had inspected. It recalled that the place was a warehouse for some more of its abandoned experiments. There had been some ritual among these creations that had involved paper. It had not liked the ritual, in which strange-looking marks were made on paper, and so had forgotten it. As far as the litter problem went, perhaps it would reactivate the robots that had once had that job.
Next in line was clearly a robot, but even the robot was a variation on what it was used to. Mandelbrot, as it heard the robot called by the fur-creature, whose name was apparently Wolruf, had an arm that did not seem to belong on his body.
The figures following Mandelbrot confused the Watchful Eye, who was not easily disturbed. It recognized right away that they resembled the two humans it had seen earlier. They had similar faces and bodies, but their skin was a sort of silvery blue as compared with the faint pink tone of the earlier arrivals, and there was a bit more rigidity in their movements. Otherwise, they could have been twins of the pink beings. Further, there was assurance in their walks and the way their arms swung calmly at their sides.
It had a new problem to consider now, one that increased its interest. Both sets of intruders resembled humans as described in computer files. The first set seemed more awkward and not as self-assured as the second set. However, the second duo, who had the proper bearing and look of intelligence, were, in coloring, more like the city’s robots. Its first impression was that while both sets could be human, the second might be an advanced version of the species.
When Eve entered the warehouse, it was very pleased. It found that a circuit inside one of its creations there was still operable (though very weak), and it was able to make it move by remote control. It liked Eve’s cool response to the event. She seemed much more in command of her emotions than the skittish pair who had entered the other warehouse then scampered out of it at their first opportunity. If the Watchful Eye could have smiled (and it could have but had never bothered to learn the manipulation for the physical display of amusement), it would have smiled with satisfaction at what it now perceived as the superior human, Eve Silverside.
Chapter 5. Timestep And Bogie
As the warehouse door slowly and creakily shut, Derec thought he saw many eyes looking back at him from the closing sliver illuminated by daylight. Even after the door was closed, he still felt there was a good chance he would see the eyes again in his next nightmare.
Ariel, now relaxed in his arms, snuggled her head against the side of his neck. Since she was a bit taller than he, she had to slouch awkwardly in order to perform the act.
“What was that?” she said, her words muffled.
“I don’t know. Whatever they are, they shouldn’t be there. There are no animals indigenous to Robot City, and I know I’ve made no allowance for any kind of animal life here. I’m not sure I even like animals, especially small ones.”
“Maybe they weren’t on the planet when the robots arrived. Maybe they were underground. Maybe they’ve come to the surface from the bowels of the planet. They might have gotten, I don’t know, stirred up while the robots were building the city and have been slipping out under those construction slabs.” The slabs Ariel referred to were the five-meter-square pieces of iron/plastic alloy that emerged from a machine called the Extruder. “Maybe they were already-”