“Coming, Ari?” Derec called out from the boarding ramp.
“In a minute, dear. ” Ariel turned back to BlackMane. The female kin finished a yawn that stretched clear back to her third bicuspids, then sat down and gravely offered Ariel her paw. Squatting on her haunches, Ariel accepted the paw and shook it.
“I just wanted to tell you,” Ariel began, “that I’ve really enjoyed your company, and I will miss you. Your cubs are terrific; I envy you for them. Of course, I don’t know why I’m telling you this, since you can’t understand a single word that I’m saying. ”
“Arf,” said BlackMane. “Arf,” Ariel answered. She stood and started to turn toward the ship. Then she gave in to an impulse and gave BlackMane one last good scratch behind the ears.
Avery and Beta strolled past, talking in low voices. “1 quite agree,” Beta said. “Our most recent analysis indicates that it will be at least two hundred standard years before the kin are prepared enough to be allowed off this planet. ”
Avery looked worried. “So you’ll erase all mention of rocketry and spaceflight from the city’s libraries?”
“We will secure and encrypt the information on all advanced technology,” Beta answered. “We will not release the information until such time as we deem the kin to be sufficiently acculturated and no longer a threat to the other species of humanity. After all, the First Law applies to all humans, no matter their form. ”
Avery frowned. “That’s not quite what I was hoping for, but I’ll accept it. ” He looked up and spotted Adam standing by the landing gear, talking to the spaceport maintenance robots. “ Ah, Adam. Have you found any trace of Lucius yet?”
Adam raised an arm and pointed toward the spaceport control tower, behind Avery. “Here he comes now. ” Avery and Beta turned around to see Lucius approaching, followed by Wolruf, Eve, and a trio of unfamiliar robots.
“Lucius?” Avery called out. “Lucius, where the blazes have you been? We thought we were going to have to leave you behind!”
Robotic expressions were difficult to read, but Avery couldn’t miss the note of surliness in the robot’s voice. “I kept out of trouble,” Lucius snarled. “That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it?’, Not waiting for a reply, Lucius stormed past Avery and clanged up the boarding ramp.
With a shrug, Avery looked at Beta. The supervisor responded with a quizzical tilt of his head, as if to say that he didn’t understand Lucius, either. Avery and Beta were still looking at each other when Wolruf and Eve came scampering up. “Where’s Derec?” Wolruf asked, her glee barely concealed.
Avery looked around. “In the ship, I think. Derec!”
A sandy blond head popped out an open hatch. “Yes?”
“C’mere, Derec!” Wolruf called out. “Got someone ‘ere I want ‘u t’ meet!” A few seconds later Derec came jogging down the boarding ramp and over to join them.
“Derec Avery,” Wolruf said, turning to the three new robots, “I’d like t’ intr’duce ‘u t’ ‘uman Medical 17. ”
“My pleasure,” the Wohler-model robot on the left said.
“ ‘Uman Medical 21. ”,, And mine,,, the robot on the right said.
“An’-”
“Derrec?”The tall, unfamiliar robot in the center reeled back as if in shock. “Derrrec!” In a blinding flash, the robot raised his hands and lunged for Derec’s throat
And froze, rooted to the spot.
“Our apologies,” Human Medical 17 said to Derec, “we should have warned you. The data from the original Jeff Leong experiment indicated that cyborgs could be unstable and dangerous, so we took the liberty of giving this one a positronic cerebellum. If he so much as thinks of violating the Three Laws, his muscular system locks up. ”
“Cyborg?”
The two medical robots looked at each other and then at Derec. “No one told you?” From Derec’s blank look, they inferred that the answer was yes. “That lifepod that crashed last night; there was one survivor aboard. But by the time the hunter/seekers reached the scene, the native humans had mauled him quite badly. And we had no information on his physiology, which is not of a human form with which we are familiar. We had no choice but to cyborg what was left. ”
Derec turned to the cyborg. “Aranimas?”
“Oh, is that his name? Here, let me reboot him. ” Human Medical 17 reached over and touched a large red button on the back of the cyborg’s neck. “Don’t worry, rebooting the cerebellum is quick and painless. ” The cyborg shuddered and slowly stepped back and assumed a taut, angry posture. His eyes glowed like hate-filled red coals.
Wolruf stepped between Derec and Aranimas, a toothy smile playing on her lips. “ ‘Ere, allow me t’ demonstrate ‘is Second Law function. ” From behind her back, she produced a footlong stick. “ ‘Ere, boy!” She waved the stick in front of Aranimas’s glaring eyes. “ ‘Eere, Aranimas!” Taking a great wind-up and a running start, she flung the stick as hard as she could across the tarmac.
“Go fetch!”
With one exception, the robots had all gone off to their morning tasks. The last of the dew vanished in rising steam; her cubs were awake and getting crabby about breakfast. Still, BlackMane lingered on the tarmac for a few minutes more, watching the silver bird dwindle into the distance.
“You know, Beta,” she said at last, “once you get used to the way they look, those TwoLegs are okay people. ”
“Indeed they are, Mistress BlackMane,” Beta answered in the soft tones of KinSpeech.
She watched the ship a while longer and then asked another question. “Do you think they’ll ever come back?”
“It’s difficult to say, mistress. Perhaps not those TwoLegs, but in time, others like them definitely will. “
BlackMane nodded. “I see. Good. ” She nodded some more, then let out a pensive whine. “It’s just, I really wanted to ask them one last question, you know?”
Beta took his eyes off the spacecraft and turned his full attention to BlackMane. “Perhaps I can be of help. What was the question, mistress?”
Cocking her head, BlackMane scratched an ear in puzzlement. “Well, you know the game that Wolruf was playing with Aranimas, just before they left? Where she would throw the stick as hard as she could, and Aranimas would run and get it?”
“Yes, I am familiar with the game. It is called ‘fetch. ’ What would you like to know about it?”
“It looked like a great game, really it did. Lots of action, very exciting. I think it could be very popular. But there’s one thing that I just don’t understand. ”
“Yes. ”
BlackMane paused, wrinkled her nose, and then raised her ears and looked the robot straight in the eyes.
“Why did Aranimas get to have all the fun?”
Bruce Bethke
A full-time professional writer whose credits include more than one hundred nonfiction publications and fiction sales to Amazing Stories, Aboriginal SF, Easyriders, Espionage, Hardware, Hitchcock ’ s MysteryMagazine, Tales of the Unanticipated, Weird Tales and the Jerry Pournelle anthologies, Silicon Brains, There Will Be War, and War Among the Ruins, Mr. Bethke is best known for his movement-naming short story, “Cyberpunk,” first published in 1983. Contrary to popular speculation, he does not use the pen-name of Bruce Sterling, nor is he a penname for Bruce Sterling.
Now living in St. Paul with his wife and three daughters, Mr. Bethke is unique among writers in that he does not own a single cat. In fact, he is utterly incapable of appreciating the adorable antics of other writers’ cats, and instead owns a springer spaniel retriever, with whom he hunts pheasants every fall.