“I do not believe this. ” Avery shook his head slowly, then studied Beta with a cold, unblinking glare. “Beta, are you trying to tell me that the supervisors are no longer subject to the Second Law?”
The robot’s eyes flickered briefly. “Of course not. Alpha and Gamma’s Second Law duties to you simply have been superseded by their First Law obligations. ”
“First Law-” Avery suddenly snapped around and looked at Derec. “Ariel!” Before he’d finished saying the name, Derec had invoked his commlink and reached Mandelbrot.
“No,” Derec reported, shaking his head. “Ariel’s a little wet and mussed up, but she’s not in any danger. ” He concentrated harder and checked in with Eve. “Wolruf’s fine. Adam is still playing SilverSides; he’s up on a balcony, addressing a crowd, but he’s speaking too fast for Eve to translate. ”
Derec frowned. “Lucius II isn’t answering. ” He broke concentration and opened his eyes; both he and Avery turned to look at Beta.
“When you assume that the First Law applies only to members of your party, you are making a species-ist assumption,,, Beta said. “If you plan to reside in this city, you must learn to overcome your speciesism. ”
Slowly, sighing heavily, Avery nodded. “I see where this is leading. Beta, if I were to tell you that your definition of human has become corrupted and the kin are not human, would you allow me to correct it?”
Beta considered this barely a moment. “No. Redefining the native humans as nonhumans would injure them, and thus is prohibited by the First Law. ”
Avery frowned. “Circular logic: See logic, circular. The kin shouldn’t be considered humans, but since they are, you won’t let me fix the problem. ” With a disgusted look, he turned to Derec. “Come on, son, let’s get out of here. ”
Wolruf whined nervously and sidled closer to Eve. An unpleasant change had come over SilverSides with nightfall; the raw emotions of BeastTongue now threaded through her speech as she addressed the crowd in the street below. “What’s she sayin’?” Wolruf whispered to Eve.
“I’m not getting all of it,” Eve whispered back. “Some kind of anatomical comparison between Friend Avery and a sharpfang. ” She rotated her head and listened more closely. “Now she’s talking about-wonders. The ship; she’s mentioned the ship. And she’s saying that the city is capable of producing more wonders just like it. But-rhetorical question-why isn’t the city providing them?”
Silversides paused for dramatic effect and then thundered the answer.
“TwoLegs!” Eve translated.
The crowd broke into the savage, rhythmic chant in heavily accented Standard. “TwoLegs out! TwoLegs out!” Everywhere Wolruf looked, she saw angry, gaping jaws, fangs bared and glistening orange in the torchlight, chanting. “TwoLegs out! TwoLegs out!”
Eve shook her head in disbelief. “SilverSides taught them to say that in Standard! This is impossible!” Her voice became slurred and her movements erratic, clear signs of an impending First Law crisis. “He’s training the mob to hate bipeds!”
“ TwoLegs out! TwoLegs out!”
Eve and Wolruf looked at each other, then both discreetly dropped down to all fours. Eve began to transform herself into an image of Wolruf.
“ ‘U think we ought t’ warn Derec?” Wolruf asked.
“‘U better b’lieve it,” Eve answered. Closing her eyes, she activated her commlink and sought out Lucius.
Chapter 23. Battle Lines
The Warm, yellow streetlight was surrounded by a nimbus of clumsy insects. Grabbing the lamppost for a pivot, Derec swung off the slidewalk and followed Avery into the pocket park. Neither spoke until Avery had found a balcony overlooking the street below and taken a seat on the cold stone railing.
“Dad, I never thought I’d see the day when you ran away from a problem. ”
“I’m not running away. I’m thinking. ”
Derec glanced around the balcony, then put a foot up on the railing and looked out at the darkened city. The gentle night breeze carried faint hints of moisture and distant forests. “Care to explain the difference?”
Avery stopped scowling and looked up at Derec. “We can’t get anywhere with the supervisors. Circular logic: The kin have First Law status because the supervisors’ definition of human is corrupted, but the supervisors won’t let us fix the definition because that would violate the First Law. ”
“So why fix it? Aside from pure human chauvinism, that is. ”
Avery stroked his whiskery chin and tugged at the edge of his stiff white moustache. “Hard as this may be to believe, Derec, it’s for their own good. By the time we humans developed robots, we already had a mature, technological culture. We accepted robots as just better tools for carrying on life as we knew it.
“But what if back in the Stone Age, some alien race had come along and given us a magic box that delivered everything we asked for? Frost, you don ‘t have to imagine it; Old Earth history is littered with stories of Stone Age cultures that tried to make the leap directly to high technology. First the existing family and social structures were demolished. Then the local ecology was destroyed.
“And then the people had a choice: join the mainstream of human society-become exactly like every other technological culture-or become extinct. ” Avery ran a hand through his silvery hair and looked Derec straight in the eye. “Never mind how I feel about the kin personally. They deserve more of a choice than that, don’t they?”
Derec nodded. “Okay. Where do we start?”
“I’ve been thinking about that. ” Avery paused, and screwed his face up in a puzzled look. “You say it felt like Central was running on pure cron? No mentation at all?”
“Dad, I’ve met bricks with more on their minds. Central is a complete blank. ”
“ A tabula rasa,” Avery muttered to himself. He nodded. “Yes, that makes sense. That’s what I would do. ”
Derec peered at Avery. “A tubular what?”
“Not ‘tubular. ’ Tabula rasa. Latin for ‘erased tablet. ’ One old theory used to hold that the human mind started out as a blank tablet, and personality developed as a result of the impressions that life ‘wrote’ on the mind. ”
Derec laughed. “That’s ridiculous, Dad. For starters, you’re completely ignoring the influence of genetic-”
Avery waved a hand to cut Derec off. “I didn’t say that I subscribe to that theory-at least, not as it applies to humans. But tell me, what would you do if you had a robot that had suffered traumatic brain damage? Damage so profound that every time you repaired it, the very memory of that damage unbalanced the psyche module again?”
Derec thought it over a moment. “I’d erase the memory. ”
“That’d work for a conventional robot. But what if it was a cellular robot, and every cell held a complete set of backup memories in positronic microcode?”
Derec sat down heavily on the stone railing next to Avery and blew out a deep breath. “Oh boy. We’re talking about a complete system purge and rebuild here. ”
“Exactly. ” Avery favored Derec with a knowing smile. “ And what would the robot’s mind be like after the purge?”
Slowly, Derec turned to look at Avery. Slowly, very slowly, a matching smile lit up his face. “A tabula rasa. ” Picking up the thought, Derec ran with it. “If the supervisors are doing a complete system rebuild on Central, it’s in a very impressionable state right now. The merest suggestion could have incredibly far-reaching effects on the future of the city. ”
Avery nodded. “So the supervisors will try to isolate Central from unwanted influences. They’ve probably severed all the terminal input lines and buffered the 1/0 channels. ”
Derec’s face erupted in a sly grin. “But we know someone who’s got a direct commlink channel to Central’s brain, don’t we?”
Avery returned the grin. “How about it, son? Feel up to a little guerrilla computing?”