“You once said I was your most fascinating subject,” Gilbertus teased. “Have you lost interest in me?”
The robot paused, as if to consider. “Are you jealous of my fascination with her? Tell me more about your emotions.”
“Not jealous — just protective. Anna Corrino must remain safe under my care. Any harm to her will bring down Imperial wrath on the Mentat School — and I’m quite familiar with your experiments, Father. A huge percentage of your subjects did not survive.” He walked to a decorative table next to his reading chair, bent over, and set up the pieces for their usual game of pyramid chess.
“I promise to be careful,” the robot insisted.
“No. I can’t risk the Emperor’s sister. I already walk a fine line with the Butlerians when I teach students your techniques without appearing to be a machine sympathizer.”
The robot was in a more talkative mood than usual. “Yes, I recognize the growing shadow of suspicion. Your crude attempts to make yourself look older are beginning to strain belief, and the years are adding up. You knew the time would come to leave this school. You need a new identity, a new life. We should leave Lampadas — it is too dangerous here.”
“I know.…” Feeling sad, Gilbertus looked at the gelsphere, which seemed so small and fragile on its stand, so impotent in comparison with the magnificent robot that once ruled Corrin, strutting about in bright plush robes.
Erasmus was persistent. “And you must find me another robot body. A better one than last time. I need to be mobile again so I can defend myself … so that I can explore and learn. That is my raison d’être.”
Gilbertus set up the chess pieces and made his first move, knowing Erasmus was watching him through spy-eyes in the room. “I don’t have any robot bodies to work with. The Butlerians forced me to destroy all my teaching specimens. You know that — you observed it.”
“Yes, I did. And you appeared to enjoy the mayhem.”
“It was a carefully studied expression, necessary to fool Manford Torondo and his followers. Don’t sulk.”
“Perhaps you can bring in more Tlulaxa students. They can grow a synthetic biological body to accept my memory core. Now, that would be interesting.”
Gilbertus said in a quieter voice, “I do want to help you, Father, out of gratitude for all the help you’ve given me. But we have to be more cautious now than ever. In light of the news I heard today, the danger is much increased.” He knew the robot would be tantalized.
“What news? I have monitored all student and instructor conversations.”
“I didn’t release this information to the students or the faculty, but rumors are sure to spread soon enough.” He waited for Erasmus to signal his next move on the pyramid chessboard, then dutifully moved the game piece. “One of the old machine sympathizers from Corrin was discovered in hiding, a human slave-pen manager named Horus Rakka.”
“I remember him,” Erasmus said. “An adequate employee who kept the subjects in line. He slaughtered many, but no more than the other slavemasters.”
“Well, it turns out that he escaped from Corrin, as we did. The notorious Horus Rakka changed his name and lived a new life in exile, pretending to be someone else for all this time.”
“Corrin was overrun eighty-four standard years ago,” Erasmus said. “I don’t have accurate birth records for all my human helpers, but Rakka was approximately thirty years old back then. He would be a very old man now.”
“Yes, he was old when the Butlerians found him — old and frail. But they executed him nevertheless, burned him alive in a public spectacle. This discovery only increases the Butlerian fervor, and they will keep hunting until the last ‘machine apologist’ is found — and that could be me.”
Erasmus’s voice carried an edge of uneasiness. “You must not let them find you, or me.”
“Horus Rakka lived an unobtrusive life. No one paid attention to him — and yet he was still discovered. I, on the other hand, have become prominent, and there is always a risk that someone will recognize me. At one time, I might have led a happy life in obscurity, but it’s too late for that now.”
Erasmus took offense at the idea. “I did not create you to hide your potential. You were destined for greatness. I made you that way.”
“I understand that, and I have followed the path you wanted for me, founding this great school and teaching humans to organize thoughts the way machines do — that is a legacy I share with you. With all your care, advice, and attention you have treated me like a son, have shown love toward me.”
The robot found this amusing. “Perhaps I have shown what you think is love, but I have only been able to experience a rough equivalent of the emotion. There is still a great deal I do not grasp about human love, the feelings of a father for a child, or of a mother, and the reciprocal feelings of a child toward its parents. These are things I might never understand, because I can never be a real biological father to a child, with the emotional connectivity it involves.”
Looking up from the chess game that held neither player’s interest, Gilbertus turned from the robot’s memory core, while his mind journeyed far away, entering a Mentat trance.
Inside the meticulously organized compartments of his brain, the Headmaster had created a very special private sanctuary. He called it his Memory Vault, a place where he stored his experiences from his early years as a free human after escaping Corrin.
Gilbertus had lived under a false identity for his first two decades of freedom, convincing others that he was a normal human being. He looked like a healthy young man of thirty, and he maintained his body as if it were a precision machine, just as he maintained his mind. He made his way to the remote planet Lectaire, where he decided he wanted to be a farmer. He was hired on as help, learning that agriculture in practice was different from the theory he had studied.
Now whenever Gilbertus entered his Memory Vault, he relived times with the farmer’s family, the neighbors, their summer festivals and harvest feasts, their winter prayers and spring celebrations. It was the first time Gilbertus had ever interacted in human society. He studied the people of Lectaire, he learned, he imitated. Soon enough, living among people became second nature to him, and he found that he liked his neighbors, enjoyed social interaction.
The realization surprised him, because Erasmus had always said that free humans were unruly, uncivilized, and disorganized, with squalid and unsatisfying lives. Despite his mentor’s teachings, he found that the people of Lectaire had warm hearts, and a societal machinery that let them function in ways a thinking machine would never grasp.
Gilbertus spent seven years among them, working on farms, living a quiet life. While continuing to protect the robot’s hidden memory core — and ready to kill anyone who happened to discover it — he let himself fit in. He met a young woman named Jewelia and discovered love — a thing that Erasmus had never been able to teach him. In such matters, he was forced to learn for himself.
And he learned about heartache. Jewelia had loved him, but eventually she married someone else, leaving him heartbroken and struggling to understand. His secret robot mentor could offer no comfort other than to suggest in a cavalier way that Gilbertus eliminate the rival suitor. Gilbertus didn’t understand his own feelings very well, but the independent robot understood them even less.
Instead, Gilbertus locked away every memory of Jewelia, every conversation, every moment they’d spent together, each tender kiss and embrace, preserving those experiences as an immeasurable treasure.
Gilbertus had departed Lectaire, following the robot’s grandiose dreams and encouragement to form a school that would surreptitiously teach thinking-machine techniques. Erasmus also convinced him to reclaim his original name of Gilbertus Albans, which few people had known even on Corrin, and had likely forgotten long ago.…