Lucius held Derec's shoulder just too hard for comfort, but the human tried not to wince. If he did, Mandelbrot would quickly decide that further inaction on his part would conceivably cause Derec too great a harm, and Derec did not want to risk Mandelbrot's interference at this stage of the game.
"I fear that was my first true transgression. The quaking of the building put into my head the notion of everything I had learned in my brief life about how humans sustain themselves through eating."
"Huh?" Derec said.
"Meaning now that I was inside the building when its general behavior was indicating a change was about to occur, I had some notion about how a living creature swallowed by a human must feel once it has reached its destination."
Derec felt his own stomach go queasy. "Lucius, that's barbaric! Nobody does that anymore-at least not that I know of."
"Oh. Perhaps my information is suspect, then. It is so difficult to tell fact from fiction when you're trying to understand humans.”
“Yes, I can certainly appreciate that," said Derec, thinking of Ariel for an instant before resolving to keep his thoughts on the matter at hand. "Continue. You realized your existence was in danger, then, because of how the building was acting."
"Yes. It was either changing or being reabsorbed into the street. The Third Law dictated I should exit immediately. Indeed, I should have had no choice in the matter. But, strangely, I did not go. The urge to do so, in fact, was easily suppressed. Because for those brief moments it was more important to me to see the clouds unobstructed by the civilization that had spawned me than it was to ensure my continued survival. I was acting in a manner completely contrary to the path dictated by the Third Law, and yet I functioned normally, at least on the surface of things. It is only now… now…now…"
Lucius repeated the last word as if its mind had been caught in an intractable loop.
"Nonsense!" snapped Derec. "If your actions did place you in physical danger-which I gather is the general direction we're headed for-how were you to know for certain? Sure, it might have looked that way, but you had a mission, a deed to accomplish. You had factors to weigh. You had other things on your mind."
"Sti-ill-still dar waz dangzzer…”
"And a likelihood, I take it, that you would come through all right if you kept your wits about you. Obviously! Come on, Lucius, it's got to be obvious, else you wouldn't be here right now. Come on, the time to fizzle out was then, certainly not now. Live and learn, remember? Just like an artist!"
Lucius swayed like a drunken man but fixed its optics firmly on Derec. It was difficult to tell if it was getting better because its metal face was incapable of exhibiting the slightest emotion or feeling, and because the dim level of the lights in the optics lingered. But already its voice sounded firmer as it said, "We are trained to recognize probability. We deal constantly with probability. We are used to accessing it in a split centad and acting accordingly. And the probability was most unpromising."
"But what counts most is what happened-not what didn't happen. The rest you're just going to have to chalk up to experience, Lucius."
Lucius released Derec's shoulder. And just in time, Derec thought, rubbing it gently.
"Yes-I have had experience lately, have I not?" said Lucius in a tone whose very evenness made Derec catch his breath. "Are you implying that when it comes time to gain a little bit of experience in the galaxy, there may be occasions when avoiding risk might conceivably cause one more harm than taking it?"
"Ultimately, yes, I suppose," said Derec, nodding for emphasis even though he really didn't care to commit himself to that point. "In this case an omission of experience might have stunted your mental development in a certain direction-which you could define as harm of a sort. Wouldn't you say so, Mandelbrot? Lie if you have to."
"Pardon me, master, but you know I cannot lie. Was that an attempt at humor?"
"Thanks, Mandelbrot. What happened next, Lucius?”
“Despite the unsound nature of the building, I rushed to the lift and activated it. It occurred to me, just for an instant, that if the controls had shifted, then I would have no choice but to exit with the utmost dispatch. But the controls showed no evidence of a transmutation about to take effect, and so I not-quite-reasoned that the safeguards of the city itself would give me time enough to accomplish my goal and then get out. I could not have been more wrong. I must have experienced something akin to human shock, when the full impact of my miscalculation struck me.
"For when the lift had taken me approximately halfway up, the building itself ruptured. Its foundations dissolved, its walls merged into a chaotic stream that first swept me up and then remorselessly carried me down toward the surface. All I could sense was an ebb tide of meta-cells, yielding to the contours of my body yet not permitting me the slightest freedom of movement."
"Wait a second," said Derec. "Are you trying to tell me that in the history of this city, however brief, no robot has ever happened to be submerged, even accidentally, in a building as it changes or merges back into the city?"
"Naturally not, sir. There are many interior indications whenever a building is about to change, and our adherence to the Third Law prevents us from staying past the point where even accidental harm is a realistic possibility. Inaddition, the city would normally cease to act if a robot happened to remain inside because he had been rendered immobile through an accident. But I had neglected to foresee the implications of the special circumstances the city was dealing with at the time-the belief that it was under attack, the frantic restructuring, the raging environmental disaster… "
Forget it-you're a robot, not a seer. You couldn't have guessed just how badly the city's program was crashing. So what happened once you were submerged? What thoughts went through your mind?"
"Clear ones-the most logical ones I had ever had. Strangely, I felt no sense of time whatsoever. Reason indicated that I had only been submerged for a few decads, but for all practical intents and purposes my mind was flowing at a rate strongly emphasizing the subjectivity of the concept of time. Every moment I spent in the ebb stretched out for an eternity. And within those eternities, there stretched out an infinity of moments. I realized that for much of my brief existence I had lived in a state of dream-death, living, working, doing all the things I had been programmed to do, but holding back the realization of possibilities ignored. Now, I had no idea what to do about that, but I resolved to explore the appropriate possibilities, whatever they came to be.
"There came a moment when my sensors indicated I was no longer moving. I had become stationary, but the ebb was moving past me, running over me as though I had been strapped to a rock in turbulent rapids. The weight on my body gradually diminished, and I realized I was being held fast by the surface of the streets beneath the sinking building.
"And I was left lying on the surface as the final streams of meta-cells trickled over me, leaving my body fresh and cleansed. I, who had been immersed in a building, had an individualized idea of the sort of building Robot City should contain, the design and structure of which was imminent in my own experience."
"Didn't this strike you as being unusual?" asked Derec.
"No. In fact, it was logical. It was so logical that it made perfect sense to me. I had a purpose and I was going to achieve it. Beyond that, I had no interest in determining why I had it, because that did not appear to be important. I notice, however, from observing the behavior of my comrades, that I am not the only one striving to express something inside me. The ambition seems to be spreading."
"Like a plague," said Derec.
"Strangely, now the stars and clouds that had once fascinated me held no interest. All I cared about was fashioning, with the tools and instruments available tome, my idea into a reality. "