Ariel, her hair dripping wet and her suit clinging to her body, came running into the house. "There you are!" she exclaimed.
"Don't you ever knock?" Derec asked angrily, then calmed down when he realized something serious was the matter. Besides, of course she didn't have to knock. She lived here, too. "Are you all right?"
"Yes, of course. Wolruf and I found, ah…”
“Well? Out with it!" exclaimed Derec.
"I was at the reservoir this morning," she said haltingly. "Uh, I was in the reservoir, and I felt something strange. It was Lucius. His positronic brain had been partially destroyed."
"What did you say?" asked Derec as the room began to spin.
"Lucius has been deliberately sabotaged. To the utmost degree. You might even say he's been murdered."
"Ridiculous," said Harry calmly. "Only an outsider would have committed such a deed, and that's impossible. The city would have responded to an alien presence."
"Not necessarily," said Derec, thinking of Doctor Avery, who kept an office here, and whose arrival surely would not activate the city's automatic warning devices.
"It's no accident," said Ariel firmly. "I think you'll agree. Wolruf is supervising the robots who are bringing the, ah, body over here. Then you'll both see for yourselves."
"One of you must know more," said Harry. "A robot would not willingly harm another robot. Only you two and the alien are suspects."
Derec rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "No, there is no law actually dictating that a robot shall not do violence to another robot. In fact, a robot would have no choice if he truly believed harm would come to a human as a result of his omission of action." He glanced at Ariel. "Where's Mandelbrot? Wolruf?"
"Supervising the robots carrying the body here," she said.
"Harry, please leave immediately. We'll finish our talk later.”
“All right," said the robot, walking through the door. "Though I feel obligated to warn you: You have not perceived my presence for the last time!"
"Is that robot for real?" asked Ariel after it was gone.
"I'm afraid so," Derec replied. "Are you certain that we're dealing with a deliberate case of deactivation here-not an accident of some sort?"
"No-but, Derec, Lucius's face was struck in several places. It certainly looked deliberate to me, as if someone wanted to ensure it couldn't be identified."
"Which is impossible, because most of its parts contain serial numbers, which can be traced."
"Exactly. So whoever did it must have realized that in mid-act and then thrown Lucius in the reservoir in the hope that it wouldn't be found. Or, if it was found, it'd be so rusty that most of the serial numbers would be obscured."
"And unless we've an unidentified intruder-which seems unlikely-a robot was responsible."
"Amazing, isn't it?"
Derec nodded. " Absolutely. What were you doing in the reservoir?"
Ariel blushed, though Derec couldn't tell if it was from anger or embarrassment. "I was taking a swim."
"Fully dressed? Say, you've been losing weight, haven't you?" he asked, looking her over with wide eyes.
"You'll never know. Derec, how can you be flip at a time like this? To lose Lucius-"
"So early in his career, I know. The galaxy has been robbed of a great artist, I fear. Tragic. Simply tragic. I have to laugh, Ariel. It's the only way I can deal with it, and right now I don't care if you understand or not! Now be quiet and let me think!"
Ariel blinked in surprise, and jerked her head back as if he had taken a swipe at her. But she did as he wished.
Derec stared at the wall and tried to remember when he and Mandelbrot had parted company with Lucius. There had been a few hours remaining until the dawn. Had Lucius said anything about where it was going or what it was going to do? Nothing in particular that Derec could recall, just that it was going to close down for a few hours before beginning work on its next project. No, there wouldn't be any clues; Lucius certainly couldn't have predicted or even suspected that it would be murdered.
Hmm, can you call the shutdown of a robot "murder"? Derec asked himself. Or is murder too strong a word to use when talking about a machine, regardless of its level of sophistication?
A few moments later, however, Derec realized he wasn't ruminating on the incident so much as he was repressing a profound sense of outrage. During their few hours together, Lucius had begun to mean something special to him. True, there was the possibility that he was overreacting because of his already well established affinity for robots, but throughout his short life that he could remember, he had demonstrated a special appreciation for intelligent life in all its manifestations.
Lucius was a robot,Derec thought. But I fear I shall never see its like again.
Derec realized after the fact that he had paraphrased a line from Shakespeare's Hamlet. This reminded him of the promise he had made to Lucius, and he mulled over the implications of this promise for long minutes after Mandelbrot and Wolruf had escorted the robots carrying Lucius inside, after they had lain Lucius on a table. Evidently Mandelbrot or Ariel must have ordered the robots to depart, because Derec never recalled giving such an order.
For a while, as he looked at the battered and distorted face, Derec hoped he would discover that it was a dreadful mistake, that it really wasn't Lucius there after all, but some other robot. But the size was right. The model was right. The color was right. The unique identifying features that all city robots possessed to some degree were right. But most of all, the feeling in Derec's gut was right.
Lucius was indeed dead. Murdered. The logic circuits of its positronic brain had been removed with precision. But the personality integrals had been left in the brain cavity, left to be permanently damaged in the reservoir. So Lucius's unique abilities at logic might still exist, but the interaction between brain and body would probably never again be achieved. The personality was gone forever.
"Excuse me, everyone," Derec said, actually aware that his friends were staring at him, waiting for his reaction. "I'd like to be alone with Lucius for a few moments."
And then, after they had left, Derec cried. He cried in pity and remorse, not for Lucius, but for himself. This was the first time he could remember having cried. When he finished, he felt only marginally better, but he had some idea of what he had to do, and who to look to for an answer.
Derec found the ebony at the place he had come to think of as Circuit Breaker Square. Other robots of various models and intelligence levels stood around the building, watching its colors reflect the sunlight in muted shades. Occasionally, reflections thrown off by the smooth planes glittered against the robots and the other buildings. The overall effect of Circuit Breaker was more restrained in the sunlight. Doubtlessly that, too, had been part of Lucius's plan, to permit the building to become controllable and hence "safer" in the day, while the night unleashed its true energies. He would have to find out upon what principle the solar batteries worked.
That was another question Lucius would no longer be able to answer personally; however interesting it was on the purely scientific level, it did not seem especially important in light of recent events.
The ebony stood at the edge of the perimeter. Its head never turned to the building; it was watching the other robots instead, as if it was searching for some meaning in their activity. Or lack of it, as the case was. The ebony stood straight and tall, with barely a nuance Derec could call remotely human. It was easy for him to imagine a black cape hanging from the ebony's shoulders, easier still to imagine it standing on a hilltop and glaring in defiance at a gathering storm.
Blow wind. and crack your cheeks,Derec thought, recalling a line from King Lear.