"Master! Can we not proceed at a slower pace?" implored Mandelbrot beside him in the sidecar as the theoretically stable three-wheeled vehicle tilted radically to the left to compensate for Derec's swerve into a boulevard. "Is there some urgency to this matter that I have yet to perceive?"
"No! I'm just trying to keep up with Ariel!" Derec replied, unable to resist a smile at how Wolruf was cowering down in the sidecar of Ariel's scooter, nearly half a kilometer ahead.
"Perhaps the Master will forgive me if I point out that keeping up with Miss Burgess is itself a full-time proposition. You can never succeed, so why waste precious energy trying at every conceivable opportunity?"
"Hey, I don't want her making any major discoveries before I have a chance to make them myself!" Derec shouted over the wind.
"Are you implying that we might soon be traveling at a greater velocity? Master, I must confess that such a notion runs contrary to the world-view inherent in my every micromagnetic current."
"No-I want to catch up with her, but I'm not suicidal. Besides, I'm willing to bet that if I gunned this scooter any more, all Three Laws of Robotics combined will compel you to stop me."
"Merely to slow you down," Mandelbrot replied. "However, I do have a suggestion which, if acted upon, may give us both what we want."
"Oh? What's that?"
"At your behest, I have been studying the subtle permutations of the routes from point to point in Robot City. Naturally, the task has been difficult, as the routes are always changing, but I have detected a few discernible patterns that seem to remain regardless of how the city mutates in its particulars-"
"You mean you know some shortcuts?" Derec exclaimed.
"Yes, if I understand your parlance correctly, I do believe that is the point I was trying to make,”
“Then lead on, MacDuff"'
"Who?”
“Never mind, it's a quote from Shakespeare-a literary allusion! I was only trying to tell you to tell me which way to go-like a navigator! Hurry! Ariel's pulling ahead!"
"Understood, master. Do you perceive that shifting building to our left?"
As he followed his robot's instructions-an experience unusual enough-Derec found himself making such a complicated series of twists and turns through the complex city streets that he soon feared he could not possibly overtake Ariel and Wolruf, however much Mandelbrot might be assuring him to the contrary. Consequently, he took a few risks that Mandelbrot considered unnecessary, such as guiding the scooter directly over the humps of new buildings rising in the streets, or jumping over gulleys like a stuntdriver, or traveling across bridges barely wide enough for the scooter's wheels. More than once, only Derec's proficiency at driving-an improvised skill Ariel had practically dared him into cultivating-saved them from missing their rendezvous by a lifetime.
Even so, it soon became apparent that their efforts might go for naught. A few blocks away from the building, various trickles of robots were merging into a river clogging the streets, dramatically slowing the scooter's progress. It would have been a simple matter for Derec just to plow through the throng, causing all kinds of chaos and damage, and no one-not Mandelbrot, nor any of the city's supervisor robots-would have commented on the matter, much less made a judgmental observation in the back of their positronic brains. Nor would such an incident ever have any bearing on future relations. Robots weren't built to hold grudges.
But Derec didn't have the stomach to cause harm to an artificially intelligent being. Since his awakening on the mining asteroid, perhaps before then, he had suspected that there were more implications to the potentials of positronic intelligence than even Susan Calvin, the legendary pioneer of the science of robotics, or the mysterious Dr. Avery, who had programmed Robot City, had ever imagined. Perhaps it was because a robot's pathways were patterned so rigorously to imitate the results of human behavior that Derec matter-of-factly thought of robots as being the intellectual brothers of humanity. Perhaps it was because the secrets of human intelligence hadn't been so completely pinpointed that Derec could not feel comfortable making definitive distinctions between the milk of his own coconut and the powdered variety in the robots' three-pound, platinum-iridium lumps.
"You can cool your capacitors now, Mandelbrot," Derec said, slowing the scooter to a steady ten kilometers an hour, enabling him to weave through the robot pedestrians with comparative ease. "We're going to take our time."
"But if I may be permitted a question: What about Miss Burgess? I thought you wanted to arrive ahead of her."
"Oh, I do, but we're so close it doesn't matter now. Besides, there are other discoveries we can make," he said, impulsively stopping cold before a trio of copper-skinned robots that had yielded him the right of way. "Excuse me," he said, more to the tallest one in the middle than to the others, "but I'd like to ask you a few questions."
"Certainly, sir. I would be only too happy to assist a human being in any way I can, especially since my sensors indicate you are one of the two humans who recently rescued our city from the self-destructive glitch in its programming."
"Ah, you appreciate being rescued?"
"Naturally. The responses of my positronic integrals to the events of the universe-at-large often, it seems, correspond in ways roughly analogous with human emotions."
Derec could not resist raising his eyebrows at Mandelbrot to emphasize to his friend how significant he considered those words of the robot to be. He patted him on the shoulder, indicating that he should remain seated, and then got off his scooter. Itseemed impolite, somehow, for him to sit and talk while the robots were standing.
"What's your name?" he asked the one in the middle.
"My designation number is M334."
"And your comrades?"
"We have no numbers. My name is Benny," said the one on M334's right.
"And my name is Harry," said the one on the left.
"You all look like sophisticated builder robots. Am I correct?"
"Yes," said M334.
"Then why do you two have such silly names?"
The robots all looked at each other. Derec could have sworn the lights in their sensors registered something akin to confusion. "Benny's name and mine are hardly fit material for humor," M334 finally replied. "We expended a considerable amount of mental energy delving into customary twentieth-century names until we each found one we were assured suited the individualistic parameters of our positronic personalities in some fashion we could not, and still can not, adequately articulate to our satisfaction."
"You're comfortable with them," Derec said.
“Well, since you put it that way…" said M334 as its voice trailed off in a way suggesting Derec's observation had begun a train of thought laying somewhat beyond the scope of its programming. The effect was eerily human.
"Surely that can't be the only reason why you stopped us," said Harry in a tone that was almost challenging. This was the shortest robot of the three, Derec noted, but he also sensed that this one possessed the strongest personality modes. Certainly its tone of voice was brasher, more forward than that of any other robot he had encountered since his awakening. "Might I humbly inquire that you engage us with the thoughts truly on your mind? My comrades and I have places to go, things to do."
A successfully brash robot, Derec noted, nodding in approval. Though it was possible to interpret its words as being snide, the delivery had been as mannered and as composed as a request for a helping hand. "Your haste doesn't have something to do with your own studies of the Laws of Humanics, does it?" Derec asked.
"Insofar as humans have permitted us," said Harry, as if to accuse Derec of being personally responsible.
"We've been reading what histories and fictions the central computer has permitted us access to in our spare time," put in Benny.