Something brushed against her. She glanced down to see that something had stirred the dirt up. Something too big to be just an ant. Something that was real.
"What's that?" she exclaimed.
"Wha'zz what?" Wolruf inquired.
But Ariel could not bring herself to answer. Her teeth were clattering too much. Screwing up her courage-which she felt was in short supply these days-she gingerly ducked her head beneath the surface, keeping her eyes open in the frigid fluid with, an effort.
A hunk of metal lay half buried in the bottom of the reservoir. The gentle currents had removed. enough of the dirt covering it to begin moving it back to the shore. Its stiff hand brushed again against her leg.
Its hand?
Ariel accidentally inhaled a noseful of water. She shot up to the surface, sputtering.
"Air-eel?" asked Wolruf. "Wha' is it?"
"It's a robot-there's a robot down here!"
"Wha'zz it doing there?" asked the caninoid, running to the edge of the water.
"I don't know. I think it's dead!"
"Robotzz can't die!"
"Maybe this one can. It looks like Lucius!"
Chapter 5. Unlearn Or Else
Just before dawn, Derec went to sleep wondering what it would feel like to know who he was.
He knew he would dream. He would remember his dream, as always. He often searched the imagery of his dreams for a clue to his identity, figuring that his subconscious was doubtlessly signaling him information about this most personal of all his problems.
Often he dreamed he was a robot. Collectively, those dreams were always similar. He might begin in the survival pod, or in the diagnostic hospital, or even in his sleeping quarters in the house he had had Robot City provide for himself and his friends. Often he would accidentally uncover the Key to Perihelion; he would open a console panel, or open a cabinet, or even find it in his life-suit, and he would always use it.
The destination invariably filled him with keen disappointment, or even despair, for it would always be another place where he had been during the last few weeks, subtly altered, more menacing perhaps, but always fresh in his memory. Never did he dream of a place he had been before he lost his memory. There would be an accident-he would fall down a chasm opening up beneath his feet, a worker robot would misfunction and slice him open, or something else equally disastrous would happen.
But he would feel no pain. There would be no blood. He would look on his injured body, and see his skeletal structure revealed by his wound.
But not his skeletal bone. And therein lay the serious rub.
For he would have no bones to break, no flesh to tear. His skin would be plastic and his skeleton would be metal. There would be blinking lights where his muscles should be, and wires instead of arteries.
And he would feel no pain, no life-and-death anxiety about the wound, only a calmly overwhelming urge to repair himself as quickly as possible.
At that point the dream always ended, with Derec waking up in a cold sweat, staring at his hand and wondering if it just wasn't programmed to tremble at irrational fears, fears that he had always been programmed to experience, at random intervals.
He always settled back to sleep with an effort, and though not a reflective man he would invariably wonder, just for a moment, if, after you got past the obvious, there really was any difference between feeling like a human and feeling like a robot.
Sometimes the same dream, or a close variation on it, would begin again.
Tonight, however, as he tossed and turned, the dream was somewhat different.
Not surprisingly, it began in the square.
It was night, and Derec was alone. There was not an entity in sight. And as he looked at the slightly taller, slightly more freakish versions of the buildings around the square, he doubted there was an entity in the city.
But something was missing. He sensed that though the square was deserted, it was even emptier than it should be.
Something elseshould be here. Circuit Breaker! Where was Circuit Breaker?
Derec looked down to see that the plasticrete was crawling up his feet, fastening him to the spot. There was the distinct sensation of his feet merging with the plasticrete, of the meta-cells beginning to function in harmony with his biological cells. Derec held down his growing sense of panic with an effort. He did not know which he feared more: the conclusion, or awakening before he learned what it might be.
In a matter of moments the meta-cells completely smothered Derec. So thoroughly had the metallic cells mingled with his own that he did not know where they ended and where his began.
Strangely, he felt himself to be wider, taller, more physically substantial in every respect. He could not see nor move, yet found he had no yen to do either. He had become Circuit Breaker itself, gathering in the energy of the starlight, transforming it, amplifying it, and casting it out. He was stronger, sturdier, and more solid than he had ever been before.
But he had also lost his mind. Suddenly he had gone from a someone to a no one. He didn't even miss his sense of identity. He couldn't understand why he had wanted his memory back in the first place. What good could thinking and knowledge do him, standing so strong and bulky against the atmospheric tides?
Derec awoke gradually; a profound feeling of mental displacement aggravated him during those moments in which his mind hovered in the regions between waking and sleeping. In fact, those moments stretched out for an uncommonly long time. Both his immediate future and immediate past seemed hopelessly out of reach.
But the future already beckoned. He realized that for the last several moments he had been listening to a loud pounding on the door. He recalled an appointment with annoyance. It was too bad. He half wished he could return to sleep. He could certainly use it.
Oh well, there's nothing I can do about it now.
He rubbed his eyes. "Hold on," he said. "I'll be right there!"
But the knocking continued unabated, growing progressively more insistent. Now Derec was really annoyed. The persistent knocking, if it came from a human, would be very impolite. But robots had no choice but to be polite, regardless of the circumstances. What kind of robot would be so obviously predisposed toward the overkill of unnecessarily persistent knocking?
Derec suddenly realized. Oh no! I'd forgotten it was Harry!
Derec dressed hurriedly, opened the door and, sure enough, Harry was standing at the threshold. "I assume I have not been knocking too long," the robot said. "I have a hundred questions to ask you."
"And I've got a few more than that to ask you," Derec replied, motioning him inside, "but I'm afraid we've got a limited amount of time today."
"So am I to assume that you are interviewing Lucius later?" asked Harry. "Why chat with that genius when you have me around?" Then: "Was that good? Was it humor ous?"
Derec tried to hide his smile. He didn't want to encourage the robot, which didn't need it anyway. "I think you'll both prove equally important to my studies of what's been happening to robots on this planet. Did you bring your friends along?"
"M334 and Benny? No. They are working on a project of some sort together. I think they want its nature to be a surprise."
"And it probably will be," said Derec sarcastically, "if the events of the last few days have been any indication."
"Forgive me in advance, but was that remark also an attempt at humor?"
"Not really, no.”
"I see. You must understand it is often difficult for a robot to understand what a human's tone of voice means," said Harry, again very politely.
Derec decided to take the question seriously. "It was a casual observation, a commentary laced with what I presumed to be light-heartedness, an attitude which frequently gives rise to humor."