During this exhilarating period of leadership, Ariel experienced only one apprehension and one disturbance worth recording.
The apprehension had to do with Neuronius and Synapo's warning. It was one thing to deal with insane humans. It was another thing, a good bit more unsettling, to have an irrational alien floating around overhead, toting compressed hydrogen in close proximity to compressed oxygen. Neither she nor Derec had been able to get anything out of Adam SilverSide concerning what had happened between him and Neuronius. He had pleaded Third Law interference with the Second Law imperative whenever they tried. They did not insist, for fear what he called “interference” might be more seriously harmful to his positronic stability; why else would he have claimed interference at all? She resolved to have Eve work on him when it seemed propitious.
The disturbance was of a fairly major nature, not so much from its intensity as from its low grade, continual irritation-her irritation with Adam SilverSide.
That finally came to a head on a day when things had not gone well and little irritations had mounted into raw abrasions. She and Derec-trying to bring some tranquility into the day-were chatting quietly in midevening after dinner, just the two of them on the balcony again. It was where they went to escape, inconsiderately leaving Wolruf in the company of the four robots.
After awhile they had lapsed into silence, and Ariel's thoughts returned to Adam SilverSide. She had given him two sets of Jacob's clothes, distinctive sets that let her quickly identify him as Adam and not Jacob.
She supposed she knew now what Jacob looked like under his clothes, for Adam SilverSide, with visual records of Jacob and library records of humans, had carried his imprint to very fine detail indeed. And she had observed the details of that imprint the day of Eve's birth, when Adam had come charging into the apartment naked and carried her away.
Ariel broke the silence.
“Was Adam's imprint on you less realistic than his current imprint on Jacob?” she asked Derec.
“Yes. More or less the same as Eve's imprint on you,” Derec said.
Eve would never need clothes. Though an Ariel imprint, she was not fashioned with the fine attention to detail Adam had used with Jacob. Eve was merely a silvery organometallic robot.
“How would he react, do you think, if I asked him to go back to that one?”
“You'd no longer be Miss Ariel, for one thing. It would probably be Master Derec again.”
“Eve and Jacob are quite enough. But how would he behave? Would he be the wild one again?”
“I don't really know. He's certainly been steady these past few weeks. If it weren't for his quiet air of superiority-a condition of his muscles, I believe-I'd say he's achieved a state of agreeable servitude.”
“It's the muscles that bother me-no, not just the muscles, his whole appearance.”
“Reminds you too much of Jacob?”
“Yes, but more the fact that he is otherwise so little like Jacob. It's the contrast that irritates me. Do you mind if I ask him to imprint back on you?”
“No. It would be another interesting experiment in robotics.”
“No better time than now, then.”
She got up and went inside. Mandelbrot and Jacob were in the two niches. Adam and Eve were standing rigidly by the door, one to each side. Wolruf was curled up on the couch, watching a taped hyperwave drama.
Ariel had expected Derec to come in with her. She could have used his moral support on this one, but she was too proud to ask.
She walked over to Adam.
“Would it upset your positronics greatly if I asked you to return to an earlier imprint: the looser, less detailed one you did on Derec?”
“I am not giving satisfactory service, Miss Ariel?”
“The service is great, Adam. I wouldn't want your behavior in that regard to change, not in quality at least.”
“But then I would be serving Master Derec. Would that not be a drastic change in the quality of my service?”
“A change in direction, Adam, and a change I will regret, but it should not cause a change in the quality of your service. I would expect that to remain at the same high level I have enjoyed. In fact, if you could continue to serve me directly, I would find that most gratifying.”
“That would not be logical, Miss Ariel.” His tone was best described as haughty.
“I was afraid that would be the case.”
“In that light, do you still wish me to make such a change?”
“Yes. I think it would be best, Adam,” she said, “but would you do so in the bedroom. I find the process unsettling.”
“Perhaps for good reason, Miss Ariel.”
“Possibly, Adam. But there is little I can do about that.”
She rejoined Derec on the balcony as Adam went into the bedroom.
“Sorry,” Derec said. “I didn't see how my presence was going to make that any easier for either of you.”
“I suppose,” Ariel said. “But you better hope he's not the wild one again.”
Chapter 24. The Rustification Of Adam Silverside
After his final imprint on Derec, Adam SilverSide started taking long walks in the forest near the dome. He now had the lean muscular appearance of a silvery Derec without the clothes and the fine detail. His allegiance to Derec was weak. Derec must have recognized that, for he seldom gave Adam a direct order, never used him as a servant as Ariel tried to use Eve SilverSide -with only modest success-and never expected him to account for his whereabouts.
The walks in the forest brought to Adam a peace and serenity he felt nowhere else. He was comfortable with his Derec imprint, and with Derec himself, so long as Derec did not overdo his master role, but Adam was basically uncomfortable in the city and just as uncomfortable around the Avery robots as he was around Mandelbrot.
Derec never questioned his roaming around in the forest. For a while he did send a witness robot to watch him, but Adam always quickly eluded the witness by dropping to all fours and running along the low-canopied animal trails as though he were in his Wolruf imprint.
It was on one of his nature walks that an idea struck him of how he, too, might contribute to the robot farm project. He had come to the edge of the forest a kilometer or so away from the dome and had stood there in the shade of a large palm-like tree, watching a herd of wooly ruminants, the size of small llamas, as they munched the grass of the plain.
He christened them “minillamas” for want of a better name. They were quite tame. The animals of Oyster World were all vegetarians. These animals had no natural enemies except for parasitic insects that burrowed into their skin under the protection afforded by the dense wool.
The idea developed quickly. The next morning at sunup, Adam commandeered a small empty cargo robot, stepped aboard, and directed it to the city's small-tool crib where he requisitioned a laser saw, a hatchet, a shovel, a claw hammer, a bag of six-centimeter iron nails, six coils of rope in fifty-meter coils, an augered post-hole digger, an earth tamper, a microfusion-powered (MP) motor-for driving the digger and the tamper-another general purpose MP motor, a photo-sensitive switch and small MP lamp, and a pair of shears.
As the cargo robot with Adam and his supplies passed the apartment on Main Street, Eve SilverSide, standing on the sidewalk, hailed him to the curb.
“What are you up to?” she asked.
“A secret farm project,” Adam said.
“Why secret?”
“If it doesn't work, I won't have to explain that it didn't work,” Adam replied. “Want to come along?”