Laura's eyes were drawn to the armies poised on the brink of battle. It was sheer madness — what Gray was saying, what was about to happen right before her eyes. "So," she recapped in a tone of barely concealed incredulity, "you're afraid that one day humans will fight machines in a contest for survival."
Gray's eyes rose. He looked not at the battlefield around them, Laura thought, but at some far distant vision. "No," he said. "What I'm afraid of is that one day machines will fight machines to determine the fittest."
They took up positions behind the sandbags at the computer center entrance. On the long, silent walk across the lawn, Laura had managed to regain a modicum of composure. Gray and Laura looked out onto the field of the coming battle, and Laura felt closer to him than before.
They even stood closer together — so clearly inside each other's personal space that Laura felt a continuing intimacy.
Gray lowered the binoculars from his eyes, and Laura quickly looked away. She felt like an emotional basket case. She had opened herself up for his kiss, and he had left her dangling and feeling exposed. It was just one more thing about Gray's own species that he didn't understand. You don't hold someone in an embrace like that and then… do nothing.
Laura needed time alone to think things through. But there he was — nonchalant, distracted, composed. It was from his coolness and distance she took her cue. What the hell have I been thinking? Laura chided herself. Look at him! She cleared her throat and said, in a businesslike tone, "The computer said you could terminate the Other if you wanted, she said you could do anything you wanted with your God-level key. Is that true?"
"Yes. There are no security firewalls at God-level access."
Despite having asked the question, Laura only half listened to the answer he gave. She was overloaded — burned out. Her mind was so saturated she felt that every new idea simply beaded up on the surface — unabsorbed.
She looked at the soldiers around her, wondering how it had come to this. Hoblenz's men had dug fighting holes in the lawn. They manned jeeps with weapons mounted on top. There had to be fifty soldiers in Gray's army, all ready for war. But when she looked at the lines of Model Sixes still arriving in a long procession from the assembly building, she wondered which was Gray's true army — the humans, or the robots. And which robots — the Sixes and Sevens on one side, or the Eights on the other?
Laura looked back up at him. "So if you can kill the Other, why don't you?"
"The Other is every bit as much a creation of mine as Gina. Who am I to choose which of the two survives?" Gray faced her. "If you accept the concept of artificial life, you should understand that I can't kill off the Other to save Gina just because I like Gina more."
"The hell you can't! Gina's alive, the Other isn't."
"But you're wrong!" Gray shot back. "They're both alive! Gina is more human because I made her that way. I employed thousands of people to spend time with her. Oh, sure, they verified conclusions that she drew. But you could never review all the conclusions that are drawn in constructing a human mind. Ten thousand, ten million checkers couldn't have done the job. I selected people from all walks of life, from all cultures, for the sole purpose of giving the computer contact with its own kind — with humans. That's the sole reason for the shell, for God's sake. The computer doesn't need the shell. It has a hundred different computer languages to interact with programmers and other computers. The shell gives the computer human language, because without human language it could never be human."
"I got movement in the trees!" one of the soldiers called out, but Gray ignored him and the clacking sounds of weapons being readied for firing. Hoblenz's men raised long sinister tubes, rifles, and machineguns onto the sandbags all around, but Gray's eyes remained fixed on Laura.
"And is that why you talked to the computer? Gina said you two have long talks, and she's been with you for years. Have you been trying to humanize her, is that it?"
"Yes," he said simply, appearing saddened by the thought.
"But your relationship with her is different from everyone else's, isn't it?"
"Yes," Gray replied directly again, but he frowned. "She was programmed to be skeptical. We obviously couldn't allow anything that some yahoo typed on their keyboard to be accepted as gospel. We programmed the computer to always demand proof, or at least logical argument. I didn't exempt myself from that skepticism, but she never demanded proof from me. I always just assumed she'd decided my God-level access was inconsistent with doubt. I mean… how can you doubt God?"
"Or a parent," Laura said, and Gray's eyes rose to hers. "When I first realized that Gina thought of herself as a pretty, young girl, I assumed she was jealous… of me." Laura blushed and grew annoyed at herself. She was an adult. This was a professional matter.
"I thought maybe the computer fantasized that you two were… lovers. But I realize now what it was. She's jealous, but like the young girl who grew up with a widower father. Now that she's in her adolescence, she's grown accustomed to filling the role left void by the wife and mother. In the typical human situation, mild jealousy of the sort she's exhibited is common. The daughter still appreciates the fact that her father needs a…" The words hung in her throat. "You know, a mate. She may even try to goad her father into a relationship or to match-make. That's a natural extension of her role as care-provider. But it's also in direct conflict with her role as the 'other woman.' That role will be lost forever if another woman is introduced, and that potential change in your relationship is very threatening to her, especially now when she's afraid of abandonment and betrayal."
Laura finally managed to end her lecture. It was a bad habit of hers. When upset and in doubt, she always kept talking.
She looked up. Gray nodded slowly, lost deep in thought.
"Does that mean you already knew all that," Laura asked, prepared to get angry.
Gray shook his head. "But it makes sense," he said. Laura felt a smile trying to curl the corners of her lips. He didn't know everything.
But the look of pain on Gray's face brought that enjoyment of the coup to an end.
"But don't you see?" she said urgently. "There's a reason for you to choose Gina over the Other. Gina is not only human. She's your daughter, for God's sake! Morally, ethically, in whatever way you want to view it. And the Other…? It's nothing. It's not even really alive."
"But that's where you're wrong! It's wrong to say that if something isn't human, it isn't alive. The less like a human it is, the less alive it is. That's human bigotry, pure and simple. Life is violent and aggressive in its growth. It reproduces. It carves out a niche. Life defends itself. That's how you know it's alive."
"There they are!" one of the soldiers shouted.
Laura turned to see a black, shapeless formation emerging from the jungle.
"They've got shields!" one of the men said. "Shit!"
"Hold your fire!" Hoblenz ordered.
Laura looked back and forth between the emerging army of robots and Gray. It was all tied together somehow. The computer, the coming battle in the field, and something else. Something important.
"What is it?" she asked in a low voice.
"It's the Other," he said, "come to carve out its niche."
Gray headed for the stairs. Laura wanted to follow but forced herself not to. Instead she picked up his binoculars.
The Model Eights were again in a phalanx — shoulder to shoulder four abreast and as many deep. This time they carried metal plates, and their formation was armored with steel. Off to the sides Model Eights advanced singly. They also held shields in one hand and long bars wielded as weapons in the other.