Intruder

Chapter 20. The Second Confrontation

“Well, my friend,” Derec said to Wolruf, after she came to, “we owe you a solid vote of thanks.”

“Forr what, ‘u think?”

“Your holding action with the Watchful Eye. A successful mission if there ever was one. I told you to keep him occupied so we could get here. You did. Therefore, thank you.”

“From me, too,” Ariel said. “Even from him.” She pointed toward Avery, whose fingers were furiously flying around the keyboard.

“I can thank her myself,” Avery said, the kind of grouch in his voice that they had become used to.

“Yes,” Ariel said, “but would you?”

“Under the right circumstances.”

“Do those circumstances come around often?”

“Not often.”

“I thought so.”

Ariel made Wolruf stand up and walk around to make sure she was all right. There was no Wolruflike spring to her walk, but otherwise she seemed normal.

When she was satisfied with Wolruf’s condition, Ariel walked to the capsule where the Watchful Eye still lay, an unmoving blob.

“Snug fit,” she said. Derec looked puzzled. “I mean, the way our Watchful Eye fits so neatly into its egg. Must be very constricting and claustrophobic when traveling through space.”

“At that time it’s not aware of its surroundings. Adam told me he and Eve came to consciousness only after they’d landed. From what it said, I suspect the same was true for this one, too.”

“Well,” she said, stretching her arms and yawning, “what’s next?”

“With what?”

“Well, on the immediate level, I’d like something to eat. I’m starving. And I’d like to sleep for three days. And I’d like to arrange a tap dance recital for Timestep and maybe the partner he mentioned. But what I’d really like to know is what are we going to do with our Watchful Eye here?”

“I’ve got some ideas,” Avery said.

“I’ll just bet you have,” Ariel said. “But keep them to yourself for now, okay?”

“Your girlfriend’s touchy,” Avery remarked.

Ariel glared at Avery but was too tired to attempt further repartee with him. She wished she had a capsule like the Watchful Eye’s to crawl in and shut out the world.

“Well,” she said to Derec, “what about the Eye?”

“I don’t know. If we’d had more success with Adam and Eve, I’d have a better idea. This one may be our chance to find out more about these robots. On the other hand, it might be too corrupted by its flirtation with power to provide the-”

“Flirtation with power? You sound like you swallowed a textbook on improving verbal skills.”

“Sorry.”

“He’s been spending too much time with me,” Avery said as he stared at a schematic diagram on the view-screen. “He’s picking up my tendency toward the bon mot.”

“You betcha,” Ariel said. “So, Derec, you’re not sure what to do with the Eye?”

“That’s about it. We’ll question it, observe it, give it a chance to explain itself, but I can’t figure out any more than that at this moment.”

“Hey, we’ve had a busy day.”

“That iss a true sstatement if I everr hearrd one,” Wolruf observed.

Derec walked over to his father and stood behind him. The man’s fingers moved so fast they blurred from time to time.

“Is Mandelbrot handling things all right at his end?” Derec asked.

“Excellently. For a robot he’s exceptionally skilled at computer operation.”

“I schooled him in it.”

“Should have known. Old Earth saying: Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach; those who shouldn’t, think they are those who can; those who should, generally fake their way through college.”

“What does that mean?”

“Maybe I didn’t get it right.”

For a while Derec watched his father labor in silence. He could discern the effectiveness of the work Avery and Mandelbrot were doing by the way his chemfets had resumed their active and comfortable functioning. He felt as if he could just lean against a wall, shut his eyes, and blend with the chemfets as they moved along his bloodstream.

He asked his father the question he could not stop thinking about. “Could you arrange for me to meet my mother?”

Avery’s fingers stopped suddenly and rested on the middle row of the keyboard. Derec could tell he was carefully formulating his answer. He knew his father well enough by now to realize that he composed his utterances, even those that appeared to be spoken spontaneously.

“The proper question, son, is would I arrange it? And, you know, in one of my foolish sentimental moments, of which I have few, practically none, I might arrange it. Fortunately for me, I don’t have to struggle with my conscience about it. I haven’t a snowman’s idea of where she is or how to find her.”

Derec walked away. Avery called after him, “Derec?”

“Yes?”

“You might not like her. I don’t.”

“I’ll take the chance.”

“I could have predicted you’d say that.”

Derec saw Adam and Eve standing in the doorway. He wondered how long they had been frozen in position there, watching.

“Adam? Eve?”

They ignored him. Their attention was clearly focussed on the capsule.

This was the moment he had feared, and it had come too soon.

They entered the room, walking past Wolruf, past Ariel. They were holding hands, and Derec wondered where in Frost’s name they had learned to do that. Ariel came to Derec and held onto his arm.

They came to a stop by the capsule. Releasing Eve’s hand and reaching down, he flipped a toggle located near the capsule’s seam. A control panel slipped out of the tip of the egg-shaped container. Adam manipulated a number of switches, and the egg began to glow. Derec could feel heat emanating from it. There was a faint humming sound coming from the inside of the capsule. The seams separated, and the Silversides got their first glimpse of the Watchful Eye, who immediately began to stir. It rolled out of the capsule and came to rest in front of Adam and Eve.

“You are us,” Adam said.

“We are you,” Eve said.

The Watchful Eye was so bloblike now that Derec had not missed the presence of a head on the body. Now a head appeared to rise out of the middle of the blob, in the area where the eye had been. The eye had disappeared and, in its place, as facial features became discernible, there appeared two eyes, both closed. When it had fully formed, its eyes opened and Derec saw it had the features of Adam on its face. Adam-as-Derec. Then the surface of its body started to undulate as it gradually formed itself into the humanoid state. As it became more and more humanoid, it stood up on two legs and sprouted normal-length arms.

As it became more and more like Adam, Adam started to change, too. In a moment he looked more like Avery than Derec.

Derec realized it could be difficult keeping track of these chameleons without a scorecard.

“I am you, the both of you,” the Watchful Eye said. “But who are we?”

“That we will have to find out,” Eve said.

Eve’s Ariel face had a suggestion of Derec in it. Adam changed to caninoid shape, a mimicry of Wolruf. The Watchful Eye made a try at Wolruf, too. Its Wolruf was less delineated, less convincing as a copy, than Adam’s. Eve became an effective Wolruf, too. Wolruf came and stood beside them, and Derec wondered if, should he close his eyes and then open them to find the quartet had shifted positions, he could tell which one was the true Wolruf. Well, that couldn’t happen. Whatever other miraculous transformations they could achieve, they could not simulate fur, nor could they imitate very well the normal coloring of the beings they imprinted on. A moment later, Adam resembled Derec with a caninoid overlay, the Watchful Eye looked like Avery doing his impression of Bogie, and Eve was simply looking like Ariel again.

On Derec’s part, on Ariel’s part, neither was sure what was making them uneasy. However, in the past they had both felt a sense of danger from the two Silversides, and now there were three. Three of them chatting together, as if they had so many questions to ask of each other, of themselves, of the worlds where they had been dropped so unceremoniously-and probably speculating about the havoc they could wreak if given half a chance.

Avery, who had been too busy with the computer to notice the Silversides’ entrance, turned around in his chair and finally saw the curious trio. He smiled.

“The situation is replete with challenges,” he said.

“For whom?” Derec said.

“Them or us?” Ariel said.

“Them. Us. Whatever, it’s quite wonderful.”

The three shape-changing robots, apparently oblivious to the remarks of the others, joined hands in a humanlike way and began to walk out of the computer chamber.

“Should we follow them?” Ariel asked.

“Let them go,” Derec said. “We’ve got too much to do.” Avery returned to the computer.

“Message from Mandelbrot,” he said without turning around. “Seems the Supervisors are all active again, out of the meeting room and starting to function like gang busters. Systems are running more efficiently. Robots are coming out of their holes and crowding the streets like usual. The city is returning to normal. What do your chemfets tell you, Derec?”

“What you’ve reported. They’re more active than normal. I think the crisis is definitely over.” He glanced toward the doorway the Silversides and the Watchful Eye had gone through. “The city’s crisis, anyway.”

His gaze stayed on the doorway for a short while. Then, his chemfets surging through his bloodstream, he returned to the task of putting Robot City back into order.