Predator

19

As soon as Wayne realized that MC 1 was responding to his call for help, he stopped in the thick underbrush and waited for the small robot to catch up.

“You agree that the First Law requires you to protect me?” Wayne asked in a whisper.

“Yes. Hunter will fulfill that duty with his own team well enough.”

“Good,” said Wayne. “Carry me on your back. Even at your size, we can move faster that way. Take evasive patterns immediately-and vary them from the patterns you’ve been using. Hunter has identified too many consistencies in your behavior.”

“Are you going to return me with you to our own time? You can do that from right here. From your earlier information, I expected that to be your next act.”

“I have thought about that,” said Wayne. “But back in Mojave Center, I’ll have a lot of distractions. I want to get you somewhere safe so that I can have a quick look at your insides. If we can get away from Hunter for a while, I’ll have more privacy here in this time.”

“As you wish.” MC 1 bent forward.

Wayne jumped on his back. The robot gently hoisted Wayne up slightly, still crouching low under his weight. Wayne tensed at the uncomfortable position.

“Acceptable?” MC 1 asked.

“Yes! Hurry! As soon as Hunter has gathered his party, they’ll be after us.” MC 1 took off at a jog, a pace Wayne could not have maintained for very long on his own.

The team had all seen that MC 1‘s footprints had deepened at the spot where Dr. Nystrom’s had disappeared. Now they were following them, Hunter in the lead. Steve, in the third saddle again, listened with curiosity as Hunter described the predator to Chad.

“Sounds like a troodon,” Chad reported, holding the reins in one hand and his belt computer in the other. “Its fossils have been found in Montana, which isn’t too far from here-at least in zoological terms.”

“What else do you know about it?” Jane asked.

“Well, let’s see,” said Chad. “It was one of the most intelligent of all dinosaurs, maybe the very smartest. Possibly warm-blooded. Its widely-spaced eyes gave it good depth perception. Combining that with intelligence, it was one of the most dangerous predators around, even though it wasn’t very big as dinosaurs go.”

“Smart enough to investigate the disturbance my struggle with Wayne and MC 1 caused,” said Hunter. “It probably heard the noise and approached quietly to take a look before it decided we might make a good lunch.”

“A reasonable scenario,” said Chad.

“I don’t get it,” said Steve. “Hunter, if Nystrom’s idea is to take MC Governor back himself-whole or in components-why is he still here? Why doesn’t he go back to Mojave Center right now?”

“I am not certain,” said Hunter, holding a tree branch out of the way for the struthiomimus. “However, I do not dare simply return our party to the Bohung Institute and wait for them. I want to get both of them under control.”

“They can’t be very far ahead,” said Chad. “If we need a plan, we’d better make one now.”

“What about Wayne’s influence?” Jane asked. “Hunter, you can’t just jump on MC 1 now. The same problem will come up as before. Wayne will order you to stop and he’ll interfere. The First and Second Laws will stop you.”

“I will need your help this time,” said Hunter.

“What do you have in mind?” Steve asked.

“If the three of you can grab Wayne without any real threat of harm to him, I can allow that. At the same time, I can restrain MC 1.”

“You may still have a conflict between our instructions and Wayne’s under the Second Law,” said Jane.

“We’ll hold his mouth shut,” said Steve.

Chad laughed.

“Might work.” Jane smiled, too. “But we really should have something more effective than that.”

“What do you suggest?” Hunter asked

“A First Law imperative is the only guarantee of overriding the Second Law.”

“We can’t count on predatory dinosaurs showing up at the right time,” said Steve.

“If I understand you,” said Hunter, “you are pointing out that if at least one human were in danger, MC 1 would have to turn his attention to protecting the human and so make himself vulnerable to me.”

“Wouldn’t that work?” Steve asked.

“Not necessarily,” said Hunter. “Assuming that I am on the scene at the same time, the First Law would require me to protect the human from immediate harm as well. I would not be free to act purely on my own judgment.”

“We’ll set up a hoax,” said Jane.

“I like that,” said Steve.

“A hoax?” Hunter asked. “Of what design?”

“Well, I’m not sure. But suppose MC 1 is made to believe that Steve, Chad, and I are in danger. That will free him from Dr. Nystrom’s orders.”

“Yes, clearly,” said Hunter.

“So if you know that the implied danger is false, then the First Law won’t hamper your actions. Right?”

“Correct,” said Hunter.

“So you can pounce on him,” said Steve. “It ought to work, I’d say.”

“What about Dr. Nystrom?” Chad asked. “I guess we don’t want to leave him running around the Late Cretaceous Period, either, do we?”

“No,” said Hunter. “If any of us can apprehend him, we must do so. However, Wayne remains our second priority. His only reason to be here is to control MC 1, so if we return to our time with MC 1, then Wayne will follow. He has no other reason to be here.”

“That’s clear enough,” said Steve.

“What will our hoax be?” Hunter asked. “It must make a great deal of noise and commotion to attract MC 1‘s attention, wherever he is.”

“Wait a minute,” said Jane. “What if he has turned off his hearing again?”

“I believe he no longer has any reason to do that,” said Hunter. “Now he has a human companion and a First Law imperative to protect him from predatory animals. To do that most efficiently, he will need to maintain his auditory sense.”

“The previous question still stands, though,” said Chad. “What will our hoax be?”

“Chad, let’s use dinosaurs,” said Steve.

“How?”

“Can we stampede some of them in the direction of MC 1 and Wayne?”

“Hold it,” said Hunter. “That would put Wayne into genuine danger.”

“Once we get the stampede started, we’ll ride out ahead of it, yelling for help,” said Steve. “You’ll be running with us. If the First Law forces you to intervene, you’ll be right there on hand.”

“Wait a minute,” said Chad. “How can we start a stampede from behind and then ride in front of it?”

“A stampede starts slowly,” said Steve. “Even a predator can be startled and made to run for safety…or at least, in our time they can.”

“Well…I don’t know. I suppose they would react the same way they do in response to a forest fire. Their survival instinct would be triggered by seeing all the animals fleeing in the same direction.”

“I’m sure MC 1 would interpret a dinosaur stampede as a First Law problem,” said Jane, holding back laughter. “I really don’t imagine any robot would have a problem making that particular judgment.”

“Good,” said Steve. “We’ll ride along the stream, where a certain number of dinosaurs are likely to be. We’ll ride fast and yell a lot and get some of them running toward MC 1 and Wayne. Since we know where we’re going, we can ride alongside the rush and get out ahead of them. A forest stampede doesn’t really move at a dead run. It faces too many natural obstacles and too much confusion.”

“I might be able to go along with this,” said Hunter. “Chad, what does our resident paleontologist think?”

“It might be a big mistake.”

“In what way?”

“I barely have control of this struthiomimus as it is. Setting a bunch of dinosaurs in motion, out of control, is just asking for trouble.”

“I understand that this plan has a significant unpredictability,” said Hunter. “So far, I interpret the degree of unpredictability to be acceptable. Do you have other objections?”

“Yeah. We have no idea what species we’ll be dealing with. It’s not just the predators, large and small. Many of the herbivores are gigantic, too, you know. They won’t be fast, relatively speaking, but once they’re on the move, a stampede of elephants will seem downright manageable by comparison.”

Steve laughed. “You still have no sense of adventure. You’re just too sheltered, timid, and intellectual to take action in the real world.”

In the front saddle, Chad turned angrily to look over his shoulder, but Hunter spoke first.

“We will try this plan,” said Hunter. “Since you are all on one mount, I can run beside you and perform my First Law duties if any arise.”

Steve could see Chad shake his head in silence.

“Steve, putting this plan into action strikes me as your area,” said Hunter. “On this project I ask you to give the instructions. What should we do?”

“Make your best guess about the position of MC 1 and Wayne. Then calculate where they may be, roughly, during the next half hour.”

“Then what do we do?”

“Take us back to the stream.”

Hunter nodded. He was unusually quiet, but he changed the direction of their journey through the forest. None of them spoke.

When they reached the stream, Hunter began wading up the middle of the current. It was no more than waist-deep to him at the deepest, and usually more shallow than that. Chad guided the struthiomimus after him.

“This is a good spot,” Chad said quietly.

Hunter stopped and waited for them to ride up next to him. “What do you mean?”

Chad pointed. “We have a lot of herbivores visible here if you look carefully. There’s an anodontosaurus feeding on the left, up ahead. A stegoceras-maybe even the same one we captured-is drinking a little past it. I can see the heads of some hadrosaurs-the duckbill guys-in the distance.”

“Is this a good place to begin the stampede?” Hunter asked.

“I would say so. In a forest this dense, the wildlife we can see at anyone time is only a small fraction of what’s actually present.”

“So if we can see this many, we have a good start,” said Jane. “Okay, now what do we do?”

“Steve, what is your opinion?” Hunter asked.

“I think Chad’s right,” said Steve. “But which way do we chase them? Where is MC 1?”

“That way.” Hunter pointed ahead at an angle to the right of the stream.

“All right,” said Steve. “We’ll start slow and see how they react. Chad, move up slowly. We’ll all start yelling and waving our arms and try to get them moving.”

“All right.” Now that Chad had accepted the proposed action, he was giving it all his attention. “Now!”

The struthiomimus leaped forward and began splashing upstream. Steve yelled and whooped, and Chad and Jane did the same. Hunter tried a variety of noises and finally settled on a rumbling, leonine roar from his versatile larynx.

Small animals in the tree branches responded first, jumping away or fluttering into the air. Steve saw the family of duckbill dinosaurs glance quickly at them and then slip away into the dense forest. The swishing of branches and shaking of large bushes were the only signs that many other animals were starting to move.

“Hyah!” Steve shouted, waving one arm and holding on to his saddle with the other. “Chad, chase’ em! Into the woods!”

Chad reined to the right, and the struthiomimus sprang up the bank, threatening to throw its three riders for a moment. Then they were up into the forest, still yelling and chasing the dinosaurs. Hunter jogged nearby, staying close.

Steve laughed as he shouted, easily the most boisterous of the group. This was the kind of adventure he relished, though certainly even he had never stampeded dinosaurs before. Chad and Jane were clearly enjoying themselves as well.

Ahead of them, more and more dinosaurs were becoming visible as they were startled from their feeding, hunting, or sleeping. The riders followed in a crooked, haphazard path around the trees and bigger bushes. As the momentum of the chase increased, the stampede grew, the animals always running in roughly the same direction. Soon the forest was filled with the sound of thundering feet and breaking branches.

“That should be plenty,” Steve called.

“Definitely,” Jane shouted over her shoulder. “This will scare the lubricant out of MC 1.”

“Around to the left!” Steve yelled at Chad.

Chad drew on the reins and the struthiomimus responded. They angled left and soon had worked their way over to the left rear of the stampeding dinosaurs. Hunter, of course, kept his pace and position with no trouble.

“Still the right direction?” Steve shouted to Hunter.

“Yes,” he called back.

Now that they were riding off to one side of the stampede, the struthiomimus lost some of its hesitancy and ran even faster on its two long legs. They began moving up on the host of dinosaurs. Steve could see Chad rising half out of the front saddle on his stirrups, gleefully yelling and waving one hand.

Jane, too, looked at Chad and laughed. She even glanced over her shoulder and winked at Steve. Chad had loosened up a lot on this ride.

“Hunter! Do you know where they are?” Steve shouted, as the struthiomimus pranced out to the fore of the stampede, still safely to the left.

“The tracks are fresh,” Hunter called back, now at a faster run to keep up. “No more than a quarter kilometer ahead of us, and not much less.”

“We’d better get well ahead of the rush,” Steve yelled to everyone.

“That’s right,” Jane answered. She turned to speak to Steve over her shoulder, but stopped, staring back at the stampede with widening eyes. “Look!”

Steve looked. Even he recognized the two tall, monstrous fanged dinosaurs that towered over the rest of the stampede in the distant trees. The stampede had flushed out two Tyrannosaurus Hexes, and both of them were running in the humans’ direction.