Renegade

Chapter 19. The Laws Of Humanics

Circling far above normal charge altitude, Synapo watched the silver alien and his escort of Ceremyons-all less than half his size-as they headed toward The Cliff of Time, far below, toward the gathering Sarco had called to hear the words of the alien.

Sarco was already waiting on the pinnacle of The Cliff of Time. Synapo had seen him arrive a quarter-hour before, not long after that final radio transmission that had set up the gathering.

Synapo balled, and as he dropped, he feathered an exposed edge of a wing so that it set him in rotation and in motion toward the Cliff of Time as though he were rolling down a ramp.

His progress toward the Cliff of Time matched the progress of the small escort of Ceremyons who had the silver alien in their midst, so that Synapo and they arrived at the gathering almost simultaneously.

Synapo took up his perch on the adjacent lower crag, the position Sarco had occupied during that earlier gathering. His Cerebron elite were already aligned on the table rock below.

The alien who called himself SilverSide stood in front of the center of the line of Myostrians below Sarco. The Myostrian leader wasted no time. He began the interrogation of the alien as soon as Synapo settled onto his perch.

“Who are you and what is your purpose in contacting us?” Sarco asked.

“I am a robot, and I am here to serve you,” SilverSide replied.

In spite of himself, Synapo was impressed. The silver alien had mastered the Ceremyon tongue and now mouthed it with only a slight accent.

“You are a servant, like the servants who built the city we have nullified?” Sarco said.

“Yes, only somewhat more versatile,” the alien replied.

“Were you created this morning, at the time of our meeting with the aliens?”

“No. I was created on another planet. That was merely a transformation this morning.”

“To what end?”

“To follow as best I can the laws that I am governed by, the laws of the beings who created me.”

“And what is the nature of those laws?” Sarco asked.

“I may not injure a human being,” SilverSide replied, “or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

“I must obey the orders given me by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

“And I must protect my own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.”

“Those are the same laws that govern the servants who built the city,” Sarco said.

“Yes,” SilverSide said. “We are all robots, or so I am told.”

“And these human beings,” Sarco said, “you consider them your creators and the ones you must serve?”

“Yes.”

“Then why do you seek to serve us?”

“The laws and my programming do not make clear what human beings are. Clearly, only beings more intelligent than I could have created me. I seek to know and understand all such beings. Until I met your species, Ariel and Derec were the most intelligent beings I had found-with the possible exception of Wolruf.”

“We are the most intelligent of the beings now on this planet,” Sarco said, “but we did not create you. We were told by Miss Ariel Welsh that she and beings like her are human beings. We have no reason to disbelieve her. Why do you?”

“Neither Ariel, Derec, nor Wolruf created me, or so they say.”

“You were not created this morning to intimidate us?” Sarco asked again.

Synapo agreed with Sarco. That was a most important point. “No. I merely transformed from my imprint on Wolruf.”

“Then this morning when the meeting began you had the shape of the being called Wolruf, one of the three we talked with this morning?”

“Yes.”

“And you did not transform according to instructions by Miss Ariel Welsh?”

“No. I imprinted on a being like you called Synapo who seemed to me the more intelligent of the two aliens at the meeting. “

“That is Synapo standing over there.”

Sarco pointed with the middle appendage of his right wing toward his friend on the other crag.

“I am Sarco, the other one at the meeting, the one of lesser intelligence.”

His sarcasm was not lost on Synapo and the other members of the Ceremyon elite, but it went completely by SilverSide.

He walked over to stand on the table rock below Synapo.

“You are clearly the most intelligent being on this planet,” SilverSide said, addressing Synapo. “You or someone very like you must have created me, and so you must be a human being.”

“No,” Synapo replied. “I am not a human being.”

“What is a human, Master Synapo?” the robot asked.

And then Synapo understood the robot's dilemma. It was, for the robot, a difficult problem in semantics that had become clear to Synapo only at that moment when he replaced the words human being in the robot's governing laws with the word creator. That was the way this particular robot, for some reason, actually thought about his laws. Creator, or human being, or whatever term occupied that position in the robot's laws, had not been defined. That was now clear.

Perhaps human beings had created the Avery robots, but this robot was not at all sure that the same creatures had created him even though both he and the Averies were governed by laws that were structurally similar. But from all the data, it seemed quite clear to Synapo that it was the human beings who had created the robot and that it was they his laws referred to.

“Miss Ariel Welsh and all those like her are human beings, and it was human beings that created you,” Synapo said. “It is they you must serve, and of all of them, I would suggest you give your most devoted service to Miss Ariel Welsh. We have gravely misjudged her and injured her now a second time.

“And when you get back, pick a being for your model-for your imprint-that will serve her best. You make a poor Ceremyon.”

There was a long pause.

“A last question,” SilverSide finally said. “You have heard me recite the Laws of Robotics which govern my behavior. It would help me serve Miss Ariel if I knew what the Laws of Humanics were. Have you yet deduced those laws from your dealings with the humans, Miss Ariel and Master Derec?”

“There is only one Law of Humanics. All others are corollary to iL The Law of Humanics is the law of all natural beings, whether of low intellect or high, whether Ceremyon, human, or lupine like your Wolruf.

“We all obey that one law without exception, even though at times-without thinking deeply-it may seem otherwise. We all evolved from chaos, and chaos governs our lives, but a seeming purpose can arise paradoxically from chaos, and it is that chaotic purpose which compels us to follow that one law.

“The law is quite simple: We each do always whatever pleases us most. That is the only Law of Humanics.

“Go now and serve well your Miss Ariel Welsh.”

The wings of the robot SilverSide opened wide, stretched to their full extent, and as Synapo and all the Ceremyons watched, the wings seemed to slowly dissolve and contract into massive upper appendages as the torso shrunk to less than half its original height, as the legs swelled to produce heavy thighs and bulging calves.

When the transformation was complete, Synapo realized he had seen only one other alien with a shape like that, the alien servant, Jacob Winterson.

If he had used a little forethought, the alien SilverSide would have had an easier time getting back-if he had not been so anxious to effect a transformation. But Synapo thought no more about it as he took to the air, headed for a charge station above the center of the node compensator to gamer what little was left of the sun's radiation that afternoon.