Maverick

Wolruf whined nervously and sidled closer to Eve. An unpleasant change had come over SilverSides with nightfall; the raw emotions of BeastTongue now threaded through her speech as she addressed the crowd in the street below. “What’s she sayin’?” Wolruf whispered to Eve.

“I’m not getting all of it,” Eve whispered back. “Some kind of anatomical comparison between Friend Avery and a sharpfang. ” She rotated her head and listened more closely. “Now she’s talking about-wonders. The ship; she’s mentioned the ship. And she’s saying that the city is capable of producing more wonders just like it. But-rhetorical question-why isn’t the city providing them?”

Silversides paused for dramatic effect and then thundered the answer.

“TwoLegs!” Eve translated.

The crowd broke into the savage, rhythmic chant in heavily accented Standard. “TwoLegs out! TwoLegs out!” Everywhere Wolruf looked, she saw angry, gaping jaws, fangs bared and glistening orange in the torchlight, chanting. “TwoLegs out! TwoLegs out!”

Eve shook her head in disbelief. “SilverSides taught them to say that in Standard! This is impossible!” Her voice became slurred and her movements erratic, clear signs of an impending First Law crisis. “He’s training the mob to hate bipeds!”

“ TwoLegs out! TwoLegs out!”

Eve and Wolruf looked at each other, then both discreetly dropped down to all fours. Eve began to transform herself into an image of Wolruf.

“ ‘U think we ought t’ warn Derec?” Wolruf asked.

“‘U better b’lieve it,” Eve answered. Closing her eyes, she activated her commlink and sought out Lucius.

Chapter 23. Battle Lines

The Warm, yellow streetlight was surrounded by a nimbus of clumsy insects. Grabbing the lamppost for a pivot, Derec swung off the slidewalk and followed Avery into the pocket park. Neither spoke until Avery had found a balcony overlooking the street below and taken a seat on the cold stone railing.

“Dad, I never thought I’d see the day when you ran away from a problem. ”

“I’m not ru

Derec glanced around the balcony, then put a foot up on the railing and looked out at the darkened city. The gentle night breeze carried faint hints of moisture and distant forests. “Care to explain the difference?”

Avery stopped scowling and looked up at Derec. “We can’t get anywhere with the supervisors. Circular logic: The kin have First Law status because the supervisors’ definition of human is corrupted, but the supervisors won’t let us fix the definition because that would violate the First Law. ”

“So why fix it? Aside from pure human chauvinism, that is. ”

Avery stroked his whiskery chin and tugged at the edge of his stiff white moustache. “Hard as this may be to believe, Derec, it’s for their own good. By the time we humans developed robots, we already had a mature, technological culture. We accepted robots as just better tools for carrying on life as we knew it.

“But what if back in the Stone Age, some alien race had come along and given us a magic box that delivered everything we asked for? Frost, you don ‘t have to imagine it; Old Earth history is littered with stories of Stone Age cultures that tried to make the leap directly to high technology. First the existing family and social structures were demolished. Then the local ecology was destroyed.

“And then the people had a choice: join the mainstream of human society-become exactly like every other technological culture-or become extinct. ” Avery ran a hand through his silvery hair and looked Derec straight in the eye. “Never mind how I feel about the kin personally. They deserve more of a choice than that, don’t they?”

Derec nodded. “Okay. Where do we start?”

“I’ve been thinking about that. ” Avery paused, and screwed his face up in a puzzled look. “You say it felt like Central was ru

“Dad, I’ve met bricks with more on their minds. Central is a complete blank. ”

“ A tabula rasa,” Avery muttered to himself. He nodded. “Yes, that makes sense. That’s what I would do. ”

Derec peered at Avery. “A tubular what?”

“Not ‘tubular. ’ Tabula rasa. Latin for ‘erased tablet. ’ One old theory used to hold that the human mind started out as a blank tablet, and personality developed as a result of the impressions that life ‘wrote’ on the mind. ”

Derec laughed. “That’s ridiculous, Dad. For starters, you’re completely ignoring the influence of genetic-”

Avery waved a hand to cut Derec off. “I didn’t say that I subscribe to that theory-at least, not as it applies to humans. But tell me, what would you do if you had a robot that had suffered traumatic brain damage? Damage so profound that every time you repaired it, the very memory of that damage unbalanced the psyche module again?”

Derec thought it over a moment. “I’d erase the memory. ”

“That’d work for a conventional robot. But what if it was a cellular robot, and every cell held a complete set of backup memories in positronic microcode?”

Derec sat down heavily on the stone railing next to Avery and blew out a deep breath. “Oh boy. We’re talking about a complete system purge and rebuild here. ”

“Exactly. ” Avery favored Derec with a knowing smile. “ And what would the robot’s mind be like after the purge?”

Slowly, Derec turned to look at Avery. Slowly, very slowly, a matching smile lit up his face. “A tabula rasa. ” Picking up the thought, Derec ran with it. “If the supervisors are doing a complete system rebuild on Central, it’s in a very impressionable state right now. The merest suggestion could have incredibly far-reaching effects on the future of the city. ”

Avery nodded. “So the supervisors will try to isolate Central from unwanted influences. They’ve probably severed all the terminal input lines and buffered the 1/0 cha

Derec’s face erupted in a sly grin. “But we know someone who’s got a direct commlink cha

Avery returned the grin. “How about it, son? Feel up to a little guerrilla computing?”

Derec looked around the balcony and shrugged. “This looks like as good a spot as any. ” Throwing his head back, he closed his eyes and began to concentrate. “Commlink activated. I’m hacking into the city network; okay, I’m in. I’m riding down the main data bus now, and I’m coming up to-uh oh. There’s a big black hole where Central should be. ”

“All the user-friendly stuff is deactivated,” Avery said. “You’ll have to feel your way in. ”

“Right. I’m going-no, wait, there’s an invisible barrier extending around the hole as far as I can reach. Cylindrical, not hemispherical. ”

“Can you find a seam?”

“Don’t have time. I’m going to see if it’s open at the top. ” Derec squinted for a moment as his concentration intensified. “Okay, that did it. I’ve jumped the barrier and I’m inside. Feels like I’m still falling; not accelerating, just falling. The hole is completely black. I can’t see a thing. ”

“You’re probably in the I-pipe,” Avery said. “Try reaching out with your right hand. You should feel - What the blazes is that?”

Derec broke concentration and returned to the analog world to find Avery staring slack-jawed at something in the distance. He looked where Avery was looking.

He saw a mob of kin with torches surging down the darkened street, coming closer with every step.

“Listen!” Avery gasped. Derec’s ears were still tuned to the subtleties of hyperwave, but he quickly adjusted and caught the chaotic noise of the mob. No, not noise. Voices. Chanting. In heavily accented Standard.

“TwoLegs out! TwoLegs out!”

“Oh, good grief,” Avery muttered.

Derec instantly switched back to commlink and sent out an urgent call. Lucius? Mandelbrot! What ’ s going on?