"Asimov, Isaac - Robot City - Robots and Aliens 03 - Intruder - Robert Thurston" - читать интересную книгу автора (Asimov Isaac)
On the desktop the tiny figures were surveying the room. There was a strange sadness in their eyes, as if they saw at once that there was no easy escape
Derec had not been near the central core of the computer for some time. It had changed in some way, but he was not sure how. Still encased in thick transparent plastic, the intricate mechanisms inside looked like the work of several abstract expressionists painting in a number of styles. It definitely did not look like the workings of a computer.
He walked to the side of the shell and put his fingertips against its surface. They came away with a thin layer of dust on them. He scowled, puzzled but?with everything else that had been going wrong?not surprised. Before, this environment had always been kept pristine. There had been robots housed here whose only job was maintenance. Where were they now?
Walking around the enormous chamber, he found several small floor-level robot niches meant for the kind of function-robots that computer room janitors were. Some of them still had maintenance robots snuggled inside, but clearly they were now inoperative. If he had had time, he would have scheduled them for repair, but the repair shops were no doubt just as inoperative at present. Functionless cleaning robots would have to wait their turn in the line of the many anomalies to be dealt with.
Returning to Mandelbrot, he held up his dirty fingertips without speaking. Behind Mandelbrot, Bogie and Timestep stood silently. Well, not completely silent. Timestep?s toes beat out a soft slow tap rhythm on the metal flooring.
Pointing toward the computer, Derec said, ?Well, guys, I?m going inside. You wait here, but if you sense me in any trouble, remember the First Law.?
?You need not remind me,? Mandelbrot said.
?I know, I know. Sorry if I hurt you.?
?How could you hurt me? That is outside the??
?I spoke out of turn. Just give me good backup, hear??
Without waiting for any of the robots to question his colloquially expressed order, Derec walked up the steps to the platform that led to the computer chamber entrance and pushed a red button set in the door. Fortunately, the button still worked, and the door slid open.
The button was the only mechanism that did work, however. After he went through the doorway, the heat lamps did not come on, the sprayers did not send a full body spray of compressed air over his body to remove dust. He would have to enter the chamber in a contaminated state. That probably didn?t matter, since from all evidence the chamber was probably contaminated already.
In order for him to enter farther, the wall in front of him should slide open. With nothing working right, it of course did not. He recalled, however, that there was a manual override located just beside the outer door. He had to fumble around in the dark for a moment to find out. When he did, it at least worked. The wall slid open.
Now he entered what to him seemed like a shadowy world. In the dimness the computer?s shapes (he recalled circuitry, microprocessors, tubing, synapse wiring and other electronic marvels from his first visit here) seemed ghostly, unreal. He needed light. The manual override for the inner-room functions was nearby, he knew, and he groped for it. Before he found it, his hand briefly brushed against the outside of the Watchful Eye?s haven, which it had reshaped into an innocent-looking storage cabinet, a good disguise as long as the human did not decide to inspect its contents. Although detecting the touch, it felt no danger yet from Derec and remained still.
Derec?s manipulation of the override produced only partial light, but enough to see that not only was the main computer malfunctioning, it appeared to be covered with a strange kind of dark green moss.
The Watchful Eye perceived the bitterness in Derec?s whispered curse. It had known the moss, even if it had been conceived on the spur of the moment, had been a good idea.
Bogie wished he could discuss his dilemma with Timestep but they could not converse privately, either out loud or by comlink, because of the presence of Mandelbrot. He had no way of knowing whether or not Mandelbrot could eavesdrop in either way, but there was no point in taking a chance.
The problem that Bogie felt just now had to do with allegiance. He sensed that the Watchful Eye was close by, somewhere inside the transparent shell, perhaps near Derec. If one of them were to attack the other, what would be his duty? he wondered. His allegiance had been to the Watchful Eye until the arrival of Derec and the others. The First Law said to protect the human, but would that interfere with his loyalty to the Watchful Eye? It would help if Bogie had actually seen the Watchful Eye, who said it was human, yet did not act especially human and never referred to itself as of masculine or feminine gender. If it were human, had it displaced Derec in Robot City?s ruling hierarchy? Could he allow Derec to harm the Watchful Eye? Must he come to Derec?s defense if the Watchful Eye attacked him?
Considering orders did not help. Derec?s order to come in an emergency was recent, while the Watchful Eye?s command for dutiful obedience had been in effect for some time now.
The only thing to do, Bogie decided, was to hope that real life was not like the movies, where so often violent activity preceded the peaceful finale. He had no desire at this moment to cut to the chase.
The creatures had seemed to calm down after Ariel had approached them. She had drawn a chair up to the desk, keeping her hands safely out of sight, and talked to them. Her words didn?t matter, she had known that. What language they had was their own. Whoever had created them had neglected to program any known language into them, perhaps on purpose.
Standing on the other side of the desk, the Silversides and Wolruf were also entranced by Ariel?s version of the tale, although Eve had to ask frequent questions of Adam that he could not answer. She decided that the fairy godmother must be, like them, a shape-changer, and that was why she could do such marvelous things with pumpkins and farm animals.
Ariel came to the end of her story and was about to say that the prince and Cinderella lived happily ever after, but she thought of the questions that the Silversides might ask her, especially about how a human pair could possibly live forever, even if they were long-lived Aurorans, and she swallowed the phrase and merely said that everything went nicely for the happy couple for the next few decades.
When she stopped speaking, the tiny people looked eagerly at her, as if they wanted more. However, now that she had settled their anxieties, it was time to find out something more about them. But what? She had in front of her a bunch of minuscule human beings, apparently sentient, possibly (if Avery was right) android in nature, essentially a sophisticated version of the kind of mechanical toys she had played with as a child. Should she see if they could playa tin drum or walk stiff-legged like tin soldiers? Eve had said she had observed dancing in the ones at the vacant lot, and that this group had been performing some kind of ceremony.
Ceremony, that was the key. Whatever life they had, whatever ?civilization? they could develop in their short lives, it seemed that it all was tied in with ceremony.
Carefully putting her hand down on the desk at a sufficient distance from where the group was gathered, Ariel began to trace out a small circle with the tip of her index finger. She hummed an old melody, a song about a woman whose lover kept going off to war, was eventually killed, then returned to her as a ghost. It had a plaintive sound, she knew, even when sung in her slightly out-of-tune voice.
At first the group merely watched Ariel?s finger move around, then the leader stood up and made authoritative gestures to her followers. Joining her, they clasped hands, formed a circle, and began to dance around, slowly, to the rhythm of Ariel?s tune. Tears came to Ariel?s eyes as she watched them dance gracefully and with more than a touch of elegance. It was beautiful, both the dance itself and the fact that they had understood her so quickly and easily.
She stopped tracing the circle and lifted her hand from the desktop. A moment later the dancers halted, too, looking up expectantly at Ariel, who nodded and returned her hand to the desk, this time tracing out a figure-eight with her finger. She moved her finger faster, and hummed a quicker-tempoed song, one about the happiness of frolicking in Auroran woods. (The Auroran songs made her feel nostalgic for her home, and briefly she wondered when she would ever return there. The way things were going, she might live the rest of her life confronting danger with Derec and desiring a more peaceful time with him.)
The dancers reformed themselves into a line. With the leader in front, they began a quite lovely quickstep dance following the figure-eight with more precision than Ariel could with her finger. Tears now fell from her eyes, and Eve noticed them.
?What is it, Mistress Ariel? Are you injured??
Ariel was touched by Eve?s First Law reaction. ?No, I?m fine. I?ve always done this?bawled like a baby when I see anything done with any artistry. I mean, this is almost like dancing, ballet even, the way they move so delicately. Sometimes people think I?m reacting with sentimentality, but that?s not it at all. It?s just the way I respond to the beauty of it, even more the fact that such beauty is possible. Maybe it?s a kind of sentimentality, but it comes from admiration and not from tender feelings. You don?t understand very much of this, do you, Eve??
?No, I do not.?
?Nor do I,? Dr. Avery said, stepping out?as usual?without warning from a hiding place. He had stepped through the doorway, which had been left open after the Silversides brought the desk through it. Ariel was so startled she didn?t know what to say, although she was already calculating how to make him stay So she could, as ordered, try to cure him.
?If there is anything to your theories of art, Ariel, or to anybody?s theories, for that matter, it is not in intakes of breath at seeing something well-performed or sighs of admiration at a work well-executed. But that is unimportant to me, actually, since I don?t believe there is anything to theories of art. I believe imagination is a curse, unless it is used for applied science. Works of art are garbage unless they demonstrate a useful theorem.?
Ariel, recalling Lucius?s sculpture called ?Circuit Breaker,? the one authentic piece of art produced by a Robot City robot, and the doctor?s hatred of it, knew that Avery was speaking the truth. He truly despised artistic creations.
?Was not that idea once called utilitarianism?? Eve asked.
Avery seemed impressed. ?My, she does look amazingly like you, Ariel, doesn?t she? And is, perhaps, smarter. At any rate, that ancient philosophy, utilitarianism, does perhaps vaguely resemble the assumptions behind what I said.?
He walked to the edge of the desk and stared down at the tiny figures. When he had started speaking and Ariel had stopped singing, they had ended their dancing. Now, they looked up at Avery. Fear had returned to their faces.
?I can see why playing with them made you feel like God, my dear,? he said.
?I never said it did.?
?Oh, but I could see a godlike look in your face. You were looking for ways to send down tablets from the mountain or part a body of water for them, were you not??
?No, I was not!?
?I wasn?t speaking literally. But I think you?re trying to establish a relationship with them that is godlike, studying them and finding ways to improve their meager existence.?
?I requested Mistress Ariel to study them,? Eve said.
?Is that so? You continue to amaze me, what?s your name, Eve? You are quite a feat of robotics. While we?re on the subject of gods, who made you??
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