Isaac Asimov's Robots and Aliens 3 by Isaac Asimov

Author:Isaac Asimov
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-07-10T20:20:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12

FRUSTRATIONS

Avery itched to grab one of the tiny creatures, whom Ariel was now calling

“the dancers,” and take it apart under a microscopic scanner with a selection of the fine surgical instruments available in the medical facility. However, since Ariel forbade that any harm should come to the dancers, the dissection would be a violation of Second Law, and he must not violate Second Law. She still claimed it would also be a violation of First Law because of the essential humanity of the dancers, but he rejected that preposterous idea out of hand.

(Sometimes, in the back of his mind, he almost remembered he was really human and not subject to Ariel’s orders. At those moments his hands automatically reached toward the nearest dancer, and his fingers trembled.) On her part Ariel felt as if she were swimming from one whirlpool to another.

Each whirlpool was a different task, a different goal. At the center of one was Avery, who was acting crazier by the minute. The dancers (occupying her dreams as well as her daily routine) swirled in the middle of another. The third contained Adam and Eve, who, although themselves quite fascinated by the dancers, were still unpredictable and often disobedient. The previous day she had caught them trying to teach the dancers acrobatics. Eve picked up one, a male, and, keeping him firmly but gently between her fingers, tried to show him how to execute a series of midair flips. The little creature was obviously frightened, even though he did not struggle. The dancers, Avery suggested, treated their captors as gods and cooperated with any foolish things a god might try, no matter how dangerous.

It seemed that the Silversides would do anything to sidestep an order from Ariel. They had apparently never resolved the dilemma of whether or not Derec and Ariel were humans or if they were the proper kinds of humans, those for whom their mysterious and vague programming had been set. They knew they were supposed to serve humans and imprint themselves upon them, but had been given no guidelines about what a human was and how to recognize one. They were frequently puzzled by the behavior of Derec and Ariel (and, for that matter, the insanely contradictory actions of Avery), and had trouble convincing themselves to accept these particular humans as representative of the highest order of being in the universe.

Earlier in his existence, Adam had believed the blackbodies to be more intelligent than the humans he had encountered up to that time, and Eve had accepted the word of a demented blackbody that it was the only human in the galaxy. Their mistakes were just as responsible for making them cautious as were their doubts about Derec, Avery, and Ariel.

In a way, they were searching for some higher kind of human, dismissing Derec and Ariel as, like the dancers, some primitive and unworthy form of the species, not worthy of their loyalty and obedience. As a result, sometimes they responded like any robots

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