But the show was every bit as spectacular as she had intimated. She stood up to point out the one she thought was the Cerebron leader, Synapo, circling high over the dome. And it was he who dropped first: a tiny black ball plummeting toward the forest like a lead shot, becoming a small bomb, trailing a shiny smoke that slowly expanded into a silver ball that drifted gently down into the tree tops and then bobbed up to rest on the top of the forest like a ball of mercury on a countertop.

That was a solo performance, and then from near Synapo's flight circle, another followed-Sarco, the leader of the Myostria, Ariel guessed-and after a time, over the space of a quarter-hour, they all dropped until they were dispersed like myriad beads of silvery moisture over the surface of the green foliage.

Chapter 17. The Cerebot

From Central Computer File:Humanics.

Mechanical Access: Drawer667, Bin 82.

Keyword Access: Humans. Sub key: Laws.

File Creator: Rydberg 1

The next morning, well before ten o'clock, Mandelbrot parked the lorry near the west edge of the dome opening, and the three mammals got out, instructing the three robots to stay behind in the lorry but to record everything that transpired once the aliens arrived.

“Well, friend Mandelbrot, it is some time since we've been able to talk privately,” Jacob Winterson said.

“That will hardly be the case with the wild one present,” Mandelbrot said. “Watch what you say and what you do. It is completely unpredictable. It deactivated me on the wolf planet.”

Jacob and Mandelbrot were still standing behind the control panel of the lorry. SilverSide was sitting on the back seat that she had occupied with Wolruf on the way to the meeting site.

“For your information,” SilverSide said, “I am not an 'it.' I am currently of the female persuasion, having imprinted on Wolruf. You may refer to me with the pronouns 'she' and 'her,' Jacob. And you need not think that I will deactivate either of you now that I know that Mistress Wolruf would not react kindly to that action. Further, I am completely unaffected by what you may say or do, now that I understand that Miss Wolruf wants me to modulate the Third Law slightly to accord you some modest protection.”

“So, friend Jacob,” Mandelbrot said, “have you pondered further upon that imponderable, the Laws of Humanics?”

“Yes, I have,” Jacob replied, “and I find them woefully inadequate in describing human behavior. Rydberg and his companions are inexperienced in dealing with humans who are an unfathomable lot. Emotions, not laws, govern their behavior. And I think perhaps the female of the species is the most mysterious of all. I have been researching the emotion of jealousy since I seem to have been acquired essentially to create that emotion in the breast of Master Derec.”

“I hardly think jealousy can reside in the breast of a human, friend Jacob,” Mandelbrot suggested.

“Merely a figure of speech used in the literature of the subject,” Jacob replied. “The key point of interest here, however, is the multiplicity of shades and overtones that exist in the minds of humans in their consideration of the opposite sex, shades and overtones of emotion that apparently have nothing to do with reproduction of the species, the ostensible reason for there being the two sexes in the first place.”

Surprisingly, SilverSide was becoming interested in the conversation after all. She agreed with Jacob's assessment of any Laws of Humanics that would guide human behavior and supposedly parallel the Laws of Robotics that guided her behavior. And now the subject of their conversation seemed to bear directly on her discomfort with the femininity of the Wolruf imprint that seemed, paradoxically, to be aggravated by the keen interest in everything feminine she had felt earlier in the masculine mode, while imprinted on Derec.

It was a discomfort that came from an awareness of her own narcissism, something she had never experienced before, that was at once both fascinating and repulsive. She concluded she was attracted to feminine beings, but would rather it were not her own being. But what was the cause for the attraction? She concluded it must stem from that first powerful imprint on KeenEye that had not been altogether dispelled by her preference for the Derec imprint-the male imprint. That comfort with a masculine imprint was only a little less powerful than the laws that were intended to govern her behavior, but which she found so difficult to interpret for want of knowing what a human was. She could deprogram neither those laws nor her feeling of masculinity nor that insidious attraction for all that was feminine.

She found that she was experiencing another form of discomfort that came from listening to Jacob and Mandelbrot. She had never before heard two robots conversing with one another. The discomfort came not from that process but, again, from their words, what she deduced from their words. They were talking as though they knew what a human was, and she, SilverSide, was still exploring that subject by the process of multiple imprints, trying to progress to ever higher levels of intelligence, for surely only the most intelligent species in the galaxy could be the humans she was seeking.

“Jacob, you talk of the laws of humanics as though you know what a human is,” she said.

“Certainly,” Jacob said. “I am so programmed. How else could I implement the Laws of Robotics?”

“Am I human?” she asked.

“No. You are a robot,” Jacob replied.

“How do you know?”

“Master Derec says so. Further, my own senses tend to support his contention. You are not a mammal.”

“What about Mistress Wolruf? Is she human?”

“No.”

“But she is a mammal.”

“True. But not all mammals are human.”

“What is a human, Jacob?” Silverside asked.

“There are many definitions, some very complicated, some very simple. We are generally programmed with only one.”

“What is an example of a simple definition?”

“Accent in speaking Standard. Most humans speak Standard, so a simple definition for a special set of robots on a planet called Solaria once used the Solarian accent to define humans-a very simple test, not requiring any unusual instrumentation.”

“And how do you define a human, Jacob?”

“By the number of their chromosomes and the configuration of their X and Y chromosomes.”

“And how do you determine that information?”

“With an instrument-a cellular nanomachine-built into my right index finger.”

“You don't make that determination each time you meet that same human, do you?”

“No. Once I determine that a being is human, I put its image into a pattern-recognition table. Further, I am inclined to accept as human any being that approximates an average of those images-without the chromosome test.”

“Mistress Ariel and Master Derec are both humans, then.”

“Yes.”

“And which do you feel more compelled to protect?”

“My immediate master, Mistress Ariel.”

“And you, Mandelbrot, which would you favor?”

“Master Derec, although the choice would be difficult,” Mandelbrot said.