“Communication by radio accomplishes the same thing,” SilverSide said, “without the danger you suggest.”

“One must first understand their radiospeech,” Ariel said. “The modulation is pure ultrasonic gibberish. “

“I have been working on that ever since we arrived. It is not different from the ultrasound they used to converse privately during your meeting with them. That meeting provided the clues I needed to understand the radio transmissions I had picked up the evening of our arrival. I am now modestly fluent in the language.

“So fluent that I suspect you will find several representatives of their species awaiting us outside and probably well within flamethrowing range.”

Derec jumped up from the bed and ran from the bedroom to the French window that opened onto the balcony. Ariel followed him. He started to go out but stopped. There were two aliens perched on the balcony rail, clearly visible through the sheer curtains in spite of the permanent dusk created by the dome. They were silhouetted against the white building across the street like two huge black crows. There were probably more at street level.

Derec and Ariel went back to the bedroom.

“You have been talking to them!” Derec said quietly but with emphasis.

“Yes,” SilverSide said. “I have already opened my own negotiations.”

“And who have you been talking to?” Derec asked.

“The leader called Sarco.”

“And what do they want?”

“My release. I told them I was being held prisoner.”

“Hardly. You could have broken the ropes any time you wanted to, either before or after we got here.”

“Perhaps, but I didn't want to risk damaging my wings. To make myself aerodynamic I've had to sacrifice my original strength and ruggedness to the stamina and lightness needed for extended flight, which unavoidably entails a certain fragility.

“But now I must go talk to Master Sarco.”

“Tell them the truth,” Ariel said. “Explain our sincerity and our lack of knowledge of this last transformation of yours.”

“I must always tell the truth. I cannot do otherwise,” SilverSide said.

“But you do sometimes omit things,” Derec said. “Try to tell everything that is relevant to our situation.”

“My first concern must be for my new masters, but I do not easily forget those like LifeCrier and Wolruf who have been kind to me. Roping and binding, however, can hardly be described as kind.”

“Think of Wolruf, then,” Derec said. “And the many kindnesses I have shown you before this last incident.”

“I must go and confer with Sarco,” SilverSide said as he rolled to his feet, still balled. Then he partially straightened, still bent sideways, and sidled through the bedroom door.

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.