Avery scowled. “Yeah,” he said. “Let me go.”

“Only when I am convinced that you will not repeat your offense. Do I have your assurance that you will not?”

“Okay, okay, I won’t shoot at him again.”

“You must also endeavor never to scare him in another way, or to harm him either physically or psychologically in any way. Do I have your assurance that you will not?”

“Yes,you have my assurance. Now let me go.”

The robot turned to Derec. “Do you accept his assurance as truthful?”

Derec couldn’t resist laughing. “Hardly,” he said. “But that’s okay. After what he just did, I don’t think he can surprise me anymore. Let him go.”

The robots did. “We will observe you for a time,” the talkative one said.

Avery scowled. “I don’t want you to. Go away.”

“We cannot do that until we are sure that you will not harm one another.”

Avery evidently realized this was an argument that he couldn’t win. He shrugged and gestured at the mess on the floor. “Make yourselves useful then.”

The other robots began to pick up the scattered equipment, but the talkative one said to Avery, “A less destructive First Law test would have been to simply state that you were about to fall over without catching yourself. No properly functioning robot would allow that to happen.”

“Thank you for your profound input,” Avery said with exaggerated politeness.

“You are welcome.”

“Now get to work.”

Chapter 3. The Biological Laboratory

“I still think we ought to take one of them apart.” Avery was leaning over Lucius, positioning the internal scanner for yet another cross-section through the robot’s body. It may have resembled a robot on the outside, but that was as far as the similarity went; Lucius’s interior resembled a human body far more than it did a robot’s. It didn’t have any unnecessary internal organs, but those it did need were modeled after the human pattern. It had bunches of cells arranged like muscles, bones, and nerves, at least, rather than the more conventional linkages and cams.

Interesting as that discovery was, it had been hours since they had made it, and Avery was getting frustrated

“And I still say it won’t tell us anything we can’t find out indirectly,” Derec replied. He was sitting on a stool on the opposite side of the examination table, watching the screen and getting bored. “They’re obviously comparing notes, probably on their experience with humans. Why not let them go for a while? They might come up with something interesting.”

“Like some wonderful new way to disturb my cities,” said Avery.

“Your cities can take care of themselves. And if not, I can take care of them.”

“You think so. I think you’re just trying to protect your mother’s experiment.”

Derec considered that possibility. Was he trying to protect her experiment, or was he simply trying to protect three robots from being needlessly destroyed? He had thought it was the latter, but now that Avery mentioned it…

“Maybe I am,” he said.

“You don’t even know her.”

“That’s not my fault.”

“And it is mine. Guilty. I shouldn’t have wiped your memory. When I think of a good way to make it up to you, I will, but believe me, you’re better off without it.”

“I’d like to be the judge of that.”

Avery had been looking at the scanner display, but now he turned his head and looked his son straight in the eyes. “Of course you would. I can understand that. But bear in mind, if you got your memory back, what you’d have memories of. I told you once before that you had a fairly normal childhood, and that’s true enough, but it was a normal childhood in an Auroran family, which is the next best thing to no family at all. Your mother and I hardly saw one another after your birth. You hardly saw either of us. In fact, you spent most of your childhood with robots.”

“No wonder I fit in so well here,” Derec said drily.

Avery said nothing, and Derec sensed his embarrassment. At least he’s embarrassed, he thought, then chided himself for feeling vindictive. Learning to live with a recovering psychopath was almost as difficult as being the recoveree. The things his father had done while insane were not his fault, at least not in the sense that he could be held responsible for them, yet Derec still felt that he had been poorly treated. Somebody should feel bad about it, shouldn’t they?

Or was this another situation like the one they had just gone through with the laser? Was wishing for remorse just another way of mistreating a human?

No wonder the robots were having such a time trying to understand human interactions. The humans themselves didn’t understand them half the time.

But the robots were learning. Witness the cargo robots, still standing patiently around the lab, watching for signs of recurring violence. They had already learned not to trust a human’s stated intentions.

How could that be a good thing? Before long these robots of his father’s would decide that humans were not to be trusted at all, and hence not to be obeyed in any situation where trust was necessary to avoid an internal conflict with the Three Laws. As for his mother’s robots, if they ever came out of their communication fugue, who could predict what conclusions they would draw from their collective experiences? The only prediction Derec was willing to make with any certainty was that they would be even less useful than before.

That thought made Derec ask, “What were our house robots like?”

Avery looked up momentarily in surprise. “What do you mean, ‘what were they like?’ Like robots, of course. Old-style robots. I didn’t develop the cellular robot until after you’d left home, and your mother stole her design from me.”

“That’s what I thought. The point is, they did the mundane work for you, right? Cooking and cleaning and changing diapers and emptying the trash.”

“Of course they did,” Avery said. He sounded indignant, as if the very thought that he would have done any of those chores was obscene.

“They were useful, then.”

“What are you getting at?”

“I’m getting at the obvious observation that the robots around here, despite their advanced design-maybe because of their advanced design-aren’t as useful as the older models. They’re more trouble. Too much independence.”

Avery moved the scanner a fraction and keyed the display again. Another view into the nerve and musclelike masses of Lucius’s interior appeared on the screen. “Maybe my definition of useful is different from yours,” he said.

They had already had that conversation. Avery was simply not interested in immediate utility, and Derec was. There was no sense arguing over it. Derec got up off his stool with a sigh, stretched, and said, “I’m about to fall asleep here. Are you going to keep at it all day?”

“Probably,” Avery replied. “I think I’ll leave you to it, then.”

“Fine.”

“Just don’t cut any of them up, okay?”

Avery looked pained. “I’ll do with them whatever I please. If that includes cutting them up, then that’s what I’ll do.”

Derec and Avery stared at one another across the unmoving robot’s body for long, silent seconds. One of the cargo robots near the wall took a step toward them. Derec looked up at the robot, then back to Avery. He considered ordering the robot to keep Avery from harming the others, but decided against it. It would just escalate the war between them. Besides, there were better ways.

He shrugged and backed off. “It’s your conscience. But I’m asking you, please don’t cut any of them up. As a favor to me.”

Avery frowned. “I’ll think about it,” he replied.

Derec nodded. Now it was up to Avery to decide whether or not to escalate the war. It was a risk, but a calculated one. Derec had felt a spark of humanity in Avery a couple of times today; he was willing to bet his father was sick of confrontation, too.