“What does it say?”

“This one is a Ferrier Model EG,” Derec said, scanning. “Customized for valet service.” And personal defense, he added silently. A bodyguard robot. “Initialization date, Standard Year ‘83-”

Then he scanned a few words ahead and was struck dumb.

“What is it?” Wolruf asked. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” Derec managed to say. “The robot was registered on Aurora.”

“That iss one of ‘urr worlds?”

“Yes.”

“Iss that important?”

“No,” Derec said. “Let’s look at the other one.” But it was important, and his hands were trembling as he took the scanner in them and rose from his seat. He remembered Aurora. He remembered the World of the Dawn. Not the things that everyone knew-that it was the first Spacer world and long the preeminent one, that it was home to the highly regarded Institute of Robotics from which most advances in robotic science had emerged.

No, like a ray of light sneaking past the black curtain, Derec remembered Aurora as a place he had been: glimpses of a spaceport, a parklike city, a pastoral countryside. He was connected with it in some way, some way strong enough that the word alone had the power to break through the wall separating him from his past.

At last, he knew something about himself. He had been to Aurora. It was not much of a biography, but it was a beginning.

Chapter 9. Ally

Without a diagnostic board or even a computer at his disposal, Derec had no choice but to activate the robot and rely on its own self-diagnostic capabilities. But before he could get even that far, he had a jigsaw puzzle to assemble.

The headless robot was an EX series, but the differences did not affect the parts Derec needed to borrow to make the EG whole. The active systems-as opposed to the merely structural-of any mass-produced robot were modular and standardized. It would not have been possible to produce them economically any other way. So the kidney-sized microfusion powerpack of the EX was a plug-compatible replacement for the damaged one inside the EG.

But the powerpack’s mounting cradle, which contained the interface for the primary power bus, had also been damaged by the fight which had downed the robot. Regrettably, the cradle had not been designed for field replacement, and it seemed to be attached to every other component inside the EG’s torso-and not by convenient micromagnetic fields. The manufacturer had settled for the less costly alternative of sonic welds.

Lacking the proper tools, swapping the cradles was a challenge. He practiced on the damaged cradle inside the EG, then used his hard-won expertise to transfer the undamaged one into the vacancy. That alone took more than two hours. But when he was done, it took less than two minutes to swap powerpacks.

Unfortunately, that did not end the matter. In all Ferrier models, the basic data library used by the robot was contained in removable memory cubes placed in a compartment just behind its “collarbone.” The robot’s extensive positronic memory was reserved completely for the business of learning from experience.

From the manufacturer’s standpoint, that arrangement meant that the positronic brains did not have to be specialized according to the robot’s function. From the owner’s viewpoint, it meant that their investment was protected against obsolescence or changing needs.

But from Derec’s perspective, it meant trouble. The headless robot had five cube slots, four of them occupied. For the EG, the numbers were seven and five. But the two empty slots and three of the occupied ones had been caught in the same blast that had damaged the power cradle.

There was no repairing them and no replacing them. But what was worse was that Derec was bound to use one of the two functional slots for the standard Systems cube, without which the robot would know nothing about its own structure and operation. He had five cubes packed full of data and logic routines, and he could only use one of them at a time. Eventually he settled on the Mathematics cube, concealing the Personal Defense cube for possible use at some future time.

Derec’s inventory of visible damage to the robot included severed cables that would render the right arm paralyzed and a frozen gimbal on one of the dual gyroscopes. But with power and the working library restored, there was only one truly critical part left to see to: the positronic brain.

In appearance, the brain was a three-pound lump of platinum-iridium. In function, it was the repository for the fundamental positromotive potentials governing the robot’s activity, for the temporary potentials which represented thought and decision, and for the pathways which represented learning.

What Derec was hoping was that the fundamental pathways had not been randomized, as could happen if the brain had been exposed to hard radiation. There was no hope for the robot’s experience base. The backup microcell, used to refresh the pathways while the robot was being serviced, had long since been exhausted and the pathways had long ago decayed. The robot would remember nothing of its previous service. But if the brain was undamaged, it should function normally when reinitiated.

Just like me-

Given the equipment available, the only way to test the condition of the positronic brain was to activate the robot and test it. For obvious reasons, that was dangerous. At one point in the history of robotics, robots had been designed to shut down when they detected any internal error conditions. But several hundred years of progress in robotics design had produced a different philosophy built around fault-tolerance and self-maintenance. He could not be sure what would happen.

By the time he was ready to find out, Wolruf had either grown bored or was obliged to go tend to some other duty. That was a fortunate turn, since when the robot was activated, it would be facing a situation that no robot had ever faced before. It would have to decide whether Aranimas and Wolruf were “human” enough that it was required to protect them and obey their orders.

Since robots were as a rule literal-minded to a fault, it should not have been a problem. Aranimas was clearly an alien, despite his superficially humanoid appearance. Wolruf was even more so.

Those who manufactured robots did not ordinarily limit the definition of a human being, but left it as broad as possible. A power plant worker in a max suit did not look human, but a robot would obey its order. Robots were not, could not be, completely literal. They did not judge merely on appearance. A three-year-old child was human, yet a robot would frequently decline its orders.

It was possible that the programming which permitted those distinctions would find some fundamental identity between the aliens and Derec. If there was any way of preventing that, Derec was determined to do so. Because of the First Law, the robot could not be used against him. But if the robot could be persuaded that the aliens were not entitled to protection under the First Law, he might be able to use the robot against Aranimas.

With some trepidation, Derec pressed the power reset. A moment later, all of the robot’s joints except those in the damaged arm stiffened. Its eyes lit up with a red glow that pulsed rhythmically.

“Alpha alpha epsilon rho,” Derec said, repeating the sequence of Greek letters which had appeared on the ID grating. “Sigma tau sigma.”

There was a brief pause, and then the robot’s eyes began to glow steadily. “My default language is Galactic Standard, Auroran dialect,” it said. “No other language banks are currently available. Is that acceptable, sir?”

Derec broke into a smile. After his frustrations with the robots on the asteroid, it was a pleasure to be addressed civilly again. “Auroran Galactic is fine.”