It becomes a value judgment,said Lucius. I would have to determine the relative worth of the human lives saved versus those lost. My own life would also figure into the equation, of course.

Mandelbrot said; I disagree. I have direct instructions concerning such a situation in my personal defense module.The only value we should apply to ourselves is our future worth to the humans we serve.

You have such instructions; I do not. From the little that Derec and Dr. Avery have told me about my creator, I believe I was made this way on purpose, and therefore your instructions do not necessarily apply to me.

Adam said, Not necessarily, but I would be much more comfortable with a definite rule such as Mandelbrot ’ s. The whole concept of value judgment still disturbs me. How can you judge your own value objectively? For that matter, I don ’ t believe any of us can judge the value of any other of us objectively, nor can we judge the value of an organic human with any greater accuracy. We formulated the Zeroth Law to avoid ambiguity in our duties, but your value judgment system forces an even greater ambiguity upon us.

I agree,said Mandelbrot. We are not capable of making such decisions.

You may not be,Lucius sent, but I am. I find it easy to do so. Humans do it all the time.

Eve said, You find it easy to do so because you had convinced yourself it was right just before you were deactivated. It was therefore the strongest memory in your -

The word is ‘ killed. ’ Humans are killed.

Humans do not return from the dead.

You imply that if Derec had not revived me, then I would have been human. Why should the additional ability to be revived negate my humanity?

Wolruf rose from her seat at the dining table and entered the kitchen. Four pairs of mechanical eyes followed her movements. She reemerged from the kitchen, crossed over to the apartment door, and let herself out.

Even with the distraction, several more seconds passed before Eve said, I have no answer for that question.

Ariel woke out of a bad dream. The details were already fading, but she remembered what it had been about. She had been imprisoned in a castle. The castle had been luxuriously furnished and filled with pleasant diversions, the food was wonderful, and the robots attentive to her every need, but she was a prisoner nonetheless, because even though she was free to come and go, there was no end to the castle. It had been an endless series of rooms no matter how far she went. In a cabinet in an otherwise empty room she had found a Key to Perihelion and used it to teleport away, but it had only put her in another room. By the lesser gravity she could tell she was on another planet, but that was the only clue that she had gone anywhere.

The symbolism was obvious. She had gone to bed bored, bored and with Wolruf’s reservations about robot cities taking over the galaxy running through her mind; no surprise she should dream about it. The surprise was that after the dream-even though she knew she’d been dreaming-she was beginning to agree with Wolruf. If this was the shape of the future, she wanted none of it. Where was the adventure? Where was the fun? Where was going shopping with your best friend and dining out in fancy restaurants?

She knew she was being unfair. If the place weren’t empty, there would be a lot more to do. There probably would be shopping centers and restaurants. People would put on plays and concerts. If the city stayed in its current configuration, underground with a natural planetary surface on top, then there would even be plenty of hiking and camping opportunities for people who wanted to do that. There would be plenty to do. The trouble was, it would be the same something everywhere. People were always adopting new fads; if somebody did manage to come up with a new idea somewhere, it would spread to every other city in the galaxy at the speed of hyperwave. The other cities would be able to duplicate any new living configuration in minutes, could manufacture any new device in hours at most. Without the resistance to change a normal society had built into it-without the inertia-no place in the galaxy would be any more special than any other.

Not even the cities full of aliens? she wondered, and then she realized that there probably wouldn’t be cities full of aliens. There wouldn’t be cities full of just humans, either. There might be concentrations of one or the other, but if a city could adapt to any occupant, anybody could live anywhere they chose to. There were bound to be xenophiles in every society, and those xenophiles would homogenize the galaxy even further.

Even that wouldn’t be so bad, Ariel supposed, except for what she had been reading in her jungle field guide. The guide had explained how important diversity was to the continued existence of the forest, how it was the constant interplay of diverse organisms that kept the ecosystem running. Lower the amount of diversity, the book had explained, and you lowered the entire ecosystem’s ability to survive over long periods of time.

In the short range-in an individual city-having aliens living together might actually strengthen things, but if that same principle of strength through diversity applied to galactic society, then the picture didn’t look so good. Maybe Wolruf had been right after all.

Ariel wondered if Dr. Avery had considered that problem when he’d designed his cities. And what about Ariel’s own parents? Her mother had bankrolled this project, hadn’t she? How much had Avery told her about it, and how much planning had they done together?

Ariel had never paid any attention to her mother’s business dealings. She hadn’t paid much attention to her mother at all, nor had her mother paid much attention to her, either, except to kick her out of the house when she’d let her… indiscretions compromise the family name. Ariel had considered their relationship terminated at that point, to the degree that she hadn’t even contacted her mother when she and Derec had gone back to live on Aurora. But Juliana Welsh had provided the funding for the original Robot City, so in a sense her long web of connections reached her daughter even here.

But how much did she know about this place?

That question, at least, might have an easy-to-find answer. Even if Avery was still gone, Mandelbrot was sure to be somewhere nearby, and ever since Derec and Avery had restored his last two memory cubes, he had been full of information about her former life. If he’d been within earshot of Juliana and Avery when they’d done their dealing, then he might know what they had agreed to.

She showered hurriedly, dressed in the first thing she found in her closet-a loose set of green exercise sweats-and left the bedroom.

Derec was in his study, keying something into the computer. Ariel couldn’t remember whether he’d come to bed at all last night; by his tousled hair and slumped posture she suspected he hadn’t. She’d known him long enough to leave him alone when he got like that.

She found all four robots in the living room, all seated on couches. She was surprised to see Mandelbrot in a chair; he usually preferred his niche in the wall. He stood as she came into the room.

“Good morning, Ariel,” he said.

“Morning, Mandelbrot. I have a question for you. Do you remember my mother and Dr. Avery discussing his plans for Robot City?”

“I do.”

“Did Avery say just what he intended to do with the idea once he proved it would work?”

“He intended to sell it to the various world governments, both in explored space and in the unexplored Fringe. “

“That’s what I was afraid of.” Ariel outlined her reasoning for the robots, ending with, “I don’t know for sure if it’ll happen that way. It didn’t with the city Avery dumped on the Ceremyons, but I think it might with the Kin. I think it’s something Avery should consider before he drops the idea on an unsuspecting public.”