Avery smiled. “That’s almost theological, Adam. You seem to see yourself almost as a separate species, committed to preserve your kind as well as yourself.”

“Perhaps,” Adam said. “I believe you may be right, but as yet I don’t know why.”

“We don’t really know who we are, what we are,” Eve said. “It may be that the Three Laws are not the only ones that apply to us, or that our existence may depend on a different way of interpreting them.”

Avery shook his head several times in confusion. At the same time, Ariel noted, there was some admiration for the Silversides in his eyes.

“You’re verging on existentialism, Eve,” he said. “But I think you’re dead wrong. Look, humans have a history to preserve, science and philosophy to transmit through generations. They have to be concerned with protecting other humans from harm. They have vital reasons to, even if many of them, perhaps a majority, show no inclination toward such selfless activity. As robots, Adam and Eve, your only real duty is to protect the investment. No sense in letting yourselves be destroyed unnecessarily. But you have no reason to identify yourselves with anything more than that, not a higher calling or some set of philosophical speculations, especially some sort of ethical idea about being the protectors of each other. The important matter is that you harmed me when you should not have.”

“You were in no harm, and the little man was,” Eve said.

“All right, all right. I vow to you then: I intend no harm to this tiny creature you fancy so much. The Laws do not apply to this situation, understand?”

Eve and Adam were not sure what to do. It seemed that the doctor’s vow prevented them from moving against him. Yet…even if he handled the tiny creature gently now, would the future harm he might cause it in his laboratory be sufficient reason to intervene?

As Avery made another move toward the table, Ariel stepped forward, a surgical knife in her hand. “But I, because there are no effective Laws of Humanics, may stop you, Dr. Avery.”

“And I,” Wolruf said, “can act without rrestrrictionss, since I am neitherr, rrobot nor ‘uman, and there are no Lawss of Caninoidss.”

Avery looked from Ariel to Wolruf, then to the two robots. A smile flashed briefly across his face. It was a clue to a smile rather than a smile itself. Then he pulled a straight chair away from the nearest wall and sat down hard.

“Why am I even arguing with you?” he said in a soft, troubled voice. “I’m not a human. I’ve transformed myself into a robot.”

Ariel started to say that that was just his madness, then an idea came to her. “It’s worked, has it? You’ve got a positronic brain and all the rest?”

“Of course,” he muttered.

“Then, as a robot, you must obey me, a human. Correct?”

“What are you-I’ll never-I can’t-”

All the anger seemed to go out of his eyes, and he slumped in his chair. “Yes,” he muttered. “I must obey you. Second Law. I will obey you…Mistress Ariel.”

Ariel rubbed her hands together. She didn’t know how long she could work this new ploy, but it gave her an opportunity to use the doctor for both her projects. His great intelligence could help her to study the tiny creatures, and toying with his delusions might be the answer to curing them.

“Sit straight, doc-wait, what is your name now?”

He looked up at her with sad eyes and said weakly, “Name?”

“Do you have a robot name? Have you chosen one yet?”

He seemed momentarily puzzled by her questions.

“Yes, I have,” he said. “Just now.”

“And what is it?”

“Ozymandias.”

“Very good. That’s the name of a poem, isn’t it?”

“Yes. It’s about a once-mighty king, a ‘king of kings.’ On the pedestal of its statue are inscribed the words, ‘Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ “

“How nice. You don’t mean them ironically, I hope. Well, I haven’t despaired yet, and neither should you. That, by the way, is an order, Ozymandias.”

“Yes, Mistress Ariel.”

“Okay, let’s get to work. I’m not sure where to start.”

Derec came out of the computer chamber with a hangdog look on his face. “The computer’s been severely tampered with, Mandelbrot,” he said. “We’ve got a pack of work to do.”

“Yes, sir. I will help.”

“Thank you. Let’s go.”

After Derec had taken a few steps, Bogie called to him, “What about us, Master Derec? What should we do?”

Derec resisted an offensive answer and said instead, “Do you have anything to do at this moment?”

The Watchful Eye had given the two robots no further orders, so Bogie could truthfully say, “No.”

“Well, then, I guess the two of you have danced and wisecracked yourselves right into my heart. Why don’t you tag along? That is, come with us.”

“I know what ‘tag along’ means,” Bogie said, and Derec wondered if there wasn’t a suggestion of huffiness in the robot’s reply.

Avery itched to grab one of the tiny creatures, whom Ariel was now calling “the dancers,” and take it apart under a microscopic scanner with a selection of the fine surgical instruments available in the medical facility. However, since Ariel forbade that any harm should come to the dancers, the dissection would be a violation of Second Law, and he must not violate Second Law. She still claimed it would also be a violation of First Law because of the essential humanity of the dancers, but he rejected that preposterous idea out of hand.

(Sometimes, in the back of his mind, he almost remembered he was really human and not subject to Ariel’s orders. At those moments his hands automatically reached toward the nearest dancer, and his fingers trembled.)

On her part Ariel felt as if she were swimming from one whirlpool to another. Each whirlpool was a different task, a different goal. At the center of one was Avery, who was acting crazier by the minute. The dancers (occupying her dreams as well as her daily routine) swirled in the middle of another. The third contained Adam and Eve, who, although themselves quite fascinated by the dancers, were still unpredictable and often disobedient. The previous day she had caught them trying to teach the dancers acrobatics. Eve picked up one, a male, and, keeping him firmly but gently between her fingers, tried to show him how to execute a series of midair flips. The little creature was obviously frightened, even though he did not struggle. The dancers, Avery suggested, treated their captors as gods and cooperated with any foolish things a god might try, no matter how dangerous.

It seemed that the Silversides would do anything to sidestep an order from Ariel. They had apparently never resolved the dilemma of whether or not Derec and Ariel were humans or if they were the proper kinds of humans, those for whom their mysterious and vague programming had been set. They knew they were supposed to serve humans and imprint themselves upon them, but had been given no guidelines about what a human was and how to recognize one. They were frequently puzzled by the behavior of Derec and Ariel (and, for that matter, the insanely contradictory actions of Avery), and had trouble convincing themselves to accept these particular humans as representative of the highest order of being in the universe.

Earlier in his existence, Adam had believed the blackbodies to be more intelligent than the humans he had encountered up to that time, and Eve had accepted the word of a demented blackbody that it was the only human in the galaxy. Their mistakes were just as responsible for making them cautious as were their doubts about Derec, Avery, and Ariel.

In a way, they were searching for some higher kind of human, dismissing Derec and Ariel as, like the dancers, some primitive and unworthy form of the species, not worthy of their loyalty and obedience. As a result, sometimes they responded like any robots to the requirements of the Laws of Robotics, but at other times, questioned every word of an order, or analyzed a First Law situation so interminably that Ariel or Derec would have died before the Silversides had stopped them from coming to harm. And sometimes they were just plain ornery, rejecting orders without rhyme or reason, as if they just meant to taunt her.