Ariel threw up her hands in despair. She did not need this kind of robotic sophistry right this minute. Staring down at the desktop, she said, “Okay, who’s ahead?”

Ariel didn’t have the patent on despairing gestures. In another part of the city, Derec was clenching his fists and resisting the impulse to slam them down on the nearest available surface.

“Another dysfunctional session, sir?” Mandelbrot said. Derec almost laughed. A dysfunctional session? Frost, an absolute failure.

“It seems that our computer does not yet want to activate full access, Mandelbrot. This just doesn’t make sense. It’s like the computer is playing with me, letting me do some things, blocking me from others.”

“Do not the computers obey the Laws of Robotics, too?”

Derec shrugged. “They’re supposed to. Unless someone is controlling them from some outside source, overriding my requests as I make them.”

“Is that possible?”

“I believe so. There is someone in the city somewhere, the same individual that the robots are blocked from telling me about, and he or she or it’s the boss right now. There’s something so, I don’t know, inhuman about our intruder’s actions that I suspect an alien, one as intelligent as the blackbodies and as mean as Aranimas.”

Aranimas had been the alien who, before Derec came to Robot City, had trapped him on his ship and tried to make a slave out of him. The most fortunate aspects of that terrible experience were that he had met Ariel and Wolruf and constructed the wonderfully loyal Mandelbrot out of spare parts.

With an expansive hand gesture that clearly dismissed the computer, Derec stood up and began pacing the room. “Mandelbrot, I should be in charge, but the he or she or it is not allowing it. This individual doles out some information through the computer-how to activate the devices for food, Personals, the slidewalk, heat and light-but only that data that we require in order to survive. When it comes to completely activating the computer, getting the services of the city running again, and putting the robots back in their proper jobs, it keeps blocking me from accomplishing anything. Obviously it is not out to destroy us, not at present anyway. But he, she, or it is definitely hiding something from us. Its identity, of course, but maybe something more. Maybe there’s something about its identity that we should not know. Or about its future plans.”

“What about the chemfets?” Mandelbrot asked. “In the past they have always provided the right information about the city.”

“That’s what’s really crazy, Mandelbrot. The chemfets aren’t any more functional than the city is now. Oh, I get a sensation or two about our mysterious visitor now and then, but no real clue about who or what he, she, or it is. And I get this vague feeling that there’s some kind of a solution, but it remains just outside my reach. At any rate, the chemfets are messed up, just like Robot City. There are times when I can hardly detect them. And I hate that more than I can tell you.”

He stretched his arms, as if trying to stir up the chemfets. “You know,” he continued, “I used to think the chemfets were a hellish thing. I thought they were controlling me, racing up and down my bloodstream, making me ill. Now that they’ve reached maturity and I’ve integrated myself with them, I can’t cope with them not working like this. I want to activate them desperately, and I can’t. It’s like me and the city. I want to get Robot City going again. I have to. Yet I’m so darn stymied. There’s got to be a way, Mandelbrot, and I’m going to find it.”

The Watchful Eye eavesdropped on Derec with some satisfaction. Now, back to its natural shape but completely hidden by layers of the mosslike substance it had strewn over the computer, it considered its next moves.

The strange word that Derec had used, stymied, seemed to apply to the Watchful Eye’s circumstances also. As Ariel and Avery continued their research on Series C, Batch 21, it did not feel safe in reactivating the robots who had done the original lab work that led to the creation of the various batches. It had convinced those robots that more research was needed on the Laws of Humanics, and, since there were no humans in the city, they would have to create their own. Of course the Watchful Eye knew, as Avery had perceived, that their little models were not full-fledged human beings, that they were just robotically activated biological material formed into human shapes. It could have made them into any shape, even made them look like itself, but it chose to create their appearance from pictures it called up from a computer file of historical figures.

Because the intruders had to occupy so much of its time, the Watchful Eye could conduct none of its other experiments, either. It had been about to begin a stress-test to see how the iron/plastic alloy that the city was made of could hold up under many different circumstances. It had intended to fully explore the many facets of Robot City and then, when finished, restructure and refashion it to suit its needs.

It was concerned with the Laws of Humanics because it wanted to find out just what a human was. Something just beneath the level of its consciousness compelled it to discover humans and emulate them. There were times when it hoped that Derec and Ariel, or Adam and Eve, would finally prove to be the real humans, so that the matter would be settled and it could go on to its future, whatever its future was meant to be. It was certain it had a destiny that would eventually be revealed.

More than anything else, however, the Watchful Eye missed the freedom to work on the biggest question it faced: who or what it was. It had to be something, fit some category of existence. For it did exist.

It could be human, although-if the intruders were humans (and which ones? Derec and Ariel? Adam and Eve? The dreadful Avery?)-it did not physically resemble them. But then, in its natural state, or at least the state it had been in when it came to awareness, it had resembled nothing more than a blob of matter. Later it had discovered that it had the ability to change its shape. Right now it could change itself into the shape of a human, but would it be human? Did these humans start out in the same puttylike shape it had? Had they originally hidden in their havens until they had chosen what they must look like?

It wondered if it could be some kind of animal. There did not appear to be any kind of animal native to Robot City, so it could only judge that subject from information extracted from computer files. The files only confused it further, since it felt no link with any animal in any picture it called up. In addition, it noted that many of the so-called animals resembled the so-called humans in many respects. Were they also kinds of humans?

It could be a robot, but it resisted that idea most. It had studied the robots and found them to be too subservient, too easily programmed. Admirable pieces of construction though they were, they simply did not seem complex enough for the Watchful Eye to belong to their class of being. It could not convince itself that there were any resemblances between a robot and it. If anything, it felt more like a computer than a robot. But it had a sentient life that the Robot City computer did not. So it had concluded it could not be a computer, either.

What was it?

It intended to find out soon.

Adam Silverside wandered through the streets of Robot City, not knowing where he was going, not knowing why he had left the medical facility. He had been watching Eve concentrate so completely on Ariel and the dancers that he had come to the conclusion that he was useless to their experiments. Sometimes Ariel and Eve conversed so intently on the behavior of the dancers that it seemed they were unaware of his presence in the room.