“Yes, exorcise them of their demons. That’s a wonderful idea, Wolruf, but where is this perfect world?”

“Robot City.”

“Robot City? But I don’t want to take them to-wait, you’re right. Adam’s really bored with robots and there’re only robots there. He says he receives little satisfaction from imprinting on robots. I think he’s somehow relegated them to a lower order of species.”

“I don’t underrsstand. If manmade, can they be a sspeciess?”

“They’re not. But Adam perceives them that way, and has dismissed them. He’s searching for the highest order of being on which to imprint, and he sees no future in being a robot. Apparently his programming is to imprint on humans, but he still resists the idea that Ariel and I are the answer. And in Robot City she and I would be the only humans, unless my father showed up. It’s good. With us, and you, as the only nonrobots there, we might be able to keep them in check. If we couldn’t affect their programming, maybe we could bore them to death.”

“Oh, but I don’t ssuggesst they sshould die, Derrec. Oh, no.”

Derec had smiled. Sometimes Wolruf could be just as literal as a robot.

“I didn’t mean it that way. I mean a boredom so intense that it’d render them relatively inactive.”

The plan had been easy to put into operation. The Silversides were curious to see the Robot City they had heard so much about and had given Derec no opposition to the idea. They had been relatively quiet on the trip out so far, and he had begun to wonder if they were being devious, planning some massive Silverside trick. However, as they neared Robot City and the chemfets in his bloodstream began to cause havoc within him, Derec had worried less and less about his robotic charges. In fact, he was tired of thinking of them now. He wanted no worries at all. If only he could relax with Ariel, make love with her, rest in her arms.

For now he might as well settle for his uncomfortable bunk.

He did fall asleep. But more dreams came. In one of them a Supervisor robot changed its face to resemble Dr. Avery, then announced that the Laws of Robotics had been repealed and he would derive infinite pleasure from purposely mutilating a human.

Derec’s apprehension grew as his ship, piloted by the robot Mandelbrot, settled down onto a landing platform at the Robot City spaceport. His chemfets seemed to be in turmoil, as if they were struggling to process information that had been deliberately scrambled. At the same time his emotions were becoming scrambled, too. He snapped at Mandelbrot even while he was struggling to control his temper. Before the landing, Mandelbrot made a routine request for orders, and Derec responded testily, “We’ll land when I feel it’s right and not before.”

Of course Ariel, at that moment, had to be standing nearby, examining the cubes, spires, and blocks of the city from a view-portal, and of course she had to throw her two credits in.

“Whatever’s wrong with you, you don’t have to take it out on Mandelbrot,” she muttered.

He could have merely acknowledged the truth of what she said, but he had to top her two credits with a pair of his own.

“I’m not taking anything out on Mandelbrot, Ariel. You know as well as I do that it doesn’t make any difference to him what I say or how I say it, so long as he doesn’t have to remove me from harm or save my life. First Law and all that. I know I can be a real bandersnatch, call him every name in the dictionary of insults, foam at the mouth and jump up and down-and it all won’t make any difference to him. Only humans brood over other humans’ words.”

“How epigrammatic.”

He didn’t want to tell her he didn’t know what epigrammatic meant. It was already clear she had more general knowledge in her brain than he, and he didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of supplying a definition.

The anger in her face softened, and she moved toward him, patting him on his arm. “Honey, there’s no reason to be a grouch, even with a robot. Anyway, how can you be sure he’s not aware of your irritation?”

Derec glanced at Mandelbrot, who calmly sat at the controls.

“Oh, he’s aware all right. He has to be. Again, the ever-present Laws. He has to know what mood I’m in, what my nuances might mean, what my attitude is toward him-it’s all information which he processes in his positronic brain, and it helps him to judge how to react when the laws need to be applied. A robot can simulate emotion for a human being’s comfort or pleasure, but a robot’s emotion is only specific positronic activity. Aware, yes, but insulted, no.”

Ariel sighed. Derec hated that sigh. It clearly indicated she didn’t agree with him but was finding the argument too tiresome to continue with. The sigh dismissed the argument along with him and his moods. Yet, when she was moody, they had to play by different rules. Ariel could achieve a righteousness that would make a moral philosopher blush.

She walked back to the view-portal, muttering, “Well, when do you expect us to land, then?”

“Soon enough. I just have to look, make sure everything is all right down there.”

“I don’t understand, what could be wrong?”

“With what we’ve been through, you can ask that?”

“Frost, you really are in a blue funk today. I’m not going to put up with it. Summon me when you need me, master.”

After she had stalked out, Derec said under his breath, “Oh, Ariel.”

Apparently Mandelbrot heard him, for he asked, “Is there something wrong, Friend Derec?”

“Nothing that need involve you, Mandelbrot.” If the robot was at all bothered by Derec’s irritability there was no way for him to show it in his face or body. Derec wondered if Ariel was right about robots having feelings. Certainly the humaniform robots like R. Daneel Olivaw or Ariel’s precious Jacob Winterson appeared to have emotions. They seemed so human, it was hard for observers not to apply an emotional overlay to them.

“We are closing in on the Compass Tower,” Mandelbrot said.

The large view-screen in front of the pilot seat displayed the tower, the first Robot City structure Derec had ever known. He and Ariel (then known as Katherine) had arrived there from the gray misty spot known as Perihelion, when they had pressed the corners of a Key to Perihelion. That particular key had been set for Robot City, and they found they could travel nowhere else, except back to Perihelion, with it. The tower was a pyramidal building that was larger and higher than any other building in the city. Inside it was the office in which Dr. Avery had secreted himself to observe Robot City. Derec wondered if his father were in there now, messing up the workings of the place just so he could mess up the workings of his son’s chemfets and, for that matter, his mind.

“Hover here for a while, Mandelbrot.”

Derec stared down at the city, his city now and not Avery’s, uncertain of what looked strange about it at this moment. The Compass Tower was the same tiered structure it had always been. There were none of the odd lumps upon its surface that he had seen in his nightmare. The city itself, as it always had, stretched from horizon to horizon, except for some parkland to the south. New buildings had sprung up while old ones had been disassembled by the robots, whose job it was to continually refine the city, making it even fitter and more luxurious for human habitation. Someday, human colonists would actually be admitted into the place. Normally Derec would not have been aware of such architectural alterations, but his chemfets kept him up-to-date on all of the city’s transformations.

The robots in the streets below moved busily enough and appeared to be concerned with their usual goals. Yet, even their movement didn’t look right to him, didn’t feel right. And many of the usually busy thoroughfares seemed deserted. Perhaps Robot City had indeed turned into the city of his nightmare.