The image faded, and a new one appeared of Philip lying in the corridor in the ECM wing of the Security building, the guard’s
Schwertknüppel
pinning him to the wall. Again, the weapon itself was blurry, as well as the rest of the hall. Only Philip was in focus, along with the slowly spreading pool of his blood on the floor.
The image thankfully faded away, and now she saw Philip standing before her in the elevator shaft after they had released him from the transport capsule. He was smiling at her and brushing back a lock of her hair.
The image faded out and back again, and she realized that this time, they weren’t in the shaft anymore. They were standing in some kind of laboratory. She was standing nude in a tub or vat of some sort, and Philip was speaking to her:
“What is your name?”
Eve came to with a start. She had finished charging, but the lights of the city outside her window had gone dark. She must have been charging for several hours, but the visions she had seen had only lasted for a couple of minutes.
She went back up to Philip’s room and slowly opened the door. The apartment was dark. Philip was asleep in his bed, and the doctor was sleeping in a chair by the wall. The wound was closed, and a thin film had been spread over the area to suture it until it could heal fully. A fluid pouch was hanging from a light fixture on the wall, with a tube running to a needle in Philip’s arm. She pulled another chair up next to the bed, making a slight scraping noise on the floor, and the doctor snapped awake.
“Hmm? What? Oh, hello, Eve. Goodness, I must have slept for a while.”
“Oh, sorry, Dr. Cavendish. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“It’s no worry. I’m a doctor. We learn to nap when we have the chance.”
“How’s he doing?” she asked softly.
“Recuperating,” said the doctor. “I’ve finished with the interior damage, and the sutures will hold as long as he doesn’t do anything strenuous. He should be fine, but I’ll need to stay with him and monitor his nutrient drip for a few days until his fluid levels are back to normal. Until then, all he needs to do is rest, which will come easily until the sedative wears off.”
“Thank you for all you’ve done for him, Dr, Cavendish,” said Eve.
“Not at all. He’s a friend.” He yawned.
“Get some more sleep,” said Eve. “I’ll keep an eye on him.”
As the doctor leaned back in his chair and nodded off again, Eve took Philip’s hand in her own and cradled it for a while. After a few minutes, she laid her head against his shoulder and listened to his breathing as he slept.
Philip was important to her. She couldn’t allow anything to happen to him.
26
Things were getting a little tense at the ground floor level. The guard at the desk could see a growing number of people outside, and a lot of them wore Security uniforms. The atmosphere in Ergonomix seemed a little subdued, too. There didn’t seem to be as much noise and commotion filtering out as usual. It was as if everyone in the neighborhood knew something was about to happen. The pressure was building. The herd was growing restless.
Outside the building, he could see an officer raise his hand to his ear, nodding every few seconds or so. He was being notified of something, and he was telling his partner about it, too. When he lowered his hand, the two of them started moving toward the doors of Crownstone. One of them was tapping on something like a televox, but a little larger, likely getting some official documents in order. The guard reached for the internal line and sent a signal. He had been ready for this.
The officers entered and approached the desk. “Excuse me, but we need to speak with Dr. Philip Abrams. Could you call him down here, please?”
“I’m sorry, officers,” said the guard, “but Dr. Abrams is indisposed at the moment. Doctor’s orders.”
“Then can we see him ourselves?” said the other officer.
“Is he in some kind of trouble?”
“We aren’t at liberty to say. We need to speak with Dr. Abrams immediately.”
At that moment, to the guard’s intense relief, the lift opened and Colin stepped out into the lobby and approached the desk, wearing his best defense counsel suit. “What seems to be the trouble, officers?”
The guard could see the Security officers changing their strategy. They had planned on only having to get past him, not someone from the College of Law. “We need to speak with Dr. Philip Abrams. He has been helping us with our inquiries.”
“I’m sure that you’ve been told about his medical condition.”
“Yes, we’ve been told.”
“Then we are within our rights to refuse you entry, in lieu of a writ of entry, of course. Do you have any such documentation?”
One of the officers handed over their datapad, and Colin examined the contents. “This is a fugitive pursuit order.”
“That’s correct. We have reason to believe that this facility is harboring a fugitive.”
“Dr. Abrams and a robot known as Eve,” said Colin. “Under indictment for escape from Security custody, it says here. That is a very serious charge.”
“That’s correct, counselor. Eve is suspected to be complicit in the escape of Dr. Abrams from secure custody this morning. We believe them to have taken refuge in this building.”
“I was unaware that Philip had been charged with any crime. What was he doing in secure custody?”
The officer took back the datapad and made a show of cycling through the documents. The other officer put his hand to his ear for a moment, and then he turned back to Colin. “Our apologies for our incomplete documentation. We will consult with our superiors and return later with better information.”
“See that you do,” said Colin. “We can’t have incorrect documentation, can we?” He gave a small smile as the officers left.
“That was close,” said the guard. “It’s a good thing you spotted that, otherwise we could have had some trouble.”
“Don’t worry,” said Colin, patting him on the shoulder. “They knew they didn’t really have all the grounds for entry they needed. They were hoping to scare you with talk of an escaped prisoner so that you’d comply. You were right to call me down here.”
“We can’t tell off Security forever, though.”
“Why not? They have no rightful grievance with us. Not even the Security chair is above the law.”
“But what about Eve? I keep hearing how she’s a whole new kind of robot or something. Do the same laws apply to her?”
Colin stood silently for a moment. The guard had struck right at the core of the matter. “Well, we’ll just have to resolve that issue when it arises, won’t we?”
When Philip finally awoke, Eve was still seated by his bed, holding his hand. Dr. Cavendish was standing over him, checking on his sutures and fluid intake.
“Good morning,” said Dr. Cavendish. “Looks like you’re healing nicely.”
“What time is it?” said Philip.
“Pretty early,” said Eve. “It’s only been light out for an hour or so.”
Philip paused for a moment. “What day is it, then? How long did I sleep?”
“You were asleep for most of a day, not counting the sedative,” said Dr. Cavendish. “I needed to keep you under for a while so I could work on your internal injuries.”
Philip turned slightly toward Eve. “Have you been sitting here for all that time?”
“No, I rested for a while yesterday. Actually, that’s why I wanted to talk to you. Something happened while I was asleep.”
“You weren’t dreaming, were you?” said Philip.
“Yes, that’s exactly it,” said Eve. She squirmed a little in her chair, still uneasy about the idea.
Dr. Cavendish turned with a start. “You were dreaming? Philip, what are you talking about?”
“Wow,” said Philip. “I hadn’t expected it to come along quite this fast.”
“So, dreaming is a part of the whole process?”
“Yes,” said Philip, sitting up in bed. “It’s meant to serve the same purpose as the indoctrination protocol. Your dreams help you collate your experiences so that the things you’ve learned can be passed on during gestation, for lack of a better word.”
“What do you mean, gestation?” said Dr. Cavendish. “Are you telling me that Eve is pregnant? I thought she was a robot.”
“She is a robot,” said Philip, “inasmuch as she was created in a lab and she thinks using an HPU instead of a carbon-based brain. She is also pregnant. I’ll explain later.”
“So,” said Eve, “what happens next? I mean, how is this whole process supposed to work?”
“Well,” said Philip, “the new HPU is developing within you. Once it’s ready, we’ll help you deliver it, and we’ll transfer it to a bath of silicon and other components. The HPU will then form a body around itself, just like you did.”
“You said that the process was progressing faster than you’d expected,” said Dr. Cavendish. “Is that a problem? Is there a robot analog to prematurity?”
“No, no, nothing like that. I think it’s more like what happens when pregnant women begin contracting early in stressful situations. We’ve certainly had plenty of those.” He squeezed Eve’s hand a little. “I just hadn’t expected you to begin gestating so quickly.”
“What do you mean?” said Eve.
“Well, I had thought that you would have a few months out in the world to get accustomed to things. The plan was to let you find your own way for a while, and then we would get in touch with you and arrange accommodations for you here in Crownstone so you could learn how not to be a bland, asocial appliance like people seem to think robots should be. And then, maybe you might have had time to meet someone here and form a relationship.”
“Relationship?” said Eve.
“It helps in the formation of the offspring’s personality. Part of the function of the dreams is to combine aspects of yourself with those of another person, so that the offspring is more than a simple copy of the parent. Being in some kind of relationship would give you another firm set of personality and character traits so that the offspring can be a mixture of the two.”
“Well, it’s funny you mention that,” said Eve.
“It’s funny? How is it funny?” said Philip.
“Because in my dream, there was someone else who figured prominently,” she said. “It was as if they were the focus of everything that was taking place, as if nothing else was important.”
“Really?” said Philip. “That’s fantastic! That sounds exactly like what should happen. Who was it? Was it someone from Crownstone that I might know?”
Dr. Cavendish spotted the telltale clues in Eve’s behavior, like the way she was staring at her hands instead of making eye contact. He had a fair guess of what was coming.
“My dreams were about you,” said Eve.
Philip opened and closed his mouth a few times. Dr. Cavendish covered his mouth to hide his grin.
“About me?” said Philip. “You were . . . you mean, I was . . . I’m the . . . really?”
“Is that wrong?” said Eve. “Was I supposed to . . .”
“No, no, it’s not wrong as such, I just . . . sorry, it just caught me a little off guard, I suppose. I mean, I had never even thought about . . . I mean, it’s almost like being a . . . a . . .”
“A father,” said Dr. Cavendish.
Philip lay in bed silently for a moment, still trying to take everything in. “A father. Wow. I never thought I would be a father, even in the biological sense.”
“I know how you feel,” said Eve. “I never thought I would be a mother.”
“Eve, I have to ask,” said Philip. “Why me? You barely know me. When we met yesterday morning, you hadn’t even seen me since you were created. How could you know me well enough to want your child to be like me?”
“The others told me a little about you,” said Eve. “They told me that you thought I was important. They told me that you’d taken a risk to create me in the first place, which you clearly didn’t let stop you.” She leaned closer to his bed. “And besides all that, I wouldn’t exist without you. Without you, robots would be nothing but appliances, like you said.” Her voice began to falter. “I remember . . . I remember the way I was treated before I met you, and I want to do something about that, just like you. I want my child to be able to accomplish all those things, and I . . . I want you to be right there with me when she does.”
Eve gave Philip a kiss on the cheek.
He turned toward her. Their eyes met.
He gave her a peck on the lips.
She held his chin in her hand.
Their lips brushed again.
Eve leaned in.
Dr. Cavendish stepped out into the sitting room to give them their privacy.
Lucy was sitting on Philip’s sofa, talking animatedly over her televox. She saw the doctor enter the room and wrapped up her conversation. “So, how is he, Doctor?”
“He’s doing well, considering he’s the father of Eve’s child.”
“What? How is that even . . . how?”
“Oh, Philip was surprised, too, believe me. He’s not the conventional sort of father, of course, but then Eve’s not exactly the conventional sort of mother, is she? Apparently, Eve has been subconsciously conditioning her child to resemble Philip in some respects. I suppose you might say he’s the father in a sort of philosophical sense.”