The Walls Have Eyes (19 page)

Chip shied away from the newcomer and came to sit on Martin's feet. “Hey, boy, it's okay,” Martin whispered to him. But it isn't okay, he thought.

“Is he really his brother?” he muttered to William. “He's way too old to be one of the you-know-whats.”

Dr. Granville overheard him.

“Yes, we're brothers,” he said. “When your friend here was two years old, his designer brought him to visit the RISLab, and my father decided he had to have one like him right away. Except for a few tweaks, of course; Daddy Granville was very proud of his heritage.”

“And except for a little difference in allowance,” Rudy added. “Malcolm here was quite the favorite son. There I was, stuck with the other experimental subjects in the underground dormitory, with nothing to call my own but my locker and my cot. Meanwhile, Malcolm had everything money could buy and a genius in robotics could dream up. Remember that pony you got for your fifth birthday? And when I came out for the summer and we played Robin Hood, your dad made you your own merry men.”

Dr. Granville laughed. “That pony had six legs. More sure-footed, and a smoother ride. How's my sweetheart?” he asked, turning to William. “You're growing older by the day and lovelier by the minute.”

William didn't look older at all; in fact, she'd never looked younger. Her cheeks had brightened to the color of bubble gum. Great, thought Martin, I'm not the only one in this room who's stuck in a stupid schoolyard crush.

“Did you study those schematics I gave you?” Dr. Granville asked.

William nodded vigorously. “Every day. Until I had to leave them behind.”

Dr. Granville grew serious. He clapped Rudy on the shoulder.

“I'm glad you came to me. There's news. They're reopening your lab.”

Rudy's face became unreadable. “Are they?”

“Of course,” Dr. Granville said. “We all knew they would once they'd punished the old scientists. It's too important a lab to lose. You can come back, and come back at the top. They're hunting you down, you know. You don't want to go back to being an experiment in your own lab.”

William took a nervous step back at this idea, but Rudy put on one of his charming smiles.

“Malcolm,” he said, taking Dr. Granville's arm and giving it a little shake, “you know I wouldn't put you in the middle of this. Don't forget, you have your own lab to lose! I'm only here because we have a bot problem to work out, and we'll leave as soon as we're done. I'd like you to meet a friend of mine—and his unusual pet.”

“Well met,” Dr. Granville said, advancing to shake Martin's hand. “I'll admit, I've heard something about you. And is this the legendary bot himself? Well, well.”

He tilted his head and stared at Chip. Under his scrutiny, Chip started to pant. He circled Martin's legs nervously and sat down on his feet again. Then he looked up and gave a quick whine.

“He has a very intelligent look, doesn't he?” Dr. Granville said. “My guess is that your bot is just playing at being a dog. But the devotion is real.” He glanced up at Martin again. “Good Lord, is that one of my fourth-generation medical blankets? It's turned itself into outerwear!”

Martin blushed and touched his cape, which, due to the
warm conditions, had assumed a light cotton texture. “I tried to get it to go away, but it won't.”

“One problem at a time,” Dr. Granville said. He crouched down in front of the anxious dog. “William, what did you learn from his board?”

“There are two boards,” William said. “But I haven't seen them. His owner wouldn't let me.”

Martin put a protective arm around Chip's neck. “He's scared of resets, sir.”

Dr. Granville's eyebrows went up. “Retrofitted?” he mused. “Well, don't worry,” he went on as he ruffled Chip's ears. “We probably won't have to reset you. But we need to see your boards, so do me a favor. You've seen glass, clear glass, like these windows here. I need you to simulate glass for me so I can get a good look at your circuits.”

Chip glanced from Dr. Granville to Martin.
Should I?
his dark eyes asked.

“Go ahead,” Martin told him in a low voice.

The color in Chip's gorgeous coat faded out until he looked like the silver ghost of a German shepherd. Then his rough hairs smoothed to satin. In seconds, he was a clear statue with two green circuit boards lodged in his chest.

“Very pretty!” Dr. Granville said. “But I'm seeing some distortion. Can you thin this area out? That's it; perfectly flat. Good. Very good. Now, do me a favor and don't move.”

William crouched down by Dr. Granville's side and pushed her hair out of her face as she leaned forward. Rudy bent down to see too.

“Retrofitted, just as I thought,” Dr. Granville announced.
“This toy board came later. See the clumsy soldering? That wasn't done in a factory. He lost consciousness as one kind of bot and woke up as another. No wonder he's afraid of resets.”

Dr. Granville pulled a small lens from his pocket and fitted it over his left eye. It gave off a tiny hum as it focused. He peered closely at the boards. Then he jumped up, handed the lens to William, and sat down on the top of his desk.

“Why he's been altered is a bit of a puzzle,” he said. “But there's no mystery about what he is. That's the circuit board of an elected official.”

William looked crestfallen. “Are you sure?” she asked.

“Positive. There's a regular hoard of them coming out these days, and they're adding to the list all the time. Mayors, judges, county commissioners, corporation protocol officers, game show producers, you name it. Even half the talk show hosts are bots these days. No one seems to notice the difference. All in line with the favorite motto of the Savior of Our Nation: ‘The best way to safeguard a democracy is to keep the people out of it.'”

“A politician.” Rudy's face clouded in disappointment. “Well, that settles that.”

Martin shifted uncomfortably. “It settles what?” he asked.

William peered through the lens at Chip's transparent insides. “Dr. Granville, did your people make him?”

“Oh, heavens, no,” Dr. Granville replied. “They get produced in an automated facility. Never touched by human hands. William, did you note the connections? What do you make of it?”

“It couldn't be worse! The boards have been married so that
the connections can't be severed. He's always going to be a dog.”

Martin's heart gave a leap. “Really?”

“Not quite,” Dr. Granville cautioned. “He'll always be a dog if he wants to be.”

“But I don't understand,” William said. “What about his amazing skills? What about the other bots? How can he be fooling them if he's nothing but a talk show host in disguise?”

“That is a mystery,” Dr. Granville conceded, “but the mystery is why, not how. See the little gray chip snapped onto the daughter board? It's not even soldered; it can pop right off. That's the way your bot fools other bots. I just don't know what that chip's doing there.”

“Because it's a chip normally issued to military bots?”

“Because it's a chip not issued to anybody, anytime. I know because I made it myself, and quite complicated work it was— gave me a number of sleepless nights. Last year, the order for it came out of nowhere, highest clearance, highest priority, very hush-hush. I made it, and it went into the same nowhere— and here it is, prancing around in a toy.” He shrugged. “Don't ask me why. That's the kind of question I know better than to think about, and if you're wise, you won't think about it either.”

He pushed a malachite pyramid out of his way and seated himself more comfortably on his desktop. The malachite pyramid gave an angry mutter, sprouted stubby legs, and stalked off to settle itself elsewhere.

“What does the chip do?” Rudy asked.

“You know that every commercially produced bot has a
security code that it emits to other machines,” Dr. Granville said. “The code gives the bot's complete identity. Parts of it are hidden, of course—encrypted in convoluted ways; otherwise, the code could be misused. But my little chip deciphers a bot's entire code and parrots it back as its
own
identity code. And that means your toy there tells another bot not just ‘I'm a bot of your same model,' but ‘I'm you: I'm exactly the same bot you are.'”

William sat back on her heels. “No wonder bots trust everything he says. He was a collector to the collector and an officer to the officer. Even the packet AI thought he was an old railroading man.”

“I know one bot it didn't work on,” Dr. Granville said. “Come in!”

A man in shabby cutoffs and worn sneakers came through the door. The transparent statue that was Chip yelped and scooted under the desk, where he struck a table leg with a crystalline chime.

“Martin!” the man cried, and Martin found himself confronted by Hertz's disconcerting ice blue stare.

“Hertz!” he quavered as he backed up.

Hertz barreled over and shook his hand in a bruising grip. “I've been so worried! I didn't intend to leave you alone like that.” He dropped his voice and glared at Chip's sparkling tail, which stuck out beyond the edge of the desk. “Someone sabotaged me, they say. I have a pretty good idea who it was.”

“No names, Hertz,” Dr. Granville interrupted. “But tell us, what do you think of your friend's pet?”

The bot's blue eyes blazed.

“That thing's a fraud,” he growled. “His insides don't match his outside.”

“Very well put,” Dr. Granville said. “Hertz knows your bot is a fraud because he's sending out a signal that he's Hertz too. But Hertz is a beta, an experimental, one-of-a-kind bot. His programming tells him he's unique. He's a tracker. I designed him to find fugitives based on shed DNA, but that part isn't working quite yet. He came back from his first trial so excited about the boy he'd saved out in the wilderness that he's focusing all his attention on rescue work now.”

Hertz jutted out his jaw and nodded at Martin. “He and I did important work.”

“You hear that?” Dr. Granville said to Rudy. “‘He and I.' Your young friend here is as interesting as his toy. Look at the bots in this room. They're all focused on him. Even the medical blanket wants to get into his game. They respond to something about him. Simple expressions. Simple emotions, maybe. Whatever it is, it's very handy. I could use this young man to help me with beta trials.”

Sleek and transparent, but canine nonetheless, Chip had begun to whimper. Now the dog came slinking back to his master. The light from the windows illuminated his clear form, so that the bright green circuit boards appeared to float across the room inside a shimmering nimbus. With a loud whine, he leaned into Martin, and Martin ran a hand over his cold, smooth ears.

“Thanks for the show,” Dr. Granville told Chip. “You can go back to being a dog now if you want. And, Hertz, I think you'd better wait for me back in your lab. You're making our guest nervous.”

Hertz wrung Martin's hand again in a grip like iron. “Take care,” he said. “If you ever want to go hiking, just let me know.”

Chip darkened like a brewing cup of tea. Then his legs and paws turned the color of honey. In another instant, he was fuzzy and wonderful and licking Martin's face.

“Big brother, if you're counting on a mystery bot for support,” Dr. Granville said, “then you've run out of options. But you couldn't have shown up at a better time. There's news.”

“Yes, the lab,” Rudy said. “You told me. But this mystery about the bot still feels odd to me. Can we find out what kind of official he is?”

Dr. Granville snorted. “Still in love with puzzles, I see. You know it's not smart to ask questions like that. For your own good, I'm not going to help you chase down the pedigree of a politician who's been set up to look like something else.”

“What about calculating backward from when he showed up?” Rudy said. “Doesn't that give you any idea what he might be?”

“Not anymore. Terms in office are variable now. It's up to the bot official himself to report when his term expires.”

Rudy rubbed his forehead. “So someone went to all that trouble to hide an elected official, but why not just reset him and stick him in a drawer? And that chip you designed, ordered at the highest level—you mean the Secretary of State, I assume?”

Dr. Granville shrugged. “The order was anonymous, but who's higher than the Secretary? Or involved in more . . . what shall we call them . . . games?”

“But why the disguise? A politician turned dog. A dog!
That's brilliant. The canine drive is so strong, the bot's very happy to stay as he is. He gets to spend all his time playing with children, and if he meets any bots, they welcome him as a brother.”

“We can pop that chip off to solve that problem,” Dr. Granville said. “Listen to me! You're in trouble. I can help you get out of it.”

Rudy's face lit up. “Malcolm, I think I know who he is!”

A beep sounded from the console on Dr. Granville's desk. He hopped down and circled the desk to check it.

“Think about it, Malcolm,” Rudy continued. “A vacation. A free pass for life. Who would give a bot a free pass for life?”

“That's nice,” Dr. Granville said, but his voice had developed an edge. “We're out of time here. You'll listen whether you want to or not. We heads have negotiated a great settlement for you—a promotion, no less. We voted unanimously to bring you back to run the lab. All you have to do is contact the Secretary of State. The job's already under your name.”

Rudy frowned. “That's fine for me, but what about the others? Do you think I'm going to hand them over after everything we went through for them? Do you think I'm going to forget about them and save my own skin?”