Free I, Row-Boat by Cory Doctorow Page A

through the water, a simple enough trick, especially with the kind of hardware that had been raining down on the ocean that spring. But the tone held an unmistakable air of menace.
    Something deep underwater went whoomph and Robbie grew alarmed. "Asimov!" he cursed, and trained his sonar on the reef wall frantically. The human-shells had disappeared in a cloud of rising biomass, which he was able to resolve eventually as a group of parrotfish, surfacing quickly.
    A moment later, they were floating on the surface. Lifeless, brightly colored, their beaks in a perpetual idiot's grin. Their eyes stared into the bloody sunset.
    Among them were the human-shells, surfaced and floating with their BCDs inflated to keep them there, following perfect dive-procedure. A chop had kicked up and the waves were sending the fishes — each a meter to a meter and a half in length — into the divers, pounding them remorselessly, knocking them under. The human-shells were taking it with equanimity — you couldn't panic when you were mere uninhabited meat — but they couldn't take it forever. Robbie dropped his oars and rowed hard for them, swinging around so they came up alongside his gunwales.
    The man — Robbie called him Isaac, of course — caught the edge of the boat and kicked hard, hauling himself into the boat with his strong brown arms. Robbie was already rowing for Janet, who was swimming hard for him. She caught his oar — she wasn't supposed to do that — and began to climb along its length, lifting her body out of the water. Robbie saw that her eyes were wild, her breathing ragged.
    "Get me out!" she said, "for Christ's sake, get me out!"
    Robbie froze. That wasn't a human-shell, it was a human. His oar-servo whined as he tipped it up. There was a live human being on the end of that oar, and she was in trouble, panicking and thrashing. He saw her arms straining. The oar went higher, but it was at the end of its motion and now she was half-in, half-out of the water, weight belt, tank and gear tugging her down. Isaac sat motionless, his habitual good-natured slight smile on his face.
    "Help her!" Robbie screamed. "Please, for Asimov's sake, help her!" A robot may not harm a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. It was the first commandment. Isaac remained immobile. It wasn't in his programming to help a fellow diver in this situation. He was perfect in the water and on the surface, but once he was in the boat, he might as well be ballast.
    Robbie carefully swung the oar toward the gunwale, trying to bring her closer, but not wanting to mash her hands against the locks. She panted and groaned and reached out for the boat, and finally landed a hand on it. The sun was fully set now, not that it mattered much to Robbie, but he knew that Janet wouldn't like it. He switched on his running lights and headlights, turning himself into a beacon.
    He felt her arms tremble as she chinned herself into the boat. She collapsed to the deck and slowly dragged herself up. "Jesus," she said, hugging herself. The air had gone a little nippy, and both of the humans were going goose-pimply on their bare arms.
    The reef made a tremendous grinding noise. "Yaah!" it said. "Get lost. Sovereign territory!"
    "All those fish," the woman said. Robbie had to stop himself from thinking of her as Janet. She was whomever was riding her now.
    "Parrotfish," Robbie said. "They eat coral. I don't think they taste very good."
    The woman hugged herself. "Are you sentient?" she asked.
    "Yes," Robbie said. "And at your service, Asimov be blessed." His cameras spotted her eyes rolling, and that stung. He tried to keep his thoughts pious, though. The point of Asimovism wasn't to inspire gratitude in humans, it was to give purpose to the long, long life.
    "I'm Kate," the woman said.
    "Robbie," he said.
    "Robbie the Row-Boat?" she said, and choked a little.
    "They named me at the factory," he said. He labored to keep any recrimination out of