Asimov’s Future History Volume 6

by Isaac Asimov

  At length, the lightwoffils overhead signaled END OF LINE. The crowd had thinned out long before, Mommer and daughter among the first to go. Only a few distinctly scruffy types were still on the ways.

  The edge of the City was evidently not a fashionable place. A number of men in obvious workmen’s dress also rode with them.

  The eastbound and westbound strips separated, were further divided by a building, and the strips tilted.

  At heartstopping full speed the eastbound lane looped to the left, circled the building, and became the westbound lane. Ariel followed Derec down the strips just after the turn. He’d apparently been too interested to get off sooner.

  “Oh, no!”

  There was no crowd, and she thought that was the reason he got careless. Derec’s foot came down on the join of two strips, and in a moment he’d been jerked off his feet. He rolled on his back down onto the slower strip.

  Ariel leaped after him, in her haste not bracing herself, and fell forward at full length — fortunately, on the slower strip.

  Derec, grunting, had rolled half onto a yet slower strip, which slipped from under his fingers as he clawed at it. With great presence of mind he rolled over yet again fully onto that strip.

  Ariel hastily picked herself up and gingerly transferred to his new strip. Derec sat grinning faintly and watched her as she walked back toward him. A couple of Earthers glanced at them incuriously and looked up at the lightworms. Apparently falling riders weren’t that uncommon. Nobody laughed.

  Dusting himself off, Derec grinned more widely and led her down, then stopped in some consternation.

  “Where’s your purse?”

  Ariel clapped a hand to her side, gasped. She didn’t often carry a purse, but had had to on Earth. With all the identification and such she had to carry here, it was a real necessity. Now it was all gone.

  “No real matter — R. David can fake up more identification for you,” Derec said.

  They looked along the ways, but saw no sign of it. It must be hundreds of meters off by now, and they didn’t know on which strip. Ariel shrugged.

  “There must be some central office where you can reclaim things lost on the ways,” Derec said, but dismissed it.

  With a skill increased by their previous experiences, they made their way down into the bowels of the City to the freightway level. NO RIDING. PEDESTRIANS FORBIDDEN, the signs proclaimed. So they walked along beside them to the terminus, which was much like that of the passengerways above.

  Small trucks with lifts in front and broad, flat beds behind brought in cannisters of freight. Somewhere not far from here big trucks were unloading these cannisters, driving in, wheeling out.

  “Hey, you — you kids! Git away from there! Don’t you see the sign? Go on, back!”

  AUTHORIZED PERSONS ONLY.

  Muttering, Derec led Ariel up a motionless ramp, hesitated, and struck out along a corridor running east.

  After half an hour of fruitlessly trying to go down to the entrance there, he retraced his steps and they went down to the lower level, and then marched toward the entrance. It was marked on the City maps as an entrance, not as an exit. There were no exits on the map.

  NO ADMITTANCE TO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONS.

  Derec opened the door cautiously, beckoned her through. Beyond it they found a garage for the handling trucks that transferred the cannisters. Men swarmed around it, but ignored them.

  “We can’t go there,” Ariel said when he had led her behind the trucks to the motorway.

  It was a stub motorway joining the entrance with the freightway strips. To step out into that rumbling passage would be to get run over on the spot.

  Derec hesitated. “Steal a handler and drive it out there?” he asked.

  “And maybe keep on going?” she asked wistfully, thinking of sunlight and air. Tomorrow and New York were too far away to bother about. Her head hurt.

  “No, we couldn’t get much past the exit. These things are all beam-powered. That’s why we have to have one of those big trucks. They’re nukes.”

  In the end, they picked out a small handler and figured out the controls, which were quite simple.

  “I’m surprised there’s no control lock,” said Ariel. “Knowing Earthly psychology.”

  “Frost, you’re right,” said Derec, worried, and looked it over. “This slot,” he said after a moment. “For an ID tag, probably a specialized one.” He looked it over and said, “I wish I had my tools.”

  Wonders can be performed with such things as metal ration tags. He worked away behind the control panel while Ariel crouched behind him in the tiny cab and watched anxiously for anyone approaching.

  “Ready,” he said at last. “Take the stick and drive us slowly out into the rnotorway.”

  She did so, nervously. At the door, the machine slowed, a panel on its controls lighting with the words: IDENTIFICATION REQUIRED BEYOND THIS POINT. Derec did something, a relay clicked quietly, and the handler rolled smoothly out into the stream.

  “So far, so good,” Derec said. “Nobody following.” Ariel turned to the right, guided them across the motorway to the proper lane, and they rolled slowly along toward the light. The traffic was fairly heavy, but moved slowly.

  “Oh, almost —” Ariel said.

  The light came from a vast open space where elephantine trucks trundled in and backed up to the loading docks. The handlers ran in and out of them, transferring their cargoes to small trucks, which took them to the freightways. Off to the right, a row of the huge trucks were disgorging golden grain into pipelines with a roar and a hiss of nitrogen.

  “No good!” cried Derec. “Too many people. Pullover to the right, by those dumpsters. We’ll pretend to be inspectors or something.”

  Sick, Ariel saw that he was right: There was little hope of seizing a truck unnoticed. The loading was done with smooth efficiency, though nobody seemed to move very fast. There were little knots of gossiping drivers and operators around. Men and women went around with clipboards, checking manifests. As soon as a truck was unloaded, it pulled out.

  “Too bad we can’t find a clipboard or two,” Derec said.

  Ariel thought that their shipsuits fit in pretty well, but wished they were cleaner. They had not thought to launder them — she had slept in hers, though the fabric didn’t show it.

  They got out of the handler reluctantly, and stood looking about.

  Ariel yearned for the open. They could go to the edge of the dock, drop their own height to the concrete, and walk perhaps a hundred or a hundred fifty meters, and find themselves at the opening.

  “Might have expected these Earthers to block off the opening,” she observed. Light came in, but they couldn’t see out.

  “They don’t even like as much of an opening as they’ve got,” said Derec. “Notice how they all stand with their backs to it?”

  They did. Each little group was a semicircle facing away from the opening.

  “Let’s go outside,” she said impulsively.

  Derec hesitated. “It might not be easy to explain. It might not be easy to get back in.”

  “Who wants to?” she said fiercely. “I just want to see sunlight one last time!”.

  Derec looked at her, frightened, concealed it, and said gently, “All right, we’ll see what we can do.”

  He led her across the dock space and peered up at the numbers and letters on the side of one of the mammoth trucks. It was damp, and had dripped a puddle under it. Ariel had had no idea of how big they were till then. Nodding wisely, Derec stepped to the edge, turned, and dropped off.

  Ariel followed.

  They strode briskly, as if they had business there, toward the front of the truck. Beyond lay the barrier.

  Trucks entered obliquely between overlapping walls, so that vision could not reach out to the frightening openness outside but the trucks could enter without opening and closing doors. Ariel suspected that the way zigzagged, so great was the fear they showed of the outside.

&nbs
p; “Hey! Hey, you two!”

  A group of men were walking threateningly toward them on the docks, gesturing them back. One turned and dropped off as they watched. “Come back here!”

  “Run!” said Derec.

  A big wet truck erupted from the barrier even as they began to run, and they swerved. They found themselves running toward the grain trucks dropping their cargoes from their bellies.

  A sign hovered in the air before them: WARNING: OXYGEN REQUIRED BEYOND THIS POINT!

  Ariel remembered reading somewhere that grain dust could explode if liberally mixed with air. They stored it in nitrogen to prevent that. But, she observed, stricken with fear, the men working here were not wearing masks.

  Derec led her on a route that avoided them — these workers looked up curiously but did not join the chase immediately — and they ran through the first dust cloud, then through the second.

  “Not good enough,” he said, as they paused, panting. Ariel tried not to cough; the dust was in her throat.

  “Back up on the docks,” she wheezed, and he nodded, led the way. With a grunt they were up, between trucks. The grain trucks didn’t back up to the actual docks, which were quite narrow here. The whole area was fogged with dust.

  They heard a shout, “Damn thieves,” and looked back.

  They had not been seen yet, but it was only a matter of time. The space beyond the dust cloud was a bedlam of whistles, shouts, and pounding feet. A big truck pulled away, its great wheels churning up more dust but making no sound.

  A shout, something about laying the dust, came to them. Ariel couldn’t get her breath. We need oxygen, she thought, and wanted to cough worse than ever. Out there they were coughing, too.

  Red lights flamed overhead and a deep-toned horn sounded. Ariel looked up apprehensively to see yellow signs beside the red lights: SPRINKLERS … SPRINKLERS … SPRINKLERS ….

  “Back in here, quick!” Derec cried, and pulled her back behind a tangle of implements, broken handler trucks, dustbins, and the like.

  Water spurted in a fine spray from the overhead, laying the dust immediately. A blue-clad man was among the truck drivers and dock workers; he carried a now-familiar club.

  “A cop!” Derec said, groaning.

  Ariel had glanced at him. And saw, beyond him —

  “A door!”

  “Where?”

  “There, behind that tire.”

  The tire, a huge thing in bright-blue composition, discarded from one of the trucks, marked the end of the dump they were crouched in. There was a passageway by it to a small door.

  In a moment they were trying it, and before the sprinklers cut off they were in a small, dim hallway with only one out of three lights burning.

  PIPELINE CONTROL SECTION: NO ADMITTANCE TO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONS. But the hall led past. Farther on, they saw: GRAIN & BULK SUPPLY RATIONALIZING & BALANCING.

  “Administrative controls on the basic levels.” said Derec, and Ariel thought of the men and women with clipboards.

  “But there’s nobody here,” she said.

  “Well, cities grow and change; these may be abandoned, or only needed periodically. The important thing is they may have access above —”

  They did.

  At the upper level, they found that they were far from the docks, to which they knew better than to return, but were not gone from the barrier yet. The motorways used by emergency vehicles also reached at least to the entry.

  Beside the motorway was a pedestrian access door; the motorway door had no controls and probably opened by radio. Once through, walking nervously on the motorway, they found to their frustration that the way avoided the entrance, swooped, and dived down to the lower levels.

  “It’s for emergency vehicles,” said Derec. “Ambulances, and so on. Accidents must be common on the docks.”

  Presently, they did find a half-concealed route that took them to the opening, and they looked out and down.

  It was pouring with cold rain.

  Even then Derec didn’t give up, but Ariel’s mind refused to record the details of the rest of the day. For several more hours he kept them prowling around the area, always trying to find a way to get at a big truck. But he could find no garage for them within the City and doubted seriously if there was one near to it.

  Finally Ariel pleaded hunger and they gloomily rode the ways back to their section kitchen, able at least to sit down. Ariel felt doomed; one look at the cold gray rain falling endlessly outside had chilled her on some deep, basic level. She knew it was the last she’d ever see of the sky. For Derec, she felt sad, but was too tired to speak.

  “We’ll try again tomorrow at a different entrance,” Derec said when she had eaten the little she could.

  “The sun will be shining — probably, anyway — and things will be all right.”

  She nodded indifferently.

  Chapter 9

  AMNEMONIC PLAGUE

  TO DEREC’S DISMAY, Ariel did not reappear that afternoon, and the next morning she arose late and looked terrible.

  R. David became alarmed. “Miss Avery, you are not well. What are your symptoms?”

  “The same as usual, R. David. Don’t worry; I brought this illness with me; it’s nothing to worry about.”

  She sounded tired and fretful, trying not to worry his Three Law-dominated brain.

  But a robot will worry if it seems appropriate, whether told not to or not. They weren’t so different from humans in that respect, thought Derec, himself alarmed.

  “I hope you are indeed not seriously ill, Miss Avery, but please tell me your symptoms so that I may judge. As you know, First Law compels me to help you.”

  She grimaced. “Okay. I’m frequently feverish — is there any water in the place?”

  “No,” Derec said. “I’ll bring you — frost! is there anything to carry water in?”

  “No,” said R. David.

  Mentally, Derec cursed all Earthers, individually and collectively, and the Teramin Relationship, too.

  “Anyway, I’m often feverish, and tired and lethargic and listless. And — and —” she glanced at Derec. “I have mental troubles. Confusion — I forget where I am, lose track of what’s going on. A lot of the time I sit and don’t speak because I can’t follow the conversation. I’ve been reliving the past a lot.”

  Suddenly she cried out passionately, “Nothing seems real! I feel like I’m in a hallucination.”

  It was more serious than Derec had thought. Hesitantly, he asked, “Do you feel like going to the section kitchen?”

  “No. I don’t feel like doing anything, except drinking a liter of water and going back to bed.”

  “You must go to section hospital at once,” said R. David decisively, stepping forward.

  Derec could have groaned. “What kind of medical care can you expect in an Earthly hospital?” he asked. “We’ve got to get you back to the Spacer worlds —”

  “There’s no cure for me there,” she said quietly. Damn. That was true. Derec hesitated, torn, and said,

  “Well, back to Robot City, then. Maybe the Human Medical Team has a cure.”

  “My medical knowledge is limited, primarily to the effects of Earthly ills on Spacers. But that knowledge makes me doubt that Miss Avery will — will live long enough for a space journey,” said R. David, the catch in his voice obvious. “She is obviously in, or approaching, the — crisis of her disease.”

  Derec hesitated. That was too obviously true.

  Ariel smiled sadly and said, “I fear he is right, Derec. I — I’m losing my memory — my mind. And it’s getting worse. I couldn’t remember my way back here the other night —”

  Abruptly, she was weeping.

  Oh. frost. Derec thought helplessly.

  R. David gave them an argument; he wanted to accompany them — to carry Ariel, in fact.

  “No!” said Derec. “I may be ignorant of many things about Earth, but I know well enough what Earthers do to any robots they catch on the ways. And if
we tried to do anything about it, our first words would give us away as Spacers. They’d be allover us. I’ve been chased once by yeast farmers. Frost! I don’t want to have every Earther we meet at our throats.”

  It took the firmest commands reinforcing Dr. Avery’s to keep R. David in the apartment. Only when Ariel perked up, as she usually did at the prospect of change, was the robot’s First Law conditioning allayed. Ariel was even almost gay as she left, rendering a zany marching song: “One-two-three! Here we go! Bedlam, Bedlam, ho ho ho! Drrringding ding, brrrumbum bum, brrrreebeedeebee Dabbabba-dumbum-bum!”

  But once the door had closed she looked haggard.

  “Water,” she said, smiling wanly at Derec’s concerned look.

  After she had drunk a liter or so, she gasped for breath a few minutes, but was game to go on. The route to the section hospital was longer than the one to the kitchen, and she drooped visibly. Worse, it was morning now and the express was jammed. They had to stand; Threes weren’t allowed to sit during rush hour.

  It seemed that the nightmare of rushing ways and whistling wind and unconcerned, self-centered Earthers would go on forever. Derec had to watch Ariel — he feared she would collapse — and also watch the signs overhead, fearing that he would forget or confuse the instructions he had carefully impressed on his memory.

  But even the longest journey ends at last, and the exit was clearly marked SECTION HOSPITAL, with the same red cross on white that Spacers used.

  The anteroom smelled of antiseptic and was mobbed with men, women, and children. Children. thought Derec vaguely — never seen so many children in my life as on Earth. Though his memories still were lost, he was sure, by his astonished reaction, that he had not. Of course, they had to keep replacing this huge population.

  Fumbling, he inserted Ariel’s newly forged ID tags into the computer, whose panel lit with CHECK-UP, ILLNESS, EMERGENCY? Ariel was leaning against him, gasping and pale after the ordeal, and even the usually unconcerned Earthers were looking at them in some alarm. Emergency, he decided, panicky, and punched it.

  Instantly a red star appeared in the panel, blinking; apparently alarms rang elsewhere, for a strong-looking woman appeared, started to remonstrate with him for mistaking an ILLNESS for an EMERGENCY — young husbands! But Ariel turned a ghastly, apologetic smile on her, and the woman’s mouth closed with a snap.