by Isaac Asimov
“I cannot say,” Dr. Galen said. “I am certain that the station manager reported your arrival to the district supervisor at Nexon, as I did to the medical supervisor. That information may have been passed to any number of interested parties in the interval since. Why, is there someone you would like to contact?”
Derec pointed across the room at the sleeping Katherine. “Her. How much longer till you bring her out?”
“I concluded some days ago that she might hold the key to unlocking your loss of memory, and decided to allow her to wake at the earliest opportunity when her own health and comfort would not be at risk,” said Dr. Galen. “She was taken off the sleep-inducing drug at midnight. According to her brain waves, she is dreaming now. I expect her to wake sometime this morning.”
Derec glanced around the ward. There was nowhere to sit except the floor.
“There is no need for you to conduct a vigil,” Dr. Galen said as though reading his thoughts.
“I want to be here when she wakes up.”
Dr. Galen nodded understandingly. “I promise, I will call you.”
Derec whiled away one hour, then another, with a bookfilm titled “The Architects of the Machine.” He hoped to find among its profiles of notable designers and engineers a clue as to who the “minimalist” behind the asteroid colony might have been. With all the more tangible evidence lost or destroyed, it was one of the few unexplored leads left to him. Genius of that sort had to have left a trail.
But only three of the biographies were of contemporary designers, and the choices were entirely predictable. The roboticist Fastolfe. March, the Havalean wizard of micromagnetics. The human ecologist Rutan, whose services were so much in demand by the wealthy on a dozen Spacer worlds.
All three had become celebrities, acclaimed by those who knew nothing about what it took to do what they did. But the engineering community had its own celebrities, based on its own standards. Every exclusive group did — those persons who had won the respect and admiration of their peers but were completely unknown outside the circle. Fastolfe ranked here, too, but March was regarded as a toy-maker and Rutan as a joke.
Yes, he needed an insider’s perspective. Someone would know Derec’s mysterious genius —
“Master Derec, if I may interrupt.”
Derec’s head jerked up. It was the medical orderly. Like Dr. Galen, the orderly had fallen victim to the supervisor’s perverse sense of humor. “Yes, Florence.”
“Dr. Galen said that you should come right away.”
Pushing back the viewer, Derec jumped to his feet. “Coming.”
When he reached the ICU, the sterilization lights were already off and Katherine was beginning to stir. She now wore an ankle-to-neck beige gown, etiquette having changed along with Dr. Galen’s changing perception of their relationship. Derec hung back as Dr. Galen bent over Katherine and spoke softly to her.
“Good morning,” he said. “Don’t try to move.”
But she lifted her head a few centimeters all the same and surveyed the room. “Hospital?” she asked hoarsely.
“Yes, Katherine. I am Dr. Galen.”
“On what station?”
“Rockliffe Station.”
She nodded and looked past Dr. Galen to Derec. “Some rescue,” she said.
Despite her hoarseness, there was a laughing note to her voice that Derec did not like. Taking a step closer, he said stiffly, “We’re both alive, aren’t we?”
“Which just goes to show that there’s no justice in the Galaxy,” she answered, closing her eyes. “I thought you’d have been smart enough to disable Aranimas’s security system before you started to poke around in his hidey-hole.”
“Look, I’m sorry it didn’t go more smoothly,” Derec said, coming to the side of the bed. “But we did get away. And there was something we were going to talk about once we did —”
Her eyes fluttered open and searched past Derec for the robot’s face. “Dr. Galen, the headaches are back,” she said. “Would you ask Derec to leave, please? I just don’t think I can deal with company now.”
“How long could it take to tell me my surname, my homeworld —”
But Dr. Galen intervened, gently pushing Derec back toward the door. “I understand your impatience, Derec. But I must consider Katherine’s health, too. Please leave. I will find out what I can. When she is stronger you can talk with her again, if she consents.”
Derec took his frustration for a walk, leaving the hospital by the main entrance. He was sure that Dr. Galen would report him or send a robot after him to bring him back, but he did not care. He simply could not calmly stay there and wait. To be so close to answers, to the promise of being whole again, was too great a test for his patience.
The section of the station where the hospital was located was a tomb. He walked dimly lit streets past ranks of closed stores and sealed residential blocks. Only the main throughway was even lit. The side streets and courtyards were black pits.
No robot pursued him. He walked and walked until the edge was off his jumbled emotions, and then he turned back. He stalked through the reception area and into Dr. Galen’s office.
“Did she tell you anything?”
“She was not able to offer any insight into your affliction.”
“You discussed my condition with her? But you wouldn’t tell me —”
“Correction. She was already aware of your condition.”
“What did she do, ask your advice on how to deal with me?”
“Derec, I promised Katherine that I would not discuss our conversation with you.”
Crossing his arms over his chest, Derec blew a sigh ceiling-ward. “I don’t understand why she’s being so secretive. If she knows something about me, she should just tell me.” He cast a raised-eyebrow glance in Dr. Galen’s direction. “Isn’t that right?”
“The advisability of that would vary from case to case, depending on the individual, the cause of the dysfunction, and the particular personal data concerned,” was Dr. Galen’s measured answer.
“You won’t even give me a hint, will you?” Derec said ruefully.
“I regret that I may not.”
Derec frowned. “Can I see her, at least?”
The robot turned to one of the two active displays on the wall behind him. “She is awake and her algesia has moderated. But she is the final arbiter.”
“Then I’m going to go see what she has to say.”
They found Katherine sitting up in her bed. “I was hoping someone would come to see me,” she said with a smile.
“You left me with some good reasons to,” Derec said, scanning the room fruitlessly for a chair to move beside the bed.
Her face clouded over. “Da — Derec,” she said, stumbling over his name as though she had forgotten it. “I’m afraid you’re going to be angry with me. We have a lot of ground to make up together — all the things that happened on the ship. I don’t think we should start with the little I know about you.”
The look that Derec shot at Dr. Galen was black and poisonous. “What is this? What did you tell her? I thought you were trying to help me —”
“I cannot do otherwise,” the robot said calmly.
The truth of that slowed Derec’s rush to anger. He turned back to Katherine and said, “So you’re going to keep secrets from me.”
She shook her head. “Derec — let’s say that you were President of New Liberty —”
“New Liberty has a council-manager government,” Derec interrupted.
“It doesn’t matter. Let’s say you were President of New Liberty and lost your memory. If I tell you that you’re the President, does that make you the President? Can you start acting like the person you used to be just because you know that?”
Derec avoided her eyes. “I suppose not. But hearing it could make me remember —”
“It is far more likely to cause you severe anxiety,” Dr. Galen began. “Most often —”
Derec opened his mouth to answer, bu
t Katherine was faster. “Dr. Galen, go away,” she snapped. “Go back to your office and leave us alone. Don’t monitor me and don’t listen in. We’ll call you if we need you.”
The robot stared a moment, then lowered its head and exited.
“You didn’t have to get so personal,” Derec said, surprised at her forcefulness. “I’ll bet you put a kink in poor Dr. Galen’s self-worth integral that he’ll be an hour working out.”
“Oh, I don’t care,” Katherine said peevishly, staring at the empty doorway. “Medical robots are such busybodies. They’ve got ten thousand opinions but they don’t really know anything. And they can’t really understand what someone’s feeling when they’re sick, now, can they? Because they’re machines and they never get sick, or die.”
Is that what’s the matter with you? Derec wondered, looking at her face. Are you dying from something the doctors can’t cure? Is that what Dr. Galen wouldn’t talk about?
Before he could find the courage to ask her aloud, she looked toward him and patted the bed beside her. “Are you going to stand all the way over there? The field can hold both of us.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Derec settled on the edge of the bed by Katherine’s feet.
“There, that’s better,” she said. “Now I don’t feel so much like a prisoner being questioned.”
“I’m not sure what we have left to talk about.”
“Well — I’m sure there’s more to what happened on the asteroid than you told me on the ship. Then there’s the ship and what we went through there. And there’s me.”
“Let’s start there. Your name, for starters. The robot called you Katherine —”
“I am Katherine Ariel Burgess to my mother and the computers. Everyone else calls me Kate,” she said. “My father says that calling me Katherine is false advertising — that it doesn’t give people any warning what they’re in for. Katherine is please and thank you and dresses that cover you to the neck. Kate is —”
“Sharp-tongued and strong-willed and I-can-take-care-of-my-self-thank-you,” Derec supplied.
Katherine brightened as though she had been complimented. “Something like that. My father says that I have spice.”
“I think I’ll stick to Katherine. What were you doing on Aranimas’s ship?”
“Why, I was a prisoner just like you were. My robots and I were kidnapped off a courier ship.” She snapped her fingers. “I just remembered. Where’s the key? You didn’t let the robots have it, did you?”
“I don’t know where it is,” he said. “I don’t even know that it was ever where I thought it was.”
“Is the ship here? Have you been back in it?”
“Frost, I don’t know. I hadn’t even been out of the hospital until this morning,” Derec said, annoyed. “Will you tell me this — why is that key so important? What is it? What’s it the key to?”
“I don’t know,” Katherine said soberly. “I only know that Aranimas thought it was worth anything to get. Wait — I thought you said the key was your property. Don’t you know why it’s important?”
“It is my property,” Derec asserted. “Space salvage. Or a gift. Either way, I have the best claim to it.”
“But you don’t know what it is?”
“No.”
She seemed disappointed. “Maybe you do know — but it’s one of the things you’ve forgotten.”
“I guess that’s possible,” Derec acceded. “Did Aranimas come to the asteroid specifically looking for the key? Not because I was there?”
“I don’t think so —”
“You don’t think so what?”
“I think he went to the asteroid on purpose. I don’t think he knew the key was there. I’m almost positive he didn’t know you were there,” she said. “I think you were just lucky — or would it be unlucky?”
Derec considered. “Lucky, the way it fell out. I’d sure rather be here on Rockliffe Station than back on that asteroid.”
“Lucky, then.” She paused. “Look, if it is yours, maybe getting it back in your hands would help you remember something. And even if it doesn’t, we need to find out what happened to the key. Aranimas had to have some reason for wanting it.”
“Wolruf called it ‘the jewel’ when she talked to Aranimas,” Derec said thoughtfully. “But I don’t think she meant it literally.”
“Either way, it’s something valuable. Are we going to try to find it, or not?”
“We?” For a brief moment, Derec bristled defensively. Then he reminded himself what it had been like to be a loner on the raider ship. He felt at home here — but Katherine clearly didn’t. She was hurting, and she was alone, and she wanted to be his friend. And beyond that, she knew something about who he was — and wanted to help him remember.
“Sure,” he said. “Of course we are.”
Chapter 15
OH SEVEN B
DESPITE ALL THE good intentions, the partnership almost fell apart before it began. Derec had somehow visualized the arrangement with himself making all the decisions and Katherine gratefully following his lead. But he found out very quickly that it was Kate, not Katherine, with whom he’d made his pact.
Derec was eager to get started looking for the artifact. Since Dr. Galen had raised no protest about Derec’s excursion out of the hospital, he felt he had won the right to roam where he wanted. At the very least, it would be several days before Kate was accorded the same freedom.
But when Derec proposed that he go scouting alone and then report back to Katherine on his discoveries, she balked. “We go together or all promises are off,” she said firmly. “If we’re going to be a team, we have to work as a team.”
“Being a team doesn’t mean we have to be handcuffed together,” Derec argued. “Everybody should do what they do best, and right now what I can do best is be our eyes and ears.”
“What are you going to do?”
Derec shrugged. “Talk to the dock supervisor and the station manager. Start finding out what’s happened while we were here.”
“They’re robots,” she said. “Let them come here.”
It was a perfectly reasonable idea, and the fact that it had not occurred to Derec jarred him for a moment. He had been thinking of talking to the station staff ever since he had regained consciousness, but always in terms of going to see them. He realized that he had made an unspoken assumption: they’re busy — they don’t have time to come down here to talk to me.
He had never once thought of ordering them to leave their work. Katherine had thought of it immediately. Derec knew somehow that the difference said something important about the two of them — something about their background, the subculture which had shaped their attitudes about robots.
It was as though he respected the importance of the robots’ work and saw them more or less as equals, while she thought of them only as servants. But whether it meant he had more experience with robots than she or less, he could not say.
All the same, it was another tiny piece in his puzzle. He was not like Katherine. They came from different worlds — culturally if not geographically. It made him wonder how it was she knew him.
All these thoughts cascaded through Derec’s mind in a fraction of a second, allowing him to carry on the conversation with only the faintest hesitation. “Look, I’m willing to share the decision-making. Maybe we could get the robots to come here,” he said. “There’s still the ship. I should go have a look at it.”
“That’s something we should do together.”
“Why? What’s hidden there that you don’t want me to find?”
Katherine crossed her arms and sighed. “If you’re going to be suspicious of me all the time, this isn’t going to work.”
“I’m not suspicious of you!” Derec exclaimed, throwing his hands in the air. “I just don’t understand why you don’t seem to want to let me out of your sight.”
“And I don’t understand your hurry,” Katherine said stiffly. “You say that we’re a team, but
you want to go run off and do everything yourself.”
“The hurry is because we want to get there first,” Derec said impatiently. “We don’t want anyone else taking it.”
She looked at him quizzically. “We’ve been here six weeks. Do you really think that they pulled us out and then locked the ship up somewhere until we could claim it? Think! That’s an alien starship. How long do you think it took them to realize they’d never seen one like it before — not just the design, but the whole technology? This is a frontier base. Do you think they just take it in stride when an unregistered ship shows up with two injured humans aboard?”
Belatedly, Derec understood. “So they’ve been all over it. Photographed it, X-rayed it, the whole works. They might have even torn it down, sent pieces of it out on Fariis to the district offices. They’re probably wondering about us, too.”
“Of course they are. That’s why I sent Dr. Galen away.”
“Do you think he’s been spying on us?”
“All robots are spies for their masters,” she said bitterly.
“What?” Derec asked, surprised by her intensity.
“Nevermind,” she said. “I just think we ought to play innocents abroad for a while, do all the things they expect us to — until we understand what kind of game we’re in.”
“Be helpless and worried. Play dumb.”
“Just so,” Katherine said. “Sometimes it’s the smartest thing you can do.”
At their request, Dr. Galen had a multicom brought to the ICU and tied into the station net. Very quickly, they learned that the Rockliffe Station welcome mat was a bit threadbare.
The station manager was fully scheduled until the following morning and thought that they really wanted to talk to the dock supervisor anyway. The dock supervisor was conducting an overhaul of the dock pressurization system, a priority task which had to be completed in the shortest possible time, and had they tried the dispatcher?
The dispatcher couldn’t answer their questions without clearance from the security chief, who deferred to the associate manager for station operations. The AMSOP was one step down the ladder from the station manager and probably the robot to which they should have been recommended in the first place.
