by Isaac Asimov
As he looked to the north, he stopped short. “That’s funny,” he said, puzzled. “I would have sworn that last night there was a grouping of three icosahedrons right there along that boulevard.”
“Icosahedrons?”
“The most complex perfect solid — twenty triangular faces.” He shook his head. “I must have been mistaken about the grouping. Maybe I was dreaming about this place last night. Anyway, I’m almost looking forward to going down there. If we’d managed to get back to Rockliffe Station last night or on to Aurora this morning, I’d have felt cheated by not having my chance to explore.”
“Have you bothered to notice that this city isn’t just a collection of buildings?” she asked petulantly.
“What do you mean?”
She pointed down over the edge at the small figures moving in the streets. “You go down there and you’re going to have to deal with the creatures that built this city. Is it as much fun thinking about having a hundred thousand monsters like Aranimas after you? We’re trespassers, you know. We weren’t invited.”
Derec folded his arms over his chest and scanned the city outward to the horizon. “I’d say more like a million or more inhabitants in a city this size. But they won’t be like Aranimas-or like Wolruf, for that matter.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“First, because Wolruf told me about his world and the Erani world, and this doesn’t fit the description —”
“She could have lied.”
“True. But you say you didn’t pick this destination, and I know I didn’t. That means it was the key that decided to bring us here.”
“So?”
“So, the key wasn’t made by Aranimas’s people, and it wasn’t made by Wolruf’s. If it was, they’d have known how to make the key work. They could probably even have made one with a lot less trouble than they seem to have gone through to find this one,” Derec said. “So why should it take us to either of their worlds?”
“Maybe they did learn how to set the destination,” she pointed out.
“Maybe. Or maybe the key was built to return to a certain place when it’s activated without guidance — as a way of reclaiming them when they fall into the wrong hands.”
“Then the creatures down there —”
“Might be not only the builders of this city, but the builders of the key,” Derec completed. “Which means that maybe we were invited.”
She squinted in his direction. “You’re going to go down there whether I do or not, aren’t you.”
“Yes. I’ll leave the key with you, if you want.”
“I thought we were a team.”
“Are we still?” he said, raising an eyebrow questioningly.
“Don’t you want to be?”
“I don’t know if we want the same things,” he said slowly. “You want to get back to Aurora. I want to do something to help Wolruf — and then look into this business of the Daniel O’Neill.”
“Both of which require getting off this planet,” she pointed out. “Our interests overlap at least that far.”
“They do, indeed,” Derec admitted. “All right, then. We’re still a team.”
“At least until we beg, borrow, or steal a spaceship.”
“Or learn how to control the Key to Perihelion, whichever comes first,” he amended.
“Or Aranimas shows up with fire in his eye and uses us for thrust mass,” Katherine said with a grin. She peeked over the side again. “Or we kill ourselves trying to get down from here. Maybe we can make them come to us?”
Katherine’s concern was justified. The only way down from the promontory seemed to be to climb down one of the sloping faces of the pyramid. Those faces were steep, much more nearly vertical than the faces of the Incan and Mayan temples of ancient Earth which the tower otherwise resembled. But unlike those temples, there were no wide ceremonial staircases cut into any of the four faces.
Instead, there was a regular pattern of holes down the center of each plasticrete face, a pattern that seemed to extend all the way to the ground. Each hole was wider than his handspan and twenty centimeters deep, and they were spaced in such a way that they would make convenient handholds and footholds.
It was possible they had been placed there purely for decorative reasons. “The fact is, I can’t see why anyone would want to climb up here — there’s nothing up here except a good view,” he told Katherine. “And if the view was important to them, they could have run a lift up through the center of the tower.”
Even so, the holes were in some ways better than a staircase. Hugging the face of the tower, with both hands and feet to provide good purchase and their backs to the view out and down that could inspire vertigo, they might just make it.
“You’re going to be hurting by the time we get to the bottom,” he told Katherine.
“I’ve got an eighty percent charge in my medipump and I feel fine. Besides, didn’t anyone ever tell you that women have more endurance than men?” she teased. “Let’s stop talking and get going.”
The worst part was going over the edge and feeling for that first foothold. Derec led the way, being careful not to dislodge the key from its spot tucked into his waistband. A moment later Katherine was beside him, clinging more tightly than she needed to the lip of the holes she was using as handholds.
“I almost hate to bring this up, but I wonder what sort of creatures might have decided these holes would make great nests,” Katherine said breathlessly.
“Flying snakes,” Derec said straight-faced. “A meter long with three rows of sharp teeth. Nothing to worry about.”
“You’re so considerate,” she said crossly, starting down.
“No charge,” he said with a smile, and followed after her.
If he had ever thought that Katherine would be the kind to pick her way timidly down the wall, letting him lead the way and guide her steps, the first few minutes would have banished that notion. Katherine — Kate — was agile and aggressive and, most of all, fast. In ten minutes they were a fourth of the way down the tower’s face. Since he had to be wary of moving too quickly and dislodging the key, Derec had trouble keeping pace.
“Hey, partner,” he called down to her. “Time-out for a conference.”
“I thought you were already taking a time-out, as slow as you move,” she shot back. But she stopped and waited for him all the same. “What’s up?” she asked as he joined her.
“A thought about the key. Do we really want to take it down there, not knowing what we’re walking into?”
She frowned. “That would be taking a risk, wouldn’t it?
If we knew how to control it, I’d say keep it with us. We could always use it to escape from a tight spot —”
“If we knew how to control it, we wouldn’t have to do this,” Derec said.
“You want to leave it here, in one of these holes?”
“That’s what I was thinking. The key is heavy enough and the holes deep enough that nothing’s going to dislodge it.”
“I don’t much like the idea of being separated from it,” Katherine said, her eyes clouded by concern. “It’s one of our two chances to get out of here, maybe the better one, for all we know.”
“I like the idea of being separated from it by force even less,” Derec said. “What do you say?”
She nodded reluctantly. “You’re right. Let’s hide it.”
At Katherine’s insistence, they left the key right there where they were, in the leftmost hole of the pattern.
“It’s going to be a harder climb up than it is down,” Derec warned as they started down again.
“For them, too,” she said.
Freed from his burden, Derec could more readily keep pace, and the rest of the descent turned into an undeclared race. But the race ended prematurely when, sneaking a peek over her shoulder to see how much farther they had to go, Katherine saw something that made her want to start climbing upward again.
“Reception committee,” she hissed, reachi
ng out and seizing Derec by the sleeve.
Letting go with his right hand, Derec twisted at the waist and looked down. At ground level, a hundred meters below their feet, a dozen figures stood in a half-circle. All twelve faces were tipped upward, looking back at him.
A happy grin spread slowly across Derec’s face. “But look who’s on the committee,” he exulted. “They’re robots!”
Katherine stole another glance down. “Considering recent history, I don’t know why that’s such good news,” she said.
“It means that this has to be a Spacer world —”
“Rockliffe was a Spacer station,” she said.
“— which means that our biggest problem from here on out is going to be bureaucratic red tape.”
“Optimist.”
“You’ll see,” he said, starting down.
The only response came from one of the robots waiting below. “Please move slowly and exercise all possible care,” it called up to them. “Climbing the Compass Tower is a dangerous activity.”
Chapter 21
ROBOT CITY
EAGER TO HASTEN the meeting, Derec skipped the last few steps, swinging out and jumping down to the ground. As Katherine clambered down behind him, he turned to face the robots.
Several were already leaving. Derec presumed that they were medical specialists who had been there in case of a fall, plus perhaps a few riggers who could have climbed up the wall to help them. Their skills no longer needed, they were efficiently moving on to other tasks.
The robots that remained were similar in appearance to each other, but not identical variations on a theme. One had a seemingly purposeless swatch of blue enamel above the right ear, a second brilliant green optical scanner, still another sensor mesh wrapped around its skull like a headband.
“What’s your name?” Derec asked, singling one of them out.
The robot took a step forward. “I am M-3323.”
“Very well. M-3323, take me — us — to the city manager.”
“The city as presently constituted does not have a manager,” the robot replied. “What is your name, please?”
“Derec,” he said. “David Derec. But —”
“And I’m Katherine Burgess,” she said, stepping forward. “Look, we don’t need to talk to the person on top, no matter what you call them — city manager, king, president, god. We need a place to see to our hygienic needs — something with a shower and a Personal. While we’re busy with that, you can arrange a meeting for us with someone who can help us with our other problems. Is there any problem with that?”
“No, Katherine,” M-3323 said. “Arrangements are now being made. If you will follow me, I will lead you to the appropriate facilities.”
Mercifully, the house they were taken to was less than a minute’s walk away. It was nestled between two great six-sided towers like a child hiding amongst its mother’s skirts. The interior was startlingly new and pristine, as though the house had not only never been occupied, but never entered.
But the house contained everything they needed, including two Personals that opened off a room containing a futonlike sleeping platform. The three robots which had accompanied them inside waited downstairs, which afforded them an extra measure of privacy.
“There,” Katherine said, emerging from her Personal after twenty minutes. “More presentable?”
Derec rose from where he had been seated on the edge of the platform. “You’re very easy on the eyes.”
“A quaint expression,” she said, obviously pleased. “Do you have any idea where we are?”
“None whatsoever,” Derec confessed.
“But we’re on our way out of this,” she said with some anxiety. “I’m going to get to go home. You’re going to get to go find home.”
He held up crossed fingers.
“You promised me there’d be nothing more than red tape,” she said warningly.
“That was a prediction, not a promise.”
“Still stand behind your forecast?”
“Sure,” Derec said. “Let’s go start hacking through the tangle.”
M-3323 led them out of the house and guided them back the way they had come, up the street toward the great central tower. It was a strange little procession — a pair of robots in the lead, matching stride for stride — M-3323 walking between Derec and Katherine like a vigilant chaperone — another pair of robots trailing a few steps behind.
Were the extra robots an honor guard, bodyguards, or prison guards? The pair following silently behind bothered Derec the most. Before they had gone half a block, he glanced back over his shoulder to check on what they were doing. What he saw behind the robots — or, more to the point, what he did not see — made him do a double-take. The house they had just left was gone. The gap between the two towers which had flanked it had closed.
He shook his head and chided himself for foolishness. It must be the angle, he told himself. The house is set farther back than you realized. It’s there, between the towers. You just can’t see it. Then he remembered the grouping of icosahedrons he had seen, and then not seen, from the high plaza.
“Excuse me,” he said to Katherine and M-3323. “I’ll be right back.”
He ran back down the street until he had gone far enough that he should have been able to see the house, and then slowed to a walk. He could scarcely believe his eyes. The house was gone. The two towers now flanked an open courtyard.
He looked around wildly, wanting to believe that he had taken a wrong turn, that he was the victim of some sort of illusion. The house had been just what Katherine had asked for, and so conveniently located. Could they possibly have built it just for us, and then torn it down again?
It was an insane thought, and he did not want to deal with it just then. Demand-driven architecture — a modular structure that swapped whole buildings around like toy blocks or fabricated them from elemental forms — what kind of society was this? How could people live in a city like this?
With an effort, he tore himself away from the sight of the empty courtyard and found two of the escort robots standing two steps away behind him.
“Are you finished here, sir?” one asked politely.
He grunted. “Yeah, I’m finished.”
There was no keeping the troubled expression off his face as he rejoined the others.
“Is there a problem, David Derec?” asked M-3323.
“You bet there’s a problem. What happened to the house we were just in?”
“My apologies. Did you have other needs that you did not previously identify? Or do you have additional personal needs?”
“I need a straight answer. Where’s the house?”
“That facility has been released to the general inventory.”
“So I’m not just imagining that it’s gone — you brought it there for us and then cleaned up when we were done.”
“Yes, David Derec.”
“Do you do that all the time around here?”
“All physical resources are managed for maximum efficiency.”
“I’ll take that as yes. Crazy,” Derec shook his head.
“But it doesn’t matter to us,” Katherine said.
“No,” Derec agreed. “So forget it and let’s get on with this.”
They walked on until they came to a great plaza at the convergence of several main streets. In the center of the plaza was a great white tetrahedron perhaps fifteen stories tall. Their guides directed them toward an entrance on the right.
“M-3323 —”
“Yes, David Derec?”
“Is this part of the city exclusively used by robots? I didn’t see any people along the way here.”
“Yes, Derec.”
“I thought so. Where are all the people?”
“I do not know, sir,” M-3323 said. “This way, please.” It led them through a lobby area which was itself a tetrahedron and down a corridor. At the third door, the robot turned and paused. “In here, please.”
“Who ar
e we meeting?” Katherine asked, pausing in the open doorway.
“Rydberg and Euler,” M-3323 said. “They are waiting for you in the inner office.”
Rydberg — Euler — The names gnawed familiarly at Derec’s memory as he followed Katherine first through one doorway, then through another. Where have I heard them before —
Preoccupied, he entered the inner office with his eyes lowered. When he looked up, he received a jolt. The spartan compartment contained three straight-backed chairs, a quarter-circle work station with a sophisticated hypervision computer terminal, and two blue-skinned robots with silver slits for optical sensors.
This can’t be — A chill went through Derec as he stared at robots that were clones of the supervisors on the asteroid. It’s all connected. I don’t understand —” Kate —” he started.
Just ‘on the left stepped forward. “I am Rydberg.”
“I am Euler,” the other robot said.
“I’m afraid there’s some mistake,” Katherine said. “We want to talk to people.”
“There is no error. We are the representatives assigned to your case,” Euler said.
“Kate, this is wrong,” Derec said hoarsely.
Pursing her lips, Katherine decided, “If they want to do it this way, I don’t care.” She addressed Euler. “We need to see about transportation to Aurora and Nexon — that is where you’re going to go, isn’t it, Derec? — and temporary accommodations.”
“I am afraid that that is not possible,” Euler said, shaking his head gravely.
“What?” exclaimed Katherine. “Why not?”
“Friend Euler’s statement was imprecise,” Rydberg said. “It is possible to leave. But there is a problem. A human being has been killed —”
“Why does that involve us?” Derec asked.
“It would be an unthinkable violation of the Laws of Robotics for a robot to harm a human being,” Rydberg said. “I am unable even to form the thought without experiencing distress.”
