by Isaac Asimov
Derec climbed back into the office and closed the trap door behind him, once again sealing in the illusion completely.
He continued his tour of the office by emptying the small trash can that sat by the desk. The trash can held several empty containers that he recognized as standard Spacer survival rations of good-tasting roughage plus supplementary vitamin and protein pills. He torn open one of the roughage containers to find, in the corner, a small glob of the stuff, which hadn’t hardened completely. This food had been eaten within the last twenty-four hours. The rest of the trash was comprised of wadded-up pieces of paper containing mathematical equations relating to the geometric progression of the city-building, which seemed to relate to the time it would take to fill the entire planet with city. Others seemed to be directed to the amounts of rainfall and the reservoir size, quick calculations regarding how long it would take an overflow to occur. Derec had the feeling that if he simply sat in the office and waited an indefinite amount of time, he could probably catch the overseer coming back. Unfortunately, he didn’t have an indefinite amount of time.
He put the trash back in the can and directed his attention to the desk itself. The top of the iron-alloy desk contained a blotter with paper and two zero-g ink pens. The only personal item on the desk was a holo-cube containing a scene of a very nice looking woman holding a baby. The sight of the cube sent a cold chill down his back.
He turned his attention to the drawers. On his left were several small drawers, which were, for the most part, empty. Only the top drawer contained anything at all, and that was simply more paper and some technical data on the workings of the logic circuits of the positronic brain. On his right, however, he struck gold. As he opened the big well drawer there, a slight motor hum brought a computer terminal up to desktop level, the screen already active, the cursor flashing: READY.
Interestingly enough, the terminal had all the hook-ups and leads for hyperwave transmission and reception. Unfortunately, the power pack and directional hyperwave antenna were missing from the back, taken, no doubt, by the overseer.
He stared at the terminal in disbelief. No blocks, no passwords, no protections on the system at all. He couldn’t believe that an entire civilization would open itself up to him just because he’d found an office. Suppose he’d meant to cause it harm?
Cautiously, he slipped into the scheme of things, working his way down to the level of files, then asking to go to the central core. Once reaching that, he asked to open the file marked: CITY DEFENSES.
Within seconds, the READY signal was flashing again. He was in! Rapidly he typed:
LIST CITY DEFENSES.
The computer answered:
CITY DEFENSES:
ADVANCE REPLICATION
SEAL CONTAMINATION
HALT CENTRAL CORE INPUT
MOBILATE CENTRAL CORE
LOCALIZE EMERGENCY TERMINALS
ISOLATE SUPERVISORY PERSONNEL
He sat, shaking, at the typer. This was it. He decided to try his hand at shutting it down. He typed:
CANCEL REPLICATION.
The computer never hesitated.
CITY DEFENSES CANNOT BE CANCELED WITHOUT JUSTIFICATION AND INPUT REGARDING ALIEN THREAT OR CONTAMINATION.
Derec typed:
OVERRIDE ALL PREVIOUS INSTRUCTIONS AND CANCEL REPLICATION.
The computer answered:
OVERRIDE IMPOSSIBLE UNDER ALL CIRCUMSTANCES. CITY DEFENSES CANNOT BE CANCELED WITHOUT JUSTIFICATION AND INPUT REGARDING ALIEN THREAT OR CONTAMINATION.
It was a lock-out. The computer refused even to talk to him about it unless he could determine the reason for the defensive measures and provide proper rationalization for termination. It seemed etched in granite. He typed:
LIST REASONS FOR CITY DEFENSE ACTIVATION.
The computer answered with a graph of the city, its shape ever changing, turning slowly. A tiny light was flashing in the section marked Quadrant #4. At the bottom of the screen the computer wrote:
ALIEN CONTAMINATION IN QUADRANT #4.
Derec asked:
CITE NATURE OF CONTAMINATION.
The computer answered:
ALIEN CONTAMINATION IN QUADRANT #4.
He sat back and looked at the machine. It was very possible that the flashing light could represent the body of his look-alike. The machine wasn’t going to let him off the hook on the murder. He was beginning to see why it was so easy for him to get into the central core from this terminal, and he received his final confirmation quickly, when he typed:
LIST PROCEDURE FOR DEACTIVATION OF CITY DEFENSES.
The machine replied:
DEACTIVATION PROCEDURE:
ISOLATE CONTAMINATION OR PRESENCE
DEFINE NATURE OF THREAT
NEUTRALIZE THREAT
PROVIDE PROOF OF NEUTRALIZATION THRU PROCEDURE C-15
Derec typed:
LIST PROCEDURE C-15
And was answered:
PROCEDURE C-15:
ISOLATE MOBILATED CENTRAL CORE
ENTER CENTRAL CORE
PROVIDE SUPERVISOR PASSWORD
ENTER PROOF OF NEUTRALIZATION
Derec just stared at the screen, frustrated and amazed at what he was looking at. Nothing of consequence could be done from this terminal, or from any city terminal, for that matter. Input had to come directly at the central core, and unless he misunderstood the word “mobilate,” the central core was not stationary. It was mobile, moving. And to round out the entire business philosophically, a supervisor robot was necessary to enter the defensive program.
It was actually the perfect defense. The act of shutting down the defenses had to be deliberate and calculated and agreed to by both human and robot supervision. Again, the system was set up synnoetically, and Derec, despite his disappointment, had to admire it. Ultimately, he really didn’t know the form of the contamination. The central core was behaving properly by not granting his requests for deactivation until all the facts were in. The problem, of course, was that city could kill itself before the facts came to light.
He was back where he started, with the murder of his twin. There was still much he could learn from the office and the open terminal, but he simply didn’t have the time right now. He reluctantly decided that he’d have to close out for now and return when there was more time.
He had reached out to return the terminal to its berth in the drawer when he thought of something. If the overseer were, indeed, keeping track of them, perhaps there was a file extant with that information. Not knowing his own name, he decided to go with another. Bringing the filename menu back on the screen, he typed in the words:
BURGESS, KATHERINE
The machine answered:
BURGESS, KATHERINE, see DAVID.
His mouth was dry, his heart pounding as he typed in the name of the dead man.
The machine answered quickly, in a notation file obviously set in the overseer’s own hand:
ASSIMILATION TEST ON DAVID #2 PROCEEDED ON LINE AND WITHOUT MISHAP UNTIL THE TRIGGERING OF THE CITY DEFENSIVE SYSTEM AND THE DEATH OF SUBJECT THROUGH UNKNOWN MEANS.
WITHOUT HUMAN INTERVENTION, ROBOTS ARE UNABLE TO PREVENT VITAL DAMAGE THROUGH OVER-SUCCESS OF CITY PLANNING AND OPERATION WOULD BE TOTAL FAILURE.
DAVID #1 ARRIVED TO INTERVENE IN CITY CATASTROPHE AND PROCEED WITH ORIGINAL OPERATIONAL TESTING OF SYNNOETIC THEORIES. RESULTS YET TO BE SEEN.
UNCONTROLLED FACTOR ARRIVED WITH DAVID #1 IN THE FORM OF A WOMAN. SHE IS NOW CALLING HERSELF KATHERINE BURGESS FOR REASONS UNKNOWN. HER ULTIMATE INFLUENCE OVER OPERATION AND THE EXACT NATURE OF HER AIMS HAVE YET TO BE DETERMINED.
SHE WILL BE WATCHED CAREFULLY.
That was it, the end of the file. Derec stared at the flashing cursor for a moment, his mind whirling with a dozen different thoughts. But one thought overrode everything else, one sentence burned its way into his brain and hurt him more deeply than he thought possible—SHE IS NOW CALLING HERSELF KATHERINE BURGESS FOR REASONS UNKNOWN.
Chapter 10
DEREC HAD HOPED that when he came out of the overseer’s office Katherine would have already been gone, but she wasn’t. She stood waiting for him with the two witness robots, a smile on her face as if seeing him somehow made her happy. What an actress. He had to wonder now, once again, what it was she wanted out of all this. He’d once again have to pull in and play it by ear where she was concerned. Perhaps she’d say something to give herself away. Meanwhile, she’d get no satisfaction.
“How did it go?” she asked cheerily, but then her face changed, tightened up when she noticed his mood swing. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing . . . Katherine,” he said, her phony name sticking in his throat. “I found an exit to the top platform, and a computer, but nothing in it helped any, except to tell me what we already knew—that we’d have to solve the murder.”
“Well then, I think we should stop wasting time and get on to that,” she said suspiciously, not quite believing his change of attitude. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Never better,” he lied, angry at himself for wanting to be close to her despite what he’d learned. If he had any sense, he’d turn and run as fast and as far as he could from her. Instead, he said, “Let’s go.”
They moved out of the Compass Tower quickly and quietly, Katherine watching Derec out of the corner of her eye most of the time. He tried to be more nonchalant to keep from arousing her suspicions, but it was difficult for him. He apparently wasn’t as schooled in subterfuge as she. As they made their way through the building, robots paid them no attention, already becoming familiar and comfortable with human presence.
When they stepped outside, they found a tram with a utility driver atop it, waving to them. “Friend Derec!” the robot called, and they moved over to the tram.
“What is it?” Derec asked the squat driver.
“Supervisor Euler asked me to be your driver today, honoring an earlier request you made in regard to transportation.”
“Well,” Derec said, looking at Katherine, “it appears that we’re finally being trusted a little bit. Our own tram, eh?”
“It’s radio-controlled,” the utility robot said.
Derec narrowed his brows. “What’s its range?”
“The range of the control is roughly equivalent to the limits of the already extruded city.”
“Oh,” Derec said quietly. “You mean that the tram won’t operate except in city limits?”
“A fair appraisal,” the robot said.
Katherine laughed loudly. “Now that’s what I call trust,” she said, and shook her head.
He glared at her and climbed into the tram. “Rec,” he told his witness, “why don’t you ride up here with me?”
The robot dutifully climbed in beside Derec, leaving Katherine to sit with her witness in the seat behind.
“Where to, sir?” the tram driver asked.
Derec turned to Katherine. “You know where we’re going?”
“Quadrant #4,” Katherine replied. “Eve will show you from there.”
They drove on quickly. Derec, for the first time, took a moment to think about the other things that had happened in the office, things that were pushed out of his mind by his anger toward Katherine. His name, for instance. He was called David #1 on the computer record. Then why did he come after David #2? Was it a simple experiment shorthand, or did the name have meaning? It sounded so . . . engineered. The thoughts generated by that line of reasoning were more than he could bear. He pushed them away and thought that if his name was, indeed, David, then Katherine had told him the truth; at least about that.
There were other concepts implied in those few paragraphs. Whoever the overseer was, he obviously knew David and Katherine, and knew something of their past histories. So whoever had brought him here was someone he’d known before his memory loss, and he couldn’t help but consider the possibility that the overseer had had something to do with his memory loss. But the chances were just as good, if not better, that Katherine herself had been connected with his amnesia for her own purposes, whatever they were.
Layers and layers. So much had been implied by the notes on the computer. The city was, indeed, considered an experiment in synnoetics, of that much he could now be certain. But then, when it came time to deal with a reason for the defense system going operational, the overseer seemed just as much in the dark as he, himself, was.
Derec also wasn’t sure if he had been deliberately brought here to help the city, or if he had shown up accidentally, the overseer deciding to the use him, as opposed to either stepping in himself or letting the operation shut itself down. The more answers he found, it seemed, the more in the dark he was.
They arrived at quadrant #4 without difficulty. Eve took her triangulation readings to help them find their way back to the house on the pedestal. Derec watched the city developing all around him as they drove, the sight of humans driving the inhabitants into a frenzy of human preparation—the robot equivalent of nesting.
“This is the place,” Eve said as the tram stopped in the middle of an ordinary-looking street. The witness looked all around. “It doesn’t appear to be here.”
“It’s moved some, that’s all,” Katherine said. “We’ll go on foot from this point.”
They climbed out of the tram and started walking, the tram following close behind them in case they had need of it.
“You sure this is the right direction?” Derec asked, after they had gone a block. “How far could it have moved?”
“Everything looks familiar here,” she replied.
“The whole city looks the same,” Derec said. “I don’t think you . . . ”
“There!” She pointed.
Derec needed no pointing finger to tell him they’d arrived. A tall tower stood in the middle of a street, nothing else anywhere near it. Atop the tower was a single room, sealed up except for a circular hole cut out of it.
“Let’s leave a witness here with the tram in the case of problems,” Derec said. “We’ll take Rec up with us.”
“Fine,” Katherine replied, walking to the pole.
He followed her, watching the spiral staircase reform when she touched the pole with her hand.
“You’re not going to believe this,” she told him, starting confidently up the stairs. “If this man’s not your twin, he went to an awful lot of trouble to look just like you.”
Derec smiled weakly in return, wondering, given the fact that he was #4, just who was whose twin.
She reached the top, waiting off to the side for him to join her. “I want you to go in first,” she said. “After what happened last time, I’m afraid of my reactions. I may have to work up to it.”
“All right,” he said, moving around to the cut-out. As he got close to the place, he felt his own insides jumping a bit at the thought of seeing himself dead. He got right up to the cut-out, then quickly ducked his head in before he changed his mind.
It was empty.
He climbed through; there was no sign of a body or anything that resembled a body or anything else for that matter.
“Katherine,” he called. “Come around here.”
She moved to the cut-out, shyly poking her head inside, her eyes widening when she saw the empty room. “Where is he?” she asked.
“That was my question,” Derec replied. “It appears that our corpse has gotten up and walked away.
“Or was taken away,” she returned. “Remember what happened when he died? A utility robot had to fight waste control robots for possession of the corpse. Maybe they got him this time.”
“Didn’t anyone stay behind when you passed out before to keep that from happening?”
“I don’t know,” Katherine said, and went back out the cut-out to call down to her witness. “Eve! Did anyone stay behind after I fell unconscious yesterday?”
“No,” the robot called back up. “You were our first priority. We all did our parts to get you home safely and to get you medical attention.
”
Katherine came back into the room. “No one stayed behind,” she said.
“I heard,” Derec replied. “Pretty convenient.”
“Convenient for whom?” she said, eyes flashing. “What are you driving at?”
“Nothing,” he replied. “I’m just . . . disappointed.”
“You’re disappointed,” she said, sitting on the floor and leaning against the wall. “This was my ticket out of here.”
“Just like you,” he said, “thinking about yourself while the whole world crumbles around you.”
Her eyes were dark fire. “And just who should I think about?” she asked. “The buckets of bolts who run this place, who don’t have enough sense to keep from destroying themselves?”
“Like every other human culture that ever lived,” he replied. “Yes. Think about them . . . ” He pointed at her, then snapped his fingers. “Maybe we don’t need a body for this. Maybe we can simply recreate the circumstances.”
“You mean try and set it all up just like it happened to the dead man?”
“Sure. The computer in the office told me that there is danger from alien contamination. Let’s see if we can bring it out a little.”
Katherine stood again, her face uncertain. “Need I remind you that the last man who had to face up to this predicament is dead?”
He walked past her, out onto the now inward-curled disc that held the room, watching the robots on the streets hurrying to their deadlines through time and space. She joined him within a minute.
“What choice do we have?” he asked.
“None,” she answered. “Both of our problems are tied up in the murder. We’ll do whatever we have to, to solve it.”
“Let’s go over everything the witness told you,” Derec said. “Look for a loophole.”
“It’s sparse,” Katherine replied. “He was already sealed up, and angry about it, when they arrived to cut him out. He had no idea why he’d been sealed in. When they cut him out, his behavior seemed a bit erratic, he had a headache and a cut on his foot.”
“Didn’t you have a headache last night?” he asked.
She cocked her head. “I just assumed it had something to do with my passing out,” she said.
