by Isaac Asimov
“And after you left?”
“I told myself I was looking for a cure, but I don’t know if I really believe there is such a thing. But I did decide not to waste any time!”
Derec felt a prickling along the back of his neck. “What do you mean, not waste any time?”
“Derec, I...I’m going to die of this!” And suddenly she was crying, scared and vulnerable in a way he had never seen before.
He hesitated just a moment, and then went to her, holding her—awkwardly at first, then gently as she relaxed against him and really began to sob.
He was dumbfounded. This flood of information seemed to short-circuit his attention, and left him simply staring at the floor without thoughts as she cried in his arms. He had to sort out what he could—that she was Ariel, not Katherine, and that she was not, right now, the confident and sharp-edged older girl he had known her to be.
She was Ariel Welsh, banished from her home planet, trapped on Robot City, and infected with a deadly disease.
He turned her gently by the shoulders and led her into her room. First he sat with her on the bed, still uncertain of what to do. Then, after her sobs had grown fainter, she squeezed his arm affectionately and pulled away to stretch out on the bed. He rose, patted her on the shoulder shyly, and went out, closing her door behind him.
Derec sat at his computer console for a long time without turning it on. His own amnesia suddenly seemed like a fairly manageable problem. Yet the urgency of getting her off Robot City, and perhaps to some medical help, was greater than ever.
He doubted that the robots could help with a disease, at least in the short term. Even so, he started calling up various medical subjects on the central computer, in case Dr. Avery had left anything useful.
Actually, he found quite a bit of medical information pertaining to humans, but nothing that hinted at an ability to find cures for new diseases. The computer did have a list of vaccines, cures, and treatments for diseases he recognized—common ones that would have been available on Aurora. He also found a great deal of advanced material on surgery, organ regeneration, and other treatments for injuries. Overall, however, the library was oddly lacking, as though Dr. Avery, or at least somebody, had just grabbed information and entered it without checking it. For instance, there was no introductory reference on anatomy as such, or on psychology. Derec suspected that the eccentric Dr. Avery had been so involved with the frontiers of science that he had neglected to supply fundamental knowledge. After all, the robots had no particular need for this subject. He also remembered that the library on the planetoid where he had first met these Avery robots had been oddly selected.
At dinner time, he took a break and knocked lightly on Ariel’s door. When she did not answer, he peeked inside and found her sleeping soundly. He made dinner for himself and returned to the computer.
The only information he could find pertaining to human anatomy regarded external appearance. This came from the positronic brains of the robots, rather than any specific entry into the computer. They could only obey the Three Laws of Robotics if they could identify humans when they came into contact with them, so he was not surprised to find this. When he saw the addendum beneath it, however, he sat up straight in his chair.
The computer noted five alien presences in Robot City. He supposed that meant humans, as the likelihood of sentient nonhuman aliens was very slim. There simply weren’t enough of them, and he decided that the central computer would surely have made more of the matter. Nor would it ever again interpret microscopic human parasites as alien presences. Non-Avery robots could conceivably be here, of course, but he was sure that the significance of reporting these presences was to warn the local robot population that humans were here. Their presence would bring the Laws into consideration, while the arrival of other robots would not.
Obviously, he and Ariel were two of the five presences, but that left three of whom he had no knowledge. One of the three had arrived just a few days before. The other two, apparently traveling together, had been here for a slightly longer period.
The only ways they could have gotten here were with another Key to Perihelion, if there was another one off the planet, or in spacecraft. Either way, they offered additional chances for Derec and Ariel to get away from Robot City. He stayed on the computer all evening, trying to find more information.
He also rigged the chemical processor to make a new boot. It didn’t match, being made of organic materials instead of synthetics, but it fit well enough.
He finally quit for the night when he felt his concentration slipping. After getting something else to eat from the chemical processor, he fell into bed. Ariel was still asleep.
Derec was exhausted, but as he lay in the dark, his mind was still racing. He kept reviewing his new knowledge over and over—Ariel Welsh, her disease, the duplication of the Key... and now, three more humans on Robot City—which might mean, possibly, some new ways to get off the planet. Finally, just before he drifted off to sleep, he heard Ariel leave her room and turn on the chemical processor. For tonight, at least, she was all right.
When Derec emerged for breakfast the next morning, clean and dressed, Ariel was working at the computer. He was hesitant to interrupt her there. However, she looked up when he turned on the chemical processor.
“Morning, Derec.” She smiled shyly. “Are you still mad at me?”
“No. I guess you had good reason to be upset.”
“I just felt so guilty and confused about everything. Especially keeping secrets from you, when you were wondering about the city and all. I’m really sorry.”
“I’m just glad you finally told me. In the long run, maybe my knowing that stuff will help us.”
“I saw the file you left on the console, the medical one. You were trying to help me, weren’t you?”
“Yeah. I’m afraid there wasn’t much about diseases, though. But did you see that we’re not alone?” He took his breakfast out of the processor and sat down next to her, his plate on his lap.
“Yes! I was just looking at the notation. Do you have any idea who they could be?”
“No, I don’t. As soon as I’ve finished eating, I’ll see if I can find any more information about them in the computer, but I’m not too optimistic. Until I get more streamlining done, this computer can know all kinds of things and not realize it, you might say.”
“This is such a strange place.” Ariel sighed. “When I left Aurora, I was looking for adventure as well as a cure. I got the adventure part, such as it is.”
“Like getting captured by that pirate, Aranimas?” Derec grinned. “When he got hold of me, I wasn’t looking for adventure at all.”
“We made a pretty good team, though, taking care of ourselves in that situation.”
“Don’t forget the rest of the team—Alpha, the robot I put together out of all those parts, and Wolruf.”
“That little alien. I wonder what happened to them.”
“Yeah.” He was quiet for a moment, thinking about them. When he and Ariel had used the Key, and as a result had arrived in Robot City, Alpha and Wolruf had been left behind.
“Wolruf could be so surprising. One minute, she seemed like a very shy, subservient little creature, and the next minute we were relying on her for our lives.”
“That’s true. And Alpha’s certainly unique, since I had to cobble him together out of random parts. Did I tell you he has a special arm? It’s made of a kind of cellular substance. I ordered him to move it as though it’s jointed like everyone else’s, but actually he can make it completely flexible, like a tentacle. I wonder where they are now.”
“We’ve never really talked about this, before, have we? About our being friends, I mean, and what we’ve done together.”
He looked up at her. She was more at ease than he had ever seen her. He, too, felt the difference.
Somehow, he trusted her now, though for all he knew, she could be keeping other secrets. She didn’t act like she was.
“Derec, you’ve been very understanding. I appreciate it. Thank you.”
“Uh....” He gave just a hint of a shrug. “That’s okay. Now, let’s see if we can figure out how to get off the planet.”
Chapter 4
ARIEL
DEREC AND ARIEL took turns on the console all morning. This gave him a break every so often and gave her some practice. He sat looking over her shoulder as they tried to think up more questions to ask the computer.
“Derec, do you think the strangers that we’re looking for have been able to hide? Or disguise themselves?”
“Maybe, but I don’t see how. If they tried to hide, they’d still find robots everywhere in Robot City.
They would have to stay inside someplace, and even then, they might be in a building that was scheduled for modification or tearing down by the robots.” He laughed. “That would give them a good shock.”
“And disguising themselves as robots might be a little difficult.” She turned, also laughing, to catch his eye.
“Or maybe we could get some scrap robot parts ourselves, and wear them around like ancient armor.”
Derec shook his head, still grinning. “Especially those helmet-like heads.”
“Seriously, though. What could have happened to them?”
“Well, it’s possible that there are more sightings that have been lost in the central computer someplace.
Otherwise, I don’t really have an answer.”
“I’ve asked about all the questions I can think of. I don’t know what else to do.”
“Let’s try another train of thought,” said Derec. “We don’t know who they are—but what are they coming here for? What do they want?”
“The Key!”
“That’s my guess. But other space traffic could come this way, even though we seem to be off the beaten track here. How about this: they knew Dr. Avery and came here to take over. Or what about your mother—could she have sent someone here to check on her investment?”
“I don’t believe my mother actually knows where Robot City is, or maybe even exactly what it is.”
“That narrows it to two possibilities I can think of. Either they’re travelers who arrived by chance, maybe for repairs or fuel, or they came for the Key and maybe to take over Robot City. Can you think of anything else?”
“Maybe Avery himself, if he isn’t dead. I doubt that, though. He’d be in his office running things, not allowing these chance sightings. But what are we going to do?”
“We’ll have to go out and look around for ourselves, I guess. Unless you have another suggestion.”
She shook her head.
“We’ll have to be careful, though, till we find out who they are and what they want. We’ve gotten used to a certain amount of security here with the robots, since they can’t hurt us, but now that’s changed.”
“Not as long as we have robots around us. Remember, they can’t stand by and allow us to come to harm, either. What about asking Avemus or one of the other Supervisors to help us find them?”
“Not right now. I don’t want to alert the Supervisors to our interest in getting the Key, and so far they’ve left us alone. Let’s start by going back to the Key Center. If we can get our hands on a key, we can just leave Robot City to fend for itself.”
This time they took standard transportation, even though it took them farther out of their way than the vacuum chute had. The subway tunnels were another development that had become feasible once the shapechanging had stopped. They were full of robots, going about their daily business, who could be questioned. Derec and Ariel went to the nearest tunnel stop and rode down the ramp.
Traffic in the tunnels took the form of a robot, or a human, standing on a meter-square platform, enclosed by a booth of transparent walls, with a small console that could be set for whatever stop the passenger wished. The platforms ran on tracks; some parts of the city had as many as fifteen parallel tracks. The tunnel computer, an offshoot of the central computer, did all the steering, and could shift platforms from one track to another in order to create the most efficient flow of traffic. Tunnel stops had additional siding loops for loading and unloading. The technology reminded Derec of the lift system he had seen on the asteroid where he had first encountered the Avery robots.
Without positronic brains, the function robots could not set the controls, so only humans and robots with positronic brains rode the booths. Derec observed, as he watched the robots speed past, that they all stood motionless and staring straight ahead, unlike humans, who of course would be shifting positions, shuffling their feet, and looking around. The robots were logical, but never curious.
Ahead of them, several robots were emerging from platform booths. Derec and Ariel split up to approach them.
Derec stood directly in front of one to make sure the robot could see him clearly as a human in the dim light. “Just a moment. I would like to ask you a few questions.”
“Yes?” The robot stopped.
“Have you seen any humans?”
“I presume you mean other than yourself.”
“Yeah, besides me.”
“Your companion is a female human.”
“Besides us!” Derec flung up his hands. “Somewhere else in the city. Anywhere.”
“No. You are the first humans I have ever seen.”
“Thanks.” Derec sighed and flagged down another robot. “Have you seen any humans other than my companion and myself?”
“What companion?”
“Uh—her. Over there. See her?”
“Yes.”
“You have? Where?”
“Over there. Where you pointed.”
“What—no, not her—”
“You asked if I saw her. I said yes.”
“Okay, okay. Now, then. Other than the two of us present right here, have you ever seen any humans on Robot City?”
“No.”
“All right, thanks.” Derec waved him on.
At the moment, no more robots were coming into the siding loop or down the ramp. Ariel joined him.
“No luck here,” she said. “You get anything?”
“No. Let’s ride out to the Key Center.”
They got into the first empty booth. It was a fairly close fit, but not uncomfortable. Derec set the controls and the booth started with a slight jolt.
The platform carried them along the siding loop slowly, so that it could merge smoothly onto the first track at the earliest opening. Derec’s trust in the engineering job done by the robots was so great that he never worried about safety. If the robots themselves had any doubts about the system, the First Law would have forced them to keep the humans from riding in it.
He didn’t know exactly how the platforms were powered, though it must have been through the tracks.
In a city where construction was rampant, these details often came and went so fast that learning them just didn’t matter. The platforms moved quickly, with a faint hum, and never seemed to need sudden changes in speed.
At Ariel’s suggestion, they got off at a couple of tunnel stops to question more robots, but this random search continued to produce nothing. They emerged from the system as close to the Key Center as they could, but still some distance away. In order to go on questioning robots on the street, they took the slidewalk, though they did not learn anything new this way, either.
When they first came into view of the dome, Derec stopped short. A huge opening gaped in the curving surface, and gigantic pieces of machinery, some easily ten and fifteen meters high, were being driven into the dome on a flatbed vehicle. More robots were visible inside than before, possibly to install the new equipment.
“If they were people,” said Derec, “I’d try to get inside during the confusion. The trouble is, 1 don’t see any confusion. They know what they’re doing. I don’t think there’s much point in trying to sneak in right now.”
“Let’s move along.” She took his arm and steered him away. “No sense alerting Keymo’s secu
rity to the fact that we’re back.”
“True.”
They began to walk a discreet perimeter around the dome, making further inquiries of robots they met.
The lack of information made it clear that the strangers had simply not been there.
“They will be,” said Ariel. “They have to come here for the Key sooner or later. Suppose we instruct all the robots in the neighborhood to report sightings directly to us on the console.”
“We can try,” he said doubtfully. “The way the city keeps expanding, their population shifts all the time.”
They continued their perimeter, now adding the instruction that the robots report sightings directly to them, and also to the central computer under the heading of “alien presences.” When they had completed the circuit, Derec found himself gazing with hands on hips at the seamless wall of the Key Center, where the big opening was now fully sealed and scarless.
“This walking around talking just isn’t getting us anywhere,” Derec said. “Looking for our mysterious strangers is all right, but if we leave Robot City, we can forget about them anyhow. We can’t get around it. We have to get inside the dome and get one of those keys.”
“I’m afraid you’re right. Look, I owe you on this one. Come on, let’s do it. Do you remember where you left your boot?”
“Yeah, over there.”
“You get over to it. I’m going to provide the diversion you needed the last time, over at the opposite side.”
“No good. I won’t know when to enter unless I can see you.”
“All right—I’ll stand just in sight. That way the curve of the dome will help keep the security robot from seeing you.”
“Its name is Security 1K.”
He walked over to the spot where a portion of his boot was still protruding from the wall, and waved to her. In response, she pounded on the wall.
“Hey! Open up in there! This is a human order!”
She did not, however, step back. With both fists on her hips and her feet wide apart, she stood with her toes right up against the wall of the dome.
The wall opened, as before, with a tearing sound right in front of her. Security 1K started to step out, but when she held her ground, the robot remained where it was. Derec could just barely see its hands moving. The robot was going to see him from that spot.
