Derec looked to Katherine. “I’m taking her to find some food,” he said. “If you don’t like it, you’re welcome to go solo from here on.”
“Oh, no, you don’t,” she said quickly. “You can’t get rid of me that easily.”
“Come on, then,” he said as he started brushing futilely at the fur clinging to his clothing. He looked back to Wolruf and smiled. “Let’s see if we find you some food before I choke to death on your dander.”
They ended up returning to the hospital, both because it was relatively close and because it was one of the few facilities they knew anything about. Katherine entered first, demanding care and attention as she swept through toward the ICU and making sure to gather up both Dr. Galen and Florence along the way. A minute later, Derec and Wolruf slipped inside and headed in the other direction, toward the kitchens.
“Meat, breads, vegetables-what’s best for you?” Derec said, scanning the menu of the autogalley.
“Plants,” Wolruf said, crouching. “Something to work my teeth on.”
“Everything’s synthetic, I’m afraid-the farm is one of the things they closed down. Let’s see-I think they make the apple wedges with a lot of fiber.”
“Do ‘u know what ‘ur going to do with the key when ‘u find it?” Wolruf asked from behind.
“No.” Derec turned around and presented the alien with a white tray filled with pale yellow pulpy slices of apple. With surprising patience, Wolruf selected a wedge, sniffed it experimentally, then balanced it on her narrow tongue and delicately took it into her mouth. As far as Derec could tell, she did not chew it, but swallowed it whole.
That created a minor paradox-though Wolruf did not appear to be eating quickly, the plate rapidly emptied. She ate as though she were trying to make up for all seven weeks of deprivation at one sitting, and yet was scrupulously neat and almost completely silent. There were none of the wet crunching noises that any human trying to keep pace would have made.
I wouldn’t be surprised if she finds our eating habits repulsive, he thought as he watched her.
When the tray was empty, Wolruf offered it up to Derec with a hopeful look. “I guess ‘u can trust me now, right?” she said.
“Except I’m not the one you have to win over,” he said, taking the tray and turning back to the autogalley for a refill. “Katherine is. Which reminds me-why didn’t you tell me she was on board?”
Wolruf shrugged. “No chance to. Always something ‘appening, somebody ‘terrupting.”
“That’s true enough,” Derec said, surrendering the replenished tray. “There’s questions I’ve been wanting to ask you since that first night and I haven’t gotten a chance to.”
“Ask,” Wolruf said, then rolled out her tongue for another bite.
Derec considered a moment. “This one isn’t important to anyone but me. You didn’t know I was on the asteroid, did you?”
“Not until gunners spot you. Then thought you were robot.”
“Which is why you didn’t fire at me-”
“Aranimas’s orders-not perfectly followed.”
“You meant the robot that was with me? That was a self-destruct.”
“Fine distinctions escape Aranimas. Ask gunner who hit him.”
Derec smiled. “Did you know the key was on the asteroid?”
“No twice.”
“That’s what I thought. But then why were you there? Was it just the dumbest luck that you showed up?”
“Purpose, not luck. Aranimas build very fine starglass. Saw ast’roid being made and became very curious.”
“Say that again? I didn’t catch your meaning.”
She cupped her hands and made motions like forming a snowball. “With starglass, Aranimas watched the ast’roid-making. Boss very curious. Not something Erani ever do. ‘U do it often?”
“No,” Derec said, still blinking in surprise. An artificial world-it was remotely possible. Use a small fleet of haulers to bring in the raw material-maybe just smaller planetoids brought in from the nearest dirty system. Drive the pieces together at just the right speed and fuse them into a larger body-but why?
The answer came to him almost immediately. To hide the key. To bury it away where no one would ever find it, as though it were as dangerous as a cask of plutonium waste. Buried cleverly, not at the heart of the asteroid where the first shaft sunk would uncover it, but tucked invisibly under the surface.
Except that someone saw or found out, and sent the robots to retrieve it.
“Are you sure about this?” Derec demanded.
“Sure. Aranimas saw it all. Very good starglass.” She offered up the empty tray hopefully.
Then we’re in over our heads, Derec thought as he turned back to the autogalley. Way over-
Wolruf was finishing her third helping when Katherine joined them. She had drawn on station supply for a longsleeved blouse to wear over the jump suit, and traded the foot pillows for soft-soled shoes.
“I sent Florence on an errand and gave Dr. Galen a task that should keep him out of the lobby for at least half an hour,” she said. “And I made Dr. Galen fit me with a loaded medipump just in case it’s not convenient to come back. Though my skin really doesn’t feel too bad. Are you two almost ready?”
Wolruf made the last two wedges disappear. “I am.”
“Then it’s time to pay the bill for the meal,” Katherine said, reclaiming the empty plate. “Let’s go look at the map.” They stood elbow to elbow in the deserted lobby, Wolruf in the middle.
“Here’s where we are,” Katherine said, pointing. “And here’s about the spot you and Derec went to the mat. All you have to do now is tell us where the key is, and we’ll go get it. You can go back to the dark and never have to see another robot.”
But Wolruf was unable to understand the map in any of its modes or projections, even though both Derec and Katherine made labored efforts to try to explain it. “I know it in my feet and my nose,” Wolruf said. “I go with ‘u and show ‘u.”
Katherine frowned and looked to Derec. “How are we going to smuggle her through the halls? It was risky enough bringing her here. And she said she almost got caught the first time.”
“I was thinking while we were walking that a place this large probably used to have some kind of personal transport.”
“Jitneys,” she said.
“That’s the word.” An image of a three-wheeled utility vehicle snapped into focus in his mind. In automatic mode, they were essentially wheeled robots. In semi-auto, they served as smart taxis for visitors to the station. But in manual mode, they should offer freedom from Central Services control and privacy from Security curiosity. “The robots don’t need them, but I’ll bet they’re all lined up somewhere ready to roll.”
“Won’t the robots think it’s unusual, seeing one out in the streets?”
“I don’t think so,” Derec said. “When a ship’s in port the crew probably uses them. And seeing one of the carts won’t strike them as any more strange than our presence alone would. Robotsnotice people. It’s the way they’re made. But we don’t need to be invisible-we just need to be left alone. What do you say?”
Katherine pursed her lips and considered. “I think if we don’t find any jitneys, it doesn’t matter what I think.”
Chapter 18. Theater
Happily, the jitney accumulator areas were clearly marked on the station map. It took less than five minutes for Derec to walk to the nearest one and return with one of the nimble little electric carts. The version he had chosen had a single driver’s seat in back over the solo wheel, and an open passenger cab slung between the other wheels in front.
Wolruf curled up on the floor of the passenger cab under a white hospital robe. Katherine sat in one of the two seats, her legs further helping to conceal the alien, and Derec took the controls.
For Wolruf to find her place in her scent map, they were forced to backtrack into the dark sections. From there it was relatively simple: up three levels, north two subsection
s, up another level, and then west five blocks into a large plaza.
When Wolruf warned them they were nearing their destination, Derec slowed the vehicle to a moderate walking pace. A moment later the alien stole a peek over the edge of the cab, then jabbed a fat finger in the direction of the circular building at the center of the plaza.
“In there? Are you sure?” Derec hissed.
“Yes, Derec. Thass wherr the jewel iss.”
The lightworm sign outside the main entrance said “Station Operations Center-Restricted,” and robots were everywhere. The center itself was a single room twenty meters in diameter and encircled with windows looking out on the plaza.
“Great. Just great,” Derec grumbled, driving slowly across the plaza at an oblique angel. “How are we going to get in there? We can’t sneak up.”
“How about the front door?” Katherine said, twisting around to look at him. “Maybe they’ll let you in.”
Derec regarded her dubiously.
“Go ahead-it’s worth a try.”
“I still don’t understand,” Wolruf chimed in. “Aren’t robots ‘ur servants?”
Before answering, Derec drove the jitney a short distance down a connecting corridor, then pulled to one side and stopped. “I don’t know about this,” he said to Katherine. “Maybe they’re just setting up, like with Aranimas’s ship. If we try to get in there, if we show any interest in the thing at all, maybe that’s just going to bring them down on our necks like a tonne of slag.”
“You want to just leave it with them? After all we’ve gone through because of it?”
“When we were prisoners on the ship, I thought it was important to get the thing away from the aliens and back in human hands. Well, that’s where it is. Jacobson made it clear they’re willing to let us walk away and leave this mess to them. Maybe that’s what we ought to do.”
“Don’t you have any curiosity?” she demanded. “Don’t you want to know what this has all been about?”
“Sure, I’ve got curiosity. I’ve also got problems of my own to sort out. I don’t see where that thing is going to help any.”
“What’s happened to your nerve?” she said. “Look, these are the same people that stole our spacecraft, spirited away my robot, and then tried to tell us we should be grateful that they’re sending us away as paupers instead of criminals. I’m not about to let them get away with it.”
“Don’t you understand?” Derec shouted angrily. “You think we’re going to be able to just walk in there, put it under our arm, and say ‘Thanks for looking after it’? This thing came off a heavily armed alien ship-”
“They don’t know that,” Katherine pointed out. “They never saw Aranimas, or even Wolruf.”
“All right,” Derec said tiredly. “Maybe you’re right. If they did think it was an alien ship, they probably wouldn’t let us go. But these people aren’t playing. They wanted the ship, and they took it. They wanted the robot, and they took it. They want the jewel, and they have it. We’re not going to be able to take it back. We won’t even get in the door.”
“Maybe their orders weren’t that specific.”
“I’d have made them so.”
“You didn’t give them. Go on-try.”
“What’s the point? Wolruf’s right-the key is just trouble for everybody.”
Katherine sighed. “If you want something done-” And before Derec could stop her, she climbed out of the jitney and headed back to the plaza on foot.
In less than ten minutes Katherine was clambering back into her seat. “They let me in, even gave me a little tour,” she said breezily. “Very accommodating.”
“I figured that out when you weren’t back in two minutes. What about the key?”
“It’s there all right, sitting out in plain sight. What idiots!”
Derec eased the jitney into motion down the corridor, mulling over Katherine’s news. “Not really. Describe what you saw.”
“It’s a big semicircular room, with glass all around except for the offices at the back. There’re five robots at work stations, including Anazon. Then there’re two more near the center of the room doing nothing but sitting facing each other with the artifact on a table between them. There was some sort of funny emblem on the shoulder of those robots, a blue F in a double gold circle-”
Derec groaned. “Falke X-50s.”
“Does that mean something?”
“It means trouble. They have superfast reflexes. If a bomb went off five meters in the opposite direction, they might be distracted long enough for you to get your hands on the key, but you’d never get out of the room with it. If we’re going to get it back, we’re going to have to have some way to neutralize seven robots at once-and I don’t know any.”
“Can you explain to me why it’s out in plain sight? Could it be a copy, a fake? Maybe you’re right about the trap.”
“No,” Derec said with a shake of his head. “I’d guess the robots were probably ordered to watch it constantly, in principle if not in so many words.”
“If you put it in a vault and nobody opens the vault, it isn’t going to vanish into the ozone.”
“No,” Derec agreed, “but that understanding requires a fairly advanced and rather subtle mental function called object permanence. Robots are strongly biased toward the concrete and away from the inferred. If they lock something away out of sight, they don’t really know it’s there except when they check on it.”
“That’s illogical. No human would think that way.”
“Some would,” Derec dissented. “But you’re right, it’s not logical.”
“So why do the roboticists let that happen?”
“No engineered system is perfect,” Derec said with a shrug. “This is just one of those little things that doesn’t always behave the way you wish it would. A robot’s uncertainty about whether it’s satisfactorily fulfilling its orders can drive it into an anxiety state-specifically, they develop an elevated K-integral in the W14 level. So they begin checking on the thing they’re guarding more and more often at shorter and shorter intervals.”
“And eventually it ends up sitting on the table next to them,” Katherine said.
“Right.” Derec fell into a thoughtful silence, then suddenly caught himself. “Damn it all, you’ve got me trying to figure out how to get to it.”
“See, I knew you didn’t want to let them have it,” Katherine said with a bemused smile. “Any ideas?”
“Not yet.” A moment later he added, “Except that no matter how carefully worded and strongly impressed their orders to protect the key are, they’re only covered by the Second Law.”
Katherine was mute for a time, as Derec drove aimlessly through the streets bounding the Operations bloc.
“Following orders is Second Law,” she said finally.
“That’s what I just said.”
“What if Wolruf and I gave them a First Law reason to disregard them?”
Wolruf peeked out from under the robe at the mention of her name and looked hopefully at Derec.
“That’s the way to go, obviously,” Derec said. “But how?”
“I’ve got some ideas. A little-robot theater, shall we say.”
“Do you think you can be convincing?” Derec asked skeptically.
“I’d rather try than not,” she said. “Let’s not stop ourselves. Let’s make them stop us.”
“Wolruf?” he asked. “Do you want to try?”
“Whatever ‘u want, Derec.”
The burden was back on him, whether he wanted it or not. “All right, then,” Derec said slowly. “Let’s go somewhere more private and talk it through.”
Peering down the corridor into the plaza, Derec shook his head. “This will never work,” he whispered.
“It’s worked so far, hasn’t it?”
Derec had to admit that it had. The first problem had been to eliminate most of the robot traffic in the plaza. They had considered half a dozen ideas for accomplishing that, from setting up
hallblocks with robot monitors to trying to draw them away with invented errands elsewhere in the station.
In the end, they settled for a whisper campaign, a simple variation on the unkind children’s game-”Billy is a cootie; pass it on.” Derec had stopped a robot at random just outside the Operations bloc and spoken briefly to it:
“Robot. Management has ordered that there be a test of station emergency communications in this subsection. Your instructions are as follows. First, you are not to discuss the test or your part in it over the command link. Second, you are not to enter or remain in subsector 100 at any time between 1200 hours and 1400 hours today. Third, you are to relay these orders to the next robot that you see.”
The instructions were innocuous enough that the robot did not challenge them. Like a runaway infection, the whisper had raced through the body of the station staff. Within half an hour, the traffic in the plaza had thinned dramatically. Within the hour, the plaza was deserted, and several robots had even left the Operations Center.
Three robots remained. From where he was crouching beside the jitney, Derec could see them inside the Operations Center-the two X-50s guarding the artifact, and Anazon, darting from one work station to the next trying to oversee critical operations. Their particular responsibilities were too strongly impressed on them for Derec’s little trick to pull them away.
“It’ll work,” Katherine prodded. “Go on. We’ll do our part. You just make sure you do yours.”
Swallowing hard, Derec nodded and started off down the corridor. He crossed the empty plaza and climbed the single step up into the Operations Center. None of the robots took any notice of him.
“Anazon.”
“Yes, Derec.”
“I’ve decided not to wait for the Nexon shuttle. I want to charter a ship to come and get me and take me to Aurora. Tell me the procedure I should follow.”
Without ever turning away from the console, the robot began to answer. “There are seven ships of Nexonian registry licensed for Auroran space and available for hire. You may contact any of their owners by hyperwave-”
Suddenly the peace of the plaza was broken by the roaring sound of a jitney in high gear. A moment later the vehicle burst out of one of the connecting corridors, Katherine at the controls. Pursuing close behind was Wolruf, running with an easy loping gait that used all four of her limbs.
Odyssey iarc-1 Page 19