by Rob Chilson
When she turned, Korolenko was there, frowning in conversation with-Derec, she must remember always to call him. That was right, that was what the Earthers called him. But there was another reason, which she couldn’t quite recall, why she must not use his true name. Or did she know his true name, after all? She had forgotten so much, could she trust that memory too?
Avery!she thought, remotely astonished. The drug made all emotions remote.
She wondered vaguely where Dr. Avery was now. Still on Robot City, she supposed. For a moment she felt an ironic amusement at the thought that they had been using his apartment, his robot, and his funds on Earth. Then she knew that this was an old amusement, she’d had this thought before; and with that thought, she remembered having had the amusement before.
“Memory is like drink,” she said to the uncomprehending robot. She felt a little light-headed.
The nurse and a robot stepped aside as they spoke together and Ariel looked, shocked, at…Derec.
“Why is…he so-thin?” she demanded abruptly.
“Mr. Avery? He had been under a strain, Mrs. Avery. He has been worried about you and has not been eating sufficiently.”
“Does he have-” Her heart stopped, started painfully. “-Burundi’s fever?” Again her heart shook her.
“No, Mrs. Avery. He is merely under a strain.”
“He’s sick,” she said.
“No, Mrs. Avery.”
“He is sick,” Ariel said positively, peering at him narrowly with the observant eyes of one who has recently passed near to the gates of death. “He is-dying.”
Nurse Korolenko heard enough of that to frown at her, and one of the robots-R. Jennie, Ariel thought-went to the control board at the head of the bed, but merely checked the readings.
“Derec is a young fool who has neither been sleeping nor eating, and who has spent all his time brooding over you,” said Korolenko, angry not at her or at Derec, but at his stupidity.
“There’s nothing else to do in that stupid apartment but stare at the ceiling,” Ariel said, irritated on his behalf. Why did he keep staring at her with eyes like holes in space? “Frost, there’s not even a trimensional there.”
“You wanted to experience life as Earth people do, and apparently low-rated Earth people at that, so you have no more than they do,” Korolenko said, shrugging.
Wanted…to experience…? She turned eyes in inquiry on…Derec, who shrugged also, grimacing ruefully.
“Perhaps you don’t remember that the Institute wiped our memories temporarily before we came to Earth, so we wouldn’t be able to reveal their techniques,” he said.
Ariel could only stare in amazement. “When you are well enough to travel, we will leave. Of course, since we’ve been discovered here, our purpose of sociological study is negated. And once back on Aurora, we will have our own recorded memories reimplanted.”
She had heard of none of this. The Institute? Institute of what? Study? Of Earth? But, own recorded memories reimplanted……Ariel leaned back and for a moment thought tears would leak from her eyes.
“So you’ve lost your memory twice over, but it’s only temporary.”
“I’d like to know just how that’s done,” growled a baritone voice. After a moment Ariel identified it: Dr. Powell. She had heard it often enough in the past weeks. “I know, I know, you haven’t the foggiest-only a brief layman’s description that doesn’t describe.”
When she opened her eyes, they were all around her bed, with R. Jennie at the controls.
“Well, young lady, your request for a visit to the outdoors is a bit…unusual.” He visibly repressed a shudder of distaste at the thought, and Ariel, fascinated, realized that to this man the outside was more fear-inspiring than the claustrophobic City was to her.
“We can’t very well add you to the list on a Settler Acclimatization Group, and the only other people who go… outside are the odd Farming, Mining, and Pelagic Overseers. They are solitary as well as agoraphilic, very strange types; they wouldn’t welcome an addition. Certainly not a sick Spacer. And there’s nobody else to take care of you.”
“Robots?” she asked weakly, looking at R. Jennie.
The doctor frowned, shook his head. “It’s difficult to move a robot through the City without having it mobbed and destroyed. Robots are being restricted more and more each year; we have half as many here now at Towner Laney than when I was an intern. That leaves only your husband, and frankly, within a couple of days you’ll be taking care of him.”
“I’m all right,” said Derec with a flash of irritation that for a moment brought back the companion of the hospital station-Ariel couldn’t remember the name, but she remembered the station-and of Robot City. “What’s the signal coding of the local office of the TBI?”
“The what?” Dr. Powell stared at him. “The comm number? Why would you want to call the Terries?” From his tone it was obvious he had guessed, and seethed at the thought.
“To get authorization to have robots moved through the motorways, and for permission to leave the City, if only for a short period.”
“Hmmph! Medically-”
“Medically it would do her good, Doctor,” said the nurse quietly.
“True, damn it, but we need to be sure that her mental condition-the implants-”
“We can’t keep bringing her back and forth, I admit,” said Korolenko.
“Ariel, could you…hold off till tomorrow?” Derec asked.
Tomorrow…she was so tired, from inaction and drugs, that she’d sleep till then anyway…Ariel could have stood anything for a tomorrow in the sun.
“Oh, yes, yes.” She’d be good, she’d
Ariel had a moment of vivid memory, herself quite young, promising her mother that she would be very, very good. Was that when she’d been given her first robot? Or was that Boopsie, the pup?
When the first vivid reexperience faded, she looked up and they had drawn apart. It was no matter; it would be all right tomorrow.
“Never saw myself as nursemaid to a couple of Spacers and a robot,” said Donovan. The agent-in-charge had not trusted any of his men to go outside.
The hospital had an emergency entrance and egress for ambulances, and was a major junction on the motorways. R. Jennie carried Ariel down in its arms, Ariel having chosen that over being wheeled, strapped to a gurney, or in a chair with wheels.
The hospital had supplied an ambulance, but the Terry eyed it with distaste. “We’ll use the Bureau car,” he said. “There’s room for four of us, robot or no.”
R. Jennie gently put Ariel into the back seat and got in beside her, the car creaking and sinking under the weight until the suspension system analyzed the imbalance and compensated for it. Derec and Donovan got into the front seat, and the agent took the controls and sent them surging silently down a ramp and into a lit but dim-seeming tunnel.
For a moment Ariel fought a scream, tensing; the claustrophobia was worse in such tight passages. But she fought it off, helped by the speed of their passage. Signs blurred past soundlessly as the Terry tapped more and more of the beamed power. Once the ceiling lit up in bloody light, and winking yellow arrows along the walls gave obscure warning. Then a blue car whipped by in the other direction, Donovan having avoided it with the warning.
“Like the models we trained on,” murmured Derec, glancing back at her.
For a moment she was blank on that, the she remembered the roofless roads and the emergency vehicle monitors, the remote control sweaty in her hand, and the laughing students crowding around. But that was nothing like this dim, empty wormhole.
GLENDALE, KIRKWOOD, MANCHESTER, WINCHESTER, BALLWIN, ELLISVILLE, the signs flowed past, as fast as the expressway would have taken them. Ariel ignored all the labyrinthine branchings and windings that twisted obscurely away right and left out of sight, peering past Derec to see as far before them as possible.
The tunnel was a rectangle of dim light, two glowing tracks overhead and a pair of glowing, beaded tracks on
the sides, the last being the glowing signs, fading into tininess.
At last, though, there came an interruption in the shape of the tunnel. It got dark at the limit of vision, the darkness outlined in light. Presently the outline of light appeared as various warning signs. The darkness was a ramp, leading up.
Donovan slowed sharply, causing R. Jennie to lean forward and prepare itself for a snatch at the controls.
“Don’t worry, boy,” said the Terry, grinning but not looking back. Ariel had him in profile. “I’ve driven for thousands of hours, faster than this, and no problems.”
“Twenty-one point three percent of all major traumas to enter Towner Laney Memorial Hospital occur in the motorways,” said R. Jennie, unperturbed. “Fewer than twenty percent occur on the ways. A few thousand humans use the motorways; seven million use the ways.”
“Damn, I always hated know-it-all robots,” grunted Donovan, taking the ramp with unnecessary flair. “Could never stand to live on any Spacer world. A man should have the right to go to hell in his own way.”
The car eased to a stop at a barrier. Donovan played a tune on his computer controls and the barrier opened. He drove through, they wound a complicated path that apparently avoided heavy traffic-there were thunderous rushing sounds through the walls, but no traffic in their motorway-and they were at a huge entry in the outer wall.
Kilometer-long lines of great trucks full of produce, some robot-driven, most computer-controlled, roared in with noisy, huge tires but silent engines and dived into the City just below them. They were on a higher ramp, one of a dozen that leaped out of the City from high and low. Donovan stopped the car well back from that light-blazing gap.
“You’ll have to walk from here,” he said abruptly. “Car won’t go any further-no beamcast beyond the barrier.”
Chapter 13. Robot City Again
“Paulins,” said R. Jennie. “They are used to cover machinery in the fields against rain and dew. There are no tents available in the immediate vicinity of St. Louis. Perhaps in a day or two there will be a tent.”
The plasticated canvas of the big paulins worked as well as a tent, strung over a couple of poles and tied to a tree limb. It was needed more for shade than shelter. This move to the country had not been a simple one, nor could they keep it up for more than a day or two.
But it was such a relief!
Ariel could tell that Derec felt the same sense of escape that she did. The sky of Earth was wide and blue and very high, and little puffy clouds ambled slowly across it, all framed by the pointed opening of the “tent.” The sunlight was just right. The plants were the familiar green of Earth life everywhere, and they too seemed just right. Except in greenhouses, she had probably never seen Earthly plants in the natural light of the sun in which they evolved. Even the heat was not unpleasant.
“We won’t need a tent, if we have to wait that long,” said Derec grimly.
“You should return to the City as soon as you can,” R. Jennie said. “Mrs. Avery is far from recovered from the fever.”
Ariel felt quite recovered from the fever, though her memory was returning slowly. Weak as she undoubtedly was, she thought with concern, she could have wrestled Derec two falls out of three and won. But he said nothing about his own condition.
“Everything’s so…ordinary,” said Ariel, looking out at the kind of birds and plants and small animals she had seen all her life. A squirrel is a squirrel, and sounds just the same on Aurora. Even the shrilling of the unseen insects was familiar. Humans had taken their familiar symbiotic life-forms with them to the stars. She had expected Earth to be more exotic.
The reality was a relief more than a disappointment.
“It must have been a bad time for you,” she said to Derec, when R. Jennie had stepped out to the…kitchen. They had been supplied with something called a “hot plate” and a dielectric oven.
Derec moodily watched the robot prepare the packaged meals, designed for people with high enough ratings to permit them to eat in their own apartments. This was luxury for their rate.
“Bad, well.” He shrugged, clearly not wishing to discuss it. “I did learn one thing from R. David: there’s a spaceship belonging to Dr. Avery in the New York port. If we could get there-”
“How, if our rating doesn’t permit us to travel that far?”
“We’ll have to get him to make ID with higher ratings for us-”
R. Jennie stepped under the opening with a tray holding coffee and juices. When she had gone, Ariel said, “I hope they don’t discover the apartment.”
“I suspect the Terries know all about it, but won’t make trouble. They want us gone before we get mobbed or something. We’ve been very lucky.”
“Couldn’t we ask Donovan for assistance?” she asked wistfully.
“We could. I thought of it,” Derec said, broodingly. “But that’d be above his level, surely. If Earth can ignore us, it won’t be so badly embarrassed if we’re discovered here, investigating-or spying on-Earth people. But if they have helped us in any way, they can’t deny having known about us.”
“Helping us would be seen as condoning our presence,” she said grayly. “I understand.” Politics seemed to be the same everywhere. “So what can we do? Get new ID-will the Terries spot that, do you think?”
“Frost, I don’t know-”
R. Jennie gave them fruit cups and whipped cream, returned to the kitchen, a rustic scene in the frame of the tent opening.
The fruit was good, but unusual-compotes served in what she thought of as unsweetened ice cream cones. It was like eating warm ice cream with strong fruit flavors. All yeast, she supposed.
“If they do spot us at it, I suppose they’d look the other way. But what worries me is that it would alarm them. They’d know we weren’t telling everything, they’d realize that R. David-or someone-has ID duplicating equipment. They might well raid the apartment.”
Ariel thought about that for a moment. As long as they weren’t arrested and the Key to Perihelion taken from them, it didn’t matter.
“Oh. The Key is focused on the apartment,” she said. “We’d be unable to retreat to it.” She remembered well the occasion when they’d had to do so.
“We will be in any case; we couldn’t begin to explain our reappearance,” Derec said. “They’d guess too much-”
“Zymoveal,” said R. Jennie. “There is also a chicken wing for each of you. Chicken soup, made of real chicken with yeast enhancement. Bread, real potatoes, gravy.”
A simple, hearty meal. Ariel ate with good appetite, but her stomach seemed to have shrunk. Weeks of eating little in hospital had altered her eating habits. Derec, however, carried on grimly, eating long after it became obvious that he’d had all he wanted, eating on to the edge of nausea.
When the robot had retreated, Ariel said, “I see. It’s all or nothing. Well, if so I won’t weep. If we could just get to New York!”
“Don’t think I haven’t thought about it. I’d be tempted to walk-it’s on this continent-but it’s a couple of thousand kilometers, and we’d starve.”
“Too bad. Derec, why do you go on eating when anyone can see you’re full?”
He looked up at her grimly, harassed, his eyes sunken, his face thin and lined…I’ve not been eating enough, or sleeping well enough. Everybody says so. I need to get my strength back now that you’re well.”
“Have you really worried that much about me?” she asked, her heart thumping. She felt flattered, and also dismayed, as if it were her fault.
“Well, it isn’t just that.” Derec lowered his fork, swallowed coffee, looked queasy. “I’ve been upset. I haven’t been sleeping. I-I keep having this strange stupid dream. About Robot City.”
Ariel stared at him…, A stupid dream made you look like a walking wreck?”
“Yes.” He looked…frightened. “Ariel, there’s something unusual about this. I-I keep dreaming that Robot City is inside me. We’ve got to get back there.”
Robot Ci
ty!
Ariel’s mind was flooded with a hundred images, sounds, odors even, of the great robot-inhabited planet, where the busy machines worked away like so many bees, building and building for the ultimate good of humans. It was an Earthly City without a roof, populated by robots rather than humans. They’d been trapped there, first by the robots themselves, then by their mad designer, Dr. Avery.
“Go back there?” she whispered tensely. “I’ll never go back!”
“We must,” said Derec, his voice just as low and determined, but also indifferent. It was as if he was speaking not to her but to himself. “I’m dying or something. I don’t know what Dr. Avery did to me, but…”
What had he not already done? Derec had lost his memory long ago, and only Dr. Avery could have removed it. She had known that as soon as she realized that he had lost all memory of her. Human beings were less than robots to Avery, they were guinea pigs.
Go back? To save Derec’s life?
But I’m cured! she wanted to cry. I can go back to Aurora and say to them: Look, the despised Earthers cured me after you cast me out! You don’t need to watch your sons and daughters lose their memories and die-you can cure them. If you can persuade the Earthers to tell you how!
There need be no more of this aimless existence, running from planet to planet, looking for a cure, for an excuse to go on hoping. There could be a home, a place in society, all the wealth of associations that membership in the human society meant.
They could even consider the Keys, the existence of aliens, Robot City itself-they could report Dr. Avery, turn the Key over to the proper authority, shift the burden to other shoulders.
Ariel sighed.
“You don’t look good,” she said.
After all, how much did she owe him, anyway? At lot of apologies, if nothing else. She’d blamed him wrongly for too much.
“I hope there are star charts in the ship,” he said. Derec put a hand to his brow. “If we can get back to Kappa Whale, we can take both ships back to Robot City. That’ll give us a spare. Dr. Avery won’t think of that-I hope.” He rubbed his face slowly; his eyes squinted as if the light were too bright.