Automated tractors following invisible guide signals sped through the canyons, a constant loud humming and rush of cold air that whipped at his coat. The place smelled of oil and ozone, metal and hot plastic, and, under all that, an organic odor: yeast or mold. Rot.
The walkway took him to a broad receiving area fronting a row of large bay doors. As he neared, the sounds grew thunderous: doors opening and slamming shut, transports rumbling through in both directions, the wind now almost constant. And beyond that, in the distance, deeper, sepulchral, the heavy thunder of the port itself: shuttles lifting off and landing irregularly, disrupting any possible rhythm to all the noise.
Between the edge of the storage hive and the bays lay six meters of ancient, stained apron. Except for small piles of boxes and litter, Coren saw nowhere to hide. He set free another handful of machines and retreated to the nearest staircase leading down into a canyon.
Fog lay heavily a few stories below. Coren descended half the height of the block, until the cold bit at his face and filled his sinuses with warning hollowness. He sat down on a step and pulled his palm monitor out once more.
It unfolded four times to give him a display showing the locations of all his little spies against a map of the entire warehouse. The surveillance blocks still showed operative. Now he saw blue dots where all his other machines had secreted themselves. He pressed the half-meter-square screen against the wall beside him and waited.
Ten minutes.
One blue dot turned red. Coren looked up, surprised. The intruder had come from the nearby loading bays. The sixteenth member of the crew, he thought. Coren looked down at the fog, twenty or more meters below, and wondered if he should move-into even more bitter cold. But numbers flashed beside the dot on his flatscreen, coordinates that told him the precise location of the worker, who waited near one of the bay doors, showing no sign of coming any closer to Coren. After a few seconds Coren felt confident that he would not be seen-not by this one, at least.
Twelve more minutes passed.
Three blue dots turned red, far down the row, back near the offices. As he watched, his machines focused on the new intruders, coordinates proliferated over the screen, and he counted bodies: fifty-one.
The number surprised him. He had expected no more than a dozen, at most fifteen.
They came as a group down a walkway, heading this direction, obviously for a meeting with the waiting dockworker, who now moved a few steps from the wall.
Coren folded the screen back down to palm-size and crept up the stairs to the lip of the walkway.
The dockworker stood just inside the warehouse by an open bay door several meters away, his back to Coren. Hands in pockets, the man shifted minutely from foot to foot as if keeping time to a tune only he heard. Coren looked across the grid of walkways to the approaching group. From this distance he recognized no one. All of them wore black, all of them carried small packs.
Five or six children accompanied the adults.
Coren glanced at his palm-monitor. The communications and surveillance dampers still showed green. He estimated that he had another twenty minutes before the AI figured out why its internal security system was down.
Coren peeled off his overcoat.
As the fifty-one refugees gathered around the dockworker, Coren stepped silently from the stairwell and moved smoothly up to the perimeter, then cautiously worked his way through them. He looked at no one, aware only that a few people gave him quick, nervous looks. They were frightened, tense, too careful perhaps in some ways, careless in others. None of them would want to believe that they had been followed or infiltrated or caught, so unless it was made obvious that he did not belong here, they would explain him away to themselves. At least, for the time being.
Long enough to reach the front of the gathering. "-no changes," a woman said tersely. "Canister BJ-5156. Don't tell me about some other canister-"
"It can't be helped," the dockworker said calmly. "I'm sorry. The one segregated for you was found and impounded."
"Why wasn't I informed?"
"I'm informing you now. I'm informing you that we have back-up. We were prepared. It's the same as it was, only different. A new canister. I could point out that you were supposed to be a party of fifty-two and you're missing one. Bad security. But, hey, we understand-people get scared and back out at the last minute." He gave her a crooked smile. "We are professionals.".
The woman was tall, almost gaunt, sharply featured. Her head sat forward, angry and demanding, as she glared at the dockworker, who gazed back at her evenly. Coren admired his nerve under that displeased inspection.
After several seconds, she nodded slowly. "All right. But if this turns out to be anything but copasetic I'll peel your skin off with pliers. Tell your people we're ready."
The worker nodded and walked through the bay.
Coren started forward.
Something closed on his right bicep. He tugged at it automatically, to no effect. He turned around, left hand curled to give a palm blow, and froze, abruptly and utterly terrified.
A robot regarded him blankly through mesh-covered eye sockets.
"I apologize, sir," it said quietly, "but I must ask that you come with me. "
The robot drew him back through the crowd, which now watched him with open fear and shock. Some cringed back from the robot, but most stood fast, staring outrage at Coren Lanra.
The robot walked him down the row of bay doors, to the fourth one from the group, and waited, still holding him, firmly but harmlessly.
"Damn it, Coren. "
Coren glanced around at the voice. He looked at the woman he had come to talk to. He waited as long as he could before speaking, taking advantage of the opportunity to simply look at her. Finally, he said, "Good to see you, too, Nyom."
She let her breath out through her teeth, slowly, and Coren felt himself smile.
"Don't tell me you're surprised to see me," he said.
"I'm not. That's what bothers me."
Coren gestured toward the robot. "Umm..,"
"Coffee, go see to our arrangements."
"Yes, Nyom."
The robot released Coren 's arm. He congratulated himself that he did not immediately step away from it. Instead, he watched it walk back toward the group of refugees.
"What are you doing?" he asked the young woman. "Running baleys?"
"You know I am. I have been. "
"I'd hoped I'd been misinformed. Are you insane?"
She shook her head impatiently. "That's good, Coren, appeal to my vanity. You always had a way of making me feel special. "
"I'm serious. Do you know what you 're doing?"
"Usually."
Coren waited, but she said nothing more. Abruptly, he felt awkward and slightly foolish. He glanced toward the baleys.
"Where'd you get the tinhead?" he asked. "Your father would love that."
"To hell with my father and to hell with you. What, did he send you to find me? What are you going to do, throw me over your shoulder and drag me back home?"
"The thought had occurred to me."
She snorted, but took a step back. Then she gave him a narrow look. "What are you going to do?"
He met her gaze evenly, trying to think of a suitable answer. Finding none, he shook his head. "I didn't know you had a robot."
She laughed. "You don't have a plan? Rega didn't send you. You came on your own."
"Not exactly. He did tell me to find out what you're doing and-"
"And what? Sit on me till the election is over? That's what this is about, then. Rega is afraid his little girl's activities might botch his election. Tell him not to worry. I think he can ruin his chances all on his own; he doesn't need my help. In fact, you can give him some good news: He won't have to worry about me anymore at all. I won't give him any further cause for concern."
Coren waited. He recognized the tone of voice, the half smile, and a small point of fear burned at the back of his throat. He slipped his hands i
nto his pockets, the right one finding a small plastic bag. He squeezed it till it burst in his palm.
"Nyom," the robot interrupted. Coren started and Nyom laughed.
"Coffee won't hurt you," she said. "What is it, Coffee?"
"Time," the robot said.
"I'll be right there."
Coffee retreated.
"What do you mean, Nyom?" Coren asked.
She sighed and stepped closer. "Tell me the truth now, Coren: did you tell the authorities? Am I going to be arrested by Immigration and Trade Enforcement?"
"No."
She studied him. "You really just came all on your own."
"Too many people are hard to control."
"That's not it." She frowned. "It's still personal, isn't it?" When he did not answer, she smiled. "I'm really flattered. And I'm sorry. " She touched his face lightly and turned away.
He grabbed her arm. "What did you mean, Nyom?"
"I'm going with this bunch, that's all. My turn to exit. Nothing personal, Coren, but if you found me, then it's only a matter of time before the authorities find me. I'm taking this ride."
Coren felt his fear grow, becoming panic. "Go where?"
"Nova Levis."
Coren released her. He wanted to argue. More, he now really did want to drag her out of here. But it was clear from her expression, from the waiting baleys, and the robot watching everything that he would not be able to.
"Well," he said, shrugging. "I can die happy now. I know you really are insane. " He cleared his throat. "You do know that Nova Levis is under blockade, I suppose?"
"We'll make it." For a moment, Nyom looked sad. "Sorry. I wish…"
"Nyom. Please don't."
She shook her head. "Gotta go. You shouldn't be seen. My contacts aren't as understanding as I am."
Nyom sprinted back to her flock of baleys. Seconds later they filed through the bay door. Coren backed quickly up against a wall, standing motionless until they had all passed out of the warehouse proper.
Behind him, one of the bay doors began to open.
Coren broke for it and slipped around the edge just as a huge hauler rumbled through, carrying a four-meter-high stack of cubes. Its slipstream almost knocked him down.
Just on the other side of the opening, Coren found a massive support rib rising to the ceiling high overhead. He pressed into the corner and waited till the bay door sealed, then pulled another device from his pocket.
He raised the optam to his eyes as he peered around the column of composite metal.
Seven or eight meters from the wall, the pavement ended and a tangled maze of thin tracks spread out, delta-like, busy with huge transports carrying large containers, bins, and packages from the tunnel system that led directly to the shuttle pads dotting the landing area of Petrabor field. The surge and rumble of shuttle traffic drove through him, vibrating his bones.
He was annoyed that Nyom had read him so easily. He had hoped she would assume that he had brought back-up-the police, immigration authorities, other company security. He thought he could talk her out of it; that, after loading her latest troop of misguided would-be Settlers aboard whatever means of transport she had arranged, he could convince her to come home and suspend operations for a time. Until the end of the election. He had hoped she might finally want to stay with him.
He had hoped…
The view through the optam showed the party of baleys, a few dozen meters down, on an empty patch. While Coren watched, a huge pod drifted out of the writhing traffic and came to a stop before them. The end developed a seam and opened smoothly to one side. Four people stepped from its dark interior to meet with Nyom.
Coren stiffened. Two of the four were robots. One looked a bit more sophisticated than the other, almost human, but the dull sheen that outlined its sleek head and body gave it away. It moved with an unusual grace, a fluid, almost organic motion, uncharacteristic of any robot with which Coren was familiar. It circled the baleys, slowly, as if taking inventory. It stopped before Nyom's robot, Coffee, then seemed to come to a decision and rejoined its companions.
Coren touched a contact on the side of the optam and sound came through the bead in his ear, but he only heard the muffled, unintelligible sounds of a discussion. He lowered the optam and tried to adjust the aural filters to compensate for the noise, then raised it again.
The strange robot was gone.
Coren dropped the optam; he saw the robot clearly. When he raised the magnifier again, the robot did not appear. He could see the other robot easily, a machine slightly smaller than Coffee, a bit sleeker. But the first robot remained invisible.
Masked…?
Coren tensed, preparing to act. The baleys began filing into the big container, and he realized that he would do nothing. Nyom knows what she's doing, he thought. At least as far as procedure goes. She did not act alarmed, so he had to assume she knew these people, these machines. It unsettled him, though, to watch her, the last one, walk up the ramp, accompanied by Coffee.
The masked robot followed a minute later, causing Coren's pulse to accelerate again. The other contacts, human and robot, closed up the container, then walked away.
Five minutes later an automated hauler hooked onto the container and pulled it into the maze of tracks and out of Coren 's reach.
Abruptly, Coren felt a wave of bitterness. Failure did that. It would have been so simple, so much easier if she had just come with him. Now…
He opened his palm monitor and keyed for a new signal. A bright yellow dot glowed on the small screen. The smear he had placed on Nyom had transferred from fabric to metal to plastic, a clever seeker code built into the tiny molecules that imparted a kind of machine instinct to find a suitable place to use as a conductor and enable them to transmit.
He pocketed the optam and the palm monitor and slipped back through the bay door on the next cycle, just ahead of another huge pallet. All he had to do now was get out of the warehouse-and all the communications damping he had put in place-and signal his contact on Kopernik Station.
He imagined how angry Nyom was about to be.
"So what?" he mused as he recovered his overcoat. "Better she's righteously pissed off at me than dead from some trigger-happy blockade station." Ht; glanced back at the bay door. "Nova Levis! What are you thinking, Nyom? Or are you thinking." He trotted along the walkway toward the offices, muttering. "You've never been particularly impulsive, but when you are, you are absolutely unpredictable. Nova Levis. Damn."
When he reached the locker room, he punched a code into the palm monitor. All the little machines he'd released throughout the warehouse began to eat themselves into dust. Nothing would be left to analyze, if anyone ever found them. Just minuscule piles of refuse.
He checked the time, estimated that he had about six hours before that bin reached dockside on Kopernik. He could even clean up before he made his call…
He recovered the small button he had placed in the exit and stepped into the alley. He saw no one and quickly bounded across to where he had been hiding when the nightshift crew had left. He fished one more device from an inside pocket and opened it. He tapped in a code and waited for the comm to upload for him.
The screen remained blank. He ran a diagnostic. LOCALITY ERROR scrolled across the small screen. Coren hissed, annoyed. Something around here was interfering with the link. He should have tested it first. Probably being this close to the port was causing problems. He closed up the comm unit and headed down the alley.
He splashed through the accrued seepage and hunched his shoulders against the random drops of condensation from the unseen ceiling high overhead. He rounded the next corner and headed up a broad alleyway littered with abandoned shipping crates, refuse dumpsters, old and broken transports, and the scraps of traffic.
"Hey, gato."
Coren glanced to his right, at the source of the throaty voice. A tall man came out of the shadow of a receiving bay and loped toward him, hands in the pockets of a long overcoat. Coren'
s hand moved for the stunner he carried in his jacket. The stranger coughed heavily, a phlegmy hack Coren recognized as one of the recent strains of sublevel tuberculosis. Not contagious usually, but Coren liked to keep his distance.
"Not tonight," he said.
"Hey, that's not sapien," the man said. " Just wanting a share, you know."
Coren reflexively pulled out a few credits from his pocket and tossed them.
The man scooped them up with more alacrity than Coren would have guessed.
"Thanks, gato," he said and touched a finger to his hat.
Coren turned away.
A hand clenched around his throat between one breath and the next. Coren grabbed the wrist and pushed forward to relieve the pressure, but the hand held. The wrist, wrapped in a thick sleeve, seemed like steel. Coren tried to turn away from the encircling arm and drive an elbow back. He missed, tried again, and then dropped to his knees under a sharp blow to the left shoulder.
He choked. Sparks danced around the edge of his vision. He tried to sweep a hand around to catch the knees of his attacker, but he was too off-balance.
He closed his eyes, and the pain went away. Coren came awake lying on damp pavement, his throat burning as he choked on the sourness in his mouth. His shoulder throbbed and would not support his attempt to push himself up. He rolled over and stared up at dark walls, too close. He had been moved. He lay still for a minute or more until the acid subsided and his breathing calmed. He managed finally to sit up.
He was about three meters from the end of a narrow hallway, but still in the same general area of Petrabor, from what he could see beyond. His head spun and his legs trembled as he got to his feet. He needed to get to a medical unit, he knew, but not down here; no telling what kind of treatment he might get from the quacks practicing in the sublevels. He needed to get to a comm sooner.
He patted his pockets. His stunner was gone, as were his optam, palm monitor, and comm unit. But they had missed his ID, and he still had a few credits in a calf-pouch.
Coren tried to figure out what had happened. He was not a small man, and he had been trained well during his years with Special Service, but whoever had attacked him had handled him as if he were a child. Possible, but not the panhandler. Surely not.
Chimera (isaac asimov's robot mystery) Page 2