Fugitive From Asteron

by Gen LaGreca

  “I’m sure he’ll be right back, Alex,” Kristin said hopefully. “He never misses an appointment with me.”

  The three of us turned toward the hallway door where the sound of a low, humming motor was approaching us. Gliding into the room on bristled feet that vacuumed the floor as they moved was a tall, slim, cylindrical robot with eight arms, large pockets containing cleaning supplies in the midsection, a head with a humanlike face of pliable material whose mouth curved up in a smile, and a name painted onto his chest: Dustin.

  “Good afternoon, folks,” Dustin said through moving lips, as he swiveled his head and shuffled into Dr. Merrett’s inner office. The cheerful electronic janitor wore a baseball cap on his head that read: “Clean Team.”

  “Who called Dustin in?” asked Kristin.

  “I did,” Margaret replied.

  “But I have an appointment with my dad.”

  “He said he was leaving for the day just five minutes ago,” said Margaret.

  “But he made an appointment with me. He never forgets that!”

  Margaret pressed an icon on her monitor, and a calendar appeared on the screen. “I have no record of it, dear. If he made an appointment to see you, it didn’t get on his calendar. I’m sorry, Kris, but I’m sure he’s not coming back.”

  Kristin’s face fell. “Alex, I apologize.” Her voice was heavy with disappointment. “Maybe we can catch him at home. Over the weekend might be a good time.”

  “Okay,” I said. If I am still living by then, I thought.

  “While I’m here, I’d like to leave these flowers, Margaret.”

  “Sure, Kris.”

  “Alex, I’ll just be a minute, if you’d like to wait.”

  I nodded that I would, as Kristin skirted around the industrious Dustin to remove the vase of flowers she had brought her father earlier that week. “I’ll throw these out in the kitchen and get some fresh water,” she explained.

  With Margaret resuming her work and Kristin down the hall in the kitchen, I leaned against a windowsill in the reception area, watching Dustin plunge into his cleaning routine. One arm wiped the desk, another emptied the wastebasket into a shredder inside his chest, a third sprayed a cleaner on the window, and a fourth wiped it with a towel.

  When Kristin returned, she sat in the reception area, arranging the flowers. She and Margaret conversed without engaging me, so I turned my attention back to Dr. Merrett’s office. Dustin was gently wiping the computer screen with a cloth. Through a spigot on one of his arms, he watered a plant on a bookcase that faced the monitor. I noted that the plant, resting on a high shelf of the bookcase, seemed to have as good a view of the screen as the window beside it.

  “Did something happen to distract my dad, Margaret?”

  “I’m afraid so, dear. Right before you arrived, two men were here from Earth Security.”

  My eyes darted to Margaret.

  “Oh? Why?” asked Kristin.

  “They’re looking for a suspicious person they think is somewhere in Rising Tide.”

  “Gee, if ES is involved, it must be serious,” said Kristin. “It must be a . . . spy.”

  “I suppose.”

  “A spy from where?”

  “They’re looking for someone from Asteron.”

  “What!” gasped Kristin. “A spy from there . . . here?”

  I moved away from the windowsill so abruptly that I bumped into Margaret’s desk, shaking the items on it, because I had seen out the window two men leaving the building, two men dressed in business clothes who yesterday wore police uniforms when they broke into my apartment—Feran’s spies! I steadied the desk, apologized, then placed my hands in my pockets, trying to act casual, until the two women who had suddenly turned to me looked away.

  “I don’t know much about it, just that ES is searching for a man they want to talk to, and your father gave them permission to look around and question the people here. He told me to alert all the divisions.”

  I heard a voice of such bitterness that I could not believe it was Kristin’s: “I hope they get this guy fast. He should be punished for snooping on us and for working for those horrible people!”

  In a flash of guilt, I looked away from Kristin. My eyes fell on Dustin—and what I saw next astonished me. One of his arms reached up to the small plant on the bookcase. Then his prong-like fingers closed, as if they were clutching something on the soil, but nothing was there. The arm moved to a small compartment that slid open in Dustin’s shoulder, and the fingers dropped the imaginary object in the little bin, which closed again. The fingers then reached over to a similar compartment that slid open on the other shoulder, clutched at something that, again, was not there, and placed the imaginary object in the identical spot on the plant’s soil.

  “Hey, Alex, are you leaving us too?” asked Kristin.

  Heading to the door, I paused to remember my manners. “I have to take care of something. Would you excuse me, please?” Then I raced out of the office, down the stairs, and out a side door of the building.

  I whisked past the steely block letters that spelled SPACE TRAVEL on the lobby wall and the rocket replicas displayed under them. Avoiding the elevators, I took the stairs to the fourth floor. The building that had given me a life and that I favored above all other places was now fraught with dangers. Every voice, every footstep, every glimpse of a human being sent me hiding in doorways while I walked down what seemed like an interminable hallway to Frank Brennan’s office. I felt my heart race in my chest, then calm momentarily, only to surge again at the next alarming item, such as a door opening or a person sneezing. I wondered how I had managed to spend my entire life in the state of a cornered rat. But that was before I had sipped wine from a crystal glass, when I had been forced to drink from Feran’s stream.

  Upon seeing me, Frank’s eyes widened in a smile.

  “May I shut this?” I asked, my hand on the door.

  “Sure. Have a seat, Alex. Say, are you okay? You’re whispering.”

  “I need to talk to you.” I sat down, facing Frank at his desk.

  “I’m glad you’re here, Alex. I want to tell you something too. Mykroni called me to say he heard about my accomplishments in Housekeeping. He wants me to come to his office to talk about robotics. It sounds as if he might have a job in mind.”

  “Good.”

  “It was you who told him about me, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know, Chuck’s name never came up, and I hope it never will! I felt as if I could tell Mykroni what I really accomplished here, even if it does make a liar out of his son.”

  “I think you can tell him the truth and he will listen.”

  “Thanks, Alex. I owe you one.”

  “If you mean you would like to help me, I do have some questions for you.”

  “Shoot.”

  When I told Frank about the peculiar movement in Dustin’s cleaning procedure, he pressed a control on his computer to summon the robot to his office. He gestured for me to follow him to an inner office, which contained a wall of instrumentation to rival my flight deck.

  “This console controls the Clean Team,” Frank explained, as we sat before the grid of buttons, lights, computer screens, and electronic panels.

  Soon we heard the low humming sound of Dustin arriving, his vacuuming feet removing the dirt particles on the floor as he approached us. Frank sprang open a door on Dustin’s back to access his control panel, then pressed a few keys. Projecting from Dustin’s eyes into the space before us, a three-dimensional holographic image appeared of Dr. Merrett’s office, with Dustin starting his janitorial routine.

  “When did you see the weird move, Alex?”

  “After Dustin watered the plant on the bookcase.”

  Frank sped the action up to that point, then played in slow motion the maneuver I had described, in which Dustin seemed to remove something from the plant and store it in one of his shoulders, then replace the item on the plant with something that he took fr
om his other shoulder.

  “Hmmm. I see what you mean,” said Frank. “I never noticed that before. Let’s see if it’s on my master program.”

  Frank activated a function on his instrument panel, producing another hologram of Dustin at work in Dr. Merrett’s office, exactly like the image we saw from the robot, but with one exception. On this master program, after Dustin watered the plant, he completely skipped the maneuver I had questioned, advancing to the one that followed it.

  “It looks as if someone added a few lines of code directly to Dustin, but never copied them onto my master program. That’s against the rules!”

  “Do other robots in the Clean Team have the program for Dr. Merrett’s office?” I asked.

  “No, only Dustin.” Frank checked the compartments on Dustin’s shoulders. “These storage bins are empty now, but I guess they once contained something to make sense out of the movements you saw. But what?”

  “Do you have any security checks for the robots that clean the executive offices?”

  “You know, because the bosses have office safes for their documents and passwords for their computer files, we haven’t thought much about the robots gaining access to restricted information.”

  “Who could have changed Dustin’s code? Could Chuck have done it?”

  “Chuck is capable of writing a few lines of program. So are other people. The programming language I use for the Clean Team is also used by other departments at MAS. It’s called QuikCode.”

  “I see.”

  “It’s not as if we keep the Clean Team a secret. They roam the halls. They’re on the elevators. They’re in people’s offices. They use a known programming language. Someone familiar with QuikCode could figure out the program and make changes, I suppose, although I never thought about that before.”

  “When was the change made?”

  Frank punched keys in Dustin’s back, setting his hologram in motion again, until we came to the image of the movement in question.

  “Let me find out the date when this programming was done,” said Frank, freezing Dustin’s action at that point and pressing more keys in the robot’s control panel. “It was in May, two and a half years ago. The maneuver you saw, with Dustin removing something from the plant’s soil and placing something else on it, was programmed then.”

  “And the other day you said Project Z started in April of that same year, right?”

  “That’s right. Project Z started in April; Dustin’s code was changed a few weeks later.” Frank’s worried eyes scanned mine. “What are you thinking, Alex?”

  A camera. That was what I was thinking. A small, waterproof video camera—no doubt camouflaged to blend in with its setting. This device could have been disguised as a small rock, because the plant already had some shiny stones for decoration sitting on the soil. This camera would have been focused on Dr. Merrett’s monitor, recording images but apparently not transmitting them. Maybe the thieves did not want to risk electronic transmission of the data, which could potentially be discovered and traced to them, so they had Dustin physically place and replace the camera regularly, thereby making the activity traceable only as far as the robot. Once Dustin left Dr Merrett’s office with the used camera, someone could open the compartments manually, remove that device, and insert a new one to be planted on Dr. Merrett’s shelves during Dustin’s next scheduled cleaning time. This someone could be hard to find, because Dustin roamed the halls and came into contact with many people.

  “Unless that plant eats some kind of special plant food that has to be taken away too, I can’t explain what Dustin was doing,” Frank added.

  Dustin waited patiently for us to complete our examination, a benign smile on his face.

  “Could someone on your staff have changed the code?” I asked.

  “A few of them would be able to. But wait, no one from my staff was here two and a half years ago, so none of them could have programmed the sequence you saw in Dustin.”

  “You mean your staff does not remain employed for very long?”

  “I mean Chuck’s staff. Everybody had run-ins with Chuck at some point. When he got heavy-handed with them, they’d quit or get fired. And the best workers left the soonest. That is, until Chuck left Housekeeping two months ago for greener pastures. I don’t know how his promotion is working out for Dr. Merrett, but it’s allowing me to build a more stable department here.”

  “You had mentioned that Chuck and Dr. Merrett were carrying the pieces of the dismantled invention to the compactor when they were together at Project Z on the day before Dr. Merrett’s memo came out. How do you know that?”

  “That’s what my friend Mike, the security guard at Project Z, said.”

  “Did they both go to the compactor, or did only one handle the matter?”

  “I’ll tell you what. I guess there’s some valuable equipment remaining in that building, because Mike’s still assigned there. He works weeknights and Sundays.” Frank glanced at his watch. “It’s after six, so he should be on duty. Let’s go talk to him.”

  The lobby of the building that housed Project Z was stark. Glass entrance doors led us into a hollow space without adornments of any kind. A guard’s desk and a security passage with a face scanner were the only objects it contained. Frank introduced me to his friend Mike, the security guard who sat at the desk.

  “You’re the pilot, aren’t you?” Mike asked me as we shook hands. “Frank told me about the fantastic ride you gave him.”

  “I think we both enjoyed it.”

  “Say, Mike,” said Frank, “an incident happened with one of the Clean Team that I’ll have to report to Security for investigation. It’s raised some questions we have about the Sunday Dr. Merrett dismantled Project Z.”

  “Oh?” Mike was an older man with a soft voice and an easy smile; however, an intensity in his eyes told me he took the matter seriously.

  Frank began. “First of all, we were wondering how Chuck Whitman got inside this building that day.”

  “He and Dr. Merrett walked in here together. The boss asked me to let Chuck in. By the way, only Dr. Merrett could authorize someone outside the project to come in. So I let Chuck in through the locked door around the side of the lobby while Dr. Merrett came in the usual way, through the face-scanner entrance here.”

  “And the two of them came out with two big boxes, right?”

  “That’s right. I personally had to let Chuck out; otherwise, the alarms would have gone off. Anyway, they left with two big wooden boxes on a motorized dolly. I let Chuck and the boxes out through the locked door, and Dr. Merrett left the usual way, through the face-scanner entrance.”

  “How’d you know the pieces of Project Z were what was inside the boxes?” Frank continued.

  “Dr. Merrett mentioned it on the way out. Come to think of it, that was odd, because he never commented on his business before; he was always tight-lipped about the project. But that day he said that he and Chuck were headed for the compactor to destroy the material from Project Z. I guess because his memo about the project’s cancellation came out the next morning, he figured the whole thing was no longer a secret.”

  “Did both men go to the compactor with the boxes?” I asked.

  “As far as I could see. They both stepped onto the motorized dolly with the boxes and rode around the building toward the compactor.”

  “Are there any records there that the materials were actually destroyed?” I continued.

  “No. We don’t keep records at that compactor.”

  “And was anyone else with them?” Frank asked.

  “No.”

  “Have you ever been inside Project Z, Mike?” I asked.

  “Not inside the flexite area, no.”

  “Would you say that the security systems at MAS are good?”

  “They’re good, Alex, yes.”

  “Impenetrable?”

  “There could always be something we’ve overlooked, of course. When modern advances make possible better secur
ity, they also make possible new ways to breach it. Take fingerprints, for example. We used to employ them at security entry points and also for computer passwords. But the crooks found credible ways to duplicate them, so we had to find new ways. We’ve also used iris recognition, but that can be gotten around with high-resolution images of the eye. Then there’s the matter of some of these methods being too intrusive, and we like to avoid having our staff and visitors grumbling. So, boys, that’s why you’ve got me here—a live security guard is still pretty hard to beat,” Mike said, pleased with the notion.

  “Do the people here worry about security?” I prodded.

  “They do. Maybe not as much as they should.” He stroked his face thoughtfully. “I’ve read that in the old days, when Earth was filled with power-hungry rulers and wars, security was a huge concern. Now it’s something we take care of, sure, but I suppose we’re not as worried about it.”

  “How long have you worked for MAS?”

  “Since before you were born,” said Mike, smiling at me. “About thirty years now.”

  I decided to take a chance. I took out my pad and pencil to sketch Feran’s cargo. “Have you ever seen an object that looked like this?”

  “No, never.”

  Mike waited for more questions, but Frank and I were finally silent.

  “Anything else, boys?” he asked. We shook our heads. “Then let me warn you. If you know something that’s in the slightest way suspicious, you need to fill out a report, you hear?” We both nodded. “Don’t go playing amateur detectives. Security has to know what’s going on.”

  “Sure, Mike, of course,” said Frank.

  Another puzzle, I thought. First, many people had access to Dustin and could have changed his programming, leaving me with no clear suspect. Then the evidence showed that the components of Project Z never left Dr. Merrett’s personal supervision, leaving me again with no suspect who could be Feran’s spy.

  We said good-bye to Mike and started walking toward the exit door.

  “Oh, by the way, there was one odd thing that happened that day,” he added.

  We stopped and turned around to him.

  “You see, Dr. Merrett checked in twice that day, but he checked out only once.”