Isaac Asimov's I, Robot: To Preserve

by Mickey Zucker Reichert

  Like all robots, John Calvin remembered everything. Pal should not know about Susan’s father, but she was certain he did, like every member of Cadmium. If the code had actually existed, John Calvin would definitely still know it, embedded into his positronic memory.

  Pal went to the true heart of the matter, solidifying Susan’s suspicions. If she harbored any residual doubt about Pal’s loyalties, they disappeared entirely. “Did you put the code in written or electronic form?”

  “It was all up here.” Susan tapped her skull, then raised and dropped her bruised shoulder. “I . . . think I can remember a bit of it.”

  A bit of it would not help, and they both knew it.

  “Try,” Pal suggested softly, kindly.

  Susan wondered how long his patience would last, but she dared not test it to its breaking point. She needed to make the situation believable and also to gain Nate the time he needed to double back and locate Jake, for Jake to handle the robot’s reappearance and the information Nate brought. A horrible thought followed: Assuming I even got through to Nate.

  Susan studied the note, trying to pick out the letters she needed. It soon became apparent that she would need more than one pass through in order to get enough information to make it appear legitimate. She cursed the tendency of people creating cryptograms to avoid choosing common letters as substitutions. Her father had used X for E, Q for U and Z for O, which would make her strongly dependent on translated letters for vowels.

  The cryptogram and translation read:

  JQJRY, FMX FMSXX VRKJ RSX ASSXBXSJAGVL AYFSAYJAI FZ FMX WZJAFSZYAI GSRAY.

  Susan, the Three Laws are irreversibly intrinsic to the positronic brain.

  FMXSX AJ YZF, RYT MRJ YXBXS GXXY, R IZTX FZ QYIZQWVX FMXD.

  There is not, and has never been, a code to uncouple them.

  DL VZBX NZS LZQ MRJ RVKRLJ GXXY RJ IVXRS RYT WQSX RJ RYL NRFMXS IZQVT MRBX NJS MAJ TRQCMFXS.

  My love for you has always been as clear and real as any father could have for his daughter.

  YXBXS NZSCXF LZQ KXSX DL XBXSLFMAYC.

  Never forget you were my everything.

  Susan glanced at Pal, who was standing behind her and casting his shadow over the words. “Could you please find me a pencil and a pen?” She waved in the general direction of the living room.

  Quickly noting that the P she needed for Port Authority Bus Terminal didn’t appear until well into the puzzle, Susan decided to add the definite article “the.” She started with the T in the second word, which actually was “the,” but then took the H and E from the third word, “three.”

  Pal soon returned with pencil in hand, and Susan reached back to accept it without bothering to look. She let the plastic tube slip into proper writing position in her hand, then brought it around to the paper, circling the three letters she had chosen.

  Once again standing over Susan’s shoulder, Pal said, “The? That’s promising.”

  Susan nodded, but there were still a lot of letters between what she had circled and the P. It might appear suspicious, so she sat back, pretending to think. “Honey, can you give me a bit of breathing room? The code was extremely complicated, and it was a long time ago.”

  “Sorry.” Pal stepped back and pulled up a stool to the table. “I’m just excited. Your father must have been brilliant to come up with a code within a code within a code that relies on several people coming together and something from your childhood.” He added like a man who knows what a woman wants to hear, “Obviously where your genius comes from.”

  It was a compliment, but Susan found herself bristling. “Actually, both of my parents were geniuses.”

  Pal did not miss a beat. “Doesn’t surprise me at all. I only hope you inherited your father’s memory.”

  As that came from John Calvin’s robotic brain, Susan did not bother to reply. Instead, she circled the P in “positronic.” If Pal asked, she planned to explain that her code worked with long or short messages, which meant it looped. Without large breaks, the subsequent letters might land on top of one another. Susan studied the paper a bit longer, realizing she could not spell out “Port Authority Bus Terminal” without already forcing a second pass. She chose to abbreviate, as she had on Nate’s arm, next circling the A in the word “brain.” She added the B from the encoded YXBSX that corresponded with “never,” the U from “uncouple,” the S from “has” and the T from the coded RYT that translated to “and.”

  Susan sat back with a sigh and ran her hand through her hair.

  Pal was clearly trying to help, “Can I get you some coffee or something? It’s been a long time since you’ve eaten anything.”

  Susan shook her head. If she tried to eat now, she would vomit. “It’s just difficult trying to think back that far. I’m not sure I’m really getting anything useful.”

  Pal kept his eyes on Susan as he reached for the paper. When she did not object, he turned it toward him and recited the circled letters, “T-H-E-P-A-B-U-S.”

  Susan sighed again. “Thepabus isn’t a word. Even if I divide it, I’m not getting anything. “The pabus? Thepa bus?”

  Pal spun the paper back around to face Susan. “You don’t have the whole message yet. You have to keep trying, Susan. What choice do we have?”

  “Yeah, all right.” Susan continued to stall. By the time she reached the end of the message, she would barely have spelled out “PA Bus Terminal.” If this had been a message from her father directing her to the location of a vital code, he surely would have been more specific about the location, where exactly he placed it in a terminal that spanned three stories. That meant she had to loop through the same message at least two more times, which would make her cryptogram code inconsistent and suspicious. If he had not already done so, Pal could get the information to the top cryptographers the Department of Defense could buy. Once they closely examined what she had done that evening, the game was over.

  Susan knew she had to make sure she lured Pal to the terminal this very night, but only after Jake had arrived. She had to time things correctly; her life depended on it.

  Susan continued pretending to decode, gradually spelling out the remaining letters and finishing with the L from the coded LZQ that had become “you.” Pal had wandered off to make some coffee and snacks, and Susan wrote out every letter she had circled, speaking them aloud as she did so. “T-H-E-P-A-B-U-S-T-E-R-M-I-N—”

  Pal was clearly paying close attention, because he dropped a spoon, which clanged against the counter. “The P.A. Bus Terminal!”

  Susan put lines in the appropriate places. “Yes,” she said in an awed hush. “Oh my God!”

  “Oh my God!” Pal repeated. “All this time, you had the answer in your hands. Your hands, Susan!”

  “And I never knew it.”

  “The SFH was right,” Susan said without moving a muscle. “Cadmium was right.” She thought she saw an ever-so-slight stiffening of Pal’s body when she mentioned the unofficial name of his unacknowledged organization.

  Pal seized Susan’s upper arm and guided her to a standing position. “Susan, it’s ten thirty-five at night. We need to go right now, while the SFH isn’t gunning for you because they assume you’re sleeping.”

  Susan realized she had dragged this out for longer than two hours. Adding that to the hour or so they had spent in the Vox store, and walking home, it ought to have given Nate and Jake some breathing room, especially since she and Pal still had to make the trip to the Port Authority. “All right,” Susan said, picking up the paper, the pen, and the pencil and putting them into the envelope. “I don’t believe this is happening, Pal. There really is a code? There really is a reason for . . . everything that’s happened?”

  Pal noticed the flaw Susan had already considered. “The Port Authority is a big place, Susan. Is there more?”

  Susan pulled on a light jacket. “There could be,” she adm
itted. “Cryptograms come in varying lengths, of course. Longer ones are easier to decode, so my father and I often wrote short ones to make them harder. Originally, my number code didn’t take that into account, so I came up with a way to head back to the start from the end. Repeatedly, if necessary.”

  Pal dropped his shoulders. “So, you need more time.”

  Susan yawned. “I do, but I don’t have to work in the kitchen. We already know where we’re going. I should be able to finish this, and fish out the details, on the bus ride to the terminal.”

  Pal glanced at the envelope. “Even I could probably do it, right? I mean, once you know the pattern, anyone should be able to just leave the same amount of space between circled letters and flip between the code and the translation.”

  If he did that, Susan knew, he would wind up with a hodgepodge of useless letters. “That wouldn’t work.” She improvised as swiftly as possible. “My interest stemmed more from the math than the coding. At the moment of looping, I switched from a base eight system to base seven, then six.”

  Pal blinked. “You’re losing me.”

  Susan headed for the door, envelope in hand. She could not risk it falling into Pal’s hands, where he might use his Vox to scan it and send it to other mathematical geniuses. “It would take me far longer to explain it than to just decode it on the bus.” Susan tried to hide her discomfort. Her plan still required that Nate had understood her unspoken writing, that he found Jake, that Jake acted on the information and confronted Pal. She did not know the terminal well but had been there enough times to fake a place the code could be hidden; but she could not get away from the fact that it did not exist. Once Cadmium realized that, her life meant less than nothing to them.

  “Right.” Pal did a quick scan, touching his right hip and ankle, then his Vox. He reached for the door. “Ready?”

  Susan doubted it, but she forced a grim smile. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

  They headed for the door.

  Chapter 16

  The glide-bus moved as silently and smoothly as silk through the dark Manhattan night, the interior lit by thin lines of steady fluorescents running like snakes through the car. Susan pretended to process the cryptogram, mostly circling random letters while her mind worked overtime on the upcoming confrontation. Irritatingly calm, Pal tapped at his Vox. Susan had no idea what he might be doing, but she assumed the worst. In her mind, he was contacting other members of Cadmium, sending them to the Port Authority New York New Jersey Bus Terminal to help him obtain the code. It occurred to her that she had, quite likely, sent not only herself, but Jake, toward death.

  Bombarded by terrible thoughts, Susan slammed her back against the seat and stared at the ceiling. Ads papered it, as well as the area above and between each window. There was nothing she could do, no way to warn Jake or anyone else. It occurred to her how much everyone depended on Vox, how dangerous the world must have been before its predecessors, like smartphones, connected every individual to the rest of the world.

  Pal took Susan’s hand. “Slow going?”

  Susan sighed deeply. “It was a long time ago.”

  Pal turned toward her. He had a knack for making it appear as if he prized her over everything, that he may have abandoned an important conversation to deal with her every whim and concern.

  If only it were true. Susan despised the wistfulness that went into that thought and deliberately squashed it under the rage that had accompanied her every consideration of Pal since Jake had unveiled him. “It’s coming,” she reassured him. “I think I’m spelling out ‘second floor,’ but I’m finding myself looking for the next letter instead of allowing it to come to me using the appropriate math.”

  Pal nodded. “That’s understandable.”

  Susan tipped her head toward his Vox. “Who are you talking to?”

  “Huh?” Pal followed Susan’s gaze. “Oh, no one.” A flush came to his cheeks. “I was actually playing a game. Pretty obnoxious of me, huh? You’re struggling, and I’m entertaining myself.” He squeezed her hand. “Isn’t there anything I can do to help?”

  “There’s no way you can help me.” Susan wanted Pal off his Vox, but she had no choice but to give the answer she would have before she knew his true alliance. “Play games, if it helps you. So long as you’re still looking out for me.” She lowered her voice to a whisper, forcing Pal to lean in close. “I’d hate to get wasted because my bodyguard’s distracted by ‘Galloping Galoots.’”

  Pal lowered his Vox and released Susan’s hand. “Not going to happen,” he assured her.

  Of course it’s not. The only ones I have to fear are your companions, and they need me alive right now. Susan kept that to herself and turned back to the cryptogram.

  Properly chastised, Pal turned his attention to the other occupants of the glide-bus, a pair of teens making out in the back, and two derelicts curled up on different seats, snoring. None of them appeared in any way threatening, though Susan knew from experience that appearances could deceive. Making mostly random marks on the already over-circled cryptogram, she pictured the layout of the terminal as best as she could remember. The last time she had used it was when she had traveled to Remington’s funeral. She had arrived at the terminal early and used the extra time to explore the main and second levels, to survey a media stand for worthwhile magazine chits, and grab herself a fizzy juice and whole-grain pretzel at a snack stand.

  It made the most sense for Susan’s father to have placed the code, if it had existed, into a locker or box. Now, she realized, her choice of meeting location might undo her. Transportation terminals had done away with such storage facilities after a bombing at LaGuardia Airport in 1975. The code they were supposedly currently seeking would need to have remained in its current location for longer than a year without anyone disturbing it. A locker seemed the only logical place, yet the PA NY NJ Bus Terminal, like most, had no lockers.

  Susan considered and discarded multiple possibilities. She could not get away with numbers and letters written large in the terminal. They would have meaning to passengers and/or staff, and prove too coincidental for Pal to believe. Under a bench seemed workable except that no one creating a “treasure hunt” as clever as the one her father had made would repeat the same trick. They had already found the port key in a similar location. Furthermore, Susan suspected that the benches at the Port Authority received so much traffic, her father would never have risked it. John Calvin would have found a more protected place for something so significant.

  Susan’s thoughts drifted back to lockers. Even if the terminal had had them, it would not have worked. The filthiest gyms performed routine maintenance, such as cleaning out abandoned lockers, at least twice a year. If he had used one, her father would not have just placed a piece of paper into the box and activated the locking mechanism. He would have taped it to a shelf or phalange, attached it to make it appear part of the construction, or scratched the code into the metal of the box.

  Susan turned her mind to boxy things that might exist at the Port Authority Bus Terminal, objects people might see but not tamper with or were off-limits to any but regular employees who would not delve too deeply. She first considered fuse, gear, or fire extinguisher boxes but realized she had no idea where those were located. Automated external defibrillators had become common in many, but not all, public places. Given her medical training, it seemed a likely place for her father to place a code for her, but Susan discarded it. She did not know for sure if the Port Authority Bus Terminal had AEDs or where they might locate them if they did. Furthermore, they were kept unlocked so people could use them in an emergency, which meant the code might get accidentally compromised.

  Pal interrupted Susan’s thoughts. “We’re almost at our stop. Any luck?”

  Susan stuffed the paper back into its envelope, added the pencil and pen, and slipped the packet under her jacket. “Yeah, I think I have it. I’ll explai
n where I believe it is on the walk.” She kept things deliberately vague. Once she told Pal an exact location, Cadmium might decide they no longer needed her.

  The doors slid open soundlessly. Susan and Pal slipped out into the night, leaving the teenagers still smooching and the derelicts still sleeping. Dropped at Thirty-ninth Street and Eighth Avenue, they had only a one-block walk to the terminal. Susan’s heart raced. One block. Only one block until it all comes down. She had no clear idea what would happen next. She had little choice but to trust that Nate had done his job, that Jake would come prepared for any eventuality. She suspected nothing significant would happen unless and until Cadmium discovered that the code truly did not exist. She only hoped Jake would end the charade long before that point.

  “So,” Pal said as they walked. “Where are we going?”

  Susan’s brows furrowed. “We’re going to the Port Authority Bus Terminal.”

  Pal stopped and turned to face Susan, hands on hips. “I know that. You said you’d explain where in the terminal on the walk.”

  Susan could have kicked herself. Too immersed in her own thoughts, she had reverted to the obvious. She started moving again, and Pal retook his position beside her. “If I translated right, it’s on the second floor in a . . .” Susan thought quickly. “A kiosk refrigerator. Based on my last visit there with Dad, I’m pretty sure I know which one.” She did not get any more specific for her own security.

  Susan made sure not to pause as they approached the terminal’s Eighth Avenue entrance. She did not want to give Pal the opportunity to text this new bit of information. The less his companions knew, the better.

  As they entered, the familiar odors of the bus terminal assailed Susan: popcorn and cinnamon, various cleaners, all twined through with the acrid smell of human body odors. There were people walking through the terminal, not hordes like during the day but more than Susan expected for after eleven o’clock at night. Others sat or sprawled on myriad benches, waiting. To Susan’s left, past an island containing a set of restrooms, was a drugstore apparently open twenty-four hours a day. To her right, windows revealed several people sipping drinks and gobbling snacks at various tables in a bar. Directly ahead of her was an information booth and, right beside it, Jake sat, immaculately dressed as always and clearly watching for their entrance.