As the pair approached, Jake rose, pulling his pistol. “You’re under arrest. Put your hands up.” The latter came out of his mouth as if it were a single, four-syllable word.
Pal and Susan froze. Pal’s hands edged upward, and Susan copied the motion, uncertain whether Jake meant her as well. She was, if anything, more guilty than Pal of the crime Jake was investigating.
A movement to Susan’s right caught her eye. A man near the bar window leapt to his feet and ran. A gun appeared in his hand, and he aimed from the doorway, behind Jake’s line of vision.
Susan tried to shout. Before a sound emerged, two gunshots rang out in quick succession. Jake fell to his knees, still clutching his pistol. “No!” Susan finally managed, leaping toward Jake.
Pal caught her as she moved, pulling her to him. “Susan, no! It’s the SFH. They’re after you!” He raced past Jake, deeper into the terminal, dragging a protesting Susan with him. Glancing over her shoulder, Susan saw another stranger approach the shooter and fire, point blank, into his head. The man who had shot Jake dropped like a stone. Another shot rang out, this one from the drugstore, and the man who had just killed Jake’s attacker staggered backward, clutching his throat.
It took Susan inordinately long to realize Pal was using her as a shield, clutching her tight to his body between himself and the shooters. On an instinctive level, the strategy galled her, but she knew he was doing the intelligent thing. Despite his claim, this had nothing to do with the SFH. Clearly, Jake had backup, either his own or from the Port Authority police. She could only assume it was Cadmium and the cops exchanging gunfire, and the only person neither of them wanted dead was Susan. Yet.
Pal’s right arm clutched Susan across the chest, threaded beneath her armpits. He gripped a pistol in his left hand. “Nobody follows us!” Pal yelled into the din of screaming civilians rushing for the exits. “Everybody downstairs! Outside! Go! Go! Go!” He paused at the central staircase between two up escalators.
Apparently, most of the upstairs crowd had dispersed to the Ninth Avenue exit, leaving the central stairwell open. Susan heard more shots behind her, but she could not see what was happening, not that she could have told, anyway. Everyone involved seemed to be in plainclothes. She could not tell the good guys from the bad guys, and she wondered how any of them knew whom to shoot.
Still holding Susan, Pal charged up the stairs. Certain no one was following them, apparently convinced his companions had the police distracted, Pal turned his attention to the second floor. Leading with the gun, he kept his head low and his body in motion as he and Susan finished their ascent.
Alarms blared. Loud instructions echoed through the terminal, directing all staff and travelers toward the main floor Ninth Avenue exit and away from the shooting and the second floor.
“Quickly,” Pal said. “Where’s the fridge?”
Susan glanced around. They had come up near the locked Operations Control Center. Across the way, Susan found the media stand where she had once purchased a Vox-chit for Newsday. On one side of it, she saw a souvenir shop. On the other, she spotted shelves full of packaged snacks, an electronic cashbox, a Vox reader, a glass-fronted refrigerator filled with various types of fizzy juice, and an old-fashioned, massive chest-type freezer that presumably held frozen juices and yogurts.
Susan feigned panic, not at all difficult. “Pal, Jake was shot! I have to help him!” She struggled against Pal’s hold. “Let me go, damn it!”
Pal shook her as violently as he could with one arm. “Susan, stop! There’s nothing you can do for Jake right now. If you go to him, we’re all three dead. No one’s safe until we have that code!”
Susan thought she heard more gunshots beneath the blaring of the speakers. Arrows flashed across the monitors, pointing away from Eighth Avenue. God, not Jake. Please don’t let them finish off Jake. She had no idea whether he had survived the first two shots, but she had to believe he had. To do otherwise might destroy her.
Susan tried to gauge Pal. He had to know she was at least suspicious now, not wholly trustworthy, either from uncertainty or fear. She knew he carried a backup pistol, quite possibly two. Experience told her he probably had at least one in an ankle holster. She swept him with her gaze and tried to sound more rational. “I’m a doctor, Pal. I need to save Jake, to help anyone who needs me.”
Clearly trying to assuage her, Pal said, “And you will. But not until it’s safe.” He readjusted his grip. “Susan, where is that fridge?”
Susan doubted she could overpower Pal, but if she managed it, the freezer was large enough to hold product and a man. She rushed to it, pulling Pal along with her, and wrenched up the lid. It opened easily. A cloud of cold air puffed upward to reveal Nate lying on boxes of juice, yogurt, and ice milk bars. Susan slammed it shut before Pal could peek over her shoulder. Nate! Nate’s here. It seemed the perfect place to hide him, one no one would have thought to check. No human could have survived the lack of air, the freezing temperature. She only wondered how, in the whole of the Port Authority, anyone could have known to hide him in that particular freezer.
Pal jumped backward. “What the hell, Susan?”
“It’s a freezer,” Susan explained, feeling as if her heart were about to pound out of her chest. She needed to find a way to turn Pal’s back to Nate, to give the robot a chance to quietly free himself from the confines. What can Nate do? The Three Laws tied the robot’s hands. He could not harm a human being, even if that human being threatened her. “The code clearly read ‘fridge,’ not ‘freezer.’” She jabbed a finger at the refrigerator filled with fizzy juice, which forced Pal to turn to face it, the freezer now at their backs. Nothing living moved on the second floor, and nearly all the shops had already been closed for the night.
Still in Pal’s grip, Susan pulled at the refrigerator door. Held in place by a padlock, it resisted her attempt to open it. Susan grabbed the lock and started fiddling with it, pretending she knew the combination.
Pal yanked Susan away from the lock. Anticipating he would shoot it like in the movies, spraying metal shrapnel, Susan tucked her neck into her jacket and twisted her face toward the ceiling.
Pal switched his handgun from his left to his right hand, the arm holding Susan. Carefully, he studied the lock, a no-name cheapie that would keep out the curious but not a determined thief. Susan supposed most people would not risk jail for an armload of fizzy juices. He next turned his attention to the hasp and mechanism through which the lock was threaded.
Susan had not expected Pal to take so long and use such care. On television, the hero simply pointed and shot, and the lock disintegrated or sprang open obligingly. Still protecting her face, she studied the ceiling blocks. Off to her right, a bit of debris fell, and she thought she saw something move. What the hell?
Abruptly distracted, Susan let down her guard. The boom of Pal’s pistol startled her. She let out a scream that disappeared beneath the shrill of the alarm. Momentarily deafened, she could not even hear herself. She flung herself against him, and he had to tighten his grip to the point of pain to keep from dropping her.
“Sorry,” Pal said, removing the remnants of the hasp and dropping the lock to the floor. “I thought you knew what I was doing.” He made a gesture toward the refrigerator. “All yours.”
Susan opened the door and poked her head inside. It felt properly cold and eerily silent. She could not hear the purr of the motor beneath the ringing in her ears and the ceaseless alarm that seemed to have entered her head permanently. The terminal alarm had been set at a tone and volume that assured anyone who heard it could never concentrate again.
Susan pushed aside bottles of fizzy juice, searching for something, anything, that could pass for a code. Surely, the refrigerator or shelves had at least one serial number. She could only hope it came on a removable tag or that someone might have scratched something onto the back wall at some point, even if only a misc
hievous employee. After a few moments, Susan feigned a crick in her back, standing up and bending backward so that she could look at the ceiling again. A tile near the one she had been watching was moved aside, and a face peeked through the hole. As Susan spotted him, the owner of the face placed a finger to his lips in a plea for silence.
Susan glanced at Pal. He stood in a twisted position that allowed him to hold Susan and look diligently around the terminal, pistol in hand. The one direction he did not appear to be looking was upward. Susan suddenly realized people hardly ever noticed things above their heads. For humans, danger rarely came from that direction.
Susan knew she had to distract Pal before he became aware of the person crawling through the ceiling or the robot in the freezer. Both needed his attention diverted before they could find secure and useful positions. She stuck her head back into the refrigerator. After a bit of pushing bottles and boxes around on the highest shelf, she shouted over the alarm, “I think I found it! I feel it, but I’m not tall enough to see it.”
Pal placed himself between Susan and the open refrigerator door, neatly trapping her against the shelves. He placed a hand on her spine, pressing her downward as he stuck his own head inside. “Where?”
Susan placed a hand on the door, as if to help with her balance. She pointed with the other one. “There! Behind the boxes. Something’s etched into the metal.”
Pal pulled himself up. Trusting his head to be larger than hers, Susan slammed the refrigerator door as hard as she could. Worried for her own head, she winced, but the door cracked hard against Pal’s skull and bounced open.
“Ow! Shit!” Pal’s grip on Susan loosened enough for her to pull away.
Pal recovered in an instant, diving for Susan. Also confined, Susan doubted she could get away in time. Then, other stronger hands closed around her waist and buttocks, yanking her away from Pal. He whirled, firing, as Nate shoved Susan behind him.
Nate backed away, bullets striking him in the chest, shielding Susan with his body. Then, apparently recognizing Susan’s defender, Pal stopped shooting. “Nate, step aside.”
The robot ignored the command, continuing to edge cautiously backward so as not to dislodge or reveal Susan.
“Nate, do as you’re told. Step aside!”
Susan knew Nate would not obey. The First Law took precedence over the Second, and he surely knew that doing so would cause harm to Susan. Also, she realized, she had already instructed Nate to “ignore all commands given to you by Pal.”
Suddenly, the ceiling tile collapsed, spilling the man on top of it to the floor.
Pal spun toward it, pistol leading. He fired a shot that went over the man, now prone on the floor. It was Jake.
Pal hesitated, clearly as surprised as Susan. No longer stunned from the unexpected fall, Jake shot once, twice, three times. Pal stumbled against the freezer. The gun fell from his hand.
Susan could not watch any more. She knew from far too much experience that Jake would “NSR” him, shooting Pal until there was no possible doubt he was no longer a threat. Tears filled her eyes, and every muscle in her body started to shake. The gunshots that followed seemed like rhythmic drumbeats to the melody of the terminal alarm.
Nate whirled, catching Susan into a comforting embrace. Susan melted into his arms, so powerful and, at the moment, disturbingly cold. She was alive and, miraculously, so was Jake. For now, nothing else mattered.
Then, suddenly, the alarm went silent. The world seemed foggy, raspy, as if static had moved in to fill the void. She could hear Jake shouting, but it sounded as if she wore earplugs or it came from a great distance. “All clear!”
Reluctantly, Susan freed herself from Nate to approach Jake. He was standing now. He had holstered his gun, replacing it with his shield, which he held out conspicuously, ensuring that anyone who saw him knew, first and foremost, that he was a cop. Averting her eyes from Pal’s crumpled body, she asked the necessary question. “Are you hurt?”
Jake continued to study the staircase and escalators, not looking at Susan. “I’m okay.”
Susan did not believe him. “I saw someone shoot you. You fell.” She added softly, “I thought you were dead.”
Jake explained in two words. “Body armor.” He finally glanced at Susan. “I’ll get it checked out as soon as I can. The fall from the ceiling hurt worse. Might have broken a rib or two.”
Susan watched him breathe. His chest moved normally, and he was not struggling for air. At least for the moment, she could rule out a pneumo – or hemothorax. “If you start having any difficulty breathing—”
Jake interrupted. “I promise you’ll be the first to know.”
Susan heard footsteps on the stairs; then a man and a woman appeared. As they looked over the scene, their steps slowed and, gradually, stopped. The man spoke first. “What the hell’s going on, Jake? The two guys we got alive claim they’re federal agents and got the creds to prove it.”
Jake lowered his shield. “Don’t let ’em go. Put them away, and let the big guys sort this out.”
While the men spoke, the woman continued up the stairs to Susan. “Are you all right, ma’am?”
“I’m fine,” Susan said, meaning it. This was her last confrontation with the Department of Defense or with the Society for Humanity; she would see to it if she had to challenge the president of the United States herself. If she never saw another violent confrontation, never heard another gunshot, it would be too soon. “I’m a physician, Dr. Susan Calvin, and I’d be happy to assist anyone who needs it.”
“I’m Detective Rayner,” the woman said. “In moments, we’ll have more cops and paramedics crawling over this place than flies on a carcass.” She cringed at her own analogy. “Sorry. Grew up on a farm in Arkansas. We’ll have more than enough professionals to handle any issues.” She tossed an elbow in Nate’s direction. “Who’s this guy?”
The robot had an arm draped casually across his chest, concealing the bullet holes in his shirt. Susan knew he had only a few shallow blood vessels in the human dermis that covered his porous skeleton, so there was very little blood to hide.
Susan did not want to get Jake in more trouble. She surmised that he should have immediately placed Nate into custody, that Jake had broken rules and protocol by bringing Nate along instead. “A friend,” Susan said. “He’s the one who told Jake where to find us.”
“Pretty brave friend,” the detective said. “To stay up here while a lunatic is chasing everyone away brandishing a gun.”
“Yeah.” Susan smiled at Nate but did not explain further. “So, you’re with the Port Authority police?” She remembered seeing occasional officers patrolling the terminal in the past. “I thought they were a uniformed unit.”
Jake addressed Susan’s question first. “These two are from the Port Authority Police Department Anti-Crime team. They’re separate from the regulars, dealing only with violent felonies.”
The male member of the PAPD Anti-Crime team stepped up. “We were on break in the brewery sipping fizzies when we saw Jake come in looking all cautious. We’d worked with him on another project and figured whatever he was after had to be interesting, so we notified the sergeant, who brought in the rest of the team.”
Surprised, Susan turned on Jake. “You mean, you came alone?”
Jake shrugged. “Nate just said you were bringing Pal. He didn’t mention a squad of goons with guns.” He waved a hand toward Nate, who clamped his arm more tightly against his chest. “Nate worried Pal might turn violent and insisted on coming along. So, I sent him in the other entryway and told him to hide somewhere no one would think to look.”
Susan had to admit Nate had obeyed. No human could have survived five minutes in that freezer. The robot selecting his own hiding place explained how he came to be in such an odd and indefensible position. But how did he know which freezer to use? Susan made a mental note to ask hi
m when they were no longer in the company of people to whom she dared not reveal him. “I didn’t know Pal would bring friends, but I suspected it. I figured you would assume it, too.” Susan did not get into the details of her limitations at the time she had given Nate his instructions.
Jake’s voice dropped nearly to a whisper. “Is your guy okay?”
Rayner shook her head, lowering it. “Our sergeant headshot the perp who shot you. He took a round in the throat. There was a lot of blood, and they were working on him, but it doesn’t look good.”
“Damn,” Jake said, followed by a deep silence.
“Maybe,” Susan started, but she could see by the looks on their faces that anything she tried would be far too late. They would send their sergeant to the hospital; cops never abandoned one another and had no authority to pronounce someone dead, but he would surely arrive DOA. Even if Susan managed to restart his heart, which seemed highly unlikely without buckets of alpha-adrenergic agonists, he had suffered irreversible brain death.
As Susan’s hearing started to clear, she could make out sirens and voices, footsteps on the floor beneath them. Soon, the hordes of cops and paramedics Rayner mentioned would burst in, and the investigation and cleanup would begin. She knew she and Jake and Nate had earned a trip to the hospital, but it would be a long time before anyone else inside the terminal left the scene.
“Is everyone else intact?” Jake asked.
“Two bad guys injured and in custody, one with a nonlethal GSW. We had warned away the uniformed MOS when we spotted you, and they’ve been handling the public outside. Despite the panic, we had a remarkably sane evacuation and lockdown. Nothing but scrapes and bruises as far as we know.”
Isaac Asimov's I, Robot: To Preserve Page 33