Mirage (isaac asimov's robot mystery)

by Mark W. Tiedemann

  "I have to let you go?"

  "Correct. Earlier tonight, two agents arrived to attempt to remove me again. Their agitation did not seem within normal vectors of frustration appropriate to the circumstances. They became quite agitated and verbally abusive. The other agents seemed dismayed by their reaction as well and requested that they leave. Three hours ago, all agents stationed at this facility were recalled and reassigned. Presently, no law enforcement personnel are on the premises other than you and me and a new agent stationed at the nurses desk. Also, medical staff has been relieved for the night. There is one physician on call, sleeping in the lounge. I proceeded to intervene in your therapy and bring you out of coma early. There was a small risk factor and you may experience greater discomfort as a result, but I determined that your awareness was of higher priority than your convenience."

  "No other personnel… not even a city police officer?"

  "No one."

  Mia did not know if the tingling in her belly was the result of restored sensation or fear.

  "Bogard, I want you to surveil the premises."

  "I should not leave you."

  "Listen carefully, Bogard. Right now we don't have enough information to make a decision. We need to know. You don't want to let the staff know I'm awake, fine. This is the alternative. I can't do anything till the anжsthetic wears off, anyway. I need to know what's happening, if anything. I repeat: surveil the premises."

  Mia watched the big shadow, wondering if it would accept her logic and her instruction. Bogard was obviously still on the edge of a breakdown. That it still functioned evidently resulted from binding it to her safety, but she did not know how far she could push it.

  "Your assessment is sound," Bogard said. "I will return as soon as possible."

  And it vanished. Mia imagined she felt a slight shift of air, an almost-breeze, as it left the room. Its speed startled her, and she wondered then how it had been possible that it had permitted Senator Eliton to die.

  She craned her neck to see the monitors around her. The readouts made little sense other than those for her pulse and respiration, which appeared slightly elevated but not out of bounds. The tingly sensation spread across her thighs and now she began to feel the heavy bruised pain of her wounds. She only remembered being shot once, but her memory was hazy on other details as well-she could not remember the specific instructions she had given Bogard, only that she had given them.

  As she lay there waiting for all her senses to return, Mia began to puzzle over Bogard's report. It had convinced her easily that something was wrong, but was that in fact the case? Coming out of a rehab coma, nothing worked right. Her mind grabbed onto anything that resembled reason and order, so the first thing she heard seemed to make sense. Perhaps sending Bogard out like this was as much a reflexive attempt at verifying its perceptions as anything else. Field agents had better things to do than sit in a medical center holding a wounded but essentially fine agent's hand. It was reasonable to call them away, especially in light of what had happened not even half a day ago. Fourteen hours. She had allowed Bogard to scare her into believing what? That her life was in danger?

  No city cop either…

  "We must move."

  She flinched at the sound of Bogard's voice to her right. She watched as it deftly removed all her monitors.

  "Bogard, what-?"

  "Little time," it said quickly.

  It flitted to another part of the room and returned, moving too fast to follow. In the dim light it was difficult to see clearly, but it seemed squatter, more compact than it should. It pulled off the thin sheet covering her and for an instant Mia felt a pang of modesty.

  Then it spread its arm against the mattress and expanded them to form a kind of sling. Mia had never seen this aspect of it in anything but a training video which had been itself circumspect about most of Bogard's potentials. Every other time she had witnessed Bogard's shapeshifting, it had already completed it, too fast for her to see, as when it had enveloped Eliton. She was startled and amazed at the process, like watching a part of the robot melt and solidify into a new shape.

  "Can you move yourself?" Bogard asked.

  "Y-yes, I think so…"

  She scooted, her leg aching sharply, the rest of her body dimly echoing the pain, and shoved herself onto the sling. She expected it to be cold, but instead the material was comfortably warm. When she had gotten herself entirely onto it, Bogard lifted her and curled the edges around to cover her. She was folded against it, infant-like. Mia lifted her head and peered over the lip of the cradle.

  Bogard carried her out the door in a vertiginous rush and down the dark hallway. Mia frowned. That was wrong. The lights should not be dimmed out here.

  At the end of the corridor, Bogard stopped and turned so that she had a clear view back toward her room.

  "Bogard, why-?"

  "You will see." Bogard replied, voice hushed and low.

  As she watched, a pair of black shapes crept up the hallway. They stopped at her door and huddled on either side. Then one of them crouched, pushed open the door, and Mia heard the sound of metal sliding on floor. The pair then hurried back the way they had come, rounding the far corner just as the door burst out from the pressure of a bright cloud of fire.

  An instant later the sound of the blast hit Mia's ears. Bogard's shielding arms moved instantly to cover her face.

  Then there was 'only the sensation of movement and the wracking tremors of fear. tactical parameters, standard conjoined facility, connection to sublevels and maintenance conduit, security level three, negative supplemental security, absence of police surveillance confirmed, intrusion confirmed, hostile intent assigned high probability, First Law violation exceeds potential, assigned highest probability, primary imperative coextensive to First and Second Law protocols, egress secure, subject risk through termination of medical protocols minimal, conflict assigned to auxiliary buffer, shield configuration, first-order expedience, initiate survive and protect protocols Bogard carried her down to a sublevel of the facility, among the storage lockers and systems components that provided support. Smooth-walled conduit snaked along the walls and ceiling; modules stood in ranks, interconnected, providing power and communications; conveyors stood motionless. Bogard shone a light among the dark shapes until it found the interrupted line that isolated the hospital. A simple switch, one that had not been touched in years, judging by the dust on everything else around it.

  "Leave it alone," Mia told Bogard. "It will only let them know someone is down here."

  Bogard did not respond, but moved past to another set of stairs, and down to another sublevel.

  The passageways narrowed claustrophobically. Mia only glimpsed them in the short beam of light from Bogard. More conduit, pipes, collections of cable attached to boxes, rounded forms, or bunched masses of multicolored shapes, stained by age and moisture, the air smelling dank with the heaviness of hidden growth.

  Then Bogard dowsed its own lights in the presence of bright red panels spaced every few meters. The traces of connective cables and tubes took on an organic appearance and Mia imagined, briefly, that they hurried down the veinous network of a living thing. In a sense they did-the deep viscera of the urban organism known as D. C.,

  Bogard moved smoothly, without the shock she expected of running enfolded in its arms, and the motion lulled her. She dozed.

  She came awake with a start, groping for the edges of a bed, her fingers coming against the walls of her cradle. Her leg burned with pain and her torso ached. She lay still for a few seconds, remembering, then realized that they were no longer moving. She raised her head to peer over the edge of Bogard's arms.

  The chamber beyond was unevenly lit. Columns seemed to support nothing, lost in darkness. Large housings made ominous shapes in the half-light of old glow panels and a flickering illumination that danced somewhere beyond a wall to their left. Debris littered the floor. Stacks of objects here and there gave the place a forgotten quality, an atti
c melancholy. Cold air stroked her face.

  "Bogard, where are we?"

  "Sublevel eleven, beneath McMillan District."

  Sublevel eleven… Mia tried to recall the D. C. grid. They were below the level of the ancient Potomac. McMillan Sector was several kilometers north of where they had begun.

  "How long have I slept?"

  "You have slept inconsistently. We exited the medical center eighty-seven minutes ago."

  "Why have we stopped?"

  "I have determined that for the present you are in no danger of detection. Further instructions would be prudent."

  "Prudent…? Bogard, you have a fine sense of the absurd."

  "Pardon?"

  "Never mind. Let me think."

  Mia found that more difficult than she expected. All she wanted to do was go back to sleep. She had never experienced so much fear; she had no idea what was a normal reaction, but this surprised her. It was as though her unconscious, the repository of habit and instinct and reflex, was telling her that the safest thing to do was to go away until the danger was over. Bogard would protect her.

  She looked up at the trace of white light from its head, above the curve of its upper torso and shoulders. No, it could not protect her completely. It could carry her out of immediate dangers, evade pursuit, act as a wall against blasters and explosives, but it could not exercise deadly force, could in fact be only minimally aggressive, and even that could be subverted if it was forced to recognize the actions as inimical to humans. Mia had to remind herself of Bogard's limitations, that no matter how fearsome it could seem it still used a positronic brain with all the constraints against harming humans that implied. It had brought her here and now-sensibly-but it had handed the next decision over to her.

  So decide… she chided herself.

  She needed to know who they were, the two who had just tried to kill her. Their choice of method seemed unnecessarily crude at first, a hammer to kill a fly. But with Bogard in the room with her anything else might easily have been countered. Which meant that they knew Bogard was with her. No matter what Bogard would have done, it could not have done it fast enough or safely enough for other people who might have been in the building.

  They knew about Bogard…

  That led to uncomfortable places. Mia set the problem aside to consider the immediate situation. Prudence dictated that she avoid another public facility until she knew all the facts.

  Protocol dictated she contact One and report.

  But they knew about Bogard…

  Her leg ached violently, and she sucked air between her teeth. "Bogard, is there anything you can do for my pain?"

  "I can administer a general anжsthetic. I regret I do not have a local."

  "At some point we need to find painkillers. First, though, I need… I need some things… Can you get me to my apartment from here undetected?"

  "Yes."

  "That's a start. Do that. I can think on the way." Instead, she slept most of the way. She glimpsed the passing of lights and unfamiliar places, old construction gradually becoming organic over time, the bones of the City encrusted with the residue of time and neglect. Bogard travelled so fast that even had she managed to keep awake, it would have still made as abstract and indefinable an impression. She lost direction, sense of place. Sleep came easily, brief lapses in which dreams hinted at safer realities, and pain faded.

  "You'd make a wonderful transport," Mia murmured once. If Bogard replied, she did not hear.

  Once again she awoke in the absence of motion.

  Bogard stood surrounded by trees. Mia pulled herself up as well as she could into a sitting position. The smell of pine and grass filled her nostrils, displacing for a moment the distant tinge of blood.

  Through the tangle of limbs and leaves, a walkway separated the edge of the parkland from a blocky apartment complex. Streetlights set the pavement aglow, but above them only the warm illumination from windows broke the night.

  "Bogard, assessment. "

  "There is a Service transport in the garage entrance. One occupant. High probability of encountering personnel or detectors. Degree of safety indeterminate."

  "Damn." She could not see herself wrapped within Bogard's arms like this, but she imagined what she looked like dressed in only a hospital shift. Even if no one was looking for her, her appearance screamed fugitive, especially in the company of a robot like Bogard. "Can you bypass surveillance?"

  "Yes."

  Mia looked up at Bogard. "Remind me to ask you for a complete manifest of your capabilities."

  "When?"

  "When what?"

  "When do you wish to be reminded?"

  Mia almost laughed. "When we're reasonably safe for more than an hour. Listen. I want you to leave me here-"

  "That is not an acceptable action."

  "Listen, I said. Leave me here, under cover. Find some bushes or something. I need things from my apartment. Would it be safer for you to go in alone or carrying me?"

  "Alone."

  "Then don't argue. Leave me here under cover and enter my apartment. Exercise extreme caution. If you cannot get in and out undetected, abort. Do you understand?"

  "Yes."

  "Good. Now this is what I want…" tactical parameters, apartment complex, three pedestrian/ residents accesses, four maintenance accesses, abutment to commercial facility, one joining access, standard antiintrusion security hard-linked to urban police network, additional security on-site deployment of widescan sensors at three residential entrances, one enhanced visual surveillance by human, in-house systems tapped by mobile monitor, optimum access via commercial facility, lowest potential Three Law violation, access achieved via service port, sublevel two, on-site internal security ambient heat and motion sensors, adjusting shell reflectance for ambient temperature 20 degrees centigrade, air permeability adjusted to 95%, visual reflectance null, access achieved, residential security personal code access to elevator, situation indicates optimum procedure to minimize unauthorized human contact via service conduits, enhanced shell configuration to space allocation 1.25 meters square, access achieved, target area unoccupied, additional on-site security deployed, Service-issued sound, heat, and motion sensors, full-range acuity, reconfigure for ambient conditions, objects located, exit secured Oddly, Mia could not sleep once Bogard left. She sat propped against the itchy bark of a pine tree, her injured leg stretched straight out atop a bed of fallen needles, and stared through the small breaks in the evergreens surrounding her, listening to the dissociated sounds of the park, unable to tell which belonged and which meant threat.

  It seemed, though, that she had slept enough and now found herself on the other side of a nightmare. The events in Union Station did not feel real, but more like a fiction or the events of history as witnessed by someone else. Not her. She had not lived through an assassination attempt, or seen her employer killed. She had not chased a murderer and in turn nearly been murdered. She had not been carried from a hospital room less than two minutes before it was bombed. She was not cowering under cover of bushes, unable to cross a street and enter her own home for fear of being arrested or killed.

  Not Mia Daventri. This sort of thing happened to others, never to her, and whoever this was happening to would never experience it again. Perhaps they were not experiencing it now but only waiting for sleep to resume or end so the waking world next time she visited it would show her that it all had been a dream, a chimera, a mirage of the mind.

  I could ask Bogard… she thought.

  The robot could do either, though, she realized: comfort her by confirming her hypothesis, or dispel the desperate rationalization just concocted. Safer, perhaps, not to ask it just yet.

  She heard the crisp crackle of twigs snap nearby and her breath caught.

  Dreams can only threaten and illusions only kill when you surrender to them…

  The shrubs around her shifted delicately. She pressed her hands to the ground, muscles tightening. She could not run, and she
doubted she could do much more than annoy someone in a fight.

  A branch moved aside, and a blunt helmet -shape with a streak of white light peered in at her.

  "I have the things you requested," Bogard said in a clear whisper.

  Mia's breath sounded explosively loud in her own ears.

  "Bogard…" she breathed, relieved. "Your domicile has been compromised," Bogard explained.

  "Listening devices as well as full visual surveillance, including a tap on your com line. I detected only two personnel: the one in the transport, the other waiting in the lobby. I did not procure sufficient data for recognition, per your instructions."

  "Good, good… you did good, Bogard."

  Mia tapped at her portable datum and watched the diagnostic examine itself for intrusions. It came up clean. Perhaps later she could get a more complete diagnostic, just in case, but for now she had to trust her own safeguards.

  Time for the next decision. Now that she knew she was under surveillance, she also knew she could not report to One. Someone on the inside could intercept her before she got to him. She was a competent, even talented, agent, but she was relatively new on the job and had no illusions about the limits of her experience. She needed a place to recover completely and think clearly.

  But where?

  She opened her list of names and started scrolling. Most of the people she knew well worked for the Service. Going to one of them was a fifty-fifty chance that they were involved or would become targets themselves. She winced inwardly at the solid recognition that she could trust none of her former colleagues. Who did that leave? Relatives? No. Her parents were dead, most of her brothers and sisters had emigrated to a Settler colony, except Toj, but he lived in Europe now. Besides, it would be unfair to make them targets, especially since they were known to the Service and were probably being watched in case she did contact them. Her best friend from university had broken off their friendship when Mia had signed for Special Service. The rest of her friends… well, none were close enough to ask this kind of favor from. If they were, she could not see that it would help. They did not know what it entailed. She would be putting them in danger.