“Thank you,” she said softly. The major walked through the empty apartment and stood by the door, holding it open for her. She was almost through the door when a sharp spike of what she could only call envy shot through her: the sudden awareness she was close to a fellow human with talents like her own. Her face went white, and she stammered, “N-n-not yet. She’s here!”
“Where?” the major demanded, pushing her back to the window.
“Yes, yes, yes,” Vara muttered as he propelled her. They treat me like a despicable runt! But the excitement of the chase was strong. She pointed a trembling finger and wiped her lips with the back of her other hand. “Down there! She’s close!”
The agent peered down into the crowd, following the line of the small woman’s finger. He saw a female figure, swift and almost colorless, dart through the crowds toward the entrance of a plunger.
Immediately, he used his comm to alert other agents on the street below.
“You’re sure?” he demanded of Vara, but she could only point and rub her lips, the sensation was so great. She had to work hard to keep from trembling. She hated this sensation-had come to know it whenever she was around the others in Wanda and Stet tin’s group, but never as strongly as this. Envy like an ache in her chest, as if this girl could steal everything in life from her and leave only empty expectations and endless disappointment!
“Her!” she said. “Get her, please!”
Something made Klia’s scalp feel as if it were on fire, and she cried out as she darted into the plunger cab. Two older men with heavy black-and-gray mustaches looked at her with mild concern.
Klia could not see over their shoulders. She jumped and caught a glimpse of two square-featured men running as fast as they could toward the open plunger doors. The doors started to close; the agents shouted for it to stop, and even flashed code blinkers to take control of the mechanism.
Klia dug into her pocket and produced a maintenance key, illegal but standard issue for couriers. The elevator doors hesitated, then stopped. She plunged her key into the control panel and shouted, “Emergency! Down now!”
The doors resumed closing. The two men could not make it and pounded on the outside, shouting for her to stop.
The older males gave her a wide berth. “Where would you like to get off?” she asked breathlessly, smiling.
“The next level, please,” one of them said. “Fine.” She gave the plunger its instructions, then made the older males forget they had seen her or experienced anything out of the ordinary.
They stepped out onto the next level, and she quickly ordered the doors to close again. With a sigh, she leaned against the dirt-smeared wall. A scratchy mechanical voice said, “Emergency instructions. Which maintenance level?”
She reached out with all her strength and found spots of trouble for many levels above and below. Her scalp still hurt. She had to get out of range of the teams sent to find her. There was only one likely direction-down.
“Bottom,” she answered. “Zero.”
Four kilometers beneath all the occupied levels-
The suburban rivers.
18.
Tritch met Mors Planch in neutral territory, far from the hold but aft of the crew quarters, in a weightless service hallway. If she had hoped to have him at a disadvantage in weightless conditions, she had hoped in vain; Planch was as much at home weightless as in standard gravitation.
“Your corpse has some remarkable talents,” she said as Planch pushed into view around the curve of the bulkhead.
“Your crew suffers some remarkable ethical lapses,” Planch replied.
Tritch shrugged. “Ambition is a constant curse these days. I found Gela Andanch outside the hold, in very bad condition. He’s stable now in the infirmary.”
Planch nodded; Lodovik had not heard the man’s name, and had just happened to run into Planch while carrying the limp body forward. Planch had taken Andanch and told Lodovik to return to the hold. Presumably, he was still there.
“What were they looking for?”
“Someone paid them off,” Tritch said lightly. “I presume it was someone opposed to the party or parties paying you. If they delivered Lodovik Trema, they’d each get fifty times what I pay them in a standard year. That’s a lot of money, even for Imperial corruption.”
“What are you going to do with them?” Planch asked.
“I presume they would have taken the ship and put us out of action, maybe killed us. Trin is in my cabin now, drinking heavily-and not Trillian, either. When she’s drunk enough, I might just toss her out of the hold over Trantor, and hope she burns up over the Palace.” Tritch’s eyelids fluttered slightly, and her lips grew tight. “She was a good first mate. My problem now is, what should I do with you?”
“I haven’t betrayed you,” Planch said.
“And you haven’t told me the truth. Whatever Lodovik Trema is, he isn’t human. Trin is babbling about simulacra, robots. Whoever paid her off told her she’d be looking for mechanical men. What do you know about robots?”
“He’s not a robot,” Planch said with a shake of his head and a smile. “Nobody makes robots anymore.”
“In our nightmares,” Tritch said. “Class B filmbooks. Tiktoks with mutated brains bent on mindless revenge. But Lodovik Trema…first councilor to the Chief Commissioner of Public Safety?”
“It’s nonsense,” Planch said shortly, as if this entire conversation was beneath his dignity.
“I looked it up, Mors.” Tritch’s face suddenly became sad, assuming a kind of limpness away from the draw of gravitation. “You were right. Neutrinos in sufficient numbers are deadly. And there’s no shielding against neutrino flux.”
“He’s dying,” Planch lied. “His condition in any case has to be kept secret.”
Tritch shook her head. “I don’t believe you. But I’m going to keep my word and drop you on Madder Loss.” She mused for a moment. “Maybe I’ll drop Trin and Andanch there with you, let you all work things out. Now go confer with your dead minister.”
She turned and headed forward.
“What about getting back into my cabin?” Planch said.
“I’ll send food and a cot back to the hold. If I let someone who consorts with a living corpse go forward, I’d have a mutiny on my hands. We’ll be at Madder Loss in a day and a half.”
Planch shuddered as she passed out of sight. He, too, didn’t like associating with Lodovik Trema. Tritch was perfectly correct.
Nobody aboard the Arrow of Destiny could have survived. Nobody human.
Lodovik stood in the hold beside his box, hands folded, waiting for Planch to return. By his actions, Lodovik had apparently brought severe harm to a human being, and yet the expected difficulties of such a situation-decrease in mental frequency, critical reexamination, and under extreme circumstances, even complete shut-down-did not affect him much, if at all. Even allowing for the extended nature of his long-term mission for Daneel-and under the provisions of the Zeroth Law-there should have been deeply uncomfortable repercussions.
Yet there were none to speak of. Lodovik felt calm and fully functional. He did not feel contented-he had caused damage and was aware of that, quite clearly-but he experienced nothing like the near-paralyzing realization of having broken one of the Calvinian Three Laws.
Clearly, something within him had changed. He was trying to track down what that might be when Planch returned.
“We’re stuck back here for the duration,” Planch said matter-of-factly. “I had a very nice cabin, too. And the captain and I were…” He shook his head sadly, then his features sharpened. “Never mind. Something is very wrong with this whole scenario.”
“What might that be?” Lodovik asked. He stretched and smiled. The human persona slid smoothly over all his other functions. “The box was cramped, but I’ve spent time in worse conditions. I emerged at the wrong moment, I suppose?”
“No supposing about it. The man suffered a heart attack.”