He turned his face away from her. If she was reexperiencing those memories, she was probably more comfortable at the moment. He could let her have that. Then, once they were safely out of this capsule, they could get their bearings.
The tube did not always go straight. Its various straightaways were broken with curves, loops, and changes in altitude. These most often simply accommodated architecture that must have been already in place. Sometimes they brought the capsule to an intersection of tubes, where curves allowed it to change direction with minimal loss of speed. Occasionally the shifts in direction led by depot sidings that their capsule shot past. Every so often the tunnel dipped underground, and once it ran along the ceiling of the platform booth tunnel system for an extended period.
Finally the capsule leveled off near the ground and decelerated sharply into a siding. It stopped abruptly, sliding them both to the front of the tube with the small package. Derec lay panting on his back, looking up through the transparent capsule and tube at the impassive face of a Hunter robot.
The slidewalk was the slowest of Robot City’s powered transportation systems. Mandelbrot and Wolruf followed the single Hunter on it with increasing boldness. The various Hunters had obviously taken different assignments and they had no way of knowing what role this Hunter actually had.
“Not too close,” hissed Wolruf softly over Mandelbrot’s shoulder. “ ‘U will get itss attention, I tell ‘u.”
“I doubt it,” said Mandelbrot. “I now think it, as a Hunter, maintains an awareness of everything around it. It must have scanned us and rejected us as its quarry.”
“That iss sstupid,” said Wolruf.
“Eh?” Mandelbrot said stiffly.
“Not ‘u. ‘Im,” she said patiently. “Why would theirr order include Derec and Ariel but not us?”
“It does seem to be poor programming,” said Mandelbrot. “However, I do not judge it as stupidity.”
“Then what?”
Up ahead, the Hunter still advanced along the moving slidewalk. It seemed to know where it was going.
“Derec often spoke of the single-rnindedness of Avery robots,” Mandelbrot explained. “Their task orientation is narrow. If the central computer or the Supervisors, or even Avery himself, learned of the presence of Derec and Ariel, perhaps the order to the Hunters specifically named them and did not extend to anyone else.”
Wolruf shook her head at the Hunter ahead of them. “Iss stupid. Good for us, but still stupid.”
Ahead of them, the Hunter moved on. Mandelbrot strode tirelessly after it.
Derec and Ariel were in no shape to protest as two Hunter robots lifted them out of the capsule door. The function robot on the dock waited until the humans were out before grabbing the small package that had been scheduled for the trip. Derec hurt allover and was simply too weak to struggle.
One Hunter held him by the arm, and he actually leaned against the robot for support. Ariel was just now blinking at the Hunter holding her. He recognized that as one of the signs that she was coming back out of her latest memory fugue.
“Ariel,” he said quietly.
She turned at the sound of his voice, then started at the sight of the Hunters. “Derec-”
“They’ve got us,” he muttered wearily. He shook his head as the Hunters turned and started for the nearest slidewalk, pulling them along in their inflexible grips.
Derec still tried to think of a way out of this. They were positronic robots and would respond to protests based on the Laws. From past experience, however, he also knew that they had been programmed to detain and arrest humans without harming them. He could argue, but he didn’t know how to win.
Besides, he was just too tired. Derec stumbled several times, forcing himself to keep up with the Hunter. Finally the Hunter lifted him bodily and carried him, not out of concern but for efficiency of travel. The other Hunter lifted Ariel at the same time.
The Hunters turned to ride the slidewalks and Derec found himself facing Ariel.
“How did they get us?” She mouthed the words silently, with a quick glance at her captor’s head.
“I don’t think they care if we talk,” he said aloud. “I’m guessing now that some other Hunters started by questioning the tunnel-system computer. That gave them the coordinates of the tunnel stop where we got off the platform booth, as I was afraid might happen. From there they must have used heat sensors to track us along the street to the vacuum tube depot.”
“But the capsule in the vacuum tube goes so fast. How did they get in front of us?”
“They must have found out which depot that package was going to and called ahead to have these guys waiting for us.”
“After that long ride,” said Ariel. “You make catching us sound so simple.”
“Apparently it was,” he said ruefully.
“They’ve got us,” she said, in a voice that cracked. “Derec, look out! They’re right behind us in the conduit-”
Derec stared at her in a kind of resigned worry as she entered another displaced memory episode. This one must be from the last time Hunters had tracked them down and captured them, when they had tried to run away through the maze of underground conduits in the city. The vacuum tube hadn’t worked any better.
He ached allover. Having the Hunter carry him was almost a relief after the effort to escape. Ariel was squirming and protesting in the grasp of the other Hunter, but she had no idea of where she was or what was happening now. He closed his eyes and tried to relax.
The Hunters only rode the slidewalks a short distance. They were soon intercepted by a large function robot in the shape of a transport truck. The Hunters mounted the open back of the truck, still carrying Derec and Ariel.
The switch to the truck woke Derec up, and he watched the city pass by as they rode. Ariel was now silent, her eyes closed. The city streets seemed depopulated to him, at least compared to what he remembered from their previous visit to Robot City. Maybe, he thought, the city had expanded faster than the robot population, causing the robots to spread themselves thinner over the whole planet.
He glanced at Ariel periodically with growing concern. Her episodes seemed to occur more frequently under stress. That might mean she was getting worse, not better.
The truck stopped several times to pick up other Hunters from the slidewalks. Now that the search was over, they would probably be taken to a storage area or something. They were all unusually tall for humanoid robots, with expansive torsos. Narrow benches molded from the truck bed itself provided seats for all of them along the side walls. They sat with their knees drawn up and their waists level with the top of the walls, watching Derec and Ariel without a word spoken.
The truck slowed down as it approached one more lone Hunter on a slidewalk. Two familiar shapes caught Derec’s eye in the distance, and he stiffened.
“Ariel,” he said quietly.
She didn’t answer.
He glanced over his shoulder at Mandelbrot, who was standing on the stationary shoulder of the slidewalk just a few meters away. Wolruf had been with him a moment ago, but was now out of sight. The Hunter was climbing into the back of the truck, making a total of six. Derec reached over and shook Ariel’s limp arm.
“Ariel.”
She opened her eyes and looked at him, still partly disoriented. “What? Derec, where are we?”
It was too late to get off the truck, even if the Hunters could be distracted somehow. The last Hunter was on board and the truck started up. Then the engine began a high, irregular whine and the truck coasted back to a stop.
The Hunters remained motionless for a short time. Then Mandelbrot stepped forward. Derec was certain that they were all communicating through their comlinks.
“What’s going on?” Ariel whispered.
“I’m not sure.”
Mandelbrot suddenly climbed onto the front of the truck and sat down. Derec had trouble seeing what he was doing, but a minute later the truck began to move forward, Hunters and all. Apparently Wolruf had sabotaged the function-robot brain and Mandelbrot had successfully volunteered to operate a manual override. Derec hoped Wolruf was safe, wherever she was-most likely under the truck and hanging on precariously.