This room was tiny, with just barely enough room for her to stand up. It, too, was in the shape of the Keys. There was a door in each wall that was big enough, and nothing else. The walls glowed with light, as in the Compass Tower. She pressed a stud by one of the doors.
The door slid open to reveal a solid glowing wall. She opened another one. This door opened to reveal a dark, narrow hallway. Before trying it, she pushed another stud.
A weirdly sculptured face stared at her from an archaic red brick wall. It had pointed ears, a long pointed face, and was laughing. Grimacing, she closed that one and tried another.
Another dark hallway stretched in front of her.
She had to go somewhere. With a glance at the other open doorway, she edged inside. The walls here didn’t glow, and she slid her feet carefully along the floor before committing her weight forward. After a few steps, the corridor began to curve.
A moment later, she had followed it right back to the same little room again. Ariel closed the doors to the circular hallway and stood inside the room. It might not have an exit, of course; this was the work of a paranoid who’s tendencies had been openly revealed. The room could just be a prison.
“Well, now what?” She said aloud.
A muffled response sounded behind one of the doors. She pressed the stud and found herself looking at the grotesque sculptured face again. All its features were exaggerated.
“What did you say?” She demanded.
“Pull my nose,” it said.
“Who are you?”
“Pull my nose.”
“What happens when I do?”
“Pull my nose.”
“Is that all you can say?”
“Pull my nose.”
She watched it for a moment. “One, two, three.”
“Pull my nose.”
She figured it out, then. This was a function robot without a positronic brain. It had one line to say, triggered by any sound of human speech.
Holding her breath, she pulled its nose.
The long, narrow nose stretched toward her and then suddenly snapped back, out of her grasp. On impact, the entire sculpture collapsed into itself, inverted, and pushed itself out the other way. Then the brick wall broke into quarters and each piece receded sideways, carrying the inverted face with it.
She was looking down a short ramp into another corridor, this one lined with glowing stones cut in the shape of the Keys but not in a smooth surface. Their corners protruded irregularly out of the wall to create a jagged, textured wall. The entire shape of the corridor as she faced the opening was in the shape of the corridor as she faced the opening was in the shape of the Keys, as well.
Still stepping carefully, she ventured down the ramp. After a moment, she realized that she was chillier than before…air was moving against her soaked clothing. Puzzled, she turned around-and found the walls, ceiling, and floor behind her converging to pinch off the corridor after she had passed.
She hurried forward a little, despite her caution, and came up against a stone wall at the end. Starting to panic, she ran her hands across the stones, feeling for a control of some kind. She felt nothing and whirled around to look at the shrinking corridor.
Suddenly something dropped from the ceiling in front of her and she flattened against the end wall, trying to see the object as it swayed before her face. She recognized it as Wolruf’s head, dangling on a long piece of rope tied into an ancient noose.
As she stared at it in horror, she realized that it was only a function robot rendered in realistic detail.
“Why arr ‘u ‘err?” The robot asked, in Wolruf’s voice.
Ariel’s spine prickled at the sound. She glanced behind the hanging head. The corridor had stopped closing behind her and now had left her in a very small dungeonlike space.
“Wrong answer,” said the robot, though she hadn’t spoken.
Suddenly the floor rose under Ariel’s feet, pushing her up toward the ceiling. The rope retracted with her, keeping the Wolruf head level with her as she rose. The ceiling opened and then the section of floor stopped, now flush with the floor just above the stone corridor.
The abrupt halt threw her off balance and she fell on a rich, gold carpet. Above her, five elaborate chandeliers sparkled and shone from a surprisingly low beamed ceiling. She rose up on her elbows, looking around fearfully.
She was in a library. Shelves of antique books, not computer tapes, stretched around all the walls and were protected by a transparent barrier of some kind. Turning, she stepped off the lift platform away from the Wolruf head.
A candelabra of some sort was on a shelf outside the transparent barrier that protected the books. It stood inside a blue and white bowl, leaning to one side. The candelabra was on a round base, with one central stem holding one candle and four branches arching upward on each side to total nine. She had never seen one before, whatever it was, and thought it seemed out of place here, as though someone had set it down and forgotten it.
She stepped back and looked at the bowl. It was large enough to serve four or five people plenty of food. Light blue designs danced around the white background on the outside. It had never been meant to hold a candelabra, though. Someone had left these here carelessly.
“What iss it?” The Wolruf head asked.
Ariel flinched at the sound and looked at the head. “A candleholder of some kind, obviously.”
“Wrong again.”
One of the shelved walls glided away soundlessly. She stood where she was, eyeing the dark opening that appeared. An animal-no, a function robot, almost certainly-stepped into a space where light fell on it. It had Wolruf’s caninoid body and Ariel’s own face.
“If you’re standing on the surface of the planet Earth in Webster Groves, Missouri,” said the robot-Ariel, “which way is Robot City?”
She stared at it hopelessly. “I’m no navigator. Not without some kind of information to use, anyway.”
Robot-Ariel cocked her head, turned, and trotted away.
The wall of shelves slid back into place.
Ariel sank to the floor in a mixture of relief and despair. She couldn’t just go on wandering aimlessly in the real-life manifestation of one man’s insanity. If this place offered a way out, she could figure it out. If it didn’t, she might as well stay in this room instead of going forward into some dungeon cell or something worse.
As before, her knowledge of Dr. Avery was the only source of clues she had, and she no longer had Jeff’s memories or Derec’s facility with robots to help. All right. Basically, what did she know?
She knew he was a genius, that he was paranoid, that he wanted to create a perfect society. But what did this crazy place have to do with order and rationality? What was it doing on Robot City?
Everything she knew about Robot City said that this place just didn’t belong here at all. The more she thought about it, the more she realized that every line of thought brought her back to that one conclusion. “That’s it,” she whispered to herself suddenly. “He’s gone over the edge. He’s even crazier than before.”
In the heart of a planet-wide city based on logic and efficiency, its creator had lost his mind.
She smiled at the irony. It wasn’t funny, exactly, but it was…funny. Somehow.
Exhaustion and fear made her giddy. She began to giggle. The more she thought about this-about all their discussions of the Laws of Robotics and all their convoluted efforts to reason with the positronic brains of the robots-and how it had led to this……She really began to laugh. She fell onto the floor on her back, laughing in the little room by herself.
The wall of shelves slid open again, apparently triggered by the sound of her laughter.
Suddenly on guard again, she sat up and looked around. The function robot with her face was back.
“If you’re standing on the surface of the planet Earth in Webster Groves, Missouri,” said the robot-Ariel again, “which way is Robot City?”
Ariel giggled again. “Up, of course.” She laughed-and the floor gave way beneath her.