“All right,” Derec said to himself. “Maybe the block really isn’t on this terminal. He’s set himself up somewhere else, of course, and he’s simply blocked whatever he’s done at that terminal. That must be it. He hasn’t thought to block this one. Makes sense, doesn’t it?”
When Ariel didn’t answer, he painfully looked back over his shoulder at her. “Ariel?”
She was standing motionless with her eyes open. They seemed to be aimed at the floor just past the desk, but she was not blinking. When he put his hand in front of her, she did not react. He gently reached up to close her eyes with his fingertips. They remained closed.
“We can’t wait,” he said quietly to himself as much as to her. “We can’t just sit here and try to think our way out of this. We don’t have the time.”
He stood up and carefully put one arm around her shoulders. With gentle pressure, he was able to guide her to the couch. She walked stiffly and slowly, with her eyes still closed. He could not get her to sit until he sat down first and pulled her down into a sitting position next to him.
“Ariel?”
He could see her eyes moving beneath her closed lids. After the last few episodes he had seen like this, he didn’t dare try to bring her out of it himself. He would probably just make her worse.
After a few minutes, he moved away from her a little bit and watched her. She was sitting straight, rather primly, with her head up. Maybe she was reliving a trip in the seat of a spacecraft or something. She offered no clues.
Finally she inhaled sharply and blinked a couple of times.
“Ariel?”
She looked at him and then at one of the viewscreens.
“Ariel, are you…with me again?”
“I did it again, didn’t I?” She reached for one of his hands.
“It was different this time. You weren’t shouting or anything.” He held her hand and put his other arm around her.
“I was watching the play,” she said softly. “It was real, wasn’t it? You know the one I mean? I don’t know what I’m doing. I can’t even be sure where I am, or when I am.”
“Slow down,” he said patiently. “One question at a time. You said the play. You mean Hamlet?”
She nodded. “When we did it here.”
“Did it come out any better this time?” He forced a smile, hoping to lighten her mood.
She shook her head, not responding to his humor.
“All right. Look, I’ve decided something. Let’s go see Avernus. Or Euler. Or any of the Supervisors. They’re probably right here in the Compass Tower.”
“Are you sure?”
“We’ve been stuck in here long enough. Come on.” He got up, wincing at the shooting pains in his legs.
She stood up reluctantly. He pushed a button on the control panel on the desk, and a doorway opened in one of the viewscreens. It was a black maw in the center of downtown Robot City.
“Come on.” He edged carefully out the doorway, looking around. All he saw was the short spiral staircase, maybe three meters or a little more, that he had come up when he had first found the office. From here it led down to a closed door. “We won’t find any robots near here. We’ll at least be safe until we get out of the taboo area.”
“All right.” She hadn’t moved from the couch. “But what if I…you know. What if I go into one of my states right in the middle of everything?”
“We’ll just have to chance it.” He looked back and saw the reluctance on her face. “We’ve tried being cautious and we haven’t gotten anywhere. We have to go.”
“I might foul you up, Derec. Not knowing what’s going on and all. If you want me to stay…”
“I may need you to save me, too.” He smiled wistfully. “We’re still a team, no matter what.”
She relented, then. “No matter what.” She followed him to the door and gave his arm an affectionate squeeze.
Derec clung to the rail of the spiral staircase all the way down. His knees burned at every step. He took a deep breath at the bottom, thankful for the rest as she came down behind him. Then he opened the door.
A short hallway extended ahead of them. He recognized it and the gently glowing wall panels that provided light. The end of this hallway marked the nearest limit to the office that robots were allowed to come. Past that point, he and Ariel could encounter robots on their normal duties at any time.
He walked forward slowly, watching for shadows and listening for any sound that would mean unwanted company. If they could get down to the meeting room of the Supervisors, on a lower level, the robots might assume that they had entered from the street level. He did not want them to suspect any other possibility.
Ariel followed closely as he moved through the hallways. These halls were narrow, but this level of the pyramid had very little floor surface. In just a few moments, they came to an elevator.
He took a deep breath and pressed the single button on the wall panel. “About six floors down, if I remember right,” he said quietly. “Do you remember any of this?”
She nodded.
They waited in a tense silence. When the door began to open, he drew in a sharp breath and felt her grab a fistful of the back of his shirt. It was empty, however, and they entered with embarrassed smiles of relief for each other.
He pressed the button for six levels down. The elevator dropped precipitously, but slowed gently enough and came to a smooth stop. Again, they stood completely still while the door opened.
No robots were waiting outside the elevator, but for the first time they could hear sounds of activity. The noises were not specific; perhaps they were no more than a variety of hums created by function robots cleaning the rooms and halls. Still, this level was clearly occupied.
“We’re okay now,” he said quietly. “In fact, we may want to meet a robot who can act as a guide. Just remember. If a robot asks how we got in here, our story is that we came in the front door.”
“And got lost.” She grinned.
“Uh, yeah.”
The halls were wider here, and the ceilings higher; to make the trip worse, the maze was far more intricate. Intersecting halls crossed the main hallways more and more frequently, and they could look down any of them to see further expansions of the labyrinth. Long ago, he had guessed that this level was roughly halfway up the pyramid. The floor surface of this level was very large.
“I just can’t remember,” said Derec, stopping at an intersection of halls. He leaned against one of the glowing panels for support. “We could wander indefinitely. I’ve been taking all the largest halls, but they still haven’t led anywhere.”
Ariel studied his face. ”You’re in pain, aren’t you?”
“I can’t let that stop me, or we won’t get anywhere.”
“Then quit dawdling and come on!” Ariel pushed past him and started down the wider of the two hallways.
He smiled weakly as he followed her. She was being brusque in the hope of angering him, and causing another brief remission of his condition. It didn’t work because he recognized the effort, but he appreciated it as he forced his burning legs to follow her.
Suddenly a rhythmic beeping sound echoed down the hall toward them. A small function robot, only a meter high, rolled toward them with a blue light on its front. A small scoop front functioned as a vacuum, and brushes on retracted tentacles betrayed its second duty as a sweeper. Its beeping recognition of strangers in the halls was probably a third function, nearly an afterthought.
Derec and Ariel stopped, watching it hurry forward. It skidded to a halt in front of them, still beeping.
He laughed. “I guess that’s our alert. I thought we’d rate a siren or two, at least.”
“It’s kind of cute. I suppose it’s sending out another signal as well, huh?”