“Oh, no.” Derec rubbed his forehead, stifling an embarrassed smile of his own.
“What is it?” Jeff asked, looking at them all one after another. “What’s wrong? Don’t you want to leave any more?”
“Jeff.” Ariel went over to him and gave him a hug. “You actually came back for us. That’s wonderful. Please don’t misunderstand. It really means a great deal. Thank you.”
Jeff hugged her back lightly, clearly uncomfortable. “I don’t get it. What’s going on?”
“Jeff,” said Derec. “We can get off the planet now if we want. In fact, we can travel pretty far-as far as Earth and back. We…I…have a different problem now.”
“You can travel now?”
“I’m afraid so,” said Derec.
Jeff looked at Ariel, who shrugged. Then he gave a short laugh, shaking his head. “Mind if I sit down?” He collapsed on the floor where he was, not too far from Derec.
“I thought you were going to send someone else back,” said Derec. “I had no idea you’d come yourself.”
“How did you find it?” Mandelbrot asked. “If you remember, I had no navigational data to give you.”
“I had a computer cross-reference the Aurora-Nexus route with what little I knew. It worked.” Jeff ran a hand through his black hair, staring at the floor. “I’m a little shocked. But I’m glad you haven’t been stranded.”
“How did you get here?” Derec asked.
“I was picked up by a ship headed back to Aurora. Once I got back there, I put together the location where I was picked up, the length of time it took me to get there, and the nearest stars. A computer gave me the likely directions, but I had to try several before I got the right one.” He shrugged. “The hard part was getting my father to spring for the rental of a ship. And now I have to tell him it was unnecessary.”
“Well…” Ariel started.
Jeff turned to look at her.
“We could still use some help;’ she said. “We have to find Dr. Avery before his robots get ahold of us.”
“Avery! Did you say Dr. Avery?” Jeff sat up straight.
“You’ve heard of him?” Ariel said, dropping down to sit next to him. “Where?”
“Mandelbrot, Wolruf,” said Derec. “Come closer and follow this. It may turn out to be important.”
“Well,” said Jeff. “I tried to explain to my father what I needed the ship for and he reminded me that this weird guy named Avery once had some wild plans about a planet with a planned community sort of like this one.”
“Wait a minute! This was supposed to be a secret,” said Ariel. “My mother funded it. How does your father know about it?”
“He doesn’t, really. It’s just that Dr. Avery gave away some hints when we met him.”
“Met him?”Derec and Ariel cried in unison.
“Look, I don’t remember it very well-”
“We’ve all had a few memory problems,” Ariel said with annoyance. “Come on, this is important to us.”
“When?” Derec demanded. “Recently? Back on Aurora?”
“No, no, no. A long time ago. A couple of years ago.“
Derec settled back. “What happened?”
“He was still planning then, I bet,” said Ariel. “Considering how fast these robots work, that’s plenty of time.”
“He came to consult with my father,” said Jeff. “My father is a professor of Spacer cultural studies. His specialty is tracing the development and evolution of the various Spacer communities.”
“What does that mean?” Derec asked.
“They’re comparative studies,” said Jeff. “What planets have in common and what they don’t. How they’re organized. How their values differ. Stuff like that.”
“Your father must be an expert in that, huh?” Ariel said. “That’s why Avery sought him out.”
“I guess.” Jeff shrugged. “Anyhow, a couple of years ago, this Dr. Avery asked to consult informally with him. My father was real impressed with the guy. He said Avery was an eccentric genius, and made me tag along to meet him.”
“What did he want to talk about?” Derec asked.
“He was asking about social matrices,” said Jeff. “In particular, how my father would set up a utopia, if he could.”
“Utopia.” Derec exchanged a glance with Ariel. “That’s how he viewed this experiment, isn’t it?”
She nodded. “Jeff. We can use any clues you have to Avery’s personality.”
“I can tell you what I remember. Why do you have to find him, anyway?”
“He implanted a kind of…well, sort of a disease in Derec that only he can remove. We have to figure out where he is on the planet. Can you tell us what he’s like?”
“I hate to tell you this, but I don’t remember him very well.” Jeff looked at all of them apologetically. “I wasn’t that old, and I didn’t really care about seeing him. I went because my father wanted me to meet this genius. He said it would be a good experience for me. The truth is, I didn’t get much out of it.”
“Anything,” said Ariel. “Just start talking. Maybe things will come back to you.”
“Well…my father had a very high regard for him. More than usual. I mean, he’s surrounded by very capable people all the time. They were pretty friendly for a while.”
“Then what?” Derec asked. “Dr. Avery left Aurora, I suppose?”
Jeff shook his head. “Not right away. That is, he came and went for a time. My father had some sort of falling out with him, I think, but I never bothered to ask about it.”
“Are you sure you don’t know why they stopped being friends?” Ariel asked. “It might turn out to be important.”
“I think he was pretty egotistical. I got that impression right away. And he was definitely eccentric. I guess my father just got tired of listening to him.”
“That fits my mother’s description,” Ariel said to Derec. “Can we use that somehow?”
“I don’t know. We’ve all found dealing with him unpleasant.” Derec shrugged. “Mandelbrot, you can correlate data the best of us all. What do you think?”
“We have information about Robot City,” said Mandelbrot. “And we have information about Dr. Avery. However, we don’t have the necessary correlations to narrow the scope of his whereabouts.”
“What about our staying here?” Derec asked. “Are we safer staying here longer, or should we move?”
“I only have a guess,” said the robot. “I again used an evasive route in returning here, but the fact that the truck vanished from sight in the same general area as last time will narrow the Hunters’ scope considerably. On the other hand, traveling somewhere else clearly provides more data to the central computer of our whereabouts every time we are witnessed by any robot in the city.”
Derec sighed and rubbed the stiff muscles in his legs. “Thank you for the lecture. What’s your conclusion?”
“We are better off remaining here for the remainder of the day. At nightfall, travel will be safer than staying here. These are both calculated risks, not cert-”
“I understand,” said Derec. He gritted his teeth and lay down again. Normally he wanted to know how Mandelbrot formed his judgments because the robot’s consistent logic could be informative. Now he was just too tired and in too much pain for that.
“Maybe we should all rest,” said Ariel. “If we’re going to go somewhere else after dark.”
“Good idea,” said Wolruf.
Derec closed his eyes. He heard Wolruf pad away, presumably to relax in a spot of her choosing.
“I was planning to go out again to seek a food source,” said Mandelbrot, “but I now consider it too risky. All of you can remain healthy through the day without sustenance. When we travel at night, we may find food in some way. Is this acceptable?”
“Sure,” Derec muttered, without opening his eyes.
“All right,” said Ariel.
“You know,” Jeff said slowly, “I have plenty of supplies on board the Minneapolis. I didn’t realize food was a problem for you. The only question is how to get it.”