Jeff looked back over his shoulder and then came back. He watched Derec for a minute and shook his head. “I don’t know what to do. We can’t just stop.”
Derec coughed and shook his head in frustration. He wanted to speak and didn’t have the breath for it yet. Quickly, he pointed in a stabbing motion in the direction of the humanoids.
Ariel turned to look. “They aren’t coming yet. At least, I don’t see anybody.”
“No,” Derec wheezed. “That’s not what I mean.” He paused again, still breathing hard. His head was spinning dizzily.
“We could try supporting you between us again,” said Jeff. “But we can only do that by standing up and walking.”
“Wait, wait.” Derec inhaled deeply and looked up at both of them. “Those aren’t Hunters. I’m sure of it.”
“Really?” Ariel scooted closer to him. “Derec, are you sure? You’re not exactly in the best condition.”
“Hunters wouldn’t just pass by like that without even looking down the row. They can’t be Hunters. “
“Makes sense to me,” said Jeff slowly. “So who are they, then? And what are they doing in this valley?”
“I was thinking about that, too,” said Derec. “I think they’re migrating. They’re following that mysterious migration programming we told you we heard about.”
“So the only danger from them,” said Jeff, “is that if they notice us, the Hunters can ask them where we were. Otherwise they won’t bother us?”
“That’s right,” said Derec. “But we can also find out where they’re going-where their assembly point is. And what this whole operation is for.”
“Now?”Ariel said, making a face. “Derec, we don’t have much time left to find Avery. We can’t just go wandering off-”
“No! Don’t you understand? This migration thing is Avery’s doing. If we can figure it out, maybe we’ll find him. He’s behind it all, and it’s obviously very important to him.”
“That sounds awfully risky,” said Jeff.
“Look at me! Risky? I don’t have much time left!” Derec spoke forcefully, but was too weak to speak loudly now. “I think we’ve talked long enough. What are we going to do?”
“That row is full of robot footsteps, too,” said Ariel. “Ours would be camouflaged some.”
“It is something to go on,” Jeff said slowly.
“I wish Mandelbrot was here,” said Ariel. “And poor Wolruf, running around in Robot City with him. I wonder where they are. I hope they’re all right.”
“We can’t worry about them,” said Derec. “We can’t help them directly now, anyway. If we get to Avery, we can make him ease up on them, too. We have to concentrate on Avery.”
“That’s right,” said Jeff. “The truth is, they can probably take care of themselves better then we can, especially Mandelbrot. And Derec seems to be the one Dr. Avery is after.”
“I’ve been putting some ideas together,” said Derec. “While we were crawling in the mud back there, just now.”
“All right,” said Jeff, “let’s hear ‘em. If they aren’t going to come after us, we have a few minutes.”
“Unless the Hunters get here too,” added Ariel.
“Listen,” said Derec…Avery learned from Professor Leong that the two most important forces behind cultural longevity are passing on values and maintaining a distinct identity. Right?”
“Sure,” said Jeff.
“So passing values down is not a problem with robots; they’re just programmed. They can process information much faster and keep more of it accessible than humans.”
“No argument there,” said Jeff.
Ariel nodded. “And all along, we’ve seen that these Avery robots are different from any other sort. They behave in a different way. Their programming must have been special from the beginning.”
“Exactly,” said Derec. “Both of those facts fit perfectly. And the isolation of Robot City prevents it from being altered by cultures from the outside. “
Jeff nodded. “Its location is still a secret.”
“So Avery really took those two lessons to heart and used them to form Robot City,” said Ariel.
“One big question remains,” said Derec. “What values did he program into them?”
“Efficiency,” said Jeff.
“Harmony,” said Ariel. “Both of those. A kind of idealism. Remember when they gave us their provisional Laws of Humanics, for ideal human behavior? Robot City was supposed to be a kind of utopia. We already knew that.”
“But now we know what kind-on what basis.” Derec nodded with excitement. He now felt a surge of energy again that animated him once more.
“I’m starting to get the idea,” said Jeff. “What do you want to do about it?”,
“Challenge the system,” said Derec. “Force it to malfunction. or at least make it look like it is.”
“To make Avery show himself,” Ariel said. “All right. I get it. But… how?”
“We have to present the system-that is, the central computer-with irrational events,” said Derec. “Look-the Supervisors originally needed us to solve a crime against a human when we first arrived. The system here has that weak point.”
“And we never did figure out who the victim was, either,” said Ariel. She shivered. “He looked just like you. That still gives me the creeps, even now.”
Derec said nothing. When he had first entered Avery’s office he had come across some mysterious information about the dead man that he had never shared with Ariel. This was no time to launch into that topic.
Jeff looked at her in surprise. They had never told him that part of their story.
“Well, for the moment, forget it,” said Derec sharply. “One crisis at a time. The reason we arranged the Hamlet performance was also to accomplish something that the robots weren’t ready to handle.”
“I see what you’re getting at,” said Jeff. “That’s a weak point in the system. A utopia isn’t supposed to have crimes and these Avery robots can’t really handle them.”
“Exactly,” said Derec. “I think we have to commit a few crimes against humanoid robots. We aren’t bound by the Laws of Robotics and Mandelbrot isn’t around to interfere if a situation arose that involved the Laws.”
Jeff grinned wryly. “Okay…let’s become criminals. What’ll we do first, boss?”
Derec grinned himself, despite his discomfort. “We have to incapacitate a robot. “
“Murder one?” Ariel shook her head. “I don’t see how. Those heads of theirs are as hard as a ship’s hull. We could bonk them on the head and not even get their attention.”
All three of them giggled nervously. The tension was broken a little by the hope of taking aggressive action.
“We can’t unfasten their bodies, either,” said Jeff, still grinning. “No tools. Otherwise, we could just sneak up behind them, power up the tools, and leave a little junkpile behind.”
“We could go into business later with used parts,” said Ariel. “Discounted Avery robot parts, cheap.”
“All right, all right.” Derec shook his head. “We don’t actually need any physical violence. The first thing we have to do is get over to that other row, so we can look for one robot walking alone. Let’s crawl back over there.”
It was a very long crawl. Derec had to stop several times on the way to rest. Each time, he worried that the Hunters were going to catch up to them before they could accomplish anything.
Finally they reached the last few tall, leafy stalks before the break in the rows. The three of them huddled at the corner of the row, where Derec could lean forward and look up the slope. Jeff and Ariel sat on his other side, both of them looking around anxiously for Hunters coming from other directions.
“Nothing yet,” said Derec. “That gives me time to explain what I have in mind.”
“I hope more are coming this way,” said Ariel. “What if the bunch going to that assembly point is all there?”