"I see," said Derec, nodding to himself. He had stopped to wait for another group to make way, but instead of releasing the brake and gunning the accelerator, he pulled the scooter over to the side of a building and parked it. "Come on, Mandelbrot, let's take a walk."
"Forgive me, master, but I thought you were in a rush.”
“Well, either the enlightenment I've gained from your answers has enabled me to come to grips with circumstances-or else I've decided we can make faster time by simply going with the flow. Take your pick."
But after taking only a few steps, Derec stopped as he sensed a curious nothingness at his side. Indeed, Mandelbrot had not yet begun to keep pace with him. The robot had remained standing beside the sidecar with his head tilted at a curious angle, as if deep in thought. "Mandelbrot? What's keeping you?"
The robot shook his head as if aroused from a dream. "Forgive me, master, I did not mean to detain you. It is merely that, lacking sufficient information, I cannot choose why we are walking."
Derec rolled his eyes to the sky in exasperation; the clouds glowed bright red, as if the planet were inexorably Calling toward a giant star. "Both are why, Mandelbrot. I was just making a little joke-trying to be ironic; humorous, if you will.”
“Humor and irony are two subjective qualities of the human experience that never cease to confuse me. You must explain them to me sometime.”
"A pun is the lowest form of humor-and I will devise some way to punish you if you don't hurry! Now let's go!"
Derec was a little upset; his remark had come out unintentionally disagreeable, and he disliked being temperamental with robots. He could never shake the feeling that it was bad form. But he had to admit his inadvertent chastisement had two effects on Mandelbrot, one good and the other bad. The good was that for the next few minutes Mandelbrot did not waver from Derec's side for a moment. The bad was that Mandelbrot continued to ask about the subtleties of humor until Derec had no choice but to forbid him directly to speak of the matter until later. How much later was something Derec neglected to specify, which meant that Mandelbrot could bring up the joke again at practically any time. Derec trusted that the robot's perceptual programming would permit him to wait until deviations from the subject at hand were less exasperating.
The crowd in the square facing the building was as tightly packed as any Derec had ever experienced. He did not know this in his mind, because of course he could not remember the crowds he may have seen or been in during his dim, unremembered past. Instead, he felt the certain knowledge in the tightness in his chest, in the unfamiliar sensation of his skin squirming, and in a sudden urge-one difficult to control-to get out, to flee the square as quickly as possible and find a place where it would be easier to breathe.
Robots don't need to breathe,he told himself, concentrating on thoughts as rational as possible to bring himself to a state of calm. You're the only one using air here.
After a moment, he realized that it was only the unexpectedness of being pressed in from all sides that was agitating him. An observation had been fitfully forming in his mind, and its elusiveness had been an unobserved factor in his distress. For not even in Rockliffe Station, where Derec diverted the normal robot traffic from a major intersection so that they could steal the Key to Perihelion (which they needed still, in order to escape from the planet), had robots gathered in such close proximity. Hmm. I'm willing to bet that when I regain my memory, I' ll learn that I'm not used to crowds at all. he thought.
"Mandelbrot," he whispered, for some reason not wanting to be overheard, "quickly, give me an estimate. How many robots are here?"
"Visual scan indicates the court itself is six thousand square meters. Each robot takes up little area, but their natural politeness seems to be ensuring that they maintain a certain distance from one another. I would estimate there are approximately ten thousand robots here."
"Counting the ones standing under the building?”
“Ten thousand four hundred and thirty-two.”
“I can't see Ariel or Wolruf. Can you?"
"Despite my broader visual spectrum, no, I cannot. Shall I try an olfactory scan?"
"No. I hope they got stuck in the crowd.”
“Is that an example of human animosity?"
"No, just a thirst for poetic justice. I'm sure they'll arrive soon.'.
Taking a deep breath, Derec grabbed Mandelbrot by the elbow and they worked through the crowd in earnest. Now that they were on foot, the robots made way for them almost without noting their presence. Without exception, all stared with their equivalent of rapt fascination at the rotating building, the constant motion of which sent shifting waves of incandescence to every point of the square. Robots of all colors glowed unnaturally, as if in perpetual cool states of internal combustion. The various copper, tungsten, iron, gold, silver, chromium, and aluminum teguments, reflecting the colors from the planes, contributed additional subtle nuances to the scene.
Derec kept thinking the robots should be burning hot, on the verge of melting like wax, but Mandelbrot's arm remained cool to his touch, cooler even than the breeze whipping between the buildings into the square.
As for the tetragonal pyramid itself, the crimson, indigo, magenta, and ochre planes each appeared twice-once on the upper level and once on the lower. As the clouds directly above reflected a particular shade, the square around Derec was awash with another. Derec only noticed this effect in the back of his mind, however. He was completely preoccupied with the shifting nuances of color within each plane.
Each shade appeared to be composed of semitransparent fields, haphazardly laid on top of one another. Vessels of color-some filled with surging liquids, some not-writhed in and out and through the planes like hopelessly intertwined serpents. Though the vessels also possessed quivering vibrissae that only added to the unpredictable textures, the actual number of elements producing variations remained constant, producing the effect of unimaginable forces held strictly, remorselessly under control.
The crimson planes resembled raging infernos. The indigo planes reminded him of a shifting representation of waters from a hundred worlds, from a thousand seas. The magenta was both fire and water, merged into the contradictory texture of the petals of an easily bruised rose, composed of hardy fibers. And the ochre was the combined colors of wheat reflecting the blazing setting sun, of lava rippling down a scorched mountainside, and of solar flares spitting out in great plumes from the surface of a fluctuating nova. And all those things and more were ambushed and trapped there, in a space possessing two separate and distinct masses: the marble-like mass of the building itself, and the airy mass of eternity itself, seen from the point of view of an eye at the edge of the universe.
Ultimately, the intent was unclear, even enigmatic. Derec could not be sure what the form of the structure meant, but now that he was seeing it up close, he was convinced more than ever that every inch represented the purposeful activity of a single mind striving to piece together a particular puzzle in a particular way. An independently conceived puzzle.
Derec had to learn how the actual construction job was accomplished. Obviously, the builder had learned how to reprogram a sector of individual metallic cells in Robot City's central computer. Perhaps he had introduced a kind of metallic virus into the system, a virus that performed to preconceived specifications. Derec didn't even know how to begin doing either task. That meant that not only had a robot conceived the building, it had also performed a few scientific breakthroughs in the software department.