“Back up on the docks,” she wheezed, and he nodded, led the way. With a grunt they were up, between trucks. The grain trucks didn’t back up to the actual docks, which were quite narrow here. The whole area was fogged with dust.
They heard a shout, “Damn thieves,” and looked back.
They had not been seen yet, but it was only a matter of time. The space beyond the dust cloud was a bedlam of whistles, shouts, and pounding feet. A big truck pulled away, its great wheels churning up more dust but making no sound.
A shout, something about laying the dust, came to them. Ariel couldn’t get her breath. We need oxygen, she thought, and wanted to cough worse than ever. Out there they were coughing, too.
Red lights flamed overhead and a deep-toned horn sounded. Ariel looked up apprehensively to see yellow signs beside the red lights: SPRINKLERS…SPRINKLERS… SPRINKLERS…
“Back in here, quick!” Derec cried, and pulled her back behind a tangle of implements, broken handler trucks, dustbins, and the like.
Water spurted in a fine spray from the overhead, laying the dust immediately. A blue-clad man was among the truck drivers and dock workers; he carried a now-familiar club.
“A cop!” Derec said, groaning.
Ariel had glanced at him. And saw, beyond him-
“A door!”
“Where?”
“There, behind that tire.”
The tire, a huge thing in bright-blue composition, discarded from one of the trucks, marked the end of the dump they were crouched in. There was a passageway by it to a small door.
In a moment they were trying it, and before the sprinklers cut off they were in a small, dim hallway with only one out of three lights burning.
PIPELINE CONTROL SECTION: NO ADMITTANCE TO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONS. But the hall led past. Farther on, they saw: GRAIN BULK SUPPLY RATIONALIZING BALANCING.
“Administrative controls on the basic levels.” said Derec, and Ariel thought of the men and women with clipboards.
“But there’s nobody here,” she said.
“Well, cities grow and change; these may be abandoned, or only needed periodically. The important thing is they may have access above-”
They did.
At the upper level, they found that they were far from the docks, to which they knew better than to return, but were not gone from the barrier yet. The motorways used by emergency vehicles also reached at least to the entry.
Beside the motorway was a pedestrian access door; the motorway door had no controls and probably opened by radio. Once through, walking nervously on the motorway, they found to their frustration that the way avoided the entrance, swooped, and dived down to the lower levels.
“It’s for emergency vehicles,” said Derec. “Ambulances, and so on. Accidents must be common on the docks.”
Presently, they did find a half-concealed route that took them to the opening, and they looked out and down.
It was pouring with cold rain.
Even then Derec didn’t give up, but Ariel’s mind refused to record the details of the rest of the day. For several more hours he kept them prowling around the area, always trying to find a way to get at a big truck. But he could find no garage for them within the City and doubted seriously if there was one near to it.
Finally Ariel pleaded hunger and they gloomily rode the ways back to their section kitchen, able at least to sit down. Ariel felt doomed; one look at the cold gray rain falling endlessly outside had chilled her on some deep, basic level. She knew it was the last she’d ever see of the sky. For Derec, she felt sad, but was too tired to speak.
“We’ll try again tomorrow at a different entrance,” Derec said when she had eaten the little she could. “The sun will be shining-probably, anyway-and things will be all right.”
She nodded indifferently.
Chapter 9. Amnemonic Plague
To Derec’s dismay, Ariel did not reappear that afternoon, and the next morning she arose late and looked terrible.
R. David became alarmed. “Miss Avery, you are not well. What are your symptoms?”
“The same as usual, R. David. Don’t worry; I brought this illness with me; it’s nothing to worry about.” She sounded tired and fretful, trying not to worry his Three Law-dominated brain.
But a robot will worry if it seems appropriate, whether told not to or not. They weren’t so different from humans in that respect, thought Derec, himself alarmed.
“I hope you are indeed not seriously ill, Miss Avery, but please tell me your symptoms so that I may judge. As you know, First Law compels me to help you.”
She grimaced. “Okay. I’m frequently feverish-is there any water in the place?”
“No,” Derec said. “I’ll bring you-frost! is there anything to carry water in?”
“No,” said R. David.
Mentally, Derec cursed all Earthers, individually and collectively, and the Teramin Relationship, too.
“Anyway, I’m often feverish, and tired and lethargic and listless. And-and-” she glanced at Derec. “I have mental troubles. Confusion-I forget where I am, lose track of what’s going on. A lot of the time I sit and don’t speak because I can’t follow the conversation. I’ve been reliving the past a lot. “
Suddenly she cried out passionately, “Nothing seems real! I feel like I’m in a hallucination.”
It was more serious than Derec had thought. Hesitantly, he asked, “Do you feel like going to the section kitchen?”
“No. I don’t feel like doing anything, except drinking a liter of water and going back to bed.”
“You must go to section hospital at once,” said R. David decisively, stepping forward.
Derec could have groaned. “What kind of medical care can you expect in an Earthly hospital?” he asked. “We’ve got to get you back to the Spacer worlds-”
“There’s no cure for me there,” she said quietly. Damn. That was true. Derec hesitated, torn, and said, “Well, back to Robot City, then. Maybe the Human Medical Team has a cure.”
“My medical knowledge is limited, primarily to the effects of Earthly ills on Spacers. But that knowledge makes me doubt that Miss Avery will-will live long enough for a space journey,” said R. David, the catch in his voice obvious. “She is obviously in, or approaching, the-crisis of her disease.”
Derec hesitated. That was too obviously true.
Ariel smiled sadly and said, “I fear he is right, Derec. I-I’m losing my memory-my mind. And it’s getting worse. I couldn’t remember my way back here the other night-”
Abruptly, she was weeping.
Oh. frost.Derec thought helplessly.
R. David gave them an argument; he wanted to accompany them-to carry Ariel, in fact.
“No!” said Derec. “I may be ignorant of many things about Earth, but I know well enough what Earthers do to any robots they catch on the ways. And if we tried to do anything about it, our first words would give us away as Spacers. They’d be allover us. I’ve been chased once by yeast farmers. Frost! I don’t want to have every Earther we meet at our throats.”
It took the firmest commands reinforcing Dr. Avery’s to keep R. David in the apartment. Only when Ariel perked up, as she usually did at the prospect of change, was the robot’s First Law conditioning allayed. Ariel was even almost gay as she left, rendering a zany marching song: “One-two-three! Here we go! Bedlam, Bedlam, ho ho ho! Drrringding ding, brrrumbum bum, brrrreebeedeebee Dabbabba-dumbum-bum!”
But once the door had closed she looked haggard.
“Water,” she said, smiling wanly at Derec’s concerned look.
After she had drunk a liter or so, she gasped for breath a few minutes, but was game to go on. The route to the section hospital was longer than the one to the kitchen, and she drooped visibly. Worse, it was morning now and the express was jammed. They had to stand; Threes weren’t allowed to sit during rush hour.
Itseemed that the nightmare of rushing ways and whistling wind and unconcerned, self-centered Earthers would go on forever. Derec had to watch Ariel-he feared she would collapse-and also watch the signs overhead, fearing that he would forget or confuse the instructions he had carefully impressed on his memory.