Ariel thought about that for a moment. As long as they weren’t arrested and the Key to Perihelion taken from them, it didn’t matter.
“Oh. The Key is focused on the apartment,” she said. “We’d be unable to retreat to it.” She remembered well the occasion when they’d had to do so.
“We will be in any case; we couldn’t begin to explain our reappearance,” Derec said. “They’d guess too much-”
“Zymoveal,” said R. Jennie. “There is also a chicken wing for each of you. Chicken soup, made of real chicken with yeast enhancement. Bread, real potatoes, gravy.”
A simple, hearty meal. Ariel ate with good appetite, but her stomach seemed to have shrunk. Weeks of eating little in hospital had altered her eating habits. Derec, however, carried on grimly, eating long after it became obvious that he’d had all he wanted, eating on to the edge of nausea.
When the robot had retreated, Ariel said, “I see. It’s all or nothing. Well, if so I won’t weep. If we could just get to New York!”
“Don’t think I haven’t thought about it. I’d be tempted to walk-it’s on this continent-but it’s a couple of thousand kilometers, and we’d starve.”
“Too bad. Derec, why do you go on eating when anyone can see you’re full?”
He looked up at her grimly, harassed, his eyes sunken, his face thin and lined…I’ve not been eating enough, or sleeping well enough. Everybody says so. I need to get my strength back now that you’re well.”
“Have you really worried that much about me?” she asked, her heart thumping. She felt flattered, and also dismayed, as if it were her fault.
“Well, it isn’t just that.” Derec lowered his fork, swallowed coffee, looked queasy. “I’ve been upset. I haven’t been sleeping. I-I keep having this strange stupid dream. About Robot City.”
Ariel stared at him…, A stupid dream made you look like a walking wreck?”
“Yes.” He looked…frightened. “Ariel, there’s something unusual about this. I-I keep dreaming that Robot City is inside me. We’ve got to get back there.”
Robot City!
Ariel’s mind was flooded with a hundred images, sounds, odors even, of the great robot-inhabited planet, where the busy machines worked away like so many bees, building and building for the ultimate good of humans. It was an Earthly City without a roof, populated by robots rather than humans. They’d been trapped there, first by the robots themselves, then by their mad designer, Dr. Avery.
“Go back there?” she whispered tensely. “I’ll never go back!”
“We must,” said Derec, his voice just as low and determined, but also indifferent. It was as if he was speaking not to her but to himself. “I’m dying or something. I don’t know what Dr. Avery did to me, but…”
What had he not already done? Derec had lost his memory long ago, and only Dr. Avery could have removed it. She had known that as soon as she realized that he had lost all memory of her. Human beings were less than robots to Avery, they were guinea pigs.
Go back? To save Derec’s life?
But I’m cured! she wanted to cry. I can go back to Aurora and say to them: Look, the despised Earthers cured me after you cast me out! You don’t need to watch your sons and daughters lose their memories and die-you can cure them. If you can persuade the Earthers to tell you how!
There need be no more of this aimless existence, running from planet to planet, looking for a cure, for an excuse to go on hoping. There could be a home, a place in society, all the wealth of associations that membership in the human society meant.
They could even consider the Keys, the existence of aliens, Robot City itself-they could report Dr. Avery, turn the Key over to the proper authority, shift the burden to other shoulders.
Ariel sighed.
“You don’t look good,” she said.
After all, how much did she owe him, anyway? At lot of apologies, if nothing else. She’d blamed him wrongly for too much.
“I hope there are star charts in the ship,” he said. Derec put a hand to his brow. “If we can get back to Kappa Whale, we can take both ships back to Robot City. That’ll give us a spare. Dr. Avery won’t think of that-I hope.” He rubbed his face slowly; his eyes squinted as if the light were too bright.
“Is it getting dark?” he asked.
“Not yet,” Ariel said. “The sun will be setting in a little while, but it won’t start to get dark for another hour.”
“Oh.”
“What kind of dreams have you been having?” she asked skeptically, thinking that they might have been right: if he’d not been eating, or sleeping, it might all be strain-
“Like I said, I dream that Robot City has been shrunk into my bloodstream. I don’t know why it frosts me so, but it does. I can’t shake it off. It’s a -a haunting feeling.” He rubbed his face again, haggard.
Ariel didn’t know what to say. “It…doesn’t sound like an ordinary dream.”
“I’m sure it’s no dream,” he said instantly, looking sick. “Something’s going on.” R. Jennie entered the opening of the tent and he said, dully, “R. Jennie, what are chemfets?”
“I do not know, Mr. Avery.”
“Derec-”
“I wish I could sleep. It drives you crazy if you don’t have real dreams.”
“Derec, you really look-awful.” Ariel felt a stab of real fear. “Oh, Derec!”
He looked as if he were about to throw up. Drooling, he pushed his light camp chair back, starting to get up. He fell over.
“ Derec!”
R. Jennie came with a rush, cradled him as Derec’s arms and legs started to flail. “He is having convulsions. I do not know what is wrong,” she said. “Help me hold him-”
Ariel was too weak herself to be of much help, but after a few moments Derec’s seizure eased, he sighed heavily, and he began to breathe in a more normal fashion instead of inhaling in great tortured gasps. His limbs relaxed, and R. Jennie warily lowered him to the carpet-covered grass of the tent floor.
“He seems to be much better, but this is not a natural sleep,” said the robot. “Unfortunately, there is no communo in the area, nor do I possess a subetheric link. I must go for help. Ariel, you must watch him.”
“What do I do if he…has another seizure?” she asked, huskily.
“Hold him. Do not put a spoon in his mouth.” And with that puzzling admonition, the robot began to run toward the City.
Greatly to her relief, Derec awoke within ten minutes. “How are you?” she whispered, frightened.
“I’m okay,” he said faintly. He did look greatly relieved. “Chemfets,” he said.
“What?”
“Robot City is inside me, in a manner of speaking.” Derec struggled with her weak help to a sitting position. “I’m thirsty.”
Hastily, Ariel poured him some juice. He drank carefully, seeming a little dizzy.
“We keep thinking of robots in terms of positronic brains,” he said, seemingly at random. “But computers existed before positronic brains and are still widely in use. At least a dozen computers of different sizes for every positronic brain, even on the Spacer worlds. And for a long time there’ve been desultory attempts to reduce computers in size and give them some of the characteristics of life.”
“Derec-are you all right?”
He looked at her seriously, haunting knowledge in his sunken eyes. “No. I’ve been infected with chemfets. Microscopic, self-replicating computer circuits. Robot City is in my bloodstream. When I fell asleep just now, the monitor that Dr. Avery implanted in my brain opened communication with them.”
“What…what are they doing?” Ariel could scarcely grasp it, it was so strange. What would a chemfet want? Was it truly alive?
“Growing and multiplying, at the moment. I don’t think they’re anywhere near…call it maturity. The monitor…I don’t think it’s of any use yet. It’s as if they have nothing to say to me yet.”
“But they may later?” she asked swiftly.
“I suppose.” He looked at her, haggard. “I wonder if they’ve been programmed with the Three Laws?”
Ariel grunted. “Yes. I suppose they’ve been upsetting your body systems. No wonder you’ve been sick. Will… will the dreams continue?”