They had no idea where they were.
Chapter 3. Webster Groves
The apartment was small, cramped, mean. It had not been lived in-there were no human touches, no pictures of relatives, no flowers or personalized decorations. It was very clean, but the flooring looked worn-no carpets-and the door handles looked dulled from use. A silly-looking robot stood against one wall.
This room was perhaps three meters by five and had a chair and a small couch that might seat two-three if they didn’t mind contact. There was a curious blank space against one wall; a control panel was near one closed door. An open door led into what seemed to be a bedroom. A third door was closed and smaller than the others.
In the bedroom, Derec saw when he took a step, was another closed door. It was side by side with the closed door in this room, and he judged that they were both closets. Also in that wall, in both rooms, were drawer pulls-drawers built into the wall. A faint mechanical hum permeated the apartment.
And that was it.
“Just two rooms,” he said in disbelief.
“No bathroom!” said Ariel.
“No. And no kitchen or dining room.”
They looked at each other. The only thing Derec could think of was a prison, but that wasn’t right; there’d be a bathroom, at least. And this was too small and sterile for a prison, anyway.
“I wonder if that robot is functional,” said Ariel, frowning at it.
It didn’t look functional. It had a rigid, silly grin on a plastic face, unlike any robot Derec had seen or heard of. Now that he looked at it critically, its joints and the associated drive mechanisms looked large and clumsy. His training in robotics had dealt primarily with the brains, but the bodies, too, had been covered. It seemed to be looking at them, but it hadn’t moved, of course.
“Robot, are you functional?” Derec asked.
“Yes, master,” it said obsequiously, not moving, that fatuous grin never altering.
Robots should not have phoney human faces,Derec thought in irritation; one kept wanting to respond, but there was no emotion there to respond to.
“What is your name?”
“My name is R. David, master.”
Ariel looked questioningly at him. Derec shook his head. Robots often had human names, if they attended humans. Ariel had told him that as a child she had named her nurse robot Guggles, though her parents had named the robot Katherine. Nowhere, though, had he heard of a robot with a prefix to its name. R. David? Or had he heard
“R. David, what planet is this?” Ariel asked.
“This is Earth, Miss Avery,” the robot said respectfully.
Startled-staggered, in fact-they looked at each other.
Of course! The rooms were so small, so cramped and mean, because Earth was immensely overpopulated. It had more people than all fifty Spacer worlds put together. The robot was crude because Earthmen were backward in robotics and in fact had a strong prejudice against them.
As strong as their prejudice against Spacers.
“We might have been better off back on Robot City,” Derec said.
“Maybe we can get back to civilization from here,” Ariel said.
“Good thinking. R. David, is it possible to take ship from Earth to the Spacer worlds?”
“Yes, Mr. Avery. Ships leave Earth at least weekly, and often more frequently.”
Mr. Avery! And he had called Ariel “Miss Avery.” They glanced at each other and with one accord decided not to mention it.
It seemed obvious to Derec that this robot was accustomed to seeing Dr. Avery come and go in the instantaneous fashion possible only to Key wielders. It had accepted that “Avery” could come and go in such fashion. Seeing them arrive in the same way, it came to the logical but wrong conclusion that they were “Averys,” though they were obviously not “Or. Avery.”
“The first thing to do, then, is to get to the spaceport,” Derec said. “Does that door lead to the outside?”
“One moment, Mr. Avery, if you please. It would not be wise for you to venture forth without preparation.”
“What sort of preparation?” Derec asked. The robot was right; this was Earth.
“First, you will need a complete prophylactic regimen against the diseases of Earth. These are many and varied, and you have no natural immunity.”
Frost, that was so. They looked at each other in alarm.
“However, the problem is not so great as most Spacers believe.”
The robot stirred, opened a drawer in the wall and produced hypoguns, vials, pills. Grimacing, but needing no urging, they submitted themselves to their use.
“Take the pills when next you drink. If at any time you have any physical sensations of illness, you must notify me at once. It will be necessary to diagnose you immediately for treatment. “
Derec and Ariel nodded solemnly, more than a little nervous at the thought of Earthly diseases.
“You will also need identification, ration slips and tags, and money,” said R. David decisively when that was done. Moving clumsily, it opened the door to the closet in the sitting room. It was jammed with things, from a bookviewer and boxes of records to compact duplication devices. Derec recognized these as Spacer-made, and surmised that it would be no great feat to duplicate Earthly ID symbols.
In this he was correct. R. David lowered the blank thing on the wall-a folding table-and spent an hour or so producing numerous bits of plastic and metal bearing their pictures, long numbers, various obscure statements about them, and of course a complete ID workup, including fingerprints, footprints, retinal scans, corneal images, ear pictures, and blood analysis.
“Dr. Avery procured comparatively large sums of Earthly money when he first landed,” R. David explained. “He traded rare metals for it. Of course, money as such is of little value on Earth, as it can only be used to purchase nonessentials such as book recordings. Food, housing, clothing, and so on, are rationed.”
“Frost,” said Ariel nervously. “I wouldn’t want some poor Earther to starve because I got his rations.”
“There is no danger of that, Miss Avery. There is ample margin. It does no harm to anyone to provide you with Earthly ID, as Dr. Avery has more than paid for the consumption of Earth’s scarce resources with his rare metals. Rationed items are available in amounts and qualities controlled by the individual’s rating.”
“Rating?”
“One’s position in Earthly society. I understand that things are not greatly different in any human society, but on Earth such things have been formalized to a much higher degree.”
“It’s true that in the Spacer worlds the most important people usually get the best of what’s going,” said Ariel wryly. “Maybe Earth is actually more honest in admitting this. What kind of government does Earth have? Is it democratic, aristocratic, or what? Do the higher ratings run everything?”
“In answer to your last question, yes, to a degree. Earth is a democratic syndicalism, with elections to Parliament made from location-in the lower house-and from industry to the upper house, or senate. Elections are democratic in those areas, but most of the administration is by appointed officials, these being people who have passed certain tests and worked their way up from less important offices. Syndicalism means that industry-primarily the feeding, housing, and clothing of the population-dominates the government.”
“I can see how that would be necessary,” said Derec, watching the robot’s big, clumsy hands proceed delicately at their task. “How many ratings are there, and what’s the highest?”
“Currently there are twenty-one ratings. The rating A is usually considered the highest. It is rarely bestowed. Only ten million humans are in this rating category.”
One out of ten,Derec thought automatically. Then he caught himself. No: on Aurora, or most of the Spacer worlds, ten million would be ten percent of the populace. But Earth had