“Most of their agents are robots,” he said, and that got an instant response, instantly blanked.
A nice fat red herring for you to follow,he thought gleefully, and then idly wondered what a red herring was, and on what planet the phrase had originated.
“Any idea who they are?” Donovan asked, casual again.
Very little. “Only that it’s a sociological investigation. There’s been some talk about Laws of Humanics, the mathematical expressions that describe how human beings relate to each other. Studies of society have been made on various Spacer worlds, as disparate as Aurora and Solaria.” Derec was detailing the theories of certain of the robots of Robot City.
He finished with a shrug. “I suppose that they find Earth the best case study, it having the densest population and the longest cultural history.”
“It seems odd that they’d memory-wipe their agents just for a cultural study,” said Donovan dubiously. “What were you instructed to look for?”
Derec thought fast, holding his face as nearly expressionless as he could. He felt that he was sweating. Keep it close to the truth, he told himself. “The study’s not so important, but uncontaminated data is. If we entered openly, we’d be under the surveillance of your Bureau. Understandable enough; Spacers aren’t common on Earth.”
“Especially not in the Cities,” said Donovan dryly.
“The knowledge that we were being watched, followed, even protected, would affect what we observed. It would be an emotional wall between us and Earth people. It would be a safety net. It would prevent us from living like Earthers.”
“And that’s what you were sent here to do?” The TBI man was skeptical, but not closed-minded.
“Yes. We weren’t told to look for anything specific; that would have warped our data. We were simply told to go to St. Louis, to settle in, to spend some time, and to record our impressions.” The moment he spoke the last four words Derec realized how big an error he’d made.
Then he thought of an explanation. But he was still sweating when the Terry said, “But that doesn’t explain why your memories were erased.”
“Oh. To prevent us from telling anything about the techniques by which our IDs were wiped from your computers. You see, they wanted us to disappear completely, to prevent contamination. “
Donovan nodded slowly. Derec couldn’t tell how much of it he had swallowed.
“I see. Well, you have not yourself violated any law that we know of, except as accessory to violation of the Immigration Act, and computer fraud. The last of which can ‘t be proven, because we have no records to cite! We’ve found platinum and iridium that we think must have been dumped by your organization to pay for your support here. There’s also some hafnium we can’t trace a source for. You, or they, have more than paid for all you’ve consumed, so there are no complaints on that score.”
Donovan looked severely at him. “You understand that there are a lot of red faces at the TBI, and some angry ones elsewhere in Washington. I’m just the A-in-C of the local office, and even I felt the heat. They don ‘t, we don’t, like having our computers messed with so freely, gato. But nobody wants trouble either-certainly we don’t want to see you lynched. Sorry about your wife. Hope she gets better. We suggest that you leave as soon after that as possible.”
Derec nodded, gulping, glad the other didn’t ask to see the “impressions” they were supposedly recording. He could say she’d been taken sick so rapidly they hadn’t had time-true enough, too. Leaving when Ariel got better was a good idea, too-and not just because of the sternly repressed dislike on the special agent’s face.
After that, things got worse. For five days in a row they refused to let Derec see Ariel. Afterward, he could see her, but only her trimensional image; he wasn’t allowed in the room. She passed through the crisis of the disease during that time, and they began to implant the earliest memories. That left her in an hypnotic state most of the time, and when she wasn’t in it she was asleep or on the verge of sleep.
“Somnambulistic state,” Dr. Powell said. “Though of course she can’t walk. Too weak yet.”
Derec grimly worked at recording and coding, eating little and sleeping less. Dreams of Robot City haunted him waking and sleeping. He couldn’t help brooding, while working, over such nonsensical questions as: did Dr. Avery get out of Robot City before it was shrunk, or was a tiny madman swimming through his bloodstream at this moment? How about the Human Medical Team; were they making the most of their opportunity to study human anatomy and biochemistry?
Earthers whom he passed in the corridors and ways tended to avoid him; he looked sick and desperate, as his infrequent glances in mirrors told him. Not all Earthers avoided him, however. Once a man glanced directly at him in Personal, and Derec was so accustomed to Earthly ways that he was shocked. Then he thought for a startled moment that it was Donovan. But it wasn’t the special agent, it was merely a man who looked like him: a man with an easy, athletic carriage, an air of competence, and the look of eagles in his eyes.
Another such man sat across from him at breakfast one morning, and occasionally he was half-conscious of other TBI men about. Nothing so conspicuous as ducking into corners as he came by, or peering from doorways. They simply were about.
He decided not to worry about it. The Terries had compelling reasons of their own for not making a scene, and so long as he gave no evidence of spying, he doubted they’d do anything. Probably they were there for his protection. Derec grinned faintly, the only hint of humor in all that bleak time: they were contaminating his observations.
“I told you so,” he said to the absent Donovan.
Being watched by the TBI did not bother him; he was used to being watched by mother-hen robots.
He did think much, though, on what the Terry had told him: he had never had the plague, though he had antitoxins to its neurotoxin in his blood. He’d had the memory loss without the plague. He’d received a dose of the neurotoxin without having had the disease.
Well, his arrival on that ice asteroid, without his memory, while the robots were searching for the Key to Perihelion, never had seemed to him like an accident or a coincidence. He felt, and always had, as if he were a piece in a game, being herded across the board for someone else’s reasons. A mad someone else.
The only one he knew of with both the madness and the genius was Dr. Avery.
They had to get back to Robot City.
One morning during this period he looked up from table J-9 and saw Korolenko next to him. She was wearing her hospital whites, or he might not have recognized her.
“Eat your bacon,” she said crisply as recognition dawned on his face.
The thought made him ill. Yeast-based or no, it was fat and greasy and sickening. His opinion of the bacon showed on his face.
“Then eat the eggs. And the toast.” Korolenko’s voice was grim. “Look, Mr. Avery, you won’t help your wife by collapsing of starvation.”
Derec wanted to say it was stress, not starvation, but realized that there was something in what she said. He’d been living on fruit juices and caffeine. He managed to choke down the toast and some of the scrambled eggs, with lots of hot, sweet tea.
“That’s better. We’ll see you at the hospital tomorrow.”
That night Derec had one of his worst dreams about Robot City, and the next day he sat looking at nothing and thinking about it…
Nothing silly about Dr. Avery shrinking, or the Human Medical Team. He knew perfectly well that Robot City was on its own planet-even during the dream. What he was dreaming was that a miniature version had been injected into his blood, where it had started growing and reproducing. Here the dream became silly-the miniature city was getting iron from his red blood cells. But there was nothing silly about the feeling it left him with.