Kilometer-long lines of great trucks full of produce, some robot-driven, most computer-controlled, roared in with noisy, huge tires but silent engines and dived into the City just below them. They were on a higher ramp, one of a dozen that leaped out of the City from high and low. Donovan stopped the car well back from that light-blazing gap.
“You’ll have to walk from here,” he said abruptly. “Car won’t go any further-no beamcast beyond the barrier.”
Chapter 13. Robot City Again
“Paulins,” said R. Jennie. “They are used to cover machinery in the fields against rain and dew. There are no tents available in the immediate vicinity of St. Louis. Perhaps in a day or two there will be a tent.”
The plasticated canvas of the big paulins worked as well as a tent, strung over a couple of poles and tied to a tree limb. It was needed more for shade than shelter. This move to the country had not been a simple one, nor could they keep it up for more than a day or two.
But it was such a relief!
Ariel could tell that Derec felt the same sense of escape that she did. The sky of Earth was wide and blue and very high, and little puffy clouds ambled slowly across it, all framed by the pointed opening of the “tent.” The sunlight was just right. The plants were the familiar green of Earth life everywhere, and they too seemed just right. Except in greenhouses, she had probably never seen Earthly plants in the natural light of the sun in which they evolved. Even the heat was not unpleasant.
“We won’t need a tent, if we have to wait that long,” said Derec grimly.
“You should return to the City as soon as you can,” R. Jennie said. “Mrs. Avery is far from recovered from the fever.”
Ariel felt quite recovered from the fever, though her memory was returning slowly. Weak as she undoubtedly was, she thought with concern, she could have wrestled Derec two falls out of three and won. But he said nothing about his own condition.
“Everything’s so…ordinary,” said Ariel, looking out at the kind of birds and plants and small animals she had seen all her life. A squirrel is a squirrel, and sounds just the same on Aurora. Even the shrilling of the unseen insects was familiar. Humans had taken their familiar symbiotic life-forms with them to the stars. She had expected Earth to be more exotic.
The reality was a relief more than a disappointment.
“It must have been a bad time for you,” she said to Derec, when R. Jennie had stepped out to the…kitchen. They had been supplied with something called a “hot plate” and a dielectric oven.
Derec moodily watched the robot prepare the packaged meals, designed for people with high enough ratings to permit them to eat in their own apartments. This was luxury for their rate.
“Bad, well.” He shrugged, clearly not wishing to discuss it. “I did learn one thing from R. David: there’s a spaceship belonging to Dr. Avery in the New York port. If we could get there-”
“How, if our rating doesn’t permit us to travel that far?”
“We’ll have to get him to make ID with higher ratings for us-”
R. Jennie stepped under the opening with a tray holding coffee and juices. When she had gone, Ariel said, “I hope they don’t discover the apartment.”
“I suspect the Terries know all about it, but won’t make trouble. They want us gone before we get mobbed or something. We’ve been very lucky.”
“Couldn’t we ask Donovan for assistance?” she asked wistfully.
“We could. I thought of it,” Derec said, broodingly. “But that’d be above his level, surely. If Earth can ignore us, it won’t be so badly embarrassed if we’re discovered here, investigating-or spying on-Earth people. But if they have helped us in any way, they can’t deny having known about us.”
“Helping us would be seen as condoning our presence,” she said grayly. “I understand.” Politics seemed to be the same everywhere. “So what can we do? Get new ID-will the Terries spot that, do you think?”
“Frost, I don’t know-”
R. Jennie gave them fruit cups and whipped cream, returned to the kitchen, a rustic scene in the frame of the tent opening.
The fruit was good, but unusual-compotes served in what she thought of as unsweetened ice cream cones. It was like eating warm ice cream with strong fruit flavors. All yeast, she supposed.
“If they do spot us at it, I suppose they’d look the other way. But what worries me is that it would alarm them. They’d know we weren’t telling everything, they’d realize that R. David-or someone-has ID duplicating equipment. They might well raid the apartment.”
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!