“Can I ask you a question?” he said.
Her face darkened and he watched her tighten up. “What is it?” she asked.
“When we were at Rockliffe, Dr. Galen mentioned you had a chronic condition,” he said. “Later, when he began to talk about it, you shut him up.”
She walked up to look at the screen, refusing to meet his gaze. “You’re mistaken,” she said. “I’m fine… the picture of health.”
She turned slightly from him, and there seemed to be a small catch in her voice. When she turned back, her face was set firm, quite unlike the vulnerable morning creature he’d seen a moment ago. “What’s happening on the screen?” she asked.
He looked. A pleasant, always changing pattern of computer generated images was juicing through the CRT, accompanied by a random melody bleeped out of the machine’s tiny speaker.
“You make it very hard for me to believe you,” he said, ignoring the screen. “Why, when we need total honesty and trust between us, do I feel that you’re holding back vital information from me?”
“You’re just paranoid,” she said, and he could tell he was going to get nothing from her. “And if you don’t change the subject quickly, I’m going to find myself getting angry, and that’s no way to start the day.”
He reluctantly agreed. “I’m worried about the rains,” he said. “They were worse last night than the night before.”
She sat at the table with him. “Well, if this place is getting ready to have major problems, I hope we’re out of here before they happen. We’ve got to get something going with the murder investigation.”
“Do you know what makes rain?” he asked, ignoring the issue of the murder.
“What has that got to do with our investigation?” she asked, on edge.
“Nothing,” he said. “I’m just wondering about these rains, I… ”
“Don’t say it,” she replied holding up a hand. “You’re worried about your robot friends. Well, let me tell you something, your friends are in the process of keeping us locked up for the rest of our lives… ”
“Not locked up, surely,” he interrupted.
“This is serious!” she said, angry now. “We have a very good chance of being kept prisoner here for life. You know, once they make a decision like that, I see no reason that they would ever change it. Don’t you understand the gravity of the situation?”
He looked at her calmly, placing a hand over hers on the table. She drew it away, and he felt his own anger rise, then rapidly subside. “I understand the problem,” he explained, “but I fear the problem with the city is more pressing, more… immediate.”
“But it’s not our problem. The murder is.”
“Indulge me,” he said. “Let’s talk about weather for just a minute.”
She sighed, shaking her head. “Let’s see what I remember,” she said. “Molecules respond to heat, separating, moving more quickly. Water molecules are no exception. On a hot day, they rise into the atmosphere and cling to dust particles in the air. When they rise into the cooler atmosphere, they turn into clouds. When the clouds get too heavy, too full of water, they return to the ground in the form of rain.”
“Okay,” he said. “And wind is simply the interplay of heat and cold in the atmosphere.”
She shrugged. “The cold, heavier air pushes down and forces the warm air to move-wind.”
“I think I’m beginning to see a connection,” he said, excited. “Look. Robot City is building at a furious pace, sending a great deal of dust into the atmosphere.” He thought about the reservoir. “Meanwhile, they are somehow liberating a great deal of water from the mining processes that are needed to build the city. Along with the mining processes comes a tremendous amount of kinetic energy, heat, which they are venting into the atmosphere near the water, forcing the heated molecules to rise as water vapor and cling to the dust particles that are thick in the atmosphere right now. At night, the temperature cools down a great deal… ”
“That could be an uncompensated ozone layer,” she said.
He pointed to her. “Ozone. That’s what seals in our atmosphere. As goes the ozone layer, so go our temperature inversions. So, it cools at night, the rain clouds forming, the cool air bringing on the big winds, and the rain falls.”
“So,” Katherine said, “if they slowed down the building pace, it could slow down the weather.”
“It seems logical to me,” he replied.
“So why don’t they do it?”
“That’s the mystery, isn’t it?”
The door slid open and Wohler, the golden robot, moved into the room, flanked on either side by smaller robots.
“Good morning,” Wohler said. “I trust your sleep-time was beneficial.”
“You’re going to have to learn to knock before you come barging in here,” Katherine said. “Now go out and do it again.”
Derec watched the robot dutifully march outside the door and slide it closed. He knew that Katherine was simply venting frustration. On Spacer worlds, robots were considered simply part of the furniture and their presence was not thought about in terms of privacy.
There was a gentle tapping on the door, the nature of the material muffling the sound somewhat.
“Come in,” Katherine said with satisfaction, and the door slid open, the robots reentering.
“Is this the preferred method of treatment in future?” Wohler asked.
“It is,” she replied.
“Very well,” the robot said, then noticed Derec’s sleeping covers on the sofa. “Should these be returned to the bedroom?”
“You only provided us with one bed,” Derec replied. “I slept out here.”
Wohler moved farther into the room, coming up near the table. “Did we err? Was the sleeping space too small… ”
“Katherine and I would simply like… separate places to sleep,” Derec said.
“Privacy?” Wohler asked. “As with the knocking on the door?”
“Yes,” Katherine said, and he could tell she was unwilling to delve into the social aspects of human sleeping arrangements, so he left it alone, too.
“On-line time is a matter of priorities right now,” the robot said, “but we will see if we can arrange something for you that is more private.”
“Thanks,” Derec said. “And if it takes another day to arrange it, that’s all right with me. It’s Katherine’s turn to sleep on the couch tonight.”
“What?” she said loudly. Derec grinned broadly at her. She wasn’t amused.
He quickly changed the subject. “What brings you here this morning, Wohler?” he asked. “Have you reached a decision about our requests of yesterday?”
“Yes,” the robot replied. “And it is our sincerest wish that the decision be one that all of us can accept. First, in addressing the issue of your investigation and freedom of movement. We conferred at as great a length as time would permit under the present circumstances, and decided that, despite your flaws, you are human, and that fact in and of itself demands that we give you the benefit of the doubt in this situation. Many of our number were concerned about your veracity, or lack of it, but I reminded them that a great human philosopher once said, ‘Isn’t it better to have men being ungrateful than to miss a chance to do good?’ And so my fellows voted to do good in this regard.”
“Excellent,” Derec said.
“But… ” Katherine helped.
“Indeed,” Wohler returned. “It is my place to philosophize in any given situation, and I need remind you now that one must always be prepared to take bad along with good.”
“Just get on with it,” Katherine said.
Wohler nodded. “On the matter of your safety, and your… unpredictability, it was decided that each of you would have a robot companion to… help you in your investigations.”
“You mean to guard us,” Katherine said.
“Merely a matter of semantics,” Wohler countered, and Derec could tell that the robot had been geared for diplomacy. “Actually, in this case, I believe you may find these robots more useful as assistants than as protection. In fact, one of them was present during the death of David and the subsequent confusion.”