Derec led Avernus to the elevators, then had a thought and returned to Euler. He unwrapped the fabric bandage from his cut arm and handed it to the supervisor. “Have the blood analyzed, the data broken down on disc so I can feed it to the core.”
“Yes, Derec,” Euler said, and it was the first time the supervisor had addressed him without the formal declaration, Friend. Maybe they were all growing up a little bit.
Derec then joined Avernus in the elevator, pushing the down arrow as the doors slid closed. They only traveled down for a moment before Derec pushed the emergency stop button; the machine jerked to a halt.
“What is this about?” Avernus asked.
“I want to make a deal with you,” Derec said.
“What sort of deal?”
“The lives of your robots for one of your digging machines.”
Avernus just stared at him. “I do not understand.”
“Let’s talk about the Third Law of Robotics,” Derec said. “You are obligated by the Third Law to protect your own existence as long as it doesn’t interfere with the First or Second Laws. In your case, with your special programming, I can easily extend the Third Law to include the robots under your control.”
“Go on.”
“My deal is a simple one. Rydberg has suggested an evacuation plan that could save the robots in the mines from the flooding that is sure to occur if the cavern is not excavated. The evacuation plan depends completely on my reprogramming the central core to halt the replication. For if I don’t, the city will have to keep replicating, even to its own destruction… that destruction to include the robots who are working underground.”
“I understand that,” Avernus said.
“All right.” Derec took a deep breath. What he was getting ready to propose would undoubtedly freeze out the positronics of any of the other robots; the contradictions were too great, the choices too impossible to make. But with Avernus… maybe, just maybe. “Unless you give me one of the digging machines so I can begin the excavation myself, I will refuse to reprogram the central core, thereby condemning all your robots to stay underground during the flooding.”
Avernus red eyes flared brightly. “You would… kill so many?”
“I would save your city and your robots!” Derec yelled. “It’s all or nothing. Give me the machine or suffer the consequences.”
“You ask me to deny the central core program that protects the First Law.”
“Yes,” Derec said simply, his voice quieting. “You have got to make the creative leap to save your robots. Somewhere in that brain of yours, you’ve got to make a value judgment that goes beyond your programming.”
Avernus just stood there, quaking slightly, and Derec felt tears welling up in his eyes, knowing the torture he was putting the supervisor through. If this failed, if he, in effect, killing Avernus by killing his mind, he’d never be able to forgive himself.
The big robot’s eyes flashed on and off several times, and suddenly his body shuddered violently, then stopped. Derec heard a sob escape his own lips. Avernus bent to him.
“You will have your digging machine,” the robot told him, “and me to help you use it.”
Chapter 13. The Central Core
Even as Katherine clung doggedly to the face of the pyramid, she knew that her ability to hold on could be measured in no more than minutes, as the rain lashed savagely at her and the winds worked to rip her off the patterned facade.
The ground lay several hundred meters below, calling to her. As her body went totally numb in the freezing downpour, her strong survival instinct was the only thing keeping her hanging on.
Her brain whirled, rejecting its own death while trying desperately to prepare for it, and through it all, she could hear the wind calling her name, over and over.
“Katherine!”
Closer now, the sound grew more pronounced. It seemed to come from below.
“Katherine!”
For the first time since she’d begun her climb, she risked a look downward, in the direction of the sound. She blinked through the icy water that streamed down her face only to see an apparition, a gray mass moving quickly up the face below her, proof that her mind was already gone.
“Katherine, hang on! I’m coming!”
In disbelief, she watched the apparition coming closer. And as her arms ached, trying to talk her into letting go and experiencing peace, she saw a golden hand reach from under the gray lump and grasp a handhold in one of the cutouts.
Wohler!
“Please hold on!”
“I can’t!” she called back, surprised to hear the hysteria in her own voice. And as if to reinforce the idea, her left hand lost its grip, her arm falling away from the building, the added pressure sending cramping pain through her right arm still lodged in the hole.
The robot below hurried his pace. The wind, getting beneath the tarp he wore to protect himself from the rain, pulled it away from his body to float like a huge, prehistoric bird.
“P-please… ” she called weakly, her right arm ready to give out.
“Hold on! Please hold on!”
The urgency in his voice astounded her, giving her an extra ounce of courage, a few more seconds when seconds were everything. And as she felt her hand slip away for good and all, his large body had wedged in behind her, holding her up against the facade.
Wohler clamped solidly in hand and footholds just above and below hers and he completely enveloped her, protecting. She let herself relax, all the strength immediately oozing out of her, Wohler supporting her completely.
“Are you unhurt?” the robot asked in her ear.
“I-I think so,” she answered in a small voice. “What happens now?”
“We can only wait,” Wohler said, his voice sounding somehow ragged. “An old Earth proverb says, ‘Patience is a bitter plant but it has sweet fruit.’ Survival w-will be our fruit… Friend Katherine.”
“Friend Wohler,” she responded, tears mixing with the cold rain on her face. “I want to th-thank you for coming up here for me.”
But Wohler didn’t answer.
The supervisors as a group stood behind the gateway excavator that Derec and Avernus operated. Neither helping nor hindering, they simply took it all in, no doubt unable to appreciate the thought processes that had led the big robot to pull the machine away from his mining crews and their replication labors, to put it to work simply clearing a path for something that, at this point, was no more than mere potential.
Derec had seen excavators like these before. On the asteroid where he had first awakened to find he had no identity, the robots had used identical machines to cut out the guts of the asteroid in their search for the Key to Perihelion.
The gateway was a marvel, for it demolished and rebuilt at the same time. Derec sat with Avernus at the two cabin control panels, watching the boom arms cutting into rock face nearly a hundred feet distant. One of the boom arms bore rotary grinders, the other microwave lasers that tore frantically at the core of the planet, chewing it up as it went. There were numerous conveyors and pulleys for the removal and scanning of potential salvage material, but none of these were in use right now. They were simply grinding and compressing the excavated rock and earth, the gateway itself using the materials to build a strong tunnel behind-smooth rock walls, reinforcing synthemesh, even overhead lamps.
They were creeping toward the cavern, every meter a meter closer to possible salvation. They had been working through the night, Derec desperately trying to let the effort keep his mind off Katherine and Wohler. It wasn’t working. There had been no word of them since before the storm had begun nearly ten hours ago. Had they been alive, he would have heard by now.
There was always the chance that Katherine had retrieved the Key and left, perhaps waiting out the rain in the gray void of Perihelion, or perhaps finding her way to another place. But that didn’t explain Wohler’s absence.
During the grueling hours spent working the gateway, Avernus and Derec had conversed very little, both, apparently, lost in their own thoughts. Derec worried for Avernus, who he knew was going through a great many internal recriminations that could only be resolved with a satisfactory outcome and subsequent vindication of his actions.