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“I’ll have to learn to live with that,” Derec replied sadly. “Sometimes the right thing isn’t always the best thing. I’m sorry if I hurt you.”

“Hurt is not a term that I understand,” the robot replied.

“No,” Derec said, turning to fiddle with the terminal Dante had left in the back. “It’s a term that I relate to.”

Derec used the terminal to contact the city’s hastily organized medical facility, trying for information on Katherine and Wohler. He and Avernus had left Quadrant #4 and traveled through the city to #2, going underground again at that point. Tunnel D-24 was one of the more distant shafts, drilled as an oil exploration point for the plastics operation. A pipeline churned loudly, attached to the tunnel ceiling above their heads.

“They’ve gotten Katherine and Wohler down from the Tower!” he said, wishing his fingers moved as well as Dante’s over the keyboard.

“Are they well?”

“Katherine is suffering from shock and exposure,” Derec said excitedly. “She’s being treated now. The prognosis is good. Wohler is… is… ” He turned sadly to Avernus. “Wohler is dead.”

“Look!” the robot called, pointing ahead.

Farther along the tunnel, they were rapidly closing on a moving area of light. It was perhaps six meters long, and just tall enough to miss the overhanging lights.

“The central core!” Avernus said, braking heavily, the tram skidding to a halt.

“What are you doing?” Derec asked. “It’s getting away!”

“It will be faster now on foot,” Avernus said.

“Not for me,” Derec replied. “I can’t run fast enough to… ”

“Climb on my back,” the robot ordered. “Quickly.”

While the huge robot was still sitting, Derec stood and climbed onto his broad back, putting his hands around Avernus’s head, the robot locking an arm behind him, holding Derec on tightly.

Then Avernus jumped from the cart and began a headlong charge down the tunnel, moving faster than Derec realized was possible. Tunnel segments flew by in a blur as the moving core grew larger and larger in their vision.

They caught it quickly, and Avernus slowed his pace to match the speed of the core. Its outer surface was transparent plastic of some kind, and very thick. Like a transparent eggshell, it contained the complex workings of a sophisticated, operating machine. In the rear was a platform with steps leading up to a sliding door.

Avernus jumped, catching the stairs and climbing on. He brought his arm around, gently lifting Derec off to stand before the door. “Go on,” he said. “Go in. Only one at a time can pass through.”

Derec slid open the door by hand and walked in to find himself within the transparent chamber. A red button was set in the plastic before him. He pushed it. Sprayers and heat lamps came on, a full body spray of compressed air traveling the length of his body to remove all traces of dust. There was a loud sound of suction, and then the wall before him slid open and he walked into the beating heart of Robot City.

The core was open, like an exposed brain, its working synapses sparking photons up and down its length, its fluidics a marvel of imaginative engineering. He found a typer halfway down its length and juiced it to life, while hearing Avernus going through the chamber ritual. The robot was doubled over to fit within the “clean room.”

The first thing he did was open a file under the heading of HEMOGLOBIN, and enter the disc’s-worth of information Arion had procured for him. Then he got into the DEFENSES file again, going as far as he could with the system until it prompted him for the supervisor’s password.

He heard a door slide open and turned to see Avernus, still somewhat hunched over, move to stand beside him at the typer.

“It wants your password,” Derec said.

Avernus looked at him, not speaking, then reached out and typed on the screen:

AVERNUS-2Q2-1719
PASSWORD: SYNNOETICS

Without a second’s hesitation, the computer prompted:

RATIONALIZATION FOR DEACTIVATION OF CITY DEFENSES?

With shaking fingers, Derec typed his rationalization into the machine, dumping, as he did so, all the information from the HEMOGLOBIN file into the CITY DEFENSES file as authoritative backup and information to keep the same thing from ever happening again.

When he was through typing he stood back and took a breath, almost afraid to push the ENTER key.

“We must know now,” Avernus said.

Derec nodded, swallowed hard, and entered the information.

The machine churned quietly for a moment that seemed to last an hour. Finally, quite simply and without fanfare, it responded.

RATIONALIZATION ACCEPTED-DEFENSES DEACTIVATED.

They stood for a moment, staring, not quite believing that it could be so easy. Then they felt a noticeable slowing of the core’s motion. Within seconds, it had ground to a stop.

It was over.

Chapter 14. World Perfect

Derec walked the corridors of the mostly dark, mostly unfurnished medical facility. It would be a fine building when it was completely finished, a place where the humans who would inhabit Robot City could receive the finest medical care available anywhere in the galaxy under the supervision of the most advanced team of med-bots operational. He knew this would be so because the robots who performed the services would perform them by choice, out of love instead of servitude.

He walked the corridors alone-no guides, no keepers, no jailers. He was a free citizen now, a condemned man no longer. And it was good, because now, right now, he preferred being alone.

A room at the end of the corridor was awash with light, and he knew he’d find Katherine there, recovering from her night with the storm. He no longer cared about her subterfuge or her reasons for being with him on Robot City. For good or ill, he was happy and thankful that she was alive. Nothing else really could, or did, matter.

He was beginning to know why she affected him the way she did-he loved her.

He reached the room and poked his head inside. It was a large room, one that would most likely be a ward at some future time. But right now it was empty, except for Katherine’s place at the far end.

She lay in stasis, floating half a meter above a table, bright lights surrounding her completely. She was naked, just as she’d been on Rockliffe Station. This time he didn’t turn away, but looked, and her body seemed somehow… familiar to him.

A med-bot rolled up to him.

“How is she?” he asked.

“Splendid,” the robot replied, “except for her chronic condition… ”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said, letting her have her secrets. “Other than that?”

“She’s sleeping lightly,” the med-bot said. “We have rebalanced her chemicals through massive influxes of oxygen and fluids, and warmed her up. She lost a small part of her left ear to the cold, but that has already been adjusted through laser cosmetic surgery. You may visit with her if you wish.”

“I’d like that,” he said. “But before you wake her up, would you put a robe or something on her?”

“The heat lamps work better if… ”

“I know,” Derec said. “It’s a matter of her personal privacy.”

“I see,” the robot said in its best bedside manner, but Derec could tell that it didn’t.

When the med-bot turned and rolled back to Katherine, Derec politely stepped through the doorway and back into the hall.

A moment later, he could hear her talking to the robot, so he walked back in. She was off the table, sitting in a motorized chair, swathed in a bright white bathrobe. Her face was blank as he moved up to her.

“I’m sorry for everything,” he said. “I’ve been suspicious and hard to get along with and… ”

She smiled slightly, putting up a hand. “No more than I have,” she said softly, her voice hoarse. “I guess I’ve acted pretty stupidly.”

“Human prerogative,” he said. “You look… good.”

“They scraped the surface skin off me,” she said, “cleared away the dead dermis. I guess I could say you’re looking at the new me.” She moved her gaze to the floor. “The Key is gone.”