Mike McQuay - Suspicion

“Lost it?” Derec said.

Derec knew it was impossible for a robot to be or look embarrassed, but that was exactly the feeling he was getting from the entire group.

“We really have no idea of where it is,” Euler said.

Derec saw an opening and quickly took it. “In order to do this investigation and prove that we’re innocent of any First Law transgressions, we must have freedom of movement around your city.”

“We exist to protect your lives,” Euler said. “You’ve been caught in the rains; you know how dangerous they are. We can’t let you out under those conditions.”

“Is there advance warning of the rain?” he asked.

“Yes,” Rydberg said. “The clouds build in the late afternoon, and the rain comes at night.”

“Suppose we promise to not go out when the conditions are unfavorable?” Derec asked.

Wohler, the golden robot, said, “What are human promises worth?”

Katherine pushed her way beneath the hands of the robots to stand in the center of the circle. “What are our lives worth without freedom?”

“Freedom,” Wohler echoed.

A dark cloud passed above the skylight, plunging the room into a gray, melancholy halflight, illumination provided by a score of CRT screens, many of them now showing pictures of madly roiling clouds.

The circle broke immediately, the robots, agitated, hurrying toward the door.

“Come,” Euler said, motioning to the humans. “The rains are approaching. We must get you back to shelter. There is so much to do.”

“What about my suggestion?” Derec called loudly to them.

“Hurry,” Euler called, waving his arm as Derec and Katherine walked toward him. “We will think about it and let you know tomorrow.”

“And if we can investigate and prove our innocence,” Katherine said, “will you then let us contact the outside?”

Euler stood still and fixed her with his photocells. “Let me put it this way,” he said. “If you don’t prove your innocence, you’ll never be allowed to contact the outside.”

Derec sat before the CRT screen on the apartment table and watched the “entertainment” that Arion was providing him in the form, at this moment, of sentences and their grammatic diagrams. Before that it had been a compendium of various failed angle trisection theorems, and before that, an incredibly long list of the powers of ten and the various words that had been invented to describe the astronomical numbers those powers represented. It was an insomniac’s nightmare.

It was a dark, gray morning, the air heavy with the chill of the night and the rain that had pounded Robot City for many hours. The sky was slate as the remnants of the night’s devastation drifted slowly away on the wings of the morning.

He felt like a caged animal, his nerves jangling madly with the notion that he couldn’t leave the apartment if he wanted to. They had been dropped off in the early evening after the meeting at the Compass Tower and hadn’t seen a supervisor robot since. The CRT had no keyboard and only received whatever data they chose to show him from moment to moment. At this particular time, they apparently felt the need to amuse him; but the time filler of the viewscreen only increased his frustration.

He hadn’t slept well. The apartment only had one bed and Katherine was using it. Derec slept on the couch. It had been too short for him, and that didn’t make sleeping any easier. But that wasn’t the real reason he’d been awake.

It was the rain.

He couldn’t get out of his head the fact that the reservoir had been nearly filled when he’d been flung into it the night before. How, then, could it possibly hold the immense amounts of water that continued to pour into it with each successive rainfall? He’d worried over that point: the more rain, the greater the worry. The fact that the supervisors hadn’t contacted him since before the storm seemed ominous. All of their efforts seemed to revolve around the weather problems.

How did the weather tie in with the rapid growth rate of the city? Were the two linked?

“You’re up early,” came Katherine’s voice behind him.

He turned to see her, face soft from sleep, framed by the diffused light. She looked good, a night’s sleep bringing out her natural beauty. She was wrapped in the pale green cover from her bed. He wondered idly what she was wearing beneath it, then turned unconsciously to his awakening, after the explosion in Aranimas’s ship, in the medical wing of the Rockliffe Station to find her naked on the bed beside. Embarrassed, he pushed that thought aside, but its residue left another thought from that time, something he had completely forgotten about.

“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.”