Mike McQuay - Suspicion

“I understand,” Derec replied, “and will respect your wishes.”

“Your words, unfortunately, mean very little right now,” the robot said, turning to the door, his head swiveling back to Derec. “By your deeds we will judge you in future. As an Earth philosopher once said, ‘The quality of a life is determined by its activities.’ Now, I must go.”

With that, Wohler moved quickly through the opening and departed hurriedly down the elevator. The activity bothered Derec; it said to him that things were not going well in Robot City. He had intended to ask Wohler about the effects of last night’s rain, but then decided a first-hand look might be better and determined that Rec would take him where he wanted to go.

“There,” Katherine said, coming down the hall to bustle around the room. She wore a blue one-piece that the dinner servo-robot had brought with it the night before. “Finally, we can start moving in a positive direction. Where do you want to start?”

“I thought I’d go down to the reservoir,” he replied, “and see how much rain fell last night.”

She stopped walking and stared, unbelieving, at him. “Don’t you realize that every moment is precious right now? We need to find that body and see what happened. It could be… decomposing or something at this very minute.”

“I’ve got to see if there was any damage,” he said. “I’ll try and join you later.”

“Never mind,” she said angrily, and walked quickly to the door. “Satisfy your stupid urges. I don’t want you with me. You’ll just get in the way anyhow. Come on, Eve. We’ve got a corpus delecti to find.”

She walked out of the apartment without a backward glance and was gone, Derec frowning after her. He couldn’t help the way his feelings ran on this. He felt that so much of his own life, his own reasons for being, hinged upon the future of Robot City that its troubles seemed to be his own.

“I want to go to the reservoir,” he told Rec. “Can you take me there?”

“Yes, Friend Derec,” the robot answered, and they left together.

When they arrived at street level, Derec was disappointed to find that the supervisors hadn’t left any transportation for him to use. A great deal of time would be wasted walking from place to place. Perhaps he could talk to Euler about it later, though he feared that the reasons had much to do with keeping him from going very far from home.

“Do you want to go the most direct route?” the witness asked him.

“Yes, of course,” Derec said as they set out walking. “Let me ask you a question. Is the rain a result of the work being done on the city?”

“For the most part,” Rec answered through a speaker located on Derec’s side of his dome. “It is also the rainy season here.”

“If they slowed down the building, would it slow down the rain?”

“I do not know.”

Derec was going about this wrong, asking the wrong questions of a witness. “How does the city make rain?” he asked.

The robot began talking, recalling information in an encyclopedic fashion. “Olivine is mined below ground and crushed in vacuum, releasing carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, from which water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane gas, and traces of other chemicals are liberated. Iron ore is also being mined for building materials, along with petroleum products for plastics… ”

“Plastics?” Derec asked.

“Plastics are used as alloys in making the material from which the city is constructed. Do you wish me to go on with my previous line of witnessing?”

“Let me tell you,” Derec said, “and you tell me if I’m right. Water vapor, along with the heat energy from the mining process, is pumped into the air, heat also being pumped into the reservoir. The CO2is bled into the forest to help growth. The reason that the weather is so rainy now is that the city is growing too fast, giving off too much heat, dust, and water.”

“I do not know why the weather is so rainy right now,” Rec said. “I do not even understand what so rainy means. The other statements you made are juxtapositional with statements I heard Supervisor Avernus make, which I assume to be correct.”

“Fine,” Derec said. “Is there a problem with the ozone layer?”

“Problem?” the robot asked.

Derec rephrased. “Is any work being done on the ozone layer?”

“I do not know,” Rec said, “although I did hear Supervisor Avernus say on one occasion that the ‘ozone layer needs to be increased photochemically to ten parts per million.’“

“Good,” Derec said. “Very good.”

“You are pleased with my witnessing?” Rec asked.

“Yes,” Derec replied. “Will the supervisors be asking you to witness later what we’ve discussed?”

“That is my function, Friend Derec.”

They walked for nearly an hour by Derec’s watch, the city still subtly changing around them. It sometimes took a while to get information out of the witness, but if questions were phrased properly, Derec found Rec an endless source of information, and he wondered how Katherine was faring with her witness.

Derec knew they were nearing the reservoir long before they arrived there. A long stream of robots was moving toward and away from the site, followed by large vehicles bearing slabs of city building material.

They walked into an area sonorous with activity, echoes raising the pitch enough that Derec covered his ears against the din. Within the confines of the reservoir area, his worst fears were realized. The water had reached the top of the pool and was splashing over slightly in various areas.

For their part, the robots were doing their best to stop it. Large machines, obviously converted from mining work, had been modified to lift huge slabs of the building material to the top of the pool, where utility robots with laser torches were welding the higher sections together, trying for more room, bathing the area in various sections in showers of yellow sparks.

It was a massive job, the reservoir covering many acres, as the robots worked frantically to finish before the next rain. And to Derec’s mind, this could be no more than a stopgap measure, for unless the rain was halted, it would overflow even the extra section in a day or two.

“What happens if the water overflows?” he asked Rec.”

I am unable to speculate on such matters, Friend Derec,” the robot said. “It is not overflowing. When it does, I will witness.”

“Right,” Derec said, and moved forward, closing on the workers.

“Do not get too close,” Rec called. “It is dangerous for you.”

Derec ignored him and moved closer, recognizing Euler, who was helping with the movement of a slab. He was directing a large, heavy-based machine with a telescoping arm that held a six-by-six-meter slab in magnetic grips. He was holding his pincers at the approximate distance the arm had yet to travel so that it would be flush with the edge of the pool and the slab next to it. Utility robots physically guided the slabs to the ground and held them so the welders could set to work immediately.

“Euler!” Derec called, the robot jerking to the sound of his name.

“It is too dangerous for you here!” Euler called back, waving him away. “We have no safety controls over this area!”

“I’ll only stay a centad,” Derec said, moving up close to him. He could look past the end of the last slab and see the dark waters churning the top of the pool. In the distance, all around the reservoir, he could see the same operation being repeated by other crews.

“What are you doing here?” Euler asked him.

“I had to see for myself,” Derec answered. “I knew the levels were rising. Why don’t you stop the building pace and let these waters recede?”