Mike McQuay - Suspicion

Eve moved quickly around a corner, then stopped abruptly, Katherine nearly running into the robot.

“Here,” Eve said, “is the approximate place where the body was alleged to have fallen.”

“Alleged?”

“It was no longer here upon my arrival.”

“What story did the utility robot tell?”

“Utility Robot #716-14 said that he sent the waste control robots away, then examined Friend David for signs of life without success. During the course of the examination another room began to grow around the body and enclose it, at which point Utility Robot #716-14 removed himself before becoming trapped, and put in an emergency call to us. We returned to the scene together, but the body was gone. That is the last time anyone has seen Friend David.”

“Were there signs of violence on the body?”

“Utility Robot #716-14 reported that the body appeared perfectly normal except for a small cut on the left foot. Since I can only report hearsay in this regard, I am unable to render this as an accurate examination.”

Katherine leaned against the wall of a one-story parts depot, the wall giving slightly under her pressure. It seemed more than coincidence that David’s plight in the sealed room and the alert conditions of the city happened concurrently-but how were they connected?

“Do you feel, then, that the body moved simply because the city moved it?” she asked.

“I cannot speculate on such a theory,” the witness said, “but I heard Supervisor Euler make a pronouncement similar to yours-hearsay again.”

“Given the growth rate of the city,” Katherine said, “calculate how far and in what direction the body of David could have traveled if, indeed, the movement of the city took him from this place.”

“Approximately ten and one-half blocks,” Eve said without hesitation, “in any direction. The city works according to a plan that is not known to me.”

“Ten and a half blocks,” Katherine said low. “Well, it’ll sure give me something to do to fill in the time.” She looked at Eve’s bristling dome. “Let’s take a walk.”

“That is your decision,” the robot replied, as Katherine picked a direction at random and began walking, looking for what, she didn’t know.

ACCESS DENIED was written in bold letters across the CRT, and it was a phrase Derec had run into over a dozen times in as many minutes.

He stood at a small counter set beside a large, open window. Through the billowing clouds of iron-red dust floating into the sky, he could see the long line of earthmovers inching their way along the rocky ground, the teeth of their heavy front diggers easily chewing up the ground to a depth of 70 centimeters, then laying out the mulch in a flat, even plain behind, holes filling, rises falling, the ground absolutely uniform behind. A series of heavy rollers completed the unique vehicles, packing the ground hard for the slab base of the city to push its way into that section as it was completed.

After leaving the reservoir and its tragedy behind, he had asked Rec to take him to the edge of the city. He had wanted to see for himself the creation of the cloud dust and also to try and find access to a terminal far out of the reach of the supervisors. The robot had been hesitant at first, but after Derec had assured him that he’d go no farther than city’s edge, Rec had readily agreed.

But now that he was here, Derec resented the time it had taken to come this far out. The terminal had been a complete bust. He’d found himself able to access any amount of information when it came to this part of the city operation: troubleshooting info, repair info, time references, equipment specs, personnel delineation, and SOPs of all kinds; but beyond that, access was impossible.

He had tried various methods of obtaining passwords, but it seemed he was stymied before he got started. He came away with the impression that once the city was on alert, terminals became place-oriented, only able to pick up specific data as it related to their possible function in a given location. He found this difficult to believe, for if the robots were in total charge of access and passwords it belied the nature of their “perfect human world.” It struck him that access would have to be humanly possible for very basic philosophical reasons.

But not here; not at this terminal.

So, where did that leave him? The rains still came, with or without his presence; the central core was still denied to him, and with it any answers it might possess; he was still a prisoner (a fact he did take seriously, despite Katherine’s feelings); and he still knew nothing about his origins or reasons for being in Robot City.

That thought returned him to the basics. When he had visited the Compass Tower, Avernus had been pointed out as the first supervisor robot, the one that had initiated the construction of the other supervisors. Derec had been successful in determining the origin and destination of the water; now he would work on the origin of the city itself. The only place to start was with Avernus and the underground. The mining was needed to produce the raw materials to build the city. Everything else sprang from that foundation. He would go to the source-to Avernus.

He shut down the useless terminal and walked out of the otherwise bare room to find Rec intently studying the rising dust clouds, taking readings. It was his obsession.

“I want to go into the mines and speak with Avernus,” he told the robot. “Is that acceptable?”

“I will take you to the mines, Friend Derec,” Rec answered, “but from that point on, the decision will belong to Avernus.”

“Fair enough,” Derec said, and prepared for another long walk. Then he spotted one of the trams parked near the excavation and walked toward it. “Let’s ride this time.”

“We were not given this machine,” Rec said. “It is not ours to take.”

“Were you told not to let me take the machine?” Derec countered.

“No, but… ”

“Then let’s go.”

Derec jumped in the front, but saw no controls with which to drive it. He knew that this was probably the means by which the robots working the movers got here, but the witness was unable to make that speculation and consequently folded up. “How does it work?”

“You speak your destination into the microphone,” Rec said.

“The underground,” Derec said, then shrugged at Rec. Within seconds, the car lurched forward and moved speedily away from the digs.

They traveled quickly, moving through an entire section full of nothing but robot production facilities that were running full tilt, furiously trying to keep up with the record-setting building pace. As the number of buildings increased, so, too, did the number of robots to service those buildings and the people who didn’t live in them. They passed vehicle after vehicle jammed full of new, functionally designed robots who stared all around, seeing their world for the first time.

They also passed other small forests and what seemed to be large sections of hydroponic greenhouses, for when large-scale food production became a reality. Then they whizzed past a large, open area that seemed to serve no function.

“What’s that?” Derec asked.

“Nothing,” Rec answered.

“I don’t mean now,” Derec said. “What’s it going to be?”

“I do not often deal in potential,” the robot replied, several red lights on his dome blinking madly, “but I recall Supervisor Euler once referring to this place as a future spaceport.”

Derec was a bit taken aback. Robot City was absolutely unable to deal with incoming or outgoing ships in any form. It led him down another avenue.

“If the spaceport hasn’t been constructed yet,” he said, “where do you keep your hyperwave transmitters?”