Mike McQuay - Suspicion

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.

“Derec!” came Euler’s voice from the newly built tunnel behind; it was the first time the robot had spoken to them since the operation had begun.

Derec looked at his watch. It was nearly five a.m. He shared a glance with Avernus. “Yes!” he called back.

“The rain has abated,” Euler returned. “The missing have been located!”

Derec resisted the urge to jump from the controls and charge out of there. He still had work to do. He looked at Avernus. “What now?”

“Now we will see,” the robot said. “We must locate the core and reprogram.”

“Should I leave you here to continue operations and go with someone else to the core?”

“No,” Avernus said with authority. “I am supervisor of the underground and know my way around it. I also… must know the outcome. Can you understand that?”

Derec reached out and punched off the control board, stopping new digging and bringing all operants to the standby position. “You bet I can understand it. Let’s go!”

They moved out of the gateway, squeezing past stacked up cylinders to join the other supervisors in the tunnel behind. It was the first time Derec had looked back at their handiwork. The tunnel he and Avernus had made stretched several hundred yards behind them, nearly as far he could see.

“Where are Katherine and Wohler?” he asked. “Are they all right?”

“No one knows,” Rydberg said. “They are clinging to the side of the Compass Tower, nearly a hundred meters above the surface, but they have not responded to voice communication, nor have they attempted to come down.”

Derec’s heart sank. They’d been out all night in the rain.

It looked bad.

“Are rescue operations underway?” he asked.

“Utility robots are now scaling the Tower to determine the extent of the problem for emergency disposition,” Euler said.

“The central core,” Avernus said to Dante. “Tell me where it is right now.”

“Tell me honestly, Euler,” Derec said. “Will my presence at the Tower facilitate the rescue operation?”

“Tower rescue has always been part of our basic program, for reasons no one can fathom,” the robot said. “Standard operating procedure has already been initiated. You could only hinder the operation.”

“Good,” Derec said. Of course Tower rescue was standard. The overseer had worried that, should the trap door to the office below become jammed, he would be caught on the Tower, unable to get down. The almighty overseer didn’t mind letting everyone else twist slowly in the wind, but he wasn’t going to let himself be uncomfortable on the Tower.

Dante spoke up from the terminal in his tram car. “The central core is in Quadrant 2, Tunnel D-24, moving to the north.”

Avernus nodded and looked at Derec. “We must hurry,” he said, “lest all our work be in vain.”

“Work is already in vain,” Waldeyer said to Avernus. “Because of your unauthorized impoundment of the gateway excavator, the on-hand raw iron consignments have dropped dangerously low. Within an hour, replication efforts will begin falling behind schedule.”

The big robot simply hung his head, looking at the floor.

“I pose a question to you all,” Derec said. “If Avernus and I are able to get to the core and reprogram to halt the replication, will our work already done here enable us to dig the rest of the way through to the cavern before tonight’s rain?”

“Barring work stoppage and machinery malfunction,” Euler said, “we should just be able to make it. This, of course, is all hypothetical.”

Derec just looked at them. There was no satisfaction to be gained from arguing at this point. It was time to deliver the goods. “Where’s the data from my blood sample?” he asked.

Arion stepped forward and handed him a mini-disc. “Everything you asked for is in here,” he said.

“Thanks,” Derec said, taking the disc and putting it in his breast pocket. “Now, listen. We’re going to the central core. As soon as we reprogram, we’ll need you to begin work here again immediately so that no time is lost.”

Arion took a step toward the gateway. “It is now too late to move the excavator back to the iron mine and pick up our failed operation there, so I see no reason why the digging here shouldn’t continue in your absence. There is no longer anything to lose. I will continue to work here, even as you approach the central core.”