Rob Chilson - Refuge

“We’ll try again tomorrow at a different entrance,” Derec said when she had eaten the little she could. “The sun will be shining-probably, anyway-and things will be all right.”

She nodded indifferently.

To Derec’s dismay, Ariel did not reappear that afternoon, and the next morning she arose late and looked terrible.

R. David became alarmed. “Miss Avery, you are not well. What are your symptoms?”

“The same as usual, R. David. Don’t worry; I brought this illness with me; it’s nothing to worry about.” She sounded tired and fretful, trying not to worry his Three Law-dominated brain.

But a robot will worry if it seems appropriate, whether told not to or not. They weren’t so different from humans in that respect, thought Derec, himself alarmed.

“I hope you are indeed not seriously ill, Miss Avery, but please tell me your symptoms so that I may judge. As you know, First Law compels me to help you.”

She grimaced. “Okay. I’m frequently feverish-is there any water in the place?”

“No,” Derec said. “I’ll bring you-frost! is there anything to carry water in?”

“No,” said R. David.

Mentally, Derec cursed all Earthers, individually and collectively, and the Teramin Relationship, too.

“Anyway, I’m often feverish, and tired and lethargic and listless. And-and-” she glanced at Derec. “I have mental troubles. Confusion-I forget where I am, lose track of what’s going on. A lot of the time I sit and don’t speak because I can’t follow the conversation. I’ve been reliving the past a lot. “

Suddenly she cried out passionately, “Nothing seems real! I feel like I’m in a hallucination.”

It was more serious than Derec had thought. Hesitantly, he asked, “Do you feel like going to the section kitchen?”

“No. I don’t feel like doing anything, except drinking a liter of water and going back to bed.”

“You must go to section hospital at once,” said R. David decisively, stepping forward.

Derec could have groaned. “What kind of medical care can you expect in an Earthly hospital?” he asked. “We’ve got to get you back to the Spacer worlds-”

“There’s no cure for me there,” she said quietly. Damn. That was true. Derec hesitated, torn, and said, “Well, back to Robot City, then. Maybe the Human Medical Team has a cure.”

“My medical knowledge is limited, primarily to the effects of Earthly ills on Spacers. But that knowledge makes me doubt that Miss Avery will-will live long enough for a space journey,” said R. David, the catch in his voice obvious. “She is obviously in, or approaching, the-crisis of her disease.”

Derec hesitated. That was too obviously true.

Ariel smiled sadly and said, “I fear he is right, Derec. I-I’m losing my memory-my mind. And it’s getting worse. I couldn’t remember my way back here the other night-”

Abruptly, she was weeping.

Oh. frost. Derec thought helplessly.

R. David gave them an argument; he wanted to accompany them-to carry Ariel, in fact.

“No!” said Derec. “I may be ignorant of many things about Earth, but I know well enough what Earthers do to any robots they catch on the ways. And if we tried to do anything about it, our first words would give us away as Spacers. They’d be allover us. I’ve been chased once by yeast farmers. Frost! I don’t want to have every Earther we meet at our throats.”

It took the firmest commands reinforcing Dr. Avery’s to keep R. David in the apartment. Only when Ariel perked up, as she usually did at the prospect of change, was the robot’s First Law conditioning allayed. Ariel was even almost gay as she left, rendering a zany marching song: “One-two-three! Here we go! Bedlam, Bedlam, ho ho ho! Drrringding ding, brrrumbum bum, brrrreebeedeebee Dabbabba-dumbum-bum!”

But once the door had closed she looked haggard.

“Water,” she said, smiling wanly at Derec’s concerned look.

After she had drunk a liter or so, she gasped for breath a few minutes, but was game to go on. The route to the section hospital was longer than the one to the kitchen, and she drooped visibly. Worse, it was morning now and the express was jammed. They had to stand; Threes weren’t allowed to sit during rush hour.

Itseemed that the nightmare of rushing ways and whistling wind and unconcerned, self-centered Earthers would go on forever. Derec had to watch Ariel-he feared she would collapse-and also watch the signs overhead, fearing that he would forget or confuse the instructions he had carefully impressed on his memory.

But even the longest journey ends at last, and the exit was clearly marked SECTION HOSPITAL, with the same red cross on white that Spacers used.

The anteroom smelled of antiseptic and was mobbed with men, women, and children. Children. thought Derec vaguely -never seen so many children in my life as on Earth. Though his memories still were lost, he was sure, by his astonished reaction, that he had not. Of course, they had to keep replacing this huge population.

Fumbling, he inserted Ariel’s newly forged ID tags into the computer, whose panel lit with CHECK-UP, ILLNESS, EMERGENCY? Ariel was leaning against him, gasping and pale after the ordeal, and even the usually unconcerned Earthers were looking at them in some alarm. Emergency, he decided, panicky, and punched it.

Instantly a red star appeared in the panel, blinking; apparently alarms rang elsewhere, for a strong-looking woman appeared, started to remonstrate with him for mistaking an ILLNESS for an EMERGENCY-young husbands! But Ariel turned a ghastly, apologetic smile on her, and the woman’s mouth closed with a snap.

“Here!”

She half carried Ariel past three rooms full of still more waiting Earthers, to a room with a wheeled, knee-high cart in it.

“Lie down, baby!”

The gurney stood up, she strapped Ariel on, and an older woman entered. “Dr. Li-”

“Mmm. I see.” She began to check over Ariel, not bothering with instruments-she took Ariel’s temperature by placing her hand on Ariel’s head!

A harassed-looking man entered. He wore a curious ornament in the form of a frame holding glass panes in front of his eyes. Derec had noticed some of these on the ways. It gave his face a dashing, futuristic look. “What is it, Dr. Li?”

“Don’t know yet, Dr. Powell. Elevated temperature, febrile heartbeat, hectic flush, exhaustion. I want to measure everything first, of course.” She reached to the bottom of the gurney and started pulling out instruments, to Derec’s considerable relief. Ariel had closed her eyes, and seemed to be asleep.

The doctors bent over her, shaking their heads and measuring everything about Ariel. Tense as he was, Derec looked about for a place to sit, content for the moment to leave it in their hands. Abruptly the nurse said. “How long has it been since she’s eaten?”

The doctors ignored this till Derec said, “Uh-yesterday afternoon. Not long after noon.”

Dr. Li grunted, and Dr. Powell said, “Inanition!”

“Young as she is, that shouldn’t have brought on this collapse. Feel that arm. She’s practically starving.” The three of them looked at each other, plainly shocked.

“Why hasn’t she been eating, young man?” Dr. Li demanded.

“She hasn’t felt like it, Ma’am,” said Derec, and all three of them frowned at his accent.

“Settler prospects, eh?” Powell removed his frame and wiped the panes with a tissue. “You’ll not have much need of Spacer talk on a frontier planet. Better to learn some good medieval jargon: brush, creek, log cabin. Not to mention ‘sweat.’ What’s wrong with her?”