Rob Chilson - Refuge

Abruptly she was weeping, for in the midst of this catalog of sights that she had not seen since her memory began, there came a sudden demanding vision: an image of a garden, somewhere; of bright light and flowers and warmth, drowzy warmth, with bees humming sweetly on key, and the scent of orange blossoms. Someone she loved lay just out of sight.

Ariel turned over and wept passionately for some minutes, her face in her pillow. She felt a hand on her shoulder, not a robotic hand, and felt faintly grateful, but was too wretched to turn.

A detached, floating calm gradually washed away her tears, leaving her tired but spent. Tranquilizer; the robots never gave her more than a few minutes to weep. They usually allowed her that-or she’d have gone mad from the inability to express her emotions at all.

When she turned, Korolenko was there, frowning in conversation with-Derec, she must remember always to call him. That was right, that was what the Earthers called him. But there was another reason, which she couldn’t quite recall, why she must not use his true name. Or did she know his true name, after all? She had forgotten so much, could she trust that memory too?

Avery! she thought, remotely astonished. The drug made all emotions remote.

She wondered vaguely where Dr. Avery was now. Still on Robot City, she supposed. For a moment she felt an ironic amusement at the thought that they had been using his apartment, his robot, and his funds on Earth. Then she knew that this was an old amusement, she’d had this thought before; and with that thought, she remembered having had the amusement before.

“Memory is like drink,” she said to the uncomprehending robot. She felt a little light-headed.

The nurse and a robot stepped aside as they spoke together and Ariel looked, shocked, at…Derec.

“Why is…he so-thin?” she demanded abruptly.

“Mr. Avery? He had been under a strain, Mrs. Avery. He has been worried about you and has not been eating sufficiently.”

“Does he have-” Her heart stopped, started painfully. “-Burundi’s fever?” Again her heart shook her.

“No, Mrs. Avery. He is merely under a strain.”

“He’s sick,” she said.

“No, Mrs. Avery.”

“He is sick,” Ariel said positively, peering at him narrowly with the observant eyes of one who has recently passed near to the gates of death. “He is-dying.”

Nurse Korolenko heard enough of that to frown at her, and one of the robots-R. Jennie, Ariel thought-went to the control board at the head of the bed, but merely checked the readings.

“Derec is a young fool who has neither been sleeping nor eating, and who has spent all his time brooding over you,” said Korolenko, angry not at her or at Derec, but at his stupidity.

“There’s nothing else to do in that stupid apartment but stare at the ceiling,” Ariel said, irritated on his behalf. Why did he keep staring at her with eyes like holes in space? “Frost, there’s not even a trimensional there.”

“You wanted to experience life as Earth people do, and apparently low-rated Earth people at that, so you have no more than they do,” Korolenko said, shrugging.

Wanted…to experience…? She turned eyes in inquiry on…Derec, who shrugged also, grimacing ruefully.

“Perhaps you don’t remember that the Institute wiped our memories temporarily before we came to Earth, so we wouldn’t be able to reveal their techniques,” he said.

Ariel could only stare in amazement. “When you are well enough to travel, we will leave. Of course, since we’ve been discovered here, our purpose of sociological study is negated. And once back on Aurora, we will have our own recorded memories reimplanted.”

She had heard of none of this. The Institute? Institute of what? Study? Of Earth? But, own recorded memories reimplanted… …Ariel leaned back and for a moment thought tears would leak from her eyes.

“So you’ve lost your memory twice over, but it’s only temporary.”

“I’d like to know just how that’s done,” growled a baritone voice. After a moment Ariel identified it: Dr. Powell. She had heard it often enough in the past weeks. “I know, I know, you haven’t the foggiest-only a brief layman’s description that doesn’t describe.”

When she opened her eyes, they were all around her bed, with R. Jennie at the controls.

“Well, young lady, your request for a visit to the outdoors is a bit…unusual.” He visibly repressed a shudder of distaste at the thought, and Ariel, fascinated, realized that to this man the outside was more fear-inspiring than the claustrophobic City was to her.

“We can’t very well add you to the list on a Settler Acclimatization Group, and the only other people who go… outside are the odd Farming, Mining, and Pelagic Overseers. They are solitary as well as agoraphilic, very strange types; they wouldn’t welcome an addition. Certainly not a sick Spacer. And there’s nobody else to take care of you.”

“Robots?” she asked weakly, looking at R. Jennie.

The doctor frowned, shook his head. “It’s difficult to move a robot through the City without having it mobbed and destroyed. Robots are being restricted more and more each year; we have half as many here now at Towner Laney than when I was an intern. That leaves only your husband, and frankly, within a couple of days you’ll be taking care of him.”

“I’m all right,” said Derec with a flash of irritation that for a moment brought back the companion of the hospital station-Ariel couldn’t remember the name, but she remembered the station-and of Robot City. “What’s the signal coding of the local office of the TBI?”

“The what?” Dr. Powell stared at him. “The comm number? Why would you want to call the Terries?” From his tone it was obvious he had guessed, and seethed at the thought.

“To get authorization to have robots moved through the motorways, and for permission to leave the City, if only for a short period.”

“Hmmph! Medically-”

“Medically it would do her good, Doctor,” said the nurse quietly.

“True, damn it, but we need to be sure that her mental condition-the implants-”

“We can’t keep bringing her back and forth, I admit,” said Korolenko.

“Ariel, could you…hold off till tomorrow?” Derec asked.

Tomorrow…she was so tired, from inaction and drugs, that she’d sleep till then anyway…Ariel could have stood anything for a tomorrow in the sun.

“Oh, yes, yes.” She’d be good, she’d

Ariel had a moment of vivid memory, herself quite young, promising her mother that she would be very, very good. Was that when she’d been given her first robot? Or was that Boopsie, the pup?

When the first vivid reexperience faded, she looked up and they had drawn apart. It was no matter; it would be all right tomorrow.

“Never saw myself as nursemaid to a couple of Spacers and a robot,” said Donovan. The agent-in-charge had not trusted any of his men to go outside.

The hospital had an emergency entrance and egress for ambulances, and was a major junction on the motorways. R. Jennie carried Ariel down in its arms, Ariel having chosen that over being wheeled, strapped to a gurney, or in a chair with wheels.

The hospital had supplied an ambulance, but the Terry eyed it with distaste. “We’ll use the Bureau car,” he said. “There’s room for four of us, robot or no.”

R. Jennie gently put Ariel into the back seat and got in beside her, the car creaking and sinking under the weight until the suspension system analyzed the imbalance and compensated for it. Derec and Donovan got into the front seat, and the agent took the controls and sent them surging silently down a ramp and into a lit but dim-seeming tunnel.