William Wu - Cyborg

“I can’t honestly see why anybody would want to come here,” said Ariel. “There’s no business to conduct. And it’s not exactly Fun City. There’s no entertainment or anything.”

“I know. And pioneering commercial interests would show up in force, not one or two people at a time.”

“Individuals wouldn’t have much of anything to do here that I can think of,” she went on. “Even if I weren’t sick, I’d still want to get away from here. The robots run everything on their terms.”

“I think we can rule ourselves out as the reason, don’t you?” Derec asked. “As far as we know, no one has any way of knowing that either of us is here.”

“Don’t I know it.” She shook her head in resignation, with a wistful smile.

“So that leaves Robot City itself as the reason.”

“But I told you that Dr. Avery kept its location a secret. My mother was sure that was very important to him.”

“You also said that he disappeared a long time ago. If he’s dead, could he have left some information behind in the office that someone got? Or spilled the secret someplace else out in space before he died? And now they’ve used the information to come here. Or he’s back himself.”

“With a guy like that, anything’s possible,” she said reluctantly. “But it sounds out of character for him to reveal more than he wanted. Besides, any people who had learned the secret would have shown up here a long time ago.”

“Not if it was well hidden. Maybe they just found it.”

“Maybe. I guess.” She looked at him. “Do you think it’s Avery?”

“No. The sightings just aren’t consistent with his ability to go into that office in the Compass Tower. Our visitors are as lost as we are. And they can get us off this rock, too.”

“So much for them finding Robot City,” said Ariel. “What about us finding them?”

“I wish I’d had the time to streamline the computer by now. It just isn’t that reliable. If it was, we could use it to help.”

“We can try, can’t we? Can you give some kind of standing instruction to the robots to look for the people?”

“Yeah, I can try, but we have the same problems as before. The instructions don’t reach every single robot, and they take a long time to reach a lot of them. And even that assumes Dr. Avery didn’t counterprogram against it for some weird reason of his own.”

She shook her head. “He was too paranoid. If he was careful enough to keep the secret of this place, I’m sure he would have approved of ordering the robots to keep watch for outsiders.”

“We already know that some robots are reporting their sightings. I’ll order all the robots to do that, and…” he trailed off. “Well, I don’t know. Maybe we’re just going around in circles.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Well, I just don’t know if it’ll make a difference, like I said. It’s just more of what’s already in the computer.”

“All we can do is give them the instruction and hope they get us some information,” she said. “Then we’ll try to think of something else. What’s wrong with that?”

“Yeah, here goes. But what we really need is for the robots to detain them if they can, and I don’t see how they can do that. That might violate the First Law.”

“Wouldn’t that depend on the particulars of the situation? Maybe the robots could persuade them to come. Anyway, the robots just have to avoid harming them. And they might want to see us. I guess they could bring them here, don’t you?”

“I’m putting in the order. If there are any robots who can find and identify these strangers, they are to bring them here if they can. The robots can worry about the Law problems when the time comes.” He sat back in his chair with a sigh. “I just don’t know if any of this will make a difference.”

“We’ve been going at this pretty hard,” said Ariel. “Why don’t we take a break? It’s time for something to eat, anyway.”

“Ugh,” said Derec, and they both laughed. “All right. We’ll force down anything we can stomach from the processor for lunch. After that, assuming we live, we’ll probably be glad to go out and engage in endless debates with uncooperative robots.”

Ariel got up, smiling. “I guess we can take our motivation wherever we find it.”

After they had eaten, they ventured out once more to see if they could find some evidence of the strangers in the city. Derec started out eager and full of energy, in large part because Ariel’s illness was on his mind. He wanted to make sure that she knew he wasn’t dawdling.

At her suggestion, he agreed after a while to take it easy. Rushing around wasn’t likely to help at this stage of the search. They had alerted the robots as much as they could, and they had a list of locations of previous sightings. Now all they could do was walk around, hoping to chance across a lead.

The worst problem was that the sightings offered no pattern that they could recognize. Since the lone traveler had not been reported at all for some time, they decided to forget about that one for the present. The sightings of the two traveling together were completely random, as far as they could tell.

The most recent sighting had taken place on the outskirts of the city. They rode the tunnels to the end of the trunkline at the edge of the city, and then had to surface. There, they managed to hitch a ride in the cab of a huge liquid transporter of some kind. They hopped off when its route diverged from theirs.

As they walked, they got their first look at the long, three-stage mole device that dug the underground tunnels and left a fully equipped, functioning platform system behind. This segment was not being used because it had not been connected to the main system elsewhere; otherwise, the mole device would have been underground and out of sight. It also simultaneously mined ores for construction and other uses, according to a foreman robot whom Derec questioned. It seemed to be a modified version of a gatelike device he had seen sifting the asteroid in search of the original Key for the Avery robots, shortly after waking up with amnesia, and the great mining and construction devices that had been crucial to the automatic shapechanging of the city.

They also saw a number of buildings under construction and some freshly finished. These included some smaller domes of bronze dianite reminiscent of the Key Center. Nowhere, however, did any of the robots remember any additional sightings of humans.

His name was Jeff Leong. He opened his eyes in darkness and wondered where he was. At least he was alive, and not in pain.

He seemed to be lying on his back, comfortably. Pale, colored lights crossed his vision from his left, suggesting monitor readouts. He supposed they were medical equipment of some kind, and turned his head to the left, expecting it to involve considerable effort and discomfort. Instead, he moved easily and comfortably, though he found wires, now, under his cheek, that connected his head to the equipment by his side.

Dim light seemed to have come on in the room. He could see outlines in the room around him, and of course the lit displays of the monitors. The readouts meant nothing to him, though, so he straightened his head again.

He felt fine. That hardly made any sense.

Since he had only been a passenger on the spaceship Kimbriel, he did not have a clear understanding of the disaster. The captain had spoken over the intercom, saying that a mechanical problem had developed, and that they had left Aurora too far behind to return safely. The navigator had located a habitable planet, however, and they would attempt an emergency stop in a lifepod.

At the time, Jeff had been excited. He had had faith in the crew and had actually looked forward to an unscheduled adventure on a planet he had never seen. He assumed that was where he was now.