William Wu - Cyborg

“They’re duplicating the Key.”

“You think so?”

“I’m sure of it, Derec. And, look at the addendum on the supply requisition. They added small amounts there at the dome.”

“That would be the original Key,” Derec said slowly. “They…had to break it down to analyze it. Then they tossed the pieces into the pool of materials. It’s gone.”

“But they’re making more. Derec, this will make it easier for us to get one. Instead of one Key under careful guard, they’ll have a bunch of them we can try for.”

“I just hope Keymo is duplicating them accurately. And we might have to wait for them to turn out a few. We can’t get something that hasn’t been made yet.”

“Uh, Derec? Would you turn around?”

He turned in his chair and looked up at her.

“I guess you deserve an explanation. I know I’ve been acting weird. And I’m sorry I didn’t go inside with you. I had my mind on something else at the wrong time.”

“The wrong time!” Derec leaped out of his chair, glad to have the opening. “The worst possible time! We might have gotten the Key-or a key, anyway!”

“Derec, please. I’m trying to explain. Anyway, maybe there weren’t any to get, like you said.”

“All right! All right. Go ahead and explain.” He paced away from her and turned at the wall. “Go ahead.”

“Derec, I know who designed Robot City. And why.”

“ What?”

“I-”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” He raged. “No! Never mind that -who did build this place?” His astonishment and curiosity were interfering with his anger.

“Before I get to that, my real name is Ariel Welsh.”

“Well-glad to meet you. Finally.”

“I’m the only daughter of Juliana Welsh, of the planet Aurora.” She watched for his reaction.

“Should that mean something to me?”

“I thought you might have heard of her-she’s extremely wealthy. Lots of people have.”

Derec shrugged.

“My mother was the biggest patron of a man called Dr. Avery. Have you heard of him?”

“Dr. Avery. You know, I think I have…his name sounds familiar. What about him?”

“Dr. Avery was the brain behind all this.” She waved a hand, indicating the entire planet. “Robot City is his. And my mother’s money got it started.”

Derec’s heart began to pound. Dr. Avery. He had sat in the man’s office and used his terminal; now he had a name to go with the vague, limited information. Someone had been in that office shortly before he had; he had found a recently discarded food container.

“Whew. You really were keeping a secret, weren’t you?” He spoke more sympathetically. “What was he doing? Why did he build it?”

“From what Mom said, I think he was a famous architect. She called him a visionary. He was also eccentric, and used to argue with everyone. Robot City was a place where he could test his theories. “

“I get it. Here’s this…genius, I suppose, with all these outlandish ideas that no one can handle. So he wants to try out his experiments without interference, and your mother finances him.”

Katherine-now Ariel-nodded. “She gave him enough to get started, with the understanding that his project would have to be self-supporting after a certain point. Since that was part of his experiment, he didn’t object. And of course the robots are always very efficient. “

“He wanted to create an ongoing, self-sufficient city?”

“With a fully functioning society.”

“Where is he now?”

“He vanished a long time ago. Just went off somewhere. I suppose he’s dead, but Mom said he’s so strange that you just never know.”

“And he left behind an entire city of robots running on their original programming.” Derec shook his head. “Well, that clears up more than you think.”

“Like what?”

“When the microbes from the blood of…of the dead man set off the automatic shapechanging in the city, this entire community went berserk because its programming made an interpretation that no human would have made.”

“In other words,” said Ariel, “something went wrong and Dr. Avery wasn’t around to fix it. He wanted an ideal experimental environment and he didn’t quite get it.”

“When you put it that way, though, he came pretty close. If he had stayed here, he might have kept it going the way he wanted.”

“There’s something else.” She looked at her hands, and started playing with her fingernails. “I’ve been banished from Aurora. I can’t go back. “

“You’ve been banished? How? I mean, what for? Did you break a law or something? Are you a criminal?”

She gave a wry sneer. “I wish. I’d be a lot better off. Derec, I’m-sick.”

“The chronic condition you’ve mentioned.” He spoke gently, allowing her whatever leeway she wished in such a personal matter.

“Oh, don’t worry. You’re in no danger. You can’t get it from just being around me.” She laughed bitterly. “I had an affair. I guess it was, you know, a rebellion against my mother and all her fancy friends. They all expected me to be such a good little girl and grow up to be just like them.” It was her turn to start pacing.

Derec waited patiently.

“The guy was a Spacer from, I don’t know, some other planet. He was just traveling through, you might say, and he was long gone by the time I found out he’d contaminated me.”

“Couldn’t your mother help? With all her money and everything?”

“Ha! They don’t have any cure on Aurora-or maybe anywhere. Besides, this wasn’t just a matter of getting sick and getting well. On Aurora, this is a deadly sin. My mother bought a ship and outfitted it for me, complete with a couple of robots as aides. Getting away was the best I could do.”

“Your mother made quite a contribution, at that. You left Aurora in style, at least.”

“I can’t complain about that.”

“And after you left?”

“I told myself I was looking for a cure, but I don’t know if I really believe there is such a thing. But I did decide not to waste any time!”

Derec felt a prickling along the back of his neck. “What do you mean, not waste any time?”

“Derec, I…I’m going to die of this!” And suddenly she was crying, scared and vulnerable in a way he had never seen before.

He hesitated just a moment, and then went to her, holding her-awkwardly at first, then gently as she relaxed against him and really began to sob.

He was dumbfounded. This flood of information seemed to short-circuit his attention, and left him simply staring at the floor without thoughts as she cried in his arms. He had to sort out what he could-that she was Ariel, not Katherine, and that she was not, right now, the confident and sharp-edged older girl he had known her to be.

She was Ariel Welsh, banished from her home planet, trapped on Robot City, and infected with a deadly disease.

He turned her gently by the shoulders and led her into her room. First he sat with her on the bed, still uncertain of what to do. Then, after her sobs had grown fainter, she squeezed his arm affectionately and pulled away to stretch out on the bed. He rose, patted her on the shoulder shyly, and went out, closing her door behind him.

Derec sat at his computer console for a long time without turning it on. His own amnesia suddenly seemed like a fairly manageable problem. Yet the urgency of getting her off Robot City, and perhaps to some medical help, was greater than ever.

He doubted that the robots could help with a disease, at least in the short term. Even so, he started calling up various medical subjects on the central computer, in case Dr. Avery had left anything useful.

Actually, he found quite a bit of medical information pertaining to humans, but nothing that hinted at an ability to find cures for new diseases. The computer did have a list of vaccines, cures, and treatments for diseases he recognized-common ones that would have been available on Aurora. He also found a great deal of advanced material on surgery, organ regeneration, and other treatments for injuries. Overall, however, the library was oddly lacking, as though Dr. Avery, or at least somebody, had just grabbed information and entered it without checking it. For instance, there was no introductory reference on anatomy as such, or on psychology. Derec suspected that the eccentric Dr. Avery had been so involved with the frontiers of science that he had neglected to supply fundamental knowledge. After all, the robots had no particular need for this subject. He also remembered that the library on the planetoid where he had first met these Avery robots had been oddly selected.