William Wu - Perihelion

“Now what?” She asked, wiping off her own hands. “Nothing’s happening.”

At the far end of the valley, Wolruf sat quivering in the chilly air. She was huddled high in the mountains in a vertical crevice of rock. This was the compromise she had reached for her conundrum: she was in the valley where she could try to observe the humans or even Mandelbrot if they were here when day broke. At the same time, she would not lead the Hunters following her directly to them.

Now she could not see any of them in the faint light down in the valley. In the nearer regions below her, function robots were visible doing their regular chores among the crops. Her physiology kept her just warm enough at this altitude to remain for a while, but she was not comfortable. Nor did she have the energy left to run farther.

She waited patiently, reviewing the moves she had made to break her trail. None of them could avoid a systematic search by the Hunters if they were close enough to detect her heat. Also, the Hunters probably had checked the pass at some point, because it was a bottleneck that could quickly tell them if she was inside the valley or out.

If her heat trail had faded before they had reached it, they still had physical signs to rely on. She had been as careful as possible, but the robotic vision of the Hunters could detect extreme detail. The rest was up to them.

Her ears perked up at the sound of footsteps on the rock fall below her. With no more energy left for fleeing, she waited patiently. The giant shape of a Hunter emerged from the darkness, thrown into silhouette by the distant glow emanating from the crops below. She knew it would not harm her, but it would take her prisoner and possibly deliver her to Dr. Avery, who could certainly harm her if he wished. She shivered as the Hunter reached down to pick her up.

Derec was staring disconsolately at the dirt-covered sensor when it suddenly erupted in an uneven spray, knocking loose some of the dirt. Ariel and he both flinched. All around them, other spigots were also spraying jets of fine mist into the air.

“That’s it!” Derec lifted his arms toward her. “Let’s go. Can you help me up?”

Ariel took his arms and pulled. His legs gave out under him. She wasn’t strong enough to lift him.

She started to pull again.

“I can’t walk any more.” His lower legs and feet had lost all feeling.

“You can’t walk at all?” Her shoulders slumped.

“But I can crawl. Let’s go.”

“Derec…?”

“Come on!” He started crawling through the soft earth, which was quickly turning to mud.

She stood and walked alongside him. “This is crazy. We’re hardly getting anywhere.”

“We have a lot more time now. The Hunters can’t follow our heat trail so they’ll have to start a pattern search. And at least one of them will have to carry Mandelbrot after they’ve shut him down.”

“Derec, you’ve only gone two meters!”

He stopped, sighing, and looked ahead. She was right. He could barely move. “Hey-what’s that thing?”

“What?” She looked, too.

Some kind of large rectangular shape, at least a cubic meter in size, was emerging from the ground below the trees.

“That…thing, there. We haven’t seen one of those before.” He started crawling again.

“There’s one behind us, too,” she said. “And beyond that one. They’re coming up all over. They were completely hidden before.”

“We must have triggered them along with the irrigation. Go see what it is.”

She hurried ahead and stopped in front of the object, bending low in front of it. After a moment, she came back and knelt down. “I think we can get inside it. It looks like a ventilation duct or something.”

Derec nodded. He had stopped crawling to get his breath again. His head was spinning dizzily.

When she got down on all fours and moved under him, he let her. She gathered his arms around her neck and maneuvered under him. Then, supporting his weight, she began to crawl much faster than he had, carrying as much of his weight as she could.

He hung on with his arms and closed his eyes against the spray of water.

“Here,” she said, after a few moments.

He opened his eyes into a gaping black opening with no other features. As she eased out from under him, he reached inside and felt for the shape of the object.

“It’s not a straight drop.” She helped him climb inside. “You can feel a gradual incline.”

Derec hesitated, too disoriented to speak but still reluctant to throw himself into an unknown hole.

“Go on, get in before the Hunters see us.”

He was losing all sense of his surroundings. Following directions was easier than arguing. He worked his way inside the opening and then suddenly was sliding downward and accelerating.

All was in darkness. He felt a rushing of air, the smooth pressure of the surface against his back as he slid, and Ariel bumping against him from above as she slid with him. Vaguely, he realized he was too exhausted to feel any fear.

He should have been terrified of winding up in a moving fan blade, for instance, or in the workings of some mysterious robot creation that would convert them both to fertilizer. Apparently he had been on Robot City too long for that. The robots couldn’t allow that much danger to a human to exist here.

No, that wasn’t it, either. The reason was even simpler. Nothing on this planet was more frightening than the chemfets destroying his body from the inside at this very moment.

The sensation of falling continued as they entered some turns, gradual curves, and finally reached a sudden upturn.

In the short ascent, gravity broke their momentum and then they slid backward again. Derec lay motionless, aware that they had stopped in the bottom of this thing, whatever it was. No light reached them at all.

He felt Ariel move a little, probably getting her bearings.

“Derec?” She said softly.” Are you hurt?”

A moment passed before he had the breath to answer. “No,” he whispered. “But I’ve had it.”

“We’re safe now,” she said, feeling for him and stroking his hair.” At least from the Hunters. I’m sure of it. They’ll have to search the entire valley, and every one of these things. And these were popping up every few meters, it looked like… well, every fifty or sixty, anyhow. Without a heat trail to follow, it’ll take them forever.”

“I can’t do it.”

“But we’re onto him! Avery, I mean. I’m sure of it.” She shuffled around and seemed to stand. “You know that upward curve at the end of our…little ride? It’s here and not very high. The duct continues on a level from here. Say, you know what else? There are handholds of some kind on the side opposite the one we slid down.”

“Maybe for service robots to make repairs down here.” He thought a moment. The temptation to go on was strong. Confronting the crazy doctor after all the suffering he had endured…but he couldn’t move. All he wanted to do was sleep.

“I think you’re right,” he said finally. “This is a ventilation duct. From the size and number of them, it must lead to an immense living space.”

“Avery’s home. Robots wouldn’t need it or the produce in the valley. Come on, let’s go. I’ll help you up.”

“You’ll have to go on alone. I honestly can’t move.”

She was quiet a moment. “Do you really want me to go on without you?”

“Yes.”

“All right,” she said slowly. She waited, perhaps trying to think of something else to say. Then she got her arms around him and embraced him very hard, and held on.

He was too weak to respond. After a moment, he felt her let go and stand up. Then she was climbing, and he heard her moving down the ventilation duct away from him.