William Wu - Perihelion

Still stepping carefully, she ventured down the ramp. After a moment, she realized that she was chillier than before…air was moving against her soaked clothing. Puzzled, she turned around-and found the walls, ceiling, and floor behind her converging to pinch off the corridor after she had passed.

She hurried forward a little, despite her caution, and came up against a stone wall at the end. Starting to panic, she ran her hands across the stones, feeling for a control of some kind. She felt nothing and whirled around to look at the shrinking corridor.

Suddenly something dropped from the ceiling in front of her and she flattened against the end wall, trying to see the object as it swayed before her face. She recognized it as Wolruf’s head, dangling on a long piece of rope tied into an ancient noose.

As she stared at it in horror, she realized that it was only a function robot rendered in realistic detail.

“Why arr ‘u ‘err?” The robot asked, in Wolruf’s voice.

Ariel’s spine prickled at the sound. She glanced behind the hanging head. The corridor had stopped closing behind her and now had left her in a very small dungeonlike space.

“Wrong answer,” said the robot, though she hadn’t spoken.

Suddenly the floor rose under Ariel’s feet, pushing her up toward the ceiling. The rope retracted with her, keeping the Wolruf head level with her as she rose. The ceiling opened and then the section of floor stopped, now flush with the floor just above the stone corridor.

The abrupt halt threw her off balance and she fell on a rich, gold carpet. Above her, five elaborate chandeliers sparkled and shone from a surprisingly low beamed ceiling. She rose up on her elbows, looking around fearfully.

She was in a library. Shelves of antique books, not computer tapes, stretched around all the walls and were protected by a transparent barrier of some kind. Turning, she stepped off the lift platform away from the Wolruf head.

A candelabra of some sort was on a shelf outside the transparent barrier that protected the books. It stood inside a blue and white bowl, leaning to one side. The candelabra was on a round base, with one central stem holding one candle and four branches arching upward on each side to total nine. She had never seen one before, whatever it was, and thought it seemed out of place here, as though someone had set it down and forgotten it.

She stepped back and looked at the bowl. It was large enough to serve four or five people plenty of food. Light blue designs danced around the white background on the outside. It had never been meant to hold a candelabra, though. Someone had left these here carelessly.

“What iss it?” The Wolruf head asked.

Ariel flinched at the sound and looked at the head. “A candleholder of some kind, obviously.”

“Wrong again.”

One of the shelved walls glided away soundlessly. She stood where she was, eyeing the dark opening that appeared. An animal-no, a function robot, almost certainly-stepped into a space where light fell on it. It had Wolruf’s caninoid body and Ariel’s own face.

“If you’re standing on the surface of the planet Earth in Webster Groves, Missouri,” said the robot-Ariel, “which way is Robot City?”

She stared at it hopelessly. “I’m no navigator. Not without some kind of information to use, anyway.”

Robot-Ariel cocked her head, turned, and trotted away.

The wall of shelves slid back into place.

Ariel sank to the floor in a mixture of relief and despair. She couldn’t just go on wandering aimlessly in the real-life manifestation of one man’s insanity. If this place offered a way out, she could figure it out. If it didn’t, she might as well stay in this room instead of going forward into some dungeon cell or something worse.

As before, her knowledge of Dr. Avery was the only source of clues she had, and she no longer had Jeff’s memories or Derec’s facility with robots to help. All right. Basically, what did she know?

She knew he was a genius, that he was paranoid, that he wanted to create a perfect society. But what did this crazy place have to do with order and rationality? What was it doing on Robot City?

Everything she knew about Robot City said that this place just didn’t belong here at all. The more she thought about it, the more she realized that every line of thought brought her back to that one conclusion. “That’s it,” she whispered to herself suddenly. “He’s gone over the edge. He’s even crazier than before.”

In the heart of a planet-wide city based on logic and efficiency, its creator had lost his mind.

She smiled at the irony. It wasn’t funny, exactly, but it was…funny. Somehow.

Exhaustion and fear made her giddy. She began to giggle. The more she thought about this-about all their discussions of the Laws of Robotics and all their convoluted efforts to reason with the positronic brains of the robots-and how it had led to this… …She really began to laugh. She fell onto the floor on her back, laughing in the little room by herself.

The wall of shelves slid open again, apparently triggered by the sound of her laughter.

Suddenly on guard again, she sat up and looked around. The function robot with her face was back.

“If you’re standing on the surface of the planet Earth in Webster Groves, Missouri,” said the robot-Ariel again, “which way is Robot City?”

Ariel giggled again. “Up, of course.” She laughed-and the floor gave way beneath her.

She was in one more chute, twisting in a tight downward spiral. Just as it began to level off, the dark space ahead of her irised open into light. She spilled out onto a polished hardwood floor.

Shaken by the ride, she lay still for a moment gazing at a very high beamed ceiling that was nearly lost in shadows. She turned her head to the side and found walls of gray stone, precisely chiseled and fit again in the modular shape of the Key to Perihelion. The room was huge, stretching meters on each side of her.

She raised onto her elbow, still getting her bearings. The end of a large, intricately carved table was in front of her. Its legs and feet were sculpted in the shape of some furry, clawed animal she did not recognize. It was made of a dark, deeply polished wood.

Struggling to rise, she reached up and grabbed the edge of the table. She pulled herself up to lean on it and then froze in surprise. At the far end of the table, many meters away, a man sat in a high, straight-backed chair with a gigantic fire blazing behind him in a stone fireplace twice her height.

“Welcome, Ariel. I am Dr. Avery.”

She stared at him with nothing to say. After all the effort to find him, landing here like this was so unexpected that she hadn’t formed any plan of attack, any arguments to use with him. She wasn’t ready to talk to him.

“You are welcome to warm yourself by the fire,” said her host.

She was willing to stay chilly to keep away from him, but she wanted to stall a little if she could, without getting too close. Slowly, she moved around the corner of the table and began to walk down the side of it. Dr. Avery seemed relaxed, even unconcerned, as he fingered some small object in front of him on the table.

The long, narrow table had all kinds of articles on it: flowers, dishes, trinkets, small sculptures. She didn’t dare take the time to look. Her eyes remained on Dr. Avery.

He was short. looking especially so in the high-backed chair. His build was stocky. Wavy white hair framed his face, which was also adorned with a bushy mustache. He looked friendly and benign.

His coat was too big, as she remembered from the other times she had seen him, and he still wore a white shirt with a ruffled collar.

He didn’t look crazy.

Ariel stopped a good four meters away, still watching him. What was a crazy man supposed to look like?