Refuge

Chapter 11. Questions!

The Terry followed him and Dr. Li to a more private conference room, where Dr. Li left them.

The special agent looked Derec over intently, but not in a hostile manner. Derec braced himself, shaky. Above all, he mustn’t mention Robot City. Neither could he mention Aranimas and Wolruf. They’d consider him crazy.

Any break in his story would mean endless questioning, queries to the Spacer worlds, questions about Dr. Avery, the discovery of Wolruf in orbit about Kappa Whale, perhaps the discovery of all that Dr. Avery was doing…not all of that bad, but it would take time! Worst of all, the investigation would ultimately uncover Robot City…and that secret had to be kept at all costs.

Derec and Ariel had to get back there.

“I must warn you that this conversation is being recorded, and that anything you say may be used against you. Further, you have the right to remain silent, if you feel that your interests might be threatened by answering. On the other hand, we have as yet no positive evidence that any crime has been committed. The Bureau has been called in primarily because you are allegedly a Spacer…diplomatic reasons, that is,”

Derec nodded, throat tight.

“Who are you?” the agent asked abruptly.

“Derec.”

“And your last name?”

Derec debated, decided not, and said, “I sit mute.”

“That is your right. Do you wish a witness that you have not been coerced?”

“Waived, but, uh,” Derec could not quite remember the Spacer legal formula-so far it had seemed close to Earth’s. If anything, Earth was more fanatical about preserving the individual’s rights than the Spacer worlds were. “Oh, I wish to retain the right to ask for a witness later.”

“Waived right to a witness pro tern,” said Donovan, nodding shortly once, in faint approval. “I assume then that you do not mean to sit mute to all questions. Therefore, I ask you: have you ever had Burundi’s disease, popularly known as amnemonic plague?”

“I don’t remember.” Derec smiled faintly at the other and received a faint smile back.

“Do you remember your last visit to Towner Laney Memorial Hospital, two days ago, and the blood sample that was taken at that time?”

Derec remembered the visit, but not the blood sample. Even when Donovan pointed at the red scab inside his left elbow, he still didn’t remember the sample being taken.

Concerned, Donovan said, “Do you assert that it was taken without your knowledge; particularly, do you accuse anyone of using anesthesia on you against your will?”

“Is that a crime on Earth? No, I make no such-uh-assertion. I just don’t remember…I was probably in a fog. I usually am, these days.”

The agent looked at him. “Isn’t unauthorized anesthesia a crime on the Spacer worlds?”

“It might be, but I doubt it. I doubt that it happens often enough for anyone to pass a law against it. The robots would prevent it, usually.”

“Hmmm,” said the Terry, possibly reflecting that a robot-saturated society might have its points. “In any case, I now inform you that a blood sample was taken from you on that occasion and carefully studied. The conclusion of the doctors here, and at the Mayo, and in Bethesda, is that though you have antitoxins to Burundi’s, you have never had the disease in its severe form.”

Derec stared at him.

Donovan continued, “Yet, something you said to the Spacer plague victim, and which she answered, indicates that your memory was lost in the characteristic fashion of this disease. Can you elucidate that, or do you wish to sit mute?”

The robots.thought Derec. Furniture to a Spacer, he had paid no attention. And usually a robot’s discretion was proverbial, so much so that their testimony was rarely heard even in Spacer courts. But these had been instructed to record and play back everything that Ariel said. Derec couldn’t remember what she and he had said, but they’d given the game away more than an Earthly week ago.

Had they mentioned Robot City?

“Why do you ask?” he asked warily.

“Do you suffer from amnesia?” the other countered.

Derec ought to sit mute. He considered that seriously, wondered if perhaps it was already too late, then thought of a possible way around.

“Why do you ask? Surely it’s no crime to suffer amnesia. Nor would I expect the Terries to be called in even if a Spacer suffered. The condition isn’t contagious, you know.”

“There are laws against harboring certain diseases, nevertheless,” said Donovan automatically, but he waved that aside. “Public policy. No, the question here is more serious. Essentially, two things about you alarm us. One is that you do not remember your past. The other is that you are not on Earth.”

Derec gaped at him, almost started to ask exactly where St. Louis was.

“Officially, I mean,” said Donovan, frowning in irritation. “We’ve done a thorough computer check, and we find no sign of you before you appeared here a couple of weeks ago, eating at the section kitchen, big as life and twice as natural. This was brought to our attention by the hospital’s accountants and computer operators, who have never discovered how your partner’s records vanished out of the hospital’s computer.”

The Terry looked at him again. “Normally I wouldn’t reveal so much, but there’s a good deal of alarm in Washington. It’s considered that you are not the source of the mystery, and may in fact be unaware of it. Who sent you to Earth, and why?”

Derec’s mind was spinning like a wheel, but he managed to say, “I suppose you figure the ones who sent us have done this computer trick. How could they possibly have?”

Donovan shrugged angrily. “Any number of ways, I suppose. There’s talk of bandit programs that take over computers. More realistically, there’s talk of disappearing programs, that automatically wipe themselves after a certain time-that is, they contain instructions that cause the computer to wipe them, do you see?”

Derec nodded, a memory clicking into place. He’d heard of such programs as toys, but a good computer could usually retain them. And a network of computers…if you were getting food or lodging with your ration tag, that allocation would have to be routed through so many computers that though the first computer might lose the program, the memory of the transaction would remain. His little erasure at the hospital had been simple, and he’d caught the accounting trail early, so there was no trace.

But of course there was no memory of their arrival in any Earthly computer. Only in one Earthly positronic brain.

“Violation of the Immigration Act can be charged against you,” said Donovan chattily. “We couldn’t make it stick without proof that you knowingly and deliberately invaded without the legal formalities. But we could hold you pending an investigation.”

“We couldn’t go far in any case,” said Derec. “Earth is one big jail.”

Donovan nodded. “ Any planet is.”

Derec tried to imagine how many computers in how many bureaus and branches of government would have to be foxed to slip a spy in. His mind boggled; no wonder they were concerned. Far easier to believe that a ship sneaked in and dropped someone, despite orbital radar and other detection devices.

They were overreacting: easier to slip in spies in other guises, like traveling sociology students. Except that Spacers never went anywhere on Earth, and now here were two of them.

“How many of you are there, on Earth?” Donovan asked casually.

It hit Derec that he didn’t really know. He had supposed that Dr. Avery worked alone, but his belief that it was so didn’t make it so. Besides, Dr. Avery worked through robots, and there could be any number of them

“I don’t know,” he said frankly. “We were told little. I have reason to think that we are the only two.” He shrugged. “It’s hard to find volunteers for social studies on Earth. Too few Spacers care about the subject in the first place; they’d rather study robotics.”

Donovan nodded, sitting leaning slightly toward him, not at all relaxed. There was so much energy and sheer competence in that pose that Derec had the sudden realization that if he were to attack the Earthman, the other would pinion him as efficiently as any robot. If not quite as gently. The idea of concealing the location of R. David and the apartment seemed silly. This man represented a planetwide investigative organization.

“Most of their agents are robots,” he said, and that got an instant response, instantly blanked.

A nice fat red herring for you to follow,he thought gleefully, and then idly wondered what a red herring was, and on what planet the phrase had originated.

“Any idea who they are?” Donovan asked, casual again.

Very little. “Only that it’s a sociological investigation. There’s been some talk about Laws of Humanics, the mathematical expressions that describe how human beings relate to each other. Studies of society have been made on various Spacer worlds, as disparate as Aurora and Solaria.” Derec was detailing the theories of certain of the robots of Robot City.

He finished with a shrug. “I suppose that they find Earth the best case study, it having the densest population and the longest cultural history.”

“It seems odd that they’d memory-wipe their agents just for a cultural study,” said Donovan dubiously. “What were you instructed to look for?”

Derec thought fast, holding his face as nearly expressionless as he could. He felt that he was sweating. Keep it close to the truth, he told himself. “The study’s not so important, but uncontaminated data is. If we entered openly, we’d be under the surveillance of your Bureau. Understandable enough; Spacers aren’t common on Earth.”

“Especially not in the Cities,” said Donovan dryly.

“The knowledge that we were being watched, followed, even protected, would affect what we observed. It would be an emotional wall between us and Earth people. It would be a safety net. It would prevent us from living like Earthers.”

“And that’s what you were sent here to do?” The TBI man was skeptical, but not closed-minded.

“Yes. We weren’t told to look for anything specific; that would have warped our data. We were simply told to go to St. Louis, to settle in, to spend some time, and to record our impressions.” The moment he spoke the last four words Derec realized how big an error he’d made.

Then he thought of an explanation. But he was still sweating when the Terry said, “But that doesn’t explain why your memories were erased.”

“Oh. To prevent us from telling anything about the techniques by which our IDs were wiped from your computers. You see, they wanted us to disappear completely, to prevent contamination. “

Donovan nodded slowly. Derec couldn’t tell how much of it he had swallowed.

“I see. Well, you have not yourself violated any law that we know of, except as accessory to violation of the Immigration Act, and computer fraud. The last of which can ‘t be proven, because we have no records to cite! We’ve found platinum and iridium that we think must have been dumped by your organization to pay for your support here. There’s also some hafnium we can’t trace a source for. You, or they, have more than paid for all you’ve consumed, so there are no complaints on that score.”

Donovan looked severely at him. “You understand that there are a lot of red faces at the TBI, and some angry ones elsewhere in Washington. I’m just the A-in-C of the local office, and even I felt the heat. They don ‘t, we don’t, like having our computers messed with so freely, gato. But nobody wants trouble either-certainly we don’t want to see you lynched. Sorry about your wife. Hope she gets better. We suggest that you leave as soon after that as possible.”

Derec nodded, gulping, glad the other didn’t ask to see the “impressions” they were supposedly recording. He could say she’d been taken sick so rapidly they hadn’t had time-true enough, too. Leaving when Ariel got better was a good idea, too-and not just because of the sternly repressed dislike on the special agent’s face.

After that, things got worse. For five days in a row they refused to let Derec see Ariel. Afterward, he could see her, but only her trimensional image; he wasn’t allowed in the room. She passed through the crisis of the disease during that time, and they began to implant the earliest memories. That left her in an hypnotic state most of the time, and when she wasn’t in it she was asleep or on the verge of sleep.

“Somnambulistic state,” Dr. Powell said. “Though of course she can’t walk. Too weak yet.”

Derec grimly worked at recording and coding, eating little and sleeping less. Dreams of Robot City haunted him waking and sleeping. He couldn’t help brooding, while working, over such nonsensical questions as: did Dr. Avery get out of Robot City before it was shrunk, or was a tiny madman swimming through his bloodstream at this moment? How about the Human Medical Team; were they making the most of their opportunity to study human anatomy and biochemistry?

Earthers whom he passed in the corridors and ways tended to avoid him; he looked sick and desperate, as his infrequent glances in mirrors told him. Not all Earthers avoided him, however. Once a man glanced directly at him in Personal, and Derec was so accustomed to Earthly ways that he was shocked. Then he thought for a startled moment that it was Donovan. But it wasn’t the special agent, it was merely a man who looked like him: a man with an easy, athletic carriage, an air of competence, and the look of eagles in his eyes.

Another such man sat across from him at breakfast one morning, and occasionally he was half-conscious of other TBI men about. Nothing so conspicuous as ducking into corners as he came by, or peering from doorways. They simply were about.

He decided not to worry about it. The Terries had compelling reasons of their own for not making a scene, and so long as he gave no evidence of spying, he doubted they’d do anything. Probably they were there for his protection. Derec grinned faintly, the only hint of humor in all that bleak time: they were contaminating his observations.

“I told you so,” he said to the absent Donovan.

Being watched by the TBI did not bother him; he was used to being watched by mother-hen robots.

He did think much, though, on what the Terry had told him: he had never had the plague, though he had antitoxins to its neurotoxin in his blood. He’d had the memory loss without the plague. He’d received a dose of the neurotoxin without having had the disease.

Well, his arrival on that ice asteroid, without his memory, while the robots were searching for the Key to Perihelion, never had seemed to him like an accident or a coincidence. He felt, and always had, as if he were a piece in a game, being herded across the board for someone else’s reasons. A mad someone else.

The only one he knew of with both the madness and the genius was Dr. Avery.

They had to get back to Robot City.

One morning during this period he looked up from table J-9 and saw Korolenko next to him. She was wearing her hospital whites, or he might not have recognized her.

“Eat your bacon,” she said crisply as recognition dawned on his face.

The thought made him ill. Yeast-based or no, it was fat and greasy and sickening. His opinion of the bacon showed on his face.

“Then eat the eggs. And the toast.” Korolenko’s voice was grim. “Look, Mr. Avery, you won’t help your wife by collapsing of starvation.”

Derec wanted to say it was stress, not starvation, but realized that there was something in what she said. He’d been living on fruit juices and caffeine. He managed to choke down the toast and some of the scrambled eggs, with lots of hot, sweet tea.

“That’s better. We’ll see you at the hospital tomorrow.”

That night Derec had one of his worst dreams about Robot City, and the next day he sat looking at nothing and thinking about it…

Nothing silly about Dr. Avery shrinking, or the Human Medical Team. He knew perfectly well that Robot City was on its own planet-even during the dream. What he was dreaming was that a miniature version had been injected into his blood, where it had started growing and reproducing. Here the dream became silly-the miniature city was getting iron from his red blood cells. But there was nothing silly about the feeling it left him with.

Come to think of it, Robot City could be thought of as a kind of infection of the planet on which it had been established. It, too, had grown from a single point of infection, a living organism that had grown and reproduced.

Robot City inside him. He could feel it there. The feeling was so strong that he forgot all about eating, or going to the hospital. Even Ariel was faint in the back of his mind.