Refuge

Chapter 2. Perihelion

The burnished, enigmatic face of Mandelbrot approached his. The robot gripped him with his normal left arm. His Avery-construct right arm bent impossibly, reached around Derec and switched off his communicator.

Derec had had nightmares about that arm. It was a piece of scrap from an Avery robot, which Aranimas had had picked up from the ice asteroid where Derec had first awakened. “Build me a robot,” the alien had said. Derec had put pieces together to build the robot he called Alpha. It wasn’t a good job, but it worked.

Then, weeks later, the crudely attached right arm seated itself firmly and made a few modifications in Alpha’s brain: Alpha informed them that he was now known as Mandelbrot. Derec had observed the fine structure of the arm: a series of tiny chips, or scales, that gripped each other and could therefore mold the arm to any shape that might be desired.

Each unit was a sort of robotic cell; together, they were a brain. And having integrated themselves, they had-to a degree-taken over Alpha. Derec’s nightmare was that the cells were eating the robot out from the inside, that his interior was one solid mass of them, and he was about to become something -horrifying.

Impossible; the cells couldn’t eat. Also, all the brains were robotic, Mandelbrot’s normal positronic brain and the units in the cells. The Three Laws compelled them all. But dreams are not logical.

At the moment, the worst nightmare had come true, until Mandelbrot put his head against Derec’s helmet. It would have looked to an observer as if the robot were kissing his cheek: his microphone touched Derec’s helmet and Mandelbrot spoke.

“Derec, I am worried about Ariel.”

They had been careful to conceal from Mandelbrot the worst of Ariel’s condition. The robot knew only that she was sick, not that the disease was usually fatal. The effect on his positronic brain was more than they cared to risk; the First Law left no loophole for incurable diseases.

“Ariel is bored, as well as ill,” Derec said.

He looked away uneasily from the robot’s expressionless but intense face. The stars beckoned, promising and threatening; somewhere out there, perhaps, he might recover his memory. He remembered Jeff Leong, who had crashed on Robot City after an accident while on his way to college. In a few years, Derec would have been thinking about college, if this fantastic thing hadn’t happened to him.

“Ariel is very sick,” said Mandelbrot. “Her eating pattern has altered markedly. She suffers from fever most of the time. Her attention span is abnormally low, she is sensitive to light, she moves about only with effort-”

“All right,” said Derec, feeling that he would ossify before the robot finished its catalog if he didn’t interrupt. “It’s true that Ariel is ill. But I am not worried about her.”

That wasn’t true, especially now that it had been brought out into the open.

“You should worry. I fear for her safety if something is not done for her.”

“What do you suggest we do?”

“You may have to use the Key to Perihelion.”

After scouring Robot City for weeks for a Key to Perihelion, the mysterious device that would transport them instantly off the planet, they had managed to steal Dr. Avery’s ship when he had come to investigate their “interference.” On the ship they had found the Key, but Derec’s investigation of Dr. Avery’s office had shown him where the Key would probably take him.

Derec said, “That would take us back to Robot City-with no way of escape and Dr. Avery after us. Surely that’s less safe than this mild illness.”

Mandelbrot was silent for a moment. Then he said, “That is true. I hope you are right and that this is a mild illness. But she has suffered many of these symptoms for many days now. Mild illnesses usually subside within this time.”

The robot fell silent but did not move away.

“‘Ou might as well come back in,” said Wolruf, startling Derec. “I do not think we can find the problem out therre. I wish I knew more about dense energy fieldss…”

Derec turned, and at his first motion the robot released him, first turning his communicator back on. The motion was as much an indicator of Derec’s will as a command, and the Second Law of Robotics forced the robot to comply with his desire.

“Right, I’m coming back,” Derec said, as if there had been no hiatus in their communications.

He returned reluctantly. There was free-fall within the cabin-and three times as much space as there had been under acceleration-but there were decks and bulkheads and overheads. Out here he was in his element. It was like floating in warm salt water. Even the cumbersome suit didn’t detract from the feeling of freedom he got from letting his gaze rove out and on out, from star to ever-more-distant star. All of them waiting, just beyond this red-lit room.

Stars beyond stars, with their waiting worlds, which now only the Earth Settlers were opening up. And beyond, other intelligent races, other adventures…A member of one of those races waited now in the ship. Derec had again a moment of intense wonder that he of all people should be among the first to meet aliens. Most of those who had met the pirate Aranimas hadn’t survived…

Who knew what other beings awaited them among all those bright stars? He wondered why the Spacers had sat for so many centuries on their fifty worlds, too satisfied to go looking for adventure. The way he felt now, it was impossible to believe.

Derec had an impulse to jump and go tumbling head under heels across the sky, but he knew Ariel would think it silly with his safety line and dangerous without. Right on both counts, he thought ruefully. Frost, why can’t I be a little kid for once? J can’t remember ever having been one; it’s like I’ve been cheated out of all that kiddish fun……

There was a warm, pleasant smell in the air of the ship when they reentered. “I made toast,” said Ariel emptily.

She had toasted the last of the crusty bread, but hadn’t buttered it. It was now nearly cold. Derec pretended not to notice, merely nodded and thanked her, trying to sound pleased. Popping the slices into the oven, he reheated them, and punched up his sequence for bread on the synthesizer-three loaves. When the toast was warmed, he buttered it and shared it with Wolruf. The caninoid, like a true dog, was always ready to eat, if only a bite or two.

Ariel wasn’t hungry.

“I think Doctorr Avery hass retuned the hyperwave antenna by changing the densities of the force-fieldss in the core elementss,” Wolruf said, exhaling crumbs. “Dense force-fieldss arre the only things that can stop hyperatomos. But why change it, if not to detect something?”

Derec nodded uncertainly. A dense force-field was one that permeated some object; a magnet with a keeper across its poles was the classic example. Altering the density of the atomic-level fields in the core elements of the antenna would change the “acceptance” of the core.

“If not to detect something, like, say, Aranimas’s ship or transmissions?” he asked. “It’s a consideration. It’s not unlikely that they have crossed paths, as Dr. Avery has Keys to Perihelion and Aranimas wants them.”

It might well be reassuring, then, that the hyperwave wasn’t detecting anything. It might mean that Aranimas wasn’t operating anywhere around here.

“Ariel, you seem sleepy,” said Mandelbrot. “It approaches your usual bedtime. Perhaps you should go to bed.”

“Yes, good idea,” said Ariel vaguely. She continued to sit and stare vacantly for another fifteen minutes before sighing deeply and getting slowly “up”.

When she had gone to the one private cabin the little ship boasted, Wolruf turned fiercely on Derec.

“She iss sick! ‘Ou must do something, Derec! The robot iss worried. I am worried.”

Mandelbrot had accompanied Ariel into the cabin. Derec lowered his voice, nevertheless. “You’re right. Don’t let Mandelbrot know how far advanced her condition is; it might destroy his brain.”

Wolruf caught his breath. “She will die? Iss that what you mean?”

Derec nodded, haggard. “She told me her disease is usually fatal. I-I’d been hoping that it wouldn’t be. But since we’ve been sitting here, doing nothing…”

“I think some iss boredom. But mosst is sickness!”

Derec nodded. The cabin door opened and Mandelbrot emerged, closed it gently, and moved purposefully toward them, fingers against the overhead, toes against the deck.

“Ariel must have medical attention,” he said bluntly when he was close, speaking as circumspectly as Derec and Wolruf had done. “The First Law demands it. I fear for her life if this trend continues, Derec.”

They looked at him and he saw it coming.

“You must use the Key to Perihelion.”

Wolruf nodded her agreement.

Derec felt sick at the thought of returning to Robot City, even aside from the thought of Dr. Avery. “That would leave you here with no spacesuit and only Mandelbrot able to go outside-”

“Iss no matter. ‘Ou musst not rissk Ariel’ss life.”

“It is a First Law imperative.” Mandelbrot could not conceive that a human could resist that imperative, any more than he himself could.

“Very well. As soon as she has awakened and eaten. Tomorrow, in other words. And I hope Dr. Avery isn’t at home.”

The thing that alarmed Derec most next morning was that Ariel didn’t resist. A tart-tongued young woman, had she been in her normal condition she’d have frosted them well. As it was, there was a spark of eagerness in her eye, not so much, Derec thought, hope that the robotic Human Medical Team on Robot City might have found a cure, as relief from boredom.

It was no small risk they were taking. Dr. Avery was brilliant, a genius, but undoubtedly insane-megalomaniacal. Humans were but robots to him, to be used as he wished.

Derec looked at Ariel.

Frost,he thought, I hope we make it. She had come to mean a lot to him. How much, he hadn’t been free to say. She did, after all, have this disease. It was not readily contagious, and in fact Derec had learned that it was sexually transmitted. Additionally, she remembered him from before his memory began.

Apparently there had once been some kind of strong emotion between them, and she was torn two ways by the memory, or by the contrast between his present innocent state and what had once been between them. She had told him frustratingly little about himself, though he thought she knew much.

None of her secretiveness mattered. She was Ariel, and he would rather be sick himself than see her suffer so.

Nevertheless, going back to Robot City was a wrench when they’d come so near to escaping.

“We might as well get it over with,” said Ariel. He thought she sounded better than she had for days. Possibly being chased halfway across Robot City would be good for her.

Mandelbrot handed Derec the Key. It was rectangular and flat, small enough to hold in a hand, but larger than any mechanical key. It glittered in the light, looking more like silver than aluminum. It was in fact a highly conductive alloy permeated with a force-field. That made it more reflective than any unenergized metal, and was suggestive of hyperatomics.

Derec put an arm around Ariel for stability and pressed the Key into her palm, gripping her hand from below. As both of them gripped the Key, he pressed each corner in turn. Derec considered that the Keys had a nonhuman source, though the robots on Robot City had learned to make them. Humans wouldn’t design a control system like that.

When the fourth corner was pressed, a button rose from the smooth, seamless surface. Derec took a final glance around, nodded farewell to the caninoid and the robot, and to the ship itself. There wasn’t time for lengthy speeches; the button would soon recede.

He pressed the button.

The ship disappeared from around them, and fog took its place.

Perihelion.

The word meant the point in an orbit closest to a sunmore accurately, the sun, the Sun of old Earth. But now the term was synonymous with periastron. Perihelion had been described to them as the place closest to every place else in the universe.

They retained their floating attitudes, still in free fall, and looked around. Perihelion hadn’t changed. All around them was a soft gray light, and air, air that smelled fuggy and dusty. No purifiers here, thought Derec, twisting to look around. It seemed that Perihelion went on forever, but he suspected that it had sharp limits to its size.

“What are you looking for?” Ariel asked, sounding as if she cared again.

“The hyperatomic motors.”

“The what?”

“The Jump motors. This Key couldn’t have brought us here by itself, not if the robots could duplicate it. It has to be tuned to motors elsewhere; I think it’s just a tiny hyperwave radio. I don’t know if we’re in hyperspace or if this is a place in normal space-a big balloon, the size of a planet, perhaps.”

“You mean, somebody made it?” Ariel asked, aghast.

“It’s obviously an alien transport station-maybe for moving really heavy freight,” said Derec. “It may be one of many. I wonder if it’s abandoned, or if it’s actually in use but is so big we don’t see the others and they don’t see us.”

“The light comes from all sides,” Ariel said, thoughtfully.

“Yes,” said Derec, also thoughtful. “I hadn’t thought of that. Well, much remains mysterious. It would take a small ship to explore this place.”

In any case, they could do nothing now.

“We might as well get on with it,” said Ariel, bored once the first interest had worn off. She made a face at the thought of Robot City, but Derec was heartened. She hadn’t had that much spirit last night.

Derec repeated the keying motions and pressed the button. Gravity slapped their feet and light slapped their eyes. They looked around in shock. Walls surrounded them-obviously the walls of an apartment. But this wasn’t an apartment designed by Avery robots. They weren’t on Robot City.

They had no idea where they were.