Refuge

Chapter 7. Back To School

“That way two blocks, take the up ramp,” the young tough said courteously, and the hard-featured young woman looked sympathetically at them.

“Thank you,” said Derec, and Ariel, as startled as he, echoed him.

Their rescuers had forgotten them before they were out of sight, but Derec and Ariel remembered them all the way home.

The section kitchen had become a familiar place by the time of their third meal, next morning. Much of the shock of enormous rooms, enormous numbers of loud talking Earthers, of being ignored amid mobs, was gone. After breakfast, out into the monotonous every-day of the ways, they rode south toward the edge of the sprawling megalopolis. Finally, in a section called Mattese, they found the driving school they sought.

They had chosen it because it was a “private” school. Though regulated by the government, it counted as a luxury, and one paid for the privilege of learning here, a concept that bemused the Spacers.

“Yes, please?”

The receptionist was not the robot the term called to their minds, but a middle-aged woman-though Earthers aged fast by Spacer standards; she was probably quite young, perhaps no more than forty-five or fifty.

“Derec and Ariel Avery,” Derec said apologetically, trying again to imitate the Earth dialect.

“Oh, yes, new students. You’re a bit early, but that’s good-you have to do your forms.”

They thought they’d already done the forms over the communo, but took the papers and sat down. These forms were simple and asked primarily how much experience they’d had with automobiles and something called “models.”

“Can that mean what I think it does?” Ariel asked. Derec could only shrug.

They had sweated over the application last night, for it asked for their schooling, but R. David had given them the names of schools in the City they might have gone to. They hoped the driving school would be lax in checking up. Of course, sooner or later their imposture would be detected, but even one day, they calculated

“You may see Ms. Winters now,” said the receptionist, smiling kindly.

Ms. Winters kept them waiting in an outer office for a moment while she examined their forms, and Ariel nudged Derec.

“Did you hear that receptionist? She was trying to copy our accent!”

Ms. Winters called them in, asked a question or two, nodded, and, taking the forms, left with a brief “Wait just a moment.” It hadn’t taken her long, as they had indicated no experience.

She hadn’t closed the door completely.

“Red? Those two students, the brother and sister… upper-rating children slumming, or kicked out of the house, or something.” Doubtfully, she added, “Maybe student reporters, checking up on the schooling system, or something.”

“Who cares?” came a gruff-sounding male voice. ‘They got money, they want to learn, we sell schoolin’. Send ‘em on out.”

With a dazzling smile, Ms. Winters ushered them through the farther door into a large room with a number of carrels within it. Students were entering in a steady stream from a different door and occupying carrels and other learning stations farther down.

Red confronted them, a blocky fellow with thinning sandy hair and a handsome face, his body one solid slab of muscle. He looked them over shrewdly for a moment, nodded, gave a noncommittal grunt.

“Drivin’s a hands-on schoolin’,” he said bluntly. “You either learn it with your reflexes or else you don’t learn it. It ain’t so different from learnin’ to ride the ways, though you don’t remember how you did that.” It was a set speech, and went on in that vein for about three minutes. Red’s face remained blank.

Derec was impressed despite his prejudices. Education among Spacers, as little of it as he could remember, was a more gracious process, lavishly supported by ever-patient robots. It was clear that this indifferent man proposed to push them into the water and watch to see if they drowned. If they did not, they would be rewarded only by his good opinion.

“…it’s your money and your time, so I know you’ll do your best and not waste either.”

Though his experience with different machines must be far greater than this Earther’s, Derec wryly found that Red’s good opinion was a thing worth striving for.

The carrels were cockpits containing mockups of the control sets of various kinds of vehicles, and trimensionals of the roadways. Red gave them a brief instruction on the rules of the road and the operation of the craft, showed them a printed set of instructions on the right and of rules on the left, and said, “Do it, gatos.”

Derec and Ariel grinned faintly at each other, and did it for about half an hour.

Red came by at the end of the time, sucking on the stem of a cup, if a cup had a stem, and exhaling smoke courteously away from them. He bent and looked on the back sides of the carrels.

“You did good,” he said, his eyebrows expressing more than his voice. “You did real good, for beginners.”

Maybe too good,Derec thought uneasily.

Red looked at them, blew smoke thoughtfully, and said, “Come down here to the models.”

The models were as they had supposed, small-scale versions of various vehicles they’d have to learn to drive in order to graduate, from one-man scooters to big transport trucks. They were given models of four-person passenger cars marked POLICE, and control sets, the models being, of course, remote-controlled.

This was an interactive game with a vengeance, and the other students who had advanced this far grinned at them and made room. Derec started his car slowly, nearly got run over by a big truck, speeded up, nearly went out of the lane going around a corner, cut too sharply, but gradually began to get the hang of it.

Then a white-gleaming ambulance with red crosses on its doors and top made a left turn from the outside lane, the operator crying “Oops!” belatedly as he realized where he was. Derec avoided him skillfully and slipped past. After a moment his controls froze, as did the ambulance’s. The ambulance operator grimaced, then grinned ruefully, and they all looked at a trimensional screen to one side.

A-9 ILLEGAL TURN, NO SIGNALS. P-3, FAILURE TO APPREHEND TRAFFIC VIOLATOR.

“Frost. Swim or drown,” Derec muttered, and the girl next to him laughed.

It wasn’t as easy as it looked, and he wasn’t thinking only of not knowing the rules-such as that a police car was expected to act like a police car. The streets were full of vehicles, and he had to be prepared to predict their moves. None of his Spacer training was of much use here. To his mortification, he rammed a fire engine at one stopping, not seeing the signal lights in time. It didn’t help that Ariel slaughtered half a dozen pedestrians at a place where the motorway and pedestrian levels merged. The other students were far better, but cheerful about it, or Derec couldn’t have stood it.

It was humiliating.

After an hour of exhilarating play, during which they got much better, Red came by and said, “Take a break, all; give the second team a chance.”

The students relinquished their controls, leaving the vehicles in mid-street, and trooped out, old and young alike, to some kind of refectory. Red caught Derec’s eye, nodded to Ariel; they stepped aside.

“I’ve been watching the monitor record. You’re not so swift on models, where I was expectin’ you t’ shine,” he said. “Figured you’d have lots of experience on them.”

He paused and eyed them questioningly, but they just nodded. Shrugging, Red said, “I’m gonna put you on trucks. Big ones. You ever been outside?”

Chilled, Derec said, “What?”

“Outside the City, “ Red said patiently.

“Well-” Derec exchanged a glance with Ariel. “Yeah. We’ve, uh, we’ve given it a try.”

“Ever have nightmares about it?”

“What? No.”

Red nodded shrewdly. “The shrinks have all kinds tests, but one thing talks true: nightmares. Thing is, you’re young, you could be conditioned easily if you aren’t what shrinks call phobic. That means, if you don’t have nightmares. Big money in driving the big rigs outside-not many people to do this kind of job. Most trucks are computer-controlled, or remote-controlled-but even remote-control ops get upset, break down, have nightmares. They even use a lot of robot drivers. “

“Really?”

Red shrugged. “Why not? They’re not takin’ anybody’s job away. Not many people will do that kind of work. If you can do it-and will-it pays real good.”

Derec and Ariel looked at each other.

“Don’t have to decide right away,” Red said shrewdly. “I know-people’d think you’re queer, wanting to go outside. And I should tell you, I get a bounty on every prospect I send out.”

He looked at them with a hint of humor. “Oh, yeah, you got to apply for the job-outside.”

He paused for an answer, and Derec said slowly, “Well, can we think it over? I mean, we don’t know anything about trucks-”

“I’ll put you on simulators now-c’mon back here.”

At the back of the room were giant simulators they had to climb up into-three of them.

“Most of the trucks we train on are for inside the City, and they’re pretty small. Lots of competition for the driver jobs on them-most freight goes by the freightways, naturally, and driving the freight-handler trucks is a different department of the Transportation Bureau. Lots of competition for those jobs, too. But these big babies go beggin’. Yet they’re real easy to learn.”

The important thing was remembering that one had a long “tail” behind one. They moved. slowly when maneuvering, though, and anyone who had landed a spaceship could learn this readily enough.

“Give it half an hour or so, an’ we’ll look at your records.”

It was closer to an hour, and Derec and Ariel were both tired when Red approached them again.

“You done real good,” he said, looking at a print-out. “You were made for outside drivin’. You do much better where you don’t have to watch out for traffic.” He looked at them with a faint smile. “It’s never as frantic in the motorways as in our model. Usually they’re wide open and empty… But you learn about traffic in traffic.”

“How’d we do?” Ariel asked, imitating his accent fairly well, to Derec’s ear.

“Good enough to make it worth your while to go on,” said Red. “A week’s training, and I’ll be sending you out to Mattell Trucking Transport. Yes?”

Ms. Winters, from the inner office, had approached him. She glanced at them curiously.

“You two go take a break, drink some fruit juice or something, and I’ll talk to you in fifteen minutes.”

When they were out of sight, Ariel said, “Keep on going.”

“I thought so, but I couldn’t be sure,” Derec said.

“I suppose she checked out our education, or something,” Ariel said glumly.

“Yes, well, it had to happen. And we’ve had an hour’s worth of training on big trucks.” Derec was quite buoyant. “I doubt very much if they are equipped to chase stolen trucks across the countryside. At least, not well equipped. How many Earthers would not only steal a big truck, but take off across country?”

“We haven’t stolen our truck yet,” Ariel said gloomily.

Derec found himself joining her in gloom as they made their way back to the expressway; and then they found it jammed and had to stand on the lower-ratings’ level. It traveled just as fast, but it was a tiring nuisance.

They stopped off at the kitchen for a light lunch, and at the Personals on the way back to the apartment. Derec made his way back to Sub-Section G, Corridor M, Sub-Corridor 16, Apartment 21, from the Personal, with a skill that was by now automatic. Then he sat and waited. And waited.

Derec was quite concerned by the time Ariel returned, and became more concerned with one look at her. She had taken twice as long as he, and looked dull.

“What took you so long?”

“I got lost,” she said lusterlessly.

“You look-tired. You want-to lie down?” Derec’s voice kept catching with his fear.

“I guess.”

But Ariel sat down on the couch and didn’t move. She didn’t respond to anything Derec said. After a long while she got up and dragged herself into the bedroom.

Derec was worried and restless. He had wanted to discuss ways and means of getting a truck, but that was impossible under the circumstances. She obviously had at least a mild fever.

Instead, he spent the afternoon viewing books. Some of Dr. Avery’s local collection were Earthly novels; some were documentaries; some were volumes of statistics about population densities, yeast production, and so on. It was not the most stimulating reading he’d ever done, but Derec read or viewed the documentaries-some were print, some audiovisual.

Presently he found that it was late and he was hungry, but he hesitated. “R. David, please check on Ariel and see if she is awake. If so, ask if she would like to accompany me to the section kitchen.”

The robot did so, found her awake, and repeated the answer Derec had heard: “No, Mr. Avery, Miss Avery does not feel hungry and requires no food.”

He hesitated about leaving her. If she felt hungry later, he could accompany her to the kitchen door, but doubted he’d be allowed in again tonight. Still, he could hang around outside and hope he wasn’t questioned by a policeman. In any case, he himself was quite hungry despite his worry over Ariel.

He went out, stopping off at the Personal again and getting a drink from a public fountain outside it, then threaded the maze to the section kitchen. This time he got table J-10, and there was a longer wait; he saw that the room was near capacity. There weren’t two adjoining spaces free at the table, as the Earthers tended to spread out as much as possible.

It was a gloomy meal, alone amid so many.

Then he retraced his weary route. I suppose a person could get used to this, he thought. It’s inconvenient, but you don’t miss what you never had. The Earthers obviously didn’t give it a thought.

Questioned on this subject, R. David said, “It is not necessary for all Earth people to make this trek every time, of course. Holders of higher steps in each rating have such things as larger apartments, activated wash basins, subetherics, and so on. Of course, it is far more efficient to supply one section kitchen for four or five thousand households than to supply a room for cooking in each of these apartments, plus a cooker, food storage devices, food delivery, and so on. Just so with subetherics, when one big machine can replace a thousand small ones.”

“But some people do have these things, and convenient laundry facilities in Personal, without having to go to the section laundry. Don’t the have-nots resent these privileges?”

“Perhaps some do so, Mr. Avery, for humans are illogical. But human emotions are allowed for in the distribution of these favors, according to the Teramin Relationship.”

“The what?”

“The Teramin Relationship. That is the mathematical expression that governs the differential between inconveniences suffered with privileges granted: dee eye sub jay taken to the-”

“Spare me the math; I’m a specialist in robotics, and even my math there is not fully developed. But I’m interested; I’ve never heard of any kind of math being applied to human relations. Can you express this Tera-whatchacallit Relationship verbally?”

“Perhaps an example would suffice, master. Consider that the privilege of having three meals a week in the apartment, even if the recipient has to fetch the meals himself from a section kitchen, if the privilege were granted for cause, will keep a large if varying number of people patient with their own inconveniences. For it demonstrates that privileges are real, can be earned without too great an effort, and have been earned by people whom one knows.”

“Interesting,” said Derec, thinking that the robots of Robot City ought to know this. “How do you know all this?”

“I aided Dr. Avery in his researches on society. I also aided him in his research into robotic history.”

“Robotic history? On Earth?”

“But of course, Mr. Avery. The positronic brain, and the positronic robot, were invented on Earth. Susan Calvin was an Earthwoman, and Dr. Asenion an Earthman.”

Those names he knew-Dr. Asenion, especially, the man who had codified the mathematics that expressed the Three Laws in ways that made it possible to incorporate them into positronic brains. But Earth people! Still, it might explain much about Robot City. Dr. Avery was studying mass society and non-specialized robots on Earth.

“Is there a book on the mathematics of human society?” he asked, thinking it might well be good to take such a thing back to Robot City. Those poor robots had scarcely ever seen a human being, yet they were designed to serve mankind.

“I believe there are no Spacer books on the subject, Mr. Avery. However, I have several Earthly references of which you may have copies.”

“I’d like that.”

He’d like even more for Ariel to wake up and be her old self again. All during the afternoon he had had twinges of sharp fear, and kept trying not to remember that her disease was ultimately fatal.