Perihelion

Chapter 14. The Agricultural Park

Twilight had fallen on the mountain pass by the time Derec plodded after Jeff and Ariel to its far side. They waited for him to catch up and he leaned an arm across Ariel’s shoulders when he arrived. Together, the three of them looked out over the green valley below.

The valley was divided into many different fields, all of them tended by function robots. The hoes were easily identified, even at this great distance. There were others moving about, some clipping and spraying. The lower slopes leading into the valley were terraced and cultivated, also.

“This has to be the place,” said Derec. “Robots just don’t need this stuff.”

“I agree,” said Jeff. “This is Avery’s grocery store. Or at least, his produce market. If he has livestock, they must be somewhere else.”

“They would require different care and processing. “ Derec nodded. “And these robots are too efficient to put this here and Avery a thousand kilometers away. I’m betting he’s in the neighborhood, someplace.”

“And we made it,” said Ariel. “This far, anyway.”

“We couldn’t help leaving a few footprints here and there,” said Jeff. “And those Hunter robots may have sensors I can’t even imagine. They don’t have to stop for the night, either.”

“They’ll spot all kinds of details we left behind,” said Derec. “Broken branches and things like that. As much as I hate to say this…we’d better move on.”

“Some of them probably went to the other pass,” Ariel pointed out. “There won’t be as many behind us.”

“That pass leads to this valley, too,” said Jeff. “We might just meet them coming the other way.”

Ariel shook her head. “You’re so optimistic. Come on.”

They started down the slope and soon entered the cultivated rows of some plant that none of them could identify. It grew in a straight stalk with stiff, narrow leaves angling sharply upward, roughly three meters high. The stalks were planted close together, forcing them to walk in single file between the rows.

Jeff looked back over his shoulder nervously. “We’re leaving a track even I could follow. Look down.”

Derec looked. The soil was freshly turned and damp. Their footprints were clear and deep. “These robots must hoe and water constantly.”

“It hasn’t gotten any darker,” said Ariel. She looked up at the sky. “It should have by now.”

“Lights must have come on,” Derec said. “I can’t tell from where, though. The function robots here may need some to work at night. Or else this is growth light of some kind for the crops.”

Jeff was pushing experimentally between two stalks in one of the rows. “Come on. We can squeeze between these. We have to break up our trail a little.”

The others followed him through. The next row was identical to the previous one as far as Derec could see. They walked down it for a while, then found another spot where they could push through into the next row down into the valley.

“Up there,” said Derec, pointing. “We have to catch it. Come on!”

Some distance ahead, a function robot was moving away from them at a moderate speed. The body of this robot was roughly a cube two meters on a side. It seemed to advance on a bed of vertical spikes that chewed into the ground as it walked forward, thereby hoeing the soil it covered. At intervals, it stopped and sent tentacles out to each side that stabbed into the earth in the rows of crops and pulled out small plants into its own body.

Jeff ran for it. As Ariel tried to help Derec along, he glanced at the rows of crops as they passed. Apparently that stabbing motion cut the roots of unwanted plants that had grown up between the desired crops. The weeds were drawn into the function robot, ground up, and deposited through the bottom to be left behind as instant compost. He could see the tiny bits here and there in the soil now that he was looking.

“I got it but I don’t see any way to stop it,” Jeff called. He was now sitting on the body of the hoer, facing backward.

“Stupid thing,” said Ariel. “I wish it had a positronic brain so we could order it around.”

“No,” said Derec, struggling after her. “It could also report to the Hunters, in that case.”

The hoer would not wait for them, but every time it stopped to weed they gained on it a little. At last they were able to climb on board with Jeff, where they sat awkwardly on its crowded top.

“Now we just need some luck,” said Jeff. “If this thing stays out of the sight of the Hunters until it takes a few turns here and there, they won’t be able to track us easily after all. All the rows have the same appearance after these things go through them.”

“I can use the rest,” said Derec. “But we have to figure out where Avery is while we can. I didn’t see any buildings in this valley when we came in.”

“I didn’t either,” said Jeff, shaking his head.

“Then what else do you remember?” Ariel asked. “From your father? Anything.”

“I thought about it while we were climbing up the mountain,” said Jeff. “But I didn’t have breath to talk. You remember how I told you that Avery wanted to know about cultures that could endure?”

Ariel nodded. Derec was alert but too tired to respond.

“My father told him that two groups exist even now, in space, that are descended in a straight line from ancient Earth. Both of them have continued to evolve in Spacer communities, but their longevity really got Avery’s attention.”

“What were they?” Ariel asked.

“One is the Spacer minority culture descended from China through a couple of migrations on Earth. The other is the Spacer Jewish communities.”

“What did he want to know about them?” Ariel made a face. “I don’t see how this is going to help us find him here.”

Jeff shrugged. “I do recall that he didn’t care about their details. My father tried to tell him that both these cultures had continued to evolve in space. He even said that in many ways they were totally unrecognizable from their ancestral Earth cultures. But all Avery wanted to know was how they had survived as specific entities.”

That was consistent, Derec thought to himself. The guy only cared about his own project and what he could do to improve it.

“He was looking for clues for Robot City,” Ariel said. “To make it endure across the centuries. That’s what he was researching with Professor Leong. He needed to program cultural values into the city. But we haven’t really seen very much of that.”

Derec forced himself to speak. “I’m sure that he reprogrammed the city while we were on Earth. I think after the incidents surrounding the performance of Hamlet, the robot creativity scared him. He couldn’t have his robots committing crimes against each other.”

“The arts aren’t the only part of culture,” said Jeff.

“What do you mean?” Ariel asked.

Derec shifted slightly so that he could hear Jeff better. The hoer moved right along, still hoeing and weeding. The sky above them now looked dark, but a soft glow of light from somewhere illuminated the rows of crops.

“My father gave Avery two reasons for the cultural survival of those groups while they were on Earth. One is that the original cultures had very strong family units that passed values on. The other is that, outside of their native countries, both groups on Earth experienced limited assimilation as minorities and often faced prejudice from the majority culture.”

“But only on Earth?” Ariel said.

“That’s right. Modem Spacer families aren’t personally close the way families used to be, I guess. And now the ethnicities are from one planet to another, or Spacer versus Earth.”

“My mother didn’t like Solarians,” said Ariel. “They program their robots funny or something.” She smiled. “She told me a joke once that went-”

“How could Avery have used that information?” Derec asked firmly, stopping her with a hand on her arm.

“Come to think of it,” said Ariel, “how can these minorities still exist if the original reasons for their endurance no longer do? That doesn’t make sense.”

“I’m not sure,” said Jeff. “But on Aurora, I still look different. That always kept me distinct. And, you know, my father took more interest in me than my friends’ fathers. That’s why he dragged me out to meet Avery, remember?”

“I think I see,” said Ariel. “Maybe some of these tendencies still exist to a degree.”

“At least in comparison to the majority cultures on the planet.” Jeff nodded.

They all clutched for a hold on the hoer as it reached a perpendicular row and made a right-angle turn without slowing down. It made another right turn at the next row and started down the direction it had just come on the previous one. They could see a long way ahead of them.

So could the Hunters, if they looked down the right row.

Derec was uncomfortable with this talk of families and fathers and sons. He hadn’t had any family to speak of since he had awakened with amnesia.

“We still have to find Avery in this valley or this mountain range or somewhere,” said Derec with annoyance. “What are we going to do about that?”

“Just one more thing,” said Jeff. “My father told Avery that two major events changed both these cultures in ancient times. One was moving from the so-called Old World of Earth to the United States.”

“What difference would that make?” Ariel asked. “They were still on Earth.”

“He said that while prejudice didn’t vanish there, these two cultures were part of a nation of immigrants and their descendants for the first time. They were a fundamental part of these societies even while maintaining their identities.”

“What was the other event?” She asked.

“Going into space. The same situation occurred again with the settling of Spacer worlds. Being an Auroran, say, is now more important than one’s Earth ancestors. As demonstrated by your mother’s attitude toward Solarians.”

Ariel nodded thoughtfully.

“So what does all this get us?” Derec demanded. “Robots never did have this kind of identity, anyhow. What does this have to do with Robot City? And finding Dr. Avery?”

“Now, look!” Jeff whirled on him. “You’re the one who started asking me what I remember. I’m just telling you. If you don’t want to hear it, don’t ask me.”

Ariel grabbed both their arms. “Robots,” she whispered.

Far in the distance ahead of them, the silhouettes of humanoid robots were moving from right to left, down the valley slope, across their open row.

Wolruf gathered her legs under her and leaped from a small rock to a fallen branch large enough to hold her. She landed on it on all fours and hung on till she got her balance. This forest had very few fallen branches, or loose matter of any kind.

The robots obviously cleared the forest floor frequently. She had seen a few function robots in the distance but had kept clear of them. She didn’t want the Hunters sending any more orders to function robots that would help them capture her.

Still, she had managed to minimize the footprints she left behind. A fairly small area had been sprinkled by the sensor she had triggered and she had left it before the sprinklers quit operating. She wondered how long they had continued to run.

She hoped they had remained on for some time. If they had sprayed long enough, then the water eventually would not only have eliminated the body heat of her footprints on the ground, but also would have washed away the visual traces.

That and the difficulty the big Hunters would have in moving through the crowded forest might account for their falling behind. When they had lost her trail, they probably would have had to resort to a pattern search to pick it up again, and that would cost them time.

She stayed on the branch to catch her breath. Her memory of the terrain on the ship viewscreen was clear enough, but she wasn’t sure exactly where she was. Nor was she sure of what to do.

So far, she had been angling up the slope and away from the pass that the humans had been near, certain that they were heading there. Anything she could do to draw Hunters away from them would be a contribution. She also remembered that another pass led into the valley somewhere in this direction.

She was torn between two impulses, with no way to know which would better serve the cause of Derec’s getting to Avery before Avery’s robots got to him. If she got to the pass and joined the humans, they could work together as a team again and perhaps accomplish more. However, that would mean leading the Hunters following her right back toward them again.

This was not getting her anywhere.

She could not afford to rest anywhere too long, even now. After balancing along the fallen branch as far as she could, she jumped off to a patch of ground that looked firm. From there, she stepped on the top of an exposed tree root, grabbed a low-hanging branch, and swung over to a small rock.

Then she paused to look back, wondering if this was worth the effort. If the Hunters came up quickly, their heat sensors would tell them where she had been. Now, however, she was hoping that they were too far behind to use those sensors effectively. If the traces of her body heat subsided before they arrived, minimizing her visual track could be critical.

She continued to move along this way. It was a gamble, but probably worth it. If she could actually lose the Hunters, then she could look for the humans in the valley without endangering them further. In order to know, however, she would have to double back at some point and actually watch the Hunters in action.

That might be too risky. Still undecided, she fled on up the slope, still moving roughly in the direction of the pass. Once she got there, she could make her final decision on whether to enter it or not.