Suspicion

Chapter 4. The Compass Tower

As the door to the apartment slid open, Derec tucked under the arm of the big robot, watched Katherine’s facial expression change from horror, to relief, to unbridled amusement-all in the space of three seconds.

“Let me guess,” she said, putting a finger to her lips, “you’re a ditty bag.”

“Cute,” Derec returned as the robot set him gently on the ground. He looked up at the huge, black machine. “Thanks for the ride, Avernus.”

“My pleasure, Friend Derec,” the robot replied, bending slightly so that the hallway could accommodate his height. “But I must ask you to stay away from the underground. It is no place for a human.”

“I appreciate your concern,” Derec said noncommittally. He walked into the apartment, then turned back to Avernus. “Will we see you at the meeting?”

“Most assuredly,” he returned. “All of us look forward to it with great expectation.”

“You can go now,” Katherine told Avernus coldly, the robot nodding slightly and moving off, the utility robot guard sliding quickly to fill the door space with his squat body.

Katherine punched the door stud, the panel sliding closed. “You missed breakfast and lunch,” she said, moving to sit listlessly on the couch.

“Avernus got me something before he brought me back,” Derec said. “He got my wounds cleaned up, and even let me sleep for a while.” Finally, he couldn’t ignore her mood any longer. “What’s wrong?”

“You,” she said, “this place… everything. I don’t know which way is up anymore. Did you find out anything?”

Derec spotted the CRT screen set up on the table and walked to stand before it. “It’s a place designed for humans,” he said, “and the building is going on at a furious pace, as if they’re in some kind of hurry to get finished. I think the buildings may be… I don’t know, alive, I guess is the best way to put it.” He pointed to the screen. “Where did this come from?”

“Rydberg brought it,” she answered, “But it only receives. What do you mean, the city’s alive?”

“Watch this,” Derec said, and ran full speed across the room, banging into the far wall. The wall gave with him, caving inward, then gently pushed itself back to a solid position.

“I laid awake all night worrying about you, while you were discovering the walls are made of rubber?” she asked loudly.

He turned to her, smiling. “Did you really worry about me?”

“No,” she replied. “What else?”

He walked over and sat on the couch with her, his tones hushed. “I saw the city building itself, literally extruding itself from the ground. I tried to go down there, but Avernus caught me. I think he’s in charge down there. The only thing I can figure is that there are immense mining operations underway below ground and that the buildings are positronic, some kind of cellular robots that make up a complete whole. It’s fascinating!”

Katherine was unimpressed. “Did you find a way out of here?”

He shook his head. “Not yet,” he answered, “but I don’t really think that’s going to be a problem.”

“That’s because you’re so eaten up with your robot friends you can’t think of anything else!” She suddenly jerked her head toward the wall. “If the walls are robots, I wonder if they can hear us now?”

Just then the screen on the table came to life, Rydberg’s face filling it. “So, you are back, Derec,” he said. “Good. Prepare yourselves. An honor guard is coming right now to bring you to your preliminary trial.”

“Trial?” Derec said.

“Uh oh,” Katherine said, putting a hand to her mouth. “That may be my fault. I all but dared them to put us on trial.”

“But we haven’t had a chance to investigate yet.”

She shrugged. “I was trying to find if we could have access to outside communications.” She snapped her fingers. “Maybe this means we’re going to get it.”

“Yeah… maybe,” Derec said, but he was skeptical. Robot City was too precious a gem to be hanging out in the ether for anyone to pluck. At this point, he wasn’t even sure if he wanted to communicate with the outside.

He looked at the screen. It had already gone blank. “Whatever the reason,” he said, “I believe we’re going to get some answers at this point.”

“Let’s hope they’re answers we can live with,” she sighed. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life here.”

Within minutes, the utility robot was knocking on the door. Derec hurried to open it. Euler greeted him, accompanied by a supervisor robot he’d not seen before. This one was the robot most closely molded to a human that Derec had seen, with chisled, though blank, mannequin-like features.

“Friend Derec,” Euler said, “Friend Katherine Burgess, may I present Arion, who will be in attendance at our meeting.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Derec said.

“Rydberg called it a trial,” Katherine said.

“This is a great moment for us here,” Arion said. “I trust that your stay so far has been satisfactory. I am doing my best with what little time I have to try and prepare some entertainment for you. We know that humans enjoy mind diversions.”

“We’d appreciate anything you could do,” Derec said.

“Sure,” Katherine said. “How about conjuring up a radio for us to call the outside for help?”

“Oh, that’s quite impossible,” Arion said.

“That’s what I thought,” Katherine answered.

“I have a present for each of you,” Euler said, extending his right arm. “Then we must be off to the meeting.”

Derec moved to the robot. His pincers held two large watches, dangling on gold chains. “You may know the time here now,” Euler said. “It is of importance to humans, and so, to us. We will do more to make you feel comfortable in this regard.”

Derec took the watches, giving one of them to Katherine. They had square faces encased in gold. On both of them, the LCD faces read 3:35. “They run on a twenty-four hour day,” said Euler. “We thought it would be more comfortable for you if we adjusted the length of our hour than if you had to adjust to a twenty-and-one-half hour day. Our hours, decads, and centads are approximately eighty-five percent of standard.” Derec walked out onto the veranda and looked into the sky. The sun had already passed its apex and was slowly crawling toward the eventual shadows of evening.

“Right on the money,” he said, returning to the apartment.

“You doubted it?” Arion asked, looking at Euler.

“Do you understand now?” Euler said to him.

“Interesting,” Arion said, cocking his head in an almost human fashion.

“We must go,” Euler said and hurried out of the apartment, the others following.

They rode the elevator to street level and boarded a multi-car tram that had no apparent driver. It started off immediately when they were seated. Euler turned to Derec, who sat, with Katherine, behind him and Arion. “You put yourself in extreme danger last night,” the robot said. “Why?”

“I’ve a better question,” Derec returned. “If this is such a perfect human world, why was it so dangerous?”

“Spacer worlds conquered weather problems eons ago,” Katherine interjected. “For you to have them in such an advanced culture makes no sense.”

Arion turned to her and bowed his head. “Thank you for calling our culture advanced.”

“The weather,” Euler said, “is quite honestly part of our overall problem right now. It is under our control, but also not under our control. Unfortunately, for security reasons, we cannot discuss it in detail.”

“Great,” Katherine said. “Everybody can do something about the weather, but nobody talks about it.”

“To answer your original question,” Derec told Euler, as he watched them move in a direct line toward the tower where they had initially materialized, “I have no memory and no past. My curiosity, my search for answers about myself, leads me to do things not necessarily in my best interest.”

“Amnesia?” Euler asked. “Or something else?”

Derec looked at him in surprise. “What else?”

The robot answered his question with another question, an old one. “How, then, did you come to our planet?”

Derec realized that the robot was playing word games with him that tied directly to the word games Derec had initiated the night before. He decided to keep playing. “What did the dead man, David, say when you asked him that question?”

“He said he didn’t know,” Euler replied, and turned back around in his seat. Over his shoulder, he said, “He claimed he’d had amnesia.”

The tram came to a halt beside the mammoth pyramid that dominated the landscape of Robot City, the place the inhabitants called the Compass Tower. Katherine put a hand on Derec’s arm, squeezing, and he knew she had the same fear that he’d felt. Here, about halfway up the tower, was where they had hidden the Key to Perihelion that had brought them to the city. Had the robots found it? Were they confronting them with the evidence, or, worse yet, taking it away?

But Euler said nothing of the Key. Instead, he simply climbed from the tram and led them directly to the base of the tower, a tower that Derec had surmised was solid.

He’d never been more wrong.

At the robot’s approach, an entire block of the solid matter that formed the base simply melted away, leaving a gently sloping runway leading into the structure, another example of Derec’s theory about the intelligence of the building materials themselves.

They moved into the pyramid through a short, dark hallway that emptied into a maze of criss-crossing aisles and stairs that, in turn, led off in all directions within the structure.

“Try and memorize our path,” Derec whispered to Katherine. “Just in case.”

“In case of what?” she asked. “In case you haven’t figured it out, we’re not going anywhere.”

“This is the most important building in our city,” Euler said, as he took them up a series of stairs and escalators that zig-zagged at every landing and culminated in a long, well-lit hallway. “This is where decisions are made, where… understanding takes place.”

They walked the hall, Arion hurrying ahead and disappearing down some stairs. The surrounding walls glowed lightly, with connecting hallways intersecting every ten feet.

They followed Arion’s path, changing direction several times before finding themselves standing in a large, well-lit room whose four walls angled in toward a ceiling, fifteen meters above, that poured in sunshine like a skylight.

The floor of the room was tiled in the form of a large compass, its four points forming the cornerstones of Robot City. In the center of the compass, under the direct rays of the sun, stood six robots in a circle, arms outstretched, their pincers grasping those of their neighbors on either side with space left for one more-Euler.

“This is the place where we seek perfection,” Euler said, and joined the circle, closing it.

“It’s almost religious,” Derec whispered to Katherine.

“Yeah,” she replied. “It give me the creeps.”

Derec looked around the room. There were no chairs or tables, nothing upon which a human being could rest. The walls were inset with CRTs jammed side to side around the entire perimeter. Each screen showed its own view of Robot City. Many showed excavation sites, the large movers pushing and leveling soil. Other pictures were of the extrusion plant he had visited, and he was led to conjecture that there might be more than one. There were pictures of the reservoir he had splashed into, and strange, underground pictures taken through the eyes of roving cambots that showed mining tunnels, kilometer after kilometer of deserted tunnel. And finally, many of the screens simply showed the pinktinged blue of the sky.

“You have come to this place,” Euler said loudly, “to help us in our search for correctness, for perfection, for completeness. We are the keys-human and robot-to the synergy of spirit. Synnoetics is our goal. I will introduce the rest of us and we will begin.”

“Synnoetics?” Katherine whispered.

“Man and machine,” Derec replied, “the whole greater than the sum of the parts.”

“It is religious!” she rasped. “And how did you know that?”

Derec shrugged. “This all feels so… comfortable to me.”

“You know Rydberg,” Euler said, “and Avernus and Arion.” The robots nodded as their names were called. “The rest of us… Waldeyer… ”

“Good day,” said a squat, roundish robot with wheels.

“Dante… ”

“I welcome you,” Dante said, his telescopic eyes sticking out several inches from his dome.

“And Wohler.”

A magnificent golden machine bowed formally without removing his pincers from his neighbors’. “We are honored,” Wohler said.

“We will answer what questions we can from you,” Euler said, “and hope that you will do the same.”

“If, as you say,” Derec told them, “we are all looking for truth and perfection, then our meeting will be fruitful. I would like to begin by asking you why there are certain areas of life here that you will not discuss with us.”

Rydberg spoke. “We are in a standby security mode that renders certain information classified by our programming.”

“Did our arrival prompt the institution of the security mode?” Katherine asked.

“No,” Euler said. “It was in effect when you arrived. If, in fact, you arrived when you said you did. We must ask you again how you came to be here.”

Derec decided to try a little truth. It couldn’t hurt as long as no mention was made of the Key. Perhaps a dose of the truth might get them to open up about the Key’s existence. “We materialized out of thin air atop this very building.”

“And where were you before that?” Wohler, the gold one, asked.

Derec walked slowly around the circle, studying his questioners. “A Spacer way station named Rockliffe near Nexon, right on the edge of the Settlement Worlds quarantine zone.”

Arion, the mannequin, asked, “What means, then, did you use to get from one place to the other?”

“No means,” Derec said. “We were simply transported here.”

There was silence for a moment. “This does not coordinate with any information extant in memory,” Avernus said, his large dome following Derec’s progress around the circle.”

You’ve found no ship that could have brought us,” Derec said, “and I’m sure you’ve searched.”

“That is correct,” Euler said, “and our radar picked up no activity that could have been construed to be a vessel in our atmosphere.”

“I can’t explain it beyond that,” Derec said. “Now, you answer a question for me. Where did you come from?”

“Who are you addressing?” Euler asked.

“All of you,” Derec said.

Avernus answered. “All of them except for me were constructed here, on Robot City,” he said. “I was… awakened here, but believe I was constructed elsewhere.”

“Where?”

“I do not know,” the large robot replied. “My first i/o memories are of this place. Nothing in my pre-programming suggested anything of an origin.”

“Are you trying to say,” Katherine broke in, “that all of you know nothing but the company of other robots? That your entire existence is here?”

“Correct,” Rydberg said. “Our master programming is well aware of human beings and their societies, but no formal relationship exists between our species.”

“Then how did you come to build this place?” Derec asked. “How then, did it become important to you to make a world for humans?”

“We are incomplete without human beings,” Waldeyer said, his squat dome swiveling to Derec and then Katherine. “The very laws that govern our existence revolve around human interaction. We exist to serve independent thought, the higher realms of creativity that we are incapable of alone. We discovered this very quickly, without being told. Alone, we simply exist to no end, no purpose. Even artificial intelligence must have a reason to utilize itself. This world is the first utilization of that intelligence. We’ve been building it for humans, in order to make the perfect atmosphere in which human creativity can flourish to the greater completeness of us all. Without this world we are nothing. With it, we are vital contributing factors to the ongoing evolution of the universe.”

“Why would that matter to you?” Katherine asked.

“I have a theory about that,” Dante said, his elongated eyes glowing bright yellow. “We are the product, the child if you will, of higher realms of creative thought. It seems impossible that the drives of that creative thought wouldn’t permeate every aspect of our programming. We want for nothing. We desire nothing. Yet, the incompleteness of our inactivity makes us… feel, for lack of a better word, useless and extraneous. Given the total freedom of our own world, we were driven to function in service.”

Derec suddenly felt a terrible sadness well up in him for these unhappy creatures of man’s intelligence. “You’ve done all this, even though you never knew if any people would come here?”

“That is correct,” Euler said. “Then David came, and we thought that all would be right. Then came his death, then the calamities, then you… suspects to murder. We never meant for anything to be this way.”

“When you say calamities,” Derec said, “are you speaking of the problems with the storms?”

“Yes,” Rydberg said. “The rains threaten our civilization itself, and it’s all our own fault. We are breaking apart from the inside out, with nothing to be done about it.”

“I don’t understand,” Derec said.

“We don’t expect you to, nor can we tell you why it must be this way,” Euler said.

Derec thought about the hot air pumping through the reservoir. “Is the city’s rapid growth rate normal?” he asked.

“No,” Euler said. “It coincides with David’s death.”

“Is it because of David’s death?”

“We do not know the answer to that,” Euler said.

“Wait a moment,” Katherine said, walking away from the circle to sit on the floor, her back up against the north wall. “I want to talk to you about our connection with all this… and why Rydberg called this a preliminary trial.”

“You were the one who first mentioned the concept of trial,” the robot replied, leaning out of the circle to stare at her. “I only used that term to make you feel comfortable.”

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll play. You say this is a civilization of robots that have never had human interaction, yet obviously someone gave you your initial programming and ability to perform the work on this city.”

“Someone… yes,” Euler said.

“Someone who’s in charge,” she said.

“No,” Euler said. “We are now in group communication with our master programming unit, but it simply provides us with information from which logical decisions are made. Our overall philosophy is service; our means are logical. Other than that, our society has no direction.”

“Then why put us on trial at all?” she asked.

“Respect for human life is our First Law,” Rydberg said. “When we envisioned our perfect human/robot world, we saw a world in which all shared respect for the First Law. We envisioned a system of humanics that would guide human behavior, just as the Laws of Robotics guide our behavior, just as the Laws of Robotics guide our behavior. Of course, we have been working entirely from theory, but we have made a preliminary list of three laws that would provide the basis for an understanding of humans.”

“Cute,” Katherine said. “Now they want us to follow the Laws of Robotics.”

Derec interrupted her complaint. “Wait. Let’s see what they’ve come up with.”

“Thank you, Friend Derec. Our provisional First Law of Humanics is: A human being may not injure another human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.”

“Admirable,” conceded Derec, “even if it isn’t always obeyed. What is your Second Law?”

Rydberg’s hesitation before answering gave Derec the clear impression that the robot wanted to ask a question of its own, but his took precedence under the Second Law of Robotics.

“The Second Law of Humanics is: A human being must give only reasonable orders to a robot and require nothing of it that would needlessly put it into the kind of dilemma that might cause it harm or discomfort.”

“Still admirable, but still too altruistic to be always obeyed. And the third?”

“The Third Law of Humanics is: A human being must not harm a robot, or through inaction, allow a robot to come to harm, unless such harm is needed to keep a human being from harm or to allow a vital order to be carried out.”

“Not only is your experience with humans limited, so is your programming,” Derec said, shaking his head. “These ‘laws’ might describe a utopian society of humans and robots, but they certainly don’t describe the way humans really behave.”

“We have become aware of that,” said Rydberg. “Obviously, we are going to have to reconsider our conclusions. Since your arrival we have been subjected to human lies and deceit, concepts beyond our limited understanding.”

“But the First Law must stand!” Avernus said loudly, his red photocells glowing brightly. “Human or robot, all are subject to respect for life.”

“We certainly aren’t arguing that point,” Derec said.

“No!” Katherine said, standing angrily and walking back to the circle. “What we’re talking about is the lack of respect with which we’re being treated here!”

“Kath… ” Derec began.

“Shut up,” Katherine said. “I’ve been listening to you having wonderful little philosophical conversations with your robot buddies, and I’m getting a little tired of it. Listen, folks. First thing, I demand that you give us access to communications with the outside and that you let us leave. You have no authority to hold us here.”

“This is our world,” Euler said. “We mean no offense, but all societies are governed by laws, and we fear you have broken our greatest law.”

“And what if we have?” she asked. “What happens then?”

“Well,” Euler said. “We would do nothing more than keep you from the society of other humans who you could harm.”

“Great. So, how do you prove we did anything in order to hold us?”

“Process of elimination,” Waldeyer said. “Friend Derec has previously suggested some other possible avenues of explanation, but we feel it is incumbent upon both of you to explore them-not because we are trying to make it difficult for you, but because we respect your creative intelligence more than we respect our own deductive intelligence in an area like this.”

Derec watched as Katherine ran hands through her long black hair and took several deep breaths as she tried to get herself together and in a position to work with this. “All right,” she said, more calmly. “You said before that you won’t let us see the body.”

“No,” Euler said. “We said that we can’t let you see the body.”

“Why?”

There was silence. Finally Rydberg spoke. “We don’t know where it is,” he said. “The city began replicating too quickly and we lost it.”

“Lost it?” Derec said.

Derec knew it was impossible for a robot to be or look embarrassed, but that was exactly the feeling he was getting from the entire group.

“We really have no idea of where it is,” Euler said.

Derec saw an opening and quickly took it. “In order to do this investigation and prove that we’re innocent of any First Law transgressions, we must have freedom of movement around your city.”

“We exist to protect your lives,” Euler said. “You’ve been caught in the rains; you know how dangerous they are. We can’t let you out under those conditions.”

“Is there advance warning of the rain?” he asked.

“Yes,” Rydberg said. “The clouds build in the late afternoon, and the rain comes at night.”

“Suppose we promise to not go out when the conditions are unfavorable?” Derec asked.

Wohler, the golden robot, said, “What are human promises worth?”

Katherine pushed her way beneath the hands of the robots to stand in the center of the circle. “What are our lives worth without freedom?”

“Freedom,” Wohler echoed.

A dark cloud passed above the skylight, plunging the room into a gray, melancholy halflight, illumination provided by a score of CRT screens, many of them now showing pictures of madly roiling clouds.

The circle broke immediately, the robots, agitated, hurrying toward the door.

“Come,” Euler said, motioning to the humans. “The rains are approaching. We must get you back to shelter. There is so much to do.”

“What about my suggestion?” Derec called loudly to them.

“Hurry,” Euler called, waving his arm as Derec and Katherine walked toward him. “We will think about it and let you know tomorrow.”

“And if we can investigate and prove our innocence,” Katherine said, “will you then let us contact the outside?”

Euler stood still and fixed her with his photocells. “Let me put it this way,” he said. “If you don’t prove your innocence, you’ll never be allowed to contact the outside.”