Renegade

Chapter 7. Crisis

“How do we stand right now, Wohler?” Ariel asked.

She and the two robots had just left the meeting with the aliens and were traveling down Main Street in the lorry, heading for the apartment. The street lights stretched ahead toward the Compass Tower like a string of illuminated pearls in the dim light of a late dusk, the permanent dusk created by the dome.

“In what respect, Miss Ariel?” Wohler asked.

“With respect to the city, Wohler. The dome will be closed day after tomorrow unless we can get through to those monsters. What are you doing about it?”

“We are moving the necessary materiel for construction of a second Compass Tower and city on the other side of the plain, five kilometers away.”

“Yes, I believe those were the very words you used earlier,” she said. How could she be irritated by a machine that, given the same stimulus, came up with the same answer? “So your grand plan is to hop allover the planet, a jump ahead of the aliens, constructing Compass Towers and cities-weather nodes-while they follow along behind neutralizing them with their domes?”

Was she still feeling guilty about Wohler-1 and taking it out on this poor machine that wouldn't know it even if she were?

“We tried first to neutralize them and lost a pilot robot and flier,” Wohler-9 said, “and then we tried to learn more about them and lost a surgeon and laser scalpel.”

“You could have learned a lot more about them by just talking to them.”

“That has not proved to be true, Miss Ariel, and did not seem to be necessary at first since they destroyed only that one witness. They did not interfere with our endeavor once we enlarged the patrol circle to avoid construction of the dome. It did not appear they were violating our governing laws nor interfering with the Prime Directive until their construction work began to circle inward-to close the dome. Then we did begin to talk, and they succeeded in learning our language, but we learned very little except specialized terminology which you have now determined to be meteorological in nature.”

“What about the central core?” Ariel said. “You'll surely not leave that behind.”

“No, Miss Ariel. Our control computer's mainframe is mobile. When the blackbodies begin construction on the last day, we'll move it out to serve the new city.”

“Which will then shortly be covered by a dome.”

“Yes. That was why we hyperwaved Robot City for help.”

“Come upstairs with us, Wohler,” Ariel said as Wohler-9 pulled to the curb in front of the apartment building.

When they walked into the apartment, both Jacob and Wohler-9 headed for wall storage niches.,

“Jacob,” Ariel said, “would you rassle up some lunch for me? See if you can get a crisp garden salad out of that thing. And then sit down at the table. I'll freshen up and be right out.”

When she came out, the salad and a glass of milk were waiting on the table; Jacob sat across the table from where he had set her place, and Wohler-9 was standing in his niche.

She felt uncomfortable when the humaniform, Jacob, stood in a niche. Her Auroran upbringing made it seem natural for Wohler-9 to do so. That was where he was supposed to be when he wasn't doing some task for her. And she should have felt exactly the same way about Jacob, but his appearance didn't allow it.

“Now,” she said as she began eating, “our most pressing problem is how to carry out the objective of making this planet suitable for human life and at the same time avoid disrupting the weather. The weather does seem to be the main concern of the aliens.

“However, that's too tough to handle during lunch. It will ruin my appetite and upset my digestion.

“Let's talk instead about the hyperwave noise, the other way we're apparently disturbing them. I can understand the weather problem, sort of, and even have a glimmer of what a puncture node is-hot air punching up through a cold air layer, I suppose -but I've got no idea what they mean by discrete and continuous modulation. What's that all about, Jacob?”

“I'm not sure myself, Miss Ariel,” Jacob said. “I am aware of only one type of modulation of hyperwave: that which the alien called discrete. Nor had I drawn the connection of hyperwave modulation with jump technology, which permits us to travel through hyperspace. Were you aware of such a connection, Wohler?”

“No,” Wohler-9 replied, “but I was aware that teleportation using a Key to Perihelion is technologically different from jump teleportation.”

“This seems to me a minor problem involving new technology that we obviously should have been aware of,” Ariel said in true managerial style. “Get to work on it, Jacob.”

“Very well, Miss Ariel,” Jacob said. “Where would you suggest I start?”

For a moment Ariel thought that perhaps Jacob was being sarcastic, and then she realized that could not be the case. He was just a robot. Still, could the Robotics Institute have included an optional sarcastic module for the positronic brain of their humaniforms? Not likely. But it was an interesting thought that diverted her from these pesky engineering problems. They were more Derec's forte than hers. Social problems, people problems, sarcastic positronic modules; all those. she doted on. Not pesky problems with meteorology and hyperwave.

She was quiet for awhile. Jacob at the table, and Wohler-9 in his niche, said nothing.

Then she said, “Wohler, is there a Keymo on the planet?”

“Yes,” Wohler-9 said. “Keymo, eighth generation, is in charge of Key control.”

“There's your lead then, Jacob,” she said. It was merely a people problem-robot problem-after all. “We want to develop continuous hyperwave modulation. Synapo said there was a connection between continuous hyperwave modulation and Key teleportation. Keymo on Robot City manufactured the Keys. Keymo here, in charge of Key control, of all those here, should be most familiar with Key teleportation and the one most likely to fathom continuous modulation. See if the two of you can't cobble up some equipment to implement it.”

“Very well, Miss Ariel,” Jacob replied.

“Wohler,” Ariel said, “find Jacob a comlink cartridge, plug it into him so he can find Keymo on his own, and then come back and help me. With your knowledge of the aliens, we've got to figure out a solution to this dome problem.”

Jacob and Wohler-9, when not conversing audibly, close at hand, had been communicating with their cumbersome, long-distance, radio frequency systems. The comlink cartridge would hook Jacob into their more sophisticated, short-range, microwave telephone network.

“Very well, Miss Welsh,” Wohler-9 said.

Ariel did not hold out much hope that Keymo and Jacob would come up with anything significant. In her experience, ordinary robots just weren't creative. Yet there was that extraordinary exception: that brief period on Robot City when Shakespeare's Hamlet had lived again, supported by robot actors, and the robot Lucius had created his artistic masterpiece, the dynamically chromatic edifice called Circuit Breaker.

A half-hour later Wohler-9 returned.

“Did Jacob locate Keymo?” Ariel asked.

“I believe so,” Wohler-9 said. “He had contacted Keymo over the comlink before I left.”

“Good. Does this apartment have a memory projector?”

“Yes. The niches are equipped with sockets, and that wall serves as the screen.”

“Just what we need. How many times did you meet with the alien Synapo?”

“Thirty-four.”

“How long each time?”

When Wohler-9 began reciting the list that contained the time for each meeting, Ariel interrupted him.

“On the average!” she said.

“Forty-two minutes,” Wohler said.

“I'll not have time to go over all that before tomorrow morning. Yet I desperately need some clue as to how we may resolve this dilemma.

“Wohler, while I'm thinking how to screen that material rapidly, download to central core just the dialogue of your meetings with Synapo, and get a printout back to me as soon as possible.”

“Download in progress,” Wohler-9 said.

A fraction of a minute later, while Ariel was still pondering her problem, Wohler-9 said, “Download complete.”

A couple of minutes later, she said, “I really don't know what I'm looking for, but I do know what I'm not looking for. Wohler, delete all sections of the meetings dealing with linguistics and play back the rest at double speed.”

She could understand neither Wohler-9 nor the alien at that speed. Then when she slowed it down so she could understand Wohler-9, she still couldn't understand Synapo's Webster Grove accent. She finally slowed it down to normal and could understand most of what Synapo said, but not all. She refused to slow it any further.

Just as she didn't hope for much from Keymo and Jacob, she really didn't expect to get anything much out of listening to Wohler-9 and Synapo. But it did keep her conscious mind actively on the problem and left her subconscious mind to freewheel on all the correlated branches of the main subject.

Neither her conscious mind nor her subconscious mind contributed anything of significance during an inquiry that became dull and dragging after the novelty of watching and listening to a giant bat wore off.

The courier from central core arrived with the printout of the dialogue late in the afternoon, and with that interruption, Ariel decided to take a break and eat an early dinner. She had heard nothing from Jacob and realized she had been expecting him to return for dinner, when there was really no reason why he should, since he didn't eat and merely kept her company when she did. Still, it was a habit she had become accustomed to, and she missed him now that she was deprived of that pleasure.

Was it Jacob she missed, or really Derec? She had only to ask herself that question, and the longing to see Derec and the flood of homesickness for the beautiful estates and green farmlands of Aurora overwhelmed her.

She tried to put it out of her mind as she ate a lonely dinner, but it was not possible. Her mind rebelled from the magnitude of the problem that faced her on this alien world, and while she ate, she wallowed in her loneliness and homesickness, and before she finished eating, tears of self pity were trickling down her face.

As she finished eating, Wohler-9 asked, “Are you in pain, Miss Welsh?”

Ariel wiped her tears away with a napkin. “No, Wohler. Just lonely. “

“Does my presence relieve your loneliness to any degree?”

“No.”

“To what degree did my assistance this afternoon serve in the preservation of the city, Miss Welsh?”

“Very little, I'm sorry to say,” Ariel said. “Why do you ask? Did you expect otherwise?”

“Certainly I had hoped otherwise, Miss Welsh. I proceed at all times in the direction that best serves the Prime Directive, if that does not violate the more compelling laws that govern my behavior.

“I have been neglecting my supervisory duties in the construction and operation of the city, Miss Welsh, for I concluded that your imperative best served the Prime Directive. If that seems no longer to be the case, I must return to my duties, which are currently spread among the other six supervisors.”

“Very well, Wohler. Return to duty.”

“I will clear the dinner table, request a maid to serve you in the future, and then take my leave.”

“I'll clear the table, Wohler. And a maid won't be necessary. Jacob will suffice. “

“But he is on another assignment, Miss Welsh.”

“We'll handle it, Wohler. Just raise Jacob on the comlink, tell him to get back here no later than ten PM, and then leave.”

She was anxious to be alone. Wohler had begun to get on her nerves, Wohler and that alien she had felt compelled to watch and listen to all afternoon.

“Will you be needing me at the meeting tomorrow morning?” Wohler asked.

“No. Did you get hold of Jacob while you were chattering there?”

“Yes, Miss Welsh. He will be here by ten PM.”

“Then leave, Wohler.”

Despite her warm feelings for Wohler-l, she was fed up with this Wohler-9. Yet in his dialogue with the alien, she felt there had to be some clue to the aliens, to their behavior, to their needs, to their culture, a clue to something that would make the aliens and humans compatible so that this desirable planet did not have to be abandoned and bypassed in the future.

She turned to the printout the courier had delivered before dinner.

Strange how that archaic form of transmitting information-the printed word-had stayed around so long. Yet was it so strange when that marvelous instrument, the human brain, was taken into account: the speed with which she could assimilate the words and conjure related images, the speed with which she could scan the pages?

She quickly thumbed to where Wohler had left off in his projection that afternoon and scanned through the rest of the dialogue-ten times the volume they had covered that afternoon-and she did it in less than two hours. And got more out of it, by being able to easily and quickly replay, fast forward, skip, and ponder over the significance of a phrase, a word.

It was true that central core had eliminated the alien's accent -and certainly that had speeded things up-but the true efficiency came with the printed word itself: the strange archaic telepathy that extracted alien ideas from an alien mind and moved them into hers.

Yet despite the ancient beauty of the printout, nothing of significance came from its perusal, no more than had come from the boring afternoon with Wohler and the memory projector.

Still, her intuition told her there had to be a solution. She just wasn't looking at it right, or with the proper frame of mind, or in the proper place. If not the dome, where on this weird world was she supposed to look? The city was the problem, a weather node the aliens had termed it, an aggravating, uncontrollable irritant, like a grain of sand in an oyster.

And the aliens were coating it, smoothing it, to relieve the abrasion, like an oyster coats the sharp edges of a grain of sand with iridescent nacre, mother-of-pearl. Now she was even beginning to think like an alien. This world is an oyster and the city and its dome are a pearl. Oyster World. Pearl City. She had christened a world and a city.

And she had gotten no further by the time Jacob returned at ten PM.

“Well, you're finally back,” she said when he came in. “What did Keymo have to offer on the hyperwave problem?”

“Very little, Miss Ariel,” Jacob said. “Neither of us could see how Key teleportation technology could be applied to modulation of hyperwave signals.”

“Did you examine the parallel dichotomy of hyperspace jump technology and discrete modulation of hyperwave? That parallel connection should provide clues to the connection between the Key and continuous modulation. Right?”

Ariel had first heard the word dichotomy on the way to Oyster World, when Jacob had used it; and she had been wanting to use it ever since. It had such a ring of erudition. Now she had played it back to him.

“You suggested only that we look for a connection between continuous modulation and Key teleportation. Neither of us could see any during a lengthy discussion which concluded only a half hour ago.”

You dummy,she thought, the creative process is primarily a matter of drawing correlations. If there is a connection between discrete modulation and jump technology, as the aliens claim, you must first ferret out and understand that connection. Then maybe you can deduce what continuous modulation is by examining Key teleportation for the parallel connection the aliens say exists there. She thought she had made that clear before he left. He, too, had heard everything the alien had said.

“Tonight, while I'm sleeping,” Ariel said, “examine everything in your memory concerning jump technology and discrete modulation of hyperwave. Go back and forth comparing the two at every point. Look for similarities. Correlate one with the other. And give me a report in the morning of all instances where you see a similarity between the two.”

“Very well, Miss Ariel.”

She retired to bed then and thought how she would like to see the full musculature of Jacob without his clothes on. And that made her feel guilty, and her longing for Derec came rushing in, the longing she had been pushing from her mind all evening that had probably brought on the unmaidenly notions concerning Jacob.

She went to sleep, and sometime during the long night, she dreamt of playing in a verdant Auroran cornfield with her personal robot as she had when she was a child, and then the robot became Jacob, and they were running and laughing as he chased her down the rows of tall green plants waving in the gentle breeze, and gradually he was no longer chasing her but waiting for her at the end of the long row, far away; yet it was not Jacob; and then she realized that Derec had come to Oyster World, and he was standing there with his arms outstretched, waiting for her. Joyfully, she ran toward him down the long rows of waving green.

She awoke, and it was morning, and she was indeed on Oyster World. But Derec was not there.