Suspicion

Chapter 13. The Central Core

Even as Katherine clung doggedly to the face of the pyramid, she knew that her ability to hold on could be measured in no more than minutes, as the rain lashed savagely at her and the winds worked to rip her off the patterned facade.

The ground lay several hundred meters below, calling to her. As her body went totally numb in the freezing downpour, her strong survival instinct was the only thing keeping her hanging on.

Her brain whirled, rejecting its own death while trying desperately to prepare for it, and through it all, she could hear the wind calling her name, over and over.

“Katherine!”

Closer now, the sound grew more pronounced. It seemed to come from below.

“Katherine!”

For the first time since she’d begun her climb, she risked a look downward, in the direction of the sound. She blinked through the icy water that streamed down her face only to see an apparition, a gray mass moving quickly up the face below her, proof that her mind was already gone.

“Katherine, hang on! I’m coming!”

In disbelief, she watched the apparition coming closer. And as her arms ached, trying to talk her into letting go and experiencing peace, she saw a golden hand reach from under the gray lump and grasp a handhold in one of the cutouts.

Wohler!

“Please hold on!”

“I can’t!” she called back, surprised to hear the hysteria in her own voice. And as if to reinforce the idea, her left hand lost its grip, her arm falling away from the building, the added pressure sending cramping pain through her right arm still lodged in the hole.

The robot below hurried his pace. The wind, getting beneath the tarp he wore to protect himself from the rain, pulled it away from his body to float like a huge, prehistoric bird.

“P-please… ” she called weakly, her right arm ready to give out.

“Hold on! Please hold on!”

The urgency in his voice astounded her, giving her an extra ounce of courage, a few more seconds when seconds were everything. And as she felt her hand slip away for good and all, his large body had wedged in behind her, holding her up against the facade.

Wohler clamped solidly in hand and footholds just above and below hers and he completely enveloped her, protecting. She let herself relax, all the strength immediately oozing out of her, Wohler supporting her completely.

“Are you unhurt?” the robot asked in her ear.

“I-I think so,” she answered in a small voice. “What happens now?”

“We can only wait,” Wohler said, his voice sounding somehow ragged. “An old Earth proverb says, ‘Patience is a bitter plant but it has sweet fruit.’ Survival w-will be our fruit… Friend Katherine.”

“Friend Wohler,” she responded, tears mixing with the cold rain on her face. “I want to th-thank you for coming up here for me.”

But Wohler didn’t answer.

The supervisors as a group stood behind the gateway excavator that Derec and Avernus operated. Neither helping nor hindering, they simply took it all in, no doubt unable to appreciate the thought processes that had led the big robot to pull the machine away from his mining crews and their replication labors, to put it to work simply clearing a path for something that, at this point, was no more than mere potential.

Derec had seen excavators like these before. On the asteroid where he had first awakened to find he had no identity, the robots had used identical machines to cut out the guts of the asteroid in their search for the Key to Perihelion.

The gateway was a marvel, for it demolished and rebuilt at the same time. Derec sat with Avernus at the two cabin control panels, watching the boom arms cutting into rock face nearly a hundred feet distant. One of the boom arms bore rotary grinders, the other microwave lasers that tore frantically at the core of the planet, chewing it up as it went. There were numerous conveyors and pulleys for the removal and scanning of potential salvage material, but none of these were in use right now. They were simply grinding and compressing the excavated rock and earth, the gateway itself using the materials to build a strong tunnel behind-smooth rock walls, reinforcing synthemesh, even overhead lamps.

They were creeping toward the cavern, every meter a meter closer to possible salvation. They had been working through the night, Derec desperately trying to let the effort keep his mind off Katherine and Wohler. It wasn’t working. There had been no word of them since before the storm had begun nearly ten hours ago. Had they been alive, he would have heard by now.

There was always the chance that Katherine had retrieved the Key and left, perhaps waiting out the rain in the gray void of Perihelion, or perhaps finding her way to another place. But that didn’t explain Wohler’s absence.

During the grueling hours spent working the gateway, Avernus and Derec had conversed very little, both, apparently, lost in their own thoughts. Derec worried for Avernus, who he knew was going through a great many internal recriminations that could only be resolved with a satisfactory outcome and subsequent vindication of his actions.

“Derec!” came Euler’s voice from the newly built tunnel behind; it was the first time the robot had spoken to them since the operation had begun.

Derec looked at his watch. It was nearly five a.m. He shared a glance with Avernus. “Yes!” he called back.

“The rain has abated,” Euler returned. “The missing have been located!”

Derec resisted the urge to jump from the controls and charge out of there. He still had work to do. He looked at Avernus. “What now?”

“Now we will see,” the robot said. “We must locate the core and reprogram.”

“Should I leave you here to continue operations and go with someone else to the core?”

“No,” Avernus said with authority. “I am supervisor of the underground and know my way around it. I also… must know the outcome. Can you understand that?”

Derec reached out and punched off the control board, stopping new digging and bringing all operants to the standby position. “You bet I can understand it. Let’s go!”

They moved out of the gateway, squeezing past stacked up cylinders to join the other supervisors in the tunnel behind. It was the first time Derec had looked back at their handiwork. The tunnel he and Avernus had made stretched several hundred yards behind them, nearly as far he could see.

“Where are Katherine and Wohler?” he asked. “Are they all right?”

“No one knows,” Rydberg said. “They are clinging to the side of the Compass Tower, nearly a hundred meters above the surface, but they have not responded to voice communication, nor have they attempted to come down.”

Derec’s heart sank. They’d been out all night in the rain.

It looked bad.

“Are rescue operations underway?” he asked.

“Utility robots are now scaling the Tower to determine the extent of the problem for emergency disposition,” Euler said.

“The central core,” Avernus said to Dante. “Tell me where it is right now.”

“Tell me honestly, Euler,” Derec said. “Will my presence at the Tower facilitate the rescue operation?”

“Tower rescue has always been part of our basic program, for reasons no one can fathom,” the robot said. “Standard operating procedure has already been initiated. You could only hinder the operation.”

“Good,” Derec said. Of course Tower rescue was standard. The overseer had worried that, should the trap door to the office below become jammed, he would be caught on the Tower, unable to get down. The almighty overseer didn’t mind letting everyone else twist slowly in the wind, but he wasn’t going to let himself be uncomfortable on the Tower.

Dante spoke up from the terminal in his tram car. “The central core is in Quadrant 2, Tunnel D-24, moving to the north.”

Avernus nodded and looked at Derec. “We must hurry,” he said, “lest all our work be in vain.”

“Work is already in vain,” Waldeyer said to Avernus. “Because of your unauthorized impoundment of the gateway excavator, the on-hand raw iron consignments have dropped dangerously low. Within an hour, replication efforts will begin falling behind schedule.”

The big robot simply hung his head, looking at the floor.

“I pose a question to you all,” Derec said. “If Avernus and I are able to get to the core and reprogram to halt the replication, will our work already done here enable us to dig the rest of the way through to the cavern before tonight’s rain?”

“Barring work stoppage and machinery malfunction,” Euler said, “we should just be able to make it. This, of course, is all hypothetical.”

Derec just looked at them. There was no satisfaction to be gained from arguing at this point. It was time to deliver the goods. “Where’s the data from my blood sample?” he asked.

Arion stepped forward and handed him a mini-disc. “Everything you asked for is in here,” he said.

“Thanks,” Derec said, taking the disc and putting it in his breast pocket. “Now, listen. We’re going to the central core. As soon as we reprogram, we’ll need you to begin work here again immediately so that no time is lost.”

Arion took a step toward the gateway. “It is now too late to move the excavator back to the iron mine and pick up our failed operation there, so I see no reason why the digging here shouldn’t continue in your absence. There is no longer anything to lose. I will continue to work here, even as you approach the central core.”

“No,” Euler said. “Will you now violate your programming, and perhaps the Laws?”

“The program is already shattered,” Arion said, moving into the innards of the gateway. “There is no putting it back together now.”

Derec smiled broadly as he heard the standby board being brought to full ready by Arion. He walked over to Dante. “We’ll need your tram,” he said. “Now.”

The fever had come on strong, and along with it, hallucinations. Katherine’s world was a nightmare of water, a world of water always threatening to pull her downward, and through it all Derec/David, David/Derec, Derec/David, his face smiling evilly and becoming mechanical even as she watched, metamorphosing from human to robot and back again, over and over. He’d skim the cresting waves to take her in his arms, only to use those arms to pull her underwater-drowning her! Drowning!

“Katherine… Katherine. Wake up. Wake up.”

Voices intruding in her world of water. She wanted them to go away, to leave her alone. The water was treacherous, but at least it was warm.

“Katherine… ”

Something was shaking her, pulling her violently from her dream world. She opened her eyes to pain blazing like fire through her head.

It was daytime, early morning. A utility robot was staring at her around the protective branch of Wohler’s arm.

“C-cold,” she rasped, teeth chattering. “So… cold.”

A light flared above her and to the left, a light raining sparks. She squinted. Welders were using laser torches to cut Wohler’s pincers off the facade where they were locked tight. Above the welder, she could see mechanical pulleys magnetically clamped to the side of the structure, city-material ropes dangling.

“We are cutting you free,” the robot said. “A net and stretcher have been strung just below you. You are safe now.”

“C-cold,” she rasped again.

“We will warm you. We will get you medical attention.”

And through the haze that was her mind, she felt the reassuring firmness of Wohler’s body protecting her, always protecting her.

“Wohler!” she said loudly. “We’re s-safe. Wohler!”

“Supervisor Wohler is… nonoperational,” the utility said.

Even through the hurt and the delirium, she was wracked by waves of shame. That this robot would give his life for hers, after the way she’d acted, was more than she could bear.

She felt his weight behind her give; then hands were lifting both of them onto the stretchers pulled up tight below. She felt the morning sun on her face, a sun that Wohler would never experience again, and rather than dwell on the unpleasant results of its own selfishness, her mind once more retreated into the blissful haze of unconsciousness.

“Would you have?” Avernus asked him as they pushed the tram down tunnel D-24, heading north.

“Would I have what?” Derec replied. The tunnel walls rushed past, red lights zipping overhead at two-second intervals.

“Would you have let the robots die if I hadn’t agreed to help you dig the tunnel?”

“No,” Derec said. “I wouldn’t have done anything like that. I just wanted to talk some sense into you.”

“You lied to me.”

“I lied to save you,” Derec said. “Remember our discussion about lying in the Compass Tower? I created a different reality, a hypothetical reality, to force you into a different line of thought.”

“You lied to me.”

“Yes.”

“I do not know if I’ll ever really understand that,” Avernus said, subtly telling Derec that their relationship would forever be strained.

“I’ll have to learn to live with that,” Derec replied sadly. “Sometimes the right thing isn’t always the best thing. I’m sorry if I hurt you.”

“Hurt is not a term that I understand,” the robot replied.

“No,” Derec said, turning to fiddle with the terminal Dante had left in the back. “It’s a term that I relate to.”

Derec used the terminal to contact the city’s hastily organized medical facility, trying for information on Katherine and Wohler. He and Avernus had left Quadrant #4 and traveled through the city to #2, going underground again at that point. Tunnel D-24 was one of the more distant shafts, drilled as an oil exploration point for the plastics operation. A pipeline churned loudly, attached to the tunnel ceiling above their heads.

“They’ve gotten Katherine and Wohler down from the Tower!” he said, wishing his fingers moved as well as Dante’s over the keyboard.

“Are they well?”

“Katherine is suffering from shock and exposure,” Derec said excitedly. “She’s being treated now. The prognosis is good. Wohler is… is… ” He turned sadly to Avernus. “Wohler is dead.”

“Look!” the robot called, pointing ahead.

Farther along the tunnel, they were rapidly closing on a moving area of light. It was perhaps six meters long, and just tall enough to miss the overhanging lights.

“The central core!” Avernus said, braking heavily, the tram skidding to a halt.

“What are you doing?” Derec asked. “It’s getting away!”

“It will be faster now on foot,” Avernus said.

“Not for me,” Derec replied. “I can’t run fast enough to… ”

“Climb on my back,” the robot ordered. “Quickly.”

While the huge robot was still sitting, Derec stood and climbed onto his broad back, putting his hands around Avernus’s head, the robot locking an arm behind him, holding Derec on tightly.

Then Avernus jumped from the cart and began a headlong charge down the tunnel, moving faster than Derec realized was possible. Tunnel segments flew by in a blur as the moving core grew larger and larger in their vision.

They caught it quickly, and Avernus slowed his pace to match the speed of the core. Its outer surface was transparent plastic of some kind, and very thick. Like a transparent eggshell, it contained the complex workings of a sophisticated, operating machine. In the rear was a platform with steps leading up to a sliding door.

Avernus jumped, catching the stairs and climbing on. He brought his arm around, gently lifting Derec off to stand before the door. “Go on,” he said. “Go in. Only one at a time can pass through.”

Derec slid open the door by hand and walked in to find himself within the transparent chamber. A red button was set in the plastic before him. He pushed it. Sprayers and heat lamps came on, a full body spray of compressed air traveling the length of his body to remove all traces of dust. There was a loud sound of suction, and then the wall before him slid open and he walked into the beating heart of Robot City.

The core was open, like an exposed brain, its working synapses sparking photons up and down its length, its fluidics a marvel of imaginative engineering. He found a typer halfway down its length and juiced it to life, while hearing Avernus going through the chamber ritual. The robot was doubled over to fit within the “clean room.”

The first thing he did was open a file under the heading of HEMOGLOBIN, and enter the disc’s-worth of information Arion had procured for him. Then he got into the DEFENSES file again, going as far as he could with the system until it prompted him for the supervisor’s password.

He heard a door slide open and turned to see Avernus, still somewhat hunched over, move to stand beside him at the typer.

“It wants your password,” Derec said.

Avernus looked at him, not speaking, then reached out and typed on the screen:

Without a second’s hesitation, the computer prompted:

RATIONALIZATION FOR DEACTIVATION OF CITY DEFENSES?

With shaking fingers, Derec typed his rationalization into the machine, dumping, as he did so, all the information from the HEMOGLOBIN file into the CITY DEFENSES file as authoritative backup and information to keep the same thing from ever happening again.

When he was through typing he stood back and took a breath, almost afraid to push the ENTER key.

“We must know now,” Avernus said.

Derec nodded, swallowed hard, and entered the information.

The machine churned quietly for a moment that seemed to last an hour. Finally, quite simply and without fanfare, it responded.

RATIONALIZATION ACCEPTED-DEFENSES DEACTIVATED.

They stood for a moment, staring, not quite believing that it could be so easy. Then they felt a noticeable slowing of the core’s motion. Within seconds, it had ground to a stop.

It was over.