Suspicion

Chapter 14. World Perfect

Derec walked the corridors of the mostly dark, mostly unfurnished medical facility. It would be a fine building when it was completely finished, a place where the humans who would inhabit Robot City could receive the finest medical care available anywhere in the galaxy under the supervision of the most advanced team of med-bots operational. He knew this would be so because the robots who performed the services would perform them by choice, out of love instead of servitude.

He walked the corridors alone-no guides, no keepers, no jailers. He was a free citizen now, a condemned man no longer. And it was good, because now, right now, he preferred being alone.

A room at the end of the corridor was awash with light, and he knew he’d find Katherine there, recovering from her night with the storm. He no longer cared about her subterfuge or her reasons for being with him on Robot City. For good or ill, he was happy and thankful that she was alive. Nothing else really could, or did, matter.

He was beginning to know why she affected him the way she did-he loved her.

He reached the room and poked his head inside. It was a large room, one that would most likely be a ward at some future time. But right now it was empty, except for Katherine’s place at the far end.

She lay in stasis, floating half a meter above a table, bright lights surrounding her completely. She was naked, just as she’d been on Rockliffe Station. This time he didn’t turn away, but looked, and her body seemed somehow… familiar to him.

A med-bot rolled up to him.

“How is she?” he asked.

“Splendid,” the robot replied, “except for her chronic condition… ”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said, letting her have her secrets. “Other than that?”

“She’s sleeping lightly,” the med-bot said. “We have rebalanced her chemicals through massive influxes of oxygen and fluids, and warmed her up. She lost a small part of her left ear to the cold, but that has already been adjusted through laser cosmetic surgery. You may visit with her if you wish.”

“I’d like that,” he said. “But before you wake her up, would you put a robe or something on her?”

“The heat lamps work better if… ”

“I know,” Derec said. “It’s a matter of her personal privacy.”

“I see,” the robot said in its best bedside manner, but Derec could tell that it didn’t.

When the med-bot turned and rolled back to Katherine, Derec politely stepped through the doorway and back into the hall.

A moment later, he could hear her talking to the robot, so he walked back in. She was off the table, sitting in a motorized chair, swathed in a bright white bathrobe. Her face was blank as he moved up to her.

“I’m sorry for everything,” he said. “I’ve been suspicious and hard to get along with and… ”

She smiled slightly, putting up a hand. “No more than I have,” she said softly, her voice hoarse. “I guess I’ve acted pretty stupidly.”

“Human prerogative,” he said. “You look… good.”

“They scraped the surface skin off me,” she said, “cleared away the dead dermis. I guess I could say you’re looking at the new me.” She moved her gaze to the floor. “The Key is gone.”

“I didn’t know,” he replied. “I guess we’re really stuck.”

She nodded. “Did you hear what… what Wohler did for me?”

“Yes.”

“I never understood your… feeling for the robots,” she said, eyes welling up with tears. “But his life was as important to him as mine is to me, and he… he gave it up… so I could live.”

“He was burned out completely,” Derec said. “They’re trying to reconstruct him now.”

She looked up at him. “Reconstruct?”

“It won’t be the same, of course. We are, all of us, a product of our memories. The Wohler you knew is, for the most part, dead.”

“But if they reconstruct,” she said, “something of him will remain.”

“Yes. Something.”

“I want to go there,” she said. “I want to go where he is.”

She tried to stand, Derec gently pushing her back in the chair. “You’re still a sick girl,” he said. “You can’t be running around doing… ”

“No,” she said, a spark of the old Katherine already coming back. “He died so that I could live. If there’s anything of him left, I want to be there.”

Derec drew a long breath. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said, knowing how stubborn she could be.

And so, thirty minutes later, Katherine, wrapped in a sterile suit, wheeled herself into the dust-free repair chamber where six different robots were working diligently on the body of Wohler, the philosopher. Derec walked with her.

Most of his plating was gone, circuit boards and relays hitting the floor with clockwork regularity, a small robot wheeling silently around and sweeping up the discards.

“Can I get closer?” she asked Derec.

“I don’t see why not,” he answered.

Just then, Euler came into the chamber and walked directly toward the couple. “Friend Derec,” he said. Derec smiled at the reuse of the title before his name. “We are just completing work on the connecting tunnel to the runoff cavern and would very much like you to be present for the opening.”

Derec looked down at Katherine. “Well, I’m kind of busy right now, I… ”

“Nonsense,” Katherine said, reaching out to pat his hand. “I’m just going to stay around here for a while. One of the robots here can get me back to medical.”

He smiled broadly. “You sure it’s okay?”

She nodded, smiling widely. “I understand completely,” she said.

He grinned at Euler. “Let’s go,” he said, and the two of them moved quickly out of the room.

Katherine listened to their footsteps receding down the hall, then wheeled her chair closer to the work table. Her anger at Derec along with a great many other conflicting emotions, had died along with Wohler on the Compass Tower. Because of her thoughtlessness, a life had been lost. All her other emotions seemed petty in the face of that.

She wheeled up near the golden robot’s head. Most of his body was exposed in pieces on the table, but the head and upper torso were intact. The robots working on the body moved around the table to accommodate her presence.

She stared at his head, reaching out a finger to gingerly touch him. “I’m so sorry,” she said.

Suddenly, the head turned to her, its photocells glowing brightly. “Were you addressing me?” he asked her.

“Wohler,” she said, jumping. “You’re alive.”

“Do we know one another?” he asked, and she realized that this was a different Wohler, a newly programmed Wohler who knew nothing of their previous experience.

“No,” she said, choking back a sob. “My name is Katherine. I’m… pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“A new friendship is like new wine,” Wohler said.

“When it has aged, you will drink it with pleasure. Katherine… Katherine. Why are you crying?”

Only a small dam held back the waters in the trench from the tunnel that Derec and Avernus had dug to the cavern. The supervisors and as many of the utility robots as could clusters in the opening were there, Derec holding the electronic detonator that would blast away the dam and open up the new waterway.

“This is the first day,” Euler told him, “the first day in a truly unified city of humans and robots. The beginning of the perfect world.”

“We have reacted synnoetically to make this day happen,” Rydberg said. “Working together we can accomplish much.”

“While we still have a great deal to learn about one another,” Derec said, “I, too, believe that we have proven something of value here today.”

“Then open the floodgate, Friend Derec,” Euler said, “and make the connection complete.”

“With pleasure.”

Derec flipped the toggle on the hand control. A small explosion made the wall of dirt and rock jump. Then it crumbled, and rapidly flowing water from the trench finished the job that the explosive had begun.

And as the waters rushed past, he thought of all the things still unresolved, still rushing, like the waters, through his confused brain. Who was he? Who was the dead man? Who put this all together, and why?

And then there was Katherine.

In many ways, he still felt as if his journey had just begun, but he couldn’t help but feel he had accomplished something major with the breaking down of the dam. He couldn’t help but feel that something good, something positive had been accomplished. And that made him feel just fine. Maybe life was nothing so much as a succession of small battles, small victories to be won.

“Derec,” came a voice behind him, and he turned to see Avernus standing there.

“Yes?”

The robot, so large, spoke with a small voice. “I do not know that I can understand why you did what you did to me last night,” he said, “but I cannot help but feel that we did the right thing, and that doing the right thing is what is important.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Derec said, smiling widely. “Friends?”

Avernus nodded solidly. “Friends,” he said, as he laid his pincer in Derec’s open palm in the universal gesture of peace and good will.

It wasn’t going to be such a bad day after all.