"Please, Ms. Yarick, I understand-" Ariel began.
"No, you don't! Have you ever been shot at? Has your life ever been threatened so immediately that you believed your next thought would be your last? I don't think you do understand!"
"How old are you, Ms. Yarick?" Ariel asked quietly.
"What? I-what?" Yarick frowned, off-balance.
"How old are you?"
"Ninety-eight."
"Do you know that the average life expectancy on this planet is less than eighty?"
"I-yes, I knew that. I'm afraid I don't see your point."
"You've reached nearly a hundred and this is your first brush with mortality. These people live with it daily once they hit forty. Part of Humadros's mission might have given them some hope to change that."
After a long pause, Yarick said, "Are you implying that my reaction lacks perspective?"
"Perhaps. You're making a lot of assumptions about how little anyone else might understand."
"I see. Well, that may be true, and if so then I will apologize to you once I recover my perspective enough to appreciate it. But for now, I can't get away from my own reactions. I'm sorry if that's not what you wish to hear."
"I apologize if I seem insensitive," Ariel said. "But I do understand."
"Very well. Yes, perhaps I was presumptive."
"Would anyone else of your staff be willing to stay? It would help if the entire Auroran legation did not abandon the mission."
"The wounded are already scheduled to go up to Kopernik. I can talk to Trina and Gavit, but they're as badly shaken as I am. I do see your point, but-"
"Anything you might be able to do would help. We can move you into the Calvin Institute wing -there would be a full staff of robots. I'm asking for a gesture, an act of faith-"
Yarick laughed dryly. "The day has used up its allotment of gestures, don't you think? But I promise, I'll speak with the others. I'll let you know in the morning, Ms. Burgess."
"That's all I ask. Thank you."
The connection broke and Ariel let out a long, exasperated sigh. Sometimes her job made it difficult for her to see why she wanted it.
She tried Tro Aspil again, but the link remained closed.
Ariel paced the length of her living room and back, and by the time she reached her bar, the whiskey was gone, and she finally felt the first intimations of sleep coming on. She looked at the time-nearly one in the morning-and tried to ignore the knowledge of her early appointments.
"Time for bed," she announced to the room.
The doorbell sounded, bright and clear.
"What in-?" she groaned.
Impatience mounted steadily to anger as she strode toward the door. She could think of only a couple of people in the building who might be so impolitic as to disturb her this late, but could think of no possible reason other than to bother her about what had happened today. She thought they would know better, but after a day of dealing with the skewed reasoning of her fellow Aurorans it should not surprise her that they might not.
R. Jennie was already at the door by the time Ariel reached it.
"It is after the hours during which Ms. Burgess accepts company," R. Jennie explained through the intercom patiently. "Please return in the morning."
"I can't," came a small, tight voice. "I need to see Ariel now. Listen, I am ordering you-you are a robot?"
"I am-"
"Listen, I am ordering you-"
"Jennie," Ariel said. "Admit them."
"But, Ariel-"
"Admit them."
"Yes, Ariel."
Ariel's nerves danced as R. Jennie opened the door.
Standing in the hallway, supported by the oversized arm of an immense robot, Mia Daventri smiled weakly at her.
"Hi, Ariel. Sorry to bother you so late. Can I stay here for a few days?"
Eight
The Phylaxis Group offices occupied three floors of a refurbished small industries complex in the Lincoln District, just off the Seventeenth Corridor. They were crowded between a modest heavy metals recovery business and a recently abandoned tailoring shop. The air always faintly smelled of hot ozone and acid. A small plaque by the main entrance identified the Group headquarters, but they received no walk-in business. Derec had put in a reception area when he had gotten the permits, but it had been a gesture, a visible symbol of what he had hoped would become more than just a promise among politicians. As he walked through the empty front office, he doubted any of his hopes would come true. Earth would surely reject all positronics now. And if not, the Fifty Worlds had no reason to try to continue relations with them.
When he entered the main lab, Rana turned from her console and grinned at him proudly. She was a compact woman, with close-cropped black curls and narrow hazel eyes. "I made a duplicate," she said. "We still have an RI matrix to study."
Derec stared at her, uncomprehending. "A copy… how-?"
"While the transfer to their buffer was going on. It was simple to just assign a secondary address."
Derec laughed. "It's not traceable, is it?"
"Please, Derec. Credit me with some sophistication. I didn't want to say anything over the com earlier, just in case. You mentioned Special Service, and I just don't trust those"
"They're not that bad. "
"With all due respect, Derec, you don't trust them either, otherwise you wouldn't have 'forgotten' that you were on com with me when they showed up."
He sobered, thinking of the two agents arriving at the med facility-the same pair that had thrown him out of Union Station. No, he did not trust them, but he doubted they had tapped his comlines. But perhaps Rana's caution would not be a bad example to follow until they knew more.
"Well. In that case," he said, "make another duplicate and hide it, just in case we get an on-site visit."
"Already working on it. "
"Start a forensic. There's an isolated segment in the RI where the recorded perceptions deviate radically from reality. We need to know how that happened."
"Deviated in what way?"
"I don't know. The roboticists on site told me it was a strategy game, but it looked like a full sensory hallucination. Thales?"
"Yes, Derec?" the smooth, disembodied voice of their RI answered.
"I want you to run a diagnostic through Union Station while you're in there. See if you can find any irregularities in the support systems, comlines-anything that's connected to the RI."
"Do you have a specific irregularity in mind, Derec?"
"No… the RI started playing a strategy game called Coup when it went off-line. See if there's anything about it in the regular datum files."
"Yes, Derec."
"Hallucination?" Rana said. "That's impossible."
"Of course it is. Everyone knows positronic brains can't hallucinate. But this one did. Did you get hold of our attorney?"
"No, he's in Chicago Sector. I left a message for him to call us in the morning. Have you called anyone else about this? We're supposed to be doing all the troubleshooting on a positronic brain."
"Who would you have me call? I tried the subcommittee, but I only spoke to Vann and Hajer, and they didn't know anything about this."
"What about what's-his-name?" Rana asked. "Taprin?"
Derec shook his head. "He's doubtless up to his hairline in Clar's death. I won't bother him unless I have to. I'd rather talk to our lawyer, but I suppose morning will have to do. What about this RI? Have you given it a look yet?"
"It's a jumbled mess. I already found the collapse points, but we have a major problem."
Derec glanced at Rana, who glared at her screen. She stabbed at a couple of keys on her board, then sat back, sucking her lower lip under her teeth. Derec waited.
"It went into nearly complete collapse once it came back online." She jabbed a finger at the screen. "Here and here you can see the recursive loops it generated while trying to cope with the situation. They spiralled out of control as more data came available, and it reached the inescapable conclusion that it was responsible for the deaths of humans. Total First Law violation. It followed its own navel into oblivion."