His body was tired, more tired than it should have been. He hated to admit it to himself, but his time to find Dr. Avery was quickly growing shorter. Worst of all, he might reach the point where he could think clearly but would be unable to carry out any plans. As sleep approached, his mind went to his basic problem: the chemfets in his body.
Dr. Avery had captured him when they had been on Robot City before. At that time, however, Ariel’s illness had been entering a critical phase. Derec had escaped and fled from Robot City, hoping to find a cure for her disease. They had wound up on Earth. Only then had he realized what Dr. Avery had done to him in the laboratory while he had been a prisoner.
The chemfets were microscopic circuit boards with biosensors that interfaced his body. These tiny circuit boards were capable of preprogrammed growth and replication, and apparently Dr. Avery had programmed them. He had also planted a monitor in Derec’s brain that told him what they were and what was happening now: a tiny Robot City was growing inside his body.
Derec had no idea why Avery had done this to him, but the monitor had made one fact clear: the number of chemfets was growing, and some of them were joining together to grow larger. They were already interfering with his ability to coordinate his movements normally, and they were going to kill him from the inside-paralyze him, he suspected-if he didn’t get rid of them.
Only Dr. Avery could do that. Derec had no idea how he could convince the man to do so.
Derec woke up spontaneously, looking at a plain ceiling of light gray. For a moment, he was completely disoriented. Then, remembering he was back in Avery’s office, he sat up with a start of near-panic and looked around.
Ariel was sitting at the desk. She flinched in response to his movement and looked at him. Her expression was at first blank, then relaxed to a shy smile.
“Ariel! How are you feeling?” Derec smiled in embarrassment himself at his sudden awakening, and ran a hand through his hair to brush it out of his eyes.
“I feel all right. I just…get confused sometimes.” Her voice was apologetic.
Derec swung his feet over the edge of the bed and looked around. Mandelbrot had found a way to opaque the walls, which were the same light gray as the ceiling, and now stood motionless with his back to Derec. Wolruf was awake, sitting quietly in the chair where she had been when he had gone to sleep.
“How are you?” Ariel asked. “I’m able to get several decent dishes out of the chemical processor, by the way. My memory was a little weak, but I learned some of it from scratch. Wolruf and I have eaten. Some of it is waiting for you.”
“Thanks. I’m okay,” said Derec. He had benefited a great deal from the sleep. “A quick trip to the Personal and I’ll be fine.”
A moment later, he was standing in the cramped shower stall, letting steaming water massage his scalp with needle spray and run down his back. He stood with his head down, eyes closed. The heat made him feel better, telling him just how poorly he really felt. It was loosening kinks in his neck that he had never had before.
They were all refreshed as though it were morning, which it could not be. Their biological clocks would adjust soon enough.
He forced himself to leave the shower and dress again. If at all possible, he would disguise his ailments from his companions. Ariel and Wolruf were counting on his knowledge of Robot City to keep them safe and he would have to do that somehow until they located Dr. Avery. If Mandelbrot knew how fast the chemfets were interfering with his health, the robot just might have to turn him and Ariel over to the medical robots of Robot City under the First Law. That would play right into Dr. Avery’s hands.
He left the Personal and forced a cheerful smile.
“I’ve been reading up in the city computer,” said Ariel, nodding toward the terminal. “In particular, anything that we were involved in before.”
“Really? What have you found?”
“Did you know that our visits to the Key Center are recorded here? And this whole episode with Jeff Leong, the cyborg, when he was running amok?”
“Were there any reviews of Hamlet?” Derec grinned.
“Not that I noticed.” She seemed to miss the joke. “Oh, and of course the mystery of that wild, automatic shapechanging mode in the city, and how you stopped it.”
“I guess I hadn’t thought about being in the records much,” said Derec. “I’m not surprised, though.” He thought a moment, watching the cursor blink on the screen. “What is different from when we were here before is being able to get all the information you ask for. Have you been able to do that?”
“Yes…” She looked at him thoughtfully. ”I do remember, now…you had trouble getting your terminal to respond at times.”
Derec nodded. “There were blocks on other terminals, all right. This terminal had no blocks, like I said last night. Still, that just refers to the ones Avery deliberately installed in the rest of the system. The problem with the city computer before was that so much information had entered during the fast pace of the shapechanging mode. It was all in the computer somewhere, but the information wasn’t really organized anymore.”
“If you want to see what you can do here…” Ariel started to get up and move away from the desk.
“No, not yet.” Derec tasted a bit of leftover breakfast and nodded appreciatively. “Mandelbrot, have you found any blocks in the city computer yet?”
“No.” The robot’s voice was low in both pitch and volume.
Derec and Ariel both looked at him in surprise. Wolruf also studied his impassive face.
“Mandelbrot?” Derec said. “Come to think of it, you’ve been quiet since I woke up. What’s wrong?”
“I have been unable to resolve the First Law contradiction I described to you last night. I am only functional now because I do not have complete information on which to base my judgments.”
Ariel looked back and forth between them. “What contradiction? Was that after I…fainted?”
“Yes,” said Derec, ignoring a tightening in his stomach. “Go on, Mandelbrot. Can I give you instructions or explanations that will make a difference?”
“I do not see how. Ariel’s condition is a serious matter. The robots at the Human Medical Facility here demonstrated a potential that I must logically consider.”
“Dr. Avery is crazy. If he gets us in his power, that may threaten her life-all of ours.”
“It is possible, but so far his greatest interest has been in you. The possible harm to her from Dr. Avery is not greater than the clear harm that inaction may bring about.”
“Are you approaching some kind of conclusion about this?” Derec asked.
“Conclusion!” Ariel cried. “How can you just sit calmly and talk about conclusions? This isn’t a philosophy class! He’s talking about turning us in to the enemy!”
Chapter 3. Relapses
Derec was quivering with tension, but he forced himself to stay clear-headed. “Mandelbrot?”
“I am finding it difficult to concentrate. I am dwelling on this problem and going in circles. If I enter a closed loop on the First Law, I will be useless to you.”
“Now listen to me! Before you go into any kind of closed loop, uh-okay, I’ve got it. Listen.” Derec was talking fast, really before he had more to say. “Urn…”
“I am listening,” said Mandelbrot.
“Maybe ‘u have more information to give ‘irn,” Wolruf suggested. She got down from the chair and stood in front of Mandelbrot, straining her neck to look up at him.
“Yes! That’s it,” said Derec. “Mandelbrot, we’re working with limited information on Ariel. The process she went through was experimental, but I think it worked. I reprogrammed her memory myself. We have to give it a chance.”
“People will have relapses,” Ariel pointed out, in a tightly controlled tone. She was gripping the edge of the desk so hard that her fingertips were white.
“These appear to be similar to a mechanical malfunction,” said Mandelbrot. “Certainly medical care is a logical and customary treatment to facilitate healing.”