When they had left, Ariel got up so that Derec could have the console chair if he wanted it. Instead, he started into his room.

“Derec?” She said quietly, standing with her arms folded.

“Yeah?” He turned at his doorway.

“Did they talk about the transplant while you were out walking around with them?”

“No, not really. Why?”

“I was thinking about what Research 1 said. That maybe Jeff has gone weird because of the shock of waking up and finding out what happened to him. That might throw anybody, don’t you think?”

“Sure. What about it?”

“If that’s true, then the transplant was actually successful, wouldn’t you say? The surgery itself, I mean, and all the adjustments they had to make in the robot body.”

“Yeah, I guess so. But they aren’t sure that’s the case, remember? It’s just one possibility.” He cocked his head. “Since when did you get interested in all this?”

She shrugged self-consciously. “I was just thinking about it. On account of talking to Jeff. He says it’s not too bad.”

“Not too bad? Being a robot on the outside and a human on the inside?” He had started to smirk, teasing her, but then realization crossed his face. “Hey, wait a minute. You don’t…?”

“Not for sure.” She turned away, embarrassed. “I just want to know more about it, that’s all.”

“You mean you’d actually consider this? Turning yourself into a robot?”

She nodded her head without turning around.

“And then what-stay here? In this ridiculous place?” His voice was filled with wonder as much as anger.

“It’s better than dying!” She whirled on him. “Or being frozen whole and maybe never waking up! What if there isn’t any cure, anywhere? Maybe these robots could find one, if I stayed long enough.” She felt tears stinging her eyes.

“Well,…” He paused uncertainly. “What about the other possibility? Maybe the robots messed up somehow. Maybe that’s why Jeff’s going crazy. You can’t risk that. That would be worse than looking for a cure off the planet somewhere.”

“If we get off the planet! Derec, what if we’re still stuck here? I won’t have anything to lose then, will I?”

“Well, I…I don’t know. Maybe not.”

“And what if Jeff was always a little crazy? Nobody here knows him. Maybe he hasn’t been changed at all. What about that?”

He shook his head. “Maybe that’s true. You were the one who came up with the theory about his going crazy now. All I know is that if they can’t rig up the transplant right, it could kill you faster than your disease.”

She looked away from him.

He hesitated, watching her. When she didn’t say anything else, he went on into his room.

She walked into her own room and collapsed on her bed to stare at the ceiling. Then she remembered: it would not do her any good. One of the effects of her disease, before causing death, was insanity. Even a transplant like Jeff’s would not help her escape her own brain.

Chapter 15. The Circle Tightens

Jeff stood on the stationary shoulder of a slidewalk, at the apex of a high, arching overpass. Robots and vehicles passed on a major boulevard several stories below him. On one comer, five humanoid robots were talking. He had watched three of them approach the other two, and had seen that the pair standing together had blocked their path to engage them in conversation.

He couldn’t tell what they were discussing at this distance, but normally robots would communicate privately among themselves through their comlinks. The most likely reason they were using spoken communication was that they were searching for him. His lack of a comlink was one identifying mark he could not disguise.

“You can’t go that way, either, Jeffrey,” he said into the slight breeze. It would carry his voice the other way, so that even their most sensitive robot hearing would not detect it. “They think they’re closing in. Well, maybe they are and maybe they aren’t. We’ll see.”

He stepped onto the slowest lane of the slidewalk and rode it standing still, carefully watching in all directions. With his vision magnified for distances, he was able to spot these little clusters of conversing robots before they noticed him. They were uncharacteristic of normal robot behavior.

As near as he could tell, these clusters were coming toward the center of the city from all directions. They had been slowed down, though, because the population was higher as they approached the heart of the urban area. That might give him time to figure out an escape.

“Time for another reconnoiter, Jeffrey ol' pal. Just keep it casual and don’t let anybody sneak up on you. Got it? Of course I’ve got it, you moron; I’m you.” He laughed at his little joke and prepared to change direction at an upcoming junction ramp with another slidewalk.

He knew, by this time, the routes that gave him the most visibility, either with raised sections of slidewalk or open areas that offered a broad vista of the city. The robots involved in the pattern search were direct, and made no attempt to disguise their efforts, so he was able to see how much progress they had made. The circle was surprisingly tight, and still closing in.

“Now it’s time to check out their procedure a little more closely. It’ll take some care, Jeff. Think you can handle that? Of course I can. Shut up and get to work.”

He was hoping to eavesdrop. The difficulty was in listening without attracting the attention of the search team. He continued to ride the slidewalks until he found a cluster of robots speaking below another slidewalk overpass. When he was close enough, he stepped off onto the shoulder again and turned up his aural sensitivity until he could hear them clearly.

“We have contacted all three of you through your comlinks,” one robot was saying. “We believe all three of you responded, but we wish to speak aloud with you as well.”

“Identify,” said another.

“I am Drainage Foreman 31. I am temporarily suspended from my regular duties. At the present time, I am leading this team of three robots in search of a human with the physical body of a robot. This is the purpose of our questions.”

An extended moment of silence followed. Jeff understood what was happening. The search team was matching up comlink communication with eye contact and spoken words so that they would have no chance of letting him through by mistake, or by his getting lost in the crowd.

“I am going to repeat my answer to you aloud,” Drainage Foreman 31 said to another robot. “This human had his brain successfully transplanted into the body of a robot. For this reason, he has the strength and appearance of a robot, but the authority of the Laws of Robotics. I am going to ask you a question aloud now. Please respond through your comlink.”

Another moment of silence followed, then more talk of a similar kind.

Jeff stepped back onto the slidewalk to ride away. He was convinced that he could not fake having a comlink. That one robot was being very thorough in his testing, and he was backed up by two more robots. Jeff couldn’t win a wrestling match with three robots, each with a strength equal to his own.

He was still wary as he approached a tunnel stop. If the robots did not shut down the system entirely, they would at some point stake it out, perhaps with checkpoints down in the tunnels themselves. They could not be careless enough to have forgotten it. However, they might not yet have set up their search there.

“This block is clear so far,” he muttered to himself, looking toward a tunnel stop. “And no one’s standing at the opening. All right, then. Casually, like before-and watch out for a checkpoint down in the tunnel itself. Right? Of course you’re right. So am I. I know you are. Shut up and let’s go. Okay, okay…”

He went on muttering to himself, seriously now, as he sauntered toward the stop. Several humanoid robots passed him on the way, as well as the normal crowd of function robots of all sizes and types, but he was not worried about any of them. The search teams had so far all been teams of threes, and they had stopped every humanoid robot they met. They did not just walk around normally, like this.