She didn't say anything more then. The vision of green Auroran truck farms and golden wheat fields had come to mind. She could see the robots moving down the green, weedless rows, harvesting lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, the very things Jacob was taking from the food processor.
Those same farms would flourish equally well right here on Oyster World. This world could be the breadbasket for this part of the developing galaxy. And without interfering with the aliens at all. There would be no need for expensive and energy-wasting food processors in this part of the galaxy if all one wanted was a simple green garden salad.
She had failed to create the same image in Synapo's mind. But how could she have succeeded? How was he to understand something that was as alien to him as his government was to her? She had been expecting too much.
Yet was his government so strange? She herself had seen many instances on Aurora-city governments with their bureaus and committees and councils-which Petero's Principle fit perfectly: all positions filled with incompetents, almost without exception.
“I guess it's not so strange that the aliens didn't buy my proposal,” she said. “They are aliens and can't possibly think like we do. Yet their government makes sense, odd sense, mind you, as you might expect coming from aliens. Nothing a bunch of humans would ever come up with. It makes too much sense.
“And I guess it's just wishful thinking to expect Synapo to change his mind. So when you think about it, I guess I'm not really in a quandary, am I, Jacob?”
“So it would appear, Miss Ariel,” Jacob replied.
In a process that was too fast for the human eye to follow, he had torn the lettuce into bits, sliced the tomatoes, and had diced everything else except the bacon bits and croutons. Now he was tossing, in a large bowl, everything but the ham, cheese, bacon bits, and croutons.
“They'll close the dome tomorrow,” Ariel said, “and we'll be camping out.”
“That seems to be the only logical deduction.”
“So I've got to call Derec for help, right?”
“Quite so,” Jacob agreed.
“How do I do that?”
“I do not have personal knowledge of that function. I will check with Wohler-9 using the comlink.”
At the same time, he keyed the food processor for milk and thousand island dressing.
Ariel said nothing, and then, while he set the table, Jacob reported from the comlink.
“Avernus-8 supervises Mr. Avery's special monitor link.”
“Tie in to him,” Ariel said.
“I now have Avernus-8,” Jacob said.
“Tell him to transmit the following message to Derec.”
Ariel hesitated, thinking, while Jacob finished putting everything on the table. He had topped two bowls of salad with diced ham and cheese, ladled out a generous dollop of thousand island dressing onto each, and then sprinkled on the bacon bits and croutons.
Then she said, “No. Ask him first what's special about Derec's link, how does it work?”
She sat down at the table and motioned for Jacob to do likewise, and they both began to eat.
“Avernus-8 says that the connection with Derec's internal monitor is not made over hyperwave,” Jacob said. “It is a special system Dr. Avery developed. The equipment is mounted on the mobile platform supporting the computer mainframe and on the mainframe's backup platform, but is accessible by all seven supervisor robots.”
“And who has detailed technical knowledge of the system?” Ariel asked. “User's manual, wiring diagrams, maintenance manual?”
“Avernus-8 and the technician on each of the two computer platforms.”
“I'll bet a pewter button that Derec's special link does use hyperwave, but unlike it's ever been used before. It's not common, ordinary discrete modulation.
“Dr. Avery has beat us to it, dam it. He's already invented the aliens' continuous modulation.
“Jacob, hook Keymo into your comlink connection, and tell Avernus to describe Derec's monitor system to him. See if the two of them don't agree that it's continuous modulation of hyperwave as Keymo would define it. “
That connection and analysis took a little longer than quick, but still consumed less than two minutes.
“Avernus-8 replies in the affirmative,” Jacob said. “To communicate with all robot cities, Master Derec's internal monitor metabolically manipulates hyperwave in a manner similar to what Keymo describes as continuous modulation.”
“Bingo,” Ariel said. “Derec does it and doesn't even know how he does it. And I don't need to know anything about engineering to do engineering. Tell Avernus to ring up Derec and give him this message:
“CRISIS HERE ON OYSTER WORLD. YOU MUST IMMEDIATELY REPROGRAM AVERY ROBOTS. I ALSO HAVE A BIT OF IMPORTANT ENGINEERING TECHNOLOGY TO TEACH YOU, DUM-DUM. IN FACT, YOUR OWN INTERNAL ENGINEERING, SO COME AT ONCE.
“Sign it: LOVE, ARIEL, and ask for confirmation.”
For ten minutes Jacob said nothing while Ariel forked salad into her mouth and mooned over Derec. With that wild imagination one has when extrapolating hope, she visualized Synapo meeting with her before Derec arrived, telling her the aliens had changed their minds and would accept her proposal. She would then be the aliens' kind of Leader.
No matter what, the robots would have to be reprogrammed. They weren't going to build any robot city on this planet.
While they were finishing their lunch, Jacob broke the silence. “
Avernus-8 has received this reply from Master Derec:
“ON MY WAY, SMARTY PANTS. LOVE, DEREC.”
She spent the rest of the afternoon on the balcony, which overlooked Main Street, sitting in the subdued light of the perpetual dusk under the dome, reading a book of poems she took with her whenever she traveled: Selected Poetry of Old Earth.
It was an ancient book, bound in soft brown imitation suede, and printed in a small, graceful font on one side of thin, translucent, parchment-like paper. It was the only thing her mother had ever given her that she truly treasured. Juliana Welsh had given her a lot of expensive things: clothes, jewelry, cars, fliers, jumpers, but seldom anything with the taste and thought that was reflected in the selection of that little book. She wondered if her mother had picked it out or had merely asked one of their robots to pick up something via the hyperwave shopping service.
She came to a very short poem she had forgotten, but when she reread it, it seemed like a piece of wisdom that might apply at almost any time in a person's life-Robert Frost wisdom:
That's what she seemed to be doing. Dancing around the solution to the problem. She had come so close to the answer in that meeting with Synapo and his lieutenants. He had said as much with that elaborate apology he had left her with, as though he would have done things differently if it had been left up to just him. In that case, would he really have bought her proposal?
She looked up every now and then to stare at the opening in the dome. It made her uneasy. What if they could suddenly close it and trap them all inside that insidious blackness? There would be no way out, no way that human technology could provide.
But she didn't want to camp out, and she certainly didn't want to spend any more time in that tiny, cramped, two-passenger jumper than she absolutely had to.
After dinner Jacob rigged a viewing screen on the balcony so she could spend the evening keeping an eye on that critical opening in the dome while she watched a library tape of an old hyperwave drama involving Elijah Baley, Gladia Solaria, and the robot Daneel Olivaw…
She could not see the dome opening when she looked up. The starshine in the black sky was not bright enough to be seen through pupils contracted by the illumination required to present Elijah Baley in all his glory. But she could see the lights of the robot traffic far out on the plain, traffic that was now diminishing as the materiel transfer neared completion.