Chapter 18. Theater

Happily, the jitney accumulator areas were clearly marked on the station map. It took less than five minutes for Derec to walk to the nearest one and return with one of the nimble little electric carts. The version he had chosen had a single driver’s seat in back over the solo wheel, and an open passenger cab slung between the other wheels in front.

Wolruf curled up on the floor of the passenger cab under a white hospital robe. Katherine sat in one of the two seats, her legs further helping to conceal the alien, and Derec took the controls.

For Wolruf to find her place in her scent map, they were forced to backtrack into the dark sections. From there it was relatively simple: up three levels, north two subsections, up another level, and then west five blocks into a large plaza.

When Wolruf warned them they were nearing their destination, Derec slowed the vehicle to a moderate walking pace. A moment later the alien stole a peek over the edge of the cab, then jabbed a fat finger in the direction of the circular building at the center of the plaza.

“In there? Are you sure?” Derec hissed.

“Yes, Derec. Thass wherr the jewel iss.”

The lightworm sign outside the main entrance said “Station Operations Center-Restricted,” and robots were everywhere. The center itself was a single room twenty meters in diameter and encircled with windows looking out on the plaza.

“Great. Just great,” Derec grumbled, driving slowly across the plaza at an oblique angel. “How are we going to get in there? We can’t sneak up.”

“How about the front door?” Katherine said, twisting around to look at him. “Maybe they’ll let you in.”

Derec regarded her dubiously.

“Go ahead-it’s worth a try.”

“I still don’t understand,” Wolruf chimed in. “Aren’t robots ‘ur servants?”

Before answering, Derec drove the jitney a short distance down a connecting corridor, then pulled to one side and stopped. “I don’t know about this,” he said to Katherine. “Maybe they’re just setting up, like with Aranimas’s ship. If we try to get in there, if we show any interest in the thing at all, maybe that’s just going to bring them down on our necks like a tonne of slag.”

“You want to just leave it with them? After all we’ve gone through because of it?”

“When we were prisoners on the ship, I thought it was important to get the thing away from the aliens and back in human hands. Well, that’s where it is. Jacobson made it clear they’re willing to let us walk away and leave this mess to them. Maybe that’s what we ought to do.”

“Don’t you have any curiosity?” she demanded. “Don’t you want to know what this has all been about?”

“Sure, I’ve got curiosity. I’ve also got problems of my own to sort out. I don’t see where that thing is going to help any.”

“What’s happened to your nerve?” she said. “Look, these are the same people that stole our spacecraft, spirited away my robot, and then tried to tell us we should be grateful that they’re sending us away as paupers instead of criminals. I’m not about to let them get away with it.”

“Don’t you understand?” Derec shouted angrily. “You think we’re going to be able to just walk in there, put it under our arm, and say ‘Thanks for looking after it’? This thing came off a heavily armed alien ship-”

“They don’t know that,” Katherine pointed out. “They never saw Aranimas, or even Wolruf.”

“All right,” Derec said tiredly. “Maybe you’re right. If they did think it was an alien ship, they probably wouldn’t let us go. But these people aren’t playing. They wanted the ship, and they took it. They wanted the robot, and they took it. They want the jewel, and they have it. We’re not going to be able to take it back. We won’t even get in the door.”

“Maybe their orders weren’t that specific.”

“I’d have made them so.”

“You didn’t give them. Go on-try.”

“What’s the point? Wolruf’s right-the key is just trouble for everybody.”

Katherine sighed. “If you want something done-” And before Derec could stop her, she climbed out of the jitney and headed back to the plaza on foot.

In less than ten minutes Katherine was clambering back into her seat. “They let me in, even gave me a little tour,” she said breezily. “Very accommodating.”

“I figured that out when you weren’t back in two minutes. What about the key?”

“It’s there all right, sitting out in plain sight. What idiots!”

Derec eased the jitney into motion down the corridor, mulling over Katherine’s news. “Not really. Describe what you saw.”

“It’s a big semicircular room, with glass all around except for the offices at the back. There’re five robots at work stations, including Anazon. Then there’re two more near the center of the room doing nothing but sitting facing each other with the artifact on a table between them. There was some sort of funny emblem on the shoulder of those robots, a blue F in a double gold circle-”

Derec groaned. “Falke X-50s.”

“Does that mean something?”

“It means trouble. They have superfast reflexes. If a bomb went off five meters in the opposite direction, they might be distracted long enough for you to get your hands on the key, but you’d never get out of the room with it. If we’re going to get it back, we’re going to have to have some way to neutralize seven robots at once-and I don’t know any.”

“Can you explain to me why it’s out in plain sight? Could it be a copy, a fake? Maybe you’re right about the trap.”

“No,” Derec said with a shake of his head. “I’d guess the robots were probably ordered to watch it constantly, in principle if not in so many words.”

“If you put it in a vault and nobody opens the vault, it isn’t going to vanish into the ozone.”

“No,” Derec agreed, “but that understanding requires a fairly advanced and rather subtle mental function called object permanence. Robots are strongly biased toward the concrete and away from the inferred. If they lock something away out of sight, they don’t really know it’s there except when they check on it.”

“That’s illogical. No human would think that way.”

“Some would,” Derec dissented. “But you’re right, it’s not logical.”

“So why do the roboticists let that happen?”

“No engineered system is perfect,” Derec said with a shrug. “This is just one of those little things that doesn’t always behave the way you wish it would. A robot’s uncertainty about whether it’s satisfactorily fulfilling its orders can drive it into an anxiety state-specifically, they develop an elevated K-integral in the W14 level. So they begin checking on the thing they’re guarding more and more often at shorter and shorter intervals.”

“And eventually it ends up sitting on the table next to them,” Katherine said.

“Right.” Derec fell into a thoughtful silence, then suddenly caught himself. “Damn it all, you’ve got me trying to figure out how to get to it.”

“See, I knew you didn’t want to let them have it,” Katherine said with a bemused smile. “Any ideas?”

“Not yet.” A moment later he added, “Except that no matter how carefully worded and strongly impressed their orders to protect the key are, they’re only covered by the Second Law.”

Katherine was mute for a time, as Derec drove aimlessly through the streets bounding the Operations bloc.

“Following orders is Second Law,” she said finally.

“That’s what I just said.”

“What if Wolruf and I gave them a First Law reason to disregard them?”

Wolruf peeked out from under the robe at the mention of her name and looked hopefully at Derec.

“That’s the way to go, obviously,” Derec said. “But how?”

“I’ve got some ideas. A little-robot theater, shall we say.”

“Do you think you can be convincing?” Derec asked skeptically.

“I’d rather try than not,” she said. “Let’s not stop ourselves. Let’s make them stop us.”