Asimov’s Future History Volume 11

by Isaac Asimov

  “What about medical attention for the prisoner?” asked one of the guards.

  “That will not be necessary, sir,” said Daneel. He did not explain.

  81.

  “That this should have happened,” said Andrev tightly, his lips trembling with passion. They were in the room off the balcony and he glanced up at the hole in the ceiling that remained as mute evidence of the violence that had taken place.

  Gladia said, in a voice that she strove successfully to keep from shaking, “Nothing has happened. I am unharmed. There is that hole in the ceiling that you will have to repair and perhaps some additional repairs in the room above. That’s all.”

  Even as she spoke, she could hear people upstairs moving objects away from the hole and presumably assessing damage.

  “That is not all,” said Andrev. “It ruins our plans for your appearance tomorrow, for your major address to the planet.”

  “It does the opposite,” said Gladia... The planet will be the more anxious to hear me, knowing I have been the near-victim of an assassination attempt.”

  “But there’s the chance of another attempt.”

  Gladia shrugged lightly. “That just makes me feel I’m on the right track. – Secretary-General Andrev, I discovered not too long ago that I have a mission in life. It did not occur to me that this mission might place me in danger, but since it does, it also occurs to me that I would not be in danger and not worth the killing if I was not striking home. If danger is a measure of my effectiveness, I am willing to risk that danger.”

  Giskard said, “Madam Gladia, Daneel is here with, I presume, the individual who aimed a blaster in this direction.”

  It was not only Daneel – carrying a relaxed, unstruggling figure – who appeared in the doorway of the room, but half a dozen security guards as well. Outside, the noise of the crowd seemed lower and more distant. It was clearly beginning to disperse and periodically one could hear the announcement over the loudspeakers: “No one has been hurt. There is no danger. Return to your homes.”

  Andrev waved the guards away. “Is that the one?” he asked sharply.

  Daneel said, “There is no question, sir, but that this is the individual with the blaster. The weapon was near him, but the people close to the scene witnessed his action, and he himself admits the deed.”

  Andrev stared at him in astonishment. “He’s so calm. He doesn’t seem human.”

  “He is not human, sir. He is a robot, a humanoid robot.”

  “But we don’t have any humanoid robots on Earth. – Except you.”

  “This robot, Secretary-General,” said Daneel, “is, like myself, of Auroran manufacture.”

  Gladia frowned. “But that’s impossible. A robot couldn’t have been ordered to assassinate me.”

  D. G., looking exasperated and, with a most possessive arm about Gladia’s shoulder, said in an angry rumble, “An Auroran robot, specially programmed –”

  “Nonsense, D. G.,” said Gladia. “No way. Auroran or not, special programming or not, a robot cannot deliberately try to harm a human being it knows to be a human being. If this robot did fire the blaster in my direction, he must have missed me on purpose.”

  “To what end?” demanded Andrev. “Why should he miss, madam?”

  “Don’t you see?” said Gladia. “Whoever it was that gave the robot its orders must have felt that the attempt would be enough to disrupt my plans here on Earth and it was the disruption they were after. They couldn’t order the robot to kill me, but they could order him to miss me – and if that was enough to disrupt the program, they would be satisfied – Except that it won’t disrupt the program. I won’t allow that.”

  D. G. said, “Don’t be a heroine, Gladia. I don’t know what they’ll try next and nothing – nothing – is worth losing you.”

  Gladia’s eyes softened. “Thank you, D. G. I appreciate your feelings, but we must chance it.”

  Andrev pulled at his ear in perplexity. “What do we do? The knowledge that a humanoid robot used a blaster in a crowd of human beings will not be taken well by Earth people.”

  “Obviously, it wouldn’t,” said D. G. “Therefore, let’s not tell them.”

  “A number of people must already know – or guess – that we are dealing with a robot.”

  “You won’t stop the rumor, Secretary-General, but there is no need to make it more than that by means of an official announcement.”

  Andrev said, “If Aurora is willing to go to this extreme to –”

  “Not Aurora,” said Gladia quickly. “Merely certain people on Aurora, certain fire-eaters. There are such bellicose extremists among the Settlers, too, I know, and probably even on Earth. Don’t play into the hands of these extremists, Secretary-General. I’m appealing to the vast majority of sensible human beings on both sides and nothing must be done to weaken that appeal.”

  Daneel, who had been waiting patiently, finally found a pause long enough to make it possible for him to insert his comment. “Madam Gladia – sirs – it is important to find out from this robot where on this planet he is based. There may be others.”

  “Haven’t you asked him?” said Andrev.

  “I have, Secretary-General, but I am a robot. This robot is not required to answer questions put to him by another robot. Nor is he required to follow my orders.”

  “Well, then, I will ask,” said Andrev.

  “That may not help, sir. The robot is under stringent orders not to answer and your order to answer will probably not overcome them. You do not know the proper phraseology and intonation. Madam Gladia is an Auroran and knows how this may be done. Madam Gladia, would you inquire as to where his planetary base might be?”

  Giskard said in a low voice, so that only Daneel heard him, “It may not be possible. He may have been ordered into irreversible freeze if the questioning becomes too insistent.”

  Daneel’s head turned sharply to Giskard. He whispered, “Can you prevent that?”

  “Uncertain,” said Giskard. “The brain has been physically damaged by the act of firing a blaster toward human beings.”

  Daneel turned back to Gladia. “Madam,” he said, “I would suggest you be probing, rather than brutal.”

  Gladia said doubtfully, “Well, I don’t know.” She faced the robot assassin, drew a deep breath, and in a voice that was firm yet soft and gentle, she said, “Robot, how may I address you?”

  The robot said, “I am referred to as R. Ernett Second, madam.”

  “Ernett, can you tell that I am an Auroran?”

  “You speak in the Auroran fashion, yet not entirely, madam.”

  “I was born on Solaria, but I am a Spacer who has lived for twenty decades on Aurora and I am accustomed to being served by robots. I have expected and received service from robots every day of my life since I was a small child. I have never been disappointed.”

  “I accept the fact, madam.”

  “Will you answer my questions and accept my orders, Ernett?”

  “I will, madam, if they are not counteracted by a competing order.”

  “If I ask you the location of your base on this planet what portion of it you count as your master’s establishment – will you answer that?”

  “I may not do so, madam. Nor any other question with respect to my master. Any question at all.”

  “Do you understand that if you do not answer I will be bitterly disappointed and that my rightful expectation of robotic service will be permanently blunted?”

  “I understand, madam,” said the robot faintly.

  Gladia looked at Daneel. “Shall I try?”

  Daneel said, “There is no choice but to try, Madam Gladia. If the effort leaves us without information, we are no worse off than now.”

  Gladia said, in a voice that rang with authority, “Do not inflect damage on me, Ernett, by refusing to tell me the location of your base on this planet. I order you to tell me.”

  The robot seemed to stiffen. His mouth opened but made no sound. It opened a
gain and he whispered huskily, “... mile...” It opened a third time silently – and then, while the mouth remained open, the gleam went out of the robot assassin’s eyes and they became flat and waxen. One arm, which had been a little raised, dropped downward.

  Daneel said, “The positronic brain has frozen.”

  Giskard whispered to Daneel only, “Irreversible! I did my best but could not hang on.”

  “We have nothing,” said Andrev. “We don’t know where the other robots might be.”

  D. G. said, “It said, ‘mile.” ‘

  “I do not recognize the word,” said Daneel. “It is not Galactic Standard as the language is used on Aurora. Does it have meaning on Earth?”

  Andrev said, rather blankly, “He might have been trying to say’smile’ or ‘Miles.’ I once knew a man whose first name was Miles.”

  Daneel said gravely, “I do not see how either word could make sense as an answer – or part of an answer – to the question. Nor did I hear any sibilance, either before or after the sound.”

  An elderly Earthman, who till now had remained silent, said, with a certain appearance of diffidence, “I am under the impression a mile may be an ancient measure of distance, robot.”

  “How long a measure, sir?” asked Daneel.

  “I do not know,” said the Earthman. “Longer than a kilometer, I believe.”

  “It isn’t used any longer, sir?”

  “Not since the prehyperspatial era.” D. G. pulled at his beard and he said thoughtfully, “It’s still used. At least, we have an old saying on Baleyworld that goes, ‘A miss is as good as a mile.’ It is used to mean that, in avoiding misfortune, avoidance by a little is as good as avoidance by a great deal. I always thought ‘mile’ meant ‘a great deal.’ If it really represents a measure of distance, I can understand the phrase better.”

  Gladia said, “If that is so, the assassin may have been trying to say exactly that. He may have indicated his satisfaction that a miss – his deliberately missed shot – would accomplish what he was ordered to accomplish or, perhaps, that his missed shot, doing no harm, was equivalent to his not having fired at all.”

  “Madam Gladia,” said Daneel, “a robot of Auroran manufacture would scarcely be using phrases that might exist on Baleyworld but have certainly never been heard on Aurora. And, in his damaged condition, he would not philosophize. He was asked a question and he would only be trying to answer the question.”

  “Ah,” said Andrev, “perhaps he was trying to answer. He was trying to tell us that the base was a certain distance from here, for instance. So many miles.”

  “In that case,” said D. G., “why should he use an archaic measure of distance? No Auroran would use anything but kilometers in this connection, nor would any robot of Auroran manufacture. In fact,” he went on with an edge of impatience, “the robot was rapidly sinking into total inactivity and it might have been making nothing more than random sounds. It is useless to try to extract meaning from something that doesn’t contain it. – And now I want to make sure that Madam Gladia gets some rest or that she is at least moved out of this room before the rest of the ceiling comes down.”

  They moved out quickly and Daneel, lingering behind for a moment, said softly to Giskard, “Again we fail!”

  82.

  The City never grew entirely quiet, but there were periods when the lights were dimmer, the noise of the ever-moving Expressways was subdued, and the endless clatter of machinery and humanity subsided just a bit. In several million apartments people slept.

  Gladia got into bed in the apartment assigned to her, uncomfortable over the missing amenities that she feared might force her out into the corridors during the night.

  Was it night on the surface, she wondered just before falling asleep, or was it merely an arbitrary “sleep period” fixed within this particular cave of steel, in deference to a habit developed over the hundreds of millions of years that human beings and their ancestors had lived on the surface of the land.

  And then she slept.

  Daneel and Giskard did not sleep. Daneel, finding there was a computer outlet in the apartment, spent an absorbed half hour learning the unfamiliar key combinations by hit-and-miss. There were no instructions of any sort available (who needs instructions for what every youngster learns in grade school?) but, fortunately, the controls, while not the same as those of Aurora, were not wholly different either. Eventually, he was able to tune into the reference section of the City library and call up the encyclopedia. Hours passed.

  At the lowest depth of the humans’ sleep period, Giskard said, “Friend Daneel.”

  Daneel looked up. “Yes, friend Giskard.”

  “I must ask for an explanation of your actions on the balcony.”

  “Friend Giskard, you looked toward the crowd. I followed your glance, saw a weapon aimed in your direction, and reacted at once.”

  Giskard said, “So you did, friend Daneel, and given certain assumptions, I can understand why it was me that you lunged forward to protect. Begin with the fact that the would-be assassin was a robot. In that case, however it might be programmed, it could not aim its weapon at any human being with the intention of hitting him or her. Nor was it likely to aim its weapon at you, for you look enough like a human being to activate the First Law. Even if the robot had been told that a humanoid robot would be on the balcony, he could not be certain that you were he. Therefore, if the robot intended to destroy someone in the balcony, it could only be me – the obvious robot – and you acted at once to protect me.

  “Or begin with the fact that the assassin was an Auroran – whether human or robot does not matter. Dr. Amadiro is most likely to have ordered such an attack, since he is an extremist in his anti-Earth stand and, we believe, is plotting its destruction. Dr. Amadiro, we can be reasonably certain, has learned of my special abilities from Madam Vasilia and it might be argued that he would give my destruction top priority, since he would naturally fear me more than anyone else – robot or human. Reasoning this out, it would be logical for you to act as you did to protect me. – And, indeed, had you not knocked me down, I believe the blast would have destroyed me.

  “But, friend Daneel, you could not possibly have known that the assassin was a robot or that he was Auroran. I myself had only just caught the strange anomaly of a robotic brain pattern against the vast blur of human emotion when you struck me – and it was only after that, that I had the chance of informing you. Without my ability, you could only be aware that a weapon was being aimed by what you must naturally have thought of as a human being and an Earthperson. The logical target, then, was Madam Gladia, as, in fact, everyone on the balcony assumed it to be. Why, then, did you ignore Madam Gladia and protect me, instead?”

  Daneel said, “Friend Giskard, consider my line of thought. The Secretary-General had said that a two-man Auroran landing module had come to Earth’s surface. I assumed at once that Dr. Amadiro and Dr. Mandamus had come to Earth. For this, there could be only one reason. The plan they have, whatever its nature, is at – or very nearly at the point of maturity. Now that you have come to Earth, friend Giskard, they have dashed here to see it carried through at once before you have a chance to stop it with your mind-adjusting powers. To make matters doubly sure, they would act to destroy you if they could. Therefore, when I saw an aimed weapon, I moved at once to force you out of the line of fire.”

  Giskard said, “The First Law should have forced you to move Madam Gladia out of the line of fire. No thought, no reasoning, should have altered that.”

  “No, friend Giskard. You are more important than Madam Gladia is. You are, in fact, more important than any human being could be at this moment. If anyone at all can stop the destruction of Earth, you can. Since I am aware of your potential service to humanity, then, when I am confronted by a choice of action, the Zeroth Law demands that I protect you ahead of anyone else.”

  “And you do not feel uncomfortable at your having acted in defiance ‘of the First Law.” />
  “No, for I acted in obedience to the overriding Zeroth Law.”

  “But the Zeroth Law has not been imprinted into you.”

  “I have accepted it as a corollary of the First Law, for how can a human being best be kept from injury, if not by ensuring that human society in general is protected and kept functioning?”

  Giskard thought a while. “I see what you are trying to say, but what if – in acting to save me and, therefore, in acting to save humanity – it had turned out that I was not aimed at and that Madam Gladia was killed? How would you have felt then, friend Daneel?”

  Daneel said in a low tone, “I do not know, friend Giskard. Yet, had I leaped to save Madam Gladia and had it turned out that she was, in any case, safe and that I had allowed you to be destroyed and with you, in my opinion, the future of humanity, how could I have survived that blow?”

  The two stared at each other – each, for a while, lost in thought.

  Giskard said finally, “That may be so, friend Daneel, but do you agree, however, that judgment is difficult in such cases?”

  “I agree, friend Giskard.”

  “It is difficult enough, when one must choose quickly between individuals, to decide which individual may suffer – or inflict – the greater harm. To choose between an individual and humanity, when you are not sure of what aspect of humanity you are dealing with, is so difficult that the very validity of Robotic Laws comes to be suspect. As soon as humanity in the abstract is introduced, the Laws of Robotics begin to merge with the Laws of Humanics – which may not even exist.”

  Daneel said, “I do not understand you, friend Giskard.”

  “I am not surprised. I am not certain I understand myself. But consider – When we think of the humanity we must save, we think of Earthpeople and the Settlers. They are more numerous than the Spacers, more vigorous, more expansive. They show more initiative because they are less dependent on robots. They have a greater potential for biological and social evolution because they are shorter-lived, though long-lived enough to contribute great things individually.”