Asimov’s Future History Volume 11

by Isaac Asimov

  Was one of them the guilty one? Was one of the two men behind her the one who had tried to kill her and botched the job?

  Try not to think about it. Westward. Fly west to the outskirts of the city, north at low altitude until she crossed the mountains – and then barrel in straight for Harcourt’s place at maximum speed. Get there before Kresh.

  And then pray that he would at least look at her waiver before burning a hole in Caliban.

  Crash sites never looked the way Kresh expected them to, and he had seen enough of them to know better. He always imagined finding a neat little impact inside a tidy little crater, the aircar perhaps crumpled a bit. He imagined the pilot – usually a drunk stupid enough to fly himself home but smart enough to elude any and all robotic protection – as being slumped over the control, dead but neatly dead, no wounds, readily identifiable.

  Of course the reality was always horribly different. Today, for example. He knew it the moment Donald spotted the crash site and they did a flyover pass. It had looked bad even from the air. Here on the ground, reality was harsher still. There were bits and pieces of aircar allover the hillside, strewn in all directions, shattered into a thousand burned, bent pieces. If a human had been flying the aircar, there wouldn’t even be anything recognizably human left, let alone any part intact and unburned enough to ID an individual.

  But a robot had been flying this one, and robots didn’t burn. There had to be something of him left. Tonya, Donald, and Ariel were fanned out across the hillside, doing a second search, having found no trace of him on the first. Kresh was starting to wonder if Caliban had survived this by some miracle.

  “Sheriff Kresh!” Tonya was calling, from the east side of the crash. “Footprints! I found footprints!”

  Kresh hurried toward her, eager to see what she had found.

  He was almost to her when he stopped dead in his tracks, cursing in disappointment. “Yes, footprints,” he said. “But not Caliban.” From where he was standing, he could see what Tonya could not. The line of prints led in a neat line straight toward their source – Ariel, busily searching another patch of ground. Ariel looked up, took in the situation, and called to them. “Forgive me, Lady Welton. I did not mean to cause any confusion.”

  “Damnation!” Kresh growled. “Nothing in this case leads in the right direction! Nothing.”

  And then it clicked. Wait a minute. Just half a damned minute!

  But there never was half a minute. “Sheriff!” Another call, from Donald this time. Good. He would trust Donald’s search skills far above Tonya’s. He trotted back up the hill to the north of the crash, Tonya and Ariel right behind him.

  And this time there was no mistake. An area of sandy dirt overlay the bare rock for a long stretch of the ground. And on it was a whole line of prints, leading up the grade in a direction none of them had gone yet. Kresh could see broken twigs and bits of rock that had been kicked aside, leading clear up the slope.

  No question at all.

  And then came a sound overhead. They all looked up and saw it. An aircar flying low and fast from the west, arcing down to come in for a landing in the valley below.

  “That’s it,” Kresh said. “I’ll bet whatever you want that is Fredda Leving, trying to get to him first. Come on. We’ve got to get there fast before she can get him out of there.”

  The four of them turned and hurried back to the aircar.

  And halfway to the car, Alvar Kresh stopped dead and stood there for that half a minute he had wished for.

  And that was all it took.

  He had figured it out.

  Abell Harcourt heard the sound of aircraft coming in and went to the door of the shed. He looked into the sky. Two of them. A civilian job, and one of those sky-blue Sheriff’s Department aircars.

  He turned back to Caliban. “Better unplug yourself from that charger,” he said. “Company’s coming. A little too much of it.”

  Caliban pulled the charger plug from the socket in his side and stood up. He went to the door and looked skyward with his one good eye. Was it imagination, or did the robot’s shoulders slump with disappointment just a touch when he spotted the Sheriff’s car and realized what it meant?

  “Either she squealed to Kresh, or Kresh managed to follow her in. Shall we go receive them all in the parlor, like civilized folks?” Harcourt asked, his voice full of bitterness. “Or should we make a run for it in my aircar? Maybe we could get away.”

  “No, friend Abell. There is no place left to run,” Caliban said. “Outside. We shall meet them outside, well away from your house. If they mean to kill me, I see no reason for your home to be shot up as well. Let us go meet them.”

  Sheriff Kresh worked the aircar control without knowing he did. He was aware of nothing else but what he could see, down on the ground. There he was.

  Caliban.

  For the first time, Alvar Kresh set eyes upon the robot he had been tracking. Standing on the ground next to an odd-looking man, both of them calmly watching the arrival of their visitors.

  He had him. He had him. And in a moment, he would win it all, win against an opponent he had not even been aware of until a few minutes before. It was so obvious, once he shook off all his assumptions and looked, really looked, at the evidence.

  He watched as Fredda Leving’s aircar swung around, set down first, but Kresh’s aircar landed within seconds of hers. That suited Kresh fine. Let them all get ahead. He would catch up soon enough. He knew. Now nothing remained – except to prove it. But it would be wise to be careful. This was not a moment to get too eager.

  He set the aircar gently down on the valley floor, undid his seat restraints, and turned to regard Tonya and Ariel in the backseat. Ariel betrayed no emotion, of course, but Tonya Welton, Queen of the Settlers, was obviously on the edge of hysteria. “All right,” Kresh said. “Ariel, Donald, Madame Welton – I’m going to need all of you to be careful here. The situation is still dangerous. If someone makes a mistake, and someone gets hurt – well, that would not be good. I want everyone alive at the end of this, if for no other reason than so we’ll be able to get the whole story. I don’t want any loose ends. All right?”

  “Yes,” Tonya Welton said, her face pale, her expression stem and unreadable. Kresh knew she could crack at any moment.

  “Good,” Kresh said. “Then let’s go.”

  Tonya nodded rather jerkily and opened the hatch. She stepped out the door, Ariel following.

  But neither Kresh nor Donald made any effort to follow the other two out. Interesting that Donald knew Kresh wanted him to stay put. But then, Donald had been a little bit ahead every step of the way, ever since he had gotten to the crime scene before everyone else.

  “Donald,” Kresh said, “you mentioned something about a theory you wanted to test. I believe I understand now what you meant. You know, don’t you?”

  Donald did not speak, but instead stared straight ahead and watched the tableau taking shape on the ground outside. Kresh followed his gaze. The man who lived here stood next to Caliban. Terach and Leving stood on Caliban ‘s other side, getting a good hard look at their creation. Tonya Welton, her face strained and nervous, stood next to Leving, Ariel behind her. Gubber Anshaw was at Welton’s side, holding her hand, clearly proud and relieved that ‘he could now express his affection in public. They were forming up to stand in a rough, nervous half-circle facing the aircar, waiting for Kresh. But still Donald said nothing. And Alvar Kresh found that his heart was pounding so hard it seemed about to pop out of his chest. Donald could sense that, of course, with his lie-detection system. What would he make of it?

  “Donald, I asked you a question,” Kresh said.

  But still Donald kept his silence.

  Kresh sighed. As always, it was a question of juggling the Law potentials. Weaken the First Law injunction to do no harm, strengthen the Second Law requirement to obey orders. “Donald, first noting that my ego will be quite unharmed no matter what your answer, I now order you to answer my questi
on. You figured it out some time ago, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, sir. I was not altogether certain of my conclusions until last night, however.”

  “In future, Donald, I would suggest that holding back on your theories and opinions could do more harm to me and my career than speaking up and bruising my ego. But we will discuss this later. Just now, I think it is time to test your little theory. Might I suggest that you contrive to get Fredda Leving between yourself and Ariel?”

  “I was about to offer the same arrangement, sir.”

  “Good. Follow my cue. Let’s get to it.”

  Kresh opened his door and stepped down out of the car as Donald got out the other side. Kresh noted, somewhat absently, that the palms of his hands were slick with sweat. Careful. Careful. He wiped his hands on his pants legs. They were nearly all the way there, but he would only have one chance. He had to get it right, and he had to bear in mind that she was still damn-all dangerous. Things could still go wrong.

  He stepped around the side of the car and strode slowly toward the semicircle. Good, Donald had positioned himself just behind Leving, with Ariel on his other side.

  Alvar Kresh moved slowly, carefully, straight toward her. Time seemed to slow, events seemed to expand. Everything seemed to look larger, mort; important, with all details razor-sharp.

  Fredda Leving lifted her hand, moved it toward a pocket on her tunic, began to pull something out. Kresh’s fingers twitched, but he forced himself to keep his hands at his sides. Not yet. Slowly. Carefully.

  Leving pulled a piece of paper from her pocket and held it up. “Sheriff Kresh, I have a waiver. It permits me to own one No Law robot. It establishes Caliban as a legal chattel and causes his existence to conform with all –”

  And time suddenly speeded up. Heart pounding, fear-sweat pouring out of him, Alvar Kresh pulled out his blaster, his body acting almost before his mind willed it to act. A misstep, a wrong guess, and she could be on him, kill him before his heart could beat again.

  Now. Now. Now. Alvar Kresh leveled his blaster and aimed it straight for Fredda Leving, s heart. “Dr. Fredda Leving, I arrest you as a Settler spy and saboteur,” he said, his voice firm and strong, betraying none of his fear. “You faked the attack on yourself, programmed Caliban to wreak havoc on our planet, and then set him loose in the city. It was all part of a Settler plot to throw Inferno society into chaos.”

  Fredda Leving’s jaw dropped in astonishment. She stepped forward to protest. The other humans in the semicircle, no less amazed, stepped back. She was isolated, with a robot behind her on either side, Ariel just a bit closer than Donald. Perfect.

  “Do not move, Dr. Leving! Not one muscle, or I will be obliged to fire.”

  Fredda Leving, the terror plain on her face, lowered the paper just a trifle. It was nothing, the merest involuntary movement, but it was all the excuse Alvar Kresh needed.

  He fired.

  Fredda Leving screamed.

  A brilliant roar of light leapt out from the blaster and struck her square in the chest.

  Chapter 20

  AND NOTHING HAPPENED.

  Fredda Leving stared down where the hole in her chest should have been, but she was whole and intact. For one moment, immeasurably short and infinitely long, nobody moved.

  And then Ariel leapt forward, placing her body in the path of the blast that had just been.

  “Too late, Ariel,” said Alvar Kresh, reholstering the training unit and pulling his real blaster from his pocket. He pointed the real blaster square at Ariel. “Nice try, but too late. A robot that truly had First Law would have been in front of Dr. Leving before my finger could tighten on the trigger. But then, all you have is the knowledge of how to simulate obedience to the Three Laws. And dying would make your simulation just a little too authentic, wouldn’t it? On the other hand, I expect that death at police hands of the one person who could expose you was an awfully tempting idea.”

  Ariel spoke. “There was no chance to save her!” she. protested. “Your own robot, Donald, made no move to block your shot.”

  “Donald knew that was a training blaster. The ruse was his idea.”

  “I have First Law! I am a Three Law robot!”

  “Be quiet, Ariel!” Kresh barked.

  “But you are mistaken!” Ariel protested.

  “I am afraid you just violated a very clear order to be quiet,” Donald said, staying well clear of Ariel. “I must note there was no First Law conflict involved that would explain this lapse.”

  “That’s not my idea of a Three Law robot, Ariel,” Kresh said.

  “I don’t understand,” Tonya said.

  “It’s perfectly simple,” Kresh said. “It all makes sense when you consider the evidence very strongly suggested that a robot committed the crime – but that Caliban did not commit it. That’s what blinded us. We assumed that he was the only robot with no laws, the only one capable of attacking a human. None of us considered Ariel, even though she had precisely the same dimensions, the same tread pattern on the soles of her feet, the same length to her stride, the same shape to her forearm. She could make it seem as if those were Caliban ‘s footprints, and leave exactly the same wound in Fredda’s head as Caliban would have if he had struck her.”

  “I did not do it!” Ariel protested.

  “The hell you didn’t.”

  “But what possible motive would she have?” Tonya Welton demanded.

  “Self-preservation,” Kresh said, still keeping his eye and his blaster on Ariel. “Fredda Leving was about to discover that Ariel was the free-matrix robot of the two gravitonic brain units in that test Gubber Anshaw ran. You remember, Gubber. A double-blind test. Fredda Leving didn’t tell you, but she gave you one robot with Three Laws and one without. It was a test to see if a free-matrix gravitonic brain could integrate the Three Laws. Well, maybe a free-matrix can learn Laws – except Ariel managed to invent her own Laws of self-preservation first.”

  “But Gubber explained that to me!” Tonya protested. “He said that the test unit would be destroyed, and the control unit placed in service. Ariel was the control unit.”

  “Yes, she was,” Alvar Kresh agreed. “At least she was after she managed to switch herself with the real control the night before the test. She had the whole night to find a way to switch the labels between herself and the real control.”

  “But surely the real control would have spoken up!” Tonya protested.

  “No,” Fredda said, her voice faint and quavering. “The test pairs in such cases are under very strict orders not to reveal which is which, to prevent test bias. The real control must have gone to its destruction knowing the truth but bound not to speak.”

  Suddenly Fredda’s eyes widened, and she spoke again, in a stronger voice. “Inventory! I still can’t recall that night itself, but I can remember thinking that I had to go over the brain inventory.”

  “Yes!” Gubber said. “I remember. You said there was something wrong with the brain list –”

  “And you said it in front of Tonya, Gubber, and Ariel,” Kresh said. “Ariel realized that you were going to work through the serial numbers on the test and discover that the control unit had been destroyed instead of her. So she waited in Gubber’s lab while you argued with Madame Welton, knowing you would return there once the argument was over.

  “Then she did exactly what she had planned to do: cosh you on the head with a nice, precise blow calculated to induce amnesia. That was my other big mistake. I assumed that the attack was attempted murder, even though the attacker had to know Fredda Leving was still alive after the attack. But if it was attempted murder, then it could not be a Lawless robot, because a robot would not have left the job half-done.”

  “Then why do you think I did it?” Ariel asked.

  “I ordered you to be quiet,” Kresh said harshly. “You’re not doing too well in your Three Law imitation all of a sudden. You didn’t want her dead. You wanted her to forget all about the inventory. And that you did exactly
right. The med-robots say it is highly unlikely that Dr. Leving will ever regain her memory of that evening’s events.”

  “But why didn’t she want to kill me?” Fredda asked.

  “Because if you died, then the Limbo Project would fold,” Tonya Welton said in a voice that was suddenly flat and cold. “I’m beginning to see the logic of it. Without Fredda Leving to push for the New Law robots, Limbo would fail. That would be inevitable in the political uproar over your murder. Think how bad the situation has been, even though you lived. If you had been killed, it’ d be close to a certainty that all the Settlers would have been thrown off the planet. And I would not have Ariel with me if I was deported.”

  Tonya Welton, ashen-faced, moved forward a cautious step or two and took a good long look at Ariel. “What you ‘re telling me, Sheriff, is that I have been spending my days and nights with a potentially homicidal robot that was playacting the part of my helpful companion.” Tonya looked Ariel straight in the eye. “Is that right?” she asked, a strained quaver in her voice.

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m afraid that’s about the size of it.”

  “And you were there,” Tonya said to Ariel, “day after day, listening to all my secrets, night after night, watching – watching everything! I trusted you!” Tonya looked toward Gubber, who seemed as horrified as she was, then pointed at Ariel and looked back toward the Sheriff. “This, this thing could have killed me whenever it liked.” Suddenly Tonya laughed, a reedy, panicky bark that had as much horror as humor behind it. “Stars in the sky, but for the first time in my life I know why you people need the Three Laws.”

  “Better late than never, Madame Welton,” Kresh said. “But to get back to the matter at hand, if you had left Ariel behind, that would leave her as an untrained surplus robot, one that bore the stigma of having been owned by a Settler. Besides, she would have to spend the rest of her existence around Spacers who would be likely to spot any mistakes she made imitating the Three Laws,” Alvar Kresh said. “She was good, but she wasn’t perfect, Dr. Leving. She reached for your injured shoulder when she pulled you to safety during the auditorium riot.” Kresh shook his head and nodded at Ariel. “She would have made a mistake, or else been declared abandoned property and destroyed. One way or the other, she’d have ended up on the scrap heap.”