Asimov’s Future History Volume 12

by Isaac Asimov

  “What the hell are you trying to accuse me of?” Welton snapped. “Staging an attack on myself?”

  It’s an interesting possibility, Kresh thought. But I’ll worry about that later. Besides, i/you did have it staged, you’ll have a plausible explanation for why your people never showed up. “Furthest thing from my mind,” Kresh lied smoothly. “But you are the senior Settler present. Perhaps your Security Service agents were ordered to some other duty for some reason.”

  Welton shook her head. “Not to my knowledge. I checked the deployment plan four hours ago, and there were supposed to be six agents based at the front door.”

  “There were indeed six SSS agents on duty when Prospero and I arrived,” Caliban said.

  Kresh ignored that as well. “Did you know of any arrangement to withdraw them or redeploy then?” he asked, still addressing Welton.

  “No, but there’s no particular reason why I would. I don’t keep track of where every Settler on the planet is. My staff has more sense than to bother me with such trivia.”

  “Trivia? That’s just the problem,” Kresh said. “Why in the devil would anyone bother with such an elaborate scheme to extract two barroom brawlers from the scene of a trivial offense? It had to be riskier than leaving Deam and Blare to face charges.”

  “It is a rather cumbersome way of doing business,” Tonya Welton agreed. “But there’s another odd feature–it makes it look very much like the whole thing was planned.”

  Kresh nodded. “You’re right,” he said. “The phony SSS agents came in right on cue.”

  “Begging your pardon, sir,” Donald said, “but there is a rather clear inference to be drawn. As the effort involved was too great to justify the minor attack on Madame Welton, it seems to me that the attack on her was part of some larger operation. The attack was a diversion.”

  “Hell! You’re right, Donald,” Kresh said. “And it’s worked beautifully.”

  “But what?” Tonya Welton asked. “Diverted you from what?”

  “It’s like the questions we can’t ask the men that aren’t here,” Kresh said. “We don’t know precisely because it worked.”

  He stood up and shook his head. “One thing I do know. Donald and I were on our way to have a little chat with the Governor on the subject of security before all this happened. I don’t think we’d best delay it any longer.” Sheriff Kresh nodded to the leader of the Settlers and left the room, followed by Donald.

  Kresh was halfway down the hallway before something else very strange occurred to him. He stopped for a moment to think it through. Caliban and Prospero. They were neither of them bound to prevent harm to humans. Caliban had no Laws at all, while Prospero’s First Law was modified. He was enjoined against doing harm to humans–but there was nothing that forced him to prevent harm. Once he had left the scene of the fight, Kresh hadn’t thought about it, any more than he would have been surprised to find that the rain made him wet. After all, it was part of the natural order of things for robots to break up fights.

  “Donald,” he said. “You seemed unconcerned to see Prospero and Caliban restraining the combatants, yet you knew neither of them was possessed of the full First Law. Weren’t you at all concerned?”

  “No, sir, I was not. My dealings with New Law beings have been rather limited, and I have but rarely encountered Caliban. However, I have thought a great deal on the question of how to predict the behavior of sentient non-humans that do not have the Three Laws.”

  “‘Sentient nonhumans that do not have the Three Laws.’ That’s a mouthful.”

  “I do not feel it appropriate to refer to beings such as Caliban and Prospero as robots,” Donald replied.

  Kresh couldn’t help but be amused by Donald’s hairsplitting, but he did have a point. “How about calling them ‘pseudo-robots’ instead?”

  “That does seem less cumbersome. In any event, I concluded some time ago that the best way to deal with such pseudo-robots is to assume they will react in the same way as a rational human being would–with a basis of self-interest, and with a certain limited amount of altruism. Once the two pseudo-robots had restrained the combatants, I had no reason to fear for the humans at their hands, any more than I would have feared them being attacked by two humans acting to restrain them.”

  “But why did they do it?” Kresh asked. “They were under no compulsion to act.”

  “As I said, sir, enlightened self-interest. To put it somewhat crudely, by acting to protect human beings, they made themselves look good.”

  “Donald, I am surprised. I never suspected you of cynicism.”

  “It would depend on the subject under discussion,” Donald said, a bit primly. “On the question of beings who pretend to be human for gain, I think you will find me to be nothing if not suspicious. Shall we go talk with the Governor?”

  “By all means,” Kresh said, working hard to hide a smile from Donald.

  Tonya Welton watched the Sheriff and Donald leave, then got up from her seat and smiled at Caliban and Prospero. “I have not had a chance to thank both of you properly, “she said. “I fear I wasn’t very gracious about your restraining me, Caliban, but you were quite right to do so. Things could have been much worse.”

  “I am pleased to have been of help,” Caliban replied, feeling a bit uncertain.

  “Thanks to you as well, Prospero,” she said.

  “It was a pleasure to be of service,” he replied.

  “I must return to the party,” Madame Welton said, “but once again, I do thank you for your assistance.”

  Caliban watched as she left. Of all the humans Caliban knew, Madame Welton was perhaps the most baffling of all. She seemed to insist on treating any robot, all robots, as full-fledged human beings, even in the case of low-end units where it was patently absurd. Perhaps it was some strange principle or other that she felt obliged to uphold, but even so it was confusing. Did she treat Caliban and Prospero with respect because she felt they deserved respect? Or only because doing so annoyed the Spacers?

  “Do you think we did the right thing?” Prospero asked. “Was it wise to ape the behavior of standard robots?”

  “I am not sure,” Caliban said. Things were so difficult to judge. He, Caliban, was capable of things Prospero was not, and that might well prove useful in the near future. It would be wise to avoid reminding people of that. “Certainly no one could fault us for it, and certainly we could not have stood idly by–that would have looked very bad indeed. But bringing ourselves to the attention of Sheriff Kresh–if things go wrong, that could have a very high price indeed. We must tread most carefully if our plans are to succeed.”

  Alvar Kresh and Donald found Chanto Grieg, Governor of the planet Inferno, standing in the shadows on the upper landing, looking down, unseen, over the room full of smiling, laughing people. “The evening is off to a good start, aside from Beddle’s entrance and the Welton incident,” Grieg said as he saw them approaching.

  “Aside from those things, yes, sir,” Kresh said. “But they are a great deal to leave to one side.”

  “Oh, Beddle was bound to do a little grandstanding, and I don’t think that one little scuffle is anything to concern us. I should be able to make my entrance to good effect,” the Governor said. “And make it strictly according to plan. Don’t you think so, Sheriff Kresh?”

  Sheriff Alvar Kresh grunted noncommittally as he stepped to the Governor’s side. Maybe to a politician, a room jam-packed with all manner of people was a good thing. Not to a policeman–and especially not to a policeman who was outside his jurisdiction and standing next to a man who received a half-dozen death threats a week. But still, the question deserved some sort of polite answer. “It’s a splendid party, Governor.”

  Alvar leaned over the rail next to Grieg and ran his fingers through his thick white hair–something he only did when he was on edge. He glanced over his shoulder at Donald. It had to be his imagination, of course, but it seemed to him that Donald looked just as ill at ease as Alvar was h
imself.

  The thought was ridiculous, of course. Donald didn’t have expressions–or emotions to express, for that matter. His face was nothing more than two immobile, glowing eyes and a speaker grill, as motionless and unreadable as could be.

  But for all of that, Donald did seem edgy. Kresh shook his head to himself. He was imagining things. It happened when he got jumpy.

  The Governor should never have come to Purgatory with the situation as unsettled as it was. But then, from the politician’s point of view, it was the very fact of things being unsettled, out of control, that made a visit here necessary. The Governor needed to be seen as in command, in charge, secure enough to host a party and a conference. That he plainly wasn’t in control only made the need all the more urgent.

  Grieg glanced over at Alvar and smiled again, but there was something stiff, theatrical, about the expression, and a glint of something very like fear in the man’s eyes. He knows, Kresh thought. That was the damned thing about it. Grieg knew perfectly well that he was taking his life in his hands tonight. It wasn’t that he was deluding himself, or ignoring the danger, or brushing the warnings aside. He knew–and yet he went on anyway. Kresh could admire the man’s courage, but that didn’t mean it didn’t scare the hell out of him.

  Chanto Grieg was a bit over fifty standard years, barely more than a youth by the standards of the long-lived Spacers. He was a short and dark-skinned man. Tonight he was wearing his shoulder-length black hair in a thick, ropy braid at the back of his head. He was a bit on the sharp-faced side, with dark brown eyes. He was wearing a handsome burgundy suit, set off with black piping at the shoulders and waist. His black trousers had a burgundy stripe down the outer seam. He presented a striking appearance.

  There had always been something hunted-looking about him, however much he might try to hide it with charm and smiles. These days, the charm was as strong as ever, but the hunted look was getting easier and easier to see. Chanto Grieg was a man who heard footsteps behind him, and was trying to pretend he did not.

  And Alvar Kresh heard the footsteps just as loudly–and he could not afford to pretend otherwise. Dammit, he had to try one more time. He had to. “Sir, a word, just a quick word. Can we go back to your office for a moment?”

  Grieg sighed and nodded. “Very well. It won’t do any good, but very well.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Kresh took Grieg by the arm and led him back up the stairs, back toward Grieg’s office. At least it had a proper armored door. No one could get in or out unless Grieg let them in.

  Grieg put his palm on the security plate and the door slid open. They stepped into the room, a handsome, if spartan, chamber. Alvar Kresh looked around with more than passing interest. He had only been in here once before, briefly, years before, during some sort of signing ceremony Grieg’s predecessor had put on. It was, after all, a famous room. A lot of historic occasions in the life of the planet had happened here–back in the days when Inferno had history. The island of Purgatory had been the first part of the planet to be settled, centuries ago, and there had been some sort of Residence for the Governor on the island ever since. The current building was only a century or so old, but it still had the resonances of a planet’s biography.

  A desk with a black marble top sat at one end of the room, the desk’s surface completely empty, not so much as a fingerprint on it. A vaguely thronelike chair stood behind the desk; facing the desk were two slightly uncomfortable-looking audience chairs, just a trifle lower than standard height.

  Amazing. Alvar thought. Even here, in the private working office of the Governor’s winter vacation home, they had played the game.

  A game that was a relic of the past, of the last century, as much as the room itself. Back then, Inferno’s architects and craftsmen were still at least willing to play up to the cultural mythology of the Spacers, even if they did not, strictly speaking, believe in it anymore.

  Infernals were Spacers, and, the myths told them, Spacers were a proud and mighty people. in the vanguard of human progress. It was therefore fit and proper for the Governor who represented a planet of such splendid people to appear a little larger than life. Put him in a higher chair, arrange things so he looks down upon his visitors.

  This place had been designed and built in the last century. These days, no one would even bother with all that nonsense. No one had the confidence, the arrogance, to pull it off anymore. No, that’s not quite it, Alvar told himself. It’d be closer to the truth to say they could no longer bring themselves to go through the motions. Back then they could still brazen it out. Even a hundred years ago, no one had believed the myth anymore, but they had all played along. Now, no one could even pretend to believe. And yet Inferno was covered with buildings of that era, palaces of thundering arrogance, constructed to demonstrate wealth and power and influence that had already been ebbing away when their first stones were being set in place. Inferno was full of rooms like this, symbols of power that had shriveled away, become no more than memorials to power.

  There were other clues to show how much the state of affairs had changed, some of them in the form of things that were no longer there. No fewer than four robot niches lined the wall behind the Governor’s chair. Time was, the Governor could not be seen in public with anything less than a full quartet of robots in attendance. Now the niches stood empty. Governor Grieg rarely used even a single personal robot.

  But the biggest clue was no doubt off in the far corner of the room, as far as possible from the Governor’s desk, as if no one wanted to put the terrible truth of the future too close to the glorious fictions of the past. It was a simglobe unit, smaller than the one back in Government Tower in Hades, but still sleek and impressive. It was a holographic display system that could display the planet’s appearance and condition as of any moment in its recorded past, or any moment in its future, projecting planet Inferno’s response to varying circumstances. The main projection unit was a metal cylinder about a half meter across and a half-meter high. It could display the globe of Inferno in hundreds of different ways, from short infrared to a false-color image of the projected humidity at two thousand meters above sea level a hundred years from now.

  It was a Settler-built simglobe, of course. The Settlers made all the best terraforming and terraforming computation gear. In fact, they pretty much made the best of everything, these days. Except robots, of course. Robots were the only thing Spacers did better, and that was by default. No Settler wanted anything to do with robots.

  Spacers were on the way down. The Settlers had passed them by, leaving them so far behind that they didn’t even consider the Spacers a threat. These days, Spacers were charity cases.

  After all, the Settlers were here to help reterraform Inferno, supposedly out of the goodness of their hearts–though Alvar doubted that. And, most galling of all, the government of Inferno had no choice but to accept their help–or watch the planet die.

  Grieg stepped into the room, turned his back on the grandiose desk, and sat down in the center of a low couch near the simglobe. Choosing the real future over the imagined past, Kresh thought. Grieg seemed to be putting on a show of being relaxed and at ease. He stretched out his legs in front of him and put his hands behind his head.

  Alvar sat down in an easy chair facing the couch, but there was nothing easy or relaxed about his posture. He sat down on the edge of the chair, leaning forward, his arms resting on his knees. Donald followed a discreet distance behind Kresh and stood at the back of his chair, just far enough off so as not to seem to be intruding.

  “All right, Sheriff,” Grieg said. “What’s on your mind?”

  Kresh didn’t know exactly how to begin. He had already tried all the logical, sensible approaches, produced all the subtle, vague bits of intelligence that told him something was wrong without telling him what. None of it had worked. Tonya Welton’s vanishing attackers, and the false SSS agents, were the most concrete things he could point to–but even they were maddeningly unclear.

&nb
sp; The hell with it, then. Nothing careful or reasoned. No recourse to rumor or vague whispers of threat. Just blurt it out. “Sir, I have to ask you once again to think about a lower profile here. This island–this whole planet–is in chaos. It is my professional judgment that you are placing yourself in extreme danger by attending this function.”

  “But the reception has already begun,” Grieg objected. “I can’t cancel out now.”

  And up until now, you’ve put me off by saying you could cancel at the last minute if things got out of hand, Alvar thought. Typical of the man that he would try to have it both ways. But there was no point in saying that. “Plead off with a headache or something,” Kresh said. “Or just let me come out and take the blame. Let me cancel the whole party right now, blame it on a security alert. Blame it on the attack on Welton. I could say there was a threat to your life. “That much at least would be true. Alvar Kresh’s desk was overflowing with threats against the Governor–half of them linked to this visit.

  “But what in Space does an attack on Welton have to do with me?” the Governor asked.

  Kresh told him about the bogus SSS agents whisking away the attackers. “It’s a very strange circumstance,” Kresh said. “It’s the sort of thing that seems like it should be a diversion–but a diversion for what? What is the direction we weren’t supposed to look in? I have to assume that it was related to you in some way.”

  “Sheriff, be reasonable,” Grieg said. “Half the most powerful Infernals and Settlers on the planet are here already. Can you imagine the political damage if I hustled them all out into the night and the pouring rain because some drunk got the worst of it in a scuffle with the Settlers’ leader? How am I supposed to explain to my guests that the Sheriff of Hades was worried one of them might take a shot at me? I have to negotiate with these people tomorrow morning. I can’t make much progress with someone I’ve accused of attempting my murder.”