Asimov’s Future History Volume 12

by Isaac Asimov

  Caliban spotted a fast-moving craft streaking past his present position, moving about a thousand meters below him. He had forgotten, at least for the moment, that he was not as alone out here as he had thought. He flipped his navigation system to full display mode, and suddenly the display screen was full of purposefully moving dots, every one an aircar. Every one with at least one robot aboard. And all of them searching fruitlessly, pointlessly for Simcor Beddle. None of them would ever think to look in the right place, because none of them would know where it was.

  All of them would keep on searching, up to and past the last possible moment, hoping against hope for a miracle. All of them would be destroyed when the comet came.

  It occurred to Caliban that there was one thing further he could do. It might or might not do any good. But he could not see how it could do any conceivable harm. He switched on the hyperwave transmitter, adjusted it to one of the robotic general-broadcast frequencies, and set the system to record a repeating message. “This is Caliban, robot number CBN-001. I have deduced the location of Simcor Beddle with a high degree of confidence, and am proceeding toward that location at maximum speed. The odds are approximately fifty percent that I will be able to effect a rescue of Simcor Beddle. I require no assistance. Any attempt to assist would likely serve only to interfere with my efforts. To all other search parties, I say this. The odds against any other searcher finding Simcor Beddle in time are on the order of millions to one. No useful purpose can be served by destroying yourself in a hopeless cause. Save yourselves. Turn back. Escape the comet. I swear and affirm on the honor of Fredda Leving, my creator, that all I have said is true. Message repeats. “He stopped the recording and set to broadcast over and over on the general frequency..

  He turned his attention back toward the navigation equipment. He was surprised how pleased he was to see that he had done at least some good. A few of the aircars, not all, but at least a few, were turning around, breaking off the search patterns, moving to direct courses and high speeds in an attempt to escape. Even as he watched, more and more aircraft began to head out of danger.

  There was no logical reason why Caliban should have cared about Three-Law robots. There were few among them that felt he had any right to existence. But even so, it was good to see some of them would be spared such meaningless demises. Caliban had seen more than enough useless death.

  The aircar flew south, to Valhalla.

  And high overhead, the comet grew brighter in the sky.

  21

  ALVAR KRESH REMAINED alone in the office, alone with Unit Dee. There was very little one of them could say to the other – but Kresh could think of no more useful place for him to be. There was nothing else that could be done. All he could do was sit here and hold Unit Dee’s wholly imaginary hand and hope that she would

  “Excuse me, Governor Kresh?”

  “Yes, Dee. I am here. What is it?”

  “There is a new development. There is a repeating broadcast being made over a general-purpose hyperwave frequency reserved for robot use. The broadcast is originating from an aircar flying at speed through the projected impact zone of the first fragment. I would ask you to listen to it.”

  A new voice, one Kresh knew only too well, came in over the headphones. “This is Caliban, robot CBN-001,” it began.

  Kresh listened intently to the message twice through, more and more astonished with every moment. What the devil was Caliban up to? Why did he think he could find Beddle when no one else could? How had he gotten into the air over the impact zone?

  “Have you heard enough of it, Governor Kresh?” Dee asked.

  “What? What? Yes, yes, of course.”

  “According to my information,” said Dee, “Caliban is a No Law robot, with no restrictions on his behavior. He is capable of lying, stealing, cheating, and murder – just like a human. Is that correct?”

  “In essence yes. Just like a human, there are no restrictions on his behavior save those he puts on himself.”

  “I wonder how much such restrictions could be worth,” Dee said, a distinct note of disdain in her voice. “Very well. It seems that Caliban believes he can save Simcor Beddle before the impact. Answer honestly, on your honor. Do you believe him?”

  Only the truth can save us, Kresh told himself. Only the truth. He thought – or at least he hoped – he knew what was going through Dee’s mind. If Caliban were indeed able to save Beddle, then the First Law requirement for Dee to protect Beddle would be diminished. Diminish it enough, and maybe – just maybe – it would allow Dee to act, allow her to perform the intended terminal descent package. Or had he figured it wrong? Would it somehow induce her to initiate Last Ditch? Or was the danger to Beddle some sort of crutch, a shield that Dee was using to save herself from having to make an impossible choice? There was no way to know.

  Suppose he told her what he thought she wanted to hear, and it had the wrong effect on her? Supposing he lied to her – and then Caliban broadcast again, saying something that showed Kresh to be a liar?

  No. There was no way to know the outcome, no matter what he said. The truth, then. If the planet was to live or die based on his next words, then let those words be the truth.

  But what the devil was the truth? Did Caliban mean what he said? And was Caliban judging the situation properly? Or was Caliban trying, in some mad way, to save the world by lying?

  Kresh knew that Caliban could lie – but would he? Was he? Kresh had no idea was Caliban was up to, what his motives were.

  “Governor Kresh? I must have your answer.”

  “Yes, of course Unit Dee. But I must consider carefully.”

  “Very wise, sir, I am sure, but time is short.”

  As if he had to be told that. “Just a moment more,” said Kresh. He wished he knew why, exactly, Unit Dee needed to know about this one event at this one time.

  He wished Fredda were here, all her expertise at the ready, guiding him through all the intricacies of it. But Unit Dee had wanted Kresh alone. He dared not break that agreement now, even for Fredda’s sage advice

  But wait a second. Fredda. Caliban had invoked Fredda’s name and honor. That was his answer. That was it. Alvar Kresh had never entirely made up his mind about Caliban. From Kresh’s perspective, the No Law robot had been so many things – fugitive, victim, hero, villain, schemer, a voice for decency, a voice for rebellion. But somehow, underneath it all, always there had been a bedrock of integrity. Caliban had no external laws imposed upon him – but he had always kept faith with the laws he had made for himself.

  And he had always treated Dr. Fredda Leving, his patron, his creator, with the greatest deference and respect. Caliban had always done her honor.

  He would not put all that on the line lightly. Caliban would not lie in the creator’s name.

  “Caliban is to be trusted,” he said at last. “He means what he says, and he can do what he believes he can do.”

  “Thank you, Governor. I believe you, and believe you are correct. Please stand by.”

  There was a brief pause, and then the unison voice, Unit Dee and Unit Dum together, spoke together once again.

  “Initial phasse of prre-programmmed terminal approach will commmennce in one hourr, twwwenty-two minutesss,” they announced.

  Kresh started breathing again – which was the first that he realized he had stopped. It was going to happen. It was going to happen exactly as Davlo Lentrall had said it would, two months and a lifetime ago.

  Now all they had to get through was a dozen massive comet fragments smashing into the planet.

  They had never found Valhalla. Now, unless they were bothering to track this aircar right now, they never would.

  Caliban took back the controls as the aircar came up on the target area. There it was, down below: Loki Lake. It was one of a hundred, a thousand tiny lakes that dotted this part of the landscape, each exactly like all the others. And yet Loki was utterly different from all the others. Everyone had always focused on the notion that
Valhalla was underground – and so it was.

  But it was also underwater.

  Caliban pulled the aircar around into a hard, tight turn and pulled the nose up. The area was full of hidden landing pads, camouflaged repair centers, and underground bunkers that could hide any number of aircars from view. None of that mattered anymore. Let every satellite that orbited the planet spot his aircar landing here. Three hours from now none of it would still exist. Caliban dropped the aircar down right by the shores of the lake. He retrieved the blaster from the side compartment, and rummaged around in the aircar’s storage compartments until he found a watertight container that the gun would fit into. He dumped the contents of the container, put the gun in it, and sealed it up again. In all likelihood the blaster would not be at all bothered by immersion – but this was no time for taking needless chances. He put the container under one arm and got moving.

  Caliban opened the outer hatch of the aircar and stepped outside. It was almost full dark now, and he switched over to infrared in order to see better. There, at the shoreline, he noticed two more pieces of evidence that he had guessed right. There was a camouflaged aircar hangar, designed to conceal whatever vehicles were in it from airborne detection. But one could see into it perfectly well from ground level. In it was an aircar he recognized. Caliban looked toward the nearest service rack and noticed that one of the larger personal cargo rollers was missing from its storage slot.

  That was not good. It was all exactly the way he had figured it would be, but none of it was good. He could not remember a time when he had been less pleased to be right. He turned and headed directly for the shoreline. There were many other ways in and out of the city, but this was the main entrance.

  The walkway was exactly the same color as the belt of shore sand it led through. It was well camouflaged enough that it was hard to see, even from ground level. From the air it was utterly invisible. But for all of that, Caliban found it easily enough, and started to follow it as it led along the lake shore – and then down under the water itself. Ankle-deep, knee-deep, waist-deep, chest-deep, he walked out into the lake, until, at last, he was completely underwater.

  People float. Robots sink. A robot could walk along the path Caliban was on, having to move somewhat more slowly underwater, but with no other real problems. A human would bob to the surface. A human wearing sufficient ballast and carrying breathing equipment could have walked that path, but not easily. But the main advantage of the under-lake entrance was that it would simply not occur to the average human that anyone would put an entrance there.

  Caliban kept going, moving deeper and deeper underwater. At last he came to the complex of airlocks that made up the main entrance to the city of Valhalla. He picked the closest personnel locks, by the cargo-lock section, and cycled through, sealing the outer door behind himself, and waiting for the pumping system to pull the water out of the chamber and bleed in air from the city interior. At last the inner door opened, and Caliban stepped through.

  There it was. He had expected to find it there, but he was not pleased to do so. The large personal cargo roller, in essence an airtight box that could be pulled along by the tow bar attacked to the front. The cargo roller was about the size and shape of a steel coffin on wheels – not the most happy comparison that could have sprung to mind. Caliban looked inside the steel box. Yes. There it was. An airtank with a breathing mask, and a carbon-dioxide scrubber as well. It all made sense. After all, the kidnapper could not harm his victim.

  But time was short. Caliban took his blaster from its waterproof container and held in his right hand as he kept moving forward, out of the airlock complex and into the main corridors of the underground city. He thought he knew where to look for Beddle, but he could not be certain. It might be that he would have to search a fair part of the city before he found the man. He would have to work quickly.

  He found the first of the murdered New Law robots just a few hundred meters from the airlocks. The body was sprawled face down on the floor of the corridor, shot through the back of the head in much the same way as the victims at the aircar site. Caliban knelt down next to the body and turned it over. It was Lancon-03, Prospero’s most recent protégé. Lacon, it would seem, had gotten in somebody’s way.

  But there was nothing Caliban could do for Lacon now – and time was short. He had to keep moving. He spotted three more murdered New Laws as he walked along. There had been nothing but a few caretakers left behind in the city to deal with last-minute details. It would seem that the kidnappers had dealt with all of them.

  Each should have been mourned over, praised, remembered – but time was short. Caliban broke into a trot, hurrying forward through the sterile emptiness of the depopulated robot city. Every tidy, immaculate, sensible, utilitarian, carefully laid-out passage and street and building now was meaningless, useless. The empty town of Depot had seemed like a place that was dying, lost, abandoned. Somehow, the empty town of Valhalla seemed like a place that had never lived in the first place. Caliban thrust such thoughts from his mind and hurried on up the ramps to the upper level, the huge half-cylinder-on-its-side that was the main gallery of Valhalla. He jogged up the central boulevard and into the main administration building of the city. He slowed, and moved more cautiously up the broad, sloping ramp that led to the building’s upper story and the executive offices there.

  And suddenly Caliban heard a voice. A human voice. Beddle’s voice. He tried to make out the words as he got closer. At first, he could only understand a word here and there. “– ever you want to know... promise you that –” He moved in closer, until he was right outside the door, and then he could hear it all. “I will make any promises you like, and put them in writing,” Beddle said. “Just let me out of here. You have convinced me that your cause is just. Let me leave, and –”

  “If I let you leave, you will prove yourself a liar,” another voice said.

  Prospero’s voice.

  Caliban felt a fresh wave of revulsion wash over him. He had known it. He had been sure of it. But knowledge and proof were two different things. Up until that moment, some small part of him had prayed that he was wrong. But now that hope was gone.

  He stepped into the office – Prospero’s office, his blaster at the ready. “Liar or no,” Caliban said, “you will let this human go.”

  A surreal tableau greeted Caliban as he came into the room, a whole series of complex details that he took in all at once, in the space of less than a second. Prospero stood on one side of the room, in front of his desk, a magnificent panorama of the lower city visible through the view window behind him. A system of wall-mounted photosensors divided the room in two lengthwise. The sensors were attached to one long wall of the room, and spaced about twenty centimeters apart in a vertical line that went from ceiling to floor. Beam emitters lined the opposite wall, their beams aimed squarely at the photosensors, and bright enough to be plainly visible.

  A complicated-looking device, roughly torpedo-shaped, but with a powerful-looking drillhead mounted on its nose, lay on the ground at Prospero’s feet. A cable led from an open hatch on the device to a junction box on the floor. Another cable led from the junction box to the photosensors.

  On the opposite side of the room, behind the optical barrier formed by the photosensors, stood Simcor Beddle, leader of the Ironheads. He looked haggard and gaunt, his eyes wild with fear. He was so terrified he hardly seemed to know that anyone new had come into the room.

  Beddle was a sorry sight. He was unshaven, and his hair was badly mussed. He wore a sort of shapeless gray jumpsuit that did not seem to hang on him properly, as if he had had trouble doing up the fasteners. There were sweat stains under his armpits, and a greasy sheen of sweat on his face. Simcor Beddle. Every bit of the power, the authority, the arrogance attached to his name had been swept away. He seemed numbed, in shock, scarcely aware of his surroundings. He looked toward Caliban, and yet seemed to look right through him. “Who’s there?” he demanded. “Who’s there at th
e door?”

  Caliban ignored him, and continued his survey of the room. There was a portable refresher unit in Beddle’s side of the room, and a large supply of bottled water and survival rations stacked up on the opposite side of the room from the refresher. A primitive cot, with one blanket and one pillow, stood in the center of the cell.

  And Caliban understood. The torpedo-shaped device was, of course, the burrow bomb. It was hooked up to the photosensors. If Beddle tried to step across the sensor barrier, the bomb would go up – or at least Prospero had convinced him that it would. It came to much the same thing.

  But Caliban understood more than that. A robot may not injure a human being. That was the New First Law, in its entirety. And, at least by the most parsimonious and niggardly of interpretations, Prospero had not in literal fact harmed Beddle. No doubt he had carried some utterly safe anesthetic with him when he had hidden himself aboard Beddle’s aircar. He had seen to it that the unconscious Beddle had plenty of air for his ride across the lakebed in the cargo roller. And he had provided Beddle with ample food and water, adequate sanitation facilities, serviceable clothes, and a decent bed. He had done the man no harm at all, at least in any literal, physical sense.

  And if Beddle elected to stay where he was, he would not come to any harm at Prospero’s hand. And if he crossed the optical sensor barrier, it would be Beddle’s action – not Prospero’s – that would set off the bomb and destroy him. Beddle would kill himself with the bomb he had meant to use to kill a city full of New Law robots.

  And Prospero would not be forced to interfere. The second clause of the original First Law required a robot to take action to prevent harm. A Three-Law robot could not stand idly by if Beddle endangered himself. But not so the New Law robots. Prospero could, through inaction, allow a human to come to harm.