Have Robot, Will Travel

by Alexander C. Irvine

  Ariel attended the hearing knowing more or less exactly what would happen, and as usual her political instincts were accurate. Eza Lamina held the gavel, seven of her fellow Spacer senators made up the rest of the committee, and Vilios Kalienin remained close at hand, offering whispered advice at every break in the proceedings.

  “Ambassador Burgess,” Lamina said after an hour or so of preliminaries. “Your association with the question of cyborg citizenship is terribly discrediting to what this government is trying to accomplish.

  It is difficult for me to understand how you can continue in your present liaison capacity, and it is even more difficult to see how your project can continue without you.”

  Ariel had lost all interest in political niceties. “That’s quite a tidy assessment of the situation, Senator. You get rid of me and the only compartment of the Triangle interested in government transparency, all at one stroke.”

  One of the other senators spoke. Arvid Aanesen, from Acrisia.

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  Privately Ariel thought of him as Senator Vowel, and his speech fed into the caricature. He was the kind of politician who always spoke as if he was changing the course of human history; he thundered, he boomed, he devoted himself to the pursuit of the orotund and obfus-catory. “This is beneath you, Ms. Burgess,” he said. “The gravity of this situation demands a certain decorum from us all, but perhaps most especially from yourself.”

  “You’ll excuse me if I see no reason to be decorous when I’m being scapegoated,” Ariel shot back. “A corporate citizen in good standing of this planet asked me to investigate a legal question. I am in the process of doing so. I have taken no position on the question and do not intend to. It is manifestly useless for this panel to attach to me motives imputed by subetheric parasites.”

  “Who has asked you to investigate the question?” Lamina asked.

  “Given the irrational response to the question,” Ariel said, “I believe it is in no one’s best interests for me to divulge that information.”

  “I will remind you that you are under compulsion to answer direct inquiries here, Ms. Burgess.” This time the speaker was Brin Houser, cashiered from the Solarian diplomatic corps for profiteering on Settled worlds.

  That I should be grilled by a group of corrupt exiles, Ariel thought.

  At least the last time people tried to scapegoat me, they had power that meant something beyond a pathogenic backwater.

  “I assert that the committee has no legitimate interest in knowing the answer,” she said. “The purpose of the question is solely to widen the smear that is as of now only being perpetrated on me and my project.”

  “You will answer the question, or you will be held in contempt,”

  Houser said, drawing the last few words out for effect.

  “The committee can hold me in no greater contempt than I already feel for each of its members,” Ariel said. In the outraged silence that followed, she brought up the name of a lawyer on her datum.

  Seated at her kitchen table that evening, Ariel reflected that she might 125

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  have been more circumspect in her speech to the committee. Her project was terminated, and with it the employment of the nineteen attorneys and researchers she supervised. Formal charges were pending against her, and whatever the outcome—which didn’t worry her, since a constitutional committee was already empanelled to draft a clause restricting citizenship to unenhanced human beings, and once the clause was rubber-stamped it wouldn’t be worth the Triangle’s time to go through with prosecution—people on Nova Levis would suffer because Ariel’s transparency project was no longer there to goad the powers that were into some semblance of rectitude.

  So ends my brief career in politics, she thought. I was made an ambassador because no one else was available, and now I’m not even fit to be a liaison to a bunch of profiteering exiles.

  “Time to go back into robotics,” she mused out loud.

  R. Jennie stirred. “Would you like me to update your vita?”

  “No, thank you, Jennie,” Ariel said with a smile, even though it wasn’t a terrible idea. She’d kept up on the literature when she had time; her skills couldn’t be that far out of date, and when she had worked at the Calvin Institute, she’d been one of the best.

  I should be on Kopernik, she thought. I’m as good as Derec ever was, and Jonis…

  That train of thought didn’t lead anywhere she wanted to go.

  Strange, that one of her lovers should be investigating the murder of another. She remembered Jonis, a long time ago, wanting to rub her feet. Before he’d become a Managin, or at least before he’d admitted to it. Before he’d stood by and let her bear the brunt of the anti-Spacer backlash that followed the Union Station massacre. The power of the memory shook her, and Ariel found herself wiping tears from her eyes before she’d consciously realized she was crying.

  “Do you require assistance, Ariel?” R. Jennie, ever solicitous.

  “Just solitude, Jennie. I just need to be left alone.”

  R. Jennie left the room. Ariel got up from the table and found a bottle of Terran whiskey in the cabinet over the stove. On the way 126

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  back to the table, she picked up a glass, and after that she didn’t leave the chair for quite some time.

  Nova Levis. If there was a worse place for human beings to live in the known universe, Ariel had never heard of it. Hours had passed, and Ariel had long since stopped tasting the whiskey she poured into herself. Out of her intoxication and angry self-pity, a thought formed itself: As long as they’re in charge, this planet will never be anything more than a pathogenic sump. A way station for pirates, an open-air laboratory for voracious microbes and vonoomans. The hell with cyborg citizenship. What Nova Levis needs is real citizenship for the people who live here.

  Like a spark in a thatched roof, that thought burrowed into her mind and began to smolder.

  The next morning, all of her head was smoldering. As soon as she’d cleaned up and scalded her throat with a little coffee, Ariel went to see Masid anyway. He wasn’t in his office, so Ariel got more coffee and fresh bread from a bakery around the corner and settled down on a transport-station bench to wait for him. An hour passed, her head cleared, her stomach settled. Then Masid sat down next to her.

  “You get coffee for me, too?”

  Ariel started, then had to laugh. “Good thing I’m not a spy.”

  “Good thing I’m not, either.” Masid smiled as well, but there was a little warning behind it. Ariel wasn’t sure she wanted that warning spelled out. “The accommodations here suit you, or would you like to go inside?”

  “I think I’d just as soon sit here,” Ariel said. “All I have is one thing to say, in any case. One thing to ask.”

  He waited for her to go on.

  “I’m going to go back to Gernika,” she said. “I want you to just…check in on me every so often.”

  “If you’re that worried about them, you shouldn’t go,” Masid said.

  “That’s the thing, Masid. I’m not sure whether I’m more worried 127

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  about the reanimes or the people I’m supposed to be working for here.

  I mean it.”

  He studied her, waiting again. Masid had a way of making the rhythms of a person’s speech seem off somehow. Ariel felt like she’d been blithering.

  “Do you have any hope for this place?” she asked him.

  “I make it a rule never to have hope for anything.”

  “Then what keeps you here? If every place is hopeless, why not go somewhere that at least does a good job of concealing it?”

  Masid shrugged. “Ariel, you’re talking to an ex-spy. After a few years doing that, it’s real nice to have everything out in the open.

  Easier to figure out who your enemies are. You have a personal com code?”

  Ariel touched h
er datum to his.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll get in touch every so often. You want the rest of this bread?”

  She gave it to him, then asked him a question on impulse. “If it actually came to a vote, which way would you go?”

  Masid had already stood, and again Ariel saw that hint of warning in his face. “It won’t come to a vote. A lot of other things might happen, but you can bet your uterus that Nova Levis will never vote on citizenship for cyborgs. Travel safe, Ariel.”

  A minute or so after he’d crossed the street and gone into his office, a public transport squealed up. Ariel almost hesitated too long, but as it was dropping into gear again she jumped up from the bench and climbed aboard.

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  CHAPTER

  19

  Shara Limke did not believe for one moment that a murderous cyborg might be loose on her station. Derec could see this on her face, and he couldn’t blame her. He wouldn’t have believed it himself if he hadn’t seen Jerem Looms and Tro Aspil at much closer range than he’d ever wanted. Still, that was where the available evidence led him.

  Despite her disbelief, Limke had made sure that Omel Slyke cooperated with station security in personally tagging every Cole-Yahner on Kopernik. The process wasn’t finished, but it soon would be. Derec wasn’t sure what they would find, but he found that his faith in the inability of positronic robots to kill had been restored.

  Odd, that it had been shaken so thoroughly. He was still an Auroran.

  Derec was killing time in his lab, waiting as each report on an individual Cole-Yahner domestic trickled over the station security net, when Skudri Flin walked in.

  “I’m surprised you’re not out looking for robots,” Derec said.

  “I am.” Flin laid a disk on Derec’s desk. “Listen. I can only say this once, and then I’m going to pretend that you and I talked about billiards in the game room if anyone asks. That might not do any good.

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  If this thing keeps blowing up, and you go down, I’m going to go down with you. I don’t like that, Avery, but I did it to myself. So here’s your disk. I don’t give a damn about Jonis Taprin, but that Spacer getting murdered tells me that something’s going on that the TBI can’t handle. I didn’t give them this because they’re arrogant, big-footed sons of bitches, and I don’t trust them, and if I have to tell you that you shouldn’t either, you’re dumber than I’m guessing.”

  “You don’t.”

  “Good. I’d hate to think I was that wrong about someone. Listen, here’s something else.” He handed Derec a flimsy. “One of the guys down at the cargo docks saw something this morning. I’m not saying it’s a robot, and even if you can find out who he is, the dockworker won’t either, but you should have a look.”

  “Before or after I look at the record from the robot?”

  “Should probably be after. But what the hell, look whenever you want.”

  “I’ve got more than enough ambiguity on my plate,” Derec said.

  He opened the sheet, and saw shipping information. A freighter, the Cassus, had left Kopernik three hours before, bound for Nova Levis.

  How had it gotten through the picket? Derec wondered. When he looked up to ask Flin, the man had gone.

  Looking back to the flimsy, Derec saw that the Cassus was registered to Nucleomorph.

  He set the flimsy down. So many questions answered, and so manymore opened up in turn. All he could do was speculate until he’d seen the record from the robot.

  Picking the disk up, Derec took a deep breath. No preconceptions, he told himself. The data is the data. Let it tell you what it will.

  He slid the disk into the slot of his desktop datum, and waited for it to yield its secret.

  DIDN’T DO IT DIDN’T DIDN’T DO IT

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  HUMAN DEAD, IDENTIFY, JONIS TAPRIN, BODY TEMPERATURE DECREASING

  IN LINEAR PROGRESSION CONSISTENT WITH AMBIENT TEMPERATURE

  DIDN’T

  FIRST LAW VIOLATION, ASSESS RESPONSIBILITY, NO OTHER BEINGS

  MECHANICAL OR HUMAN PRESENT, INFERENCE OF SELF-RESPONSIBILITY, ASSESS ALTERNATE POSSIBILITIES, NONE AVAILABLE, DIAGNOSTIC ON CHRO-NOLOGICAL AWARENESS REVEALS CONFLICT, GAP IN PERCEPTIONS POSSIBLY

  DUE TO

  DIDN’T DO IT INCAPABLE OF DIRECT ASSAULT ON HUMAN BEING INCAPABLE

  OF INFLICTING HARM EVEN IN CASE OF POSSIBLE DANGER TO ANOTHER HUMAN

  DID NOT DO THIS

  HUMAN DEAD, ASSESS DAMAGE, BLUNT TRAUMA, STRUCTURAL DAMAGE

  TO CRITICAL SYSTEMS

  ASSESS SYSTEMS, PHYSICAL ROUTINES NORMAL, CHECK MEMORY

  CONFLICT

  DIDN’T DO IT

  ASSESS POSSIBILITIES, OTHER PARTIES MIGHT HAVE CONDUCTED ATTACK, NO OTHER PARTIES REGISTER IN MEMORY

  MEMORY, LAST HOUR, INSPECT

  MAINTENANCE CONDUCTED AT BERTH A48, KOPERNIK STATION, AFTER

  TRANSIT FROM

  PLANET OF ORIGIN UNAVAILABLE, GAP IN MEMORY DIAGNOSED, INTERROGATED, PLACE OF MANUFACTURE AURORA, SERVICE RECORD INCLUDES AURORA KERES NOVA LEVIS, INITIAL OBSOLESCENCE INSPECTION CONDUCTED NOVA LEVIS ELEVEN MONTHS PREVIOUS, REMOVED FROM ACTIVE SERVICE

  LAST SERVICE RECORDS INCLUDE PERFORMANCE OF PROGRAMMED DUTIES

  AT

  DIDN’T DO IT

  FIRST LAWCONFLICT, HUMAN DEAD, SELF POSSIBLY RESPONSIBLE, INVESTIGATE, OTHER PARTIES PRESENT?

  PARTIES IN ROOM, SELF AND NONFUNCTIONAL HUMAN JONIS TAPRIN, INVENTORY SURROUNDINGS, STANDARD GOVERNMENT-CLASS HOTEL

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  ACCOMMODATION, THREE ROOMS, NO SOUNDS INDICATING PRESENCE IN

  OTHER ROOMS, ONLY PRESENCE IN THIS ROOM SELF AND NONFUNCTIONAL

  HUMAN JONIS TAPRIN

  CONCLUSION, SELF IN ROOM AT TIME OF NONNATURAL DECEASE OF HUMAN

  JONIS TAPRIN, FIRST LAW CONFLICT, NO RECORD OF SELF ACTING TO

  PRESERVE LIFE OF JONIS TAPRIN, NO RECORD OF SELF

  CONFLICT, DID NOT CAUSE HARM TO HUMAN JONIS TAPRIN

  NO OTHER PARTY IN ROOM AT TIME OF DECEASE OF JONIS TAPRIN, POSSIBLE CONCLUSION SELF CAUSED NONFUNCTION OF JONIS TAPRIN, CONCLUSION IMPOSSIBLE, FIRST LAW CONFLICT

  MEMORY DIAGNOSTIC, CONTINUITY?, INTERRUPTED, GAP IN MEMORY 2247-2307, TIME NOW 2307, RECALL 2247, ROUTINE MAINTENANCE, ORDERS GIVEN

  TO

  MEMORY ENDS

  MEMORY BEGINS AGAIN 2307, HUMAN JONIS TAPRINDEAD, UNABLE TO

  DETERMINE PRESENCE OF SELF AT DEATH

  PHYSICAL INVENTORY, HUMAN BLOOD ON CHASSIS AND LIMBS, ALSO FEET, TRAIL OF PARTIAL FOOTPRINTS LEADING FROM BODY OF HUMAN JONIS TAPRIN

  TO SELF

  DIDN’T DO IT

  “Alvaro Kader,” Derec muttered. The tech who had worked on the robot. Either he’d made some modification to the machine, or he’d relayed a kind of message that had distracted the positronic brain while the fearsomely strong alloy body did the work. It was exactly the modus operandi he’d seen at Union Station, and seeing it again made Derec wonder if maybe Kynig Parapoyos hadn’t survived after all. It wasn’t likely, but if that wasn’t the case, someone else had assimilated both Parapoyos’ methods and his posthumous grudge.

  The Cole-Yahner wasn’t a cyborg. Derec was no longer worried about that. For a moment, when he’d seen that the domestic robot had arrived from Nova Levis, he couldn’t think about anything but cyborgs, and a cyborg disguised as a robot would be a tricky adversary 132

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  indeed. Other robots would notice the difference, but most of them would operate with defaults that would grant a cyborg provisionally human status until they could confirm the decision with an actual human being. The time lag would be more than enough for a skilled assassin. But there the robot was, in a positronic death spiral after its (best case) presence at or (worst case) commission of the murder of Jonis Taprin. If it was a cyborg, it wouldn’t have sat around waiting for Kopernik Security, the TBI, Derec,
or anyone else to take a look at it.

  Which left subversion, and that was why Derec badly wanted to talk to Alvaro Kader.

  Even before he could do that, though, he had to warn Ariel.

  Slyke answered his com from somewhere down in the maintenance corridors. “Don’t bother me, Avery,” he said. “We’ve got eighty-nine of one hundred and two Cole-Yahners from that series. Thirteen more.

  I’ll let you know what happens.”

  “The one you’re looking for is off the station,” Derec said.

  “Did your mysterious opponent tell you that? Getting more coded messages?”

  “Slyke, I don’t care whether you believe me or not. A colleague of mine might well be in danger back on Nova Levis, and I need to get a message through to her. The robot came here from Nova Levis, and now it’s going back there…” Derec halted himself. If he wasn’t careful, he was going to sound more paranoid than he really felt. “Have you heard about what’s going on there? On Nova Levis?”

  “What, the cyborg vote thing?”

  “Exactly. That. A colleague of mine—”

  “Burgess.”

  Of course the TBI would have briefed Slyke about Ariel. “Yes. She was asked to look into the question. The cyborg who killed Rega Looms also killed her lover, and I don’t think I have to tell you how she feels about the question personally. But she agreed to investigate the legal issues. Now what if I told you that Nucleomorph, the com-133

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  pany who asked her to do this, is the same company that owns the ship flying your assassin robot back to Nova Levis?”

  The professional stoneface came over Slyke again. Derec could see him working through the implications, searching for alternatives, double-checking his conclusions. It didn’t take long.

  “Just so I know we’re on the same wavelength here,” Slyke said.

  “Are you suggesting that someone on Nova Levis wanted Taprin dead so they could further a kind of anti-Spacer vendetta? And that the cyborg deal is a stalking horse for that?”

  Am I suggesting that? Derec wondered. “That sounds more or less right,” he said, vacillating and hating himself for it.

  “Okay. So did the robot kill Taprin?”

  This is where you jump, Derec told himself. You’ve been moving along the edge for a long time now.