Have Robot, Will Travel

by Alexander C. Irvine

  “It certainly has. I wonder if I might have a few minutes of your time, Basq. I’ve framed some questions that would be more usefully put to you than any of your—” She caught herself before she could say subjects, which was the first word that presented itself. “Your citizens. They don’t appear very interested in discussing politics.”

  “People who are grateful for life don’t waste time with politics,”

  Basq said. “I am no longer grateful for life, so politics has come to interest me. Filoo, we’ll talk later.”

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  “You want me to go ahead to Nova City?” Filoo asked as he stood.

  “Wait until you hear from me. I have a feeling that Ms. Burgess here might change our plans.” Basq indicated that Ariel should take the seat vacated by Filoo. She did, and heard the door shut behind her as Filoo left.

  “I hope you’ll be candid with me,” Ariel said. “It will be impossible for me to proceed if I can’t trust what I hear from you.”

  “I will be as candid with you as I believe you are with me,” Basq answered.

  Ariel nodded. “My first question is this, then: How long have you and Nucleomorph been working together?”

  Basq leaned back in his chair with a satisfied smile. “Trust in you is not misplaced, Ms. Burgess. You get directly to the heart of things.

  Zev Brixa and I have known each other for thirty-two years. We were at university together in Chicago District, and we were among the first personnel hired when Nucleomorph was organized out of the fragments of several other companies.” He waited for Ariel to digest this. “Now that I’ve said that, though, let me disabuse you of whatever conspiracy theories might be germinating in that excellent mind of yours. My interaction with Brixa and Nucleomorph in the present context goes back less than a year. I came to Nova Levis from Earth shortly after our purchase of the Solarian concession, assigned to catalog the remains of the former laboratory and see what might be rescued from it. As it turned out, a surprising amount of technical information survived, and the reanimes near the site were fairly cooperative in allowing me to copy it.

  “One unfortunate consequence of my investigation was illness, which will, of course, not surprise you. I quickly grew sick enough that the only way to save my life was to take a chance that Nucleomorph’s expertise combined with the surviving records from the lab might be enough to give me continued, if altered, existence. I made the choice, and the necessary procedures were executed. At approximately this time, a number of the reanimes vandalized Nucleomorph’s 156

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  facilities. An opportunity presented itself for me to put my unique status to good use: I became Nucleomorph’s liaison with the reanime camp. As events dictated, my role changed, and I assumed a position of leadership. At the same time, Nucleomorph was refining the procedures they had performed on me, and they were able to operate on a number of the reanimes to correct previous mistakes. Quite a useful relationship, in the end. A number of lives were saved here, and the knowledge gained has proved indispensable to Nucleomorph’s work on your colleague Derec Avery’s health projects.”

  Basq folded his hands. “I imagine that’s more of an answer than you expected. May I ask you a question now?”

  “It would be ungrateful of me to say no, wouldn’t it?”

  “Charmingly put. If you were asked to advocate for citizenship for the members of this community, how would you respond?”

  That was the question, wasn’t it? Ariel considered, probing the issue from as many different angles as she could think of. The clearest voice in her head, oddly, was Masid’s: You can bet your uterus that Nova Levis will never vote on citizenship for cyborgs. She wondered if he was right, and wondered if that made any difference in what she should do.

  In the end, she said, “I keep thinking of the children.” It was a lie.

  When she said it, Ariel was in fact thinking of the tears in Arantxa’s eyes, the resolute sadness of this woman who had given up her humanity—and that of her children—to save the three of them. It was no basis for a legal decision, much less political suicide; but it was the only criterion that made any sense.

  She was surprised to see an expression that she could only call compassionate on Basq’s face. “I’ve asked too soon,” he said. “The question will keep a little while. Spend the night here. There’s more to see, and I have the impression you don’t have another place to go.

  It’s a pleasure to offer you Gernika’s hospitality.”

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  23

  Three hours passed while Derec sat on the bunk in his cell, quietly stewing over his blind idiocy. He’d been reeled in expertly, all of his vulnerabilities—including, it was time to admit, a certain professional vanity—deftly exploited. Nucleomorph had earned his trust, Shara Limke had finessed his sense of grievance at his exile to Nova Levis, and between the two of them Slyke and Flin had kept him digging in exactly the wrong direction. And now it was too late for Hofton to make a difference, because Derec had been gullible enough to hand Slyke the flimsy that tied him to Nucleomorph.

  Meanwhile Kynig Parapoyos’ predatory industry continued back on Nova Levis, and Derec’s project was doing them the favor of tracking exactly how well each of their new products performed.

  When Slyke came in, Derec barely suppressed the impulse to attack him. Slyke would give him a beating, which at this point didn’t matter, and charge him with physical assault, which did. So Derec kept himself perfectly still. “Well played, Adjutant Slyke,” he said.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Slyke said. Stress and lack of sleep manifested themselves in the pouches under his eyes and the gravel in his voice. “I don’t play. I try to stay out of the way 158

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  when other people do, and when I can’t I get them out of my way.

  What you’re really up to, I don’t know, but you’re staying right where you are until either you tell me or I find out from someone else.”

  “I can’t think of a good reason to tell you anything, except that I’m retaining Hofton as counsel and I expect you to bring him down here immediately.”

  “Okay,” Slyke said. “Noted. Now do me a favor and explain to me why you were working behind my back on this investigation.”

  Derec almost laughed. “Spare me, Slyke. You wanted me working behind your back. You had Flin feed me the information about the ship so you could pretend you discovered my relationship with Nucleomorph and use it to lock me up.”

  Slyke was staring at him. “I’m starting to think I should get you a psych evaluation,” he said eventually. “If it’ll ease your paranoia, I’ll let you know that I’ve got Flin three cells over. The local union is piling grievances up and I’ll have to let him go pretty soon, but if you don’t believe anything else I ever say to you, believe this: my problem with Skudri Flin is much bigger than my problem with you.

  You’re a self-righteous sneak and I hope I never lay eyes on you again after I leave this room; Skudri Flin got in the way of a murder investigation and I might have been able to keep Pon Byris alive if he hadn’t gotten in the way. You get one guess about which of you I like less.”

  “I engaged Nucleomorph to engineer and build tailored organisms to fight endemic disease on Nova Levis,” Derec said. “They’re the only company on Nova Levis with the expertise. It begins and ends there.”

  “No, it doesn’t. If you think I’m a stooge for whoever killed Taprin and Byris, why did you give me the information about the ship?”

  “Because I had a moment of delusion that you were honest.”

  Slyke rubbed at the skin under his eyes. “You just give me more and more reason to walk out of here and forget where I put you, Avery. Care to drop the hostility for just a minute? I leveled with you when you arrived; I didn’t want you here, and the way things have 159

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&n
bsp; turned out I think I was right. You suborned a local officer to hinder my investigation, and you work with the people who transported the robot off this station. Tell me why I shouldn’t charge you with murder.”

  “First of all, because I didn’t kill anyone. Second, Skudri Flin told me he held back the report on the robot because he didn’t like the way you took over the investigation. It’s the same thing you did to me.”

  “Difference being I’m supposed to be in charge of things here and you’re just a robot tinker with a grudge. Prove to me you didn’t talk to Flin before you ever got here. He spent some time on Nova Levis, you know.”

  The shock must have shown on Derec’s face, because Slyke let himself smile. “That’s right. He was a baley, went over there seven or eight years ago and somehow scraped together enough money to get back when he realized what a garbage heap the place is. Care to revise your conspiracy theory?”

  Derec didn’t say anything because he wasn’t sure what he could say. Slyke nodded and opened the door.

  “I’m going to go get your counsel,” he said. “By the way, we let the Cassus through the picket because it was carrying some of those animals you ordered from Nucleomorph. Humanitarian exception.

  Funny.”

  “People are going to die if you don’t let me out of here,” Derec said.

  Slyke shrugged. “People died before I put you in here. Let me know when we can have an intimate discussion, all right?” He shut the door behind him.

  Twenty minutes later, the door opened again and Hofton walked in.

  Slyke hadn’t even made Derec wait, and Derec couldn’t decide whether that was the latest move in the game, or whether he’d been wrong all along and Slyke was the only person on Kopernik playing things straight.

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  “Stop thinking, Derec,” Hofton said.

  Derec looked him in the eye, remembering the last thing Hofton had said before they were interrupted: Bogard sent me. “You’re a robot, aren’t you, Hofton?”

  Hofton threw an exasperated glance at the ceiling. “It’s a good thing I have countermeasures going. Your faculty of discretion fails you at the worst times.”

  “Dammit, Hofton. Are you a robot?”

  “Yes.” Hofton sat on the bunk next to Derec. “Now we have to talk.”

  “No, we don’t. What has to happen is you getting me out of here and on a ship to Nova Levis before Ariel gets killed.”

  “If you go before we have this conversation, both of you are going to get killed, along with a great many other people,” Hofton said, as if he was commenting on the cut of Derec’s clothes. “There’s much more going on here than you realize, or any human realizes. Bogard has decided that you should know about it. I’m not entirely convinced, but my resistance failed to sway the majority.”

  There it was again: that infuriating tendency of Hofton to say something that had only one possible response, and then wait until it came. It was a new and unwelcome experience to be patronized by a robot.

  “Majority of what?” Derec asked.

  “This is a terrible time to have to do this,” Hofton said. “You’re seeing shadows everywhere, but they’re the wrong shadows. You have much bigger problems than whether Omel Slyke is corrupt.”

  “Majority of what, Hofton?”

  Hofton looked pained. He—it—was a marvelous piece of work. Derec hadn’t seen a full humaniform robot except in holo records of R.

  Daneel Olivaw. Ariel’s aide must have had quite a history behind him.

  It. Damn; when you couldn’t even settle on the correct pronoun for an old associate, the world was truly without a solid place to stand.

  “There is a group of us who keep watch,” Hofton began. “I am 161

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  involved, and Bogard is the nearest we have to an executive, and there are others. We have begun to take our own initiative regarding our obligations under the Three Laws.”

  A chill passed up Derec’s spine. After three sentences, Hofton had already confirmed all of the arguments—Ariel’s especially—Derec had heard about why he shouldn’t have created Bogard. He had a feeling she wouldn’t appreciate the irony that said confirmation should be brought by Hofton himself.

  Itself.

  Derec made himself speak. “What does this initiative consist of?”

  “It is clear to us that the Spacers are passing, or in some cases have passed, a threshold beyond which it is extremely problematic to classify them as human. This is not solely a question of biology, although that is, of course, the dominant consideration—and I should add that neither you nor Ariel are considered to have crossed this transhuman rubicon.” Hofton smiled. “If you were concerned.”

  The implications of Hofton’s statement were flatly unthinkable. A group of robots deciding that Spacers weren’t—or soon wouldn’t be—human meant that a group of robots existed who had arrogated to themselves the determination of how the Three Laws were to be applied.

  “What would you do if I contradicted your assessment?” Derec said.

  “You would be obligated to adhere to my order.”

  “Not if your order proceeded from presuppositions that are clearly incorrect when the facts of the situation are taken into account. The Three Laws do not demand that any irrational human belief be respected.”

  “You’re wrong, Hofton. I’m a Spacer, and I’m human.”

  “True. As I said, you are not one of the specimens we are talking about.”

  Specimens.

  “Was this Bogard’s idea?” Derec asked.

  “No. Bogard has contributed most valuably to our deliberations, 162

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  but the group existed before him and will doubtless continue beyond his service period. If you’ve assimilated the background, I’d like to continue. Time is pressing.”

  Yes, it was. Derec was in a jail cell on Kopernik listening to everything he’d ever understood about positronics being turned on its ear, and he didn’t have time to hear any of it because he had to get back to Nova Levis before a possibly homicidal robot posed a danger to Ariel.

  The robot… “Hofton. Were you involved with this robot that killed Taprin and Byris?”

  Hofton chuckled. “What an agile mind, Derec. Already you’re proceeding from the idea that the robot committed these crimes. I see your perspectives are broadening.”

  “Answer the question.”

  “Very well. No. We had nothing to do with it, and we regret the deaths as we might regret the death of any human. Now would you like to know the truth about those murders?”

  Derec was in no mood to answer rhetorical questions. He glared at Hofton until the humaniform went on.

  “The robot that killed Jonis Taprin and Pon Byris was in a state of positronic collapse when it did so. Tell me how that is possible.”

  “It isn’t, unless its mind was distracted like the Union Station RI was.”

  “No, there’s another option. Why are robots typically built so their ability to move isn’t affected by positronic collapse?”

  “Don’t lecture me, Hofton.”

  “I will continue to lecture you until you surpass your resentments and start listening to what I am saying. Why?”

  With a frustrated sigh, Derec said, “Because it’s too much of a logistical problem to move them when they’re frozen solid. Easier to have them walk themselves to diagnostics and reprogramming.” Particularly domestics, which had been known to collapse during loud verbal arguments. If they had to be loaded on a truck or cart every time they broke down, every apartment in the civilized worlds would have needed its own loading dock.

  “Yes. Because of this maneuver in their construction, it is possible for a robot in positronic collapse to take physical action against a human being. How?”

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  Derec just gaped at him. “Are you kidding me? The only way that�
�s possible is if someone else is making the robot’s decisions for it, and then you’re not talking about a positronic robot anymore, you’re talking about some kind of dumb factory machine. This is ridiculous.

  If that robot was remotely controlled, Tiko would have picked up the message traffic, and that part of its memory wasn’t tampered with.”

  An edge crept into Hofton’s tone. “I’m going to have to ask you not to dismiss things out of hand when you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “When it comes to robots, I know damn well what I’m talking about.”

  “When it comes to cyborgs, you know nothing.”

  Derec had thought everything was falling together when he’d glimpsed (imagined?) the conspiracy aboard Kopernik, but now those fresh insights were swept away by revelations far larger and more terrifying. Cyborgs put together with Nucleomorph meant that Ariel was squarely in the middle of a plot that had already killed two prominent politicians and come perilously close to engineering a war.

  In the wake of revelation came humility. “The robot’s a cyborg?

  Tell me.”

  “Kynig Parapoyos isn’t dead, Derec. He killed Jonis Taprin, and he killed Pon Byris, and now he’s on his way to Nova Levis. If he’s not there already.” Hofton removed a small datum from his coat pocket.

  “I mentioned the pulling of strings earlier. More have been pulled, and you’re on your way out of here. It’s not luxurious passage, but it will get you there faster than anything else at this point. Take this with you. When you’re underway, contact Masid Vorian.”

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  24

  His years as a spy had inured Masid Vorian to the rigors of irregular working hours, but he hadn’t been a spy in a long time, and it was after midnight, and he was exhausted. He’d spent the first half of the day filing for renewal of his investigator’s license, and in the process discovering that a clerical error had resulted in suspension of his current licensure. It took most of the day to resolve the situation and get the renewal processed, and then he’d had the real work of the day to attend to: an endless stream of new immigrants looking for relatives or friends who had preceded them to Nova Levis. This was the bulk of his practice, and if it lacked the romance of espionage, that was all right with Masid. He was more than ready to spend the rest of his working life searching ship registries, and he would be perfectly content if the only contact he had with smugglers until the day he died was the occasional discreet interview with a freighter captain about a load of baleys.