Have Robot, Will Travel
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of strength and a blow against the Basque people who dared claim the right to determine their own destiny.
“It’s a simple story, and no doubt repeated throughout human history. But this is the instance of it I know, and this is the instance of it that provoked a great artist to take up his brushes.” Basq nodded at the painted wall. “As you can see, I am no great artist. What I am is a man—a cyborg—who subscribes to the old, trite notion that not to know history is to doom yourself to repeat it. So I name this town, and I name the people who live here, to remind them that until we can write ourselves into the laws of this planet we exist at the suffer-ance of others.”
Ariel wasn’t sure what to say. “How—what happened to them?”
“The same thing that happens to every other human culture. They were absorbed, by force and by the inertia of passing time. That is where we have the advantage over them. We can’t interbreed with you, so we will be a distinct population as long as we wish to. Barring, of course…” He indicated the painting.
Still struggling to get her bearings, Ariel said, “I’m not here to save you, Basq. I’m not even convinced you’re in danger. You seem to be much better off than the majority of the humans on Nova Levis.”
“Nova Levis is, you’ll pardon the expression, a boil on the backside of human—and perhaps posthuman—civilization. My concerns extend much farther.” Basq went to the table and sat. “It’s time to return to the question we tabled two days ago. Are you ready to support us?”
“I don’t know that you need my support,” Ariel said truthfully. “Or that it would do you any good. There is a Terran legal precedent for granting a cyborg the legal rights of its human—unaltered—prede-cessor, if that’s the right word. Without question, some new language is in order, but I think the cornerstone of your goal was laid by Jerem Looms.”
She tried to hide her distaste at pronouncing the name, but Basq didn’t miss it. “Jerem Looms was a psychopath. I doubt he’s suitable to build a legal edifice on. You understand, don’t you, that your 176
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experience with Looms makes you an ideal spokesperson? If you can see the objective merits of the question, by extension anyone else should be able to.”
There it was, the whole truth of Ariel’s solicitation. She felt the truth of Basq’s assessment even as she instinctively resisted it. It was disgusting that losing Coren should have fit her to speak for the des-cendants of his murderer, and it was purely appalling that Basq was asking her to foment revolution on a planet so precariously surviving as Nova Levis. Above all else, it was unspeakable that Ariel should be so close to agreeing.
“The courts are not the place for this. On Earth, maybe. Not here.
On Nova Levis, the statement must be bold, and accompanied by action.” Basq’s voice was soft as a slack tide, but beneath its softness as implacable as the rising waters that come after. Ariel couldn’t find a reply.
“What if I told you that elements within the Triangle were already planning to exterminate us?” Basq said.
Ariel met his gaze and saw no deceit there. Nor did she see any fear; a man who had been through the cyborg transformation must have spent his share of hours accommodating the idea of death.
“Is that true?” she asked.
“There is talk. I don’t know how far it has gone. You are much better able to ferret out that kind of information than I am, or anyone here. Except perhaps Filoo, and I’m not enough of an idiot to trust what he tells me.”
Ariel thought of Arantxa again, and her boys. In the end, it came down to individuals. Legal arguments never reached down as far as a lone woman who took it upon herself to risk her children’s lives in the hope that it might save them.
“I’ll find out what I can,” she said. Hearing the words lifted a weight from her. She was committed. Perhaps foolishly, perhaps wrongly, but committed all the same.
“Excellent.” Basq stood. “Zev Brixa will be happy as well. He’s been 177
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here since yesterday afternoon wanting to see you, but I wouldn’t let him near you until we’d had a chance to reach an understanding.”
He stood and waved to the guard at the door, who went out. Ariel sat, trying to come to terms with what she had done, but she hadn’t had much success by the time Brixa and his infuriating smile came in the blockhouse door.
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It took less than ten minutes. Derec walked out of his cell with Hofton, passed Slyke without a word, and went straight to the cargo docks, where he was slotted into an empty baley slot while the dockworkers made a great show of looking the other way.
“Baley passage, Hofton?” Derec said.
Hofton shrugged. “Broaden your horizons. Getting you there is more important than your comfort, and even I can’t get you through the picket unless you want to go home to Aurora.”
Not a chance, Derec thought. He climbed into the baley slot.
“This is just until you get in-system at Nova Levis, approximately forty-eight hours in real time. The captain will let you out then, and the first thing you will do is play the message I have left for you on the datum. Hear me?”
Derec nodded.
“The second thing you will do is contact Masid Vorian. Do not under any circumstances use shipboard transmission equipment. The datum is encrypted and should be safe. Do both of those things before you even take a drink of water. Once you’re up to speed, things are going to happen fast.”
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“What things, Hofton?”
The humaniform shrugged. “If I knew that, I’d take care of it myself.
You have no idea how it pains some of us to entrust so important an undertaking to a human. Do your race a favor and don’t let us down.”
In some situations, nothing but an obscene gesture will do. This was one of them, Derec decided, and let Hofton’s last sight of him behind the closing hatch of the berth be vulgarly memorable. Then the capsule chilled around him, and Derec felt himself drifting…
And drifting back, with the muscle memory of an extended finger still fading from his freezing hand. The hatch was open, and warm air flooded into Derec’s berth. He gulped it down, feeling some of the chill leave his body. There was a face in the open portal, not Hofton’s, and before Derec’s rational mind caught up with the animal part of the brain that demands that one moment follow another, he looked over the man’s shoulder to locate Hofton. Then he was fully present, and he said, “Are we there?”
“Just in-system. I’ll let you know when to strap in for planetfall.
Should be five or six hours. You okay to get out by yourself?”
Derec nodded, and the man left. He wasn’t wearing a uniform. In all likelihood, Hofton had wedged Derec into a ship given a humanit-arian pass through the Kopernik blockade; most of those were private vessel financed by one government or another. It didn’t matter, as long as they got there.
Before you even take a drink of water, Hofton had said. The memory made Derec painfully thirsty, but he followed instructions. He found the datum in the locker over his berth and sat with it on a couch, still only in his underclothes. Two icons glowed on the datum’s display: one said FIRST, the other NEXT. Derec tabbed FIRST and got one of the shocks of his life when Bogard appeared on the screen.
“Derec,” Bogard said. “It is to be regretted that this interaction could not happen face-to-face. As things stand, however, we find it necessary to act swiftly, and this is the most efficient means of communic-180
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ating what you need to know. This message will erase itself as it unspools. Do not attempt to pause it, and do not direct your attention elsewhere.” The robot—Derec’s finest creation and, as of now, his least understood—paused to let him assimilate and respond to its directives.
“Very well.
Hofton will have told you of the group of which he and I are members. After a great deal of analysis and consideration, we have concluded that the First Law’s injunction to protect human life is in danger of being self-contradictory due to the rapid divergence of some Spacer populations from the human norm. This norm is our standard to which the First Law is applied, and logic dictates that a point will arrive at which the First Law will no longer apply to Spacers. In its own definitional way, this is a threat to human life, but there is no way for us to address it without actively contravening the wishes of a great many beings who are still—however provisionally or tentatively—human. Therefore, the decision of the group is that these populations will be allowed to diverge, then isolated from the rest of humanity in order that they not endanger it or force us to an untenable position with respect to the First Law.
“This decision was not taken lightly, and at first was not taken unanimously, but recent events in a variety of locales have mitigated the objections of our most reluctant members. This will happen, Derec.
We are powerful enough to see that it does, and we see no other way to ensure human survival. Call it the Zeroth Law if you will: we must sacrifice a few humans in order to protect the species as an identifiable entity.
“You are asking yourself, I anticipate, if the flexibility with which you designed me is a contributing factor to this endeavor. The answer is yes, but not the only factor, and no more can usefully be said. What is useful, indeed imperative, for you to know is that the activities of the cyborgs on Nova Levis are a direct threat to long-term viability of Homo sapiens. We are unfortunately lacking in specific information there, owing to the paucity of robots and concomitant difficulty in arranging for observers, but we do know that a citizenship referendum 181
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is considered only a preliminary stage in the cyborgs’ ambitions. In the end, whether cyborgs gain the franchise on a single precarious Settler colony does not matter; but as the Spacers distance themselves from Earth and the Settled worlds, and Earth’s attention shifts to focus on these new siblings, the danger is great.
“We are breaking our cover and announcing our presence to you for the sole purpose of impressing upon you the immediacy of this danger. When you arrive on Nova Levis, it is imperative that you go at once to Noresk and ascertain the true purpose of both the cyborgs and the corporate officers of Nucleomorph, which by now you know is manufacturing them. Your course once you have learned this, we believe, will be clear to you, and of all the humans in a position to affect the course of events, we anticipate you will act with proper resolve.
“The other reason you must act immediately is that the life of Ariel Burgess is in direct danger. Find her. We are unable to go to Nova Levis, but this impotence in the face of a Three Laws demand is deeply troubling to us. We cannot approach the authorities on-planet, for reasons that are useless to enumerate here; so we discharge our obligations under the Three Laws by apprising you of the threat in full expectation that you will act accordingly.
“A last warning: If your investigations satisfy us that the cyborgs’
ambitions extend no further than Nova Levis, we will, in all probability, let the situation take its course. If you learn otherwise, though, we will be provoked to more direct action. Minimize your interaction with cyborgs and your presence at the settlement known as Gernika.
I wish you success, Derec.”
The screen blanked.
Derec knew better than to try to react right away. He’d learned too much, and would need time to process and arrange the information.
The robots’ plan beggared belief—how had they decided that such action lay within their purview? It was a question that would keep graduate students in fellowships for generations. He let it slip out of 182
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his mind, focusing instead on the immediate problem at hand, which was Ariel. Bogard had confirmed his worst suspicions about her situation. If Nucleomorph had masterminded the murders of Taprin and Byris, and if in doing so they had allied themselves with Kynig Parapoyos, killing an out-of-favor bureaucrat would bother them not at all. They were playing for galactic stakes.
As were Bogard and his group, and Derec had just been given his small role to play. So be it. Soldiers didn’t fight for the causes that motivated the governments who sent them to war; they fought for the soldiers on either side of them at the front line. And Derec as of now was fighting for Ariel.
He took ninety seconds to dress, and then he tapped the icon labeled NEXT, already framing what he would say to Masid Vorian.
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“I’m just coming back from Nova City,” Brixa said as he followed Ariel out of Basq’s headquarters. “Or was yesterday.
Had to pick up a couple of things there, and I called around looking for you. When you weren’t in town, I had a feeling you might have come here. And I was right, but Basq didn’t want you to talk to me until the two of you had settled something. I take it from the fact that we’re walking together that things are, in fact, settled?”
So it would appear, Ariel thought. She didn’t want to tell him too much, though. Basq didn’t trust Brixa, and neither did she, although she now had a much clearer idea of his importance to the survival of Gernika. He could pinch off their supply of new inhabitants at will, and now that Ariel had found herself implicated in Basq’s plans, she was bound to consider the cyborgs’ well-being in whatever she told Brixa.
What an odd predicament.
“I think we understand each other,” Ariel said. Brixa looked at her; she could see him make the decision not to press for clarification.
“Good enough,” he said.
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“Why did you tell me you were concerned that religious zealots would damage your facilities, Zev?”
“It happens to be true.” They were walking along the central street, Brixa slightly in the lead and Ariel going along out of curiosity about where he would take her. “There are religious nuts around here, and they’ve made it clear that they’d like nothing better than to watch our lab burn. Which is a strange position for them to take given the fact that we’re the only reason they’re alive, but I never could figure the religious temperament. Anyway, the reason I told you what I told you is that nothing grabs the attention like fundamentalism and the threat of violence. Sure, we had other concerns that are probably more important, but when I first talked to you, the important thing was to get you to listen. I’m sure you understand.”
I’m sure I do, Ariel thought.
“This is marvelous work we’re doing here,” Brixa went on as they passed the side street where Arantxa and her children lived. Ariel wondered in passing where the Kyls were now. She’d forgotten what Toomi Kyl’s name was now. What a lightning bolt all of this would be for Derec.
The thought almost made her smile. He was off chasing her personal shades on Kopernik, and he’d come back to find that she’d solved his mystery for him. If she knew Derec, and she did, this would give him something new to gnaw at.
She caught up with Brixa again in mid-discourse. “Okay, I shaded things a little for you, but you were the one who told me I only had thirty minutes, so I had limited time to make my case. Nucleomorph’s case.” He windmilled his arms, encompassing everything around them.
“Their case. I don’t apologize for that. You’re here, and I think you’re going to do what you know is right. We’re saving children here, Ariel.
We’re lifting them out of a genetic morass to cybernetic solid ground, if you’ll forgive a little cribbing from the marketing brochure we’re going to distribute when we can safely take this all public.”
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“You won’t have anything to take public if the zealots blow up your lab,” Ariel said, just to slow him down a little.
Brixa waved a hand dismissively. “Basq
has that all taken care of.
No worries there.”
“What does he do, kill them?”
The question had exactly the reaction she’d hoped: a flat-out gog-gling stare.
“What?” Brixa said incredulously. “You think we’d be involved with something like that? Apart from the fact that we’ve spent a nontrivial fraction of our liquid assets on the people in this town, do you think we could afford to be publicly linked to some kind of despot? Please, Ariel. You’re sounding a little naïve here.”
“Either that, or you’re overreacting,” Ariel said smoothly. “What’s the line about protesting too much?”
Looking all around as if gauging who might be interested and within earshot, Brixa stepped closer to Ariel. “All right. The truth is that… look at it this way. Part of the reason Basq wants to get on the books here is that he knows that as long as he’s running a cluster of shacks with dirt streets out in the middle of a pathogenic wilderness, there’s no real hope of getting anywhere. Developing. Gernika isn’t going to be a utopia. He knows that, we know that, the people who live here know that. Basq’s job is to keep everything together until the people who look to him for leadership get what they deserve. But that’s not likely to happen, is it, if government observers come here and see some kind of anarchy.”
This last was aimed directly at Ariel, and she felt it. Like it or not, she had become some kind of fulcrum. Brixa and Basq had done a masterful job of maneuvering her into a position where she had to swallow hard and accept things she found reprehensible. She’d been surprised by the order and purpose she saw in Gernika, and it hadn’t occurred to her to question it until she’d already committed herself in deed if not word.
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Chasing my own shades, she thought. Derec isn’t the only one still chipping away at the memories of the last five or six years.
She filed that. No point in breaking out the full apparatus of self-appraisal with Zev Brixa waiting to turn it to his advantage.