Asimov’s Future History Volume 10

by Isaac Asimov

  “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 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 empaneled 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 She’d kept up on the literature when she had time; her skills couldn’t be that far out of date, and when she had worked at the Calvin Institute, she’d been one of the best.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 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 about the reanimés 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 her 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.

  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.

  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 f
reighter, 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 many more 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

  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 CHRONOLOGICAL 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 LAW CONFLICT, HUMAN DEAD, SELF POSSIBLY RESPONSIBLE, INVESTIGATE, OTHER PARTIES PRESENT?

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

  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 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 company 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.

  “I think it might have,” he said. “Only I’m pretty sure a human was pulling its strings. Do you have some time for me to explain this?”

  “Time? Sure, I’ve got nothing but time now that the great brain of Phylaxis is on-station. Where would you like to meet?”

  “I’ll come find you,” Derec said. “You might want to make sure this conversation is private.”

  By the time Derec tracked the TBI officer to an annex between the robot corridors and the human passages that paralleled them, Slyke was getting a com report from one of his inspectors that all of the Cole-Yahners on Kopernik Station had been identified. None of them was the unit they were looking for. Slyke ended the call and noticed Derec waiting.

  “I thought of something,” he said. “You think this robot might have killed Taprin. Nobody knew that Pon Byris was coming. How do you work that in?”

  “Could be any number of things,” Derec said.

  “Such as?”

  “I need you to explain something first. Why did you tell me the robot had been scrapped?”

  “Because I wanted you to give up and go home.”

  Right, Derec thought. A perfectly good reason to compromise a murder in
vestigation. “Fair enough. What really happened to it?”

  “You want to know the truth? It got up and walked out of the berth while our positronic guy was out getting a cup of coffee.”

  “I’ve seen a record of its responses to the murder, Slyke. That robot was in complete positronic collapse.”

  Slyke shrugged. “That’s what our guy said, too. Looks like both of you were wrong.”

  “Details,” Derec said. “What stage of analysis had your tech reached?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t deal with robots, and I don’t especially like dealing with people who deal with robots. Our guy said that the tinhead was scrambled, I took his word for it, and then it turns out that it wasn’t quite so scrambled after all.”

  “Does Tiko have any record of it?”

  “You mean the RI? It’s called Tiko?” Derec nodded, biting back a comment; he was sure he’d mentioned Tiko’s name to Slyke before, but details like the names of robots didn’t stick in the mind of a borderline Managin like Slyke. “Sure, the RI has all kinds of records. The robot walked out of the lab where we were looking at it, went straight down into the tinhead tunnels, and started picking off Byris’ robots.

  When it had all five of the ones that spent a lot of time with the man himself, it created its diversion and went to Byris’ room. Then it grabbed hold of him and broke his neck, and then it walked back out.”

  “Where did it go then?”

  “We’ve got it as far as the cargo docks. Then the goddamn Aurorans started firing off full-holo messages to everyone in the galaxy, and because they all had diplomatic priority Tiko had to redirect processing capacity away from routine surveillance so it could encode and send everything.” Slyke’s tone had gotten bilious. “You Spacers. You need robots to change your diapers, but you have no idea how to actually use them.”

  Derec laughed. “Always a pleasure working with bigots, Adjutant Slyke.”

  “What happened, happened,” Slyke said.

  “It happened because the people with Byris are diplomats who are used to being more important than everyone else, especially police.