Caliban c-1

by Isaac Asimov

  He hung there, waiting, for what seemed an absurdly long time. His on-board chronometer gave him a precise report on how long he waited there, but somehow the number of minutes and seconds that flickered past was no proper measure of his situation. There was something more to it, for the odds were very good that these were the last minutes and seconds he would ever experience.

  What was taking them so long?

  At last there was a clang and a thump. Caliban cocked his head cautiously down to peek around the support beam that hid him from view. He turned his head toward the access hatch. “Damnit,” a voice called out. “He must have knocked all the lights out.” Caliban saw the beam of a handlamp stab out from the building side of the hatch. Like most lamps designed to give off visible light, this one cast a fair amount of infrared as well. A human figure, and then another and another and another, came through the hatch, plainly visible in infrared.

  “Well, at least we know he’s still in here,” one of them said as a light beam played across the floor, revealing the smashed glow lamps. “He wouldn’t have hung around smashing the lights if he could’ get out one of the hatches.”

  “Ready to do some damage, Spar?” one of the others asked with a low chuckle.

  “Capture only, Jak,” a third one, the only woman, said. “Try to keep that in mind, okay?”

  “Don’t like tunnels,” the one called Spar announced. “This gives me the creeps. Can’t we pull in some real lights before we go searching around in here?”

  “Galaxy’s sake, it’s just one lousy robot in an H-tunnel,” the one called Jak replied. “Don’t you get all jumpy on me now.”

  Suddenly the hatch behind them swung shut again, to the obvious discomfort of the four deputies. “Well, if he can’t get out, neither can we,” the woman said, her voice a bit low and nervous.

  “I don’t like it,” Spar objected. “Can’t we reopen the hatch and just post a guard on it?”

  “Yeah, and let the rogue punch out the guard and make a run for it,” the first voice said. “Look, Spar, the manual keypad combo for all the hatches is 274668. You get antsy, you get out that way. Just don’t get crazy on us. Come on, let’s move out. Mirta, you and me will take the east side; Spar and Jak, you take the west.”

  These humans weren’t thinking clearly. Did they assume that if they could not see him, he could not hear them? But that keypad combination. That was the information he needed. Caliban drew his head back in and remained motionless as two of the deputies went past, directly below him.

  Listening carefully, he judged that the other pair of deputies had indeed gone the other way, to the western leg of the “H.” He could hear them turning the corner and moving up one arm of the tunnel.

  Moving as silently as he could, Caliban worked his way back down the wall, stepped down onto the floor, and turned in the direction the two male deputies had gone. He was tempted to use the keypad combination on the building access door, but no doubt there were any number of police waiting just behind it. No. His one hope was to get past these deputies, punch in the keypad combination, and hope it worked. He made his way down to the intersection between the cross tunnel and the side tunnel and peered cautiously around the corner. There they were, on the north end. Caliban backed into the crosswise leg of the tunnel again. He braced his arms and legs against the walls and worked his way back upward to hide against the ceiling again.

  After a few moments, the two deputies walked past him in the central connecting tunnel, headed toward the southwestern end of the H-tunnel, making a fair amount of noise as they kicked past the debris of the ruined glow lights. Caliban once again let himself down from the ceiling and moved silently in the direction the two men had come from. There it was, the tunnel hatch, the control panel next to it. Suddenly he had a most disturbing thought. Suppose they were playing games with him now? Suppose they had meant for him to hear their discussion, and they had deliberately spoken loudly enough for him to hear? Suppose the combination was false?

  But it didn’t matter. For if the combination did not work, he would in any event have no other way out. He was locked in here, and that combination was the only key that might open the way. Caliban punched in the keypad combination, moving his fingers as rapidly as possible.

  A light stabbed down on him from the opposite end of the tunnel, bright enough to dazzle his infrared vision. “There he is!” Spar’s voice shouted from behind the blinding light. There was a roar, and a whoosh, and Caliban threw himself to one side of the tunnel. There was a violent impact, dead on the center of the hatch. A roaring explosion tore through the reinforced hatch and ripped it to shreds, littering the tunnel with shrapnel and smoke. Debris ricocheted off Caliban’s body case, knocking him down. He scrambled back to his feet. The impact had blown a hole clear through the armored door, just big enough for Caliban to get through. He scrambled through it, the white-hot armor plate hissing and popping, sending his thermosensors into maximum overload. But then he was through, and out into the tunnels, and gone.

  12

  “I have had my fill and more of shambles, Donald,” Alvar Kresh said as he read the action reports over a belated breakfast at his desk. A breakfast he had been looking forward to since the early hours of the morning, and one he was now not enjoying at all.

  He had wanted to eat in the privacy of his own home, not at his desk at headquarters. Circumstances dictated otherwise, to put it mildly. Nor did the circumstances of the situation improve his mood.

  Minutes after he came out of the Governor’s office, he learned that his officers had lost the leading suspect in the case that might literally decide the fate of the world. This did not make him a happy man.

  “We go for a nice, quiet chat with the Governor, you and I,” Alvar said, in a voice that was low and reasonable, in a tone of patently false calm. “I am out of contact with the force for perhaps all of an hour, and come back to find that my deputies have been using the airspace over downtown to practice their aerobatics and scare the hell out of half the population.” Alvar’s voice started to get louder, angrier. He stood and glared at Donald. “I find that one of my officers disregarded all orders and made a creditable effort to kill that suspect before he could be questioned and examined. Instead he made a good start toward blowing up half the city tunnel system.”

  He knew it was unfair and illogical to yell at Donald, but he had to take his anger out on someone. And there Donald was, right in front of him, an easy target for his fury, and one that would not fight back.

  But even in the depths of his fury, Alvar knew that he was playing to the squad room outside his office as well. It was not by chance that his office was not well soundproofed. Some times it did the force some good to hear the Old Man blow up. By now Alvar was shouting out loud, deliberately shouting not at Donald, but at the thin walls and the men and women outside.

  “In other words, the only reason my stunt-flying, trigger-happy deputies have not wrecked everything is that they are lousy shots as well. What is wrong with everyone?”

  The rhetorical question hung in the air for perhaps half a minute. Donald stood silently before Alvar’s desk. At last Alvar sighed, sat back down, and picked up his fork. He took another moody stab at his sausages. “I am not a happy man, Donald,” he said at last, in a quieter voice, now speaking almost to himself. “On top of everything else, I have not a doubt that this whole fiasco has set a whole new series of rumors flying. Besides the hundreds of witnesses to our overreaction, there is a civilian we can do nothing to silence, and he is no doubt out there cheerfully telling all his friends about the robot who refused orders. God knows where that will end.”

  “Yes, sir. It is most unfortunate. There is some other rather awkward news. There is a current rumor that Fredda Leving’s announcement tonight is related to the events of this morning, though what the connection is, no one seems to know.”

  “That’s quite a rumor,” Alvar growled ruefully. “Hell, I’m heading the investigation, and even I d
on’t know for sure if that’s true. It’ll get her a hell of a big audience tonight.”

  “The same thought crossed my mind,” Donald said. “You were proved correct in your concerns over a massive police effort. It has forced the whole situation at least partly into the public view. We have set off the panic that might well have been the perpetrator’s actual goal.”

  “Yes, yes, I know. But damn it, what other chance did we have but to respond to the situation? We could not allow this Caliban to go loose—a robot capable of violence against humans—just because a police chase might upset a few people. Not when we had a solid position and a positive ID on him. Expect we blew it, and by now he could be anywhere in or under the city.”

  “Sir, if I could interject just a moment,” Donald said in his most deferential voice. Alvar looked up sharply. He recognized that tone. It was the one Donald used when he was going to be his most contrary. “You are proceeding from an assumption that I now feel we must regard as unproved.”

  “And what might that be?” Alvar asked cautiously as he used his fork to chase the last of his eggs around the plate.

  “That Caliban is a robot capable of violence against humans.”

  The office was wreathed in silence once again, other than the muffled noise from the exterior offices that managed to seep in. This time it was Alvar who knew no way to respond. But it was obvious that Donald was going to say no more. “Wait a second,” Alvar said, dropping his fork back on his plate and giving the service robot a half-conscious signal to remove the tray. “You were the one trying to convince me that our suspect was a robot.”

  “Yes, sir. But circumstances have changed. New evidence and patterns of evidence have come to light. Tentative conclusions must be reviewed against revised data.”

  “What evidence and patterns of evidence?”

  “One pattern in particular, sir, that I have not examined as yet. I need to run a thought experiment. I have a hypothesis which I need to test. If you will bear with me for a moment, this experiment will be difficult for me. But to perform this mental experiment, I will be forced—to—contemplate—a—robot doing—violence—to human beings. No doubt that will make it hard for me to speak and think. Indeed, you will note that even offering up the idea causes my speech to slow and slur noticeably.”

  The serving robot turned toward Donald, moving so jerkily that the silverware flew off the serving tray. It knelt and scooped up the fork and knife before rising again, weaving back and forth a bit.

  Donald noticed the other robot’s reaction. “Ah, sir, before we discuss this further, perhaps you should excuse the serving robot so as to prevent needless damage to its brain.”

  “What? Oh, yes, of course.” Alvar waved the serving robot out, and it left the room, still holding the tray. “Now then, what is this thought experiment? If it’s risky, I don’t want to do it. I don’t want you to damage yourself, Donald,” Alvar said, concern in his voice. “I need you.”

  “That is most kind of you to say, sir. However, I believe that, given the police-robot reinforcements to my positronic brain, the risk of significant permanent damage is negligible. However, you will need to be patient with me. Nor do I wish to work through this thought process more than once. It will no doubt be unpleasant for me, and the risk of permanent damage will increase should I need to repeat it. So I would request that you pay strict attention.

  “I wish to place myself in the circumstances that this Caliban has faced on at least two occasions, once at the warehouse with the robot bashers, and once just now with the deputies in the tunnel. In both cases, Caliban was surrounded by a group of human beings who were clearly threatening his very existence. I intend to work through the circumstances of each event and see how a high-level robot with the Three Laws would react, what the outcome would be. In short, what would have happened if a robot with my mind and Caliban’s. size and strength faced such circumstances?”

  “Yes, very well,” Alvar said, a bit mystified.

  “Then I will proceed.” He sat there and watched for about a minute as Donald stood there in front of him, stock-still, frozen in place.

  With a resumption of movement that was somehow more disconcerting than the way he had stopped moving, Donald came back to himself. “Very good,” he said to himself. “The first part of my hypothesis is correct. If it had been myself in either situation, I would have been destroyed, killed on the spot.” The satisfaction in his voice was plain.

  “Is that all?” Alvar asked, feeling quite confused.

  “Oh, no, sir. In a sense, I have not started yet. I was merely establishing a baseline, if you will. Now I must come to the far more difficult part of the experiment. I must put myself in the position of a being of high intellect, with great speed and strength, with superb senses and reflexes, who is placed in the same circumstances. But this hypothetical being is willing and able to defend itself by whatever means, including an attack on a human.”

  Alvar gasped and looked up at Donald in shocked alarm. More robots than he cared to recall had been utterly destroyed by far more casual contemplation of harm to humans. To imagine such harm, deliberately committed by oneself, would be the most terrifying, dangerous thought possible for a robot. “Donald, I don’t know if—”

  “Sir, I assure you that I understand the dangers far more thoroughly than you do. But I believe the experiment to be essential.”

  Before Alvar could protest any further, Donald froze up again. But this time, he did not stay frozen. A series of twitches and tics began to appear, and grew worse and worse. One foot lurched off the ground, and Donald nearly toppled over before he recovered and regained his balance. A strange, high-pitched sound came up from his speaker, sweeping up and down in frequency. The blue glow of his eyes dimmed, flared, and then went blank. His arms, held at his side, twitched. His fingers clenched and unclenched. He seemed about to topple again. Alvar stood up, rushed around his desk, and reached out to steady his old friend, his loyal servant, holding Donald by the shoulders.

  Even as he acted, he found that he was astonished with himself. Friend? Loyal servant? He had never even been aware that he thought of Donald that way. But now it quite abruptly seemed possible that he might lose Donald, this moment, and he suddenly knew how deeply he did not want that to happen.

  “Donald!” he called out. “Stop! Break off. Whatever it is you are doing, I am ordering you to stop!”

  Donald’s body gave another strange twitch, and the robot flinched away from Alvar’s touch, backing away a step or two. His eyes flared up, painfully bright, before regaining their normal appearance. “I—I—thank you, sir. Thank you for calling to me. I do not think that I could have broken free of my own volition.”

  “Are you all right? What the hell happened to you?”

  “I believe that I am fine, sir, though it might be prudent if I underwent a diagnostic later.” He paused for a moment. “As to what happened, it was a severe cognitive loop-back sequence. I understand that humans are capable of holding two completely contrary viewpoints at once without any great strain. It is not so for robots. I was forced to simulate a lack of constraints on my behavior, although the Three Laws of course control my actions. It was most disconcerting.”

  Donald hesitated for a moment and looked at Alvar, his head cocked to one side. “It has never occurred to me just how strange and uncertain, how unguided a thing it must be to be a human being. We robots know our duty, our purpose, our place, our limits. You humans know none of that. How strange to live a life where all things are permitted, whether or not they are possible. If I may be so bold as to ask, sir—how is it humans can cope? What is it they do with all the freedom we robots provide?”

  Alvar found himself sorely confused and surprised by the question. Still thrown off guard by Donald’s experiment, he answered with more honesty than he would have permitted in a considered answer. “They waste it,” he said. “They do nothing with their lives, determined to make each day like the last.” He thought
of the complaints on his desk, civilians whining that the police had disrupted their lives this morning by trying to capture Caliban, quite unconcerned that the disruption had been in the interests of protecting their lives. “They are sure change can only be for the worse. They battle against change—and so ensure there is no change for the better.”

  But then Alvar stopped and turned away from Donald. “Damn it, that’s not fair. Not all of it, anyway. But I spent the morning learning how we’ve doomed ourselves with indolence and denial.”

  “My apologies, sir. I did not intend to move the discussion into such irrelevant areas.”

  “Irrelevant?” Alvar went back to his desk chair and sat back in it with a sigh. “I think perhaps the questions of change and freedom are very close to the issues in this case. We have looked hard, seeking to find how Fredda Leving was attacked, and who did it. But we have scarcely even stopped to ask ourselves why the blow was struck. I’ll tell you the reason we are bound to find, Donald.” Suddenly his voice was eager, excited. “The reason—the motive—is going to be change, and the fear of it. It’s got to be something mired down in the politics of all this. There is some big change coming, and someone either wants to protect that change—or stop it. That’s what we’re going to find out. But damn it, we have wandered.”

  But Alvar had wandered deliberately. He wanted to give Donald a moment to settle down, a chance for his positronic brain to be focused on less frightening, unsettling thoughts for a moment. Alvar knew that the question of a crime’s motive, with the insight it provides into the human psyche, always fascinated Donald. “But your experiment, Donald. What were the results?”