To Obey

by Mickey Zucker Reichert

  Jake looked back at the playground. “Get a bus! We have one perp shot on the street, Nine and C! K.”

  Central addressed Jake again. “Unit requesting? K.”

  Jake ran a hand through hair plastered with sweat. “Manhattan South Homicide. I’m in plainclothes. Multiple shots fired.”

  “Units responding to the thirteen, use caution. Manhattan South Homicide on the scene, plainclothes. K. Where are you at, Homicide?”

  Jake went suddenly silent. He licked his lips and looked up the front of the apartment building.

  The voice came over the line again, repeating the question. “Where are you at, Homicide?”

  Jake tapped the borrowed Vox several times. Releasing the arm to its owner, he spoke in a voice that sounded strained and anemic. “I’d keep it off for the next fifteen minutes or so, if you don’t want an earful. When the police arrive, tell them you lent your Vox to a desperate cop who had to leave in a hurry.”

  Huddled in Kendall’s arms, Susan could not stop herself from sobbing.

  Even after seeing how easily the sniper’s bullets had penetrated the parked car on Bond Street, Susan felt far more secure in the moving confines of Jake Carson’s Subaru Sapphire. They headed off in a discomforting hush. Kendall huddled in the back, silently rocking, as if his body instinctively sought the long-ago safety of his mother’s loving arms. Always pale, he now looked ghostly white in the dark interior of the car, his freckles standing out in bold relief.

  For now, Susan left her fellow resident alone with his demons. She knew what bothered him. He had shot a man. And, for the moment, whether that man was an innocent father of eight or Hitler sentencing millions to death did not matter. Kendall had pulled the trigger, sending a lethal projectile hurtling toward another human being. On purpose. The Hippocratic oath, the vow taken worldwide by most physicians at the time of graduation, had been modified countless times through the centuries. Each school had its own version, but, she believed, every one contained the words or the sentiment, “I will do no harm to anyone.”

  Susan knew Kendall had a lot to work through right now. He still harbored some guilt from the previous year, when he had frozen, unable to shoot, allowing a killer to enter a crowded mall. This time he had acted swiftly, shooting a man based solely on speculation. That his hunch had proven correct might not be enough to assuage his hard-nosed conscience. It had taken Kendall at least a decade to deal with the mildly unpleasant realization he might just be gay. Susan knew she could not solve this far more significant dilemma in the confines of a single car ride, so she did not even try.

  Jake stared straight ahead, his brow deeply furrowed, his jaw tightly clenched. Ignorant of police training, Susan had a much harder time reading him. She knew she had to start with the basics: he was human, with normal emotions and reactions. He had chosen a career filled with excitement and danger, particularly in the locale he practiced. Yet she had to believe the events of the past few days were not typical for him. Police, she believed, like doctors, spent far more time dealing with documentation and testimony, more with observation and intervention than with cardiac arrests or gunplay. Without him, she would already be dead at least three times over. She needed him awake, alive, and with his wits intact. I’m a psychiatrist, for God’s sake. I need to fix him.

  Susan worked into it slowly. “Jake?”

  He barely responded. “Hmmm?”

  “Back at the building, why didn’t you answer your dispatcher?”

  That got his attention. He even glanced at her briefly. “What do you mean?”

  “He asked you where you were, and you didn’t answer. The last time we were in a plainclothes situation, you made us go out in the hallway so they wouldn’t mistake us for the shooters.”

  Jake sighed deeply. Her simple question, intended to ease into the conversation, had clearly struck right to the heart of the problem. “Last time I’d been hit in the chest. I figured I was a dead man walking on nothing but adrenaline.”

  There was more to the answer, and Susan knew it. “So…you didn’t respond this time because…you were still alive?”

  Pressed, Jake fairly growled, “I didn’t respond this time because we had to leave; we couldn’t wait for backup. There. Are you satisfied?”

  It was the first time Jake had ever snarled at her, but Susan refused to take it personally. Something else was bothering him, and she had hit close to home. “We could have waited a little bit. At least until they arrived.”

  “If we waited until they arrived, I’d have had to assist them in rooting out the shooter. They’d have taken us to the station, where we’d have spent five or six hours tied up in questions and explanations.”

  “Oh.” Susan had not anticipated that, though it made a lot of sense.

  “We’d be sitting ducks for Cadmium, who would have swept in with government clearance and taken us without a fight.” Jake’s teeth clenched so forcefully Susan worried about his jaw. “They need you alive, at least for a while. Kendall and I have no value to them at all. After I took down two of theirs, they might relish the chance to finish me off.”

  Susan heard Kendall stir in the back. Despite the depth of his own contemplation, he was listening.

  Susan’s intuition told her to continue. “There’s more,” she encouraged softly. “Something new. Something that hit you the moment you disconnected that Vox.”

  Jake tipped his head. At least one of the maelstrom of emotions currently assailing him must have drained away, because his jaw relaxed and the cadence of his voice slowed to normal. “You’re good.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Susan would not allow him to change the subject. “I’m the best psychiatrist in the world. Now spill it.”

  Jake’s hesitation now seemed to have more to do with finding the proper phraseology than any attempt to hide his discomfort. “You know how doctors tend to stick together, to protect one another?”

  “That’s a myth,” Kendall said from the back.

  Susan had to agree. “Too much ego. We’re constantly stabbing each other in the back in order to take the credit for what goes right.” Even as she spoke the words, she realized she had a bit of that propensity herself, and it mostly accounted for her multiple run-ins with Mitchell Reefes. She knew exactly how to handle him now, assuming she survived long enough to continue her residency. “Plus, each of us believes our way is the best way, and anyone who does it differently is a moron.”

  Kendall made it simple. “It’s like sharing a dishwasher with an obsessive-compulsive. There’s the right way and the how-could-any-living-person-be-such-a-blithering-idiot way.”

  “Uh.” Jake considered that. “Well, it’s different for cops. The thin blue line is very real, similar to the camaraderie between soldiers in a unit. When your lives depend on one another, you develop an unshakable loyalty.” Abruptly, he took what seemed like a different tack. “You ever see a Steven Segal movie?”

  The name sounded only vaguely familiar to Susan. “Was he an actor?”

  “Actor, producer, writer. Started in a movie called Above the Law, which pretty much sums up the theme of his movies, most of which went direct to video.”

  Apparently, Kendall had either seen some or had heard about their reputation. “Usually about some rogue cop who continues following a case despite having been ordered off of it. The idea being he goes on to successfully complete an impossible mission, and throws his accomplishments back into the faces of his superiors.”

  Susan got it. “Ah, the rogue-cop theme. It’s a television and video staple.”

  “It’s also an oxymoron.” Talking about what troubled him seemed to help Jake regain his composure.

  A light went on in Susan’s mind. “Are you saying you’re a rogue cop now?”

  “No!” The response was so abrupt, so sure, it was the closest thing Susan had ever heard to a verbal gunshot. “Never! My sudden departure will cause some serious consternation. I’ll be answering a lot of hard questions for a very long time, an
d I’m going to have to construct some suitable answers. But my superiors know essentially where I am, what I’m doing, at least in a general sense. I’m working on a wink and a nod, and they may have to disavow me if things get tight, but I’m not directly risking my job. Assuming, of course, I survive this.”

  Kendall asked the obvious questions: “So, why didn’t you just tell them you had to go, instead of leaving things hanging? Why did you call it in at all?”

  “I called it in for the safety of the officers responding to the gunshots. They need to know what’s going on. I didn’t tell them I was leaving the scene, because that would make it an internal issue. This way, I can claim something pulled me away before I could answer, like I was chasing a bad guy and my borrowed Vox dropped its battery.”

  “So you’re going to lie?” Kendall pointed out.

  Susan immediately cut in with a reassurance. “You’re damned right he’s going to lie. And we’re going to swear to it. Right, Kendall?” She did not wait for her companion to reply before speaking directly to Jake. “Tell us what to say, and we’ll say it. We owe you our lives several times over.”

  “Consider me a scripted actor,” Kendall called up from the back. “I have no problem with lying to protect a friend.” He probably intended the rest to be subvocal, but Susan managed to hear it. “It’s shooting people I have a problem with.”

  Jake looked at Susan again, then back at the road. She noted he always buckled his seat belt, nearly always kept his hands on the steering wheel at the classic ten and two o’clock positions. “Susan, are you sure we’re doing the right thing?”

  Susan could barely fathom the question. “A little white lie to keep you employed isn’t that big a deal.”

  Jake shook his head. “No, I mean about the whole positronic-robots situation. I mean, these Cadmium guys are from the Department of Defense of the United States of America, not China. Isn’t there something to be said for allowing them to work with the highest levels of technology in order to keep us—and our neighbors—safe?”

  Though she did not need to, Susan gave Jake’s words significant consideration. “You know, I hate it when animal-rights activists call scientists murderers for performing necessary experiments. I love animals. Most people do. Scientists are no exception. I have no problem with people who want strict oversight to ensure research remains as humane as possible. But it seems like the same activists who believe they’re freeing rabbits from torture and slavery are the ones quickest to run crying to a lawyer when they suffer from a side effect of a medication or procedure.”

  Kendall called up, “You probably have a point related to the question, don’t you, Susan?”

  Jake chuckled.

  Susan turned the driver a loathsome look. “Don’t laugh. It only encourages him.” Nevertheless, she dropped the analogy. “I’m just saying, I understand hypocrisy. If I want protection, I need to trust my protectors, even if they have to overstep a boundary now and then.” She struggled to put her thoughts into words, and wound up finishing lamely, “But this is different.” Susan knew she could not leave it there; she had to explain. “USR isn’t withholding anything from the Department of Defense. The military has robotic technology. Everyone knows we’ve used unmanned drones since at least the war in Vietnam. They even have positronic robots in their employ, just not as…direct weapons.”

  As both men seemed to be listening intently, Susan continued. “I now believe I fully understand what Lawrence and my father meant about positronic robots being intrinsically linked to the Three Laws, why they can’t be separated. It might help to think of positronic robots as humans, the positronic brain as religion, and the Three Laws as inviolate commandments.”

  Kendall inserted, “I’ve known some deeply religious people who believe themselves above morality. Also some highly ethical atheists.”

  Susan agreed. “In fact, I consider myself one of the latter, for the most part. But we’re all raised with some sort of moral code we internalize and believe, regardless of whether we follow it to the letter. Remember, I stated the Three Laws of Robotics were inviolate commandments. If the ten featured in our Judeo-Christian bibles were equally impossible to break, we would live in a very different world.”

  Jake nodded. “I’d be out of a job, for sure.”

  “No, you wouldn’t,” Kendall said. “You’d just be enforcing different laws. Things like ‘No milking brown-and-white pygmy goats on a Sunday,’ or ‘It’s illegal to flick boogers into the wind.’”

  Jake managed another chuckle. “Fine. Let’s agree it would make my job a lot more boring, anyway.”

  Susan returned to her argument. “Positronic robots don’t start with malleable infant brains into which we can cram our ideals until they seem hardwired. It’s long been known children raised in abusive or neglectful environments—and by that I mean mostly or wholly devoid of stimulation and caring—develop a complex and extremely dangerous brain disorder known as reactive attachment disorder.”

  “True,” Kendall confirmed.

  “But positronic robots aren’t human,” Jake pointed out. “They’re tools.”

  Susan tried not to take offense. People considering circumstances in a personal, rather than an objective, ethical light, were probably the cause of most of the world’s strife. She did not want to create trouble where none needed to exist. “Tools, yes, but not like a hammer or a tank. Positronic robots have the capacity to think and reason. How do you justify using anything with actual intelligence as a weapon?”

  “It’s done all the time.” Jake continued to stare out the window. “Wars are fought between human beings, with soldiers as weapons.”

  Kendall added his piece. “I’d classify the soldiers as the warriors making decisions for the weapons, not the weapons themselves.”

  “Kamikazes,” Jake supplied. “Homicide bombers.”

  Susan shrugged. “Forced suicide, in many cases. Hopeless people talked into the unthinkable. Those who do it with vicious enthusiasm obviously have serious psychiatric issues: reactive attachment, antisocial personality disorder, or even brainwashing. But these positronic robots won’t have a choice. And, if not endowed with some form of moral code, such as the basic one supplied by the Three Laws, they won’t have anything to guide their actions. They’re not just tools then; they’re holocausts waiting to happen.”

  The men fell into a thoughtful hush, but only momentarily. Jake said, “Isn’t that sort of the point, Susan? They’d be awesome weapons.”

  “Awesome weapons without the burden of morals or ethics or even loyalty. Accountable to no one.” Susan drew from earlier in the conversation. “Rogue weapons.”

  “Maybe,” Jake tried, “you could undo the First and Third Laws, leaving the Second. That would still make them accountable.”

  “Yeah, to everyone,” Susan supplied. “Including the enemy. They’d be constantly trying to decide between conflicting commands, without the benefit of any moral anchoring.” She allowed that picture to sink in before continuing. “Besides, that’s not how it works. The Three Laws are a unit, bound together and created by some of the world’s greatest minds.”

  “Your parents,” Jake pointed out.

  “Yeah, they happened to be. So what? That’s not really the issue here.” Susan felt obligated to remind the others, “Lawrence Robertson and his team created something unique, something beyond the understanding of much of society. USR has worked tirelessly for nearly three decades to produce a safe and useful product…and not in a vacuum. I’m sure they started debating and discussing the implications of positronic robots long before they connected the first wires. Not only do they have a right to have the strongest say in the legacy of their creation, but I believe they knew exactly what might happen if anyone found a way to deactivate the Three Laws.”

  Kendall summed things up. “So, protecting this information you found at the bench is worth dying for?”

  “I believe,” Susan said, enunciating each word, “that not pr
otecting it would be a crime against humanity. That losing it would be tantamount to global catastrophe.”

  “Global catastrophe,” Jake repeated. “You really believe if this code falls into the hands of our own government, it would herald the end of the world?”

  Susan harbored little doubt. “The end of the world.”

  Kendall leaned forward. Some of the color had returned to his features. “So, what, exactly, is this doomsday code, Susan? What little present did your father leave us at the bench?”

  “I’m not sure.” Susan felt for the object through her khakis. It moved freely in her pocket. “It seems to be a port key.”

  “A port key?” Kendall snorted. “You mean one of those little doohickeys we used to use to gang Vox or computers or both together? Before government-regulated global wireless put the so-called phone companies out of business? Back when the Net had holes.”

  The size of her thumbnail, the port key was shaped like a rounded letter H. Susan tried to think back to the last time she had discussed port keys with her father. She had wondered aloud why manufacturers still included ports on Vox, and he had mentioned rain fade, solar flares, malfunctions, and other satellite issues. He had also talked about a less-common type of port key that could actively store a small amount of data. She was trying to remember how it worked when Jake chimed in.

  “Port keys aren’t entirely obsolete, Kendall. There’s always some overlap between old and new tech. The station keeps a drawer full of them in case a foreign government took down our communications network. The smart port key technology was just beginning when the global web went up, so not a lot of people know about them, and fewer use them. It’s possible to link two systems with a port key, then leave a small package of data that can only be retrieved if that port key is later plugged into the exact same two devices.”

  Susan felt certain Jake had just hit the nail on the head. “So, we’re together on this. Right? The information stays out of the hands of agents, federal or foreign.”