Asimov's Future History Volume 5

by Isaac Asimov

  There was just no way around it. The ship was an impenetrable maze, its key elements linked in a hopelessly inefficient and disorderly manner. Derec could think of only two explanations for it. One had to do with defense. The arrangement probably served to disguise the crucial targets, and was certain to frustrate intruders.

  The other explanation was that the ship was just what it appeared to be — a jury-rigged mishmash of ships that had never been intended to be joined together.

  Whichever was the case, Derec was on the verge of concluding that the ship was too complex for him ever to hold its plan in his head, when he felt a queer momentary sensation of being turned inside out. The moment he felt it, he started back toward the laboratory, his jaw set in a grim expression. He wanted to believe it was only a moment of dizziness, a sign of creeping fatigue, but he could not.

  For the feeling was nothing new to Derec. It was a Jump, that oddly incomprehensible, almost mystical, momentary transition through hyperspace that transferred a ship and all it contained from one point in space to another, light-years away. Wherever they had been, they were somewhere else now. Far away from the asteroid base — far away from any ship that might have been en route there to rescue him.

  He should have guessed that the raiders had Jump technology, for the design of the ship would never have stood up to any sort of conventional propulsion. But he had not, and the discovery jolted him, bringing back full force the feeling of powerlessness that he had felt in the robots’ custody.

  No one’s going to find me now, he thought despairingly. Not if I live to be a thousand —

  The lab was empty except for the robot when Derec reached it.

  “Alpha.”

  “Yes, Derec.”

  “Did you monitor a Jump a short time ago?”

  “No, Derec. Since the reflexes of my positronic brain are so much faster than yours, robots do not experience the disorientation common among humans.”

  “Then you can’t tell me anything about it — how far we might have Jumped.”

  “Without knowing the power curve of the vessel’s drive, I would not have been able to interpolate from the duration of the Jump in any case,” the robot said. “However, that does not rule out secondhand evidence concerning our destination.”

  “What secondhand evidence? Where did you get it?”

  “Sir, Aranimas and Wolruf held a discussion about this in my presence.”

  “When?”

  “This evening, less than one decade ago. It was my impression that they had come here to find you, but in your absence lingered to examine me. Wolruf described the work she had observed you doing, told how my position varied each time she visited, and pointed out to Aranimas several of my access ports and described what lay under them.”

  “I thought she was spying on me,” Derec fumed. “What else happened?”

  “Aranimas seemed disturbed that you were absent without supervision, and ordered Wolruf to watch you more closely in the future —”

  “Get to the point. Where are we? Where are we going?”

  “I was forced to make certain inferences from what I heard, but I believe we are making an inbound approach to a site where Aranimas expects to obtain a large quantity of additional robots.”

  “Repeat the relevant part of the conversation.”

  “Yes, Derec.”

  The voices were so faithfully duplicated that if Derec closed his eyes he would have sworn Aranimas and Wolruf were in the room with him.

  “We’ave been away from Mrassdf a long time,” said Wolruf. “The Narwe arr restless for their ‘ome ‘erds. Even I grow weary from time to time. Iss it truly necessary to go to another ‘uman nest?”

  “I will not go back empty-handed,” Aranimas said.

  “’U have the jewel, this robot, and more besides. ‘U have exceeded ‘ur promises to Wiwera. Surely enough glory will flow from those accomplishments —”

  “It is not for discussion,” Aranimas said curtly. “I will have robots to serve me. The human Derec said that there would be robots at any human world, that they would trade with us if we come in peace. We will allow them to think we come in peace and then take what we need. Then, and only then, will we set course for Mrassdf.”

  Wolruf’s voice took on a pleading, whining tone. “The Narwe are truly worthless ones, there can be no doubt. But if we were to lose the jewel in hand while reaching for a bit of glass —”

  The robot interrupted himself. “At this point, Aranimas produced a weapon I cannot identify and pointed it at Wolruf. It seemed to cause Wolruf great distress.”

  Then it continued in Aranimas’s voice. “You disappoint me, Wolruf. I thought you had more vision than that. Without the robots, I will have to surrender that jewel to Wiwera when we return — which I have no intention of doing. Better that you and I are turned to atoms here than to give up the key to such as Wiwera.”

  The robot fell silent, and Derec found himself with nothing to say. One more stop, and the raiders were going home with their treasure. Where that stop was, there was no guessing. There were hundreds of Spacer facilities scattered over hundreds of light-years. It could be a Customs station lying between Settler and Spacer territory, a mining or processing center, or even one of the research complexes. It might be staffed with humans, humans and robots, or robots alone.

  It didn’t matter. He would never see it.

  Aranimas would use him — his knowledge, his voice, perhaps even his image — to gain entry to the installation. And when the alien’s business there was done, the ship would leave for Mrassdf, where Derec was destined to be nothing better than a slave, and perhaps nothing more than a curiosity.

  The realization of his impotence shattered Derec. He had taken the lone road and done everything he could by himself. He had schemed and blustered and fought and finagled his way past each succeeding challenge.

  But the challenge now facing him seemed insurmountable. Sometime within the next few days, he had to escape — from a ship in which he could not yet even find his way around, from a jailer whose capabilities he had not yet fully gauged, to a refuge whose promise of safety was more hopeful than real.

  The fight drained out of him as he confronted the bleak possibilities. Aranimas had all the advantages. He would have Derec watched constantly while they were docked at the installation — if they docked at all. And Derec could not move sooner, for he could never hold the ship. He was outnumbered eighty to one by the crew.

  All Derec had was the robot, and that was not enough. I can’t do it, he thought despairingly. But I can’t just give up —

  The conflicting thoughts chased each other through his mind, neither gaining the advantage. Weary and confused, he retreated to the far side of the room and huddled there against the base of the wall.

  I’ve got to have help, he realized at last. I’ve got to stop trying to do it all myself — got to trust someone. It’s that or resign myself to living the rest of my life on an alien world —

  And then it came to him that there was someone else on board who was just as alone, just as helpless, who might take not only comfort but courage from a companion. Someone, in fact, who had already proclaimed herself Derec’s friend.

  If she’ll help, Derec thought, we just might do it, at that —

  An hour of waiting had slipped by. Reinvigorated by hope, Derec’s attention had wandered from watching the doorway to playing with the pieces of the puzzle.

  “’Ur back,” a gruff voice intruded.

  Derec raised his head and looked toward Wolruf. “I went walking. You’ve been looking for me, haven’t you?”

  “Aranimas was looking for ‘u,” Wolruf corrected. “‘U stay ‘ere now, okay?”

  “Is he coming back?”

  “Boss iss resting now. ‘E’ll come to see ‘u in the morning. Best ‘u be ‘ere,” Wolruf said, turning away.

  “You got in trouble with Aranimas because I was gone, didn’t you?” Derec called after her.

&nbs
p; The caninoid stopped, looked back, and shrugged.

  “I’m sorry,” Derec said. “I put you in a bad position.”

  “Iss nothing new. I put myself therr enough.”

  Derec smiled. “Tell me something, Wolruf. What are you doing here? Why are you working for someone like Aranimas?”

  “Too long a story to explain.”

  “You’re not on board by choice, are you.”

  “Too complicated to explain.”

  “I’ve got the time — and I really want to know.”

  Wolruf hesitated, then advanced a few steps into the room. “Should go sleep,” she said gruffly.

  “Why not do what you want to instead of what you ought to?”

  Crouching an arm’s length away, Wolruf grinned. “That the secret of ‘ur success?”

  It took longer than it should have to sort out the story. Wolruf had never had to talk about her home and life to someone who did not know the thousand and one things that a person living within a culture knows without thinking. Again and again, Derec had to ask her to go back and fill in some clarifying detail.

  Beyond that, there were language problems, as some of what Wolruf was trying to convey ran up against the limits of her Standard vocabulary. At other times she seemed to be talking around some fact or idea that she did not feel comfortable disclosing.

  Piecing together what he heard and filling in a few of the blanks on his own, Derec gained a reasonably coherent answer to his question. Despite Wolruf’s boast of two hundred inhabited worlds, the crew of the ship was from a single solar system. Aranimas’s kind — the Erani — and the Narwe lived on the second planet, Mrassdf, which by Wolruf’s description was a hot, windswept, unpleasant world. Wolruf’s kind — the name was just as unpronounceable as Wolruf’s own — and the elusive star-creatures were from the temperate fourth planet.

  The relationship between the Narwe and the Erani was like that between sheep and their shepherds, except that the Narwe were more intelligent and physically adept than sheep. But the comparison was still apt. The Narwe vastly outnumbered the Erani, but the Erani — aggressive, inventive, acquisitive — were completely dominant.

  The relationship between the two worlds was rather more complex, and Derec did not completely understand it. Neither planet seemed to have a unified government. That might have been the only thing that kept them from going to war, for there clearly was a basic antipathy between them. Despite that, there was active commerce between the worlds. At the center of it were trading companies operated by several factions of Erani and goods produced by several families of Wolruf’s people.

  Wolruf would not talk much about Aranimas in particular, but he seemed to be a younger member of one of the more powerful Erani factions. Derec gleaned that somehow Wolruf’s family had run afoul of Aranimas’s trading company.

  “My service on this mission lifts the dhierggra from my family,” she explained.

  The dhierggra, Derec determined after much questioning, was equivalent to a blacklist — while it was in effect, no Erani would deal with the family. That made Wolruf, in essence, an indentured servant — a slave, working off her family’s debt.

  “Why were you chosen?”

  “I am youngest, least valuable to my family.”

  Derec did not want to rush to judge an entire culture on one story from one member, but he found himself getting angry over the injustice. “Is that why Aranimas treats you the way he does? Is that part of the deal, that he gets to push you around?”

  “That iss the Erani way. They treat everyone so.”

  “Not each other,” Derec said. “That’s what makes it wrong.”

  It was then that Derec realized that somewhere in the course of the conversation, something unexpected had happened. He had drawn Wolruf out selfishly, calculating. It was just another angle to exploit. But as he had listened to her, his false sympathy for her plight became real empathy for her pain. She was a victim, just as he was.

  But she seemed uncomfortable with his concern. “Not ‘ur trouble.”

  “Wolruf — you said you were my friend. Let me be yours.”

  “What do ‘u mean?”

  “Aranimas is working you like a slave and abusing you like an animal. It doesn’t have to be that way. We can put a stop to it, together.”

  “How?”

  “I have a tool,” he said, nodding toward the robot. “And I have some ideas. But I need you to tell me some things — about Aranimas, and about how this ship is controlled.”

  Wolruf looked uncomfortable, and Derec was afraid that he had gone too fast and frightened her. “You want the jewel back,” she said.

  Honesty was an imperative. “I do.”

  “’U will take it and leave me to face Aranimas.”

  Derec shook his head emphatically. “I do have to get away. I can’t let Aranimas take me back to Mrassdf. But if I can’t leave you in a better situation than you’re in now, I’ll take you with me. Wolruf — we’re the only ones who can help each other. If we don’t try, then we deserve what happens to us.”

  The caninoid met Derec’s questioning gaze unblinkingly. “That iss true. Okay — friend. Less try.”

  There seemed to be something in the biology of Wolruf’s kind which sharpened the imperative for sleep and rejuvenation. It was almost as though there was within them a metabolic switch which, once tripped, told them in no uncertain terms that the primary energy fund had been exhausted and it was time to withdraw.

  A half-hour after they began talking, with only some of Derec’s questions answered and their plan barely sketched out, Wolruf’s alarm went off. Her eyes narrowed to slits, her breath took on a sour tang, and her fur lay flat and seemed to lose luster.

  Though he still had many urgent questions, Derec did not even get a chance to try to coax her to stay. With no more explanation than a muttered “must sleep,” she rose and was gone.

  Wolruf’s departure made Derec suddenly aware of his own weary limbs. But there was one further task he had to see to before he could think about curling up on the thin mattress.

  The robot was waiting where it had settled after completing Derec’s last order several hours ago, but that was no surprise. There had been an unnatural passiveness to the robot’s behavior ever since Derec had activated it, a passiveness above and beyond the wait-states he had prescribed. A normal robot had a variety of duties it attended to without external direction, following the default orders built into it for its primary function: domestic, laborer, engineer, and the like.

  The robot’s initiative had apparently fallen victim to the burned-out memory cubes and the cold powerdown. But it still had the Second Law, and so it sat and waited patiently for the words from Derec that would give it something to do.

  Derec’s first act was to pull the Mathematics cube and replace it with the Personal Defense cube. The additional pathways in the PD cube would enhance the robot’s sense of impending harm and its anxiety to act to prevent it. But they would also suppress the robot’s normal inclination to protect him from immediate, concrete risks without regard to the consequences of doing so. The First Law did not have any exceptions built into it for taking well-intentioned gambles; the PD cube provided them.

  “Alpha,” Derec said when he was done. “My previous instructions for you to go into a wait-state when one of the aliens approaches are now canceled. But where possible, you are still to avoid revealing the unique capabilities of your right arm.”

  “I understand, Derec.”

  “I am now going to give you a block of instructions which will not become operative until you hear the initiate code. The initiate code, which must come from me, is the question, ‘Who is your master?’ The disable code is the word ‘Aurora.’”

  “I understand, Derec.”

  “Begin instruction block. You will answer the initiate code with the reply ‘Aranimas.’ You’ll go with Aranimas wherever he wishes you to go. You are to follow his orders except where they conflict with the F
irst, Second, or Third Laws or this instruction block. You will not follow orders given by Wolruf or any other nonhuman member of the crew. You will not accept any additional orders from me unless preceded by the disable code. You will respond to informational inquiries from Wolruf or myself. However, you will not relate, replay, or in any way communicate to Aranimas this conversation or any other conversation with me which he did not witness.”

  “Clarification. You wish for Aranimas to believe that I am completely in his service?”

  “Suspend. I do,” Derec said. “If he’s going to get any use out of you, he’s going to have to teach you about the ship. Anything you learn will help us escape.”

  “I understand the necessity for intelligence, sir,” the robot said. “But if I am to protect you I must remain at your side.”

  Derec had expected the objection — PD circuits made robots more argumentative. “Since Aranimas is in command of this ship, he is the real threat to me. Only his actions or his orders can harm me. By remaining close to him, you will be best able to protect me.”

  “I understand, sir.”

  “All right. Resume. There are two things that we particularly need to know. A valuable object came aboard with me, a metallic rectangle, silver color, about five by ten centimeters. I think it’s the same object Aranimas called the key, and Wolruf the jewel. It’s apparently valuable and powerful. We need to know where it is.”

  “Yes, Derec. I will be particularly alert for clues to this object’s whereabouts.”

  “The other thing we need to know is what Spacer facility we’re heading for and when we’re going to get there. If we wait too long to move, Aranimas will have us locked up somewhere to keep us out of his hair while he’s stealing robots.”

  “That would be a prudent precaution.”

  “Which means that Aranimas will probably think of it,” Derec said. “If you learn where the key is located, you are to wait one decad and then simulate a Code 804 malfunction. If you learn where we are headed or when we are to arrive, you are to wait fifteen centads and then simulate a Code 3033 malfunction. End instruction block.”