Asimov’s Future History Volume 9

by Isaac Asimov

  Coren tugged the sheets down. Stained. Sweat? The coloration was wrong for anything else. Still, the possibility that someone had been in bed with him was not unreasonable. What had he said about his contacts?

  “A woman named Tresha and a man named Gamelin. I assume he’s just muscle, he’s big enough.”

  Coren thought back to his last visit to Jeta Fromm’s hab, and the fact that a man and woman had come to see her, but she had already left. What was the chronology? A day? Two days? Things had happened so fast. The warren rat had said the man was big, something wrong with him. The same pair?

  He wondered then if the woman who’d acted as his data troll had even been Jeta Fromm. Perhaps he’d been dealing with this “Tresha “all along...

  The sheets were skewed in the direction of the bathroom, but that did not necessarily mean Damik had been dragged. Coren left the bedroom and almost stepped on a forensic recorder. The compact, turtle-shelled unit continued on, oblivious to Coren’s presence, looking for the minutiae that might provide a clue–hairs, skin, fibers, fluids.

  Coren stopped before the large picture and watched the rectangles drift before and behind each other. It was a very expensive piece, Auroran, Coren thought, and he wondered if it were an import as well. He turned away after a few minutes and did a slow circuit of the living room.

  A low table made from a sheet of thinly-sliced granite stood between facing setees. One glass stood in a drying pool of condensation, ice melted at the bottom.

  One glass.

  No clothes in the living room.

  He entered the kitchen. Four glasses stood on the counter by the sink, all empty.

  The place had been cleaned, he realized. While Damik had been tortured–four or five hours’ worth, according to Capel–someone had gone through the apartment and tidied up.

  Damik’s office showed a little more disorder, but none of it appeared significant. A few papers scattered on the desk, disks stacked sloppily, a jacket draped over a chair back.

  A few plaques decorated one wall. Coren smiled, seeing the Special Service certificate, and, beside it, a merit award for bravery. He did not recall the action, but he could look it up.

  Damik had gone to university–Nestern in the Freno District–and graduated with a degree in art history. Coren grunted, surprised. He would never have guessed.

  The frame rested crookedly on the wall. Coren brought a fingertip against the lower left comer and pushed up to straighten it. The hook on which it hung came loose and the entire plaque clattered to the floor.

  It burst apart–frame, cover sheet, hook, and documents–and sprawled across Coren’s feet. Damik had used the same display to hold several items, one atop the other. Coren knelt quickly. He counted half a dozen certificates, which must have strained the capacity of the frame, stuffed past its meager limits. Coren gathered them up.

  More graduation certificates. Damik had taken courses in a number of unrelated fields: cooking, the history of paleoanthropology, astronomy, microcircuit repair. All them unexpected and, in their diversity, admirable.

  Coren stopped at the last document. Damik’s grammar school certificate, from the Holmer Foster Gymnas Cooperative.

  Brun was an orphan...?

  Something else about the name of the facility seemed familiar. Later, he decided; he could look it up later. He folded the certificate and tucked it into an inside pocket, then reassembled the frame. He found the hook and pressed it back into the wall and carefully set the display on it, which then listed crookedly to the left.

  Capel waited in the living room.

  “Anything?” he asked.

  “Nothing obvious. You realize that the place was sanitized.”

  Capel scowled. “They had time. Where can I reach you if I need to ask further questions?”

  Coren fished out a card and handed it to Capel.

  “So have you found Nyom Looms yet?” Capel asked.

  “I’m still looking,” Coren said smoothly.

  Capel nodded again. “We’ll be in touch.”

  “Even if you don’t need me, let me know, would you? Damik and I did work together once.”

  Capel seemed to soften a little. “Sure.”

  “By the way, did he have any relatives?” It seemed likely that Damik would have been adopted, but Coren never heard him talk about anyone. That omission now acquired significance.

  “I was going to ask you that. None we’ve found. He had a broker. We’ll be talking to him.”

  “Hm. Too bad.”

  Coren left. He checked his watch. He had less than forty minutes to get to the Auroran embassy. Too little time, really, to sort out his thoughts, much less his feelings.

  Brun Damik was an orphan...

  He pulled out his comm. “Desk; connect to the public records of the Holmer Foster Gymnas Cooperative. Alumni.”

  While he waited, Coren teased at the reasons Damik had been killed. Because of Coren’s visit? So soon? That implied a surveillance network of remarkable scope. Had Damik called someone, given himself away, or was this an unrelated matter?

  “Connection complete,” his Desk said.

  “Access records for Damik, Brun.”

  “Located.”

  “List of kin or other relations.”

  “Parents, Evlin Mores and Rolsin Dynik, recorded as deceased. Institutional guardianship until age eleven.”

  Mores and Dynik... sound familiar... Coren could not remember. “Then what?”

  “Elective sponsorship.”.’

  “Name of sponsor?”

  Under security lock.”

  “Hack it. I want that name.”

  “Working.”

  Damik’s parents seemed so familiar, as if he had met them or seen their names

  The list of people in Wenithal’s investigation.

  He needed to check it again and verify, but now that he remembered he was sure.

  “Finished,” his Desk reported. “Sponsor listed as Wenithal, Ree, agent with Eurosector police.”

  Fourteen

  “A DINNER?” DEREC shook his head at the image on the comm screen. Ariel returned his cynical look. “I don’t get this,” he continued. “Two days ago we were all but persona non grata and now Setaris is inviting you to embassy soirees.”

  “It gets better,” Ariel said. “Jonis will be there.”

  “Taprin... it occurs to me that you’re being used here.”

  “Really?” Ariel intoned with mock dismay. “I asked Lanra to be my guest. One good surprise is worth another.”

  “Do you trust him?”

  “Of course not. He hasn’t told us half of what he’s looking into.”

  “Fair is fair. We aren’t telling him everything, either.”

  Ariel shrugged. “Do you want to take odds on whether the two lines of inquiry intersect?”

  “I’m not sure I want them to.”

  “Well... Lanra asked me if Chassik would be there tonight. I asked him why, and he said it was something he stumbled on.”

  “Chassik. What could he possibly want with Chassik?”

  “I have some opinions. Did you know that Solaria owns Nova Levis?”

  “That hasn’t come out in the newsnets.”

  “No, and it may not. They owned it before it was Nova Levis, when it was no more than a Solaria mining franchise called Cassus Thole. The colony–a Settler colony–is a lease agreement that was originally set up between Solaria and the Church of Organic Sapiens.”

  Derec started. “Looms’ church?”

  “The same, only back before they were so rabidly antispace. Now, just to heap coincidence upon coincidence, Gale Chassik was one of the initial investors in a biomed research lab called–are you ready?–Nova Levis, which was closed after having been investigated for infant brokering.”

  Derec whistled. “Convergence is imminent.”

  “So it seems. How’s it coming with the robot?”

  Derec glanced across the small workspace at Rana. She sta
red, rapt, at the banks of screens, calibrating the myriad details of Thales’ link to facilitate a precise excavation. The robot itself remained where it had been left, on its pallet, now connected to Thales and Rana’s console via several heavy cables.

  “I’d say another half-hour, we’ll have the interface running at an acceptable level,” he said. A small icon in the upper left corner of the comm screen revealed Thales’ presence in the exchange, monitoring security and running an encryption routine. Ariel saw the same icon on her end, otherwise she would never speak so freely on a commline.

  “Speaking of things robotic,” Derec said, “the director here is a man named Rotij Polifos. Do you know anything about him?”

  “No. Should I?”

  “He’s been director for seven years. I was just thinking,, it’s kind of unusual for an Auroran to stay in a Terran posting like this for that long. Don’t they usually rotate out more regularly?”

  “Usually. Maybe he likes it.”

  Derec frowned. “Maybe.”

  “Is there a problem?”

  “No, I just... it seems odd, that’s all.”

  “Have Hofton look into it. Keep your mind on the robot, Derec.”

  “Right, right. You know, Lanra wants us to prove a robot committed the murders. There’s no way, Ariel. Not this one, anyway. It’s just a standard DW-12 with a few added modules–nothing I don’t recognize–and it’s showing a nearly textbook collapse pattern. It couldn’t even have made the crack in the cargo bin, not without some tools.”

  “Oh, I don’t doubt the robot you have is innocent. What I’m wondering is, why didn’t the robot prevent the deaths? If a second robot had been involved, as unlikely as it sounds, this one should have intervened. Has Sipha Palen told you much yet?”

  “No. She wants us to run the excavation without any preconceptions. I can understand that.”

  “Get it done ASAP. I want to move this to the next level.”

  Derec raised an eyebrow. “What next level?”

  “I’m sending you a packet to go over in private,” Ariel replied. “About Nova Levis. Very interesting reading.”

  “The colony, or the lab you mentioned?”

  “Both. The list of shareholders in the lab is intriguing all by itself. Chassik isn’t the only surprise.” She looked away for a few seconds. PACKET RECEIVED appeared along the bottom of Derec’s screen.

  “Got it,” he said. “Be careful tonight, Ariel. We don’t want to be deported for bad taste.”

  Ariel’s eyes widened in mock surprise. “Derec, please! I? Bad taste?”

  Derec smiled. “Forgive me. I do know better.”

  She grinned. “Have fun.”

  The screen went blank then, except for Thales’ icon and the notice of the data packet. Derec plugged his personal datum into the board.

  “Download the packet for me, Thales,” he said. “I’ll look at it later.”

  “I would recommend sooner,” Thales said. “I compiled the raw data. It may be more relevant than you might think.”

  “‘Keep your mind on the robot,’ Ariel said. I’ll add it to the list, thanks.”

  Lights winked on the datum’s pad. He scooted his chair over by Rana. She worked with confidence, clearly in control, comfortable in her expertise. Better than Derec remembered, and he remembered her as being very good.

  “I suppose,” Rana said slowly, “that it’s occurred to you that you’re both being used.”

  “You think so?”

  “You’re being set up to take blame.”

  “That would be consistent.”

  “Then why are you going along with it?”

  “It’s a question of being deported now or later. The longer we put it off, the more chance there is to avoid it completely.”

  “You don’t believe that, do you?”

  “Shouldn’t I?” She shrugged. “I suppose you’re thinking that you might find something in this mess–” she waved at the screens “–that will make you so valuable to someone that they’ll intercede on your behalf and restore you to former glory.”

  “Something like that.”

  Rana shook her head. “I can’t imagine why. All I want to do is get away from this planet, and all you want to do is stay.” She turned to look at him. “Why?”

  “We’ve been over this before,” Derec said uncomfortably.

  “Yes we have. And you’ve never given me an answer. Excuses, reasons, justifications, but not an answer.” Rana glanced toward the curtain that isolated them from the rest of the lab. “This planet has treated you pretty badly. Hell, it’s treated me badly and I was born here; you weren’t. I grew up on Earth and I have no place here. I’m leaving first chance I get, to go somewhere I might be appreciated.”

  “Aurora is just as bad in different ways.”

  “But it’s not personal the way it is here.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “My co-workers, for one. After they got over the idea of a Terran who understood positronics, they treated me as an equal.”

  Derec shook his head. “No. You just haven’t learned to read the signs.”

  Rana cut the air with her hand. “Stop. It is different because I have skills they value. Maybe it will be only more of the same in a new way, but for now it feels like respect. I already know what I don’t have on Earth.”

  “So what is your question?”

  “Why are you so set on trying to stay here?”

  “You think there’s one answer?”

  “No, but there’s usually one thing that validates all the rest.”

  Derec stared at her, mind suddenly blank. “I never thought about it that way before,” he heard himself say. He no longer looked at Rana, but at a point just past her right shoulder, as if waiting for something to resolve in the air behind her.

  “I don’t need an answer now, boss,” Rana said. He refocussed on her.

  “Um...”

  “And I can manage this,” she said, turning back to the console.

  Conversation abruptly terminated, Derec went over to the gurney, annoyed and impressed by Rana.

  Beyond the fabric curtain he could hear the other lab workers moving and speaking in low tones. He leaned on the edge of the pallet and gazed down the length of the robot.

  “So where did you come from?” he muttered.

  The torso showed age and use. Scratches gave the impression of a complicated urban map etched in bronze. The metal gleamed dully through patches of tarnish and encrusted grime. Plates covered linkages thirty centimeters below its arms that allowed extra limbs to be connected. The arms themselves, three-jointed and thick, ended in finely articulated six-digit hands. The legs depended from a rotating platform beneath the torso shell. Derec noted more removable coverplates on the platform hiding assemblies to which secondary legs or support braces or tractor modules or one of several other modifications could be fitted. The DW-12 was a large robot, two-and-a-half meters tall, designed for a multiplicity of heavy tasks in conjunction with human workers, very adaptable, with an advanced positronic brain that allowed for considerable independence and problem-solving capacity.

  Vaguely humaniform, the head was little more than a protective helmet curving over the intricate sensor array behind the mesh-covered eyes. A complex architecture of connections rose out of the torso and joined the brain that lay within the chest cavity to the communications and sensory apparatus beneath the headcap. The normally thick column had been modified by the addition of accessory modules and cables. Normally, the “neck” would be covered by a smooth carapace, but the extra components jutted out like synthetic goiters, requiring a specially-fitted casement no one had bothered to acquire.

  Derec frowned at the overall dirty appearance. This robot had been worked hard for a long time. Hiding it, as would be necessary on Earth, probably prevented the owner from caring for it as thoroughly as needed, but he would have expected Palen’s forensics people to clean it up in the course of their inspection.
<
br />   But no thorough examination had been made.

  Derec started going over it more carefully.

  He felt beneath the headcap for the release and flipped the cover off, revealing the strutwork that caged the components. He took a rag and small bottle of solvent from the workbench and lightly cleaned off grime from the smooth surfaces until he found the serial number. He jotted it down and went to the comm, where he fed it to Thales to be encrypted and sent to Ariel.

  Derec made note of each component he recognized within the head. Optical and aural receptors and translators, UV and Infrared telemetric assemblers, gas traps linked to interferometers, location and attitude modules–nothing unexpected. He wanted to turn it over to get inside the torso shell, but not till Thales finished the excavation.

  On its right side, below the accessory limb coverplate, new metal shone brighter than the surrounding surface. A fifteen-centimeter square area had been replaced, the weld itself invisible but for the age difference in the material. Derec went over the rest of the body for signs of recent damage, but found none.

  He tried to imagine its last minutes. A chamber full of humans died around it. What would its reaction have been? Derec tapped his finger arrhythmic ally on the pallet.

  One human had been assaulted: Nyom Looms had suffered a broken neck. And this robot had failed to protect her from an alleged second robot.

  Which had now disappeared.

  Ridiculous.

  Derec turned over first one robotic hand, then the other.

  A dark substance filled the joints of three fingers, palm-side, of the right hand. Derec tried to flex them open but the segments were too tight. He found a small flathead screwdriver among the tools on the workbench. He slid a sheet of paper beneath the hand, then pried one of the segments open and dug at the matter embedded within the joint. Flakes fell to the paper.

  He looked around their workstation. No magnifier. Derec carefully brushed the recovered material into a small dish, clapped a lid on it, and stepped from behind the blind.