Asimov’s Future History Volume 9

by Isaac Asimov

  “Humans don’t even do that, “Coren said.

  “Not as effectively, no,” Ariel agreed. “But we have far fewer hardwired parameters and far more self-reprogramming parameters. We have both a sub-and an un-conscious. We can dream, we can imagine, we can lie, we can hallucinate. Reality is a conditional set of perceptions. The plasticity of our minds enables us to function even through gross distortions in our initial parameters. We imagine more richly and much faster than we process information. We’re inextricably linked to our environment, but our perceptions of our environment are fluid. We can be fooled, deceived, manipulated. But it’s a two-way exchange–the manipulator will be manipulated in turn through the interaction–but we can still function in the midst of deception and illusion. We can set aside our moral restrictions if need be–and we define our own need–and resume them later. If we choose. Humans, in short, can remake who they are at will. A positronic brain cannot.”

  Coren’s face showed the effort to understand. Ariel stopped, unsure how much he followed.

  “It borders on metaphysics,” he said.

  “‘Borders?’ Hell, it is metaphysics. All the philosophical speculation of ten thousand years became concrete when the first positronic robot sat up and said hello to its makers.”

  Coren nodded slowly. “And a cyborg?”

  Ariel sighed. “Positronic intelligence gave us another self aware entity we could compare our own to and ask questions about the differences. It gave us the measuring stick to determine what is human and what is not. Cyborgs... break the measuring sticks and dump all those questions back in our laps.”

  She leaned forward again. “Imagine a positronic brain with all its capacity to analyze data and perceive the world as a material whole all at once, joined to something that can set its own parameters. There is no buffer, no unconscious to help process excess data or unpalatable information, and no preset responses to conditions. It has no basis for behavior other than what it chooses to have at any given moment.”

  “You’ve described a sociopath.”

  “A very, very fast, smart sociopath. A sociopath we can’t begin to understand because we don’t have a model for its mental processes.”

  “Why did you stop working with them?”

  “We discovered that we couldn’t program in the Three Laws. Something in the mix, probably–undoubtedly–from the organic side kept overwriting them. The one consistent attribute that emerged was self-preservation. Beyond that, we had no idea how to cope with them. After a while it seemed immoral to continue the experiments.”

  “Immoral. You actually shut down a line of research on moral grounds?”

  “Why not? Spacers don’t get to be moral?”

  Coren shook his head. “No, it’s not that. I–never mind. So you’re saying that we were attacked by a cyborg.”

  “That’s my first guess. A robot would never have done that. I doubt a human–even one of your military modifications–could have survived those shots. I’d like to hope I’m wrong, but...” Ariel blinked at him, suddenly understanding something. “I see. You Earthers wouldn’t have shut down the experiments. You didn’t. The only thing that kept you from building cyborgs was the fact that you’d outlawed positronics.”

  Coren’s expression showed his ill-ease. He did not like what she had said but he could not deny it. Ariel had always been puzzled by Terran perversity, the apparent willingness to do what clearly should not be done. But perhaps the real puzzle was why Spacers chose not to do those things. Maybe their long lives gave them a better understanding of consequences. Maybe their smaller populations made them less willing to take risks on questionable projects. Terrans seemed only to care in hindsight, when things went wrong.

  One of their spasms of late conscience banished positronics...

  “How,” Coren said finally, “does this relate to Nyom Looms?”

  “That robot you saw.”

  Coren nodded. “Cyborg.”

  “More than likely.”

  “And the blood Avery found on Nyom’s robot...”

  “A cyborg composed partly of a relative?”

  Coren’s face contorted in harsh distaste. “Where? How? We can’t build them here, you won’t build them there...” His eyes widened. “Pirates. Black market.”

  “A reasonable guess.” Which would explain Aurora’s sudden interest in helping the Terran authorities with the baley problem. Where are all those baleys going?

  “Could someone somewhere be converting baleys–?”

  “No. A cyborg doesn’t work that way. You couldn’t take a full-grown human and make the conversion.” Ariel thought about that. “At least, I don’t think you could. From what I recall, a cyborg has to be grown. The mix has to mature in symbiosis, so ideally you’d start with a fetus.”

  “A newborn?”

  “Possibly. The organic system is still in transition through puberty, so I suppose children could be used, but the older the material the more difficult the process.”

  “But where would they get all the raw material?” Coren asked.

  “I said at the beginning of this evening that we need to talk to this retired policeman.”

  “Wenithal.” He blinked. “Orphanages.”

  Seventeen

  COREN SLEPT FOR an hour, then showered, swallowed more painblock, and found a change of clothes for Ariel. Dressed now in plain pants, work boots, and a dull blue jacket, she looked like any other T-rated office worker just off third shift, going home or shopping. He took her to the mall where RW Enterprises was and they waited in an open kitchen across from the entrance. Twenty minutes later, Wenithal emerged and trudged wearily down the concourse.

  Ariel drifted away, quickly and unobtrusively falling several meters behind Wenithal on the way out of the mall. Coren was mildly surprised and impressed at how quickly and easily she blended with Terrans. The more time he spent with her the less Spacer she seemed.

  He sat at a table at the edge of the pantry, nibbling on a meat pastry and sipping a cup of acrid coffee. After about ten minutes, he crumpled up the wrapper and dropped it and the half-full cup into the waste.

  At the door to RW Enterprises, he took out his palm monitor and a small device that he pressed to the wall just below the lock. While it worked to decode the access sequence, Coren pulled out a few of his little devices and activated them. He glanced around. The mall was pretty deserted, but a few people milled around. The trick was to gain entry as fast as possible, making it look as if he had been admitted. The longer it took the more conspicuous he became.

  The palm monitor chirped at him. He had the code. He entered a command that turned the ID scan on the door into a recorder, pocketed the reader, and pressed his right hand against the panel above the lock. A second later, the door slid open for him.

  He snatched his decoder from the wall and dropped his devices just inside the doorway. They scurried off to run interference for him as he proceeded on, into the plant.

  Machinery hummed. Coren went directly to Wenithal’s private office. As he stepped through the door, he thumbed his hemisphere for a little added security, set it in the middle of Wenithal’s cluttered desk, and paused.

  Where to start?

  Coren did a slow turn.

  It was a working office, that was clear. A few changes of clothes lay scattered over chairs, stacks of paper and disks filled corners, three empty cups sat on the desk.

  Coren looked for a personal datum. He found it tucked in a desk drawer.

  He took a disk from his pocket and inserted it into the datum’s reader. The screen scrolled up, went cloudy, then blank. Coren waited, listening intently to the distant sounds of automated machinery.

  Less than a minute later–a long time for the decryption ‘ware Coren used–the screen presented a menu.

  Letters, memos, profiles on clients, quarterly reports. Coren opened the latest of these and perused RW Enterprise’s Profits and Losses statements. One of the largest customers, he noted, was a
Solarian firm–Strychos–that bought nearly half a million meters of a synthetic fabric a year. The lot was identified only by a batch number. Coren opened his palm monitor, switched it to record, and began taking notes.

  Far down the menu he found a file named GRATUITES. Coren grunted in surprise. Well, he never thought anyone would open this...

  The file contained what it suggested: a list of people to whom Wenithal paid bribes.

  Brun Damik was halfway down. A very generous allocation.

  Gale Chassik appeared several lines further.

  Coren copied the list and closed the file. Studying the menu, he wondered how much more he needed to know about Ree Wenithal.

  Why you resigned after becoming a hero would be useful...

  He saw nothing that would seem to contain the answer to that, so he closed the datum down and returned it to the desk drawer.

  So Wenithal was paying bribes to Damik. Coren still did not understand what any of this had to do with baleys... though he felt he should know.

  There were several files of correspondence. Coren opened each one and perused addresses. He found several to a location in Petrabor. The documents themselves proved cryptic–evidently a code Coren did not recognize. Still, messages to someone in Petrabor seemed suggestive enough. He looked for replies and found them attached to each document–all of them were initialed either T. R. or Y. P.

  Yuri Pocivil …?

  Coren swiveled in the chair, searching the office walls. Nothing.

  He closed up his palm monitor and left the office. Sitting down at one of the secretarial stations, he accessed the production records. He located the batch number for the synthetic, and went into the main plant to look for it.

  The synthesizers looked like huge columns of dark gray segments piled high to the ceiling. Heavy conduits ran from their bases back into the shadows of the cavernous chamber. They hummed with activity, though only a few seemed to be outputting product into the deep troughs below their extrusion slots.

  Coren followed the row of machines to the one marked “Line 18” and stopped. It was on–they all were, it cost too much to shut them down completely and restart them–but nothing was coming out. Coren studied the control panel.

  “Imbitek,” he noted, recognizing the logo. He keyed for access. The screen gave him a list of options. He entered the code for a sample.

  Less than a minute later, a meter of black fabric oozed from the ‘machine into the trough. The cutter came down with a heavy thud to chop it off, and Coren picked up the sample.

  It was remarkably thin, almost insubstantial, and he found it difficult to hold, its surface friction nearly nonexistent. He managed to fold it down to a square that fit into his pocket with no more bulge than a handkerchief.

  He walked away from RW Enterprises as if he were late for an appointment, briskly but not so fast as to look culpable. Outside the mall, he called Ariel.

  Ree Wenithal lived modestly for his income. His apartments occupied two floors of an old warren complex that had once been a barracks for factory workers, then converted into luxury apartments nearly a century ago, and now had evolved into many things: apartments, clinics, retail shops, storerooms, offices. Coren was amused to find two private investigation agencies listed.

  Ariel waited across from the arched entry to Wenithal’s warren, sitting at an autochef with a cup of hot cocoa, doing a reasonably effective imitation of someone who had just gotten off-shift and on her way to well-earned sleep.

  “Did you follow him all the way in?” Coren asked; sliding onto the stool beside her.

  “No. I’m not altogether certain he didn’t see me, so I thought I’d better not. Did you find anything?”

  “Some, but I’m not sure if it means much. He runs a business.” Coren shrugged. “He’s paying bribes to Chassik.”

  Ariel frowned. “He does business with Solarians?”

  “A couple. Pretty big accounts.”

  “Solaria manufactures its own textiles. What are they buying from Earth?”

  “A half-million meters a year of a synthetic.” He showed her the sample. “If I’m not mistaken, this is myralar.”

  Ariel ran a finger over its slippery surface. “I’d have to analyze it, but it feels right. Hm. Half a million meters a year? That’s a lot, but not enormous.” She shook her head. “Maybe I’ll ask Chassik.”

  Coren drummed his fingers on the counter. “I’ve got his P&L records, we can go over them later. I don’t think we’ll find anything conclusive, though. He was bribing Damik, too. The bribe is unusually large, more than I would have guessed Damik would be worth.”

  “Did Damik have something over Wenithal?”

  “It’s a thought... but that’s not the feeling I got when I followed Damik to his meeting with Wenithal. Everything about it said Wenithal was the one in charge.” He glanced at her cup. “Are you done?”

  Ariel held up the cocoa and wrinkled her nose. “Before I started. Let’s go talk to your ex-policeman.”

  They passed under the archway and started down a path lined with poorly-tended shrubbery. A number of the growl amps above them were out. Coren glanced around the area, and frowned.

  “What’s wrong?” Ariel asked.

  “Hm? Oh. Nothing...” He glanced up at the tall windows to his right. Balconies and walkways hung higher up. “That’s not true. I’m not sure if I can explain it.”

  “Try. I’m always eager to learn new things.”

  Coren looked at her. He saw no sign of sarcasm in her expression. Indeed, she seemed intent only on their surroundings.

  “Well,” he said, “usually when someone has a connection to a case–I’m talking like Service now–you might find someone through one source, one link, but when you look, if there is a connection, there’s more than just one.”

  “And with Ree Wenithal?”

  “There are suggestions of more connections, but I still have only one: Brun Damik. And his connection was tenuous.”

  “Until he died.”

  “That was a pretty strong hint, but not really a connection.”

  She frowned at him. “Just what do you count as a connection?”

  “Something with steel cables tying it to something else.”

  “Isn’t that a bit unrealistic?”

  Coren stopped. Ariel continued on a few more steps, then turned to him.

  “Early on,” he said, “I arrested an innocent man. It wasn’t a big deal, nothing bad happened to him, he just spent a few nights in confinement, went through a lot of humiliating interrogations and filled out a lot of forms. It was a mistake. I think I felt worse about it than he did.”

  “So you vowed never to make a mistake again?”

  “No, but I got into certain habits after that. I made fewer mistakes. I became pretty good at it. And I got overconfident.”

  “And made a big mistake.”

  “Very. It cost me the life of a friend.”

  “You’re talking about Nyom Looms.”

  Coren nodded.

  Ariel pursed her lips. “High standards are good.”

  They continued on to Wenithal’s apartment in silence.

  The door stood open.

  “Come in,” Wenithal called. “I was beginning to wonder if you’d ever get here. “.

  Ree Wenithal sat on a long couch, slippered feet propped on a low table, a glass in his left hand and a pistol in his right. He scowled at them for a long moment, then laughed.

  “You! I thought it would be someone else.” He set the pistol aside. “Close the door if you’re staying.”

  Ariel pressed the contact.. The light from the balcony shrank to a narrow line and vanished.

  The room smelled of alcohol.

  “So,” Wenithal said, “did you go through my files?”

  Coren hesitated.

  “My career,” Wenithal said, stressing each syllable. “My exploits. They’re all in the public record. They’ll tell you all about me, about my life, my accomplishments
, my... my...” He waved a hand vaguely. “Everything.”

  “I looked at them,” Coren said.

  Wenithal waited. When Coren said nothing more, he got ponderously to his feet. “Are you going to introduce me to your partner? Oh, if you want a drink, help yourselves. I keep a good stock. Even some Spacer stuff.”

  “Brun Damik is dead,” Coren said.

  Wenithal nodded. “I was questioned about it.”

  “Uh-huh. Do you have any idea why he was killed?”

  “Do you?”

  Coren crossed the room in four strides and snapped his palm into Wenithal’s chest. The older man sat back down heavily, his wind wheezing from his mouth.

  “We were attacked earlier tonight,” Coren said. “I’m in no mood for repartee, Mister Wenithal, so do me the courtesy of answering my questions directly.”

  “I don’t have to tell you shit,” Wenithal said breathily.

  “Fine. Then when the people you were expecting come to kill you, I hope you have some friends to attend the services.”

  Wenithal glared up at Coren, but his eyes wavered moistly and Coren caught the distant shimmer of fear behind them.

  “Something killed Nyom Looms and Brun Damik and fifty baleys who just wanted to get off Earth,” he continued. “Something tried to kill me tonight, and something is coming after you. You used to be a cop. Pretend you still are for the next ten minutes and do the right thing.” He paused. “Or do you already know who these people are?”

  Wenithal tried to heave himself up, but Coren rapped him in the sternum again. “You’re a bastard,” Wenithal hissed.

  “Do you know that for a fact, or just speculating?”

  Wenithal slapped at Coren half–heartedly, missing. Coren watched the old man warily, but it was obvious Wenithal would do very little now.