by Isaac Asimov
The blood had virtually all clotted or dried by now. Kresh pulled a stylus from his pocket and tested the surface. Almost completely solidified. It always amazed him how fast it happened. He looked up and from the pool of blood, noted the pattern of a med-robot’s foot and then noted something else he had seen before but merely filed away until he had seen the whole room. Two other sets of prints, clearly from robotic feet, but wholly different from the med-robot’s treads. One set of prints led out the front interior into the hallway, the other out the front exterior door to the outside of the building.
And the two sets of prints might be different from the med-robot’s, but they were utterly identical to each other.
Two sets of mystery prints, exactly like each other.
“That’s what’s bothering you, isn’t it, Donald?” Alvar said, standing back up.
“What is, sir?”
“The robot footprints. The ones that make it clear that a robot – two robots – walked through the pool of blood and left Fredda Leving, quite possibly to die.”
“Yes, sir, that did bother me. The flaw is obvious, but it is what the evidence suggests.”
“Then the evidence is wrong. The First Law makes it impossible for any robot to behave that way,” Alvar said.
“And therefore,” a brash new voice suddenly declared from the door Alvar had come through, “therefore, someone must have staged the attack to make it seem like a robot – two robots – did it. Brilliant, Sheriff Kresh. That took me all of thirty seconds to figure out. How long have you been here?”
Alvar turned around and clenched his teeth to keep from letting out a string of curses. It was Tonya Welton. A tall, dark-skinned woman, long-limbed and graceful, she stood just inside the doorway, a tall, dusky-yellow robot behind her. Alvar Kresh would not even have noticed the robot except that Welton was a Settler. He always got a certain grim pleasure out of seeing robots inflicted on the people who hated them so passionately, but at the moment at least, Welton seemed bothered not at all. Her expression was one of amused condescension.
She was dressed in a disturbingly tight and extravagantly patterned blue one-piece bodysuit. The Spacer population on Inferno preferred much more modest clothing and far more subdued colors. On Inferno, robots were brightly colored, not people. But no one had told the leader of the Settlers on Inferno that – or else she had ignored them when they did tell her. Welton, more than likely, had gotten it backwards deliberately.
But what the hell was Tonya Welton doing here now?
“Good evening, Lady Tonya,” Donald said in his smoothest and most urbane tones. It was rare, surpassing rare, for a robot to speak except when spoken to, but Donald was smart enough to know this situation needed defusing. “What a pleasant surprise to have you join us here.”
“I doubt it,” Tonya Welton said with a smile that Alvar scored as being at least an attempt at courtesy. “Forgive me, Sheriff Kresh, for my rather rude entrance. I’m afraid the news about Fredda Leving unsettled me. I tend to be a bit sharp-tongued when I am upset.”
And at all other times, Kresh thought to himself. “Quite all right, Madame Welton,” he replied in a tone of voice that made it clear it was anything but all right. “I don’t know what business brings you here, but there has been an attack on one of Inferno’s top scientists here tonight, and I cannot allow anything to interfere. This is an official investigation, Madame Welton, which has nothing to do with the Settlers, and I’m afraid I must ask you to leave.”
“Oh, no, I can’t. You see, that’s why I’m here. Governor Grieg himself called me not an hour ago and asked that I come here tonight and join in your investigation.”
Alvar Kresh stared at the Settler woman in openmouthed astonishment. What in the devil was going on here? “Are we done here, Donald?” he asked. “Anything else I need to see immediately?”
“No, sir, I think not.”
“Very well, then, Donald. Seal this room as a crime scene. No one in or out. Just now, I think perhaps Madame Welton and I need to have a little talk, and this is not the place for it. Join us when you have completed the arrangements.”
“Very good, sir,” Donald said.
“Let’s go to my car, Madame Welton. We can talk there.”
“Yes, let’s do that, Sheriff,” Tonya Welton said, rather stiffly. “There are a few things we need to get straight. Come along, Ariel.”
Alvar Kresh and Tonya Welton sat down in the Sheriff’s aircar, facing each other, both of them clearly wary. Welton’s robot, Ariel, stood behind her mistress, fading into the background as far as Kresh was concerned. Robots didn’t count.
“All right, then,” he said. “What’s all this about? Why did the Governor call you in? What possible connection does this case have with the Settlers?”
Tonya Welton folded her hands carefully and looked Kresh straight in the eye. “In a day or two you’ll get the answer to that. But for now, it’s classified.”
“I see,” Kresh said, though he most certainly did not. “I’m afraid that is not much of an explanation.”
“No, and I am sorry for that, but my hands are tied. There is, however, one thing I can tell you that will at least in part explain my being here. I do have authority to be here, under the agreement permitting a Settler presence on this world. I have the right to protect the safety of my employees.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Oh, yes, didn’t you know?” Tonya Welton asked. “Fredda Leving is working for me.”
There was a half minute’s dead silence. Fredda Leving was famous, one of the top roboticists on the planet. Most Infernals regarded her not as a person, but as a planetary asset. For her and her labs to be reduced to mere employees of the Settlers – Welton might as well have announced that the Settlers had purchased Government Tower, or gotten title to the Great Bay.
At last Alvar found his voice again. “If I could make a suggestion, Madame Welton, I think it might be wise to keep that fact very quiet indeed,” he said gruffly.
Welton looked surprised. “Why? We haven’t publicized it widely, but we haven’t tried to keep it secret.”
“Then I suggest you start,” Alvar said.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” Welton said.
“Then let me make this clear, Madame Welton. The average citizen of Inferno will not regard this attack as a mere assault, or as attempted murder. The citizens will see an attack on a top scientist, especially a roboticist, as sabotage. Many of them will simply assume your people did it, even without knowledge of Settler involvement in Leving Labs. Once they hear Settlers are involved, that will only make it worse.”
“Our involvement!” Tonya Welton exclaimed. “We had nothing to do with the attack!”
“That’s as may be,” Alvar said. Clearly Welton was upset, and he wanted her that way, wanted her off balance. What was she doing here, anyway? How had she gotten here so quickly? There was something damned suspicious in her haste and eagerness. Just what the hell kind of robotics work would the Settlers be interested in, anyway? There was more than one mystery in the air tonight.
Donald slipped back into the aircar and took a place standing against the wall, next to Ariel. Kresh glanced at him and nodded. There was something comforting in having his loyal servant present. But Donald was not the issue here. Kresh took a good hard look at Welton, trying to gauge her mood. If he was any judge of such matters, there was an underlayer of uncertainty below all her brave talk. “You deny involvement,” he said, “but just now you spoke of Fredda Leving working for you. That is involvement enough. That alone will be seen as a threat by most of the people on this world.”
“What in deep space are you talking about?” Welton demanded.
“My fellow Infernals will see interference in robot research as an attack on the Spacers’ hopes of survival in a universe that seems to be surrendering itself to the Settlers. Given the slightest hint of any connection between the Settlers and the attack, however slender and tenuous,
the people of this world will assume your people were behind it. They won’t care if it is true or not. They will believe.
“They will associate this attack with the Settlers – the same damn Settlers they see wandering free allover Inferno, poking their noses into everything, treating the people of Inferno as little better than savages. It will be enough to make the situation even more tense than it is already. The people of Inferno are sure you Settlers regard us all as amusing little natives to be brushed aside on your way to conquering the galaxy.”
Tonya colored a bit, and she folded her arms in front of her. “Politics. Always it comes down to politics and prejudice. My dear Sheriff. It is not we Settlers who are holding you Spacers back. You are doing it to yourselves, with no need of help from us. You have had endless generations in which to colonize new worlds of your own. You could have peopled thousands of worlds by now. Instead you have but fifty worlds – forty-nine after this Solaria business.
“We did not stop you from going on to further colonization. You chose not to continue. Nor are we preventing you from starting a new effort at colonization now. But instead of taking action, you choose to remain at home and blame us for moving outward. Is it our fault that you have made your refusal to settle new worlds a mark of virtue?”
“Madame Welton. You must excuse me,” Kresh said. “I allowed my own emotions to get the better of me. I did not intend to accuse you, but you are entitled to fair warning of what the people of Inferno will think if your – ah – involvement becomes known. I don’t hold such views myself, though I must admit some sympathy for them. But if a Settler relationship with Fredda Leving comes out in connection with this crime, or in any way at all, it is my considered professional opinion that there will be hell to pay.”
Tonya Welton stared at him, unblinking, her face unreadable.
At last she spoke. “Then I think you can look forward to having to pay that hell in about two days’ time,” she said, rather soberly.
“What happens then?” he asked, his voice flat, his face deadpan.
“There will be an – announcement,” she said, clearly being careful of what words she used. “I am not at liberty to say more, but if there are to be the sort of difficulties you are talking about, they will happen then.”
“Beg pardon, Madame Welton, but do you think it possible that tonight’s attack has some connection to that announcement?” Donald asked. “Perhaps an attempt to stop or delay it?”
Welton turned her head sharply toward Donald, her expression suddenly wild and uncontrolled. Obviously, she had not noticed him coming in. “Yes,” she said, a bit too eagerly. “Yes, I believe that is a real possibility. If it is true, then I believe we are all in terrible danger.”
“What the devil are you –” Kresh began.
“No,” Welton said, turning back toward Kresh. “I can say no more. But solve this case quickly, Sheriff. If there is anything in this life, this world, that you value, solve it!” She took a deep breath and seemed to come back to herself a bit. “It was a mistake for me to come here tonight,” she announced. She turned and looked about the aircar’s cabin, as if seeing it for the first time. “I will contact you tomorrow, Sheriff,” she said. “And I will expect full and complete reports of your progress on a regular basis. Come, Ariel.”
And without another word, she stepped out of the car, her robot following. Alvar Kresh watched them go, wondering just. what exactly Tonya Welton was up to. Her performance tonight was odd, to put it mildly. Putting aside the fact of her magically appearing almost before Kresh got to the crime scene, there was something else: the way she had latched on to the possibility of a political motive. It almost made Kresh think she wanted to draw attention toward that idea and away from something else. But what the hell could that something else be?
All he knew for sure was that whatever was going on, he was already stuck, deep inside it.
Chapter 3
CALIBAN WALKED THE night, burning with curiosity. He was a great distance from his starting point, in a quiet residential area, the walkways all but completely deserted at this hour. The homes were large and widely scattered. Great lawns, some of them getting a bit dry, scruffy, and thin-looking, separated the houses. In this part of town, it seemed there was little ground traffic to speak of. Judging from the absence of a road wide enough for large vehicles, travel to and fro was by aircar or by foot.
But a dying lawn was no less wondrous than a live one to Caliban. All the world was new to him, everything that he saw was a fresh and vibrant wonder. He saw the bright pinpoints of light in the sky and wondered what they were. He noticed a few bits of litter blown against a fence and wondered how such a strange combination of objects had come to be there. His datastore was mute on both of those subjects, and many others besides, but on the whole it was a splendid guide, telling him any number of things about the city through which he walked. He wandered everywhere, eagerly looking about at everything, marveling at all things. And if stars and litter were not explained, many other things were. More often than not, he could look at a thing, and wonder about it, and find that the datastore could identify it and explain it for him.
He was content for some time to wander the city, passively absorbing whatever the datastore saw fit to tell him about what he saw. Then Caliban had an idea. If the map and the datastore could work to tell him about what was before him, could they not also guide his steps? Perhaps he could examine the datastore ‘s map, select an interesting destination, and travel to it.
He stopped in his tracks and tried the experiment. The outside world seemed to fade from his sight. Suddenly he was looking down on a map-schematic of the area he was in, done in bold primary colors and carefully designed symbols.
He tried to push outward from that point and was greatly pleased to discover that the simple act of wishing it to be so allowed him to visualize the entire city map, or focus in on any portion of it. Nor, he found, did his virtual viewpoint have to stay above the map. He could move down to ground level and see the buildings and hill tower over him. He could visualize the map data from any angle or position.
A few moments of experimentation confirmed it: He could manipulate his viewpoint to any spot in or over the map, look at the lay of the land from a bird’s-eye view, or from ground level at any position, with the buildings and streets presented in the proper shapes and sizes. His vision swept along great swatches of the city, across the parks, the buildings, the great roads. It was as if he were traveling through those places in his mind. The sensation was exhilarating, almost one of flight.
There were datatags on the map, offering information on the buildings – their names and addresses, and in many cases the names of whatever businesses went on there.
Suddenly he got a splendid idea. He could use the datatag information to learn more about himself. He manipulated his viewpoint within the map and brought it back to his present position. Then he proceeded to retrace his steps back to the building he had started out from. He could read the datatags connected to the building and learn what sort of place it was, see what other information the map held concerning it. Certainly he could find clues to his own identity, his place in the world. Eager to find out more about himself, he moved his viewpoint rapidly across the map, back the way he had come.
The map imagery rushed past him at a breakneck pace, twisting and turning violently, reversing his movements at tremendous speed. At last the images came back to his starting place. He made a strange discovery: The image of the building was incomplete. Nearly every other building was shown in great detail, with doors and windows and basic elements of the architecture clearly shown. But the map showed this building as nothing but a featureless grey rectangular solid, a low, long shape on the land.
Confused, Caliban accessed the datatag system.
And discovered that the map had no information whatsoever about the building inside which he had awakened.
Stunned, surprised, Caliban shut down the map display system. Th
e bright colors and symbols of the map faded from his vision, and he found himself once again standing in the darkness, alone on an empty pathway in a quiet residential district.
Why was there no information about that building? Perhaps he should go back there, examine the place firsthand. He of course had a perfect, detailed memory of what he had seen there, and no doubt he could work his way back through those memories for information. But he had not been looking for anything when he awakened, had not even been fully aware that he should have known more than he did. If he went back, he would learn more.
He turned around, was about to head back the way he had come, toward the lab. But then he stopped. Wait a moment. There was another factor. One he had not considered yet. He recalled that first moment of awakening, the sight of the woman unconscious at his feet, the blood pooling about her head. The cross-index system of his datastore flitted through a whole series of things even as he thought about that moment.
And it settled at a quotation from the Legal Code that leaving the scene of a crime before being interviewed by the police was itself a crime. His mind flittered through all the datastore had to say about the Legal Code, the concept of crime, and the idea of punishment and rehabilitation. All of it seemed to relate to humans, but it was not a great leap of reasoning to assume that committing a criminal act could mean trouble for a robot as well.
No, he could not go back there.
Wait a moment. Were there other blanks on the map? Other places where detail was limited in some way? Perhaps other places with limited information on the datastore would have something in common with the building he had left. Perhaps examining one of them would offer some clue; perhaps some thought or image would stimulate the datastore to offer some sort of information that could tell him about himself.
Caliban looked about the area and decided it would be best to get off the pathway while he was examining the map. He stepped off the path and walked a short way, until he found a slight depression in the rolling landscape. He sat down in it, reasonably sure he could not be seen from the path.
