Asimov’s Future History Volume 11

by Isaac Asimov

  Unless the Ironheads had found out about her connection to the Settlers and taken their revenge. That would give them a motive for keeping quiet.

  “Sir,” Donald said, “to the rear of the bonfire –”

  Kresh swung his viewers around and swore. “Burning hellfire, that’s just great. That’ll make the Settlers just happy as could be.” There was a group of masked Ironheads off in a copse of young trees, destroying as many of the saplings as they could, firing point-blank at their trunks with blasters. Not even dragging them back for fuel, which would almost make some sense. But no, this was just wanton destruction for the hell of it. Damned idiots. The Settlers loved their trees, yes, and killing a few would get them mad. But didn’t it occur to the Ironheads that a group of people preparing to re-terraform a planet would have the capacity to replace a few trees? And what sort of idiots would kill trees on a planet with a weakened ecology?

  Fools. Maybe, with a little luck, they’d take a few of themselves out with sloppy cross fire. It made Kresh more than a little uncomfortable that he agreed with the Ironhead philosophy. Yes, fine, make more robots, better robots, give the Infernals a real chance to revive the terraforming before handing the job over to outsiders. That all made sense. But politics did not excuse vandalism. Kresh reached for the aircar’s comm mike, but even before he could give the order, one of the circling deputy’s cars dove down almost to treetop level, pumping out a cloud of trank-gas behind itself. The Ironheads scattered, but one or two were dropped by the gas, unable to outrun it. Another deputy’s car swept down to a landing. Two deputies jumped out and had the unconscious protesters cuffed and ready for pickup in seconds. Their aircar was already back in the air, in pursuit of the escaping Ironheads. Meanwhile, a fire department airtruck was coming in. It fired twin water cannons at the bonfire and the effigies. More deputy’s cars landed. Deputies poured out and started rounding up the protesters. Good. Good. Kresh was glad to see his people doing so well.

  This was work for humans, no question about it. Riot control was something that robots simply could not do. Which was why, of course, there were still human police. Sheriffs and deputies had to be ready to do a lot of things that broke the First Law.

  Kresh watched his people at work with real pride. There had been no need for him to command or direct. They were getting this sort of operation down to a science. But there was a dark side to that truth. How could they not get better? The devil himself knew they were getting enough practice.

  “Let’s land this thing, Donald,” he said. “As long as we’re here, we might as well pay a call on Madame Welton. Call ahead to her.”

  Tonya Welton was there on the ground, looking up, watching their aircar land. She was standing by the main entrance shaft to Settlertown, waiting for them. There was something missing about her, Kresh thought, something that should have been there. Then it came to him. Her robot, Ariel. No Spacer would go out of doors without at least one robot in attendance, and in the city Tonya kept to that convention. But here, on her own turf, perhaps she felt she could avoid Spacer absurdities.

  The aircar set down. Man and robot disembarked.

  “Sheriff Kresh, Donald 111,” Tonya said. “Welcome to our humble abode. Come in, come in out of that frightful cloud of smoke your friends have dumped into the atmosphere.”

  “The Ironheads aren’t my friends,” Kresh said, stepping forward. He and Donald followed her into the elevator car for the ride down.

  “No, I doubt that a policeman would approve of their tactics,” Welton said. “But surely you don’t pretend to be opposed to their goals.”

  The doors slid shut, and the elevator began its high-speed descent to the interior of Settlertown. The ride always did odd things to Alvar’s stomach and inner ears. Or maybe it was just that he didn’t like the idea of being a half kilometer underground.

  He shoved those thoughts from his mind and answered the Settler leader. “No, ma’am, I don’t,” Kresh said. “They want you people out of here, they want Governor Grieg to use robots, not Settlers, to reterraform Inferno, and they want Inferno to be a Spacer world, not some half-breed between Spacer and Settler. They believe that such a situation could only be an interlude until your people took over completely. I believe all those things, too. But the ends do not justify the means. Savagery has no place in a political debate.”

  Tonya looked at the Sheriff with a smile that was not entirely at ease with itself. “Well said, Sheriff Kresh. What a pity Chanto Grieg is only a year into his first term. You would make quite an opposition candidate.”

  “The thought had crossed my mind,” Alvar said, drawing himself up to his full height and staring straight ahead. “Someone will have to take him on sooner or later. But the next election will be time enough.”

  “It sounds like an exciting campaign,” Tonya said dryly. The elevator door slid open and Tonya Welton led them out into a large open space underground. It was a huge, vaulted space, to Kresh’s eye perhaps a kilometer long and half that wide. There was an elaborate false sky overhead which seemed to be mimicking the true conditions in the real sky – from the gleaming sun down to the column of smoke still rising from the direction of the Ironhead demonstration. Welton noticed Kresh looking upward. “Yes, the real-time simulation is a new touch since the last time you were here. The theory is it will be much less disorienting to go back and forth between Settlertown and Hades if our undersky matches the real one precisely. With just the generalized day-night sky program we had before, moving from inside to outside got quite confusing.”

  “Hmmph.” Alvar looked around, feeling most unhappy. perhaps his eyes saw the wide-open spaces of the great cavern, but his mind was aware of every single gram of the millions of kilograms of rock over his head. “I suppose it might help, but I find this place sufficiently disorienting no matter what is projected on your false sky. How can you bear to live underground?”

  Tonya gestured grandly about the huge artificial cavern. Brilliant simulated sunlight shone down on a pretty little park. A fountain jetted a stream of water into the air, a breeze tickled her hair. Small, handsomely designed buildings were dotted here and there about the landscape. “We Settlers are quite used to life below ground. And besides, you can hardly argue that this place is some dank, dismal dungeon. These days, we are able to make our underground homes seem quite like the surface, without interfering with the landscape or suffering the inconveniences of bad weather. Your dust storms cannot touch us here. But we have other matters to discuss. Come.”

  She led them from the bottom of the elevator shaft to a waiting runcart. She sat down in it and waited for Alvar and Donald to do the same. They did so – Alvar next to her in the front seat, Donald in the back – and the cart took off with no apparent command from Tonya. It drove them through the central cavern and into a broad side tunnel. It stopped outside her outer office.

  Alvar resisted the temptation to renew the endless philosophical argument Settlers and Infernals had been having since the day the Settlers arrived. The argument about the cart, and all the other “smart,” nonrobotic, automated hardware the Settlers used. It still seemed suicidally dangerous to trust to automatic devices that did not contain the Three Laws, but the Settlers took a perverse pride in the knowledge that their machines would not prevent people from killing themselves – as if that were a useful design feature. Yes, nonsentient machinery left more scope for human initiative – but what benefit if all that scope gave you was more chances to get squashed like a bug in a crash?

  The three of them disembarked and went through the ornately carved glass double doors into the reception area, and then through to Welton’s surprisingly austere office. Most places in Settlertown were comfortable, even downright luxurious – except for the lack of robots – but Welton seemed to like things kept to a minimum. There was not so much as a desk in the room, at least at the moment, though Kresh knew a worktable could be extruded from the wall quickly enough. There was nothing but four chairs in a circl
e with a low, round table in the center.

  It seemed to Alvar that the furniture had been rearranged every time he came in here, in accordance with whatever sort of use to which the room was to be put – working office, meeting room, dinner reception, whatever. A Spacer would have had a room for each function. Perhaps this was a cultural holdover from when the Settlers’ underground cities were more cramped. Or perhaps the mock austerity was a mere affectation on Welton’s part. Kresh noted one addition to the room since the last time he had been here. A very standard robot niche, occupied by Ariel at the moment.

  Tonya noticed Kresh looking at Ariel and shrugged irritably. “Well, I had to have some place for her when she is off duty. She herself suggested the niche, and it seemed as good a place as any. I believe she has herself on standby at the moment. Ariel?”

  There was no answer. Kresh raised an eyebrow. “You let your robot go into standby whenever it chooses?”

  “Ariel, poor thing, serves no other purpose than to act as window dressing when I go out among the Spacers. It upsets your people no end to see someone without a robot in attendance. It made it almost impossible to do my work. She calms the passersby a bit. Otherwise, she has no other duties, and I let her do what she pleases. If she wishes to be dormant for a while, so be it. But come, we have much to discuss.”

  Alvar Kresh was more than a bit unsettled by the arrangement with Ariel. Every robot was ordered into standby once in a while, to conserve power or for maintenance, but he had never heard of a robot going into standby on its own. In standby, how could a robot obey the First and Second Laws? Well, no matter, let Welton make her own arrangements. No doubt she told Ariel to choose her own standby times in such a way that Ariel considered it an order. No matter. It was time for business.

  He took a seat, and Tonya Welton took the seat opposite. Donald, as a matter of course, remained standing. But Welton would have none of that. “Donald, sit down,” she said. Donald obeyed and Alvar gritted his teeth, determined not to be annoyed. Tonya Welton knew damn well that it would irritate him to have Donald treated as an equal. She was doing it deliberately.

  “Now then,” she said. “Starting with your Ironheads, Sheriff. This is the most serious and violent demonstration they have mounted. Can you give me any assurance that these provocations will end?”

  Kresh shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “No,” he said at last. “I don’t see much point in my pretending otherwise. There are literally thousands of years of animosity built up between your people and mine. Our people considered yours to be subhuman for a long time, and I suspect ‘some Settlers have had that opinion of us. I think we are all past that stage now, but the fact remains that we don’t like each other. Prejudices remain. There is also a great deal of resentment over the behavior of the Settlers on Inferno.”

  “I cannot see that my people have been overly rude or disrespectful – though I, too, have my uncontrollable hotheads. You picked up a mob of robot bashers just last week. Is it their actions that is causing the resentment? I have done all I could to punish such actions quickly and publicly.”

  “Gangs of drunken Settlers wandering the streets of Hades, destroying valuable robots, have not helped your cause,” Kresh said dryly. “However, I am willing to accept the point that you cannot control your people – the devil knows I can’t control mine. I am even prepared to believe that a terraforming project might well require some rough-and-ready sorts to make it work. The sort that might find ordering a robot to commit suicide amusing.” He glared at her, but she displayed no reaction.

  “None of the bashing incidents have been good public relations for you,” he went on. “But the root cause of resentment is your very presence, your annoying self-confidence that you can so easily solve the climate problems that have bedeviled us.” He made a gesture with his right hand, indicating all of the vast underground settlement he was in. “The casual way in which you built this place was disconcerting. And I might add it seems a very permanent home for ‘a group that does not intend to – ah – settle permanently.”

  Tonya Welton nodded thoughtfully. “I have heard all these points before, and they are good ones. But must we act as if we don’t know what we are doing, just to salve the feelings of the Infernals? We have assembled the finest experts on terraforming from all the leading Settler worlds. They are good, they are skilled, and they brought their equipment. They used it to build their own – temporary-dwelling place. Would you trust the rebuilding of your world to people who were unsure of their skills? Or to people who could not excavate a simple cavern?” Tonya gestured toward Ariel, inert in her niche. “You have seen to it that many of us have robots, to convince us of the worth of your lifestyle. When we go, and leave this place behind as a gift to the city of Hades, we hope that some number of your people will take up residence, and see the advantages of our way of life.”

  “There is little chance of that,” Kresh said, a bit too sharply.

  “There is little chance of Settlers taking home robot slaves,” Tonya countered in an equally unpleasant tone.

  There was a moment’s glaring silence, but then Donald spoke. “Perhaps,” he said, “it might be wise to leave topics of policy for the moment and return to more immediate concerns.”

  Tonya looked toward Donald and grinned. “Always it comes to this point. You watch the tempers flare, and just when it is about to get out of hand, you politely suggest that your boss and I agree to disagree. I sometimes think you are wasted outside the diplomatic corps. But tell me, does it ever get dull for you, Donald, watching the same tired ritual again and again?”

  “I would not characterize it as tired ritual, nor do I find it dull. Both of you are skilled debaters. I might add that, as a robot programmed for police service, I am a student of human behavior under stress of emotion. I watch, and I learn. It is most instructive.”

  “All right, Donald,” Kresh said irritably. “You‘ve got us both nicely calmed down again. Why don’t we move on to the Leving attack. The Governor’s office hyperwaved confirming orders to me this morning. I am to share all of our information with you. I don’t see why that is needful, but orders are orders. Donald, why don’t you give Madame Welton a summary of our information and theories so far.”

  “Certainly.” Donald turned his rounded blue head toward Tonya Welton and gave a concise summary of the information they had developed since the attack. Tonya asked one or two questions as he went along, and listened carefully. She made no notes, but Kresh had no doubt she was also recording the conversation in some way.

  At last Donald was finished. Tonya leaned back in her chair, stared up at the featureless white ceiling, and thought for a moment before saying anything.

  Finally she looked back toward Donald and Kresh and spoke. “It seems to me that you are going to remarkable lengths to exclude the possibility of a robot as a suspect. Surely you will grant that it requires a good deal of special pleading to accept such elaborate explanations as boots with robot treads or remote control machines that look just like robots. There is an ancient rule of logic that teaches us that, absent compelling reasons to the contrary, it is wisest to use the simplest possible explanation. Taken at face value, the evidence is overwhelming that a robot committed the crime. Why not at least examine that very simple explanation?”

  “Yes,” Kresh agreed uncomfortably,” but the Three Laws –”

  “The Three Laws are going to drive me mad,” Welton snapped. “I know the Three Laws as well as you do, and you need not recite them again like some bloody holy’ catechism. I swear, Kresh, you Spacers might as well face facts and admit that worship of those dismal Laws is your state religion. The answer to all problems, the end of all quests, can be found in the infinite good of the Three Laws. I say that if we just assume that the Three Laws make a robot attack on Leving impossible, I think we are missing a key point.”

  “And what might that be, Lady Welton?” Donald asked mildly. It passed idly through Kresh’s mind that it was we
ll that Donald was around, if only to lubricate the wheels of conversation. Welton had obviously paused for the sole purpose of eliciting the question Donald had asked, but Kresh was hell-damned if he would give her the satisfaction of asking it.

  “A very simple point,” Tonya Welton replied. “With all due respect, Donald, robots are machines, and it is impossible for them to harm humans only because they are built in such a way to make that so. If all runcarts were built without a reverse gear, that would not render the construction of a machine with reverse gear impossible. A machine that is built one way can be built another. Suppose robots were built another way? What is to prevent it – if the builder decided not to follow your precious Three Laws? Would not the rock-hard belief that robots cannot commit such acts provide a perfect cover? The robot’s builder need not even run, for none will think to pursue.

  “One other point. This speechblock put on the staff robots, preventing them from saying who ordered them to go to the far wing of the labs that night. It seems to me that a mechanical device, an override circuit, would be more effective in setting an absolute block against speech concerning certain subjects than in giving an intricate series of orders to each and every robot. It would be easier to set up as well. And before you object that such a speechblock circuit would weaken the robot’s ability to obey the damned Three Laws, we are assuming that the attacker was not too fastidious about such things. Donald – how large a piece of microcircuitry would that take?”

  “It could be made small enough to be invisible to the human eye, and could be wired in anywhere in the robot’s sensory system.”