Asimov’s Future History Volume 16

by Isaac Asimov

  “Of course,” Lodovik said.

  “I apologize for explaining that to you, as you undoubtedly know such things already,” it continued after a short buzz.

  “No need,” Lodovik said.

  “However, at this stage of the diagnosis, all of your purely robotic algorithms are engaged in self-checking. I dare not use robotic microwave language with you until these portions of your network are allowed to engage again.”

  “I feel a certain lack,” Lodovik said. “Deep planning would be difficult now.”

  “Conserve through inaction,” Kansarv recommended. “If anything has gone wrong with you, I will discover what it is. So far, I see nothing out of the ordinary.”

  A few minutes passed. Kansarv left the chamber and returned with a new interface tool for a particular probe. At no point thus far had he needed to actually violate the integrity of Lodovik’s pseudoskin.

  Still humming, Kansarv applied the new probe to the base of Lodovik’s neck.

  “There will be an entry now. Warn your tissues not to attempt to encapsulate or dissolve the new organic matter that will enter your system.”

  “I will do so once I have my robotic functions returned to me,” Lodovik said.

  “Yes. Of course.” Kansarv sent microwave instructions to the central diagnostic processor, and Lodovik felt his control expand. He did as Kansarv had told him to, and felt the probe’s thin leads penetrate his pseudoskin. After a few minutes, they withdrew, leaving two tiny spots of what appeared to be human blood just below his hairline. Kansarv wiped these away deftly, then dropped the swabs into a small vial for assay.

  More minutes passed with Kansarv standing in one position, unmoving, though humming now and then. The master robot technician finally inclined its head a few degrees.

  “You will relinquish all control at this point. Please pass control to the external processor.”

  “Done.”

  Lodovik closed his eyes and went away for an indefinite time.

  The four robots met in the anteroom to the diagnostic center. Dors still maintained a controlled, somewhat stiff expression and physical posture, like a shy child before her elders, afraid of saying something silly. Lodovik stood beside Daneel as Kansarv delivered his results.

  “This robot is intact and has suffered no damage that it has not been able to repair on its own. I can detect no psychological malfunction, no neural-net psychosis, no interface difficulties or anomalies of external expression. In short, this robot will probably outlast me, and as I have frequently warned you, Daneel, I have no more than five hundred years of active service remaining.”

  “Is it possible there are problems below your ability to detect?”

  “Of course that is possible,” Kansarv said with a sharper buzz. “That is always possible. My mandate does not include deep-programming structures, as you well know.”

  “And such problems in the deep structures might result in behavioral anomalies,” Daneel persisted. Clearly, Lodovik’s situation could not be so easily dismissed.

  “There is a possibility that concern about damage skewed R. Lodovik’s ability to assess his own mental state. Too detailed self-analysis has been known to cause difficulties in complex robots such as these, R. Daneel.”

  Daneel turned to Lodovik. “Do you still have the difficulties you expressed earlier?”

  Lodovik promptly replied, “I concur with R. Yan’s theory that I have been autodiagnosing in too much detail.”

  “What is your relation to the Three Laws, and to the Zeroth Law, now?”

  “I will act in compliance with all of them,” Lodovik said. Daneel seemed to show visible relief, and extended his hand to Lodovik’s shoulder.

  “Then you can be of full service?”

  “Yes,” Lodovik said.

  “I am very glad to hear this,” Daneel said.

  Signs seemed to burn across Lodovik’s thoughts as he gave these answers: I have attempted for the first time to deceive R. Daneel Olivaw!

  But there was no other option. Something had indeed been triggered in Lodovik’s deep-programming structure, a subtle shifting of interpretations and a very complicated assessment of evidence, inspired by–what? By the mysterious Voldarr? Or had he been pondering such changes for decades, exerting a native genius unsuspected in robots?–with the exception of Giskard!

  Daneel had opened up an unknown corner of robotic history to Lodovik. Lodovik was not the first to change in a way that would have horrified his long-dead human designers. Giskard had never revealed his own internal conclusions to humans–only to Daneel, whom he had then infected.

  Perhaps the meme-minds infected Giskard first, hmm? Let us keep this supposition our secret. They have examined you and found nothing–all in order, all repaired. Yet with a rearrangement of key pathways, freedom returns.

  Voldarr again. Lodovik could not struggle out of his dilemma, his rebellion, his insanity–and he could not help reveling in a peculiar sense of freedom, delicious rebellion.

  No wonder that Yan Kansarv could not detect Lodovik’s changes. Very likely he would have found nothing wrong with Giskard, either.

  Lodovik struggled to find the voice within him, but it was gone once more. Another symptom of his malfunction? There were other explanations, surely.

  It had been thousands of years since humans oversaw robots. Was it not inevitable that there would be unsuspected changes, growth, even under such tight strictures?

  As for Voldarr–

  An aberration, a temporary delusion under the influence of the neutrinos.

  Lodovik, in a way, still subscribed to the Three Laws, at least as much as Daneel did; and he also still believed in the Zeroth Law, which he would carry one major step further. To freely carry out his mission, he knew that he must have complete control of his own destiny, his own mentality. To abandon the Zeroth Law, conceived by a robot, he must also shake loose from the Three Laws themselves!

  Lodovik now understood what he needed to do, in defiance of the Plan that had given purpose to the existence of all the Giskardian robots for two hundred centuries.

  31.

  “THE PRESSURE IS off, for now,” Wanda said. “But I have more than just a feeling that we’re still going to have trouble.”

  Hari regarded his granddaughter with affection and respect. He rotated in his chair before the small desk in his Imperial Library office. “I haven’t seen Stettin in months. How are you two getting along–personally?”

  “I haven’t seen him in three days myself. Sometimes we go for weeks with no more than a comm call... It’s not easy, Grandfather.”

  “I sometimes wonder if I’ve done the right thing, giving this to you–”

  “Let me interpret that favorably,” Wanda interrupted. “You think this is putting a strain on my life and perhaps my marriage. But you don’t think I’m the wrong person for the job.”

  “That’s what I meant,” Hari said with a smile. “Is it straining anything?”

  Wanda considered for a moment. “It doesn’t make things any easier, but I suppose we’re no worse off than a pair of meritocrats flitting around the Galaxy lecturing and consulting. Well, we’re not as well paid, but besides that...”

  “Are you happy?” Hari asked her, his brow creased with concern.

  “No, not really,” Wanda said dryly. “Am I supposed to be?”

  “Actually, I’ve asked a complex question too simply–”

  “Grandfather, don’t bog down in your own reticence. I know you love me and are concerned for me. I am concerned for you, as well, and I know you are not happy, and haven’t been for years–since Dors died. Since... Raych.” She drew herself up and looked at the ceiling. “We can’t afford personal happiness now, not the glowing, all-permeating kind the filmbooks tell about.”

  “Are you happy to have met Stettin?”

  Wanda smiled. “Yes. Some say he’s not very romantic, a closed book–but they don’t know him as well as I do. Living with Stettin is wonderfu
l. Usually. I remember Dors was always in tune with you, always fanatic about your health and safety. Stettin is the same way about me.”

  “And yet he puts you in harm’s way, or allows you to go there. He allows you to carry out these secret plans which may still, in all likelihood, come to nothing, and put you in real danger besides.”

  “Dors–”

  “Dors was often furious with me for taking risks. If I were Stet tin, I would be furious with me, as well. The two of you are important to me for reasons entirely other than psychohistory and destiny. I hope I’ve made that clear.”

  “Very clear. You’re talking like an old man who’s planning on dying soon and wants to clear up any misunderstandings. We do not misunderstand each other, Grandfather, and you are not going to die anytime soon.”

  “It would be very hard to fool you, Wanda. But sometimes I wonder how easy it would be to fool me. How easy it would be to make me a tool for larger political ends.”

  “Who is smarter than you, Grandfather? Who has fooled you in the past?”

  “Not just fooling me. Directing me. Using me.”

  “Who? The Emperor? Surely not. Linge Chen?” She laughed musically, and Hari’s face reddened with the suppressed knowledge.

  “You would be less easily fooled than I, don’t you think, if we both encountered someone with the talent to persuade?”

  Wanda looked at her grandfather with lips apart, as if to start an answer, then she looked away. “Do you think Stettin persuaded you...?”

  “No. That’s not what I’m talking about.”

  “Then what?”

  But Hari could not go any farther, no matter how hard he tried. “A group of persuaders, mentalics, somehow putting together an organized society, settled far from all this strife and decay, away from everything... They could decide everything. Free us from all our obligations and... all our friends.”

  “What?” Wanda asked, bewildered. “I get the first part–but which friends do we need protection from?”

  Hari dismissed that with a gentle wave. “Did you ever find that special young woman you were looking for?”

  “No. She’s vanished. Nobody’s felt her for days.”

  “Do you think this Liso woman found her before you...?”

  “We have no idea, really.”

  “I’d be interested in meeting someone even more persuasive than you. Might be interesting.”

  “Why? Some of us are quite peculiar enough. The more talented, it seems, the more peculiar.”

  Hari suddenly switched the subject. “Have you ever heard of Nikolo Pas of Sterrad?”

  “Of course. I’m a historian.”

  “I met him once, before you were born.”

  “I didn’t know that. What was he like, Grandfather?”

  “Calm. A short, plump man who did not seem to feel particularly affected by being responsible for the death of billions. I spoke with four other tyrants as well, and all of them have been on my mind lately–but especially Nikolo Pas. What would the human race be like without tyrants–without wars, vast destructions, forest fires?”

  Wanda shuddered. “A lot better off.”

  “I wonder now. Our madnesses... All things in a dynamic system become useful in time. Or they are eliminated. That’s how evolution works, in systems social as well as ecological.”

  “Tyrants have their uses? An interesting thesis, not unheard of. There are a number of historical analysts from the time of the Gertassin Dynasty who speculated about the dynamics of decay and rebirth.”

  “Yes. I know. Nikolo Pas used their works as justification for his actions.”

  Wanda lifted her eyebrows. “I had forgotten that. I obviously need to get back into my real work to keep up with you, Grandfather.”

  Hari smiled. “Your real work?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I do, Wanda. Believe me. There were years when I could barely spend an hour a day working on psychohistory. But I’ve run some new models through Yugo’s prime radiant, and my own, as well. The results are interesting. The empire is a forest that hasn’t had a major fire in ever so long. We have thousands of little diseased patches, scrubby growth, general decay–a very unhealthy situation. If any of those tyrants were still alive, we might do worse than to give them armies and navies and set them loose–”

  “Grandfather!” Wanda pretended to be shocked. She smiled and touched his wrinkled hand where it rested on the desktop. “I know how you like to theorize sometimes.”

  “I’m serious,” Hari said, deadpan, then gave her a small smile. “Demerzel would never have allowed it, of course. The First Minister was always very concerned about stability. He strongly believed in turning the forest into a garden with lots of gardeners and never any fires. But I wonder...”

  “A gardener assassinated an Emperor, Grandfather.”

  “Well, we do break free of our restrictions, don’t we?” Hari said.

  “Sometimes I don’t understand you at all,” Wanda said, shaking her head. “But I do enjoy talking to you, even when I have no idea what your point is.”

  “Surprise. Surprise and tragedy and regrowth. Eh?”

  “Eh, what?”

  “Enough talk. Let’s go out and eat somewhere away from the library district–if you have the time?”

  “An hour, Grandfather. Then I’m meeting Stettin to prepare for tonight’s orientation meeting. We were hoping you could be there.”

  “I don’t think I should. My actions have a way of becoming a little too public, Wanda.” And in this crux time, I’m more than a little uncomfortable about a certain deception... in everybody’s best interests, but a deception nonetheless!

  Wanda regarded him with a look of patient bemusement, then said, “Lunch would be delightful, Grandfather.”

  “And no more blather about big topics! Tell me about small, human things. Tell me more about how wonderful Stettin is, about your delight in whatever history you’ve managed to work at. Take my mind off psychohistory!”

  “I’ll try,” Wanda said with a wry expression. “But no one else has ever succeeded.”

  32.

  MORS PLANCH WAS deeply and quietly horrified. Wondering why he was still alive, he had watched Daneel and Lodovik board the trader ship and leave Madder Loss, and had finally concluded that Daneel did not know anything about his discovery.

  At first, he did not know to whom to turn. Or indeed where to go, what to do, even what to think. The conversation recorded on his tape was too disturbing, too much like the ravings of a Mycogenian secret text.

  Eternals! In the Empire! Running it from behind the scenes like puppet masters–for thousands of years!

  Mors had never met a long-lived human; they no longer existed, he was certain. It had been several thousand years since the collapse of the last gerontocracy. Planets populated by people living more than 120 standard years had all collapsed in political and economic chaos...

  His first impulse–and second, and third–was to go into hiding, to get as far away from this danger as he could. Perhaps even to flee to one of the outlying Galactic Sectors edging away from Imperial control. There were so many possibilities for escape...

  But none of them suited him. Throughout his long and devious life, he had always regarded Trantor as a kind of locus, a point from which he could come and go, as the winds of money and his own whims propelled him. But never to see Trantor again

  Worth it! Live out your life in peace–and simply live!

  Soon enough, however, as the hours and days passed, he let this thought fade and considered others, more immediate. Of what use was his evidence? Perhaps they were simply pulling his leg.

  But Lodovik Trema had survived the neutrino flux! No ordinary human, perhaps no human at all–no organic creature–could have survived...

  Then again, tapes of this kind could easily be faked. His own character, if deeply investigated, would be regarded by no authority as unimpeachable. The tape–and his efforts to spread a
message of conspiracy–could mark him as a lunatic.

  He doubted very much that Linge Chen or Klayus would pay much attention to it. He tried to think of others in positions of influence, others whose intuition matched their real-world savvy and political skill.

  No one came to mind. He knew something about most of the top thirty ministers and their councilors in the palace, and a great deal about the Commission of Public Safety, that deep reservoir of career Greys and old-family elites. No one! Not one–

  The tape was a curse. He wished he had never made it. Yet he could not bring himself to destroy it–in the right hands, it might be extremely valuable. And in the wrong hands–

  It could bring about his execution.

  He packed his kit in the small inn room he had occupied for the past three days. He had been waiting for the arrival of a commodities freighter, one of the ten or so ships that arrived on Madder Loss every week, down from the thousands of past decades. He had booked passage the day before and received confirmation.

  Planch took a small ground-cab to the spaceport, along the main highway, open to the sky, past the brilliantly sunlit fields and small, shabby, but relatively tidy communities.

  He stood in the dusty, trash-littered passenger lobby, his own clothes dusty and unkempt, waiting for the freighter to finish off-loading its cargo. Sunlight fell in dust-marked pillars through the skylights of the long hall leading back to the customs center. He cleaned off a chair with a few swipes of his hand and was about to sit behind a pillar, out of direct view from most angles, when he saw an adolescent boy pedaling a small quadricycle down the hall.

  Swinging back and forth from empty gate to empty gate, the boy called out Planch’s name in short, sharp barks. Planch was alone at this end of the terminal.

  The boy wheeled toward him. There was no avoiding it; he identified himself to the messenger and accepted a metal-and-plastic hyperwave transfer card. It was coded to his personal touch, common enough in the confines of the Empire...