Asimov’s Future History Volume 12

by Isaac Asimov

  “There is a new reason,” Kresh said. “A new reason they might have to go. I may have to choose between destroying them and saving the planet. I don’t need to tell you what my choice would be.”

  “Alvar, what in the name of the devil are you talking about?”

  Alvar Kresh did not answer at first. He looked at her most unhappily, and let out a deep and weary sigh. “I should never have accepted this job,” he said at last. “I should have let Simcor Beddle take it, and let him have the nightmares.” He did not say more for a moment. Instead he picked up his fork and made an attempt to eat a bite or two more. But the sudden silence in the room, and the expression on Fredda’s face, were too much for him. He let the fork clatter onto the plate, and leaned wearily back in his chair. “I want you to come in with me tomorrow morning,” he said. “There’s someone I want you to meet. I want your opinion of what he has to say.”

  “Who – who is it?” Fredda asked.

  “No one you’d know,” said Kresh. “A young fellow by the name of Davlo Lentrall.”

  Tonya Welton was worried. She had reason to be. Something was going on. Something was going on, and she did not know what it was. And she would not know until the Settler Security Service debriefing team was ready to tell her. The SSS had told her that an informant named Ardosa had risked his cover getting into Settlertown, and that he had claimed to have some vital information, and that it concerned an astrophysicist named Davlo Lentrall. They would not be able to have anything more for her until the transcripts of his debriefing were drawn up and checked over, and the information verified.

  There had been something in the voice of the SSS officer who had reported the news, something that told her it was big enough that they didn’t want to risk letting it out until they were sure the information was credible. They were going to have a try at breaking into Lentrall’s computer files. The University was using a Settler-built computer system, which ought to give them an advantage, but it still would not be easy. There was nothing to do but wait.

  Tonya had a gut feeling that told her they were going to find out Ardosa’s information damn well was credible. She was tempted to call over and demand to be given the raw information immediately. But she knew better than that. When the professionals turned cautious, there was, more often than not, good reason for them to do so. Let them work. She would know in good time.

  As she sat there, worrying, Gubber Anshaw came into the room. He bent down to kiss her on the forehead, and she gave him a little pat on the arm before he straightened up and crossed the room to settle into his own chair with a contented sigh.

  Tonya watched him pullout his technical journals and start in to read. She loved him dearly, there had been times when he had been of tremendous help – but this was not likely to be one of those times.

  Gubber was a world-class expert on robots, but whatever was up, it definitely did not involve robots. At the moment, Gubber was reading up in preparation for his long-planned trip to Valhalla. Gubber, as the designer of the gravitonic brain, had never really approved of the way Fredda Leving had appropriated his work to create the New Law robots. However, over time, he had come to accept the situation – and from there, it was not much of a step to taking advantage of it. The New Laws were still the only gravitonic-brain robots ever made. It was only common sense that Gubber take advantage of the chance to study them more. Gubber was due to take the morning suborbital flight to Depot in the morning, and meet up with a New Law robot by the name of Lancon-03 there for the journey on to the hidden city of Valhalla.

  Normally, Tonya would have entertained the hope that Gubber might have heard something through the rumor mill. But when Gubber was wrapped up in his work, it took something on the order of a blaster shot at the book he was reading to direct his attention elsewhere. It seemed highly unlikely he had spent much time recently with his friends chatting about the doings of obscure astrophysicists.

  Damnation, what was this Lentrall person up to? Why was he suddenly so important? It involved terraforming, that much was for sure. Therefore, it had to affect the Settlers on Inferno. And, as she was the leader of the Settlers on Inferno, it sure as hell was going to affect Tonya.

  The contingent of Settlers were on Inferno for the express purpose of reterraforming the planet. Very few of the Settlers sent on the project had been particularly thrilled about the assignment. After all, it required them to live on a Spacer world, and to deal with Spacers on a daily basis.

  But enough could be said for the Spacer life that many of the Settlers had lived up to their name, and settled on Inferno, more or less permanently. They had discovered there were other ways to live, besides in the vast underground warrens that were the Settler cities. They had met husbands and wives, started families. They had bought property, built houses. Some had actually taken on robot servants. There were more than a few of them who had no particular desire to go back home. As terraforming a planet was, at the very least, a task measured in decades, some of her people – including Tonya herself – had begun to take comfort in the knowledge that they could stay as long as they liked, perhaps their whole lives long.

  Therefore, anything that threatened, or even affected, the Settlers’ terraforming project, was of the gravest concern. And Tonya had the very distinct impression that this Lentrall affair could play merry hell with the terraforming project.

  Their operative at the University of Hades, a fellow by the name of Ardosa, had alerted the Settler Security Service that Lentrall had come up with something that had thrown the whole terraforming department for a loop. Ardosa had also reported that the upper ranks of the university’s administration had likewise been thrown into an uproar by the news. there had been some extremely stormy meetings.

  Beyond all that, Ardosa didn’t know much – simply that something was up, and that it was urgent, and that Lentrall had met with the university’s top terraforming experts. Or at least what passed for terraforming experts over there. Tonya was confident her own people were way ahead of anything the Infernals could do. At least she had been confident, up until now.

  Once alerted by Ardosa, the Settler Security Service had spotted Lentrall going in and out of Governor Kresh’s office complex. The SSS also managed to get a private peek at the governor’s daily appointment list. All the other entries were routine, but the listing Davlo Lentrall – reterraforming proposal had caught Tonya’s eye.

  Who was this Lentrall, and what was he up to? Her people knew almost nothing about him. About all they had was that he was very young – even by Settler standards – and that he was some sort of scientist in the university’s astrophysics department. He seemed to have an informal connection to an obscure research center that was vaguely attached to the Infernal side of the terraforming project. That was all they knew.

  That, and the fact that he had had a rapid series of appointments with progressively higher-ranking Infernal government officials, culminating in a meeting with the governor himself. The question was obvious – what could be important or urgent enough to propel an obscure astrophysicist into the governor’s office?

  Tonya felt frustrated. The time had been when her people could have worked up a complete dossier on a fellow like Lentrall no time at all. There had been an odd sort of freedom for her spies and intelligence operatives, in the old, confrontational days. Back then, relations between the Settlers and the Spacers had been so bad it didn’t much matter if they got worse. In fact it was difficult to see how they could have gotten worse. Cinta Melloy, the head of the SSS, could have, and had, used all sorts of dirty tricks – taps on comm calls and databanks, bribes, agents tailing a subject, the whole works – in order to develop information.

  But now everyone had to be very respectful and polite, on both sides. Over the past few years, the SSS had developed a very close working relationship with Justen Devray’s Combined Inferno Police. They shared intelligence and assisted each other in enforcement work. It would not do to jeopardize all that with a flu
rry of ham-handed snooping around. In some ways, peace was a lot more complicated than confrontation.

  Tonya looked back over at Gubber. Speaking of relationships, theirs, Tonya’s and Gubber’s, had caused more than a small stir, back when the secret got out. The hard-as-nails leader of the Settlers on Inferno, quite literally in bed with the quiet, retiring, soft-spoken Spacer roboticist. It had been a tremendous scandal.

  Tonya realized she was missing a bet. Even if it was unlikely that Gubber had heard anything, it couldn’t hurt to ask. Besides, scientists tended to know each other. Maybe Glibber would know something useful about Lentrall’s background, even if he wasn’t up to date on the latest rumors

  “Gubber?” she asked in a casual tone of voice.

  “Hmmm?” He looked up from his reading, a vague sort of smile on his face. “What is it?”

  “Do you happen to know a man named Davlo Lentrall?”

  Gubber thought for a moment. “I know of him, at least slightly,” he said. “I ran into him at some sort of joint studies conference. A very young fellow. He’s some sort of assistant researcher in the department of astrophysics over at the university. I don’t pay much attention to those backwater space science disciplines. I can’t say I know much about him.”

  Tonya nodded thoughtfully. There was not much impetus for basic space research on the Spacer worlds, and hence not much research. “What did you think of him?” she asked. “What sort of impression did he make?”

  “Oh, I don’t think we got past the hello, pleased-to-meet-you stage, so I can’t say I formed much of an opinion. Pleasant enough, I suppose, but very rushed and abrupt. Everything is always a top priority. You know the sort. Why do you ask?”

  “Well, no special reason,” she said. “To tell you a little more than I should, our people spotted him going into the governor’s office, and we were wondering what he was doing there.”

  Gubber frowned. “I’m sure I don’t know,” he said. “But he does seem rather a junior sort of person to be meeting with the planetary governor.”

  “I quite agree,” Tonya said.

  “Well, I’m sure you’ll find some perfectly dull explanation in a day or so,” Gubber said, and went back to his reading.

  “Maybe,” said Tonya. “Maybe.” Gubber was probably right. But she could not let go of it. What the devil did a junior astrophysicist have to do with terraforming? Tonya had an unpleasantly strong hunch she was not going to like the answer.

  Simcor Beddle, leader of the Ironhead party, leaned forward into the lectern and pounded it with his fist. “No more!” he shouted out to his audience. “We won’t take anymore!” he half shouted in order to be heard over the wild cheers and applause from the audience. Or would it be more accurate to call that mass of his wild-eyed followers a mob? No matter. They were his. They fed on him, and he fed on them.

  He wiped the sweat from his brow with a pristine white handkerchief and went into his wind-up, the crowd shouting louder, his voice growing stronger and more angry with each demand. “No more delay in returning our robots from their illegal government seizure! No more coddling of those so-called New Law robots that threaten the stability of our society! No more Settlers shoved down our throat!” By now the crowd noise was so deafening there was no longer any point in attempting to be heard. But he shouted at the top of his lungs, not so much to make his voice audible, but in order to make it possible for his followers to read his lips. “No more!” he cried out. “No more!”

  “NO MORE!” the crowd shouted back, and the chant had begun. “NO MORE! NO MORE! NO MORE!”

  Simcor Beddle grinned broadly and spread his arms wide, waving to them all, drinking in the cheers and the shouts and the anger. They were still there, and they were still his. The sea of faces roaring its approval might not have been quite as large as it once had been, but it was still there, and he still controlled it. It was a great pleasure, and a great relief, to know that. The Ironheads held these meetings to keep up the enthusiasm of the rank-and-file, but there was no doubt in Beddle’s mind that they did him a great deal of good as well.

  He raised his arms a bit higher, and grinned a bit more broadly. That got the crowd shouting and cheering louder. He nodded to them, waved, and made his exit to the stage right wings.

  Jadelo Gildern was waiting for him there. Beddle nodded to him as a serving robot handed Beddle a large glass of fruit juice to quench his thirst and ease his throat. “How big was the crowd?” Beddle asked as his took the juice and drank it down greedily. Rabble-rousing was thirsty work.

  “Five thousand two hundred and thirty-three,” Gildern replied. “We’re holding on to more of them than I had expected. But sooner or later, we’re going to have to do something.”

  He nodded toward the still-cheering crowd out there. “That lot out there expects action. If they don’t get it from you soon, they’ll look elsewhere.”

  “Let’s just be thankful they don’t have anyplace else to go,” said Beddle as he handed the empty glass to the robot and took a big towel to his face. He rubbed his face and his scalp vigorously. It might not be as decorous as a handkerchief, but it did a better job of drying off the sweat.

  “Let’s get you home and in and out of the refresher,” Gildern said. “There’s something we need to talk about.”

  “That informant that walked in earlier today?”

  “That’s the one,” said Gildern. “You ordered us to pursue it, and we have. We’ve don’t have much just yet, but you said you wanted to be kept informed.”

  “Then let’s go,” said Beddle. He followed Gildern out of the auditorium, leaving the still-cheering crowd behind.

  Forty-five minutes later, Simcor Beddle was at his desk, reading a file prepared by Gildern, and learning the name of Davlo Lentrall.

  He studied the file carefully. Once Gildern’s agents had been tipped off by the informant Ardosa, they had to set to work at once. They had procured a full summary of Lentrall’s career to date, but it did not make very informative reading. He was born, he went to school, he studied astronomy. None of it made for shocking revelations. So what was so important about Lentrall? Was their informant playing some sort of game with them?

  “This tells us very little,” Beddle said to Jadelo, who sat in one of the chairs in front of his desk. “Do you still think this is something big?”

  “Yes, I do. I’ve worked with this particular informant for quite some time. He has been a reliable small-time operative for us. His information has always been good. And as best I can tell, he is either behaving exactly the way a small-timer should when big, dangerous information drops in his lap, or else he is one of the best actors I have ever met.”

  “Hmmmph.” Beddle glared at the file in front of him, as if he could force more information out of it by sheer force of personality. “Lentrall has something, or knows something, that is causing a lot of turmoil. I find it intriguing, but we need more. Maybe it’s just some arcane academic dispute.”

  “I doubt it. Whatever it is, it’s gotten him in to see a whole series of government officials – and gotten him in to see Governor Kresh in a private interview,” Gildern pointed out. “But that’s all we’ve been able to get.”

  “You’re saying we’re stuck. I don’t like being stuck.” Simcor Beddle was a man of action, a man given to straight-ahead action, not to waiting.

  “We’ll get more information,” Gildern said. “But when we do, I have a feeling that we’re going to have to act on it fast.”

  “I agree. The government seems to moving with unseemly haste. It’s going to be something with a time element to it.” Beddle gestured toward the file on his desk. “Take it away,” he said, and the robot by his side leaned in toward the desk, closed the file folder, and removed it. Beddle stood up, and a second robot stepped in from the rear to pull back his chair. Beddle stepped around his desk, leaving it to the two robots to get out of his way. That was the Ironhead way. One required absolutely perfect service of one’s robots, an
d then paid them no mind. One assumed the robot would do what was required, and that was all. The Infernals followed the Spacer convention of ignoring robots. But Ironheads took the convention to its extreme.

  An Ironhead might be awakened, washed, dressed, fed and served by a whole platoon of robots during the day – but never acknowledge their existence, or even be consciously aware of seeing them. Someone had described the ideal Ironhead lifestyle as being waited upon hand and foot by a legion of ghosts, and that was not far from the truth.

  Beddle came around to sit in one of the two big, comfortable armchairs reserved for visitors, easing his considerable bulk into it with a surprising grace. “What do you make of it?” he asked of the man in the other chair.

  Jadelo Gildern smiled, displaying a set of pointed-looking teeth. Beddle had recently promoted Gildern to second-in-command of the Ironhead party, while instructing him to keep his euphemistically titled post as Director of Research and Information – a polite way of saying Gildern ran the Ironhead spy network.

  Gildern was a small, thin, sallow-faced man. His thinning pale-blond hair was cut very short, and his face was long and narrow. Today he was wearing a very plain, loose-fitting outfit of gray pants and a gray tunic. All his clothes always seemed to be a bit too large for him. “I think it’s important, but I don’t know what it is,” he said. “We have only had a very few hours to examine the situation.” Gildern’s voice was low, and almost musical in tone. Beddle felt certain that Gildern could credit that voice as being at least half of what had gotten him to where he was. “It would of course be a relatively simple matter to infiltrate Lentrall’s office and have a look around, and thus learn more about what he is doing. However, the odds of our operatives getting caught would be moderately high, and the odds that Lentrall or the university would be able to detect the intrusion quite high. The university has a surprisingly competent security system. I’d be even more reluctant to try breaking into Lentrall’s computer files there. We haven’t had much luck cracking into Settler computers. Even if we could get in, the odds are very much against our avoiding detection.”