Asimov’s Future History Volume 12

by Isaac Asimov

  He did not like Prospero. He did not like dealing with Prospero. The other New Law robots were thoughtful, careful, reticent beings. Prospero was none of those things.

  And, if one defined the other New Law robots as sane, Gubber Anshaw was far from certain that Prospero was that, either.

  Part 2

  IMPACT MINUS FIFTY-FIVE

  9

  ALVAR KRESH STARED out the window of his home, and watched the rain come pouring down. Rain - lifegiving, welcoming rain. It was a rare thing for the city of Hades, and always a most welcome one.

  But the rain and the darkness made the way impossible to see, and made the going slippery. Flash floods could wash out the road altogether. It was best to stay in one place, stay inside and home and dry in the rain. But Kresh could see another, larger, and more dangerous storm, one that had swept across the planet, Comet Grieg bearing down in its wake. In that larger storm, the storm of politics and decision and danger, Kresh had no choice but to move forward, to venture out and choose the direction that would lead to safety.

  If any direction could do so. If there was any way to choose a path, or any way to know that it would lead in the direction it seemed to go.

  What was to be done?

  Alvar Kresh had faced many decisions in his life, made many choices that affected many people, but never had he felt the loneliness of decision more. If only Lentrall had discovered his damnable comet sooner. If only there were more time.

  “What am I going to dot’ he asked the rain, speaking softly enough that his voice would not carry. But there were no answers, no guidance there. He turned around and looked around his living room. Fredda and Donald were there, watching him, waiting for him to speak to them.

  It was a big, comfortable, informal room. Fredda had redecorated it in soft and gentle colors, pastel shades of yellow and white, with soft rugs and comfortable chairs and cheerful abstract murals on the walls. Kresh would not have picked out any of it for himself, and yet, somehow, it all suited him very well. It felt more like a home than any place he had ever lived by himself. Warm, and safe, and bright.

  But then Kresh saw the room flash white for a split second as a lightning bolt lit up the window behind him. The thunder came quickly after, a booming roar that seemed powerful enough to shake the room apart.

  A well-timed reminder, it was, that they were not safe, that they could build all the buildings and walls and barriers they liked. The world would still be outside, unpredictable, uncontrollable, unknowable.

  And why merely imagine the chance of Comet Grieg being spotted earlier? Comet Grieg could just as easily have been left undiscovered until it was much closer, until it was too late to even consider diverting it. Or else the comet’s natural, undiverted orbit could just as easily have been too far off to even contemplate moving it. Or the damned thing could have been heading in for an unplanned, uncontrolled direct hit on the planet. What would they have done then?

  But no. “What if” was no longer the question. Alvar Kresh, and Alvar Kresh alone, had to answer another question.

  “What now?” he asked Fredda and Donald. “What is to be done?”

  There was a long moment’s pause before either of them replied, the rain on the roof a fitting, brooding background to the mood of the room.

  “I don’t know,” said Fredda at last. “Either leave the comet alone or bring it in to drop on our heads. Those are the two things you can do. It seems to me that either one could save all the life on the planet from destruction – or actually bring on that destruction. Are we doomed if we do nothing? Can we drop the comet without killing us all?”

  Kresh made a thoughtful little noise in his throat. “That’s what it comes down to, isn’t it?” He considered for a moment, and then went on. “Of course, the traditional Spacer response would be to do nothing at all,” said Kresh. “Let it alone, let it pass. If there is no way to know if it would be better to act, why then far better to leave the thing alone. If you do nothing, then there is nothing you can be blamed for if things go wrong.”

  “Another proud legacy of the Three Laws,” Fredda said. “Be safe, do nothing, take no chances.”

  “If the Three Laws teach humans to avoid taking needless risks now and again, I for one see that as a very strong argument in their favor,” said Donald, speaking for the first time. “But even the First Law contains an injunction against inaction. A robot cannot stand idly by. It must act to prevent harm to humans.”

  Kresh looked toward Donald with a smile. “Are you saying that a robot faced with this decision would choose to bring down the comet? Is that what you would do?”

  Donald held up his hands palm out and shook his head back and forth vigorously. “By no means, Governor. I am quite literally incapable of making this decision. It would be a physical impossibility for me to do it, and more than likely suicidal to attempt it. So it would be for any properly constructed Three Law robot.”

  “How so?”

  “The First Law enjoins us against doing harm to humans, and against inaction at such times when robotic action would prevent harm to humans.” Donald’s speech became labored as he spoke. It was plain that even discussing the issues in a hypothetical context was difficult for him. “In this case, both action or inaction might or might not cause or prevent harm to humans. Attempting to deal with such a difficult problem, with the lives of so many present and potential humans in the bal – balance would cause... would cause irreparable damage to any pospospositronic brain, as the question produced cascading First-Law/First-Law conflictzzz.” Donald’s eyes grew a bit dimmer, and his movements seemed oddly sluggish as he put his arms back down at his side.

  “All right, Donald,” said Kresh, in his firmest and most reassuring voice. He stepped over to the robot and put his hand on Donald’s sloping shoulder. “It’s all right. You are not the one who will have to make that decision. I order you to stop considering it at this time.” There were times when only the words of a robot’s direct master could be enough to snap the robot out of such a state.

  Donald’s eyes faded out all but completely for a moment, and then came back to their normal brightness. He seemed to be looking at nothing at all for a few seconds, but then his eyes began to track again, and he looked straight at Kresh. “Thank – thank you, sir. It was most unwise of me to consider the question so closely, even when called upon to do so.”

  Kresh nodded absently, knowing that he had brought it on himself. He had asked Donald why a robot could not make such a decision, and a question was, in essence, an order. It required constant caution, endless care, to deal with the delicacy of a Three-Law robot’s sensibilities and sensitivities. Sometimes Kresh was deeply tired of it all. There were even times when he was ready to concede that the Settlers might have a point. Maybe some parts of life would be easier without robots.

  Not as if they had such an option at the moment. But if robots could not be trusted to face such a situation... Kresh turned toward Donald again. “Donald, I hereby order you to turn around and face the wall, and to shut off all your audio inputs until you see my wife or me waving at you. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir. Of course.” Donald turned his back on Kresh and Fredda. “I have now shut down my audio receptors.”

  “Very good,” said Kresh. More damn fool precautions, but that couldn’t be helped. At least now Donald would be unable to hear or eavesdrop. Now they would be able to talk without fear of saying the wrong thing in front of the robot and accidentally setting up a damn fool First Law crisis. Kresh turned toward Fredda. “What about the Robotic Planetary Control Center?” he asked. “I wanted to consult with it – and with the Computational Planetary Control Center – before I reached a decision.”

  “Well, what about them?” Fredda asked.

  The two control centers were the heart of the reterraforming effort, performing all the calculations and analyses of each new project before it was launched. The original intent had been to build a single control center. Th
ere were two basic designs to choose between. One was a Settler-style computational unit, basically a massively complex and powerful, but quite nonsentient, computer. The other was a Spacer-style robotic unit that would be based on a hugely powerful positronic brain, fully imbued with the Three Laws. It would, in effect, be a robot mind without a robot body.

  There had been a tremendous controversy over whether to trust the fate of the planet to a mindless machine, or to a robotic brain that would refuse to take necessary risks. It was easy to imagine a robotic control unit choosing to avoid harm to one human, rather than permit a project vital to the future of the planet. The robotics experts all promised that it didn’t work that way, but experts had been wrong before. Governor Grieg had died before he could reveal his choice between the two systems. In one of the first acts of his administration, Kresh had decided to build both, and interconnect them so that the two systems worked in consensus with each other. In theory, if the two systems could not reach agreement on what to do, or not to do, they were to call in human referees to decide the issue. In practice, the two systems had agreed with each other far more often than anyone could have hoped. Thus far, there had only been a half dozen or so very minor issues that had required human decisions.

  A vast planetary network of sensors and probes, orbiting satellites, mobile units, and on-site investigators, both robotic and human, fed a constant stream of information to both units – and both units fed back a constant stream of instructions and commands to the humans and robots and automatic machines in the field.

  The two interconnected control centers were the only devices on the planet capable of handling the constant stream of incoming data and outgoing instructions. It was plainly obvious that the two of them would have to be consulted regarding the plan to drop a comet on the planet, but Kresh did not wish to risk the sanity of the robotic unit. “You saw what just happened to Donald,” he said. “Will I burn the Robotic Center out if I ask it what I should do?”

  Fredda smiled reassuringly. “There wouldn’t be much point in having a Robotic Control Center that couldn’t consider risks to the planet without damaging itself,” she said. “It took some doing, but we installed some special... safeguards, shall we say, that should keep it from experiencing any serious First Law conflict.”

  “Good, good,” said Kresh, a bit absently. “At least that’s one less thing to worry about. At least we know that part is all right.”

  “Do we?” Fredda asked. “I wonder. When Lentrall asked me about Donald’s name, and how it was not from Shakespeare, that made me wonder.”

  “Wonder what?”

  “I was absolutely certain it was from Shakespeare. No doubt at all in my mind. I never bothered to double-check, any more than I would have bothered to double-check the spelling of my own name. I thought I knew it – and I was dead wrong.”

  “We all make mistakes,” Kresh said.

  “Yes, yes, of course,” Fredda said, impatiently. “But that’s not the point. In a sense, it’s a trivial mistake. But it came out of a trusted database. Who knows how long ago the dataset got scrambled, or what else in it is wrong? And if that database can be wrong, lots of other things can be as well. What else is there that we think we know? What other hard fact that we think we have absolutely right will turn out to be absolutely dead wrong? What else do we think we know?”

  There was a moment of long and uncomfortable silence.

  But uncertainty surrounded all of life. To wait until one was sure was to remain frozen in place until it was too late. “We’ll never be able to answer that question,” said Kresh. He paused for a moment and thought. “You’re thinking like a scientist,” he said. “And up until now, I’ve been thinking like a politician. Maybe it’s time to think like a police officer.”

  “I must admit that I do not see how the police viewpoint would be of much use in this situation,” said Fredda.

  “Because back when I was a policeman, I knew I didn’t know,” said Kresh. “I knew, on every case, that some knowledge was hidden, and that I would never have absolutely complete or totally accurate information. But I still had to act. I still had to decide. I had to take the facts I had – or thought I had – and ride them as far as they would take me.” He stepped around Donald so he was facing the robot. He waved his hand in front of Donald’s face. “All right, Donald,” he said. “You can turn around and listen now.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Donald replied.

  Kresh smiled at Donald, then paused a moment and walked to the center of the room. He looked from Donald to Fredda, and then turned around to look at the rainstorm again, to look at nothing at all. “By the time I know enough to decide what to do, it will be too late to decide. Therefore, we will work on the assumption that we are going to divert Comet Grieg. All preparations will go forward as if we were indeed planning to do the job.”

  “So we pretend that you’ve decided?” Fredda asked.

  “More or less,” Kresh said. “It will buy me some time. I won’t have to decide until it’s actually time to deflect the comet.”

  “That’s a dangerous move,” Fredda said. “It’s going to be hard to make all the investment of time and effort and money and then pull back at the last moment.”

  “It’s not the best way to do it,” Kresh agreed. “But can you think of any way that’s less bad? That at least gives us time to examine our options?”

  “No,” Fredda admitted.

  “Then I think we’d better do it my way,” said Kresh.

  “That leaves us with a hell of a lot to do,” Fredda said. “There’s the space-side interception and diversion to set up, the targeting to plan, the site survey of wherever the comet’s going to hit, evacuation of people and equipment, emergency preparations for the cities, food stockpiles to lay in –”

  “Excuse me, Dr. Leving, but, if I may say so, that is the sort of organizational job I was made to do.”

  Kresh smiled. Fredda ought to know that. She had made Donald in the first place. It was as close to a joke as Donald was ever likely to get. “Point taken,” Kresh said. “Donald, I want you to get started on the initial organizational tasks right now. Project management is to be your primary duty, and you are to avoid allowing other tasks to interfere. You are to perform no further personal service for me unless specifically ordered to do so. Report to me via hyperwave in three hours, time as to project status. Thereafter, you are to consult with me as you see fit. Fredda, with Donald tied up, I’m afraid I’m going to have to borrow Oberon as a pilot. I have a feeling Donald would not permit me to do the flying myself in this weather.”

  “Absolutely not,” said Donald.

  “But – but where are you going at this hour of the night?” Fredda asked.

  “Out,” said Kresh. “No one seems to know anything for sure in this whole business. It’s just about time I got some advice from someone who knows what’s going on.”

  There’s no logical reason to make this trip, Kresh told himself as he stepped out of the elevator car into the covered rooftop hangar of his house. And that was true, as far as it went. No doubt Kresh could have gotten all the information he needed by sitting at his own comm panel in his own house.

  But there were times when being on the scene, being there in the flesh, was useful. There would be some little detail, something that might have been overlooked, or never noticed at all, if seen only through a viewscreen, or heard through a speaker.

  Besides, the journey itself would be of use. There were times when it was important to be alone, to have time to think. Alone even from one’s personal robot, from one’s trusted wife. Alvar Kresh sensed that this was one of those times when he had to be alone – if for no other reason than to remind himself that he would have to make his decision alone. And he would have the duration of the flight all to himself. Fredda’s robot Oberon scarcely counted as company, and besides, he was taking the long-range aircar. It had a separate passenger compartment behind the cockpit. He stepped aboard, and Oberon foll
owed behind him. Kresh took a seat by the port-side window, allowed Oberon to lock and double-check his seat restraint, and then watched as Oberon stepped forward to the pilot’s compartment and shut the hatch behind himself.

  Alone. Yes, a very good idea, to be alone. Good to get out of the city, see something – at least a little something – of the planet again, while he was considering its fate. The thought appealed to him as Oberon powered up the aircar and it lifted a half-meter or so off the deck of the hangar. The outer doors opened, and the aircar slowly eased out into the driving rain. If anything, the storm had grown more intense.

  Suddenly the aircar was in the middle of the storm, bucking and swaying in the darkness, the rain crashing down on the hull and the ports with incredible violence. Just for a moment, Alvar Kresh would have been just as glad to have stayed at home – but Oberon would not have started the flight if he had not been confident of his ability to deliver Kresh safely to his destination. Kresh certainly would not have been willing to pilot the craft in this sort of weather.

  But even as he grabbed at the arms of his seat and braced himself against the bouncing, bone-rattling ride, there was part of him that knew no fear at all, because a robot was at the controls, and robots and danger to humans simply could not exist in the same place. There were few things in the universe in which Alvar Kresh could place absolute faith, but robots were one of them.

  But tell that to the weather. The storm boomed and roared outside the long-range aircar as it fought for altitude, the banging and rattling getting worse with every moment. Just at the moment when Kresh was ready to decide his faith in robots was not all that absolute, the aircar broke free, punched a hole in the clouds and climbed out into the clear and placid skies above.

  Smooth sailing after the storm, Kresh told himself as he looked down on the storm clouds below. A nice symbol, that. Maybe even a good omen.

  But Kresh knew better, of course. When it came to signs and omens, he had no faith at all.