Asimov’s Future History Volume 10

by Isaac Asimov

  The other person did not look familiar. Taller than Talas — who was herself Spacer tall and slender — and broad across the shoulders, he seemed oddly unhealthy by Spacer standards. Bogard ran a comparative analysis and decided that the variations were quite probably not apparent to another human. Skin tone was “wrong,” paler and rough, and his hair showed evidence of dermal flaking. The eyes shimmered, a bit too moist, and shifted in a constant scan pattern.

  He pointed at Bogard. “I’m uncomfortable with that here.”

  Talas approached the niche and keyed its readout. “He’s completely off-line.” She pressed a few contacts. “There. Now he can’t self-initiate, either. We’re as private here as we’re likely to be.”

  “Why not just go to your office?”

  Talas shook her head. “The less association the better, as far as I’m concerned. I want you to stay here till I arrange transit.”

  The man sat down. “I’m leaving?”

  “As soon as I can get you on a ship.”

  “We aren’t finished here. There’s still the Burgess woman and Avery.”

  Talas scowled. “And maybe by now Dr. Penj and the First Advisor? No, it stops now. It’s bad enough you killed Eliton. That was a mistake.”

  “You’re second-guessing the Executive now? Eliton was an inconvenience. It was risky enough sending him to Solaria, but having him here, scheduled to testify — no, there was no choice.”

  “He has to be explained now. How is that supposed to happen?”

  The man shrugged. “That’s your job.”

  “Exactly so, and this is how I’m doing it. Burgess already named you, Maliq will probably alert other security agencies once he realizes I’m not finding you. So I’m packing you off Aurora. Once you’re gone, then I can backdate the records and show you fleeing before I even began my search.”

  “Leaving Burgess and Avery to tell the Council what they know.”

  “Which is what? Nothing they can substantiate. Her report naming you as a corpse on Earth never got to them. They’ll see that as evidence that she’s unreliable. Besides, if my suggestion to First Advisor Maliq is accepted — and it will be, since everyone here is uncomfortable having Burgess remain on Aurora — then the problem solves itself. She’ll be at Nova Levis, away from here, safely sidelined.”

  “I don’t like leaving all these mouths around.”

  “Too bad. If you hadn’t killed Eliton, we might have found another way.”

  “Eliton could identify the Executive. Eliton could reveal the associations between Solaria, Earth, and here. He might even have been able to make the connection with Nova Levis. It’s too soon for that. He shouldn’t have gotten himself arrested.”

  “Ambassador Burgess got him arrested.”

  “He’d been told to stay in his cabin and avoid any contact with other passengers. He’d been told to behave like a Solarian.”

  Talas shook her head impatiently. “Enough. These are all excuses. Aurora is my world and you made a mess here. I’m supposed to handle situations arising here.”

  “You didn’t. Eliton was about to testify. But as you say, enough. You can explain it all to the executive when the time comes. Maybe he’ll understand something I don’t.”

  Talas opened her mouth to respond, but then stopped. She pulled out a portable datum from her belt pouch and sat down at the far end of the conference table from the man. Within moments, she was lost in concentration.

  Bogard to Thales, monitor datum traffic, this location, trace comm traffic, report

  Working, stand by

  The trace scrolled through Bogard’s internal datum. Talas was checking on shuttle schedules and shipping. She had made a request for a diplomatic pass, undisclosed recipient, through a shadow office attached to First Advisor Maliq. Bogard opened a secondary trace and invaded the structure of that office. No one actually worked in it, everything about it was virtual, and the security shell around it was generated by the rogue RI as part of the same packet through which all the illicit hyperwave communications flowed. Bogard probed further to find names. If the existence of the office became known, it would wash over First Advisor Maliq, though Bogard found no evidence that Maliq knew anything about it. The secretary-in-residence was listed as Tro Aspil.

  Bogard probed into that creation and found thousands of files strewn throughout the Auroran diplomatic database relating to this person. The picture it presented showed an Auroran of considerable bureaucratic influence, with connections to several offices of the government, especially offworld services. He had carte blanche to walk through virtually any level of the government and act with a free hand in many capacities. He could not make executive decisions, but those decisions he could make could change how the executive branches responded to a situation.

  It was an admirable creation. The only problem had been the real Tro Aspil, who had evidently known nothing about it and existed only as a junior liaison advisor from the Calvin Institute. Bogard found those records easily enough, isolated almost utterly from this artificial person. It was unlikely anyone would confuse the two, that any cursory look would reveal the discrepancies in the two lives.

  But the real Aspil had indeed been assigned to the Humadros Legation, fast upon a promotion to a senior position, which made it more likely the false one might be discovered.

  Why use a real person, though?

  Bogard dug further. Tro Aspil had possessed a single trait that made him ideal to coopt: he was an orphan. He had no family. His parents had died in space, in an accident, and he had been an only child — not unusual at all among Aurorans, but not so unusual that other relations somewhere ought to exist. But he had none.

  And he had standing in the Calvin, which gave him access to areas of Auroran culture often closed to simple bureaucrats. He had not himself been useful yet — but he would be one day. That day had come, with his promotion, and the prestige of the Humadros mission, and suddenly he was worth replacing with this artificial persona that had been constructed — as far as Bogard could determine — over the course of several years.

  No one file revealed who had initially set it up, but the cumulative evidence made it clear that Talas had been principally instrumental. The security clearances could not have been created through any other office so easily.

  So who was this man sitting here now, this Aspil, physical being who had had an entire false dossier invented so he could come here and be Tro Aspil once the real one was dead? And where had he come from in the first place?

  “All right,” Talas announced finally. “Got your passage secured. I’m sending you to Keres. From there you should be able to get anywhere you want. Right now it’s the safest route from here.”

  Bogard to Thales, monitor dialogue, begin intervention

  Acknowledged

  Talas closed her datum and stood. “You wait here till I come and get you. I have to check on Burgess and Avery.”

  Aspil watched her leave. The door closed, and he sighed raggedly.

  “The hell I will,” he said, rising.

  Bogard stepped from the niche. “You will not leave.”

  Aspil stared, surprised, at Bogard. Then he grinned. “You can’t stop me without a violation.”

  “Incorrect,” Bogard said, moving to block the door. “You will stay.”

  Aspil seemed to think for a moment. Then he reached out, inhumanly fast, and grabbed Bogard’s shoulders. He heaved, and Bogard flew across the room to crash against the wall.

  He snapped upright instantly.

  The door was open, and Aspil was gone.

  Bogard to Thales, reprioritize, Aspil is not human, Aspil is a cyborg, Aspil has fled

  Bogard rushed from the room in pursuit.

  Ariel sat next to Penj and waited till he opened his eyes and acknowledged her.

  “I was picked up at the hospital,” she said. “I went there to see one of the surviving members of the Humadros Legation. She’s there, under hospice care.”

 
; Penj nodded slowly. “Mnemonic plague?”

  “You knew?”

  “Suspected. The returning members of that mission have all been rendered... unusable... by events.”

  “You told me there were factions competing.”

  “As usual.”

  “Of course. But would they be prepared to use something like this to win?”

  Penj’s thick eyebrows went up fractionally. “That is a question, isn’t it? If so, then their reach is beyond Aurora, certainly. I would have doubted it before talking to you about what happened on Earth.”

  “I sent reports —”

  “And like your report on Tro Aspil, several evidently went missing. Or were buried. It’s not difficult to lose things in a bureaucracy.”

  “On Earth, maybe, but we have positronic oversight —”

  Penj raised a hand. “Please, Ariel, don’t disappoint me. You must realize that we’re long past the time when positronics were entirely under our control. You hinted at it yourself, in your thesis at the Calvin. The complexity of our designs has surpassed the understanding of any one individual, and it’s safe to assume that our marvelous servants have evolved agendas unrelated to us.”

  “Safe?”

  He smiled. “But not popular. The fact is, we don’t know what’s going on in any reliable way. We — you and I and anyone who cares to think it through — can come to reliable conclusions, but they remain guesses.”

  “But the plague —”

  “Has sprung up on at least sixteen of the Fifty Worlds. When you contracted it — and Derec — and were essentially exiled, we still didn’t know the vectors well enough to be confident about allowing you to stay. Certainly it can be passed sexually, but when you track the isolated incidents of it, you begin to see that there must surely be another vector. The original infection was on Nexon, you know, and was one of the driving factors in the extreme isolation on Solaria.”

  “Are you suggesting the infection is intentional?”

  “Not originally, but...” Penj straightened and cleared his throat. “You were one of Aurora’s most promising robotic psychologists before your illness. Evidently the disease does not impair the mind’s ability to relearn and perform, because when you finally returned —”

  “When I was finally allowed back?”

  “— you went through the Calvin again with remarkable results. You were probably my best student. Avery over there, very similar background, and from what I’ve heard of that remarkable robot he built on Earth, he’s lost none of his essential brilliance.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “Checking the pattern for the plague on one planet reveals nothing. But when you expand it to include all incidents everywhere, you find that forty-two percent of the victims are directly involved in robotics and positronic research.”

  Ariel stared at him. “You didn’t tell me this before.”

  Penj sighed. “Self-preservation leads to bad judgment sometimes. I wanted to see what happened to you before I told you something that might put you in more danger.”

  “Forty-two percent... which means that the rest could be coincidental, assuming what you’re suggesting is true.”

  “That’s pretty much my thinking.”

  “So roboticists are being targeted?”

  “That’s one conclusion. The other is that something related to robotics is involved and we haven’t found the trigger.”

  “With that high an incidence, you’d think we’d look.”

  “My numbers are over a fifty-year span. We don’t have reliable numbers from Solaria, of course, they won’t admit to suffering from anything except the presence of other people.”

  “What about medical researchers? People who might be looking into it?”

  “I’d have to check, but I seem to recall a few. Of course, that’s difficult to draw a conclusion about because there seems to be a natural affinity between roboticists and biologists.”

  “Benen Yarick returned from Earth and was only here six months when she came down with the disease. The other two are offworld on new missions. The fourth...”

  “May be an impostor.”

  “And may have killed Eliton. But how would he have managed to get in here?”

  “Depends on his level of clearance.”

  “My report about him was never received. Who would have been the first one to get it here?”

  “There’s positronic oversight on diplomatic communiqués. It would have routed through the assigned RI.”

  “We need to see that RI then.”

  “You could certainly check it from any public comm —”

  “No. We need to physically see it.”

  Penj frowned. “The sooner the better, I suppose?”

  “With Derec,” Ariel added. “He — well, he did the analysis on the RI on Earth that allowed the massacre to occur. He’d know what to look for.”

  Penj glanced at his wrist. “We’ve been sitting here almost six hours. I doubt even Lea Talas can convince a judge to hold us much longer without better cause or an outright arrest.” He heaved himself to his feet and turned. “Lieutenant?”

  Clin Craym sat on the far side of the room. She had stopped examining the projection of the murder scene and now simply brooded, her extensions bobbing slightly above her, waiting. She looked up at Penj’s approach.

  “Sir?” she said, standing. The extensions adjusted to new orbits.

  “Please contact your superior and inform her that we are leaving. The time has passed that she can forcibly keep us without more legal explanation.”

  “I —”

  Penj raised a hand. “You may accompany us to the Calvin Institute if security concerns are at issue. I’m sure neither Ambassador Burgess nor Mr. Avery would mind. In fact, I’m sure they would insist.”

  Craym looked past Penj to Derec, then nodded. “I’ll clear it. Give me a moment.”

  Penj came back to Ariel. “All the primary RIs are housed on the Calvin Institute’s grounds. Are you up for some hands-on analysis, Mr. Avery?”

  Derec got to his feet, nodding. “Anything besides sitting around here doing nothing.”

  Ariel looked at the guards by the door. They were both frowning uncertainly, and one was resting a hand on the butt of his blaster.

  “This is not proper protocol —” Craym said loudly. “No. That’s a violation of statutes — I can’t —” She listened for a long time, her face hardening. “Terminate comm,” she said abruptly, and came toward them. “There’s a problem,” she began.

  Suddenly, her extensions dropped to the floor, almost simultaneously. She stared at them, stunned. Then she whirled around. “We’re leaving.”

  One of the guards raised a hand while the other wrapped his fingers around his pistol.

  “I’m sorry, Lieutenant, but our standing orders are to permit no one to leave without a direct —”

  “Stand by that,” Craym said, “and your career will take a sharp turn for nowhere. Stand aside.”

  “Lieutenant —”

  The other drew his weapon and held it by his side.

  Craym glared at him. “I can start citing regulations and protocol, but you know it, I’m sure. There is a situation —”

  Behind the guards, the door opened. Before either guard could turn around, they were lifted from their feet by their necks, and their heads were slammed together. Blood spattered from one and Craym backed up, drawing her own weapon.

  The guards fell to the floor and something very large and extremely fast rushed into the room.

  Craym flew backwards, across the room and against the wall. Her pistol clattered to the floor halfway between.

  The door closed.

  Ariel turned, feeling slow, with a rising sense of powerlessness.

  A man stood amid the deactivated extensions, holding the blaster.

  “Ambassador,” he said, “I am so pleased to finally meet you. I understand you knew my predecessor. I’m Tro Aspil.”

&nbs
p; He raised the blaster and aimed it at her face.

  Bogard emerged from the police precincts and onto the plaza. He stopped at once.

  Tro Aspil had vanished.

  Bogard requesting full access, complete spectrum track, location Aspil Tro, assume trajectory on previous vector

  This way

  Bogard received a grid map. He shot across the plaza, between startled people and suddenly immobile robots, toward the civil courts building.

  Path exhibits discrepancies with probable vector, infrared, UV, pheromone trace indicates false data

  Continue on present track

  He entered the robotic access and descended into the service warrens, slowing as he went.

  Error. Bogard to Thales, reestablish, confirm, trace inconsistent

  Proceed on present track

  Bogard followed the path. He had gone too far now to productively retrace and try again. He had to rely on the data being provided, though he now doubted its utility.

  He ascended four floors, followed the tube to an egress, and stepped into a room.

  A room full of robots.

  Denis stood at the door.

  Explain

  Present course prohibited

  Explain

  Three Law violation probable, percentile assigned —

  Explain potential violation

  Pursuit of subject Aspil Tro leads to conclusion that an arrogation of human prerogatives is only logical outcome

  Aspil Tro is not human

  Verify conclusion

  Access files C-11789 through C-89654 inclusive

  Files refer to subject examined on Kopernik Station, conclusion confirmed that subject was artificial amalgam, biological and inorganic mechanistic, label affixed cyborg, accepted analysis for examined subject, conditional relevance assigned to current circumstance pending confirmation of conclusions

  Conclusion high probability, Aspil Tro is of same order of organism

  Conditional acceptance, explain conclusion that present action does not violate human prerogatives

  Aspil Tro is not human, prerogatives do not assign

  Conclusion is speculative, conditional upon further examination, action based on surmise requires default to broadest parameters of definitional operations

  ?