Asimov’s Future History Volume 10

by Isaac Asimov

  “How do you feel about what you do?”

  Weil and Jan looked at each other. “Jan’s the emotional one,” Weil said. “I’m a scientist. I’m interested in what is possible. The political questions don’t mean anything to me.”

  Ariel looked to Jan. “I come to this from a medical background,” he said. “A good ninety-five percent of the people we work on would die otherwise. My feeling is that this procedure isn’t different in kind from the first primitive body augmentations — heart transplants, artificial knees, all of that ancient fumbling. If you could resurrect an ancient and ask him or her to choose between death and the cyborg operation, I’ll wager the odds are ten to one or so in favor of the transformation.”

  “Now it’s our turn,” Weil said. “What are you doing here?”

  Ariel debated how to phrase her answer. “I work with the Triangle.

  Brixa asked me to investigate some legal questions surrounding the new cyborgs.”

  Weil wasn’t willing to let her off that easily. “What questions?”

  “He’s floated the idea of enforcing their citizenship rights.”

  A puzzled frown creased Jan’s forehead. “Enforcing how? He wants to make them citizens?”

  “Legally, they are citizens — unless you think your procedure somehow removes their humanity.”

  Weil made a warning noise, but Jan was shocked enough to ignore it. “That’s ridiculous. What we do is remake people so they’re stronger, less vulnerable and more resilient than they were before. The work on their brains is minimal, merely tweaking a few connections so they can accommodate the new pathways and neural sensitivity.

  You’ve mistaken us for the butchers who experimented on terminal orphans, Ms. Burgess. Their work fundamentally changed the personalities of their subjects. Ours doesn’t. It’s as simple as that, and it’s pure unreasoning bigotry that keeps our patients living out in their shacks instead of taking their places in the flow of society.”

  At last he caught himself, and looked over at Weil, angry and nervous. She wouldn’t meet his eye, and Jan looked back to Ariel.

  “Would you do it?” Ariel asked him. “If you were dying?”

  “You’re damned right I would. Maybe even if I wasn’t. Not now, not in five years, but the day is not far off when we will be able to do this with no more risk to the patient than might accompany a genome tuneup. It’ll never be as easy as pulling a tooth, but you and I will both live to see the day when it’s an option for anyone. Even Krista will live that long.”

  “I might, but I wouldn’t do it if I lived to be a million,” Weil said.

  “How about you, Ms. Burgess? Are you with your fellow Spacer? He thinks he’s living in the Stone Age because there aren’t ten robots for every human around here.”

  “It doesn’t seem to me that highlighting cultural differences between Terrans and Spacers is useful here,” Ariel said.

  Weil grinned without humor. “You do work for the Triangle, don’t you?”

  Ariel wasn’t sure how to proceed. She’d walked into the middle of tensions that were much older and much broader than anything having to do with cyborgs, and like all old arguments, once started this one offered precious little opportunity to escape gracefully. It occurred to her that Brixa had known this would happen, had chosen Krista Weil for exactly that reason; then just as quickly Ariel dismissed the suspicion. He couldn’t manage things that closely.

  Yet if he hadn’t planned this, the possibility presented itself that this kind of dissension was widespread, that the cyborg question would only deepen divisions between Terran and Spacer. Given the already tender state of affairs, there was a genuine question of whether the cyborgs’ interests outweighed the imperative to keep peace between Earth and the Fifty Worlds. Ariel had never enjoyed this brand of realpolitik reasoning, but she was supposed to be thinking for other people — including Brixa, who might have been surprised to learn that perspectives other than his own were useful.

  As if conjured, Brixa stepped through the door. He took in the silence between Ariel and the two scientists and said, “Well. I trust you’ve learned what you hoped to learn here, Ariel. How about you come back to the office and we’ll see if we can’t work out some plan of action?”

  Chapter 30

  DEREC WAS OUT of his seat and waiting at the debarkation lock before the freighter had even started to equalize pressure with Nova City ambient. He threw a hurried thanks over his shoulder at the pilot, whose name he’d never learned, and bulled his way into inspection waving his government identification. That was when the first of many things went wrong.

  The inspector’s lips pursed as he ran Derec’s records. “Mr. Avery,” he said, “you appear to have a pending criminal case against you on Kopernik Station.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I can’t permit re-entry into Nova Levis under these circumstances.

  Will you come with me, please?”

  The clerk indicated a door behind his desk. Derec didn’t move. “The charge was fraudulent to begin with, and has been dropped. That’s why they let me out. You might have heard there’s a blockade. If I was under charge, they would hardly have let me fly away.”

  “I’m not here to argue, Mr. Avery. This way, please.”

  “I am here to argue. Let me put this to you simply: People are going to die if you hold me up here while we establish the fact that the TBI investigators on Kopernik are slow to update their records.”

  Now the clerk was angry. “Mr. Avery. If you do not come with me, I will have you arrested.”

  Derec’s datum chirped. He glanced at it and saw that Hofton was calling. Without asking the clerk, he answered the call. “Hofton. What a surprise.”

  “Derec. May I suggest you allow me to talk to the customs clerk? I believe things can be cleared up without much trouble.”

  “Are you —” Derec clamped his mouth shut and handed the datum to the clerk. “My counsel. He’ll clarify the situation for you.”

  The clerk took the datum and spoke first. “This is Nova Levis planetary customs. Your client has a pending criminal charge, and cannot under these circumstances be permitted entry.”

  Derec could no longer see Hofton’s face, but the humaniform’s voice was clear enough. “Perhaps we should discuss this out of Mr. Avery’s hearing.”

  That was pure Hofton, all discretion. Once he’d gotten the clerk a slight distance away from Derec, he could proceed with his genteel arm-twisting without the risk of embarrassing the clerk. The clerk looked up to Derec and said, “If you leave this desk, you will be arrested before you can get out of the spaceport.” He took the datum through the door he’d pointed out before.

  It didn’t take long. Two minutes at the most after he shut the door, the clerk opened it again. He handed Derec the datum and through a jaw trying to unclench said, “The situation is rectified. Recordkeeping errors are an obstacle to the commission of my duties.”

  “I understand,” Derec said. “Policy is policy. Sorry to have made things complicated.”

  Walking away into the port, he looked at the datum again, but Hofton was gone. No — gone was the wrong word. Hofton was not evident, but he hadn’t just called at that exact moment by chance.

  The datum, in addition to carrying bulletproof encryption, was Hofton’s way of tracking Derec. Observing him. He looked it over, admiring its construction. It looked inert, and Derec wondered how much power drain would show up on even the best monitors he could find. Quite the little spy tool.

  The idea that Hofton was keeping tabs on him made Derec profoundly uncomfortable even as he was grateful for the humaniform’s assistance. After the revelations of the past couple of days, Derec’s entire sense of the relational matrix between humans and robots was shaken. The power differential he’d always understood to be in place now looked very different.

  Think about it later, he told himself. Right now, worry about Ariel.

  Twenty minutes later, he was lifting off from
the flier yard and heeling the light craft around to the north. Once he’d passed out of Nova City’s legal jurisdiction, he relinquished control to the autopilot and called Miles.

  “Work has progressed slowly in your absence,” Miles told him.

  “We’ve got bigger problems, Miles,” Derec said. “The murderer of Jonis Taprin and Pon Byris is loose on Nova Levis.” He debated how much to tell the robot; even the hint that a positronic brain had been involved in the murder of a human being might be enough to set Miles teetering.

  “Should I contact law enforcement?”

  “No. Under no circumstances should you do that.” Derec had serious doubts that the Nova Levis Bureau of Investigation was any less territorial than its Terran counterpart; in fact, many NLBI detectives and analysts had worked for the TBI. “Understand, Miles? Do not call law enforcement.”

  Miles hesitated, and Derec knew it was wrestling with the Three Law implications. “Are you telling me that you will be safer if law enforcement is not involved?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m telling you.”

  Again, the slight hesitation. Then, Miles said, “Very well. What are my instructions?”

  “Take the code for the datum I’m using. If anyone calls looking for me, send them here.”

  “I am unable to establish that code, Derec. It is encrypted and scrambles every buffer I try to use.”

  Derec grumbled curses under his breath. That was just like Hofton.

  He was probably listening to this conversation and feeling superior.

  When the Nucleomorph situation was resolved, Derec was going to have a talk with Hofton — and Bogard — about their organization.

  “All right,” he said. “If anyone contact you looking for me, tell them I’ll be checking back with you.”

  “Understood.”

  Elin’s voice rang out from off the datum’s screen. “Miles, get out of the way.” She stepped into view and said, “Derec. Where are you?”

  “Traveling. I’ll be back at the lab tomorrow.” Or not at all, he thought.

  “Traveling,” she repeated. “Wonderful. While you were gone, we were notified that Eza Lamina wants us to appear tomorrow at a hearing. She mentioned Nucleomorph, and the implication was that we’ve been overcharging the Triangle for the services Nucleomorph provides.”

  “Have we?” Derec asked. He was too tired and focused on Ariel to be tactful.

  Elin froze, then just as quickly heated up. “Are you accusing me of financial improprieties?”

  “No. But I haven’t been skimming money, and I’m not getting any kickbacks from Nucleomorph —” here Derec had to suppress a laugh

  “— so I’m putting my mind at ease.”

  “The answer is no. And when you get back, we are going to discuss my future on this project.”

  “Elin, I don’t think you’re stealing. I just don’t have any energy for indirection right now. When was the last time you talked to Nucleomorph?”

  “They asked for our most recent pathogen inventory the day before yesterday, and said that delivery of the next batch of ungulates would be delayed. And the person I talked to seemed to know you were on Kopernik. How did you get back, anyway? I didn’t think anyone was getting through the blockade.”

  “I got a little back-channel help,” Derec said. “Elin, I need to talk to Miles again.”

  She nodded. “See you tomorrow.”

  When Miles was back, Derec said, “Miles, I’m going to look for Ariel. If I do not contact you in the next four hours, contact Mia Daventri. Tell her that I was going to Gernika because I believed Ariel’s life to be in danger. Once you have done that, consider my prohibition on contacting the NLBI rescinded. Is the priority clear?”

  “It is, Derec.”

  “All right,” Derec said. “Four hours.”

  He tweaked the autopilot to accelerate up the Bogard Valley.

  The flier’s console comm chirped ninety minutes later. Before Derec could accept the call, the signal overrode his receiving privileges.

  “Attention civilian vehicle,” an automated voice said. “You are entering a zone considered hazardous. You are advised to evacuate this area by the Terran Military Command. Should you remain within this area, the Terran Military Command assumes no responsibility for your safety or that of your property. Ping this message to acknowledge receipt and understanding; if you do not ping this message, it will repeat until you do.”

  Before the message had begun to repeat, Derec was calling Ariel on the datum he’d gotten from Hofton. There was an interminable pause, and then a visual message: CONNECTION FAILED.

  “What!?” Derec shouted. “Hofton, dammit, if you’re eavesdropping you need to do something about this.” He stabbed Ariel’s code again, and again got the CONNECTION FAILED return.

  “Should you remain in this area,” the automated voice said, “the Terran Military Command —” Derec punched the automated-response key and the voice shut off. Five seconds later it started up again. “You have acknowledged receipt and understanding of a message from Terran Military Command advising you to evacuate this area. In the event of personal injury or property loss, the Terran Military Command is indemnified from all claims of loss.”

  “Shut up already,” Derec said. The message did not repeat.

  All right, Derec thought. You’re heading into an area declared hazardous by the Terran military, which shouldn’t even be here; you can’t get in touch with Ariel; you may or may not be under observation by a group of robots who are taking human survival into their own hands; and there is a conspiracy of uncertain extent between Nucleomorph and a group of cyborgs. The only thing working in Derec’s favor was that nobody knew where he was — except perhaps Hofton, and whoever Hofton chose to tell, and whatever elements of the Terran military appeared to have presented themselves in Nova system.

  So what made sense? Derec would go on. He would call Masid Vorian when he was so close to Gernika that even someone monitoring the call wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. If Masid hadn’t found Ariel, he’d likely know where she’d gone, and for all Derec knew, Ariel had figured out what was happening and taken her own action. The worst thing that could happen was for the three of them to chase each other in circles; so until he got a better idea, he’d go on to Gernika and find Masid.

  The kilometers flew by, but not quite fast enough. Derec overrode the autopilot and accelerated again, leaving a wake of twisting leaves on the forest canopy below.

  Chapter 31

  THEY DIDN’T HIT Masid after that first time, and they didn’t even rough him up when he’d been installed in a small, slant-roofed shed on the outer fringes of Gernika. Instead Gorka, the cyborg who had leveled him back in the woods, stayed by the door while Filoo offered Masid a chair. He took it, both out of gratitude to relax while he tried to get the pain in his head under control and because he couldn’t think of any reason not to cooperate with Filoo while he figured out what exactly the drug kingpin was after.

  “You looking for Ariel Burgess?” Filoo appeared only mildly interested, and Masid figured the question was designed just to get him talking. Fine. He would talk. The longer he talked, the longer Filoo wasn’t killing him, and the longer Masid had to assess his chances of getting out.

  “Yeah. She here?”

  Filoo shook his head. “Missed her. She’s gone off with Brixa to the borg lab. Lucky find for Basq and Brixa both; she’s exactly the kind of person they need to make them seem credible.”

  “I gather she’s had her own problems with credibility. Maybe she’s just looking for a way to get back in the game.”

  “She’ll get in a game, all right,” Filoo chuckled. “You make me laugh, Vorian. You thought you could just walk away from everything after taking a shot at Parapoyos and nearly getting me killed, and now you stroll back into the lion’s den looking for your damsel in distress.”

  If that was Filoo’s impression of Ariel, Masid thought he was in for a shock.

&n
bsp; “And you’ve got no idea what’s really going on,” Filoo continued, “which is the funniest thing of all. Come on. Spill it. What do you think you’re saving Ariel from?”

  “For starters, the robot that has Parapoyos in it.”

  “You think he’s after Ariel? Not so, gato. If Parapoyos is worried about settling a score, it’s with you. Especially after you fried part of his puppet’s head the other night. He was starting to like that shell, I think. It sure helped him out on Kopernik.”

  “Let me guess,” Masid said. “He went up there to kill Taprin figuring that the Managins would blame Spacers and the Spacers would be rattled by even the hint of the possibility that a robot could be involved. Then Pon Byris came along and it was too good a chance to pass up. Now that he’s got Earth and the Fifty Worlds eyeball to eyeball, he can get things back under control here without worrying too much about who’s watching.”

  Filoo sat down, clearly enjoying himself. “You got part of it. The obvious part. Sure, Parapoyos wanted to distract the Terrans and Spacers. But he’s already in control down here, at least of what matters. Who do you think sent me to recruit dying baleys for transformation? Who had me cook up symptom mitigators to help convince people that we knew what we were doing? Gato, we’ve been making most of the bugs that Derec Avery spends all of his time listing. Some of them we send out into the hinterlands to work their way into the ecology, others we just wipe on a few doorknobs in Stopol. You thought all that was gone just because you wrecked the original lab and saw Parapoyos carried off, but he’s smarter than you or I will ever be. He had it all figured out.”

  “Which is why he let me get to a gun when he could have just pinched my head off.”

  Briefly, Masid thought he’d made a mistake. Filoo, who appeared to have no other emotional attachments in the world, was fiercely devoted to Parapoyos, and if Masid hadn’t been sitting in a prefab shack with his head throbbing and the clock on his life probably ticking out its last few minutes, he’d have chosen his words more carefully.