Caliban c-1

by Isaac Asimov

HOURS went by, and still Caliban walked the streets, still deeply confused, uncertain what he was searching for. Anything could contain the clue, the answer, the explanation. A word from a passing human, a sign on a wall, the design of a building, might just stimulate his datastore to provide him with the answers he needed.

  He stopped at a corner and looked across the street to the building opposite. Well, the sight of this particular building did not cause any torrent of facts to burst forth, but it was a strange-looking thing nonetheless, even considering the jarringly different architectural styles he had seen in the city. It was a muddle of domes, columns, arches, and cubes. Caliban could fathom no purpose whatsoever in it all.

  “Out of my way, robot,” an imperious voice called out behind him. Caliban, lost in his consideration of things architectural, did not really register the voice. Suddenly a walking stick whacked down on his left shoulder.

  Caliban spun around in astonishment to confront his attacker.

  Incredible. Simply incredible. It was a tiny woman, slender, thin-boned, easily a full meter shorter than Caliban, clearly weaker and far more frail than he was. And yet she had deliberately and fearlessly ordered him about, instead of merely stepping around him, and then struck at him—using a weapon that could not possibly harm him. Why did she not fear him? Why did she have such obvious confidence that he would not respond by attacking her, when he could clearly do so quite effectively?

  He stared at the woman for an infinite moment, too baffled to know what to do.

  “Out of my way, robot! Are your ears shorting out?”

  Caliban noticed a crowd of people and robots starting to form around him, one or two of the humans already betraying expressions of curiosity. It would clearly be less than prudent to remain here, or attempt to respond when he so clearly did not understand. He stepped aside for the lady and then picked a direction, any direction but the one she had taken, and started walking again. Enough of aimless wandering. He needed a plan. He needed knowledge.

  And he needed safety. Clearly he did not know how to act like a robot. And the expressions, some of them hostile, he had seen on the faces of the passersby told him it was dangerous to be peculiar in any way.

  No. He had to lie low, stay in the background. Safer to blend in, to pretend to be like the others.

  Very well, then. He would blend in. He would observe the behavior he saw around himself, work determinedly to get lost among the endless sea of robots around him.

  KRESH walked the streets of Hades at the same hour, though with more certain purpose. He found that it helped to clear his head and refocus his attention if he got away from his office, got away from the interrogation rooms and evidence labs, and stretched his legs under the dark blue skies of Inferno. There was a cool, dry wind blowing in from the western desert, and he found that it lifted his spirits. Donald 111 walked alongside him, the robot’s shorter legs moving almost at double time in order to keep up with Alvar.

  “Talk to me, Donald. Give me an evidence summary.”

  “Yes, sir. Several new facts have come to light from the hospital and our forensic lab. First and foremost, we have confirmed that the bloody footprints match the tread patterns of a standardized robot body model manufactured at Leving Labs. That robot body is a large general-purpose model, used with various brain types and body modifications for various purposes. The length of the footprints’ stride precisely matches that of the standard specification for that robot body model. The wound on Fredda Leving’s head corresponds to the shape and size of the arm of the same robot type, striking from the rear and to the left of the victim, from an angle consistent with Fredda Leving’s height and the height of that robot model—though all of those measurements are approximate, and any number of other blunt instruments would match, and a whole range of heights, forces, and angles would also be consistent with the wound.

  “Microtraces of a red paint found in Madame Leving’s scalp wound likewise correspond to a paint used on some robots at Leving Labs, though it has not been definitively established that the paint in question was used on the robot model in question. I might add that it could not be immediately established whether the microtraces were from fresh or fully dried and hardened paint, as it was some hours before the labtech robots secured the samples. Further tests should answer that question.”

  “So the only suspect we are offered is a robot. That’s impossible, of course. So it had to be a human—a Settler—posing as a robot. Except even a Settler who had been on the planet five minutes would know that it is impossible for a robot to attack a human. Why bother to plant doctored evidence we will refuse to believe?”

  “That point has bothered me as well,” Donald said. “But even if we assume a Settler was involved in this crime, we must assume that the Settler in question knew more about robots than the average Spacer.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Consider the detailed familiarity and access to robot equipment required to stage this attack,” Donald replied. “The assailant would have to build and wear shoes with robot foot-tread soles and then replicate the gait of a specific robot. He or she would have to use a surplus robot arm—or an object that closely matched it—as a blunt instrument, and strike in such a manner as to match a blow from that robot arm. He or she would need access to the proper materials to stage the attack, and have the mechanical skill to build or modify the needed robot body parts. To be blunt, sir, a human capable of staging this attack could not possibly be stupid enough or sufficiently ignorant of robots to dream that we would think a robot did it.”

  “But then what was the motive for staging the attack in that manner?” Kresh asked. He thought for a moment. “You said this footprint and arm are off a very standard robot model. How many of them out there?”

  “Several hundred. Several thousand if you include all the variants.”

  “Very well, then. That means there have been several thousand opportunities to steal a robot, or secure a defective one, and strip it for parts—the feet and arms and so forth. Or hell, the assailant could simply get hold of a robot and yank the positronic brain. He or she could plug in a remote-control system with a video-link back to the controller. Let the controller walk the robot body up to the unsuspecting victim—after all, who would suspect a robot?

  “And using a remotely operated robot body that would look like a normal robot would have to be less suspicious than wearing robot-tread boots and carrying a robot arm around. And by working from a remote location, the assailant could hide his or her identity. Another thing: If I popped someone on the head, I’d want to get away fast. Yet those footprints were of a walking gait, not a run. That points toward a remotely controlled robot, one with a fairly limited remote-control system that could manage a walk but not a run.”

  “Except the attacker did not leave immediately. He or she—or it—remained for some time after the attack, at least thirty seconds or a minute.”

  “How do you know that?” Kresh asked. “Ah, of course, the footprints. They went through the outer edges of the pooled blood, so they had to have been made after Leving had bled long enough to produce a large pool of blood. Damn it! That makes no sense. Why the devil would the attacker stay behind? Not to make sure Leving was dead, obviously, because she wasn’t. But we’re digressing. You suggested that the assailant would know that we’d know that a robot could not commit the crime. Therefore, the assailant had an alternate motive for disguising the attack as coming from a robot. What would that be? Why such an elaborate setup?”

  “To afford the chance to get lost in the crowd later,” Donald suggested. “Let me offer a hypothetical variation on the facts by way of example. We now have an impossible suspect, a robot. Let me offer another impossible suspect to make my point, though I must ask you not to take offense at a hypothetical example.”

  “Of course not, Donald. Go on.”

  “All right. If someone decided to plant clues to make it appear that, for example, you had attacked Fredda Leving,
that would limit the search for the assailant to those persons with the ability to plant those clues. Someone who could steal a pair of your shoes, or manage to plant strands of your hair, or your fingerprints, at the scene. But if that someone chose to plant clues that pointed equally well to several thousand identical and impossible suspects—”

  “Our search is made far larger. Yes. Yes, I see that. An excellent point, Donald. But there is still another question. What of the second set of footprints?”

  “If you will grant, for the sake of argument, my original premise, that the effort to make this seem like a robot attack was made because we would know it was impossible a robot did it, I can offer an answer. If we further assume that the motive for that nonconvincing subterfuge was to disguise the real assailant, then I suggest that a single assailant deliberately made one set of bloody tracks, walked far enough that all traces of the blood were worn off, then simply doubled back and walked through the blood again. Again, the idea would be to confuse the search.”

  “It seems an awfully risky thing to do for a fairly minor advantage,” Kresh objected.

  “If, as you suggest, the attacker was using a remotely controlled robot body, as opposed to merely wearing robot boots and carrying a robot arm, there could be no risk in the gambit. At worst, someone might have come in during the assailant’s absence and been there to capture the false robot, with the real attacker at the controls, perhaps many kilometers away.”

  “Yes. Yes. Now they would have us looking for two robots, or two people trying to disguise themselves as robots, when there was really only a single, human assailant. That’s a lovely theory, Donald, just lovely.”

  “There is another note: Our robopsychologists have completed the preliminary interrogation of the staff robots at Leving Labs. Their results are, I think, astonishing.”

  “Are they indeed?” Kresh asked dryly. “Very well, then, astonish me.”

  “First, this is by no means the first time the staff robots have been instructed to stay out of the main wing of the labs. They have been told to get out many times before, usually but not always at about the hour of the attack, but always when the lab was more or less empty. This merely confirms what Daabor 5132 told me the night of the attack. However, the second point provides fresh and remarkable data.”

  “Very well, go on.”

  “Every single robot flatly refused to identify who had given the order. Our robopsychologists unanimously agree that the block restraining them is unbreakable. The psychologists took several robots to and past the breaking point, pressuring them to answer, and all refused to talk right up to the moment they brainlocked. The robots died rather than talk, even when told that their silence might well allow Fredda Leving’s attacker to go free.”

  Alvar looked at Donald in amazement. “Burning devils. It’s almost unheard-of for a block to be that good. Whoever placed it must have done a damned convincing job of saying harm would certainly come to himself—or herself—if the robots talked.”

  “Yes, sir. That is the obvious conclusion. There would be no other way to keep a robot from refusing to assist the police in capturing a murderer. Even so, it would require a human with remarkable skill in giving orders, and an intimate knowledge of the relative potentials of the Three Laws as programmed into each class of robot, to resist police questioning. I would venture a guess that it was only the shock of seeing Fredda Leving unconscious and bleeding that allowed Daabor 5132 to say as much as it did before expiring.”

  “Yes, yes. But why was this order given more than once? Why would the order-giver need that sort of privacy repeatedly?”

  “I cannot say, sir. But the last point is perhaps the most remarkable. The block was placed with such skill that no human at the lab was even aware that the block had been placed. A whole lab full of robot specialists never even noticed that all the robots would not, could not, talk about being ordered to clear off again and again. The degree of skill required to—”

  Suddenly Donald stopped moving and seemed to come to attention. “Sir, I am receiving an incoming call for you from Tonya Welton on your private line.”

  “Devil and fire, what the hell does that woman want? All right, put her through. And you might as well give me full visual.”

  Donald turned his back on Kresh. A flat vertical televisor panel extruded itself from between his shoulders and slid up behind the back of his head. As it rose up, it was showing a shifting abstract pattern, but then it resolved to a sharp image of Tonya Welton. “Sheriff Kresh,” she said. “Glad I got through to you. You should come here, to Settlertown, now.”

  Kresh felt a sharp stab of anger. How dare she order him around? “There’s not that much new at this end, Madame Welton,” Kresh said. “Perhaps if we delayed our next meeting until I’ve had a chance to develop more information—”

  “That’s not why I need you, Sheriff. There’s something you should see. Here, in Settlertown. Or more accurately, over it.”

  Donald spoke, swiveling his head a bit. “Sir, I am now receiving reports from headquarters confirming a disturbance in Settlertown.”

  Kresh felt a knot in the pit of his stomach. “Burning hellfire, not again.”

  “Oh, yes, again,” Welton said, cool anger in her voice. “Deliberate provocation, and I don’t know how calm I can keep my people. Your deputies are here, of course—but it’s worse than last time. Much worse.”

  Kresh shut his eyes and wished desperately for things to stop happening. Not that such wishes were likely to come true any time soon. “Very well, Madame Welton. We’re on the way.”

  5

  MURDER. Riot. What the hell was going on, anyway? Alvar Kresh powered up his aircar and took the controls. It took little more than a glare in Donald’s direction to make it clear to the robot that Alvar intended to fly himself, just at the moment, and was not going to take any nonsense.

  But still, no sense in getting Donald upset for no reason. Alvar took off, flying with a nicely calculated degree of care, guiding the craft just cautiously enough to keep Donald from taking over.

  Violent crime wasn’t supposed to happen on Spacer worlds. The endless wealth and unlimited prosperity provided by robotic labor was supposed to eliminate poverty, and so remove any motive for crime.

  Nice theory, of course, but it did not quite work out that way. If only it did, Alvar Kresh would have a much more peaceful time of it. For there was always someone relatively poorer than someone else. Someone with only a small mansion instead of a big one, who dreamed of owning a palace. Someone jealous of someone’s greater affluence, determined to redress the unfair imbalance.

  And no matter how rich you were, only one person could own a given object. Spacer society had more than its share of artists, and thus more than its share of art, some small fraction of it remarkably good. The burning desire to own an original and unique work of art was common motive for burglary.

  There were plenty of other motives for crime besides poverty and greed, of course. People still got drunk and lusted after other people’s spouses, and got into arguments with their neighbors. There were still lovers’ quarrels, and domestic incidents.

  Love and jealousy sparked many a crime of passion, if you could call a crime passionate when it required intricate, detailed planning to arrange for your victim to be somewhere robots weren’t…

  Others broke the law seeking after a different kind of gain than wealth or love. Simcor Beddle, for example. He hungered after power, and was willing to risk arrest—for himself and for his Ironheads—in order to get it.

  And that was just the start of the list of motives. Inferno society was deeply hierarchical, its upper crust burdened with an incredibly complex system of proper behavior. It was vital to keep up appearances, and virtually impossible to avoid making a misstep sometime. In short, upper-class Inferno was a perfect breeding ground for blackmailers and revenge seekers.

  Then there was industrial espionage, more than likely the motive for the attack on Fredda
Leving. If there was little original research performed on Inferno, that just made the little that was done that much more precious.

  But none of these motives would have much force if not for another factor, one that, in Alvar’s opinion, few observers and theorists gave anywhere near sufficient weight: Boredom.

  There was nothing much to do on a Spacer world. There were certain personality types that did not adapt well to the endless leisure, the endless robotic protection and pampering. Some small fraction of such types became thrillseekers.

  There was one last thing to throw into the mix, of course—the Settlers. They had been here just over a standard year, and the Sheriff’s Department had never been busier. There had been endless barroom brawls, scuffles in the street, mass demonstrations—and riots.

  Such as the one they were coming up on now. They were nearly at Settlertown.

  Kresh let Donald take the controls. He wanted to be able to see it all from the air, watch the riot in progress, learn the pattern, learn how to counter the Ironheads’ latest moves. He had to keep one step ahead of them, keep them from getting completely out of control.

  Which was ironic, of course, because he believed in everything the Ironheads professed. But a lawman could not let his politics prevent him from quashing a riot.

  Settlertown. Now there was a mad lapse of policy, one that could only result in the sort of strife that had apparently just broken out again. Chanto Grieg and the City Council had granted the Settlers an enclave inside Hades, given them a large tract of unused land, meant for an industrial park that had never been built. If Grieg had to have the damned Settlers on the planet, why in the devil’s name couldn’t he have granted them an enclave well and safely outside the city limits? Putting them inside Hades was an incitement to riot all by itself.

  But no, Grieg let the Settlers in, and the Settlers went to work. And there, coming into view at the horizon, was the result, barely a year after the land was granted. No building in view, of course, but that was deceiving. The Settlers preferred to put their buildings underground, leaving the landscape undisturbed. And if there was no landscape to speak of, why, then, they would build one.