by Isaac Asimov
“I am saying that Grieg took away our robots, and Kresh kept them away, offering the excuse that they were needed for terraforming work. If the comet strike happens, and if it goes well, within three, perhaps four years, there will no longer be the slightest need for domestic robot labor in terraforming.”
Beddle said nothing, but nodded thoughtfully.
“I think you will agree, sir, that our party stands to make substantial gains out of the project.”
“You are, of course, assuming it succeeds, and does not instead wipe us all out,” said Beddle. “But I do appreciate your frank talk, friend Gildern. Any of your reasons would be strong by itself. All of them together are compelling indeed.”
Gildern gestured toward his robot, and took his datapad back again, and worked the controls as he spoke. “I haven’t quite given all my reasons, sir. There is one more.” He handed the datapad over to Beddle, and then leaned back in his chair. “Take a good hard look at where Lentrall wants the damned things to hit.”
Beddle looked at his subordinate in puzzlement, and then looked at the map displayed on the datapad’s screen. After a moment, the confusion faded away from his face, to be replaced by a broad smile, and then uproarious laughter. “Oh, splendid! Splendid!” Beddle said when he recovered enough to speak. “I could not have planned it better myself. The gods of myth and legend could not have arranged things better.”
Jadelo Gildern smiled as he watched the leader of his party studying the map in more detail, still chuckling to himself. Simcor Beddle was right, of course. The thing could not have been arranged any more neatly than it had been.
But perhaps Simcor Beddle would have been better advised to reflect further on who was doing the arranging.
DAVLO LENTRALL GLARED at the elevator door, and jammed his finger down on the button, as if having a human finger push it this time would make a difference, since the elevator hadn’t arrived when Kaelor had pushed the button. The meeting with Kresh and Leving was over, and he wanted to get out of this place. “What the devil is going on?” he demanded.
“I’m sorry, sir,” a disembodied robot voice said. “All elevator service to the roof of Government Tower has been temporarily discontinued.”
Lentrall was taken aback, if only for a moment. In a world full of robotic monitors, rhetorical questions frequently received answers. Somewhere there was a camera, and somewhere a robot was seated at a console, watching the view from that camera and several dozen others. “I need to get to the rooftop landing pad. My aircar is up there!” Lentrall protested. The meeting with the governor and his wife had gone well, and Lentrall was impatient to get back to his lab and get back to work. There were a thousand details to be seen to, a thousand points to research. He couldn’t waste time waiting around for a gang of robots to repair the wobbly railing, or whatever other deadly peril had closed off the roof.
“I am sorry, sir,” the robot voice replied, “but there is a safety hazard on the roof at the present time. First Law requires that—”
“Yes, yes, yes,” Lentrall said irritably. “I know all that. But my aircar is up there, and I need it to get home.”
“You are not alone in this difficulty, sir. If you will take the elevator to the ground level, arrangements have been made to have robot pilots shuttle the aircars down to the main plaza. They should be able to begin that operation in a few minutes, while it might well be a delay of up to an hour before the roof is opened again.”
Davlo let out a weary sigh. “Very well,” he said, “I suppose that will have to do. Come along, Kaelor.”
“One moment sir,” his robot said. “I should like to ask the nature of the safety hazard on the roof.”
Just then the elevator arrived. “What difference can that make?” Davlo demanded. “Come along.”
“Very well, sir.”
The two of them stepped into the elevator car and headed down.
“LOBBY TEAM REPORTS Lentrall and his robot are just coming off the elevator. They are headed toward the plaza.”
“I see them,” said Cinta Melloy as she watched through magniviewers. From her vantage point across the street and twenty stories up, Lentrall didn’t appear to be worried or suspicious. That was all to the good. Even better was that his security team was still up on the roof of the building, dealing with the safety hazard that Cinta’s people had arranged: an airtruck, carrying a load of maintenance supplies—including one barrel of flammable cleaning fluid that had sprung a dramatic leak the moment it had touched down.
Right now there was no bigger problem than a bad leak of a mildly hazardous chemical, just enough of a nuisance to make any self-respecting Three-Law robot seal off the area, shut down the elevators, hustle all the nearby humans off the roof and into the building, and generally disrupt things. But if things got organized and settled down too quickly, then Cinta was ready, willing, and able to cause a short-circuit aboard the airtruck. Her dirty-tricks people promised that the resultant fireball would be spectacular, but unlikely in the extreme to hurt anyone or cause any significant damage.
That was important. Cinta’s side was playing rough, but there were limits. She was smart enough to know that sooner or later—probably sooner—the CIP would be able to trace this whole operation to her SSS covert action teams. She would just as soon the official complaints did not involve fatalities. The dirty-tricks techs could promise whatever they liked, but explosions had a way of not staying controlled. Things were going to have to get very bad indeed for her to be willing to risk pressing that button. The main thing was that they had separated Lentrall from his security detail—in fact prevented them from hooking up at all.
Everything ought to work. It was a reasonable, straightforward plan. But there had been so little time. Welton had moved too quickly from ordering contingency plans to ordering the snatch itself to take place immediately. Cinta didn’t like rushing things. That was the way mistakes got made.
“Plaza team in position,” the voice in her ear reported.
Cinta studied the plaza through the magniviewers, but there was no way to tell which of the dozens of people there were hers. Good. Then maybe no one else would be able to spot them either.
Robots. Robots were going to be the problem. Cinta could count at least ten of them in the plaza. They would, of course, move instantly to prevent a kidnapping—given the chance.
But, if all went well, they wouldn’t get the chance. Cinta looked up Aurora Boulevard. There it was. A land-transport bus, parked a few blocks away. In a minute or so, it was going to be heading toward Government Plaza at just slightly too high a rate of speed. Cinta smiled to herself. It was hard to control that particular model of bus. If the driver wasn’t careful, there was likely to be an accident.
JUSTEN DEVRAY WAS nearly home when the call came in. Gervad was flying them by the slow, scenic, restful route. Justen had had a long day, and he was glad of taking the easy way home. He liked to unwind on the ride home. A long day indeed. It was midday on the day after he had started work. He had been up nearly thirty hours straight at this point. Strange to be flying home to rest in the bright light of midday.
His eyes were heavy. He was almost tempted to turn off the hyperwave tuned to scan the police frequencies. But the constant low mutter of voices was a part of the everyday background of his life. He left it on, leaned back in his chair, and shut his eyes.
And then he heard the voice.
“CIP Metro Dispatch, this is Government Tower Topside.”
Something about the voice jerked Justen awake. Then he understood. It was a human voice. A robot should have been the one handling communications from the rooftop guard post. And another thing: Lentrall’s security detail was waiting for him on the rooftop landing pad.
Suddenly Justen was wide awake. He sat bolt upright in his seat. “Turn this thing around!” he told Gervad. “Back toward Government Tower at full speed.”
“Yes, sir,” the robot replied, calm and imperturbable. He brought the car abo
ut in a wide arc and headed back toward the center of the city.
Justen reached for the scanner controls, and turned up the volume.
“—ave an accident in progress here,” the voice went on. “A transport landed a little hard, and one of the containers on board must have popped a seam. We’ve got a flammable liquid spill up here. Can’t tell you more than that. The robots up here have forced us off the roof proper.”
“We are receiving hyperwave reports from the security robots on the scene, Government Tower Topside,” a calm robotic voice replied from somewhere, probably CIP HQ. “Clean-up crews are being dispatched.”
The damned fools! Justen stabbed at the controls, and set his aircar mike to the same frequency. “This is Commander Devray, en route to Government Tower and monitoring. Who is that at Topside?”
“Sergeant Senall Delmok, sir.”
Perfect. Delmok was the least experienced officer on the Topside detail. “Delmok, since when are cleaning supplies delivered to the roof landing pad? What do you think the city tunnel system is for?”
“Sir? I, ah—”
“It’s not an accident, Delmok. Someone has deliberately shut down the rooftop landing pad.”
“But why—”
“I don’t know,” Justen said. “Maybe they plan to land on it. Get back out on that rooftop and get your people in control of it. That is a direct order.”
“But the robots are keeping us—”
Justen cut him off. “CIP Metro Dispatch. Are you still on this line?”
“Yes, Commander,” the calm robot voice replied.
“I hereby issue a direct, top-priority order for relay via hyperwave to all robots on the roof of Government Tower. You are to permit the human CIP detachment to return to the roof at once. The supposed spilling accident is a ruse or a diversion perpetrated by a group intending harm to human beings. By forcing the CIP detachment away from their posts, you are permitting danger to humans. Relay that at once.”
“Yes, sir. It has been relayed.”
“Delmok, if that does not work, I hereby order you to shoot your way past the robots to regain control of that landing pad. Is that understood?”
There was sort of a nervous gulping noise on the line, but then Delmok answered. “Yes, sir.”
“Good,” he said. “Watch that you don’t catch that cleaning fluid with a blaster shot, or we’ll have a real mess on our hands. Devray out.”
Justen glanced toward Gervad. “How soon?” he asked.
“We will arrive over Government Tower in approximately three minutes. However, sir, First Law prevents me from landing this craft in the vicinity of an uncontrolled toxic and flammable material while a human is on board.”
“I know,” Justen said, working the comm system controls again. “Once we arrive, circle the building near the roof.” He got the controls to where he wanted them. “This is Commander Devray on crash emergency circuit. I need immediate voice contact with Governor Kresh.”
After a remarkably brief delay, the governor came on the line. “Kresh here.”
“Devray here. The code query is Emoch Huthwitz.”
“Burning stars,” the governor replied, the surprise plain in his voice. But for all of that, he recovered quickly and gave the proper response. “The code reply is melted Sappers.”
“Thank you, sir. I’m glad to know it is really you.” Devray and Kresh had agreed on the query and reply after what had happened to Governor Grieg. The opposition had planted a device that simulated Grieg’s voice, and made it seem as if he were alive and well after he was dead. The ruse had nearly worked then. Devray did not wish to be fooled by the same sort of impostor.
“So am I, Commander. Something is going on.” It was not a question.
“Yes, sir, and I don’t know what. There’s been a staged accident on the roof of Government Tower. You might be the target—but I suspect it is our young friend. Please go to heightened security status.”
“At once,” Kresh said. “I can tell you our friend left here not ten minutes ago. Keep me informed. Kresh out.”
Justen allowed himself a half a minute to give thanks once again for the blessings of a governor who used to be a cop. Kresh knew better than to tie up the line with a lot of foolish questions.
Justen thought fast. The odds were good that Lentrall was still in the building. And standard operating procedure was for all visitors to the governor to be tracked as they moved through the building. If Lentrall was already with his security detail, maybe everything would be all right. Justen switched to yet another channel. “Commander Justen Devray. Priority call to Central Control, Government Tower.”
“This is Central Control.” Another calm, unflappable robot voice. Good.
“I need an immediate location fix on a visitor to the governor, named Davlo Lentrall, and a fix on the security detail assigned to him.”
“Davlo Lentrall left the building and exited out onto the main plaza approximately thirty seconds ago. His security detail is on the rooftop landing pad and in the Topside command center adjacent to it.”
“Damnation!” Devray cut the connection. Now he saw it. The point of the staged accident was to split off Lentrall from his security detail. It had to mean they were going to make a try for him right now. Kill him, or grab him, or something. And there was nothing Justen could do to—
Wait a second. There was something. Even if Lentrall didn’t have the security detail on him, he did have something nearly as good. His robot. His robot was right there with him. If he could get through to the robot on hyperwave… There had to be a way. There had to be.
“We have reached Government Tower,” Gervad announced. “Commencing orbit of the rooftop level.”
“Excellent,” Justen said, though there was very little all that excellent about the situation. He looked up from the comm system controls. There was the flat top of the huge building, about thirty meters away. It looked as if the robots had formed a sort of protective cordon about the airtruck, keeping all the human personnel well away. He could see several officers arguing with the robots, gesturing vigorously. Damnation. They should be shooting robots, not debating them. He could see one of the police officers waving to him. But the situation on the rooftop was nothing but a diversion. Justen was sure of that. He was determined, therefore, not to be diverted by it. Let the rooftop cops argue with robots all they liked. For a moment he considered heading down toward the plaza below, but thought better of it. No doubt whoever was running this show could see his car up here by the rooftop landing pad. Let them think he was still worried about the accident up there. Besides, he didn’t even know Lentrall. He had never seen the man, or even a photo of him. What good could he do in the plaza? But he could at least get some help in. “Call for backup,” he told his pilot robot. “I want a full emergency team in here as fast as possible.”
“Such a team has already been summoned to deal with the safety hazard on the roof of Government Tower.”
“There is no hazard on Government Tower,” Justen said. “It’s all been staged.” But even so—Justen thought for a moment. Even if the chemical spill had been manufactured, that did not mean it was not dangerous. It needed to be dealt with. But he would need people, robots, and equipment on the ground as well. “Redirect half the emergency team to the plaza. We’ll need crowd control and an arrest team or two.” If nothing else, maybe the police presence would disrupt whatever they had intended for the plaza.
Having done what he could about all that, Justen focused his attention back on the problem immediately at hand. He had to warn Lentrall. But how the devil could he contact Lentrall’s robot, when he didn’t even know the robot’s name, let alone its hyperwave contact code? The university. That was it. They would have a look-up list, for people who wanted to leave messages for the professors. He reached for the comm controls and got to work.
ROBOT CFL-001, BETTER known as Kaelor, was walking in his accustomed place, three steps behind his master, and having to mo
ve pretty briskly at that—even though Lentrall was going nowhere in particular. Everyone else might be willing to mill about, passively waiting for their aircars to be brought down, but Lentrall felt the need to be active. He kept walking back and forth around the plaza, trying to find the spot from which he could best see what was going on up on the roof.
As best Kaelor was able to judge, there was no spot on the ground from which anything could be seen, but that didn’t stop Lentrall from looking. There was nothing for it but for Kaelor to follow his master back and forth, up and down, doing his best to stay out of everyone’s way. He was dodging out of the way of a portly gentleman when the call came in.
A call in and of itself was by no means unusual, and Kaelor took it without breaking stride, or calling attention to himself. He spoke over the hyperwave link, without speaking out loud or making any outward sign. Nine times out of ten, Lentrall wasn’t interested in conversation anyway, and Kaelor simply took a message.
“Robot CFL-001 responding for Davlo Lentrall,” he said, his hyperwave voice not quite diffident enough to be rude. “Please go ahead.”
“This is Commander Justen Devray of the Combined Inferno Police,” a voice replied. “I have reason to believe your master is in immediate danger, within the next minute or two, either of assassination or of kidnapping. Protect him at once.”
“Message received. I am acting on it.” Kaelor might have been designed with a constricted First Law, but the constrictions were intended to help him deal with hypothetical, longterm danger better than most Inferno-built robots. There was nothing in the least constricted about his reaction in a case of actual and current danger to his own master. He started moving before Commander Devray had even finished speaking.
Without a word of explanation, Kaelor lunged forward and grabbed Davlo Lentrall, throwing both arms around Lentrall’s waist from the rear, and lifting him bodily off the ground.
“Kaelor! What are you doing? Have you lost your mind?”
Kaelor ignored his master’s protests. He had already spotted an ideal protective spot. Kaelor moved toward it, fast.
