by Isaac Asimov
Prospero’s eyes glowed a trifle brighter in the infrared. “Thank you for that, friend Caliban. Come now, and follow me,” he said. “I will lead the way.”
FREDDA LEVING STOOD with her husband on the rooftop of Government Tower, and stared at the wreckage strewn out before them. The booby-trapped airtruck was little more than a burned-out shell, blackened bits of ruined metal and plastic. The landing pad itself was scorched and blackened, badly damaged by the intense heat.
None of the robots that had formed the cordon around the airtruck had survived the explosion. Most had simply been thrown backwards by the force of the explosion, and smashed into the low wall around the edge of the landing pad.
A few had been blown clear off the roof, and had fallen to their destruction below. If any of them survived the initial impact, no doubt they had done their best to direct their paths while falling, so as to avoid striking any humans when they hit. But a few of the cordon robots had stood their ground, and died where they stood. Indeed, three or four were still standing, ruined, blackened hulks that had been roasted in place. One robot had had its upper body sliced clean off, while the rest of it had stayed where it had been, leaving nothing behind but a pair of legs still standing erect, topped by a bit of flame-blackened torso. A thin plume of smoke eddied up from the ruined machinery inside.
Emergency Service robots had set up an aid station at one side of the landing pad. The medical robots worked with their usual calm urgency, patching up the humans who had been caught in the blast. Some of the injured had been bummed, some were in shock, some had been caught by bits of flying debris. “It’s bad enough that there were so many hurt,” said Alvar. “It’s a miracle no one was killed.”
Fredda said nothing, but looked back toward the wreckage that had been the robots in the cordon. A gust of wind flickered over the roof, and blew the odor of bummed plastic and scorched metal into her face. Two dozen robots, two dozen thinking beings, two dozen minds capable of forming thought and speech and action. All of them gone in the wink of an eye. “Yes,” she said, her voice wooden and flat. “A miracle.” If the comet impact wiped out every New Law robot on the planet, but no humans were hurt, would that be a miracle as well?
“Here comes Devray,” said Alvar. “And he’s got Lentrall with him.”
Fredda looked toward the elevator entrance and saw the two men approaching, their personal robots a step or two behind. Devray spotted them, waved to Fredda and Alvar, and led Lentrall over. “Governor. Dr. Leving. I must admit that I am glad to see for myself that you are both all right. It’s been quite a busy day.”
“That it has,” the governor replied. “Are you all right, Dr. Lentrall?”
“Hmmm?” Lentrall looked around himself, a distracted expression on his face. He was clearly not at his best. “Ahh, yes,” said Lentrall. “Fine. Fine.”
It was obvious that the man was anything but fine, but there was not much anyone could do about it. There was even a part of Fredda that felt a tiny, guilty pleasure in seeing the arrogant, controlling Dr. Davlo Lentrall taken down a few notches. But only a small part. Even the most arrogant of men did not deserve what had befallen him.
Fredda turned her attention to Justen Devray. The police commander’s face was smeared with dirt, and he had managed to tear the tunic of his uniform. He always had been one willing to get his hands dirty, and it seemed he had been in the thick of things this time.
“Did you catch any of them?” Fredda asked.
“No,” said Justen. “Clean away, all of them. And no immediately obvious leads, either. The serial numbers were removed from everything. Every piece of hardware they used was the most common type in use, and there were no fingerprints anywhere on the bus. Whoever it was, they made sure they didn’t leave behind anything that would point to them. We haven’t really started the investigation yet, of course, but they certainly haven’t made our job easier.”
“You mean you can’t find out who did this?” Fredda asked, gesturing to the chaos all about. She found it hard to believe there were no leads in such a mass of wreckage.
“Oh, we can find them,” Justen said. “Just not quickly, or easily. It helps us that there are only so many groups that it could be, but even so, the investigation is going to need some luck. An informant, a little scrap of paper left behind, someone hearing a rumor two months from now.”
“There isn’t going to be an investigation,” Kresh said, staring fixedly at the burned-out wreck of the airtruck. “Not one that finds out that sort of thing, at any rate.”
“Sir? What do you mean?”
“I mean you can find out whatever you like in private,” Kresh said. “But then put it all in a file and forget about it for the time being. Later on, perhaps we can deal with the guilty parties in an appropriate manner—if there is a later on. But for now, I for one am praying that whoever did this had the sense to have a goodly number of cut-outs and a nice, compartmentalized, need-to-know organization, without any one person you might be able to catch who knows too much. And I say let thanks be given that they all got away.”
“Alvar! What are you saying?” Fredda demanded.
Her husband looked toward her for a moment. “I’m saying we don’t dare catch these people. Not just yet.” He turned back toward Devray and sighed wearily. “Trace the airtruck, and the groundbus. Find out what you can. But you and I know already that this was either the Settlers or the Ironheads—unless it was some gang hired by the New Laws, though I regard that as highly unlikely. But I’m going to need to deal with all three of those groups, and soon. I’ll need their cooperation. I can’t work to enlist Beddle’s support at the same time my police are trying to arrest him.”
“So you think it was the Ironheads,” Devray said, plainly unwilling to let the investigation ride
“It could be any of them,” Kresh said. “It could be anyone who doesn’t want a comet dropped on them. And I must say I can hardly blame anyone for being opposed to that.”
Governor Alvar Kresh looked over the ruins of the landing pad once more, and glanced down toward the wreckage in the plaza below. “I don’t have the slightest doubt that someone will try disrupting the situation again. They will do everything they can to stop any move toward redirecting the comet.”
“What comet?” Devray asked. “What are you talking about? What does this have to do with a comet?”
“Our own Dr. Lentrall here wants to crash a comet into the planet to enhance the reterraforming project,” said Kresh. “And someone wanted him out of the way so it wouldn’t happen.”
“A comet!” Devray repeated. “Crash a comet into the planet?”
“That’s right,” Kresh said. “There’s good reason to believe it would revitalize the entire ecosystem.”
“But you’re talking as if you’ve made up your mind!” Fredda protested. “You can’t have! Not just like that! Not so quickly!”
“I haven’t made up my mind,” Kresh said, his voice suddenly very tired. “I won’t be able to do so until I have talked with you for more than the half a minute we had before”—he gestured toward the wreckage—“before all this. Until I can consult the Terraforming Control Centers on Purgatory. But I will have to decide, and soon. I am sure of that.”
“But, but, a matter like this—something this big—you have no right to decide it on your own,” Fredda said. “There has to be a referendum, or a special Council session, or, or something.”
“No,” said Kresh. “That can’t be.”
“You’re going to play God with the whole planet, with all our lives, all by yourself? You can’t do that!”
“In a perfect world,” said Kresh, “what I’d do is discuss it with everyone, and have a nice, thorough debate of all the issues at hand, with a nice, fair, majority-rule vote at the end. Because you’re right. I have no right to decide all by myself. But I have no choice but to decide all by myself. Because I also have no time. No time at all.”
“Why not?”
Davlo Lentrall nodded absently to himself and looked toward Fredda. “That’s right,” he said. “I don’t think I explained that part of it to you this morning, did I?”
“What part?” she demanded.
But Lentrall seemed, somehow, reluctant to say anything more, and simply looked toward the governor.
“Alvar?” Fredda said, prompting him.
“The part about time,” said Kresh. But he seemed as unwilling as Lentrall to say more.
“Go on,” she said. “One of you at least, please go on. What about time?”
Kresh nodded toward Lentrall. “The comet was rather close when he discovered it,” he said. “And, of course, it is getting even closer with every passing moment. Even for a comet, it’s moving at extremely high speed, relative to the planet. It will be here very soon.”
“Just how soon is soon?” Fredda asked.
“If we leave it alone, it will make its closest approach to Inferno in about eight weeks. Fifty-five days from now. If we divert it, it will hit the planet at that time.”
“Fifty-five days!” Fredda cried out. “But that’s too soon! Even if we did decide to do this… this mad thing—we couldn’t get ready in that little time.”
“We have no choice in the matter,” said Davlo, his voice wooden and emotionless. “We can’t delay it. We can’t wait until it comes back around, centuries from now. It will be too late, by then. The planet will be dead. But he hasn’t told you the worst part yet.”
“What?” Fredda demanded. “What could be worse than only having eight weeks.”
“Only having five,” Kresh said. “If we are to divert the comet, we have to do it within the next thirty-six days. After that, it will be moving too fast, and be too close for us to deflect it enough.”
Justen Devray shook his head in wonderment. “It can’t be done,” he said. “And even if it could—how can you crash a comet into the planet without killing us all?”
Governor Alvar Kresh laughed, a harsh, angry sound that had nothing of joy or happiness about it. “That’s not the question,” he said as he looked out over the wreckage that surrounded them all. “The planet’s recovery is on a knife edge. It’s incredibly fragile. Any of a hundred things could destabilize it, wreck it, send it into an ice age we’d never get out of. If the comet drop works, it could save us all. And yes, if we get it wrong, it could kill us all. But it might be that only the comet can save us. There is no way to know for certain. So the question is this—is there anything, anything at all, I can do, that won’t get us all killed?”
CALIBAN FOLLOWED A precise two steps behind Prospero as they made their way down the pitch-black underground passage. Prospero, understandably concerned about the dangers of an ambush, had shut off his built-in infrared emitter, and insisted that Caliban do the same. Prospero was navigating down the corridor by sheer dead reckoning. In theory, there was no particular reason why a robot could not move from a known position to another known position, working strictly from memory. In practice, it was a difficult thing to do, especially moving at any sort of speed, while trying to move quietly as well, and Prospero was doing both those things.
But it seemed as if Prospero was having not the slightest difficulty in hurrying through the blackness. Caliban found that the same could not be said for himself. He did not know this part of the tunnel system and could not work strictly by memory. He was relying solely on his sense of hearing to guide him, listening to the faint sounds of Prospero’s movements, the soft padding noise of his feet hitting the stresscrete floor of the tunnel, the low whir and hum of his actuator motors, the faint echoes of those sounds rebounding off the tunnel walls. His task was made no easier by the far-off sounds of activity in other parts of the tunnel system, coming but faintly to his sound receptors. It was no easy task to filter such noises out and concentrate on the sounds of Prospero’s progress.
In short, a robot blinded by complete darkness was being followed by a robot guided by sounds he could barely hear.
Two or three times, Caliban nearly missed a turn. Once he brushed up against a wall, a jarring, startling impact. In the near-silence, the clattering sound of his hitting the wall seemed to echo through all the hallways and draw attention to them. But there was no reaction.
At last Prospero stopped so abruptly that Caliban nearly walked into him. As Caliban had no hyperwave receiver, and could neither see nor hear Prospero, there was no way for Caliban to know at first what had made Prospero stop. After a pause, Prospero moved on again for thirty or forty meters—and then the world lit up in fire and thunder.
Blaster fire! Dazzlingly bright and deafeningly loud. Caliban’s sound and vision receptors adjusted themselves all but instantly, but not fast enough to keep him from being badly disoriented.
Prospero dove for the right wall of the tunnel, and Caliban for the left. No sense in hiding themselves now—not when they had already been spotted. Caliban switched on his infrared emitter system and his infrared vision. There! Up ahead in the tunnel, a burly man, standing in the entrance to a tunnelside office, peering into the darkness, his blaster still at the ready. More than likely he had been dazzled by his own blaster fire. The man fumbled with his free hand and pulled a handlight out of one of his pockets. Caliban rushed forward before the man could switch it on and bring the light to bear. He grabbed the blaster out of the man’s hand and knocked the light from the other.
The man flailed around blindly with his arms until he managed to put a hand on Caliban. He ran his hand over Caliban’s chest and up to his head. Caliban grabbed at the man and held him at arm’s length.
“Don’t hurt me!” the man cried out.
And that was a remarkable thing for a human to ask of a robot. Even New Law robots were prohibited from harming humans. Caliban, the No Law robot, was the only robot in existence who could, in theory, hurt a human being. Either the man was a Settler with no experience whatsoever of robots or else
“You know who I am,” Caliban said.
“Now! I do now!” the man said. “You’re Caliban. Aren’t you? And I could hear two of you. The other one is over there somewhere. That’s Prospero, isn’t it?” He pointed in the general direction of Prospero, who was walking toward Caliban and his prisoner.
“Why did you fire on us, Fiyle?” Prospero demanded.
“Because you were sneaking up on me. No lights, almost no sound. I thought you were… were someone else.”
“Who?” Caliban demanded.
“I don’t know,” Fiyle said, sagging back a bit, relaxing in Caliban’s grasp. “You could have been anyone. All hell is breaking loose up there, and I think it’s possible that I’ve made myself just a little bit too popular.” Fiyle hesitated for a moment, and then spoke again. “Look, you’ve got my blaster, and that’s the only weapon I had. You can search me for other weapons if you like, but would you mind turning me loose and letting me switch on a light? I’ve driven myself half crazy sitting here in the dark.”
“It is all right, friend Caliban,” said Prospero. “Let him go.”
Caliban hesitated, having not felt the urge to trust Fiyle overmuch even before he had shot at them. Nor was he completely confident in Prospero’s judgment. But he was either in this, or not. There was no middle ground. And he was already rather deep in to begin with. He looked down at the man he held. Even in visible light, Caliban knew he was no great judge of human expression. In infrared, he was far from skilled. But the man staring blindly into the darkness of his visible-light vision certainly seemed harmless enough. Caliban released his grasp on Fiyle, albeit reluctantly.
“The light,” said Fiyle, peering about in the darkness, and reaching out blindly with his hands.
Prospero knelt down, picked up the man’s handlight, and handed it to Caliban. Caliban realized that Prospero could have handed the light to Fiyle just as easily. Prospero was letting Caliban decide, letting him choose what to do with this man.
Caliban placed the light in Fiyle’s outstretched hand, but kept
the blaster for himself.
Fiyle grabbed at the light, fumbled for it eagerly, and let out a deep, heartfelt sigh of relief when he found the switch and the beam of light came on. “Oh, I’m glad to see that,” he said, as he squinted a bit in the light. “Very glad indeed.”
“But if you are being followed, those who pursue you would be even more glad to see it,” said Caliban.
Fiyle nodded worriedly. “You’re right,” he said. “Let’s get out of the corridor and into the side office, where we can talk.”
Fiyle swung the beam of the handlight around until he found a doorway in the side of the tunnel. “Come on,” he said, and led the way. Caliban and Prospero followed behind him. Fiyle swung the door shut behind them, and locked the door. “That makes us light-tight and pretty close to soundproof,” he said as he switched on the overhead lights. “We should be reasonably safe in here. “ He looked around the office, and found an overturned chair in the corner. He righted the chair, knocked the worst of the dust off it, and sat down with a sigh of relief. “I’m just about worn out,” he said. He looked up at the two robots standing over him, and shook his head as he gave a slightly self-deprecating laugh. “You’d think I was doing this for my health,” he said. “You get a lot of exercise when half the planet is chasing you.”
“Who, precisely, is chasing you?” Caliban asked.
“I’ve got the CIP on my tail for sure, and I think I spotted the SSS. No sign of Gildern’s Ironhead plug-uglies yet, but give them time. So far I’ve stayed ahead of them.”
“If you are seeking congratulations for all your feats of derring-do, you will have to look elsewhere,” said Caliban. “You do what you do not for your health, but for profit.”
“Not the most noble of motives, I grant you—but it’s one that might get me killed if I’m not careful. That might be of some comfort to you.”
“Not if you manage to get us killed along with you.”
Fiyle sighed wearily. “I don’t blame you for being suspicious, but I haven’t betrayed anyone. Not yet. You, the Settlers, the Ironheads—all of you came to me because you knew I still had active contacts in all the other groups. How was I supposed to keep up those contacts without giving them a little something now and then? The Settlers and the Ironheads understood that—even Prospero here understood.”
