by Isaac Asimov
“Yes, I know,” said Soggdon. “And I see you have produced an impressive planetary projection as a result. Would either or both of you care to comment on it?”
“Both willl speeak, and then eachhh,” said the unison voice. “We havvve prrojected forward four ttthousand yearss, as we have found that a wellll-planned operrational sequenzzze will result in a zzzero-maintenance planetary ecologggy within apprrroximately three hundred years. In our projection, the planetary climmmate remainss intrinsically stable, selfffcorrecting, and self-enhancing throughout the period of the metasimulation. There is no apparent danger of recollapse evident in any of the data for the end of the metasimulation period.”
Kresh frowned. Metasimulation? Then he understood. The unison voice was using the term to refer to a simulation inside a simulation—which was what it had been, so far as Dum and Dee were concerned.
Dum spoke next. “Reference to unit Dum’s prior objections in regard to ecological and economic damage. Projections show that the damage to the general ecology and gross planetary product caused by digging inlets for the Polar Sea would be fully compensated for within fifteen years of project completion.”
But if the first two aspects of the combined control system made it all seem wonderful, the third voice pulled everything back down to reality. “It all sounds quite splendid,” said Dee. “There is, of course, the slight problem of it being quite impossible. We ran the metasimulation based on the assumption that it would be possible to dig the channels. It is not possible to dig them. An interesting exercise, I grant you—but it is not one that has a great deal of connection to the world of our simulation.”
“I was afraid she was going to say that,” Soggdon muttered as she switched off her mike. “You’d think she’d be the least sensible of the three possible personality aspects, but instead Dee’s always the one to stick the pin in the balloon. She always reminds us of the practicalities.”
“Maybe this time they’re a bit more possible than you think,” Kresh said. He keyed his own mike back on, and tried to phrase things so that he would not reveal that he had overheard the conversation with Soggdon.
“Unit Dee, that’s a very promising projection there. I take it you think creating the Polar Sea would be a good idea?”
“It is a good idea that cannot be realized, Governor,” said Unit Dee. “You do not have the resources, the energy sources, or the time to construct the needed inlets.”
“That is incorrect,” Kresh said. “It is possible there is a practical, doable, way to dig those inlets. I came here to have you evaluate the proposed procedure. I first wanted to see if the effort would be worthwhile. I see now that it would be.”
“What is the procedure in question?” asked Unit Dee.
Kresh hesitated a moment, but then gave up. There was no way to describe the idea that didn’t sound dangerous, desperate, even insane. Well, maybe it was all three. So be it. “We’re going to break a comet up, and drop the fragments in a line running from the Southern Ocean to the Polar Depression,” he said. Even as he spoke, he realized that he hadn’t put any modifiers or conditionals in. He hadn’t said they might, or they could, or they were thinking of it. He had said they were going to do it. Had he made up his mind without knowing it?
But Dum and Dee—and Soggdon—plainly had more on their minds than Kresh’s reaction to his own words. There was dead silence for a full thirty seconds before any of them reacted. The perfect holographic image of the Inferno of the future flickered and wavered and almost vanished altogether before it resolidified.
Unit Dee recovered first. “Am I to under—under—understand that you intend this as a serious idea?” she asked. The stress in her voice was plain, her words coming out with painful slowness.
“Not good,” said Soggdon, her headset mike still off. She turned toward a side console, paged through several screenfuls of information, and shook her head. “I warned you she took her simulants seriously,” she said. “These readings show you’ve set off a mild First Law conflict in her. You can’t just come in here and play games with her, make up things like that.”
Kresh cut his own mike. “I’m not making things up,” he said. “And I’m not playing games. There is a serious plan in motion to drop a fragmented comet on the Utopia region.”
“But that’s suicidal!” Soggdon protested.
“What difference does it make if the planet’s going to be dead in two hundred years?” Kresh snapped. “And as for Dee, I suggest it is time you start lying to her in earnest. Remind her it’s all a simulation, an experiment. Remind her that Inferno isn’t real, and no one will be harmed.”
“Tell her that?” Soggdon asked, plainly shocked. “No. I will not feed her dangerous and false data. Absolutely not. You can tell her yourself.”
Kresh drew in his breath, ready to shout in the woman’s face, give her the dressing-down she deserved. But no. It would do no good. It was plainly obvious that she was not thinking with the slightest degree of rationality or sense—and he needed her, needed her help, needed her rational and sensible. She was part of the team that had set up this charade. She was the one who would have to prop it up. He would have to reason with her, coolly, calmly. “It would do no good for me to tell her any such thing,” he said. “She thinks I’m a simulant. Simulants don’t know they are simulants. She would not believe me telling her there was no danger—because she does not believe me to be human. And she does not believe that because you have lied to her.”
“That’s different. That’s part of the experiment design. It’s not false data.”
“Nonsense,” Kresh said, a bit more steel coming into his voice as the gentleness left it. “You have set up this entire situation for the sole purpose of allowing her to take risks, to do her job, while believing she could no harm to humans.”
“But—”
Kresh kept talking, rolling right over her protests. “I could even do damage to her if I told her it was just a simulation. There must be some doubt in her mind as to whether her simulants—the people of Inferno—are real. Otherwise she would not be experiencing the slightest First Law conflict concerning them. If I assured her that I was not real, Space alone knows what she would make of that paradox. It seems to me as likely as not that she would reach the conclusion that I was real, and that I was lying to her. If I lie to her, she might realize the truth—and then where would you be, Dr. Soggdon? Only you can do it. Only you can reassure her. And you must do it.”
Soggdon glared at Kresh, the anger and fear plain on her face as she switched on her mike again. “Dee, this is Dr. Soggdon. I am still monitoring the simulation. I am detecting what appear to be First Law conflicts in the positronic pathing display. There is no First Law element to the simulated circumstances under consideration.” Soggdon hesitated, made a face, and then spoke again. “There is absolutely no possibility of harm to human beings,” she said. “Do you understand?”
There was another distinct pause, and Kresh thought he detected another, but much slighter, flicker in the image of the Inferno that was to be. But then Dee spoke again, and her voice was firm and confident. “Yes, Doctor Soggdon. I do understand,” she said. “Thank you. Excuse me. I must return to my conversation with the simulant governor.” Another pause, and then Dee was speaking to Kresh. “I beg your pardon, Governor. Other processing demands took my time up for the moment.”
“Quite all right,” Kresh said. Of course, Dee was no doubt linked to a thousand other sites and operations, and probably having a dozen other conversations with field workers right now. It was not quite a little white lie, but it was certainly close enough to being one. Robots were supposed to be incapable of lying—but this one was clever enough to manage a truthful and yet misleading statement. Dee was a sophisticated unit indeed.
“Can you tell me more about this… idea under discussion?” Dee asked him.
“Certainly,” said Kresh. “The idea is to evacuate everyone from the target area, and provide safeguards for the population outsid
e the target area.” It could not hurt to emphasize safety procedures first off. Let her know that even the fictional simulants would be safe. They needed as many defenses as possible against a First Law reaction. “Once that is accomplished, a large comet is to be broken up and the fragments targeted individually, the overlapping craters running through existing lowlands. More conventional earth-moving will no doubt be required afterwards, but the linked and overlapping craters will form the basis for the Utopia Inlet.”
“I see,” Dee replied, her voice still strained and tense. “Unit Dum and I will require a great deal more information before we can evaluate this plan.”
“Certainly,” said Kresh. He pulled a piece of paper out of his tunic and unfolded it. “Refer to network access node 4313, identity Davlo Lentrall, subgroup 919, referent code Comet Grieg.” Lentrall had given him the access address earlier. Now seemed the moment to put it to good use. “Examine the data there and you will be able to do your evaluations,” said Kresh.
“There is no identity Davlo Lentrall on access node 4313,” Dee said at once.
“What?” said Kresh.
“No one named Davlo Lentrall is linked into that access node,” said Dee.
“The number must be wrong, or something,” said Kresh.
“Quite likely,” said Dee. “I’m going to hand off to Dum. He is directly linked to the network in question and can perform the search more effectively.”
“There is no Davlo Lentrall on node 4313,” Dum announced, almost at once, speaking in an even flatter monotone than usual. “Searching all net nodes. No Davlo Lentrall found. Searching maintenance archives. Information on identity Davlo Lentrall discovered.”
“Report on that information,” Kresh said. How could Lentrall’s files have vanished off the net? Something was wrong. Something was seriously and dangerously wrong.
“Network action logs show that all files, including all backups, linked to the identity Davlo Lentrall, were invasively and irrevocably erased from the network eighteen hours, ten minutes, and three seconds ago,” Unit Dum announced.
Kresh was stunned. He looked to Soggdon, not quite knowing why he hoped for an answer from that quarter. He switched off his mike and spoke to her. “I don’t understand,” he said. “How could it all be erased? Why would anyone do that?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “He used a term I’m not familiar with in this context. Let me check.” She keyed on her own mike again. “Dum, this is Soggdon, monitoring. Define meaning of the term ‘invasive’ in present situation.”
“Invasive—contextual definition: performed by an invader, an attack from the outside, the act of an invader.”
“In other words,” said Kresh, his voice as cold and hard as he could make it, “someone has broken in and deliberately destroyed the files.” He suddenly remembered what Fredda had said, about the things you thought you knew. She had said something about never really being sure about what you knew. Here it was, happening again. He had thought he knew where the comet was. Now he knew he did not. “It would seem,” he said, “that someone out there agrees with you, Dr. Soggdon. They don’t want anyone playing with comets.”
11
“IT’S GONE, GOVERNOR,” said Davlo Lentrall. “Everything I’ve ever worked on is gone.” He was glad to be speaking over an audio-only link to the governor. Kresh had called on an audio link because it was easier to maintain a secure line that way, but Davlo didn’t care about that. He was simply glad he did not have to show his face. It was bad enough that Kresh could hear the panic in his voice. He wouldn’t want anyone to see him this way. Davlo Lentrall paced frantically up and down in front of his comm center. “All my core files, all the backups, everything.”
“Take it easy, son. Easy now. There must be some way to retrieve it all. I thought the system was designed to make it impossible to lose things irretrievably.”
Davlo tried to calm himself. Kresh had called from—from wherever he was—just as Davlo had finally, absolutely confirmed that all was lost. It was no easy thing to talk to the planetary leader when he was at his lowest ebb.
“Normally, yes, sir. But this wasn’t an accident. This was sabotage. Five minutes after I discovered that my files were gone, I got a call from University Security. Someone broke into my office there and threw in a firebomb. They think there were at least two separate break-ins. By the end of the second intrusion, everything that wasn’t stolen was bummed. They say there’s nothing left. Nothing at all. All my notes and work—including the comet data. The comet coordinates, the tracking information, the orbital projections—everything.”
“Burning stars,” Kresh’s voice half whispered. “Maybe that whole escapade at Government Tower was just a diversion.”
Davlo laughed bitterly. “Trying to kidnap me, perhaps kill me, a mere diversion for stealing my life’s work?”
“I don’t mean to sound harsh, son, but yes. Exactly that. I grant that you would have a different point of view—but for the rest of the world, right now, your life’s work is of far greater importance than your life. And you’re sure everything is gone? Irretrievably gone?”
“Everything. “
“I see.”
“Governor Kresh? Who did this? Was it the Settlers?”
“Probably,” said Kresh. “But it could have been anyone who wanted to keep the comet from coming down. Right now that doesn’t matter. Right now we have to deal with the situation, not worry about how the situation came to be.”
“That’s not going to be easy, sir. I’ll try.”
There was silence on the line for a moment. “All right, then. Your computer files containing your plans are gone. We have to set to work at once to get them back—or at least get the main part of them back. I’ve seen enough of what the twin control units can do to be sure they could start from the basics of your plan and reconstruct it—probably in greater detail than you had to start with.”
“How very kind of you to say so,” Davlo muttered.
“I meant no offense to your work,” Kresh said. “The control units are designed for this kind of job, and they have the capacity to oversee the climate of an entire planet. Of course they can do more detailed projections than one man working alone, no matter how gifted—especially when that man is working outside his field of expertise. And I might add that no robot or computer or control unit found that comet and saw what it might mean to this planet.”
Davlo sat down in the chair facing the comm unit, folded his arms over his chest, and stared down at the floor. “You’re flattering me,” he said. “Trying to soothe me, make me feel better.”
“Yes, I am,” Kresh agreed, his voice smooth and calm. “Because I need you, and I need you right now. As I was about to say, the control units can reconstruct and refine your plan for targeting the comet—but we need you in your field of expertise.”
“Sir? I don’t understand.”
“Son, we need you to look through your telescope again and relocate that comet. And fast.”
Davlo took a deep breath, shook his head, and kept his gaze fixed on the floor. “Sir, I never found the comet in the first place.”
“What! Are you saying this has all been some kind of hoax? Some kind of fraud?”
“No! No, sir. Nothing like that. I didn’t mean it that way. I meant that the computers found the comet. Automated telescopes found it while doing preprogrammed scans. I’ve never looked through a telescope myself in my life.”
Again, silence on the line, but this time Davlo spoke first. “All the data is gone, sir. Without my computer files, without my written notes, without the log files—there is simply no way at all I can find that comet again in time.”
“But the thing is kilometers across! It’s practically headed straight for the planet right now! How hard could it be to spot?”
Davlo Lentrall let out a tired sigh. The man was right. It shouldn’t be hard at all. How could he explain that it would be all but impossible? “It is extremely hard to spot, s
ir. It is coming straight for us, and that is part of the problem. Normally we track a comet by spotting its motion against the night sky. Comet Grieg appears to be all but stationary. Not quite motionless, but close. And while it’s a relatively large cometary body, even a big comet is rather small from tens of millions of kilometers away. It also happens to be a rather dark body—and at its present distance, it has a very low apparent magnitude.”
“You’re saying it’s too dim to see? But you saw it before—or at least the computers and the telescopes did.”
“It’s not impossible to see. But it’s very dim and small and far away and with a very small lateral motion. And it’s not just a question of seeing it once. We have to get repeated, accurate measures of its position and trajectory before we can reconstruct the orbit.”
“But what about when it gets closer? Won’t it develop a tail and all the rest of it? Surely that will make it easier to spot.”
“By which time it will be too late. Grieg is a dark-body comet. The comet will be too close, and if it has developed much of a tail, that will mean it is starting to melt. If it gets too warm and melts too much, it will be too fragile to hold together during the course correction. Part of the plan I hadn’t worked out yet was shielding from the sun. I was going to come up with some kind of parasol, a shield to keep the sunlight off.”
“But there’s a chance,” said Kresh. “At least there is some sort of chance we could reacquire the comet if we tried.” There was a brief moment of quiet again before the governor’s voice spoke again. “Here’s what we’re going to do,” he said. “We’re going to keep everything moving forward, based on the assumption that we do reacquire the comet, and that we will decide to go forward with the diversion and the impact. We need to move forward on as many fronts as possible, as fast as possible, and I need some work out of you, right now.
“First I want you to set down the closest approximations you can of the mass, size, position, and trajectory of Comet Grieg. Even rough figures will give us someplace to start in planning for the impact itself. Send that information at once to my data mailbox. Then you are going to get to work at once organizing a search to reacquire Comet Grieg. I will instruct your superiors to give you whatever resources and personnel you need for the job. Tell them as much as you can about the comet. But get that started—and let someone else run it. Because I want you to get to work trying to recover your computer files. Maybe they’re not as lost as we think. There must be something, somewhere—at least enough to give some leads to the team doing the telescope search. Is that clear?”
