Asimov’s Future History Volume 8

by Isaac Asimov

  Derec waited while the AI system rolled the request around for a few seconds and decided what to do with it. Finally, it said, “One moment, please, while I connect you.”

  The moment became nearly a minute before a human voice, male, answered.

  “This Iva Kusk. How can I help you?”

  “This is Derec Avery of the Phylaxis Group, Mr. Kusk. I understand that Imbitek is installing new systems into Union Station.”

  “Phylaxis... ah, the robot people. Yes, we are. It’s my understanding that you’ve been removed from the project.”

  “That remains to be seen, sir. We have a contract to service the RI–”

  “Which is no longer functioning, am I correct?” Kusk interjected.

  “Well–”

  “Imbitek received an exclusive contract pursuant to the failure of the current system. It’s my understanding that the RI suffered total collapse. Under those circumstances, you have nothing to service.”

  “The positronics still need to be removed. I ought to oversee that, at least,” Derec countered.

  “We’re not removing it, the Solarians are. Take it up with them. As far as Imbitek is concerned, you have nothing to concern yourself with.”

  “Nevertheless–”

  “Nevertheless, Mr. Avery,” Kusk said sharply, “I think you know that we shouldn’t even be discussing this matter. Sorry I can’t be of more help, but when Special Service lays down the law, we’re not inclined to go around them. So, if there’s nothing else...”

  “Should you find yourself running into difficulties with some of those systems, Mr. Kusk, consider giving us a call before you destroy something you can’t replace.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Avery,” Kusk said smugly. “We’ll take that under advisement.”

  The connection died.

  “High marks for sincerity,” Rana said. “Demerits for tact.”

  Derec ignored her and called Imbitek back. He got the directory and asked to speak to Hob Larkin.

  “Hob Larkin no longer works for our firm,” the AI informed him. “Due to privacy restrictions we may not provide any other information.”

  Derec broke the connection and tapped yet another code. The emblem of the Terran Senate appeared on the screen. A moment later, a secretary took its place.

  “Senator Clar Eliton’s office. May I help you?”

  Derec noticed that her voice was strained, as if under firm control. “I’d like to speak to Jonis Taprin, please. This is Derec Avery of the Phylaxis Group.”

  “I’ll see if Vice Senator–Senator Taprin is available. Please hold.”

  Derec watched the time chop above the screen. The secretary reappeared after nearly a full minute.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Avery, but Senator Taprin is in a meeting. May I direct you to one of his aides?”

  “No, thank you. Please have him call me at his earliest convenience. It’s important. It concerns Union Station.”

  “I’ll let him know.”

  The screen blanked.

  “He’s going to be tied up in meetings from now till the election,” Rana said.

  Derec nodded. “He’s got a big vacuum to fill.”

  “Why don’t you just call the Calvin Institute?”

  “Not yet.” He returned to her console.

  “Do I detect a hint of personal aversion?”

  “Not a bit. What are you doing?”

  Rana gave him a skeptical look, then pointed at her screen. “An excavation. I’m matching layers to see if anything turns up.”

  Derec shuddered at the idea. The RI was scrambled from the collapse. Whole segments of it no longer “lined up” to form a functional matrix. What Rana was attempting to do made random chance seem predictable by comparison.

  “That could take days.”

  “Thales is doing the gross sorting for me.”

  “Still...”

  “Uh-huh. Do you have a better idea?”

  Derec slid his chair to his own console and began entering commands. “As a matter of fact, no. But maybe one just as good. We can narrow it down by isolating out all other possible intrusive presences. A lot of com traffic goes through this thing”

  “But most of it is buffered to avoid direct contamination of the positronic matrix,” Rana concluded.

  “Of course it is. So anything that got past that–”

  “Would be worth a look. Of course. What about the RI performance record?”

  “Save it. I’ll look it over later.”

  Derec set up parameters for each type of communications link that the RI dealt with: regular com, systems interfaces with incoming shuttles, dialogues with maintenance drones, hotels, requisitions vendors, banks, security protocols with the various police services, subetheric links, interstellar traffic, interfaces with nonpositronic systems, and its own relays with its various service components. After establishing a firewall between the subject RI and Thales, he let the Group RI do the actual sorting, which took much less time than any other method. While the lists compiled, he wrote an instruction to search for mirror sites once everything was in a manageable state, looking for match points with the unexplained pathways Rana had found.

  They worked in silence for nearly three hours. The amount of data to go through remained immense and intimidating, but Derec sensed progress.

  The com chimed behind him. He looked over his shoulder and saw that Vice Senator–now Senator–Taprin was returning his call.

  He punched ACCEPT.

  “Mr. Avery, how are you? How can I help?”

  “I’m fine, sir, if a little confused. There are a couple of matters I hope you can help me clear up. Phylaxis was taken off the investigation. I don’t know if you were aware of that.”

  Taprin frowned. “No, but I don’t keep that close tabs on what you do. Frankly, Clar tended to be very proprietary about the entire positronic issue.”

  Issue...? Derec thought. “Special Service assumed jurisdiction over the entire investigation, which is certainly their prerogative. But it ‘is unorthodox. I’m not aware that they have any positronic specialists on staff.”

  “I didn’t think they did, which was one reason to use you,” Taprin said. “I’ll look into it.”

  “Thank you, sir. The other matter has to do with protocol regarding the Union Station RI. I’ve learned that someone gave directions shortly after it was installed that certain problems with the RI were to be referred directly to the Calvin Institute rather than us. I wondered if you could find out who issued that directive.”

  “I can look into it, but my authority stops at the Auroran Embassy door. You could ask them yourself.”

  “I’d rather it came from a more official source.”

  “I see.”

  “Besides, the staff at Union Station wouldn’t be under Auroran authority. Whoever issued that directive had to have Terran authority.”

  “True. Now that I think about it, it is odd. I’ll see what I can find out for you. It might take some time. I’m swamped.”

  “Whatever you can give me, sir, I’d appreciate it.”

  “If, as you say, Special Service has removed you from the investigation–why are you interested?”

  The question surprised Derec. He hesitated uncertainly. “Well... I think we’d all like to know what went wrong, Senator. I thought you’d appreciate the input. Besides, I think this pertains directly to the future of Phylaxis. But beyond that, it seems pertinent to Senator Eliton’s work.”

  Tarpin nodded slowly. “Mmm. Very true. I’ll see.”

  “Thank you.”

  The screen went blank, leaving Derec with an odd, displaced feeling.

  Why am I interested?

  “We have something matching up,” Rana said.

  Derec hurried back to the console. On the main screen, columns lined up. As he watched, lines from each became highlighted, then isolated to another window.

  “Maintenance...” Derec read aloud. “Maintenance... maintenance... maintenance... al
l the exit pathways are mirroring to maintenance communications?”

  “That’s what it’s looking like. But the signals are not transmitted.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean they are strings of code going through the RI and routed back to the relevant site,” Rana explained. “They’re one-to-one. Something at the pathway site is injecting code directly.”

  Derec stared at the configurations on her screens. “There’s no routing... no buffer...? It’s as if something is directly attached to the physical node.”.

  “Doesn’t make sense, I know, but that’s what it’s showing.”

  “We have to get in there and look at these components.”

  Rana laughed sharply. “Before Imbitek rips them out? Good luck.”

  Derec drummed his fingers. “They can’t. The Calvin Institute has to supervise removal of the positronic components–satellite systems and all.”

  Rana pursed her lips, but said nothing.

  Derec rapped his knuckles impatiently on the console and headed back to the comlink. “And so should we.” He punched in a code.

  “Calvin Institute. How may I direct your call?”

  “I want to speak to...” He hesitated, licked his lips, and sighed heavily. “I wish to speak to Ariel Burgess, please. Tell her it’s Derec Avery from the Phylaxis Group.”

  Eleven

  ARIEL GOT OUT of bed with the feeling that something was not right. Perhaps it was only that she had gotten five hours of sleep.

  She found Mia in the living room, occupying one of the oversized sofas. Her portable datum propped on her lap, a cup of coffee on the end table, and various disks scattered on the pillow beside her, she looked more like a business traveller than a government agent. Ariel was larger than Mia, and the borrowed robe seemed to swallow the smaller woman.

  The picture window was milky-white, allowing in morning light but not the view.

  “Good morning, Ariel,” R. Jennie said, trundling in with a tray of breakfast.

  “‘Morning” Jennie.”

  Mia looked up and smiled briefly. “Hi.”

  “You look better,” Ariel said. “How do you feel?” She glanced around the room until she found Bogard, halfway between Mia and the door, standing against the wall. It seemed somehow shrunken now, not nearly as imposing as the previous night.

  “Rested,” Mia said. She winced slightly. “Sore. My treatments weren’t finished.”

  R. Jennie set the tray on the breakfast table by the window. Ariel thought about moving it to the coffee table before Mia, but it was not too far away. And Bogard still made her a little nervous.

  Ariel sat down and lifted the cover from her eggs and hamsteak. “I’ll make the call to take care of that after I eat. What are you going to do afterward?”

  “After what?”

  “After you’re healed.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to decide. I can’t very well hide out here for the rest of my life. And I doubt you could get me an open passport to Aurora.”

  “You might be surprised what I can get you.”

  Mia raised her eyebrows, but said nothing. She tapped the keypad on her datum for a few minutes while Ariel carved her ham and drank down half her cup of coffee. Ariel wondered if she should have Jennie prepare a large carafe for the day.

  Mia sighed heavily, then set the datum aside. She rubbed her face, then folded her arms. “I can’t run. If I do, we’ll never find out who did this.”

  “The media are all blaming the Managins.”

  “That might be partly true,” Mia said. “I think it was Managins that actually did the killing. I’ve started a search protocol on a couple of names that might be relevant and one of them came up within seconds: Lemus Milmor. He’s a known affiliate of OSMA, the Order for the Supremacy of Man Again. He’s in our database under a ‘To Be Watched’ flag because he was rejected by a Settler’s group for assaulting two people.”

  Mia shook her head. “Still. The Managins are a large faction, true. Lot of members, broad base. But to subvert the security systems in a place like Union Station? And get all those people and all those weapons in without being detected at some point? And then to put me under surveillance and try to kill me? No. They have the motive but not the resources. Not on their own.”

  “There are other factions.”

  “I’ve been going through the list,” Mia said, gesturing at the datum. She grabbed her cup and cradled it. “TerraFirst, Primists, the HLA, the Fraternity of Organic Supremacy–if you take bits and pieces of several of them, you might get an effective team together that could attempt something like this. But they hate each other almost as much as they hate Spacers and robots.” Mia frowned.” Sorry.”

  “For what? Are you a member of any of these organizations?”

  “No... well, maybe. The largest faction would have to be the Terran government.”

  “But you don’t go around killing Spacers to prove your point. Forget it.” Ariel shrugged. “Any other candidates on your list?”

  “There’s been corporate resistance to these talks all along.”

  “Positronics is a threat to homegrown industry. At least, they see it that way. We’re not so optimistic.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s Spacer belief–an article of faith–that Earth will never allow positronics again. Some of us don’t believe that’s an absolute–after all, we got a Resident Intelligence installed at one of your largest spaceports–but we doubt Earth will ever embrace our robots to any great degree. Positronics will always be a small presence here.”

  “So what was this conference supposed to be about?” Mia asked.

  “Spacer technology is highly advanced, some of it very far advanced over what’s available on Earth. Earth would love to have some of it-like our medical tech–but Earth is afraid that opening the gates just a little will let all of it, including positronics, in. For our part, Spacers are worried about competition from some of your technologies that we find impressive.”

  “Like what?”

  Ariel ticked the list off with her fingers. “Transportation systems, automated databases, imbedded technologies, quasi-organic biomechanisms. But mainly mass manufacturing systems. Earth has a long history of production engineering that even with all we’ve done we can’t quite match. Frankly, I find the Terran aversion to positronics puzzling considering some of the things your people play with daily. Anyway, there’s fear of open trade both ways. Underlying commercial concerns, there’s fear of cultural contamination. But the main deal is the black market. Ever since the Tiberius incident, Earth has been treading very carefully. We almost went to war over that.”

  “If you hadn’t backed down–” Mia began.

  “If you hadn’t found contraband, you mean. It’s very difficult to claim injury when the other fellow is right.”

  “As far as Earth is concerned, that was still an illegal act, boarding the Tiberius.”

  “But rather than go to war, you listened to Eliton.” Ariel heard the edge of impatience in her own voice. Mia did not respond, obviously waiting for her friend to calm down.

  Ariel cleared her throat. “This conference was supposed to start a process of... well, of demystification between us. A start at debunking some of the erroneous beliefs and tearing down prejudices. Without that process, controlling the illegalities that proliferate between us will never be possible and one of these days we will go to war. Some of us don’t think either Earth or the Spacer worlds can survive without each other. At best, though, positronics would always be a token presence, but a way of teaching Terrans not to fear us.”

  “That’s all shot to hell.”

  “Maybe. I’ve been doing a lot of damage control. But the heart and soul of the conference is–might be–an agreement to allow positronic inspection of all traffic between Spacer worlds and Earth. We believe the piracies are a front for black marketeering. The Tiberius supports that belief.”

  “On whose part?”
Mia asked.

  “Both sides. You can’t sell contraband without a market.”

  “Collusion between legitimate corporations and pirates?”

  “Or pirates in the pay of those corporations. Either way, humans can be bribed. Robots can’t.”

  Mia shook her head in wonder. “The newsnets had been going on for months over the proposal for all-robotic inspections of interstellar freighters. That would have been a miracle.”

  “Maybe. Just short of getting Earthers to accept positronics?”

  Mia laughed bitterly. “The Union Station RI was a positronic system. It failed. That’s going to be a hard fact to get past.”

  Ariel covered her reactions with a forkful of egg. The Resident Intelligence at Union Station should not have permitted the catastrophe. There were ample security systems tied into it, it had the capacity and the imperatives to prevent harm to humans. But Mia was right–it had failed. She was right, too, that it would be a difficult wall to break down. Anyone wishing to derail the conference and any future conference could not have wished for a more perfect event. With all the other problems, it may well have made the situation impossible.

  But why had the RI failed? It made no sense. Ariel wondered what Derec’s Phylaxis Group had found out. She glanced at her com, but quashed the impulse to call him. She looked over at Bogard against the wall–it had failed, too, even with its vaunted “versatility” in interpreting Three Law conditions. That was Derec’s concept, his design.

  His failure.

  Mia tensed when the medical robot showed up, but made herself relax and allow it to treat her.

  “You should be in hospital,” the robot informed her.

  “Treat her here,” Ariel said. “Strictest confidentiality.”

  “Confidentiality will be respected unless such treatment places the subject at risk,” the robot informed her.

  “Understood. Proceed. Do you want me to stay, Mia?”

  Mia shook her head. “No, I’m fine. You have things to do.”

  “In that case, anything you need, ask Jennie. If you have to contact me, do so through her.”

  Mia nodded, watching the medical robot examine her leg.