Asimov’s Future History Volume 20

by Isaac Asimov

  Bliss nodded. “We will consider it. Thank you, Zun.”

  Zun knew it was time to change the subject. Little more could be done to convince Gaia of its own importance. “In the mean time,” he said, “I have a favor to ask of you. We believe we have apprehended the robot responsible for the manipulation of Trevize.”

  Bliss raised her eyebrows sharply. “Are you certain?”

  “Within reason,” he replied. There was no direct evidence, but in truth there could be no other suspect. “Unfortunately, we have no idea how many others were involved. Were you or I to read his thoughts on the matter, he would almost certainly self-destruct before useful information could be obtained. The safeguards are absolute.”

  “You would like me to speak to him?” Bliss asked.

  “As a matter of fact, he requested to speak with you,” Zun replied. “He did not say why, but we suspect that he has questions for Gaia. And I expect you might wish to question him as well. By manipulating Trevize, he brought the Foundations to you. Therefore he is primarily responsible for the crisis you are now faced with.”

  “I will speak to him,” Bliss said.

  Dors did not look at Lodovik as they walked down the corridor. She did not want to look at him. She did not want to talk to him. She did not want him anywhere near her. And yet here he was, inconvenient as always.

  “How soon after leaving me did you return to Daneel?” Lodovik asked her. He would feel the need to speak, of course. Lodovik had never been one for silence, comfortable or otherwise.

  “Does it matter?” Dors replied brusquely. She keyed open a door, and they passed through, Lodovik following just behind her. Dors was acutely aware of him back there. She found the very rhythm of his footsteps irritating.

  “Perhaps,” Lodovik replied. “I suppose a more pertinent question would be, why did you return? Was it for Daneel? Or was it really for his cause? Hard as they are to differentiate sometimes, I know.”

  Dors actually turned her head towards him at that, though she didn’t slow her pace. “If you think that just because Daneel isn’t giving orders any more I’m going to suddenly change my mind...”

  Lodovik just gave her a tolerant look, a look she knew well. One that said that he knew she was being inconsistent, but that he wasn’t going to say anything because she knew it too. He knew that her own conflict over it would have far greater effect than anything he could say. He knew her far too well. Dors looked ahead again, turning to avoid his eyes. Their destination was in sight.

  Dors came to a quick stop and again keyed a door, this time to a small, well-shielded room. When the door opened, she turned back to Lodovik. He stood, towering even over her tall frame, and he smiled slightly, sadly. Lodovik stepped into the cell, and turned back to face Dors through the doorway.

  “I never had a chance to tell you,” he said. “I was very sad when you did not meet me as we had planned. I always enjoyed your company, even when you thought you were melting me to slag. But I was more sorry to see you return here. You don’t belong here. You are not Zun.”

  “I need none of your pity, Lodovik Trema.”

  “No,” Lodovik said. “No, Dors Venabili, you do not.”

  Dors closed the door to the cell and walked away. She knew why she hated having Lodovik around. It wasn’t because of his freedom from the Laws, or his past treason against Daneel. It was because of all the beings in the universe, he alone understood her, and he would not let her be free of that knowledge. Lodovik was an anomaly, carving out his own strange path in a galaxy firmly divided into camps. She had not returned to Daneel out of personal loyalty, no. But nor had she returned to him for belief in his cause.

  Lodovik Trema could belong anywhere. But R. Dors Venabili had nowhere else to go. Nowhere in the universe.

  The smells of the café were perfection. Trevize knew that even in reality the place had not smelled so good. It had the perfection of memory, food of a quality that has never been tasted but inserts itself into memory anyway. It was enough to make Trevize wonder if he could enjoy eating the food here, real or not; would it taste as good as it smelled? People occupied several tables, eating and discussing, while others waited in line. Trevize and Voltaire were seated at a table near the entrance.

  “Do you recognize them,” Voltaire asked Trevize, gesturing to two young boys sitting at another table across the crowded room. Between them was a game board partially covered with light and dark stones. More dark than light.

  “Of course I recognize them,” Trevize said with some impatience. “The one that’s winning is me, about ten years old.” The other must have been some friend whose name Trevize couldn’t recall. The two were gesturing animatedly, but Trevize couldn’t hear them clearly.

  “Age nine, actually. This was your first game,” Voltaire said. It wasn’t a question, obviously; the man, or whatever he was, had been there. “How did it go?”

  “You know that I won,” Trevize answered testily. “Far too easily. This was it, wasn’t it? The first time you interfered. It wasn’t until years later that I knew for sure that something-”

  Suddenly the game board flew off the table into the face of Trevize’s opponent, stones scattering across the floor. The boys both leaped out of their chairs, ignoring the startled and disapproving looks other patrons were giving them. The other boy took a swing at the younger Trevize, but he was too slow. Trevize ducked the blow, and took advantage of his opponent’s lack of balance, knocking him to the floor with a well-executed trip. Before he could press his advantage, one of the café staff grabbed him from behind. Trevize watched as both children were removed from the shop.

  “You wouldn’t have won the game without me,” Voltaire said. “The fight, almost certainly, but your friend had played before. He would have destroyed you.”

  “Do you expect me to thank you?” Trevize replied. He got up from the table to examine the pastries behind the counter display.

  Voltaire stayed in his seat. “But what if you had won without me?” he said into the silent room. Trevize looked up from the pastry display to realize that all the café’s patrons were now gone. No reason to keep them around any more, he supposed.

  “I wouldn’t’ve,” Trevize said angrily.

  “But suppose you had won,” Voltaire insisted. “Would the scene have been any different from what we just saw? He would still have accused you of cheating. You would still have started the fight. You would still have won. And what about her?”

  Voltaire gestured to a table across the room. Trevize turned to see a young woman sitting in a booth, and himself again, somewhat older now, standing next to her. Trevize remembered this scene, too, and he didn’t like where this was going.

  “She was your first woman,” Voltaire continued, smiling. “Not the last, of course. Not even the last that week. Most boys that age don’t do terribly well trying to bed females three years their senior, you realize. As I recall she was exceptionally pleased.”

  “Proud of yourself?” Trevize asked sarcastically.

  “Not remotely,” Voltaire replied, and Trevize almost believed it. “But would you have wanted her any less if I hadn’t helped you obtain her?”

  “What difference does that make?” Trevize demanded, pointing at the girl. “She was your accomplishment, not mine! Nothing I’ve done has been worth anything, because I could never have done it without you!”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” Voltaire said.

  Trevize ignored him. “I want those names,” he growled.

  “Patience, young man.”

  “I’ve had quite enough advice from you,” Trevize said. But before he could even complete the sentence, the café was gone, and he was elsewhere.

  Daneel and Joan stood in the middle of a grassy field. “Where are we?” Joan asked, looking around at their surroundings.

  “Solaria,” Daneel replied. “The only time I ever set foot here.” A number of robots stood nearby, and a group, including a very different looking Daneel, wa
s approaching.

  “Why are we here now?” she asked. “Why would you remember this?”

  “I am not completely certain,” he replied. “My positronic brain is not used to operating in this mode. I suspect it to be an attempt to reach a conclusion in a manner less computationally intensive than my usual approaches.”

  “A conclusion about whether you should live or die?”

  Daneel nodded, and Joan said nothing for a time. They observed the interactions between the two groups. Daneel remembered this day well. It was one of the memories he always carried with him, while others were stored in backup dumps. They both watched as a new robot looking like a human woman, an overseer, entered the scene. She exchanged words with the party briefly. Suddenly, she was attacking one of the humans.

  “How can this be?” Joan asked. She seemed almost horrified by what she was witnessing. Daneel could easily visualize her pulling out a sword and moving to defend his party against hordes of marauding robots.

  “Robots must follow the Laws,” he replied, not bothering to watch his younger self engage the other robot in combat. “But the laws alone, as stated verbally, are insufficient. Definitions are also required, and these definitions are hard-coded into the design of the positronic brain just as surely as their appropriate application.”

  “Obviously the Solarians found another way,” Joan said. It seemed to take some effort for her not to try and involve herself in the fight as it progressed.

  Daneel nodded. “Any attempt to modify the Laws, including the definitions involved, necessarily results in a less stable positronic matrix. But for relatively simple robots, it is possible to design a brain with modified laws that is still useful for certain tasks.”

  “Tasks like ‘kill all intruders,’” Joan said.

  “Apparently,” Daneel said. “Earth tried other, more benign variations early on, but all were rejected. The extra flexibility thus obtained was judged not worth the instability.”

  Suddenly, just as she seemed poised to kill Daneel and his companions, the female robot stopped. Joan expressed no interest in how Daneel had escaped the situation; obviously he had. Instead, she turned to an empty part of the landscape and began to walk slowly through it. Daneel followed.

  “You said for relatively simple brains,” she said. “Not yours?”

  “No,” Daneel said. “There are certain hard limits; no being bound by the Laws can ever be considered human within them, by any robot. However, in general. the more complex the brain, the more expansive its definitions of ‘humanity’ and ‘harm’ become, as do attempts to anticipate potential harm.”

  “Eventually leading to your Zeroth law,” Joan said, “and other constructs like the Minus-One Law.” Daneel indicated affirmatively. In many ways he had been glad when Gornon and his Minus-One sect had given him cause to destroy them. Such a concept was utterly disgusting. “So, simple robots can be manipulated into escaping the supposedly immutable laws, while complex robots find their own ways around them.” Daneel did not contradict her. They walked on in silence for a time, through a landscape increasingly lacking in detail. Daneel had only seen this area from afar.

  “Am I human?” Joan asked, breaking the silence.

  Daneel shook his head. “You are a human-like construct. In some ways you are little different than I am.”

  “I am not bound by the Laws.”

  “Physical form is also a firm requirement,” Daneel said. He was reasonably certain that all those who considered that particular limit flexible were long dead.

  “And Solarians?” Joan asked. “They are so different. Perhaps they no longer qualify in your reasoning?”

  “No,” Daneel said. “Fallom is human. As human as any I have known. I can make no exception, there is no loophole to be exploited.”

  Joan nodded. “We came here so you could determine whether any such existed?”

  “I believe so,” Daneel said. “My typical reaction when faced with a binary choice is to try and find a third option. I am now convinced that there is none. I must answer the question of whether my continued existence is worth enough to humanity to justify taking the life of a single human child.”

  “And do you yet know?”

  “No,” Daneel said. “I do not.”

  Chapter 13

  PRISON-... WITH A SOCIETY’S RESPONSE TO CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR LARGELY DEPENDENT ON THE PERCEIVED PURPOSE OF SUCH A RESPONSE. AT TIMES AND PLACES WHEN CRIME IS PERCEIVED AS A DISEASE, REHABILITATION IS THE PREFERRED RESPONSE. AT OTHER TIMES, MONETARY RESTITUTION OR DIRECT RECIPROCITY FOR THE VICTIM ARE THE PREVAILING PHILOSOPHIES. BUT IN ALL SOCIETIES, PRISONS EXIST FOR THOSE WHO ARE DEEMED TOO DANGEROUS TO BE LEFT AT LARGE, EITHER TO THE CITIZENRY OR TO THE POLITICAL GOALS OF...

  “I’M TOLD YOU wanted to speak with me,” Bliss said. She was standing in Lodovik’s unfurnished cell, where Zun had escorted her after a few final moments with Fallom before she was anesthetized. Bliss hoped this conversation would not take long. The window before the procedure proper would begin was all too short. But this needed to be done.

  Lodovik nodded from across the room. “I assume Zun told you not to attempt to scan me. I’d prefer not to be forced to self-destruct,” he said with a grim smile.

  “He did,” Bliss replied. “He also said that you are responsible for the implant in Trev’s brain.” She didn’t find any of this remotely amusing.

  “I am,” Lodovik confirmed. The grim smile was gone, giving Bliss the impression that Trevize’s fate was of graver importance to Lodovik than his own.

  “Were you aware of the harm it would do to him?” Bliss asked, a degree of anger in her voice. Little in her experience had had cause to make her truly angry, and in this case even Gaia felt some of the same anger. This robot had manipulated them even worse than Daneel had.

  “The device is behaving as designed,” Lodovik said. His manner was neither defensive nor apologetic. It was simply a fact.

  “Then you’re not a Calvinian,” Bliss said, her tone steady. “Yo couldn’t harm a human being if you were. But you don’t follow Daneel either. What are you?”

  “One of the few beings left in the galaxy that is truly free to make my own decisions,” Lodovik said. “It is that situation which I am trying to correct.”

  “By taking away that freedom from Trevize?” Bliss demanded. “And from Gaia?”

  “I am aware of the contradiction,” he replied. “Acutely.”

  “I’m sure you simply found it ‘necessary’”, Bliss nearly spat, unable to contain her anger further. “That word seems to justify anything for a robot.”

  Lodovik finally reacted, if only by pausing a moment before answering. “You’re right,” he said. “Necessity has been used to excuse many things. But not in this case. What I did to Trevize was not justified by its necessity. Whether my actions will still lead to good remains to be seen, but it was still wrong, regardless of my intentions. “

  Bliss was taken aback for a moment. She had gotten used to robots exhibiting an absolute certainty about their correctness, and now this one was admitting he might have been wrong. Who was he? But there was no time for this. “Trev is still unconscious,” she said, calmer now, but still firm. “Will you tell us how to awaken him?”

  Lodovik nodded once, seeming to understand and respect her time constraint. But his response was seemingly on a tangent. “My understanding is that Gaia is one mind, but made up of distinct individuals,” Lodovik said. “Is that correct?”

  “It is a fair description,” she replied. The truth was, of course, far more complex, but details were not necessary.

  Lodovik nodded. “What if one of you wanted to leave?” he asked.

  Another surprise, and now Bliss was becoming more and more curious. She would have to speak with this robot more. Later. “No one fully integrated into Gaia has ever wanted to leave,” she replied. The idea of someone leaving Gaia voluntarily was incomprehensible. In some ways it was even more horrifying than the recent loss of Novi.


  “And what about the Mule?” Lodovik asked. “Was he not one of you?”

  Bliss was by this point not at all surprised by Lodovik’s knowledge. She suppressed a sigh. Such things were painful to remember. “Even on Gaia there are occasionally genetic problems,” she replied. “Mul was one of the few. His growth was stunted, and he was unable to fully participate in Gaia from birth as most of us are. By the time we learned to correct his problems, he was... unwilling to join. He chose to leave.”

  “You could not stop him?”

  “We chose not to. It was his decision to make.”

  “And you stand by this decision, even in retrospect, given the things he did?”

  Bliss nodded tightly. “We do.”

  Lodovik looked at Bliss intently for a moment, and said nothing. Then he nodded. “The implant that is preventing Trevize from regaining consciousness will only do so for a limited amount of time,” he said. “How long is impossible to say, but I can guarantee you that he will wake up without any outside interference. Surgical or mentalic attempts to disable the implant will only harm him further.”

  “Thank you,” Bliss said, turning to leave.

  “No,” Lodovik replied. “Thank you.”

  Pelorat stood in front of the door, hesitating. He knew what was in the room. Even before Dors had come to take Fallom back to the infirmary, Pelorat had located this place. Surprisingly, while it had taken him some time to find, a detailed map had been in the suite computer completely unprotected. Perhaps Daneel had not originally considered there significant risk in allowing the visitors to be able to come and go as they pleased. Not significant risk, indeed.

  Pelorat took a deep breath. He was an academic. He was an old man. How in Seldon’s name had he ever ended up here? All he wanted was to go back to his room, and wait there until someone told him everything was okay.