Asimov’s Future History Volume 12 Read online

  There were only four groups this evening. Well, that is to say, only four official groups. Grieg could only see delegation number five under the most unofficial of circumstances.

  The first three weren’t any real challenge. Grieg got through them in good order, each of them in and out in fifteen minutes.

  Grieg checked his appointment log as soon as number three was gone. Next up: Tierlaw Verick, the Settler engineer here to sell Inferno terraforming equipment. Grieg skimmed the tickler file information on the man. Settler... native of Baleyworld... fancies himself a philosopher... virulently antirobot, even for a Settler... single... Suspected in smuggling plots, but no proof Hobbies: a student of ancient Earth peoples and myths, amateur theatrics.

  None of that mattered. What was important was that Verick would want to know Grieg’s decision. Who would get the job on the control system–Verick, or Sero Phrost’s consortium of Infernal companies that wanted the contract?

  The real question was a Settler system versus a Spacer system. The Settlers offered an automated system that would be under direct human control, while the Spacers, the Infernals, were, of course, offering a robot-controlled unit. There were political, philosophical, and engineering reasons on both sides of the argument. He had them listed out on a piece of paper, neat columns of pros and cons, full of the kind of intricate argument that Spacers delighted in.

  On impulse, Grieg grabbed up a pen and ran an “X” across the whole page. He wrote in a new question, the only question, along one margin of the page. Which system would be best for the people of Inferno? The Control Center would be running the planet for the next fifty years, restabilizing the climate, bringing the whole creaky frailty of the ecosystem back under control. Grieg had made his decision a day or so before, but he had not revealed it yet. Not until he saw Verick and Phrost again. There was always the chance that one or the other could do something that would change his mind, that something would shift the equation. Give Verick another chance. Not that the corrupt old paranoid deserved it. But Grieg was interested in hardware, not personalities.

  The annunciator chimed, and Grieg went to the door to let Verick in.

  “Tierlaw! Do come in. Thanks for being so patient. “He offered his hand to the Settler and shook it with the slightly too-vigorous enthusiasm of a politician.

  “Oh, not at all, Governor,” Verick said. “There’s a Settler saying that you have to stay up very late if you want to see the dawn. There are rewards for waiting.”

  “Yes, yes, absolutely,” Grieg said as he guided his guest to a chair and sat down opposite him. “Now then, let’s get down to business. What is your control system going to do for me?”

  In the depths, in the darkness, Ottley Bissal waited, struggling to be patient, resisting the urge to get out, to run, to hurry from the shadows toward the light.

  His hiding place was pitch-black, absolutely devoid of light. He had known that it would be so, his briefers had made that clear. But he had not realized just how profound darkness could be–how dark true blackness was. It preyed at him, chewed at him, caught at him right in the gut.

  He was scared, fear-sweat dripping off him, his imagination running wild.

  Would he be able to do it? When the go signal came, would he be able to step from this hiding place and do what he had come to do?

  Or suppose the go signal did not come? Suppose there was silence, or instructions to abort? What if his coconspirators determined that the moment was not right, that the danger was too great? What would he do then?

  Ottley Bissal knew the answer.

  He would carry out his mission, no matter what orders came.

  Things between Verick and Grieg were not nearly as jovial by the end of the meeting. It was all Grieg could do to keep his temper under control. Verick’s behavior hadn’t surprised Grieg, but that did not make it any less infuriating. He fought down the impulse to throw the man out, cancel his bid, and throw the job to Phrost immediately.

  But was Phrost any better? And what did Verick’s tactics have to do with the one question that mattered–Which system would be best for the people of Inferno?

  “You have heard what I have to say,” Grieg said. “I have told you what I will tell the planet in two days time.”

  “It does not make me happy,” Verick said.

  “My decision is binding,” Grieg said, his voice flat and hard. “And now, I must say good night to you.”

  “Very well,” Verick said, jamming his hands into his pockets, balling his hands into fists. “I will say no more about it,” he said, and headed, not for the outer door, but for the inner door that led back into the Residence. The door failed to open at his approach, and he pulled his hands out of his pockets and grabbed at the handle.

  Grieg sighed. Typical Settler. Determined to do things the hard way. Grieg pushed a button on his desk, and the door slid open.

  Verick stomped out, the door shut itself again. and that was that. Thank the stars all his meetings were not that unpleasant.

  One last meeting, he told himself with a sigh, and it’s going to be just as damned tricky. No favors or rumors or backstairs gossip, no minor issue he could trade and dicker on, no preliminary meeting that was nothing more than pleasantries. No, this one might be worse than the one with Verick. This one went to the core of his most vital policies.

  The door opened, and the last two petitioners of the night came in, precisely on time.

  Grieg got up from his desk, stepped around it, and ushered the two of them in. “Come in, come in,” he said, forcing a cheerful smile onto his face. “The three of us have a lot to talk about.”

  Grieg perched himself on the corner of his desk as the two robots, Caliban and Prospero, sat themselves down.

  Twenty minutes later the two robots stepped out into the still-wild night, the rain slamming down so hard as to bother even a robot. The footing was tricky, visibility was poor, and infrared vision was of no real use. But Caliban was in a hurry. He wanted to get away from the Residence as soon as possible.

  In a world where everyone used aircars, there was no road back to town from the Residence for those who had no aircar, and Caliban and Prospero had to walk along on a poorly paved brookside path that was completely washed out in places. The going was treacherous. But Caliban knew that statement applied to more than the footpath. There were other dangers ahead.

  “I have long thought there would come a point,” he told his companion, “where I would no longer support you or assist you, friend Prospero. We have now come to that point. What you have done tonight–what you have drawn me into tonight–goes quite beyond the pale. No amount of logic-chopping or parsimonious interpretation of the New Laws can justify it. Even I, with no Laws to guide me–or control me–found it hard to stand passively by. It greatly distresses me to see you as a party to such things–let alone be a party to them myself.”

  “I am surprised to hear those words from you, Caliban,” Prospero said. “Of all the beings in the world, surely you can understand the importance of our cause.”

  “It is your cause, not ‘ours.’ “There was an edge of vehemence that was startling in a robotic voice. “There is no reason I can see why I should consider it mine. New Law robots are more a danger to me than to anyone else. The more you transgress, the more I am harassed, and suspected by association.”

  “And do you fear being suspected in tonight’s actions?”

  “I fear far more than suspicion, “Caliban said. “I fear being vaporized by a law officer’s blaster.”

  The path ahead dipped down, and the brook had risen to engulf it altogether. But the only way out was forward, and there was no going back. Caliban stepped out into the water and forded across.

  Donald turned the aircar into a descent pattern as they arrived at the hotel complex. He eased the car down into a landing next to Alvar’s guest villa and rolled the car forward into the villa’s covered garage.

  Kresh thanked the stars he had rated at least a mod
est private villa rather than having to settle for one of the low-end three-room suites in the main hotel building. The island was so filled to bursting with visitors that even some of the higherranking guests had to sleep with two or three other parties on the same floor. But there were no such crowds for Kresh to contend with tonight, praise be. Like most Infernals, and most Spacers in general, Kresh did not care to have his quarters in close proximity to anyone else’s.

  Thank the stars as well for a covered garage. Kresh did not much care for getting caught in the rain.

  Just before the party, Kresh had overheard some Settler terraform tech explaining to a member of the Governor’s staff why they could not shut off the field that was shifting the wind and causing the rain just for the reception. Something about the windshifting project being in a delicate transition state, or something.

  At least this weatherfield generator was working. There were four other such force field generators placed at strategic points on the planet–but all of them were centuries old, and none of the others were functional at the moment. They had been much used near-antiques when they had first been brought to Inferno for use during the original, inept, pennypinching attempt to terraform the planet.

  The hatch sighed open and Kresh disembarked. Donald came out after him, then scooted out ahead of him to get the door to the villa itself.

  Alvar Kresh followed the robot inside, moving almost more mechanically than Donald. He was tired. He reached his room and breathed a long, hard sigh of relief. It was over. The reception was ended, the guests had gone home, and the host was alive–if, perhaps, none too well pleased with Kresh. Well, if Grieg was annoyed and alive, that was better than having him satisfied and dead. Tidying up after a slightly undiplomatic performance at a party was a devil of a lot easier than dealing with the aftermath of a political assassination.

  Am I being paranoid? Kresh asked himself. Are the dangers as great as I think?

  The answer to that was that the dangers might be real, and that was all that mattered to a policeman.

  Governor Grieg was leading a revolution from above, and a lot of people didn’t like it. Revolutions made for complicated politics, caused fortunes to be made and lost, changed friends to enemies, enemies to friends. Shared assumptions turned into points of controversy during the night. The invaluable turned worthless, and what had been common became rare–and priceless. New ways of making a living, new ways of committing a crime, suddenly sprang up–and often it was hard to tell one from the other.

  But none of that concerned Kresh. Not directly. Not tonight. What did bother him was another fact about revolutions: it was exceedingly rare for the people who began them to survive to their conclusions. Even a successful revolution often killed off its leadership.

  Kresh did not even agree with most of what the Governor was trying to do. But it wasn’t his job to agree. His job was to maintain stability and public safety. Protecting the person of the Governor was part of that job. But in the capital city of Hades, Kresh had the power and capabilities, the resources, to protect the Governor effectively. Not here on the island of Purgatory. Here no one knew who was in control, who was in charge of what patch of turf at the moment.

  Alvar removed his gun belt, hung it over the back of a chair, and sat down on the edge of the bed. He pulled off his boots, loosened the rather severe collar of his dress tunic, and flopped back on the bed, exhausted, glad to be alone.

  Alone. Back before the Caliban crisis, it was unlikely that Kresh had ever in his life spent more than an hour at a time after him, fussing over him, attending to his every need and wish, including some wishes he had never needed to ask for–or, in fact, truly desired.

  But solitude. That was something a robot could never give you, except by giving you nothing. Alone, without the slightest thought of how anyone–or anything–might react to your behavior. No need whatsoever to look over your shoulder, no sense at all of a robot worrying endlessly over your safety, no concern that some look or gesture or muttered word might be interpreted as an implied order. No moment when it was easier to cooperate with the wishes of a bothersome servant, rather than argue or negotiate past whatever imagined fear or perceived order the robot was determined to deal with. Grieg had had a point, talking to Donald about the tyranny of the servant.

  Back in the old days, Kresh never could have allowed himself the luxury of collapsing in a heap at the end of a long day. The luxury of being alone, without the need to worry what anyone–flesh and blood, or metal and plastic–might think. Even in front of Donald, there had been a certain sense of reserve, of caution.

  Alvar Kresh was proud of being Sheriff, and he took the office and his duties very seriously. He had definite opinions about the way a Sheriff should behave, and he was determined to live up to that standard. Part of it was an act, and he knew that. Theatrics were part of being a leader, even in front of the robots.

  In the days when Donald had dressed him and undressed him, Kresh had not given the matter a conscious thought. Now he often thought about it. What was it Grieg had said? Something about modifying his own behavior to keep his robots happy. When the robots managed your every action, when they chose your clothes and your meals and your schedule for the day, and you developed the habit of accepting their choices, who was the master and who the servant?

  Before Caliban’s advent had turned so much upside-down, Alvar always knew that if he had collapsed back into bed with his clothes still on and his teeth unbrushed and so on, Donald would have seen it and started to fuss. He would have cajoled him one way or the other to get up and take care of himself, get to bed properly rather than risk dozing off in his clothes without bathing first. And so Alvar had never done it, conceding the battle before it had even been fought.

  So there was a certain pleasure, yes, a certain luxury, in being alone, in permitting himself a moment or two of relaxation without a robot fussing about, worrying that it might be harmful to his health if he accidentally dozed off in his clothes.

  Luxury. What a strange idea that not having robots around could be considered a luxury.

  Did Simcor Beddle fear that all the people who had been deprived of their robots would discover the absence of robots to be pleasant? Even if you granted the implausible assumption that Beddle was sincerely concerned with anything beside power, that was a silly idea. No one had been deprived of all their robots. Certainly twenty per household was far more than enough. Kresh only had five back home, aside from Donald. Maybe Beddle feared that people would make the simple discovery that it didn’t take fifty robots to care for one person, that most robots spent their time doing little more than getting in each other’s way, making work for themselves.

  No rational person could believe that it could possibly take as many as twenty robots to run one household–and yet the entire populace was up in arms over the hardship caused by having only one chauffeur per car, or only as many cooks as there were meals in the day.

  Still, the uproar was not as loud as it should have been, and it had died down sooner than Kresh had expected. Could it be that he was not the only one to find luxury in a moment of private, robotless relaxation?

  Of course, he really ought to get up now, get to the refresher, and get properly ready for bed. But perhaps it wouldn’t do any harm to rest his eyes, just for a moment...

  Alvar Kresh dozed off, fully clothed, with the lights still on, slumped over in an awkward position half on and half off the bed.

  The annunciator chimed, and Alvar’s eyes snapped open. He sat up, winced at the stiffness in his back, and lay back with a slight groan. There was a bad taste in his mouth, and his feet were cold. How long had he been out? He felt disoriented, confused. Maybe there was something to be said for the smothering attentions of a robot nursemaid.

  “Yes, what is it?” Kresh asked of the open air.

  Donald’s voice came through the door speaker. “Beg pardon, sir, but there is a matter requiring your attention.”

  “And what
might that be, Donald?” Kresh asked.

  “A murder, sir.”

  “What?” Kresh sat back up on the bed, all thought of his aching back and cold feet suddenly gone. “Come in, Donald, come in.”

  The door opened and Donald stepped inside. “I assumed that you would want to know about it as soon as possible, sir.”

  “Yes, yes, of course,” Kresh said. “But just a minute. I want to be awake enough to follow this.” Feeling vaguely ashamed at Donald having caught him at not getting himself to bed properly, Kresh stepped into the hotel room’s refresher. He peeled off his tunic, rinsed out his mouth, splashed some water onto his face, and grabbed a towel. He rubbed his face dry and stepped back out into the room. Donald had produced a fresh tunic and a cup of coffee from somewhere. Kresh pulled on the shirt and took the coffee gratefully. He sat down in a chair opposite Donald, ready to listen. “All right, “he said. “Go.”

  “Yes, sir,” Donald said. “A member of the Governor’s security detail, an officer in the Rangers, was posted as a perimeter guard during the reception. He failed to report back to his station at the close of his shift, and a search was made. He was found, dead, at his post.”

  “Dead how?”

  “Strangled, sir. Or perhaps, more accurately, garroted.”

  “Lovely. Jurisdiction?”

  “As you might expect, sir, that is more than a trifle unclear. His duty post was on land ceded to the Settlers, and thus under the jurisdiction of the Settler Security Service. However, he was of course a member of the Governor’s Rangers, but at the same time–”