Isaac Asimov's Caliban 3 - Utopia

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The Caliban Trilogy is a searing examination of Asimov’s Three Laws of

Robotics, a challenge welcomed and sanctioned by Isaac Asimov, the late

beloved genius of science fiction, and written with his cooperation by one of

today’s hottest talents, Roger MacBride Allen, New York Times bestselling

author of Star Wars: Ambush at Corella.

CALIBAN

The First Law states:

A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human

being to come to harm.

INFERNO

The Second Law states:

A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders

would conflict with the First Law.

UTOPIA

The Third Law states:

A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not

conflict with the First or Second Law.

_ISAAC

ASIMOV’S

UTOPIA

BY ROGER

MacBRIDE

ALLEN

A Byron Preiss Visual Publications, Inc. Book

_“Isaac Asimov’s Caliban” is a trademark of Byron Preiss Visual Publications,

Inc.

This book is an Ace original edition, and has never been previously published.

UTOPIA

An Ace Book / published by arrangement with Byron Preiss Visual Publications,

Inc.

PRINTING HISTORY

Ace trade paperback edition / November 1996

Cover Painting by Bruce Jensen.

This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part by mimeograph or any other

means, without permission.

For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group, 200 Madison Avenue, New

York, NY 10016.

The Putnam Berkley World Wide Web site address is

http://www.berkley.com/berkley

Make sure to check out PB Plug, the science fiction/fantasy newsletter at

http://www.pbplug.com

ISBN: 0-441-00245-5

ACE®

Ace Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group, 200 Madison Avenue,

New York, NY 10016.

ACE and the “A” design are trademarks belonging to Charter Communications,

Inc.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To My Brother Chris,

His Wife Edie,

My Sister Connie,

And Her Husband Jim.

Author’s Note

I would like to thank all the people involved with this book, and with

this trilogy. It has been a long and complicated undertaking. Now, at long

last, it is complete.

These three books would have been absolutely impossible if not for the

prodigious literary output of the late Isaac Asimov, and if not for the

prodigious popularity of his work. He is and will be greatly missed, and we

are all in his debt. It has been an honor and a privilege to explore the ideas

and the worlds he created.

Thanks as well to the editors who have labored over Caliban, Inferno,

and Utopia. David Harris, John Betancourt, Leigh Grossman, and Keith R. A.

DeCandido all worked to improve these books--and all succeeded. Thanks also to

Susan Allison, Ginjer Buchanan, and Laura Anne Oilman of Ace Books, to Peter

Heck, and to Byron Preiss, for their labors on my behalf.

And, of course, thanks as well to Eleanore Maury Fox. I hadn’t even met

her when I started work on this trilogy. Now she is my wife. This is the spot

where authors usually talk about the love, affection, and patience of their

long-suffering spouses, and Eleanore certainly deserves thanks on all those

counts. But I also got something else: very hard-edged, straightforward,

professional editorial advice. It helped a lot.

I now come to my sister Constance Witte, my brother Chris Allen, my

brother-in-law Jim Witte, and my sister-in-law Edith Allen. This last book of

the trilogy is dedicated to them, as the first one was dedicated to their

children. (Except for one, and I’ll come to her in a minute.) Connie, Chris,

Jim and Edie: thank you, for a list of things that would be longer than this

book. Thanks as well to my parents, Tom and Scot tie Allen, and to my mother-

in-law Elizabeth Maury, to my father-in-law David Fox, and to my brother-in-

law, Carl Fox. The family just keeps getting bigger, and consequently I just

keep getting luckier.

Speaking of families getting bigger, the newest member of it hadn’t

quite arrived when I dedicated Caliban to my nieces and nephews. She deserves

to be on the list. In closing, therefore, I would like amend that dedication

to include Anna Patrice Allen. Welcome aboard, Anna.

Roger MacBride Allen

Brasilia. Brazil

November, 1995

THE NEW LAWS OF ROBOTICS

A Robot May Not Injure A Human Being.

A Robot Must Cooperate with Human Beings Except Where Such Cooperation Would

Conflict with the First Law.

III

A Robot Must Protect Its Own Existence, As Long As Such Protection Does Not

Conflict with the First Law.

A Robot May Do Anything It Likes, Except Where Such Action Would Violate the

First, Second, or Third Laws.

THE ORIGINAL LAWS OF ROBOTICS

A Robot May Not Injure a Human Being, or, Through Inaction, Allow a Human

Being to Come to Harm.

A Robot Must Obey the Orders Given It By Human Beings Except Where Such Orders

Would Conflict With the First Law.

III

A Robot Must Protect Its Own Existence As Long As Such Protection Does Not

Interfere With the First or Second Law.

_THE SPACER-SETTLER STRUGGLE was at its beginning, and at its end, an

ideological contest. Indeed, to take a page from primitive studies, it might

more accurately be termed a theological battle, for both sides clung to their

positions more out of faith, fear, and tradition, rather than through any

carefully reasoned marshaling of the facts.

Always, whether acknowledged or not, there was one issue at the center

of every confrontation between the two sides: robots. One side regarded them

as the ultimate good, while the other saw them as the ultimate evil. Spacers

were the descendants of men and women who had fled semi-mythical Earth with

their robots when robots were banned there. Exiled from Earth, they traveled

in crude starships on the first wave of colonization from earth. With the aid

of their robots, the Spacers terraformed fifty worlds and created a culture of

great beauty and refinement, where all unpleasant tasks were left to the

robots. Ultimately, virtually all work was left to the robots. Having

colonized fifty planets, the Spacers called a halt, and set themselves no

other task than enjoying the fruits of their robots’ labor.

The Settlers were the descendants of those who stayed behind on Earth.

Their ancestors lived in great underground Cities, built to be safe from

atomic attack. It is beyond doubt that this way of life induced a certain

xenophobia into Settler culture. That xenophobia long survived the threat of

atomic war, and came to be directed against the smug Spacers--and their

robots.

It was fear that caused Earth to cast out robots in the first place.

Part of it was an irrational fear of metal monsters wandering the landscape.

However, the people of Earth had more reasonable fears as well. They worried

that robots would take jobs--and the means of making a living--from humans.

Most seriously, they looked to what they saw as the indolence, the lethargy,

and the decadence of Spacer society. The Settlers feared that robots would

relieve humanity of its spirit, its will, its ambition even as they relieved

humanity of its burdens.

The Spacers, meanwhile, had grown disdainful of the people they

perceived to be grubby underground dwellers. Spacers came to deny their own

common ancestry with the people who had cast them out. But so too did they

lose their ambition. Their technology, their culture, their worldview, were

all static, if not stagnant. The Spacer ideal seemed to be a universe where

nothing ever happened, where yesterday and tomorrow were like today, and the

robots took care of all the unpleasant details.

The Settlers set out to colonize the galaxy in earnest, terraforming

endless worlds, leapfrogging past the Spacer worlds and Spacer technology. The

Settlers carried with them the traditional viewpoints of the home world. Every

encounter with the Spacers seemed to confirm the Settlers’ reasons for

distrusting robots. Fear and hatred of robots became one of the foundations of

Settler policy and philosophy. Robot-hatred, coupled with the arrogant Spacer

style, did little to endear Settler to Spacer.

But still, sometimes, somehow, the two sides managed to cooperate,

however great the degree of friction and suspicion. People of good will on

both sides attempted to cast aside fear and hatred to work together--with

varying success.

It was on Inferno, one of the smallest, weakest, most fragile of the

Spacer worlds, that Spacer and Settler made one of the boldest attempts to

work together. The people of that world, who called themselves Infernals,

found themselves facing two crises. Their ecological difficulties all knew

about, though few understood their severity. Settler experts in terraforming

were called in to deal with that.

But it was the second crisis, the hidden crisis, that proved the greater

danger. For, unbeknownst to themselves, the Infernals and the Settlers on that

aptly-named world were forced to face a remarkable change in the very nature

of robots themselves....

Many elements combined to produce the final and most dangerous crisis

for the planet Inferno. Beyond question, the so-called New Law robots played a

pivotal role in what happened. But as is so often the case in history, it was

the unexpected interaction of several seemingly unrelated factors that

produced the final convulsion. All of them were necessary in order to produce

the tumultuous sequences of events that were to follow. Things would have been

very different if not for the New Law robots. But so too would subsequent

history have been changed beyond all recognition if not for the chance

discovery made by an obscure and ambitious scientist, or the erratically

heightened ethical sensitivity of an indiscreet police informant, or the

elaborate lies told to an all-powerful robot, or the two attempts by two

separate parties to commit a particular sort of crime--a crime that had not

been perpetrated for so many years that few were even aware that it existed.

Not once, but twice, the planet Inferno was shocked by attempts to

accomplish the barbaric act known by the strange name of kidnapping...

--Early History of Colonization, by Sarhir Vadid,

Baleyworld University Press, S.E. 1231

PART 1

IMPACT MINUS SIXTY-TWO_

A BLINDING FLASH of light erupted in the depths of space, a massive explosion

that blazed like a second sun. A cold, dark lump of matter, eighteen

kilometers in diameter, was caught in the blast, and deflected toward a new

heading, toward a slightly changed orbit.

The power of the blast should have been enough to shatter the comet,

but, somehow, it held together. The surface of the cometary body was heated by

the explosion, and small pockets of volatiles boiled up and out, sending jets

of gases flaring out across the darkness.

The laws of action and reaction work equally well, whether or not the

action is intentional. The jets of gas served as natural rocket thrusters,

accelerating the comet in unexpected directions, throwing it off its carefully

calculated course.

But other jets flared almost at once, artificial ones that compensated

for the uncontrolled thrust. The control thrusters had to fire more and more

frequently as the comet moved in closer to the inner planets of the star

system.

It soon became plain that the comet was heading straight for a planet in

the inner system, a world of blue and brown and tan, a world that was nearly

all water in the southern hemisphere, and nearly all dried-out desert in the

north.

The comet fell in toward the planet, closer and closer. The comet warmed

as it came in nearer to the star the planet orbited. Its surface began to boil

and vaporize, gases and dust blowing off into space, forming up into a tail

that stretched itself out behind the comet.

The comet suddenly broke up. The fragments spaced themselves out into a

neat line, like beads on a string.

The fragments moved closer, closer to the planet.

“Move from time factor positive one hundred to positive factor ten time

dilation,” said a disembodied voice in the darkness.

Time seemed to slow, the fragments suddenly moving at a fraction of

their original velocity, easing themselves slowly down out of orbit.

“Give me a view closer to Inferno,” the same voice commanded, and the

image suddenly swelled in size.

“That’s still way too fast. Time dilation to negative factor five,” the

voice ordered.

Once again, the clock slowed down, but even so, events moved quickly.

The comet fragments were moving with incredible speed as they slammed into the

planet’s upper atmosphere, and even with time slowed to a fifth its normal

speed, it still took scant seconds for the fragments to force their way down

through the atmosphere and slam into the planet.

The largest fragment hit first, striking on land just north of the

shoreline. The second crashed into the planet just north of the first,

slamming into the peaks of a low range of hills. The other fragments struck,

one after another, in a line running straight to the North Pole, blazing stars

of light blooming for brief moments before they were engulfed in cloud and

smoke, dust and debris

“It worked,” the voice said. “Freeze sequence at that point. Simglobe

off. Room lights on.”

The image of the planet aflame died away, and the lights came up to

reveal a perfectly ordinary living room in a perfectly ordinary residence. The

only unusual object in the room was the highly sophisticated simglobe

projector sitting in the center of the room.

Davlo Lentrall walked over to the low, stubby cylinder that was the

simglobe unit, and tapped the top of it with his finger. Not even the most

advanced Settler models could do what this unit could do. He ought to know. He

had designed and built it himself. He savored the satisfaction of the moment,

and all the effort that had gone before it. It was his, all his. He had

discovered the comet. In a rare burst of modesty, he had named it, not for

himself, as called for by tradition, but for Chanto Grieg, the murdered

governor who had spurred the reterraforming project that had saved the planet.

Or at least bought the planet some time, so that Davlo Lentrall and Comet

Grieg could finish the work that Chanto Grieg had begun. There was a symmetry

there, a bit of poetry that would appeal to the historians. Posterity would

remember Davlo Lentrall, no matter what the comet was called.

Of course, there was no point in discussing such matters with his

robotic assistant. Kaelor would only remind him of the things that were bound

to go wrong. But Davlo could not let such a triumphant moment go without

saying something. “It worked,” he said at last.

“Of course the simglobe works, Master Lentrall. It has worked every time

you operated it. Why should it fail now?”

“I meant the comet-capture, Kaelor, not the simulator.”

“I must point out that you forced it to work,” said the robot Kaelor.

“What, exactly, do you mean?” Lentrall asked. Kaelor was a useful

servant, but dealing with him required a good deal of patience.

“I mean, sir, that you are making a series of unwarranted assumptions.”

Davlo held back his temper, and forced himself to be patient. Kaelor had

been designed and built to Davlo’s custom specifications, the most important

of which was to hold First Law potential to the lowest possible level when

judging hypothetical situations. A lab-assistant robot with First Law set to

the normally super-high levels of Infernal robots would have been utterly

incapable of assisting him on the sorts of experiments Davlo was interested

in. Even before he had stumbled across Comet Grieg, Davlo had been involved in

Operation Snowball, a project that required the contemplation of a great many

risky alternatives in order to find the safest way to proceed.

There was scarcely a Three-Law robot on the planet who would have been

willing to work on Snowball, let alone operate the simglobe to test ideas for

bringing Comet Grieg in. Few robots would even be willing to help set up the

problem, on the grounds that the simulation could pave the way for letting a

real comet strike the real planet--which would be dangerous to humans in the

extreme. Davlo had therefore ordered a custom-built robot for his Snowball

work, and been glad to have him when he realized Grieg’s potential.

It had taken a lot of argument and discussion with the robot designer,

an exceedingly conservative gentleman who was most reluctant to put the

slightest restriction on First Law, but the result was Constricted First Law

001--CFL-001. Tradition and convention would have required Davlo to named CFL-

001 something like Caefal, or Cuffle, or even, as one waggish colleague

suggested, Careful. But none of those appealed to Davlo, and he had come up

with Kaelor instead.

But, either as a side effect of constricted First-Law potential, or

merely as the consequence of the normal random subpathings of his positronic

brain, Kaelor was also possessed of a dour, even depressive, outlook on life

and the universe. “What are these assumptions, Kaelor?”

“You’re assuming you can hold the comet together during the original

guidance explosion,” said Kaelor, “and then assuming you can split it apart in

precisely the manner you wish, exactly when you wish. Furthermore, you have

not resolved the issue of solar heating and its effects. I also have doubts

about your being able to control the comet’s outgassing. You have also been

quite arbitrary about the number of fragments needed for the job, and,

finally, you have not dealt with the incredibly delicate timing and guidance

control needed for final-phase targeting and atmospheric entry. Success

requires a degree of precision in all these matters that I see no way of

accomplishing.”

“I am aware of all those problems,” said Davlo. “If we were only to

begin after we had solved all the problems, we would never begin at all. But I

have demonstrated that the basic plan will work. Or at least that it can. Now

I just have to convince my superiors. But in my considered opinion, I have

proved we can drop Comet Grieg onto Inferno, and save the planet.”

“Granting your assumptions, I suppose you are right,” the robot replied

in dour tones. “I only wonder if you can manage to do it without killing

everybody.”

JUSTEN DEVRAY, COMMANDER of the Combined Inferno Police, sat in the unmarked

and slightly battered aircar and watched the sun come up over parkland of

idyllic green. He was tired. Deathly tired. But being tired was part of the

job description on this duty. That was part of what he was here to learn.

It had seemed like a very sensible theory, going around to every bureau

of the Combined Infernal Police, getting a firsthand idea of the sort of

police work he had never had the chance to do, back in the old days. It had,

in fact, been Justen’s own idea, and it was teaching him a lot. Now he knew

for certain that stakeout duty was both duller and more exhausting than he had

thought possible. And he was starting to suspect that a nice, soft office job

had more to recommend than he had realized.

Justen’s unmarked aircar was parked a hundred meters or so away from the

surface entrance to the vast underground complex known as Settlertown. The

entrance itself was a mushroom-shaped arrangement, with a central pillar that

contained the elevator shaft, and a wide, rounded, overhanging roof that

spread out from the pillar to keep the weather off anyone waiting for a car

down to the interior. The entrance shaft stood just inside the gate to the

huge park the Settlers had built over their underground city. The landscaping

of the park was all Settler work as well, of course, a demonstration of their

skill in terraforming.

But the design of Settlertown did not concern Justen Devray. The job of

the officer on this stakeout was to keep on a watch on the people going in and

out of Settlertown. There were, of course, other entrances to the vast series

of artificial caverns and chambers below. The CIP had watches on those, as

well. But the main entrance was the real prize, at least according to the

CIP’s intelligence unit. The big fish used the main entrance. Their ranks, or

at least their cover stories, would demand it. More importantly, the amateurs

used the main entrance.

Everyone on both sides knew that all the entrances to Settlertown were

watched, even the most rarely used ones. According to most theories of field

operation, the best way to avoid being noticed was to use the busiest

entrance, in hopes of getting lost in the shuffle. Sometimes it even worked.

Especially now, at midmorning, there was a great deal of coming and going. It

was far from simple to monitor it all. Something else for Justen to learn.

There were, of course, plenty of legitimate reasons for people to go in

and out of Settlertown, and lots of people, Spacer and Settler, who did indeed

go in and out. But some fraction of that number had no good reason for being

there at all. Those were the ones who gave the CIP stakeout its reason for

being.

The CIP never used the same car twice in a row for this stakeout job,

even though the real professionals on the other side knew perfectly well they

were being observed, and had no doubt gotten quite good at spotting the CIP’s

stakeout, no matter what car they were using. That was beside the point.

However the CIP ran the stakeout, the pros in Settlertown would be able to

spot them. But not so the amateurs, the dropins. Change the car often enough,

routinely vary the spot where you parked it, and the odds were reasonably good

that an amateur could go in and out a dozen times without being able to spot

the surveillance car.

Justen Devray shifted in his seat and tried to get a trifle more

comfortable. He felt cooped up, hemmed in. He smiled to himself. It wasn’t

just the car that had him feeling a little bit trapped. It was the job. In the

old days, Justen had run the Governor’s Rangers, a service with the dual

responsibility of enforcing the law outside the cities and managing a number

of reterraforming projects. Even Justen was willing to admit it had been an

awkward combination of responsibilities.

A little under five years before, Alvar Kresh had reorganized the

Rangers, leaving them with no other duties than their terraforming projects,

and merging their law-enforcement commands with the City of Hades Sheriff’s

Department to form the Combined Inferno Police. Kresh had put Devray in charge

of the new service.

Justen had taken the job willingly enough, but there were plenty of

times he regretted the decision. Running the planetary police more or less

required him to live in the planetary capital, and Justen Devray could not get

used to the city of Hades, or to city life in general. He often found himself

wishing to be back in the Rangers, working on some conservation job or

terraforming project out in high plains north of the city.

Despite his desk work, Justen still had the tanned skin, tousled blond

hair, and deep blue eyes to match that of an outdoorsman. The previous years

out in the wind and weather had at least etched some character into his face,

and life in the city had not erased any of it. Even so, he still looked

unfashionably young, and one glance at him was enough to see he did not belong

in a city.

Although he felt as if he were very much on his own, Justen had company

in the battered aircar. There were two robots with him. One was Gervad 112,

his personal robot of some years standing. Gervad was a General Ranger

Deployment robot, a GRD unit of the sort that had been general issue for the

Rangers some years before. The other was a Security, Patrol, and Rescue robot,

an SPR, more casually called Sapper 323. After the night when the previous

governor, Chanto Grieg, was murdered with a whole squad of Sappers on guard

around him, the model suddenly, and rather unfairly, had gained a bad

reputation. What had happened to them could have happened to any model of

robot.

Still, no major security service was willing to use them any more.

Justen hadn’t even tried to hang on to the Rangers’ SPRs. The rank and file

did not trust them, and would not use them. As a result, most of the Sappers

had been sold off at rock-bottom prices to all sorts of slightly disreputable

organizations and people. That in turn meant that a Sapper made good

camouflage. No one who saw Devray with a Sapper in tow was going to think he

was a cop, let alone the most senior police official on the planet.

The depressing fact was that the two robots could have done the watching

just as well without Devray. Better, probably. However, it did not do to dwell

on such matters. The plain fact of the matter was that humans were not really

much needed for most kinds of work.

“The male subject in red pants and blue tunic is not on my list of

identified subjects,” the SPR announced. The special features of the SPR

design really shone in identity work. They were nearly as good as humans at

visual pattern matching and comparison--or, to put it another way, at

recognizing faces and people. And, of course, they had virtually infallible

memories. When a Sapper said it recognized someone, or that it did not

recognize something, it was best to take it seriously. Right at the moment it

meant that someone who wasn’t supposed to be going into Settlertown was doing

just that.

Justen Devray, suddenly wide awake and alert, peered through the forward

windshield, eagerly trying to get a good look at the person in question. There

was a knot of about ten or twelve people waiting for the next elevator car to

arrive.

“Gervad,” he asked his personal robot, “do you know him?” Gervad had the

current official CIP mugshot file in his memory store.

“Sir, I have at least a tentative pattern match, but I am afraid that it

seems rather an improbable one.”

“Let me be the judge of that,” said Justen, still trying to get a good

look at the man in question. It wasn’t easy, with the throng of people all

around him. If the fellow actually had intelligence training, he would of

course do his best to blend in. “What’s your pattern match?”

“The observed subject matches with one Barnsell Ardosa, a junior

researcher in astrophysics at the University of Hades. As it seems unlikely in

the extreme that there would be much of interest to the Settlers coming from

that source, I would suggest that I have likely made an inaccurate match.”

Justen was just about to agree with Gervad, but just then he finally

spotted his quarry. There he was: a big, burly, round-faced man with dark

skin. He was completely bald on the top of his head but had a thin fringe of

snow-white hair that clung to the sides, thicker toward the back of his head,

and fading out completely just forward of the ears. He had a bushy mustache

and a distinctly worried look on his face.

For just the briefest of moments, Ardosa--if it was Ardosa--seemed to be

looking straight at Devray. And in that moment, Devray decided that Gervad

should have more faith in his own pattern-matching skills.

Justen Devray had never been near the university’s astrophysics

department. But Justen Devray was absolutely certain he had seen that face

before.

But the devil take him if he could figure out where.

ALVAR KRESH, GOVERNOR of the Planet Inferno, glared up at the young man

who stood at the other side of his desk. “You’re not helping your cause,” he

said. “I told you that I would consider your proposal, and I will consider it.

I have been considering it. But I am not going to be rushed into a decision.

Not on something this big.”

“There is no time to do anything but rush,” his visitor replied, his

voice urgent and insistent. “We have lost time already. I ran my final

simulations three days ago--and it has taken me that long to get in to see

you. This is a danger, and an opportunity, far greater than you understand.

Perhaps greater than you can understand.”

“What a tactful thing to say to the governor of the planet,” said Kresh,

his tone of voice as sour as his words. “But even if comprehending it is

beyond my poor abilities, I suppose that you are capable of seeing the big

picture?”

“I beg your pardon, sir. I didn’t mean to put it that way,” said Davlo

Lentrall, coloring just a bit.

“No,” Kresh said tiredly, “you probably didn’t.” He sighed, and

considered his visitor with the practiced eye of an ex-policeman. Lentrall was

dark-skinned and lantern-jawed, with an angular face and intense dark-brown

eyes. His hair was jet black and cut short enough to stand up straight. Height

average, build medium. Then Kresh reminded himself that he wasn’t a policeman

anymore, but a politician, and he needed to judge the fellow’s character, not

note his physical description. It was plain to see the salient factor in

Lentrall’ s personality: he was young, with all the brazen self-confidence of

youth.

Perhaps other cultures, Settler cultures, might regard youth as

attractive, or let youthful zeal serve to excuse a multitude of sins. But

Spacer culture was old, and its ways were old. Most of its people were old as

well. For the average citizen, the exuberance and passion of youth was, at

most, a distant, and slightly distasteful, memory, and Lentrall was a walking

reminder of why that was. Brashness, impetuosity, and arrogance rarely won any

friends.

But there was some possibility that the message Lentrall carried was

important, no matter how annoying the messenger might be. “Let’s both back off

on this, just for the moment,” Kresh said. “We’re not getting anywhere

anyway.”

Lentrall shifted uncomfortably on his feet. He seemed to debate the idea

of protesting again, and then think better of it. “Very well, sir,” he said.

“I--I apologize for my outburst. It’s just that the strain of all this, the

thought that the survival of the planet might be in my hands--it’s a lot to

deal with.”

“I know,” Kresh said, his voice suddenly gentle. “I know it very well. I

have been living with just that thought for years now.”

Once again, Lentrall reddened a bit. “Yes, sir. I know you have. It’s

just the idea of letting this chance slip away. But even so, I shouldn’t have

presumed to, to--”

“That’s all right, son. Let’s just leave it there. We’ll talk again in a

few days. In fact, tomorrow. Come in tomorrow morning. I will bring my wife,

and you can give the full presentation to both of us. I would very much value

her opinion on all this.” And that was true for more reasons than he would

care to share with young Dr. Lentrall just at the moment.

“Yes, sir. I’ll do that. Tomorrow, first thing. Would ten be all right?”

“That would be perfect. Donald, get the door for our guest, will you?”

“Of course, sir.” Donald 111, Kresh’s personal robot, stepped out of his

wall niche and walked smoothly across the floor. He led Lentrall to the door,

activated the door controls, and watched Lentrall leave.

Donald was a short, rounded-off sort of robot, all smooth curves and no

hard edges, quite specifically designed to be as nondescript and

nonthreatening in appearance as possible. He was sky-blue in color, the sky-

blue of the old Hades Sheriff’s Department, a hold-over from the days when

Kresh was the sheriff of the city--and there was a sheriff. Perhaps Kresh

should have had Fredda recoat him in some other color. But Kresh liked the

reminder of those days, when he had dealt with problems a lot smaller than the

ones he had now--even if they had seemed quite large enough at the time.

Donald closed the door after Lentrall and turned back to face Kresh.

“Your opinion, Donald?”

“Of what sir? The message, or the man who delivered it?”

“Both, I suppose. But start with the messenger. Quite a determined young

man, isn’t he?”

“Yes, sir. If I may say so, he puts me in mind of what I know of your

own early days.”

Kresh looked toward Donald suspiciously. “What do you know about my

early days?” he demanded. “How could you know about them? You weren’t even

built until after I was sheriff.”

“True enough, sir, but you have been my master for many years now, and I

have made you my study. After all, the better I know you, the better I can

serve you. I have examined all the extant records regarding you. And, unless

every record is misleading or inaccurate, that young man there bears a

striking resemblance to the man you were at his age.”

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摘要：

TheCalibanTrilogyisasearingexaminationofAsimov’sThreeLawsofRobotics,achallengewelcomedandsanctionedbyIsaacAsimov,thelatebelovedgeniusofsciencefiction,andwrittenwithhiscooperationbyoneoftoday’shottesttalents,RogerMacBrideAllen,NewYorkTimesbestsellingauthorofStarWars:AmbushatCorella.CALIBANTheFirstLaw...

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Isaac Asimov's Caliban 3 - Utopia

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