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

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摘要：

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

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