Isaac Asimov's Caliban 1 - Caliban

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ISAAC

ASIMOV’S

CALIBAN

ROGER

MacBRIDE

ALLEN

To five wondrous creatures, named in the order of their appearance on this

planet:

Aaron

Victoria

Benton

Jonathan

And

Meredith

Acknowledgments

This book would not have been possible without the support, and

especially the patience, of David Harris, John Betancourt, Byron Preiss, Susan

Allison, Ginjer Buchanan, and Peter Heck. There was many a slip between cup

and the lip, but thanks to their collective efforts, never a drop of the good

stuff was lost. The book stands as proof once again that every writer needs

at least one editor, and sometimes five or six is no bad idea. Thanks are

also due to Thomas B. Allen and Eleanore Fox, neither of whom had time to read

the manuscript, and both of whom did.

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

Conflict 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 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 had 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 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 own ambition. Their technology, their culture, their worldview, all

became 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 rather 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 goodwill 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...

--Early History of Colonization, by Sarhir Vadid,

Baleyworld University Press, S.E 1231

THE blow smashed into her skull.

Fredda Leving’s knees buckled. She dropped her tea mug. It fell to the

floor and shattered in a splash of brown liquid. Fredda crumpled toward the

ground. Her shoulder struck the floor, smashing into the broken shards of the

cup. They slashed into her left shoulder and the left side of her face. Blood

poured from the wounds.

She lay there, on her side, motionless, curled up in a ghoulish mockery

of the fetal position.

For the briefest of moments, she regained consciousness. It might have

been a split second after the attack, or two hours later, she could not say.

But she saw them, there was no doubt of that. She saw the feet, the two red

metallic feet, not thirty centimeters from her face. She felt fear,

astonishment, confusion. But then her pain and her injury closed over her

again, and she knew no more.

ROBOT CBN-001, also known as Caliban, awoke for the first time. In a

world new to him, his eyes switched on to glow a deep and penetrating blue as

he looked about his surroundings. He had no memory, no understanding to guide

him. He knew nothing.

He looked down at himself and saw he was tall, his body metallic red.

His left arm was half-raised. He was holding it straight out in front of him,

his fist clenched. He flexed his elbow, opened his fist, and stared at his

hand for a moment. He lowered his arm. He moved his head from side to side,

seeing, hearing, thinking, with no recollection of experience to guide him.

Where am I, who am I, what am I?

I am in a laboratory of some sort, I am Caliban, I am a robot. The

answers came from inside him, but not from his mind. From an on-board

datastore, he realized, and that knowledge likewise came from the datastore.

So that is where answers come from, he concluded.

He looked down to the floor and saw a body lying on its side there, its

head near his feet. It was the crumpled form of a young woman, a pool of blood

growing around her head and the upper part of her body. Instantly he

recognized the concepts of woman, young, blood, the answers flitting into his

awareness almost before he could form the questions. Truly a remarkable

device, this on-board datastore.

Who is she? Why does she lie there? What is wrong with her? He waited in

vain for the answers to spring forth, but no explanation came to him. The

store could not--or would not--help him with those questions. Some answers, it

seemed, it would not give. Caliban knelt down, peered at the woman more

closely, dipped a finger in the pool of blood. His thermocouple sensors

revealed that it was already rapidly cooling, coagulating. The principle of

blood clotting snapped into his mind. It should be sticky, he thought, and

tested the notion, pressing his forefinger to his thumb and then pulling them

apart. Yes, a slight resistance.

But blood, and an injured human. A strange sensation stole over him, as

he knew there was some reaction, some intense, deep-rooted response that he

should have--some response that was not there at all.

The blood was pooling around Caliban’ s feet now. He rose to his full

two-meter height again and found that he did not desire to stand in a pool of

blood. He wished to leave this place for more pleasant surroundings. He

stepped clear of the blood and saw an open doorway at the far end of the room.

He had no goal, no purpose, no understanding, no memory. One direction was as

good as another. Once he started moving, there was no reason to stop.

Caliban left the laboratory, wholly and utterly unaware that he was

leaving a trail of bloody footprints behind. He went through the doorway and

kept on going, out of the room, out of the building, out into the city.

SHERIFF’S Robot Donald DNL-111 surveyed the blood-splattered floor,

grimly aware that, on all the Spacer worlds, only in the city of Hades on the

planet of Inferno could a scene of such violence be reduced to a matter of

routine.

But Inferno was different, which was of course the problem in the first

place.

Here on Inferno it was happening more and more often. One human would

attack another at night--it was nearly always night--and flee. A robot--it was

nearly always a robot--would come across the crime scene and report it, then

suffer a major cognitive dissonance breakdown, unable to cope with the direct,

vivid, horrifying evidence of violence against a human being. Then the med-

robots would rush in. The Sheriff’s dispatch center would summon Donald, the

Sheriff’s personal robot, to the scene. If Donald judged the situation

warranted Kresh’ s attention, Donald instructed the household robot to waken

Sheriff Alvar Kresh and suggest that he join Donald at the scene.

Tonight the dismal ritual would be played out in full. This attack,

beyond question, required that the Sheriff investigate personally. The victim,

after all, was Fredda Leving. Kresh must needs be summoned.

And so some other, subordinate robot would waken Kresh, dress him, and

send him on his way here. That was unfortunate, as Kresh seemed to feel Donald

was the only one who could do it properly. And when Alvar Kresh woke in a bad

mood, he often flew his own aircar in order to work off his tension. Donald

did not like the idea of his master flying himself in any circumstances. But

the thought of Alvar Kresh in an evil mood, half -asleep, flying at night, was

especially unpleasant.

But there was nothing Donald could do about all that, and a great deal

to be done here. Donald was a short, almost rotund robot, painted a metallic

shade of the Sheriff’s Department’s sky-blue and carefully designed to be an

inconspicuous presence, the sort of robot that could not possibly disturb or

upset or intimidate anyone. People responded better to an inquisitive police

robot if it was not obtrusive. Donald’s head and body were rounded, the sides

and planes of his form flowing into each other in smooth curves. His arms and

legs were short, and no effort had been made to put anything more than the

merest sketch of a human face on the front of his head.

He had two blue-glowing eyes, and a speaker grille for a mouth, but

otherwise his head was utterly featureless, expressionless.

Which was perhaps just as well, for had his face been mobile enough to

do so, he would have been hard-pressed to formulate an expression appropriate

to his reaction now. Donald was a police robot, relatively hardened to the

idea of someone harming a human, but even he was having a great deal of

trouble dealing with this attack. He had not seen one this bad in a while. And

he had never been in the position of knowing the victim. And it was, after

all, Fredda Leving herself who had built Donald, named Donald. Donald found

that personal acquaintance with the victim only made his First Law tensions

worse.

Fredda Leving was crumpled on the floor, her head in a pool of her own

blood, two trails of bloody footprints leading from the scene in different

directions, out two of the four doors to the room. There were no footprints

leading in.

“Sir--sir--sir?” The robotic voice was raspy and rather crudely

mechanical, spoken aloud rather than via hyperwave. Donald turned and looked

at the speaker. It was the maintenance robot that had hyperwaved this one in.

“Yes, what it is?”

“Will she--will she--will she be all--all right right?” Donald looked

down at the small tan robot. It was a DAA-BOR unit, not more than a meter and

a half high. The word-stutter in his speech told him what he knew already.

Before very much longer, this little robot was likely to be good for little

more than the scrap heap, a victim of First Law dissonance.

Theory had it that a robot on the scene should be able to provide first

aid, with the medical dispatch center ready to transmit any specialized

medical knowledge that might be needed. But a serious head injury, with all

the potential for brain damage, made that impossible. Even leaving aside the

question of having surgical equipment in hand, this maintenance robot did not

have the brain capacity, the fine motor skills, or the visual acuity needed to

diagnose a head wound. The maintenance robot must have been caught in a

classic First Law trap, knowing that Fredda Leving was badly injured, but

knowing that any inexpert attempt to aid her could well injure her further.

Caught between the injunction to do no harm and the command not to allow harm

through inaction, the DAA-BOR’s positronic brain must have been severely

damaged as it oscillated back and forth between the demands for action and

inaction.

“I believe that the medical robots have the situation well in hand,

Daabor 5132,” Donald replied. Perhaps some encouraging words from an authority

figure like a high-end police robot might do some good, help stabilize the

cognitive dissonance that was clearly disabling this robot. “I am certain that

your prompt call for assistance helped to save her life. If you had not acted

as you did, the medical team might well not have arrived in time.”

“Thank thank thank you, sir. That is good to know.”

“One thing puzzles me, however. Tell me, friend--where are all the other

robots? Why are you the only one here? Where are the staff robots, and Madame

Leving’s personal robot?”

“Ordered--ordered away,” the little robot answered, still struggling to

get its speech under greater control. “Others ordered to leave area earlier in

evening. They are in are in the other wing of the laboratory, And Madame

Leving does not bring a personal robot with her to work.”

Donald looked at the other robot in astonishment. Both statements were

remarkable. That a leading roboticist did not keep a personal robot was

incredible. No Spacer would venture out of the house without a personal robot

in attendance. A citizen of Inferno would be far more likely to venture out

stark naked than without a robot--and Inferno had a strong tradition of

modesty, even among Spacer worlds.

But that was as nothing compared to the idea of the staff robots being

ordered to leave. How could that be? And who ordered them to go? The

assailant? It seemed an obvious conclusion. For the most fleeting of seconds,

Donald hesitated. It was dangerous for this robot to answer such questions,

given its fragile state of mind and diminished capacity. The additional

conflicts between First and Second Laws could easily do irreparable harm. But

no, it was necessary to ask the questions now. Daabor 5132 was likely to

suffer a complete cognitive breakdown at any moment in any event, and this

might be the only chance to ask. It would have been far better for a human,

for Sheriff Kresh, to do the asking, but this robot could fail at any moment.

Donald resolved to take the chance. “Who gave this order, friend? And how did

you come to disobey that order?”

“Did not disobey! Was not present when order given. Sent--I was sent--on

an errand. I came back after.”

“Then how do you know the order was given?”

“Because it was given before! Other times!”

Other times? Donald was more and more amazed. “Who gave it? What other

times? Who gave the order? Why did that person give the order?”

Daabor 5132’s head jerked abruptly to one side. “Cannot say. Ordered not

to tell. Ordered we were ordered not to say we were sent away, either--but now

going away caused harm to human harm harm harm--”

And with a low strangling noise, Daabor 5132 froze up. Its green eyes

flared bright for a moment and then went dark.

Donald stared sadly at what had been a reasoning being brief moments

before. There could be no question that he had chosen rightly. Daabor 5132

would have failed within a few minutes in any event.

At least there was the hope that a skilled human roboticist could get

further information out of the other staff robots.

Donald turned away from the ruined maintenance robot and turned his

attention back toward the human victim on the floor, surrounded by the med-

robots.

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摘要：

ISAACASIMOV’SCALIBANBYROGERMacBRIDEALLENTofivewondrouscreatures,namedintheorderoftheirappearanceonthisplanet:AaronVictoriaBentonJonathanAndMeredithAcknowledgmentsThisbookwouldnothavebeenpossiblewithoutthesupport,andespeciallythepatience,ofDavidHarris,JohnBetancourt,ByronPreiss,SusanAllison,GinjerBuc...

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