Isaac Asimov - Robot City 2 - Suspicion

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Isaac Asimov's ROBOT CITY - Book Two: Suspicion
ISAAC ASIMOV’S
ROBOT CITY
Books in the Isaac Asimov’s Robot CityTM series from Ace
BOOK 1: ODYSSEY by Michael P. Kube-McDowell
BOOK 2: SUSPICION by Mike McQuay
BOOK 3: CYBORG by William F. Wu
BOOK 4: PRODIGY by Arthur Byron Cover
BOOK 5: REFUGE by Rob Chilson
BOOK 6: PERIHELION by William F. Wu
ISAAC ASIMOV’S
ROBOT
CITY
BOOK 2: SUSPICION
MIKE MCQUAY
A Byron Preiss Visual Publications, Inc. Book
ACE BOOKS, NEW YORK
This book is an Ace original edition, and has never been previously published.
ISAAC ASIMOV’S ROBOT CITY
BOOK 2: SUSPICION
An Ace Book/published by arrangement with Byron Preiss Visual Publications,
Inc.
PRINTING HISTORY
Ace Edition/September 1987
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1987 by Byron Preiss Visual Publications, Inc.
Introduction copyright © 1987 by Nightfall, Inc.
Cover art and illustrations by Paul Rivoche.
Edited by David M. Harris.
Book design by Alex Jay/Studio J.
This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by mimeograph or any
other means, without permission.
ROBOT CITY is a trademark of Byron Preiss Visual Publications, Inc.
For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group, 200 Madison Avenue, New
York, New York 10016.
ISBN: 0-441-73126-0
Ace books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group, 200 Madison Avenue,
New York, New York 10016.
The name “Ace” and the “A” logo are trademarks belonging to Charter
Communications, Inc.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3
For Brian Shelton And the “bruised banana”
THE LAWS OF HUMANICS
ISAAC ASIMOV
I am pleased by the way in which the Robot City books pick up the various
themes and references in my robot stories and carry on with them.
For instance, my first three robot novels were, essentially, murder
mysteries, with Elijah Baley as the detective. Of these first three, the
second novel, The Naked Sun, was a locked-room mystery, in the sense that the
murdered person was found with no weapon on the site and yet no weapon could
have been removed either.
I managed to produce a satisfactory solution but I did not do that sort of
thing again, and I am delighted that Mike McQuay has tried his hand at it
here.
The fourth robot novel, Robots and Empire, was not primarily a murder mystery.
Elijah Baley had died a natural death at a good, old age, the book veered
toward the Foundation universe so that it was clear that both my notable
series, the Robot series and the Foundation series, were going to be fused
into a broader whole. (No, I didn’t do this for some arbitrary reason. The
necessities arising out of writing sequels in the 1980s to tales originally
written in the 1940s and 1950s forced my hand.)
In Robots and Empire, my robot character, Giskard, of whom I was very fond,
began to concern himself with “the Laws of Humanics,” which, I indicated,
might eventually serve as the basis for the science of psychohistory, which
plays such a large role in the Foundation series.
Strictly speaking, the Laws of Humanics should be a description, in concise
form, of how human beings actually behave. No such description exists, of
course. Even psychologists, who study the matter scientifically (at least, I
hope they do) cannot present any “laws” but can only make lengthy and diffuse
descriptions of what people seem to do. And none of them are prescriptive.
When a psychologist says that people respond in this way to a stimulus of that
sort, he merely means that some do at some times. Others may do it at other
times, or may not do it at all.
If we have to wait for actual laws prescribing human behavior in order to
establish psychohistory (and surely we must) then I suppose we will have to
wait a long time.
Well, then, what are we going to do about the Laws of Humanics? I suppose
what we can do is to start in a very small way, and then later slowly build it
up, if we can.
Thus, in Robots and Empire, it is a robot, Giskard, who raises the question of
the Laws of Humanics. Being a robot, he must view everything from the
standpoint of the Three Laws of Robotics — these robotic laws being truly
prescriptive, since robots are forced to obey them and cannot disobey them.
The Three Laws of Robotics are:
1 — A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human
being to come to harm.
2 — A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such
orders would conflict with the First Law.
3 — A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not
conflict with the First or Second Law.
Well, then, it seems to me that a robot could not help but think that human
beings ought to behave in such a way as to make it easier for robots to obey
those laws.
In fact, it seems to me that ethical human beings should be as anxious to make
life easier for robots as the robots themselves would. I took up this matter
in my story “The Bicentennial Man,” which was published in 1976. In it, I had
a human character say in part:
“If a man has the right to give a robot any order that does not involve harm
to a human being, he should have the decency never to give a robot any order
that involves harm to a robot, unless human safety absolutely requires it.
With great power goes great responsibility, and if the robots have Three Laws
to protect men, is it too much to ask that men have a law or two to protect
robots?”
For instance, the First Law is in two parts. The first part, “A robot may not
injure a human being,” is absolute and nothing need be done about that. The
second part, “or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm,”
leaves things open a bit. A human being might be about to come to harm because
of some event involving an inanimate object. A heavy weight might be likely to
fall upon him, or he may slip and be about to fall into a lake, or any one of
uncountable other misadventures of the sort may be involved. Here the robot
simply must try to rescue the human being; pull him from under, steady him on
his feet and so on. Or a human being might be threatened by some form of life
other than human — a lion, for instance — and the robot must come to his
defense.
But what if harm to a human being is threatened by the action of another human
being? There a robot must decide what to do. Can he save one human being
without harming the other? Or if there must be harm, what course of action
must he pursue to make it minimal?
It would be a lot easier for the robot, if human beings were as concerned
about the welfare of human beings, as robots are expected to be. And, indeed,
any reasonable human code of ethics would instruct human beings to care for
each other and to do no harm to each other. Which is, after all, the mandate
that humans gave robots. Therefore the First Law of Humanics from the robots’
standpoint is:
1 — A human being may not injure another human being, or, through inaction,
allow a human being to come to harm.
If this law is carried through, the robot will be left guarding the human
being from misadventures with inanimate objects and with non-human life,
something which poses no ethical dilemmas for it. Of course, the robot must
still guard against harm done a human being unwittingly by another human
being. It must also stand ready to come to the aid of a threatened human
being, if another human being on the scene simply cannot get to the scene of
action quickly enough. But then, even a robot may unwittingly harm a human
being, and even a robot may not be fast enough to get to the scene of action
in time or skilled enough to take the necessary action. Nothing is perfect.
That brings us to the Second Law of Robotics, which compels a robot to obey
all orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict
with the First Law. This means that human beings can give robots any order
without limitation as long as it does not involve harm to a human being.
But then a human being might order a robot to do something impossible, or give
it an order that might involve a robot in a dilemma that would do damage to
its brain. Thus, in my short story “Liar!,” published in 1940, I had a human
being deliberately put a robot into a dilemma where its brain burnt out and
ceased to function.
We might even imagine that as a robot becomes more intelligent and self-aware,
its brain might become sensitive enough to undergo harm if it were forced to
do something needlessly embarrassing or undignified. Consequently, the Second
Law of Humanics would be:
2 — A human being must give orders to a robot that preserve robotic existence,
unless such orders cause harm or discomfort to human beings.
The Third Law of Robotics is designed to protect the robot, but from the
robotic view it can be seen that it does not go far enough. The robot must
sacrifice its existence if the First or Second Law makes that necessary. Where
the First Law is concerned, there can be no argument. A robot must give up its
existence if that is the only way it can avoid doing harm to a human being or
can prevent harm from coming to a human being. If we admit the innate
superiority of any human being to any robot (which is something I am a little
reluctant to admit, actually), then this is inevitable.
On the other hand, must a robot give up its existence merely in obedience to
an order that might be trivial, or even malicious? In “The Bicentennial Man,”
I have some hoodlums deliberately order a robot to take itself apart for the
fun of watching that happen. The Third Law of Humanics must therefore be:
3 — A human being must not harm a robot, or, through inaction, allow a robot
to come to harm, unless such harm is needed to keep a human being from harm or
to allow a vital order to be carried out.
Of course, we cannot enforce these laws as we can the Robotic Laws. We cannot
design human brains as we design robot brains. It is, however, a beginning,
and I honestly think that if we are to have power over intelligent robots, we
must feel a corresponding responsibility for them, as the human character in
my story “The Bicentennial Man” said.
Certainly in Robot City, these are the sorts of rules that robots might
suggest for the only human beings on the planet, as you may soon learn.
CHAPTER 1
PARADES
It was sunset in the city of robots, and it was snowing paper.
The sun was a yellow one and the atmosphere, mostly nitrogen/oxygen blue, was
flush with the veins of iron oxides that traced through it, making the whole
twilight sky glow bright orange like a forest fire.
The one who called himself Derec marveled at the sunset from the back of the
huge earthmover as it slowly made its way through the city streets, crowds of
robots lining the avenue to watch him and his companions make this tour of the
city. The tiny shards of paper floated down from the upper stories of the
crystal-like buildings, thrown (for reasons that escaped Derec) by the robots
that crowded the windows to watch him.
Derec took it all in, sure that it must have significance or the robots
wouldn’t do it. And that was the only thing he was sure of—for Derec was a
person without memory, without notion of who he was. Worse still, he had come
to this impossible world, unpopulated by humans, by means that still astounded
him; and he had no idea, no idea, of where in the universe he was.
He was young, the cape of manhood still new on his shoulders, and he only
knew that by observing himself in a mirror. Even his name—Derec—wasn’t really
his. It was a borrowed name, a convenient thing to call himself because not
having a name was like not existing. And he desperately wanted to exist, to
know who, to know what he was.
And why.
Beside him sat a young woman called Katherine Burgess, who had said she’d
known him, briefly, when he’d had a name. But he wasn’t sure of her, of her
truth or her motivations. She had told him his real name was David and that
he’d crewed on a Settler ship, but neither the name nor the classification
seemed to fit as well as the identity he’d already been building for himself;
so he continued to call himself by his chosen name, Derec, until he had solid
proof of his other existence.
Flanking the humans on either side were two robots of advanced sophistication
(Derec knew that, but didn’t know how he knew it). One was named Euler, the
other Rydberg, and they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, tell him any more than he
already knew—nothing. The robots wanted information from him, however. They
wanted to know why he was a murderer.
The First Law of Robotics made it impossible for robots to harm human beings,
so when the only other human inhabitant of Robot City turned up dead, Derec
and Katherine were the only suspects. Derec’s brief past had not included
killing, but convincing Euler and Rydberg of that was not an easy task. They
were being held, but treated with respect—innocent, perhaps, until proven
guilty.
Both robots had shiny silver heads molded roughly to human equivalent. Both
had glowing photocells where eyes would be. But where Euler had a round mesh
screen in place of a human mouth, Rydberg had a small loudspeaker mounted atop
his dome.
“Do you enjoy this, Friend Derec?” Euler asked him, indicating the falling
paper and the seemingly endless stream of robots that lined the route of their
drive.
Derec had no idea of what he was supposed to enjoy about this demonstration,
but he didn’t want to offend his hosts, who were being very polite despite
their accusations. “It’s really . . . very nice,” he replied, brushing a
piece of paper off his lips.
“Nice?” Katherine said from beside him, angry. “Nice?” She ran fingers
through her long black hair. “I’ll be a week getting all this junk out of my
hair.”
“Surely it won’t take you that length of time,” Rydberg said, the speaker on
his head crackling. “Perhaps there’s something I don’t understand, but it
seems from a cursory examination that it shouldn’t take you any longer than .
. . ”
“All right,” Katherine said. “All right.”
“ . . . one or two hours. Unless of course you’re speaking microscopically, in
which case . . . ”
“Please,” she said. “No more. I was mistaken about the time.”
“Our studies of human culture,” Euler told Derec, “indicate that the parade is
indigenous to all human civilizations. We very much want to make you feel at
home here, our differences notwithstanding.”
Derec looked out on both sides of the huge, open-air, V-shaped mover. The
robots lining the streets stood quite still, their variegated bodies giving no
hint of curiosity, though Derec felt it quite possible that he and Katherine
were the first humans many of them had ever seen. Knowing nothing, Derec knew
nothing of parades, but it seemed to be a friendly enough ritual, except for
the paper, and it made him feel good that they should want him to feel at
home.
“Is it not customary to wave?” Euler asked.
“What?” Derec replied.
“To wave your arm to the crowd,” Euler explained. “Is it no customary?”
“Of course,” Derec said, and waved on both sides of the machine that clanked
steadily down the wide street, the robots returning the gesture with more
nonreadable silence.
“Don’t you feel like a proper fool?” Katherine asked, scrunching up her nose
at his antics.
“They’re just trying to be hospitable,” Derec replied. “With the trouble we’re
in here, I don’t think it hurts to return a friendly gesture.”
“Is there some problem, Friend Katherine?” Euler asked.
“Only with her mouth,” Derec replied.
Rydberg leaned forward to stare intently at Katherine’s face. “Is there
something we can do?”
“Yeah,” the girl answered. “Get me something to eat. I’m starving.”
Rydberg swiveled his head toward Euler. “Another untruth,” he said. “This is
very discouraging.”
“What do you mean?” Derec asked.
“Our hypotheses concerning the philosophical nature of humanics,” Rydberg
said, “must have their foundation in truth among species. Twice Katherine has
said things that aren’t true . . . ”
“I am starving!” Katherine complained.
“ . . . and how can any postulate be universally self-evident if the
postulators do not adhere to the same truths? Perhaps this is the mark of a
murderer.”
“Now wait a minute,” Derec said. “All humans make . . . creative use of the
language. It’s no proof of anything.”
Rydberg examined Katherine’s face closely. Then he pressed a pincer to her
bare arm, the place turning white for a second before resuming its natural
color. “You say you are starving, but your color is good, your pulse rate
strong and even, and you have no signs of physical deterioration. I must
conclude, reluctantly, that you are not starving.”
“We are hungry, though,” Derec said. “Please take us where we might eat.”
Katherine fixed him with a sidelong glance. “And do it quickly.”
“Of course,” Euler said. “You will find that we are fully equipped to deal
with any human emergency here. This is to be the perfect human world.”
“But there are no humans here,” Derec said.
“No.”
“Are you expecting any?”
“We have no expectations.”
“Oh.”
Euler directed the spider-like robot guiding the mover, and the machine turned
dutifully at the next corner, taking them down a double-width street that was
bisected by a large aqueduct, whose waters had turned dark under the ever-
deepening twilight.
Derec sat back and stole a glance at Katherine, but she was busily pulling
bits of paper from her hair and didn’t notice him. He had a million questions,
but they seemed better left for later. As it was, he had conflicting emotions
to analyze and react to within himself.
He was a nonperson whose life had begun scant weeks before, when he’d awakened
without past or memory to find himself in a life-support pod, stranded upon an
asteroid that was being mined by robots. They had been searching for
something, something he had accidentally stumbled upon—the Key to Perihelion,
at least one of the seven Keys to Perihelion. It had seemed of incredible
import to the robots on the asteroid. Unfortunately, he had had no idea of
what the Keys to Perihelion were or what to do with them.
After that was the bad time. The asteroid was destroyed by Aranimas, an alien
space raider, who captured Derec and tortured him for information about the
Key, information that Derec could not supply. There he had met Katherine, just
before the destruction of Aranimas’s vessel and their dubious salvation at the
hands of the Spacers’ robots.
The Spacers also wanted the Key, though their means of attaining it seemed
slightly more civilized and bureaucratic than Aranimas’s. Katherine and Derec
were polite prisoners of bureaucracy for a time on Rockliffe Station, their
personalities clashing until they were forced to form an alliance with Wolruf,
another alien from Aranimas’s ship, to escape their gentle captivity with the
Key.
They found that if they pressed the corners of the silver slab and thought
themselves away from the Spacer station, they were whisked bodily to a dark
gray void that they assumed to be Perihelion. Pressing the corners again,
another thought brought them to Robot City. And then their thinking took them
no farther, stranding them in a world populated by nothing but robots.
And that was it, the sum total of Derec’s conscious life. He had reached
several conclusions, though, scant as his reserve of information was: First,
he had an innate knowledge of robots and their workings, though he had no idea
from where his knowledge emanated; next, Katherine knew more about him than
she was willing to tell; finally, he couldn’t escape the feeling that he was
here for a purpose, that this was all some elaborate test designed especially
for him.
But why? Why?
It was worlds that were being turned here, physical and spatial laws that were
being forced upside down—all for him? Nothing made sense.
And then there was the Key, the object that everyone wanted, the object that
was safely hidden by the person who couldn’t control it. The robots here
didn’t know he had it. Were they looking for it, too? He’d have to find out.
The Key seemed to be the one strain that held everything else together.
Keeping that in mind, he determined to move slowly, to try always to get more
in the way of information than he gave. He’d been at a disadvantage for the
entire length of his memory. From this point, he wanted to keep the upper hand
as far as possible.
But there was, of course, the murder.
Derec stood on the balcony of the apartment given to him and Katherine by the
robots, looking out over the night city. A stiff, cold wind had come up, the
starfield totally obscured by dark, angry clouds that seemed to boil up out of
nowhere. Lightning flashed in the distance, electrons seeking partner protons
on the surface. It was a beautiful sight, and frightening. Derec watched the
distant buildings light to near daytime before plunging once more into
darkness.
“There,” he said, pointing to a distant tower. “It wasn’t there a centad ago.”
Katherine walked up beside him, leaning against the balcony rail. “Where was
it?” she asked, mocking.
“It wasn’t anywhere,” he replied, turning to take her by the shoulders. “It
didn’t exist.”
“That’s impossible,” she replied, then turned and walked back into the large,
airy apartment that sat at the top of another tower like the one Derec said
had sprung from nowhere. “I wish they’d get here with our food.”
“They’re probably fixing us something extra special,” Derec said, joining her
in the living room. “And impossible seems to be the way of our lives right
now, doesn’t it? I’m telling you, Katherine, that along with everything else
that doesn’t make sense, this . . . city is growing, changing right before our
eyes.”
“How can that be?” she asked, and looked around uneasily. “I mean . . . cities
are built, aren’t they? They don’t just grow.”
Derec stared a circle around the room. It was hexagonal, like standing on the
inside of a crystal, with no visible line of demarcation for the ceilings and
floor. The furniture seemed to flow from the walls, as the table seemed to
flow upward from the floor. Light concentrated from the ceiling and lit the
room comfortably, but it seemed the ceiling itself that was alight, with no
external apparatus to make it happen.
“Look around you,” Derec said. “Everything’s connected to everything else, and
connected seamlessly. And it all seems to be made from the same material.” He
walked to a sofa that flowed out of the wall and sat on the cushion that
formed its base. “Comfortable,” he said, “but I think it’s made from the same
material as the harder stuff—some kind of steel and plastic alloy—just in
different measure.”
Katherine had walked to the table and was staring at it. “If you look
closely,” she said, “you can see a pattern to the material.”
Derec stood and walked up beside her, leaning down on the table to get a close
look. The pattern was faint, but readable. The table was made up of a
collection of trapezoidal shapes, interwoven and repeated over and over.
“Interesting,” Derec said.
“How so?”
“Is the shape familiar to you?” She narrowed her brows in concentration for a
moment, then looked at him with wide eyes. “The same shape as the Key,” she
said.
He nodded.
Katherine left him standing there and hurried back out to the balcony.
“It’s almost like individual pieces stuck together,” he called to her. “I
wonder how they connect . . . ”
“It’s gone!” she shrieked, and Derec hurried onto the balcony. “Your tower
from before, it’s gone!”
“No it’s not,” he said, pointing farther to the east.”
It’s moved?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so.” He pointed to the huge, pyramidal
structure that dominated the landscape to the west. It was at the top of that
place where they were first brought by the Key. “That’s the only building I
think doesn’t change. And we couldn’t see it from the balcony a moment ago.”
“You mean, we’ve changed?”
“Something like that.”
She put a hand to her head. “I didn’t see . . . feel, I . . . ”
“It’s kind of like watching clouds,” he said. “If you stare at them from
moment to moment, they seem to be solid and stationary, but once you turn
away and then look back, they’ve changed. It’s almost like some sort of
evolutionary growth . . . ”
“In a building?”
“If you stay out there much longer, you will probably get wet,” came a voice
from behind them. They turned to see Euler’s glowing eyes staring at them in
the darkness.
“We’ve gotten wet before,” Katherine returned, looking past Euler to the food
being set out on their table. “Ah, a last meal for the condemned.”
“The rain here is particularly cool,” the robot said, and watched as Katherine
shoved past him and ran into the dining area, “perhaps uncomfortably cool for
the human body temperature.”
Thunder rumbled loudly in the distance, a brilliant shaft of lightning
striking the top of the towering pyramid. Derec turned from the spectacle and
moved toward the doorway, Euler stepping aside to let him pass.
He walked to the table, sitting across from Katherine, who was already piling
food from a large golden bowl onto her plate, also gold-colored. The food
seemed to be of a uniform, paste-like consistency, its color drifting
somewhere between blue and gray. Golden cups filled with water sat beside the
plates.
“Are these utensils made of gold?” Derec asked, clanging a spoon melodiously
against his plate.
“Correct,” Rydberg said. “It’s a relatively useless soft metal that is a by-
product of our mining operations. Its one major virtue besides its use as a
conductor is the fact that it doesn’t tarnish, making it ideal for human
eating utensils. We made these things for David’s visit.”
Derec watched the serving spoon slip from Katherine’s grasp to clang loudly
against her plate. And for just a second her face turned white.
“That’s what you told me my name was,” Derec said, finding the coincidence a
little too close for his comfort.
She fixed him with unfocused eyes, then shrugged, looking normal again. “It’s
a common enough name on Spacer worlds,” she said, returning her attention to
her plate.
She picked up the spoon and went back to the job at hand. Derec looked up at
the robots who stood beside the table and the small servo Type-I:5 robot
waiting patiently near the door for the return of the utensils.
“Would you care to sit with us while we eat?” Derec asked, and felt Katherine
kick him under the table.
“Delighted,” Euler said without hesitation, and the two robots sat at table
attentively, apparently enjoying in their way the human familiarity.
Derec took the serving spoon and began filling his own plate. “I take it that
David was the other human who came here?” he asked.
“That is correct,” Rydberg said.
“Then he came in a ship?” Derec pressed.
“No,” Euler said. “He simply walked into the city one day.”
“From where?”
“I don’t know.”
“Aaaahhh!” Katherine yelled, spitting out food and grabbing for the glass of
water, drinking furiously. The robots swiveled their heads to watch, then
exchanged glances. “Are you trying to feed us or kill us?” she demanded.
“Our programming would never allow us to kill you,” Rydberg said. “That would
be quite impossible.”
Derec tentatively dipped his spoon into the porridge-like mixture, taking a
small bite. Not sour, not sweet, it simply had a strange, alien taste
accompanied by a slight noxious odor, one he was also uncomfortable with.
“This stuff stinks!” Katherine said loudly, the robots looking at her, then
turning expectantly toward Derec.
“She’s right,” Derec replied. “What is this?”
“A perfect, nontoxic mixture of local plant matter, high in protein and
balanced carbohydrates,” Rydberg said. “It’s good for you.”
“The other human ate this?” Derec asked.
“Quite enthusiastically,” Euler said.
“No wonder he’s dead,” Katherine muttered. “This is simply unacceptable.
You’re going to have to find us something else, something that tastes good.”
Derec took another bite, this time holding his nose. Disassociating the smell
from the food helped some, but not too much. The gruel left an unpleasant
aftertaste. How could the other man have eaten it and not complained? Less
made sense all the time.
“How long before you can get us something else?” Derec asked.
“Tomorrow?” Rydberg suggested. “Although they were proud of this in food
services. Finding something of equal nutritional value will be difficult.”
“Forget nutritional value to a degree,” Derec said. “Study other human foods
and see how well those can be duplicated exactly with the know-how you have
here.” He looked at Katherine. “We should probably try and choke some of this
down to keep our strength.”
She nodded grimly. “I’d already figured that,” she said, and looked at
Rydberg. “Bring me lots of water.”
The robot hurried to comply, fetching a gold pitcher from the servo-cart and
refilling her cup.
“When did he die, this David?” Derec asked, holding his nose and taking
another bite.
“Seven days ago,” Rydberg said, sitting again and carefully positioning the
pitcher within everyone’s easy reach on the table.
“Well, that rules us out as suspect then,” Derec said happily. “We didn’t
arrive here until last night.”
“You’ll have to excuse me,” Rydberg said politely, “but Katherine has already
exhibited a penchant for speaking less than honestly—”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Katherine said angrily.
“No disrespect intended,” Rydberg said. “It is simply the case that your
veracity must be in question in light of our conversations of this afternoon.
At this point, we don’t know if we can trust anything either of you says.”
“We don’t even know where this place is,” Derec said.
“Then how did you get here?” Euler asked, swiveling his head to stare directly
at Derec.
“I . . . ” Derec began, then stopped himself. He wasn’t ready to admit any
knowledge of the Key. It was their only weapon, their only potential
salvation; he couldn’t give it over so early in the game. “I don’t know.”
Rydberg stared for several seconds before saying, “To believe you means that
you either materialized out of the ether or were somehow brought here totally
without your knowledge or consent.”
Derec responded by taking the conversation away from the robot’s control. “You
say this David also seemed to appear out of nowhere. Did you ever question him
about his origins?”
“Yes,” Euler said simply.
“And you know nothing about his background,” Derec said, trying to keep his
mind off the food by concentrating on the investigation. Across from him,
Katherine was swallowing her food whole and washing it down with large gulps
of water. “How was he dressed?”
“He was naked,” Euler said. “And he stayed naked.”
The two humans shared a look. Nudity was common and casual on many Spacer
worlds, but the climate here would hardly recommend it. “When can we see the
body?” Derec asked.
“That’s not possible,” Euler told her.
“Why?”
“I cannot tell you why.”
“Cannot or will not?” Derec asked, exasperated.
“Cannot and will not,” Euler replied.
“Then how do you expect us to investigate the cause of death?” Kate asked.
“If either or both of you are the murderers,” Euler said, “you already know
the cause of death.”
“You’ve already decided our guilt,” Derec said, pointing. “That’s not fair or
just.”
“There are no other possibilities,” Rydberg said.
“When the possible has been exhausted,” Derec replied, “it is time to examine
the impossible. We are innocent, and you can’t prove that we aren’t. It only
follows that the death was caused by something else.”
“Humans can murder,” Euler said, as thunder crashed loudly outside. “Humans
can lie. You are the only humans here, and murder has been done.”
“We came out of nowhere,” Derec returned. “So did David. Others could also
have come out of nowhere, others you haven’t discovered yet. Why, had we
committed a murder, would we stay around for you to catch?”
The robots looked at one another again. “You raised logical questions that
must be answered,” Euler said. “We certainly sanction your investigation.”
“How can we investigate without full access?”
“With all the other resources at your command,” Rydberg said, then stood. “Are
you finished eating?”
“For now,” Derec said. “We’ll want real food tomorrow, though.”
“We will do our best,” Euler said, and he, also, stood. “Until then, you will
stay here.”
“I thought I might go out,” Derec said.
“The rains will come. It’s too dangerous. For your own safety, you will stay
here tonight. We have found that we cannot be certain if what you tell us is
correct, so we’re leaving a robot at the door to make certain you stay in.”
“You don’t know that we’ve done anything wrong. You can’t treat us like
prisoners,” Katherine said.
摘要：

IsaacAsimov'sROBOTCITY-BookTwo:SuspicionISAACASIMOV’SROBOTCITYBooksintheIsaacAsimov’sRobotCityTMseriesfromAceBOOK1:ODYSSEYbyMichaelP.Kube-McDowellBOOK2:SUSPICIONbyMikeMcQuayBOOK3:CYBORGbyWilliamF.WuBOOK4:PRODIGYbyArthurByronCoverBOOK5:REFUGEbyRobChilsonBOOK6:PERIHELIONbyWilliamF.WuISAACASIMOV’SROBOT...

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