“At any rate, Fredda intended Caliban as a final grand demonstration that a rational robot would select her Laws as a guide for life.”
“Wait a moment,” Kresh said, rather sharply. “You’re telling me this is what was supposed to happen. What is happening? What is Caliban doing out there?”
Jomaine shrugged. “Who knows? In theory, he should be doing exactly what I’ve just described—using his experience to codify his own laws for living.”
Kresh reached out his hands and placed them flat on the table, tapping his right index finger on its surface. He did not speak for half a minute, but when he did, all the masks were off. The calm, the courtesy, were gone, and only the anger remained in his steel-cold voice.
“In other words, this robot that assaulted and nearly killed its creator in its first moment of awakening, this robot that threw a man across a warehouse and committed arson and refused to follow orders and fled from repeated police searches—this robot is out there trying to find good rules for living? Flaming devils, what, exactly, are the laws he has formulated so far? ‘A robot shall savagely attack people, and will not, through inaction, prevent a person from being attacked?’ ”
Jomaine Terach closed his eyes and folded his hands in his lap. Let it be over. Let me wake up and know this is all a nightmare. “I do not know, Sheriff. I do not know what happened. I do not know what went wrong.”
“Do you know who attacked Fredda Leving?”
“No, sir. No, I do not. But I cannot believe it was Caliban.”
“And why is that? Every scrap of evidence points to him.”
“Because I wrote his basal programming. He was not—is not—just a blank slate. He has no built-in Laws. Neither do you and I. But his innate personality is far more grounded in reason, in purpose, than any human’s could be. You or I would be far more likely than he to lash out blindly in a random attack. And if I had made a mistake big enough to cause Caliban to attack Fredda like that, that mistake would have cascaded into every other part of his behavioral operant system. He would have seized up for good before he reached the door to the lab.”
“Then who was it?”
“You have the access recorder records. Look there. It is some one of us on that list. That’s all I can tell you for certain.”
“Access recorder?”
Jomaine looked up in surprise. They hadn’t known about the recorder! Of course. Why should they even think about such things? With the endless wealth of Spacer society, and the omnipresent robots to serve as watchkeepers, theft was almost unknown, and security systems even rarer. If he had not assumed they knew and let it slip, they never would have known. If he had kept his mouth shut about it, they would have had no way of knowing he had been at the lab that night, just about the time of the attack…
But it was too late to hold back. Now they would know what to ask about. There was nothing for it but to charge on. They would get the access records, and that would be that. “It’s a Settler security device,” he said. “Tonya Welton insisted that Fredda install it because Leving Labs had access to Limbo Project material. It records the date and time and identity of the person every time someone passes in or out of the lab. It works on a face-recognition system. Humans only. It was programmed to ignore robots. Too many of them.”
Kresh turned toward Donald 111, but the robot spoke before the Sheriff had a chance. “I have already dispatched a technical team to the labs, sir. We should have the data from the access recorder within half an hour.”
“Very good. Now, why don’t you save us some time and effort, and tell us yourself whatever that recorder will tell us about your movements.”
Jomaine was rattled. He had made a major mistake telling them about the recorder. But damnation! Now that they knew that much, there was no point in hiding anything else. “There is very little to tell. I had left a notepack in my lab. I noticed it when I sat down to get some work done at home. I live quite near the lab, and I walked over to collect it. I entered through the main door. I think I called out to see if anyone was around, and there was no answer. I went to my lab, got the notepack, and then left my lab by one of its side doors. That’s all.”
“That’s your story.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Why didn’t you send a robot to get the notepack?” Kresh said. “Seems to me like an errand suited to a robot.”
“I suppose I could have sent Bertran, but that would have been more trouble than it was worth. I couldn’t quite recall which notepack the data I wanted was in, or where I had left it. Sometimes I can’t even recall which pack I need. I have to put my eyes on it to be sure. My lab is often a bit of a jumble, and there are notepacks all over the place. I find that if I just stand and look at a room for a minute, I remember where the thing I’m looking for is. A robot can’t do that for me.”
Jomaine had the uncomfortable sense that he was babbling, going on and on, but there seemed to be no way out but forward with more of the same. “Bertran would have brought me a half dozen notepacks to be sure I had the right one, which seemed a bit silly. I knew that I would be able to find the notepack myself the moment I stepped into the lab. And sure enough, I did.”
“That seems like a rather overexplained set of reasons for why it was easier to do it yourself.”
Jomaine glared at Kresh. “Yes, I suppose it does. But bear in mind that all of us down at Leving Labs have been hearing Fredda’s theories about excessive dependence on robots for some time now. We’ve all developed a bit of a fetish about doing things for ourselves.”
Kresh grunted. “I know how that can be,” he said. “All right. You’ve filled in quite a few blanks for us, Terach. You’re free to go—for now. But if I were you, I’d work on the assumption that you and I were going to have other little chats in future, about other questions that will come up. And the better your memory is when that happens, the better you and I will both like it. Do I make myself clear?”
Jomaine Terach looked Sheriff Alvar Kresh straight in the eye and nodded. “Oh, yes,” he said. “There is nothing in the world clearer to me than that.”
JOMAINE Terach stumbled out of Government Tower into the thin light of morning. He felt a pang of guilt for betraying Fredda’s confidence, but little more than that. What good were petty little secrets when a whole world was turning upside down in panic? The debts he owed to the good of society, and to himself, far outweighed his obligation to Fredda. Besides, you could not know. There might be some key to it all buried deep, hidden in his words where he could not even see it. Maybe Kresh could find that key and turn it in the lock. Maybe, just maybe, by talking, he had saved them all.
Jomaine snorted in disgust. High and mighty talk for a man who had spilled his guts. There was another explanation, one that did not come out quite so noble.
Maybe, just maybe, he was a coward at the heart.
He hailed an aircab and headed toward home.
“THE access recorder data, sir,” Donald said, handing him a notepack.
“Thank you, Donald,” Kresh said. He skimmed over the data once or twice, then studied it in greater detail. Damnation! Why hadn’t he had this data days before? It provided him something he had not had until this moment—a nice, tidy list of suspects. Suspect humans, at least. Terach had said the thing did not record the comings and goings of robots.
“Sir, was it wise to let Jomaine Terach go free?” Donald asked. “I do not think we can consider his interrogation to be complete, and he did confess to several crimes related to violations of robot manufacture statutes.”
“Hmmmm?” Kresh said absently. “Oh, Terach. It’s a bit of a gamble, but if we want this case to get anywhere, I think we had to set him free—at least for now. And the same for Anshaw when we’re done with him. Neither of them has much of anyplace to go. I don’t regard them as flight risks. But I’m counting on at least one of them panicking. If one or both of them does, it is damned likely they will make some sort of mistake, and it is likely that their mistakes could make our jobs a lot easier. Now go and bring Anshaw in.”