AND nothing happened.
Fredda Leving stared down where the hole in her chest should have been, but she was whole and intact. For one moment, immeasurably short and infinitely long, nobody moved.
And then Ariel leapt forward, placing her body in the path of the blast that had just been.
“Too late, Ariel,” said Alvar Kresh, reholstering the training unit and pulling his real blaster from his pocket. He pointed the real blaster square at Ariel. “Nice try, but too late. A robot that truly had First Law would have been in front of Dr. Leving before my finger could tighten on the trigger. But then, all you have is the knowledge of how tosimulate obedience to the Three Laws. And dying would make your simulation just a little too authentic, wouldn’t it? On the other hand, I expect that death at police hands of the one person who could expose you was an awfully tempting idea.”
Ariel spoke. “There was no chance to save her!” she. protested. “Your own robot, Donald, made no move to block your shot.”
“Donald knew that was a training blaster. The ruse was his idea.”
“I have First Law! I am a Three Law robot!”
“Be quiet, Ariel!” Kresh barked.
“But you are mistaken!” Ariel protested.
“I am afraid you just violated a very clear order to be quiet,” Donald said, staying well clear of Ariel. “I must note there was no First Law conflict involved that would explain this lapse.”
“That’s not my idea of a Three Law robot, Ariel,” Kresh said.
“I don’t understand,” Tonya said.
“It’s perfectly simple,” Kresh said. “It all makes sense when you consider the evidence very strongly suggested that a robot committed the crime-but that Caliban didnot commit it. That’s what blinded us. We assumed that he was theonly robot with no laws, the only one capable of attacking a human. None of us considered Ariel, even though she had precisely the same dimensions, the same tread pattern on the soles of her feet, the same length to her stride, the same shape to her forearm. She could make it seem as if those were Caliban ‘ s footprints, and leave exactly the same wound in Fredda’ s head as Caliban would have ifhe had struck her.”
“I did not do it!” Ariel protested.
“The hell you didn’t.”
“But what possible motive would she have?” Tonya Welton demanded.
“Self-preservation,” Kresh said, still keeping his eye and his blaster on Ariel. “Fredda Leving was about to discover that Ariel was the free-matrix robot of the two gravitonic brain units in that test Gubber Anshaw ran. You remember, Gubber. A double-blind test. Fredda Leving didn’t tell you, but she gave you one robot with Three Laws and one without. It was a test to see if a free-matrix gravitonic brain could integrate the Three Laws. Well, maybe a free-matrixcan learn Laws-except Ariel managed to invent her own Laws of self-preservation first.”
“But Gubber explained that to me!” Tonya protested. “He said that the test unit would be destroyed, and the control unit placed in service. Ariel was the control unit.”
“Yes, she was,” Alvar Kresh agreed. “ At least she wasafter she managed to switch herself with the real control the night before the test. She had the whole night to find a way to switch the labels between herself and the real control.”
“But surely the real control would have spoken up!” Tonya protested.
“No,” Fredda said, her voice faint and quavering. “The test
pairs in such cases are under very strict ordersnot to reveal which is which, to prevent test bias. The real control must have gone to its destruction knowing the truth but bound not to speak.”
Suddenly Fredda’s eyes widened, and she spoke again, in a stronger voice. “Inventory! I still can’t recall that night itself, but I can remember thinking that I had to go over the brain inventory.”
“Yes!” Gubber said. “I remember. You said there was something wrong with the brain list-”
“And you said it in front of Tonya, Gubber, and Ariel,” Kresh said. “ Ariel realized that you were going to work through the serial numbers on the test and discover that the control unit had been destroyed instead of her. So she waited in Gubber’s lab while you argued with Madame Welton, knowing you would return there once the argument was over.
“Then she did exactly what she had planned to do: cosh you on the head with a nice, precise blow calculated to induce amnesia. That was my other big mistake. I assumed that the attack was attempted murder, even though the attackerhad to know Fredda Leving was still alive after the attack. But if it was attempted murder, then it could not be a Lawless robot, because a robot would not have left the job half-done.”
“Then why do you think I did it?” Ariel asked.
“I ordered you to be quiet,” Kresh said harshly. “You’re not doing too well in your Three Law imitation all of a sudden. You didn’t want her dead. You wanted her to forget all about the inventory. And that you didexactly right. The med-robots say it is highly unlikely that Dr. Leving will ever regain her memory of that evening’s events.”
“But why didn’t she want to kill me?” Fredda asked.
“Because if you died, then the Limbo Project would fold,” Tonya Welton said in a voice that was suddenly flat and cold. “I’m beginning to see the logic of it. Without Fredda Leving to push for the New Law robots, Limbo would fail. That would be inevitable in the political uproar over your murder. Think how bad the situation has been, even though you lived. If you had been killed, it’ d be close to a certainty that all the Settlers would have been thrown off the planet. And I would not have Ariel with me if I was deported.”
Tonya Welton, ashen-faced, moved forward a cautious step or two and took a good long look at Ariel. “What you ‘re telling me, Sheriff, is that I have been spending my days and nights with a potentially homicidal robot that was playacting the part of my helpful companion.” Tonya looked Ariel straight in the eye. “Is that right?” she asked, a strained quaver in her voice.
“Yes, ma’am. I’m afraid that’s about the size of it.”
“And you were there,” Tonya said to Ariel, “day after day, listening to all my secrets, night after night, watching-watching everything! I trusted you!” Tonya looked toward Gubber, who seemed as horrified as she was, then pointed at Ariel and looked back toward the Sheriff. “This, thisthing could have killed me whenever it liked.” Suddenly Tonya laughed, a reedy, panicky bark that had as much horror as humor behind it. “Stars in the sky, but for the first time in my life I know why you people need the Three Laws.”
“Better late than never, Madame Welton,” Kresh said. “But to get back to the matter at hand, if you had left Ariel behind, that would leave her as an untrained surplus robot, one that bore the stigma of having been owned by a Settler. Besides, she would have to spend the rest of her existence around Spacers who would be likely to spot any mistakes she made imitating the Three Laws,” Alvar Kresh said. “She was good, but she wasn’t perfect, Dr. Leving. She reached for yourinjured shoulder when she pulled you to safety during the auditorium riot.” Kresh shook his head and nodded at Ariel. “She would have made a mistake, or else been declared abandoned property and destroyed. One way or the other, she’d have ended up on the scrap heap.”
“But what about Caliban?” Gubber demanded. “He was switched on when I came into the room.”
“Ariel did it to confuse our investigation,” Donald said. “But she made mistakes in framing Caliban. She painted her arm red before striking Dr. Leving, not realizing that Caliban ‘ s red color was integral to his body panels. Though she must have realized her error when the paint refused to stick to her own body.” He turned toward Ariel. “It must have been a terrible moment for you when you realized there was no need to wash your arm.”