The big man looked even bigger, encased in his suit and in the outer casement of a dropshaft. Against his massive chest he wore the computer, an extra brain as lovingly crafted as any object in the treasure hoard. The guardian would ask him questions; the computer would help him answer. And Bolzano would listen. If Lipescu erred, possibly his partner could benefit by knowledge of the error and succeed.
“Can you hear me?” Lipescu asked.
“Perfectly. Go on, get going!”
“What’s the hurry? Eager to see me die?”
“Are you that lacking in confidence?” Bolzano asked. Do you want me to go first?”
“Fool,” Lipescu muttered. “Listen carefully. If I die, I don’t want it to be in vain.”
“What would it matter to you?”
The bulky figure wheeled around. Bolzano could not see his partner’s face, but he knew Lipescu must be scowling. The giant rumbled, “Is life that valuable? Can’t I take a risk?”
“For my benefit?”
“For mine,” Lipescu said. “I’ll be coming back.”
“Go, then. The robot is waiting.”
Lipescu walked to the lock. A moment later he was through and gliding downward, a one-man spaceship, jets flaring beneath his feet. Bolzano settled by the scanner to watch. A televector pickup homed in on Lipescu just as he made his landing, coming down in a blaze of fire. The treasure and its guardian lay about a mile away. Lipescu rid himself of the dropshaft, stepping with giant bounds toward the waiting guardian.
Bolzano watched.
Bolzano listened.
The televector pickup provided full fidelity. It was useful for Bolzano’s purposes, and useful, too, for Lipescu’s vanity, for the big man wanted his every moment taped for posterity. It was interesting to see Lipescu dwarfed by the guardian. The black faceless robot, squat and motionless, topped the big man by better than three feet.
Lipescu said, “Step aside.”
The robot’s reply came in surprisingly human tones, though void of any distinguishing accent. “What I guard is not to be plundered.”
“I claim them by right,” Lipescu said.
“So have many others. But their right did not exist. Nor does yours. I cannot step aside for you.”
“Test me,” Lipescu said. “See if I have the right or not!”
“Only my master may pass.”
“Who is your master? I am your master!”
“My master is he who can command me. And no one can command me who shows ignorance before me.”
“Test me, then,” Lipescu demanded.
“Death is the penalty for failure.”
“Test me.”
“The treasure does not belong to you.”
“Test me and step aside.”
“Your bones will join the rest here.”
“Test me,” Lipescu said.
Watching from aloft, Bolzano went tense. His thin body drew together like that of a chilled spider. Anything might happen now. The robot might propound riddles, like the Sphinx confronting Oedipus.
It might demand the proofs of mathematical theorems. It might ask the translation of strange words. So they gathered, from their knowledge of what had befallen other men here. And, so it seemed, to give a wrong answer was to earn instant death.
He and Lipescu had ransacked the libraries of the world. They had packed all knowledge, so they hoped, into their computer. It had taken months, even with multi-stage programming. The tiny shining globe of metal on Lipescu’s chest contained an infinity of answers to an infinity of questions.
Below, there was long silence as man and robot studied one another. Then the guardian said, “Define latitude.”
“Do you mean geographical latitude?” Lipescu asked.
Bolzano congealed with fear. The idiot, asking for a clarification! He would die before he began!
The robot said, “Define latitude.”
Lipescu’s voice was calm. “The angular distance of a point on a planet’s surface north or south of the equator, as measured from the center of the planet.”
“Which is more consonant,” the robot asked, “the minor third or the major sixth?”
There was a pause. Lipescu was no musician. But the computer would feed him the answer.
“The minor third,” Lipescu said.
Without a pause, the robot fired another question. “Name the prime numbers between 5,237 and 7,641.”
Bolzano smiled as Lipescu handled the question with ease. So far, so good. The robot had stuck to strictly factual questions, schoolbook stuff, posing no real problems to Lipescu. And after the initial hesitation and quibble over latitude, Lipescu had seemed to grow in confidence from moment to moment. Bolzano squinted at the scanner, looking beyond the robot, through the open gate, to the helter-skelter pile of treasures. He wondered which would fall to his lot when he and Lipescu divided them, two-thirds for Lipescu, the rest for him.
“Name the seven tragic poets of Elifora,” the robot said.
“Domiphar, Halionis, Slegg, Hork-Sekan—”
“The fourteen signs of the zodiac as seen from Morneez,” the robot demanded.
“The Teeth, the Serpents, the Leaves, the Waterfall, the Blot—”
“What is a pedicel?”
“The stalk of an individual flower of an inflorescence.”
“How many years did the Siege of Lanina last?”
“Eight.”
“What did the flower cry in the third canto of Somner’s Vehicles?”
“’I ache, I sob, I whimper, I die,’” Lipescu boomed.
“Distinguish between the stamen and the pistil.”
“The stamen is the pollen-producing organ of the flower; the pistil—”
And so it went. Question after question. The robot was not content with the legendary three questions of mythology; it asked a dozen, and then asked more. Lipescu answered perfectly, prompted by the murmuring of the peerless compendium of knowledge strapped to his chest. Bolzano kept careful count: the big man had dealt magnificently with seventeen questions. When would the robot concede defeat? When would it end its grim quiz and step aside?
It asked an eighteenth question, pathetically easy. All it wanted was an exposition of the Pythagorean Theorem. Lipescu did not even need the computer for that. He answered, briefly, concisely, correctly. Bolzano was proud of his burly partner.
Then the robot struck Lipescu dead.
It happened in the flickering of an eyelid. Lipescu’s voice had ceased, and he stood there, ready for the next question, but the next question did not come. Rather, a panel in the robot’s vaulted belly slid open, and something bright and sinuous lashed out, uncoiling over the ten feet or so that separated guardian from challenger, and sliced Lipescu in half. The bright something slid back out of sight. Lipescu’s trunk toppled to one side. His massive legs remained absurdly planted for a moment; then they crumpled, and a space suited leg kicked once, and all was still.
Stunned, Bolzano trembled in the loneliness of the cabin, and his lymph turned to water. What had gone wrong? Lipescu had given the proper answer to every question, and yet the robot had slain him. Why? Could the big man possibly have misphrased Pythagoras? No: Bolzano had listened. The answer had been flawless, as had the seventeen that preceded it. Seemingly the robot had lost patience with the game, then. The robot had cheated. Arbitrarily, maliciously, it had lashed out at Lipescu, punishing him for the correct answer.
Did robots cheat, Bolzano wondered? Could they act in malicious spite? No robot he knew was capable of such actions; but this robot was unlike all others.
For a long while, Bolzano remained huddled in the cabin. The temptation was strong to blast free of orbit and head home, treasureless but alive. Yet the treasure called to him. Some suicidal impulse drove him on. Sirenlike, the robot drew him downward.