“Let’s go find my dad.” She headed for the door, and Remington followed.
They wound their way swiftly back to Lawrence Robertson’s office, where they found the door closed. Susan knocked politely before pushing it open. A screen blared the evening news. The same men they had met earlier, plus two more, leaned forward in their chairs, watching intently. At the back of the room, Susan’s father appeared to be the only one who noticed them, and he ushered them inside with a gesture. The pair stepped in and closed the door behind them.
“Hell of a coincidence,” someone muttered.
“But coincidence it must be,” Alfred Lanning said emphatically. “There’s no other explanation.”
“What happened?” Susan whispered to her father.
John Calvin squirmed, clearly loath to tell her. “Valerie Aldrich just blew herself up in the Federal Building.”
Susan felt as if a vice clamped onto her chest. “Valerie Aldrich? Princess Valerie? I injected her myself.”
“Yes.”
The situation seemed to require more. “Dad, that’s the second person with circulating nanorobots who set off a bomb in Manhattan.”
“Yes.”
Susan made a wordless noise of frustration.
Remington took over the questioning. “Was anyone hurt?”
Lawrence Robertson shut off the news.
“From what they’re saying, she ordered everyone to evacuate the room before detonation. Half the building went down, though, and some people got caught in the rubble. They’ve confirmed two deaths and a lot of injuries.”
“We have to remember,” Alfred Lanning continued, “we’re working with the most psychotic patients in the city. Insanity is normal for them.”
Susan blurted out, “But acting within the Three Laws of Robotics isn’t.”
Every eye, every head whipped toward Susan. Remington shook his head and unobtrusively took her hand in a quiet plea for silence.
But it was too late. Whatever damage he feared was already done.
Lawrence Robertson spoke first. “What do you mean, Susan?”
Susan had no idea why Remington wanted to silence her, but she had something to say and every intention of saying it. “Both of our bombers have had three things in common: They were injected with nanorobots, they somehow obtained functioning explosives, and they attempted to follow the Three Laws of Robotics.”
An outburst of conversation followed Susan’s pronouncement.
Lawrence Robertson raised a hand, restoring the quiet but not decreasing the intensity of the stares one iota. “How so? If they were operating under the Three Laws, they could not have injured anyone.”
As Susan continued, Remington’s grip on her hand grew stronger to the point of pain. “I think they tried to avoid it, but they had limited judgment and insight into the power of the explosives they carried. In both cases, they ordered people out of the blast area first.” She gave Remington a questioning look and received a subtle cutting gesture at his throat. He wanted her to shut up.
Alfred Lanning screwed his features into a perfect depiction of disgust. “That’s all very interesting, but entirely impossible. While it’s true the nanorobots do carry the Three Laws by virtue of having positronic properties, they don’t have the thinking capacity to contemplate and act on them. I think it’s far more likely the functioning consciences of these psychiatric patients caused them to act in an ethical manner that simulates the patented Three Laws of Robotics.”
“Except,” Susan said, “that it’s too far-fetched a coincidence to believe that, in a city of fifteen million, two of the seven patients injected with nanorobots, neither of whom had ever shown a violent propensity nor had any knowledge of explosives, independently decided to blow up prime Manhattan targets.”
A handsome, fine-boned man of mixed race piped up next. “Are you saying the nanorobots caused these people to act this way?”
“Impossible,” Alfred snapped. “I programmed those nanos myself. There’s absolutely nothing in them that could induce someone to act in any fashion.” He added emphatically, “Nothing!”
Remington released Susan. “Unless, Dr. Lanning, someone tampered with them.”
The room fell into an even deeper silence than before, if possible. Susan suddenly understood why Remington had wanted to keep her from talking. He suspected someone at U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men, perhaps someone in the room, was a saboteur.
Apparently, Lawrence Robertson made the same connection. He addressed Remington directly. “With the exception of you, young stranger, I trust every person in this room not only with my business, but with my life itself. Not one has worked with me fewer than fifteen years, and all of them have invested a life work into this company. As to you, Remy, I’m assuming you don’t have the knowledge to program nanorobots, and I know you haven’t had the opportunity.”
“No, sir.” Remington rolled his eyes at the bare thought. “But I do have reason to believe this tampering is occurring, and not necessarily at your facility.” He approached Lawrence Robertson with a hand in his pocket, pulled out the vial and seal, and placed them on the desk. “I compared the seals to the ones on the vials in your laboratory. They’re not the same.”
Alfred Lanning scooped it up before anyone else could take a closer look. “Where did you get this?”
“From one of the vials Susan injected into a patient.”
Susan appreciated he did not mention he had taken over for her on two occasions. It might make her appear incompetent.
The scientist tossed the objects back onto the desk. “He’s right. That seal is definitely more orange in color and not quite as thick as the ones we use.” He shrugged a single shoulder. “Someone is tampering with our work.” His eyes widened at the implications of his own words. “Someone sabotaged our nanorobots!”
A pallor seemed to overtake the room. Every face, the air in the room itself, seemed to grow white with strain. Susan watched them all carefully. She could read a lot from faces, from fidgeting, from words and movement. Everyone seemed genuinely shocked and dismayed. If a traitor stood among them, he was well trained at guarding his thoughts and emotions.
Lawrence Robertson took over immediately. “Javonte and George, start looking into whoever touches those vials once they leave the refrigerators: lower-level employees, delivery men, shipping companies. No one outside this room is above suspicion.”
The handsome black man and the gangly roboticist rushed to obey. “Alfred, get Goldman and Peters up on the secure speaker. Susan —” Apparently suddenly realizing he was commanding someone not in his employ, he softened his tone. “Based on what you’ve seen so far, and your knowledge of the study patients, what can we expect?”
Susan had focused so intently on her theory about the Three Laws, she had not taken her ideas on the matter much further. Now, she thought aloud. “Since the nanorobots don’t have the capacity to mull the Three Laws the way a full positronic brain does, we have to assume the patient’s ethical considerations play a role here, filling in what the nanorobots can’t.” The idea was so stunning, Susan had to stop herself. The protestor, the one who had tried to talk her out of helping with the project, had a point. If she was right, they had created an odd and primitive form of cyborg, robot function interacting seamlessly with human thought and emotion.
No one spoke, not even Alfred Lanning, who looked as if he had just rushed headlong into a train.
Susan had to continue, resorting to an exterior stony coldness to explain something shocking the instant it came to her mind, yet make it appear as if she had given it her full attention for an appropriate period of time to make it a viable theory. “The way I figure it, someone programmed the nanorobots to overtake the brains of their human hosts, each programmed to blow up a different target. But whoever did the programming either didn’t know about, or didn’t understand the overwhelming significance of, the Three Laws of Robotics.”
To Susan’s surprise, the silence persisted. Every man in the room kept staring directly at her, their expressions anticipatory, to a man. She wondered what more they expected. She felt as if she had thrown out more than enough ideas to contemplate for hours.
Remington gave her hand another squeeze, this one less insistent, more encouraging. “Susan, in your
