Caliban

“And you went along. Even though you’ve just said the New Laws are dangerous.”

“Yes, I went along, though now I wish I burned my work instead.” For a brief moment, Gubber showed a little spark of passion, but then the little man seemed to shrink in on himself again. Alvar Kresh felt a fleeting moment of pity for Gubber Anshaw. No matter how the matter was resolved, there seemed little hope that he would get his old life back. If he was something of a villain in the piece, so, too, was he something of a victim.

“I won’t pretend that I have unblemished pride in what I did,” Gubber went on. “But it seemed the last chance that my life’s work would not be thrown away. I worked very hard to convince myself that the New Laws included adequate safeguards. Well, you know how that turned out. Something went wrong, either with the Laws or the brain. But I know the brain was good. It has to be the Laws.”

Wait a second, Kresh told himself. He thinks that Caliban is a New Law robot. Kresh had just assumed that Terach was lying and Caliban’s true nature was bound to be common knowledge around the lab. If Anshaw was Tonya Welton’s main source of information, as seemed likely, then she, too, had to be assuming that Caliban was a New Law robot.

Burning devils. If that was true, she would have serious and legitimate concerns about unleashing a whole army of the things at the Limbo Project, alongside her own people. If she hadn’t attacked Fredda, and was unsure who had, she would very much want to believe that Caliban was innocent, and harmless, for the sake of her own people. If Caliban and she herself were eliminated, then the suspect list was damned short—and her lover, Gubber Anshaw, was at the top of it.

No wonder the woman was acting a bit edgy. “I told myself the New Law robots would be mere laboratory experiments,” Anshaw went on. “I was wrong about that, too.”

“Lab experiment? But the New Law robots are going to be all over the Limbo Project. They’ll be able to wander anywhere they want on Purgatory.”

Anshaw smiled bleakly. “New Law robots at Limbo was my doing. Pillow talk, I suppose you’d call it. I mentioned the New Law project to Tonya, and she was fascinated by the idea. She could see they were just the thing for the Limbo Project, a real chance for compromise and common ground, for Spacer and Settler to work together, for a world with the advantages of robots with none of the drawbacks. Oh, she got very excited.

“She knew that I would want my name kept out, of course, and she managed to fake a leak of the information from some other source. A Settler running into a Leving Labs worker in a bar, or something.”

“That sounds plausible. Your security isn’t very tight.”

“I don’t even know if that’s how it worked. I didn’t want to know the details. Anyway, Tonya went to see Fredda and let it be known that she had heard about the New Law project. Fredda was furious about the leak, of course, but then she started to get excited about the idea herself. They presented the idea to Governor Grieg as a joint proposal, and he accepted it.”

“It sounds as if it was a fruitful collaboration,” Donald said. “What caused the two of them to fallout?”

Gubber shifted uncomfortably. “Ambition,” he said at last. “Both of them always wanted—and still want—to be in charge of whatever project they are working on.”

Ambition, competition, Kresh thought. Those could be damned potent motives, and Gubber knew it. What would be tougher for him—admitting those motives to the police or wondering, in spite of all protestations to the contrary, if those motives had indeed tempted his wild, brazen Settler lover into this violent attack?

“You’ve said that you and Dr. Leving had argued as well. Might I ask the nature of those arguments?” Alvar asked. “Did she perhaps object to your relationship with Tonya Welton?”

“What?” Gubber seemed surprised by the question. “Oh, no, no. She couldn’t have. She didn’t know about— doesn’t know about it.” He hesitated for a minute, and then doubt seemed to creep into his voice. “At least I thought she didn’t. But we didn’t do much of a job keeping it from you.”

Kresh smiled. “If it’s of any comfort, she hasn’t given any sign of knowing about it.”

“If I may broach a new subject, Dr. Anshaw,” Donald said. Kresh leaned back and let Donald carry on. At least Anshaw didn’t seem dreadfully insulted at the very idea of a robot asking questions. “We have a report concerning a minor point in connection with the New Law robots. Perhaps you could clear it up.”

“Well, if I can.”

Interesting how the man had become so cooperative in his own interrogation. Kresh had seen it before—the strange moment when the questioning became not a battle, but a collaboration.

“You were asked to perform certain tests on a pair of sessile testbed New Law units without being told what you were testing them for. Do you recall that?”

“Yes, of course. Nothing all that remarkable about it. It was some weeks ago. The only reason I remember it clearly is that Tonya—Lady Welton—happened to stop by that day. I remember thinking later that was the last time she stopped by the lab without an argument starting between Fredda and Tonya. She stayed and watched the tests, and even chatted with one of the sessiles. We do that sort of test all the time. Two units, one experimental and the other a production unit robot, a control, with the experiment operator not knowing which is which—or even the purpose of the experiment. The operator just gets a list of procedures to follow and runs the test as described.”

“What is the purpose of masking the test unit and the experiment’s goal from the experiment operator?” Donald asked.

“To avoid bias. Usually the test is of something that might be skewed by the experimenter’s own reactions, or by an interaction between the experimenter’s emotional response and the robot’s desire to please the experimenter. All of us at the lab have used each other to run that sort of test from time to time.”

“On this particular test, what were you asked to do?”

“Oh, nothing very much. I was told to discuss the Three Laws with the two robots and then record their basal reactions to simulated situations that would test their reactions. The two sessile robots were delivered toward the end of the day, and I got to work on them the next morning, explaining the Three Laws in detail, using a set series of procedures. Then I put them through the simulation drill and they both did fine.”

“What became of them?”

“Well, this was some time ago. The usual procedure would be to destroy the test unit and complete assembly of the control and place it in service. Let me think. The test unit, the experimental unit, was definitely destroyed. Standard safety procedure. As for the control—” Gubber thought for a moment. “You know, I can tell you about the control unit, come to think of it.

“As I mentioned, Tonya Welton was in the lab that day and struck up a conversation with the control unit. Of course, it being a double-blind test, I didn’t know it was the control at the time, but later Tonya said she had taken a liking to the sessile robot that had spoken with her. Tonya wasn’t very happy with the robot she had been issued, and asked if I could arrange for her to exchange it for the one she had met in the lab.

“If the one she had liked had turned out to be the experimental model, she would have been out of luck, of course. But as it turned out, Ariel was the control, and was working in the lab. Fredda authorized the swap, and so Tonya ended up with her robot.”

Plainly, Gubber was puzzled by the question, but he wasn’t going to get any explanation for it.

“Very good. It is always wise to confirm details wherever possible. That dovetails with our previous information.”

And allows us to confirm that Jomaine Terach was telling the truth at least part of the time, Kresh thought. But maybe it was time to come back to the main point. When I found the body, Gubber had said, letting it drop very casually, as if he assumed that Kresh already knew that. That was the way to play it. Donald had been smart, giving Anshaw the idea that all they were doing was confirming information. Robots were incapable of lying, of course, except under the strongest of orders to do so, and even then they were never very good at it. But sophisticated units like Donald could allow a true statement to provide a false impression now and again.

“Let’s go back to something else, Anshaw. Back to the moment when you discovered the body, all right?”

Anshaw nodded calmly, clearly unperturbed by any thought than he had let something slip.

“Good,” Kresh said, giving his voice the tone of a man going through the motions, clearing up routine details. “Now, you’ve already been extremely helpful today, but as you can imagine, the actual crime scene is important. The last thing we want to do is color your recollections of it. It’s the same as with your blind robotics tests, really.