Isaac Asimov - Utopia

He bowed once more to Dr. Leving, turned and headed toward the door.

“Wait!” Dr. Leving called out. “What is it? What’s in that datacube?”

Gildern looked back toward her with genuine surprise. “You haven’t figured that out? I expect your husband has.”

“It took me a minute, but I have,” said Kresh. “Lentrall told me there were two break-ins at his lab. One to steal copies of his data, and the other to destroy the originals. I should have figured it out long ago. Lucky for you I didn’t.”

“Will one of you tell me?” Fredda demanded. “What’s in that thing?”

Gildern smiled unpleasantly at her. “Why, Comet Grieg, of course. All of Dr. Lentrall’s calculations and data regarding its location, trajectory, mass, and so on. It’s all there.” He looked from Leving to Kresh and nodded his head at the governor. “Now, then, if you’ll excuse me, I must leave at once. I’m expected at some little town called Depot in the middle of the Utopia region. There’s no suborbital service from here. I’m going to have to fly in a long-range aircar, and it is going to be a very long flight indeed.”

Kresh picked up the cube and smiled coldly at Gildern. “See our friend out, Donald,” he said. “I have a speech to prepare.”

“I look forward to hearing it, Governor,” Gildern said. And with that, he followed the small blue robot out of the room.

LANCON-03 PLACED THE call to Anshaw as soon as Governor Alvar Kresh had completed his speech, in which Kresh had just confirmed that the government was working on the comet project, and that the Utopia region was the target. Lancon-03 knew perfectly well that there was little Gubber Anshaw could do, but on the other hand, the New Law robots had precious few friends, and now was the moment when they would need all the help they could get.

Lancon-03 was still using the city leader’s office in Prospero’s absence. It had one of the few fully shielded and untraceable hyperwave sets in the city. Of course, if Valhalla were about to be destroyed, how much difference could it make if someone managed to tap the call and zero in on their location?

Gubber Anshaw’s image appeared on the screen. “I was expecting your call, friend Lancon,” he said without preamble. “I take it you heard the governor’s speech?”

“I did,” Lancon replied. “I still have trouble believing they truly intend to drop a comet on us.”

“Denial is a human trait,” said Anshaw. “I would not advise you to indulge in it. The governor has confirmed the stories regarding the comet, and that is all there is to it. Now you must—we all must—deal with available reality. What is Prospero’s opinion of the situation?”

“Prospero continues to be unreachable. My expectation is that he was alarmed by the Government Tower incident, or perhaps learned something of a worrying nature. If that were the case, he would elect to travel as discreetly as possible, and would not risk needless communication. At least that is what I hope has happened. Otherwise it might well be that he is dead.”

“Let’s hope not,” Gubber said.

“Dr. Anshaw, what are we supposed to do?” Lancon-03 asked. “How can we stop this thing from happening?”

“You cannot,” said Gubber. “Now, no one can. Too much has been committed to it, too much has been promised, too much energy has been expended. You have told me many times how much New Law robots want to survive. Now they must survive this, as well.”

“But how are we to do that?” Lancon-03 asked.

Gubber Anshaw shook his head sadly. “I don’t know,” he said. “If I think of anything, I’ll let you know.”

GUBBER SAID HIS goodbyes to Lancon-03, wondering just how permanent they were, and returned to his wife’s office. Any hope that Tonya might have calmed down while he was out of the room were dispelled as soon as he set foot in the room. He glanced toward the far end of the room, where Cinta Melloy was sitting. Cinta caught his eye, and shrugged helplessly. Clearly Cinta had decided there was nothing for it but to wait out the storm.

“The fools,” said Tonya Welton through clenched teeth as she paced the floor. “The bloody, stupid fools.” Two commentators were on the comm screen, in the midst of animated debate on the subject of Comet Grieg. But Tonya slapped at the comm control panel and the image died, cutting them off in midword.

“I can’t listen to any more of this,” she said, still fuming. “Damn that Kresh! Not only did he publicly commit to the plan, he went and broadcast the precise orbital data for Comet Grieg. It was hard enough erasing one man’s computer files, and we didn’t even manage the kidnapping. Now what the hell do we do? Erase the coordinates from every comm center on the planet?”

It took a moment for Gubber to realize the implications of what Tonya was saying. “You mean—you mean you were the ones who tried to kidnap Lentrall?” he asked.

“Of course we were,” Tonya said. “To prevent exactly this from happening. No one else seemed interested in stopping the comet crash.”

Gubber nodded blankly. Of course it was Tonya. He should have known it in the first place. Why was he always so startled to discover her ruthless streak? When it came to politics, Tonya Welton took no prisoners. “Won’t the CIP find out?” he asked. The question sounded foolish, even to him, but somehow he could think of nothing else to say.

“Probably,” said Tonya, her tone brisk and distracted. “Sooner or later. If we all live that long.” She turned toward Cinta Melloy. “How the devil did they do it?” she demanded. “How did they reconstruct the comet data?”

“Does it matter?” Cinta asked. “We always knew there was a chance that there would be a backup copy we missed.” Cinta Melloy sat on the couch and watched her boss stalking back and forth across the floor. “It’s not important how they did it. The point is that they did.”

But Tonya was barely listening. Instead she kept pacing, her face a study in furious concentration. “Beddle,” she said at last. “We’ve been pretty sure for a while that informant of ours was working both sides of the street. And then, all of a sudden Beddle’s all for the government, all for the comet plan, before Kresh makes a public statement. Suppose our informant fed the data to Beddle and Beddle fed it back to Kresh before Kresh went to ground?”

Cinta shrugged. “It’s possible. We tracked Gildern’s long-range aircar headed toward Purgatory. We know from the broadcast just now that Kresh is working at the Terraforming Center there. But what does it matter?”

“It means that Beddle and Gildern bear watching, that’s what,” said Tonya. “It means they may behind this whole suicidal operation. Why else would they support the government? When was the last time they did that?”

Gubber Anshaw crossed the room and sat down next to Cinta Melloy. He looked from Tonya to Cinta, and had a feeling that he knew what the security officer was thinking. Even with his thoughts in a whirl, he was thinking the same thing. Tonya was obsessing on this crisis. He had known the truth about Government Tower Plaza for only a few minutes, but he knew Tonya well. If she were frantic enough, desperate enough, to have ordered that fiasco, Dark Space alone knew what else she would be capable of.

“So what do we do about it all?” Cinta asked, her voice a study in neutrality.

“Why ask her to choose now?” Gubber asked. “There’s no need for rushed decisions. Better to take time, to study things calmly first.”

Tonya wheeled about and glared at both of them. “You’re handling me,” she said. “Humoring me. Don’t. I’m still in command of the Settlers on this planet, and don’t you forget it.”