Isaac Asimov - Caliban

The doors slid shut, and the elevator began its high-speed descent to the interior of Settlertown. The ride always did odd things to Alvar’s stomach and inner ears. Or maybe it was just that he didn’t like the idea of being a half kilometer underground.

He shoved those thoughts from his mind and answered the Settler leader. “No, ma’am, I don’t,” Kresh said. “They want you people out of here, they want Governor Grieg to use robots, not Settlers, to reterraform Inferno, and they want Inferno to be a Spacer world, not some half-breed between Spacer and Settler. They believe that such a situation could only be an interlude until your people took over completely. I believe all those things, too. But the ends do not justify the means. Savagery has no place in a political debate.”

Tonya looked at the Sheriff with a smile that was not entirely at ease with itself. “Well said, Sheriff Kresh. What a pity Chanto Grieg is only a year into his first term. You would make quite an opposition candidate.”

“The thought had crossed my mind,” Alvar said, drawing himself up to his full height and staring straight ahead. “Someone will have to take him on sooner or later. But the next election will be time enough.”

“It sounds like an exciting campaign,” Tonya said dryly. The elevator door slid open and Tonya Welton led them out into a large open space underground. It was a huge, vaulted space, to Kresh’s eye perhaps a kilometer long and half that wide. There was an elaborate false sky overhead which seemed to be mimicking the true conditions in the real sky—from the gleaming sun down to the column of smoke still rising from the direction of the Ironhead demonstration. Welton noticed Kresh looking upward. “Yes, the real-time simulation is a new touch since the last time you were here. The theory is it will be much less disorienting to go back and forth between Settlertown and Hades if our undersky matches the real one precisely. With just the generalized day-night sky program we had before, moving from inside to outside got quite confusing.”

“Hmmph.” Alvar looked around, feeling most unhappy. Perhaps his eyes saw the wide-open spaces of the great cavern, but his mind was aware of every single gram of the millions of kilograms of rock over his head. “I suppose it might help, but I find this place sufficiently disorienting no matter what is projected on your false sky. How can you bear to live underground?”

Tonya gestured grandly about the huge artificial cavern. Brilliant simulated sunlight shone down on a pretty little park. A fountain jetted a stream of water into the air, a breeze tickled her hair. Small, handsomely designed buildings were dotted here and there about the landscape. “We Settlers are quite used to life below ground. And besides, you can hardly argue that this place is some dank, dismal dungeon. These days, we are able to make our underground homes seem quite like the surface, without interfering with the landscape or suffering the inconveniences of bad weather. Your dust storms cannot touch us here. But we have other matters to discuss. Come.”

She led them from the bottom of the elevator shaft to a waiting runcart. She sat down in it and waited for Alvar and Donald to do the same. They did so—Alvar next to her in the front seat, Donald in the back—and the cart took off with no apparent command from Tonya. It drove them through the central cavern and into a broad side tunnel. It stopped outside her outer office.

Alvar resisted the temptation to renew the endless philosophical argument Settlers and Infernals had been having since the day the Settlers arrived. The argument about the cart, and all the other “smart,” nonrobotic, automated hardware the Settlers used. It still seemed suicidally dangerous to trust to automatic devices that did not contain the Three Laws, but the Settlers took a perverse pride in the knowledge that their machines would not prevent people from killing themselves—as if that were a useful design feature. Yes, nonsentient machinery left more scope for human initiative—but what benefit if all that scope gave you was more chances to get squashed like a bug in a crash?

The three of them disembarked and went through the ornately carved glass double doors into the reception area, and then through to Welton’s surprisingly austere office. Most places in Settlertown were comfortable, even downright luxurious—except for the lack of robots—but Welton seemed to like things kept to a minimum. There was not so much as a desk in the room, at least at the moment, though Kresh knew a worktable could be extruded from the wall quickly enough. There was nothing but four chairs in a circle with a low, round table in the center.

It seemed to Alvar that the furniture had been rearranged every time he came in here, in accordance with whatever sort of use to which the room was to be put—working office, meeting room, dinner reception, whatever. A Spacer would have had a room for each function. Perhaps this was a cultural holdover from when the Settlers’ underground cities were more cramped. Or perhaps the mock austerity was a mere affectation on Welton’s part. Kresh noted one addition to the room since the last time he had been here. A very standard robot niche, occupied by Ariel at the moment.

Tonya noticed Kresh looking at Ariel and shrugged irritably. “Well, I had to have some place for her when she is off duty. She herself suggested the niche, and it seemed as good a place as any. I believe she has herself on standby at the moment. Ariel?”

There was no answer. Kresh raised an eyebrow. “You let your robot go into standby whenever it chooses?”

“Ariel, poor thing, serves no other purpose than to act as window dressing when I go out among the Spacers. It upsets your people no end to see someone without a robot in attendance. It made it almost impossible to do my work. She calms the passersby a bit. Otherwise, she has no other duties, and I let her do what she pleases. If she wishes to be dormant for a while, so be it. But come, we have much to discuss.”

Alvar Kresh was more than a bit unsettled by the arrangement with Ariel. Every robot was ordered into standby once in a while, to conserve power or for maintenance, but he had never heard of a robot going into standby on its own. In standby, how could a robot obey the First and Second Laws? Well, no matter, let Welton make her own arrangements. No doubt she told Ariel to choose her own standby times in such a way that Ariel considered it an order. No matter. It was time for business.

He took a seat, and Tonya Welton took the seat opposite. Donald, as a matter of course, remained standing. But Welton would have none of that. “Donald, sit down,” she said. Donald obeyed and Alvar gritted his teeth, determined not to be annoyed. Tonya Welton knew damn well that it would irritate him to have Donald treated as an equal. She was doing it deliberately.

“Now then,” she said. “Starting with your Ironheads, Sheriff. This is the most serious and violent demonstration they have mounted. Can you give me any assurance that these provocations will end?”

Kresh shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “No,” he said at last. “I don’t see much point in my pretending otherwise. There are literally thousands of years of animosity built up between your people and mine. Our people considered yours to be subhuman for a long time, and I suspect some Settlers have had that opinion of us. I think we are all past that stage now, but the fact remains that we don’t like each other. Prejudices remain. There is also a great deal of resentment over the behavior of the Settlers on Inferno.”

“I cannot see that my people have been overly rude or disrespectful—though I, too, have my uncontrollable hotheads. You picked up a mob of robot bashers just last week. Is it their actions that is causing the resentment? I have done all I could to punish such actions quickly and publicly.”