Isaac Asimov - Caliban

But Alvar had wandered deliberately. He wanted to give Donald a moment to settle down, a chance for his positronic brain to be focused on less frightening, unsettling thoughts for a moment. Alvar knew that the question of a crime’s motive, with the insight it provides into the human psyche, always fascinated Donald. “But your experiment, Donald. What were the results?”

“In brief, sir, it confirmed my initial hypothesis—that a a—being with the physical capabilities of a robot, but with no inhibitions on its behavior, and highly motivated to protect its own existence, could have—ki-killed all the Settlers at the warehouse and all the deputies in the tunnels. And, indeed, doing so would have been safer for this hypothetical being than acting as Caliban did.”

“What are you saying?”

“It would appear that Caliban acted to protect himself, but did not seek to harm humans. Whatever harm came to them was incidental to his self-defense, and perhaps accidental. There is no doubt that he set fire to the warehouse. There is no proof that he did it deliberately.”

“You almost make him sound human, Donald.”

“But sir, as I just observed, there are no constraints on human behavior.”

“Oh, but there are such constraints. Deep, strong constraints, imposed by ourselves and by society. They rarely fail to hold. They do not have the rigid code of the Three Laws imposed from without, but humans learn their own codes of behavior. But let’s not go off on another tangent. I’ve been thinking about the fact that Leving Labs is an experimental facility. We have yet to ask what sort of experiment Caliban was meant to be. What was it that Fredda Leving had in mind? Did the experiment fail? Did it succeed?” A thought came to him, one that made his blood run cold. “Or is the experiment under way now, running exactly according to plan?”

“I don’t understand, sir.”

“Robots come awake for the first time knowing all they need to know. Humans start out in the world knowing nothing of how the world works. Suppose Leving wondered how a robot that had to learn would behave. Suppose that Caliban is out there, behaving in accordance to the Three Laws, but with such a reduced dataset that he does not know, for example, what a human being is. Tonya Welton reminded us that it has happened before. Suppose that Fredda Leving set him out to see how long it would take him to learn the ways of the world on his own.”

“That is indeed a most disturbing idea, sir. I can scarcely believe that Madame Leving would be capable of undertaking such an irresponsible experiment.”

“Well, she is sure as hell hiding something. That lecture last night took lots of potshots at the present state of affairs. I’ve got a feeling there will be even more bombshells at the second lecture. Maybe we’ll learn more then.”

Alvar Kresh looked down at his desk and found his thoughts turning toward the routine business of running the department. Personnel reports. Equipment requisitions. The dull humdrum of bureaucracy seemed downright attractive after the chaos of the last few days. Best get to it. “That’s all for now, Donald.”

“Sir, before I go, there is one more datum of which you need to be apprised. “

“What is that, Donald?”

“The blow to Fredda Leving’s head, sir. The forensic lab has established that Caliban almost certainly did not do it.”

“What?”

“It is another part of the new patterns of evidence, sir. There were traces of red paint found in the wound, sir.”

“Yes, I know that. What of it?”

“It was fresh paint, sir, not yet fully dry. Furthermore, according to the design specifications for Caliban’s body type, a given robot’s color is integral to the exterior body panels. With that model robot body, dyes are blended into material used to form the panels. The panels are never painted. The body material is designed to resist stains, dyes, and paints. In short, nothing will stick to that material, which is why it must be imbued with a color during manufacture.”

“So that paint couldn’t have just flaked off Caliban’s arm.”

“No, sir. Therefore, someone else, presumably with the intent of framing Caliban, painted a robot arm red and struck Leving with it. I would further presume that person to be unknowledgeable concerning the manufacture of robot bodies, though that presents difficulties, as everything else suggests that the attacker knew quite a bit about robotics.”

“Unless the red paint was, if you’ll pardon the expression, a deliberate red herring.” Alvar thought for a moment. “It could still be Caliban, or someone else, who knew about the color process for that robot model. Caliban could have painted his red arm red merely to confuse the trail. He would know we would find out about the color issue, and therefore would know we’d think he could not have done it.”

“You are presupposing a great deal of knowledge and cunning for Caliban, especially considering that you suggested a minute ago that he did not know what a human being was.”

“Mmmph. The trouble with you, Donald, is that you keep me too honest. All right, then. If Caliban did not do it—then who the damned hell-devils did ?”

“As to that, sir, I could not offer an opinion.”

CALIBAN came to another tunnel intersection and hesitated for a moment before deciding which way to go. He had yet to see a single human in the underground city, but it seemed unwise to be in the company of robots, either. There seemed to be less traffic on the left-hand tunnel branch, and so he went that way.

There had been moments, more than a few of them, since his awakening, when Caliban had experienced something very like the emotion of loneliness, but he certainly had no desire for companionship at the moment. Right now he needed to get away, to put as much distance and as many twists and turns as possible between himself and his pursuers. Then he needed to sit down somewhere and think.

The robots here underground were quite different from those he had seen on the surface. No personal-service robots down here, no fetchers and carriers of parcels. These passages were populated by burlier sorts, lumbering heavy-duty machines in dun colors. They had little resemblance to the brightly colored machines overhead. Compared to these robots, the ones above were merely toys. These underground robots were closer kin to the maintenance units that toiled on the surface only by night. By night, and underground, do the true workers toil, Caliban thought to himself. There was something disturbing about the thought, the image.

He was coming to understand that this was a world where real labor, work that accomplished something, was distasteful, something that had to be done out of sight. The humans seemed contemptuous of the very idea of work. They had taught themselves it was not a proper thing to see, let alone do. How could they live, knowing themselves to be useless, pampered drones? Could they truly live that way? But if they allowed themselves to be waited on hand and foot, then surely they must, as individuals, and as a people, be losing even the ability to do most things for themselves. No, it could not be. They could not possibly be making themselves so helpless, so vulnerable, so dependent on their own slaves.

The ways under the central part of the city were clean, dry, and bright, bustling with activity, robots going off on their errands in all directions. None of that suited Caliban’s purposes. He consulted his on-board map and headed toward the outskirts of the system.

The main tunnels and the older tunnels were lit in frequencies visible to humans, Caliban noticed. Perhaps that was some sort of holdover from the days when humans had trod these ways. The newer ones were lit in infrared, offering mute testimony to the absence of human use in these latter days.