Mark Tiedemann - Mirage

But to construct a robot that could circumvent one of the Three Laws, no matter how little or how briefly, went against everything she believed about robots. It came too close to free will for her.

Of all the things that might have driven a wedge between them, casuistry would have been the last thing Derec expected.

"Incoming message," Thales said.

"From?"

"Agent Sathen, Special Services."

Derec sat up. "Accept. Agent Sathen?"

"Mr. Avery. I hope I'm not disturbing you-"

"No, not at all. In fact, I just quit for the day. How can I help you?"

"Well, I don't think at all, really, but I'd like you to come back to the hospital."

"Why? Has your agent come out of coma?"

"No, I'm afraid that's not even a question anymore." Sathen paused. "Her room was bombed a little while ago. She and the robot are gone." The scene around the entrance to the hospital reminded Derec of Union Station not a day earlier. Emergency vehicles crowded close to the entrance, small knots of people stood around, a police line kept spectators back. No robots, though, and no bodies lying on the pavement.

Sathen stood by the nurses' station, a cup in one hand, his face expressionless for the moment. He blinked when he saw Derec and straightened.

"Mr. Avery, thank you. Come with me."

Derec followed the agent back down the corridors which earlier had been less crowded. An acrid stench cut through the usual medicinal odors.

The walls on either side and across from the door to Agent Daventri's room were blackened. Small fixtures sagged, melted. The ceiling showed black, too, though oddly the floor seemed clean but for a few sooty footprints. Agent Sathen gestured for him to look inside.

The walls appeared covered by black flakes or the scales of a charcoal reptile. Here and there lay a mound of ash or a mass of slag. A forensic unit hovered in the air in the center of the burnt area. As he stood there, Derec thought he could hear the walls crackle delicately, still cooling.

"What about-?" he started to ask.

Sathen shook his head. "We're collecting everything that we can, but whatever it was burned hot enough to vaporize seventy, eighty percent of whatever was in there before it started to cool. The only reason there's still a room is because of the standard radiation shielding in the walls, but even that has been crystallized by the heat. Another second or so and this whole corridor might have been engulfed. It was a timed charge, very expertly made. Maybe a bubble nuke."

Derec backed away. He felt himself tremble. "Is there some place I can sit down?"

Sathen frowned, but nodded. "We can talk back here."

Sathen took him to a commissary at the end of the hall. He fetched two cups of coffee from the dispenser and set one before Derec.

"Thanks. Sorry. I've been up since… what day is it?"

Sathen nodded. "I know what you mean. Thanks for coming down."

Derec swallowed a mouthful of too-hot coffee. It shocked him into more wakefulness. "Was anybody else hurt?"

"One of our agents was found strangled by the nurses' station." Sathen's voice was edged with anger.

Derec blinked at him, startled. "I'm sorry."

Sathen waved a hand as if to say, "Never mind."

"Why did you ask me down?" Derec asked.

"I have questions about the robot. I understand you built Bogard."

"Yes. Look, if you're wondering whether or not Bogard did this-"

"No, not exactly. I'm wondering if a robot-understand, Mr. Avery, I don't know a lot about robots-I'm wondering if it's possible for one to malfunction in such a way as to explode. They go-what? insane?-when they have a conflict over protecting humans. When they get like that"

"No," Derec said firmly.

"They do operate on a small nuclear battery, right?"

"Did you check for radiation?"

"Yes."

"And?"

"Zero."

Derec frowned. "Zero?"

"Near enough to make no difference. A bubble nuke would eat up its own radiation in the course of the blast. But if the robot blew up… I didn't know what their power supply was. So is there any other way for it to do this?"

"No, Agent Sathen, there is not. Bogard certainly would not have strangled someone beforehand. That would be impossible."

"I never count anything as impossible, Mr. Avery."

"Count on this. Bogard could not harm a human being. And it had no self -destruct function."

"You sound very certain. "

"I am. Look, Bogard runs-ran-on a positronic brain. All positronic brains are built with the Three Laws already encoded. Before anything else is loaded into a positronic robot, the Laws are there. They cannot harm humans or allow humans to come to harm."

"But they also have to obey humans, too," Sathen countered.

"Not if it results in harm."

"Bogard was different, though, wasn't it? A bodyguard. "

"No, even Bogard was constrained by the Three Laws. Whatever happened here, Bogard had nothing to do with it." Derec drank more coffee, feeling his impatience and weariness begin to turn to anger. "Bogard had a slightly wider range of interpretative freedom when it came to defining harm, true, but nothing that would allow deliberate self-destruction, especially if it meant killing a human at the same time. If it had malfunctioned that severely, it, as with all positronic robots, would have simply shut down."

''I see… so it's possible it shut down before the explosion happened, which would explain why it didn't prevent it?"

"That's… reasonable. But without its brain or any of its recorders, there's no way to tell now."

"Recorders?"

"It was a security robot, after all, Agent Sathen. We built in several accessory recorders not directly tied to the positronic brain. Admissible in Earth courts, since you don't allow for robotic testimony."

Sathen narrowed his eyes, thoughtful. "Interesting. So, this malfunction-how likely would that be?"

"It wasn't behaving according to normal operational standards when I talked to it," Derec admitted. "Having failed to protect Senator Eliton, witnessing the deaths of other humans, it was likely in the first stages of a collapse. That's why I told you to leave it alone. It might have been salvageable if it weren't pushed. I suppose-I'm just guessing, now-that it could have continued to break down after I left. The pathways under breakdown aren't well understood, only the cause and effect."

"So when whoever set off this charge did so, Bogard may very well have been completely inert."

"Could very well have been."

The silence stretched then, while Sathen worked through the information. Derec finished his coffee.

"This Agent Daventri… did you know her?" Derec, asked.

"Hm?" Sathen shook his head. "No, not very well. She'd just been assigned to Eliton's team. Before that she worked a different district than me. I knew about her, though. Good agent. A little green, but we all are once or twice, eh?"

"I suppose so. Some of us fairly often."

Sathen grinned briefly. "So, how is your investigation coming?"

"Mine?"

"On the RI."

"Phylaxis was taken off of that."

Sathen frowned. "You were? But I thought that's what you people do-analyze positronics."

"It is and normally we would, but apparently your people decided that this time it should be handled completely internally." Derec heard the bitterness in his own voice.

"That's… huh." Sathen gestured to Derec's cup. "More coffee?"

Derec peered into his empty cup, shook his head. "Do you have more questions?"

"Probably, but I suppose they can wait. Is there anything else useful you could tell me about Bogard?"

"Relating to this? No, I don't think so."

"Then, no."

Derec got to his feet. "Oh, you might remind your forensics people that Bogard was partially constructed out of amalloy. It has a distinctive molecular signature."