Michael Kube-McDowell - Odyssey

The Second Law said, “A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.”

A question was an order-and silence was disobedience. Which could only be if Darla was following her higher obligation under the First Law.

The First Law said, “A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.”

Darla had to know how small the chance of rescue was, even within a star system, even along standard trajectories. And Darla knew as well as any robot could what sort of harm that fact could do to the emotional balance of a human being. The typical survivor, already terrorized by whatever events brought him into the lifepod, would respond with despair, a loss of the will to live.

It made sense to him now. Of course Darla would try to protect him from the consequences of his own curiosity-unless he could make her see that he was different.

“Darla, I’m not the kind of person you were told to expect,” he said gently. “I need something to do, something to think about. I can’t just sit here and wait. I can deal with bad news, if that’s what you’re hiding. What I can’t take is feeling helpless.”

It seemed as though she were prepared for his kind too, after all, but had only needed convincing that he was one. “I understand, Derec. Of course I’ll be happy to tell you what I know.”

“Good. What ship are we from?” he asked. “There’s no shipper’s crest or ship logo anywhere in the cabin.”

“This is a Massey Corporation G-85 Lifepod-”

“You told me that already. What ship are we from?”

Darla was silent for a moment. “Massey Lifepods are the primary safety system on six of the eight largest general commercial space carriers-”

“You don’t know?”

“My customization option has not been initialized. Would you care for a game of chess?”

“No.” Derec mused for a moment. “So all you know how to do is shill for the manufacturer. Which means that we probably came from a privately owned ship-all the commercial carriers customize their gear.”

“I have no information in that area.”

Derec clucked. “In fact, I think you do. Somewhere among your systems there has to be a data recorder, activated the moment the pod was ejected. It should tell you not only what ship we came from and where it was headed, but what’s happened since. It’s time to find out how smart you really are, Darla,” he said. “We need to find that recorder and get into it.”

“I have no information about such a recorder.”

“Trust me, it’s there. If it wasn’t, there’d be no way to do postmortems after a ship disaster. Are you in control of the pod’s power bus?”

“Yes.”

“Look for an uninterruptible line. That’ll be it.”

“Just a moment. Yes, there are two.”

“What are they called?”

“My system map labels them 1402 and 1632. I have no further information.”

Derec reached for the water tube again. “That’s all right. One will be the recorder, and the other is probably the locator beacon. We’re making progress. Now find the data paths that correspond with those power taps. They should tell us which one is which.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t.”

“They have to be there. The recorder will be taking data from your navigation module, from the environmental system, probably even an abstract of this conversation. There ought to be a whole forest of data paths.”

“I’m sorry, Derec. I am unable to do what you ask.”

“Why?”

“When I run a diagnostic trace in that portion of the system, I am unable to find any unlabeled paths.”

“Can you show me your service schematic? Maybe I can find something.”

The icescape vanished and was replaced by a finely detailed projection of the lifepod’s logic circuits. Scanning it, Derec quickly found the answer. A smart data gate-a Maxwell junction-was guarding the data line to the recorder. The two systems were effectively isolated. Similar junctions stood between Darla and the inertial navigator, the locator beacon, and the environmental system.

This is all very odd , Derec thought. It wasn’t surprising that there was a lower-level autonomous system regulating routine functions. What was strange was how Darla was locked out of getting any information from it.

Coddling frightened survivors required tact and discretion. But robots were strongly disposed toward an almost painful honesty. Perhaps it had proven too difficult to program a Companion to put on a happy face while keeping grim secrets. Lying did unpredictable things to the potentials inside a positronic brain.

And there were Third Law considerations as well. The Third Law went, “A robot must protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.”

How would a robot balance its responsibility to preserve itself with the increasing probability of its demise? It was as though the designers had concluded that there were things Darla was better off not knowing, and thrown up barriers to prevent her from finding out. They had kept her ignorant of herself, and even of her ignorance.

There was a disturbing parallel in that to Derec’s own situation. Is that what happened to me? he wondered. He had hoped almost from the first that his loss of memory was the consequence of whatever disaster had put him in the lifepod, perhaps along with the shock of a hard landing on this world.

Now he had to ask whether such selective amnesia could be an accident. He had read the schematic easily, but he could not remember where or why he had acquired that skill. Obviously he had some technical training, a fact which-if he survived-might prove a useful clue to his identity. But why would he remember the lessons, but not the teacher? Could his brain have been that badly scrambled?

Yet reading the schematic was a complex task which clearly required that his mind and memory be unimpaired. As well as he could judge, his reasoning was measured and clear. If he were in shock or suffering from a concussion, wouldn’t all his faculties be affected?

Perhaps this wasn’t something that had happened to him. Perhaps, as with Darla, it was something that had been done to him.

Derec grimaced. It was unsettling enough looking at the blank wall of his past, but more unsettling to think that hiding behind that wall might be the reason why it had been built.

By this time Darla had grown impatient. “Have you found anything?” Darla asked with a note of anxiety.

Blinking, Derec looked up at the status board. “The recorder’s tied in through a Maxwell junction. The junction won’t pass through to the recorder anything it doesn’t recognize, which is why you can’t find it with a trace. And why we’re not going to be able to read it through you. But there has to be a data port somewhere, probably on the outer hull-”

At that moment, the whole pod lurched and seemed to become buoyant. Derec had the sensation that it was no longer in contact with the frozen surface of the asteroid. “What’s going on?” he demanded.

“Please stay calm,” Darla said.

“What is it? Have we been found?”

“Yes. I believe we have. But I am unable to say by whom.”

Derec gaped openmouthed for a moment. “Put the exterior video up again! Quickly!”

“I am becoming concerned about your level of agitation, Derec. Please close your eyes and take several deep breaths.”

“I’ll do no such thing,” he said angrily. “I want to see what’s going on.”

There was a moment’s hesitation, and then Darla acquiesced. “Very well.”

The sight that greeted Derec’s eyes made his breath catch in his throat. The limpet’s cameras were no longer trained on the horizon, but down at the ground. A half-dozen machines, each different from the next, were arrayed around the pod. The largest was taller than a man, the smallest barely the size of a safesuit helmet. The tiny ones hovered on tiny jets of white gas, while the larger ones were on wheels or articulated tracks.