Isaac Asimov's Caliban 1 Caliban

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His heart started pounding. There were other answers, yes, other explanations.
But he could no longer force the obvious from his mind.
Sheriff Kresh! Alvar wheeled around to see Donald standing straight up
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again, holding something. Alvar walked back toward the robot, knowing,
somehow, that whatever Donald was holding would make it worse, make his
dawning suspicions even more inescapably certain.
He came up to Donald and looked down into the robot s hand.
He was holding a blaster, the crumbled remains of a Settler s model blaster.
And only the strength of a robot s hand could have crushed that blaster down
to scrap.
7
AN hour after the discovery of the blaster, the crime scene robots found the
Settler woman cringing in the doorway of a nearby building. She was
hysterical, so far gone that even the sight of a robot frightened her.
Or perhaps, Alvar reflected, under the circumstances, the woman had reason to
fear robots. Alvar ordered the woman brought to his aircar. He met her there,
escorted her inside the car, and sat her down in its calm and quiet privacy.
There would be enough time later to worry about arresting her and charging
her. Right now he needed information, and a person in her condition would
almost certainly react better to kindness than bullying. Though, of course,
bullying would remain an option he could fall back on later. He brought her
some water and sat down with her. Damned nuisance that Donald couldn t be
present for this interrogation, but this was clearly no time to expose this
woman to any more robots. Donald could monitor the conversation, and that
would have to be good enough.
All right, Alvar Kresh said, his voice low and gentle. All right.
You re a Settler, aren t you? What is your name?
Santee Timitz, she said in a low, quavering voice. I work in the general
agronomy section in Settlertown.
All right, fine, Kresh said. He had to be careful how he played this one.
She was in a cooperative mood, so terrified by whatever she had seen that she
was willing to tell him anything. Such moods were remarkably fragile things.
What I want to know is what, exactly, happened. What were you doing in that
warehouse?
Ro--ro--robot ba--ba--
Robot bashing, Kresh finished for her. That s what we thought, but it s
good to know for certain. All right, then, that s a serious crime, you know
that. You re in a lot of trouble right now, Timitz. But maybe it doesn t have
to be so bad for you if you ll cooperate with--
I--I can t inform on my friends, she interrupted, looking up at him, her
eyes swollen and full of tears.
Kresh reached out and took her by the hand. No one s asking you to, he said.
Not yet, anyway, he thought. Maybe there won t even be any need to ask.
Just having your name is a better lead than we ve ever had. But what I am
going to ask you is what went wrong down there. Things got out of control,
that s obvious. How? Did your friends set fire to the building to hide the
evidence? Kresh no longer believed that idea, but it might be no bad thing to
make her think otherwise.
No! Timitz cried out. We would never--no, no, that s not what happened.
Then how did the building burn down?
It was the robot, Timitz blurted out. Reybon was baiting the robot.
He tried to trick it into killing itself, and then it turned away, and Reybon
ordered it to stop but it didn t and--
Wait a second. The robot refused a direct order? Kresh asked. He was pleased
to have Timitz blurt out the name Reybon, and would have been content to let
her go on burbling out as much incriminating information as she wanted, but
not when something that impossible was going past.
Yes, Timitz said. She looked Kresh in the eye, and he could see the light of
caution suddenly appear in her face. It s hard to say exactly what
happened--it all went by so fast. Rey--um, ah, the man who was baiting the
robot. He said stop, and told the robot it was an order, and the robot kept
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going.
And then what happened?
He--the man who was there--pulled his blaster on the robot and ordered it to
stop again.
And did the robot stop?
No, sir. He didn t, Timitz said, her voice getting excited again. It
grabbed the blaster and crushed it and threw it away. The blaster shorted out
and sparks flew everywhere. That s what started the fire. Then Reybon reached
for the robot, and the robot shoved him away, really hard. Then the robot
turned and left. The fire started to spread, and then everyone panicked and
ran.
Wait a second, Kresh said, unwilling to believe what he was hearing, even as
he had been unwilling to believe the evidence in the warehouse, and the
evidence back at the robot lab last night. A robot set that fire, with
people in the building? A robot refused an order, and attacked a human being,
and left several human beings behind in a burning building?
Santee Timitz looked up into Kresh s face, her eyes full of tears, her face a
transparent mask of fear. Yes, yes, that s what happened, she said. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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