[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
what we already know? he asked. And maybe this time you can be just a
little bit more forthcoming with your answers. That way I won t be tempted to
use the charges we have against you already--the ones related to obstructing
an investigation and failing to provide full and complete answers to a police
officer. How does that sound to you? Alvar Kresh smiled again, even more
unpleasantly, as he looked his prisoner in the eye.
Jomaine Terach stared back and tried to keep calm, tried to calculate, tried
to figure the situation. The night behind bars had been a long one, and it had
not done his state of mind any good. No doubt it was not meant to. It was a
fairly safe bet that they had picked up Gubber and maybe Fredda at the same
time they got him. However, no one in the Sheriff s Department was admitting
to that or much of anything else.
But if Gubber was in here, well, Gubber was not much given to calm in the face
of adversity. A night in a cell was likely to make Gubber s tongue quite
Page 143
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
loose. And lurking in the background of Alvar Kresh s angry, threatening
courtesy was the unspoken threat of the Psychic Probe. No sane man wished to
face that, and Jomaine regarded himself as eminently sane. Sane enough to know
just how serious the charges against him could get if Kresh wanted to throw
the book at him.
If he wanted to stay free and with a whole mind, he was going to have to tell
Kresh what he wanted to know, and tell it to him before Gubber or Fredda did.
The time had come to protect himself from everyone else s mad schemes.
Unless that time was already past.
Say what you have to say and ask your questions, he said. I don t know it
all. I didn t want to know it all. But what I know, I ll tell you. I
have run out of reasons for silence.
Alvar Kresh leaned back in his chair. All right, he said. Let me start by
telling you part of what we know already, and just see how well you do filling
in the blanks.
The operative word there was part, of course, Jomaine told himself. Was
Kresh going to tell ninety-five percent of what the police knew, or five
percent? There were any number of traps and pitfalls here.
We know for starters that Caliban is not a Three Law robot, not even one of
these damned New Law robots, but a No Law robot.
Kresh looked hard at Jomaine, stared him down. The testing was starting early.
Here was his chance, Jomaine realized. Kresh wanted to see what he would do if
given the chance to play games. Kresh had not even asked a question. It was
Jomaine s chance to ask what a No Law was, or who Caliban was.
But Jomaine had a pretty fair idea what would happen if he did that, and he
had no desire to find out if he was right.
The silence went on for another few seconds before Jomaine Terach could bring
himself to speak the words.
Yes, he said. Caliban is a No Law.
I see, Kresh said. How is that possible?
Jomaine was thrown off balance by the question, and no doubt that was the
intention. I--I don t understand, he said. What do you mean?
I believe that what the Sheriff wishes to know are the technical details of
the process, Donald 111 said.
Jomaine looked over to the small blue robot, and was not fooled for a minute
by Donald s unprepossessing appearance and gentle voice. Donald had come out
of Leving Labs, after all, and Jomaine had had a hand in his design.
Behind that harmless blue exterior was a formidable mind, a positronic brain
that came close to the theoretical limits for flexibility and learning
ability.
You mentioned in our first interview after the attack that gravitonic brains
were a new departure, Kresh said, his voice deceptively mild.
Yes, they are. Gubber designed them that way and was justifiably proud of
what he had done. But no one would listen to him--until he came to Fredda.
All right, that s fine. But then we get into a problem area. I am not very
happy to hear about this New Law experiment, to say the least, but it appears
to have legal sanction from the Governor, and I don t see that there is much I
can do about it. But, as I understand it, these gravitonic brains have the New
Laws as part of their integral makeup, just as the positronic brain s basic
structure must of necessity include the Three Laws. So how did you manage to
erase those laws from Caliban s brain?
They were never there in the first place, Terach said. There are no
Laws inherent in the structure of the gravitonic brain. That s the whole idea.
The positronic brain became a dead end precisely because the Three Laws were
so tightly woven into it. Because of the inherent nature of the Laws inside
the positronic brain, it was almost impossible to consider one element of the
brain by itself.
The Laws interconnected all the aspects of the brain so thoroughly that any
Page 144
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
attempt to modify one part of a positronic brain would affect every other part
of it in complex and chaotic ways. Imagine that rearranging the furniture in
your living room could cause the roof to catch fire, or the paint on the
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]