Utopia

Prospero regarded his new protйgй with something close to disappointment. Lancon-03 was as tall and angular and alert-looking as any New Law robot, but even so there were times when she seemed completely incapable of advanced or subtle reasoning. If Caliban was proving to be a more and more unsuitable second in command, Prospero was beginning to wonder if Lancon-03 was going to be any better. “The map, Lacon, the map. If the comet fragments strike in the predicted locations, and the expected changes in local geography and sea level take place, Site 149 is going to be within a few kilometers of the new shoreline, right on top of what ought to be the best harborage for three thousand kilometers. It will be the largest port in this hemisphere-and the New Law robots will control it. We will be there. We will lay claim to it, not only as an assigned evacuation site, but because we are on it, in possession.”

“But you put many New Law robots at risk by sending them to such a place,” Lancon-03 objected.

“I expose a few to slight danger for the greater good of all. But I do more than that,” he said.

Prospero turned toward the view window that took up most of one wall of his office. Prospero looked down on the interior of Valhalla, on the brightly-lit streets, on the graceful arcing ramps that led from one level to another, on the busy robots hurrying along with their belongings from one place to another, preparing to leave this graceful, tranquil city under its sky of stone. This city was all they had, the fruit of their own labor, the greatest achievement of the New Law robots. And the humans were preparing to smash it down into nothing, to wipe it out as if it had never existed, if doing so would be to their advantage. There was a lesson there for Prospero.

“I propose,” he said, “to take as much advantage as possible of whatever opportunities are presented to me by this disaster.”

IT WAS TIME.

After the endless hours of checks and counterchecks, after endless dress rehearsals, after wringing any number of bugs out of the system, all of it was done. And it was time.

Governor Alvar Kresh paced back and forth behind his console, and looked up again, for the thousandth, the ten thousandth time, at the two hemispheres on their pedestals, the two control center units, the two oracles who could predict, and even shape, the future-if one dared to let them.

Kresh felt as if he had spent his whole life in this room, and the rest of the universe was little more than a vague and distant dream. He smiled wearily. Unit Dee no doubt felt much the same way. To her, this whole world was a dream, though one of mathematical sharpness and clarity.

Soggdon was there with him, and Fredda, and Donald, and all the others, the roomful of experts and technicians and specialists and advisors who had seemed to appear out of nowhere, unbidden, drawn in by nothing more or less than the crisis itself. But, in the final analysis, there was no point in any of them being there. He had heard what they all had to say, and considered their opinions, weighed all the pros and cons again and again. There was nothing more any of them could tell him that he did not know already. Not even anything more than Dum and Dee might say.

In the midst of all of them, he was alone. The one person who, by rights, should have been there, was not. But Davlo Lentrall was still with the comet diversion fleet. The first and most important phase of the fleet’s work was now done. Now they had only to monitor the comet, track it, watch the telemetry.

Assuming they had to do even that. If he, Alvar Kresh, planetary governor of Inferno, decided to say no, to turn his back and walk away, Comet Grieg would go sailing off into the darkness, not to be seen for another two centuries. There would not be much point in watching its telemetry in such a case.

Nor was there much point in considering the possibility of such a case ever coming to pass. Alvar Kresh knew what he had to do. There was very little point in pretending otherwise. How could he possibly walk away from it all now, after so much had happened? How could he say no, and spend the rest of his life watching the planet slowly decay, spend the rest of his life asking himself what ij; telling himself if only?

He had to go forward. He had no real choice.

And that was the part that terrified him.

Forcing himself to be calm, he picked up the headset and put it on. “Unit Dee, Unit Dum,” he said. “This is the governor.”

“Yesss, Governnorrr,” the unison voice replied. It startled Kresh to hear the two speaking together once again. It had been quite some time since they had done that. Was it because Dee recognized the gravity of the event? Some sort of effort at ceremony? Or was it for some other reason, or at random, for no reason at all, or because Dee was continuing to brood and wonder, and becoming less and less stable as she did so?