"No one ordered it to shut down," Derec said.
"Evidently not. It just didn't occur to anyone to think to preserve whatever data the RI might have."
"Or they assumed that collapse meant stasis."
Rana cocked an eyebrow at him. "Oh, sure, just like a human mind remains orderly during a psychotic break."
"Well, it does, sort of. The point is, a positronic brain isn't a human brain, so the expectation is unrealistic. But most people don't know that." Derec studied the screens. "This looks worse than it should, though. There ought to have been discreet sectors, at least. This appeared to have no coherence at all."
"You said there were two positronic specialists there?" Rana said.
"They were there when I arrived. Whether or not they were on watch when this happened…"
The pattern on their screens resembled a collection of interference grids, moirй textures, coils, dark and light alternating rhythmically. Rana touched a spot on her screen.
"What bothers me are these little loops here and here. Same sort of thing, but according to their size they never quite amounted to much, like a problem that solved itself. Now, that can theoretically happen in a positronic brain-confusion, ambiguity, indecision, all that can start a recursive loop that dissolves as soon as it finds solid footing. But not this much, and they usually have a distinctive endpoint pattern. These just evaporate…"
"It's likely the same event could trigger several loops."
"Sure."
"Of which only one or two develop into collapse."
"It depends, though, doesn't it?"
"On?"
Rana scratched at her chin absently, eyes wide, lost in the configurations before her. Derec waited. She had been his best student on Earth. She grasped positronics better than anyone else he had trained here, but she still had to think her way through certain concepts that seemed to come naturally to him, or for that matter any positronic specialist from a Spacer world. It was said that one needed to be raised in the discipline to be good at it; Rana had proved that axiom false, but she still wrestled with it like a second language.
He wondered where Kedder and Hammis had gotten their training…
"Depends on when these loops developed," she said finally. "Their location and configuration suggest that they happened earlier than these major loops. It's hard to tell. Chronology in a collapsed positronic matrix is as jumbled as everything else. But if they're earlier, then I'd like to know what triggered them."
"Wouldn't it be more to the point to find out why it took itself off-line to playa game?"
"Those loops could be tied to that."
Derec nodded. It made sense. At least he hoped it did. He suddenly realized how very tired he was and glanced at the time chop on one of the screens. Eighteen hours since he had started the day. Rana had been up longer, but she still appeared alert and engaged. Having a problem to solve energized her.
"Okay," he said, "you work on those. I need to sleep."
"I'll call you."
Derec stood and looked around the room. Equipment covered the walls around them. Stations for eight people-all empty but for the two chairs Rana and he used-spoke of the ambitions of the Group more than the reality. Of the handful of qualified roboticists on Earth, Phylaxis employed four. All the other people he employed, field operatives, office personnel, and paralegals-twelve in all-were little more than eager amateurs. This room contained facilities to keep eight roboticists busy full time-given a commensurate workload. The treaty conference would have provided that work with a successful outcome.
"I'll be upstairs," he said, and left.
Derec climbed to the small apartment he kept on the premises, his legs seeming to grow heavier.
The room contained a bed, a datum, comlink, a shower and toilet, a small closet, and its own food synthesizer. It was only slightly larger than a decent cabin on a starship. Derec kept a bigger, better-appointed apartment a few kilometers away, but he often spent his nights here, even if he had nothing to do.
He sat down on the edge of the bed and rubbed his face with the heels of his hands.
Senator Clar Eliton, dead. He still could not take it in.
What about our charter? he wondered. Without Eliton to champion the entire robotics cause, Phylaxis could end up without a license. Not that it mattered, because without Eliton the reintroduction of positronics to Earth could very likely halt.
"Tomorrow," he told himself.
"You have several messages, Derec," Thales told him.
"List."
"Four from the Senate Select Committee on Machine Intelligence, two from the Committee on Import-Export, one from the Calvin Institute-"
"Stop. Play last one."
"Message reads: 'I see you got your wish. ' Message ends."
Derec sighed. "Ariel."
"The message was not signed," Thales noted.
"No, of course not."
"Would you like me to continue?"
"No. Store messages. I'll go through them… later."
So I got my wish, he thought. He lay back on the mattress. What might that be?
As much as he wanted to assume otherwise, he knew she meant Bogard. They had argued bitterly over it, she rejecting the idea of tampering with the Three Laws at any level. Robots, she believed, should be slaves, ideal servants, with only enough self-direction to interpret the inexactitudes of human commands and possibly anticipate human desires.
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."