"Allen, Roger Macbride - 01 - Isaac Asimov's Caliban" - читать интересную книгу автора (Allen Roger Macbride)

ДThese Settlers left in a hurry. Suppose not all of them got into the aircar, and the driver was too drunk and too scared to count noses? Someone might have been left behind.У
ДYes, sir. I will pass the order.У Instantly a dozen of the crime scene robots broke off their work and set out to search the area. Donald bent back over and returned to his methodical scan of the warehouse floor.
Kresh watched the crime scene robots go and then got back to his thinking. A panicky exit. The doorway. A crush of bodies hurrying through it as the flames rose higher. Maybe people dropping things, leaving telltale items behind.
Kresh stood in the middle of the ruined structure and scanned the bent and twisted remains of the buildingТ s frame, judging where the entrance had been before the collapse. There, in the middle of the south wall. He picked his way through the rubble-strewn floor, moving slowly, carefully sweeping his light back and forth across as he moved. Yes, the robots would do better, but even if he missed something they later found, at least he would have a feel for where that something came from.
Slowly, carefully, he moved toward the wreckage of the doorway and through it. In this part of town, no one even bothered paving the sidewalks. Just outside the doorway was nothing but hard-packed dirt. There was a confused tangle of rather muddied footprints, perfectly unreadable to Kresh, though the imagery reconstruction computers might be able to do something with them. Kresh was careful not to walk over anything himself.
It was not footprints he was looking for, but the sort of thing a person might drop or lose in a panicky hurry. Something that might lead Kresh to a name, a person. A wallet or an ident card would be ideal, of course, but he hardly dared expect that. But there were a thousand lesser things, perhaps none of them as easy or obvious as a photo ID, but some of them no less certain in the end. A bottle that might reveal a fingerprint, a bit of cloth that might have been torn from a shirt and left behind on a roughened edge of the door frame, a bit of skin or a drop of dried blood from where someone got scratched or cut in the rush to escape a burning building. A hair, a broken fingernail, anything that could be typed and DNA-coded would do for Kresh.
But if it was not footprints he was looking for, it was footprints he found. One set coming in, overprinting all the other incoming prints--clearly the last one in. And then another set of the same prints, emerging from the muddle of other prints, overprinted by everyone else. Clearly the first one out. And both sets of prints, in and out, moving at a calm, steady gait. A walking pace, definitely not a run.
A set of prints he knew full well from the night before. A very distinctive set of robot prints.
Alvar Kresh stood there, staring at them, for a full minute, thinking it all through once, twice, three times, working through all the possibilities he could, forcing down his excitement, his astonishment. Last to arrive, first to leave, and the place caught fire.
His heart started pounding. There were other answers, yes, other explanations. But he could no longer force the obvious from his mind.
ДSheriff Kresh!У Alvar wheeled around to see Donald standing straight up 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 robotТs hand.
He was holding a blaster, the crumbled remains of a SettlerТs model blaster.
And only the strength of a robotТs 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 couldnТt 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.
ДAll right,У Alvar Kresh said, his voice low and gentle. Д All right. YouТre a Settler, arenТt you? What is your name?У
ДSantee Timitz,У she said in a low, quavering voice. ДI work in the general agronomy section in Settlertown.У
ДAll right, fine,У 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. ДWhat I want to know is what, exactly, happened. What were you doing in that warehouse?У
ДRo--ro--robot ba--ba--У
ДRobot bashing,У Kresh finished for her. ДThatТs what we thought, but itТs good to know for certain. All right, then, thatТs a serious crime, you know that. YouТre in a lot of trouble right now, Timitz. But maybe it doesnТt have to be so bad for you if youТll cooperate with--У
ДI--I canТt inform on my friends,У she interrupted, looking up at him, her eyes swollen and full of tears.
Kresh reached out and took her by the hand. ДNo oneТs asking you to,У he said. Not yet, anyway, he thought. Maybe there wonТt even be any need to ask. Just having your name is a better lead than weТve ever had. ДBut what I am going to ask you is what went wrong down there. Things got out of control, thatТs obvious. How? Did your friends set fire to the building to hide the evidence?У Kresh no longer believed that idea, but it might be no bad thing to make her think otherwise.
ДNo!У Timitz cried out. ДWe would never--no, no, thatТs not what happened.У
ДThen how did the building burn down?У
ДIt was the robot,У Timitz blurted out. ДReybon 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 didnТt and--У
ДWait a second. The robot refused a direct order?У Kresh asked. He was pleased to have Timitz blurt out the name ДReybon,У 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.
ДYes,У Timitz said. She looked Kresh in the eye, and he could see the light of caution suddenly appear in her face. ДItТs 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 going.У
ДAnd then what happened?У
ДHe--the man who was there--pulled his blaster on the robot and ordered it to stop again.У
ДAnd did the robot stop?У
ДNo, sir. He didnТt,У Timitz said, her voice getting excited again. ДIt grabbed the blaster and crushed it and threw it away. The blaster shorted out and sparks flew everywhere. ThatТs 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.У
ДWait a second,У 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. Д 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?У
Santee Timitz looked up into KreshТ s face, her eyes full of tears, her face a transparent mask of fear. ДYes, yes, thatТ s what happened,У she said. ДI know all about the rules and how robots arenТt supposed to be able to do that, but it happened,У she said, her voice teetering back on the edge of full hysteria. ДIt happened! It happened! ItТs all true! That robot went crazy in there!У
Kresh stood up, paced up and down the length of the aircarТs main cabin. At last he stopped, standing over Timitz. ДI want to make sure I have this straight. You Сre saying that a robot deliberately refused an order, then took a weapon from a man, started a fire, threw a man down, and left a warehouse full of people in imminent danger of being Burned alive? That he didnТt turn back, or try and help, or attempt to rescue anyone?У
ДYes, I was there! I saw it!У Timitz said, her voice half-panicked. ДReybon got out, we all got out, no one was killed--but the robot didnТt try to help us. It just walked away, calm as could be.У
Kresh stared down at her. He desperately wanted to press on, but he was skilled enough to know when to back off. If he pushed her now on this line of questioning, she would think he doubted her--as indeed he did. But then she would get defensive, belligerent. Right at the moment she was too far gone to be telling him anything but the truth. Anger would focus her. Better to keep her off balance, before she started to collect herself and started to shade her story. Time to shift gears, gather information on some other point while her feat made her easy to bully.
ДAnd so your friends all piled into their aircar, including the one the robot had attacked, and you got left behind,У Alvar said. ДWas that byТ accident?У He was careful to put just the right amount of doubt in his voice, to hint just slightly that he had some reason to think it might have been deliberate. Perhaps the tactic would not bear fruit now, but later, brooding in her cell, the fear of immediate danger replaced by the knowledge of certain trouble to come--oh, that tiny suggestion might well gnaw at her heart, make her that much more ready to betray the ones who had, deliberately or not, left her to the wolves. Kresh was a patient man when it came to his suspects. He planned ahead when he played with their minds. ДMaybe they were mad at you for some reason.У
ДNo, no, they would never do that,У Timitz said, a bit too forcibly for the statement to be altogether convincing. ДIt was an accident, IТm sure of it.У
ДAll right, if you say so. And then what happened?У
ДI ran until I couldnТt anymore. I was so scared I couldnТt think straight. I found a doorway to hide in and catch my breath. Then the fire brigade came, and there were lights and robots and people everywhere. I didnТt dare move. And then your robots caught me.У Timitz, drained of all emotion, looked up at the Sheriff. Kresh stared into that wan little face. Robot basher, vandal, criminal, drunk, Settler. She was all those things, and those were all things he hated. But this woman had been through the terrors of hell tonight. All the nightmare robots of the imagination that the Settlers used to frighten naughty children must have come to life for this poor little fool. Almost reluctantly he found pity in his heart for the woman. At last he sighed and turned away, looked toward the wall and not toward her. He could bully her all night and not get any more than he had. Time to let it go.
ДOne last question,У he said in a gentle voice, still carefully considering the featureless wall. ДThe robot. What did it look like?У
ДTall,У she said in a voice still edged with fear. ДIt was red, with blue eyes. About two meters tall, very powerfully built. It said its name was Caliban.У
ДHe told you his name?У Kresh said, startled. Why in the name of all devils would a robot keen on attack tell anyone its name?
No, wait, the robot could have given a false name. Yes, the robot could have lied. Alvar realized that he had been assuming a robot would always tell the truth--but why assume that about a robot who left human beings to die?
But that name, Caliban. There was something about that name.