Another Girl, Another Planet Page 16

  “Thank you.”

  I turned around and scanned the restaurant. “Damn!” I muttered and turned quickly to walk away without thinking. I still had the phone receiver in my hand, so as I stepped away from the alcove I yanked the phone away.

  It smashed to the floor with an enormous crash punctuated by the bell going ting! It sounded like a car crash. Pieces of Bakelite littered the floor, and the cord lay limp like a dead snake.

  All conversation stopped and everyone in the restaurant turned to look.

  Right then I had another one of those moments where I saw something my brain couldn’t quite process. Then it clicked. Many of the women in the restaurant had turned their heads at the same time.

  The exact same time. And they all looked directly at me.

  They’re androids! I thought.

  The maître d’ walked up. “Are you hurt, sir?”

  I snapped out of it. “No, I’m fine, just a clumsy accident.” I bent down and began picking up the wreckage.

  The maître d’ gestured to a bus boy. “No, no, that’s fine, sir, accidents will happen,” he said. “Please, we will clean it up. You can return to your table.”

  Everyone was looking at me, but in a moment they all turned back to their meals and conversations.

  I frowned as I went back and down across from Laura.

  She smiled. “You drink too much sake?”

  “No, that phone call bothered me.”

  “What was it about?”

  “A tipster,” I said, pushing my chair in. “I don’t know if they are trying to cause trouble or trying to be helpful. People are trying to get my office to do their dirty work for them, with complaints and such. I’m used to it.”

  She lowered her head. “Yes, but why bother you at dinner?”

  “Yes, why bother?” I didn’t mention that the call had been placed from inside the restaurant.

  “Somebody may just have an irrepressible urge to gossip,” she said. “You know, the Russians have a saying: Two people can easily keep a secret—if one of them is dead.”

  I grimaced. The caller didn’t sound like an American. In fact, despite his efforts to muffle his voice, I was pretty sure I knew who it was.

  Dinner arrived, and I tried to make small talk while furtively looking around to see if there was anyone there I recognized. The only person I saw was Ivan Iglyztin, the customs inspector who I met the first day on Mars. I nodded and he grinned back like a friendly bear.

  After we finished the entrees, Laura looked at her watch. “I don’t know how late you want to stay out, but I need to get some sleep. I have an important meeting in the morning.”

  “If you’re saying I’m not going home with you, that’s fine. I’m distracted myself, and Andy Coltingham and I are meeting with Gerry Kurland at Tesla tomorrow morning.”

  She pushed her half-eaten kuzumochi toward me. “Here, you can finish my dessert. You need to build up your strength if you plan to lock horns with Kurland.”

  I thought to object at first, but then pulled the plate over. “Thanks.”

  Dean Friedman was back from his break. He sat back down on his stool.

  “Folks, it’s time to finish up for tonight. For all you people who were around ten years ago, you remember that this was my break-out hit, and started it all.”

  He began playing “Ariel.”

  I pushed back a bit in my chair and turned to better face the stage. Laura looked at me quizzically. “Ah, this brings back memories,” I said as I watched Friedman.

  Freshman year in college. First girlfriend in college. God, was I ever that young?

  I remembered having a picnic on the campus lawn with Desiree, the song playing in the background, and my thinking at the time, “Hey, I’m one lucky guy.”

  My reverie was interrupted as Laura snapped her fingers at me. “Hey, space cadet, come out of orbit!”

  I looked at her. “Sorry, I was having a nostalgiac flashback.”

  She smiled sardonically. “You’re not old enough to have nostalgia.”

  That night, before I went to bed—alone—I thought about what I had noticed at Saitama. What to make of it? It looked like maybe a half the women in the restaurant might have been androids.

  And what about the “anonymous caller”?

  I thought hard and stared at the ceiling a long time before I went to sleep that night.

  Chapter Eleven

  The next morning, I pulled a heavy binder off a shelf in my office and plunked it down on my desk with a dull thud:

  “Regulatory Statutes (Mars) In Re: Localized Industrial Manufacturing.”

  Sherry cleared her throat and knocked on the door as she walked in. “I left a pile of requisitions for you to review and approve so I can fax them back to Earth.”

  “While you’re here, I’ve got a question for you,” I said.

  “Which is?”

  “I know Governor Wilder was divorced. Did he have a girlfriend on this planet?”

  She averted her gaze and didn’t answer at first, so I continued.

  “He was old and paunchy, and I can smell the booze from the photographs,” I said. “So what did he do for female companionship?”

  Sherry sighed and stared back at me. “What do you think he did?”

  “Okay, then if he had a heart attack while banging an android, why wasn’t there an investigation?”

  “It was natural causes,” she said. “At his age and in his condition, to drop dead in the sack is natural.”

  “How do we know it wasn’t an assassination?”

  She knitted her brow and cocked her head. “What? How do you make that leap of logic?”

  “What was your major in college?”

  “As an undergraduate? Economics. Why?”

  “I majored in South African History, but minored in U.S. History,” I said. “Ever hear of Wendell Willkie?”

  “Yes, he ran for President once, didn’t he?”

  “Yes, against Franklin Roosevelt in 1940. He died four years later,” I said. “As a gesture of unity once World War II started, Roosevelt appointed Willkie to make a round-the-world fact-finding tour in 1942. While flying as a guest of the Soviet Union across Russia, Generalissimo Stalin decided to ensure Mister Willkie was, ummm … very comfortable, and had a pretty Soviet agent—'sparrows,’ they called them—at his disposal.”

  I sat down and locked my fingers.

  “While joining the ‘mile-high’ club, Willkie suffered a major heart attack,” I continued. “He didn’t die right then, but he never completely recovered, either, and kicked the bucket a few years later.”

  “You’re suggesting that someone might have had Wilder screwed to death?” Sherry nodded and raised her eyebrows. “To what purpose? He was completely ineffective.”

  “Good question,” I said. “I intend to find out. My gut tells me there’s a cover-up, but it’s not what we think it is. It’s like the Sherlock Holmes story where he has a criminal who’s willing to help him in a case because Holmes was able to prove he once burgled a house—when he was supposed to be committing a murder. For getting him prison time instead of a dance at the end of a rope, the crook was Holmes’ friend forever.”

  “I don’t get it,” said Sherry, raising her voice a bit.

  “I got a tip that if we look into Wilder’s death, we will find a lot of answers,” I said.

  “What do you mean you got a tip?” Her eyes widened as they met mine. I explained about the phone call at the restaurant.

  “And you think it was from someone who was there in the restaurant at the same time?”

  “Yes, but I’m not sure who it could be.”

  Her face crinkled as she thought about all the implications. “I’m not sure you’ve even asked the right questions.”

  “Okay, androids are being used as sexual surrogates,” I said. “We can take that as a given. What else can there be?”

  “Hey, I’m just a lowly civil servant with her nose firmly planted on the bu
reaucratic grindstone,” she said, raising her hands dismissively. I searched her eyes for a sign of fear or some other emotion, and found no sense of alarm, more like resolve.

  “I’ve probably babbled enough already. You need to ask people like Gunter or Mickey, or even Laura, about that.” She turned to leave. “But not me.”

  “But I trust you.”

  She already had turned, but she straightened her back and walked out, saying, “I trust you, too, and you’re smart enough to figure it out yourself.”

  I sat down and began reading through the binder. I reviewed the allowable applications for the use of androids in the colony. The service applications specified “personal care assistants.” including visiting nurse assistants and home health care aides.

  I closed the binder and stepped outside to Sherry’s desk. “How long has Gunter Lielischkies been with the joint space program?”

  She continued busily working at her desk as she answered, “Ages. I think he was sent to the Moon after the Asimov Purge, following the Cuban Robot Crisis.”

  “Did he have anything to do with the set-up of Tesla?”

  She smiled sweetly. “Why don’t you ask him yourself?”

  “I think I will. In fact, I’ll head over to his office right away.”

  She raised a hand. “The Eastern Bloc types don’t like drop-ins.”

  I grinned. “I’m just a shoot-from-the hip American, you know.”

  Besides, that was exactly what I wanted, to catch him off guard. She watched me as I hurried for the door, shaking her head but smiling.

  * * *

  A colleague once told me Russians come in two varieties: Taciturn and suspicious, and outgoing and cheerful.

  Ivan Iglytzin was of the second variety. He smiled genially when he saw me. “Mister Shuster, what brings you here?” He walked over and gave me a crushing friendly hug.

  “I was in the neighborhood and I had a thought I wanted to run past your boss. Is Gunter here? I’d like to talk to him.”

  “I will tell him,” he said. “One moment.”

  Lielischkies came out to the entrance of customs a moment later, looking puzzled. “David, what is on your mind?”

  “I want to pick your brain for a history lesson,” I said. “I need some background.”

  “Very well,” he said rather sullenly. He seemed unhappy.

  “If I am inconveniencing you, I can come back later,” I said.

  He looked at me, thought for a moment, and then forced a smile.

  “No, it’s fine. Come this way. I’m willing to help,” he said and motioned toward a side door. “We need to use this door.”

  We went through the side entrance and entered his office. We sat down, and he opened a drawer in his desk. “Do you smoke?” He seemed to be trying to be conciliatory.

  “Just cigars.”

  Lielischkies pulled out a pack of Sobranie cigarettes. “Then this won’t bother you?”

  “No. Heck, I’d enjoy the smoke,” I said. “But how do you manage it?”

  “My own special set-up. We filter the air, and then eject the smoke. We are only 60 meters here from the outside wall, you know,” he said.

  “Did I say something that bothered you just now?”

  He paused as he puffed. “You’re a very perceptive young man. Yes, actually you did, but it’s not your fault. I should explain.” He blew a neat little smoke ring sideways.

  “Different cultures find certain physical terms offensive. You Americans find references to the anus very rude. We Germans dislike remarks referring to the head or brain.” He took a deep drag. “That English colloquialism, ‘pick your brain,’ just grates, that’s all. But it’s a German thing.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

  He shrugged. “Of course, it’s not your fault. I’ve heard expressions used by Americans ‘You’ve got a screw loose,’ or ‘He has a hole in his head’—in Germany, using such an expression is considered extremely abusive and will get you cited for disturbing the peace.”

  He folded his hands in his lap and smiled for real. “Now that we’ve improved East-West understanding, what can I help you with, young man?”

  “I was only five at the time,” I said, “so I don’t know anything about the Cuban Robot Crisis, but it seems to have had a lot to do with the way the androids have been restricted ever since. I was wondering whether you could give me some personal perspective.”

  He looked at me evenly. “You know I was there?”

  “Where? Cuba? No!”

  “Yes, I was one of the advisors to Castro and Guevara.”

  “No! I had no idea.”

  Lielischkies continued to puff. “It was a bad idea from the beginning. We just thought they would help destabilize an already tottering regime. We had no inkling, as you say, that they planned to overthrow and take over the government for themselves.”

  I was obviously surprised by this revelation. “Somehow I can’t see you as a contemporary and colleague of Castro and Guevara.”

  He brushed some ash from his lapel. “The problem in life when you are enthusiastic is that you are too smart young and too wise old,” he said. “I was an agent provocateur. That was my actual title in the party. Agent Provocateur. We don’t do that anymore. I was the last of a breed of agitators that went back to Lenin.”

  “The Soviets planted Castro and Guevara?”

  He smiled a bit painfully. “No, they were home-grown. We didn’t need to cultivate any enemies for Batista, that Fascist bastard did fine making them for himself. But those two hairy revolutionaries got us to support them—covertly, of course. You Americans were doing the same with the Vietnamese, but we didn’t care, because that was the Chinese sphere of influence.”

  I was genuinely perplexed. “Complex robot technology was less than a dozen years old. How did they get as far as they did?”

  He blew a smoke ring in my direction. “You mean in the actual fighting? Everyone underestimated the speed at which the positronic brain was improving. Professor Asimov didn’t hold back in any way. He really saw the integration of robots into human society as potentially beneficial. You might say he was blind to any dangers. Some people trusted him.”

  He looked and saw he had almost already finished the cigarette. “I didn’t care. I just saw a potential way to slow NATO progress and even the playing field. Despite all the joint cooperation we’ve had in space, not much has changed on the maps since the end of the Great Patriotic War. We are still always sniping and sneaking and spying on each other. I can speak frankly with you. You are an intelligent young man.”

  “Kipling called it ‘The Great Game.’”

  He lit up a second cigarette. “Exactly. It’s like a chess game. You wait for your opponent to make a mistake, and then take advantage. You Americans have the advantage of great resources and secure borders. But we are better chess players.”

  “Does that make me like Bobby Fischer?”

  He laughed. “Yes, maybe. You have a crazy streak. I heard how you agitated Coltingham.”

  “Pretentious prick. Can East and West agree the Brits suck, then?”

  He threw his head back and guffawed, an unusual reaction for a German.

  Since he was obviously in such a good mood right then, I went straight to the point. “What did the Cuban revolutionaries do that worked so well?”

  “Everyone knows Asimov’s original Three Laws were hard-wired in all positronic brains,” he said. “It was Guevara who thought of the difference between ‘injure’ and ‘kill,’ and decided to exploit it. They had infiltrators in the plants implant programming that allowed the revolutionaries to take over the androids and launch the revolt.”

  “But what made them so effective? They only had 300 robots.”

  He smiled sardonically. “Have you ever heard someone called a ‘cold-blooded killer’? Or someone called ‘a killing machine’?”

  I nodded. “Ah, it was the intimidation factor.”

  “Precisely. Any
soldier in battle must have somewhere in his mind the fear that he might be killed, and for many men, that creates momentary hesitation. When humans battle humans, both sides share that same fear, so it evens out,” he said. “But when one side doesn’t fear death …”

  I rested a finger on his desk top. “That being the case, then I wonder how the revolt was suppressed at all?”

  He leaned across the desk, holding his cigarette off to the side. “You want to know how it was done? President Kennedy called Premier Khrushchev and told him, ‘Do you really want to start World War III over a piss-ant country like Cuba?’ Of course, Khrushchev said no. Kennedy said if Khrushchev let him detonate a low-yield nuclear weapon over the Bay of Pigs, to disrupt the robotic circuitry, he’d make sure Batista would be removed and a genuine reformer installed.”

  I leaned back in my chair. “I guess it all worked out then, except I didn’t know there was a bomb involved.”

  “Very small, but enough to scramble most of the positronic brains. I was responsible for identifying the location of Guevara and Castro myself.” Lielischkies took another drag on his cigarette. “Kennedy kept his word. After Batista had the pair shot, the CIA instigated the ‘revolt’ that toppled him, and Cienfuegos came to power.”

  “But why the rush to expel the robots to the Moon? Couldn’t they just be reprogrammed?”

  Lielischkies tilted his head. “You know of Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics, but have you ever heard of Moore’s Law?”

  I shook my head. “No, what’s that?”

  “It’s named for a man who headed up one of the companies that makes the transistors used in the positronic brains,” he said. “It says the density and complexity of the computational power in those brains doubles every 18 months. It was part of a secret report for your government that was done as a result of the Robot Crisis. That’s why both sides agreed that robots were to be expelled to the Moon by 1965. It is a more tightly controlled environment.”

  “But robots aren’t self-aware and can’t self-motivate.”

  “Professor Asimov also thought his Three Laws would keep them under control,” said Lielischkies, raising an eyebrow dubiously.

  I nodded. “You went to the Moon after that yourself, then?”