Suddenly, Kaelor heard a horn blaring, and the squealing brakes of a large ground vehicle. He looked toward the noise, at the Aurora Boulevard end of the plaza, and saw a large groundbus moving far too fast. It was not going to be able to make the turn. Every human aboard, as well as any number of humans on the plaza, was in danger. Kaelor felt the pull of First Law imperative telling him to rush toward the bus to be ready to render aid, but the First Law requirement that he protect his master from danger was stronger-if only just.
No other robot on the plaza had any such First Law conflicts. They moved with the blinding speed of robots in a hurry. Some dove in to snatch humans from out of the path of the bus, while some ran to where they judged the bus would come to a halt, to be ready to rescue the victims the first moment it was possible. Three robots rushed out into the road and threw themselves directly in the path of the bus, no doubt hoping the force of the impact with their bodies would be enough to slow it down safely. The bus smashed into each one of them, one after the other, and just kept on coming. It hit the curb with a resounding crash, bouncing and lurching, skidding wildly before it tipped over on its side with a terrible booming thud, and the shriek of tearing metal. It skidded a good twenty meters on its side before coming to a halt.
The first of the robots was on the bus before it had even come to a complete stop, and within seconds the bus was all but hidden from view beneath a swarm of robots rushing to rescue the injured humans aboard. Two of them tore the remains of the driver’s windshield off, and gained access that way. Five others tore the side windows out and scrambled in.
In seconds, the chaos of the crash site was transformed into an organized rescue operation.
“Kaelor! What the devil is all that noise! What’s going on?”
Kaelor, the robot designed, built, and trained to assist in the analysis of hypothetical cataclysms, did not answer for a moment, frozen into immobility by a complex conflict between contradictory First Law and Second Law imperatives. He had to protect his master from danger, of course-but the danger to Davlo Lentrall was unstated, and unseen, and possibly hypothetical, while the danger to humans right in front of him was real, definite, and direct. However, the Second Law potential of the situation had been tremendously strengthened by the power, the authority, and the urgency of Commander Devray’s order. The presence of so many robots rushing to the bus crash diminished the First Law imperative to go to the aid of the victims, but it did not extinguish it. The urge to go, to help, was strong.
“Kaelor, what the devil is going on?” Lentrall asked again.
“I am not sure,” he said. “There appears to have been a violent and dramatic bus crash.”
“What do you mean ‘appears’?” Lentrall demanded.
“Something does not make sense,” Kaelor replied. He considered. The unspecified safety hazard on the roof, the warning of danger to his master, and this bus crash, each in itself an unlikely event, all had taken place within a few minutes of each other, and very close to each other. There had not been a safety evacuation, or an out-of-control ground vehicle anywhere in the city, for years. While the level of violent crime had increased in recent years, it was still quite rare, and generally either was related to gang activity, or consisted of crimes of passion. This was clearly neither. The odds of three such low-probability events happening so close to each other was almost microscopic.
Suppose one of them hadn’t happened? Suppose he, Kaelor, had not received the warning? Then, undoubtedly, he would be over there, helping with the rescue, and his master would be out in the open, away from his aircar and the security team on the roof, in an area stripped clean of robots. Just right for an attempt to kill or capture.
Robots swarmed over the ruined bus, moving with the sort of relentless speed and determination of Three-Law robots driven by a strong First Law imperative. Robots in that state questioned nothing, concerned themselves with nothing but the job of rescue. Incongruities and contradictions were simply things that might get in the way of rescue, things that must, therefore, be ignored and gotten past on the way to preventing harm to humans. There could be no thought, no reflection, on any subject but that of rescue.
So the robots in and on the bus did not pause to notice that much of the debris they were pulling out of the wreckage consisted of lifelike dummies, or that the small number of actual humans seemed to be alive and conscious, even walking and talking, in spite of apparent injuries that should have killed them. Kaelor was not as surprised as he should have been when one victim’s serious cranial injury simply fell off, to reveal a whole and intact head underneath.
A trick. It was all a trick. And it was his master, Davlo Lentrall, that they were after.
At that moment, he heard the sound-the sound of an aircar coming in fast and hard, from a great height, diving straight in. He looked up, and saw the car, and realized it was not over. He prepared himself to defend his master.
Whatever good that could do.
JUSTEN DEVRAY TORE his eyes away from the chaos of the bus crash, and spotted the fast-dropping snatch car. He saw it in the same moment Kaelor did, but there was nothing he could do in response. The robot pilot of his aircar would prevent him trying to shoot the aircar down, of course, but Justen would not have tried the shot himself-not with a plaza full of innocent people below, and Government Tower close enough that a disabled, uncontrolled craft might crash into it.
But he could pursue-or at least order his pilot to do so.
“Get with that aircar and stay with it,” he ordered.
Gervad obeyed at once, flipping Justen’s aircar out of its slow orbit with a hard, sharp dive. They were, quite suddenly, dropping like a stone. Justen felt his stomach trying to turn itself inside out, and fought back the feeling.
This car had to be the way they were going to get them out-Davlo Lentrall and all their own people. If Justen could prevent it from landing, or even from taking off after it had landed, then the game would be up. But where the devil was the arrest team?
He punched up a status display, and got the answer-they would be on the scene in ninety seconds. But in ninety seconds, it was likely to be far too late.
Justen thought fast. One thing was clear. This was no attempt at assassination. It was too elaborate, too complex. It would have been easy to kill Lentrall by now, if that had been their aim. If the opposition-whoever they were-could arrange chemical spills on Government Tower and crash buses to create diversions, they would surely also be able to get in a shooter and a long-range precision blaster, or some sort of slug-throwing rifle. They could have picked off Lentrall that way. Even now, with Lentrall barricaded in under the stone bench by his robot, a well-placed shot from a grenade launcher would do the job. Hit Lentrall’s robot clear in the chest, and the force of the explosion would be enough to drive the robot’s body back and mash Lentrall to a pulp.
So it was a kidnap attempt-but they might have orders to kill Lentrall if they could not grab him.
Justen Devray still did not have the slightest idea what Lentrall was up to, or why he was important. Right now, that didn’t matter. Lentrall was important. Important enough for the governor to see him, for the Settlers and the Ironheads to spy on him, for Kresh to want a full security detail on him, for this whole scene of chaos to be cooked up in his honor. If that was all he knew, it was enough. He had to protect Lentrall.
“Emergency landing!” he told Gervad. “Put us down as close as possible to the rear of the stone bench where Lentrall is.”