"THE BUS IS rolling!" the voice in Cinta's ear announced, telling her something she could see with her own eyes. She watched the bus pull away from the curb and head toward the plaza, gradually gathering speed as it moved forward.
Most of the passengers aboard that bus were merely highly realistic dummies, some of them programmed to moan, cry out, and writhe about a bit, even spurt realistic blood. The four or five real people aboard the bus were in the best padded seats, ready with bladders full of simulated blood that would pop open on cue, and with ghastly-looking injuries that were testaments to the skills of the makeup artist. For the moment, the mock injuries were hidden beneath wigs and tear-away clothing. Once the bus had crashed, all would be revealed.
A nice job, all around-doubly so, given the rush nature of the assignment. It wouldn't have been possible at all if the SSS Covert Office hadn't had most of the gear and people available on standby. By all accounts, there were some very interesting things in the CO warehouse.
Cinta swung the magniviewers to see if she could spot Lentrall. Still no luck. Nothing to see but a crowd of people looking up toward the roof, waiting for their aircars to be shuttled down to them.
It was just as well she knew the lobby team and the plaza team were tracking him, or else-there was something wrong. She spotted sudden, abrupt movement in the plaza. She zoomed in to the action, and swore a blue streak-just as the voices on the headset chimed in, telling her more things she already knew.
"Lentrall's robot has grabbed him! He's pulled him under cover!"
Cinta watched the robot shove Lentrall under a bench and cover the opening with his body. He'd been warned. Someone on the CIP had been very smart, and very, very fast. And if they were able to send a warning, that almost certainly meant help was on the way as well. It would have been tough enough spiriting Lentrall away without CIP cops all over the place. She glanced toward the single CIP aircar orbiting the top of the tower. She had hoped the situation up there would have created a sufficient distraction, but it would seem they were only pretending to have been fooled by it.
"Order an abort!" she said. "Cancel! Stop the bus and everyone go home, now!"
"It' s too late, ma' am," the watch controller said. "All the teams are already in motion. The snatch car is already on approach."
Cinta looked up into the sky, but could not see the snatch car yet. She looked back to the bus, and saw that it was already moving too fast to stop. Another second or two, and it was going to hit.
And then all hell would break loose, even if there was no longer any use for the hell.
"WHAT'S GOING ON?" Davlo Lentrall demanded. "I can't see a damned thing back here."
"Good," the robot Kaelor replied. "Then no one can see you. There is nothing significant happening-"
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."
His aircar lurched again, but less violently this time, as their new course was rather close to their old one. But it was also close to the snatch car's course. Justen's aircar pulled almost even with them, close enough that he could actually see into it.
And he saw that the snatch car had a distinct advantage. A human pilot. A human pilot could and would take chances, take risks-something a robot pilot could not and would not do.
And this human pilot proceeded to do exactly that, putting on extra speed, accelerating as he fell, diving in under Justen' s aircar. Clearly the human pilot knew First Law would keep a robot pilot from copying that move-and that First Law would force the robot to back off, for fear of a midair collision.
Which is exactly what happened, of course. Gervad put on the speedbrakes, hard, and the snatch car dropped out of sight below the nose of Justen's aircar. They were going to get there first.
And that was just about enough for Justen. "I'm taking the controls!" he shouted as he undid his seat restraint and moved forward into the co-pilot's seat.
"Sir, the dangers of doing so-"
"Are minimal, compared to the danger to humans represented by that aircar," Justen said as he strapped himself in. "There is too much delay between my orders to you and execution! I order you to let me fly this machine." Either that would be enough to overcome Gervad's First Law resistance, or it would not. Justen twisted the knob that shifted flight control to his console and cut the speedbrakes, and Gervad made no effort to stop him. Well, that was at least one minor victory. The aircar began to drop faster again.
Justen watched eagerly out the viewscreen, watching for the snatch car to come back into view below them. He spotted it again just as it was about to touch down, moving fast enough that the landing would be little more than a controlled crash.
And at that moment, Justen had an object lesson in the distinct disadvantage of having a human pilot. Humans could take risks, all right-but sometimes risky choices went wrong. The snatch car was plainly braking as hard it could, but just as plainly, it wasn't hard enough. The ground was coming up fast under it, too fast.
The snatch car landed ten meters from Lentrall' s bench with a crash that was plainly audible even in Justen's aircar. It slammed down hard, bottoming out the shock absorbers on its landing jacks and lurching a good fifteen meters back up into the air, its port side angling high up into the air, until it seemed all but inevitable that the craft would topple over and slam back into the ground on its side.
Somehow, the pilot managed to regain control of the craft and bring it upright. The snatch pilot held the aircar in a hover for a moment or two, during which time Justen managed to dodge around the snatch car and put his own vehicle down, in a hard but passable landing, so close to Lentrall's bench that he nearly clipped it with his rear landing jack.
Justen popped the cover on a rarely-used part of the control panel and pulled up on a red lever, unlimbering the aircar's topside swivel blaster. Justen powered up the targeting system and locked the gun on the snatch car just as its pilot finally managed to bring it in for a safe-if ugly-landing. Its portside rear landing jack seemed to have collapsed slightly.
"Sir! I cannot permit you to fire on a craft with humans aboard."
"I'm not going to shoot!" Justen said. Not unless I have to, he told himself. "And please note that I am targeting their propulsion systems, not their control cabin. I just want to intimidate them, make them know we mean business. I promise you I won't fire." Breaking a promise to a robot didn't amount to much, if it came to that.
"But sir-"
"Quiet!" There were times that the benefits of robot labor was not worth the effort required to negotiate the robot's cooperation.
Not that there was time to worry about such things at the moment. The snatch car hadn't given up yet. Not completely. Justen could see the pilot, a hard-faced woman, and he saw the look of surprise on her face as she spotted the swivel blaster aimed at her craft. But surprise did not keep her from reacting quickly. She popped her own topside gun-and aimed it straight through the viewscreen of Justen's aircar, straight at his head, leaving him looking straight down the barrel of a most powerful-looking blaster.
Suddenly they were both down. Suddenly things had stopped happening. Suddenly it was quiet. And suddenly he didn't dare move a muscle unless he wanted to die. Justen didn't think he had even seen anything bigger than that blaster in his life-and he had never heard anything louder than the pounding of his own heart. But fear could kill him. He had to remain calm, clear, focused. He shifted his gaze from the barrel of the gun to the face of the pilot. It was easy to imagine that the willingness to shoot was plain in her expression.
Justen heard movement to his left. "Don't move!" Justen said to Gervad, without moving his head or looking away from the blaster cannon aimed at him. The robot, of course, was about to interpose his body between Justen and the gun. "That thing could burn through you to me in half a millisecond, and if you blocked my view, she might decide it was worth it to shoot me when I couldn't see to shoot back."
"But sir!" Justen clenched his teeth in anger. "Quiet!" he said. "Any action you could take would put me in further danger." It was exactly the sort of statement they warned you not to make to a robot, for fear of doing severe damage to it by setting up a dangerous conflict between First and Second Law. But just at the moment, Justen was a trifle more concerned about his own survival and well-being, and rather less worried about that of his robot.
"But-if-I must-"
"Quiet!" Justen said, still holding eye contact with the snatch car pilot. The next move was up to her. There was no debate on that point. She could fire that blaster and kill Justen, or send out someone with a hand blaster in order to kill Lentrall. They might even try to go ahead with the kidnap plan. Just shoot Lentrall's robot, pull it out of the way, and drag Lentrall out. She could do a lot of things, so long as she kept that gun trained on Justen. And all he could do was keep eye contact with her, watch her, see what she did next.
But then she broke eye-contact with Justen, and looked down at her own control panel. Justen could see her lips move, and he read the word incoming. Good. Very good. It had to be the CIP emergency team, coming in at last.
Justen saw the pilot glance over toward the wrecked bus, and he risked a glance in that direction himself. Even though he had assumed the bus crash had been staged, it was strange indeed to see that most of the supposed victims were dummies, and that the remainder were peeling off their injuries and sprinting for the snatch car. Of course. They had to extract their people from this mess-not only out of loyalty, but also as a way to prevent them from being caught and questioned.
But if Justen was surprised, the robots attempting to care for the crash victims were even more so. It seemed to dawn on all of them at once that there were no victims. It was instantly clear that none of them knew what to do next.
The humans in the plaza were only slightly less disoriented, but as the robots pulling them back from the imaginary dangers released them, at least one or two started chasing after the human "victims" of the bus accident, and shouting for the robots to do the same.
Justen Devray could not do anything to help the pursuers, not with a blaster cannon aimed at his head. But maybe they could catch at least one of them.
CINTA MELLOY WATCHED as her operation fell apart. There was no chance at all of success at this point. Thanks to Lentrall's robot and that CIP command car, their plan had been completely disrupted. There was nothing for it now. The CIP would have reinforcements on the scene any second now. Now the only thing left to do was to get her people out, before the Infernals got their hands on one of them and switched on the Psychic Probe. That could not be allowed to happen.
And Cinta had but one card left to play. One she had hoped not to play at all. The pyrotechnics people could assure her all they liked that nothing could go wrong. After everything else that had gone wrong today, she was in no particular mood to believe anyone.
But she didn't have many choices left. All that was left to her was the question of timing. When would her last diversion most disrupt the opposition?
Cinta watched the chaos on the plaza, saw the robots and the Infernal humans starting to recover, and decided.
The time was now.
She pushed down the button she had been hoping not to push.
THE SKY LIT up like a thunderbolt as the barrel of cleaning fluid blazed up into the sky, a fireball that bloomed up and out from the roof of Government Tower, enveloping the robots who ringed the delivery airtruck in order to keep humans back. Bits of shrapnel from the blast filled the air, bouncing and ricocheting in all directions.
The shock wave bloomed out from the top of the tower, sending the CIP emergency team aircars tumbling out of control, a giant invisible hand that slapped at the cars, scattering them in all directions as their pilots fought to regain control.
Down on the plaza, all the robots instantly forgot all about their pursuit of the falsely injured. There were humans in immediate danger of being struck by flying debris.
Each robot dove for the closest human and wrapped itself around that person. But with the robots turning themselves into shields, and the humans being shielded whether they liked it or not, there was no one available to pursue the fleeing members of the kidnap squad. The door of the snatch car opened, and the team from the crash bus scrambled aboard.
The pilot checked her boards, then looked back toward Justen. This was the moment. If she were going to kill him to cover their escape, and prevent him from pursuing, this was the moment to do it.
Justen's eyes widened, and he swallowed, hard. He found himself wishing he knew why Lentrall was so important. It would have been nice to know what he was dying for.
It was obvious the pilot could read it all in his eyes. Justen braced himself for the end-but the end did not come. The snatch car pilot shook her head no, back and forth, just once, very clearly and firmly. I'm not going to kill you, she was telling him, as plainly as if she were speaking.
Her blaster cannon swung away from its aim on his head and swiveled down to point at the base of Justen's aircar. It fired twice, blowing off one landing jack and cutting the core power coupling. His car toppled over on its side as the snatch car lifted into the air and rushed for the edge of town at high speed. No craft was able to pursue them.
Gervad was hustling Justen out of the ruined aircar almost before it had finished falling, the robot's First Law potentials pushed to new heights by the calamities he had been forced to witness. Justen did not argue. He had no desire to remain long in a vehicle with a destabilized power system.
Justen stumbled out onto the plaza. He looked behind his aircar, and saw a young-looking man, his fashionable business attire much the worse for wear, crawling out from behind the stone bench, his robot helping him get to his feet. Lentrall. Davlo Lentrall. The man at the center of this storm. The man they had come for. Whoever "they" were. The only thing Justen knew for sure about them was that they had sure as hell left a mess behind.
Justen turned and watched the snatch car as it flew toward the edge of vision and beyond. They had gotten away. But they didn't have what they had come for.
That was some comfort, anyway.
If not much.