Unwise Child by Randall Garrett (world best books to read TXT) š
- Author: Randall Garrett
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āThereās another thing: Snookums is fouling up the Second Lawās operation. He wonāt take orders that interfere in any way with his religious beliefsāsince that automatically conflicts with the First Law. He, himself, cannot sin. But neither can he do anything which would make him the tool of an intent to sin. He refuses to do anything at all on Sunday, for instance, and he wonāt let either Fitz or I do anything that even vaguely resembles menial labor. Slowly, heās coming to the notion that human beings arenāt humanāthat only God is human, in relation to the First and Second Laws. Thereās nothing we can do with him.ā
āWhat will you do if he becomes completely uncontrollable?ā
She sighed. āWeāll have to shut him off, drain his memory banks, and start all over again.ā
Mike closed his eyes. āEighteen billions down the drain just because a robot was taught theology. What price glory?ā
[194]
22Captain Sir Henry Quill scowled and rubbed his finger tips over the top of his shiny pink pate. āYour evidence isnāt enough to convict, Golden Wings.ā
āI know it isnāt, Captain,ā admitted Mike the Angel. āThatās why I want to round everybody up and do it this way. If he can be convinced that we do have the evidence, he may crack and give us a confession.ā
āWhat about Lieutenant Mellonās peculiar actions? How does that tie in?ā
āDid you ever hear of Lysodine, Captain?ā
Captain Quill leaned back in his chair and looked up at Mike. āNo. What is it?ā
āThatās the trade name for a very powerful drugāa derivative of lysurgic acid. Itās used in treating certain mental ailments. A bottle of it was missing from Mellonās kit, according to the inventory Chief Pasteur took after Mellonās death.
āThe symptoms of an overdose of the drugāadministered orallyāare hallucinations and delusions amounting to acute paranoia. The final result of the drugās effect on the brain is death. It wasnāt my blow to the solar plexus, or the sedative [195] that Pasteur gave him, or Vaneskiās shot with a stun gun that killed Mellon. It was an overdose of Lysodine.ā
āCan the presence of this drug be detected after death?ā
āPasteur says it can. He wonāt even have to perform an autopsy. He can do it from a blood sample.ā
Captain Quill sighed. āAs I said, Mister Gabriel, your evidence is not quite enough to convictābut it is certainly enough to convince. Therefore, if Chief Pasteurās analysis shows Lysodine in Lieutenant Mellonās body, Iāll permit this theatrical denouement.ā Then his eyes hardened. āMike, youāve done a fine job so far. I want you to bring me that son of a bitchās head on a platter.ā
āI will,ā promised Mike the Angel.
[196]
23Captain Sir Henry Quill, Bart., stood at the head of the long table in the officersā wardroom and looked everyone over. The way he did it was quite impressive. His eyes were narrowed, and his heavy, thick, black brows dominated his face. Beneath the glow plates in the overhead, his pink scalp gleamed with the soft, burnished shininess of a well-polished apple.
To his left, in order down the table, were Mike the Angel, Lieutenant Keku, and Leda Crannon. On his right were Commander Jeffers, Ensign Vaneski, Lieutenant Commander von Liegnitz, and Dr. Morris Fitzhugh. Lieutenant Mellonās seat was empty.
Black Bart cleared his throat. āItās been quite a trip, hasnāt it? Well, itās almost over. Mister Gabriel finished the conversion of the power plant yesterday; Treadmoreās men can finish up. We will leave on the Fireball in a few hours.
āBut there is something that must be cleared up first.
āA man died on the way out here. The circumstances surrounding his death have been cleared up now, and I feel that we all deserve an explanation.ā He turned to Mike the Angel. āMister Gabrielāif you will, please.ā
[197] Mike stood up as the captain sat down. āThe question that has bothered me from the beginning has been: Exactly what killed Lieutenant Mellon? Well, we know now. We know what killed him and why he died.
āHe was murdered. Deliberately, and in cold blood.ā
That froze everybody at the table.
āIt was done by a slow-acting but nonetheless deadly drug that took time to act, but did its job very well.
āThere were several other puzzling things that happened that night. Snookums began behaving irrationally. It is the height of coincidence that a robot and a human being should both become insane at almost the same time; therefore we have to look for a common cause.ā
Lieutenant Commander von Liegnitz raised a tentative hand, and Mike said: āGo ahead.ā
āI was under the impression that the robot went mad because Mellon had filled him full of theological nonsense. It would take a madman to do anything like that to a fine machineātherefore I see no peculiar coincidence.ā
āThatās exactly what the killer wanted us to think,ā Mike said. āBut it wasnāt Mellon that fed Snookums theology. Mellon was a devout churchman; his record shows that. He would never have tried to convert a machine to Christianity. Nor would he have tried to ruin an expensive machine.
āHow do I know that someone else was involved?ā
He looked at the giant Lieutenant Keku. āDo you remember when we took Mellon to his quarters after he tried to brain von Liegnitz? We found half a bottle of wine. That disappeared during the nightābecause it was loaded with Lysodine, and the killer didnāt want it analyzed.
āBut, more important, as far as Snookums is concerned, is that I looked over the books on Mellonās desk that night.[198] There werenāt many, and I knew which ones they were. When Captain Quill and I checked Mellonās books after his death, someone had returned his copy of The Christian Religion and Symbolic Logic. It had not been there the night before.ā
āMike,ā said Pete Jeffers, āwhy would anybody here want to kill Lew thataway? What would anybody have against him?ā
āThatās the sad part about it, Pete. Our murderer didnāt even have anything against Mellon. He wantedāand still wantsāto kill me.ā
āI donāt quite follow,ā Jeffers said.
āIāll give it to you piece by piece. The killer wanted no mystery connected with my death. There are reasons for that, which Iāll come to in a moment. He had to put the blame on someone or something else.
āHis first choice was Snookums. It occurred to him that he could take advantage of the fact that Iām called āMike the Angel.ā He borrowed Mellonās books and began pumping theology into Snookums. He figured that would be safe enough. Mellon would certainly lend him the books if he pretended an interest in religion; if anything came out afterward, he couldāhe thoughtāclaim that Snookums got hold of the books without his knowing it. And that sort of muddy thinking is typical of our killer.
āHe told Snookums that I was an angel, you see. I couldnāt be either hurt or killed. He protected himself, of course, by telling Snookums that he mustnāt reveal his source of data. If Snookums told, then the killer would be punishedāand that effectively shut Snookums up. He couldnāt talk without violating the First Law.
āUnfortunately, the killer couldnāt get Snookums to do [199] away with me. Snookums knew perfectly well that an angel can blast anything at willāthrough the operation of God. Witness what happened at Sodom and Gomorrah. Remember that Snookums has accepted all this data as fact.
āNow, if an angel can kill, it is obvious that Snookums would not dare attack an angel, especially if he had been ordered to do so by a human.ā
āJust a minute, Commander,ā said Dr. Fitzhugh, corrugating his face in a frown. āThat doesnāt hold. Even if an angel could blast him, Snookums would attack if ordered to do so. The Second Law of obedience supersedes the Third Law of self-preservation.ā
āYouāre forgetting one thing, Doctor. An angel of God would know who had ordered the attack. It would be the human who ordered the attack, not Snookums, who would be struck by Heavenly Justice. And the First Law supersedes the Second.ā
Fitzhugh nodded. āYouāre right, of course.ā
āVery well, then,ā Mike continued, āsince the killer could not get Snookums to do me in, he had to find another tool. He picked Lieutenant Mellon.
āHe figured that Mellon was in love with Leda Crannon. Maybe he was; I donāt know. He figured that Mellon, knowing that I was showing Miss Crannon attention, would, under the influence of the lysurgic acid derivative, try to kill me. He may even have suggested it to Mellon after Mellon had taken a dose of the drugged wine.
āBut that plan backfired, too. Mellon didnāt have that kind of mind. He knew my attentions and my intentions were honorable, if youāll pardon the old-fashioned language. On the other hand, he knew that von Liegnitz had a reputation [200] for beingāshall we sayāa ladiesā man. What happened after that followed naturally.ā
Mike watched everyone at the table. No one moved.
āSo the killer, realizing that he had failed twice, decided to do the job himself. First, he went into the low-power room and slugged the man on duty. He intended to kill him, but he didnāt hit hard enough. When that man wakes up, heāll be able to testify against the killer.
āThen the killer ordered Snookums to tear out the switches. He had made sure that Snookums would be waiting outside. Before he called Snookums in, of course, he had to put the duty man in a tool closet, so that the robot wouldnāt see him. He told Snookums to wait five minutes and then smash the switches and head back to his cubicle.
āThen the killer went to my room and waited. When the lights went out and the door opened, he intended to go in and smash my skull, making it look as though either Mellon or Snookums had done it.
āBut he didnāt figure on my awakening as soon as the switches were broken. He heard me moving around and decided to wait until I came out.
āBut I heard him breathing. It was quite faint, and I wouldnāt have heard it, except for the fact that the air conditioners were off. Even so, I couldnāt be sure.
āHowever, I knew it wasnāt Snookums. Snookums radiates a devil of a lot more heat than a human being, and besides he smells of machine oil.
āSo I pulled my little trick with the boots. The killer waited and waited for me to come out, and I was already out. Then Chief Multhaus approached from the other direction. The killer knew heād have to get out of there, so he went in the opposite direction. He met Snookums, who was [201] still obeying orders. Snookums smacked into me on his way down the hall.
āHe could do that, you see, because I was an angel. If he hurt me of his own accord, I couldnāt take revenge on anyone but him. And there was no necessity to obey my orders, either, since he was obeying the orders of the killer, which held precedence.
āThen, to further confuse things, the killer went to Mellonās room. The physician was in a drugged stupor, so the killer carried him out and put him in an unlikely place, so that weād think that perhaps Mellon had been the one whoād tried to get me.ā
He had everyoneās eyes on him now. They didnāt want to look at each other.
Pete Jeffers said: āMike, if Mellon was poisoned, like you say, how come he was able to attack Mister Vaneski?ā
āAh, but did he? Think back, Pete. Mellonādying or already deadāhad been propped upright in that narrow locker. When it was opened, he started to fall outāstraight toward the man who had opened the locker, naturally. Vaneski jumped back and shot before Mellon even hit the floor. Isnāt that right?ā
āSure, sure,ā Jeffers said slowly. āI reckon Iādāve done the same thing if heād started to fall out toward me. I wasnāt even lookinā when the locker was opened. I didnāt turn around until that stun gun went offāthen I saw Mellon falling.ā
āExactly. No matter how it may have looked, Vaneski couldnāt have killed him with the stun gun, because he was already either dead or so close to death as makes no difference.ā
Ensign Vaneski rather timidly raised his hand. āExcuse [202] me, sir, but you said this killer was waiting for you outside your room when the lights went out. You said you knew it wasnāt Snookums because Snookums smells of hot machine oil, and you didnāt smell any. Isnāt it possible that an air current or something blew the smell away? Orāā
Mike shook his head. āImpossible, Mister Vaneski. I woke up when the door slid open. I heard the last dying whisper of the air conditioners when the power was cut. Now, we know
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