Isaac Asimov's Caliban 1 - Caliban

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ISAAC

ASIMOV’S

CALIBAN

ROGER

MacBRIDE

ALLEN

To five wondrous creatures, named in the order of their appearance on this

planet:

Aaron

Victoria

Benton

Jonathan

And

Meredith

Acknowledgments

This book would not have been possible without the support, and

especially the patience, of David Harris, John Betancourt, Byron Preiss, Susan

Allison, Ginjer Buchanan, and Peter Heck. There was many a slip between cup

and the lip, but thanks to their collective efforts, never a drop of the good

stuff was lost. The book stands as proof once again that every writer needs

at least one editor, and sometimes five or six is no bad idea. Thanks are

also due to Thomas B. Allen and Eleanore Fox, neither of whom had time to read

the manuscript, and both of whom did.

A Robot May Not Injure a Human Being, or, Through Inaction, Allow a Human

Being to Come to Harm.

A Robot Must Obey the Orders Given It by Human Beings Except where Such Orders

Would Conflict with the First Law.

III

A Robot Must Protect Its Own Existence As Long As Such Protection Does Not

Conflict with the First or Second Law.

...THE Spacer-Settler struggle was at its beginning, and at its end, an

ideological contest. Indeed, to take a page from primitive studies, it might

more accurately be termed a theological battle, for both sides clung to their

positions more out of faith, fear, and tradition than through any carefully

reasoned marshaling of the facts.

Always, whether acknowledged or not, there was one issue at the center

of every confrontation between the two sides: robots. One side regarded them

as the ultimate good, while the other saw them as the ultimate evil.

Spacers were the descendants of men and women who had fled semi-mythical

Earth with their robots when robots were banned there. Exiled from Earth, they

traveled in crude starships on the first wave of colonization from Earth. With

the aid of their robots, the Spacers terraformed fifty worlds and created a

culture of great beauty and refinement, where all unpleasant tasks were left

to the robots. Ultimately, virtually all work was left to the robots. Having

colonized fifty planets, the Spacers called a halt, and set themselves no

other task than enjoying the fruits of their robots’ labor.

The Settlers were the descendants of those who stayed behind on Earth.

Their ancestors lived in great underground Cities, built to be safe from

atomic attack. It is beyond doubt that this way of life induced a certain

xenophobia into Settler culture. That xenophobia long survived the threat of

atomic war, and came to be directed against the smug Spacers--and their

robots.

It was fear that had caused Earth to cast out robots in the first place.

Part of it was an irrational fear of metal monsters wandering the landscape.

However, the people of Earth had more reasonable fears as well. They worried

that robots would take jobs--and the means of making a living--from humans.

Most seriously, they looked to what they saw as the indolence, the lethargy

and decadence of Spacer society. The Settlers feared that robots would relieve

humanity of its spirit, its will, its ambition, even as they relieved humanity

of its burdens.

The Spacers, meanwhile, had grown disdainful of the people they

perceived to be grubby underground dwellers. Spacers came to deny their own

common ancestry with the people who had cast them out. But so, too, did they

lose their own ambition. Their technology, their culture, their worldview, all

became static, if not stagnant, The Spacer ideal seemed to be a universe where

nothing ever happened, where yesterday and tomorrow were like today, and the

robots took care of all the unpleasant details.

The Settlers set out to colonize the galaxy in earnest, terraforming

endless worlds, leapfrogging past the Spacer worlds and Spacer technology. The

Settlers carried with them the traditional viewpoints of the home world. Every

encounter with the Spacers seemed to confirm the Settlers’ reasons for

distrusting robots. Fear and hatred of robots became one of the foundations of

Settler policy and philosophy. Robot hatred, coupled with the rather arrogant

Spacer style, did little to endear Settler to Spacer.

But still, sometimes, somehow, the two sides managed to cooperate,

however great the degree of friction and suspicion. People of goodwill on both

sides attempted to cast aside fear and hatred to work together--with varying

success.

It was on Inferno, one of the smallest, weakest, most fragile of the

Spacer worlds, that Spacer and Settler made one of the boldest attempts to

work together. The people of that world, who called themselves Infernals,

found themselves facing two crises. Their ecological difficulties all knew

about, though few understood their severity. Settler experts in terraforming

were called in to deal with that.

But it was the second crisis, the hidden crisis, that proved the greater

danger. For, unbeknownst to themselves, the Infernals and the Settlers on that

aptly named world were forced to face a remarkable change in the very nature

of robots themselves...

--Early History of Colonization, by Sarhir Vadid,

Baleyworld University Press, S.E 1231

THE blow smashed into her skull.

Fredda Leving’s knees buckled. She dropped her tea mug. It fell to the

floor and shattered in a splash of brown liquid. Fredda crumpled toward the

ground. Her shoulder struck the floor, smashing into the broken shards of the

cup. They slashed into her left shoulder and the left side of her face. Blood

poured from the wounds.

She lay there, on her side, motionless, curled up in a ghoulish mockery

of the fetal position.

For the briefest of moments, she regained consciousness. It might have

been a split second after the attack, or two hours later, she could not say.

But she saw them, there was no doubt of that. She saw the feet, the two red

metallic feet, not thirty centimeters from her face. She felt fear,

astonishment, confusion. But then her pain and her injury closed over her

again, and she knew no more.

ROBOT CBN-001, also known as Caliban, awoke for the first time. In a

world new to him, his eyes switched on to glow a deep and penetrating blue as

he looked about his surroundings. He had no memory, no understanding to guide

him. He knew nothing.

He looked down at himself and saw he was tall, his body metallic red.

His left arm was half-raised. He was holding it straight out in front of him,

his fist clenched. He flexed his elbow, opened his fist, and stared at his

hand for a moment. He lowered his arm. He moved his head from side to side,

seeing, hearing, thinking, with no recollection of experience to guide him.

Where am I, who am I, what am I?

I am in a laboratory of some sort, I am Caliban, I am a robot. The

answers came from inside him, but not from his mind. From an on-board

datastore, he realized, and that knowledge likewise came from the datastore.

So that is where answers come from, he concluded.

He looked down to the floor and saw a body lying on its side there, its

head near his feet. It was the crumpled form of a young woman, a pool of blood

growing around her head and the upper part of her body. Instantly he

recognized the concepts of woman, young, blood, the answers flitting into his

awareness almost before he could form the questions. Truly a remarkable

device, this on-board datastore.

Who is she? Why does she lie there? What is wrong with her? He waited in

vain for the answers to spring forth, but no explanation came to him. The

store could not--or would not--help him with those questions. Some answers, it

seemed, it would not give. Caliban knelt down, peered at the woman more

closely, dipped a finger in the pool of blood. His thermocouple sensors

revealed that it was already rapidly cooling, coagulating. The principle of

blood clotting snapped into his mind. It should be sticky, he thought, and

tested the notion, pressing his forefinger to his thumb and then pulling them

apart. Yes, a slight resistance.

But blood, and an injured human. A strange sensation stole over him, as

he knew there was some reaction, some intense, deep-rooted response that he

should have--some response that was not there at all.

The blood was pooling around Caliban’ s feet now. He rose to his full

two-meter height again and found that he did not desire to stand in a pool of

blood. He wished to leave this place for more pleasant surroundings. He

stepped clear of the blood and saw an open doorway at the far end of the room.

He had no goal, no purpose, no understanding, no memory. One direction was as

good as another. Once he started moving, there was no reason to stop.

Caliban left the laboratory, wholly and utterly unaware that he was

leaving a trail of bloody footprints behind. He went through the doorway and

kept on going, out of the room, out of the building, out into the city.

SHERIFF’S Robot Donald DNL-111 surveyed the blood-splattered floor,

grimly aware that, on all the Spacer worlds, only in the city of Hades on the

planet of Inferno could a scene of such violence be reduced to a matter of

routine.

But Inferno was different, which was of course the problem in the first

place.

Here on Inferno it was happening more and more often. One human would

attack another at night--it was nearly always night--and flee. A robot--it was

nearly always a robot--would come across the crime scene and report it, then

suffer a major cognitive dissonance breakdown, unable to cope with the direct,

vivid, horrifying evidence of violence against a human being. Then the med-

robots would rush in. The Sheriff’s dispatch center would summon Donald, the

Sheriff’s personal robot, to the scene. If Donald judged the situation

warranted Kresh’ s attention, Donald instructed the household robot to waken

Sheriff Alvar Kresh and suggest that he join Donald at the scene.

Tonight the dismal ritual would be played out in full. This attack,

beyond question, required that the Sheriff investigate personally. The victim,

after all, was Fredda Leving. Kresh must needs be summoned.

And so some other, subordinate robot would waken Kresh, dress him, and

send him on his way here. That was unfortunate, as Kresh seemed to feel Donald

was the only one who could do it properly. And when Alvar Kresh woke in a bad

mood, he often flew his own aircar in order to work off his tension. Donald

did not like the idea of his master flying himself in any circumstances. But

the thought of Alvar Kresh in an evil mood, half -asleep, flying at night, was

especially unpleasant.

But there was nothing Donald could do about all that, and a great deal

to be done here. Donald was a short, almost rotund robot, painted a metallic

shade of the Sheriff’s Department’s sky-blue and carefully designed to be an

inconspicuous presence, the sort of robot that could not possibly disturb or

upset or intimidate anyone. People responded better to an inquisitive police

robot if it was not obtrusive. Donald’s head and body were rounded, the sides

and planes of his form flowing into each other in smooth curves. His arms and

legs were short, and no effort had been made to put anything more than the

merest sketch of a human face on the front of his head.

He had two blue-glowing eyes, and a speaker grille for a mouth, but

otherwise his head was utterly featureless, expressionless.

Which was perhaps just as well, for had his face been mobile enough to

do so, he would have been hard-pressed to formulate an expression appropriate

to his reaction now. Donald was a police robot, relatively hardened to the

idea of someone harming a human, but even he was having a great deal of

trouble dealing with this attack. He had not seen one this bad in a while. And

he had never been in the position of knowing the victim. And it was, after

all, Fredda Leving herself who had built Donald, named Donald. Donald found

that personal acquaintance with the victim only made his First Law tensions

worse.

Fredda Leving was crumpled on the floor, her head in a pool of her own

blood, two trails of bloody footprints leading from the scene in different

directions, out two of the four doors to the room. There were no footprints

leading in.

“Sir--sir--sir?” The robotic voice was raspy and rather crudely

mechanical, spoken aloud rather than via hyperwave. Donald turned and looked

at the speaker. It was the maintenance robot that had hyperwaved this one in.

“Yes, what it is?”

“Will she--will she--will she be all--all right right?” Donald looked

down at the small tan robot. It was a DAA-BOR unit, not more than a meter and

a half high. The word-stutter in his speech told him what he knew already.

Before very much longer, this little robot was likely to be good for little

more than the scrap heap, a victim of First Law dissonance.

Theory had it that a robot on the scene should be able to provide first

aid, with the medical dispatch center ready to transmit any specialized

medical knowledge that might be needed. But a serious head injury, with all

the potential for brain damage, made that impossible. Even leaving aside the

question of having surgical equipment in hand, this maintenance robot did not

have the brain capacity, the fine motor skills, or the visual acuity needed to

diagnose a head wound. The maintenance robot must have been caught in a

classic First Law trap, knowing that Fredda Leving was badly injured, but

knowing that any inexpert attempt to aid her could well injure her further.

Caught between the injunction to do no harm and the command not to allow harm

through inaction, the DAA-BOR’s positronic brain must have been severely

damaged as it oscillated back and forth between the demands for action and

inaction.

“I believe that the medical robots have the situation well in hand,

Daabor 5132,” Donald replied. Perhaps some encouraging words from an authority

figure like a high-end police robot might do some good, help stabilize the

cognitive dissonance that was clearly disabling this robot. “I am certain that

your prompt call for assistance helped to save her life. If you had not acted

as you did, the medical team might well not have arrived in time.”

“Thank thank thank you, sir. That is good to know.”

“One thing puzzles me, however. Tell me, friend--where are all the other

robots? Why are you the only one here? Where are the staff robots, and Madame

Leving’s personal robot?”

“Ordered--ordered away,” the little robot answered, still struggling to

get its speech under greater control. “Others ordered to leave area earlier in

evening. They are in are in the other wing of the laboratory, And Madame

Leving does not bring a personal robot with her to work.”

Donald looked at the other robot in astonishment. Both statements were

remarkable. That a leading roboticist did not keep a personal robot was

incredible. No Spacer would venture out of the house without a personal robot

in attendance. A citizen of Inferno would be far more likely to venture out

stark naked than without a robot--and Inferno had a strong tradition of

modesty, even among Spacer worlds.

But that was as nothing compared to the idea of the staff robots being

ordered to leave. How could that be? And who ordered them to go? The

assailant? It seemed an obvious conclusion. For the most fleeting of seconds,

Donald hesitated. It was dangerous for this robot to answer such questions,

given its fragile state of mind and diminished capacity. The additional

conflicts between First and Second Laws could easily do irreparable harm. But

no, it was necessary to ask the questions now. Daabor 5132 was likely to

suffer a complete cognitive breakdown at any moment in any event, and this

might be the only chance to ask. It would have been far better for a human,

for Sheriff Kresh, to do the asking, but this robot could fail at any moment.

Donald resolved to take the chance. “Who gave this order, friend? And how did

you come to disobey that order?”

“Did not disobey! Was not present when order given. Sent--I was sent--on

an errand. I came back after.”

“Then how do you know the order was given?”

“Because it was given before! Other times!”

Other times? Donald was more and more amazed. “Who gave it? What other

times? Who gave the order? Why did that person give the order?”

Daabor 5132’s head jerked abruptly to one side. “Cannot say. Ordered not

to tell. Ordered we were ordered not to say we were sent away, either--but now

going away caused harm to human harm harm harm--”

And with a low strangling noise, Daabor 5132 froze up. Its green eyes

flared bright for a moment and then went dark.

Donald stared sadly at what had been a reasoning being brief moments

before. There could be no question that he had chosen rightly. Daabor 5132

would have failed within a few minutes in any event.

At least there was the hope that a skilled human roboticist could get

further information out of the other staff robots.

Donald turned away from the ruined maintenance robot and turned his

attention back toward the human victim on the floor, surrounded by the med-

robots.

It was the sight that had destroyed the Daabor robot, but Donald knew he

was, quite literally, made of sterner stuff. Fredda Leving herself had

adjusted his First, Second, and Third Law potential with the express purpose

of making him capable of performing police work.

Donald 111 stared at the scene before him, feeling the sort of First Law

tension familiar to a sheriff’s robot: Here was a human being in pain, in

danger, and yet he could not act. The med-robots were here for that, and they

could aid Fredda Leving far more competently than he ever could. Donald knew

that, and restrained himself, but the First Law was quite clear and emphatic:

A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human

being to come to harm. No loopholes, no exceptions.

But to aid this human would be to interfere with the work of the med-

robots, thus at least potentially bringing harm to Fredda Leving. Therefore,

to do nothing was to aid her. But he was enjoined against doing nothing, and

yet to aid her would be to interfere--Donald fought down the tremors inside

his mind as his positronic brain dealt with the same dissonance that had

destroyed Daabor 5132. Donald knew that his police-robot adjustments would see

to it he survived the episode, as he had so many in the past, but that did not

make it any less unpleasant.

Humans, on the other hand: These days, the sight of blood and violence

scarcely bothered Alvar Kresh. Human beings could get used to such things.

They could adapt. Donald knew that was so intellectually, he had observed it,

but he could not understand how it was possible. To see a human in distress,

in danger, to see a human as the victim of violence, even dead, and to be

unmoved--that was simply beyond his comprehension.

But human or robot, the police saw a lot, especially on Inferno, and

experience did make it easier in some ways. The paths of his positronic brain

were well worn with the knowledge of how to deal with this situation, however

disturbing that might be. Stay back. Observe. Gather data. Let the meds do

their work.

And then wait for the human, wait for Alvar Kresh, wait for the Sheriff

of the city of Hades.

The med-robots worked on the still form, rushing to stabilize her,

ensure her blood supply, patching up the gashes in her shoulder and face,

attaching monitor pads and drug infusers, moving her to a lift stretcher,

shrouding her in blankets, inserting a breather tube into her mouth, cocooning

her from sight behind their protections and ministrations. And that is how it

should be, Donald thought. Robots are the shield between humans and the

dangers of the world.

Though the shield had clearly failed this time. It was a miracle that

Fredda Leving was even alive. By all appearances the attack had been

remarkably violent. But who had done this, and why?

The observer robots hovered about, recording the images of this scene

from every angle. Maybe their data would be of some use. Let them soak in all

the details. Donald shifted his attention to the two sets of bloody footprints

that led from the body. He had already tracked them out as far as they went.

Both sets of prints faded away into invisibility after only a hundred meters

or so, and he let it go at that. Police technical robots were already using

molecular sniffers to try to extend the trails, but they wouldn’t get

anywhere. They never did.

But there was no missing the key fact, the vital piece of evidence. And

no denying the horrible, unthinkable conclusion they suggested.

Both sets of footprints were robotic. Both sets. Donald, designed,

programmed, trained in police work, could not avoid making the obvious and

terrifying inference.

But it could not be. It couldn’t be.

Donald devoutly wished for Alvar Kresh to arrive. Let a human take over,

let someone who could get used to such things deal with the impossible thought

that a robot could have struck Fredda Leving from behind.

THE night sky roared past Sheriff Alvar Kresh, and the scattered lights

of buildings in Hades’s outskirts gleamed bright below. He looked up into the

dark sky and saw the bright stars glowing down at him. A beautiful night, a

perfect night for a speed run over the city, something he only got the chance

to do on official business, and he had to be in a foul mood.

He did not care for being awakened in the middle of the night, did not

care for anyone but Donald helping him to dress.

He tried to cheer himself up, to soothe himself. He looked out into the

night. Tonight was the best weather Hades had had in a long time. No

sandstorms, no dust-haze. There was even a fresh tang of seawater blowing in

off the Great Bay.

At least he could burn off his adrenaline and his anger by flying his

aircar himself, rather than leaving the chore to a robot. He took a certain

pride in that. Few humans even knew how to fly an aircar. Most people felt the

chore of controlling an aircraft beneath them. They let the robots do it. No

doubt most people thought it was damned odd that Alvar liked to fly his own

car. But few people were likely to say that to the Sheriff’s face.

Alvar Kresh yawned and blinked, and punched the coffee button on the

aircar’s beverage dispenser. He was alert, clear-eyed, but there was still a

shroud of tiredness over him, and the first sip of the coffee was welcome. The

aircar sped on through the night as he flew it one-handed, drinking his

coffee. He grinned. Lucky Donald isn’t here, he thought. It was stunts like

flying one-handed that made it all but impossible for him to fly his own car

when Donald, or indeed any robot, was on board. One false move and the robot

would instantly leap into the copilot’s seat and take over the craft’s

controls.

Ah, well. Maybe the Settlers sneered at robots, but no Spacer world

could function for thirty seconds without them. That having been said, the

damned things could be incredibly infuriating all the same.

Alvar Kresh forced himself to calmness. He had been roused from a sound

sleep in the dead of night, and he knew from bitter experience that

interrupted sleep made him more edgy than usual. He had learned long ago that

he needed to do something to take the edge off himself when he was too keyed

up, or else he was likely to take someone’ s head off instead.

Alvar breathed the cool thin air. A nightflight over the desert at speed

with the top open and the wind howling through his thick thatch of white hair

helped drain away some of his temper, his tension.

But crimes of violence were still rare enough in Hades for him to take

them personally, to get angry and stay that way. He needed that anger. This

savage and cowardly attack on a leading scientist was intolerable. Maybe he

did not agree with Fredda Leving’s politics, but he knew better than most that

neither the Spacer worlds in general nor Inferno in particular could afford

the loss of any talented individual.

Alvar Kresh watched as the city swept by below him, and began to slow

the aircar. There. The aircar’s navigation system reported that they were

directly over the Leving Robotics Labs. Alvar peered over the edge of the car,

but it was difficult to get a fix on the precise building at night. He eased

the car to a halt, adjusted its position over the landscape slightly, and

brought it down to the ground.

A robot ground attendant hurried over to the car and opened the door for

him. Alvar Kresh stood up and stepped out of the car, into the night.

There was a busy rummaging-about going on. A red and white ambulance

aircar squatted on the ground near Kresh’s car, its lift motors idling, its

running lights on, obviously ready to lift off the moment its patient was

aboard. A squad of med-robots bustled through the main door of the lab, two of

them carrying a stretcher, the others holding feed lines and monitoring

equipment hooked up to the patient. Leving herself was not quite visible under

the tangle of life-support gear. A human doctor lounged by the hatch of the

ambulance, watching the robots do the work. Alvar stood still and let the

robots pass as they carried the victim from the scene of the crime.

He watched, his anger rising inside him, as the meds carried her into

their van, and watched as the indolent human doctor eased his way into the

ambulance behind his busy charges. How could anyone commit such violence

against another human being? he asked himself.

But raw, unchanneled anger would not help catch Fredda Leving’s

assailant. Remain calm, he thought. Keep your anger controlled, focused. Alvar

Kresh lifted his hand to a med-robot that was carrying a first-aid kit back to

the ambulance. “What is the condition of your patient?” he asked.

The gleaming red and white med-robot regarded Kresh through glowing

orange eyes. “She received a severe head injury, but no irreparable trauma,”

it said.

“Were her injuries life-threatening?” Kresh asked.

“Had we been delayed in reaching Madame Leving, her injuries could

easily have been fatal,” the robot said, a bit primly.

“However, she should recover completely, though there is the distinct

possibility that she will suffer traumatic amnesia. We shall place her in a

regeneration unit as soon as we reach the hospital.”

“Very good,” Kresh said. “You may go.” He turned and watched the last of

the med team climb into the ambulance and take off into the night. Good that

she would recover, but it could be very bad indeed if she did suffer amnesia.

People with holes in their memories made for bad witnesses. But the words of

the med-robots changed the nature of the case. Her injuries could easily have

been fatal. That changed a simple assault with a deadly weapon case into one

of attempted murder. At last he turned to go inside the building, to see what

Donald and his forensic team had come up with.

“ALL right, Donald,” Kresh said as he came in, “what have you got?”

“Good evening, Sheriff Kresh,” Donald replied, speaking with a smooth

and urbane courtesy. “I am afraid we do not have a great deal. The crime scene

does not tell us much that we can use, though of course you may well note

something we have missed. I have not been able to form a satisfactory

interpretation of the evidence. Did you have the opportunity to examine my

update regarding the maintenance robot’s statements?”

“Yes, I did. Damn strange. You did right to get the data out of him, but

I don’t want to take any chances on the rest of the staff robots. I don’t even

want to get near them myself. I want the department’s staff roboticists to

interview them all--carefully.” Normally the police roboticists dealt with

robots who had been tricked into this or that by con artists skilled in lying

to robots and convincing them to obey illegal orders under some carefully

designed misapprehension. A man could make a pretty fair living convincing

household robots to reveal their masters’ financial account codes. It would do

the roboticists good to deal with something a little out of the ordinary.” But

we can worry about that tomorrow. Is the scene clear?”

“Yes, sir. The observer robots have completed their basic scan of the

area. I believe you can examine the room without danger of destroying clues,

so long as you practice some care.”

Alvar looked closely at Donald. After a lifetime of dealing with robots,

he still did that, still looked toward the machines as if he could read an

emotion or a thought in their expressions or postures. On some robots, on the

very rare ones that mimicked human appearance perfectly, that was at least

possible. But there were precious few of those on Inferno, and with any other

robot type the effort was pointless.

Even so, the habit gave him a moment of time to consider the indirect

meaning of the robot’s words. No “satisfactory interpretation of the

evidence.” What the hell did that mean? Donald was trying to tell him

something, something the robot did not choose to say directly, for fear of

presuming too far. But Donald was never cryptic without a purpose. When Donald

got that way, it was for a reason. Alvar Kresh was tempted to order Donald to

explain precisely what he was suggesting, but he restrained his impatience.

It might be better to see if he could spot the point that was bothering

Donald himself, evaluate it independently without prejudgment. There was, of

course, precious little a robot would miss that a human could notice. Much of

what Donald had said was so much deferential nonsense, salve for the ego. But

the words Donald had used were interesting: “The crime scene does not tell us

much that we can use.” As if there were something there, but something

distracting, meaningless, deceptive. So much for avoiding prejudgment, Alvar

thought sardonically. That was the trouble with robot assistants as good as

Donald--you tended to lean on them to much, let them influence your thinking,

trust them to do too much of the background work. Hell, Donald could probably

do this job better than me, Alvar thought.

He shook his head angrily. No. Robots are the servants of humans,

incapable of independent action. Alvar stepped through the doorway, fully into

the room, and began to look around.

Alvar Kresh felt a strange and familiar tingle course through him as he

set to work. There was always something oddly thrilling about this moment,

where the case was opened and the chase was on. A strange chase it was, one

that started with Alvar not so much as knowing who it was that he pursued.

And there was something stranger still, always, about standing in the

middle of someone’ s very private space with that person absent. He had stood

in the bedrooms and salons and spacecraft of the dead and the missing, read

their diaries, traced their financial dealings, stumbled across the evidence

of their secret vices and private pleasures, their grand crimes and tiny,

pathetic secrets. He had come to know their lives and deaths from the clues

they left behind, been made privy by the power of his office to the most

intimate parts of their lives. Here and now, that began as well.

Some work places were sterile, revealing nothing about their

inhabitants. But this was not such a place. This room was a portrait of the

person who worked here, if only Alvar could learn to read it.

He began his examination of the laboratory. Superficially, at least, it

was a standard enough setup. A room maybe twenty meters by ten. Inferno was

not a crowded world by any means. People tended to spread out. By Inferno

standards it was an average-sized space for one person.

There were four doors in all, in the corners of the room, set into the

long sides of the room: two on the exterior wall, leading directly to the

outside, and two on the opposite, interior wall, leading into the building’ s

hallway. Alvar noted that the room was windowless, and the doors were heavy;

they appeared to be light-tight. Close them, cut the overhead lights, and the

room would be pitch-black. Presumably they did some work with light-sensitive

materials in here. Or perhaps they tested robot eyes. Would the reason for, or

the fact of, a light-tight room be important or meaningless? No way to know.

Alvar and Donald stood by one of the interior doors, toward what Alvar

found himself thinking of as the rear of the room. But why is this end the

rear? he wondered. No one specific thing, he decided. It was just that this

end of the room seemed more disused. Everything was boxed up, in storage. The

other end clearly was put to more active use.

Work counters ran most of the length of the room, between the pairs of

doors. There were computer terminals on the counters. The walls held outlets

for various types of power supplies, and two or three hookups Kresh could not

identify. Special-purpose datataps, perhaps.

Every square centimeter of the countertops seemed to have something on

it. A robot torso, a disembodied robot head, a stack of carefully sealed

boxes, each neatly labeled Handle with Care. Gravitonic Brain. Alvar frowned

and looked at the labels again. What the devil were gravitonic brains? For

thousands of years, all robots had been built with positronic brains. It was

the positronic brain that made robots possible. Gravitonic brains? Alvar knew

nothing at all about them, but the name itself was unsettling. He did not

approve of needless change.

He filed away the puzzle for future reference and continued his survey

of the room. All of the room’ s side counters were full of all sorts of

mysterious-looking tools and machines and robot parts. Yet there was no feel

of chaos or mess about the room; all was neat and orderly. There was not even

so much as an air of clutter. It was merely that this entire room was in

active use by someone who seemed to have several projects going at once.

Two large worktables sat in the center of the room. A half -built robot

and a bewildering collection of parts and tools were spread out on one table,

while the other was largely empty, with just a few odds and ends here and

there around the edges.

Wheeled racks of test equipment stood here and there about the room. A

huge contraption of tubing and swivels stood between the two tables. It was

easily three meters tall, and took up maybe four meters by five in floor

space. It was on power rollers, so it could be pushed out of the way when not

in use.

“What the devil is that thing?” Alvar asked, stepping toward the center

of the room.

“A robot service rack,” Donald replied, following behind. “It is

designed to clamp onto a robot’s hard-attachment points and suspend the robot

at any height and in any attitude, so as to position the needed part of the

robot for convenient access. It is used for repairs or tests. I thought it a

large and awkward thing to keep in the middle of the room. It would certainly

interfere with easy movement between the two worktables, for example.”

“That’ s what I was thinking. Look, you can see the empty space along

the wall on the rear end of the room. They rolled it over there when they

weren’t using it. So why is it out in the middle of the room? What good is an

empty robot rack?”

“The clear implication is that there was a robot in it recently,” Donald

said.

“Yes, I agree. And notice the empty space on the center of the empty

worktable. About the right size for another robot there, too. Unless they

moved the same robot from the table to the rack, or vice versa. Maybe that was

the motive for the attack? The theft of one or two experimental robots? We’ll

have to check on all that.”

“Sir, if I could direct your attention to the floor in front of the

service rack, Fredda Leving’s position on it has been marked out--”

“Not yet, Donald. I’ll get there. I’ll get there.” Alvar was quite

purposefully ignoring the pooled blood and the body outline in the center of

the room. It was too easy to be distracted by the big, obvious clues at a

crime scene. What could the body outline tell him? That a woman had been

attacked here, bled here? He knew all that already. Better to work the rest of

the room first.

But one thing was bothering him. This room did not match Fredda Leving’s

character. He knew her slightly, from the process of ordering Donald, and this

place did not fit her. It had the feel of a male domain, somehow. Tiny details

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ISAACASIMOV’SCALIBANBYROGERMacBRIDEALLENTofivewondrouscreatures,namedintheorderoftheirappearanceonthisplanet:AaronVictoriaBentonJonathanAndMeredithAcknowledgmentsThisbookwouldnothavebeenpossiblewithoutthesupport,andespeciallythepatience,ofDavidHarris,JohnBetancourt,ByronPreiss,SusanAllison,GinjerBuc...

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