Caliban

“If we leave Robopsychologist Patras to her own devices, I expect we will have all that information in very short order. Meantime, we have all been looking forward to Fredda Leving’s second lecture with great anticipation. We shall be landing at the auditorium in approximately eight minutes. I expect that a great number of our questions will be answered as we listen to her.”

“I hope so, Donald. I sure as hell hope so.”

The aircar flew on.

FREDDA Leving paced back and forth backstage, pausing every minute or two to peek through the curtain.

Last time there had not been much of a turnout. Call it a testimony to the power of rumor and speculation, but tonight the auditorium was a madhouse. It had been designed to hold a thousand people and their attendant robots, with the robots sitting behind their owners on low jumper seats. But the thousand seats were long ago filled, and could have been filled again.

After a massive struggle, the management had got everyone in, a feat accomplished by the expedient of ejecting all the robots and giving places to the overflow crowd. The whole operation of getting people into their seats was taking a while. Fredda’s talk was going to have to start a bit late.

She peeked through the curtain again and marveled at the crowd. Word had certainly gotten out, that was clear. Not only about her first talk, but about the mysterious rogue robot Caliban, and the fast-swirling rumors of Settler robot-sabotage plots. There was endless speculation regarding the important announcement due to be made tonight. The whole city was whispering, full of unbelievable stories—most of them flatly wrong.

Tonya Welton and her robot, Ariel, were backstage with Fredda, and though Fredda supposed they had to be there, under the circumstances, it was not going to be easy talking to this crowd with the Queen of the Settlers on the stage, glaring icily down.

Governor Grieg himself was backstage, too, ready to show his support, for whatever that was worth just now.

Gubber Anshaw and Jomaine Terach were here as well, about as calm and relaxed as two men awaiting the executioner. The Governor wasn’t looking very at ease, either. Only Tonya Welton looked relaxed. Well, why not? If things went wrong, her worst-case scenario was that she got to go home.

There were a fair number of Settlers in attendance, sitting off by themselves on the right side of the house. By the looks of them, they weren’t exactly the most gentle or refined examples of their people. Rowdies, to put it bluntly. Tonya said she had made no arrangements for a Settler contingent. So who had set it up, and who had chosen this bunch of toughs to attend?

Maybe they were friends of the robot bashers who had been arrested. Maybe they were here to do a little paying back for the latest Settlertown incident. Whoever they were, Fredda had not the slightest doubt they were hoping there was an excuse for trouble.

Fredda stole one last peek around the edge of the curtain, and what she saw this time made her curse out loud. Ironheads. What better excuse for trouble could there be? A whole crew of them, maybe fifty or sixty, easily identifiable by the steel-grey uniforms they insisted on wearing for some reason, and Simcor Beddle himself in attendance. At least they had been seated at the rear left of the auditorium, as far as possible from the Settlers.

Sitting in the center of the front row was Alvar Kresh. Fredda surprised herself by being glad to see him. Maybe things wouldn’t get out of hand. His robot, Donald, was still in the auditorium, no doubt coordinating security. Fredda counted at least twenty deputies in the auditorium, lined up along the walls in the niches usually reserved for robots. They looked to be ready for anything—except who in the world could know what to be ready for?

She sighed. If only this roomful of people, and the words she was about to say, were all she had to worry about. But life was not that simple. There was the Caliban crisis, and now these garbled reports about Horatio and some sort of trouble at Limbo Depot. What the devil had happened there?

She stared again at Kresh. He knew. He knew what had happened to Horatio, and she had no doubt whatsoever that he was closing in on the real story behind Caliban as well.

She felt her head throbbing slightly and put her hand up to her turbaned head. She felt the small, discreet bandage on the back of her head under the hat. At least the turban would hide her shaved head and the bandage. No doubt everyone here knew she had been attacked, but there was no need to advertise it.

She stepped back from the curtain and found herself pacing the stage, lost in thought, lost to the world. But that was too lonely, too nerve-racking. She needed to speak to someone. She turned to her two associates, who were doing their own nervous waiting.

“Do you really think they’ll listen, Jomaine?” she asked. “Do you, Gubber? Do you think they’ll accept our ideas?”

Gubber Anshaw shook his head nervously. “I—I don’t know. I honestly can’t say which way they’ll jump.” He knitted his fingers together and then pulled his hands apart, as if they were two small animals he was having trouble controlling. “For all we know, they’ll form a lynch mob at the end of the night.”

“Nice of you to go out of your way to make Fredda feel better, Gubber,” Jomaine said acidly.

Gubber shrugged awkwardly and rubbed his nose with the tips of his fingers, his hand stiff and flat. “There’s no call for you to talk that way to me, Jomaine. Fredda asked for my honest opinion—and, and—I gave it to her, that’s all. It’s no reflection on you, Fredda, nor on our work, if the people choose not to accept what you say. We always knew there was a risk. Yes, I was unsure about signing on to the project in the first place, but you long ago convinced me that your approach makes sense. But you said it yourself enough times: You are challenging what amounts to the state religion. If there are enough hard-core true believers out there—”

“Oh, stuff and nonsense,” Jomaine said wearily. “The only thing close to robotics worship is the Ironhead organization, and their only belief is that robots are the magic solution to everything. They’re here looking for a reason to cause trouble. It’s the only reason they go anywhere. And I promise you—if we don’t give them a reason for a fight, they’ll do their best to find one. The only question is whether the police are here in enough force to keep them from succeeding.”

“But what about the rest of the people out there?” Fredda asked.

“My dear, you are not going to manage a blanket conversion tonight,” Jomaine said in a far gentler voice. “At best you will open a debate. If we are lucky, people will start thinking about what you say. Some will take one side, some another. They will argue. If we are lucky, things that people have taken for granted all their lives will suddenly be topical issues. That is the best we can hope for.” Jomaine cleared his throat delicately, a prim little noise. “And,” he added in rather dry tones, “the fact that you are going to present them all with one hell of a fait accompli at the end of the evening should intensify that debate, just ever so slightly.”

Fredda smiled. “Yes, I suppose you’re right. It’s not going to be over tonight.” She turned toward Gubber again, but noticed he had wandered off toward the other end of the stage, and was chatting with Tonya Welton while the Governor sat waiting quietly at the table. “It’s gotten to Gubber more than any of us, hasn’t it?” Fredda said. “Since all this started, he’s in the worst shape I’ve ever seen him.”

Jomaine Terach grunted noncommittally. Gubber was undoubtedly even more tightly strung than usual, but Jomaine was not entirely convinced it had all that much to do with ‘the Caliban crisis’ or the N.L. robots. Jomaine could not imagine that conducting a supposedly secret romance with Tonya Welton would be all that relaxing an activity.

Did Fredda know about the affair? It seemed at least possible she did not. The way gossip moved through the average workplace, the boss was often the last to know. Should I tell her? he asked himself for the hundredth time. And for the hundredth time, he came to the same conclusion. Given the strained relations between Leving Labs and the Limbo Project—in other words, between Fredda and Tonya—Jomaine could see no point in telling Fredda and giving her something else to worry about.

“Come on, Fredda,” he said. “It’s nearly time to start again.”

“WE cannot talk here!” Tonya hissed angrily under her breath. She hated this, but there was no help for it. Here was Gubber, not half a meter from her. And instead of reaching out to him, throwing her arms around him, and