Caliban

them that submission to his whims was essential if they were to prevent severe emotional and mental harm to their master. He did it emphatically enough to overcome the robots’ worries over his long-term deterioration.

That—and the absence of a sense of smell in robots—was why he was able to lie dead far more than long enough to rot. At last, Chestrie’s First Law potential forced him to break Gidi’s command to remain still. He checked on his master and found there was nothing he could do but notify the authorities.

Kresh and his partner entered a dank and fetid room, the walls covered with some sort of mold. The heap of discarded food containers at the back of the room was quite literally crawling with scavengers. But it was Gidi—or what was left of him—that Kresh still saw sometimes, deep in troubled sleep. That grinning, fly-covered corpse, that corpse with skin that moved, writhing and wriggling as the maggots inside fed on their host. The ghastly dribble of fluid that dripped from the foot of the bed, some horrible liquefied by-product of decay. The shriveled eyes, the fleshy parts of the ears and nose that were dried and blackened, starting to resemble bits of leather.

The coroner never bothered—or perhaps could not bring himself—to do an autopsy or determine the cause of death. He set it down as natural causes, and everyone was quite content to let it go at that, and never mind what sort of comment on Spacer society it was for such a death to be called natural.

No one, anywhere, ever, wanted to talk about it. Chestrie and the other robots were quietly destroyed, the house torn down, the grounds abandoned and left to their own devices. No one was even willing to go near the spot anymore. No one would so much as mention Gidi’s name.

Artists who had built their careers and reputations based on his praise suddenly found themselves not only without a sponsor but in the uncomfortable situation of having the merits of their work certified by a madman, or worse, having the direction of their work influenced by his opinions. No one was willing to deal with them. Some of them dropped out of the art world, while those with a bit more backbone started their careers all over again from scratch, and set about the task of remaking names for themselves without Gidi’s endorsement and guidance.

The only other visible effect of his death was that the fad of attending social events via screen and holograph died a sudden and quiet death.

It was cold comfort to assure oneself that Gidi had gone mad. After all, Gidi had started out sane and never realized he had crossed the line. His continued belief in his own rationality was right there in his journals. He spent much of his last days congratulating himself on the achievement of an orderly and sensible life.

If madmen did not know when they were crazy, how could anyone ever be sure they were sane? No one in the city of Hades ever looked at the question. No one ever talked about that, or any, aspect of the case.

But just how healthy was a society when the universal reaction to a horrible, real-life nightmare was to pretend it had never happened?

And how far was too far to go in letting the robots take care of everything?

Alvar grunted to himself. Not being aware of what your own body was doing while a robot got you ready for bed was clearly not a good sign.

“Donald!” he called out into the darkness.

There was a faint noise. It sounded as if Donald, standing in his niche on the opposite side of the room, had stepped forward a pace or two. Kresh could see nothing of him at first, but then the robot powered up his eyes, and Kresh spotted them, two faintly glowing spots of blue in the blackness. “Yes, sir.”

“Leave me,” Kresh said. “Spend the night somewhere else in the house besides my bedroom suite. Do not attend me in any way until I leave my bedroom in the morning. Instruct the rest of the house staff robots to do the same.”

“Yes, sir,” Donald said, speaking quite calmly and without surprise, just as if their morning routine had not been established decades before.

Alvar Kresh watched the two glowing eyes move toward the door, heard the door open and close, and heard Donald as he moved out into the hallway.

How many others? Alvar wondered. How many others of the people in that audience, how many of those who watched at home, were sending their robots away tonight, troubled by what Fredda Leving had said, determined to make a new start at living their own lives, rather than having the robots live them for them?

None of them? Millions? Somewhere in between? It was disturbing that he had no idea. He liked to think that he knew the people of Hades pretty well. But in this, he had no idea at all. Maybe he was not the only one remembering Davirnik Gidi tonight. And if that was so, then Fredda Leving had performed a real service tonight. People needed their eyes opened.

But then his thoughts turned toward the subject he had been trying not to think about. Caliban, lurking out there in the shadows. Lawless, uncontrolled, his mere existence likely to inspire fear and riot, and perhaps worse.

Alvar Kresh frowned angrily into the darkness. Maybe Fredda Leving had done some good tonight, but there was no doubt whatsoever that she had also committed a terrible crime.

And for that, she was going to pay.

16

CALIBAN sat in another patch of darkness in another stretch of tunnel. Alone, hunted, he kept himself in utter blackness, denying himself even infrared vision. He dared not do anything that might cause his detection. He had no desire to take any chances.

It was hard to think how things could get any worse, though up to now they had always found a way. He thought back over his disastrous attempt to seek help from a robot. At least, he had gotten a fair number of questions answered. Being shot at would seem to be a highly effective learning technique—if one could manage to survive the procedure. It certainly served to focus one’s attention.

But now he knew that he could not trust robots, either. They would inform on him, through this hyperwave system Horatio had mentioned. But there was something else he had learned. A subtle thing.

These Three Laws Horatio had mentioned. Both logic and something beyond logic, something hidden in the ghostly personality traces that floated through his datastore, told him that the Laws, whatever they were, were the key to it all. Learn what they were, learn how they worked, and he would have the puzzle solved.

Somehow, they were the key to the behavior of robots. That much he was sure of. They had something to do with the Settlers’ expectations that he would stand there passively and permit his own destruction. They would explain why that absurd little man had expected he, Caliban, to carry his packages. Knowing what the Laws were would explain why every hand was raised against him for the unpardonable crime of not knowing those Laws.

Logically there was no way for him to be certain that knowledge of the Laws would save him, but Caliban was coming to see that logic and reason were not by themselves reliable guides to thought and action, for the world itself was neither reasonable nor logical. Perhaps a logical being infused with the Laws could function successfully in this universe. Perhaps they provided some useful means of circumscribing action and thought, blocking off the parts of the world that seemed to be governed by irrational beliefs and random chance and the dead weight of the past.

If he learned the Laws, perhaps he would understand this world. It was at least a workable theory. Nor could he see how learning about the Laws could do him any particular harm. And if he found they proscribed thoughts and actions he wished to retain, why, then, he need not follow them. But merely knowing them was likely to be of great help, and unlikely to be of any harm.

But putting the Three Laws to one side, he was developing another theory. From all that he could see, it was the Sheriff and his subordinates that were his most dangerous enemies. Others might try to harm him, or call in a deputy when they saw him, but only the Sheriff and his deputies would actively hunt him down.

That theory could hurt him if it was wrong—and perhaps even if it was right. Yet he had no choice but to trust in it. For if he assumed that all beings, robotic and human, were as dangerous to him as the deputies, he was doomed. His only hope for survival would be in hunkering down in these tunnels permanently, and that was unacceptable.

He had two goals, then: to discover the nature of the Laws and to avoid the Sheriff. The longer he could