that’s going to be destroyed?” said Caliban.
“Precisely because it’s going to be destroyed,” said Fiyle with a grin. “That right there ought to make it a great place to disappear from. I can cook myself up a new identity, based in Depot, and say whatever I want about the new me. How’s anyone going to check the records, when Depot is a smoldering ruin? And maybe I’ll have a chance to fiddle the town records before they archive them and ship them off. Maybe the records will wind up saying I’m a prosperous businessman with a large bank balance. Once the town is flattened and the population is dispersed, who’ll be able to know for sure that I’m not?”
Caliban looked steadily at Fiyle for a full five seconds before he responded. “I must say you do think ahead,” he said. “I suppose it is yet another insight into the criminal mind.”
Fiyle grinned broadly and laughed. “Or perhaps,” he said, “merely an insight into the human mind.”
“That is a plausible suggestion,” said Prospero, “and therefore a most disturbing one. Farewell, Caliban. Farewell, Norlan Fiyle.”
“So long, Prospero,” Fiyle replied, a big sidelong grin on his exhausted face.
And then there was no more to say. Caliban rose up from his seat and climbed down from the aircar. Fiyle closed the door from the outside, and the aircar lifted off, straight up, leaving Caliban and Fiyle behind.
“Well,” said Fiyle, “if I’m going to try and disappear, might as well get started right away. So long, Caliban.”
“Goodbye, Fiyle,” Caliban said. “Take care.”
Norlan smiled again. “You do the same,” he said. He waved, turned around, and started walking down the still-darkened street.
Caliban looked back toward the aircar as it rose up and swing around to a southerly heading, a small dark smudge of deeper darkness against the slow-brightening dawn. Alone. That was the way he had wanted it. But even so, he could not rid himself of the sense that he had just parted from a vital part of himself. He had been, or at least almost been, one with the New Law robots for a long time.
And now. Now he was Caliban, Caliban the No Law robot. Caliban by himself, once again.
Somehow the thought did not bring him as much pleasure as he had expected.
NORLAN FIYLE FELT good as he strolled about the town. There was something about being out under an open sky, about knowing that the people looking for him were quite literally on the other side of the world. It felt good, very good, to walk along in the early morning through a town that was just beginning to wake up, knowing that he was out from under, that the game he had been playing was over and done with. It had not been easy playing the Settlers off against the Ironheads, all the while steering clear of the Inferno police in the middle. In the short term, a fellow could have a good run of luck at that sort of thing, bucking the odds, taking chances and getting away with it. But sooner or later, the odds would catch up. They had to. Law of nature. In the long run, there was only one way to win that sort of game—by getting out of it the first moment you could.
And he had. He was out.
He found a little cafe that served a very passable breakfast. He ate a leisurely meal at the table by the front window, and spent an hour or two in that most enjoyable of pastimes—watching other people rushing off to work while being under no obligation to do any such thing himself.
He paid his bill in cash, exchanged a pleasantry or two with the handsome woman behind the counter who combined the functions of manager, waitress, cook, and cashier, and ambled out into the dusty main street of Depot.
The next step was to find a place to stay, and then to pick up a few of the basic necessities. He had, after all, fled Hades with nothing but the clothes he was in, and a certain amount of cash. But Fiyle had lost everything he had a time or two before, and would quite likely do so again. The prospect did not bother him overmuch. There ought to be plenty of work in this town, seeing how the whole damn place was going to have to be packed up and shipped—
A hand came down on his shoulder. A man’s hand, small and thin-fingered, but wiry and strong.
“Dr. Ardosa,” a cool, unpleasant voice said in his ear. “Dr. Barnsell Ardosa. What a remarkable surprise to see you here, of all places. Except I suppose you’re not using that name anymore. Have you gone back to Norlan Fiyle for the time being? Or haven’t you picked out a new one yet?”
Fiyle turned around, and looked down just a trifle, straight into the eyes of Jadelo Gildern, the Ironhead chief of security. “Hello, Gildern,” he said slowly. “I suppose I might just as well stick with Norlan Fiyle, at least with you.”
Gildern smiled unpleasantly. “That makes sense to me,” he said. “But don’t you worry,” he said. “No one else needs to know who you really are—the Inferno police, for example, or the Settlers—as long as you keep me happy. Does that sound fair?”
“Yeah, sure,” said Fiyle, his voice a monotone.
“Good,” said Gildern. “Very good. Because until this very moment I was worrying about how I was going to staff things around here. It’s hard to find people with the right aptitude for intelligence work—especially among people who also have a strong motivation for keeping their employers happy.”
“Employers?” asked Fiyle, a cold, hard, knot forming in his stomach.
“That’s right,” said Gildern. “It’s your lucky day, Norlan. A very nice job opportunity has just fallen into your lap. Just between you and me, I don’t see how you can turn it down.”
Gildern stepped alongside Fiyle and put his hand on Fiyle’s forearm. It looked like a gentle, even friendly, gesture, but the fingers on his arm clamped down as tightly as any vise.
Jadelo Gildern led Norlan Fiyle away. And it was abundantly and unpleasantly clear to Norlan that he was nowhere near getting out of the game.
Part 3.
Impact Minus Thirty
14
THIS IS REAL, Davlo Lentrall told himself, once again. For the first time in your life, you are part of something real. You’re one of the ones actually doing the job. He sat down, exhausted, at the wardroom table, and set his tray down in front of him. Something Kaelor died to prevent, because it could kill so many. Davlo blinked and shook his head. It was hard to keep thoughts like that at bay. He knew he should eat, knew he needed to keep his strength up in order to keep working, but he was too tired to be hungry. He would just sit a moment by himself, before he forced himself to eat. He was in bad shape and losing weight, he knew that. But it took a real effort of will to care.
Why had they sent him here? Governor Grieg himself had suggested—or rather, politely ordered—that Davlo should join the spaceside part of the operation. Davlo was not entirely sure why. Had the governor thought it would be some sort of reward—rather than a torment—for Davlo to see the thing he had dreamed of taking place? Had the governor, quite accurately, perceived Davlo as borderline unstable, someone who might best be put out of the way before some clutch of reporters got their claws into him?
He looked out the porthole of the Settler spaceship, looked out into space, out at the realest thing he had ever seen in his life. There it was, just ten kilometers away. Comet Grieg, an ice mountain cruising through the darkness of space.
It was no abstraction inside a computer, no simulated image in a holographic generator. It was real. It was there. And it was huge, far larger than he had imagined it being, far larger than mere numbers could have told him. It took up half the sky, and seem to take up more. It was a dark, brooding shape of dirty gray, half lost in shadow. A monster out of the darkness, and, thanks to him, it was aimed straight at Inferno.
It was, roughly speaking, an oblong spheroid, but that made the shape of it sound simple and abstract. It
