Caliban

4

SIMCOR Beddle lifted his left hand, tilted his index finger just so, and Sanlacor 123 pulled back his chair with perfect timing, getting it out from behind him just as Simcor was getting up, so that the chair never came in contact with Simcor’s body as he rose.

There was quite a fashion for using detailed hand signals to command robots, and Simcor was a skilled practitioner of the art.

Simcor turned and walked away from the breakfast table, toward the closed door to the main gallery, Sanlacor hard on his heels. The door swung open just as he arrived at it. The Daabor unit on the other side of the door had no other job in the world but to open it. The machine marked out its existence by standing there, watching for anyone who might approach from its side of the door, and listening for footsteps from inside the room.

But Simcor Beddle, leader of the Ironheads, had no time to think about how menial robots spent their days. He was a busy man.

He had a riot to plan.

Simcor Beddle was a small, rotund man, with a round sallow face and hard, gimlet eyes of indeterminate color. His hair was glossy black, and just barely long enough to lie flat. He was heavy-set, there was no doubt about that. But there was nothing soft about him. He was a hard, determined man, dressed in a rather severe military-style uniform.

Managing his forces, that was the main thing. Keeping them from getting out of control was always a problem. His Ironheads were a highly effective team of rowdies, but they were rowdies all the same—and as such, they easily grew restive and bored. It was necessary to keep them busy, active, if he were to keep them under any sort of control at all.

No one quite knew where the Ironheads had gotten their name, but no one could deny it was appropriate. They were stubborn, pugnacious, bashing whatever was in their way whenever they saw fit. Maybe it was that stubbornness that earned them their name. More likely, though, it was their fanatical defense of the real Ironheads—robots. Well, granted, no one used anything as crude as raw iron to make robot bodies, but robots were as hard, as strong, as powerful, as iron.

Not that the Ironheads held robots themselves in any special esteem. If anything, Ironheads were harder on their robots than the average Infernal. But that was not the point. Robots gave humans such freedom, such power, such comfort. Those things were the birthright of every Infernal, indeed of all Spacers, and the Ironhead movement was determined to preserve and expand that birthright by any means necessary.

And making life unpleasant for the Settlers certainly fit into that category.

Simcor smiled to himself. That was getting to be a bad habit, thinking in speeches like that. He crossed to the far side of the gallery, toward his office, and another door robot swung the door wide as he approached. He entered the room, quite unaware of Sanlacor moving ahead of him to pullout his chair from his desk for him.

But he did not sit down. Instead, he made a subtle gesture with his right hand. The room robot, Brenabar, was at his side instantly, bringing Simcor’s tea. He took the cup and saucer and sipped thoughtfully for a moment. He nodded his head a precise five degrees down toward the desktop, and spoke one word. “Settlertown.”

Sanlacor, anticipating his master, was already at the view controls, and in less than a second, the bare desktop was transformed into a detailed map of Settlertown. Simcor handed his teacup to the empty air without looking, and Brenabar took it from him smoothly.

Kresh’s deputies were sure to be ready for them, after last night. Simcor had superb connections inside the Sheriff’s Department, and he knew everything Kresh knew about the attack on Fredda Leving. In fact, he knew quite a bit more. He had heard a recording of that lecture of hers. Damnable, treasonous stuff. Simcor smiled. Not that she was likely to make any more such speeches. Everything was working his way.

But he had to concentrate on the plans for today. He had to assume the Sheriff’s Department was ready for trouble. Once the Ironheads started the ruckus, they would only have a few minutes before the law stepped in to protect the damned Settlers.

So they would have to do as much damage as possible in those first few minutes. Under the circumstances, it was too much to hope they would be able to penetrate the underground section of Settlertown again. No sense wasting effort in the attempt. This time, it would have to be on the surface, at ground level. Simcor Beddle lay his hands on the desktop and stared thoughtfully at the map of his enemy’s stronghold.

IT was morning in the city of Hades. Caliban knew that much for certain, if very little else of any substance. By now he was no longer sure what he knew.

But he was beginning to believe something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong.

It was as if Caliban’s utterly blank memory and the precise but limited information in the datastore were the double lenses of a distorted telescope, utter ignorance and expert knowledge combining to twist and warp all he saw. The world his eyes and mind presented to him was a crazed and frightening patchwork.

In the busiest part of the city’s midtown, he turned off the sidewalk and found a bench set in a quiet corner of a tiny park, well out of sight from any casual passersby. He sat down and began reviewing all that he had seen as he had walked the streets of Hades.

There was something distinctly unreal, and somewhat alarming, about the world around him. He had come to realize just how clean, perfect, idealized, precise were the facts and figures, maps, diagrams, and images that leapt up from the datastore. But the real-world objects that corresponded to the datastore’s concepts were far less precise.

Further exploration confirmed that false voids and featureless buildings were not the only flaws in the datastore map.

The map likewise did not report which blocks were busy, full of people and robots, and which were empty, semi-abandoned, even starting to decay.

Some new buildings had materialized since the map was stored in his datastore, and other, older buildings that seemed whole and complete in the datastore had vanished from reality.

No image in the datastore showed anything to be worn-out or dirty, but the real world was full of dust and dirt, no matter how vigorously the maintenance robots worked to keep it all clean.

Caliban found the differences between idealized definitions and real-world imperfections deeply disturbing. The world he could see and touch seemed, somehow, less real than the idealized, hygienic facts and images stored deep inside his brain.

But it was more than buildings and the map, or even the datastore, that confused him.

It was human behavior he found most bewildering. When Caliban first approached a busy intersection, the datastore showed him a diagram of the correct procedure for crossing a street safely. But human pedestrians seemed to ignore all such rules, and common sense, for that matter. They walked wherever they pleased, leaving to the robots driving the groundcars to get out of the way.

Something else about the datastore was strange, even disturbing: There was a flavor of something close to emotion about much of its data. It was as if the opinions, the feelings, of whoever implanted the information into the datastore had been stored there as well.

He was growing to understand the datastore on something deeper than an intellectual level. He was learning the feel of it, gaining a sense of how it worked, developing reflexes to help him use it in a more controlled and useful manner, keep it from spewing out knowledge he did not need. Humans had to learn to walk: That was one of many strange and needless facts the datastore had provided. Caliban was coming to realize that he had to learn how to know, and remember.

Confusion, muddle, dirt, inaccurate and useless information—those he could perhaps learn to accept. But it was far more troubling that, on many subjects, the datastore was utterly—and deliberately—silent. Information he most urgently wanted was not only missing but excised, purposely removed. There was a distinct sensation of emptiness, of loss, that came to him when he reached for data that should have been there and it was not. There were carved-out voids inside the datastore.

There was much he desperately wanted to know, but there was one thing in particular, one thing that the store did not tell him, one thing that he most wanted to know: Why didn’t it tell him more? He knew it should have been able to do so. Why was all information on that place where the sign said Settlertown deleted from the map? Why had all meaningful references to robots been deleted? There was the greatest mystery. He was one, and yet he scarcely knew what one was. Why was the datastore silent on that of all subjects?

Humans he knew about. At his first sight of that woman he saw when he awoke, he had immediately known what a human was, the basics of their biology and culture. Later, when he glanced at an old man, or one of the rare children walking the street, he knew all basic generalities concerning those classes of person—their likely range of temperament, how it was best to address them, what they were and were not likely to do. A child might run and laugh, and adult was likely to walk more sedately, an elder might choose to move more slowly still.

But when he looked at another robot, one of his fellow beings, his datastore literally drew a blank. There was simply no information in his mind.

All he knew about robots came from his own observation. Yet his observations had afforded him little more than confusion.

The robots he saw—and he himself—appeared to be a cross between human and machine. That left any number of questions unclear. Were robots born and raised like humans? Were they instead manufactured, like all the other machines that received detailed discussion in the datastore? What was the place of the robot in the world? He knew the rights and privileges of humans—except as they pertained to robots—but he knew nothing at all of how robots fit in.

Yes, he could see what went on around him. But what he saw when he looked was disturbing, and baffling. Robots were everywhere—and everywhere, in every way, robots were subservient. They fetched and they carried, they walked behind the humans. They carried the humans’ loads, opened their doors, drove their cars. It was patently clear from every scrap of human and robot behavior that this was the accepted order of things. No one questioned it.

Except himself, of course.

Who was he? What was he? What was he doing here? What did it all mean?

He stood up and started walking again, not with any real aim in mind, but more because he could not bear to sit idle any longer. The need to know, to understand who and what he was, was getting stronger all the time. There was always the chance that the answer, the solution, was just around the corner, waiting to be discovered.

He left the park and turned left, heading down the broad walkways of downtown.

HOURS went by, and still Caliban walked the streets, still deeply confused, uncertain what he was searching for. Anything could contain the clue, the answer, the explanation. A word from a passing human, a sign on a wall, the design of a building, might just stimulate his datastore to provide him with the answers he needed.

He stopped at a corner and looked across the street to the building opposite. Well, the sight of this particular building did not cause any torrent of facts to burst forth, but it was a strange-looking thing nonetheless, even considering the jarringly different architectural styles he had seen in the city. It was a muddle of domes, columns, arches, and cubes. Caliban could fathom no purpose whatsoever in it all.

“Out of my way, robot,” an imperious voice called out behind him. Caliban, lost in his consideration of things architectural, did not really register the voice. Suddenly a walking stick whacked down on his left shoulder.

Caliban spun around in astonishment to confront his attacker.

Incredible. Simply incredible. It was a tiny woman, slender, thin-boned, easily a full meter shorter than Caliban, clearly weaker and far more frail than he was. And yet she had deliberately and fearlessly ordered him about, instead of merely stepping around him, and then struck at him—using a weapon that could not possibly harm him. Why did she not fear him? Why did she have such obvious confidence that he would not respond by attacking her, when he could clearly do so quite effectively?

He stared at the woman for an infinite moment, too baffled to know what to do.

“Out of my way, robot! Are your ears shorting out?”

Caliban noticed a crowd of people and robots starting to form around him, one or two of the humans already betraying expressions of curiosity. It would clearly be less than prudent to remain here, or attempt to respond when he so clearly did not understand. He stepped aside for the lady and then picked a direction, any direction but the one she had taken, and started walking again. Enough of aimless wandering. He needed a plan. He needed knowledge.

And he needed safety. Clearly he did not know how to act like a robot. And the expressions, some of them hostile, he had seen on the faces of the passersby told him it was dangerous to be peculiar in any way.

No. He had to lie low, stay in the background. Safer to blend in, to pretend to be like the others.

Very well, then. He would blend in. He would observe the behavior he saw around himself, work determinedly to get lost among the endless sea of robots around him.

KRESH walked the streets of Hades at the same hour, though with more certain purpose. He found that it helped to clear his head and refocus his attention if he got away from his office, got away from the interrogation rooms and evidence labs, and stretched his legs under the dark blue skies of Inferno. There was a cool, dry wind blowing in from the western desert, and he found that it lifted his spirits. Donald 111 walked alongside him, the robot’s shorter legs moving almost at double time in order to keep up with Alvar.

“Talk to me, Donald. Give me an evidence summary.”

“Yes, sir. Several new facts have come to light from the hospital and our forensic lab. First and foremost, we have confirmed that the bloody footprints match the tread patterns of a standardized robot body model manufactured at Leving Labs. That robot body is a large general-purpose model, used with various brain types and body modifications for various purposes. The length of the footprints’ stride precisely matches that of the standard specification for that robot body model. The wound on Fredda Leving’s head corresponds to the shape and size of the arm of the same robot type, striking from the rear and to the left of the victim, from an angle consistent with Fredda Leving’s height and the height of that robot model—though all of those measurements are approximate, and any number of other blunt instruments would match, and a whole range of heights, forces, and angles would also be consistent with the wound.

“Microtraces of a red paint found in Madame Leving’s scalp wound likewise correspond to a paint used on some robots at Leving Labs, though it has not been definitively established that the paint in question was used on the robot model in question. I might add that it could not be immediately established whether the microtraces were from fresh or fully dried and hardened paint, as it was some hours before the labtech robots secured the samples. Further tests should answer that question.”

“So the only suspect we are offered is a robot. That’s impossible, of course. So it had to be a human—a Settler—posing as a robot. Except even a Settler who had been on the planet five minutes would know that it is impossible for a robot to attack a human. Why bother to plant doctored evidence we will refuse to believe?”

“That point has bothered me as well,” Donald said. “But even if we assume a Settler was involved in this crime, we must assume that the Settler in question knew more about robots than the average Spacer.”

“What do you mean?”

“Consider the detailed familiarity and access to robot equipment required to stage this attack,” Donald replied. “The assailant would have to build and wear shoes with robot foot-tread soles and then replicate the gait of a specific robot. He or she would have to use a surplus robot arm—or an object that closely matched it—as a blunt instrument, and strike in such a manner as to match a blow from that robot arm. He or she would need access to the proper materials to stage the attack, and have the mechanical skill to build or modify the needed robot body parts. To be blunt, sir, a human capable of staging this attack could not possibly be stupid enough or sufficiently ignorant of robots to dream that we would think a robot did it.”

“But then what was the motive for staging the attack in that manner?” Kresh asked. He thought for a moment. “You said this footprint and arm are off a very standard robot model. How many of them out there?”

“Several hundred. Several thousand if you include all the variants.”

“Very well, then. That means there have been several thousand opportunities to steal a robot, or secure a defective one, and strip it for parts—the feet and arms and so forth. Or hell, the assailant could simply get hold of a robot and yank the positronic brain. He or she could plug in a remote-control system with a video-link back to the controller. Let the controller walk the robot body up to the unsuspecting victim—after all, who would suspect a robot?

“And using a remotely operated robot body that would look like a normal robot would have to be less suspicious than wearing robot-tread boots and carrying a robot arm around. And by working from a remote location, the assailant could hide his or her identity. Another thing: If I popped someone on the head, I’d want to get away fast. Yet those footprints were of a walking gait, not a run. That points toward a remotely controlled robot, one with a fairly limited remote-control system that could manage a walk but not a run.”

“Except the attacker did not leave immediately. He or she—or it—remained for some time after the attack, at least thirty seconds or a minute.”

“How do you know that?” Kresh asked. “Ah, of course, the footprints. They went through the outer edges of the pooled blood, so they had to have been made after Leving had bled long enough to produce a large pool of blood. Damn it! That makes no sense. Why the devil would the attacker stay behind? Not to make sure Leving was dead, obviously, because she wasn’t. But we’re digressing. You suggested that the assailant would know that we’d know that a robot could not commit the crime. Therefore, the assailant had an alternate motive for disguising the attack as coming from a robot. What would that be? Why such an elaborate setup?”

“To afford the chance to get lost in the crowd later,” Donald suggested. “Let me offer a hypothetical variation on the facts by way of example. We now have an impossible suspect, a robot. Let me offer another impossible suspect to make my point, though I must ask you not to take offense at a hypothetical example.”

“Of course not, Donald. Go on.”

“All right. If someone decided to plant clues to make it appear that, for example, you had attacked Fredda Leving, that would limit the search for the assailant to those persons with the ability to plant those clues. Someone who could steal a pair of your shoes, or manage to plant strands of your hair, or your fingerprints, at the scene. But if that someone chose to plant clues that pointed equally well to several thousand identical and impossible suspects—”

“Our search is made far larger. Yes. Yes, I see that. An excellent point, Donald. But there is still another question. What of the second set of footprints?”

“If you will grant, for the sake of argument, my original premise, that the effort to make this seem like a robot attack was made because we would know it was impossible a robot did it, I can offer an answer. If we further assume that the motive for that nonconvincing subterfuge was to disguise the real assailant, then I suggest that a single assailant deliberately made one set of bloody tracks, walked far enough that all traces of the blood were worn off, then simply doubled back and walked through the blood again. Again, the idea would be to confuse the search.”

“It seems an awfully risky thing to do for a fairly minor advantage,” Kresh objected.

“If, as you suggest, the attacker was using a remotely controlled robot body, as opposed to merely wearing robot boots and carrying a robot arm, there could be no risk in the gambit. At worst, someone might have come in during the assailant’s absence and been there to capture the false robot, with the real attacker at the controls, perhaps many kilometers away.”

“Yes. Yes. Now they would have us looking for two robots, or two people trying to disguise themselves as robots, when there was really only a single, human assailant. That’s a lovely theory, Donald, just lovely.”

“There is another note: Our robopsychologists have completed the preliminary interrogation of the staff robots at Leving Labs. Their results are, I think, astonishing.”

“Are they indeed?” Kresh asked dryly. “Very well, then, astonish me.”

“First, this is by no means the first time the staff robots have been instructed to stay out of the main wing of the labs. They have been told to get out many times before, usually but not always at about the hour of the attack, but always when the lab was more or less empty. This merely confirms what Daabor 5132 told me the night of the attack. However, the second point provides fresh and remarkable data.”

“Very well, go on.”

“Every single robot flatly refused to identify who had given the order. Our robopsychologists unanimously agree that the block restraining them is unbreakable. The psychologists took several robots to and past the breaking point, pressuring them to answer, and all refused to talk right up to the moment they brainlocked. The robots died rather than talk, even when told that their silence might well allow Fredda Leving’s attacker to go free.”

Alvar looked at Donald in amazement. “Burning devils. It’s almost unheard-of for a block to be that good. Whoever placed it must have done a damned convincing job of saying harm would certainly come to himself—or herself—if the robots talked.”

“Yes, sir. That is the obvious conclusion. There would be no other way to keep a robot from refusing to assist the police in capturing a murderer. Even so, it would require a human with remarkable skill in giving orders, and an intimate knowledge of the relative potentials of the Three Laws as programmed into each class of robot, to resist police questioning. I would venture a guess that it was only the shock of seeing Fredda Leving unconscious and bleeding that allowed Daabor 5132 to say as much as it did before expiring.”

“Yes, yes. But why was this order given more than once? Why would the order-giver need that sort of privacy repeatedly?”

“I cannot say, sir. But the last point is perhaps the most remarkable. The block was placed with such skill that no human at the lab was even aware that the block had been placed. A whole lab full of robot specialists never even noticed that all the robots would not, could not, talk about being ordered to clear off again and again. The degree of skill required to—”

Suddenly Donald stopped moving and seemed to come to attention. “Sir, I am receiving an incoming call for you from Tonya Welton on your private line.”

“Devil and fire, what the hell does that woman want? All right, put her through. And you might as well give me full visual.”

Donald turned his back on Kresh. A flat vertical televisor panel extruded itself from between his shoulders and slid up behind the back of his head. As it rose up, it was showing a shifting abstract pattern, but then it resolved to a sharp image of Tonya Welton. “Sheriff Kresh,” she said. “Glad I got through to you. You should come here, to Settlertown, now.”

Kresh felt a sharp stab of anger. How dare she order him around? “There’s not that much new at this end, Madame Welton,” Kresh said. “Perhaps if we delayed our next meeting until I’ve had a chance to develop more information—”

“That’s not why I need you, Sheriff. There’s something you should see. Here, in Settlertown. Or more accurately, over it.”

Donald spoke, swiveling his head a bit. “Sir, I am now receiving reports from headquarters confirming a disturbance in Settlertown.”

Kresh felt a knot in the pit of his stomach. “Burning hellfire, not again.”

“Oh, yes, again,” Welton said, cool anger in her voice. “Deliberate provocation, and I don’t know how calm I can keep my people. Your deputies are here, of course—but it’s worse than last time. Much worse.”

Kresh shut his eyes and wished desperately for things to stop happening. Not that such wishes were likely to come true any time soon. “Very well, Madame Welton. We’re on the way.”