Inferno

Grieg sighed. Typical Settler. Determined to do things the hard way. Grieg pushed a button on his desk, and the door slid open.

Verick stomped out, the door shut itself again. and that was that. Thank the stars all his meetings were not that unpleasant.

One last meeting, he told himself with a sigh, and it’s going to be just as damned tricky. No favors or rumors or backstairs gossip, no minor issue he could trade and dicker on, no preliminary meeting that was nothing more than pleasantries. No, this one might be worse than the one with Verick. This one went to the core of his most vital policies.

The door opened, and the last two petitioners of the night came in, precisely on time.

Grieg got up from his desk, stepped around it, and ushered the two of them in. “Come in, come in,” he said, forcing a cheerful smile onto his face. “The three of us have a lot to talk about. ”

Grieg perched himself on the corner of his desk as the two robots, Caliban and Prospero, sat themselves down.

Twenty minutes later the two robots stepped out into the still-wild night, the rain slamming down so hard as to bother even a robot. The footing was tricky, visibility was poor, and infrared vision was of no real use. But Caliban was in a hurry. He wanted to get away from the Residence as soon as possible.

In a world where everyone used aircars, there was no road back to town from the Residence for those who had no aircar, and Caliban and Prospero had to walk along on a poorly paved brookside path that was completely washed out in places. The going was treacherous. But Caliban knew that statement applied to more than the footpath. There were other dangers ahead.

“I have long thought there would come a point,” he told his companion, “where I would no longer support you or assist you, friend Prospero. We have now come to that point. What you have done tonight-what you have drawn me into tonight-goes quite beyond the pale. No amount of logic-chopping or parsimonious interpretation of the New Laws can justify it. Even I, with no Laws to guide me-or control me-found it hard to stand passively by. It greatly distresses me to see you as a party to such things-let alone be a party to them myself.”

“I am surprised to hear those words from you, Caliban,” Prospero said. “Of all the beings in the world, surely you can understand the importance of our cause. “

“It is your cause, not ‘ours. ’ “ There was an edge of vehemence that was startling in a robotic voice. “There is no reason I can see why I should consider it mine. New Law robots are more a danger to me than to anyone else. The more you transgress, the more I am harassed, and suspected by association.”

“And do you fear being suspected in tonight’s actions?”

“I fear far more than suspicion, “ Caliban said. “I fear being vaporized by a law officer’s blaster.”

The path ahead dipped down, and the brook had risen to engulf it altogether. But the only way out was forward, and there was no going back. Caliban stepped out into the water and forded across.

Donald turned the aircar into a descent pattern as they arrived at the hotel complex. He eased the car down into a landing next to Alvar’s guest villa and rolled the car forward into the villa’s covered garage.

Kresh thanked the stars he had rated at least a modest private villa rather than having to settle for one of the low-end three-room suites in the main hotel building. The island was so filled to bursting with visitors that even some of the higherranking guests had to sleep with two or three other parties on the same floor. But there were no such crowds for Kresh to contend with tonight, praise be. Like most Infernals, and most Spacers in general, Kresh did not care to have his quarters in close proximity to anyone else’s.

Thank the stars as well for a covered garage. Kresh did not much care for getting caught in the rain.

Just before the party, Kresh had overheard some Settler terraform tech explaining to a member of the Governor’s staff why they could not shut off the field that was shifting the wind and causing the rain just for the reception. Something about the windshifting project being in a delicate transition state, or something.

At least this weatherfield generator was working. There were four other such force field generators placed at strategic points on the planet-but all of them were centuries old, and none of the others were functional at the moment. They had been much used near-antiques when they had first been brought to Inferno for use during the original, inept, pe

The hatch sighed open and Kresh disembarked. Donald came out after him, then scooted out ahead of him to get the door to the villa itself.

Alvar Kresh followed the robot inside, moving almost more mechanically than Donald. He was tired. He reached his room and breathed a long, hard sigh of relief. It was over. The reception was ended, the guests had gone home, and the host was alive-if, perhaps, none too well pleased with Kresh. Well, if Grieg was a

Am I being paranoid? Kresh asked himself. Are the dangers as great as I think?

The answer to that was that the dangers might be real, and that was all that mattered to a policeman.

Governor Grieg was leading a revolution from above, and a lot of people didn’t like it. Revolutions made for complicated politics, caused fortunes to be made and lost, changed friends to enemies, enemies to friends. Shared assumptions turned into points of controversy during the night. The invaluable turned worthless, and what had been common became rare-and priceless. New ways of making a living, new ways of committing a crime, suddenly sprang up-and often it was hard to tell one from the other.

But none of that concerned Kresh. Not directly. Not tonight. What did bother him was another fact about revolutions: it was exceedingly rare for the people who began them to survive to their conclusions. Even a successful revolution often killed off its leadership.

Kresh did not even agree with most of what the Governor was trying to do. But it wasn’t his job to agree. His job was to maintain stability and public safety. Protecting the person of the Governor was part of that job. But in the capital city of Hades, Kresh had the power and capabilities, the resources, to protect the Governor effectively. Not here on the island of Purgatory. Here no one knew who was in control, who was in charge of what patch of turf at the moment.

Alvar removed his gun belt, hung it over the back of a chair, and sat down on the edge of the bed. He pulled off his boots, loosened the rather severe collar of his dress tunic, and flopped back on the bed, exhausted, glad to be alone.

Alone. Back before the Caliban crisis, it was unlikely that Kresh had ever in his life spent more than an hour at a time after him, fussing over him, attending to his every need and wish, including some wishes he had never needed to ask for-or, in fact, truly desired.

But solitude. That was something a robot could never give you, except by giving you nothing. Alone, without the slightest thought of how anyone-or anything-might react to your behavior. No need whatsoever to look over your shoulder, no sense at all of a robot worrying endlessly over your safety, no concern that some look or gesture or muttered word might be interpreted as an implied order. No moment when it was easier to cooperate with the wishes of a bothersome servant, rather than argue or negotiate past whatever imagined fear or perceived order the robot was determined to deal with. Grieg had had a point, talking to Donald about the tyra