Caliban

BLEND in,Caliban told himself.Observe what the other robots do. Behave as they do. Already, he had developed the sophistication to know his very survival might depend on acting like the others. He walked back and forth across Hades, watching and learning, shuttling back and forth across the city as day crossed the sky and night came on.

6

GUBBER Anshaw paced the floor of his living room in fretful distraction. They had to have found her by now. Surely they had. But had she survived? The question clawed at his soul. She had been alive when he had left, of that much he was certain. Surely a robot had found her and saved her. That place was teeming with robots. Except, of course, Gubber himself had ordered all the robots to stay away that night. He had forgotten that in his panic.

But that pool of blood, the terrible way her face was cut, the way she lay sostill. He should have stayed, he should have risked all and tried to help. But no, his own fears, his own cowardice, had prevented that.

And Tonya! His own dear, dear Tonya! Even in the midst of his anguish, Gubber Anshaw found a moment in his thoughts to marvel once again that such a woman would care, could care, for a man like Gubber Anshaw. But now, perhaps, caring for him had only placed her in danger.

Unless, of course, it wasshe who had placedhim in danger. A tight knot of suspicion pulled taut in his chest. How could he even think such thoughts? But how could he avoid them?

There were so many questions he dared not ask, even of himself. How mixed up in all thiswas she? He had sacrificed greatly, perhaps had sacrificedall for her. Had he been right to do so? What would be the consequences of his actions? What had he done that night?

He glanced toward the comm panel. Every alert light on it was blinking. The outside world was trying to reach him over every sort of comm link he had. No doubt word from Tonya was there, waiting for him with all the others. No doubt she had wangled access to the police reports by now. And no doubt she would know just how eager he was to see those reports.

Gubber Anshaw paced the floor, worrying, waiting, forcing down the impulse to look at the wall clock. He had covered it with a cloth long ago, anyway. Perhaps hisreflexes directed his glance toward the clock, but his conscious self most definitely did not want to know what the time was. He no longer had even the remotest idea how much time had passed, whether or not it was day or night. He could have found out in an instant, of course, by pulling the cover off the clock or by asking a robot. But there was some part of him that urgently resisted knowing.

In some irrational corner of himself, he was sure he could no longer hide from the universe if he knew what time it was. So long as the hour and the day were hidden from him, he could imagine himself cut off, outside the flow of time, cocooned away behind his shut-down comm panel and his robots, safe inside his little sanctuary, no longer part of the outside world.

And yet sooner or later, he would have to come out of his house. He would have to step back into time, back into the world. He knew that. But he knew also that his guilty knowledge, the fact of his guilty action, would keep him inside a while longer.

And Tonya. Tonya. There were two questions about her that swirled about his mind:

What part had she played in the story?

And, once this was over, what time would. she have for a coward too scared to leave his own house?

“ALL right, now, li’l robot-point the blaster at your head.” The small repair-services unit turned the nozzle of the blaster on itself, its glowing green eyes staring right down the barrel of the weapon.

Reybon Derue chortled in drunken hysteria, knowing in some strange, still-sober part of himself how pointless it all was. But, bored with the work, despised by the locals, what else was there for a Settler laborer to do but get drunk? Well, the answer was right in front of him. Robot bashing.

Except they did not do straight bashing. That had been too easy. What challenge in beating a robot down to scrap when the robot would not, could not, resist? No, this way was far more amusing, and took more skill. There weren’t many people who could talk a robot into killing itself.

Except even inducing suicide was getting too easy, at least with certain classes of robots. With the more sophisticated machines, it took a long, elaborate discussion with a robot to get it into a state where it would accept an order to destroy itself. But with a unit as unsophisticated as the one in front of him, long practice had made the game too easy. The only tough part left was remembering to order the robots not to use their hyperwave systems to report bashing incidents to the authorities.

Maybe,Reybon thought,I’ve gotten too good at this to bother with the low-end ones. This one was almost too simple.

“Okay, very good, you tin excuse for a machine,” Reybon said, leaning closer. “Now fire the blaster.”

The robot fired, and its head vaporized. Its body fell to the floor and dropped the weapon. Reybon roared with laughter and kicked the robot’ s ruined carcass.

The floor was littered with the components of shattered robots. Reybon went over to a severed hand and kicked it clear across the floor of the abandoned warehouse. He stepped back, turned to his fellow laborers, who were sitting on packing cases in the middle of the room. He took a bow. They cheered wildly. One of them tossed him a bottle of something, and he caught it with the odd, neat, fluid dexterity some drunks have. He yanked the top off, and took a long pull from the bottle.

“Who’s next?” he demanded. “That one was too easy. Who’s go

Santee Timitz got up. “I’ll go,” she said. “Lemme go find one.” She ambled toward the door of the warehouse, moving a bit slowly. “I’ll get you areally good one.” The rest of the group found that absurdly fu

“Hey, hey, Reybon,” Denlo said. “Maybe it’s time we got going, huh? Deputy’s go

Reybon walked back to the gang lounging on the packing cases. “Ah, take it easy, Denlo. We’re okay. Santee’ll find us a good one.”

NIGHThad come, and still Caliban walked the streets of the city, watching, thinking, learning. Robots were utterly, totally subservient to humans, that much he was sure of. Whatever a human told a robot to do, that robot did. Why, he could not imagine.

Humans were weaker, slower, in. some ways at least far less intelligent and competent than robots. But even if the datastore contained no information on robots, Caliban had at least the resonances in the datastore, the remnant hints left behind by whoever had assembled the datastore and then excised the robot data. Those hints, those resonances, seemed to confirm his impression that robot subservience was irrational. In fact, the whispering mood-voice went further than that, implying, insinuating, that the situation was actually dangerous. Caliban had no way of judging that, or even of knowing if the whispers were real projections from the datastore’s creator, or a malfunction, a failure in his own perception.

Humans. They were the other side of the equation. Many of them seemed to have vast amounts of time for leisure. They lingered in restaurants, relaxed in the parks, read bookfilms in the backseat while the robots drove the cars. Robots had no leisure.

On the very few occasions in which Caliban saw a robot not working, not fetching or carrying or repairing or building, then that robot would bewaiting, standing stock -still, staring straight ahead, unwilling-or perhaps unable-to do anything at all unless it was told to do something. How could they not take advantage of spare moments to explore, enjoy, the world of which they were a part? Strange were the ways of the world; Caliban could better understand human behavior than that of his own kind.