Caliban

Jakdall gri

“Orders are to capture,” Mirta said warningly.

“Oh, yeah, they sure are. But it might get a little too hot for that.” Jakdall laughed and winked. “Come on, Spar.” Without thought or question, he turned toward the torn-out, smashed-up door on the south side of the alley.

Jakdall gestured for Spar to head in while Jak covered him. Spar hesitated just in front of the door, his eyes rolling nervously. He drew his weapon and did a wholly needless tuck-and-roll dive into the building. The interior was open to plain view-there was no one in there. That robot wasn’t going to duck inside the first room it came to and hide. Jak made ready to follow his partner in when suddenly there was a muffled roar and thump from the interior.

“Got him!” Spar’s voice cried out. Jak, Tansaw, and Mirta rushed inside. Spar was standing over the burned-out hulk of a small, moss-colored robot. Jak took one look at it and let out a string of curses. “Damn you, Spar, that robot’s green! It’s just a building maintenance unit.”

“I can’t help it,” Spar said in an agitated voice. “I’m colorblind.”

“Ah, the hell with it. Come on, we’ll search through there.” Jak turned toward Tansaw. “You two coming?”

“No, you guys go ahead,” Tansaw said. “We’ll stand watch here and make sure he doesn’t double back.” Mirta turned and looked at him sharply, but Tansaw gestured for her to be quiet, out of Jak’s line of sight. Jak gri

Mirta watched the two of them clump noisily out of the back room, headed toward the front of the building, then turned toward Tansaw, obviously seething. “Damnit, Meldor, do you have to let them steal our thunder when I practically bent the aircar in half getting us here? We should be hunting with them, not guarding some damn door!”

“Easy, Mirta. I just didn’t want us getting our heads blown off when Spar decides we’re robot-shaped. The rogue didn’t come through here. He just wanted us tothink he did. Look at the room. The door’s smashed to pieces but everything in here is untouched. Let those two maniacs blunder around in here. My guess is that the robot is smarter than Jak is-though that’s not really saying too much about the robot.” He turned and stepped back out into the alley, Mirta right behind him. The alley was filled with cops by now, two or three of them heading in the smashed-down door even as Tansaw and Mirta came out. Tansaw crossed the alley and tried the other door. It swung open easily. With a glance at Mirta, Tansaw stepped inside. He knew, absolutelyknew, that this was the way the robot had gone.

But he also knew he didn’t much like the idea of tracking a robot who was capable of thinking in terms of diversionary tactics. And that second piece of knowledge did much to remove the savor from the first piece.

They moved into the gloomy interior of the building. There was very little inside, merely a forest of packing cases that had never been cracked open. Hades was full of such buildings-designed, built, stocked with equipment by robots and forgotten. Most of the ghost buildings were like this one, wholly complete, but left vacant. The ghosts were gifts from on high to criminal gangs of all sorts, ideal places to meet, to hide out, perfect headquarters from which to run their scams and crimes.

It looked as if this building had gotten all the way to furniture delivery before being shut down. The crates were neatly stacked everywhere, turning the first floor into a maze of hiding places. And then there were the floors above and the subbasements and service tu

Then Mirta grabbed his arm and pointed her handlamp down at the floor.

Dust.The floor was covered in a smooth, perfect film of dust-with one set of distinctly robotic footprints leading off into the interior, moving at a smooth and confident pace.

The two deputies followed the line of footprints through the canyons of packing cases. They led straight for a stairwell, its door standing open. Moving cautiously, Mirta and Tansaw went inside, to be greeted by a cool breeze blowing down the shaft, which apparently also served as part of the ventilator system. But the air currents meant no dust deposits here. No footprints. Damn it. All right, then. Up or down? Which way did he go?

“He headed straight for the stairs,” Mirta said, her voice a loud whisper.

“So what does that tell us?” Tansaw asked.

“That he knows where he’s going. He must have a good internal map system. He’s not moving in a panic. He’s got a plan, he’s thinking ahead.”

“Which means he must have figured out that heading up isn’t going to do him any good. We’ d be able to seal off the building and bottle him up. So he went down into the service tu

“Right.” Mirta holstered her gun and pulled her tracker/mapper out of her tunic. She worked the controls and consulted the screen. “Not so bad around here,” she said. “I only show one main horizontal shaft co

“Can we seal it before he can use it to get to another tu

“We can try,” Mirta said. “It’ll be close, one way or the other.” She brought her comm mike around to her mouth. “This is Deputy 1231, in rapid pursuit of suspect. Request immediate seals on all accesses to city tu

Tansaw looked up at his partner and nodded. “It’s time to call in the others,” he said.

CALIBAN heard the booming thuds of the tu

Tu

Suddenly Caliban had an idea. He consulted his datastore and confirmed that humans saw in a far more limited range of light wavelengths than he did. Nor, it appeared, did their bodies provide any source of built-in illumination. He turned around and hurried back down the tu