Isaac Asimov - Caliban

“It would be terrible, sir. And I might add that the very news of a robot behaving as Caliban has—well, it would be likely to cause permanent dysfunction in many, many robots. Still, the danger to humans that Caliban represents—”

“Must be weighed against the danger of moving too soon. If we start out now, with the information we have, what are we going to do? Arrest all the tall red robots? Or why stop there? Maybe our friend Caliban can disguise himself by slapping on a fresh coat of paint, or by exchanging his long arms and legs for short ones.”

“With the result that all robots will be distrusted. Which would be the intended result of a Settler plot. If the plot exists. Yes, sir, I see the difficulty.”

“It’s about all I can see at this point,” Kresh said, feeling very much like a tired old man. “But we can’t move on this Caliban robot until we have more data. We can’t do a search of the entire city. We need better information. But let us be ready if things break quickly. Relay an order for increased rapid-response air patrols. If we get lucky and spot him somewhere, I want a deputy on top of him within two minutes.”

“Very well, sir. That will no doubt be sufficient to—” Suddenly Donald’s head cocked to one side, as if he were listening to something only he could hear—and that was not far from the truth. Kresh was familiar with the mannerism. Donald’s on-board communications system was receiving a message.

“Who’s calling, Donald?” Alvar asked.

“One moment, sir. It is a timelock-secured message. I will have to wait for the synchronization burst to decode it. One moment. Ah, there it is. You are ordered to meet with the Governor tomorrow morning, first thing, seven hours from now.”

Kresh groaned. “Devil take it all. The man’s politics are bad enough. Does he have to get up at insane hours as well?”

But there was no real response to that question, and Donald offered none. At last Alvar Kresh sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Home, Donald,” he said. “I want to see that damned lecture before I see the Governor. I’ve had it up to here with knowing less than everyone else.”

“THEY’D only let me in, Fredda. Not Gubber. The police robots won’t let him in until the Sheriff has—”

“Oh, be quiet, Jomaine. I know the law. My head hurts enough as it is.” Fredda Leving leaned her head back against her pillow and shut her eyes. The throbbing was getting worse. But she could not take anything for it. Not yet. Not yet. She would have to be sharp, be careful, even with Jomaine. Especially with Jomaine. First, she had to take precautions against being monitored. It had been pointless before when there was a police robot in the room, but it was vital now. She would have to phrase the order carefully if it was to do any good.

She cleared her throat and spoke. “I order all robots in the room or monitoring this room in any way to forget all conversation that takes place between the time of this order and the next time I clap my hands three times within a period of five seconds. To remember any such conversation, or to report it, would almost certainly cause me harm.” That ought to do it, unless the police had an actual human operative listening in on some hidden microphone, or a nonrobotic recording system working. But those possibilities were absurdly remote. Spacers used robots for everything.

Which was, of course, the entire problem.

She turned toward Jomaine. “All right, I think we can talk now. Sit down and tell me what you know.”

Jomaine Terach did as he was told, but it didn’t take long for him to report the little that he was privy to. Not his fault, not really. Fredda had quite deliberately kept him in the dark, for everyone’s sake. He couldn’t tell what he didn’t know—a fact that, in balance, was very much to her advantage at the moment. Gubber was enough of a risk. A well-informed Jomaine in Kresh’s hands was a thought not to be contemplated. Still, he could at least serve to fill her in on any details Kresh had seen fit to leave out of his narrative.

Jomaine ran true to form, speaking overcarefully, working through all the details in a relentlessly orderly fashion, but even so it took him very little time to finish—no doubt in part because the crime scene was still sealed. No one not associated with the investigation had gotten into Gubber’s lab yet. Indeed, it appeared that Jomaine did not even know that a robot was missing from the lab.

Fredda nodded her head thoughtfully after Jomaine had stopped. He had not really contributed a great deal to her store of knowledge. Caliban was gone, either escaped or stolen. Someone had attacked her and stolen her notes. But what he did not say told her it could have been worse. That was not to say that a great deal of damage had not been done, but just now she would take whatever small comfort she could. “And that’s it?” she asked. “Nothing else to report?”

Jomaine got to his feet, rather apologetically, and pulled a palm-sized computer pad from his pocket. “There’s nothing more that I can tell you,” he said, “but Gubber gave this to me for you. He seems to have some rather special sources of information.” He handed her the pad and looked her straight in the eye, standing over her bed in a strangely formal, careful posture. It was obvious that he did not like what he was part of, but that he was determined to make the best of it and behave as correctly as possible. He pointed to the computer pad he had just given her. “I have not read that report,” he said, “and I’m not going to. I don’t want to know anything more. I have told you all I know, but none of what I think, and I expect that you will prefer it that way.

“To be quite blunt about the matter, my ideas about what you’re doing scare three kinds of hell out of me. Therefore, I would ask that you have the kindness to wait until I have left the room to look this over.”

Fredda Leving stared at her assistant in astonishment for a full thirty seconds before she could find voice enough to speak. Never had the man been so bold or blunt. “Very well, Jomaine. Thank you for your honesty and discretion.”

“I would suggest that those are two qualities we have all had in short supply recently,” he said sharply. The expression on Terach’s pointed face softened a bit, and he reached out to touch her on the shoulder. “Rest, Fredda, heal,” he said in a warm and gentle voice. “Even if none of this had happened, you’d need all your strength for tomorrow night.”

Fredda smiled wanly and sighed. “You didn’t need to remind me,” she said. Tomorrow night’s presentation might well decide more fates than her own.

Jomaine Terach turned and left, leaving Fredda alone with her thoughts and Gubber Anshaw’s computer pad. She was almost afraid to read it. Gubber had some amazing sources of information. Fredda had decided long ago that she did not want to know what those sources were.

Fredda hardly dared wonder what he had come up with this time. She started to read the information in the pad. Three paragraphs into it she was so terrified she could scarcely see well enough to read it. For what she read in the computer pad made all the rest of her worries seem like no worries at all.

Good lord, where the hell had Gubber gotten this stuff? It looked like he had gotten his hands on the complete police reports of her attack, raw information not yet analyzed or put in order. Two sets of bloody robotic footprints? What the devil could that mean?

And the other reports—on the Ironhead riot at Settlertown and the robot basher/arson incident in the warehouse district. Sweet Fallen Angel, yes, Caliban had given his name to a witness there and she, Fredda, had just given it to Kresh as well. They had the link. They knew, or thought they knew, all they needed to know about Caliban.