Isaac Asimov - Caliban

Damn it, who the hell had let him out of the lab? Fredda had known right along that Caliban’s earliest hours would be highly formative. That was why she had delayed powering him up for so long. She wanted all the conditions ideal when she did.

But look at the first hours he had had instead. He must have been at the very least a witness to the attack on her. Then he must have wandered the city, seen the subservient behavior of robots. That must have been damned confusing to him. She had deliberately edited out all information regarding robots from his datastore.

Hell’s bells, how long had she worked on that datastore, carefully tailoring the information it contained? At best, all that work was now wasted.

At worst, it would wildly skew Caliban’s view of the world. And on top of all that, for him to get mixed up with a mob of robot bashers…

Fredda Leving let the computer pad drop to the bed and slumped backwards, eyes shut, her stomach tied in a knot, her head a suddenly revitalized world of pain. Why? she wondered. Why did it have to be this way?

She thought about what Caliban had seen so far: violence, brutality, his own kind treated as slaves and worse. He had been given no other influences to shape his mind and viewpoint.

But that was far from the worst of it. Now Alvar Kresh was on the hunt, with every move Kresh made likely to reveal the truth at the wrong time and the wrong place. One accidental wrong move on Kresh’s part could smash down the political house of cards that was all that might save Inferno.

Fredda Leving felt her heart grow cold with fear.

Trouble was, she was not quite sure what to be afraid for.

Or afraid of.

GUBBER Anshaw knew he was not a courageous man, but at least he had the courage to admit that much to himself. He had the strength of character to understand his own limitations, and surely that had to count for something.

Well, it was comforting to tell himself that, at any rate. Not that such self-understanding was much use under the present circumstances. But be that as it may. There were times when even a coward had to do the right thing.

And now, worse luck, was one such time. He watched as Tetlak, his personal robot, guided Gubber’s deliberately undistinctive aircar through the dark of night toward Settlertown. The aircar slowed to a halt, hung in midair waiting for Settlertown’s traffic and security system to query the car’s transponder and see that it was on the preapproved list. Then the ground opened up beneath them as a fly-in portal to the underground city granted them entrance. The car flew down through the depths, down into the great central cavern of Settlertown, and came in for a landing.

Gubber used a hand gesture to order Tetlak to stay with the car, then got out himself. He walked to the waiting runcart and got in. “To Madame Welton’s, please,” he said as he settled in. The little open vehicle took off the moment he sat down. Gubber barely had time to reflect on the unnerving fact that there was no conscious being in control of the cart before he was delivered to Tonya’s quarters.

He walked to her doorway and stood there for a moment before he remembered to press the annunciator button. Normally that was something his robot would do for him. But Tetlak made Tonya nervous sometimes, and he had no wish for unneeded awkwardness. It was bad enough that he had come without calling ahead.

A sleepy Tonya Welton opened the door and looked upon her visitor in surprise. “Gubber! What in the Galaxy are you doing here?”

Gubber looked at her for a moment, raised his hand uncertainly, and then spoke. “I know it was risky to come, but I had to see you. I don’t think I was followed. I had to come and say—say goodbye.”

“Goodbye!” Tonya’s astonishment and upset were plainly visible on her face. “Are you breaking it off because—”

“I’m not breaking anything off, Tonya. You will always be there in my heart. But I don’t think I will be able to see you again after—after I go to see Sheriff Kresh.”

“What!”

“I’m turning myself in, Tonya. I’m going to take the blame.” Gubber felt his heart pounding, felt the sweat starting to bead up on his body. For the briefest of moments, he felt a bit faint. “Please,” he said. “May I come in?”

Tonya backed away from the door and ushered him in. Gubber stepped inside and looked around. Ariel stood motionless in her robot niche, staring out at nothing at all. The room was in its bedroom configuration, all the tables and chairs stowed away, replaced by a large and comfortable bed—a bed that Gubber had reason to remember most fondly. Now he crossed the room and sat, morosely, on the edge of it, feeling most lost and alone.

Tonya watched him cross the room, watched as he sat down. Gubber looked up at her. She was so beautiful, so natural, so much herself . Not like Spacer women, all artifice and appearance and affectation.

“I have to turn myself in,” Gubber said.

Tonya looked at him, quietly, thoughtfully. “For what, Gubber?”

“What? What do you mean?”

“What charge, exactly, will you confess to when you turn yourself in? What is it you’ve done? When they ask you for a detailed description of how you committed your crime, what will you say?”

Gubber shrugged uncertainly and looked down at the floor. He had no idea what to confess to, of course. In his own mind, he had committed no crime, but he doubted the law would share that opinion. But what point to confessing to a crime in order to shield Tonya when he did not know what, if anything, they suspected she had done? Tonya had her own secrets, and he dared not ask what they were.

Clearly it would be safer for both of them if each kept certain things to themselves for now.

The silence dragged on, until Tonya took it as an answer.

“I thought so,” she said at last. “Gubber, it just won’t work.” She sat down next to him and put her arm across his shoulders. “Dearest Gubber, you are a wonder. Back home on Aurora, I must have known a hundred men full of thunder and bluster, always ready to show me just how big and brave they were. But none of them had your courage.”

“My courage!” Gubber looked sadly at Tonya. “Hah! There’s a contradiction in terms.”

“Is it? No big burly Settler man would dream of confessing a crime, going to a penal colony, for the sake of the woman he loved. And you’d do it, I know you would. But you can’t. You mustn’t.”

“But—”

“Don’t you see? Kresh is no fool. He’ll be able to crack through a false confession in a heartbeat, and you don’t know what to confess to. We have the police report, but he’s not fool enough to tell us everything he knows. Once he’s cracked you, he’ll ask himself why you’d confess to what you hadn’t done. Sooner or later, he’ll find out you did it to protect me. Then we’ll both end up in trouble.”

Something deep inside Gubber froze up. He hadn’t thought that far ahead. But no, wait. There was one thing she hadn’t thought of. “That won’t happen, Tonya. After all, no one knows about us—”

“But maybe they will, Gubber. Odds are Kresh will find out sooner or later. I’ve done what I could to protect you, and I know you’ve done the same for me. But we dare do no more. If we’re lucky, and we don’t draw attention to ourselves, we’ll be all right. But if either of us does anything to draw Kresh’s attention—”

Tonya let the words hang in the air. There was no need for her to complete the sentence. Gubber turned to her, put his arms around her, and kissed her, passionately and for a long while. At last he drew back, just a bit. He looked her in the eye, stroked her hair, whispered her name. “Tonya, Tonya. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you. You know that.”