Isaac Asimov - Caliban

“Excellent. Well, they can look forward to being in communication very, very soon. I plan to have a long talk with each of them. I hope that a night in jail has put them both in talkative moods.”

Donald hesitated a moment and then decided it would be better to ask. “Sir, a question. I take it you still believe that the political solution precludes any attempt to arrest Fredda Leving? Her crimes, after all, are well established and certainly severe.”

“They are severe, Donald. But we just can’t pull her in now. That would do terrible damage to the Limbo Project, and I don’t want to do that. We’ll have to hope that we get a break somewhere a bit further along in the game. We’ll work Terach and Anshaw as hard as we can, and learn what we can that way. They are going to lead us to Caliban.”

“Yes, sir.” Apparently, then, Sheriff Kresh had made up his mind that Caliban had committed the attack on Madame Leving, or else that the danger Caliban represented took precedence over solving the case. Donald found himself in strong disagreement with both ideas, but he knew Alvar Kresh well. There was no point in discussing alternatives when the Sheriff was in this state of mind. If Donald objected now, it would do little but harden Alvar Kresh’s determination. If events proved Kresh to be in error, that would be the time to present other plans.

But there were other matters to discuss, one of which Donald found most puzzling. “Sir, there is a rather odd datum to report in connection with Gubber Anshaw’s arrest.”

“And what might that be?” Kresh asked, his mind clearly more on his flying than on the question.

“Tonya Welton’s robot, Ariel, was present when the deputies arrived.”

The aircar jinked suddenly to one side, and Donald was halfway across the cabin to the controls before he could force himself to resist his First Law impulse to protect his master.

“Sorry about that, Donald. Return to your seat. That one took me by surprise. Ariel there, by the devil. What the hell was she doing there?”

“We do not know. When the deputies ordered her to explain her presence, she refused, stating that Madame Welton had given prior orders that prevented her from speaking on the subject.”

“Indeed. It requires highly sophisticated order-giving to keep a robot from speaking to a deputy. They get a lot of training in how to break just that sort of injunction. So how the hell did Tonya Welton learn how to do it—and what made her think to take such a precaution?”

“Yes, sir. Both of those questions occurred to me as well.”

“Interesting,” Sheriff Kresh said. “Very, very interesting.” Kresh spoke no more during the flight, and he flew on with a thoughtful expression on his face.

More to the point, so far as Donald was concerned, the Sheriff tended to fly more slowly when he had a problem to think on. Sure enough, the aircar slowed significantly.

Donald allowed himself to relax just a trifle as the airspeed indicator eased back. Remarkable, the effect one well-timed question could have. Still, it worked, and that was the main thing. Even so, it sometimes seemed to Donald that taking care of Alvar Kresh was more of an art than a science.

THE interrogation room was bare and plain, the walls a faded, dusty pale blue. In it there were two straight-backed chairs, one table, one robot, and one policeman. The prisoner was on the way. Kresh had considered long and hard before he decided what order in which to question them. At last he went with the gut instinct that told him to go for Terach first and Gubber Anshaw afterwards.

Yes, Gubber second. Save the best for last. Ariel at his house the night before. There could be only one explanation for that, and that explanation could blast open a lot of the locked doors in this case… still, he would have to handle Anshaw carefully. But first there was Jomaine. There was some important groundwork to cover here. The door opened. There stood Jomaine Terach, looking small and wan and pale behind the two big guard robots that had escorted him from his cell.

Kresh made a small hand gesture and Terach came in, sat at the table.

The players are in position, Kresh told himself. Let the games begin.

JOMAINE Terach felt lost in a jumble of emotions. He was confused, tired, frightened, angered, fearful, angry. He knew perfectly well he was in no fit state to be questioned. But that was exactly why they had chosen this moment to grill him.

Alvar Kresh grinned unpleasantly at him, and spoke in a voice that made it clear that he was enjoying himself. “Why don’t I just save time and tell you what we already know?” he asked. “And maybe this time you can be just a little bit more forthcoming with your answers. That way I won’t be tempted to use the charges we have against you already—the ones related to obstructing an investigation and failing to provide full and complete answers to a police officer. How does that sound to you?” Alvar Kresh smiled again, even more unpleasantly, as he looked his prisoner in the eye.

Jomaine Terach stared back and tried to keep calm, tried to calculate, tried to figure the situation. The night behind bars had been a long one, and it had not done his state of mind any good. No doubt it was not meant to. It was a fairly safe bet that they had picked up Gubber and maybe Fredda at the same time they got him. However, no one in the Sheriff’s Department was admitting to that or much of anything else.

But if Gubber was in here, well, Gubber was not much given to calm in the face of adversity. A night in a cell was likely to make Gubber’s tongue quite loose. And lurking in the background of Alvar Kresh’s angry, threatening courtesy was the unspoken threat of the Psychic Probe. No sane man wished to face that, and Jomaine regarded himself as eminently sane. Sane enough to know just how serious the charges against him could get if Kresh wanted to throw the book at him.

If he wanted to stay free and with a whole mind, he was going to have to tell Kresh what he wanted to know, and tell it to him before Gubber or Fredda did. The time had come to protect himself from everyone else’s mad schemes. Unless that time was already past.

“Say what you have to say and ask your questions,” he said. “I don’t know it all. I didn’t want to know it all. But what I know, I’ll tell you. I have run out of reasons for silence.”

Alvar Kresh leaned back in his chair. “All right,” he said. “Let me start by telling you part of what we know already, and just see how well you do filling in the blanks.”

The operative word there was part, of course, Jomaine told himself. Was Kresh going to tell ninety-five percent of what the police knew, or five percent? There were any number of traps and pitfalls here.

“We know for starters that Caliban is not a Three Law robot, not even one of these damned New Law robots, but a No Law robot.”

Kresh looked hard at Jomaine, stared him down. The testing was starting early. Here was his chance, Jomaine realized. Kresh wanted to see what he would do if given the chance to play games. Kresh had not even asked a question. It was Jomaine’s chance to ask what a No Law was, or who Caliban was.

But Jomaine had a pretty fair idea what would happen if he did that, and he had no desire to find out if he was right.

The silence went on for another few seconds before Jomaine Terach could bring himself to speak the words.

“Yes,” he said. “Caliban is a No Law.”

“I see,” Kresh said. “How is that possible?”

Jomaine was thrown off balance by the question, and no doubt that was the intention. “I—I don’t understand,” he said. “What do you mean?”

“I believe that what the Sheriff wishes to know are the technical details of the process,” Donald 111 said.