Caliban

Alvar suddenly remembered something, a moment out of his past, back when he had been a patrol officer, sent on one of the most ghastly calls of his entire career. The Davirnik Gidi case. His stomach churned even as he thought of it.

In all places, in all cultures, there are aspects of human nature that only the police ever see, and even they see only rarely. Places they would just as soon not see at all. Dark, private sides of the human animal that are not crimes, are not illegal, are not, perhaps, evenevil. But they open doors that sane people know should be closed, put on display aspects of humanity that no one would wish to see. Alvar had learned something from Davirnik Gidi. He had learned that madness is troubling, frightening, in direct proportion to the degree to which it shows what is possible, to the degree it shows what a seemingly sane person is capable of doing.

For if a person as well known, as much admired as Gidi, was capable of such-suchdeviations-then who else might be as well? If Gidi could drop down that deep into something that had no name, then who else might fall? Might not he, Alvar Kresh, fall as well? Might he not already be falling, as sure as Gidi that all he was doing was right and sensible?

Davirnik Gidi. Burning hells, that had been bad. So bad that he had blocked it almost completely out of his memory, though the nightmares still came now and then. Now he forced himself to think about it.

Davirnik Gidi was what the Sheriff’s Department primly called an Inert Death, and every deputy knew Inerts were usually bad, but it was universally agreed that Gidi had been the worst. Period. If there was ever a case that warned of something deeply, seriously, wrong, it was Gidi.

The Inerts were something Spacers did not like to talk about. They did not wish to admit such people existed, at least in part because something that is appalling only becomes more so when it is also dreadfully familiar. Nearly every Spacer could look at an Inert and worry if the sight was something out of a distorted mirror, a twisted nightmare version built out of one’s self.

Inerts did nothing for themselves. Period. They organized their lives so that their robots could do everything for them. Anything they would have to do for themselves they left undone. They lay on their form-firming couches and let their robots bring their pleasures to them.

So with Gidi, and that was the frightening thing. Inerts were supposed to be hermits, hiding away from the world, lost in their own private, barricaded worlds, deliberately cutting themselves off from the outside world. But Gidi was a well-known figure in Inferno society, a famous art critic, famous for his monthly parties. They were brilliant affairs that always started at the dot of 2200 and ended on the stroke of 2500. These he attended only by video screen, his wide, fleshy face smiling down from the wall as he chatted with his guests. The camera never pulled away to reveal anything but his face.

So a young Deputy Kresh learned in the follow-up investigation after his death. He could not have found out firsthand: Sheriff’s deputies simply did not get into events as elegant as Gidi’s parties.

In Spacer society, a host not attending his own parties was not especially unusual, and so Gidi’s absence was not remarkable.A very private man, people said of Gidi, and that explained and excused all. Spacers had great respect for privacy.

The only thing that was thought odd was that Gidi never used a holographic projector to place a three-dimensional image of himself in the midst of his parties. Gidi explained holographs made for parlor tricks, and would create an illusion he did not wish to advance-that he himself was truly present. Illusions disconcerted people. They would try to shake the projection’s hand, or pass it a drink, or offer it a seat it did not need. No host wished to upset his guests. It was just that he was in essence a shy man, a retiring man, aprivate man. He was content to stay at home, to enjoy talking with his friends over the screen, to watch them as they had their fun.

It even started to become fashionable. Other people started making screen appearances at social events. But that fad stopped cold the day Chestrie, Gidi ‘ s chief household robot, called the Sheriff’s office.

Kresh and another junior deputy took the call and flew direct to Gidi’s house, a large and grim-faced house on the outskirts of the city, its exterior grounds strangely unkempt and untended. Vines and brambles had grown clear over the walk, and over the front door. Clearly no one had gone in or out of the door in years. Gidi never sent his robots outside to tend the yard-and never went out himself, it seemed.