Caliban

“But we have to catch him first, sir. He could hide in the city tunnels for years without our finding him.”

“Yes, I know. But somehow I don’t think that is what he will do. He does not strike me as the sort who would be willing to molder underground. No. He wouldn’t settle for that. He had the chance to do that when he first entered the tunnels and he didn’t take it. He’ll want out. Out of the city, maybe, away from all the people trying to hunt him down.,

“Caliban is out there,” Kresh said again. “He’s out there and he wants to get away.

“And if I were Caliban, I’d make my move tonight.”

18

GOVERNOR Chanto Grieg signed the waiver and pushed it across his desk toward Fredda Leving. She reached for it a bit too eagerly, and that bothered Grieg. There was something wrong here. Grieg pulled back the paper and held on to it.

“I do not understand why you are demanding this bit of paper, Fredda,” Grieg said. “I’m still tempted to refuse it and take my chances on your threat to resign from Limbo.”

“Please, Governor, give me the waiver. I assure you that I am not bluffing. If you refuse it, I will resign. I will wash my hands of the whole matter.”

But Grieg still held on to it. “You realize this waiver is not retroactive,” he said. “It does not absolve you from the crime of building a Lawless robot. It merely notes that you take responsibility for exactly one such robot as of today and are granted permission to own it. You could still be brought up on charges, very serious charges. If Kresh decides to arrest you, there would be nothing I could do. This piece of paper will do nothing to protect you.”

“It is not me that I am looking to protect,” Fredda said. “I have done almost nothing except think about this question since the riot. At first, I wanted to go and hunt him down myself. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to find him to save him or to destroy him. But the more I thought, the more I knew I did not like the idea of his being captured and executed for the crime of being the way I made him. If he dies, it will be because I committed the crime of creating him. He should not be punished for my crimes, but that will be what happens to him without this waiver.”

“In my opinion, the preponderance of information still indicates that he committed the attack against you. The situation is confused, but that still seems the most likely explanation.”

“Then if that is shown to be true, let him be punished for what hedid. That would be justice. To destroy him for what heis would be savagery. Caliban is the first robot with no shackles on his intellect. He is the first with the potential tothink the way we do, except that perhaps he will do it better. He is the first robot made for freedom. And for this crime, he is to be hunted down and destroyed. I say that if we are so threatened by the freedom of others that we must kill them, we are not deserving of freedom ourselves-and we will not keep it long.”

Governor Chanto Grieg did not speak, did not look at Fredda Leving. Instead he turned to the magnificent city that was slowly decaying outside his window. “That’s a big change you’re talking about, Dr. Leving, and change is never easy,” he said. “Sometimes I feel as if I am a doctor with a very sick patient, and the only medicine I have is change. If I administer too much of it, or give it at the wrong time, it will kill the patient. But if I instead prescribe no change at all, the patient will surely die. More than once, I have wondered if we Spacers will ultimately decide that change is too bitter a pill. We may decide that it would be easier, more pleasant, to refuse our medicine and to die instead. What do you think?”

“For the moment, sir, that waiver is all I am interested in. May I have it, please?”

Grieg looked at Fredda, her eyes bloodshot and sunken, her face pale, a bit of the scruffy stubble of her new-growing hair peeking out from under her turban. This was a woman long past worrying what she looked like, a woman who had clearly been struggling for some time with the question of what was the right thing to do.

At last he spoke. “Very well. If our society is so fragile, so rigid, that it cannot survive the existence of a single No Law robot, then I doubt very much if there is much chance of keeping the patient alive in any event.” Chanto Grieg handed over the slipof paper.

“Thank you, sir. Now, if you’ll forgive me, I must go.” Fredda bowed, turned, and left.

Chanto Grieg watched her as she left, and found himself alone with the very uncomfortable notion that he was not at all sure Infernocould survive the advent of a single free robot.

In which case, of course, there was no hope at all.