Caliban

Not that the Ironheads held robotsthemselves in any special esteem. If anything, Ironheads were harder on their robots than the average Infernal. But that was not the point. Robots gave humans such freedom, such power, such comfort.Those things were the birthright of every Infernal, indeed of all Spacers, and the Ironhead movement was determined to preserve and expand that birthright by any means necessary.

And making life unpleasant for the Settlers certainly fit into that category.

Simcor smiled to himself. That was getting to be a bad habit, thinking in speeches like that. He crossed to the far side of the gallery, toward his office, and another door robot swung the door wide as he approached. He entered the room, quite unaware of Sanlacor moving ahead of him to pullout his chair from his desk for him.

But he did not sit down. Instead, he made a subtle gesture with his right hand. The room robot, Brenabar, was at his side instantly, bringing Simcor’s tea. He took the cup and saucer and sipped thoughtfully for a moment. He nodded his head a precise five degrees down toward the desktop, and spoke one word. “Settlertown.”

Sanlacor, anticipating his master, was already at the view controls, and in less than a second, the bare desktop was transformed into a detailed map of Settlertown. Simcor handed his teacup to the empty air without looking, and Brenabar took it from him smoothly.

Kresh’ s deputies were sure to be ready for them, after last night. Simcor had superb connections inside the Sheriff’s Department, and he knew everything Kresh knew about the attack on Fredda Leving. In fact, he knew quite a bit more. He had heard a recording of that lecture of hers. Damnable, treasonous stuff. Simcor smiled. Not that she was likely to make any more such speeches. Everything was working his way.

But he had to concentrate on the plans for today. He had to assume the Sheriff’s Department was ready for trouble. Once the Ironheads started the ruckus, they would only have a few minutes before the law stepped in to protect the damned Settlers.

So they would have to do as much damage as possible in those first few minutes. Under the circumstances, it was too much to hope they would be able to penetrate the underground section of Settlertown again. No sense wasting effort in the attempt. This time, it would have to be on the surface, at ground level. Simcor Beddle lay his hands on the desktop and stared thoughtfully at the map of his enemy’s stronghold.

ITwas morning in the city of Hades. Caliban knew that much for certain, if very little else of any substance. By now he was no longer sure what he knew.

But he was beginning to believe something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong.

It was as if Caliban’s utterly blank memory and the precise but limited information in the datastore were the double lenses of a distorted telescope, utter ignorance and expert knowledge combining to twist and warp all he saw. The world his eyes and mind presented to him was a crazed and frightening patchwork.

In the busiest part of the city’s midtown, he turned off the sidewalk and found a bench set in a quiet corner of a tiny park, well out of sight from any casual passersby. He sat down and began reviewing all that he had seen as he had walked the streets of Hades.

There was something distinctly unreal, and somewhat alarming, about the world around him. He had come to realize just how clean, perfect, idealized, precise were the facts and figures, maps, diagrams, and images that leapt up from the datastore. But the real-world objects that corresponded to the datastore’s concepts were far less precise.

Further exploration confirmed that false voids and featureless buildings were not the only flaws in the datastore map.

The map likewise did not report which blocks were busy, full of people and robots, and which were empty, semi-abandoned, even starting to decay.

Some new buildings had materialized since the map was stored in his datastore, and other, older buildings that seemed whole and complete in the datastore had vanished from reality.

No image in the datastore showed anything to be worn-out or dirty, but the real world was full of dust and dirt, no matter how vigorously the maintenance robots worked to keep it all clean.

Caliban found the differences between idealized definitions and real-world imperfections deeply disturbing. The world he could see and touch seemed, somehow, less real than the idealized, hygienic facts and images stored deep inside his brain.

But it was more than buildings and the map, or even the datastore, that confused him.

It was human behavior he found most bewildering. When Caliban first approached a busy intersection, the datastore showed him a diagram of the correct procedure for crossing a street safely. But human pedestrians seemed to ignore all such rules, and common sense, for that matter. They walked wherever they pleased, leaving to the robots driving the groundcars to get out of the way.