Caliban

Love and jealousy sparked many a crime of passion, if you could call a crime passionate when it required intricate, detailed planning to arrange for your victim to be somewhere robots weren’t…

Others broke the law seeking after a different kind of gain than wealth or love. Simcor Beddle, for example.He hungered after power, and was willing to risk arrest-for himself and for his Ironheads-in order to get it.

And that was just the start of the list of motives. Inferno society was deeply hierarchical, its upper crust burdened with an incredibly complex system of proper behavior. It was vital to keep up appearances, and virtually impossible to avoid making a misstep sometime. In short, upper-class Inferno was a perfect breeding ground for blackmailers and revenge seekers.

Then there was industrial espionage, more than likely the motive for the attack on Fredda Leving. If there was little original research performed on Inferno, that just made the little that was done that much more precious.

But none of these motives would have much force if not for another factor, one that, in Alvar’s opinion, few observers and theorists gave anywhere near sufficient weight: Boredom.

There was nothing much todo on a Spacer world. There were certain personality types that did not adapt well to the endless leisure, the endless robotic protection and pampering. Some small fraction of such types became thrillseekers.

There was one last thing to throw into the mix, of course-the Settlers. They had been here just over a standard year, and the Sheriff’s Department had never been busier. There had been endless barroom brawls, scuffles in the street, mass demonstrations-and riots.

Such as the one they were coming up on now. They were nearly at Settlertown.

Kresh let Donald take the controls. He wanted to be able to see it all from the air, watch the riot in progress, learn the pattern, learn how to counter the Ironheads’ latest moves. He had to keep one step ahead of them, keep them from getting completely out of control.

Which was ironic, of course, because he believed in everything the Ironheads professed. But a lawman could not let his politics prevent him from quashing a riot.

Settlertown. Now there was a mad lapse of policy, one that could only result in the sort of strife that had apparently just broken out again. Chanto Grieg and the City Council had granted the Settlers an enclave inside Hades, given them a large tract of unused land, meant for an industrial park that had never been built. If Grieg had to have the damned Settlers on the planet, why in the devil’s name couldn’t he have granted them an enclave well and safely outside the city limits? Putting them inside Hades was an incitement to riot all by itself.

But no, Grieg let the Settlers in, and the Settlers went to work. And there, coming into view at the horizon, was the result, barely a year after the land was granted. No building in view, of course, but that was deceiving. The Settlers preferred to put their buildings underground, leaving the landscape undisturbed. And if there was no landscape to speak of, why, then, they would build one.

Alvar’s eyes dropped from the horizon to watch the landscape below. The city of Hades swept past, its proud towers a bit tired and sand-blown, many of its parks faded about the edges, the empty quarters at the edge of town fading from sight on the horizon behind them. And then, up ahead, coming up fast, Settlertown swept to the fore, a sword of green seeming to point at the brown heart of Hades, a huge and idyllic park of great meadows, proud newborn forests of seedlings, the very air over it softened by the mists of its lakes and ponds.

Incredible, simply incredible, what they had accomplished in a bare year-and without the use of a single robot. Spacers tended to equate robots with machines, and thus Spacers wondered how the Settlers managed without machines. Obviously that was a misconception. The Settlers used highly automated systems and hardware. Those forests had been planted by machines, not stoop labor. The catch was that none of the Settler machines were remotely like Spacer robots. They had virtually no capacity for thought or independent action. The most sophisticated of Settler computer systems would not even register on any of the robotic intelligence tests.

But the lesson of Settlertown was plain: Dumb machines could do a great deal in the hands of smart, determined people. Alvar Kresh looked down at the green and growing place and wondered: Had there truly ever been a time when the Spacers had been so energetic, so ambitious? What had happened that made the Spacers doze off and let history move past them?