Caliban

Yes, Settlertown was a most impressive lesson, but there were those Spacers who did not appreciate being educated. There, near the southern gate of the enclave. A plume of black smoke was rising, a small fleet of sky-blue deputy’s cars circling around it. “Take us in, Donald,” Alvar said, quite needlessly pointing toward the gleam of fire on the ground. Donald was already guiding the aircar down, setting it into a broad circle over the center of the disturbance. Another protest rally against the Settlers, obviously enough. The protesters had a good fire going this time, made out of pulled-up park benches, trash brought along for the purpose, and whatever else burnable they might find. It looked like two dummies of some sort were being dangled in the fire on the ends of long poles.

Kresh pulled a pair of farviewers out of the aircar’s gearbag and put them to his eyes. “Ironheads,” he announced. “Burning Grieg in effigy again, by the looks of it,” he said, offering the commentary even though he knew perfectly well Donald’s vision was superior to his own. The robot needed merely to increase the magnification of one or both of his eyes. “ And another figure being burned next to him. Maybe Tonya Welton. At least it isn’t me this time. Good.” For a moment, Kresh had feared that word of the attack on Leving had gotten out, in spite of the news blackout he had ordered. But none of the banners he could see mentioned Leving, or anything about the attack.

Unless the Ironheads had found out about her connection to the Settlers and taken their revenge. That would give them a motive for keeping quiet.

“Sir,” Donald said, “to the rear of the bonfire-”

Kresh swung his viewers around and swore. “Burning hellfire, that’s just great. That’ll make the Settlers just happy as could be.” There was a group of masked Ironheads off in a copse of young trees, destroying as many of the saplings as they could, firing point-blank at their trunks with blasters. Not even dragging them back for fuel, which would almost make some sense. But no, this was just wanton destruction for the hell of it. Damned idiots. The Settlers loved their trees, yes, and killing a few would get them mad. But didn’t it occur to the Ironheads that a group of people preparing to reterraform a planet would have the capacity to replace a fewtrees? And what sort of idiots would kill trees on a planet with a weakened ecology?

Fools. Maybe, with a little luck, they’d take a few of themselves out with sloppy cross fire. It made Kresh more than a little uncomfortable that he agreed with the Ironhead philosophy. Yes, fine, make more robots, better robots, give the Infernals a real chance to revive the terraforming before handing the job over to outsiders. That all made sense. But politics did not excuse vandalism. Kresh reached for the aircar’s comm mike, but even before he could give the order, one of the circling deputy’s cars dove down almost to treetop level, pumping out a cloud of trank-gas behind itself. The Ironheads scattered, but one or two were dropped by the gas, unable to outrun it. Another deputy’ s car swept down to a landing. Two deputies jumped out and had the unconscious protesters cuffed and ready for pickup in seconds. Their aircar was already back in the air, in pursuit of the escaping Ironheads. Meanwhile, a fire department airtruck was coming in. It fired twin water cannons at the bonfire and the effigies. More deputy’ s cars landed. Deputies poured out and started rounding up the protesters. Good. Good. Kresh was glad to see his people doing so well.

This was work for humans, no question about it. Riot control was something that robots simply could not do. Which was why, of course, there were still human police. Sheriffs and deputies had to be ready to do a lot of things that broke the First Law.

Kresh watched his people at work with real pride. There had been no need for him to command or direct. They were getting this sort of operation down to a science. But there was a dark side to that truth. How could they not get better? The devil himself knew they were getting enough practice.

“Let’s land this thing, Donald,” he said. “ As long as we’re here, we might as well pay a call on Madame Welton. Call ahead to her.”

TONYA Welton was there on the ground, looking up, watching their aircar land. She was standing by the main entrance shaft to Settlertown, waiting for them. There was something missing about her, Kresh thought, something that should have been there. Then it came to him. Her robot, Ariel. No Spacer would go out of doors without at least one robot in attendance, and in the city Tonya kept to that convention. But here, on her own turf, perhaps she felt she could avoid Spacer absurdities.

The aircar set down. Man and robot disembarked.

“Sheriff Kresh, Donald 111,” Tonya said. “Welcome to our humble abode. Come in, come in out of that frightful cloud of smoke your friends have dumped into the atmosphere.”