Caliban

“I ran until I couldn’t anymore. I was so scared I couldn’t think straight. I found a doorway to hide in and catch my breath. Then the fire brigade came, and there were lights and robots and people everywhere. I didn’t dare move. And then your robots caught me.” Timitz, drained of all emotion, looked up at the Sheriff. Kresh stared into that wan little face. Robot basher, vandal, criminal, drunk, Settler. She was all those things, and those were all things he hated. But this woman had been through the terrors of hell tonight. All the nightmare robots of the imagination that the Settlers used to frighten naughty children must have come to life for this poor little fool. Almost reluctantly he found pity in his heart for the woman. At last he sighed and turned away, looked toward the wall and not toward her. He could bully her all night and not get any more than he had. Time to let it go.

“One last question,” he said in a gentle voice, still carefully considering the featureless wall. “The robot. What did it look like?”

“Tall,” she said in a voice still edged with fear. “It was red, with blue eyes. About two meters tall, very powerfully built. It said its name was Caliban.”

“He told you his name?” Kresh said, startled. Why in the name of all devils would a robot keen on attack tell anyone its name?

No, wait, the robot could have given a false name. Yes, the robot could have lied. Alvar realized that he had been assuming a robot would always tell the truth-but why assumethat about a robot who left human beings to die?

But that name, Caliban. There was something about that name.

Never mind. Worry about it later. “You people talked to him?” he asked, looking back at her, wanting to be sure he had it straight.

“Yes,” Timitz said with. a look of renewed alarm. “Didn’t I say so? I thought I did.”

Kresh shook his head in bewilderment, but then he let it go. Nothing about this made sense. “We’re going to move you to another car. It’s going take you someplace you can rest for a while. Later on, you and I are going to have a lot to talk about,” he said.

“YOU got all that, I assume,” Kresh said, sitting in the copilot’s seat of the aircar, staring off at the distant skyline, the proud but weary towers of Hades glittering in the darkness. He was damned tired, and perfectly content to let Donald do the flying.

“Yes, sir, I did,” Donald said. “The intercom sight and sound relay from the aircar was quite clear, though the camera angle was a bit awkward.”

“I was afraid of that,” Kresh said. “But were you able to get enough to judge if she was telling the truth?”

“From all that I could see and hear-yes. She believed what she said. Her manner was quite sincere. Her vocal patterns indicated stress consistent with a truthful report, and her pupil dilation and body language were likewise consistent. There are of course cases of persons who have been trained to lie with their entire body, as it were, especially under emotional stress. They can orchestrate all their normally autonomic responses to appear sincere, though in a normal person, those responses would betray an attempt to lie.”

“And if she were a Settler agent, part of a team sent in with the express purpose of destabilizing our society, she would certainly have been trained just that way. IfI were the controller sending in a team to stage a robot attack, I might have set it up the way this one seemed to happen. So things appeared just the way they do now.”

“Sir, if I might bring up a point-if eventswere as they seemed, then things would also appear as they did.”

“What are you talking about?”

“With all respect, you are still working on the flat assumption that no true robot could have done this, that the Settlers are staging these attacks to alarm us. This is a most difficult concept to confront, and I do so most reluctantly, but I believe that we have no choice. But Madame Welton was right: We are obliged to at least consider the simplest explanation, which is that a robot appears to be attacking humans-because that is precisely what is happening.”

The aircar flew on in silence for a moment.

At last Kresh spoke. “One of the things I have always admired about you, Donald, is your ability to snap my head clean off without my so much as feeling it. You are right, of course. I must accept the fact that the events could be real. I will have to think on all this tonight.”

“Sir, one other thing. The name ‘Caliban.’ “

“Yes, it struck me as familiar somehow. What of it?”

“You no doubt recall it from the time you first ordered Fredda Leving to build me. She keeps a list of names of characters from an ancient storyteller named Shakespeare. She has always named robots built under her personal direction after those characters.”

“Yes, that’s right. I picked your name off that list.”

“Precisely, sir. The name ‘Caliban’ is from the same source.”