Caliban

“Which makes it all but certain that Caliban, the robot tonight, has to be the robot who left those footprints at Leving Labs.”

“All but certain, sir? I would think there could be no question.”

“A lot of people would have to know where Leving gets her robot names. A group that wanted to discredit her would name robots from the same list. That sounds unlikely, I agree, but this whole case seems unlikely. I think it would be wise if we try not to make unwarranted assumptions.”

“Yes, sir. In any event, we are nearly home.”

The aircar settled in for a landing on the roof of Kresh’s home, and he breathed a sigh of relief. It had been a devil of a long day. A long two days rolled into one. Praise be that it was finally time to rest. He climbed out of his aircar, out onto the rooftop landing pad. He paused at the bottom of the aircar’s ramp to breathe in the cool desert air, and then headed into his house, taking the powerlift down instead of the stairs, and that was a measure of his exhaustion. Lifts were for old men.

But old was just what he felt himself to be tonight.

He was too tired to fight when Donald urged him to take a long hot shower before collapsing into bed, and as usual Donald was right. The needle jets of steaming hot water melted the tension out of his body, cooked the knots out of his muscles. Kresh let the hot-air jets dry him and let Donald put a nightshirt over his head. At last Kresh collapsed into bed. He was asleep before his head hit the pillow.

And awake again before he was even sure that he had been asleep.

Donald was leaning over him, giving him a gentle, tentative nudge on the shoulder. “Sir, sir,” he was saying.

Alvar wanted to protest, to argue, the way he would if a human had awakened him, but then his mind went through the sort of mental calculation that became second nature after one lived around robots long enough. Donald knew how much Alvar needed sleep, and would not awaken him unless something urgent came up-or something that Donald knew Alvar Kresh would regard as important enough to wake up for. Therefore, the fact that he was awake meant that something big had broken.

He sat up in bed, swung his legs around to the floor, and stood up. Donald backed off to give him room. “What is it, Donald?” Alvar asked.

“It’s Fredda Leving, sir.”

Alvar looked at Donald sharply and felt his heart suddenly thundering against his rib cage. “Yes, yes,” he said impatiently. “What about her?”It could only be one of two things, he told himself.Either she had died unexpectedly, or else

“Word has just come from the hospital, sir. She’s regained consciousness.”

8

JOMAINE Terach sat and waited in the hospital corridor, trying to practice patience-a difficult task under the circumstances. He watched Gubber Anshaw pace the hallway outside Fredda Leving, s hospital room, and felt his annoyance growing stronger. Why couldn’t the miserable little fool have stayed holed up in his house a while longer? But no, he had to choosetonight to come out and latch onto good old Jomaine Terach.

Jomaine did what he could to force all thoughts of Gubber from his mind. He watched as the doctors and the med-robots bustled in and out of Fredda’ s room in an almost constant flow, the rather stolid, oversized sky-blue sentry robots standing on either side of the door. The sentries flatly refused to let Anshaw or Terach in. No amount of arguing or reasoning or cajoling would shake them.

And yet, there was Gubber Anshaw, a professional roboticist who should have known better, going up to them again, demanding to be let in. Jomaine shook his head and swore under his breath. The last day or so had been nerve-racking enough without watching Gubber go to pieces on top of it.

“Will you settle down, for Galaxy’s sake!” Jomaine finally snapped. “Leave the damned robots alone. Come over here, sit down and try to be calm.”

“But she’s awake, and they won’t let us talk to her!” Gubber said, crossing back to Jomaine. He sat down on the couch next to his colleague, perching on the edge of his seat rather than leaning back into the cushion.

Jomaine rested his tired head against the wall behind the couch, and sighed. “ And if I were the police, I wouldn’t let us talk to her either,” he said blandly. “It stands to reason we’re both suspects in the case.”

“Suspects!” Gubber blurted out, abruptly jumping up.