Caliban

They moved into the gloomy interior of the building. There was very little inside, merely a forest of packing cases that had never been cracked open. Hades was full of such buildings-designed, built, stocked with equipment by robots and forgotten. Most of the ghost buildings were like this one, wholly complete, but left vacant. The ghosts were gifts from on high to criminal gangs of all sorts, ideal places to meet, to hide out, perfect headquarters from which to run their scams and crimes.

It looked as if this building had gotten all the way to furniture delivery before being shut down. The crates were neatly stacked everywhere, turning the first floor into a maze of hiding places. And then there were the floors above and the subbasements and service tunnels below. Even if the roguehad come in here, how the hell would they ever know it, or find him?

Then Mirta grabbed his arm and pointed her handlamp down at the floor.

Dust.The floor was covered in a smooth, perfect film of dust-with one set of distinctly robotic footprints leading off into the interior, moving at a smooth and confident pace.

The two deputies followed the line of footprints through the canyons of packing cases. They led straight for a stairwell, its door standing open. Moving cautiously, Mirta and Tansaw went inside, to be greeted by a cool breeze blowing down the shaft, which apparently also served as part of the ventilator system. But the air currents meant no dust deposits here. No footprints. Damn it. All right, then. Up or down? Which way did he go?

“He headed straight for the stairs,” Mirta said, her voice a loud whisper.

“So what does that tell us?” Tansaw asked.

“That he knows where he’s going. He must have a good internal map system. He’s not moving in a panic. He’s got a plan, he’s thinking ahead.”

“Which means he must have figured out that heading up isn’t going to do him any good. We’ d be able to seal off the building and bottle him up. So he went down into the service tunnels.” That was always bad news. The tunnels went everywhere, to allow the maintenance robots to bring in supplies and services without adding to street congestion. And despite all official statements to the contrary, every cop knew there werelots of tunnels that did not appear on any map. Some had just been dug and then forgotten, some had been deliberately erased from the map memories-and some had been dug by robots in the employ of enterprising freelancers of one sort or another.

“Right.” Mirta holstered her gun and pulled her tracker/mapper out of her tunic. She worked the controls and consulted the screen. “Not so bad around here,” she said. “I only show one main horizontal shaft connecting to this building.”

“Can we seal it before he can use it to get to another tunnel?” All the tunnels-all the official tunnels, at least-were equipped with heavy-duty vault-style doors.

“We can try,” Mirta said. “It’ll be close, one way or the other.” She brought her comm mike around to her mouth. “This is Deputy 1231, in rapid pursuit of suspect. Request immediate seals on all accesses to city tunnel number A7 B26.” She listened to her headset for a moment, and Tansaw felt as much as heard a series of muffled, far-off clanging thuds. “That ought to do it,” she said. “If he didn’t get out of B26 before we sealed it, we have him now.”

Tansaw looked up at his partner and nodded. “It’s time to call in the others,” he said.

CALIBAN heard the booming thuds of the tunnel doors slamming shut. He had been moving at a fast, steady, walking pace in the narrow tunnel, but now he broke into a run, hurrying for the end. He came upon it all too soon and knew he was in deep trouble. This door was meant for a full-security seal. He tried to force it open, but obviously it had been specifically designed to be beyond a robot’s strength, with a locked and armored control panel as well. He consulted his datastore map.

Tunnel A 7 B26 was “H”-shaped, with the access to the building above in the center of the cross member, and the four ends of the vertical members linking into the main city tunnel system. The tunnel itself was barren, nothing but bare walls, floors, and ceilings, with glow lamps set into the ceiling’s overhead crossbeam supports. The beams looked to be some sort of plasteel, twenty centimeters square in cross section, spaced at five-meter intervals.