Caliban

No glimmer of light at all. What a strange sensation. Not blindness, for he was seeing all that could be seen. It was simply that what he was seeing was nothing at all. Blackness, silence, with only the far-off echo of an intermittent water drip to stimulate his senses. Here, certainly, he would hear any pursuit echoing down the tunnels long before it arrived, see any glimmer of the visible or infrared light his pursuers would have to carry. For the moment, at least, he was safe.

But certainly he was not so for the long term. What was it all about? Why were they all trying to catch him, trying to kill him? Who were they all? Was it all humans everywhere that were pursuing him? No, that could not be. There had been too many people on the street who had done nothing to stop him.

It was not until he had dealt with that one man with the packages that things had spiraled out of control. Either he, Caliban, had done something that inspired the man to call in the uniformed people, or else that particular man was in league with the uniformed group, ready to call for them if he spotted Caliban. Except the man had not seemed to show any interest or alarm at first, and did not act as if he recognized Caliban. It was something about the way he, Caliban, had acted that had made the man upset. Some action of his set off the reaction of the man and the mysterious and alarming uniformed people.

Who were they, anyway? He brought up a series of images of them, and of their uniforms and vehicles and equipment. The wordsSheriff andDeputy appeared several times on all of them. The moment his mind focused on the words, his on-board datastore brought up their definitions. The concept of peace officers acting for the state and the people to enforce the laws and protect the community swept into his consciousness.

Some of the mystery, at least, faded away. Clearly these sheriff’ s deputies were after him because they believed he had violated one law or another. It was of some help to get at leastthat much clear, but it was extremely depressing to realize that it was all but certain that the Sheriff would continue to hunt for him. The other group, the ones who had called themselvesSettlers, had not continued to pursue him after their first encounter.

Were they, the Settlers, in any way connected with the deputies? There was nothing in his datastore that could tell him either way. And yet there was something furtive, something secret about the Settlers’ actions. And they were, after all, engaged in the destruction of robots, which did seem to be an offense under the criminal code. It had to have been the deputies that they were hiding from. Was it illegal to be a Settler? Wait a moment. There was a side reference to criminal organizations, and the Settlers were not in it. At least that told him something about what they werenot. It was enough to conclude, at least tentatively, that the group in the warehouse was some sort of criminal offshoot of the Settlers.

Which still told Caliban nothing about them except that they wished to destroy robots generally and himself specifically.

But wait a moment. Back up a little. If destroying a robot was a crime-

With a sudden shock of understanding, Caliban recalled his own first moments of consciousness.

His arm outstretched before him, raised as if to strike. The unconscious woman at his feet, her life’s blood pooling around her…

The sheriff’s deputies dealt not in certainties, but in probabilities. They worked with evidence, not with proof.

And there was a profusion of evidence to suggest that he had attacked that woman. The possible charges spewed forth from his datastore. Aggravated assault. Attack with intent to murder. Denial of civil rights by inducing unconsciousness or death. Had she been dying when he had left her? Did she indeed die? He did not know.

With a shock, Caliban realized he had absolutely no objective reason to think that he hadnot attacked her. His memory simply did not stretch back before that moment of awakening. He could have done anything in the time before and not know about it.

But that did not address the issue of the police who were in pursuit of him. It seemed obvious they were chasing him because of the attack, but how did they connect him to the crime? How did they know? With a sudden flash of understanding, he remembered the pool of blood on the floor. He must have walked through it and then tracked it out the door. The police, the deputies, had merely to look at those prints to know they belonged to a robot.

Staring into the darkness, he looked back into his own past. His robotic memory was clear, absolute, and perfect. With a mere effort of will, he could be a spectator at all the events of his own past, seeing and hearing everything, and yet aware of being outside events, with the ability to stop the flow of sights and sounds, focus on this moment, that image.