Caliban

In addition, the brains were to be sent in three different shipments by three different routes. He returned to his duty station. The N.L. robots, boxed up and ready to go, were in the center of the shipping floor, a formidable wall of packing cases stacked up nearly to the ceiling. Guard robots stood on duty, one every three meters around the perimeter of the boxes. Two more guard robots stood on top of the stacked cases as well.

More guards watched over another, smaller, stack of packing cases, the ones that held the robots’ brains. Horatio felt a sudden impulse to take another look at the brains, or at least the boxes they came in. He walked over to them. After a moment’s hesitation, the guards let him past. Horatio knelt down and took a good hard look at the cases. He found himself mystified at all the fuss. The containers seemed to be ordinary padded shipping boxes. The only thing even remotely out of the ordinary seemed to be that new labels reading

HANDLE WITH CARE

POSITRONIC BRAINS

had been hurriedly slapped over the old ones, as if someone were trying to cover up what the old labels had said. On one of the boxes, the new label failed to cover the old one completely, and the first letters of two lines of type were visible.

HAN

GRA

THE first was obviously HANDLE WITH CARE, but Horatio could not imagine what GRA could be. Horatio had a strong streak of curiosity, and he was at least somewhat tempted to peel back the new label and get a peek at the old one. Butthat he knew he could never do. Management robots were of necessity given a large degree of autonomy, a lot of room to make their own decisions. However, that did not give manager robots the ability to exceed the wishes of their owners-and it was clearly the wish of Leving Robotics Laboratories that the original label remain hidden and unread, and he, Horatio, was charged with the security of the shipment.

Reluctantly, dutifully, he took a marker from his workbag and obliterated the exposed part of the old label.

He stood up and went back to his work rostrum. Horatio’ s instructions told him to send the bodies in three shipments as well, sending them at different times, via different routes, using different shipping procedures, from the three brain shipments. Human overseers would meet the three brain and three body shipments at their arrival points on the island of Purgatory and escort them to their final destination.

A third set of components, not brains or bodies, was to go out via its own secure route. “Range restricters,” it said on the invoice, but Horatio had not the slightest idea whatthat meant. Just another piece of busywork the humans insisted upon.

“Excuse me,” a rich, mellifluous voice said at his back.

Horatio turned around, expecting to see a human at his back. To his surprise, he instead saw a tall red robot there, a robot with a remarkably sophisticated voice system. Indeed, that voice went to waste in the cacophony of this place. It was difficult to speak on the working levels of the depot, and most robots did not bother trying. “Use your hyperwave, my friend,” Horatio said. “It is hard to hear you.”

“Use my what?”

“Your hyperwave signaling system. It is too noisy for speech here.”

“A moment, please.” The robot paused, as if he were consulting some internal reference or another. “Ah. Hyperwave,” he said at last. “Now I see. I was unfamiliar with the term. I am afraid I have no such signaling system. I must speak out loud.”

Horatio was astonished. Even the crudest, lowest-end carrier robots were equipped with hyperwave. And even if this robot did nothave hyperwave, how could he not know what it was at first, and yet then be able to look it up? High-level robots sometimes had internal look-up sources, but they were meant for referral to esoteric knowledge needed for a specific job. Certainly such look-up datastores were not meant to serve as a dictionary of common terms. It would be a waste of effort, when such things could have and should have been downloaded to the robot’s brain during manufacture.

What sort of strange robot was this? “Very well,” Horatio said. “We shall talk out loud. What is it that you require?”

“You are supervisor Horatio?”

“Yes. What are you called?”

“Caliban. I am glad to find you, friend Horatio. I need your advice. I tried to seek some sort of help from the other robots, the blue ones working over there, but none of them seemed able to offer me guidance. They advised me to come and talk with you.”