Caliban (Isaac Asimov's Caliban #1)

"SO how long have you and Tonya Welton been romantically involved, Anshaw?" Alvar Kresh asked, his voice low and calm.

Gubber's mouth dropped open, and he stared at Sheriff Kresh in horrified astonishment.

Kresh laughed. "Let me guess. That was the one thing you had been most determined to hide, the one thing that made you lie awake last night, scheming over the best way to conceal it from me-and we know it already."

"How did you know that?" he asked, his voice little more than a high-pitched squeak. "Who told you?"

"No one had tofell me, Anshaw. And I didn't know it for sure until just now. But it was simply the only explanation that made sense. It's been staring me in the face from the start. The devil himself knows how I missed it.

"Tonya Welton arrived at the crime scene five minutes after I did. She had no reason to insert herself into my investigation. At least noprofessional reason. Therefore, she had to have personal reasons.

"But that's not the time frame I'm interested in. Perhaps you could explain what she was doing-and you were doing-at the lab at the time of the attack on Fredda Leving."

Gubber Anshaw opened his mouth, but found that he had no words. No words at all.

Kresh pressed home his advantage. "We've got the access recorder data, Anshaw. Weknow who was there, and when they were there. Three names stick out. Tonya Welton, Jomaine Terach-and you. Gubber Anshaw.All of you, and no one else, besides Fredda Leving herself. Medical evidence gives us about a one-hour period during which the attack could have happened-and you four were all in and out of that building during that time period.No one else."

"Ah-ah-ah..." Gubber tried to speak, but nothing would come.

"Settle down, Anshaw. Tell me. Answer the questions I'm going to ask, or else you 're going to be in far deeper trouble than you are right now. Did you conceal the fact that she was there to shield her? Did you think she attacked Leving?"

"Oh dear! Oh my!"

"Answer!"

"Yes, then. Yes. I don't believe it now, of course. But that night-it was all so frightful. I did not know what to think. And she and Fredda had argued terribly that night."

"And why did you suppose that she would attack your superior?"

Silence. Kresh pressed harder. "Talk, Anshaw. Talk now and talk well. Tell me what I need to know. That is the best thing you can do to protect Tonya Welton. Silence and lies can only hurt her now. Now I ask you again-what made you think Tonya Welton deliberately attacked your superior?"

"Oh, I don't think she did itdeliberately," Gubber said all of a rush. Then he realized the gaffe he had made. "That is, now, of course, I do not think she did it at all. But, but, at the time I thought that shemight, justmight have done it, out of anger, in a rush of temper, perhaps."

"All right, then. Nowshe concealed the fact thatyou were there," Kresh said. "Did she do that to shieldyou? Did she think thatyou might have committed the attack?"

Gubber looked up, a little confused and distracted. "What? Oh, yes. I suppose so." He thought for a minute, then went on a bit more eagerly. "Fredda and I-Dr. Leving and I-had argued as well, rather often. Tonyacould have thought I was angry enough to commit the attack-but if she thought that was possible, then that proves that she could not have done it herself!"

"Unless shedid commit the attack, and is doing everything she can to act innocent. Maybe she' s feigning innocence and planning to frameyou. Or didn't that occur to you?"

Anshaw's face fell. Clearly he had thought Kresh would find his logic convincing. "No, no, it didn't. And Istill don't believe it. She is not that kind of person. She could not have attacked Fredda that way."

"You thought she could have at the time. Why do you think you were wrong then and are right now?"

"The night it happened, I wasn't able to think clearly. When I found the body, I was so scared and surprised, I did not know what to think. When I had time to think about it, I knew it was impossible."

When I found the body.It took all of Alvar's training not to leap onto that slip immediately. But that could come later. Anshaw was not aware of what he had said, and the longer he was off guard the better.Let it ride, Kresh thought.Come back to it later. He chose another point to pursue, almost at random.

"You said that you and Leving had been having arguments. What were they about?"

Gubber drew himself up to sit straight in his chair, and folded his hands. "I did not approve of what she was doing."

"What was it you objected to?"

"The New Law robots. I thought and think it is possible they are a very dangerous idea."

"But you went along with the project, anyway."

Gubber rested his hands flat on the table for a moment, but then knitted his fingers together. His hands were clammy with sweat. "Yes, that is true," he said. He looked up at Alvar, and there was suddenly something bright, sharp, fierce in his eye. "I invented the gravitonic brain, Sheriff Kresh. It represents a tremendous advance over the positronic brain, a breakthrough of huge proportions. My gravitonic brain offers the chance for whole new vistas of research, vastly increased robotic intelligence and ability. I had the notes, the test materials, the models and designs, to prove that it would work. I took them to every lab on the planet and sent inquiries to half a dozen other Spacer worlds as well.And no one would listen.

"No one cared. No one would use my work. If it wasn't a positronic brain, it wasn't a robot. My brain couldn't go in a robot. That was an article of faith, everywhere I went. Fredda had rejected my ideas as first. Until it dawned on her that I was offering a blank slate upon which to write her New Laws."

"So you swallowed your objections to her ideas to prevent your own work from getting lost."

"Yes, that's right. She was the only one who cared about my work, or would even give me the chance to complete it. Fredda Leving wasn't-and isn't-much interested in the technical improvements the gravitonic brain offers. To her, gravitonic brains were nothing more than robotic brains that did not have the Three Laws. That was her sole interest."

"And you went along. Even though you've just said the New Laws are dangerous."

"Yes, I went along, though now I wish I Burned my work instead." For a brief moment, Gubber showed a little spark of passion, but then the little man seemed to shrink in on himself again. Alvar Kresh felt a fleeting moment of pity for Gubber Anshaw. No matter how the matter was resolved, there seemed little hope that he would get his old life back. If he was something of a villain in the piece, so, too, was he something of a victim.

"I won't pretend that I have unblemished pride in what I did," Gubber went on. "But it seemed the last chance that my life's work would not be thrown away. I worked very hard to convince myself that the New Laws included adequate safeguards. Well, you know how that turned out. Something went wrong, either with the Laws or the brain. But I know the brain was good. It has to be the Laws."

Wait a second,Kresh told himself.He thinks that Caliban is a New Law robot. Kresh had just assumed that Terach was lying and Caliban's true nature was bound to be common knowledge around the lab. If Anshaw was Tonya Welton's main source of information, as seemed likely, then she, too, had to be assuming that Caliban was a New Law robot.

Burning devils. If that was true, she would have serious and legitimate concerns about unleashing a whole army of the things at the Limbo Project, alongside her own people. If she hadn't attacked Fredda, and was unsure who had, she would very much want to believe that Caliban was innocent, and harmless, for the sake of her own people. If Caliban and she herself were eliminated, then the suspect list was damned short-and her lover, Gubber Anshaw, was at the top of it.

No wonder the woman was acting a bit edgy. "I told myself the New Law robots would be mere laboratory experiments," Anshaw went on. "I was wrong about that, too."

"Lab experiment? But the New Law robots are going to be all over the Limbo Project. They'll be able to wander anywhere they want on Purgatory."

Anshaw smiled bleakly. "New Law robots at Limbo was my doing. Pillow talk, I suppose you'd call it. I mentioned the New Law project to Tonya, and she was fascinated by the idea. She could see they were just the thing for the Limbo Project, a real chance for compromise and common ground, for Spacer and Settler to work together, for a world with the advantages of robots with none of the drawbacks. Oh, she got very excited.

"She knew that I would want my name kept out, of course, and she managed to fake a leak of the information from some other source. A Settler running into a Leving Labs worker in a bar, or something."

"That sounds plausible. Your security isn't very tight."

"I don't even know if that's how it worked. I didn'twant to know the details. Anyway, Tonya went to see Fredda and let it be known that she had heard about the New Law project. Fredda was furious about the leak, of course, but then she started to get excited about the idea herself. They presented the idea to Governor Grieg as a joint proposal, and he accepted it."

"It sounds as if it was a fruitful collaboration," Donald said. "What caused the two of them to fallout?"

Gubber shifted uncomfortably. " Ambition," he said at last. "Both of them always wanted-and still want-to be in charge of whatever project they are working on."

Ambition, competition,Kresh thought. Those could be damned potent motives, and Gubber knew it. What would be tougher for him-admitting those motives to the police or wondering, in spite of all protestations to the contrary, if those motives had indeed tempted his wild, brazen Settler lover into this violent attack?

"You've said that you and Dr. Leving had argued as well. Might I ask the nature of those arguments?" Alvar asked. "Did she perhaps object to your relationship with Tonya Welton?"

"What?" Gubber seemed surprised by the question. "Oh, no, no. She couldn't have. She didn't know about-doesn'tknow about it." He hesitated for a minute, and then doubt seemed to creep into his voice. " At least I thought she didn't. But we didn't do much of a job keeping it from you."

Kresh smiled. "If it's of any comfort, she hasn't given any sign of knowing about it."

"If I may broach a new subject, Dr. Anshaw," Donald said. Kresh leaned back and let Donald carry on. At least Anshaw didn't seem dreadfully insulted at the very idea of a robot asking questions. "We have a report concerning a minor point in connection with the New Law robots. Perhaps you could clear it up."

"Well, if I can."

Interesting how the man had become so cooperative in his own interrogation. Kresh had seen it before-the strange moment when the questioning became not a battle, but a collaboration.

"You were asked to perform certain tests on a pair of sessile testbed New Law units without being told what you were testing them for. Do you recall that?"

"Yes, of course. Nothing all that remarkable about it. It was some weeks ago. The only reason I remember it clearly is that Tonya-Lady Welton-happened to stop by that day. I remember thinking later that was the last time she stopped by the lab without an argument starting between Fredda and Tonya. She stayed and watched the tests, and even chatted with one of the sessiles. We do that sort of test all the time. Two units, one experimental and the other a production unit robot, a control, with the experiment operator not knowing which is which-or even the purpose of the experiment. The operator just gets a list of procedures to follow and runs the test as described."

"What is the purpose of masking the test unit and the experiment's goal from the experiment operator?" Donald asked."

"To avoid bias. Usually the test is of something that might be skewed by the experimenter's own reactions, or by an interaction between the experimenter's emotional response and the robot's desire to please the experimenter. All of us at the lab have used each other to run that sort of test from time to time."

"On this particular test, what were you asked to do?"

"Oh, nothing very much. I was told to discuss the three Laws with the two robots and then record their basal reactions to simulated situations that would test their reactions. The two sessile robots were delivered toward the end of the day, and I got to work on them the next morning, explaining the Three Laws in detail, using a set series of procedures. Then I put them through the simulation drill and they both did fine."

"What became of them?"

"Well, this was some time ago. The usual procedure would be to destroy the test unit and complete assembly of the control and place it in service. Let me think. The test unit, the experimental unit, was definitely destroyed. Standard safety procedure. As for the control-" Gubber thought for a moment. "You know, Ican tell you about the control unit, come to think of it.

"As I mentioned, Tonya Welton was in the lab that day and struck up a conversation with the control unit. Of course, it being a double-blind test, I didn't know it was the control at the time, but later Tonya said she had taken a liking to the sessile robot that had spoken with her. Tonya wasn't very happy with the robot she had been issued, and asked if I could arrange for her to exchange it for the one she had met in the lab.

"If the one she had liked had turned out to be the experimental model, she would have been out of luck, of course. But as it turned out, Ariel was the control, and was working in the lab. Fredda authorized the swap, and so Tonya ended up with her robot."

Plainly, Gubber was puzzled by the question, but he wasn't going to get any explanation for it.

"Very good. It is always wise to confirm details wherever possible. That dovetails with our previous information."

And allows us to confirm that Jomaine Terach was telling the truth at least part of the time,Kresh thought. But maybe it was time to come back to the main point.When I found the body, Gubber had said, letting it drop very casually, as if he assumed that Kresh already knew that. That was the way to play it. Donald had been smart, giving Anshaw the idea that all they were doing was confirming information. Robots were incapable of lying, of course, except under the strongest of orders to do so, and even then they were never very good at it. But sophisticated units like Donald could allow a true statement to provide a false impression now and again.

"Let' s go back to something else, Anshaw. Back to the moment when you discovered the body, all right?"

Anshaw nodded calmly, clearly unperturbed by any thought than he had let something slip.

"Good," Kresh said, giving his voice the tone of a man going through the motions, clearing up routine details. "Now, you've already been extremely helpful today, but as you can imagine, the actual crime scene is important. The last thing we want to do is color your recollections of it. It's the same as with your blind robotics tests, really. We don't want to introduce a bias accidentally with a lot of leading questions that might end up with you subconsciously skewing your answers, giving us what we want. That make sense to you?"

"Oh, yes, very much so. I know how those subtle errors can slip in and cause no end of confusion."

"Good, good." Kresh was pleased with the analogy, and wondered if Donald had meant him to pick up on his line of questioning and use it. He could be a subtle one, that Donald. He went on with the delicate job of leading Gubber Anshaw down the garden path. "So, what I want you to do is simply tell exactly what happened, in your own words, without our drawing out your story question by question. Maybe I'll ask a question or two if we don't understand a detail, but in the main we'll wait until you're done. That will be time enough for us to go back and tidy up any discrepancies with the information we have already."Which is close to bloody-helled nothing, Kresh thought.

Gubber looked nervously at Kresh, but still he did not speak. Kresh realized he needed to press harder. But not too hard, or else there was an excellent chance Gubber would clam up altogether. "Talk to us, Gubber," Kresh said. "You have no idea the damage silence has done already. That silence is a vacuum, and it's sucking people in. A few words from you, the casual mention of some tiny detail you don't even know you know, could be the thing we need to cut the last weak threads of suspicion tying you and Lady Welton to this case. The two of you were both suspects when you walked in here. You could both be scratched right off our list here and now if you tell us the truth," Alvar lied.

"Honestly?" Gubber asked, and it was clear how desperately he wanted to believe.

"Honestly," Kresh lied again, glancing involuntarily at Donald. This was one of those moments when it was downright dangerous to have a robot in on the game. If the complex admixture of First Law potentials broke the wrong way, there was nothing in the world-least of all Donald' s own will-to prevent the robot piping up to contradict Kresh.

Donald knew Kresh was lying, making" promises he had no intention of keeping. But how would Donald balance the First Law admonition to prevent harm from being done through inaction? Certainly Gubber could come to harm by believing Kresh. But if Donald spoke up,that could produce harm to Kresh and to the Sheriff's Department. If speaking up, calling Kresh on the lie, wrecked the investigation, that could even cause harm to the population in general, by leaving Fredda' s attacker at large, free to strike again.

Kresh had a pretty fair instinct for estimating the First Law situation in such cases, and he was reasonably sure that Donald would not speak up. But there was always thechance that he would jump in at exactly the wrong moment. Kresh sometimes thought that all the problems of lost energy and low morale in Spacer society could be eliminated in a stroke if some way could be found to eliminate all such dithering over robotic behavior.

"All right, then," Gubber Anshaw said at last, rubbing his chin with his palm and staring out into space. "I suppose you are right. Neither Tonya nor I had anything to do with it. I know that. In fact, I think I can provide an alibi for her, if that is the right term. I can tell you where she was, show she had no chance to commit the crime. But that might require me to speak of certain-ah-personalthings."

"Indeed," Alvar said, trying to keep the amusement out of his voice.

Gubber Anshaw sat up a little straighter and folded his hands tightly together. "Nothing criminal, or immoral, or-or anything like that," he said, blurting the last words out in a rush, staring carefully at the tabletop. "But still they will be-difficult-totalk about," Gubber said. He raised his eyes from the tabletop and fixed his gaze on a blank piece of wall over Kresh' s left shoulder. "It was a most difficult evening," he began, "most difficult. As I expect you know, Fredda and Tonya had been fighting almost every time they met. About what didn't really matter. The details of shipping the robots to Limbo, the timing of the announcement, policy for recruiting Settlers and Spacers to the project. Whatever it was, they would have a battle over it. The issue itself was never really the point.

"The only real question waswhich one of them was in charge. As you can imagine, it was a rather difficult situation for me. On the one side, I wanted to keep Tonya happy. On the other, I had to deal with Fredda, my colleague and superior-and she, needless to say, was the last person I wanted to know about Tonya and myself.

"In any event, that day it had been worse than ever. Fredda had wheeled in a new robot on its test rack and asked me to do final checkout of its mechanical systems. The robot, of course, was Caliban; but I had no idea at the time that there was anything out of the ordinary about it. Thinking back on it now, I suppose I should have found it odd that she did not tell me to do a cognitive checkout. I was in my lab working on that when Tonya and Ariel. arrived. Tonya poked her head in my door and said she was headed down the hall to meet with Fredda. I knew Fredda was going over the inventory, and that was something that never put her in a good mood. I warned Tonya of that, and then she went down the hall to Fredda' s lab.

"Well, it wasn't five minutes later that I could hear them arguing. I tried not to listen as I got the robot-Caliban-off the test stand and started working on him. But voices carry in that building. I think the fight was over the timing of the announcement of New Law robots, and whether it should be immediately connected with the Limbo Project. I had certainly heard enough about that, from both sides, on previous occasions. I didn't pay much attention.

"Fredda was concerned that a simultaneous announcement would tie the whole New Law concept too closely to the Settlers in the eyes of the Spacers. Tonya refused to see why or how that might be a problem. Fredda wanted to announce the New Law concept first, let people get used to it, and then let it be known that the New Law robots were moving from the labs here into actual productive labor, on the Limbo Project, safely distant on the island of Purgatory. Tonya insisted on her way, disclosing everything at once. I think she felt that there simply wasn't time to be wasted on the delicate feelings of the Infernals.

"Well, you saw who won that argument, and you saw the results last night. Tonya finally convinced Fredda by threatening to pull the Settlers off the planet altogether. I doubt she was serious, but Fredda had to take it seriously. If you knew how bad the ecological situation was-"

"I do know," Kresh said. "I was briefed by the Governor."

"Ah. Well, then. You can see why Fredda felt she could not take any chances. She gave in, but there was a great deal of bad feeling between the two women in any event. It was not the first time Tonya felt she was forced to threaten Fredda with a Settler pullout. Later, she did tell me it would be the last time she' d have to do that to Fredda."

Kresh looked surprised and leaned forward in his chair. "Did she indeed?" All of a sudden the case against Tonya Welton was looking stronger and stronger. Gubber was a most reluctant witness against her, but even so he was providing some damning information. "Why did she say that?"

"Oh, no, no. It's nothing like what you're thinking. She meant that once the announcement was made, it would be too late to turn back. With the Settlers in place on Purgatory, and the New Law robots there on the job, she would have won and there would be no need for such threats.

"Besides, both she and Fredda had gotten tired of the fighting. I think what Tonya really meant was that they had reconciled their differences. The argument that day didn't end with shouts and slamming doors, but with quiet voices. You couldn't hear them at the end. I had the door to my lab open so I could 'accidentally' run into Tonya when they were done, without arousing suspicion. But even with my door open, I couldn't hear them. When Tonya came out with Ariel, I sort of drifted over to the door. I could see that both Tonya and Fredda looked a bit drawn and weary, but they shook hands and smiled, as if they had finally pounded out an agreement they could both live with."

"What was the agreement?" Donald asked.

"I think it was something along the lines of Fredda letting Tonya have her way with the announcement, in exchange for Fredda heading up recruitment for Limbo. They will need a lot of people out there, and choosing the staff will be a complicated matter. Fredda wanted control of it so that she could surround her New Law robots with Settlers and Spacers who would be able to deal with them.

"Anyway, Fredda said her goodbyes at her doorway and said something about having to get back to her inventory problems. Some serial number didn't jibe or something. Fredda can be very compulsive about details. She closed the door and Tonya came into my lab. She told Ariel to leave and come back later.That told me that she wanted some real privacy. Tonya is funny that way-she doesn't really feel private if there are any robots around."

Gubber Anshaw shifted uncomfortably in his seat, and seemed, unwilling to say more. Alvar Kresh would have been able to guess the cause even without his police training. But just because he knew the answer for himself, that did not mean he did not need Gubber to speak the words. Gubber needed to know that Alvar Kresh needed to know all the details, and would settle for nothing else. Otherwise, Gubber Anshaw could easily get the idea it was all right to leave out other details Kresh did need.

"What happened then, Gubber?" Kresh asked gently. "Why was it that Tonya wanted privacy?"

Gubber cleared his throat and turned his gaze back toward that featureless patch of wall, something approaching a defiant glint in his eye. "I ordered all the staff robots to leave us alone and we went to the duty office at the end of the hallway and made love," he said, his voice firmer than it had been.

"I see," said Alvar, more because Gubber seemed to expect him. to say something than for any other reason. Alvar supposed that Gubber thought he might be shocked. The only strong emotion Kresh felt was an overwhelming desire to kick himself. He should have seen it! It was so obvious. The skilled orders for all the lab robots to go away on repeated occasions should have told him what was going on. And who but someone of Gubber's skill would have been able to hide those orders so perfectly? So much for Tonya Welton's theory that it had been done with hardware, with microcircuits. That had been a blind, a false lead, of course. Kresh wondered what other smoke she had blown in his face. He was tempted to pursue all those questions, but none of it mattered now. After this was allover, perhaps he could waste time tidying up loose ends.

Kresh looked thoughtfully at Gubber Anshaw. The man was deeply embarrassed. Knowledge of Gubber's personal relations didn't bother Alvar, but he could understand Gubber fearing it might. Inferno was not a particularly straitlaced sort of place, but more than a few Infernals would not approve of such an intimate encounter between one of their own and a Settler-especially in a place of business. "So, anyway, the two of you went to the duty office. Go on from there."

"There was nothing crude or unseemly about it," Gubber Anshaw went on, seemingly determined to answer objections that had not been raised. "It's not as if we dumped everything off one of my work counters and, ah, well, did it with the doors open. We went to the duty station office at the end of the hallway. It's set up to allow someone to spend the night at the lab if an experiment requires it. Do you know where it is?"

"Yes," Alvar said, struggling to keep a straight face. "We used it the next morning to perform our initial interrogations. I seem to recall there was a full bed in the corner of the room. I thought at the time that was unusual. We have a room like that in my office, but we manage to get by with just a sim~ pIe cot."

Gubber Anshaw reddened violently, and clenched his knitted fingers together so tightly that the skin at the base of his fingers turned quite pale with the pressure. He cleared his throat awkwardly and went on. "Yes, well, there it is, you know," he said, somewhat enigmatically. "In any event-we, ah, were, ah,there for at least two or three hours all told. Not that we, ah, well, you know, all that time. We talked and visited. We get so little time together."

"I see," Kresh said again, encouragingly.

"Well, I suppose it's quite obvious that this wasn't the first time we had been together at the lab. It might sound odd, but it was the safest place for us. I stick out like a sore thumb if I go to her at Settlertown, and Tonya is a public figure. My neighbors would be bound to spot her. At the lab, there was the cover of official business. People tend to work on their own there, so there really wasn't that much risk of, ah, being caught. At any event, our usual arrangement was for Tonya to leave first."

"Is that what happened that night?"

Gubber thought for a minute. "Yes, yes, it was. I remember because, just when she was about to go, we could hear Jomaine in the hallway. He lives just by the lab, you see, and he's forever going back and forth at odd hours. I heard him call something to Fredda."

"Did you hear her answer back?" Kresh asked, trying not to make it sound like the vital question it was. They had the access recorder data, confirming Jomaine's statement that he had entered and exited the building within a space of ten minutes. The interesting point was that those ten minutes took place right dead smack in the period of time during which the attack took place, according to the medical evidence.

Now here was Gubber confirming Jomaine's statement as well, down to Jomaine calling out-though Jomaine had claimed he had called out to see if "anyone" was around. Gubber had him calling out for Fredda specifically. If Gubber had heard Fredda reply at that moment, the period when the attack could have taken place would be chopped in half.

Anshaw thought for a moment. "No, no, I didn't," he said. "But I wouldn't expect to, you know. Jomaine was in the hallway, which is rather echoey. But if Fredda was in one of the labs-hers or mine-at that point, I doubt I would have heard her if she answered in a normal speaking voice. I could have heard her if she was yelling at the top of her lungs, but I wasn't likely to otherwise. All I heard was Jomaine's voice calling out that one time."

Kresh kept his face expressionless, but damn it, this case never got any clearer. The time limit wasn't reduced.

"All right, then. You heard Jomaine come in, call to Fredda, and then what?"

"It sounded like he entered his lab. We waited for a bit, then when we didn't hear anything more, we decided he must have left by one of the exterior doors in his lab. We said our goodbyes and Tonya left first, as usual. Then, urn, well, I'm afraid I dozed off."

"For how long?"

Gubber shook his head. "I'm afraid I can't really say. Ten minutes, forty-five minutes, perhaps longer. It had been a dead-flat-exhausting day even before Tonya showed up. When she left, and I had nothing to do but lie back in a bed in a dark, quiet room until the coast was clear-well, why not take a nap? It was not a very restful sleep. I had rather disturbing dreams, all about Fredda and Tonya fighting and bickering, with me caught in the middle, taking all the blows whenever either of them struck at the other. After a while, I woke up, used the duty office refresher, and got dressed.

"I stepped out into the hallway and walked over to my lab to collect my things and go home."

Kresh leaned in eagerly, no longer able to pretend that this was routine, mere confirmation of other information. What Gubber Anshaw could say about what he saw and what he did could break the whole case open. Even if he was lying, his statement would be useful, for sooner or later they would be able to trap him in that lie, and the nature of his lie could help to guide their inquiries. " All right, then," he said. "Now I want you to be as careful and detailed as possible. I want you to tell me everything you saw.Everything. Don't leave anything out."

Anshaw looked at Kresh rather nervously. " All right," he said. " All right. Let me think carefully. The first thing that I noticed was that the door to my lab was closed, though I normally leave it open. That struck me as slightly odd, but not greatly so. We are in and out of each other's labs in the course of a day. Someone could have come ill looking for me and closed the door out of force of habit on the way out.

"I walked down the hallway to my door and opened it, and then I saw-saw it."

"What, Anshaw? What, exactly, did you see?"

"She was lying there on the floor, passed out cold, the robot out of the test rack, standing over her, the robot's arm raised like this." Gubber held his left arm out in front of him, elbow bent about halfway, his palm open, arm and hand both held parallel with the side of his body.

But Kresh was not paying attention to details of how Caliban had held his arm in front of him. Burning devils in deepest hell. Gubber was saying Calibanhad still been there! Never in a hundred years had he expected that. It made no sense. No sense at all. If Caliban had committed the attack, why was he still standing there? If he had not, why in the world had he vanished later?

"Hold it a moment. Caliban was stillthere? "

Gubber looked up in surprise. "Why, yes, of course. I thought you knew that."

"We have, ah, several variant versions of the crime scene."

"Might I ask if Caliban was operational?" Donald asked. "Was he powered up and functional, or still switched off?"

"Ah, neither, actually. I must admit that he was not the first thing I thought of. I did not take a close look at him. Naturally my first instinct was to look at Fredda. I could not tell if she was dead or alive. There was a small pool of blood just beginning to form under her head.

"Naturally I was scared to death. I was still a bit muzzy from my nap, and my dreams about the two women fighting were still mixed up in my head. I assumed that it had to have been Tonya who-who did it. I was standing over Fredda, next to the robot, wondering what to do, when I heard the robot'sfunctionality confirmed tone code."

"Hiswhat?"

"It's a tripled triple beep. Beep-beep-beep, pause, beep-beep-beep, pause, beep-beep-beep. It's one of a sequence of tone codes a gravitonic brain robot makes as it powers up. One of the minor drawbacks of the gravitonic brain is that its initial power-up sequence takes about fifteen minutes to an hour, rather than the two or three seconds of a positronic unit. We ought to be able to;reduce that delay in the next generation of brains, but-"

"Hold it, hold it. Let's not worry about the next generation of brains just now. Let me understand this. You heard this tripled triple tone coming out of Caliban, and that tone indicated he was in the process of coming on?"

"Yes, that's right."

Incredible. How could they have missed it? Caliban had been turned on for the first night. They had accepted that without ever asking the burningly obvious question-by whom?Damnation! Gubber Anshaw was supposed to supply new answers, not new questions. " All right. What happened then?"

"I left. I grabbed the things I had meant to collect when I went into the lab and I left."

"What?Your friend and superior dead or unconscious on the floor and you leave?"

Gubber dropped his head down to stare intently at his hands. "I'm not proud of it, Sheriff. But it is what happened. The tripled triple tone told me that the robot there would be fully activated in another two minutes. I had no reason to think he was anything other than a standard Three Law unit. Gravitonic robots can take the Three Laws or New Laws just as effectively, and there is a standing lab policy to keep all New Law robots under very strict control. If Caliban had been Three Law, then Fredda Leving would have received first-aid attention within 120 seconds-and far better care than I could offer. And there would be a witness there-a robot witness but a witness all the same. to report that I had been there when the attack happened. I had nothing to do with it, I swear it. Neither did Tonya or Jomaine. I realized that later."

"How do you know that?"

"Fredda's tea mugs."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Fredda drinks her tea from rather large and fragile mugs that some artist friend of hers makes. Fredda is forever forgetting they are not as strong as standard containers. She's careless with them. They fall and break frequently, and when they smash into the hard floors of the lab, you hear it everywhere in the building."

"What's that got to do with anything?"

"There were the remains of a broken mug on the floor of the lab. I heard both Tonya and Jomaine in the hallway. I heard Tonya leave, and both she and I heard Jomaine leave the hall and go into his own lab, down the other end of the hall. He never came back down it, and the exterior doors to the labs lock from the inside, so he could 'only have gotten into the building through the main entrance. Iheard all that." Gubber looked up, glanced from Kresh to Donald and back again before he went on.

"Now, I suppose someone could strike someone else over the head without a lot of noise. Maybe I would have missed that. But I was listening carefully when both Jomaine and Tonya left andI never heard the cup smash against the floor. It must have happened when I was asleep. I'm a deep sleeper, and as I said I was exhausted. Either I slept right through it, or else I incorporated the sound into my dream about the two women fighting. Perhaps that crashing noise even set that dream in motion."

"Forgive a most awkward question, sir," Donald said, "but is it possible that you might have missed the crash if it had happened earlier, when you and Lady Leving were together in the duty office?"

Gubber glanced up, beet-red, plainly embarrassed. " Ah, well, yes," he said. "There were certainly times in that period when we would not have heard anything."

"One other question, sir," Donald went on. "Can you characterize any marks or things you might have noticed on the floor of the room?"

"I'm sorry?"

"You said you saw the smashed mug and the blood pooling under Dr. Leving's head. Was there anything else of note?"

"Oh, I see. No, not that I noticed. But I can assure you that I was not in much of a state to notice anything at all. The moment I heard the tone code coming out of that robot, there was nothing on my mind but leaving. I doubt that I was in the room more than thirty seconds at most."

"This tone code," Kresh said. "You said it was part of the robot's wake-up sequence, and that it indicated how long until the robot would come on. Can you tell us how long before that tone the robot would be switched on?"

"Not without knowing a great deal more about how that unit was configured. There are three or four brain types, gravitonic and positronic, that can be installed in that body type, and there is other equipment that can add variation. The size and type of the on-board datastore, for example. It could take anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour to go from a cold gravitonic robot to a tripled triple."

Damnation. Events seemed to be conspiring against solving the case. Each new bit of information seemed only to muddle the time sequence or confuse the issue. Kresh felt he would go mad if he did not come up with some sort of witness, and it seemed there was only one potential witness left. "Is there any way that Caliban would have been aware or operational before the moment you came in?" he asked.

"Yes, certainly," Gubber said. "I realized that afterwards. From the time I left him to see Tonya, there was more than enough time for him to power up, run his full activation sequence, and then be switched off again-or switch himself off, for whatever reason. Then he could be switched on again, or program his own delayed power-up. Most robots have the capacity to set themselves to switch off and on again. It's quite likely something like that is what happened."

"Why do you say that?"

"Well, somehow or another, Caliban moved off the service rack to a standing position. Besides which, his arm was raised as if to strike a blow. That's not howI'd position his limbs if I was getting him off a rack. It seems to me that either Fredda got him down off the rack, or he got down himself, but it's more likely he did it on his own. Pity she can't remember the incident."

"Traumatic amnesia does that to a person," Kresh said dryly. "But how could she possibly get him down off that rack?" Kresh objected. " A robot that size must weigh five times what she does."

"The rack has all sorts of power-assistance features. It's designed to lift and carry robots, pick them up and put them down, and hold them in any position."

"All right. Let's go back to your actions. You saw Caliban over the body, you panicked, and you left. What happened then?"

"I went home," Gubber said. "I went out to my aircar, and my pilot robot flew me home. I called Tonya from home and-" Gubber stopped.

"And what?"

"Well, at first, I was going to accuse her, ask how she could have done such a thing. But then I saw her face on the screen. Fresh, and calm, very much at ease. Iknew she could not have done it. And it was starting to sink in how wrong it had been for me to run off that way. I didn't want to admit that to Tonya. All of a sudden I realized that I couldn't say anything to Tonya. I told her-I told her that something terrible had happened at the lab and that I was going into seclusion. Then I locked all the doors and cut off all the comm systems, and left them that way for the next few days."

Leaving Tonya Welton knowing just enough that she would be bound and determined to.find out more at any cost,Kresh thought.Unless, of course, his whole story is fabricated from beginning to end and they cooked it up together. They would have wanted a detail like that in there, to account for Tonya jumping into my investigation like a ton of bricks, ready and willing to misdirect it toward every direction but the right one.

"And that's it," Kresh said. "That's all you saw, and all you did."

"Yes, sir. I assure you that I would be delighted if there were more I could tell you-but that is honestly all I know."

And it's enough to wipe out every start toward a lead I've made in this case,Kresh thought. "All right, then," he said. "You are free to go, at least for the moment."

Gubber Anshaw looked surprised. "You mean, that's it?"

"That's it for now," Kresh growled. "Go.Now. Before I change my mind."

Gubber swallowed hard, stood up, and went.

ALVAR Kresh watched Anshaw go and then turned toward Donald. " All right, what have you got? Were they telling the truth?"

"Before I answer that, I must note that the situation is of course complicated by the fact that both Anshaw and Terach had a hand in my design and construction. They are therefore riot only more aware than the average citizen that I have sensors designed to serve to assist in detecting falsehoods by witnesses, they have detailed knowledge of how those sensors operate. It is possible they could be able to use that knowledge and feign the sort of responses that tend to indicate veracity."

"Do you judge that to be likely?"

"No, sir. It seems quite unlikely that either of them is capable of the sort of fine control of their involuntary reactions required for such a gambit to succeed. Indeed, they both seemed so nervous that I would not be surprised if they both had forgotten about my capabilities in that area. On the other hand, if one or both were skillful enough to feign the biomarkers of veracity while lying, that is exactly what I would expect to detect."

"Very well, then. I will keep in mind that your answer will be more of a balance of probabilities than a hard-and-fast answer. What is your judgment of their veracity?"

"Both men exhibited the classic suite of biophysical reactions for truthful male adults in stressful situations. They were agitated, worried, upset, but all that is to be expected. I believe that both were telling the truth-and indeed, at some pains to conceal nothing."

Alvar nodded and sighed. "I am forced to agree. If I'm any judge at all, the two of them were both telling the truth. But if theywere telling the truth, then we are further from a solution than ever before. All they managed to do was muddy the waters. Did you noticeany sort of unusual emotional reaction that might possibly tell us something?"

"I did note several strong emotional reactions, but I doubt they will be of much use. Gubber Anshaw's exhibited evidence of strong feeling for Tonya Welton. I will freely confess, sir, that I am no expert in the arena of human emotions, but there is much there that baffles me. I do not quite understand what there is in Gubber Anshaw that Tonya Welton finds attractive. Judging against the romantic couples I have had occasion to observe, the two of them do not strike me as, well,compatible."

Alvar Kresh laughed, and it felt good to do so. There had not been a lot to laugh about in the past few days. "Donald, you are far more expert than you think. I would expect that every single person who knows about this affair has wondered the same thing. And wondered why Anshaw worships her, instead of being terrified by her."

"That question also crossed my mind. She is a rather intimidating person. But what is the answer, then? How can this sort of unlikely alliance be explained?"

Kresh shook his head. "No one has ever figured that out, and no one ever will, I expect. Perhaps Tonya Welton does not care a bit about Anshaw, and is merely using him for some end of her own. She's the sort of woman who could turn a Gubber Anshaw into a willing slave without a great deal of trouble, if she set her mind to it."

"Do you think that is the explanation?"

Kresh thought for a moment. "No," he said. "She has had too many chances to cut her losses. Gubber Anshaw is a very dangerous man to know right now. He is in very deep trouble, and she knows it. Yet she went to some effort to distract our attention away from him. I believe that she has real affection for Gubber, though what there is that inspired that feeling, I cannot say."

"What do you make of it all on a broader scale, sir? What do you make of the case at this time?"

"It is the damnedest tangle I have ever seen. Either Terach and Anshaw and Tonya Welton are all the most consummate of liars, or else none of them had anything to do with it. And you can add Fredda Leving to that list of skilled liars, too, and make her part of the conspiracy to cover up the attack on herself. All of the other stories hang together with hers. There isn'tany meaningful discrepancy that I can see."

Kresh leaned back in his seat and stared at the ceiling thoughtfully. "They all have pretty fair motives as well. Jomaine could have feared that Fredda' s work is going to get them all in deep trouble. A well-placed fear, as it develops. Tonya might have wanted a clear hand to run Limbo without Fredda joggling her elbow. Or maybe Tonya got wind of Caliban and got Gubber to monkey with him as a way of discrediting robots. The last thing Gubber was doing before going off with Tonya was fiddling with Caliban. But if that is so, then we must assume that the entire crisis has been manufactured by the Settlers, and that just seems like an awful lot of trouble when they could wreck our world just by leaving and sitting back to wait.

"Or maybe Gubber was carefully hiding his bitterness and jealousy over the woman who took over his lovely gravitonic brains and perverted them away from the Laws. Or perhaps his temper got the better of him and he coshed her for being abusive toward Tonya. Damnation, any of those could be right! All of themotives are plausible.

"It's the way the crime wasdone that seems so implausible. If one of them did it, that still leaves us with whoever it was strapping on robot-foot shoes and procuring a robot arm for a weapon, and using both with utterly inhuman precision, taking the time to walk through the room twice in robot boots during a period of time when people were still coming and going from the labs. Madness."

There was silence in the room for a while, until Kresh could bring himself to speak. It was rarely easy to admit you were wrong and someone else was right. Especially when that someone else was a robot. "That leaves us with Caliban. And the more I think about your objections tohim as a suspect, the more I am forced to agree with you. He doesn't make much sense as an assailant. He has had many other chances to kill, and many better reasons to do so, and he hasn't taken them. And yes, a robot whocould kill andwanted to kill would have done a better job of it. A robot who wanted to kill would succeed, not botch the job by striking a nonfatal blow."

Kresh lowered his eyes to look at Donald. He drummed his fingers on the table and rubbed his chin with his hand. "Which leaves us with a totally unknown assailant as our prime suspect. Someone who can disable Settler security devices, because no one else showed up on the access recorder. Maybe a Settler disguised as a robot, someone who wanted to kill Fredda Leving so the whole operation would collapse so he or she could go home. Maybe some other motive.

"Or it could be one of Simcor Beddle's Ironheads, maybe even Simcor himself. Say one of them got wind of the New Law robot project and feared it as a threat to their sacred, inert way of life. If it was Simcor or one of his chums, then the Ironheads have more skill with Settler hardware than I would give them credit for."

"All of what you say seems quite logical, sir. But if I might observe, sir, we are losing sight of our other problem."

"I know, I know. Caliban. Caliban the rogue robot. Whether or not he attacked Fredda Leving, he is out there. He is a rogue, he is lawless, and we need to catch him. I'd been hoping that making progress on the Leving assault would help lead us to him. Except now we're no further along with the assault case, either. I take it the search teams out after him don't have any leads as of yet?"

"No, sir, they don't. No word at all."

"Damn it!" Alvar Kresh stood up and began pacing the room. "I'll admit it. I'm stumped. Totally stumped. I don't know how to put it all together. The two sides of this case are so intertwined, and yet it's as if they have nothing to do with each other." He stepped to the window and stared down at the city. Dusk was settling. It had been another long day, with meals forgotten and a hitch in his back from sitting in that damn chair all day. "Caliban," he whispered to himself. "Maybe he's the one who can tell us what the hell happened that night."

"But we have to catch him first, sir. He could hide in the city tunnels for years without our finding him."

"Yes, I know. But somehow I don't think that is what he will do. He does not strike me as the sort who would be willing to molder underground. No. He wouldn't settle for that. He had the chance to do that when he first entered the tunnels and he didn't take it. He'll want out. Out of the city, maybe, away from all the people trying to hunt him down.,

"Caliban is out there," Kresh said again. "He's out there and he wants to get away.

"And if I were Caliban, I'd make my move tonight."