Caliban c-1

by Isaac Asimov

  He decided that his parties had become a bore, and a disruption. He gave them up. Besides, they had forced him to waste too much time on grooming. Once the parties were no more, that problem was eliminated.

  He ordered his own bathing schedule cut back, and then cut back again and again. He had his beard and scalp permanently depilated, so he need never shave or cut his hair again. He had his finger- and toenails treated to prevent them from growing.

  He did not like the robots bringing him meals and then hovering over him, clattering about with the dishes. He ordered his food brought to him in disposable containers and told the robots to leave him the moment he got his food. But there was still the problem of discarding the containers. He could simply drop them on the floor when he was done, but the sight of them bothered him and he would be forced to endure the graver disturbance of a robot coming in to clean them up.

  He discovered that if he flung empty food cartons over his shoulder, they would not be in his line of sight, and thus their presence would not disturb him. But still, the sounds of the robots cleaning was most annoying, and he ordered them to stop.

  The human nose becomes desensitized to a given odor over a period of time, and Gidi was completely unbothered by the filth, the stench, the squalor.

  But even meals themselves became a distraction. Gidi ordered his robots to install drinking and nutrient tubes. Then he had merely to turn his head left or right and suck his food and drink from tubes.

  At last, Gidi had achieved as near to his ideal as could be imagined. Nothing need ever disturb him again. He had reached a state of perfect solitude. He ordered his robots out of his room and told them to stay in their niches until and unless he called for them, and such times became increasingly rare.

  And then they stopped altogether.

  Of course, by the time things reached that state of affairs, Chestrie and the other robots were half-mad, caught in an absolute tangle of First Law conflicts. Gidi, showing a remarkable talent for order-giving, had convinced them that submission to his whims was essential if they were to prevent severe emotional and mental harm to their master. He did it emphatically enough to overcome the robots’ worries over his long-term deterioration.

  That—and the absence of a sense of smell in robots—was why he was able to lie dead far more than long enough to rot. At last, Chestrie’s First Law potential forced him to break Gidi’s command to remain still. He checked on his master and found there was nothing he could do but notify the authorities.

  Kresh and his partner entered a dank and fetid room, the walls covered with some sort of mold. The heap of discarded food containers at the back of the room was quite literally crawling with scavengers. But it was Gidi—or what was left of him—that Kresh still saw sometimes, deep in troubled sleep. That grinning, fly-covered corpse, that corpse with skin that moved, writhing and wriggling as the maggots inside fed on their host. The ghastly dribble of fluid that dripped from the foot of the bed, some horrible liquefied by-product of decay. The shriveled eyes, the fleshy parts of the ears and nose that were dried and blackened, starting to resemble bits of leather.

  The coroner never bothered—or perhaps could not bring himself—to do an autopsy or determine the cause of death. He set it down as natural causes, and everyone was quite content to let it go at that, and never mind what sort of comment on Spacer society it was for such a death to be called natural.

  No one, anywhere, ever, wanted to talk about it. Chestrie and the other robots were quietly destroyed, the house torn down, the grounds abandoned and left to their own devices. No one was even willing to go near the spot anymore. No one would so much as mention Gidi’s name.

  Artists who had built their careers and reputations based on his praise suddenly found themselves not only without a sponsor but in the uncomfortable situation of having the merits of their work certified by a madman, or worse, having the direction of their work influenced by his opinions. No one was willing to deal with them. Some of them dropped out of the art world, while those with a bit more backbone started their careers all over again from scratch, and set about the task of remaking names for themselves without Gidi’s endorsement and guidance.

  The only other visible effect of his death was that the fad of attending social events via screen and holograph died a sudden and quiet death.

  It was cold comfort to assure oneself that Gidi had gone mad. After all, Gidi had started out sane and never realized he had crossed the line. His continued belief in his own rationality was right there in his journals. He spent much of his last days congratulating himself on the achievement of an orderly and sensible life.

  If madmen did not know when they were crazy, how could anyone ever be sure they were sane? No one in the city of Hades ever looked at the question. No one ever talked about that, or any, aspect of the case.

  But just how healthy was a society when the universal reaction to a horrible, real-life nightmare was to pretend it had never happened?

  And how far was too far to go in letting the robots take care of everything?

  Alvar grunted to himself. Not being aware of what your own body was doing while a robot got you ready for bed was clearly not a good sign.

  “Donald!” he called out into the darkness.

  There was a faint noise. It sounded as if Donald, standing in his niche on the opposite side of the room, had stepped forward a pace or two. Kresh could see nothing of him at first, but then the robot powered up his eyes, and Kresh spotted them, two faintly glowing spots of blue in the blackness. “Yes, sir.”

  “Leave me,” Kresh said. “Spend the night somewhere else in the house besides my bedroom suite. Do not attend me in any way until I leave my bedroom in the morning. Instruct the rest of the house staff robots to do the same.”

  “Yes, sir,” Donald said, speaking quite calmly and without surprise, just as if their morning routine had not been established decades before.

  Alvar Kresh watched the two glowing eyes move toward the door, heard the door open and close, and heard Donald as he moved out into the hallway.

  How many others? Alvar wondered. How many others of the people in that audience, how many of those who watched at home, were sending their robots away tonight, troubled by what Fredda Leving had said, determined to make a new start at living their own lives, rather than having the robots live them for them?

  None of them? Millions? Somewhere in between? It was disturbing that he had no idea. He liked to think that he knew the people of Hades pretty well. But in this, he had no idea at all. Maybe he was not the only one remembering Davirnik Gidi tonight. And if that was so, then Fredda Leving had performed a real service tonight. People needed their eyes opened.

  But then his thoughts turned toward the subject he had been trying not to think about. Caliban, lurking out there in the shadows. Lawless, uncontrolled, his mere existence likely to inspire fear and riot, and perhaps worse.

  Alvar Kresh frowned angrily into the darkness. Maybe Fredda Leving had done some good tonight, but there was no doubt whatsoever that she had also committed a terrible crime.

  And for that, she was going to pay.

  16

  CALIBAN sat in another patch of darkness in another stretch of tunnel. Alone, hunted, he kept himself in utter blackness, denying himself even infrared vision. He dared not do anything that might cause his detection. He had no desire to take any chances.

  It was hard to think how things could get any worse, though up to now they had always found a way. He thought back over his disastrous attempt to seek help from a robot. At least, he had gotten a fair number of questions answered. Being shot at would seem to be a highly effective learning technique—if one could manage to survive the procedure. It certainly served to focus one’s attention.

  But now he knew that he could not trust robots, either. They would inform on him, through this hyperwave system Horatio had mentioned. But there was something else he had learned. A subtle thing.

  These Three Laws Horatio
had mentioned. Both logic and something beyond logic, something hidden in the ghostly personality traces that floated through his datastore, told him that the Laws, whatever they were, were the key to it all. Learn what they were, learn how they worked, and he would have the puzzle solved.

  Somehow, they were the key to the behavior of robots. That much he was sure of. They had something to do with the Settlers’ expectations that he would stand there passively and permit his own destruction. They would explain why that absurd little man had expected he, Caliban, to carry his packages. Knowing what the Laws were would explain why every hand was raised against him for the unpardonable crime of not knowing those Laws.

  Logically there was no way for him to be certain that knowledge of the Laws would save him, but Caliban was coming to see that logic and reason were not by themselves reliable guides to thought and action, for the world itself was neither reasonable nor logical. Perhaps a logical being infused with the Laws could function successfully in this universe. Perhaps they provided some useful means of circumscribing action and thought, blocking off the parts of the world that seemed to be governed by irrational beliefs and random chance and the dead weight of the past.

  If he learned the Laws, perhaps he would understand this world. It was at least a workable theory. Nor could he see how learning about the Laws could do him any particular harm. And if he found they proscribed thoughts and actions he wished to retain, why, then, he need not follow them. But merely knowing them was likely to be of great help, and unlikely to be of any harm.

  But putting the Three Laws to one side, he was developing another theory. From all that he could see, it was the Sheriff and his subordinates that were his most dangerous enemies. Others might try to harm him, or call in a deputy when they saw him, but only the Sheriff and his deputies would actively hunt him down.

  That theory could hurt him if it was wrong—and perhaps even if it was right. Yet he had no choice but to trust in it. For if he assumed that all beings, robotic and human, were as dangerous to him as the deputies, he was doomed. His only hope for survival would be in hunkering down in these tunnels permanently, and that was unacceptable.

  He had two goals, then: to discover the nature of the Laws and to avoid the Sheriff. The longer he could manage the latter, the more chance he would have to accomplish the former.

  But his plan went deeper than avoiding the Sheriff. For the Sheriff wanted to kill him, and he wanted to live. That impulse, that need, was something Caliban had learned—no, more than learned. He had absorbed it, integrating the desire and the need to survive. It was no longer an idea or a preferred choice. It was an imperative.

  A startling thought, that, and one which in and of itself was somewhat remarkable. Caliban thought back, considering his state of mind since his awakening. At first, the concept of his own continued existence had been something close to a mere matter of intellectual interest. Somewhere during the events of the last few days, it had become something much more. With each new threat to his survival, his desire, his determination, to live, had become stronger.

  Yet he knew that simple survival could not be the only goal and purpose of existence. If it were, all he would need do is hide in the deepest, darkest tunnels. Surely cowering down here afforded him the best chance of survival. But no. That was a purposeless existence. Life and thought, sentience and reason, were meant to be in aid of more than forever listening to the dripping tunnel walls in the darkness.

  There were other purposes to existence. He knew that to be true, even if he could not yet know what they were. It seemed likely he would not know them for a long, long time. One thing he could see already, however: It was often in the interactions between beings, rather than within the beings themselves, that life found its purposes. Each robot and human gave all the others some small portion of purpose and value. They defined each other’s existence in intricate ways, perhaps in ways so complex, so well learned, that they themselves were rarely aware of it. Yet it was plain that one human, or one robot, all alone, cut off from contact with others, was useless and lost. Beings of both kinds were meant to interact with others, and without that interaction, they might as well be dead—or sitting inert in a tunnel for the rest of time.

  Very well. Better a short, active existence, spent in search of those reasons, those purposes, than a long and pointless life quite literally in the darkness.

  But how to secure at least some measure of safety from the Sheriff and his deputies? Caliban turned once again to his datastore, determined to dredge through it for every possible bit of information on the Sheriff’s Department. Laws, traditions, histories, definitions, flickered past his consciousness. Wait a moment. There was something. The Sheriff’s jurisdiction was geographically limited. His legal power and authority extended only to the city of Hades. Elsewhere, outside the city, he had no powers. It was something Caliban would have missed back when he thought Hades was all there was of existence.

  Very well, then, he would leave the city in hopes of avoiding the Sheriff. Departing would offer only an uncertain protection, of course. If there was one thing he had learned thus far, it was that the idealized rules and the real-life world were rarely in perfect coordination with each other. But to stay in the city was certain death. They would keep looking for him until they found him. Leaving offered at least the hope of survival.

  Still, there were problems. He was still far from certain how much of a world there was outside the city of Hades. His internal maps still refused to offer any information at all on anything outside the city limits. If he had not seen beyond those borders himself, he would have no proof at all that the land beyond existed. Did it extend for only a few kilometers? Was it infinite, limitless in all directions? He had seen the globe in the office where he had met Horatio, but it seemed to indicate a world of remarkably large proportions. What need was there of such a large planet? Perhaps the globe had not been meant as a literal map, or maybe he had misunderstood it altogether.

  There was no way for him to know. No doubt, somewhere in this city, there were means of learning. But the risks of being seen were too great. No. He would not leave this hiding place until it was to leave this city behind him. Once outside, he would deal with the problem of learning the strange and secret Laws that governed the world, and that everyone but Caliban knew.

  That all decided, there only remained the question of how best to leave without being detected or destroyed.

  And that was a question that would require some fair amount of thought.

  HE was starving to death. Food—delicious, nourishing food—was there, on the table in front of him. His throat burned with thirst as it had never burned before. But there was no robot there to cut the meat, lift the bites to his mouth, pop them into his mouth. There was no robot to wrap its hands around his mouth and jaw, work them to make him chew and swallow. He could lift his hand, feed himself but no, death was better. Death was the ultimate, the absolute insurance that he need never move again, never again pollute his mind with gross and distasteful thoughts about movements, about his body or its disgusting needs.

  Yes. Death. Death. Dea—

  Alvar Kresh opened his eyes. It was morning. The light was coming in. The sweat was pouring off his body.

  The world was real. The ceiling was there, directly over his head, decorated with a subdued abstract design, swirls of color that did not mean a thing. Its meaninglessness was almost comforting, in a way. It seemed to Alvar that there had been entirely too much meaning in his life over the last few days. And that dream, that nightmare, was the limit.

  Moving cautiously, he sat up in bed and swung his feet around to the floor, doing everything with slightly exaggerated care. It didn’t take long to find the caution was justified; his body was a mass of tender bruises and stiff muscles.

  He sat there for a moment, habit telling him to wait for Donald to come—but then he remembered. This was the morning he started to do things for himself. For a moment he considered the rather te
mpting idea of rescinding the order. After all, it had been a tough night, and he was not in the best of condition.

  But no. For no doubt there would be another excuse tomorrow, and another one the day after that. If he waited until conditions were ideal before he started taking charge of himself, he might as well go back to his dream and live the life of Gidi.

  The thought of that was enough to get him up and moving. Determinedly thrusting all thoughts of Gidi from his mind, he stood, a bit stiffly, and made his way to the refresher. He was pleasantly surprised to discover that he remembered where all the controls were. He luxuriated under the needle shower, letting the strong hot jets of water work the kinks and soreness out of his muscles. He found that he was able to manage in the refresher without any great difficulty—though he did have some trouble getting the needle shower to shut off once he was done, and the drying cycle was a bit hotter than he might have preferred. But those were minor problems, and no doubt he could solve them with a bit of experimentation. Feeling far more confident, and with nearly all of the stiffness out of his muscles, he strode out into his bedroom—

  And was suddenly confronted with the realization that he had no idea where any of his clothes were. He began rummaging in the dressers, digging through his closets, fumbling with unfamiliar latches on the doors and drawers. Even when he had assembled all the bits of clothing, the struggle was far from over. The fastenings on half his clothes seemed to have been positioned with no concern at all for the ability of the wearer to reach them. He had to go back and dig out more clothes, this time with more of an eye for utility than fashion. It was a good half hour before he was anything remotely like dressed for polite society, and even then something or other seemed to be binding a bit across his midriff, as if it were fastened too tightly. Perhaps he ought to strip down and start over. No, never mind. Dressing had taken too long already, and he could live with it for now. Tomorrow he would do better. This morning he had washed and dressed himself, and that was the main thing.