Caliban

The Settlers set out to colonize the galaxy in earnest, terraforming endless worlds, leapfrogging past the Spacer worlds and Spacer technology. The Settlers carried with them the traditional viewpoints of the home world. Every encounter with the Spacers seemed to confirm the Settlers’ reasons for distrusting robots. Fear and hatred of robots became one of the foundations of Settler policy and philosophy. Robot hatred, coupled with the rather arrogant Spacer style, did little to endear Settler to Spacer.

But still, sometimes, somehow, the two sides managed to cooperate, however great the degree of friction and suspicion. People of goodwill on both sides attempted to cast aside fear and hatred to work together-with varying success.

It was on Inferno, one of the smallest, weakest, most fragile of the Spacer worlds, that Spacer and Settler made one of the boldest attempts to work together. The people of that world, who called themselves Infernals, found themselves facing two crises. Their ecological difficulties all knew about, though few understood their severity. Settler experts in terraforming were called in to deal with that.

But it was the second crisis, the hidden crisis, that proved the greater danger. For, unbeknownst to themselves, the Infernals and the Settlers on that aptly named world were forced to face a remarkable change in the very nature of robots themselves…

—Early History of Colonization,by Sarhir Vadid,

Baleyworld University Press, S.E 1231

1

THE blow smashed into her skull.

Fredda Leving’s knees buckled. She dropped her tea mug. It fell to the floor and shattered in a splash of brown liquid. Fredda crumpled toward the ground. Her shoulder struck the floor, smashing into the broken shards of the cup. They slashed into her left shoulder and the left side of her face. Blood poured from the wounds.

She lay there, on her side, motionless, curled up in a ghoulish mockery of the fetal position.

For the briefest of moments, she regained consciousness. It might have been a split second after the attack, or two hours later, she could not say. But shesaw them, there was no doubt of that. She saw the feet, the two red metallic feet, not thirty centimeters from her face. She felt fear, astonishment, confusion. But then her pain and her injury closed over her again, and she knew nomore.

ROBOT CBN-001, also known as Caliban, awoke for the first time. In a world new to him, his eyes switched on to glow a deep and penetrating blue as he looked about his surroundings. He had no memory, no understanding to guide him. He knew nothing.

He looked down at himself and saw he was tall, his body metallic red. His left arm was half-raised. He was holding it straight out in front of him, his fist clenched. He flexed his elbow, opened his fist, and stared at his hand for a moment. He lowered his arm. He moved his head from side to side, seeing, hearing, thinking, with no recollection of experience to guide him.Where am I, who am I, what am I?

I am in a laboratory of some sort, I am Caliban, I am a robot.The answers came from inside him, but not from his mind.From an on-board datastore, he realized, and that knowledge likewise came from the datastore.So that is where answers come from, he concluded.

He looked down to the floor and saw a body lying on its side there, its head near his feet. It was the crumpled form of a young woman, a pool of blood growing around her head and the upper part of her body. Instantly he recognized the concepts ofwoman, young, blood, the answers flitting into his awareness almost before he could form the questions. Truly a remarkable device, this on-board datastore.

Who is she?Why does she lie there?What is wrong with her?He waited in vain for the answers to spring forth, but no explanation came to him. The store could not-or would not-help him with those questions. Some answers, it seemed, it would not give. Caliban knelt down, peered at the woman more closely, dipped a finger in the pool of blood. His thermocouple sensors revealed that it was already rapidly cooling, coagulating. The principle of blood clotting snapped into his mind.It should be sticky, he thought, and tested the notion, pressing his forefinger to his thumb and then pulling them apart.Yes, a slight resistance.

But blood, and an injured human. A strange sensation stole over him, as he knew there was some reaction, some intense, deep-rooted response that he should have-some response that was not there at all.