Caliban

Alvar Kresh yawned and blinked, and punched the coffee button on the aircar’s beverage dispenser. He was alert, clear-eyed, but there was still a shroud of tiredness over him, and the first sip of the coffee was welcome. The aircar sped on through the night as he flew it one-handed, drinking his coffee. He grinned.Lucky Donald isn’t here, he thought. It was stunts like flying one-handed that made it all but impossible for him to fly his own car when Donald, or indeed any robot, was on board. One false move and the robot would instantly leap into the copilot’s seat and take over the craft’s controls.

Ah, well. Maybe the Settlers sneered at robots, but no Spacer world could function for thirty seconds without them. That having been said, the damned things could be incredibly infuriating all the same.

Alvar Kresh forced himself to calmness. He had been roused from a sound sleep in the dead of night, and he knew from bitter experience that interrupted sleep made him more edgy than usual. He had learned long ago that he needed to do something to take the edge off himself when he was too keyed up, or else he was likely to take someone’ s head off instead.

Alvar breathed the cool thin air. A nightflight over the desert at speed with the top open and the wind howling through his thick thatch of white hair helped drain away some of his temper, his tension.

But crimes of violence were still rare enough in Hades for him to take them personally, to get angry and stay that way. He needed that anger. This savage and cowardly attack on a leading scientist was intolerable. Maybe he did not agree with Fredda Leving’s politics, but he knew better than most that neither the Spacer worlds in general nor Inferno in particular could afford the loss of any talented individual.

Alvar Kresh watched as the city swept by below him, and began to slow the aircar. There. The aircar’s navigation system reported that they were directly over the Leving Robotics Labs. Alvar peered over the edge of the car, but it was difficult to get a fix on the precise building at night. He eased the car to a halt, adjusted its position over the landscape slightly, and brought it down to the ground.

A robot ground attendant hurried over to the car and opened the door for him. Alvar Kresh stood up and stepped out of the car, into the night.

There was a busy rummaging-about going on. A red and white ambulance aircar squatted on the ground near Kresh’s car, its lift motors idling, its running lights on, obviously ready to lift off the moment its patient was aboard. A squad of med-robots bustled through the main door of the lab, two of them carrying a stretcher, the others holding feed lines and monitoring equipment hooked up to the patient. Leving herself was not quite visible under the tangle of life-support gear. A human doctor lounged by the hatch of the ambulance, watching the robots do the work. Alvar stood still and let the robots pass as they carried the victim from the scene of the crime.

He watched, his anger rising inside him, as the meds carried her into their van, and watched as the indolent human doctor eased his way into the ambulance behind his busy charges.How could anyone commit such violence against another human being? he asked himself.

But raw, unchanneled anger would not help catch Fredda Leving’s assailant.Remain calm, he thought.Keep your anger controlled, focused. Alvar Kresh lifted his hand to a med-robot that was carrying a first-aid kit back to the ambulance. “What is the condition of your patient?” he asked.

The gleaming red and white med-robot regarded Kresh through glowing orange eyes. “She received a severe head injury, but no irreparable trauma,” it said.

“Were her injuries life-threatening?” Kresh asked.

“Had we been delayed in reaching Madame Leving, her injuries could easily have been fatal,” the robot said, a bit primly.

“However, she should recover completely, though there is the distinct possibility that she will suffer traumatic amnesia. We shall place her in a regeneration unit as soon as we reach the hospital.”

“Very good,” Kresh said. “You may go.” He turned and watched the last of the med team climb into the ambulance and take off into the night. Good that she would recover, but it could be very bad indeed if she did suffer amnesia. People with holes in their memories made for bad witnesses. But the words of the med-robots changed the nature of the case.Her injuries could easily have been fatal. That changed a simple assault with a deadly weapon case into one of attempted murder. At last he turned to go inside the building, to see what Donald and his forensic team had come up with.

2

“ALL right, Donald,” Kresh said as he came in, “what have you got?”