Caliban

There were four doors in all, in the corners of the room, set into the long sides of the room: two on the exterior wall, leading directly to the outside, and two on the opposite, interior wall, leading into the building’ s hallway. Alvar noted that the room was windowless, and the doors were heavy; they appeared to be light-tight. Close them, cut the overhead lights, and the room would be pitch-black. Presumably they did some work with light-sensitive materials in here. Or perhaps they tested robot eyes. Would the reason for, or the fact of, a light-tight room be important or meaningless? No way to know.

Alvar and Donald stood by one of the interior doors, toward what Alvar found himself thinking of as the rear of the room.But why is this end the rear? he wondered. No one specific thing, he decided. It was just that this end of the room seemed more disused. Everything was boxed up, in storage. The other end clearly was put to more active use.

Work counters ran most of the length of the room, between the pairs of doors. There were computer terminals on the counters. The walls held outlets for various types of power supplies, and two or three hookups Kresh could not identify. Special-purpose datataps, perhaps.

Every square centimeter of the countertops seemed to have something on it. A robot torso, a disembodied robot head, a stack of carefully sealed boxes, each neatly labeledHandle with Care. Gravitonic Brain. Alvar frowned and looked at the labels again. What the devil were gravitonic brains? For thousands of years, all robots had been built with positronic brains. It was the positronic brain that made robots possible. Gravitonic brains? Alvar knew nothing at all about them, but the name itself was unsettling. He did not approve of needless change.

He filed away the puzzle for future reference and continued his survey of the room. All of the room’ s side counters were full of all sorts of mysterious-looking tools and machines and robot parts. Yet there was no feel of chaos or mess about the room; all was neat and orderly. There was not even so much as an air of clutter. It was merely that this entire room was in active use by someone who seemed to have several projects going at once.

Two large worktables sat in the center of the room. A half -built robot and a bewildering collection of parts and tools were spread out on one table, while the other was largely empty, with just a few odds and ends here and there around the edges.

Wheeled racks of test equipment stood here and there about the room. A huge contraption of tubing and swivels stood between the two tables. It was easily three meters tall, and took up maybe four meters by five in floor space. It was on power rollers, so it could be pushed out of the way when not in use.

“What the devil is that thing?” Alvar asked, stepping toward the center of the room.

“A robot service rack,” Donald replied, following behind. “It is designed to clamp onto a robot’s hard-attachment points and suspend the robot at any height and in any attitude, so as to position the needed part of the robot for convenient access. It is used for repairs or tests. I thought it a large and awkward thing to keep in the middle of the room. It would certainly interfere with easy movement between the two worktables, for example.”

“That’ s what I was thinking. Look, you can see the empty space along the wall on the rear end of the room. They rolled it over there when they weren’t using it. So why is it out in the middle of the room? What good is an empty robot rack?”

“The clear implication is that there was a robot in it recently,” Donald said.

“Yes, I agree. And notice the empty space on the center of the empty worktable. About the right size for another robot there, too. Unless they moved the same robot from the table to the rack, or vice versa. Maybe that was the motive for the attack? The theft of one or two experimental robots? We’ll have to check on all that.”

“Sir, if I could direct your attention to the floor in front of the service rack, Fredda Leving’s position on it has been marked out-”

“Not yet, Donald. I’ll get there. I’ll get there.” Alvar was quite purposefully ignoring the pooled blood and the body outline in the center of the room. It was too easy to be distracted by the big, obvious clues at a crime scene. What could the body outline tell him? That a woman had been attacked here, bled here? He knew all that already. Better to work the rest of the room first.