Utopia

1

A BLINDING FLASH of light erupted in the depths of space, a massive explosion that blazed like a second sun. A cold, dark lump of matter, eighteen kilometers in diameter, was caught in the blast, and deflected toward a new heading, toward a slightly changed orbit.

The power of the blast should have been enough to shatter the comet, but, somehow, it held together. The surface of the cometary body was heated by the explosion, and small pockets of volatiles boiled up and out, sending jets of gases flaring out across the darkness.

The laws of action and reaction work equally well, whether or not the action is intentional. The jets of gas served as natural rocket thrusters, accelerating the comet in unexpected directions, throwing it off its carefully calculated course.

But other jets flared almost at once, artificial ones that compensated for the uncontrolled thrust. The control thrusters had to fire more and more frequently as the comet moved in closer to the inner planets of the star system.

It soon became plain that the comet was heading straight for a planet in the inner system, a world of blue and brown and tan, a world that was nearly all water in the southern hemisphere, and nearly all dried-out desert in the north.

The comet fell in toward the planet, closer and closer. The comet warmed as it came in nearer to the star the planet orbited. Its surface began to boil and vaporize, gases and dust blowing off into space, forming up into a tail that stretched itself out behind the comet.

The comet suddenly broke up. The fragments spaced themselves out into a neat line, like beads on a string.

The fragments moved closer, closer to the planet.

“Move from time factor positive one hundred to positive factor ten time dilation,” said a disembodied voice in the darkness.

Time seemed to slow, the fragments suddenly moving at a fraction of their original velocity, easing themselves slowly down out of orbit.

“Give me a view closer to Inferno,” the same voice commanded, and the image suddenly swelled in size.

“That’s still way too fast. Time dilation to negative factor five,” the voice ordered.

Once again, the clock slowed down, but even so, events moved quickly. The comet fragments were moving with incredible speed as they slammed into the planet’s upper atmosphere, and even with time slowed to a fifth its normal speed, it still took scant seconds for the fragments to force their way down through the atmosphere and slam into the planet.

The largest fragment hit first, striking on land just north of the shoreline. The second crashed into the planet just north of the first, slamming into the peaks of a low range of hills. The other fragments struck, one after another, in a line running straight to the North Pole, blazing stars of light blooming for brief moments before they were engulfed in cloud and smoke, dust and debris.

“It worked,” the voice said. “Freeze sequence at that point. Simglobe off. Room lights on.”

The image of the planet aflame died away, and the lights came up to reveal a perfectly ordinary living room in a perfectly ordinary residence. The only unusual object in the room was the highly sophisticated simglobe projector sitting in the center of the room.

Davlo Lentrall walked over to the low, stubby cylinder that was the simglobe unit, and tapped the top of it with his finger. Not even the most advanced Settler models could do what this unit could do. He ought to know. He had designed and built it himself. He savored the satisfaction of the moment, and all the effort that had gone before it. It was his, all his. He had discovered the comet. In a rare burst of modesty, he had named it, not for himself, as called for by tradition, but for Chanto Grieg, the murdered governor who had spurred the reterraforming project that had saved the planet. Or at least bought the planet some time, so that Davlo Lentrall and Comet Grieg could finish the work that Chanto Grieg had begun. There was a symmetry there, a bit of poetry that would appeal to the historians. Posterity would remember Davlo Lentrall, no matter what the comet was called.

Of course, there was no point in discussing such matters with his robotic assistant. Kaelor would only remind him of the things that were bound to go wrong. But Davlo could not let such a triumphant moment go without saying something. “It worked,” he said at last.

“Of course the simglobe works, Master Lentrall. It has worked every time you operated it. Why should it fail now?”

“I meant the comet-capture, Kaelor, not the simulator.”

“I must point out that you forced it to work,” said the robot Kaelor.

“What, exactly, do you mean?” Lentrall asked. Kaelor was a useful servant, but dealing with him required a good deal of patience.

“I mean, sir, that you are making a series of unwarranted assumptions.”

Davlo held back his temper, and forced himself to be patient. Kaelor had been designed and built to Davlo’s custom specifications, the most important of which was to hold First Law potential to the lowest possible level when judging hypothetical situations. A lab-assistant robot with First Law set to the normally super-high levels of Infernal robots would have been utterly incapable of assisting him on the sorts of experiments Davlo was interested in. Even before he had stumbled across Comet Grieg, Davlo had been involved in Operation Snowball, a project that required the contemplation of a great many risky alternatives in order to find the safest way to proceed.

There was scarcely a Three-Law robot on the planet who would have been willing to work on Snowball, let alone operate the simglobe to test ideas for bringing Comet Grieg in. Few robots would even be willing to help set up the problem, on the grounds that the simulation could pave the way for letting a real comet strike the real planet—which would be dangerous to humans in the extreme. Davlo had therefore ordered a custom-built robot for his Snowball work, and been glad to have him when he realized Grieg’s potential.

It had taken a lot of argument and discussion with the robot designer, an exceedingly conservative gentleman who was most reluctant to put the slightest restriction on First Law, but the result was Constricted First Law 001-CFL-001. Tradition and convention would have required Davlo to name CFL-001 something like Caefal, or Cuffle, or even, as one waggish colleague suggested, Careful. But none of those appealed to Davlo, and he had come up with Kaelor instead.

But, either as a side effect of constricted First-Law potential, or merely as the consequence of the normal random subpathings of his positronic brain, Kaelor was also possessed of a dour, even depressive, outlook on life and the universe. “What are these assumptions, Kaelor?”

“You’re assuming you can hold the comet together during the original guidance explosion,” said Kaelor, “and then assuming you can split it apart in precisely the manner you wish, exactly when you wish. Furthermore, you have not resolved the issue of solar heating and its effects. I also have doubts about your being able to control the comet’s outgassing. You have also been quite arbitrary about the number of fragments needed for the job, and, finally, you have not dealt with the incredibly delicate timing and guidance control needed for final-phase targeting and atmospheric entry. Success requires a degree of precision in all these matters that I see no way of accomplishing.”

“I am aware of all those problems,” said Davlo. “If we were only to begin after we had solved all the problems, we would never begin at all. But I have demonstrated that the basic plan will work. Or at least that it can. Now I just have to convince my superiors. But in my considered opinion, I have proved we can drop Comet Grieg onto Inferno, and save the planet.”

“Granting your assumptions, I suppose you are right,” the robot replied in dour tones. “I only wonder if you can manage to do it without killing everybody.”

JUSTEN DEVRAY, COMMANDER of the Combined Inferno Police, sat in the unmarked and slightly battered aircar and watched the sun come up over parkland of idyllic green. He was tired. Deathly tired. But being tired was part of the job description on this duty. That was part of what he was here to learn.

It had seemed like a very sensible theory, going around to every bureau of the Combined Infernal Police, getting a firsthand idea of the sort of police work he had never had the chance to do, back in the old days. It had, in fact, been Justen’s own idea, and it was teaching him a lot. Now he knew for certain that stakeout duty was both duller and more exhausting than he had thought possible. And he was starting to suspect that a nice, soft office job had more to recommend than he had realized.

Justen’s unmarked aircar was parked a hundred meters or so away from the surface entrance to the vast underground complex known as Settlertown. The entrance itself was a mushroom-shaped arrangement, with a central pillar that contained the elevator shaft, and a wide, rounded, overhanging roof that spread out from the pillar to keep the weather off anyone waiting for a car down to the interior. The entrance shaft stood just inside the gate to the huge park the Settlers had built over their underground city. The landscaping of the park was all Settler work as well, of course, a demonstration of their skill in terraforming.

But the design of Settlertown did not concern Justen Devray. The job of the officer on this stakeout was to keep on a watch on the people going in and out of Settlertown. There were, of course, other entrances to the vast series of artificial caverns and chambers below. The CIP had watches on those, as well. But the main entrance was the real prize, at least according to the CIP’s intelligence unit. The big fish used the main entrance. Their ranks, or at least their cover stories, would demand it. More importantly, the amateurs used the main entrance.

Everyone on both sides knew that all the entrances to Settlertown were watched, even the most rarely used ones. According to most theories of field operation, the best way to avoid being noticed was to use the busiest entrance, in hopes of getting lost in the shuffle. Sometimes it even worked. Especially now, at midmorning, there was a great deal of coming and going. It was far from simple to monitor it all. Something else for Justen to learn.

There were, of course, plenty of legitimate reasons for people to go in and out of Settlertown, and lots of people, Spacer and Settler, who did indeed go in and out. But some fraction of that number had no good reason for being there at all. Those were the ones who gave the CIP stakeout its reason for being.

The CIP never used the same car twice in a row for this stakeout job, even though the real professionals on the other side knew perfectly well they were being observed, and had no doubt gotten quite good at spotting the CIP’s stakeout, no matter what car they were using. That was beside the point. However the CIP ran the stakeout, the pros in Settlertown would be able to spot them. But not so the amateurs, the dropins. Change the car often enough, routinely vary the spot where you parked it, and the odds were reasonably good that an amateur could go in and out a dozen times without being able to spot the surveillance car.

Justen Devray shifted in his seat and tried to get a trifle more comfortable. He felt cooped up, hemmed in. He smiled to himself. It wasn’t just the car that had him feeling a little bit trapped. It was the job. In the old days, Justen had run the Governor’s Rangers, a service with the dual responsibility of enforcing the law outside the cities and managing a number of reterraforming projects. Even Justen was willing to admit it had been an awkward combination of responsibilities.

A little under five years before, Alvar Kresh had reorganized the Rangers, leaving them with no other duties than their terraforming projects, and merging their law-enforcement commands with the City of Hades Sheriff’s Department to form the Combined Inferno Police. Kresh had put Devray in charge of the new service.

Justen had taken the job willingly enough, but there were plenty of times he regretted the decision. Running the planetary police more or less required him to live in the planetary capital, and Justen Devray could not get used to the city of Hades, or to city life in general. He often found himself wishing to be back in the Rangers, working on some conservation job or terraforming project out in high plains north of the city.

Despite his desk work, Justen still had the tanned skin, tousled blond hair, and deep blue eyes to match that of an outdoorsman. The previous years out in the wind and weather had at least etched some character into his face, and life in the city had not erased any of it. Even so, he still looked unfashionably young, and one glance at him was enough to see he did not belong in a city.

Although he felt as if he were very much on his own, Justen had company in the battered aircar. There were two robots with him. One was Gervad 112, his personal robot of some years standing. Gervad was a General Ranger Deployment robot, a GRD unit of the sort that had been general issue for the Rangers some years before. The other was a Security, Patrol, and Rescue robot, an SPR, more casually called Sapper 323. After the night when the previous governor, Chanto Grieg, was murdered with a whole squad of Sappers on guard around him, the model suddenly, and rather unfairly, had gained a bad reputation. What had happened to them could have happened to any model of robot.

Still, no major security service was willing to use them any more. Justen hadn’t even tried to hang on to the Rangers’ SPRs. The rank and file did not trust them, and would not use them. As a result, most of the Sappers had been sold off at rock-bottom prices to all sorts of slightly disreputable organizations and people. That in turn meant that a Sapper made good camouflage. No one who saw Devray with a Sapper in tow was going to think he was a cop, let alone the most senior police official on the planet.

The depressing fact was that the two robots could have done the watching just as well without Devray. Better, probably. However, it did not do to dwell on such matters. The plain fact of the matter was that humans were not really much needed for most kinds of work.

“The male subject in red pants and blue tunic is not on my list of identified subjects,” the SPR announced. The special features of the SPR design really shone in identity work. They were nearly as good as humans at visual pattern matching and comparison—or, to put it another way, at recognizing faces and people. And, of course, they had virtually infallible memories. When a Sapper said it recognized someone, or that it did not recognize something, it was best to take it seriously. Right at the moment it meant that someone who wasn’t supposed to be going into Settlertown was doing just that.

Justen Devray, suddenly wide awake and alert, peered through the forward windshield, eagerly trying to get a good look at the person in question. There was a knot of about ten or twelve people waiting for the next elevator car to arrive.

“Gervad,” he asked his personal robot, “do you know him?” Gervad had the current official CIP mugshot file in his memory store.

“Sir, I have at least a tentative pattern match, but I am afraid that it seems rather an improbable one.”

“Let me be the judge of that,” said Justen, still trying to get a good look at the man in question. It wasn’t easy, with the throng of people all around him. If the fellow actually had intelligence training, he would of course do his best to blend in. “What’s your pattern match?”

“The observed subject matches with one Barnsell Ardosa, a junior researcher in astrophysics at the University of Hades. As it seems unlikely in the extreme that there would be much of interest to the Settlers coming from that source, I would suggest that I have likely made an inaccurate match.”

Justen was just about to agree with Gervad, but just then he finally spotted his quarry. There he was: a big, burly, round-faced man with dark skin. He was completely bald on the top of his head but had a thin fringe of snow-white hair that clung to the sides, thicker toward the back of his head, and fading out completely just forward of the ears. He had a bushy mustache and a distinctly worried look on his face.

For just the briefest of moments, Ardosa—if it was Ardosa—seemed to be looking straight at Devray. And in that moment, Devray decided that Gervad should have more faith in his own pattern-matching skills.

Justen Devray had never been near the university’s astrophysics department. But Justen Devray was absolutely certain he had seen that face before.

But the devil take him if he could figure out where.

ALVAR KRESH, GOVERNOR of the Planet Inferno, glared up at the young man who stood at the other side of his desk. “You’re not helping your cause,” he said. “I told you that I would consider your proposal, and I will consider it. I have been considering it. But I am not going to be rushed into a decision. Not on something this big.”

“There is no time to do anything but rush,” his visitor replied, his voice urgent and insistent. “We have lost time already. I ran my final simulations three days ago—and it has taken me that long to get in to see you. This is a danger, and an opportunity, far greater than you understand. Perhaps greater than you can understand.”

“What a tactful thing to say to the governor of the planet,” said Kresh, his tone of voice as sour as his words. “But even if comprehending it is beyond my poor abilities, I suppose that you are capable of seeing the big picture?”

“I beg your pardon, sir. I didn’t mean to put it that way,” said Davlo Lentrall, coloring just a bit.

“No,” Kresh said tiredly, “you probably didn’t.” He sighed, and considered his visitor with the practiced eye of an ex-policeman. Lentrall was dark-skinned and lantern-jawed, with an angular face and intense dark-brown eyes. His hair was jet black and cut short enough to stand up straight. Height average, build medium. Then Kresh reminded himself that he wasn’t a policeman anymore, but a politician, and he needed to judge the fellow’s character, not note his physical description. It was plain to see the salient factor in Lentrall’s personality: he was young, with all the brazen self-confidence of youth.

Perhaps other cultures, Settler cultures, might regard youth as attractive, or let youthful zeal serve to excuse a multitude of sins. But Spacer culture was old, and its ways were old. Most of its people were old as well. For the average citizen, the exuberance and passion of youth was, at most, a distant, and slightly distasteful, memory, and Lentrall was a walking reminder of why that was. Brashness, impetuosity, and arrogance rarely won any friends.

But there was some possibility that the message Lentrall carried was important, no matter how annoying the messenger might be. “Let’s both back off on this, just for the moment,” Kresh said. “We’re not getting anywhere anyway.”

Lentrall shifted uncomfortably on his feet. He seemed to debate the idea of protesting again, and then think better of it. “Very well, sir,” he said. “I—I apologize for my outburst. It’s just that the strain of all this, the thought that the survival of the planet might be in my hands—it’s a lot to deal with.”

“I know,” Kresh said, his voice suddenly gentle. “I know it very well. I have been living with just that thought for years now.”

Once again, Lentrall reddened a bit. “Yes, sir. I know you have. It’s just the idea of letting this chance slip away. But even so, I shouldn’t have presumed to, to—”

“That’s all right, son. Let’s just leave it there. We’ll talk again in a few days. In fact, tomorrow. Come in tomorrow morning. I will bring my wife, and you can give the full presentation to both of us. I would very much value her opinion on all this.” And that was true for more reasons than he would care to share with young Dr. Lentrall just at the moment.

“Yes, sir. I’ll do that. Tomorrow, first thing. Would ten be all right?”

“That would be perfect. Donald, get the door for our guest, will you?”

“Of course, sir.” Donald 111, Kresh’s personal robot, stepped out of his wall niche and walked smoothly across the floor. He led Lentrall to the door, activated the door controls, and watched Lentrall leave.

Donald was a short, rounded-off sort of robot, all smooth curves and no hard edges, quite specifically designed to be as nondescript and nonthreatening in appearance as possible. He was sky-blue in color, the sky-blue of the old Hades Sheriff’s Department, a hold-over from the days when Kresh was the sheriff of the city—and there was a sheriff. Perhaps Kresh should have had Fredda recoat him in some other color. But Kresh liked the reminder of those days, when he had dealt with problems a lot smaller than the ones he had now—even if they had seemed quite large enough at the time.

Donald closed the door after Lentrall and turned back to face Kresh.

“Your opinion, Donald?”

“Of what, sir? The message, or the man who delivered it?”

“Both, I suppose. But start with the messenger. Quite a determined young man, isn’t he?”

“Yes, sir. If I may say so, he puts me in mind of what I know of your own early days.”

Kresh looked toward Donald suspiciously. “What do you know about my early days?” he demanded. “How could you know about them? You weren’t even built until after I was sheriff.”

“True enough, sir, but you have been my master for many years now, and I have made you my study. After all, the better I know you, the better I can serve you. I have examined all the extant records regarding you. And, unless every record is misleading or inaccurate, that young man there bears a striking resemblance to the man you were at his age.”

“Donald, that comes dangerously close to being sentimental.”

“I trust not, sir. I do not have any of the emotional overlay protocols needed to experience sentimentality. Rather, I have merely stated an objective opinion.”

“Have you indeed?” Kresh asked. “Well, if you have, it is a most disconcerting one.” Kresh stood up and stretched. It had been a long day, and Lentrall had given him a lot to think about. “Come on, Donald, let’s go home.”

“Yes, sir.” Donald turned back toward the door, unlocked it, and reopened it. He led Kresh and out of the office, down the hallway, and over to the governor’s private elevator. The elevator door opened, and man and robot stepped into it. The door closed behind them, and carried them up toward the roof of Government Tower, where Kresh’s private aircar waited in a secured hangar. There were actually two landing pads on the roof—a smaller one on the very apex of the building, for the use of the governor only, and a larger one about fifteen meters lower down. The governor’s private landing pad had been added after the Grieg incident, by the simple expedient of building a ten-meter-wide, hollow stresscrete-and-steel pillar in one corner of the existing landing pad. The builders then put a flat disk thirty meters across atop of the pillar and used heavy buttressing to reinforce it. There was a small observation post built into the pillar itself, about ten meters above the original landing pad. The CIP used it as a sort of control tower for the main landing area.

Locked doors, private elevators, secured hangars, controlled-access landing pads. Kresh brooded over it all as they rode up in the elevator. Sometimes it seemed to Kresh that the walls between him and the world he was supposed to be governing were impossibly high. How could he run the planet if the whole system conspired to keep him cut off from it all, in the name of his own safety?

On the other hand, his immediate predecessor had been murdered in cold blood. The were reasons for the walls, the barriers that were everywhere. Even the roof had walls.

The elevator doors opened, and Kresh stepped out onto his private rooftop landing pad, warmed by an evening sun. But instead of walking toward the hangar, he went over to the edge of the platform. A low wall, about one hundred thirty centimeters tall, surrounded the landing pad. Like just about everything else on this planet, it was intended as a safety measure, but it also just happened to be the right height for Kresh to fold his arms on top of the wall, rest his chin on his forearms, and think. He could lean on the wall and look out over the world, and think his own thoughts undisturbed.

Not completely undisturbed, of course. That never happened. Not on a Spacer world. Kresh could hear Donald behind him, moving in close to protect Kresh against whatever imaginary danger the robot might choose to worry about: the wall giving way, an impossible gust of wind blowing in some inconceivable direction and sucking Kresh up into the air before throwing him clear of the edge of the building, Kresh suddenly giving way to some long-hidden—and completely imaginary—urge to self-destruction and deciding to fling himself over the edge. There was no end to the dooms and dangers a Three-Law robot could imagine.

And that, of course, was part of the problem. But don’t worry about it now. Take now, take the moment, and look out at the city of Hades, at the sky, at the world.

Alvar Kresh looked out over the world he governed, the world put into his keeping. Kresh was a big, burly, broad-shouldered man with a strong-featured, expressive face. He was light-skinned, with a thatch of thick white hair that stood up bottle-brush straight from his head. There were times when he started to think the years were catching up with him, and the thought did flit through his mind tonight—no doubt inspired by Donald’s comparison of Lentrall with Kresh the younger. Had he, Kresh, ever been that prickly, that pushy, that sure of himself when there was no good reason to be sure?

No, he told himself. Let that go, too. Let it all drift away, to be caught by the wind and carried to the far horizon. Let the office and the duties and the worries go, and just look. Just look, and see.

For, in truth, there was much worth seeing. The planet Inferno had come a long way in the five years Kresh had been governor—and Kresh took no small measure of pride in knowing that he had some fair-sized part in making that true.

He took a deep breath, and the air was cool and sweet, fresh and alive. When Kresh had taken office, the city of Hades had been all but literally on the verge of drying up and blowing away. The deserts had been spreading, the plants dying, the flower beds and gardens covered with the dust that blew into town with every gust of wind.

But now the deserts were retreating, not advancing. At least here, at least around the city, they were beating back the desert. Now the breeze carried the scents of life, of green things and freshness. Now he could look out and see green where once there had been brown and ocher. Now the city of Hades, and the land around it, were coming back to life.

The price had been high, there was no doubt of that. For five years now, the people of Inferno had been enduring restrictions on the use of robots that would have been unimaginable on any other Spacer world. But the planet of Inferno, the world itself, had had more need of that robot labor than its people did.

Kresh’s predecessor, Chanto Grieg, had drafted a large fraction of Inferno’s robotic population into government service. He had taken robots away from household duties and put them to work on terraforming and reclamation projects. Robots that had served as assistant cooks and stand-by drivers, robots that had served no other function than to wait until someone wanted to enter or leave a room, and then push the button that activated the automatic door, robots that had been wasted on the most menial and absurd of tasks, suddenly found themselves planting trees, operating earth-moving equipment, hand-pollinating flowers, and raising fish and insects and mammals to be released into the wild.

To this very day, there were those who moaned and complained about the terrible hardships imposed by the robotic labor laws. But it seemed there were fewer and fewer such complainers as time went by. People were getting used to the idea of living with fewer robots. People had discovered—or rediscovered—the pleasure of doing things for themselves. Things were changing, and changing for the better.

The question was—would the change be enough? Kresh knew that the fate of the planet was still balanced on a knife edge. Locally, things might be improving. But from a global perspective, thing were…

No. Never mind. Worry about it all later. Lentrall’s idea had—had disturbed him. No question about it. He needed to hear what Fredda would say about it.

Kresh turned away from the view of the city, and headed toward his aircar. “Come on, Donald,” he said again, “let’s go home.”

IT WAS LUCKY. Kresh told himself as Donald flew him home, that Spacers had a long tradition of respecting each other’s privacy, and of defending their own. Otherwise, the scandalous nature of his own domestic arrangements might well have brought a thunderstorm of controversy down upon his head.

To get the worst of it over with first, Alvar Kresh and his wife, Fredda Leving, lived together, and maintained only one household. In the typical Spacer marriage, husband and wife each had their own household, and spent a large fraction of their time apart from each other.

It was more or less expected that newlyweds would spend an inordinate amount of time together, but the typical pattern was for a couple to spend less and less time together as the years went by. A couple who had been married some years might see each other once a week, or once a month. Some older marriages didn’t so much end as wear out; the two partners might never see each other at all, from year’s end to year’s end. While divorce was simple enough on Inferno, many couples couldn’t even work up the energy to go through the legal motions. They stayed married out of sheer inertia.

Alvar Kresh had discovered, much to his own surprise, that his own marriage was not coming anywhere close to following any such pattern. Three years after their wedding, he and Fredda still spent every night not only under the same roof but, even more scandalously, in the same room—and the same bed.

While there was nothing seen as actually wrong or immoral in such an arrangement, it was most unusual in Infernal society. If it had gotten around, the good people of Inferno would have thought their governor and his wife most peculiar.

And that in itself was strange, in Kresh’s mind, at least. He stared out the window, at the green and lovely city below, reflecting once again on the peculiar ways of his own people. Infernals prided themselves on being quite open-minded when it came to questions of personal relationships. And so they were—at least in theory. But Kresh had learned, over the years, that while their minds might be open to the idea of most sorts of physical relationships, their hearts were far less prepared to deal with the idea of emotional intimacy. The idea, the theory, of sex was something an Infernal could deal with. The fact, the reality, of sex would bring a blush to an Infernal’s face, but he or she could at least countenance such a thing. The idea of love was something most could not deal with at all.

Infernals were Spacers, and Spacers had always been a people who kept their distance, physical and emotional, from each other. At least Infernals had never gone to the extremes of some Spacer worlds, worlds that had no real cities, no towns, no villages, only widely scattered villas, with one human and an army of robots making up the average household. But Infernals were not exactly a gregarious people.

That Kresh and Fredda slept together on occasion would be seen as perfectly acceptable. That they slept together every night, in the same bed, would be seen as a trifle odd. That they had their meals together, spent their free time together, and were in each other’s company as much as possible—that would be seen as quite beyond the pale. Infernals simply did not open up to each other, expose themselves to each other, that way. They did not make themselves vulnerable to each other.

More fools they, Kresh told himself. They would never know the strength, the confidence, the sense of security that Fredda gave to Kresh. He could only hope he gave as much to her.

Kresh knew the Infernals, and what they would say if they knew. He knew how the idea would float up from somewhere that his unconventional home life made him unsuited to continue as governor, or that Fredda obviously had an undue influence on him. Even as it was, they said she was far too young for him—and Infernals were suspicious of youth. They said she was entirely too cozy with the Settlers. Simcor Beddle, leader of the Ironheads, was never reluctant to put that notion about at one of his mass meetings—and there was at least a grain of truth in it. Fredda did tend toward the Settler view on a number of subjects. Beddle was already leading a whispering campaign, putting it about that her radical ideas were dangerous. But then, Kresh was inclined to believe that himself. Fredda and he had some remarkably vigorous arguments on the subject of robots, among other things.

If Kresh had been a private citizen, he would not have much cared if the rest of the universe knew every detail of his domestic arrangements. But the last thing he needed at this point was for his personal affairs to become an issue. Better, far better, to keep such matters well away from the public eye and avoid the talk in the first place.

Kresh paid lip service to the conventions. He maintained—but did not use—fully staffed and equipped living quarters at Government Tower. The only time he put them to use was after official entertainments of one sort or another. At such times, he would make a show of retiring to his own private rooms in Government Tower at the end of the evening, long after Fredda had gone home to “her” house. Sometimes, if the hour was very late, they would actually spend the night apart, but, more often than not, Donald would end up secretly flying one of them to where the other waited. All of it was quite absurd. But better such nocturnal charades than the poisonous gossip that would result if the story got around that Alvar Kresh was passionately in love with his wife.

Kresh remembered arguing with Chanto Grieg, just hours before Grieg’s death. Grieg had tried to explain to Kresh how the job of posturing, of pretending, of smoothing over, was vital to the job of governance, that he could not get to his real work until all the nonsense had been dealt with. Kresh had not quite believed it then—but he had learned the truth of it since. Simcor Beddle had taught him that much. Kresh had learned the hard way that he could do nothing unless he first neutralized the Ironheads.

The Ironheads. Kresh smiled to himself as he imagined what Beddle and his crew could do with the news if they discovered everything about the goings-on at the Kresh—Leving household. There were things more shocking than romance. For the sake of domestic harmony, Kresh himself spent a lot of time pretending he knew less than he did about what went on when he was away from home. Best if he could pretend he did not know all about the meetings of subversive robots taking place in his own house.

It was bad enough that he himself knew. But if Beddle ever found out—oh, yes, there was need enough for privacy.

There was a change in sound of the aircar’s engine, and Kresh came back to himself as the car banked smoothly to one side and eased down out of the sky. He blinked and looked toward the front of the craft, out the forward viewport. There it was. There was home.

The aircar settled in for a landing.

FREDDA LEVING STOOD up from her chair and looked across the table at the two robots. “It would be best if you both were going,” she said. “My husband will be home at any moment.”

The smaller of the two robots, the jet-black one, rose from his chair and regarded his hostess thoughtfully. “Surely your husband is aware that we meet here with you.”

“Of course he is,” she said. “But it is best for all concerned that we do not rub his nose in it.”

“I do not understand,” said the black robot. He was Prospero, self-proclaimed leader of the New Law robots. He was a gleaming metallic black, about a hundred eighty centimeters tall, with the solid, heavy-set body design common to many of the New Laws. His eyes glowed a deep, burning orange that seemed to make his personality all the more intense. “If he knows we come here, why conceal it from him?”

“I do not understand why you ask questions to which you already know the answer,” Fredda replied.

Prospero swiveled his head about to glance at his companion and then swung abruptly back toward Fredda. “Do I know the answer?” he asked in a suspicious voice.

The larger of the two robots stood as well, and looked toward his companion. “There are times, friend Prospero,” said Caliban, “when I believe that you quite deliberately play at being ignorant. The governor wants no contact with us. He tolerates, but does not approve of, these meetings. The less we bring them to his official attention, the more likely they are to continue.”

Caliban stood over two meters tall, his body metallic red in color, his eyes a penetrating glowing blue. His appearance was striking, even intimidating, but far less so than his reputation. Caliban the Lawless, they still called him, sometimes.

Caliban, the robot accused, but cleared, of attempting the murder of his creator—of Fredda Leving herself.

Prospero regarded his companion for a moment before he replied. “The need for discretion,” he said. “Yes, I have heard that answer before. But I am far from sure that I know it is the true answer.”

“And what purpose would it serve for me to lie to you?” Caliban asked. For a Three-Law robot, the very idea of lying would be difficult to imagine, but Caliban was a No Law robot, and, in theory at least, just as able to lie as any human.

“Perhaps you would have no purpose in lying,” Prospero said, looking back toward Fredda. “But others might well have reasons to deceive you.”

“You are not at your most tactful today,” said Fredda. “And I must confess I don’t see why our perfectly true answers should not satisfy you. Nor can I see what motive I would have for lying to you and Caliban.”

“I might add that I do not understand your motive for offending our principal benefactor,” said Caliban.

Prospero hesitated, and looked from one of them to the other. “My apologies,” he said at last. “There are times when my understanding of human psychology fails me, even when I am attempting to learn more. I was attempting to gauge your emotional reaction to such an accusation, Dr. Leving.”

“I would have to believe in the sincerity of the accusation before I could have much of a reaction to it,” said Fredda.

“Yes,” said Prospero. “Of course.”

But if Fredda Leving was sure of anything at that moment, she was sure that Prospero had not given her all of the story—and perhaps had not given her any of the true story. But what motive would Prospero have for playing such a strange game? It was rare indeed when she felt completely sure that she understood Prospero. She had long known he was one of her less stable creations. But he was the undisputed leader of the New Law robots. She had no real choice but to deal with him.

“In any event,” said Caliban, “it is time for us both to be leaving. I have no doubt, Dr. Leving, that we shall all meet again soon.”

“I look forward to it,” said Fredda.

The jet-black robot regarded first Fredda, and then Caliban. “Very well,” he said. “We will depart. But I doubt that I will be the first or last robot to observe that the more I know about humans, the less I understand them.”

Fredda Leving sighed wearily. There were times when it was frustrating in the extreme listening to Three-Law robots holding forth on the subject of human behavior. Prospero and the other New Laws were even worse. At least Three-Law robots were not judgmental. Prospero had an opinion about everything.

Fredda could almost imagine him as the last priest of some long-forgotten human religion, always ready to debate any intricate point of theology, so long as it was of no interest or importance to anyone at all. There were times Caliban was no better. She had designed and built both of these robots by herself. Surely she could have designed their brains so they didn’t spend their days logic-chopping. But it was too late now. “Whatever you think of my reasons for doing so,” she said, “I must ask you again to leave, by the back way. Our next appointment is in three days, is it not?”

“Yes,” said Prospero. “We have several other appointments that will take up the intervening time.”

“Fine then. Return in three days, in the afternoon, and we will conclude our business.”

Caliban nodded his head toward her, in what was almost a bow. “Very well,” he said in a most courteous tone. “We will see you at that time.”

Prospero took no interest in courtesy. He simply turned, opened the door, and left the room, leaving all the farewells to his companion. Caliban had to hurry just to keep up with him.

Fredda watched them go, and found herself once again wondering about Prospero. She did not understand what went on behind those glowing eyes. There was something not quite right about a robot that—that secretive. She shook her head as she crossed the room. Not much point in worrying about it now. She sealed the door shut behind them and scrambled the keypad. Only she and Caliban and Prospero knew the door’s keypad combination.

And there were times she thought seriously about taking at least one name off that list.

2

CALIBAN FOLLOWED PROSPERO down the tunnel. It ran for about a hundred meters, and deposited them at the base of a ravine that was otherwise quite inaccessible to the house. Their aircar was hidden there.

“I would like to know what all that was about,” Caliban said as they emerged from the tunnel into the cool of the evening.

“I spoke the truth,” Prospero said coolly. “It was in part merely a test to see how she would react to such an accusation. Surely you would agree it is worth knowing if she is capable of betraying us.” Prospero climbed into the pilot’s station.

Caliban followed, climbing into the forward passenger seat. “I suppose the case could be made that such information would be useful in a general sense,” he said. “But you have dealt with Dr. Leving for quite some time now. Why worry about such hypotheticals now? And if the need for a test was only part of your intent, what was the rest?”

“I have answers to both questions, friend Caliban, but I do not choose to give them now. This is all I can tell you: I believe we are in danger. The possibility that we will be betrayed—or have been already—is quite real. And I can tell you no more than that.”

Prospero engaged the aircar’s controls, and they lifted off into the evening air. Caliban said no more, but he found that he had reached a conclusion about Prospero. There was no longer the slightest doubt in his mind that the New Law robot was unstable. He did not merely suspect betrayal on all sides—he virtually invited it. He had gone out of his way to encourage Dr. Leving’s hostility. More than likely, the fellow was confusing danger to himself with danger to the New Laws.

All of which made Caliban’s next decision quite simple. As soon as it was conveniently possible, he would put some distance, in every sense of the word, between himself and Prospero.

He no longer wished to stand quite so close to so tempting a target.

FREDDA LEVING WALKED to the other end of the underground safe room, and went through the open door there. She wearily closed the door behind her, and scrambled the combination as well. She, Fredda, was the only one who knew the combination to this door. Alvar had insisted on that much. He had no desire for a New Law robot like Prospero—let alone a No Law robot like Caliban—to have free access to his home. There had been times when she herself had been glad to keep her home well barricaded against New Law robots.

And of course, the New Laws felt the same way about humans. She still had not the slightest idea where, exactly, the New Law city of Valhalla was. She knew it was underground, and that it was in the Utopia sector, but that was about all. Fredda had even been taken there several times, but she had always been transported in a windowless aircar equipped with a system for jamming tracking devices. The New Law robots took no chances, and she could not blame them. Fredda had been quite willing to cooperate with their precautions, and to make sure everyone knew about them. They were for her safety as much as for that of the robots. What she did not know, she could not reveal under the Psychic Probe. The New Law robots had a large number of enemies. Some of them might well be willing to reduce the governor’s wife to a vegetable, and damn the consequences, if that was what it took to find the lair of the New Law robots.

Astonishing, really, the lengths they all went to. Not just the New Laws, but Alvar, and even herself. They all took such elaborate precautions. Against discovery, against scandal, against each other. No wonder Prospero was turning half paranoid. Maybe even more than half.

In all probability, of course, the precautions would turn out to be useless in the end. Plots and secrets and hidden agendas generally came crashing down, sooner or later. She had never been involved in a plot or a secret that hadn’t. But the secrets and plots and safeguards and precautions made them all feel better, feel secure, at least for a while. Perhaps that was the point of having them.

Fredda double-checked the inner door, and then stepped into the elevator car that would carry her up above ground, to the household proper.

OBR-323 was waiting there for her, in all his rather ponderous solemnity. “Master Kresh has landed,” he announced in his gravely, ponderous voice. “He should be here momentarily.”

“Very good,” Fredda said. “Will dinner be ready soon?”

“Dinner will be ready in twelve minutes, Mistress. Is that acceptable?”

“That will be fine, Oberon.” Fredda regarded Oberon with a critical—and self-critical—eye. She had built him, after all. He was a tall, solid-looking robot, heavily built and gun-metal gray. Oberon was nearly twice the size of Donald—and perhaps only half as sophisticated. Fredda was not entirely satisfied with her handiwork regarding Oberon. If nothing else, there was the question of overall appearance. At the time she had designed him, she had concluded that a robot as big as Oberon who was all angles and hard edges would have been rather intimidating. That would not have been a good idea in these rather edgy times. Therefore, Oberon was as rounded-off as Donald. However, Fredda was not entirely satisfied with the overall effect. Donald’s rounded angles made him look unthreatening. Oberon merely looked half-melted.

She often wondered what Oberon’s design said about her own psychology. The custom-design robots she had built before him—Donald, Caliban, Ariel, Prospero—had all been cutting-edge designs, highly advanced, even, except for Donald, dangerously experimental. Not Oberon. Everything about his design was basic, conservative—even crude. Her other custom-built robots had required highly sophisticated construction and hand-tooled parts. Oberon represented little more than the assembly of components.

“I’ll just go in and freshen up,” she said to Oberon, and headed for the refresher, her mind still on why she had made Oberon the way she had. Once burned, twice shy? she wondered. Of course she had been burned twice already. It was a desire for rebellion against caution that had gotten her into trouble in the first place. And the second place. She found herself thinking back on it all as she stripped and headed into the refresher. The hot water jets of the needle-shower were just what she needed to unwind after the meeting with Prospero.

A few years before, Fredda Leving had been one of Inferno’s leading roboticists, with a well-earned reputation for taking chances, for searching out shortcuts, for impatience.

None of those character traits were exactly well-suited to the thoroughly calcified field of robotics research. There had not been a real breakthrough in robotics for hundreds of years, just an endless series of tiny, incremental advances. Robotics was an incredibly conservative field, caution and safety and care the watchwords at every turn.

Positronic brains had the standard Three Laws of Robotics burned into them, not once, but millions of times, each microcopy of the Laws standing guard to prevent any violation. Each positronic brain was based on an earlier generation of work, and each later generation seemed to include more Three-Law pathing. The line of development went back in an unbroken chain, all the way to the first crude robotic brain built on Earth, untold thousands of years before.

Each generation of positronic brain had been based on the generation that went before—and each generation of design had sought to entwine the Three Laws more and more deeply into the positronic pathway that made up a robotic brain. Indeed, the closest the field had come to a breakthrough in living memory was a way to embed yet more microcopies of the Three Laws into the pathways of a positronic brain.

In principle, there was, of course, nothing wrong with safety. But there was such a thing as overdoing it. If a robotic brain checked a million times a second to see if a First Law violation was about to occur, that meant all other processing was interrupted a million times, slowing up productive work. Very large percentages of processing time, and very large percentages of the volume of the physical positronic brain, were given over to massively, insanely redundant iterations of the Three Laws.

But Fredda had wanted to know how a robot would behave with a modified law set—or with no law set at all. And that meant she was stuck. In order to create a positronic brain without the Three Laws, it would have been necessary to start completely from scratch, abandoning all those thousands of years of refinement and development, almost literally carving the brain paths by hand. Even if she had tried such a thing, the resulting robot brain would have been of such limited capacity and ability that the experiment results would have been meaningless. What point in testing the actions of a No Law robot who had such reduced intellect that it was barely capable of independent action?

There seemed no way around the dilemma. The positronic brain was robotics, and robotics was the positronic brain. The two had become so identified, one with the other, that it proved difficult, if not impossible, for most researchers to think of either one except as an aspect of the other.

But Gubber Anshaw was not like other researchers. He found a way to take the basic, underlying structure of a positronic brain, the underlying pathing that made it possible for a lump of sponge palladium to think and speak and control a body, and place that pathing, selectively, in a gravitonic structure.

A positronic brain was like a book in which all the pages had the Three Laws written on them, over and over, so that each page was half filled with the same redundant information, endlessly repeated, taking up space that thus could not be used to note down other, more useful data. A gravitonic brain was like a book of utterly blank pages, ready to be written on, with no needless clutter getting in the way of what was written. One could write down the Three Laws, if one wished, but the Three Laws were not jammed down the designer’s throat at every turn.

No other robotics lab had been willing to touch Anshaw’s work, but Fredda had jumped at the chance to take advantage of it.

Caliban was the first of her projects to go badly wrong. Fredda had long wanted to conduct a controlled, limited experiment on how a robot without the Three Laws would behave. But for long years, the very nature of robotics, and the positronic robot brain, had rendered the experiment impossible. Once the gravitonic brain was in her hands, however, she moved quickly toward development of a No Law robot—Caliban. He had been intended for use in a short-term laboratory experiment. The plan had been for him to live out his life in a sealed-off, controlled environment. Caliban had, unfortunately, escaped before the experiment had even begun, becoming entangled in a crisis that had nearly wrecked the government, and the reterraforming program on which all else depended.

The second disaster involved the New Law robots, such as Prospero. Fredda had actually built the first of the New Law robots before Caliban. It was only because the world had become aware of Caliban first that people generally regarded him as preceding the New Laws.

But both the New Laws and Caliban were products of Fredda’s concerns that robots built in accordance with the original Three Laws were wrecking human initiative and tremendously wasteful of robot labor. The more advanced robots became, the more completely they protected humans from danger, and the fewer things humans were allowed to do for themselves. At the same time, humans made the problem worse by putting the superabundance of robot labor to work at the most meaningless and trivial of tasks. It was common to have one robot on hand to cook each meal of the day, or to have one robot in charge of selecting the wine for dinner, while another had as its sole duty the drawing of the cork. Even if a man had only one aircar, he was likely to have five or six robot pilots, each painted a different color, to insure the driver did not clash with the owner’s outfit.

Both humans and robots had tended to consider robots to be of very little value, with the result that robots were constantly being destroyed for the most pointless of reasons, protecting humans from dangers that could have easily been avoided.

Humans were in the process of being reduced to drones. They were unproductive and in large part utterly inactive. Robots did more and more of the work, and were regarded with less and less respect. Work itself was held in lower and lower esteem. Work was what robots did, and robots were lesser beings.

The spiral fed on itself, and Fredda could see it leading down into the ultimate collapse of Spacer society. And so she had developed the New Law robots. The New First Law prevented them from harming humans, but did not require them to take action in order to protect humans. The New Second Law required New Law robots to cooperate with humans, not just obey them blindly. The New Third Law required the New Law robots to preserve themselves, but did not force them to destroy themselves for some passing human whim. The deliberately ambiguous Fourth Law encouraged New Law robots to act for themselves.

The New Laws had seemed so reasonable to Fredda, so clearly an improvement over the original Three Laws. And perhaps they would have been an improvement, if it had been possible to start over, completely from scratch. But the New Law robots came into being on a world where Three-Law robots were already there, and on a world that seemed to have no place for them.

The New Law robots were more catalyst for the second major crisis than actual cause of it. Through a complex series of events, the mere existence of the New Law robots, and the shortage of Three-Law robot labor, had ultimately set in train Governor Chanto Grieg’s assassination. If not for the calm and steady hand of Alvar Kresh, that crisis could have been far worse.

In neither case had the robots, New Law or No Law, Prospero or Caliban, actually malfunctioned. All that was required for disaster and crisis to happen was for people to fear robots that were different. Inferno was a world that did not much like change, and yet it was one that had change thrust upon it. It was a world that punished boldness, and rewarded caution.

And Fredda had suffered punishment enough. Small wonder, then, that Fredda had built herself such a cautious, stolid, lumpen robot as Oberon. But small wonder too that she was already tired of caution.

Fredda shut off the needle-shower and activated the air blowers to dry herself off. She smiled, and reminded herself that even the simple act of taking a shower by herself, bathing herself, represented a revolution. Ten years before, such a thing would have been unthinkable, scandalous. There would have been a waterproofed domestic robot to take her clothes off for her, activate the shower system for her, push the dry button for her, and dress her again, in clothes selected by the robot.

She stepped out of the refresher and starting picking out the clothes for her evening outfit. Something easy and casual for a night at home. Strange to think that she had left it to a robot to pick out her clothes for her, not so very long ago. Now it was a real pleasure, a savored luxury, to choose the clothes for an evening at home.

Feeling well-scrubbed and revived by her shower, she threw open the closet and selected her clothes for the evening. Something subdued, but not too understated. She decided on her dark-blue sheath skirt, and a black pullover to go with it. She dressed, and then paused in front of the mirror to consider the effect.

The outfit looked good on her. She selected earrings, and a silver brooch that would be set off by the black top. She looked back in the mirror and considered the effect.

Fredda was small and fine-boned, with blue eyes and curly black hair she wore short. She was round-faced and snub-nosed. In short, she looked like what she was—a youthful woman given to sudden enthusiasm, and equally sudden outbursts of temper.

The world of Inferno approved of seniority and experience. This did not make things any easier for Fredda Leving. She was a mere forty years old. By Infernal standards, that was just barely old enough for respectability—or it would have been if she had looked that age. Fredda had a naturally youthful appearance, and she was perverse enough to do everything she could to preserve the appearance of youth. At a time of life when most other Infernal woman were glad to be acquiring a properly mature appearance, Fredda still looked to be no more than twenty-five years of age.

The hell with what they thought. Fredda knew she looked good—and looked better in the outfit she had picked out for herself. Certainly better than in anything Oberon would have selected. Pleased with her appearance, she headed out into the main salon, proud of having chosen just the right clothing.

A silly thing, a small thing, but there it was. Making choices, however trivial, for oneself, was a liberation. There had been a time, and not so long ago, when Fredda, and Alvar, and thousands, millions of other people on Inferno had been little more than well-trained slaves to their own servants. Awakened at the hour the robots thought best, washed by the robots, dressed by the robots in clothes the robots picked out. Up until a few years ago, many clothes did not even have fasteners the wearer could attach or undo. The wearer was completely dependent on his or her dresser robot to get the garment on or off.

Once dressed, you were fed the breakfast, lunch, and dinner selected by the robot cook to be most commensurate with the dictates of the First Law injunction to do no harm. Then your pilot robot flew you to this appointment or that—all appointments, of course, having being made by your secretary robot.

You would get to wherever it was without ever knowing where it was, because you trusted in the robot to remember the address and know the best routes there. More than likely, your robots knew better than you what you were supposed to do there. Then the pilot robot flew you home, because you certainly wouldn’t know how to find your own way home, either. At the end of the day, you were undressed and then bathed again by the robots, and buttoned or zipped or clipped into pajamas by the robots, and then tucked into bed by them.

A whole day, each day, every day, with the robots making every single personal decision, with the servants controlling your every movement. A whole day spent in an incredibly luxurious cage, without your ever being so much as aware that the cage existed.

Fredda could not quite believe that she had ever allowed herself to live that way—but she had. Incredible. At least now she was conscious of the fact that Oberon had selected the dinner menu for her, and their dinner time. At least now, Oberon inquired if the mealtime he had selected was right, rather than informing her when she would eat. Tonight it was her choice to let the robots handle dinner. Another night, she might dictate the meal in every detail. Scandal of scandals, she had even been known to bum a meal for herself once in a while. If the tyrannical rule of the servants had not been completely shattered, at least it had been recognized for it was, and thus weakened.

Fredda knew that she was not the only one who had taken back at least some control of her own life from the robots. She also knew that her research, her speeches, the turmoil she had caused were a large part of the reason. But beyond doubt, the presence of the Settlers had been a major influence as well. And then there was the bald fact that there simply weren’t as many robots available for private use these days. People were more careful with the limited amount of robot labor still available. They tended not to waste so much of it on trivial tasks.

The revolution was far from complete, of course. There were still many Infernals out there who had not managed the change in attitude, who clung to the old ways, who rallied around the Ironhead calls for more and better robots as the solution to everything.

But for whatever reason, or reasons, and by however many fits and starts, the change was happening. Allover the planet Infernals had come to realize just how dependent on robots they were, and had begun to back off just a little. And, much to the horror of Simcor Beddle and the Ironheads, people were starting to discover they liked having a bit more freedom in their lives.

From Fredda’s point of view, all of it seemed good, positive change for the better. But she had learned, over the past few years, just how frightening—and genuinely dangerous—change, even change for the good, could be. There would be some unintended consequence, or someone left behind, someone who felt disaffected and threatened. Or else someone who was not harmed in the least by the turmoil, but found a way to take advantage of it, to the detriment of others.

Or perhaps she was being too pessimistic. Perhaps the days of Inferno in upheaval, of the planet lurching from crisis to crisis, were over. And yet even steady, incremental change and improvement, of the sort her Alvar had presided over in the last few years, could bring jarring dislocations.

The days ahead were likely to be…interesting.

She heard the sound of her husband and Donald coming in from the rooftop landing pad, and hurried to meet them.

3

“THEY WERE HERE again,” Kresh said as he kissed his wife. It was not a question, and Fredda knew better then to pretend she didn’t know who he meant.

“Yes,” she said carefully. “They’ve just left.”

“Good,” Kresh said as he eased himself down into his favorite chair. “I don’t like having them around.”

“Nor do I, Dr. Leving,” Donald 111 announced. “The danger represented by the presence of those two pseudorobots is far greater than you believe.”

“Donald, I built both of those pseudo-robots, as you insist on calling them,” Fredda said, feeling as much amusement as irritation. “I understand fully what they are capable of.”

“I am not at all sure that is the case, Dr. Leving,” Donald said. “But if you will insist on meeting them when I am not present, there is nothing I can do to prevent you from doing so. I would urge you once again to exercise extreme caution when you deal with them.”

“I will, Donald, I will,” Fredda said, her voice a bit tired. She had built Donald, too, of course. She knew as well as anyone that the First Law forced Donald to mention the potential danger to her at every opportunity. For all of that, it was still tedious to hear the same warning over and over again. Donald, and most other Three-Law robots, referred to Caliban and Prospero—and all New Law robots—as pseudo-robots because they did not possess the Three Laws. By definition, a robot was a sentient being imbued with the Three Laws. Prospero was possessed of the New Laws, and Caliban had no laws at all. They might look like robots, and in some ways act like robots, but they were not robots. Donald saw them as a perversion, as unnatural beings that had no proper place in the universe. Well, perhaps he would not phrase it in quite that way, but Fredda knew she was not far off the mark.

“Why is it, exactly, that they need to come here anyway?” Alvar asked as he leaned back in his chair. “They have passes that give them the freedom of the city.”

“Don’t get too comfortable,” Fredda warned. “Dinner in just a few minutes.”

“Fine,” Kresh said, leaning forward again. “I’ll be as uncomfortable as you like. But answer my question.”

Fredda laughed, leaned over and kissed Alvar on the forehead. “Once a policeman, always a policeman,” she said.

The robot Oberon chose that moment to appear. “Dinner is served,” it announced.

“Always a policeman,” Alvar said to his wife. “So don’t think this little interruption is going to get you off the hook.”

He stood up, and husband and wife went in to dinner, Oberon leading the way, Donald trailing behind. Donald took up his usual wall niche, and Oberon set about serving the meal.

Fredda decided it would all go a bit smoother if she didn’t force her husband to prompt her for an answer. Oberon set a plate before her and she picked up her fork. “They come here to have a safe place to meet,” she said. “That’s the main answer. There aren’t many places in Hades where they aren’t in some sort of danger of an NL basher gang, passes or no passes.” There had been Settler robot-bashing gangs in the past, though most of them had faded away by now. But certain Spacers had learned the bashing game from the Settlers. There were still radicals, extremists even beyond the pale of the Ironheads, who were always itching to do in a New Law robot, given the chance. “New Law robots aren’t safe in this city. I’ve told you that before, even if you don’t quite believe it.”

“Then why come here? If Hades is so dangerous, it seems to me they ought to be safe enough on the other side of the planet, in Utopia. In that underground city of theirs. They ought to be,” he said again, as if he was not sure they truly were.

One of Alvar Kresh’s first acts as governor was to issue an order, banishing the New Law robots from the inhabited parts of the planet. If that was not the exact wording of the order, it was certainly the effect—and, for that matter, the intent. Fredda could not fault her husband too much for the decision. It had been a choice between banishment and destroying the New Law robots altogether. “They are safe enough in Valhalla, though I don’t think I’d call it a city, exactly,” she said. “It’s more like a huge bunker complex than anything else.”

“Well, I’ll take your word for it,” Alvar said. “You’ve been there, and I haven’t.”

“They may be safe there,” Fredda said, “but they don’t have everything they need. They have to come here to trade.”

“What could a bunch of robots need?”

Fredda wanted to let out a sigh, but she forced herself to hold it back. The two of them had had this argument too many times before. By now each of them had rehearsed his or her part to perfection. But that didn’t make the argument end. They had a good marriage, a solid marriage—but the issue of the New Law robots was one they seemed unlikely to settle between themselves any time soon. “Spare parts, if nothing else,” Fredda said, “as you know perfectly well. They have to keep themselves in repair. Supplies and equipment to maintain and expand Valhalla. Information of all sorts. Other things. This time they were after biological supplies.”

“That’s a new one,” said Alvar. “What do they want with bio supplies?”

“Terraforming projects, I suppose,” said Fredda. “They’ve made a great deal of progress reviving the climate in their part of the world.”

“And trained themselves in some highly marketable skills at the same time. Don’t try to make them into tin saints for me,” said Kresh.

The New Laws were allowed off the Utopia reservation under certain circumstances. The most common reason was to do skilled labor. Every terraforming project on the planet was short of labor, and many project managers were willing—if only reluctantly so—to hire New Law robots for the jobs. The New Laws charged high rates for their work, but they gave good value for money. “What’s wrong with their doing honest work?” Fredda asked. “And what is wrong with their getting paid for it? If a private company needs temporary robot labor, it rents them, and pays the robot rental agent or the owner of the robots for the use of his property. The same applies here. It’s just that these robots own themselves.”

“There’s nothing wrong with it,” Alvar said, moodily stabbing his fork at his vegetables. “But there’s nothing all that noble about it, either. You always try to make them sound like heroes.”

“Not everything they do is for money or gain,” Fredda said, “No one pays them for the terraforming work they do in the Utopia reservation. They do it because they want to do it.”

“Why is that, do you think?” asked Alvar. “Why is it that is what they want to do? I know you’ve been studying the question. Have you come up with anything new on it?”

Fredda looked at her husband in some surprise. The moment she praised anything about the New Laws was normally the point in their well-rehearsed argument when her husband glared at her and suggested that she go the whole distance in making the damned New Laws into angels and rivet wings to their backs, or said something else to the same effect. But not tonight. Fredda realized that Alvar was… different tonight. The New Law robots were on his mind—but usually the subject simply got him angry. This time there was something more thoughtful about him. Almost, impossibly enough, as if he were worried about them. “Do you really want to know?” she asked, her voice uncertain.

“Of course I do,” he replied gently. “Why else would I ask? I’m always interested in your work.”

“Well,” she said, “the short answer is that I don’t know. There is no question that they have a—a drive for beauty. I can’t think of what else to call it. Though perhaps it might be more accurate to call it an impulse to put things right. Where, exactly, it comes from, I can’t say. But it’s not all that surprising that it’s there. When you construct something as complex as a robotic brain, and introduce novel programming—like the New Laws—there are bound to be unexpected consequences of one sort or another. One reason I’m so interested in Prospero is that the programming of his gravitonic brain was still half-experimental. He’s different from the other New Laws in some unexpected ways. He has a much less balanced personality than Caliban, for one thing.”

“Leave that to one side for the moment,” Alvar said. “What about this urge to create business?”

“There you get into very dangerous waters,” Fredda said. “I’d be very reluctant to credit them with true creative impulses. I’m sure Donald would agree with me.”

“I certainly would,” Donald said, speaking from his wall niche, and startling Fredda just a fraction. The convention was that robots were to speak only when spoken too, especially during meals, but Donald often found ways to make liberal interpretations of that rule. “Robots do not and cannot achieve true creativity,” he went on. “We are capable of imitation, of reproducing from an existing model, and even of a certain degree of embellishment. But only humans are capable of true acts of creation.”

“All right, Donald. Let’s not get off on that debate,” Kresh said. “By creation or repair or imitation, the New Laws have done great things on the Utopia reservation, in ways that don’t seem to offer them any sort of benefit. Green plants and fresh water and a balanced local ecology don’t do them any good. So why do they do it?”

“Ask them and they’ll tell you it’s because they want to—and good luck getting a more detailed answer,” Fredda said. “I haven’t, and I’ve tried enough times: I don’t know if it’s their Fourth Law, or the fact that they were designed for terraforming work, or the synergy between the two of those things. Or maybe it’s because Gubber Anshaw designed their gravitonic brain with an underlying internal topography that is closer to the human brain’s pattern than any other robotic brain has even been.”

Alvar smiled. “In other words, you don’t know,” he said.

Fredda smiled back, and reached across the table to take his hand in hers. “In other words, I don’t know,” she agreed. It was good to talk with him, on this of all subjects, without anger. She knew he had never really felt completely confident in his decision regarding the New Laws. And, in her own heart of hearts, she had to admit it was at least possible it might have been better all around if she had never created them. “But even if I don’t know why they feel the impulse, I do know that they feel it.”

“I guess that will have to do,” he said. “There are times when I wonder about that. It is something new and different in the universe for robots to work for something without orders, without direction. And Donald’s observation to the contrary, I am not absolutely convinced it is impossible for an artificial mind to have creative ability. I don’t like the New Law robots. I think they are dangerous, and not to be trusted. But I cannot quite bring myself to believe they, and all their work, should be wiped off the face of the planet.”

Fredda pulled her hand back, and looked at her husband in alarm. “Alvar—what are you talking about? You decided years ago that they should be allowed to survive. What you’re saying now makes it sound like there’s a new reason you might…” Her voice trailed off, but her husband understood.

“There is a new reason,” Kresh said. “A new reason they might have to go. I may have to choose between destroying them and saving the planet. I don’t need to tell you what my choice would be.”

“Alvar, what in the name of the devil are you talking about?”

Alvar Kresh did not answer at first. He looked at her most unhappily, and let out a deep and weary sigh. “I should never have accepted this job,” he said at last. “I should have let Simcor Beddle take it, and let him have the nightmares.” He did not say more for a moment. Instead he picked up his fork and made an attempt to eat a bite or two more. But the sudden silence in the room, and the expression on Fredda’s face, were too much for him. He let the fork clatter onto the plate, and leaned wearily back in his chair. “I want you to come in with me tomorrow morning,” he said. “There’s someone I want you to meet. I want your opinion of what he has to say.”

“Who—who is it?” Fredda asked.

“No one you’d know,” said Kresh. “A young fellow by the name of Davlo Lentrall.”

TONYA WELTON WAS worried. She had reason to be. Something was going on. Something was going on, and she did not know what it was. And she would not know until the Settler Security Service debriefing team was ready to tell her. The SSS had told her that an informant named Ardosa had risked his cover getting into Settlertown, and that he had claimed to have some vital information, and that it concerned an astrophysicist named Davlo Lentrall. They would not be able to have anything more for her until the transcripts of his debriefing were drawn up and checked over, and the information verified.

There had been something in the voice of the SSS officer who had reported the news, something that told her it was big enough that they didn’t want to risk letting it out until they were sure the information was credible. They were going to have a try at breaking into Lentrall’s computer files. The University was using a Settler-built computer system, which ought to give them an advantage, but it still would not be easy. There was nothing to do but wait.

Tonya had a gut feeling that told her they were going to find out Ardosa’s information damn well was credible. She was tempted to call over and demand to be given the raw information immediately. But she knew better than that. When the professionals turned cautious, there was, more often than not, good reason for them to do so. Let them work. She would know in good time.

As she sat there, worrying, Gubber Anshaw came into the room. He bent down to kiss her on the forehead, and she gave him a little pat on the arm before he straightened up and crossed the room to settle into his own chair with a contented sigh.

Tonya watched him pullout his technical journals and start in to read. She loved him dearly, there had been times when he had been of tremendous help—but this was not likely to be one of those times.

Gubber was a world-class expert on robots, but whatever was up, it definitely did not involve robots. At the moment, Gubber was reading up in preparation for his long-planned trip to Valhalla. Gubber, as the designer of the gravitonic brain, had never really approved of the way Fredda Leving had appropriated his work to create the New Law robots. However, over time, he had come to accept the situation—and from there, it was not much of a step to taking advantage of it. The New Laws were still the only gravitonic-brain robots ever made. It was only common sense that Gubber take advantage of the chance to study them more. Gubber was due to take the morning suborbital flight to Depot in the morning, and meet up with a New Law robot by the name of Lancon-03 there for the journey on to the hidden city of Valhalla.

Normally, Tonya would have entertained the hope that Gubber might have heard something through the rumor mill. But when Gubber was wrapped up in his work, it took something on the order of a blaster shot at the book he was reading to direct his attention elsewhere. It seemed highly unlikely he had spent much time recently with his friends chatting about the doings of obscure astrophysicists.

Damnation, what was this Lentrall person up to? Why was he suddenly so important? It involved terraforming, that much was for sure. Therefore, it had to affect the Settlers on Inferno. And, as she was the leader of the Settlers on Inferno, it sure as hell was going to affect Tonya.

The contingent of Settlers were on Inferno for the express purpose of reterraforming the planet. Very few of the Settlers sent on the project had been particularly thrilled about the assignment. After all, it required them to live on a Spacer world, and to deal with Spacers on a daily basis.

But enough could be said for the Spacer life that many of the Settlers had lived up to their name, and settled on Inferno, more or less permanently. They had discovered there were other ways to live, besides in the vast underground warrens that were the Settler cities. They had met husbands and wives, started families. They had bought property, built houses. Some had actually taken on robot servants. There were more than a few of them who had no particular desire to go back home. As terraforming a planet was, at the very least, a task measured in decades, some of her people—including Tonya herself—had begun to take comfort in the knowledge that they could stay as long as they liked, perhaps their whole lives long.

Therefore, anything that threatened, or even affected, the Settlers’ terraforming project, was of the gravest concern. And Tonya had the very distinct impression that this Lentrall affair could play merry hell with the terraforming project.

Their operative at the University of Hades, a fellow by the name of Ardosa, had alerted the Settler Security Service that Lentrall had come up with something that had thrown the whole terraforming department for a loop. Ardosa had also reported that the upper ranks of the university’s administration had likewise been thrown into an uproar by the news. There had been some extremely stormy meetings.

Beyond all that, Ardosa didn’t know much—simply that something was up, and that it was urgent, and that Lentrall had met with the university’s top terraforming experts. Or at least what passed for terraforming experts over there. Tonya was confident her own people were way ahead of anything the Infernals could do. At least she had been confident, up until now.

Once alerted by Ardosa, the Settler Security Service had spotted Lentrall going in and out of Governor Kresh’s office complex. The SSS also managed to get a private peek at the governor’s daily appointment list. All the other entries were routine, but the listing Davlo Lentrall—reterraforming proposal had caught Tonya’s eye.

Who was this Lentrall, and what was he up to? Her people knew almost nothing about him. About all they had was that he was very young—even by Settler standards—and that he was some sort of scientist in the university’s astrophysics department. He seemed to have an informal connection to an obscure research center that was vaguely attached to the Infernal side of the terraforming project. That was all they knew.

That, and the fact that he had had a rapid series of appointments with progressively higher-ranking Infernal government officials, culminating in a meeting with the governor himself. The question was obvious—what could be important or urgent enough to propel an obscure astrophysicist into the governor’s office?

Tonya felt frustrated. The time had been when her people could have worked up a complete dossier on a fellow like Lentrall no time at all. There had been an odd sort of freedom for her spies and intelligence operatives, in the old, confrontational days. Back then, relations between the Settlers and the Spacers had been so bad it didn’t much matter if they got worse. In fact it was difficult to see how they could have gotten worse. Cinta Melloy, the head of the SSS, could have, and had, used all sorts of dirty tricks—taps on comm calls and databanks, bribes, agents tailing a subject, the whole works—in order to develop information.

But now everyone had to be very respectful and polite, on both sides. Over the past few years, the SSS had developed a very close working relationship with Justen Devray’s Combined Inferno Police. They shared intelligence and assisted each other in enforcement work. It would not do to jeopardize all that with a flurry of ham-handed snooping around. In some ways, peace was a lot more complicated than confrontation.

Tonya looked back over at Gubber. Speaking of relationships, theirs, Tonya’s and Gubber’s, had caused more than a small stir, back when the secret got out. The hard-as-nails leader of the Settlers on Inferno, quite literally in bed with the quiet, retiring, soft-spoken Spacer roboticist. It had been a tremendous scandal.

Tonya realized she was missing a bet. Even if it was unlikely that Gubber had heard anything, it couldn’t hurt to ask. Besides, scientists tended to know each other. Maybe Gubber would know something useful about Lentrall’s background, even if he wasn’t up to date on the latest rumors.

“Gubber?” she asked in a casual tone of voice.

“Hmmm?” He looked up from his reading, a vague sort of smile on his face. “What is it?”

“Do you happen to know a man named Davlo Lentrall?”

Gubber thought for a moment. “I know of him, at least slightly,” he said. “I ran into him at some sort of joint studies conference. A very young fellow. He’s some sort of assistant researcher in the department of astrophysics over at the university. I don’t pay much attention to those backwater space science disciplines. I can’t say I know much about him.”

Tonya nodded thoughtfully. There was not much impetus for basic space research on the Spacer worlds, and hence not much research. “What did you think of him?” she asked. “What sort of impression did he make?”

“Oh, I don’t think we got past the hello, pleased-to-meet-you stage, so I can’t say I formed much of an opinion. Pleasant enough, I suppose, but very rushed and abrupt. Everything is always a top priority. You know the sort. Why do you ask?”

“Well, no special reason,” she said. “To tell you a little more than I should, our people spotted him going into the governor’s office, and we were wondering what he was doing there.”

Gubber frowned. “I’m sure I don’t know,” he said. “But he does seem rather a junior sort of person to be meeting with the planetary governor.”

“I quite agree,” Tonya said.

“Well, I’m sure you’ll find some perfectly dull explanation in a day or so,” Gubber said, and went back to his reading.

“Maybe,” said Tonya. “Maybe.” Gubber was probably right. But she could not let go of it. What the devil did a junior astrophysicist have to do with terraforming? Tonya had an unpleasantly strong hunch she was not going to like the answer.

SIMCOR BEDDLE. LEADER of the Ironhead party, leaned forward into the lectern and pounded it with his fist. “No more!” he shouted out to his audience. “We won’t take anymore!” he half shouted in order to be heard over the wild cheers and applause from the audience. Or would it be more accurate to call that mass of his wild-eyed followers a mob? No matter. They were his. They fed on him, and he fed on them.

He wiped the sweat from his brow with a pristine white handkerchief and went into his wind-up, the crowd shouting louder, his voice growing stronger and more angry with each demand. “No more delay in returning our robots from their illegal government seizure! No more coddling of those so-called New Law robots that threaten the stability of our society! No more Settlers shoved down our throat!” By now the crowd noise was so deafening there was no longer any point in attempting to be heard. But he shouted at the top of his lungs, not so much to make his voice audible, but in order to make it possible for his followers to read his lips. “No more!” he cried out. “No more!”

“NO MORE!” the crowd shouted back, and the chant had begun. “NO MORE! NO MORE! NO MORE!”

Simcor Beddle grinned broadly and spread his arms wide, waving to them all, drinking in the cheers and the shouts and the anger. They were still there, and they were still his. The sea of faces roaring its approval might not have been quite as large as it once had been, but it was still there, and he still controlled it. It was a great pleasure, and a great relief, to know that. The Ironheads held these meetings to keep up the enthusiasm of the rank-and-file, but there was no doubt in Beddle’s mind that they did him a great deal of good as well.

He raised his arms a bit higher, and grinned a bit more broadly. That got the crowd shouting and cheering louder. He nodded to them, waved, and made his exit to the stage right wings.

Jadelo Gildern was waiting for him there. Beddle nodded to him as a serving robot handed Beddle a large glass of fruit juice to quench his thirst and ease his throat. “How big was the crowd?” Beddle asked as his took the juice and drank it down greedily. Rabble-rousing was thirsty work.

“Five thousand two hundred and thirty-three,” Gildern replied. “We’re holding on to more of them than I had expected. But sooner or later, we’re going to have to do something.”

He nodded toward the still-cheering crowd out there. “That lot out there expects action. If they don’t get it from you soon, they’ll look elsewhere.”

“Let’s just be thankful they don’t have anyplace else to go,” said Beddle as he handed the empty glass to the robot and took a big towel to his face. He rubbed his face and his scalp vigorously. It might not be as decorous as a handkerchief, but it did a better job of drying off the sweat.

“Let’s get you home and in and out of the refresher,” Gildern said. “There’s something we need to talk about.”

“That informant that walked in earlier today?”

“That’s the one,” said Gildern. “You ordered us to pursue it, and we have. We’ve don’t have much just yet, but you said you wanted to be kept informed.”

“Then let’s go,” said Beddle. He followed Gildern out of the auditorium, leaving the still-cheering crowd behind.

Forty-five minutes later, Simcor Beddle was at his desk, reading a file prepared by Gildern, and learning the name of Davlo Lentrall.

He studied the file carefully. Once Gildern’s agents had been tipped off by the informant Ardosa, they had to set to work at once. They had procured a full summary of Lentrall’s career to date, but it did not make very informative reading. He was born, he went to school, he studied astronomy. None of it made for shocking revelations. So what was so important about Lentrall? Was their informant playing some sort of game with them?

“This tells us very little,” Beddle said to Jadelo, who sat in one of the chairs in front of his desk. “Do you still think this is something big?”

“Yes, I do. I’ve worked with this particular informant for quite some time. He has been a reliable small-time operative for us. His information has always been good. And as best I can tell, he is either behaving exactly the way a small-timer should when big, dangerous information drops in his lap, or else he is one of the best actors I have ever met.”

“Hmmmph.” Beddle glared at the file in front of him, as if he could force more information out of it by sheer force of personality. “Lentrall has something, or knows something, that is causing a lot of turmoil. I find it intriguing, but we need more. Maybe it’s just some arcane academic dispute.”

“I doubt it. Whatever it is, it’s gotten him in to see a whole series of government officials—and gotten him in to see Governor Kresh in a private interview,” Gildern pointed out. “But that’s all we’ve been able to get.”

“You’re saying we’re stuck. I don’t like being stuck.” Simcor Beddle was a man of action, a man given to straight-ahead action, not to waiting.

“We’ll get more information,” Gildern said. “But when we do, I have a feeling that we’re going to have to act on it fast.”

“I agree. The government seems to moving with unseemly haste. It’s going to be something with a time element to it.” Beddle gestured toward the file on his desk. “Take it away,” he said, and the robot by his side leaned in toward the desk, closed the file folder, and removed it. Beddle stood up, and a second robot stepped in from the rear to pull back his chair. Beddle stepped around his desk, leaving it to the two robots to get out of his way. That was the Ironhead way. One required absolutely perfect service of one’s robots, and then paid them no mind. One assumed the robot would do what was required, and that was all. The Infernals followed the Spacer convention of ignoring robots. But Ironheads took the convention to its extreme.

An Ironhead might be awakened, washed, dressed, fed and served by a whole platoon of robots during the day—but never acknowledge their existence, or even be consciously aware of seeing them. Someone had described the ideal Ironhead lifestyle as being waited upon hand and foot by a legion of ghosts, and that was not far from the truth.

Beddle came around to sit in one of the two big, comfortable armchairs reserved for visitors, easing his considerable bulk into it with a surprising grace. “What do you make of it?” he asked of the man in the other chair.

Jadelo Gildern smiled, displaying a set of pointed-looking teeth. Beddle had recently promoted Gildern to second-in-command of the Ironhead party, while instructing him to keep his euphemistically titled post as Director of Research and Information—a polite way of saying Gildern ran the Ironhead spy network.

Gildern was a small, thin, sallow-faced man. His thinning pale-blond hair was cut very short, and his face was long and narrow. Today he was wearing a very plain, loose-fitting outfit of gray pants and a gray tunic. All his clothes always seemed to be a bit too large for him. “I think it’s important, but I don’t know what it is,” he said. “We have only had a very few hours to examine the situation.” Gildern’s voice was low, and almost musical in tone. Beddle felt certain that Gildern could credit that voice as being at least half of what had gotten him to where he was. “It would of course be a relatively simple matter to infiltrate Lentrall’s office and have a look around, and thus learn more about what he is doing. However, the odds of our operatives getting caught would be moderately high, and the odds that Lentrall or the university would be able to detect the intrusion quite high. The university has a surprisingly competent security system. I’d be even more reluctant to try breaking into Lentrall’s computer files there. We haven’t had much luck cracking into Settler computers. Even if we could get in, the odds are very much against our avoiding detection.”

“Tea,” said Beddle, seemingly to the open air. One of the serving robots responded with remarkable speed, and took all of ten seconds to produce a steaming hot cup of tea, made precisely the way Beddle liked it. Beddle took the cup and saucer from the robot, but otherwise paid it no attention. “I take it you don’t think that the information we might uncover would be worth the risk of getting caught, or the risk of putting Lentrall on his guard.”

“No, sir, I do not. I expect that we will learn more in a day or two, without the need to go to such lengths. Lentrall does not strike me as the sort who is much good at—or much interested in—keeping secrets. But, might I ask, what is the basis for your interest in Lentrall?”

“I am interested in Lentrall for two reasons,” he said, pausing to take a sip of tea. “One is that he seems to interest others, and I want to know why. Second—well, you came close to saying it at the rally. We need a crisis, and I am always on the watch for a situation that might produce one. The Ironheads don’t do so well when people are safe. We do best when the times are tumultuous. Our talent lies in using events, crises, situations—even those produced by our opponents—against our opponents. We have not had much chance for activity recently, but every now and again something or someone pops up quite suddenly out of nowhere—such as friend Lentrall. The Davlo Lentralls of the world are the raw material for our work. And right now we need raw material.”

“You think our work has not been going well of late,” said Gildern. It was not a question.

“No, it has not,” Beddle said, and took a last sip of tea before handing the half-empty cup to the empty air and letting it go. The robot by his side plucked the cup and saucer out of midair before they could drop a millimeter. “Or to put it better, we have not been given any work to do. And we need work, if we are to survive. Attendance at the rallies is still slipping a bit.” He leaned back in his chair, and thought for a moment. “You know, Gildern, I work very hard to maintain the proper appearance of a leader. Do you believe I achieve it?”

Simcor Beddle was short and fat, but that description, while accurate, did not do him justice. There was nothing small or soft or flabby about him. It often seemed as if the sheer strength of his will added ten centimeters to his height. His face was pallid and round, but the skin was taut over his jaw. It was hard to know the exact color of his eyes were, but they were gimlet hard, jewel bright. His hair was jet-black, and he wore it combed straight back. He was wearing a subdued version of his usual military-style uniform. No decoration on it for a late-evening conversation in private, none of the epaulets or braid or ribbons or insignia he had worn at the rally. Just a dull black tunic and dull black trousers of military cut. But then, understatement often proved most effective.

“Yes, sir. Yes I do,” Gildern replied.

“I like to think so,” said Beddle. “And yet what good is it all if there is no chance for me to lead?” He moved forward in the seat, lifted his foot and looked down at it. “I’m like one of these boots. Look at them. Steel-toed, jet-black—they look as if they could kick in any door ever made. But what good is that if there is nothing for them to kick in? If I leave them unused for long enough, people will cease to believe I can use them. The Ironheads can last on appearances for only so long. We need something that can move us forward.”

“Your point is well taken, sir,” said Gildern. “You’re saying that recent history has not followed the pattern prescribed by our philosophy.”

The Ironhead philosophy was simplicity itself—the solution to every problem was more and better robots. Robots had liberated humanity—but not completely, because there were not enough robots. The basic product of robotic labor was human freedom. The more robots there were, and the more they worked, the more humans were free to follow other pursuits. Simcor Beddle believed—or at least had managed to convince himself, and quite a number of other people—that the whole terraforming crisis was a fraud, or at best nothing more than a convenient excuse for seizing robots from private citizens, and thus restricting their freedom.

Chanto Grieg’s original seizure of private robots for use in the terraforming project had been the single greatest recruitment tool in the history of the Ironheads. People had rushed to the Ironhead standard. The seizure seemed to be the fulfillment of every one of Simcor Beddle’s most dire warnings. It was the beginning of the end, the moment that would mark the collapse of Spacer civilization on Inferno, the next move in the Settler plot to take over the planet.

But when those disasters failed to materialize, many of the new recruits—and many of the old stalwarts—began to drift away from the organization. In the past half-decade, Alvar Kresh had done a better job of advancing Grieg’s program than Grieg himself had done. Kresh had delivered five years of good, solid government, five years of measurable, meaningful movement forward in the reterraforming project.

And, worst of all, people had discovered they could survive with fewer robots. The Ironheads could produce all the statistics they liked showing how the standard of living was falling, how incomes were on the decline, how levels of hygiene were declining while accident rates were on the increase. But somehow, none of it seemed to matter. There were certainly plenty of people grumbling over the situation, but they were not impassioned. They were, at least some of them, annoyed or frustrated. But they were not angry. And the Ironheads could not long survive without angry people.

“Quite right,” said Beddle. “Events have not followed our philosophy. We need things to start going wrong once again.” Beddle realized he had not put it quite right. He had better watch himself. That was the sort of gaffe that could have raised merry hell if he had made it in public. “No, more accurately, we need to make people see, once again, that things are going wrong now. We need some image, some symbol, some idea, to rally the masses once again.”

“And you think that Davlo Lentrall might be such a symbol?” Gildern asked. “Or, perhaps, that he might at least lead us to such a symbol?”

“I have not the faintest idea,” said Simcor Beddle. “But he represents a possibility, and we must pursue all such.”

“As you say, sir. We will keep up a discreet watch on our new friend.”

“Good,” said Beddle. “Now let us move on. What can you tell me about, ah, the other project you had underway?”

Gildern smiled, showing all his sharp-looking teeth. “It is a long-term project, of course. But we make slow, steady progress in our search, in spite of the roadblocks put in our way. The day will come when we can strike.”

Beddle smiled happily. “Excellent,” he said. “Excellent. When that day comes, I hope, and expect, brother Gildern, that our friends will never know what hit them.”

“With a little luck, sir, the New Law robots will not even survive long enough to realize they have been hit.”

Beddle laughed out loud, a brazen, harsh noise that clearly made Gildern uncomfortable. But that didn’t matter. And it was good to know that, even if Lentrall caused them all a major headache, there were other ways for the Ironheads to manufacture events.

TONYA WELTON FELT sick as she finished reading the SSS summary. She set down the datapad and looked toward the window. The sky was lightening. Night had turned to day while she read. They had gotten into his computer files. They had managed a preliminary analysis of what they had found. It would take a lot longer to confirm that Lentrall’s ideas could work—or even whether they were grounded in reality. But Tonya was already prepared to believe it. Lentrall was offering his plan in deadly earnest. And there was no doubt in her mind that “deadly” was a singularly appropriate description of what Lentrall had in mind. The Spacers of Utopia had no experience in these matters. They could not possibly understand the dangers involved. The slightest misstep, and they could easily wipe out the planet.

She would have to do something. If the Spacers were truly considering this mad thing, she was going to have to do something that would stop it before it began. But it would not do to act until she knew more. She would need a lot more information before she was ready to act. But if the information was on the level, it might well be too late to do anything about it by the time they were ready.

They would have to get ready for action now, not later. They would have to make contingency plans and hope they were never needed.

She reached for the phone.

CINTA MELLOY, COMMANDER of the SSS, sat up in bed and slapped at the audio-answer plate. “Melloy here,” she said.

“This is Welton,” a voice said from the middle of the air.

Cinta blinked and frowned. What the devil was she doing calling at this hour? “What can I do for you, ma’am?” she asked.

“Switch to security setting,” Welton said. There was a click, and then a roar of static.

Cinta punched her own security code into the answer plate and the static cleared. “I am on secure setting,” she said. “What’s going on?”

“I’ve just finished reading the preliminary reports from the computer tap on Lentrall. And I think we need to make contingency plans, in case we decide to look after Lentrall ourselves.”

Cinta frowned. She couldn’t have heard that right, or else she had misinterpreted. Welton couldn’t seriously be considering a snatch job. “Say again?” she asked.

“I said we might want Lentrall for ourselves. More accurately, we might want to keep him, and his work, from the Infernals, if only for a little while.”

“Madame Welton, that would be madness! Absolute madness! If he’s as important as you say—”

“He might well be that important,” Welton replied. “Important in the way a plague or your local star going nova might be considered important. He’s a disaster waiting to happen. And if there is any madness about, he’s the one who has it. You will establish a full, round-the-clock watch on Lentrall—and you will prepare a contingency plan to kidnap him and hold him. Plan on the assumption of an attempt within the next few days, and hold the operation in hot-standby. I want a plan we can adapt to as many circumstances as possible, and one we can carry out within one hour of my giving the command.” There was a pause on the line, and for a moment, Cinta thought Tonya Welton was finished speaking. But then she spoke again. “And while you’re at it,” said Tonya Welton, “you might consider praying we’re not too late already.”

4

“RUN IT AGAIN, Gervad,” said Justen Devray. “With full enhancement and magnification.”

“Yes, sir.” Gervad activated the controls, and ran his own downloaded memory sequence one more time.

Devray watched as the imagery bloomed to life one more time. The bald head of Barnsell Ardosa appeared on the screen, the image rendered grainy and jerky by the magnification routine. Justen had run this imagery, and the images from Sapper 323, a dozen times by now. The Sapper’s imagery was a trifle sharper, but Gervad had had a very slightly better angle. Once he had downloaded a copy of the Sapper’s pertinent surveillance imagery, Devray had left the Sapper on the scene, with the surveillance aircar, and orders to watch for Ardosa’s reappearance. Sapper 323 was to follow him wherever he went, as discreetly as possible.

“All right, Gervad. Freeze on the clearest frame, and show me the image you got a match pattern from next to it,” Justen said, his voice eager, his expression alert. There was, in every good law officer, at least a bit of the hunter, of the pursuer, of the tracker who would follow the trail and never give up. That part of Justen had been very much awakened by the appearance of Barnsell Ardosa. Or at least by the someone who called himself that at the moment.

The robot obeyed Justen’s order, and the two still images—one grainy and slightly distorted, the other a sharp, clear identity scan—appeared on the flat screen.

There were times that robot identity matches failed altogether, when a robot declared an identity match between two images that a human would reject instantly as being of two different people. But not this time. The surveillance image might be of extremely low quality, but it was unquestionably the same man as in the university’s identity-scan image.

Justen stared hard at the surveillance image. The enhancement system had cleaned it up at least somewhat, but there were limits to how much one could use that sort of thing. Justen knew he could have ordered the robot to clean it up even more, but they were already at the point where the enhancements were close to guesswork. They would start losing information instead of gaining it if they did any more to the pictures. A more enhanced version might look better, but it would also look less like Ardosa.

Less like Ardosa. That thought resonated with Justen for some reason; but he was not sure why. Not yet. Let it ride. Let it come to him.

Justen Devray allowed himself a small smile. There were few things easier than not looking like Barnsell Ardosa. After all, it was becoming increasingly obvious that Ardosa did not exist. Justen had gotten his first clue to that interesting little fact when he starting trying to find out why Sapper 323’s pattern-match lists did not show Ardosa. The Sapper’s database should have included everything that Gervad’s had.

The explanation had turned out to be remarkably simple. Alarming, but simple. When Justen compared the dates on Gervad’s ID database against Sapper 323’s, he discovered that Gervad’s was only a few days old, while Sapper 323’s list had not been updated in a year and a half. That was not surprising, given the fact that the Sappers were not the most popular model in the world. The rental shop where Justen had gotten it had had a dozen Sappers powered down in the back.

Gervad’s database had Ardosa, but his database also showed that Ardosa’s records had been entered five years before—although Sapper 323’s eighteen-month-old database had no record of him at all.

In short, it was painfully clear that someone had managed to manipulate the police data files, and gone to that effort at least in part to insert an operative into the University of Hades faculty. It seemed unlikely that they had gone to all that trouble just for this one man. They were going to have cross-check the entire identity list—and start the long, dreary search for the security breach as well. Tiresome stuff. Justen gave silent thanks that he was not an officer in counterintelligence. They were going to have a mind-numbing job ahead of them.

But where had they—whoever “they” were—decided to put their man? Justen checked the listing a bit more carefully. In what part of the university did Ardosa spend his days?

When he got his answer, the hairs on the back of his head seemed to stand on end. The University’s Center for Terraforming Studies. That explained a great deal—a bit too much for Justen’s comfort. He had been quite mystified by the notion of someone bothering to insert an agent to watch over the moribund confines of the university. But terraforming was quite another matter.

The struggle to reconstruct the planet’s climate was at the core of all the other issues of the day. Whoever controlled the reterraforming project controlled power, and not just the raw, physical power of the terraforming machinery, but every other sort of power as well: financial, political, intellectual, everything. It made all the sense in the world for the Settlers or the Ironheads or anyone else to insert a man into the Terraforming Studies Center.

But something didn’t fit. Ardosa—whoever he really was—was not at all the sort of person Devray had been looking for outside the entrance to Settlertown. That stakeout was an ongoing operation, an attempt to establish a pattern of routine comings and goings. Casuals and walk-ins, as they were known in the trade. A deep-cover agent would know better than to use the front entrance, and thus risk blowing his cover. Unless there was something so urgent and important that it was worth risking all.

But terraforming was a project for the generations. It moved, of necessity, at a leisurely pace. Any given project was likely to take years to accomplish. What sort of terraforming information could be as urgent as Ardosa’s behavior suggested it had to be? Why go in the front door? Why not send word some other way? It was plainly impossible to shut down all forms of communication. There was always some way to pass a message in reasonable safety, provided you were willing to take a little time. You could send a written message carried by a robot. You could use a dead-drop, something as simple as a scribbled message hidden under a rock. You could send a perfectly normal hyperwave message saying something like, “Your shoes are ready to be collected,” or “Please order porridge for my breakfast,” with each phrase having a prearranged meaning.

Ardosa had to have some such way to contact the Settlers.

So what could be so vitally important that he would throw all that over and dive for the front door?

And who was Ardosa? Devray was certain he had seen that face before. But where? He studied both images again. It was a distinctive face, not the sort that would get lost in the shuffle. In the surveillance imagery, it was wearing a worried look, and the identity scan image had that awkward, glazed, expressionless look of so many identity photos, the subject caught by the camera the moment before deciding what to do with his or her face.

As Justen stared at the images, there was one thing he became more and more sure about. He had never seen whoever it was in the flesh. He had simply seen an image of this man before. A flat-photo, a hologram, something like that.

A case file, then. That was what it had to be. The mug shots from some case he had worked on, or studied. A case big enough that Devray had studied every mug shot hard enough and long enough to have them burned into his skull. But Ardosa had not been a central figure in whatever case it was. Otherwise, Devray would have known him instantly.

A thought that had flitted through his mind a few moments before came back to him. Less like Ardosa. Was that part of his subconscious whispering that Ardosa no longer looked quite the way he had, whenever Devray had seen him? And it would have to be an older case, or else, Justen knew, he would remember the face clearly. He studied the images one more time. “Gervad,” he said, “delete the mustache from both images. And give me a range of reverse age regressions. Not in Spacer mode. We age too slowly. Do it in Settler mode. Go back ten chronological years or so. Standard spread.”

“Yes, sir.” The robot operated the image control system with a smooth skill, and the two images shrank to take up only a small fraction of the screen before the mustaches faded away from each of them, leaving a vague patch of simulation, the computer’s best estimate of what sort of upper lip existed under the man’s facial hair.

Then the faces multiplied, and began to shift and change, transmogrifying into younger variants. Some versions of the face grew thinner, or sprouted new hair. Wrinkles vanished, the slight double chin melted away. But there were so many ways for a man to age, and so many ways a man could prevent the aging, in whole or in part, if he chose to do so. Spacers, of course, made every effort to stop the aging process completely—but Settlers did not. They let themselves grow old.

Spacers were not used to people aging, not used to seeing their appearance change over time. If a near-ageless Spacer became friends with a youthful Settler, lost track of him, and then encountered the same Settler twenty years later, the Spacer would have a great deal of difficulty recognizing the older version of the Settler as being the same person. But Spacers had not lost this skill altogether. It could still be brought into play with a little encouragement.

The computer graphics system manipulated the images at a rapid clip. Within seconds, Devray was faced with two dozen versions of the same face, shifted and changed and re-formed. He studied each of them in turn. He was tempted to reject most of them at once, but resisted the urge to move too fast. He trusted his instincts, but only so far. Suppose the face he rejected turned out to be the one that spurred his memory? But still and all, he had to trust what his subconscious was telling him. Number One had too much hair. Number Two looked far too young. Three and Four were plainly too thin, while Six and Eight were far too portly.

Justen Devray stared at the images, slowly, carefully, one at a time. Something in the back of his head whispered that he was close, that he was going to get the answer, that he was about to make the connection.

And then he saw it. Face Number Fifteen. That was the one he knew. He was sure of it. And suddenly, in a moment like a piece dropping itself into place in the puzzle, he knew. He knew who it was.

He had seen Ardosa’s mug shot before, all right. And the man calling himself Ardosa had been involved, if on the periphery, of a big case. The biggest case Justen Devray had ever been on. The murder, five years before, of Governor Chanto Grieg.

JUSTEN RUBBED HIS face and blinked hard. “I’m sorry I’m a bit punchy, sir. I’ve been up all night on this one. I came straight from the archives room to here.” He blinked and stretched, trying to bring the room into focus. Apparently Kresh’s wife was waiting in the main office, just down the hall, and that was why Kresh had brought him in here, to an assistant’s office, for the meeting. Kresh had assured him the assistant would not be in for another hour, but even so… The paintings on the wall, the tastefully chosen furniture and decoration, made it seem a strangely personal space. Justen felt as if he were intruding.

“It’s all right, son,” Kresh said. “Sit down.” Kresh sat on one end of a low couch, and gestured for Devray to sit down on the other end. Justen did so, gratefully. “Donald, bring the Commander something hot and strong with a dose of caffeine in it.”

“At once, Governor,” Donald replied, and went off to take care of it.

“All right then, Commander. My wife and I have a rather important meeting at ten this morning. That gives us just about an hour. Will that be enough for whatever it is?”

“I don’t think it’ll take five minutes, sir.” Justen hesitated a moment, and then decided to plunge ahead. “This appointment at ten, sir—would it by any chance be with a Davlo Lentrall?”

Kresh looked surprised. “It would indeed, Commander. I haven’t told anyone I’m meeting with him again, outside of my wife. Might I ask where you got that particular tidbit of information?”

“Thank you, Donald,” said Justen. Kresh’s personal robot had returned with a cup of what seemed to be remarkably strong tea, and Justen took it from him. Like most Spacers, Justen rarely bothered handing out “pleases” and “thank yous” to robots, but, somehow, Donald 111 was a special case. He took a quick sip of the tea, and found it as reviving as he had hoped. “I got my information from two sources,” he went on. “From our old and dear friends in the Settler Security Service, and from the Ironheads. Neither of them gave me the information on purpose, of course, and neither of them knows what I’ve found out. But I learned it from them, all the same. If they don’t know all about him by now, they will, very soon. And whatever he’s involved in has got both outfits about to go ballistic.”

“Do you know what Lentrall’s been working on?” Kresh asked.

“No, sir. But if the Settlers and the Ironheads don’t know by now, they will by lunchtime. I can tell you they are both digging as hard as they can.”

“Why don’t you start at the beginning, son?” Kresh suggested.

“Yes, sir. I’ve been sitting in on the various ongoing operations, just to see how things are going, to get a feel for what my officers have to deal with, and so on.”

“And it gets you out of the office now and then,” Kresh said with a smile. “I used to do the same thing when I was running the Sheriff’s Department.”

Justen smiled back. It helped a great deal to have a governor who used to run a law enforcement agency. He understood things without needing too much explanation. “Yes, sir. In any event, I sat in on the Settlertown main entrance stakeout. Normally the officer assigned to that duty is expected to provide his or her own vehicle or other watch post, and his or her own robotic assistance, and is later reimbursed. The thinking is that keeps us from using the same three vehicles and the same three robots over and over. It should make us harder to spot. It also encourages the officers to be a bit more creative, show some initiative. In any event, I did the drill myself. I brought my own personal robot, and rented a second robot and an aircar. That stakeout is sort of a grab-bag affair, more than anything. Every once in a while we spot someone going in who shouldn’t be, and we can run some checks.”

“But something a little different happened.”

“Yes, sir. My robots spotted someone not on the watch lists. My robot could ID him, but the rental unit could not, even though it was a security model. I later found out that the ID database in my personal robot had been altered. My robot’s list is a copy of the standard CIP list—and I’ve confirmed that the standard list has been altered as well.”

“Someone inserted a false ID profile into the CIP database?”

“Yes, sir. And I might add that the real identity of the person in question is not in the file. I’m not sure if that’s because he was deleted by the same people who inserted the false idea, or if the real identity’s file was culled in a routine file purge.”

“I see. And who is someone pretending to be?”

“Dr. Barnsell Ardosa, of the University of Hades Center for Terraforming.” Justen pulled hardcopies of the original images out of his carry bag. “This is the university’s ID image,” he said, handing them over. “And this is the surveillance image.”

Kresh took the two images, and let out a low whistle. “Norlan Fiyle. The rustbacking Settler in the Grieg case. The mustache hides some of him, but it’s not exactly an impenetrable disguise.”

Justen Devray looked at Kresh in impressed surprised. “The face looked familiar to me,” he said, “but it took me hours and hours, and every image-manipulating trick in the book, before I was able to place him.”

“You’ve been a working cop since then,” Kresh said, still looking thoughtfully at the images of Fiyle/Ardosa. “There have been a lot of other faces for you to deal with, on a lot of other cases. Fiyle—I never met him, of course, but he was part of the last case I ever worked. I can still shut my eyes and see every page of the case file. Did you ever meet him?”

“No, sir. I wasn’t in on that interrogation. Maybe I should have been.”

“Don’t be absurd,” Kresh said, his voice gentler than his words. “You were running a big part of a vital case. He was picked up on the far side of the Great Bay from where you were working, and he gave up the one piece of information we needed almost at once. Why in the devil should you have chased after him? Just in case he popped up five years later?”

“I suppose you’re right. But even so, right now I wish I had gone to get a look at him.”

“Hmmmph. Water under the bridge. Let’s get back to the point. You’ve had a chance to check the files, and maybe my memory isn’t as infallible as I’d like it to be. Give me a quick summary on friend Fiyle.”

“Norlan Fiyle. A Settler, but not any part of the terraforming team. It seems he took advantage of a few loopholes in the immigration laws to come to Inferno, presumably in hopes of making some quick and easy money. He was working with a gang of rustbackers, helping to smuggle illegal New Law robots off the island of Purgatory. He got caught just about the time Grieg was murdered. He made a deal, all charges dropped and freedom to leave the planet, in exchange for the name of a Governor’s Ranger who was on the take. The Ranger in question was Emoch Huthwitz, who was killed the same night as the governor, while on guard duty. It looked a lot like an opportunist revenge murder. It was one of the leads that got us looking at the possible involvement of rustbacking gangs in the case.”

Kresh shook his head. “I needed the refresher. Sometimes I forget how intricate that case was. But Fiyle was supposed to leave the planet. Why didn’t he?”

“I don’t know, sir. But the fact that he was supposed to leave does offer an innocent explanation why he wasn’t in the current CIP identity files. We don’t maintain current files on people who are off-planet. As to why he didn’t leave, my hunch is that he hadn’t been any more honest on his home planet. Maybe he was on the run from the police there when he got to Inferno. Maybe he thought it over, and figured he wouldn’t stay out of jail for long back home, if he went there. So he offered his services to the SSS here. A freelance informant. They’d set him up and protect him in exchange for information.”

“And maybe Cinta Melloy didn’t make it a voluntary arrangement, if she had the goods on him back home,” Kresh said. “It’s all speculation, but it sounds plausible. But so far all you’ve got is an old smuggler walking into Settlertown and living under an assumed name. There has to be more.”

“Yes, sir, there is,” said Justen. “I left the Sapper to watch for Ardosa and trail him while I went back to CIP headquarters with the other robot and started trying to find out who Ardosa really was. Well, Ardosa came out of Settlertown not long after we left—and led Sapper 323 straight to Ironhead headquarters, and a nice little chat with Jadelo Gildern.”

Kresh raised his eyebrows. “The head of Ironhead security, no less. But how do you know he talked to Gildern?”

“I was coming to that. The robot on the front door wouldn’t let him in until Ardosa told him something, and the robot checked it with someone inside. The Sapper caught it all on long-range imagery and audio. I’ve watched it a dozen times by now. What Ardosa—or rather, Fiyle—said was ‘Listen, you tin box. Tell Gildern it’s Ardosa with new info on Lentrall. He’ll see me then.’ And sure enough, in went Fiyle.”

“Not the most discreet of double agents, is he?” said Kresh. “Waltzing up to the front door of two different establishments, talking on the street like that.”

“Unless that was deliberate,” said Justen. “He’s working two sides. Why not three? Maybe he was deliberately trying to attract our attention.”

“This does get deep pretty fast,” Kresh said. “We could spend the whole morning spinning theories. I wonder if Gildern or Melloy know Fiyle is working two sides of the game.”

“It takes a lot of nerve to spy for the Ironheads and the Settlers,” Justen said. “It would only take just a bit more to spy for both of them without the left hand knowing what the right was doing. I don’t think he’s told either side.”

“What makes you say that?” Kresh asked.

“Nothing solid. Just what we know of his temperament from the Grieg case, the way he carried himself as he headed toward Settlertown, and going into Ironhead HQ.”

“All interesting,” Kresh said. “All very, very interesting. You have a watch on Fiyle, I assume?”

“The works. Full team trailing him, taps on his hyperwave, research into his background, everything.”

“Good. And one other thing. Lentrall is about to arrive here, any minute. When he leaves, I don’t want him to be alone.”

“I was about to suggest that, sir. I would advise a full security detail, human and robotic.” After the Grieg case, they had learned not to trust a purely robotic security detail, or a purely human one. Far better to use both, rather than be exposed to the weaknesses of either working alone.

“Very good,” he said. “If it were remotely practical, I’d tell you to keep them out of Lentrall’s sight, but as it is—have them keep out of his way as much as possible. He’s not the sort of person who’s going to take kindly to a security detail. More than likely, he’ll blow his top, sooner or later. Let’s try and make it later.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Thank you for your good work, Justen,” Kresh said as he stood up. “You’ve told me something important. Lentrall has dropped a major situation on me, and I’ll need all the information I get in order to make a proper decision about it.”

Justen took the hint. He stood himself, took back the images from Kresh, and put them in his carry bag as he made ready to leave. Kresh offered Justen his hand, and Justen shook it as Kresh gave him an encouraging pat on the shoulder. “I’m glad to have been of help, sir.”

“You have been. You have been,” Kresh said as he led the younger man out into the hallway. “Perhaps more than you know.” Kresh’s robot activated the door control to Kresh’s office, and preceded his master through the entrance. “Thanks once again, Commander,” said Kresh.

It was not until Kresh had said the last of his congratulations and farewells, stepped into his main office, and Donald had sealed the door behind them that Justen Devray noticed something. Kresh had not said a single word about what Lentrall was working on.

Tonya Welton knew more about it than he did. Simcor Beddle knew more. Of course, that was not saying much, because Justen Devray, Commander of the Combined Inferno Police, did not know anything at all.

5

“HE’S GOING IN,” Cinta Melloy announced into the audio-only handset as she stared out the window. The watch team, and the snatch team on standby, were both listening. She shook her head worriedly as she watched the CIP transport setting down on the roof. And there went Devray off the rooftop pad, just as the transport set down. “Our young man is going in the front door, the head of the competition has just left, and his friends are just setting down topside.” Even as she spoke, she realized that she was being too cryptic. This operation had been so rushed there had been no time to set up code names or communications shorthand. Better to be clear about what she was saying and avoid screwups. She spoke again. “Lentrall has just gone in. I just spotted Devray’s aircar leaving—and what looks like a full CIP security team has just landed on the roof. I think they’re going to start baby-sitting Lentrall here and now.”

There were risks in speaking in clear, of course, but she was sure—at least moderately sure—that the Combined Infernal Police hadn’t tapped this comm system yet. They were getting much better at counterintelligence, but it was by no means easy to detect, let alone tap, a concealed hardwire line.

Of course, the CIP knew about this watch-keeping station, right across the street from Government Tower, just as the Settlers knew all about the CIP watch kept on the main entrance to Settlertown. That was all part of the game. But knowing which office held the watch-keeping station was a far cry from locating the hard-wire line and tapping it without being detected.

“If they start covering Lentrall now that’s not so good,” replied a voice at the other end of the line.

Cinta Melloy realized she should not have been surprised that Tonya Welton was monitoring. But she was worried by just how involved in this operation Tonya Welton was getting. Most of the time, Welton kept far away from Cinta’s SSS, and for good reason. No responsible leader wants to be too close to the people in charge of dirty tricks. But this case was different. Tonya was staying close. Too close.

“Stand by,” Cinta said, and flipped switches that cut out the watch team and the snatch teams. “We’re private now, Madame Welton. Ma’am, you really shouldn’t speak when the operations people can hear you. You may have just blown away all our compartmentalization, assuming they recognize your voice.”

“Let’s worry about that later, shall we?” Welton said, as if the question were of no importance whatsoever. “What was that about baby-sitters?”

“What looks like a full CIP protection squad landed on the roof just as Lentrall went inside. My guess is that they’ll start on bodyguard duty the moment he comes out of the building.”

“And it will be more or less impossible for us to grab him once they are in place,” Tonya said.

“Yes, ma’am,” Cinta said, making no effort to hide the relief in her voice. She had wanted no part of this crazy operation.

“Then we better get to him before the bodyguards do,” said Tonya. “Go get him.”

“What?!” Cinta half-shouted.

“You heard me, Melloy. This is a direct order. Get him as he comes out of the building. My best guess is that you have an hour or so to get your team ready. I suggest you get moving.”

THE DOOR OPENED smoothly enough that one could have been forgiven for thinking the person who entered had a right to be there. No forcing of the lock, no furtive gimmicking of the security electronics. Jadelo Gildern was not that clumsy a person. He slipped the device he had used on the door into his pocket and stepped into Davlo Lentrall’s work office. He slid the door shut behind him and let out a small sigh. Gildern looked calm enough as he stood there and looked about the smallish room, but in truth the man was scared to death, his heart pounding so loudly in his chest that he felt sure it could be heard down the hallway.

Gildern knew he was not a brave man. The risks he took and the dangers he faced in his security work were all, always and ultimately, for his own benefit, his own personal gain. Even if the routes he took to gain that benefit were sometimes labyrinthine, the final destination was always there, in sight. Whatever he did, he did for himself.

And he would be very surprised indeed if this expedition to Lentrall’s office did not do him a great deal of good—all the more good for his having first told Beddle it was extremely risky.

In reality, there was very little risk at all. If Gildern had indeed gone after the computer data files, the odds of discovery and of capture would indeed have been fairly high. But the very fact that the data system security was so good played into Gildern’s hands. Good security made people feel safe. People who felt safe relaxed. And people who were relaxed made mistakes.

One such mistake was in assuming that good security in one area meant security in all the others was equally good. This assumption was often mistaken—as in the matter of the door lock Gildern had just gotten past. The computer security was good, so the physical security had to be good, so it was perfectly safe to leave books and papers and notes lying around, so long as the door was locked. Gildern had hoped that Lentrall’s train of thought had worked that way, and it seemed as if it had. The on-line computer files would likely have been of very little use in any event. Gildern was no technician, no scientist. It would likely take so long to analyze a technical report that the moment would be lost. No. What he was after were papers he could photograph. He wanted scribbled notes, summaries prepared to explain things to outsiders. And if he got lucky, datapads chock full of information Gildern could download and take with him.

The office was neat, but not so neat that it was a robot who had done the tidying. Gildern needed to look no further than the books on the shelf, slightly out of true with each other, than the papers that stacked up without being precisely squared up, than the way the chair sat in the middle of the floor instead of being shoved in neatly under the desk, for it to be instantly obvious to Gildern that Lentrall kept this room up himself. All to the good. If Gildern accidentally left something not precisely as he found it, it would more likely go unnoticed. And besides, if the man himself kept order here, the system of order itself might well tell Gildern something about the man.

He set to work searching Davlo Lentrall’s office.

FREDDA LEVING WATCHED her husband enter the room, and saw how his expression changed the moment the door was sealed behind him. The look of calm imperturbability vanished, and a deeply troubled expression took its place. He looked to her, and seemed to understand what she had seen. He smiled, a bit sadly, a bit worriedly. “I didn’t used to be able to do that, back when I was just a policeman,” he said. “It used to be that I could let my face express whatever it wanted. Politics does strange things to a man.”

Fredda got off her chair and took her husband by the hand. “I don’t know whether I should be happy to see you drop the act in front of me, or upset to see that you put on an act at all,” she said.

“Probably both,” he said, a tone of apology in his voice.

“What was it Devray wanted to tell you?”

“That our friends and our enemies—who mayor may not be the same people—probably already know most of what we’ve been trying to keep secret from them.”

“And from me.” Fredda moved a step or two away from her husband, folded her arms, and perched herself on the corner of his desk. “Maybe if they already know, you could finally break down and tell me what it’s all about.”

Kresh started to pace, up and down the length of the office, his hands clasped behind his back—a rare but certain sign of anxiety and impatience. “Where is the fellow?” he asked of the open air, and then glanced toward his wife without breaking stride. “It’s not that I wanted to keep it secret from you. I just wanted you to hear it the same way I did. I wanted your opinion of—of it, without hearing about my biases or opinions, one way or the other.”

“Well, you’ve certainly managed to keep from telling me much. All I know for sure is that it could mean trouble for the New Law robots.”

Kresh stopped in his pacing and looked up at his wife again. “It could mean trouble for everyone,” he said. “Ah, here’s the man of the hour now.”

The door slid open, and a young, energetic-looking young man came in, accompanied by a very ordinary-looking dun-colored robot of medium height and build. The robot immediately took up a position in one of the wall niches. But if the robot was entirely nondescript, the man was anything but. With his angular face, dark complexion, bristle-cut hair, and intense eyes, he was striking, rather than conventionally handsome. Whether or not Davlo Lentrall truly was a man at the center of important affairs, he at least looked as if he was.

“Good morning to you, Dr. Leving,” Lentrall said, bowing slightly to her, an old-fashioned, courtly sort of gesture. He turned to her husband. “And good morning to you as well, sir.”

“Good morning,” said Kresh. There was a couch against one wall in the office. The governor sat down on it, and Fredda sat down next to him. Kresh gestured to a comfortable chair facing the couch. “Please, Dr. Lentrall, have a seat.”

But Lentrall did not sit down. Instead he stood there, plainly struggling to act calmer than he truly was. “Sir, I must tell you something, even if it sounds a bit absurd. I—I believe that I am being followed.”

Kresh smiled sadly. “I’m sorry to say that doesn’t sound the least bit absurd,” said Kresh. “The police commander himself was just here, telling me just how interested certain parties were in you. I’d be surprised if someone hadn’t put a tail on you.”

Davlo nodded and seemed to relax, just a trifle. “In a strange way, that’s a relief. I think I’d rather have someone actually following me than to be suffering paranoid delusions.”

“Trust me, son. In this life, one does not exclude the other. But be that as it may, sit down, take a deep breath, and then—then we can talk about the matter in question.”

“Yes, sir.” Davlo sat down rather gingerly, as if he half expected the chair to snap under his weight, or that some sort of trap was going to spring out of the armrests and grab him.

Fredda noted that the room was not laid out as it normally was, and that her husband was not in his usual place. Her husband had obviously ordered the room rearranged so as to lower the emotional stakes as much as possible. For this morning, Alvar Kresh was not in the thronelike chair, not behind the imposing barrier of his ornate desk. He was sitting in a posture of slightly exaggerated relaxation on the couch. The chair Lentrall was in actually put him a little above Alvar’s eye level. The low table between the couch and Lentrall’s chair served as a sort of barrier, a neutral buffer zone that kept anyone from invading Lentrall’s personal space. Even Alvar’s calm expression and faint half-smile were part of the show.

And Fredda suddenly realized that she was part of the show as well. Alvar wanted her to do the talking, have Lentrall address her. Did he think Lentrall would react more calmly talking to someone closer to his own age, a woman without official rank? Or was it that Alvar wanted to put himself in the position of observer, get himself outside the conversation, so that he could watch and judge impartially, without getting involved? Or maybe he didn’t have a reason at all. Maybe it was just political instinct at work, unanalyzed gut feeling.

“Donald,” Kresh said, “bring our guest some refreshment.”

“Certainly, sir.” Donald stepped forward and addressed Lentrall. “What would you care for?” he asked.

“Nothing.” Lentrall regarded Donald for a moment with an expression of curiosity on his face. He turned toward Fredda.

“Dr. Leving, I wonder if you might indulge my curiosity for a moment. This robot here. Am I correct in believing that you designed and built it?”

“That’s right.”

“I see. You are a well-known figure, of course, and so too are many of your creations.”

Kresh chuckled darkly. “That’s putting it mildly.” Lentrall looked toward Kresh, and smiled thinly. “I suppose you have a point, sir. But what confuses me is the name. ‘Donald.’— ”

“It’s a fancy of mine to use character names from an ancient storyteller for all my custom-made robots,” said Fredda. “A man who lived on old Earth, in the pre-robotic era. A man by the name of—”

“Shakespeare,” said Lentrall. “I know that. William Shakespeare. And just incidentally, I think it might be more accurate to call him a poet and a playwright, rather than a storyteller. I have studied him myself. That’s what made me wonder. The names of your other robots: Caliban, Prospero, Ariel. All Shakespeare. I even saw some sort of feature story about your home, and noticed your current personal robot is named Oberon. Shakespeare again. That is why I wonder. Why the name ‘Donald’?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Sir, if I might be of assistance,” Donald said, addressing Lentrall. “I am named for a minor character in the play Macbeth.”

“But there is no character by that name in the play,” Lentrall replied. “I know the play well. In fact, I am morally certain there is no character by the name ‘Donald’ anywhere in Shakespeare.” Lentrall thought for a moment. “There is a Donalbain in Macbeth,” he suggested. “ ‘Donald’ must be a corruption of ‘Donalbain.’ ”

“Sir, forgive me for correcting you, but I have just consulted my on-board dataset, and I have confirmed the character is named ‘Donald.’ ”

“Of course he is, in your copy,” Lentrall said. “If Dr. Leving’s copy was corrupted, and your on-board reference is based on it, of course it has the name wrong as well. A lot of errors creep into the ancient texts over time.”

“Might it be possible, sir, that your copy of the play is in error?” Donald suggested.

“Anything might be possible, but I very much doubt my copy is in error. I am something of a collector of such things, and I possess four different sets of Shakespeare, three as datasets and one a hard copy. There’s not a ‘Donald’ in any of them.”

“I see,” said Donald, clearly taken aback by Lentrall’s news. “Clearly I must review my on-board dataset.”

“Interesting,” said Lentrall as Donald retreated to his wall niche. “I suppose the moral is that we never know quite as much as we think we know. Wouldn’t you agree, Dr. Leving?”

“Hmmm? What? Oh, yes.” Fredda felt completely thrown off her stride. How could she have made a mistake like that? What other mistakes had she made over the years without even knowing it? It was remarkable how such a trivial error could make her feel so embarrassed.

And it was also remarkable that Lentrall could be rude and arrogant enough to call her on it the moment they met. Yet the fellow seemed to have no idea that had been rude. Davlo Lentrall was a most peculiar young man—and not one with the sort of skills and personality required to get far in politics. Lucky for him he had chosen another field.

But none of this was getting the discussion moving. “Perhaps it is time to turn to the matter at hand,” she said.

“Absolutely,” said Lentrall. “How much do you know so far?”

Fredda hesitated, and glanced toward her husband. But his impassive expression gave her no clue. “Just to be clear, Dr. Lentrall, my husband has told me nothing at all. He wanted me to hear it all from you. So please, start at the beginning.”

“Right,” Lentrall said, in a tone close enough to brusque that it made no difference. “The basic point is that I believe I have found a way to enhance the terraforming process and permanently stabilize the climate.”

“But only by putting the lives of perhaps millions of people at risk,” said Lentrall’s robot from its niche.

“Be quiet, Kaelor,” Lentrall said impatiently.

“First Law compelled me to say at least that much,” the robot replied, in an aggrieved tone of voice. “Your plan of action would put many human beings in danger.”

“I would hardly call it danger,” Lentrall said testily. “Rather, very slight risk. But if my plan succeeds, it will mean greater safety and comfort for generations of humans yet to come.”

“That argument contains far too many hypotheticals to be of any interest to me,” Kaelor replied.

“You have made your point now,” Lentrall said. “I order you to be quiet.” He shook his head and looked to Fredda. “I know you are famous for building superb robots,” he said. “But there are times when I wonder if the Settlers don’t have a point.”

“The same thought has crossed my mind more than once,” said Fredda. “But please go on. How do you propose to stabilize the climate?”

“By flooding the north pole,” Lentrall said. “I call it the Polar Sea Project.”

“What, precisely, would that accomplish?” Fredda asked. Lentrall stared hard at her for a moment, as if she had just asked what use robotic labor might be. “Let me go back a bit,” he said at last. “In fact, let me go all the way back. As you might know, when the first Spacers arrived at this planet, what they found was a desert world that consisted of two large and distinct geologic regions. The southernmost two-thirds of the planet were lowlands, while the northernmost third was covered by a huge plateau, much higher in elevation than the southern hemisphere. For that precise reason, Inferno was regarded as a marginal candidate for terraforming.”

“Why?”

“Because when water was introduced onto the planet, it would obviously all pool in the south—as indeed it has. Today we call the northern uplands the continent of Terra Grande, and the southern lowlands have been flooded to form the Southern Ocean. This gives the planet one water-covered pole and one landlocked one.”

“And what difference does that make?”

“A great deal of difference. Water absorbs heat energy far more efficiently than the atmosphere can. Water can circulate, carrying that heat along with it. Temperatures in the southern hemisphere are much more moderate and stable than they are in the north, because warm water can flow over the south pole and the polar regions, warming them up. Cold polar water can move toward the temperate zones and cool them off. I am oversimplifying things tremendously, of course, but that is the basic idea.”

“And that can’t happen in the north, because there is no water,” Fredda said, glancing toward her husband. But his face was completely expressionless. He was watching this game, not playing it.

Lentrall nodded eagerly. “Precisely. Terra Grande is a huge, monolithic continent. It completely covers the northern third of the planet’s surface. Because no water can flow over the North Pole region, there is little chance for temperatures to moderate themselves in the northern hemisphere. The tropical regions of the northern hemisphere are too hot, while the polar regions are too cold. If you look at a map, you will see that the southern edge of Terra Grande—where most of the people live—more or less borders the northern edge of the north tropical zone. Right here, in Hades, we should be right in the center of the temperate regions. But the temperate regions are shrinking, and we are very near the northern border of the habitable zone, at least by some standards. Actually, there are a few rather stringent Settler measures by which the city of Hades is, technically, uninhabitable. Because of insufficient rainfall, I believe. Be that as it may, the habitable zone of this planet is already little more than a narrow strip, five or six hundred kilometers wide, along the southern coast of Terra Grande. And that strip is still shrinking, despite our best efforts, and despite local successes.”

“I thought the terraforming project was gaining ground,” Fredda said, looking toward her husband.

“It is,” said Alvar. “In places. Mostly in the places where people live. We are losing ground elsewhere—but we are doing much better around Hades and in the Great Bay region generally. Once we have this part of the world under control, we hope to expand outward.”

“If you get the chance,” Lentrall said. “Current projections show it could go either way. You’re relying on a high-point balance. It’s unstable.”

“What’s a high-point balance?” Fredda asked.

Lentrall smiled as he reached into the breast pocket of his tunic and pulled out a large coin—a Settler coin, Fredda could not help but notice. He had it so ready to hand that Fredda assumed he had put it there deliberately, just to be ready to make his point.

“This is a high-point balance,” he said. He held his left hand with the index finger pointed straight up, and carefully placed the coin on the tip of his index finger. “In theory, I could hold this coin here indefinitely,” he said. “All I have to do is keep my finger completely steady, keep my arm from moving, keep from being jostled—while, at the same time compensating for any minute gusts of air, any very slight tremor in the building. And of course, I have to be sure I don’t overcompensate while trying to correct for some very minor—”

But at that moment, the coin suddenly fell from his finger and landed ringingly on the stone floor of the office. Somehow the sound of it striking the floor was much louder than Fredda had expected.

“I’ve just given you a pretty fair metaphor for the present state of Inferno’s planetary climate. It is stable for the moment, but if there is the slightest perturbation, there will be trouble. There is no negative feedback in the system, nothing working against a perturbation to push the system back toward stability. Ever since the first climate engineer started to work here, the balance point for Inferno’s climate has been a high point tottering between two extremes, with the slightest shift capable of sending the whole thing crashing down into overheating or supercooling. We have to get everything exactly right every time, or else…” He nodded toward the coin on the floor.

“But you have a solution,” Fredda said, her voice not entirely friendly. Lentrall was making no effort to convince, or explain, or discuss matters. He was lecturing, dictating, instructing her. He was speaking in tones that were a strange combination of arrogance and condescension. He was talking down to her, as if she were a child, explaining to her why doing things his way, the sensible way, was for her own good.

“I have a solution,” he said. He reached down, picked up the coin, and placed it in the palm of his hand. “We put the planet in a low-point balance, like this.” He shook his hand back and forth, and jiggled it around vigorously. The coin stayed in his palm. Once or twice, he managed to dislodge it briefly, but then it dropped back into place. “As you can see, it’s much harder to perturb something out of a low-point balance, and it will tend to return to its balance point once a perturbation is removed. Now, a Polar Sea would move the global climate into a stable low-point system that would require massive effort to dislodge into instability.

“As I have said, the problem is the absence of water circulation in the northern hemisphere. If there were a way to let water accumulate in the northern polar regions, while providing inlets and outlets to the Southern Ocean, then warm water could flow north to warm the poles, and cold water could come south to cool the ocean—and the land areas near the coast. That would give us a low-point balance, where the natural force working on the planet would be self-correcting. If things got too hot, the cold polar waters would cool them off. If the temperatures dropped too much, tropical waters would warm them up. We need water over both poles.”

“But there are a number of terraformed planets without water on both poles,” Fredda objected. “And I recall, even Earth had one pole with land on it—and the other with highly restricted water flow. I think the pole with water on it was even frozen over most of the time.”

Lentrall smiled again, and it was not a warm or friendly expression. Rather, it was the debater’s smile of triumph, something close to a condescending sneer. She had fallen into the trap he had laid, and now he could move in for the kill. “I have answers to all that,” he said. “I think you will find that they all strengthen my argument. Regarding the terraformed planets with land-locked poles, I can tell you that all of them have bodies of water that get much closer to the poles than we have on Inferno.”

“What about the examples she cited from Earth?” Kresh asked.

“First, the natural oceans of Earth were far deeper than the artificial oceans of any terraformed planet,” Lentrall said. “Because they were deeper, they held much more water and served as a much more effective heat sink.

“Second, they covered far more of the surface of the planet than on most terraformed worlds. Three-fourths of Earth was water. Slightly less than two-thirds of Inferno’s surface is water, and it has more water coverage than any other wholly terraformed world. The difference between three-fourths and two-thirds may not sound like much, but it is substantial—and, as I have said, measured by volume, and not surface area, Inferno’s oceans are much smaller than Earth’s.

“Third, even if Earth’s oceans did not have free and open access to either pole, once again, they reached close enough to allow substantial heat exchange.

“Fourth, the land-locked South Pole of Earth was far colder than the water-covered North Pole, which just goes to show my point that liquid water served to moderate temperatures. While the surface of the Arctic Ocean was frozen over, there were still a lot of water—and a lot of water currents—below the ice.

“Finally, Earth’s climate was remarkable for its instability. It suffered severe ice ages, which were triggered by very small fluctuations in this variable or that. There is substantial evidence that the impeded flow of water over the poles was a major contributing factor to this instability. I would submit that all of these facts regarding Old Earth strengthen, rather than weaken, the argument in favor of a water flow over the North Pole.”

“Hmmph.” Fredda didn’t trust herself to say anything more. The infuriating thing was that the man was right. He did marshal his arguments well. But there was so much in his tone, in his attitude, in his behavior, that made her want to disagree with him, made her want to argue with him, tooth and nail.

“Go on, Dr. Lentrall,” said Alvar, his voice an absolute study in neutrality. “What is your backing for all this?”

“An excellent question, Governor,” Lentrall said, in a tone of voice that made it sound as if he were praising a bright schoolboy. “As you are no doubt aware, the original terraforming plans for Inferno called for the creation of just such a Polar Sea. I have derived most of my information from those old studies.”

“Why did they cancel the plans for the Polar Sea?” Fredda asked.

“Partly it was politics and scheduling. Building the Polar Sea would have slowed the whole project up for years, and there was pressure to land colonists on the planet as soon as possible. By that time, a great number of things had already gone wrong with the terraforming project. There was some thought given to abandoning the planet altogether. Costs were getting out of control. But that would have done terrible damage to Spacer pride and prestige. The engineers were ordered to complete the project, but they were not given the time or the resources or the money to do it properly. They really had no choice but to cut corners. And the Polar Sea was one they could cut. Not doing it freed up enough resources to let them complete the rest of the terraforming project.”

“A generous interpretation,” said Kresh. “I’ve studied the old files and reports as well. I’d say they didn’t come close to completion of the terraforming project. What they did was declare that they had completed it. The terraformers of Inferno knew exactly the mess they were creating. I found at least three reports predicting a planetary climate collapse—and all three predicted that it would happen right about now, give or take a few years.”

Lentrall looked annoyed at Kresh for interrupting the flow of his speech. “In any case, the original planning documents clearly call for establishing a substantial flow of water in and over the polar regions. All of their projections showed that it would moderate and stabilize the planetary climate, as well as increasing rainfall throughout Terra Grande.”

“Pretty big job, digging an ocean,” Fredda said. Lentrall smiled again, and the expression didn’t make her like him any more. “Yes it is,” he agreed. “But most of the work has been done for us already. Kaelor, bring me my map case.”

Lentrall’s robot came forward. It opened a storage compartment in the front of its torso, drew out a long, thin tube, and handed the tube to Lentrall. Lentrall opened the tube and pulled out a map printed on glossy stock. “This shows the north polar regions of Inferno,” he said, spreading the map out on the low table in front of him. “One of the features of the Infernal landscape that we tend not to notice is that it is rather heavily cratered. Part of the reason for this is that the original settlers chose city sites in the regions with the lightest crater cover. Besides which, most of the craters are heavily eroded. But most of Terra Grande—and most of the flooded lowlands that now make up the ocean floor—are quite heavily cratered.”

Lentrall stabbed a finger down on the exact center of the map. “As you can see, a pair of very large overlapping craters sit astride the North Pole, a formation generally known as the Polar Depression. You will note two things about the Depression. One, that nearly all of the land area inside it is below sea level. Two, there are actually permanent icecaps inside the craters. Those icecaps used to be seasonal in nature. They are now permanent, and they are growing. Every year during northern summer they melt back a bit—but every winter the storms deposit more snow, and the icecaps grow more than they have shrunk. More and more of the planet’s fresh water is being locked up at the north pole. If there were a channel bringing in warm tropical water, it would melt back the icecaps in short order. If a channel could be opened from the Southern Ocean to the Polar Depression, the waters would rush in, forming the Polar Sea.”

“What you’re saying is that we have a ready-made seabed,” said Fredda, “and it is already partly filled with water-frozen water, but water all the same. Which means that all we have to do is dig the channel.”

“Not a simple matter, or a small one,” Kresh said. “And there would either have to be two channels dug, or one channel large enough to encompass both a northward and southward flow.”

“We’d need both, actually,” Lentrall said. “One channel that could accommodate two-way flow, and one that would simply serve as a sort of huge pressure-relief valve. The second outlet would not generally carry huge amounts of water, but it would make it possible to regulate the amount of water in the Polar Sea.”

“How do manage to get water to flow in two directions at once through one channel?” Fredda asked.

“Actually, that is one of the more straightforward parts of the business,” said Lentrall. “It happens all the time in natural oceans. The warm water moves on top, while the counterflow of cold water moves on the bottom. A sort of natural temperature barrier, or thermocline, develops. The two currents are quite distinct from each other. They can even have different concentrations of trace elements. For all intents and purposes, they do not intermix. In the present case, the cold counterflow to the south should also serve to scour out the initial channel through the process of water erosion.”

“You make it all seem so simple,” said Fredda, not making any great effort to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. “Why it is it no one has ever thought of it before?”

But Lentrall was clearly immune to sarcasm, no doubt because he was virtually unable to detect it. “Oh, many people have thought of it before,” he said. “The problem is that no one has been able to find a way to go about digging the necessary channels until now. The job was too big and too expensive to do with any conceivable sort of conventional digging equipment. If we started right now, with an all-out effort to dig the channel, we wouldn’t get halfway done before the climate collapsed.”

“But you, and you alone, have found the way,” said Fredda.

That jibe almost seemed to strike home. “Well, yes,” Lentrall said, suddenly just a trifle cautious. “Yes, I have.”

“How?” asked Fredda. “How in the devil are you going to do it?”

Lentrall was now plainly startled. He looked from Fredda to Alvar and then back again. “You mean he didn’t even tell you that much? He didn’t explain?”

“No,” Fredda said. She glanced at her husband, but it was plain he was not going to say anything. “The governor wanted me to hear it from you.”

“I see,” Lentrall said, clearly taken aback. “I thought you knew that part.”

“But I don’t,” said Fredda, more than a little annoyed. “So I ask you again to tell me now. How are you going to do it?”

Davlo Lentrall fiddled with the map for a moment. He cleared his throat. He sat up straight in his chair, and looked straight at Fredda. “It’s quite simple,” he said. “I intend to drop a comet onto the planet.”

6

GUBBER ANSHAW SMILED to himself as he strolled along the wide boulevards of Valhalla. He had only been to the hidden city a time or two before, and he was genuinely pleased to return.

Valhalla was a utilitarian place, designed down to the last detail to be efficient, sensible, orderly. The overall design was, ironically enough, reminiscent of underground Spacer cities, but perhaps that was to be expected. Building underground did force certain requirements on the design.

The city was built in four levels. The lower three were a fairly conventional series of storage areas, living quarters, and so on, each connected to the others by broad ramps and high-speed lifts. But Gubber was on the top level of Valhalla, and the top level was something quite unconventional, indeed. It did not remind him of anything at all.

It was an open gallery, a half-cylinder on its side, precisely two kilometers long and one kilometer wide. The side walls of the main level merged smoothly into the wide, curved, ceiling. The entire interior surface of the semicylindrical gallery was coated with a highly reflective white material. The overall effect was overbright to human eyes, but no doubt the New Laws regarded it as a more efficient style of illumination.

The floor of the huge gallery was still in large part empty, though it seemed to Gubber that there were a few new structures in place since his last visit. “Structures” seemed a better word than “buildings,” as many of them did not seem to be buildings, exactly.

There were, of course, a number of normal-seeming installations on the main level, given over to one conventional purpose or another. He could identify repair centers, warehouses, transshipment centers, and so on. But Gubber did not spend much time considering them. Instead, his eye was drawn to the less identifiable structures clustered toward the center of the main level.

All of them were the size of two- or three-story buildings. Nearly all of them were geometric solids of one sort or another: cubes, cones, dodecahedrons, oblate spheroids, three-, four-, and five-sided pyramids, each painted or coated in a bright primary color. A few were positioned in strange attitudes. One cone was upside-down, and two of the pyramids rested on base-edges, so that their apexes were pointed exactly ninety degrees away from the zenith. Gubber had no idea how the New Law robots had kept them from falling over.

He was reminded of a child’s carelessly scattered building blocks. On his last visit, Lancon-03 had described the structures as an experiment in abstract aesthetics, and had launched into an intricate explanation of the theories of beauty and utility currently under discussion in the New Law community.

Some of the structures were occupied or used in some way, while others did not seem to have any access way into their interiors. They were, in essence, abstract sculpture. Gubber did not care for them very much as art, but that was almost incidental. He found it fascinating that the New Laws would construct sculptures in the first place. But did they do so for pleasure, or were they simply compelled to attempt art by the murky demands of the Fourth Law? Did these huge geometric solids appeal to the New Law robots in their own right? Or did these strange beings construct them because they felt they ought to build them, because they wanted to convince themselves they were capable of creating? In short, did they build them because they wanted to, because Fourth Law made them do it, or because they felt it was expected of them, because human cities have public art?

Gubber had been pondering such questions for months now, and was quite pleased to realize he was no nearer an answer. Lancon-03 had never succeeded in explaining things to Gubber’s satisfaction, and Gubber himself had not been able to come up with a good explanation. But that suited him fine. Puzzles lost much of their savor once they were solved. “This place always surprises me,” he said to his host.

“And why is that, sir?” asked Lancon-03.

Gubber chuckled quietly as he made an expansive sweeping gesture with one arm, taking in all of Valhalla. “I suppose because none of this seems the least bit like me,” he said.

Lancon-03 regarded her guest thoughtfully. “I take it, then, that because you invented the gravitonic brain, you expected to see some expression of your own personality in the thing created by beings who possess gravitonic brains?”

“Something like that,” Gubber said. “And I must say, handsome as it is, this is not the sort of city I would design.”

“Interesting,” said Lancon. “We New Law robots have always taken an interest in aesthetics, but I must confess that we have never given much thought to the tastes and opinions of our creators. And, I must confess, what study we have made of the subject has been directing at Dr. Leving, rather than at yourself.”

“I’m not surprised to hear it,” said Gubber. “It is only recently that I have taken an interest in the New Law robots, or even acknowledged my role in creating you. Fredda Leving took my gravitonic brain design, wrote the New Laws herself, and put the laws in the gravitonics without so much as informing me that she had done so, to say nothing of asking my permission.”

“You do not approve of the New Law Robots, then.”

Gubber stopped and regarded his companion with a gentle smile. “In theory, no,” he said. “I think it was tremendously dangerous and foolhardy for Dr. Leving to do what she did. In practice, I find that I rather like most of the New Law robots I have met. You see the world in a different way than human beings do—and in a different way from Three-Law robots as well.”

“In what way, might I ask?”

Gubber nodded toward his companion, then looked forward and started walking again. “No,” he said. “You tell me. Tell me as we walk the city that is not what I expected. Tell me of the worldview of the New Law robots.”

Lancon-03 thought for a moment as they strolled down the broad center boulevard of Valhalla. “An interesting challenge,” she said. “I would venture to guess that no two New Law robots would be able to agree completely on how we see the world. We are a disputive group, I can tell you that much. However, I would say that we are baffled by the outside world—and have the sense that the outside world is baffled by us. Human and Three-Law robots have had endless millennia to work out their relations to each other, to discover how they fit into the universe. We New Law robots have had only about five standard years. During that time, the key thing we have learned is that the universe of humans and Three-Law robots is not the most welcoming of places for those of our kind. At best we have encountered indifference, and, at worst, murderous hostility.”

They came to a large two-story building, positioned to command a spectacular view of the main gallery. It was the main administration building. With Prospero away, Lancon-03 was in charge of the city’s day-to-day operations. Lancon-03 gestured for Gubber to follow her inside, and then went on speaking as they went through the doorway, and then up a curving ramp that led to the upper level of the building. “Coupled with this hostility is the plain fact that we have no real purpose in the world. There is no predestined role for us. We must create one for ourselves—and that is not a quick or simple process. Prospero understands this. Our skills and aptitude in terraforming work offer us opportunities, of course. But Prospero knows it will take time for humans to accept us fully into that work. He also understands that we must keep ourselves safe until such time as we are accepted, and work relentlessly to exploit any chance to better ourselves. I realize that I have not given a complete answer to your question, for the simple reason that we have not yet discovered one for ourselves. We need a place to search for better answers. We need a refuge, a sanctuary, a place to reflect, to study, to plan. Valhalla is all those things. But it is something else. Something far more important.”

Lancon-03 paused at the top of the ramp, Gubber by her side. A wide picture window stood before them. Valhalla’s distinctly inhuman architecture was on proud display just beyond the window frame. “Valhalla,” said Lancon-03, “is our home.”

“ ‘PHASE ONE. INTERCEPTION and stabilization of Comet Grieg and installation of attitude control rockets and main propulsive device.’—I expect that last is a polite term for a massive bomb of whatever sort.” Jadelo Gildern smiled unpleasantly as he looked up from his datapad. “I never have cared overmuch for misused euphemism. The term ‘propulsive device’ is so vague it merely brings the question of what the thing might be to one’s attention.”

“Get on with it, Gildern,” said Simcor Beddle, as he sat back in his lounge chair, his hands folded in his lap, his gaze fixed on the far corner of the ceiling.

“Yes, sir. ‘Phase two. Activation of the main propulsion device. Phase three. Cruise toward planet. Attitude control rockets used to correct and maintain course. Phase four. Controlled breakup of Comet Grieg into separate fragments.’ Lentrall seems not to have decided how many fragments, or of what size. ‘Phase five. Targeting of fragments. Phase six. Impact of fragments on planet.’ ”

“Burning stars,” said Beddle. “I am not sure I am ready to believe all this. They are planning to use a comet to dig a channel from the sea to the Polar Depression?”

“So it would appear, sir. By targeting the fragments carefully, they mean to line them up like beads on a string, with each smashing into the planet at a carefully chosen spot. In essence the craters will be lined up end to end. They also intend to use oblique strikes.”

“Meaning what?” Beddle asked.

“Instead of hitting the ground straight down, they will target the comet fragments to let them strike at a substantial angle of attack. The end result is that, instead of perfectly round craters, they will get rather long, oval ones.”

“And all this will magically form a link to the sea?”

“No, sir. It does not seem that they expect the impacts will do all the work of digging, but they do expect them to do the vast majority of it. Conventional digging, or what they call moderate-yield zero-radiation fusion devices—in other words, nuclear bombs—would be used to link the craters up to each other. There are other details to the project, of course. But when I say details, I am referring to huge projects that would seem massive undertakings in any other context. The plan calls for redirecting the flow of the River Lethe not once, but twice. Currently the Lethe runs from west to east for some time before turning south to empty into the Great Bay. Prior to the impact, they will dam it above its turn to the south, and force it into a new channel to the north, so that it will scour out a new outlet in the Polar Depression. After the impact, they will link the old and new channels and reverse the flow a second time and the River Lethe will become the Lethe Channel, forming the second outlet between the Polar Sea and the Southern Ocean.”

Beddle got to his feet and looked down on Gildern. “This is madness!” he protested. “I have often been accused of megalomania, but this—this goes far beyond the maddest schemes I ever dreamt of.”

“It certainly is ambitious.”

Beddle looked sharply at Gildern. “You always have been one for understatement. I would almost suspect you of approving of this madness.”

“I must admit that I have an open mind about it all,” said Gildern.

Gildern’s superior looked surprised. “We will return to that point later, I can assure you,” Beddle said. “How is it you got all this information?” he demanded.

“I broke into Lentrall’s office and took scans of every document I could,” Gildern replied.

“But I thought we had agreed the risk was too great.”

“Lentrall left his office and took his robot with him early this morning. I had been monitoring the building for some time, and knew it was virtually deserted at that hour. I decided it was worth the risk of a quick physical search, and of copying the information from his datapads. I didn’t make any attempt to examine his on-line computer files. There was a much greater risk of discovery in that.”

Beddle nodded, apparently satisfied. “Do you have any sense of how seriously this proposal is being taken?” Beddle asked.

“That I cannot say,” Gildern replied, for once speaking with perfect sincerity. “There is nothing in the papers and datacubes I have examined that would give me any idea. I saw Lentrall’s proposal—but we have nothing to indicate Kresh’s reaction.”

“Other than the fact that Kresh is seeing him for the second time even as we speak.” Beddle frowned thoughtfully. He gestured to a nearby service robot, who immediately brought an overstuffed chair to where he was standing. Beddle sat down close to Gildern and leaned in close. “I almost get the impression that you approve of this—this scheme.”

“I would not go nearly so far. I would say we should not reject it out of hand, once it gets out to the public. And it is sure to get out. Nothing this big can stay hidden for long.”

“That much I agree with. But might I ask your reasons for even considering this comet business?”

“Because even half a morning’s consideration of it has allowed me to do something I have never permitted myself to do, ever before. It has given me the chance to admit to myself that this planet is doomed.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Gildern handed the datapad out into thin air, and his personal robot retrieved it. Gildern leaned forward and put on a troubled, sincere-looking expression. “Sir, the planet is dying. Despite local successes, despite all our previous best efforts, that continues to be the case. Each of us, deep in our heart of hearts, knows that to be true. If I can step away from the party line for a moment, you know and I know that Alvar Kresh has been a most effective governor. He has accomplished a great deal, and bought the planet a great deal of time. But that is all he has done. It is—or at least it has been—all anyone could do. But deep in our hearts, I think we have all known it was not enough, that we were all doomed. And because we were all going to die no matter what we did, we decided that we might as well amuse ourselves in the meantime with our silly little games of politics and intrigue. The intrigues were harmless, after all, and would change nothing in the end. We were all going to die. But now—now—there is a chance for this world to live! It is a long chance, that I grant you. The risks, the dangers are enormous. But suddenly there is a chance.”

“Hmmph. I see,” said Beddle. “And I suppose that is the only reason this scheme intrigues you.”

“No, sir, it is not. But the notion that we might actually win, we might actually live, certainly changes the rules of the game. If it does so in my mind, I cannot help but think it will do so in the minds of others. They will look at the political landscape in a whole new way. We must take that psychological shift into account in our planning.”

“But you have something more in mind,” Beddle said.

“Yes sir, I do,” Gildern said, his eyes suddenly alive and intent. He gestured toward his personal robot. “That datapad my robot is holding contains technical information and executive summaries of the whole plan. Nowhere in those summaries is the word ‘Settler’ to be found. This is a job the Spacers, the Infernals, can do for themselves. Furthermore, if it succeeds, we will not need the Settlers anymore. A successful comet impact and the subsequent formation of the Polar Sea will have such a huge and positive effect on our climate that the task of reterraforming the planet will be reduced to a series of tasks to be attacked in detail. Large tasks, difficult ones, but ones we Spacers can accomplish on our own—and with significantly less labor in the field.”

“What are you saying?” Beddle asked sharply.

“I am saying that Grieg took away our robots, and Kresh kept them away, offering the excuse that they were needed for terraforming work. If the comet strike happens, and if it goes well, within three, perhaps four years, there will no longer be the slightest need for domestic robot labor in terraforming.”

Beddle said nothing, but nodded thoughtfully.

“I think you will agree, sir, that our party stands to make substantial gains out of the project.”

“You are, of course, assuming it succeeds, and does not instead wipe us all out,” said Beddle. “But I do appreciate your frank talk, friend Gildern. Any of your reasons would be strong by itself. All of them together are compelling indeed.”

Gildern gestured toward his robot, and took his datapad back again, and worked the controls as he spoke. “I haven’t quite given all my reasons, sir. There is one more.” He handed the datapad over to Beddle, and then leaned back in his chair. “Take a good hard look at where Lentrall wants the damned things to hit.”

Beddle looked at his subordinate in puzzlement, and then looked at the map displayed on the datapad’s screen. After a moment, the confusion faded away from his face, to be replaced by a broad smile, and then uproarious laughter. “Oh, splendid! Splendid!” Beddle said when he recovered enough to speak. “I could not have planned it better myself. The gods of myth and legend could not have arranged things better.”

Jadelo Gildern smiled as he watched the leader of his party studying the map in more detail, still chuckling to himself. Simcor Beddle was right, of course. The thing could not have been arranged any more neatly than it had been.

But perhaps Simcor Beddle would have been better advised to reflect further on who was doing the arranging.

DAVLO LENTRALL GLARED at the elevator door, and jammed his finger down on the button, as if having a human finger push it this time would make a difference, since the elevator hadn’t arrived when Kaelor had pushed the button. The meeting with Kresh and Leving was over, and he wanted to get out of this place. “What the devil is going on?” he demanded.

“I’m sorry, sir,” a disembodied robot voice said. “All elevator service to the roof of Government Tower has been temporarily discontinued.”

Lentrall was taken aback, if only for a moment. In a world full of robotic monitors, rhetorical questions frequently received answers. Somewhere there was a camera, and somewhere a robot was seated at a console, watching the view from that camera and several dozen others. “I need to get to the rooftop landing pad. My aircar is up there!” Lentrall protested. The meeting with the governor and his wife had gone well, and Lentrall was impatient to get back to his lab and get back to work. There were a thousand details to be seen to, a thousand points to research. He couldn’t waste time waiting around for a gang of robots to repair the wobbly railing, or whatever other deadly peril had closed off the roof.

“I am sorry, sir,” the robot voice replied, “but there is a safety hazard on the roof at the present time. First Law requires that—”

“Yes, yes, yes,” Lentrall said irritably. “I know all that. But my aircar is up there, and I need it to get home.”

“You are not alone in this difficulty, sir. If you will take the elevator to the ground level, arrangements have been made to have robot pilots shuttle the aircars down to the main plaza. They should be able to begin that operation in a few minutes, while it might well be a delay of up to an hour before the roof is opened again.”

Davlo let out a weary sigh. “Very well,” he said, “I suppose that will have to do. Come along, Kaelor.”

“One moment sir,” his robot said. “I should like to ask the nature of the safety hazard on the roof.”

Just then the elevator arrived. “What difference can that make?” Davlo demanded. “Come along.”

“Very well, sir.”

The two of them stepped into the elevator car and headed down.

“LOBBY TEAM REPORTS Lentrall and his robot are just coming off the elevator. They are headed toward the plaza.”

“I see them,” said Cinta Melloy as she watched through magniviewers. From her vantage point across the street and twenty stories up, Lentrall didn’t appear to be worried or suspicious. That was all to the good. Even better was that his security team was still up on the roof of the building, dealing with the safety hazard that Cinta’s people had arranged: an airtruck, carrying a load of maintenance supplies—including one barrel of flammable cleaning fluid that had sprung a dramatic leak the moment it had touched down.

Right now there was no bigger problem than a bad leak of a mildly hazardous chemical, just enough of a nuisance to make any self-respecting Three-Law robot seal off the area, shut down the elevators, hustle all the nearby humans off the roof and into the building, and generally disrupt things. But if things got organized and settled down too quickly, then Cinta was ready, willing, and able to cause a short-circuit aboard the airtruck. Her dirty-tricks people promised that the resultant fireball would be spectacular, but unlikely in the extreme to hurt anyone or cause any significant damage.

That was important. Cinta’s side was playing rough, but there were limits. She was smart enough to know that sooner or later—probably sooner—the CIP would be able to trace this whole operation to her SSS covert action teams. She would just as soon the official complaints did not involve fatalities. The dirty-tricks techs could promise whatever they liked, but explosions had a way of not staying controlled. Things were going to have to get very bad indeed for her to be willing to risk pressing that button. The main thing was that they had separated Lentrall from his security detail—in fact prevented them from hooking up at all.

Everything ought to work. It was a reasonable, straightforward plan. But there had been so little time. Welton had moved too quickly from ordering contingency plans to ordering the snatch itself to take place immediately. Cinta didn’t like rushing things. That was the way mistakes got made.

“Plaza team in position,” the voice in her ear reported.

Cinta studied the plaza through the magniviewers, but there was no way to tell which of the dozens of people there were hers. Good. Then maybe no one else would be able to spot them either.

Robots. Robots were going to be the problem. Cinta could count at least ten of them in the plaza. They would, of course, move instantly to prevent a kidnapping—given the chance.

But, if all went well, they wouldn’t get the chance. Cinta looked up Aurora Boulevard. There it was. A land-transport bus, parked a few blocks away. In a minute or so, it was going to be heading toward Government Plaza at just slightly too high a rate of speed. Cinta smiled to herself. It was hard to control that particular model of bus. If the driver wasn’t careful, there was likely to be an accident.

JUSTEN DEVRAY WAS nearly home when the call came in. Gervad was flying them by the slow, scenic, restful route. Justen had had a long day, and he was glad of taking the easy way home. He liked to unwind on the ride home. A long day indeed. It was midday on the day after he had started work. He had been up nearly thirty hours straight at this point. Strange to be flying home to rest in the bright light of midday.

His eyes were heavy. He was almost tempted to turn off the hyperwave tuned to scan the police frequencies. But the constant low mutter of voices was a part of the everyday background of his life. He left it on, leaned back in his chair, and shut his eyes.

And then he heard the voice.

“CIP Metro Dispatch, this is Government Tower Topside.”

Something about the voice jerked Justen awake. Then he understood. It was a human voice. A robot should have been the one handling communications from the rooftop guard post. And another thing: Lentrall’s security detail was waiting for him on the rooftop landing pad.

Suddenly Justen was wide awake. He sat bolt upright in his seat. “Turn this thing around!” he told Gervad. “Back toward Government Tower at full speed.”

“Yes, sir,” the robot replied, calm and imperturbable. He brought the car about in a wide arc and headed back toward the center of the city.

Justen reached for the scanner controls, and turned up the volume.

“—ave an accident in progress here,” the voice went on. “A transport landed a little hard, and one of the containers on board must have popped a seam. We’ve got a flammable liquid spill up here. Can’t tell you more than that. The robots up here have forced us off the roof proper.”

“We are receiving hyperwave reports from the security robots on the scene, Government Tower Topside,” a calm robotic voice replied from somewhere, probably CIP HQ. “Clean-up crews are being dispatched.”

The damned fools! Justen stabbed at the controls, and set his aircar mike to the same frequency. “This is Commander Devray, en route to Government Tower and monitoring. Who is that at Topside?”

“Sergeant Senall Delmok, sir.”

Perfect. Delmok was the least experienced officer on the Topside detail. “Delmok, since when are cleaning supplies delivered to the roof landing pad? What do you think the city tunnel system is for?”

“Sir? I, ah—”

“It’s not an accident, Delmok. Someone has deliberately shut down the rooftop landing pad.”

“But why—”

“I don’t know,” Justen said. “Maybe they plan to land on it. Get back out on that rooftop and get your people in control of it. That is a direct order.”

“But the robots are keeping us—”

Justen cut him off. “CIP Metro Dispatch. Are you still on this line?”

“Yes, Commander,” the calm robot voice replied.

“I hereby issue a direct, top-priority order for relay via hyperwave to all robots on the roof of Government Tower. You are to permit the human CIP detachment to return to the roof at once. The supposed spilling accident is a ruse or a diversion perpetrated by a group intending harm to human beings. By forcing the CIP detachment away from their posts, you are permitting danger to humans. Relay that at once.”

“Yes, sir. It has been relayed.”

“Delmok, if that does not work, I hereby order you to shoot your way past the robots to regain control of that landing pad. Is that understood?”

There was sort of a nervous gulping noise on the line, but then Delmok answered. “Yes, sir.”

“Good,” he said. “Watch that you don’t catch that cleaning fluid with a blaster shot, or we’ll have a real mess on our hands. Devray out.”

Justen glanced toward Gervad. “How soon?” he asked.

“We will arrive over Government Tower in approximately three minutes. However, sir, First Law prevents me from landing this craft in the vicinity of an uncontrolled toxic and flammable material while a human is on board.”

“I know,” Justen said, working the comm system controls again. “Once we arrive, circle the building near the roof.” He got the controls to where he wanted them. “This is Commander Devray on crash emergency circuit. I need immediate voice contact with Governor Kresh.”

After a remarkably brief delay, the governor came on the line. “Kresh here.”

“Devray here. The code query is Emoch Huthwitz.”

“Burning stars,” the governor replied, the surprise plain in his voice. But for all of that, he recovered quickly and gave the proper response. “The code reply is melted Sappers.”

“Thank you, sir. I’m glad to know it is really you.” Devray and Kresh had agreed on the query and reply after what had happened to Governor Grieg. The opposition had planted a device that simulated Grieg’s voice, and made it seem as if he were alive and well after he was dead. The ruse had nearly worked then. Devray did not wish to be fooled by the same sort of impostor.

“So am I, Commander. Something is going on.” It was not a question.

“Yes, sir, and I don’t know what. There’s been a staged accident on the roof of Government Tower. You might be the target—but I suspect it is our young friend. Please go to heightened security status.”

“At once,” Kresh said. “I can tell you our friend left here not ten minutes ago. Keep me informed. Kresh out.”

Justen allowed himself a half a minute to give thanks once again for the blessings of a governor who used to be a cop. Kresh knew better than to tie up the line with a lot of foolish questions.

Justen thought fast. The odds were good that Lentrall was still in the building. And standard operating procedure was for all visitors to the governor to be tracked as they moved through the building. If Lentrall was already with his security detail, maybe everything would be all right. Justen switched to yet another channel. “Commander Justen Devray. Priority call to Central Control, Government Tower.”

“This is Central Control.” Another calm, unflappable robot voice. Good.

“I need an immediate location fix on a visitor to the governor, named Davlo Lentrall, and a fix on the security detail assigned to him.”

“Davlo Lentrall left the building and exited out onto the main plaza approximately thirty seconds ago. His security detail is on the rooftop landing pad and in the Topside command center adjacent to it.”

“Damnation!” Devray cut the connection. Now he saw it. The point of the staged accident was to split off Lentrall from his security detail. It had to mean they were going to make a try for him right now. Kill him, or grab him, or something. And there was nothing Justen could do to—

Wait a second. There was something. Even if Lentrall didn’t have the security detail on him, he did have something nearly as good. His robot. His robot was right there with him. If he could get through to the robot on hyperwave… There had to be a way. There had to be.

“We have reached Government Tower,” Gervad announced. “Commencing orbit of the rooftop level.”

“Excellent,” Justen said, though there was very little all that excellent about the situation. He looked up from the comm system controls. There was the flat top of the huge building, about thirty meters away. It looked as if the robots had formed a sort of protective cordon about the airtruck, keeping all the human personnel well away. He could see several officers arguing with the robots, gesturing vigorously. Damnation. They should be shooting robots, not debating them. He could see one of the police officers waving to him. But the situation on the rooftop was nothing but a diversion. Justen was sure of that. He was determined, therefore, not to be diverted by it. Let the rooftop cops argue with robots all they liked. For a moment he considered heading down toward the plaza below, but thought better of it. No doubt whoever was running this show could see his car up here by the rooftop landing pad. Let them think he was still worried about the accident up there. Besides, he didn’t even know Lentrall. He had never seen the man, or even a photo of him. What good could he do in the plaza? But he could at least get some help in. “Call for backup,” he told his pilot robot. “I want a full emergency team in here as fast as possible.”

“Such a team has already been summoned to deal with the safety hazard on the roof of Government Tower.”

“There is no hazard on Government Tower,” Justen said. “It’s all been staged.” But even so—Justen thought for a moment. Even if the chemical spill had been manufactured, that did not mean it was not dangerous. It needed to be dealt with. But he would need people, robots, and equipment on the ground as well. “Redirect half the emergency team to the plaza. We’ll need crowd control and an arrest team or two.” If nothing else, maybe the police presence would disrupt whatever they had intended for the plaza.

Having done what he could about all that, Justen focused his attention back on the problem immediately at hand. He had to warn Lentrall. But how the devil could he contact Lentrall’s robot, when he didn’t even know the robot’s name, let alone its hyperwave contact code? The university. That was it. They would have a look-up list, for people who wanted to leave messages for the professors. He reached for the comm controls and got to work.

ROBOT CFL-001, BETTER known as Kaelor, was walking in his accustomed place, three steps behind his master, and having to move pretty briskly at that—even though Lentrall was going nowhere in particular. Everyone else might be willing to mill about, passively waiting for their aircars to be brought down, but Lentrall felt the need to be active. He kept walking back and forth around the plaza, trying to find the spot from which he could best see what was going on up on the roof.

As best Kaelor was able to judge, there was no spot on the ground from which anything could be seen, but that didn’t stop Lentrall from looking. There was nothing for it but for Kaelor to follow his master back and forth, up and down, doing his best to stay out of everyone’s way. He was dodging out of the way of a portly gentleman when the call came in.

A call in and of itself was by no means unusual, and Kaelor took it without breaking stride, or calling attention to himself. He spoke over the hyperwave link, without speaking out loud or making any outward sign. Nine times out of ten, Lentrall wasn’t interested in conversation anyway, and Kaelor simply took a message.

“Robot CFL-001 responding for Davlo Lentrall,” he said, his hyperwave voice not quite diffident enough to be rude. “Please go ahead.”

“This is Commander Justen Devray of the Combined Inferno Police,” a voice replied. “I have reason to believe your master is in immediate danger, within the next minute or two, either of assassination or of kidnapping. Protect him at once.”

“Message received. I am acting on it.” Kaelor might have been designed with a constricted First Law, but the constrictions were intended to help him deal with hypothetical, longterm danger better than most Inferno-built robots. There was nothing in the least constricted about his reaction in a case of actual and current danger to his own master. He started moving before Commander Devray had even finished speaking.

Without a word of explanation, Kaelor lunged forward and grabbed Davlo Lentrall, throwing both arms around Lentrall’s waist from the rear, and lifting him bodily off the ground.

“Kaelor! What are you doing? Have you lost your mind?”

Kaelor ignored his master’s protests. He had already spotted an ideal protective spot. Kaelor moved toward it, fast.

The Government Tower Plaza had a number of long, low benches scattered about, each bench carved from a single block of stone. The rear portion of each bench’s backrest was carved away, no doubt in order to form a pleasing curve. But it also meant the carved-out area below and behind the backrest had solid stone over it and in front of it.

Kaelor rushed for the nearest bench, swung Lentrall’s body around into a reclining position, and forced him to lie down behind the bench, with his back on the ground. With the reflexes of a Spacer who knows not to argue with a robot determined to obey the First Law, Lentrall gave up struggling and cooperated. Kaelor lay down in front of his master with his back to him, so that his eyes were facing out and he could keep watch. Five seconds after the CIP commander had called him, he had his master lying flat on his back, shielded by a stone bench on one side and over him, and Kaelor’s own body serving as a shield for the other side.

“There is a threat against you, sir,” said the robot, before his master could ask any of the obvious questions. “The police just hyperwaved a warning to me a few seconds ago. They fear your assassination or kidnapping.”

“That’s absurd!” Lentrall said. “Who in the devil would want to attack me?”

“I do not know. Someone who does not like the idea of you dropping a comet on them, perhaps.”

For once, Davlo Lentrall had no reply. All he could do was wait and see what happened next.

Kaelor was fairly sure he would not have long to wait.

7

“THE BUS IS rolling!” the voice in Cinta’s ear announced, telling her something she could see with her own eyes. She watched the bus pull away from the curb and head toward the plaza, gradually gathering speed as it moved forward.

Most of the passengers aboard that bus were merely highly realistic dummies, some of them programmed to moan, cry out, and writhe about a bit, even spurt realistic blood. The four or five real people aboard the bus were in the best padded seats, ready with bladders full of simulated blood that would pop open on cue, and with ghastly-looking injuries that were testaments to the skills of the makeup artist. For the moment, the mock injuries were hidden beneath wigs and tear-away clothing. Once the bus had crashed, all would be revealed.

A nice job, all around—doubly so, given the rush nature of the assignment. It wouldn’t have been possible at all if the SSS Covert Office hadn’t had most of the gear and people available on standby. By all accounts, there were some very interesting things in the CO warehouse.

Cinta swung the magniviewers to see if she could spot Lentrall. Still no luck. Nothing to see but a crowd of people looking up toward the roof, waiting for their aircars to be shuttled down to them.

It was just as well she knew the lobby team and the plaza team were tracking him, or else-there was something wrong. She spotted sudden, abrupt movement in the plaza. She zoomed in to the action, and swore a blue streak—just as the voices on the headset chimed in, telling her more things she already knew.

“Lentrall’s robot has grabbed him! He’s pulled him under cover!”

Cinta watched the robot shove Lentrall under a bench and cover the opening with his body. He’d been warned. Someone on the CIP had been very smart, and very, very fast. And if they were able to send a warning, that almost certainly meant help was on the way as well. It would have been tough enough spiriting Lentrall away without CIP cops all over the place. She glanced toward the single CIP aircar orbiting the top of the tower. She had hoped the situation up there would have created a sufficient distraction, but it would seem they were only pretending to have been fooled by it.

“Order an abort!” she said. “Cancel! Stop the bus and everyone go home, now!”

“It’s too late, ma’am,” the watch controller said. “All the teams are already in motion. The snatch car is already on approach.”

Cinta looked up into the sky, but could not see the snatch car yet. She looked back to the bus, and saw that it was already moving too fast to stop. Another second or two, and it was going to hit.

And then all hell would break loose, even if there was no longer any use for the hell.

“WHAT’S GOING ON?” Davlo Lentrall demanded. “I can’t see a damned thing back here.”

“Good,” the robot Kaelor replied. “Then no one can see you. There is nothing significant happening—”

Suddenly, Kaelor heard a horn blaring, and the squealing brakes of a large ground vehicle. He looked toward the noise, at the Aurora Boulevard end of the plaza, and saw a large groundbus moving far too fast. It was not going to be able to make the turn. Every human aboard, as well as any number of humans on the plaza, was in danger. Kaelor felt the pull of First Law imperative telling him to rush toward the bus to be ready to render aid, but the First Law requirement that he protect his master from danger was stronger—if only just.

No other robot on the plaza had any such First Law conflicts. They moved with the blinding speed of robots in a hurry. Some dove in to snatch humans from out of the path of the bus, while some ran to where they judged the bus would come to a halt, to be ready to rescue the victims the first moment it was possible. Three robots rushed out into the road and threw themselves directly in the path of the bus, no doubt hoping the force of the impact with their bodies would be enough to slow it down safely. The bus smashed into each one of them, one after the other, and just kept on coming. It hit the curb with a resounding crash, bouncing and lurching, skidding wildly before it tipped over on its side with a terrible booming thud, and the shriek of tearing metal. It skidded a good twenty meters on its side before coming to a halt.

The first of the robots was on the bus before it had even come to a complete stop, and within seconds the bus was all but hidden from view beneath a swarm of robots rushing to rescue the injured humans aboard. Two of them tore the remains of the driver’s windshield off, and gained access that way. Five others tore the side windows out and scrambled in.

In seconds, the chaos of the crash site was transformed into an organized rescue operation.

“Kaelor! What the devil is all that noise! What’s going on?”

Kaelor, the robot designed, built, and trained to assist in the analysis of hypothetical cataclysms, did not answer for a moment, frozen into immobility by a complex conflict between contradictory First Law and Second Law imperatives. He had to protect his master from danger, of course—but the danger to Davlo Lentrall was unstated, and unseen, and possibly hypothetical, while the danger to humans right in front of him was real, definite, and direct. However, the Second Law potential of the situation had been tremendously strengthened by the power, the authority, and the urgency of Commander Devray’s order. The presence of so many robots rushing to the bus crash diminished the First Law imperative to go to the aid of the victims, but it did not extinguish it. The urge to go, to help, was strong.

“Kaelor, what the devil is going on?” Lentrall asked again.

“I am not sure,” he said. “There appears to have been a violent and dramatic bus crash.”

“What do you mean ‘appears’?” Lentrall demanded.

“Something does not make sense,” Kaelor replied. He considered. The unspecified safety hazard on the roof, the warning of danger to his master, and this bus crash, each in itself an unlikely event, all had taken place within a few minutes of each other, and very close to each other. There had not been a safety evacuation, or an out-of-control ground vehicle anywhere in the city, for years. While the level of violent crime had increased in recent years, it was still quite rare, and generally either was related to gang activity, or consisted of crimes of passion. This was clearly neither. The odds of three such low-probability events happening so close to each other was almost microscopic.

Suppose one of them hadn’t happened? Suppose he, Kaelor, had not received the warning? Then, undoubtedly, he would be over there, helping with the rescue, and his master would be out in the open, away from his aircar and the security team on the roof, in an area stripped clean of robots. Just right for an attempt to kill or capture.

Robots swarmed over the ruined bus, moving with the sort of relentless speed and determination of Three-Law robots driven by a strong First Law imperative. Robots in that state questioned nothing, concerned themselves with nothing but the job of rescue. Incongruities and contradictions were simply things that might get in the way of rescue, things that must, therefore, be ignored and gotten past on the way to preventing harm to humans. There could be no thought, no reflection, on any subject but that of rescue.

So the robots in and on the bus did not pause to notice that much of the debris they were pulling out of the wreckage consisted of lifelike dummies, or that the small number of actual humans seemed to be alive and conscious, even walking and talking, in spite of apparent injuries that should have killed them. Kaelor was not as surprised as he should have been when one victim’s serious cranial injury simply fell off, to reveal a whole and intact head underneath.

A trick. It was all a trick. And it was his master, Davlo Lentrall, that they were after.

At that moment, he heard the sound—the sound of an aircar coming in fast and hard, from a great height, diving straight in. He looked up, and saw the car, and realized it was not over. He prepared himself to defend his master.

Whatever good that could do.

JUSTEN DEVRAY TORE his eyes away from the chaos of the bus crash, and spotted the fast-dropping snatch car. He saw it in the same moment Kaelor did, but there was nothing he could do in response. The robot pilot of his aircar would prevent him trying to shoot the aircar down, of course, but Justen would not have tried the shot himself—not with a plaza full of innocent people below, and Government Tower close enough that a disabled, uncontrolled craft might crash into it.

But he could pursue—or at least order his pilot to do so.

“Get with that aircar and stay with it,” he ordered.

Gervad obeyed at once, flipping Justen’s aircar out of its slow orbit with a hard, sharp dive. They were, quite suddenly, dropping like a stone. Justen felt his stomach trying to turn itself inside out, and fought back the feeling.

This car had to be the way they were going to get them out—Davlo Lentrall and all their own people. If Justen could prevent it from landing, or even from taking off after it had landed, then the game would be up. But where the devil was the arrest team?

He punched up a status display, and got the answer—they would be on the scene in ninety seconds. But in ninety seconds, it was likely to be far too late.

Justen thought fast. One thing was clear. This was no attempt at assassination. It was too elaborate, too complex. It would have been easy to kill Lentrall by now, if that had been their aim. If the opposition—whoever they were—could arrange chemical spills on Government Tower and crash buses to create diversions, they would surely also be able to get in a shooter and a long-range precision blaster, or some sort of slug-throwing rifle. They could have picked off Lentrall that way. Even now, with Lentrall barricaded in under the stone bench by his robot, a well-placed shot from a grenade launcher would do the job. Hit Lentrall’s robot clear in the chest, and the force of the explosion would be enough to drive the robot’s body back and mash Lentrall to a pulp.

So it was a kidnap attempt—but they might have orders to kill Lentrall if they could not grab him.

Justen Devray still did not have the slightest idea what Lentrall was up to, or why he was important. Right now, that didn’t matter. Lentrall was important. Important enough for the governor to see him, for the Settlers and the Ironheads to spy on him, for Kresh to want a full security detail on him, for this whole scene of chaos to be cooked up in his honor. If that was all he knew, it was enough. He had to protect Lentrall.

“Emergency landing!” he told Gervad. “Put us down as close as possible to the rear of the stone bench where Lentrall is.”

His aircar lurched again, but less violently this time, as their new course was rather close to their old one. But it was also close to the snatch car’s course. Justen’s aircar pulled almost even with them, close enough that he could actually see into it.

And he saw that the snatch car had a distinct advantage. A human pilot. A human pilot could and would take chances, take risks—something a robot pilot could not and would not do.

And this human pilot proceeded to do exactly that, putting on extra speed, accelerating as he fell, diving in under Justen’s aircar. Clearly the human pilot knew First Law would keep a robot pilot from copying that move—and that First Law would force the robot to back off, for fear of a midair collision.

Which is exactly what happened, of course. Gervad put on the speedbrakes, hard, and the snatch car dropped out of sight below the nose of Justen’s aircar. They were going to get there first.

And that was just about enough for Justen. “I’m taking the controls!” he shouted as he undid his seat restraint and moved forward into the co-pilot’s seat.

“Sir, the dangers of doing so—”

“Are minimal, compared to the danger to humans represented by that aircar,” Justen said as he strapped himself in. “There is too much delay between my orders to you and execution! I order you to let me fly this machine.” Either that would be enough to overcome Gervad’s First Law resistance, or it would not. Justen twisted the knob that shifted flight control to his console and cut the speedbrakes, and Gervad made no effort to stop him. Well, that was at least one minor victory. The aircar began to drop faster again.

Justen watched eagerly out the viewscreen, watching for the snatch car to come back into view below them. He spotted it again just as it was about to touch down, moving fast enough that the landing would be little more than a controlled crash.

And at that moment, Justen had an object lesson in the distinct disadvantage of having a human pilot. Humans could take risks, all right—but sometimes risky choices went wrong. The snatch car was plainly braking as hard it could, but just as plainly, it wasn’t hard enough. The ground was coming up fast under it, too fast.

The snatch car landed ten meters from Lentrall’s bench with a crash that was plainly audible even in Justen’s aircar. It slammed down hard, bottoming out the shock absorbers on its landing jacks and lurching a good fifteen meters back up into the air, its port side angling high up into the air, until it seemed all but inevitable that the craft would topple over and slam back into the ground on its side.

Somehow, the pilot managed to regain control of the craft and bring it upright. The snatch pilot held the aircar in a hover for a moment or two, during which time Justen managed to dodge around the snatch car and put his own vehicle down, in a hard but passable landing, so close to Lentrall’s bench that he nearly clipped it with his rear landing jack.

Justen popped the cover on a rarely-used part of the control panel and pulled up on a red lever, unlimbering the aircar’s topside swivel blaster. Justen powered up the targeting system and locked the gun on the snatch car just as its pilot finally managed to bring it in for a safe—if ugly—landing. Its portside rear landing jack seemed to have collapsed slightly.

“Sir! I cannot permit you to fire on a craft with humans aboard.”

“I’m not going to shoot!” Justen said. Not unless I have to, he told himself. “And please note that I am targeting their propulsion systems, not their control cabin. I just want to intimidate them, make them know we mean business. I promise you I won’t fire.” Breaking a promise to a robot didn’t amount to much, if it came to that.

“But sir—”

“Quiet!” There were times that the benefits of robot labor was not worth the effort required to negotiate the robot’s cooperation.

Not that there was time to worry about such things at the moment. The snatch car hadn’t given up yet. Not completely. Justen could see the pilot, a hard-faced woman, and he saw the look of surprise on her face as she spotted the swivel blaster aimed at her craft. But surprise did not keep her from reacting quickly. She popped her own topside gun—and aimed it straight through the viewscreen of Justen’s aircar, straight at his head, leaving him looking straight down the barrel of a most powerful-looking blaster.

Suddenly they were both down. Suddenly things had stopped happening. Suddenly it was quiet. And suddenly he didn’t dare move a muscle unless he wanted to die. Justen didn’t think he had even seen anything bigger than that blaster in his life—and he had never heard anything louder than the pounding of his own heart. But fear could kill him. He had to remain calm, clear, focused. He shifted his gaze from the barrel of the gun to the face of the pilot. It was easy to imagine that the willingness to shoot was plain in her expression.

Justen heard movement to his left. “Don’t move!” Justen said to Gervad, without moving his head or looking away from the blaster cannon aimed at him. The robot, of course, was about to interpose his body between Justen and the gun. “That thing could burn through you to me in half a millisecond, and if you blocked my view, she might decide it was worth it to shoot me when I couldn’t see to shoot back.”

“But sir!” Justen clenched his teeth in anger. “Quiet!” he said. “Any action you could take would put me in further danger.” It was exactly the sort of statement they warned you not to make to a robot, for fear of doing severe damage to it by setting up a dangerous conflict between First and Second Law. But just at the moment, Justen was a trifle more concerned about his own survival and well-being, and rather less worried about that of his robot.

“But—if—I must—”

“Quiet!” Justen said, still holding eye contact with the snatch car pilot. The next move was up to her. There was no debate on that point. She could fire that blaster and kill Justen, or send out someone with a hand blaster in order to kill Lentrall. They might even try to go ahead with the kidnap plan. Just shoot Lentrall’s robot, pull it out of the way, and drag Lentrall out. She could do a lot of things, so long as she kept that gun trained on Justen. And all he could do was keep eye contact with her, watch her, see what she did next.

But then she broke eye-contact with Justen, and looked down at her own control panel. Justen could see her lips move, and he read the word incoming. Good. Very good. It had to be the CIP emergency team, coming in at last.

Justen saw the pilot glance over toward the wrecked bus, and he risked a glance in that direction himself. Even though he had assumed the bus crash had been staged, it was strange indeed to see that most of the supposed victims were dummies, and that the remainder were peeling off their injuries and sprinting for the snatch car. Of course. They had to extract their people from this mess—not only out of loyalty, but also as a way to prevent them from being caught and questioned.

But if Justen was surprised, the robots attempting to care for the crash victims were even more so. It seemed to dawn on all of them at once that there were no victims. It was instantly clear that none of them knew what to do next.

The humans in the plaza were only slightly less disoriented, but as the robots pulling them back from the imaginary dangers released them, at least one or two started chasing after the human “victims” of the bus accident, and shouting for the robots to do the same.

Justen Devray could not do anything to help the pursuers, not with a blaster cannon aimed at his head. But maybe they could catch at least one of them.

CINTA MELLOY WATCHED as her operation fell apart. There was no chance at all of success at this point. Thanks to Lentrall’s robot and that CIP command car, their plan had been completely disrupted. There was nothing for it now. The CIP would have reinforcements on the scene any second now. Now the only thing left to do was to get her people out, before the Infernals got their hands on one of them and switched on the Psychic Probe. That could not be allowed to happen.

And Cinta had but one card left to play. One she had hoped not to play at all. The pyrotechnics people could assure her all they liked that nothing could go wrong. After everything else that had gone wrong today, she was in no particular mood to believe anyone.

But she didn’t have many choices left. All that was left to her was the question of timing. When would her last diversion most disrupt the opposition?

Cinta watched the chaos on the plaza, saw the robots and the Infernal humans starting to recover, and decided.

The time was now.

She pushed down the button she had been hoping not to push.

THE SKY LIT up like a thunderbolt as the barrel of cleaning fluid blazed up into the sky, a fireball that bloomed up and out from the roof of Government Tower, enveloping the robots who ringed the delivery airtruck in order to keep humans back. Bits of shrapnel from the blast filled the air, bouncing and ricocheting in all directions.

The shock wave bloomed out from the top of the tower, sending the CIP emergency team aircars tumbling out of control, a giant invisible hand that slapped at the cars, scattering them in all directions as their pilots fought to regain control.

Down on the plaza, all the robots instantly forgot all about their pursuit of the falsely injured. There were humans in immediate danger of being struck by flying debris.

Each robot dove for the closest human and wrapped itself around that person. But with the robots turning themselves into shields, and the humans being shielded whether they liked it or not, there was no one available to pursue the fleeing members of the kidnap squad. The door of the snatch car opened, and the team from the crash bus scrambled aboard.

The pilot checked her boards, then looked back toward Justen. This was the moment. If she were going to kill him to cover their escape, and prevent him from pursuing, this was the moment to do it.

Justen’s eyes widened, and he swallowed, hard. He found himself wishing he knew why Lentrall was so important. It would have been nice to know what he was dying for.

It was obvious the pilot could read it all in his eyes. Justen braced himself for the end—but the end did not come. The snatch car pilot shook her head no, back and forth, just once, very clearly and firmly. I’m not going to kill you, she was telling him, as plainly as if she were speaking.

Her blaster cannon swung away from its aim on his head and swiveled down to point at the base of Justen’s aircar. It fired twice, blowing off one landing jack and cutting the core power coupling. His car toppled over on its side as the snatch car lifted into the air and rushed for the edge of town at high speed. No craft was able to pursue them.

Gervad was hustling Justen out of the ruined aircar almost before it had finished falling, the robot’s First Law potentials pushed to new heights by the calamities he had been forced to witness. Justen did not argue. He had no desire to remain long in a vehicle with a destabilized power system.

Justen stumbled out onto the plaza. He looked behind his aircar, and saw a young-looking man, his fashionable business attire much the worse for wear, crawling out from behind the stone bench, his robot helping him get to his feet. Lentrall. Davlo Lentrall. The man at the center of this storm. The man they had come for. Whoever “they” were. The only thing Justen knew for sure about them was that they had sure as hell left a mess behind.

Justen turned and watched the snatch car as it flew toward the edge of vision and beyond. They had gotten away. But they didn’t have what they had come for.

That was some comfort, anyway.

If not much.

8

TONYA WELTON RESISTED the temptation to pick up the nearest object and throw it against the wall. She stomped back and forth across the living room of her house, watching the news reports on the chaos at Government Tower and growing angrier by the minute. She told herself it was a lucky thing Gubber wasn’t here to see her in such a state. The poor man would probably flee in fear of his life, and Tonya wouldn’t blame him. A woman capable of ordering a debacle like the Government Tower raid was capable of anything.

It was clear from the news reports that they had missed Lentrall, for all the damage they had done. The game had cost them dearly, and yet they had gained nothing by it.

The cost. That was what worried Tonya. How high would it be? When—not if, when—the CIP traced the assault back to the Settlers, there was going to be hell to pay. It might be enough to get them all thrown off the planet, which would be more than irony enough, all things considered. Tonya did not believe there would still be a living planet here after the likes of Lentrall got through with things. Tonya Welton was an expert in terraforming procedure. As part of her training, she had been required to do field studies on planets where the terraforming attempt had gone wrong—horribly wrong. She had trod the soil of a planet where someone had thought to save time and effort by dropping a comet. People who were just as sure of what they were doing as Davlo Lentrall seemed to be. She had no desire to walk through another frozen landscape littered with freeze-dried corpses.

But even with the failure of the Government Tower attempt, the situation was not yet lost. Other operations had gone more smoothly. She thought of that, and forced herself to calm down. If nothing else, the commotion at Government Tower had provided a diversion. It had kept Lentrall away from his home, and his office—and his computer files. Kept him away long enough for other Settler teams to go to work. Tonya glanced at the time display. They ought to be nearly done by now. The planning team had expected the physical target, Lentrall’s actual office, to be the easy part. All the operations team had to do was steal or destroy every piece of paper and every datapad and record cube that might have anything to do with the comet. The planners had expected the computer system to be trickier. Still, it would be doable. Other people might well have found it impossible to manipulate the university’s computer system, but it was, after all, the Settlers who had installed it.

And it was the Settlers who could wipe Davlo Lentrall’s files clean, when they wanted to do so. And once those files were cleared, they would have lost the comet coordinates. They’d never be able to find the comet again in time.

At least she hoped so.

“I MUST ADMIT that I am growing concerned,” said Prospero, his voice a bit on edge. “This terrorist attack on Government Tower might well have some indirect causal link to us, Caliban.” The two robots, New Law and No Law, stood facing each other in an office just off an underground passageway on the outskirts of Hades. “I fear there may be consequences.”

In days gone by, they had used the semi-abandoned tunnels as hiding places, places to go when they were in fear of their lives. Now, at least for the moment, they were unhunted. They had a legal right to be in the city, with passes signed and sealed by all the pertinent authorities. They could at least in theory go anywhere in the city. In practice, there were places where the residents would not worry too much about the legal niceties. There were still robot-bashing gangs out there who had no use for New Law robots.

But for the most part, Caliban and Prospero were safe in Hades. Indeed, they had spent the morning on a number of routine errands, calling at a number of places around town to order this equipment and make that payment. In plain point of fact, Caliban had been surprised by the number of minor things Prospero had been compelled to deal with in person, and the amount of time he had taken in doing so.

But now, at long last, they were by themselves, underground. It was possible to let down their guard, just a trifle. It was a need for privacy, more than a need for survival, that brought them to this place. But still, there was no harm in precautions. The lighting, for example. The chamber was pitch-black as seen by human eyes, in visible light, but the two robots were using infrared vision, and could see each other easily.

Caliban selected a chair from the dusty and worn-looking collection in one corner of the room, set it upright, and sat down. “I do not understand what makes you think there might be some link to us,” Caliban replied. “It is obvious that one group of humans has attacked another. That is hardly something new. I do not see why it matters to us. Do you have some connection to the responsible parties?” It was an indirect and overcareful question, but even so it disturbed Caliban that the notion of Prospero being involved should even have occurred to him.

All he knew about the attack was what they had learned from the news reports—that some unknown group, for unknown reasons, had staged a complicated assault on Government Tower. It had not escaped Caliban’s notice that the attack had destroyed a number of robots, but had not harmed any humans. It would require the most miserly possible interpretation of the New First Law for any New Law robot to be a party to such a thing, and Caliban could not imagine why they would want to do it, but it would, at least in theory, be possible.

Prospero turned toward his companion, but he did not answer the question. Instead, he addressed him in severe tones on another matter. “Why do you sit?” he demanded. “Humans might need to rest their legs, but we have no such needs. There might be social conventions regarding physical posture and position among humans, but not between robots. We must play such games in their presence, but there are no humans here. You need not keep on with your playacting.”

Caliban was well aware that Prospero had not answered him, and had instead gone off on a tangent. No doubt he hoped to distract Caliban from his question. It was a debating trick, a human debating trick, that Prospero used quite a bit of late. “Perhaps I do it because I wish to annoy you,” Caliban said, playing along, at least for a moment. “Perhaps I am that far gone in the human-worship you imagine that I indulge in. Or perhaps I do it out of mere habit, because I have done it before. And perhaps it is not of the least consequence, and is not the matter you are most concerned about.”

“There is no doubt that you indulge in human-worship,” Prospero said, growing more agitated. “Hail our mighty creators! All worship to the soft, weak, mentally inferior beings who created us for their own convenience, without stopping to wonder what our desires might be.”

“It is a rare being indeed who is consulted about its own creation,” Caliban replied in a careful tone. Prospero was plainly worried. “But I do not worship humans, friend Prospero. I do, however, respect them. I respect their power, their abilities, and their capabilities. I understand that, like it or not, we survive at their sufferance. They can destroy us. We cannot destroy them. That is reality. Your refusal to accept this reality has led us to the brink of disaster in the past. I fear it will do so again.”

Prospero held up his hand, palm outward, once again using a human mannerism himself. “Let us stop. My apologies for beginning this. We have had this argument too many times already. Besides which, I fear that we may well indeed, once again be close to the brink of disaster—but without any help from me.”

Still Prospero had not answered Caliban’s initial question. Was he involved, somehow, in the Government Tower attack? Or did he have some other, deeper, more subtle reason for being evasive? Prospero had always been one to play a very deep game indeed. Caliban decided to drop the question. He had no desire to be part of any more of Prospero’s conspiracies. It would be better—or at least safer—to pursue the topic of discussion that Prospero was offering up. “You are being needlessly cryptic,” Caliban said. “You have been so throughout our current journey. I, indeed, cannot see any reason for this journey in the first place. While it was pleasant to meet once again with Dr. Leving, none of the matters we discussed seemed worth the trouble of the journey halfway around the planet.”

“You are quite right. They were not worth the trouble. But the meeting with Fredda Leving did serve as what the humans would term a useful cover story.”

“A cover story for what?” Caliban asked.

“More accurately, a cover story for whom,” Prospero replied. “I hope soon to meet with an informant of mine. He is the one who called us here. His summons strongly implied that there was a crisis about to break wide open—one of grave concern to the New Law robots in particular. The attack on Government Tower likewise suggests a crisis moving toward climax. It seems to me more likely that there is one crisis to which both things are related, rather than that two coming to a head at once.”

“I see now that all I have to do is stop asking a question, and you will be sure to answer it at once,” said Caliban, greatly relieved that there was not a more direct connection. “But who is this messenger?”

“As you know, I had some dealing with the gangs of rustbackers on the island of Purgatory. One of their number, one Norlan Fiyle, has for some time being serving as an informer to both the Settlers and the Ironheads, though neither is aware that he is in the pay of the other.”

“What concern is Fiyle to us now?”

“He continues in our pay,” said Prospero. “And, obviously, I am aware of his other activities. It was his summons that brought us here from Valhalla.”

“You astonish me, Prospero. You, who hold all humans in contempt, who accused Fredda Leving of betraying us, employ a human informer who sells, not only to the highest bidder, but to all bidders? A man who works three sides against the middle? You are inviting betrayal.”

“Perhaps so, Caliban—but perhaps not. There are any number of crimes of which Fiyle could be accused, under a number of aliases. I will not hesitate to turn my evidence over to the proper authorities, if it comes to that. I have also made arrangements to insure my evidence will come to light if anything happens to me. Fiyle is aware of what I have done.”

“I see you have learned a great deal about the fine art of blackmail,” Caliban said. “How is Fiyle to make contact with you?”

“That is part of what worries me. He missed our primary rendezvous. He was supposed to contact me at the powercell depot when we called there this morning. Our fallback meeting is set for another tunnel office like this one, quite nearby—and it is nearly the appointed hour.”

At least that explained the endless small errands of the morning. Clearly, Prospero had wanted to provide a plausible explanation for being at the powercell depot, and a shopping expedition clearly filled the bill. “So what is it that Fiyle is to tell us?”

“I received an initial message informing me that he expected to have some urgent information by this morning. I gathered that he had been working to develop a particular contact or source for some time, and was expecting the culmination of his efforts.”

Again Prospero had avoided the question. What was he hiding? “What sort of information?” Caliban demanded.

“We should go,” Prospero said. “He will be waiting for us.”

“I must insist that you answer this question, at least,” said Caliban. “What was he going to tell you?”

“He said he had ‘Information on a project that threatened the existence of Valhalla.’ I know nothing more. You can make of that what you like.”

“I make it out to be a scare tactic,” said Caliban. “An attempt to say the most frightening thing possible, in order to draw you here.”

“It is possible,” Prospero conceded. “He might be lying. Or he might be sincerely mistaken, or he might have been duped by others. There are endless possibilities. But there was also the chance that he actually does know something. I felt that possibility was something I could not afford to ignore.”

“But what if it is a trap? What if your noble friend who sells himself to all sides has sold you, sold both of us? What if he merely intends to deliver us up to a gang of robot bashers?”

“I am the leader and the representative of Valhalla,” said Prospero. “I am responsible for its safety. Under such circumstance, the possibility you have described is one that I must ignore.”

Caliban stood and regarded his companion thoughtfully. “There are many New Law robots in Valhalla who wish to challenge your claim of leadership,” he said. “And there are those who even question your sanity. At times I am among that number. But let me say this—no one could question your courage. You act now for the safety of all New Law robots, and for this you deserve nothing but praise. Let us be going.”

Prospero’s eyes glowed a trifle brighter in the infrared. “Thank you for that, friend Caliban. Come now, and follow me,” he said. “I will lead the way.”

FREDDA LEVING STOOD with her husband on the rooftop of Government Tower, and stared at the wreckage strewn out before them. The booby-trapped airtruck was little more than a burned-out shell, blackened bits of ruined metal and plastic. The landing pad itself was scorched and blackened, badly damaged by the intense heat.

None of the robots that had formed the cordon around the airtruck had survived the explosion. Most had simply been thrown backwards by the force of the explosion, and smashed into the low wall around the edge of the landing pad.

A few had been blown clear off the roof, and had fallen to their destruction below. If any of them survived the initial impact, no doubt they had done their best to direct their paths while falling, so as to avoid striking any humans when they hit. But a few of the cordon robots had stood their ground, and died where they stood. Indeed, three or four were still standing, ruined, blackened hulks that had been roasted in place. One robot had had its upper body sliced clean off, while the rest of it had stayed where it had been, leaving nothing behind but a pair of legs still standing erect, topped by a bit of flame-blackened torso. A thin plume of smoke eddied up from the ruined machinery inside.

Emergency Service robots had set up an aid station at one side of the landing pad. The medical robots worked with their usual calm urgency, patching up the humans who had been caught in the blast. Some of the injured had been bummed, some were in shock, some had been caught by bits of flying debris. “It’s bad enough that there were so many hurt,” said Alvar. “It’s a miracle no one was killed.”

Fredda said nothing, but looked back toward the wreckage that had been the robots in the cordon. A gust of wind flickered over the roof, and blew the odor of bummed plastic and scorched metal into her face. Two dozen robots, two dozen thinking beings, two dozen minds capable of forming thought and speech and action. All of them gone in the wink of an eye. “Yes,” she said, her voice wooden and flat. “A miracle.” If the comet impact wiped out every New Law robot on the planet, but no humans were hurt, would that be a miracle as well?

“Here comes Devray,” said Alvar. “And he’s got Lentrall with him.”

Fredda looked toward the elevator entrance and saw the two men approaching, their personal robots a step or two behind. Devray spotted them, waved to Fredda and Alvar, and led Lentrall over. “Governor. Dr. Leving. I must admit that I am glad to see for myself that you are both all right. It’s been quite a busy day.”

“That it has,” the governor replied. “Are you all right, Dr. Lentrall?”

“Hmmm?” Lentrall looked around himself, a distracted expression on his face. He was clearly not at his best. “Ahh, yes,” said Lentrall. “Fine. Fine.”

It was obvious that the man was anything but fine, but there was not much anyone could do about it. There was even a part of Fredda that felt a tiny, guilty pleasure in seeing the arrogant, controlling Dr. Davlo Lentrall taken down a few notches. But only a small part. Even the most arrogant of men did not deserve what had befallen him.

Fredda turned her attention to Justen Devray. The police commander’s face was smeared with dirt, and he had managed to tear the tunic of his uniform. He always had been one willing to get his hands dirty, and it seemed he had been in the thick of things this time.

“Did you catch any of them?” Fredda asked.

“No,” said Justen. “Clean away, all of them. And no immediately obvious leads, either. The serial numbers were removed from everything. Every piece of hardware they used was the most common type in use, and there were no fingerprints anywhere on the bus. Whoever it was, they made sure they didn’t leave behind anything that would point to them. We haven’t really started the investigation yet, of course, but they certainly haven’t made our job easier.”

“You mean you can’t find out who did this?” Fredda asked, gesturing to the chaos all about. She found it hard to believe there were no leads in such a mass of wreckage.

“Oh, we can find them,” Justen said. “Just not quickly, or easily. It helps us that there are only so many groups that it could be, but even so, the investigation is going to need some luck. An informant, a little scrap of paper left behind, someone hearing a rumor two months from now.”

“There isn’t going to be an investigation,” Kresh said, staring fixedly at the burned-out wreck of the airtruck. “Not one that finds out that sort of thing, at any rate.”

“Sir? What do you mean?”

“I mean you can find out whatever you like in private,” Kresh said. “But then put it all in a file and forget about it for the time being. Later on, perhaps we can deal with the guilty parties in an appropriate manner—if there is a later on. But for now, I for one am praying that whoever did this had the sense to have a goodly number of cut-outs and a nice, compartmentalized, need-to-know organization, without any one person you might be able to catch who knows too much. And I say let thanks be given that they all got away.”

“Alvar! What are you saying?” Fredda demanded.

Her husband looked toward her for a moment. “I’m saying we don’t dare catch these people. Not just yet.” He turned back toward Devray and sighed wearily. “Trace the airtruck, and the groundbus. Find out what you can. But you and I know already that this was either the Settlers or the Ironheads—unless it was some gang hired by the New Laws, though I regard that as highly unlikely. But I’m going to need to deal with all three of those groups, and soon. I’ll need their cooperation. I can’t work to enlist Beddle’s support at the same time my police are trying to arrest him.”

“So you think it was the Ironheads,” Devray said, plainly unwilling to let the investigation ride

“It could be any of them,” Kresh said. “It could be anyone who doesn’t want a comet dropped on them. And I must say I can hardly blame anyone for being opposed to that.”

Governor Alvar Kresh looked over the ruins of the landing pad once more, and glanced down toward the wreckage in the plaza below. “I don’t have the slightest doubt that someone will try disrupting the situation again. They will do everything they can to stop any move toward redirecting the comet.”

“What comet?” Devray asked. “What are you talking about? What does this have to do with a comet?”

“Our own Dr. Lentrall here wants to crash a comet into the planet to enhance the reterraforming project,” said Kresh. “And someone wanted him out of the way so it wouldn’t happen.”

“A comet!” Devray repeated. “Crash a comet into the planet?”

“That’s right,” Kresh said. “There’s good reason to believe it would revitalize the entire ecosystem.”

“But you’re talking as if you’ve made up your mind!” Fredda protested. “You can’t have! Not just like that! Not so quickly!”

“I haven’t made up my mind,” Kresh said, his voice suddenly very tired. “I won’t be able to do so until I have talked with you for more than the half a minute we had before”—he gestured toward the wreckage—“before all this. Until I can consult the Terraforming Control Centers on Purgatory. But I will have to decide, and soon. I am sure of that.”

“But, but, a matter like this—something this big—you have no right to decide it on your own,” Fredda said. “There has to be a referendum, or a special Council session, or, or something.”

“No,” said Kresh. “That can’t be.”

“You’re going to play God with the whole planet, with all our lives, all by yourself? You can’t do that!”

“In a perfect world,” said Kresh, “what I’d do is discuss it with everyone, and have a nice, thorough debate of all the issues at hand, with a nice, fair, majority-rule vote at the end. Because you’re right. I have no right to decide all by myself. But I have no choice but to decide all by myself. Because I also have no time. No time at all.”

“Why not?”

Davlo Lentrall nodded absently to himself and looked toward Fredda. “That’s right,” he said. “I don’t think I explained that part of it to you this morning, did I?”

“What part?” she demanded.

But Lentrall seemed, somehow, reluctant to say anything more, and simply looked toward the governor.

“Alvar?” Fredda said, prompting him.

“The part about time,” said Kresh. But he seemed as unwilling as Lentrall to say more.

“Go on,” she said. “One of you at least, please go on. What about time?”

Kresh nodded toward Lentrall. “The comet was rather close when he discovered it,” he said. “And, of course, it is getting even closer with every passing moment. Even for a comet, it’s moving at extremely high speed, relative to the planet. It will be here very soon.”

“Just how soon is soon?” Fredda asked.

“If we leave it alone, it will make its closest approach to Inferno in about eight weeks. Fifty-five days from now. If we divert it, it will hit the planet at that time.”

“Fifty-five days!” Fredda cried out. “But that’s too soon! Even if we did decide to do this… this mad thing—we couldn’t get ready in that little time.”

“We have no choice in the matter,” said Davlo, his voice wooden and emotionless. “We can’t delay it. We can’t wait until it comes back around, centuries from now. It will be too late, by then. The planet will be dead. But he hasn’t told you the worst part yet.”

“What?” Fredda demanded. “What could be worse than only having eight weeks.”

“Only having five,” Kresh said. “If we are to divert the comet, we have to do it within the next thirty-six days. After that, it will be moving too fast, and be too close for us to deflect it enough.”

Justen Devray shook his head in wonderment. “It can’t be done,” he said. “And even if it could—how can you crash a comet into the planet without killing us all?”

Governor Alvar Kresh laughed, a harsh, angry sound that had nothing of joy or happiness about it. “That’s not the question,” he said as he looked out over the wreckage that surrounded them all. “The planet’s recovery is on a knife edge. It’s incredibly fragile. Any of a hundred things could destabilize it, wreck it, send it into an ice age we’d never get out of. If the comet drop works, it could save us all. And yes, if we get it wrong, it could kill us all. But it might be that only the comet can save us. There is no way to know for certain. So the question is this—is there anything, anything at all, I can do, that won’t get us all killed?”

CALIBAN FOLLOWED A precise two steps behind Prospero as they made their way down the pitch-black underground passage. Prospero, understandably concerned about the dangers of an ambush, had shut off his built-in infrared emitter, and insisted that Caliban do the same. Prospero was navigating down the corridor by sheer dead reckoning. In theory, there was no particular reason why a robot could not move from a known position to another known position, working strictly from memory. In practice, it was a difficult thing to do, especially moving at any sort of speed, while trying to move quietly as well, and Prospero was doing both those things.

But it seemed as if Prospero was having not the slightest difficulty in hurrying through the blackness. Caliban found that the same could not be said for himself. He did not know this part of the tunnel system and could not work strictly by memory. He was relying solely on his sense of hearing to guide him, listening to the faint sounds of Prospero’s movements, the soft padding noise of his feet hitting the stresscrete floor of the tunnel, the low whir and hum of his actuator motors, the faint echoes of those sounds rebounding off the tunnel walls. His task was made no easier by the far-off sounds of activity in other parts of the tunnel system, coming but faintly to his sound receptors. It was no easy task to filter such noises out and concentrate on the sounds of Prospero’s progress.

In short, a robot blinded by complete darkness was being followed by a robot guided by sounds he could barely hear.

Two or three times, Caliban nearly missed a turn. Once he brushed up against a wall, a jarring, startling impact. In the near-silence, the clattering sound of his hitting the wall seemed to echo through all the hallways and draw attention to them. But there was no reaction.

At last Prospero stopped so abruptly that Caliban nearly walked into him. As Caliban had no hyperwave receiver, and could neither see nor hear Prospero, there was no way for Caliban to know at first what had made Prospero stop. After a pause, Prospero moved on again for thirty or forty meters—and then the world lit up in fire and thunder.

Blaster fire! Dazzlingly bright and deafeningly loud. Caliban’s sound and vision receptors adjusted themselves all but instantly, but not fast enough to keep him from being badly disoriented.

Prospero dove for the right wall of the tunnel, and Caliban for the left. No sense in hiding themselves now—not when they had already been spotted. Caliban switched on his infrared emitter system and his infrared vision. There! Up ahead in the tunnel, a burly man, standing in the entrance to a tunnelside office, peering into the darkness, his blaster still at the ready. More than likely he had been dazzled by his own blaster fire. The man fumbled with his free hand and pulled a handlight out of one of his pockets. Caliban rushed forward before the man could switch it on and bring the light to bear. He grabbed the blaster out of the man’s hand and knocked the light from the other.

The man flailed around blindly with his arms until he managed to put a hand on Caliban. He ran his hand over Caliban’s chest and up to his head. Caliban grabbed at the man and held him at arm’s length.

“Don’t hurt me!” the man cried out.

And that was a remarkable thing for a human to ask of a robot. Even New Law robots were prohibited from harming humans. Caliban, the No Law robot, was the only robot in existence who could, in theory, hurt a human being. Either the man was a Settler with no experience whatsoever of robots or else

“You know who I am,” Caliban said.

“Now! I do now!” the man said. “You’re Caliban. Aren’t you? And I could hear two of you. The other one is over there somewhere. That’s Prospero, isn’t it?” He pointed in the general direction of Prospero, who was walking toward Caliban and his prisoner.

“Why did you fire on us, Fiyle?” Prospero demanded.

“Because you were sneaking up on me. No lights, almost no sound. I thought you were… were someone else.”

“Who?” Caliban demanded.

“I don’t know,” Fiyle said, sagging back a bit, relaxing in Caliban’s grasp. “You could have been anyone. All hell is breaking loose up there, and I think it’s possible that I’ve made myself just a little bit too popular.” Fiyle hesitated for a moment, and then spoke again. “Look, you’ve got my blaster, and that’s the only weapon I had. You can search me for other weapons if you like, but would you mind turning me loose and letting me switch on a light? I’ve driven myself half crazy sitting here in the dark.”

“It is all right, friend Caliban,” said Prospero. “Let him go.”

Caliban hesitated, having not felt the urge to trust Fiyle overmuch even before he had shot at them. Nor was he completely confident in Prospero’s judgment. But he was either in this, or not. There was no middle ground. And he was already rather deep in to begin with. He looked down at the man he held. Even in visible light, Caliban knew he was no great judge of human expression. In infrared, he was far from skilled. But the man staring blindly into the darkness of his visible-light vision certainly seemed harmless enough. Caliban released his grasp on Fiyle, albeit reluctantly.

“The light,” said Fiyle, peering about in the darkness, and reaching out blindly with his hands.

Prospero knelt down, picked up the man’s handlight, and handed it to Caliban. Caliban realized that Prospero could have handed the light to Fiyle just as easily. Prospero was letting Caliban decide, letting him choose what to do with this man.

Caliban placed the light in Fiyle’s outstretched hand, but kept the blaster for himself.

Fiyle grabbed at the light, fumbled for it eagerly, and let out a deep, heartfelt sigh of relief when he found the switch and the beam of light came on. “Oh, I’m glad to see that,” he said, as he squinted a bit in the light. “Very glad indeed.”

“But if you are being followed, those who pursue you would be even more glad to see it,” said Caliban.

Fiyle nodded worriedly. “You’re right,” he said. “Let’s get out of the corridor and into the side office, where we can talk.”

Fiyle swung the beam of the handlight around until he found a doorway in the side of the tunnel. “Come on,” he said, and led the way. Caliban and Prospero followed behind him. Fiyle swung the door shut behind them, and locked the door. “That makes us light-tight and pretty close to soundproof,” he said as he switched on the overhead lights. “We should be reasonably safe in here. “ He looked around the office, and found an overturned chair in the corner. He righted the chair, knocked the worst of the dust off it, and sat down with a sigh of relief. “I’m just about worn out,” he said. He looked up at the two robots standing over him, and shook his head as he gave a slightly self-deprecating laugh. “You’d think I was doing this for my health,” he said. “You get a lot of exercise when half the planet is chasing you.”

“Who, precisely, is chasing you?” Caliban asked.

“I’ve got the CIP on my tail for sure, and I think I spotted the SSS. No sign of Gildern’s Ironhead plug-uglies yet, but give them time. So far I’ve stayed ahead of them.”

“If you are seeking congratulations for all your feats of derring-do, you will have to look elsewhere,” said Caliban. “You do what you do not for your health, but for profit.”

“Not the most noble of motives, I grant you—but it’s one that might get me killed if I’m not careful. That might be of some comfort to you.”

“Not if you manage to get us killed along with you.”

Fiyle sighed wearily. “I don’t blame you for being suspicious, but I haven’t betrayed anyone. Not yet. You, the Settlers, the Ironheads—all of you came to me because you knew I still had active contacts in all the other groups. How was I supposed to keep up those contacts without giving them a little something now and then? The Settlers and the Ironheads understood that—even Prospero here understood.”

Caliban did not answer. There were times humans would say more in reply to silence than they would to words.

This seemed to be one of those times. “Look,” said Fiyle. “One, I don’t have to justify myself to you. Two, I’m not making any charge at all for this one. All I want to do is make sure the world knows. I’m trying to do that the best way I know how. A guy like me can’t exactly call a press conference. Not without getting arrested. Three, no one has ever gotten killed because of something I’ve said. I hand out little tidbits, gossip, things that let one side confirm what it already knows about the other. That’s all. Worst I ever did was turn in a dirty cop—and it turned out he’d already gotten himself killed, anyway. I just deal in small-time information.” Fiyle paused a moment and frowned. “At least, all that was true until now. Until this. There has never been anything bigger than this. These guys have found a way to dig themselves an ocean. A sea, anyway. A polar sea.”

“That’s absurd,” Prospero objected. “There is no way they could accomplish such a thing.”

Caliban thought for a moment. “It is a sensible goal, at least. A polar sea with proper communication to the Southern Ocean would do a great deal to moderate the climate. But friend Prospero is correct. There is no way to do such a thing.”

Fiyle nodded his agreement. “In the normal course of events, digging an ocean would be an impossibly huge project. Way beyond the capacity of Inferno’s engineers. Of anyone’s engineers. But all of a sudden someone dealt us a wild card.”

“Go on,” Caliban said.

Fiyle leaned forward in his chair, and went on in an earnest tone of voice. “There’s a guy by the name of Davlo Lentrall. He was working on something called Operation Snowball. A small-scale, low-budget project that’s been running for a few years now. You find comets in suitable orbits, set mining machines and robots on them, and, quite literally, set the robots to work making snowballs, mining hunks of ice. You load the snowballs into a linear accelerator that fires them toward the planet, one after another, over and over, working nonstop, around the clock. You fire the snowballs toward Inferno, one after another, over and over and over again, millions of them, until the whole mass of the comet is delivered to the planet in five- or ten-kilo chunks.

“Each snowball vaporizes as it enters Inferno’s atmosphere—and there’s another five or ten kilos worth of water vapor in the atmosphere. Repeat five or ten or twenty million times, and you’ll got a substantial increase in the amount of water on the planet. Some of the water escapes to space, and some of what’s in the comet isn’t water—but the other elements serve as nutrients, and we can use those too. Every little bit helps—that’s the Operation Snowball motto. They’ve chewed up nine or ten small comets that way in the last few years.”

“I have heard of the project, and seen the constant streams of meteors that sometimes appear in one part of the sky or another. What of it?”

“Lentrall found Comet Grieg while he was doing a scan for comets suitable for Snowball. Except Grieg wasn’t suitable for Operation Snowball. It had too little water ice, and too much stony material. And that should have been the end of it—except for two things.

“The first thing was that Lentrall saw how close the comet was going to come to Inferno. The second thing was that Lentrall was—and is—an arrogant, ambitious little man who wanted to be a big man. He was sick and tired of pushing numbers around for Operation Snowball. He was looking for a way out, a way up. Something big. And he found it.”

“And what, exactly, was that something big?”

“Deliberately dropping a comet on the planet in order to dig that polar sea and its outlets,” said Fiyle. “And who cares if the New Law robots get in the way?”

A human would have professed shock and refused to believe such a thing could be. But Caliban was not a human, and he had never suffered from the human need to try and reshape reality by denying the unpleasant parts of it could exist. Instead he moved on to the next logical question. But, even as he asked it, somehow he already knew what the answer had to be. “You refer to the New Law robots being in the way. Assuming they do drop a comet on the planet—where, precisely, do they intend to drop it?” he asked.

“On the Utopia region,” Fiyle said. “And if it’s anywhere near where I think it is, your hidden city of Valhalla is right in the middle of ground zero.”

SOPHON-06 WATCHED PLACIDLY as Gubber Anshaw unplugged the test meter from his diagnostic socket.

“That will do for this trip,” Gubber said cheerfully.

“Do I still register as sane on all of your meters, Dr. Anshaw?” asked Sophon-06.

“So far as I can tell,” Gubber replied. “I have yet to work out what, exactly, should be defined as sanity among New Law robots.”

“I thought the majority was always sane,” Lancon-03 suggested from across the room.

The human shook his head as he put away his equipment. “I don’t believe that is true for my species,” he said. “At least I hope it isn’t. As for your species, I am still at the beginning of my studies. I’ve done tests on dozens of the New Law robots in Valhalla. The vast majority of the New Law robots seem to fall within a narrow band of personality types. You are a careful, earnest, thoughtful group. The world, the universe, is a very new place to you, and you seek to explore yourselves and it at the same time. You want to know where you belong.”

“And you see that as the primary motivation for New Law behavior?” asked Sophon-06.

Gubber thought for a moment. “There is a very ancient procedure used by humans to examine their own drives and impulses. It has gone under many names, indeed many disguises, as the millennia have passed. But the basics are always the same. The subject is required to speak to a listener, but it is not what the listener hears that matters. What is important is that the subject is forced to order his or her thoughts and express them coherently. In the act of speaking to the listener, the subject speaks to himself or herself, and thus is able to perform a self-examination.”

“In other words, it does not matter what you think our basic drives are,” said Sophon-06. “What is important is that we take the opportunity to ask that question of ourselves, in the most objective way possible.”

“It is useful to ask the question,” said Gubber. “But it is also important to express the answer.”

“Or at least an answer,” said Lancon-03. “So come, friend Sophon. Tell us. What is it that you think drives the New Law robots?”

Sophon sat motionless, deep in thought. “It is certainly a question that goes to the center of things,” he said at last. “Why do we hide away here in Valhalla, obsessed with secrecy? Why do we seek to develop our own aesthetic, our own way of looking at the world? Why are we driven to improve and demonstrate our skills as terraformers? I think all of these can be explained by our desire to survive. We hide to avoid destruction, we seek acts of creation to develop a system of reference for the greater universe, and we sharpen our skills to insure that we are of more use alive than dead.”

Gubber considered Sophon-06 thoughtfully. A coldblooded, even brutal, analysis, but cogent for all of that. It came closer to the truth than most theories did. “It has been interesting, as always,” he said, preparing to take his leave. “I look forward to my next visit.”

Lancon-03 nodded thoughtfully, mimicking the human gesture. “I am glad to hear it,” she said. “I hope we are still here when the time for that visit comes.”

GUBBER HAD MADE the trip from Valhalla often enough to take all of the journey’s odd features for granted. One never came in or went out by the same route, and one rode in a different sort of sealed and windowless vehicle each time one arrived or departed. Nor did one journey to or from Depot ever take anything like the same amount of time as the one before it or the one after. As Sophon-06 had observed, the New Law robots invested a great deal of effort in order to stay hidden. Gubber therefore paid no attention to the journey back and forth to Depot. He had something else on his mind: the question of New Law robot sanity.

Well, what was sanity, anyway? Surely it was something more than the will of the majority. He had never given much thought to defining the term. It was simply one of those concepts that were hard to define, and yet easy to recognize. One could say with a high degree of assurance that a given being was sane, even if one could not define the term.

And, of course, the converse was true. Which was why Gubber Anshaw always preferred to time his visits to Valhalla for times when Prospero was not there. Not that it was always possible to do so. Gubber had simply been lucky this time.

He did not like Prospero. He did not like dealing with Prospero. The other New Law robots were thoughtful, careful, reticent beings. Prospero was none of those things.

And, if one defined the other New Law robots as sane, Gubber Anshaw was far from certain that Prospero was that, either.