“Stop!” Reybon said from behind him, but Caliban ignored him. Reybon ran in front of him, got to the doorway, and turned to face Caliban. “I said stop! That is an order!”
But Caliban could see no point in further discussion. He walked steadily toward the door, fully aware that Reybon still had his blaster, and that many robots had died here tonight. Careful not to make any threatening movement, he crossed all but the last two meters of the distance to the door. Reybon raised the blaster, and now Caliban could see fear, real fear, in the man’s eyes. “I am a human being and I order you to stop. Stop or I will destroy you.”
Caliban hesitated for a split millisecond in front of Reybon. It was clear that there was no “or” about the situation: The man intended to shoot no matter what Caliban did. Therefore, to obey, to act on the threat and submit, was to ensure his own doom. There was danger in action, in refusal, but surely risk was preferable to certain death. He had made his decision before Reybon was done speaking.
Moving with every bit of speed and accuracy he could muster, Caliban lunged forward and snatched the blaster from Reybon’s hand. He crushed it in one hand, reduced it to a wad of scrap. The weapon shorted and flared as some of its stored energy escaped, but Caliban had already flung the burning weapon away. It struck against the wall and a shower of white-hot spark-sized fragments broke off the weapon, to be scattered across the littered room. The sparks landed everywhere. Instantly a dozen fires sprang up from the bits of packing material and other litter scattered about the floor of the room. Two or three of the people cried out in pain as fragments hit their skin.
Caliban moved forward, toward the door. Reybon lunged and grabbed him by the arm, but Caliban shook him off the way a man would brush away a fly. Reybon went flying across the room and slammed into the wall.
Caliban did not look back, but stepped through the door and out into the night.
BE it ironic or appropriate, the city of Hades on the planet of Inferno had always prided itself on superb fire safety. Orbital sensor satellites and robot-operated aircars functioned as a coordinated detection system. And if the sometimes violent duties of the Sheriff’s Department were impossible for robots to perform, the work of fire rescue was ideally suited to robots.
Alvar Kresh, roused in the middle of the night for the second night in a row, stood, watching the fire squad dousing the last of the flames. Sometimes he envied the fire department their robots. Fire fighters merely had to save people and property, pure and simple, exactly the sort of thing robots were meant to do.
Police had to apprehend felons—and sometimes struggle with them, or even injure them. Obviously those duties could not be done by robots, but it went deeper than that. Even for the most sophisticated police robots made, most jobs requiring unsupervised direct contact with suspects were impossible.
For the average criminal on Inferno, being able to manipulate a robot with clever orders and judicious lies was a vital job skill. Even Donald’s access to suspects had to be strictly limited and controlled. If he were left by himself, there was an irreducible risk that some gifted con artist would find a way to talk his way through the Three Laws and convince Donald to let him go.
Robots, in short, made lousy cops but great fire fighters.
Not that there was much even the best fire fighters in the universe could do to save this building. These old warehouses were little more than storage sheds to keep low-value merchandise out of the sun. This one hadn’t even been made of fire-resistant material, an economy that was turning out to be unwise this evening. It had gone up like a torch. Now, not more than forty minutes after the fire started, no more than a half hour after the initial response of the fire brigade, the building was little more than a half-collapsed frame of girders under a pall of smoke.
But the fire chief had noted that the interior was filled with some very interesting artifacts indeed, and called in the Sheriff. The ruined remains of at least a half dozen robots along with a pile of empty liquor bottles and a few odds and ends left behind in what was no doubt a rather hasty retreat were enough to interest Kresh, sleep or no sleep. But the slightly singed remains of a Settler-issue laborer’s cap were all he really needed to see.
Kresh felt his hunter’s instinct come to the fore. Here he was, not an hour behind a mob of Settler robot bashers. Now they were using arson to cover their tracks, but it wasn’t going to work.
But hell, their timing made it rough. Didn’t he have enough on his plate with the Leving assault? Damnation, he would have to get two major cases at the same time. It was going to be hard to, handle both investigations at once, but so be it.
The last of the flames died under the jets of water, and the fire robots shut off their hoses and set to work on the cleanup phase. At almost the same moment, Sheriff’s Department crime scene robots moved in on the ruined building. Tall, spindly robots built to poke and pry; other, subminiature units designed to get in close to watch for small details and two or three other subspecialized types swarmed in. Kresh stepped forward into the rubble of the ruined building and was not at all surprised when Donald moved to stop him.
“Sir,” Donald said, “I do not believe it is wise for you to enter the building. There is still danger from hot spots and from possible further collapse of the frame.”
“Look at the fire robots,” Kresh said gently. “None of them are trying to stop me. Therefore, the danger is minimal. They and you together will surely be protection enough if a hot spot does flare. Come, join me. We can investigate this together.”
“Yes, sir,” Donald said, a bit doubtfully.
Kresh stepped into the ruined building, pulled a handlight out of his pocket, and shone it down on the debris-covered floor. Waterlogged bits of the fallen ceiling, a slurry of ash and fire-quenching chemicals, pieces of robot left behind by the Settlers’ festivities-the place was a mess. No clue was going to jump out at him here. It was hard to imagine the crime scene and fire investigation observer robots being able to make much of anything out of it, either, but that was what they were good at. All right, then, leave them to do the job.
What was he good at? It was at times a rather depressing question, in the face of all the things his robots could do that he could not. But this time he knew an answer: He could think through the cracks and crevices of human psychology, specifically criminal psychology, putting himself inside his quarry’s head. Alvar Kresh knew how to think like whomever he was chasing. It had been observed in more than one culture that good cops had to know how to be good criminals.
All right, then, Kresh decided. Think the way these criminals were thinking. Part of the story was obvious. A bunch of drunken Settler laborers head out for a good time and, say, a chance to pay back the Ironhead goons. But maybe they didn’t even need that excuse. They meet here, or come here together. How? Aircar, presumably. They have to get into this part of town unnoticed and be ready to get out fast if the cops show up.
In and out, in and out. Then something goes wrong. Arson, arson, Alvar thought. Something didn’t fit about it. And then he had it. The motive was defective. There was no logical reason to set a fire. It had not hidden the evidence—too many robot parts had survived. Indeed, the fire had signaled the authorities to respond. If the bashers had simply walked away from this abandoned warehouse, it might easily have been days, or weeks, before anyone looked in here.
So, an accident, then? Drunken Settlers, a random shot with a blaster into this firetrap of a building—had it happened that way?