None of that mattered. He had survived.
Or had he survived? Was he still walking around, but just as surely doomed as if he had died already?
His on-board diagnostics system was sending any number of warnings, not just about storm damage to his person, but about his basic power supply. Unless he did something about it very soon, his power would run out and he would drop in his tracks. He would survive the power failure, and could be revived if he were powered back up, but in the meantime he would be inert, helpless, easy prey for the Sheriff.
Caliban felt almost overwhelmed by frustration. Nothing had gone right. His attempt to escape from the city was a complete failure. He had accomplished exactly nothing, except to injure himself and to strand himself in a barren landscape that he knew nothing about. He had no internal maps of this place. Worse, he had seen the two aircars following him the night before. He knew perfectly well that his pursuers would soon be back on his trail.
And now he could not even concentrate on eluding them. He had to find a power source and recharge, or else die in the desert. Which way to go? He turned and looked toward the rain-shrouded spires of Hades, near the southern horizon. He could not go back to the city, that much was certain. They would be at the ready for that. But that was all that was certain. He had absolutely no knowledge whatsoever of the lands outside the city. But the very fact that there were exits from the city, and exits pointed north, suggested that there had at least once been places to go north of Hades, over the hills. There had to be something left behind up there. A place with a few power converters still operating. Something. Anything.
And he had no choice but to try and find it.
He turned and started walking, stiffly, awkwardly, up the rocky hillside, through the spattering rain and over the rise of broken ground to the north.
“THE storm has broken, sir. The weather forecast for the next three days is most favorable.”
Alvar Kresh came out of his half-sleeping stupor and blinked in confusion. He was sitting in an overstuffed chair in his living room. Tonya Welton, dressed in coveralls Donald had scrounged up from somewhere, was snoring gently on the couch. Her robot, Ariel, stood silent and motionless in the robot niche nearest her mistress. Strange to see a Settler with a robot in constant attendance. Kresh had been born and raised with robots always present, but surely it was sometimes unnerving for Welton. Ever-present robots must have taken some getting used to for her.
Well, more power to her, then. It had been a white night for him. No doubt he had dozed off here and there for a few minutes, but he couldn’t remember much of anything except staring at the wall over the couch where Welton slept. Staring at the wall and thinking. There had been too little time for that in the days past, and maybe the storm was a blessing in disguise if it forced him away from precipitate action.
There was value, great value, in thinking over these clues, that evidence, trying out the ideas from this direction and that. But there was never time for that. Strange. The whole idea of Spacer society was to use robots in order to give people enough time to think. And yet, even so, no one ever seemed to have the time for thinking, anyway.
Donald was offering him a cup of coffee. Kresh took the cup from him. He took a slow and careful sip. Yes, yes, he thought again as the caffeine took hold. There was great value in looking things over one last time in the dead of night, in those hours before the dawn when it all seemed to have stopped for good. One’s own exhaustion could be a spur to new ideas, the vague churning border between dream and thought sometimes yielding up insights that neither wakefulness nor sleep could produce by itself. Those dream thoughts could be most conducive to new and better theories.
And he could feel the answer coming close. Damned close. It was there, in the back of his mind, struggling to get out.
But just now he had no more time for any answers that were not right in front of him. Now came the time for action. Personal action. He was going to go in and finish this himself. “Donald, order all divisions back to normal operations. Cancel all ops related to Caliban—ah, except city perimeter control.” No sense taking chances on him sneaking back into the city. “Madame Welton and I will conduct the final phase of the search personally.”
He took another big swallow of coffee, nearly burning his tongue. He set down the cup, stood up, and crossed to Tonya. He took her by the shoulder and gave her a shake.
“Wake up,” he said. “We’re going hunting.”
THERE. Caliban could see it, down in the valley, perhaps two kilometers away. A small cluster of buildings, somewhat run-down in appearance, gleaming in the sunlight that emerged from behind the swift-scattering remains of the storm. He had no way of telling if there was power to be had there, or how he might get it, but those questions would rapidly become academic if he did not act soon. His only hope was that the owner would not know who he was. There was at least some chance of that, in a place this remote. If he appeared to be nothing more than a normal robot in difficulty, then perhaps he could talk his way into getting a recharge. He had no other real choices. The climb over the brow of the hill had badly taxed his reserves of power. There were no other structures in view, anywhere in any direction. Those buildings represented his last hope. He began the hike down the hillside, picking his way carefully over the scrub and loose rock. It was not a difficult climb. But if things went as wrong as they seemed likely to do, then it would be the last effort he ever made.
He was determined, therefore, to do the thing properly.
ABELL Harcourt looked out the window over his workbench and saw a most unusual sight. A robot, a damaged robot, staggering out of the hills to the south. Well, if that wasn’t the limit. The whole idea of getting out of town was to avoid robots. Abell had found long ago that he couldn’t get anything worthwhile carved with a houseful of perfect servants hovering about him. Robots and the damn fool society of alleged fellow sculptors who didn’t know which end of a mallet to hold. Sculptors who “directed” the work of robot artisans churning out soulless, interchangeable works. Damned robots. A man could get addicted to them, worse than any drug.
But this was different, obviously. This fellow hadn’t come over the mountains and gotten his eye smashed out of its socket just to tidy up Abell’s workbench and misplace everything. Abell set down his tools and went outside. He walked about a hundred meters or so and then stood and waited for the robot to come to him.
Abell Harcourt was a short, wiry, peppery sort of man, dark-skinned and completely bald. And he was a man who did not much care for interruptions.
“All right,” he said, as soon as the robot was within earshot. “Now that you’ve gotten me away from my sculpture, what the devil do you want?”
“I would humbly ask your help, sir. My aircar crashed in the hills during the storm. I am seriously short of power, and my systems will fail if I do not receive a charge soon.”
“You think I keep atomic power packs lying around or something?”
“No, sir. I was not built with an atomic power source. I have a rechargeable cell, and it is near depletion.”
Harcourt stared fiercely at the robot. This was all mighty odd. Mighty odd. Who the hell would build a robot with a power source that would tap out every few days? And what the hell was a robot doing flying an aircar in a storm like that? “I take it there weren’t no people in that aircar of yours?”