Jomaine got to his feet, rather apologetically, and pulled a palm-sized computer pad from his pocket. “There’ s nothing more thatI can tell you,” he said, “but Gubber gave this to me for you. He seems to have some rather special sources of information.” He handed her the pad and looked her straight in the eye, standing over her bed in a strangely formal, careful posture. It was obvious that he did not like what he was part of, but that he was determined to make the best of it and behave as correctly as possible. He pointed to the computer pad he had just given her. “I have not read that report,” he said, “and I’m not going to. I don’t want to know anything more. I have told you all I know, but none of what I think, and I expect that you will prefer it that way.

“To be quite blunt about the matter, my ideas about what you ‘re doing scare three kinds of hell out of me. Therefore, I would ask that you have the kindness to wait until I have left the room to look this over.”

Fredda Leving stared at her assistant in astonishment for a full thirty seconds before she could find voice enough to speak. Never had the man been so bold or blunt. “Very well, Jomaine. Thank you for your honesty and discretion.”

“I would suggest that those are two qualities we have all had in short supply recently,” he said sharply. The expression on Terach’ s pointed face softened a bit, and he reached out to touch her on the shoulder. “Rest, Fredda, heal,” he said in a warm and gentle voice. “Even if none of this had happened, you’ d need all your strength for tomorrow night.”

Fredda smiled wanly and sighed. “You didn’t need to remind me,” she said. Tomorrow night’s presentation might well decide more fates than her own.

Jomaine Terach turned and left, leaving Fredda alone with her thoughts and Gubber Anshaw’ s computer pad. She was almost afraid to read it. Gubber had some amazing sources of information. Fredda had decided long ago that she did notwant to know what those sources were.

Fredda hardly dared wonder what he had come up with this time. She started to read the information in the pad. Three paragraphs into it she was so terrified she could scarcely see well enough to read it. For what she read in the computer pad made all the rest of her worries seem like no worries at all.

Good lord, where the hell had Gubber gotten this stuff? It looked like he had gotten his hands on the complete police reports of her attack, raw information not yet analyzed or put in order.Two sets of bloody robotic footprints? What the devil could that mean?

And the other reports-on the Ironhead riot at Settlertown and the robot basher/arson incident in the warehouse district. Sweet Fallen Angel, yes, Caliban had given his name to a witness there and she, Fredda, had just given it to Kresh as well. They had the link. They knew, or thought they knew, all they needed to know about Caliban.

Damn it, who thehell had let him out of the lab? Fredda had known right along that Caliban’s earliest hours would be highly formative. That was why she had delayed powering him up for so long. She wanted all the conditions ideal when she did.

But look at the first hours he had had instead. He must have been at the very least a witness to the attack on her. Then he must have wandered the city, seen the subservient behavior of robots. That must have been damned confusing to him. She had deliberately edited out all information regarding robots from his datastore.

Hell’s bells, how long had she worked on that datastore, carefully tailoring the information it contained? At best, all that work was now wasted.

At worst, it would wildly skew Caliban’s view of the world. And on top of all that, for him to get mixed up with a mob of robot bashers…

Fredda Leving let the computer pad drop to the bed and slumped backwards, eyes shut, her stomach tied in a knot, her head a suddenly revitalized world of pain.Why? she wondered.Why did it have to be this way?

She thought about what Caliban had seen so far: violence, brutality, his own kind treated as slaves and worse. He had been given no other influences to shape his mind and viewpoint.

But that was far from the worst of it. Now Alvar Kresh was on the hunt, with every move Kresh made likely to reveal the truth at the wrong time and the wrong place. One accidental wrong move on Kresh’ s part could smash down the political house of cards that was all that might save Inferno.

Fredda Leving felt her heart grow cold with fear.

Trouble was, she was not quite sure what to be afraid for.

Or afraid of.

GUBBER Anshaw knew he was not a courageous man, but at least he had the courage to admit that much to himself. He had the strength of character to understand his own limitations, and surely that had to count for something.

Well, it was comforting to tell himself that, at any rate. Not that such self -understanding was much use under the present circumstances. But be that as it may. There were times when even a coward had to do the right thing.

And now, worse luck, was one such time. He watched as Tetlak, his personal robot, guided Gubber’s deliberately undistinctive aircar through the dark of night toward Settlertown. The aircar slowed to a halt, hung in midair waiting for Settlertown’ s traffic and security system to query the car’s transponder and see that it was on the preapproved list. Then the ground opened up beneath them as a fly-in portal to the underground city granted them entrance. The car flew down through the depths, down into the great central cavern of Settlertown, and came in for a landing.

Gubber used a hand gesture to order Tetlak to stay with the car, then got out himself. He walked to the waiting runcart and got in. “To Madame Welton’s, please,” he said as he settled in. The little open vehicle took off the moment he sat down. Gubber barely had time to reflect on the unnerving fact that there was no conscious being in control of the cart before he was delivered to Tonya’ s quarters.

He walked to her doorway and stood there for a moment before he remembered to press the annunciator button. Normally that was something his robot would do for him. But Tetlak made Tonya nervous sometimes, and he had no wish for unneeded awkwardness. It was bad enough that he had come without calling ahead.

A sleepy Tonya Welton opened the door and looked upon her visitor in surprise. “Gubber! What in the Galaxy are you doing here?”

Gubber looked at her for a moment, raised his hand uncertainly, and then spoke. “I know it was risky to come, but I had to see you. I don’t think I was followed. I had to come and say-say goodbye.”

“Goodbye!” Tonya’s astonishment and upset were plainly visible on her face. “ Are you breaking it off because-”

“I’m not breaking anything off, Tonya. You will always be there in my heart. But I don’t think I will be able to see you again after-after I go to see Sheriff Kresh.”

“What!”

“I’m turning myself in, Tonya. I’m going to take the blame.” Gubber felt his heart pounding, felt the sweat starting to bead up on his body. For the briefest of moments, he felt a bit faint. “Please,” he said. “May I come in?”

Tonya backed away from the door and ushered him in. Gubber stepped inside and looked around. Ariel stood motionless in her robot niche, staring out at nothing at all. The room was in its bedroom configuration, all the tables and chairs stowed away, replaced by a large and comfortable bed-a bed that Gubber had reason to remember most fondly. Now he crossed the room and sat, morosely, on the edge of it, feeling most lost and alone.

Tonya watched him cross the room, watched as he sat down. Gubber looked up at her. She was so beautiful, so natural, so muchherself Not like Spacer women, all artifice and appearance and affectation.