Why, why, why did the robots blindly, needlessly, build and disassemble, over and over, rather than leaving things as they were? Why create huge buildings when there were none to use them? Madness. All of it madness. The voice of the datastore whispered to him that the city was a reflection of a society warped, twisted, bent out of any shape that could make normal life and growth possible. It was opinion, emotion, propaganda, but still, somehow, it spoke to him.

The world was mad, and his only hope of survival was to blend in, be accepted as one of the inmates of this lunatic asylum, get lost among the endless robots that tended to the city and its inhabitants. The thought was daunting, disturbing.

Yet even perfect mimicry would not protect him. He had learned that much, almost at the cost of his existence. Those Settlers last night had clearly meant to kill him. If he had acted like a normal robot, he had no doubt that theywould have killed him. They had expected him to stand placidly by and permit his own destruction. They had even thought it possible that he would willingly destroy himself on the strength of hearing that weak and tortuous argument about how his existence harmed humans. Why had they thought that strained line of reasoning would impel him to commit suicide?

Caliban stepped out from the shadowy doorway and started walking again. There was so much he had to learn if he was to survive. Imitation would not be enough. Not when acting like a standard robot could get him killed. He had to know why they acted as they did.

Why was he here? Why had he been created? Why was he different from other robots?How was he different from them? Why was the nature of his difference kept hidden from him?

How had he gotten into this situation? Once again, he tried to think back to the beginning, to search through the whole recollection of his existence for some clue, some answer.

He had no memory of anything whatsoever before the moment he came on, powered up for the first time, standing over that woman’s unconscious body with his arm raised from his side. Nothing, nothing else before that. How had he come to be in that place, in that situation? Had he somehow gotten to his feet, raised his arm, before he awoke? Or had he beenplaced in that position for some reason?

Wait a moment. Go back and think that through. He could see no compelling reason to assume that his ability to act could not predate his ability to remember. Suppose he had actedbefore his memory commenced? Or suppose his memory prior to the moment he thought of as his own awakening had been cleared somehow? Alternately, what if, for some reason, he had been capable of action before his memory started, and his memory had simply not commencedrecording until that moment?

If any of those cases were possible, if the start of his memory was not a reliable marker for the start of his existence, then there were no limits to the actions he might have taken before his memory began. He could have been awake, aware, active, for five seconds before that moment-or five years. Probably not that long, however. His body showed no signs of wear, no indication that any parts had ever been replaced or repaired. His on-line maintenance log was quite blank-though it, too, could have been erased. Still, it seemed reasonable to assume that his body was quite new.

But that was a side issue. How had that woman come to be on the floor in a pool of blood? It was at least a reasonable guess that she had been attacked in some way. Had she been dead or alive? He reviewed his visual memories of the moment. The woman had been breathing, but she could easily have expired after he left. Had the woman died, or had she survived?

The thought brought him up short. Why had he not even asked himself such questions before?

Then, like twin blazes of fire, two more questions slashed through his mind:

Hadhe been the one who attacked her? And, regardless of whether or not he had-was hesuspected of the attack?

Caliban stopped walking and looked down at his hands.

He was astonished to realize that his fists were clenched. He opened out his fingers and tried to walk as if he knew where he was going.

THEnight before, Alvar Kresh had taken a needle-shower in hopes of helping him to sleep. Tonight he took one in hopes of waking up. He was tempted to watch the recording of Leving’s lecture while sitting up in bed, but he knew just how tired he was, and just how easy it would be for him to doze off if he did that. No, far better to get dressed again in fresh clothes and watch on the televisor screen in the upper parlor.

Kresh settled down in front of the televisor, ordered one of the household robots to adjust the temperature a bit too low for comfort, and told another to bring a pot of hot, strong tea. Sitting in a cold room, with a good strong dosage of caffeine, he ought to be able to stay awake

“All right, Donald,” he said, “start the recording.”

The televisor came to life, the big screen taking up an entire wall of the room. The recording began with a shot of the Central Auditorium downtown. Kresh had seen many plays broadcast from there, and most times the proceeds were rather sedate, if not sedated, and it looked as if the occasion of Leving, s first lecture had been no exception. The auditorium had been designed to hold about a thousand people and their attendant robots, the robots sitting behind their owners on low jumper seats. It looked to be about half -empty.

“…and so, without further ado,” the theater manager was saying, “allow me to introduce one of our leading scientists. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Dr. Fredda Leving.” He turned toward her, smiling, leading the applause.

The figure of Fredda Leving stood up and walked toward the lectern, greeted by a rather tentative round of applause. The camera zoomed in closer, and Kresh was startled to be reminded what Leving had looked like before the attack. In the hospital, she had been wan, pale, delicate-looking, her shaved head making her look too thin. The Fredda Leving in this recording looked as if she had a slight touch of stage fright, but she was fit, vigorous-looking, with her dark hair framing her face. All in all, an unfashionably striking young woman.

She reached the lectern and looked out over the audience, her face clearly betraying her nervousness.

She cleared her throat and began. “Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.” She fumbled with her notes for a moment, clearly still somewhat nervous, and then began. “I would like to start my talk this evening with a question,” she said. “One that might seem flippant, one wherein the answer might be utterly obvious to you all. And yet, I would submit, it is one that has gone thousands of years without a proper answer. I do not suggest that I can supply that missing answer myself, now, tonight, but I do think that it is long past time for us to at least pose the question.

“And that question is: What are robots for?”

The view cut away to reaction shots of the people in the auditorium. There was a stirring and a muttering in the audience, a strangled laugh or two. People shifted in their seats and looked at each other with confused expressions.

“As I said, it is a question that few of us would ever stop to ask. At first glance, it is like asking what use the sky is, or what the planet we stand upon is for, or what good it does to breathe air. As with these other things, robots seem to us so much a part of the natural order of things that we cannot truly picture a world that does not contain them. As with these natural things, we-quite incorrectly-tend to assume that the universe simply placed them here for our convenience. But it was not nature who placed robots among us. We did that to ourselves.”

Notforourselves, Kresh noticed.To ourselves. What the devil had Leving been saying the night of the lecture? He found himself wishing that he had been there.