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Alvar Kresh followed the robot inside, moving almost more mechanically than
Donald. He was tired. He reached his room and breathed a long, hard sigh of
relief. It was over. The reception was ended, the guests had gone home, and
the host was alive--if, perhaps, none too well pleased with Kresh. Well, if
Grieg was annoyed and alive, that was better than having him satisfied and
dead. Tidying up after a slightly undiplomatic performance at a party was a
devil of a lot easier than dealing with the aftermath of a political
assassination.
Am I being paranoid? Kresh asked himself. Are the dangers as great as I
think?
The answer to that was that the dangers might be real, and that was all that
mattered to a policeman.
Governor Grieg was leading a revolution from above, and a lot of people didn t
like it. Revolutions made for complicated politics, caused fortunes to be made
and lost, changed friends to enemies, enemies to friends. Shared assumptions
turned into points of controversy during the night. The invaluable turned
worthless, and what had been common became rare--and priceless. New ways of
making a living, new ways of committing a crime, suddenly sprang up--
and often it was hard to tell one from the other.
But none of that concerned Kresh. Not directly. Not tonight. What did
bother him was another fact about revolutions: it was exceedingly rare for the
people who began them to survive to their conclusions. Even a successful
revolution often killed off its leadership.
Kresh did not even agree with most of what the Governor was trying to do. But
it wasn t his job to agree. His job was to maintain stability and public
safety. Protecting the person of the Governor was part of that job.
But in the capital city of Hades, Kresh had the power and capabilities, the
resources, to protect the Governor effectively. Not here on the island of
Purgatory. Here no one knew who was in control, who was in charge of what
patch of turf at the moment.
Alvar removed his gun belt, hung it over the back of a chair, and sat down on
the edge of the bed. He pulled off his boots, loosened the rather severe
collar of his dress tunic, and flopped back on the bed, exhausted, glad to be
alone.
Alone. Back before the Caliban crisis, it was unlikely that Kresh had ever in
his life spent more than an hour at a time after him, fussing over him,
attending to his every need and wish, including some wishes he had never
needed to ask for--or, in fact, truly desired.
But solitude. That was something a robot could never give you, except by
giving you nothing. Alone, without the slightest thought of how anyone--or
anything--might react to your behavior. No need whatsoever to look over your
shoulder, no sense at all of a robot worrying endlessly over your safety, no
concern that some look or gesture or muttered word might be interpreted as an
implied order. No moment when it was easier to cooperate with the wishes of a
bothersome servant, rather than argue or negotiate past whatever imagined fear
or perceived order the robot was determined to deal with. Grieg had had a
point, talking to Donald about the tyranny of the servant.
Back in the old days, Kresh never could have allowed himself the luxury of
collapsing in a heap at the end of a long day. The luxury of being alone,
without the need to worry what anyone--flesh and blood, or metal and plastic--
might think. Even in front of Donald, there had been a certain sense of
reserve, of caution.
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Alvar Kresh was proud of being Sheriff, and he took the office and his duties
very seriously. He had definite opinions about the way a Sheriff should
behave, and he was determined to live up to that standard. Part of it was an
act, and he knew that. Theatrics were part of being a leader, even in front of
the robots.
In the days when Donald had dressed him and undressed him, Kresh had not given
the matter a conscious thought. Now he often thought about it. What was it
Grieg had said? Something about modifying his own behavior to keep his robots
happy. When the robots managed your every action, when they chose your clothes
and your meals and your schedule for the day, and you developed the habit of
accepting their choices, who was the master and who the servant?
Before Caliban s advent had turned so much upside-down, Alvar always knew that
if he had collapsed back into bed with his clothes still on and his teeth
unbrushed and so on, Donald would have seen it and started to fuss. He would
have cajoled him one way or the other to get up and take care of himself, get
to bed properly rather than risk dozing off in his clothes without bathing
first. And so Alvar had never done it, conceding the battle before it had even
been fought.
So there was a certain pleasure, yes, a certain luxury, in being alone, in
permitting himself a moment or two of relaxation without a robot fussing
about, worrying that it might be harmful to his health if he accidentally
dozed off in his clothes.
Luxury. What a strange idea that not having robots around could be considered
a luxury.
Did Simcor Beddle fear that all the people who had been deprived of their
robots would discover the absence of robots to be pleasant? Even if you
granted the implausible assumption that Beddle was sincerely concerned with
anything beside power, that was a silly idea. No one had been deprived of all
their robots. Certainly twenty per household was far more than enough. Kresh
only had five back home, aside from Donald. Maybe Beddle feared that people
would make the simple discovery that it didn t take fifty robots to care for
one person, that most robots spent their time doing little more than getting
in each other s way, making work for themselves.
No rational person could believe that it could possibly take as many as twenty
robots to run one household--and yet the entire populace was up in arms over
the hardship caused by having only one chauffeur per car, or only as many
cooks as there were meals in the day.
Still, the uproar was not as loud as it should have been, and it had died down
sooner than Kresh had expected. Could it be that he was not the only one to
find luxury in a moment of private, robotless relaxation?
Of course, he really ought to get up now, get to the refresher, and get
properly ready for bed. But perhaps it wouldn t do any harm to rest his eyes,
just for a moment...
Alvar Kresh dozed off, fully clothed, with the lights still on, slumped over
in an awkward position half on and half off the bed.
The annunciator chimed, and Alvar s eyes snapped open. He sat up, winced at
the stiffness in his back, and lay back with a slight groan. There was a bad
taste in his mouth, and his feet were cold. How long had he been out? He felt
disoriented, confused. Maybe there was something to be said for the smothering
attentions of a robot nursemaid.
 Yes, what is it? Kresh asked of the open air.
Donald s voice came through the door speaker.  Beg pardon, sir, but there is a
matter requiring your attention. 
 And what might that be, Donald? Kresh asked.
 A murder, sir.
 What? Kresh sat back up on the bed, all thought of his aching back and cold
feet suddenly gone.  Come in, Donald, come in.
The door opened and Donald stepped inside.  I assumed that you would want to
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