Free O Master Caliban by Phyllis Gotlieb Page A

do?”
    “Sometimes track surveying, mostly burning down overgrowth around the depots.”
    “They have flamethrowers?”
    “Yes.”
    Rustling in the foliage made them jump.
    Topaze lumbered out of the brush on all fours; they swallowed in relief.
    “Halloo!” Esther grabbed a handful of luk seeds, sprang to his shoulders, popped the food into his mouth with one hand and affectionately slapped his rump with the other. He reached a finger to scratch under her chin and clasped her two feet over his breast gently with one hand.
    The green road stretched into the haze, wind gusted in the treetops driving wet leaves, nests, blossoms downward. Yigal’s hooves clacked on the pavement, Esther trundled on Topaze’s shoulders, her busy hands grooming his great crested skull, her eyes raised to the arch of the trees and the invisible track of the erg beyond.

DAHLGREN, LIVING NIGHTMARES, sleeping without them for years, discovered he was not immune. In his dreams he clawed flesh from his arm and discovered beneath it the steel rods and flexes of the erg. He stared at other-Dahlgren through the warp-lensed blocks of the chess pieces.
    Cogito ergo sum, he whispered, cogito erg sum, incognito erg sum.
    He snarled. Light reddened his eyelids. He opened them.
    The light was on. Erg-Dahlgren was sitting on the edge of his bed, looking down at him.
    “Your sleep pattern is unusual.”
    “Get off the bed.”
    The erg moved off Dahlgren’s bed and sat on his own. “Your heart is not malfunctioning this time. Why are you disturbed now?”
    “I have told you I am angry.”
    “Is there a connection between your anger and the fibrillation of your heart?”
    “I don’t know. I have endured enough in these years to break a thousand hearts—oh, that is stupid talk. That’s not why I am angry. When I thought my son might not have survived and that I would not, I cared about nothing. Now you have told me that my son is alive and you are going to kill him as well as me. That makes me very angry, and you must know that among the more complex animals emotions may lead to stress that causes or exacerbates malfunction.”
    “Can stress cause death in itself?”
    “Sometimes.”
    Erg-Dahlgren thought of, or computed on, this concept.
    Dahlgren watched the face compose into lines of concentration, and realized that his shadow was becoming more of a twin every hour.
    “Do you have any idea of anger?” he asked.
    “I have the idea, but, as you would say, not the feeling.”
    “Do you never try to do things and fail at them?”
    “Yes ... at times.”
    “Then how do you f—how do you behave?”
    Erg-Dahlgren sat still for a moment, raised his hands slowly and returned them to his knees. “I become ... disoriented and ... uncoordinated ...”
    “That is much like frustration, and frustration is only one step away from anger.”
    “Dahlgren ...” (furious ratiocination behind that grave face?) “will I become a feeling creature if I behave like one?”
    “Friend, I know absolutely nothing of automata theory. You had better ask erg-Mother.”
    “Erg-Mother? What is that?”
    “The machine which supervises our chess game.”
    “Mother.” Erg-Dahlgren smiled, having discovered incongruity. “That is Mod Seven Seven Seven, my mentor. I was created by the servos.”
    “And who created Mentor?”
    “Servos. You mean the model. The first small model, and its predecessors, the ones who took control of this station, were made by your computer and design technicians, with the help of your ergs, Dahlgren. You knew nothing of that. They were doing research of their own.”
    “No ... I knew nothing of that. Those men were destroyed, I suppose.”
    “Of course.”
    “Yes. Will you give me something to make me sleep? If I am to keep playing chess with you I don’t want any more nightmares.”

    * * *

    While erg-Dahlgren monitored Dahlgren’s even breathing, erg-Queen communicated. WHAT IS THIS NONSENSE YOU HAVE BEEN DISCUSSING WITH