O Master Caliban Read Online Free PDF Page A

Perhaps if I live long enough I shall die humble. Ultimate punishment.
    His shoulders slumped. An erg paused and stroked him with sensors. He shuddered. Some change would occur.
    “How? How?” He did not know how long it was since he had spoken. He cleared his throat. His voice creaked. “How long have I been here?” Humble. He gagged and spat.
    SEVEN YEARS. The voice boomed around the walls.
    Seven Barrazan V. Nine Solthree. He grunted.
    YOU WILL COME.
    “Leave me.”
    Coils extended, wrapped and lifted him. He was rigid with fury. He could not move or even croak with the coil tight around his chest. The erg carried him to the infirmary entrance and stopped, too big to pass. There were half a dozen small servos clustered at the door to receive him. The files and equipment had been kept intact, or replaced.
    The erg set him upright, and the small steel creatures drew him in with a dozen clawed arms. The walls had cracked in a few places and grown several patches of pink and green mold. Otherwise there was no change. The vents had been cleared and the dehumidifier was working.
    Surrounded waist-high by palpating machines, Dahlgren stared at the opposite wall. His old GalFed uniform was hanging there fresh as on the day of arrival when he had put it in storage. It was too fine for the weather of his laboratory world, though it was a working uniform and not for show. It hung clean and crisp, a dark maroon coverall with three small gold emblems over the left breast: a star, a ringed planet, a circle divided by a cross, ancient symbol both of Earth and of Creation.
    One of the ergs plucked a file card from a rack, inserted and retrieved it from a desk computer. “Place him on the scale.”
    Claws placed him.
    “You weigh twenty-eight kilos less than when you arrived here. We will rectify that.”
    “You ...” Dahlgren searched for his voice and found it. “You intend, I suppose, to fatten me for the slaughter.”
    Ergs had neither humor nor irony. “That is correct.”

    * * *

    They gave him a room with a bed, a bath, a locked door, in an isolation ward for one of the many curious and grotesque diseases on the planet. “No one here is more curious and grotesque than I,” said Dahlgren. The camera eyes did not flicker and the ventilators did not answer. Food came through an opening in the wall. It looked and smelled delicious.
    He ignored it and lay on the bed, falling for hours or days—all illumination was artificial—into light sleep. He dreamed of the old days, but had no nightmares. They came with his waking hours.
    Ergs arrived, finally, and injected him with stimulants. Fresh food appeared. He ate; it was so rich and fine that he vomited that and the next meal and the one after that. The ergs injected him with anti-emetics and gave him food more bland and simple. He ate it and it stayed down.
    The ergs came to bathe him, heal his sores, give him therapy to cure his swollen arthritic joints, strap him into exercise machines. He began to put on weight.
    He thought of the uniform, which would fit him in a short while, and of the ancient Romans, who used to dress captives in fine clothes before degrading them. His mind remained cold and clear.
    One day or hour he moved, walked and spoke without pain or effort. He said, “This is interesting.”
    Almost at once the ergs came to trim his hair and beard, take away the faded blue hospital clothing, and fit him into his uniform. They put a mirror before him. He recognized himself.
    But that did not interest him, that he was as tall and strong as a man of sixty-three would be under the best of conditions. He did not have the strength to refuse the touch of a single one of those steel claws.
    There was no chance of help, refuge, or escape. He was curious to know what arena he would be made to fight in, how long he would be allowed to fight.
    And why.

    * * *

    They spoke to him, and made him walk and talk; noted his movements and recorded his gestures. It amused him, in