8
SERO PHROST LOOKED down into the grey darkness of the sea below as his aircar swooped back toward Purgatory. No explanation, no apology, just the flat order to turn back—an order his pilot robot was obeying, despite his best efforts to convince it otherwise. The turn-back order came from a traffic safety center, and the First Law saw to it that that was all a robot needed to know in order to force obedience.
But why the turn-around? An arrest order? What did they think they knew? And arrested for what? He would have to be careful, very careful. More than one person had been pulled in on a minor charge and made the mistake of assuming it was about some larger matter.
Or was it his own arrest that he was flying back toward? Phrost looked out the porthole and saw the running lights of several other aircars heading back to Purgatory. A dragnet? Perhaps, if he permitted himself to grasp at straws, it had nothing to do with him at all. It could be they were acting on a rustbacking tip-off, and pulling back all flights that had left at a certain time. No way to know. Perhaps it had nothing at all to do with him.
The guilty flee when no one pursues. Admit nothing, reveal nothing. There was still every chance for him to win out.
The dark sky rushed past him.
Alvar Kresh glanced at the wall clock in the operations room. Just before 0700 hours. A bare five hours since he had found the body, though it seemed that enough had happened since then to fill up a month’s worth of days. Tierlaw Verick was filed away for future reference, held under close guard in the same room in which he had been questioned, while the Crime Scene robots went over the room in which he had slept. Kresh doubted that Verick had anything to do with the assassination, but hunches were no way to run an investigation. Who knew what they might find, until they looked?
Someone had set up a conference table in the ops room, and Kresh, Fredda Leving, and Justen Devray sat at three of its sides, while Donald 111 stood at the fourth. All of them—even Donald, somehow—seemed exhausted, drawn out, the press of events leaving them all far behind the pace. And yet it seemed they were no further ahead than they had been when they had started.
The clock was moving, and moving fast. Kresh dared not delay much longer in contacting the key members of the government, or in announcing Grieg’s death to all Inferno.
But the moment he did that, Kresh knew, all hell would break loose. He could not foresee what form the chaos would take, but he knew, beyond doubt, that there would be chaos. He desperately needed to have much of this investigation under control before the news broke wide. And the damage could only be made worse if the first announcement came from someplace beside Alvar Kresh’s own mouth—a probability that was increasing with every second that passed.
A deputy might say something over an unscrambled channel that would be overheard, or call a friend or family member with the news, or give or sell the story of the century to a friend in the news business. Or the killers might decide it suited their purposes to make the announcement. Or someone who called Grieg might do what Kresh had done, and realize the Grieg on the other end was a simulation. The sim was still running on the phone system, half to help keep the lid on and half to leave it intact for the analysis teams.
They would have to make the announcement soon, very soon, if they were to keep any sort of control over events. But before Kresh told anyone anything, he needed a chance to think, to compare notes, to plan. A council of war—because it might quite literally be that Grieg’s death was the opening shot in an actual war. There was no way to know.
He was sure Justen Devray understood all that, and it at least seemed as if Fredda Leving did. Kresh found that he was impressed—very impressed—by the way she had handled herself in the midst of all this chaos. There was a lot to admire about the young, smart, and beautiful Fredda Leving. But Kresh did not feel he could rely too much on her instincts when it came to criminal investigation. She had shown in Verick’s interrogation that she thought in too straight a line for police work. Maybe the direct approach worked in science, where the facts did not mind being discovered. Police work, on the other hand, was a form of research where the facts were often determined to elude capture. Head straight for them and they’d be bound to escape.
“All right, Donald,” Alvar said. “Let’s get started. What do we have, and what do we need?”
“We have ascertained, through Tierlaw Verick’s statement, that Caliban and Prospero were almost certainly the last to see Governor Grieg alive,” Donald said. “I have placed an all-points bulletin for their capture, but it seems unlikely we will apprehend them quickly—especially if we do not have the full cooperation of the SSS. Neither the Rangers nor our own department have arrest powers here, or facilities for performing inquiries.
“Neither Prospero nor Caliban are presently available or traceable via hyperwave, and both have duties that require them to be out in the field a great deal. It is possible they are following their normal routines, but are simply out of touch. It is also possible that they have gone into hiding. We will do all we can to trace them, given the limitations of our circumstances.”
Interesting that Donald would start with the robots, Kresh thought. He was focused, perhaps overfocused, on them. It would be best to keep in mind that in this investigation at least, Donald was not likely to be even remotely as objective as he normally was. Clearly, he wanted Prospero and Caliban to be guilty. A biased robot. As if there weren’t enough problems on this case.
“How reliable is Tierlaw’s statement?” Kresh asked.
“As best I could ascertain, all of his bodily reactions were consistent with a man under great stress giving a truthful statement. I believe that he spoke the truth,” Donald said.
And that was the least-qualified pronouncement Donald had ever made concerning his lie-detector function. Enough so that Kresh felt unsure. Usually Donald made a speech three times longer than that about the uncertainty of such measurement. No doubt about it—he wanted the robots to be guilty.
“We should be able to check his story out against Grieg’s appointment diary,” Devray said. “That’s something. But at least we have a lead, and suspects.”
“Even leaving aside the First Law question, I can’t see what possible motive Caliban and Prospero could have for attacking Grieg, or why they would have been so clumsy about it,” Fredda protested. “Yes, Caliban has no First Law. In theory, there is nothing to prevent him attacking anyone he likes. But there’s nothing preventing me, or you, either. And yes, Prospero’s First Law does not enjoin him to prevent harm—but I can’t imagine Prospero splitting hair so fine as to interpret that as participating in a murder but not actually firing the weapon—which is what you’d have to have here.”
“But you do grant,” Devray said, “that there is nothing in Caliban’s absence of Laws that would prevent him from killing Grieg? And that there is nothing in the New Laws that would absolutely force Prospero to prevent the attack?”
“Yes, but—”
“So one of them could kill and the other could stand idly by,” Devray said, his tone a bit badgering.
“In theory, yes,” Fredda admitted, with massive reluctance. “But it makes no sense. Grieg was the best friend the New Law robots ever had. What would make them want to kill him?”
“Plenty,” Devray said. “I have an appointment—had an appointment—with the Governor for later this morning. We were going to talk about a proposal I had submitted last week.”
“What sort of proposal?” Kresh asked.
“One for the destruction of all New Law robots,” Devray said.
“What? Have you taken leave of your senses?” Fredda demanded.
“No, ma’am,” Devray replied, his voice bland and professional. “But I’m damned sick and tired of chasing rustbackers. The N. L. s are at the focus of a whole new series of crimes—rustback smuggling, restrictor removal, and the founding of illegal settlements.”