Asimov’s Future History Volume 12

by Isaac Asimov

  The lights switched themselves on as they sensed someone in the room. And the room was empty. No one was at the desk. There were no papers spread out to be worked on.

  Kresh rushed back into the hall, heading for the Governor’s bedroom, dodging past two more dead security robots on the way. The bedroom door was wide open. He went inside. And stopped.

  The Governor was there.

  Sitting up in bed.

  With a blaster hole the size of a man’s fist in his chest.

  Chapter 5

  DONALD 111 ARRIVED in the Governor’s bedroom a few seconds after Alvar Kresh, and saw his master standing over the grisly tableaux. But Donald was barely aware of his master. His attention was riveted on Governor Chanto Grieg. The dead man.

  It was far from the first corpse Donald had seen, and was the second one he had seen in as many hours–and yet the sight of the Governor’s dead body had a more profound effect on him than any of the others. Donald had known this man. Worse, not more that eight hours ago, Donald had told the Governor that he would be safe, that the precautions Alvar Kresh had suggested would be enough to protect him. He, Donald, had threatened to prevent this man from attending the party, but had allowed it in the end because fifty SPR security robots would be enough.

  And now the man was dead. Dead. Dead. Donald’s vision began to dim. The world was growing darker.

  “Donald! Stop it!” Alvar Kresh’s voice seemed to come from a long way away, far off and unimportant. “Come out of it. I order you to stop it! You had no part in Grieg’s death. You could have done nothing to stop it. You did nothing to cause it.”

  Perhaps no other voice could have brought Donald back, but Kresh’s voice, his master’s voice, strong, brimming with authority, did so. His vision cleared and he came to himself with a start. “Tha–tha–thank you, sir,” he said.

  “This damn planet sets First Law potential too damn high,” Kresh growled. “Donald, listen to me. There were fifty security robots on duty in this house, and Grieg died anyway. One more robot could not have done any good.”

  Donald took hold of that thought, focused on it. Yes, yes, it was true. What could he have done that they could not?

  But why hadn’t the security robots prevented this disaster? Donald turned away, not wishing to look on the horrifying sight of the dead Governor anymore. And, in turning around, he got his answer. There, lined up against the wall, still in their wall niches, were three of the SPRs, the Security, Patrol, and Rescue Sapper security robots–each with a blaster shot through the chest. That is what would have happened to me, Donald thought. Had I remained, I would have been nothing more than another robot uselessly destroyed. He found a strange sort of comfort in the idea.

  “Sir,” he said, “if I could call your attention to this side of the room.”

  “Hmm?” Kresh turned around and saw the three destroyed robots. “Burning hells. Donald. How fast would someone have to be to get into this room, blast three specialized security robots before any of them could react, and then kill a man who would appear to have been sitting up in bed? Kill him before he could even set his book down?”

  “It would be impossible,” Donald said, feeling quite sure of himself. He sensed, somehow, that he and Sheriff Kresh were, in a strange way, each doing the same thing–struggling to be professional, looking for the parts of this disaster they could deal with, putting up a wall against the parts that were unbearable. “Sir, your point is well taken. Things cannot be as they seem. But there are more urgent points to consider at the moment. This is not mere murder–this is assassination.”

  “You’re right, Donald. By all the devils in hell, you’re right. This could just be the start of who knows what. “Alvar Kresh stood there, staring at nothing, clearly still more than a little bit in shock. “Escape,” he said at last. “We have to cut off their escape. Relay emergency orders, Donald. All–and I mean all–transport between the island of Purgatory and the mainland is to be shut down, effective immediately. All outbound sea and aircraft currently in transit are to return with all passengers on-board. No exceptions. All spacecraft grounded. No one leaves the island. Everyone who has left the island since the Governor was last seen alive returns and stays here until they can be questioned.”

  “Sir, I must remind you that much of the transport on this island is under Settler control, and thus not within your jurisdiction.”

  “The hell with that,” Kresh said. “Issue the orders. The Settlers had damned well not protest, unless they want this to get completely out of control.”

  “Yes, sir,” Donald said. The Sheriff had given him standing orders long ago, instructing Donald to advise him whenever Kresh issued orders that exceeded his authority. Donald of course followed the order, but there were occasions when he didn’t understand why Kresh bothered to have himself told such things–Kresh almost never reversed or revised an extralegal command. But orders were orders, and so Donald always reminded him, and the Sheriff always overruled him.

  Donald activated his hyperwave system and began contacting the various traffic control centers on the emergency override bands, relaying the Sheriff s instructions. He could not help but notice that Kresh had not ordered him to offer any explanation for his actions. Had that been deliberate? After a moment’s hesitation, he decided not to bring the omission to Kresh’s attention. There might well be good reasons for keeping silent on the catastrophic news. All sorts of chaos might spring up if news of the assassination spread too fast.

  Of course, all sorts of chaos were going to spring up in any event, but there was nothing Donald could do about that.

  Think, man, think. Alvar Kresh did not know what to do. The clear, logical choice was to call someone, tell everyone. The world had to know. There was no hope of keeping this quiet more than an hour or two. But someone had done this. Someone capable of an elaborate plot, capable of getting through the tightest security and acting with terrible ruthlessness.

  Someone with a reason. Someone with a motive. Someone who might well not be finished yet. He had to assume that this was not an attack on the man, Chanto Grieg, but an attack on the Governor, the leader of the planet. He had to assume this was a coup.

  But if that was so, who could he call? Not the Rangers. Not when he was unsure why the devil Justen Devray had been acting so strangely, not when the Rangers had been so determined, for no clear reason, to insert themselves into the security arrangements. Certainly he could not call the SSS. Even if he trusted them, it would be politically impossible to bring them in as the lead agency to investigate the Governor’s murder.

  With a shock, he realized that he already suspected both of the other law enforcement agencies of complicity in this crime.

  But he trusted his own people. He had just been down here as window dressing, part of the Governor’s entourage, but it was just about time for that to change. Yes. That was it. Of course. Totally illegal, no doubt, and a flagrant violation of jurisdiction. But the hell with that. “Donald, contact our headquarters in Hades. I want a full operations team down here, on the spot, in control of this crime scene. I want the first team here in three hours, and a full deployment of a Major Crime Team in eight.”

  “Sir, the first team may not be able to arrive here that quickly. The normal flying time from Hades is just over two and one-half hours.”

  “I do not regard this as a normal circumstance,” Kresh said. “Get them here, authorize use of emergency speed overrides–and don’t bother telling me what laws and agreements I’m violating. By the time the Rangers and the SSS get to this crime scene, the Sheriff of Hades is going to own it–is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir. Might I ask how we are going to prevent them from corning here on their own?”

  “We aren’t going to tell them what’s happened, that’s how. Not until my people and my robots are here, and we’ve started an investigation I can trust. We can use the room where we met with Tonya Welton for our command post.” Alvar Kresh considered the risks he was ru
nning. The decisions he had made already, in the last ninety seconds, might well be enough to force his resignation before very long. Maybe enough to get him arrested and thrown in jail.

  But that didn’t matter. If he could sit on this thing long enough, even just two or three hours, that would be enough to protect the investigation, get his deputies well enough entrenched and in charge so that the SSS or the Rangers would not be able to kick them out.

  They solved the most minor part of the mystery first, a question so minor that it could barely be dignified by the name mystery. Still, it was nice to know how Grieg had managed to answer the phone after he was dead, and the details of the answer might lead them somewhere. Kresh found a miniature Settler-made image box, a rather sophisticated one, hooked into the comm system. It was sitting on a side table in the bedroom, plugged into the room’s comm jack. The fact that it was Settler-made meant nothing, of course. Image processors and sim units were in common use for many legitimate purposes. If anything, the use of a Settler unit suggested a Spacer involvement in the case, an attempt to throw off the scent. Actually, it was more likely the plotters had chosen that model because it was a cube about ten centimeters square, small enough to be easily smuggled into the Residence.

  Kresh was tempted to examine the box himself, but he knew that was a job for the lab techs. They might well be able to tell something from the way it was programmed–and they would be better able than he to overcome any booby-trapping in the software. He left it alone. It occurred to him that it might even prove useful to leave it in place. If anyone called, and it managed to fool them, that could be all to the good, if it kept the Rangers and SSS out of here a bit longer.

  Was he right to suspect them? What was it that he suspected them of? Conspiracy to kill the Governor? It seemed outlandish, but the night had already been full of suspicious incidents. It had to be that the staged attack on Welton had something to do with it, that Huthwitz had been killed as part of the same plot, but Kresh could see no way to thread them all together.

  And if not the SSS or Rangers, then who had done it? Kresh could come up with any number of suspects, starting with the Ironheads, or some lunatic faction of Ironheads, down to practically any fed-up robot owner.

  Who knew who else’s toes the Governor might have stepped on? Even if you kept to Grieg’s known enemies, you still ended up with half the planet as suspects.

  Time. It was turning into a question of time. What could he do in the time left to them before the deputies arrived, or before the Rangers or the SSS or the Governor’s first morning appointment arrived? The victim. Take a good hard took at the victim. Kresh went over to the bed and knelt down next to the Governor’s corpse, careful not to touch it or disturb anything. No sense making the Crime Scene robots work harder.

  Grieg had been sitting up reading in bed, by the looks of it, and reading an old-fashioned print book at that. It had fallen forward into his lap, still open to the page he had been reading. The tops of the pages had been singed by the blaster shot.

  Grieg was still sitting up, his head slumped forward, eyes shut, his hands fallen into his lap with the book on top of them. There was no sign that he had reacted at all, or struggled to get out of the way. He hadn’t tried to duck away from the blast or jump out of bed. Either he had been taken utterly by surprise, or he had known his attacker, perhaps even been expecting him–or her. There was a thought, and one of some delicacy, to put it mildly. Had the Governor arranged some sort of after-hours assignation? Could he have been killed by an assassin posing as a lover–or could he have been killed by, say, lover A in a jealous rage over lover B? Kresh realized he knew less about the Governor’s sex life than he should have. That to one side, it would be wise to bear in mind there were other motives for murder besides political ones.

  But there was another question–the security robots. Why had they failed? How did the assassin overcome them? For that matter, how the devil had the assassin gotten into the bedroom? Kresh stepped out into the dimly lit hallway and looked down it both ways. Where had the rest of the robots gone?

  Kresh walked back the way he had come, and soon had his answer. There was a slumped-over shape he had not paid much mind when he had first rushed down the hallway. It was another SPR security robot, this one blasted out as well. Except this one had not been killed with a single neat shot through the chest. It had been scorched on the left arm, had its head half-melted off, and then taken a final bum hole through the chest. Three shots at least, from increasingly close range. It looked as if this robot had been on the move, trying to react, and had nearly reached its attacker before it finally went down. Kresh felt more certain than ever that there was something suspicious about the ease with which the robots in the bedroom had died. He went farther down the hall and saw two more SPR robots, both shot through the head and the chest. The one in front of the entrance to Grieg’s office had been shot the same way.

  He stepped back into the bedroom where Donald was waiting for him. “Donald,” he said, “who manufactured these security robots?”

  “The models used here are manufactured by Rholand Scientific, “Donald said–

  “Good, “Kresh said. “Then Fredda Leving can examine them without a biased opinion. Hand me the voicephone and connect me.”

  “Sir, in terms of security, may I remind you that Fredda Leving was present last night and may well have had the opportunity to tamper with the robots–”

  “In terms of security we will be utterly paralyzed if we are too careful. Fredda Leving was not part of this, I can tell you that straight out.”

  “I agree that the balance of probabilities weighs heavily against suspecting her,” Donald said. “However, these robots have clearly been tampered with, and she was perhaps the only person who was present who had the expertise for that job. My First Law potential does extend to preventing you doing professional harm to yourself, and to the potential harm to others if an investigation this serious and dangerous were suborned. I must therefore point out there is no logical basis upon which she can be excluded absolutely.”

  Kresh took a deep breath and forced himself not to explode. Handling robots could be a damned nuisance, but it was only made doubly hard by losing one’s patience. Of course the same thing was true of people: You were forced to deal with unreasonable demands by being excessively reasonable. “Donald,” he said in a calm, slow voice. “I agree with you that there is no logical basis for excluding Fredda Leving as a suspect. However, I can assure you that there are reasons, outside of logic, that make me utterly certain she had nothing to do with this.”

  “Sir, you have said yourself, many times, that any human being is capable of murder.”

  “But I have also said that no one human is capable of every murder. Fredda Leving might kill to defend herself, or in a fit of passion, but she is incapable of involving herself in this level of brutality. Nor is she much good as a conspirator, and this was clearly a conspiracy. Fredda Leving was not capable of this killing, and she would have no motive for it. Indeed, I cannot think of anyone with a better motive for keeping the Governor alive. Listen in and monitor her voice-stress if you like, but give me the phone and make the connection. That is a direct and absolute order.”

  Donald hesitated a full half second before responding. Kresh thought he could almost see the First and Second Law potentials battling it out with each other. “Yes, sir,” he said at last, and handed over the phone.

  It was a sign of just how rattled Donald was that he would kick up such a fuss over such a minor point. The sight of the Governor’s corpse had upset man and robot. Both of them knew that was not merely a dead man–it was, in all probability, a whole planet suddenly thrown into peril.

  With a beep and a click-tone the phone line connected. “Um–um–hello?”

  Kresh recognized Fredda’s voice, sleepy and a bit muddled. “Dr. Leving, this is Sheriff Kresh. I’m afraid I must ask you to return to the Residence immediately, and to bring whatever technical e
quipment you have with you. I need you to examine some, ah–damaged robots.” It was a clumsy way to put it, but Kresh couldn’t think of anything else he could say on an unsecured line.

  “What?” Fredda asked. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

  “Damaged robots,” Kresh repeated. “I need you to perform a fast discreet examination. It is a matter of some urgency.”

  “Well’ all right, I suppose, if you say it’s urgent. It will take me a while to get to the Limbo Depot robotics lab and collect some examination gear. I didn’t bring anything with me. I’ll get there as fast as I can.”

  “Thank you, Doctor. “Kresh handed the handset back to Donald. “Well?” he asked.

  “Sir, I withdraw my objections. You were indeed correct. My voice-stress monitoring indicated no undue reaction to a call from you from the Residence at this hour. Either she has no idea whatsoever of what has happened, or she is a superb actress–an accomplishment of which I am unaware in Dr. Leving.”

  “Once in a while, Donald,” Kresh said, “you might try taking my word on questions of human behavior.”

  “Sir, with all due respect, I have found no topic of importance wherein questions so utterly outnumber the answers.” Kresh gave the robot a good hard look. Had Donald just made a joke?

  Prospero, Fredda told herself as she hurried to get ready. It had to be something to do with Prospero. Why else would Kresh be there at this hour, and calling her in? Something must have gone wrong with Prospero. Fredda Leving had hand-built the New Law robot, and programmed his gravitonic brain herself. She remembered how much of a pleasure it had been to work on the empty canvas of a gravitonic unit, with the chance to make bold strokes, work out whole new solutions, rather than being strait-jacketed by the limitations and conventions and excessive safety features of the positronic brain.