by Isaac Asimov
“Maybe,” Devray said. “Maybe. There’s a lot of guessing in there, but it might be right.”
“Sir,” Donald said, “if I may interject, there are other vital issues that must be considered before we establish any sort of motive for other hypothetical suspects.”
“What other issues?” Kresh asked.
“There is the question of the weapon.”
“Hell’s bells, the weapon. I am getting old.”
“What about the weapon?” Fredda asked.
“There are energy scanners at every entrance to this building,” said Kresh, “and perimeter scanners as well. No one should have been able to get an energy weapon into this building without half a dozen alarms going crazy. How did the weapon get in here? How did it get out?”
“Or did it get out?” Devray asked. “Why risk taking it both ways through the scanners? You might set off an alarm on the way out. If I were doing this job, I wouldn’t take chances on smuggling the gun in. The building was unoccupied for damn-all long enough to plant a hundred blasters. r d hide a nice standard blaster with a shielded power pack, do the job, and then abandon the blaster on the premises.”
“Hmmph. It’s a possibility,” Kresh said.
“I beg your pardon, Commander Devray, but there is one point that argues against such a possibility,” Donald said. “The energy-discharge curve.”
“What’s that?” Fredda asked.
“By examining the Governor’s wounds and the blaster damage to the robots, and by establishing range, it was possible to note the relative power of each shot, and thus the weapon’s charge level for each shot. For any given blaster, each shot is less and less intense as the blaster’s charge is expended. For the weapon in question, the intensity of the blaster shots declined precipitously with each firing, clearly indicating an unusually small power cell. The discharge pattern was quite unlike any of the common makes and models of blaster.”
“And an undersized power cell suggests a weapon intended for concealment, “Kresh said. “A custom job. And custom-made weapons can be traced. You’re right, Donald, that needs looking into.”
“Yes, sir. I think we must also ask ourselves about the assault on Tonya Welton, and the subsequent arrival of the false SSS agents. Was it indeed some sort of diversion linked to the attack? And if so, who was it supposed to divert, and what was it supposed to divert that person from?”
“Especially as we established almost immediately that it was bogus,” Kresh said. “Why stage a diversion that would make us more suspicious?”
“Maybe because at that point it didn’t matter anymore,” Devray said. “Maybe the thing it was supposed to divert attention from wasn’t the Governor’s death at all. And maybe it wasn’t you it was meant to distract.”
“Huthwitz,” Kresh said. “The murder of Emoch Huthwitz. You’re suggesting that it was sheer chance that it happened the same night as Grieg’s murder.”
“It’s possible. Maybe the Welton attack was meant to divert the Rangers away from the attack on one of their own.”
“That won’t work,” Fredda objected. “From what you’ve told me, this Huthwitz was found hours after he was killed. No one noticed he was missing. And it doesn’t sound like much of anyone in the Rangers responded to the attack on Welton.”
“All good points,” Kresh agreed. “But Huthwitz’s death doesn’t make sense as a coincidence, either.”
“Coincidences never make sense,” Fredda said. “They happen by chance, not logic.”
“But there’s a point beyond which chance is an awfully weak explanation. In fact, it’s always a weak explanation.”
“Well, suppose Huthwitz was the diversion?” asked Fredda. “While you were out looking at his body, the Governor was being killed.”
“That doesn’t work, either,” Kresh said. “Huthwitz was killed hours before the Governor. Our best estimate was he was killed before the attack on Tonya Welton. As for the discovery of his body as a diversion, he could have been discovered hours later or hours before he was. And the Governor had been dead for about an hour before we found Huthwitz. And besides, we just got through agreeing that the plotters intended Grieg to be discovered some time in the morning, hours from now.”
“But it was Huthwitz’s death that led you to check on the Governor,” Leving said.
“But no one could have predicted it would cause me to check, and my discovery of the body didn’t do anyone any good,” Kresh said. “Beyond all that, if Huthwitz was killed as a diversion, it didn’t much matter who they killed. But Commander Devray has as much as told me he thinks someone might have had very good reasons to kill Huthwitz, and Huthwitz alone.”
“So what are you saying?” Fredda asked.
“I’m saying that the two murders are related–but I haven’t the faintest idea how. Right now Donald is the only one with a theory of the crime.”
“Sir, I would submit that I have much more than a theory. I have means, motive, and opportunity. I have two suspects.”
“Donald, you want them to be guilty,” Fredda said. “If they killed Grieg, it would confirm all your strongest fears about New Law robots. But I’m no investigator, and I can see all the holes in the case against them. I agree with Sheriff Kresh that it seems extremely unlikely that Grieg’s murder was unrelated to everything else that happened last night. How could Caliban and Prospero have killed Huthwitz–and why would they do it? How and why did they arrange the attack on Tonya and the phony SSS agents that took away her assailants?”
“I cannot, as yet, answer those questions, Dr. Leving. And despite your objections, they are the only suspects we have.”
“I agree,” Kresh said. “We need to bring them in. But we also need to work on finding ourselves some other suspects as well. We’re going to have to go over the access recorder records. And we need to get hold of all the video imagery shot by all the news outlets. We need to go over it frame by frame, and if we can spot anything or anyone who shouldn’t be there.”
“I can attend to that, Sheriff,” Donald said.
“Good. “Kresh glanced up at the wall clock again. Time was moving. Moving too damned fast. “I need to draft some sort of statement,” he said. “We’ve waited long enough. We’re not going to get things under any more control than they are right now. I have to notify the government, and then the public.”
He stood up, rubbed his face with a tired hand, and ran his thick, stubby fingers through his white hair. “It’s time to tell the world that Chanto Grieg is dead.”
Chapter 9
OTTLEY BISSAL WALKED the streets of Limbo City, straining to be invisible, willing himself to vanish into the hustling, bustling, early-morning crowd, watching his back to be sure there was no one watching him. It was the last leg of the journey, and he was close, so very close. He had parked the aircar on one side of town, and walked from there straight through the busiest sections of the city.
Limbo was a classic boomtown, growing by leaps and bounds, stepping on its own feet as it struggled to keep up with its new role as the world headquarters of the reterraforming team. Technicians, designers, scientists, and construction workers were everywhere, with New Law robots hurrying everywhere on this urgent errand or that, and survey teams and speciality workers coming and going from every corner of the world.
Even on a normal day, there was not a room to be had in the city, and building new accommodations space was always a low priority to all the other vital projects. The onslaught of YIP visitors to the Residence had only made matters worse.
But Bissal had no need to worry. They had taken care of him, seen to it he had a place to stay until it was allover.
Certain that he was not being followed, Bissal shouldered his way through the worst of the crowds and made it to a less congested part of town, to an old warehouse.
As instructed, he tried his hand at the side door security panel. It read his palm and the door slid open.
He stepped inside, and the door slid closed. I
t was a rustbacking lab, with all the hardware of the trade. But one side of the place had been set up as a rather cozy little apartment, with a bed, a mini-kitchen, a refresher, and ample stocks of food and water. Now all he had to do was stay here, out of sight, until they called for him, until the heat was off, until someone came for him.
Bissal was exhausted–but he was also hungry, and he was probably too wound up to sleep, anyway. A quick snack would give him a chance to relax and unwind before he turned in. He hurried to the mini-kitchen and started rummaging around for something to eat.
It’s good to be safe, he thought as he opened up a fastmeal and sat down to eat. Very good.
“Your pardon, sir, but there is an urgent call for you.”
“Hmmm? What? Excuse me?” Shelabas Quellam, President of the Legislative Council, was not yet fully awake. He sat up in bed and blinked sleepily at his personal robot. “What is it, Keflin?”
“A call, sir, “the robot replied. “It seems to be most urgent, coming on a government channel.”
“Oh, dear. Well, then, I’d best take it at once.”
“Yes, sir.”
A second robot appeared, carrying a portable comm-link unit. The second robot held the unit with one hand as it activated it with the other. Quellam watched the screen as it cleared and saw that it was that Sheriff fellow. Klesh? Klersh? Something like that. In any event, he looked perfectly dreadful. And no wonder, at this time of night. But what in the world could it all be about?
“Good evening, Sheriff. Or rather, good morning. What can I do for you?”
“Sir, forgive me for calling at this hour,” Kresh said, “but I have some very bad news. The Governor has been murdered.”
The Governor has been murdered. It later seemed to Shelabas that the Sheriff must have said more after that–he even remembered acting on advice Kresh must have given him at that moment–but he could not recall hearing any of it at all.
He was too busy trying to contain his sense of glee while trying to pretend he was sorry Grieg was dead. Too bad the poor fellow was gone, but Shelabas Quellam suffered no illusions. He knew what people in general thought of him–and he knew very well what Grieg in particular had thought of him. Grieg might have named Quellam his Designate, but Grieg had never respected Quellam.
But now, at last, at long last, he, Shelabas Quellam, would be the Governor.
At last, long last, the world was going to find out that Shelabas Quellam was a man to be taken seriously.
Sheriff Alvar Kresh stood alone before the robot camera in the Residence’s broadcast studio.
Justen Devray stood by his side, but that did not matter. Alvar was alone, as alone as he had ever been. Even as he spoke, he knew the words he spoke would be the image that the world would remember. Twenty years from now, if anyone spoke of Alvar Kresh, it would be to talk of his standing before this camera, haggard and exhausted, speaking words he did not want to say, speaking to a world that would not want to hear.
Not that many would be awake to hear, not at this hour. Few would be tuned in to the news channels. Some nets might not even carry the announcement live. But everyone would see it, soon enough. People would call each other, retrieve the record, listen to the words, over and over again through the day, the week, the month.
Only a handful of people would hear him now. But all the people of this world–and people on other worlds, and people not yet born–would hear what he had to say, sooner or later.
Strange to think that when all he had for an audience now was Justen Devray and a robot camera operator.
“People of Inferno. Good morning to you. I am deeply grieved to make the following announcement,” Kresh said” At approximately 0200 hours last night, I, Sheriff Alvar Kresh, discovered the body of Governor Chanto Grieg at the Governor’s Winter Residence. He had been shot through the chest at close range by a blaster, by parties unknown and for reasons unknown. I immediately called in a team of Sheriff’s office investigators. I then obtained the assistance of Commander Devray of the Governor’s Rangers, and we secured the Winter Residence as a crime scene. I have notified Shelabas Quellam, the President of the Legislative Council.
“Legislator Quellam, Commander Devray, and I are all determined to use all the personnel and resources at our disposal, both to find the perpetrators of this crime and to insure the stability of our government during this time of crisis. I realize that I have left a great deal unsaid, but there is little more I can say that would be useful or reliable at this time. We will, of course, provide as much information as we possibly can, as soon as we possibly can, consistent with the requirements of a thorough investigation.”
Kresh paused for a moment, looked down at his notes, and then back at the camera. That was all he had written down, but it seemed as if there was something more he should say.
“This is–this is terrible news for all of us, and a shock as deep as any our people have ever known. Though I rarely agreed with Chanto Grieg, I always respected him. He was a man who could see ahead, to the dangers and the promises of the future. Let us not lose sight of his vision now, or let him die for things that were not to be. I ask all of you for strength and forbearance in the days ahead, and I thank you. Good morning–and good luck to us all.”
Gubber Anshaw, the noted robotic theorist, went through phases concerning his daily routine. There were times he worked late into the night, and other times he rose with the sun and got to bed not much past sunset. It was Gubber who had invented the gravitonic brain that made New Law robots possible, and he was kept constantly busy in the effort to study the New Law robots, learn what made them tick. He wanted to find ways to make them more efficient, more productive, and that meant observing his creations at work. That, in turn, often meant working at odd hours.
There were pleasures in seeing every hour of the day, to be sure. Few men saw as many sunrises, as many sunsets, as many of the midnight stars, as Gubber Anshaw. But the dawn gave him no pleasure that morning. Not with the terrible news.
He was in the solarium, his personal robot serving him breakfast, when he heard the first report. Almost before he knew it, he was rushing to the bedroom, bursting in on Tonya, still asleep.
Tonya. Tonya Welton. Even in that moment of horror and panic, there was still a tiny part of him that paused to marvel at the fact that the beautiful, hard-edged, tough-minded Settler leader loved him, lived with him, lived with a soft-spoken robot designer. There were not many Spacer-Settler couples in the universe, and there were good reasons for that. It was never easy living with Tonya. But it was always exciting, and always worth it.
“Tonya!” Gubber went to the bed and shook Tonya’s shoulder. “Tonya! Wake up!”
“Hmmn’? Hmm? What?” Tonya sat up in bed, yawning., ‘Gubber, what in the stars is it?”
“It’s Grieg! Governor Grieg! He’s been assassinated!”
“What?”
“Shot dead! Sheriff Kresh just announced it a few minutes ago. No real details yet–but Grieg’s dead!”
“Burning hell,” Tonya said, shock and astonishment in her voice. “Last night. I saw him, talked to him last night. And he’s dead?”
“Dead,” Gubber agreed.
“And they don’t know who did it?”
“I don’t think so. They said they were still investigating. But they aren’t going to say anything for a while, no matter what happens.”
Tonya reached for him, and they threw their arms around each other, held each other tight. “This is trouble, Gubber,” said Tonya, her voice a bit muffled with her face in Gubber’s chest. “Trouble for everyone.”
“Yes, yes.”
“But who did it?” Tonya asked, pulling back a little to look into Gubber’s face. “Some lunatic? Was it a plot? Why did they do it?”
Gubber shook his head and thought a minute. “I don’t know,” he said, forcing himself to settle down and think it through, forcing himself to be rational. “It doesn’t matter. The chaos will be the same. All sorts
of people will try and take advantage of Grieg’s death. If it wasn’t someone trying to take over who killed him, then someone else is going to try taking over now that he’s dead.”
Tonya Welton nodded, her expression dazed and confused. “I’m sure you’re right,” she said.
“Maybe we should try and get away,” Gubber said. “Get off-planet. There’s going to be trouble.”
“No,” Tonya snapped. Her face took on a hard, set expression. “We can’t. I can’t. I’m here to lead the Settlers on Inferno, not to run off and leave them when there’s trouble.” She stared deep into Gubber’s eyes, but then she seemed to be looking right through him, past him, at something else “Oh, no,” she said. “Oh, no.”
“What is it?” Gubber asked, grabbing her by the shoulders, trying to get her attention. “Tonya, what is it?”
“The dust-up last night,” Tonya said. “I told you about it when I got in. The two men who got in a fight with me, and were taken away by the phony SSS agents.”
“Yes, what about it?”
“Don’t you see?” she said. “Don’t you get it? Kresh will assume–will have to assume–that the attack on me was part of it, part of the plot. A diversion, or something. That it was staged for some reason to do with Grieg being killed.”
And then Gubber did understand, and he pulled Tonya close and held her tight. He knew instantly that it would be impossible to talk her into leaving, that the Rangers or the Sheriffs Department would stop her from leaving even if she tried. Because he did understand, and understood far more than what she had told him. Kresh would assume the attack on her was staged because of Grieg’s murder: He would also assume that Tonya was one of the people who helped to stage it.
