Inferno

It would follow that he knew nothing about Grieg’s death, having slept through the whole thing, and his behavior was consistent with that state of affairs. Either he did not know Grieg was dead, or he was doing a first-rate job of acting like he didn’t.

Kresh was not about to tell him. If a man who claimed to know nothing made a slip that demonstrated that he did know something, that could be most informative.

But the irritating-and baffling-thing about his story was that it seemed as if it might check out. Donald confirmed that there was a Settler businessman by the name of Verick on the guest list. That was a start, anyway. But how the devil had Kresh’s deputies missed him when they searched the house?

Kresh was too old a hand not to know there were lots of answers to that one. Human error could explain it in a dozen ways, any of which might be true-and none of which would sound the least bit convincing to outsiders.

There had not been many robots available when the first search had been performed, and those had been put to work either on specialized work or general heavy lifting. Human deputies had performed the search. The place had at least a hundred rooms, and Kresh could easily imagine a hurried deputy not being sure which room he had checked, or just opening a door to peek into the ninth or tenth obviously empty room in a row-and missing the motionless lump under the covers. Verick might have locked his door from the inside, and the deputy searching that section might have intended to come back later with the keys, and then forgot.

His deputies were only human, after all, and all of them were in one degree or another of shock. It was, after all, their Governor who had died this night. It was the head of their nation, their planet, who had fallen to enemies unseen.

But even so, it was the sort of foul-up that could easily dog this case for all time, if it were not put right immediately. Kresh could imagine the board of inquiry already. Kresh had set new teams of deputies to work to search the place allover again, just to see what else they might have missed-and, this time, with some sort of Crime Scene Observer robot accompanying each deputy. Later, if it came to that, Kresh was prepared to take the whole Residence apart, brick by brick. Nothing could be permitted to threaten the integrity of this investigation.

But Verick. If his i

In the main, it seemed to Kresh, Verick’s story seemed more plausible than any attempt to tie him to the crime. But they were damned short of suspects and motives at the moment, and Kresh saw no reason to turn his back on one. Besides, stories had held together in the past, only to crack later on under sufficient pressure. “ All right, Mr. Verick, let’s try it again,” Kresh said. “From the top.”

“Can’t you tell me what all this is about?” Verick said. “Can’t you tell me what’s happened?”

“No,” Kresh said, his tone as clipped as his reply.

“It’s important that we not tell you too much just yet,” Devray said, clearly playing good cop to Kresh’s bad cop. “We want to know what you know, without muddying the tracks.”

“I want to speak to the Governor,” Verick said.

“I can promise you that the Governor does not want to speak to you,” Kresh said. True enough, if more than a bit misleading. And it seemed to have the desired effect of u

“All right, all right. “ He hesitated long enough to take a deep sigh and slump down in his chair, and then began again, his eyes staring out. “My name is Tierlaw Verick. I live on the Settler world of Baleyworld. I represent a firm that sells highly sophisticated control equipment. We’ve sold a great number of our systems to Settler terraforming projects, and I was sent here in hopes of selling one of our systems to the terraforming center here. I attended the reception last night, and afterwards had a meeting with Governor Grieg. Knowing that accommodation was very tight in town, and that I had come a very long way, he very kindly offered to put me up for the night. ”

“You and you alone?” Fredda said. “Of all the people here last night, you were the only one who stayed the night?”

“Hmmm?” Verick looked at Fredda, as if he were surprised by the question. “I don’t know. I didn’t notice anyone else, one way or the other. I don’t see why I should be the only one. There’s certainly plenty of room here. But to the best of my direct knowledge, yes. I must say that surprises me in a house this size, though. Back home, every one of the guests at the reception would have been an overnight guest. But are you telling me there was no one else here?”

“No, there wasn’t,” Fredda said, to Kresh’s a

“Dr. Leving,” Kresh said, “I think it would be best if you let the Commander and myself ask the questions, and if you did not supply any answers yourself.”

Leving looked toward Kresh, a bit startled. “But I-oh,” she said, about to protest and then thinking better of it… Forgive me, Sheriff.”

“No harm done. In any event, it’s a very minor point,” Kresh said, hoping that he was telling the truth, now that Verick’s attention had been drawn to it. “But you weren’t the only one to meet with the Governor last night, were you?”

“No, no, of course not,” Verick said. “There were a number of other people waiting their turn before me. Eight or ten of them altogether, but in twos and threes. I had to wait until they were done, but I didn’t much mind. After all, I didn’t have to fly home afterwards-and besides, by being the last one in line, I had the chance to stay a little longer. No one was waiting behind me. ”

And you’ve just told us you were the last one to see Grieg alive, Kresh thought. He stole the tiniest of glances at Devray, and saw the point had not been lost on him, either. “So what did the two of you talk about?” Kresh asked.

It was plainly obvious that Verick’s patience was ru

“I beg your pardon?” Kresh asked. That was the benefit of repeated questioning. Verick hadn’t offered that little tidbit in the previous go-rounds.

“Our Settler system is not robotic,” Verick said. “I did what I could to point out the advantages of that to the Governor. That was mostly what we talked about. He seemed quite receptive.”

“Why would he be against a robotic system?” Fredda asked.

“Too conservative for a situation as far gone as Inferno,” Verick said. “Hook a robot-brain control unit up to the terraforming system and it will avoid all potentially risky operations, for fear of doing harm to human beings, or some damn thing. ” He was warming to his subject, obviously going through the arguments he had used on Grieg. “ A robotic control system would do all it could to avoid all risk during the terraforming process-almost certainly delaying completion, and possibly causing the project to fail altogether. Even if it succeeded in terraforming the planet, its goal would be to create an utterly risk-free final environment when the reterraforming was complete. There are Spacer worlds that are virtually nothing more than planetwide well-manicured lawns. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that those are the worlds where the populations have fallen asleep-or vanished completely. ”

That was a low blow. Solaria. No Spacer liked to be reminded of-or think about-the collapse of Solaria.