Inferno

Verick looked around and saw that he had scored a point. “A robotic system, obsessed with risk avoidance, would lead to a very bland sort of world here. As I told the Governor, not exactly a fit environment if you want future generations to be able to deal with challenges.”

“All right,” Kresh said, not having to try much in trying to play the part of the rude cop. “That’s enough speeches for now. So you talked to the Governor. Then what?”

“Then we said our good nights, and he said he had some other things to attend to, and so he saw me to the door of his office. We shook hands there, and I stepped around the robots in the hallway and went on my way. I’m afraid I got a bit turned around in the hallways and walked around in a bit of a circle. After a bit, I realized that I was going to end up right back where I had started, at the door to the Governor’s apartment. I thought of asking the two robots I had seen by the door for directions, but by then they weren’t there anymore. I suppose they had already gone in. ”

“Gone in?” Kresh asked. He had assumed the robots Verick had mentioned by the door were SPRs on sentry duty. But sentry robots stay where they were. “Where did the robots go?”

“To tuck him in for the night, I suppose. I’ve heard you Spacers can’t even get undressed without a robot to help.”

Fredda seemed about to respond to that, but Kresh stepped forward and put a hand on her shoulder. It did no good at all for the suspect to find out he could bait the inquisitors.

“Some of us can manage on our own,” Kresh said, a bit of steel behind the soft words. But the sentry should not have left its post. And there should have been one robot on door duty, not two. Kresh had a feeling he knew the answer to his next question. “These robots,” he said. “Can you describe them?”

“I don’t have much time for robots,” Verick said. “I don’t like ‘em and I don’t trust ‘em.”

“But you can see them,” Kresh said, his voice hard-edged. “What did the two robots look like?”

Verick looked up at Kresh, visibly a

Justen Devray and Fredda Leving both looked from Verick to Kresh, both of them understanding.

The last two beings to see Grieg alive were Prospero and Caliban. New Law and No Law.

One robot whose internal Laws did not require it to prevent harm to a human.

And one who had no Laws at all. Who could harm whatever humans it liked.

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 ru

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 a

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 a

A deputy might say something over an unscrambled cha

They would have to make the a

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. ”