Inferno

Caliban rose, crossed the room, opened the door, and stepped through. There was Gubber, plainly agitated and upset. Caliban closed the door behind him. There was something in Dr. Anshaw’s face that said his news would be best discussed in private.

“Caliban! Thank the stars you are here! What the devil are we going to do?”

“Do? Do about what?”

“Grieg, of course. Governor Grieg. They’re sure to suspect Tonya. Caliban, you were there. You’re a witness. She didn’t do anything. You can tell them that.”

“Dr. Anshaw, you confuse me,” Caliban said, increasingly alarmed. All of Prospero’s assurances that there would be no trouble, no danger, were clearly worth as little as Caliban had feared. “What about last night? What about the Governor?”

“Haven’t you heard? Don’t you know? Grieg is dead. He was killed last night just after-”

But Caliban was already gone before Anshaw could finish speaking. If things were uncertain enough that Anshaw feared Tonya Welton might be a suspect, then Caliban had no doubt whatsoever that he was in danger as well. He had to get away from where he could be found. Get away fast.

Shelabas Quellam was flushed with excitement. Governor. He was going to be Governor. Importance, power, respect. All his. All his. But there was so much he had to do to get ready. What to do first? A speech. Yes. He should write a speech for when he took over. Something along the lines of sorrow and courage, and the need to move forward-yes, that would be about the right approach.

He sat down at his comm console and settled in to start dictating-but then he noticed the status board was indicating all sorts of pending mail waiting for him in his office system-some of it official, and several days old.

Shelabas had never much bothered keeping close track of all his incoming correspondence. His robots read it for him, and wrote up summaries about the things he needed to deal with. But, come to think of it, he hadn’t even checked their summaries in a while. He really ought to check it all now. There might be something in there of vital interest to the new Governor.

Shelabas Quellam scrolled the pending mail list-and then let out a little gasp. There was a letter from Grieg there, coded for Quellam’s eyes only. But how could that be? But then he checked the dateline and saw that it had been waiting for him more than a week.

A week! Now that he thought of it, he could remember his robots advising him that there was urgent mail waiting for him in the system. He had no one but himself to blame for waiting this long to check.

His hand trembling, he worked the controls and saw Governor Chanto Grieg’s face appear on the screen, looking confident, sure of himself, very much in charge. Not a printed letter, then, but a video record. There was something vaguely insulting about that. You sent video letters to those who might not have the patience to deal with the written word.

“Greetings to you, Legislator,” Grieg’s image said. It was plain to see that Grieg was speaking in formal mode, for the official record. This was not a personal letter-it was a policy statement. “It is with some reluctance that I came to the decision I must now report to you-and to you alone. As you know, I have long believed that the laws of succession to my office are excessively complex and could lead to great uncertainty in a crisis. For that reason, I named you, the man fated to succeed if I were removed from office by legal means, to be my successor if I were to die in office.

“As you are no doubt aware, there are currently moves afoot to impeach or recall me. As you may not be aware, Sheriff Kresh, Commander Devray, and Security Captain Melloy have all recently warned me of threats to my life. Thus, my removal from office, either by legal means or through my death, becomes increasingly more likely. I find that I can no longer treat it as a remote theoretical possibility, but as a probable event.

“I can no longer treat the principle of unified succession as being of paramount importance. While important in its own right, it ca

“For all of these reasons, I hereby inform you that I am withdrawing you from the Designation, in favor of a new name. After suitable discussion with the new Designate, I plan to a

“With deep regret and apologies for any distress this decision might cause you, I will say good-bye.”

The screen showed Grieg’s authenticator seal, and then went blank.

Shelabas Quellam stared at the blank display in slack-jawed shock. He was not the Designate. He was not the Governor. He was nothing, nobody again.

But wait just a moment. Suppose Grieg had not named a new Designate before he died? As Shelabas recalled, the old Designation remained in force until the new Designation was made. For a mad instant, he considered erasing the letter, destroying all record of it, and declaring himself the Governor at once. But no. There would be copies placed with all the proper authorities. Destroying his copy could do no good-and would only throw suspicion on him-if he was not suspected of the crime already!

He stood up suddenly, his heart pounding. Grieg’s murder! If no new Designate had been named, Shelabas Quellam was going to be a prime suspect the moment copies of Grieg’s letter were found.

So Shelabas Quellam was not the Governor-and would not be, if Grieg had indeed named a new Designate.

Shelabas Quellam was simply a man who had a first-rate motive for the murder of the Governor.

And soon, very soon, everyone in the world was going to know it.

A half hour after ru

It required little imagination on Caliban’s part to think he and Prospero might be suspects of some sort in the case-and with good reason. Caliban had been pursued by Alvar Kresh before, and he had no wish to repeat the experience. He had to call Prospero.

Caliban was the only robot on the planet of Inferno who was obliged to use a comm center in order to place a call. That was for the very good reason that every other robot had a full hyperwave comm system built in.

Caliban had been built for a laboratory experiment, and keeping him cut off from communications with the outside world had been part of the experiment. He could have arranged to have hyperwave equipment installed long ago, but Caliban had many very good reasons for not wishing to be turned off for even as brief a time as it would take to plug in the gear. There were too many things that could happen to him while he was switched off-too many things had happened to him when he had been switched off before. There were too many humans-and robots-who did not wish him well.

Normally, not having a hyperwave link was not much of a disadvantage. Right now, he needed desperately to speak with Prospero-and he did not know where Prospero’s hidden study cell was. Prospero, too, had faced a number of threats in his day. But that did not matter. Prospero had long ago provided Caliban with a covert audio-only hyperwave link code that would co