Inferno

“Tell me some of what was in that material,” Kresh said. “No, better still, let me tell you. You had proof that Simcor

Beddle here was taking Settler money-perhaps without knowing that he was taking it. ”

“But I-” Beddle began.

“Quiet, Beddle,” Kresh said. “You’re not Governor yet. Right now you’ll speak when spoken to. ” He turned back to the robots. “You also had proof that Sero Phrost and Tonya Welton were in the smuggling business together. ” Another little stir of reaction, but Phrost and Welton both had the sense to keep quiet. “Proof that Tierlaw Verick’s bidding group had been bribing government officials. Verick was also linked to the rustbackers-along with half the planet, it seems to me, but I doubt you would divulge that little tidbit.”

“Now just a moment,” Verick protested. “I did no such-”

“Quiet, Verick. ” Kresh said. “And you also had proof that Commander Devray and Captain Melloy here were both in possession of proof of criminal acts in high places and were not acting upon that information.”

Devray and Melloy seemed about to protest, but Kresh cut them off. “Not a word, either of you,” he said, with enough steel in his voice to silence both of them. “Both of you did have such information, and both of you informed Governor Grieg of it. Justen, you told him about Tierlaw’s bribery, and, Cinta, you told him about Sero Phrost smuggling Settler hardware and passing the proceeds to the Ironheads. I’ve seen Grieg’s files. I know. Grieg didn’t do anything about the information, either, for the same reasons you both kept quiet.”

“And what reason would that be?” Phrost demanded, daring to speak.

“He was afraid that if he pulled on one thread, everything else would unravel, “ Kresh said. “ Arrest Sero Phrost, and Phrost would implicate Tonya Welton. Grieg needed Welton’s support. Grieg also knew the Spacer bid on the control system would probably collapse without Phrost. Arrest Verick, and Grieg knew he would lose the Settler bid on the system.”

Devray looked confused. “But wait a second. The robots just said that Grieg didn’t seem to care if they blew the lid off everything.”

“Exactly,” Kresh said. “Because, on the night he died, he knew it didn’t matter anymore. He had made his final decisions about the control system, and about the New Law robots. He was going to a

“It couldn’t all be good for him,” Melloy protested. “With that much mudslinging set loose, he would have gotten messed up a little himself. Someone would have tried to fight back.”

“Fight back at who? The robots?” Kresh asked. “They were the ones about to release the material, not Grieg. But even if you’re right-and you probably are-Grieg would have accepted any amount of damage to his prestige if it meant getting rid of Simcor Beddle.”

“And you are saying Grieg no longer cared because he had made his decisions,” Caliban said. “Might I ask what those decisions were, and if you intend to abide by them?”

“I do not wish to answer either of those questions, just at the moment,” Kresh said. “I have a rather cryptic note Grieg made to himself. I believe it contains his answer. But I don’t need to decipher the note. Tierlaw Verick here has done it for me.”

“He told you what Grieg had decided?” Fredda asked. “When? I never heard it.”

Tierlaw Verick opened his mouth to protest again, but then thought better of it.

“Good thinking, Verick,” Kresh said. “If I were you, I wouldn’t say one thing more.”

“But what did he say?” Fredda asked. “What did I miss?”

“You heard everything I did,” Kresh said. “And his reactions told me what Grieg’s decisions were. ”

“Then he was telling the truth,” Caliban said. “When he came out of Grieg’s office, he told Prospero and myself we were going to kingdom come. An archaic reference to the hereafter. He was telling us that Grieg had decided to destroy the New Law robots.”

“And that scared the hell out of you, and you went into Grieg full of bluff and bluster and threatened him before he even had a chance to tell you he intended to destroy you. ” Kresh shook his head. “A mistake. A very serious mistake on your part. ”

“A mistake in what way?” Caliban asked.

“And you claim to be high-function beings,” Donald said, speaking for the first time as he stepped down from his wall niche. “If you were true robots, human behavior would have been your constant study, and you would not have erred. Can you truly understand so little of human nature?”

“What do you mean?” Caliban asked. “Governor Kresh, is he speaking with your authority?”

“Donald is speaking for himself,” Kresh said, “but he’s getting it right for all of that. Go on, Donald.”

“It might be logical to expect Governor Grieg to tell you his decision in the same way no matter what that decision was, but that is not the human way. It does not account for the Governor’s personality. To expect him to act in such a way takes no account of the emotions of pleasure in bringing good news, or the embarrassment and sorrow humans feel when reporting bad news for which they are responsible. It would not be in Grieg’s character to call you into his office and tell you he intended to wipe you out. You would have found out by seeing it on the news, or by written notice-or by getting a blaster shot through the head.”

“What are you saying?” Prospero demanded.

“That you should have known his decision would be in your favor as soon as he asked to see you face-to-face,” Donald said.

“And when Verick told you that you were going to kingdom come, he was just telling what Grieg had told him,”

Kresh said. “Except he got it wrong. Grieg had been looking for a third way, some solution between tolerating the current intolerable state of affairs and extermination. And he found it. He found it and told it to Verick.”

“I still do not understand,” Prospero said. “But now I do,” Caliban said, sitting stock-still, staring straight ahead. “Now I do. Valhalla. Grieg told Verick he was sending all the New Law robots to Valhalla. To someone living on Inferno, that is a place name. It is the place to which all New Law robots wish to escape, a hidden place as far away from human interference as possible. But Verick thought the Governor was speaking in metaphor, speaking of the old Earth legend from which the name is derived. Valhalla, the hall of the gods, where those who have died in battle will live. The afterlife. Kingdom come. ”

“So you threatened the man who had found a way to save you,” Kresh said. “ And threatened to do the thing he would most love to have done, but dared not do himself. And, at a guess, that appealed to his sense of humor. So he told you to leave and not come back, hoping to have the public hear all about friend Beddle’s finances in the next day or so. The irony is that you had no motive for Grieg’s murder, even if you thought you did.”

“So you still have every reason to suspect us,” Caliban said.

“On the contrary, I am absolutely certain you two had nothing to do with the murder of Chanto Grieg,” Kresh said.

“It sounds like you’ve got this whole thing figured out,” Melloy said, a bit grumpily.

“I do,” Kresh said.

“So tell us about it,” Cinta said. “If that wouldn’t be too much trouble.”

“Too much trouble was exactly what it was,” Kresh said. “Fredda pointed that out. The plan was too intricate, too theatrical. That’s what I should have seen from the start. The plan had too many people in it, too many moving parts, too many bits of complicated coordination and timing-especially with someone as unreliable and plainly expendable as Ottley Bissal at the center of it. The plan required an assassin willing to do what he was told if the paycheck was big enough, someone willing to perform a despicable act-and yet someone foolish enough to trust the plotter who intended to kill him. Those are not job requirements that produce quality applicants. Whoever took on the job was bound to be someone who made mistakes, who got sloppy. Someone like Bissal. That should have told me something. It should have told me the plan wouldn’t work. And sure enough, it didn’t.”