Isaac Asimov's Caliban 2 Inferno

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Donald was hiding in a broom closet as he worked. He was aware of the fact
that many humans would find that extremely humorous, but that did not much
matter to him. The whole point of it was to stay out of their view in the
first place--and they could not be amused if they couldn t find him.
Besides which, there was nothing funny about the present situation.
There were any number of points that Sheriff Kresh and the other humans had
not even begun to address. Even now, there was vital new information coming
in--along with vital new questions. Donald, however, knew enough not to point
out such things to Sheriff Kresh and the others yet. It would be
counterproductive to break their concentration just as they were corning to
terms with the basic facts of the case. Humans, Donald knew, often required a
great deal of time before they were able to deal with changed circumstances.
Governor Grieg had been murdered, and that was most unfortunate. Donald
grieved his loss, inasmuch as any robot could be said to grieve. But the plain
fact was that the man was dead, and there was nothing anyone could do about
it. One always had to deal with the available circumstances, and Grieg s death
was now one of them.
Humans, of course, saw it differently. They indulged in denial, a ritual
Donald had never entirely understood. It seemed to involve an attempt to
reshape the world into a more convenient state by a sheer act of stubborn
will, generally by insisting that some bad thing had never happened. It had
never worked and never would--but it seemed that humans always had to find out
if it would work, just this once. There was no point trying to move the
Sheriff, Commander Devray, and Fredda Leving forward until they had at least
accepted the facts of the situation.
In the meantime, let them deal with theories, with the corpses of humans and
robots. They were best suited to that sort of task, just as Donald was best
suited to making arrangements for a field forensic lab to be set up.
Donald was in the midst of an intricate five-way linkup with various
logistical offices when he heard something in the hallway outside. Under
normal circumstances, he would have ignored it as part of the normal
background noise of everyday life. But these were far from normal
circumstances. It sounded very much like someone in bare feet walking slowly--
and a bit unsteadily--down the long, wood-floored hallway.
It was not Sheriff Kresh or Dr. Leving or the Commander. Donald would have
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recognized their walking rhythms. It certainly was not any of the deputies.
Their uniforms included heavy boots, and none would move at such a leisurely
pace while on duty. But the footsteps were rather loud for all of that,
considering they sounded unshod.
Donald cut off his comm links in as quick and orderly a fashion as he could,
and waited, motionless, in the darkness of the closet until the steps had
moved past him and were moving away.
Donald silently opened the door and stepped out into the hall, determined not
to make a sound. He looked down the hall, not quite sure what he expected to
see.
In any event, he did not expect to see a bald man in rather loud blue-
checked pajamas and a clashing red-and-white-striped robe padding barefoot
down the hall.
Tierlaw Verick--or at least the person calling himself that sat in his
unfortunate sleepwear, looking most ill at ease. He was perched on a hard-
backed chair in the center of a room with no other furniture in it save the
interrogator s chair. Verick s chair had been placed so his back was to the
door, with the deliberate intent of making him just that bit more
uncomfortable.
Half the Residence seemed never to have been used. The place was filled with
fully stocked, well-maintained bedroom suites with everything a guest might
need, and never mind that Infernals did not care to have overnight guests. The
Residence had any number of handsomely appointed sitting rooms no one had ever
sat in, gleaming kitchens that had not served a meal since Kresh had been
born. A sad commentary on the grandiose attitude of Inferno s architects, and
on the wasteful nature of a robot-based economy, but it did mean there were
ample facilities for interrogation. In fact, it had taken a little doing to
find a room barren enough to serve as a suitable interrogation chamber, from
the psychological point of view.
Fredda Leving sat in the chair facing Verick, while Justen Devray leaned in a
corner and Kresh paced the room. Donald stood, unobtrusive as ever, in the
room s only wall niche, facing Verick, on the far side of the room from the
door. He was, of course, recording everything, but Donald could do one better
than that. When Fredda Leving had first built him, years before, she had
equipped him with the sensors to let him serve as a lie detector. He was
monitoring Verick s heart rate, respiration, pupil dilation, and other
physiological factors that provided an estimate of stress levels. Verick
didn t know that, of course, and no one was going to tell him.
Not that Verick knew much of anything, to hear Verick tell it. Verick was an
older-looking man, thin-faced, pale-skinned, with not a single hair on his
head, aside from heavy brown eyebrows and lashes. His eyes were piercing blue,
and quite expressive; his face was lean and hungry-looking. The skin over his
skull gleamed, a healthy pink, shining as if it had been polished--as perhaps
it had. It was baldness so thoroughgoing and absolute that it had to be an
affectation, a deliberate choice in his personal appearance that had to be as
carefully maintained as the most elaborate coiffure. Either he shaved his head
at least daily, or had himself depilitated on a regular basis.
In Kresh s experience, men who put that sort of effort into their
appearance--and chose such a startling one as absolute, perfect baldness--were
rather aggressive and assertive types, and Verick fit the bill. Other men
arrested in such silly-looking sleepwear would have acted sheepish or
apologetic. Verick gave the sense of a man who didn t like being kept waiting.
Verick s story was simple, if utterly implausible. He was a Settler
businessman, here to try to sell a Settler-model Control Center to the Inferno
Terraforming Authority. He had been a guest at the reception the evening
before. He had, by prearrangement, stayed after most of the other guests had
gone to have an after-hours meeting with the Governor. Likewise by
prearrangement, he had stayed the night after the meeting, sleeping in the
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west wing of the Residence. He had awakened to hear voices and people moving
about, and had gotten up to see what was going on--only to be taken into
custody by Donald as he set foot in the hallway.
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 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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