Isaac Asimov: Inferno

“I couldn’t trust you, Cinta,” Kresh replied. Suddenly he was too tired to play the games of pretend anymore. Keeping track of the truth was hard enough. Somehow, it was easier to talk about, once those first words were out in the open. “How could I trust you, when the SSS kept showing up where it didn’t belong?”

Kresh looked to her, waiting for her to strike back, waiting for the outburst of temper. But it did not come.

“Yes, we did keep doing that,” she said, staring straight at the fire, clearly unwilling to look him in the eye as she made what amounted to a confession. “Some of it was legitimate, just good cops pushing a little harder than they should have. Some of it—some of it was the dirt that gets on your hands in this business, no matter how hard you try. We deal with criminals, Kresh. You know that. Touch them and sometimes the grime rubs off.”

“I know that, Cinta. I know. But this was more than a little dirt on the hands.”

At last Cinta looked at Kresh, squinting as a bit of smoke blew into her face. “You’re right,” she said. “More than just a little dirt. Some of it was dirty cops. My dirty cops. I am all but certain those were real, off-duty, on-the-take SSS agents that got Blare and Deam out of the reception. I don’t have them yet—but I will. Blare and Deam too. It’d make the SSS look bad—very bad—if it comes out the wrong way. I wanted—I want—to track them down myself.”

“And Huthwitz?” Kresh asked, pressing just a bit. A good interrogator always knows when to press a bit more, when the subject is cooperative. “A dead cop on the take and you knew his name when his own commander didn’t.”

“Yeah, I was afraid you’d notice that,” Cinta said. “We’d been watching him. The SSS was the original source of the tip that got to that Ranger out at the East Crack. I didn’t want to say anything more in front of Devray or you—not when my people were so close to rolling up the whole operation. I couldn’t trust you, either.”

“And did you roll up the whole operation?”

“No,” Cinta said, her voice hard and flat as the word. “They all went to ground when Huthwitz died. We lost them.”

“Did Bissal kill Huthwitz?”

“Almost certainly.” She nodded at the smoldering ruin of the warehouse. “We may never know after this mess. They knew each other, I can tell you that much for sure. Brothers in rustbacking, except they didn’t get on so good.”

“That much we knew. Did you know the shooter was Bissal before we did?” Kresh asked.

“We had a file on him,” Cinta admitted. “Everybody did. It was just that ours was crosslinked into Huthwitz’s rustbacking operation. Bissal’s name popped up as one of twenty or so possibilities. That’s all. I wouldn’t even say we considered him a full-fledged suspect before your team found him, identified him.”

“Oh, we found him, all right,” Kresh said. “But now we’ve gone and lost him again.” Kresh turned and started back toward his aircar.

“By the way,” Cinta said at him as he walked away, “I did check it out, every way I could, and you were right about Grieg and house guests.”

Kresh frowned and walked back toward Cinta. “How do you mean?” he asked.

“Turns out he was a typical Spacer after all. I checked all the old news reports and talked to friends, that sort of thing. No one can remember him ever having a house guest. Ever.”

Alvar Kresh stared, unseeing, out the window as Donald flew him back to the Residence. He was thinking. Thinking hard. Strange bedfellows, police work and politics. It would be a real challenge to satisfy the demands of both, but he was starting to realize that the two were so intertwined that he had no choice. Clues, false leads, ideas, theories, snatches of conversation, and random bits of information seemed to be swirling around in his head. Grieg with a blaster hole in his chest. Grieg’s simulated image assuring Kresh he was all right. Telmhock’s muddled attempt to tell Kresh he was the Governor. Kresh nearly tripping over a dead SPR to get to Grieg’s office. The ghostly image of Bissal captured by the integrator as he headed toward the lower-level storage room.

Half of it was no doubt vital information, while the other half was unimportant. But which half was which? He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate. No, don’t concentrate. Relax. Relax. Let it come on its own terms. Don’t expect the answer to come on schedule. It will arrive on its own terms, invited or not. There was, he told himself, no sense trying to force the solution to arrive—

And that was the exact moment the light came on. Yes. That had to be it. He needed proof, he needed to pull it all together—but yes. He knew. He knew.

Donald 111, convinced that his master had fallen asleep, tried to land the aircar as gently as he could. But, not for the first time, Alvar Kresh surprised his personal robot. He was out of the car before Donald was out of his seat, looking quite awake—in fact quite energetic and determined. Donald made a mental note to remember that there were times when humans actually did get some thinking done with their eyes shut, even if most thinking was no more than an excuse for a nap.

“I want Caliban and Prospero in my office,” Kresh said, walking toward the entrance, his eyes straight ahead. “And I want them there now.”

“Yes, sir,” Donald said, hurrying to catch up with him. “I will bring them up directly.” Once I have you safely inside the secured interior of the Residence, Donald thought. There was still danger everywhere.

“Good,” Kresh said as he walked through the main entrance. “I have one thing to do first. Something that might take a bit of time. Wait for me in the Governor’s office.”

“Yes, sir,” Donald said, more than a bit surprised. He knew all of Alvar Kresh’s moods, and he knew this one especially well. It was Alvar Kresh on the hunt, Alvar Kresh closing in for the kill. But how? And who? Donald hurried down to the improvised cell where Caliban and Prospero were being held. He had been ahead of Kresh in solving a case now and then, and well behind him on many occasions. But he had never been this far back. Did Kresh have the perpetrator in his sights, even before Donald had so much as a guess at the list of suspects?

Donald gestured for the guard robot to unlock the cell door, and stepped inside even before the door was fully open. Prospero and Caliban were both sitting on the floor of the cell. “Get up,” Donald said, not even trying to keep the excitement and satisfaction out of his voice. “The Governor wants you upstairs.” The two of them got to their feet, a bit uncertainly. Donald was glad to see their discomfiture. It gave him real pleasure to order these two around. Did this summons mean that Kresh had decided the two pseudo-robots were indeed the guilty parties? That would be pleasure and triumph unbounded.

Kresh was not in the room when Donald and his two prisoners arrived, a minute or two later. Donald gestured for the two of them to stand in the center of the floor, while he retired to a wall niche. Waiting was not generally much of a hardship to a robot. Robots spent a great deal of their existence waiting for humans to arrive, or for humans to leave, or for humans to make up their minds about an order. Nonetheless, Donald found the wait for Kresh to be almost unbearable. Something was going on. He knew it. He knew it.

The three robots waited in silence for sixteen minutes and twenty-three seconds, according to Donald’s internal chronometer. And then the doors slid open, and Kresh strode into the room. He was carrying an opaque evidence storage box. He set the box down on the desk, and then turned to Caliban and Prospero. He spoke right to the point, without any sort of preamble. “I want to know,” said Kresh, “exactly what transpired between you and Tierlaw Verick. Exactly. I want your precise words, his and yours.”