Isaac Asimov: Inferno

“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.”

“But Grieg was killed,” Fredda protested.

“Not in the way the mastermind intended,” Kresh said. “Not in the way Tierlaw Verick planned.”

Verick jumped up, and was halfway to Kresh before Donald could intercept him. Donald pinned the man’s arms to his side and dragged him back to his seat. “It was the basic problem of the whole case,” Kresh said. “We knew, even once Fredda spotted Bissal, that we didn’t have the real killer. Bissal was so obviously someone else’s creature. But whoever had sent him—and sent all the other conspirators along—had done a good job of staying hidden. It could have been anyone with access to the right sort of technology, and the wrong sort of people. It could have been anyone in this room. It could even have been me, I suppose. But it was you, Verick.”

“You’re crazy, Kresh,” Verick half shouted. “How could I have done it? I didn’t even know Grieg was dead until one of the guards on my room told me.”

“And it must have been a relief when the guard made that slip,” Kresh said. “You could stop acting. It made it that much less likely that you would make a slip. Good as you were, you knew you could not keep it up forever. And you were good. You even managed to fool Donald’s lie-detector system—and that requires some impressive training. Our files said you dabbled in theatrics. We did not know just how good an actor you were. The trouble was you’d made your slip already. One you couldn’t avoid.”

“And what slip might that be?” Verick demanded.

“You said there were two robots standing in the hallway when he came out of this office. Not three.”

“But there were only two,” Caliban protested. “There was only Prospero and myself.”

“But then where the devil was the door sentry robot?” Kresh demanded. “It was there, standing in front of the door, shot through the chest, when I checked the upper floor after discovering Grieg’s body. SPRs on other duties move around, but a door sentry robot does not go off post. Not unless it received orders to do so, from someone in authority to give orders.”

“So Tierlaw didn’t notice a robot,” Cinta said, who seemed to have taken it upon herself to defend her fellow Settler. “So what? You Spacers always ignore robots. That’s not enough to convict a man of murder.”

“Tierlaw is not a Spacer, but a Settler,” Donald said. “He has a pronounced aversion to robots, and very definitely noticed the other two standing outside the door. He gave a detailed and accurate description of Prospero and Caliban.”

“So what are you saying?” Devray said.

“I’m saying that Tierlaw ordered the Sapper, the SPR sentry robot, to be out of position. But a Sapper won’t take orders from just anyone. He—or a subordinate, more likely—must have gotten to the robot sometime before and used some rather sophisticated order giving to convince the sentry that orders from him, from Tierlaw, took precedence over everything else, even guarding Grieg.”

“Is that possible?” Devray asked.

“Yes,” Fredda said. “If the SPR did not believe Grieg was in any particular danger, so that First Law potential was reduced, and if it saw Tierlaw as its owner, thus enhancing Second Law potential, then yes, Tierlaw could have given the order for the sentry to clear off and come back later.”

“It’s thin,” Cinta said. “And I don’t see what it has to do with anything.”

“It is thin,” Kresh admitted. “I knew that as soon as I figured it out. I knew I needed proof—and I found it. But there is more. Caliban and Prospero were witnesses that Tierlaw came out the inner door to Grieg’s office. After-hours visitors to his office always used the outer side door. But Tierlaw needed to let Bissal in. So he got Grieg to open the inner door somehow.”