Caliban

have been able to guess the cause even without his police training. But just because he knew the answer for himself, that did not mean he did not need Gubber to speak the words. Gubber needed to know that Alvar Kresh needed to know all the details, and would settle for nothing else. Otherwise, Gubber Anshaw could easily get the idea it was all right to leave out other details Kresh did need.

“What happened then, Gubber?” Kresh asked gently. “Why was it that Tonya wanted privacy?”

Gubber cleared his throat and turned his gaze back toward that featureless patch of wall, something approaching a defiant glint in his eye. “I ordered all the staff robots to leave us alone and we went to the duty office at the end of the hallway and made love,” he said, his voice firmer than it had been.

“I see,” said Alvar, more because Gubber seemed to expect him to say something than for any other reason. Alvar supposed that Gubber thought he might be shocked. The only strong emotion Kresh felt was an overwhelming desire to kick himself. He should have seen it! It was so obvious. The skilled orders for all the lab robots to go away on repeated occasions should have told him what was going on. And who but someone of Gubber’s skill would have been able to hide those orders so perfectly? So much for Tonya Welton’s theory that it had been done with hardware, with microcircuits. That had been a blind, a false lead, of course. Kresh wondered what other smoke she had blown in his face. He was tempted to pursue all those questions, but none of it mattered now. After this was all over, perhaps he could waste time tidying up loose ends.

Kresh looked thoughtfully at Gubber Anshaw. The man was deeply embarrassed. Knowledge of Gubber’s personal relations didn’t bother Alvar, but he could understand Gubber fearing it might. Inferno was not a particularly straitlaced sort of place, but more than a few Infernals would not approve of such an intimate encounter between one of their own and a Settler—especially in a place of business. “So, anyway, the two of you went to the duty office. Go on from there.”

“There was nothing crude or unseemly about it,” Gubber Anshaw went on, seemingly determined to answer objections that had not been raised. “It’s not as if we dumped everything off one of my work counters and, ah, well, did it with the doors open. We went to the duty station office at the end of the hallway. It’s set up to allow someone to spend the night at the lab if an experiment requires it. Do you know where it is?”

“Yes,” Alvar said, struggling to keep a straight face. “We used it the next morning to perform our initial interrogations. I seem to recall there was a full bed in the corner of the room. I thought at the time that was unusual. We have a room like that in my office, but we manage to get by with just a simple cot.”

Gubber Anshaw reddened violently, and clenched his knitted fingers together so tightly that the skin at the base of his fingers turned quite pale with the pressure. He cleared his throat awkwardly and went on. “Yes, well, there it is, you know,” he said, somewhat enigmatically. “In any event—we, ah, were, ah, there for at least two or three hours all told. Not that we, ah, well, you know, all that time. We talked and visited. We get so little time together.”

“I see,” Kresh said again, encouragingly.

“Well, I suppose it’s quite obvious that this wasn’t the first time we had been together at the lab. It might sound odd, but it was the safest place for us. I stick out like a sore thumb if I go to her at Settlertown, and Tonya is a public figure. My neighbors would be bound to spot her. At the lab, there was the cover of official business. People tend to work on their own there, so there really wasn’t that much risk of, ah, being caught. At any event, our usual arrangement was for Tonya to leave first.”

“Is that what happened that night?”

Gubber thought for a minute. “Yes, yes, it was. I remember because, just when she was about to go, we could hear Jomaine in the hallway. He lives just by the lab, you see, and he’s forever going back and forth at odd hours. I heard him call something to Fredda.”

“Did you hear her answer back?” Kresh asked, trying not to make it sound like the vital question it was. They had the access recorder data, confirming Jomaine’s statement that he had entered and exited the building within a space of ten minutes. The interesting point was that those ten minutes took place right dead smack in the period of time during which the attack took place, according to the medical evidence.

Now here was Gubber confirming Jomaine’s statement as well, down to Jomaine calling out—though Jomaine had claimed he had called out to see if “anyone” was around. Gubber had him calling out for Fredda specifically. If Gubber had heard Fredda reply at that moment, the period when the attack could have taken place would be chopped in half.

Anshaw thought for a moment. “No, no, I didn’t,” he said. “But I wouldn’t expect to, you know. Jomaine was in the hallway, which is rather echoey. But if Fredda was in one of the labs—hers or mine—at that point, I doubt I would have heard her if she answered in a normal speaking voice. I could have heard her if she was yelling at the top of her lungs, but I wasn’t likely to otherwise. All I heard was Jomaine’s voice calling out that one time.”

Kresh kept his face expressionless, but damn it, this case never got any clearer. The time limit wasn’t reduced.

“All right, then. You heard Jomaine come in, call to Fredda, and then what?”

“It sounded like he entered his lab. We waited for a bit, then when we didn’t hear anything more, we decided he must have left by one of the exterior doors in his lab. We said our goodbyes and Tonya left first, as usual. Then, um, well, I’m afraid I dozed off.”

“For how long?”

Gubber shook his head. “I’m afraid I can’t really say. Ten minutes, forty-five minutes, perhaps longer. It had been a dead-flat-exhausting day even before Tonya showed up. When she left, and I had nothing to do but lie back in a bed in a dark, quiet room until the coast was clear—well, why not take a nap? It was not a very restful sleep. I had rather disturbing dreams, all about Fredda and Tonya fighting and bickering, with me caught in the middle, taking all the blows whenever either of them struck at the other. After a while, I woke up, used the duty office refresher, and got dressed.

“I stepped out into the hallway and walked over to my lab to collect my things and go home.”

Kresh leaned in eagerly, no longer able to pretend that this was routine, mere confirmation of other information. What Gubber Anshaw could say about what he saw and what he did could break the whole case open. Even if he was lying, his statement would be useful, for sooner or later they would be able to trap him in that lie, and the nature of his lie could help to guide their inquiries. “All right, then,” he said. “Now I want you to be as careful and detailed as possible. I want you to tell me everything you saw. Everything. Don’t leave anything out.”

Anshaw looked at Kresh rather nervously. “All right,” he said. “All right. Let me think carefully. The first thing that I noticed was that the door to my lab was closed, though I normally leave it open. That struck me as slightly odd, but not greatly so. We are in and out of each other’s labs in the course of a day. Someone could have come in looking for me and closed the door out of force of habit on the way out.

“I walked down the hallway to my door and opened it, and then I saw—saw it.”

“What, Anshaw? What, exactly, did you see?”

“She was lying there on the floor, passed out cold, the robot out of the test rack, standing over her, the robot’s arm raised like this.” Gubber held his left arm out in front of him, elbow bent about halfway, his palm open, arm and hand both held parallel with the side of his body.

But Kresh was not paying attention to details of how Caliban had held his arm in front of him. Burning devils in deepest hell. Gubber was saying Caliban had still been there! Never in a hundred years had he expected that. It made no sense. No sense at all. If Caliban had committed the attack, why was he still standing there? If he had not, why in the world had he vanished later?

“Hold it a moment. Caliban was still there?”

Gubber looked up in surprise. “Why, yes, of course. I thought you knew that.”

“We have, ah, several variant versions of the crime scene.”

“Might I ask if Caliban was operational?” Donald asked. “Was he powered up and functional, or still switched off?”

“Ah, neither, actually. I must admit that he was not the first thing I thought of. I did not take a close look at him. Naturally my first instinct was to look at Fredda. I could not tell if she was dead or alive. There was a small pool of blood just beginning to form under her head.

“Naturally I was scared to death. I was still a bit muzzy from my nap, and my dreams about the two women fighting were still mixed up in my head. I assumed that it had to have been Tonya who—who did it. I was standing over Fredda, next to the robot, wondering what to do, when I heard the robot’s functionality