people would make the simple discovery that it didn’t take fifty robots to care for one person, that most robots spent their time doing little more than getting in each other’s way, making work for themselves.
No rational person could believe that it could possibly take as many as twenty robots to run one household— and yet the entire populace was up in arms over the hardship caused by having only one chauffeur per car, or only as many cooks as there were meals in the day.
Still, the uproar was not as loud as it should have been, and it had died down sooner than Kresh had expected. Could it be that he was not the only one to find luxury in a moment of private, robotless relaxation?
Of course, he really ought to get up now, get to the refresher, and get properly ready for bed. But perhaps it wouldn’t do any harm to rest his eyes, just for a moment…
Alvar Kresh dozed off, fully clothed, with the lights still on, slumped over in an awkward position half on and half off the bed.
The annunciator chimed, and Alvar’s eyes snapped open. He sat up, winced at the stiffness in his back, and lay back with a slight groan. There was a bad taste in his mouth, and his feet were cold. How long had he been out? He felt disoriented, confused. Maybe there was something to be said for the smothering attentions of a robot nursemaid.
“Yes, what is it?” Kresh asked of the open air.
Donald’s voice came through the door speaker. “Beg pardon, sir, but there is a matter requiring your attention.”
“And what might that be, Donald?” Kresh asked.
“A murder, sir.”
“What?” Kresh sat back up on the bed, all thought of his aching back and cold feet suddenly gone. “Come in, Donald, come in.”
The door opened and Donald stepped inside. “I assumed that you would want to know about it as soon as possible, sir.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” Kresh said. “But just a minute. I want to be awake enough to follow this.” Feeling vaguely ashamed at Donald having caught him at not getting himself to bed properly, Kresh stepped into the hotel room’s refresher. He peeled off his tunic, rinsed out his mouth, splashed some water onto his face, and grabbed a towel. He rubbed his face dry and stepped back out into the room. Donald had produced a fresh tunic and a cup of coffee from somewhere. Kresh pulled on the shirt and took the coffee gratefully. He sat down in a chair opposite Donald, ready to listen. “All right,” he said. “Go.”
“Yes, sir,” Donald said. “A member of the Governor’s security detail, an officer in the Rangers, was posted as a perimeter guard during the reception. He failed to report back to his station at the close of his shift, and a search was made. He was found, dead, at his post.”
“Dead how?”
“Strangled, sir. Or perhaps, more accurately, garroted.”
“Lovely. Jurisdiction?”
“As you might expect, sir, that is more than a trifle unclear. His duty post was on land ceded to the Settlers, and thus under the jurisdiction of the Settler Security Service. However, he was of course a member of the Governor’s Rangers, but at the same time—”
“He was on duty as part of the Governor’s security detail, and therefore under the Rangers’ authority,” Kresh finished. “Lovely. So we all get to bump heads. Any other facts as yet?”
“No, sir. Not even the victim’s name. That is the sum total of my information.”
“Wonderful,” Kresh said. “Let’s get over there and find out more.”
The two of them headed for Kresh’s aircar, parked outside the guest house. Kresh got in after Donald, and sat down in his accustomed chair.
Donald rolled the aircar out of the garage and lifted off, up into the rain that was still thundering down, buffeting the car around once or twice before Donald could compensate. Kresh was barely aware of any of it, his mind focused on other matters. The Welton attack, the phony SSS guards, and now the death of a Governor’s Ranger. What the devil was going on?
The Governor. What about the Governor? Kresh thought to ask Donald, but then didn’t bother. No matter what Donald said, Kresh would feel obliged to check for himself. Kresh turned in his seat and switched on the comm system. He punched in the crash scramble code, the direct line to the Governor. He had used it exactly twice before in his career, but never felt more need of it than now.
The screen snapped on to show Grieg in his ceremonial office, at work at the big formal desk. There were papers scattered about, and Grieg was still in his formal clothes, but his hair was mussed and he was starting to show a bit of stubble. “Good evening, Sheriff,” he said. “I see I’m not the only one working late.”
“No, sir. I wanted to call personally and confirm that you were safe.”
Grieg set down the papers he was working on and frowned. “Safe? Is there some reason I shouldn’t be?”
“No one has informed you? Sir, one of the guards on the perimeter around the Residence has just been found dead, killed on duty, at his post.”
“The hell you say,” Grieg said. “What more do you know?”
“That’s all I have, sir. I am en route to the murder scene now.”
“Very well. Keep me informed.”
“Ah, yes, sir,” Kresh said. “I’ll keep you posted.” He switched off and frowned at the screen. Why the hell hadn’t anyone informed the Governor? Just how muddled was the security operation? He shook his head. Never mind. Other things to worry about just now.
They were almost there.
A dead-white face stared bug-eyed at the sky, its rain-filled mouth open in shock.
Raindrops splattered on the corpse, the scene lit in the harsh, shadowless glare of high-power portable beam lights. The dead man’s hands clutched at his neck, as if he were still struggling to pull the cruel, hard wire from around his throat. The corpse was in a small depression in the ground, tangled up in scruffy bramble, surrounded by a scrubby, anemic forest of small, elderly trees.
Lightning flashed and thunder blared, and Alvar Kresh stood over the corpse in the driving rain. The Crime Scene robots were already at work. Not that they would do any good. The CS robots could measure and sense and detect all they wanted, but there were no answers here. They could go back to their labs and come up with a time of death, perhaps, but that was going to be about it.
Alvar Kresh looked down at the dead man and sighed. He had been in this business for a while, and experience taught you things. There were times when you knew enough to know you weren’t going to know any more. Sometimes the scene of a crime spoke volumes. Other times—right now, for example—it was plain to see that prodding at the corpse was useless. What had once been a man was now a meaningless bit of grotesquerie, as impersonal, as anonymous as a crumpled-up food wrapper.
But you went through the ritual all the same, because it was part of your job, because there was the faint chance that your instincts just might be wrong, because it was expected of you, because it was standard procedure. But you knew that there was no real point.
It was clear, to Kresh’s eye, that whoever did this job had not done it with the simple goal of killing. He or she had taken on the job of killing undetected. It was a careful, professional job. A garrote, for example, was not going to show any fingerprints. A rainy night would insure that a lot of clues would be washed away. Besides, anyone who could slip through a perimeter of Governor’s Rangers, kill one of their number, and get away undetected was not going to be stupid enough to leave a calling card behind.
Sometimes—like right now—when it was obvious there was nothing to be learned, crime scenes devolved into little more than macabre social occasions. Kresh didn’t get to see his opposite numbers in the SSS and the Rangers all that often. But tonight it was old home week. Devray of the Rangers and Melloy of the SSS were both here.
That in itself was interesting. Neither service was in the habit of dispatching its highest-ranking officers to a murder scene. It was clear to Kresh that neither side wanted to concede a centimeter of ground in the endless turf war between the two services. Kresh was glad he had nothing at stake in this one. Let the two of them duke it out.
Kresh didn’t have much faith in the SSS or the Rangers. The Settler force was nothing more than a bunch of
