would explain why it was all so elaborate. It was intended to make us paranoid, so we would deploy the closest, largest force of robots on hand.”
“Makes sense to me,” Devray said. “I’ve been wondering about that. If all they had wanted was a simple diversion, there wasn’t any need to go to the lengths they did.”
“That’s a good explanation,” Fredda said, “but I think you’ve got to think about the psychology of the whole plan too. There’s something theatrical about it all. It’s complicated, it’s full of grand gestures.”
“Whoever set this up,” Kresh said. “The ringleader. That’s the person we should be thinking about, not a cipher like Ottley Bissal. He’s no one at all. It’s who he might lead us to that I’m interested in. So far, about the one thing we can say for sure about the ringleader is that it wasn’t Bissal.”
“That theatrical angle,” Devray said. “A person like that wouldn’t want to miss the show.”
“What do you mean?” Fredda asked.
“I mean if the ringleader is the sort of person with a flair for the dramatic you’re talking about, and if he or she has an ego big enough to think about killing the Governor—then that person would be there.” Devray thought for a moment, and nodded to himself. “Our ringleader would want to be there, watching the show he or she had set up, gloating over it. There would be no real danger in watching it unfold. He or she would have so many cutouts and layers of security that the team’s own operatives wouldn’t know who the boss was. But the boss would be there, watching it happen. An audience of one.”
“Point taken,” Kresh said. “It would be an insane risk for the leader of the plot to be within a hundred kilometers of the place—but people who kill planetary leaders aren’t altogether sane. All right, there we are at the staged fight.”
“The fight draws the attention of the party-goers,” Devray went on, “and distracts enough of the Ranger security guards inside the house so Bissal can get to the storage room with the robots. Alternately, the fight provides the excuse for the guards being drawn off, as they were already suborned in the first place. They are my people, but they are also human. It is possible that Huthwitz was not the only dirty Ranger in all this. But I will say in defense of the Rangers that they are not used to serving as sentries. They don’t get much training in it. Robots do that sort of thing. It was only because robots were not supposed to be in evidence last night for political reasons that Grieg asked for human guards.”
“And if he had stuck with robot guards, he’d be alive this morning,” Kresh said. “That’s another reason the plotters must have chosen last night—at a regular Spacer party, there would have been throngs of robots around, serving the food, offering drinks and so on, and they would have stayed on after the party, remained in the house. There would have been a dozen different types of robots, from a dozen different sources. There would be no way to deactivate them all at one go before the event. The reception last night was all human service, Rangers serving as bartenders and waiters, and they went home when they were done. Cinta Melloy thought it was strange that Grieg was alone in the house, but that wasn’t the strange part. The strange part was that he had none of his own household robots along.”
“In any event, Bissal uses the diversion of the fight to get to the storeroom and wait. You, Sheriff Kresh, investigate the staged fight, and while you are otherwise involved, the three supposed SSS agents come in and take Blare and Deam away, never to be seen again. The party goes on, with no apparent further incident, but everyone more than a little paranoid. Shortly thereafter, the Rangers on duty are sent down to activate the SPRs and deploy them. I questioned the Rangers who did the job, and they said all fifty robots were standing there, powered down, their chest access panels open. All the Rangers had to do was push the power buttons and close the access doors. One of the Sappers failed to activate, but the Rangers did not fuss with it very much, figuring forty-nine security robots were enough. They were also a bit anxious to get back to their own duty posts—understandable, with all the commotion that had already taken place.”
“Unless they were the Rangers who were suborned,” Kresh said. “That seems farfetched, but there was a conspiracy. Sooner or later, someone or other will suspect every single person at the reception of being in on the plot. And that goes for all of us around this table. We have to be ready for that.”
“I’m already checking the two Rangers who powered up the Sappers,” Devray said. “In any event, the plotters now had a houseful of rigged security robots, and Bissal was in the basement with Fredda’s Trojan robot. He might have come out and starting unpacking his gear then, but if he had any sense at all, he stayed in that closet, out of sight, waiting. Not the most relaxing way to spend the evening. His nerves may have gotten a bit jangled by waiting so long in the dark, which might explain some of the mistakes he made. Judging by the integrator images, he was already a little jumpy when he arrived.
“The party ends. The guests leave. The Ranger waiters are eager to get the place cleaned up and get out of there. They don’t like being servants. It’s humiliating to be doing a robot’s job, and it’s not why they joined the force. Maybe they are a little hurried, a little sloppy. Meantime, upstairs, Grieg is having his usual series of end-of- the-evening meetings. The next to last of these is with Tierlaw Verick—and I think we need to take another crack at Verick. I don’t think we got everything out of him. And he’s got to be a prime suspect in all this. Donald can say what he wants about Caliban and Prospero, but if I were an assassin, I’d want a human confederate in the house, not a pair of robots.”
“We’re still holding him,” Kresh said. “He’s mad enough to bite the head off a Sapper, but he’s not going anywhere.”
“Good,” Devray said. “Anyway, according to Verick’s statement, he said good night to the Governor at the door. He encountered two robots matching Caliban’s and Prospero’s descriptions coming in as he went out, and then went to bed. He claims to have slept through the ruckus, and he seems to have been overlooked in the initial room-to-room search.”
“My people getting sloppy,” Kresh said. “And more damn suspects for the conspiracy mill. Though what purpose pretending to overlook Verick might have, I can’t imagine.”
“Caliban and Prospero meet with the Governor,” Devray continued. “According to Donald, they say they threatened the Governor with blackmail. They may have participated in some way in the murder. Perhaps they removed the modified range restrictors from the ground-floor robots. Maybe Bissal was doing that while they shot the Governor. But let’s leave them out of it for now. We don’t really need them to explain the sequence of events. We can add them later if we have to. Donald, what did they say happened after they talked to Grieg?”
“They say they left the Residence without noticing anything untoward and walked back to Limbo.”
“In the driving rain?” Kresh asked.
“Neither of them had access to an aircar,” Donald said. “I would expect the going would be a bit treacherous, and visibility poor, but both of them are of water-resistant design. It would be no great hardship for either of them to walk back to town.”
“What about the SPRs?” Fredda asked. “Were they functional when Caliban and Prospero left?”
“I elected not to ask that question, for fear of supplying them with information they did not have. If I asked if the SPRs were working when they left, they might well have realized we had not established the timing of events, allowing them to fashion their stories more effectively. However, neither of them volunteered any information regarding the SPRs. If they are telling the truth, that suggests nothing was amiss when they left. If they are lying, they may be trying to make it appear nothing was amiss at that time, thus muddying the waters.”
“The last thing these waters need is muddying,” Kresh said. “All right, according to the robots, everything was fine when they left the building.”
“At some point in the night,” Devray said, “Bissal came out of his closet and started taking the gear out of this Trojan robot of yours, Dr. Leving. Can you give us some more details on that?”
“Well, the Trojan was badly damaged, and I haven’t had much time for an examination, but I can tell you the basics,” Fredda said. “The robot’s torso was actually a series of storage compartments. When I examined it, there was one empty compartment the right size and shape to hold the image box, the communications simulator that was programmed to put Grieg’s face and voice on the comm lines. There was what appeared to be a transmitter of some sort, though it looked half-melted. I would assume it was the activator for the range restrictors on the other robots. There were a few other things that were more or less intact—a handlight, a pair of gloves, that sort of thing. Then there was the remains of the blaster in what looked to be a shielded compartment, but it was so melted I could barely recognize it.”
“So that’s where the gun got to,” Kresh said.
“After he had unpacked his equipment,” Devray went on, “Bissal sent the signal activating the range restrictors. All the SPR robots immediately shut down. Bissal came upstairs and went straight to Grieg’s bedroom.
