and forth, back and forth, at a rather deliberate pace, his full attention on the paper. He went back to the desk and picked up the pen again. He scratched something out, and wrote something else in.
The door annunciator chimed, and Kresh pushed a button on his desk.
The door opened, and Justen Devray came in.
“Well, Justen,” Kresh said. “It would appear I have a job for my Rangers.” He handed Devray the paper. “Contact Cinta Melloy and coordinate with the 888. Pull these people in, Justen. All of them. Now. And I want you and Melloy here as well. With you it’s an order—but you can extend my invitation to Cinta. I have a feeling she’ll accept.”
Devray looked at the list and shook his head. “Maybe Melloy will want to come,” he said. “But some of these people aren’t going to like it,” he said.
“Just get them,” Kresh said. “I want them all here, in this office, and I want them here in two hours.”
Devray nodded, and then, after a moment, remembered to salute. “Yes, sir,” he said. And with that he turned and left, Kresh using the door button to let him out.
Kresh watched Devray leave, waited a minute, and then followed after, using the ID scanner plate by the door to make it open. Kresh stopped and examined something in the door frame on his way out. Whatever he found seemed to please him, and he went on his way. The room sensed that there were no humans about, and faded the lights down.
Leaving Donald alone in the dark. In more ways than one. He wanted to follow, to stay with his master—but no. Alone. Let him work it out alone. The Governor could always summon Donald if he needed him.
“I have to go, Gubber,” Tonya said.
“You could protest it!” Gubber said. “Claim diplomatic immunity. Refuse to go. It was bad enough the way Caliban just vanished and ended up in jail. I barely knew him, and it scared me half to death. If it happened to you, I couldn’t bear it. Don’t go. Don’t let them get you. Stay.”
“That could only make things worse,” Tonya said, her tone far less calm than her words. “I know this hasn’t been easy for you. But I promise you it will be over after tonight. I don’t know why Kresh wants me, but he does. I don’t know if I’m a suspect, or a witness, or if he just wants to chat about terraforming. He wants me, and I have to go.”
“But why?”
Tonya took a step or two toward the door, then turned and looked back. Logically, she knew it was going to be all right. Nothing was going to happen. But she had no such confidence on the emotional level. Fear was loose in the world. “I have to go,” she said, “because we live on this world, you and I. We live here, and Alvar Kresh might be the only man who can save it. If I fight this, with all the legal ways I might, that can’t be good for him.
“And as of today’s announcement, what is bad for Alvar Kresh is good for Simcor Beddle.”
Kresh tried to relax. He took a quick shower, changed into fresh clothes, had a quick bite to eat—and tried to settle himself down. He found the Residence library and selected a booktape to read, more or less at random. He sat there, with the words scrolling past his eyes, not taking in more than one word in ten of the story.
Calmly. Slowly. He started the tape over a half-dozen times before he gave up. He could not concentrate on anything else but the case. Because now, all of a sudden, he had a case.
He had more than that. He had the answer. He was as certain of that as he had been of anything in his life. But for all of that, it would still be easy—very, very easy—for him to make a mistake. Kresh set the tape aside, and thought it through again, and again.
Justen Devray came in the library almost precisely two hours after Kresh had sent him off.
“They’re all here,” he said. “Waiting for you.”
“Good,” said Kresh. “Good. Then’s let go see them.”
Justen led Kresh up the stairs to the Governor’s office—to his office—and ushered him inside. Kresh took a deep breath and faced a roomful of people who had to be thinking they were all suspects in Grieg’s murder. In the Governor’s murder, he told himself. And you’re the Governor now. Kresh glanced to the wall niches, and was relieved to see Donald there. Nice to know there was someone here who was utterly, unquestionably, on Kresh’s side.
Kresh looked around the room at all of them. Leving, Devray, Welton, Melloy, Beddle, Verick, Phrost, Caliban, Prospero. The humans among them looked edgy, upset, nervous. Even the two robots looked a bit ill at ease. As well they might. “Fredda, you’re here because I assumed you’d want to see the end of it. You’re in the clear. As for the rest of you,” he said, “I have a problem. A very simple problem, but one with no simple solution. And my simple problem is this: It has come to my attention that you’re all guilty.”
It took a full ten seconds of stunned silence before they started shouting their denials.
15
“ALL GUILTY OF different crimes,” Kresh said. “But guilty just the same. You were the one that did it, Cinta.”
Cinta Melloy looked startled. “Me? Are you out of your mind? I might have a little dirt under my nails, but I didn’t kill anyone.”
“No,” Kresh agreed, “you didn’t. But you were the one who gave me the clue I needed.” And it did no harm at all to rattle you and everyone else in the room by saying it that way, Kresh thought.
“What clue was that?” said Cinta.
“At the fire,” Kresh replied. “You said something about not being invited, and showing up anyway.”
“That’s your big clue?” Cinta asked.
“That’s my big clue.”
“I hardly see how those words are the basis for accusing anyone of murder,” Prospero said.
“Oh, you and Caliban don’t need to worry about murder charges either,” Kresh said. “You are here precisely because I no longer suspect you. You have cleared yourselves of all charges—aside from attempted blackmail— without anyone realizing it.”
“How so?” Caliban asked.
“By not connecting the term ‘Valhalla’ to a garbled rendition of its meaning,” Kresh said.
“Alvar—Governor Kresh—for stars’ sake stop playing games!” Fredda said. “Just tell us whatever it is you have to tell us.”
“Be patient, Fredda,” Kresh said. “We’ll get there.” He turned to the robots. “Caliban, Prospero, you told Donald. Now tell me—and I would urge you not to hold anything back, if you value your survival. When you came here, to this office, to meet Grieg, what was your plan?”
“To threaten him with the simultaneous exposure of every scandal on this planet if he decided to exterminate the New Law robots,” Prospero said.
“And you made this threat?” Kresh asked.
“We did, couching it in the most polite terms possible,” Prospero said. “However, he did not seem at all upset or perturbed by it.”
“I would go further than that,” Caliban said. “He seemed rather amused by the idea, as if he didn’t for a moment think we would carry it out.”
“And would you have?” Kresh asked.
The two robots looked at each other, and then Caliban spoke. “We were to meet the next day and begin preparing our materials for release,” Caliban said. “Then we heard that Grieg was dead, and of course canceled the plan.”
“How did you get your information?” Fredda asked.
“Slowly,” Prospero said. “Gradually. The rustbacking network is full of tipsters and rumormongers. And there is an old axiom to the effect that those who would seek the truth should follow the money. We studied a great number of transactions, legal and otherwise. They taught us much.”
