by Isaac Asimov
Sipha said nothing. Coren turned his chair to face her. She wore a skeptical expression.
“That’s what you want to believe,” she said.
Coren nodded. “Trouble is, I don’t have a viable alternative. Do you?”
“No. But I’m not sure I can accept that one robot could kill. You want me to accept that two of them were cooperating in a mass murder.”
Coren grunted. “Since when have you gone Spacer?”
She frowned. “Since when have you lost the ability to think?”
Coren glared at her.
“We partnered for two years in Special Service,” she said. “I thought you were more reasonable than that. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe working for Rega Looms has loosened your grip on objective reality. What do you think?”
Coren worked himself back from anger and tried to think it through. Sipha had come into the Service directly from the military, a different path than his more direct route of applying to the Academy for Civic Defense, Forensics, and Criminal Interdiction. Despite their divergent backgrounds, Coren had come to trust her. He still did. It had surprised him when, after he had left the Service, she had taken this position as head of security for Kopernik Station.
But it put her in almost daily contact with Spacers and Settlers, both factions of whom had embassy branches on the station.
Nevertheless, he trusted her. That, he recognized, had not changed.
“All right,” he said slowly. “Tell me your reasoning.”
“That robot is collapsed. Positronic nervous breakdown. Something happened to cause it, and if it could break down like that then it could not have harmed any of those people. If it were still walking around, calmly trying to do its business, then I might agree with you.” She sat back. “I’ve been up here five years, Coren. I’ve learned a little bit about robots. Have to, when you deal with Spacers who won’t leave home without them. I had to learn to discount my own prejudices a long time ago if I wanted any chance of running my department efficiently and doing my job honestly. It wasn’t easy–I still don’t like them–but I know their limitations. It wasn’t the robot. Not that one, anyway. And I doubt it was this other one–there’s no in-built compunction that prevents a robot from harming another robot, especially in the defense of humans. As far as we’ve been able to tell, that second robot wasn’t even on board when this happened.” She gestured toward the bay. “Besides, what motive? Suicide? Bringing along a robot would have been the best way to fail to commit suicide. They’re programmed to save our lives for us, whether we want them to or not.”
Coren nodded. “All right, that’s all logical. As far as it goes. Sorry about the remark.”
“Forget it. So–how do you want to proceed?”
“Why do I get a say? Isn’t this official now?”
Sipha pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Maybe.” She seemed to consider carefully. “See, this bay is Settler. When you contacted me about this little favor you wanted, I called in a few favors of my own. Right now, this whole business exists in an official vacuum. No one knows but you, me, and my immediate staff. “She stabbed a finger in the direction of the cargo bin. “And whoever killed all those people.”
“You’ll have to make it official sooner or later.”
“True. But maybe by then we can figure this out.”
Coren studied her for a moment. Something in her expression teased at him.
“There’s something else,” he stated.
Sipha still pondered, then nodded. “I agreed to do this for you because I need you.”
“I’m flattered. But I’m also private now.”
“Oh, I think we can change that if we need to. But... I have a problem I can’t take to my superiors. I’m not even sure who among my own people I can trust with it. I need outside help. I didn’t know how I was going to get it till you called.”
“Is it related?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised. Probably. It has to do with baleys, at least. Dead ones, too, though this is the first load of corpses to show up on my station.”
Coren raised an eyebrow in amusement. “‘Your’ station?”
Sipha smiled wolfishly. “Oh, yes, old partner mine. Never doubt it. My station. It has trouble and I want it fixed.” She gazed past him, into the bay. “As I say, this is the first load of corpses. The occasional body has been turning up from time to time. The sorts of people who easily get crushed when they learn the wrong thing, or know too much, or who just show up where they shouldn’t. Most of them have been thoroughly professional kills... till about three months ago.”
Coren waited. She seemed to come to a decision and activated the datum on the desk. The paper-thin screen extruded and winked on. She worked intently for a couple of minutes, then crooked a finger at him to have a look.
“We found this in one of our detention cells,” she said.
On the screen Coren saw a body, laid out on a morgue table. It had been a woman–the basic shape was still intact–but he had never seen a body so thoroughly bruised: blue, green, and sickly yellow marks ran from the scalp to the toes. Faint red laceration marks interrupted the mottling here and there.
“What was it? Explosive decompression? Something fall on her?”
“In a detention cell?” Sipha asked wryly. “She was alive when we put her in there. Small-quantity Brethe peddler, nothing major, ever-public nuisance, more than anything else. She was supposed to be, you see, because she worked for me.”
“Regular cop?”
“No, she really did used to deal in black market. I made her a better deal. It worked out. She worked the Settler section for me.”
Coren felt himself smile. “And when there was something really important to report...?”
“She got herself arrested. This hadn’t been the first time she’d visited one of my cells. The next shift, we found her like this. Very simply, every bone in her body had been broken. A lot of them were crushed.”
“What was she reporting?”
“I don’t know. She came in ‘under the influence.’ I was tied up with arranging all this for you and didn’t get a chance to talk to her.”
“No one heard or saw anything?”
“Evidently not. That’s why I’m not really sure about my people. Can you think of a way that could happen and no one on watch would know about it?”
Coren shook his head. “What about surveillance?”
“Blank for that section. I suspended two of my officers for negligence, but I honestly don’t think they were the ones who did it. Someone with a bit more expertise fiddled the recorders. The problem with that is, I have at least five people on my staff who could have done it, but none of them has a motive.” Sipha gestured toward the image on the screen. “Besides, look at that and tell me how it was done. A couple of adjusters with clubs? I don’t think so.”
“But since you don’t really suspect your two discipline cases, you have an idea.”
Sipha nodded. “During autopsy we came up with this. “She tapped the keypad. “The bruising is uninterrupted over the entire body and none of the fractures are consistent with blows.”
The screen changed, showing an image of a shoulder, blackened like rotting fruit. Sipha adjusted the scan and one shape emerged, slightly darker than the surrounding bruise. Coren stared at the vague outline of a hand. An odd hand, to be sure, the fingers too thick and short, the spread too wide.
“Was it clear enough for any kind of prints?” he asked.
“No prints. Perfectly smooth except for a couple of joints. And the bone beneath this impression had been ground nearly to powder. No, partner mine, this isn’t a human hand.”
“A robot?” He shook his head. “But you said–”
“I said that robot–” she pointed out at the bay “–didn’t do it. But that’s still my best guess. And if a robot did this–” she gestured at the screen “–if a robot–maybe your second mystery robot–got into my cells and did this, then I have a serious problem.” She lo
oked up at him. “Will you help me?”
“I–” Coren began.
The door opened. One of Sipha’s men leaned in. “Chief, you need to see this.”
“Couple things,” the older man–Baxin, Sipha’s staff pathologist–said when Sipha and Coren entered the bin. He pointed at the rebreather unit. The umbilicals had all been disconnected and had retracted into the unit. “That’s a standard Fain-Bischer rebreather. About six years old, out of date, but still in good working order. No reason it won’t last another hundred years once it’s been cleaned out.”
“Cleaned out of what?” Sipha asked.
“We don’t know yet, but it’s evident from the postures of the deceased that they’ve been poisoned. Something in the rebreather, we assume. Something clever, too. The filtration system should have blocked it, but it didn’t.” He nodded sharply. “That’s one thing. The other...” He pointed up.
Nyom’s body had been taken down and now they could see how she had been suspended. The roof had a crack in it, about half a meter long and perhaps five to eight centimeters at the widest. The metal around it was discolored, heat-scored.
“The bin was pressurized,” the tech explained. “The air leaked out through that crack. My guess is that the body was drawn to it during freefall. The fabric of her pants got caught in it.”
“Did decompression kill her?” Coren asked.
“No. A broken neck did that. She was dead before she got stuck in the ceiling.”
Coren looked down at the rebreather. “Why? If everyone else was poisoned...” He looked around. “Where’s the robot?”
“I’ve got it in an impound locker,” Baxin said. “I didn’t know where else to put it.”
Sipha extended her hand. “Give me the tag. I’ll take care of the robot. How long on autopsies?”
“Fifteen, twenty hours,” Baxin said. “A few preliminaries sooner than that maybe.”
“What made the crack?” Coren asked. “It looks intentional.”
“It is,” Baxin said. “Heat induction, industrial grade drill or welder, crystallized the metal, made it brittle.”
“What kind?”
“We don’t have it. There’s nothing in here that would do that.”
“Not even the robot?”
“No, I don’t think so. Specialized tool, in my opinion.”
Coren gave the hole in the roof a last glance, then left the bin.
When Sipha joined him, he said, “Doesn’t make sense. Who broke her neck if Coffee didn’t?”
She glanced at him. “‘Coffee’?”
“That’s what she called the robot.” He saw Sipha’s expression. “Don’t ask me, I don’t know why. But who else could have broken her neck?”
“We’ll check the bodies to see if time of death matches in all cases. But I still think you’re wrong about the robot. Maybe it knew they were being poisoned–that’s what it was trying to stop.”
“How did it know? And who–”
“I know, who broke Nyom’s neck. Maybe the same one who crushed that Brethe dealer?”
“And which one would that be? Which dead one in that bin who had never been to Kopernik before would that be?” Coren asked sarcastically. “Oh, wait, I know. The same one who cracked a hole in the bin with an inducer that no one can find.”
Sipha snarled at him. “I don’t damn well know, Coren. So I repeat: will you help me?”
He nodded. “Oh, yes. I’ll help you. No question.” He mulled his options for a few seconds. “I’m going back down. You can handle the autopsies without me. Also, I’ll need ID on all of them.”
“What’s down there?” Sipha frowned. Clearly, she had thought they would be working together for a few days.
“I have a couple of people to talk to. For one, the data troll who put me onto Nyom in the first place. I want to find those people Nyom was dealing with, and she’s my best chance right now.” He drew a deep breath. “And we’re going to need a roboticist.”
“There’s a lab full of them here–”
“Do you trust them?”
Sipha scowled, then shook her head. “Not till I find out who killed my Brethe dealer.”
“I’ll see if I can take care of that, then.”
“I suppose you know a roboticist?”
“Of one, yes. I think it’s best to stay away from anyone involved directly with the Spacer sector on Kopernik.”
Sipha nodded. “I’ll get you on the next shuttle back to D. C.”
“No, not D. C. Lyzig District–that’s where my informant lives. I’ll take the suborbital back to D. C. after I talk to her. Send me the autopsy data when you have it.”
“What are you going to say to Looms?”
Coren shook his head. “I’ll worry about that when I see him.”
Three
THE FLIGHT DOWN frightened him more than the trip up to Kopernik. Perhaps it was the idea of falling, but Coren felt at the edge of panic from the moment the shuttle left dock till he walked, legs trembling, into the concourse at Lyzig Station. It did not make sense–he never reacted this way on a semiballistic–and he resented the idea that it was all psychosomatic. He went directly to a public restroom and rinsed his face in cold water, then sat in a stall till the sweating and nausea passed.
“Never again,” he muttered as he finally gathered himself up. He checked his watch–twenty minutes wasted getting over his reaction–and left the restroom.
He rented a locker and shoved his one bag inside, then headed for the station lobby.
Lyzig buzzed with first-shift traffic. The warrens swarmed with people going to jobs or shops or meetings. Coren liked Lyzig: Clean, robust, a polished politesse substituted for the unmannered friendliness of other Eurosector districts, as if the residents were conscious of a long history–an important past they were obliged to honor.
At the station gate he flagged a taxi and gave his destination. The driver’s eyebrows raised speculatively, but all he said was “Very good, sir,” and moved into the vehicular lanes. The short ride ended at an ancient hotel. Coren tipped the driver and stepped out.
The taxi pulled away and Coren began walking in the opposite direction. His shakes were gone by now and he walked purposefully, in imitation of resident Lyzigers.
He had three options to find Jeta Fromm. He had already decided against contacting Data Recovery Systems, through which he had originally found her. He had to assume that whoever had killed Nyom had gotten the same information about the baley run, and that meant a competitor. He had no way of knowing yet where they would have gotten the data–it might have been Jeta Fromm herself, or her handlers, or some as yet undetermined third source. He could too easily reveal his interest by going through the usual channels.
The second option was not worth considering at this point. Local police could find her and pick her up, but he would be effectively destroying her career and perhaps hurting several other people associated with her. A significant part of the work he did depended on clandestine resources. Damaging them by “going local” could cost him his reputation and impair his ability to do his job. Using the local police, then, was a course of last resort.
His best option, then, was to find her himself. He had met with her twice, at different locations of her choosing. Her nervousness had bothered him, so he had traced her back to her hab–just in case he needed to find her quickly and confidentially. Like now.
The area he now entered was very old, and the signs of wear and neglect became more evident the further he walked. The fast pace and energy representative of Lyzig faded; people here were in no hurry to go anywhere–a few were even sitting in doorways, or gathered in small groups near shops or in the cramped public spaces that passed for parks in this part of the urbanplex.
Coren automatically imitated the lethargy around him, moving slower, keeping his head down. He tucked his hands in his pockets and searched the corridor signs till he found one marked BETRAGSTRAS. He walked down the narrower corridor to a steep meta
l staircase that ran up the windowless wall to his left. The ghosts of old graffiti discolored the surfaces, scrubbed endlessly by automated cleaners that, over time, failed to remove all the paint.
At the top of the stairs, Coren found a broad rooftop upon which stacks of single-unit cubicles formed a small, cramped village. Light glowed from open doorways, and the thick smell of cooking almost covered the odors of plastic and sweat and unprocessed waste.
Faces appeared at doorways, lingered for a few seconds, then retreated.
Coren estimated about a thousand people lived in this precariously overbuilt shantytown, lived quite illegally and with little fear of eviction, but with the constant possibility of having the entire makeshift construct tumble down on them. Many of the residents worked legitimate jobs that paid too little to afford them a decent domicile and do whatever else they found more important–sending children to better schools, subscriptions to expensive entertainments, paying off a debt, or saving for the chance to emigrate–but just as many worked on the edge of legality: dealers in stolen data or controlled substances, informants, runners, small credit fences, rented muscle. Others simply had nowhere else to go and had fallen here, fortunate to at least have a place to sleep and a source for food.
Coren took out his palm monitor and made his way through the maze of passageways, up a ladder, and down a short gangway to an unlit doorway. The signal from the smear he had deposited on Jeta the second time they met was weaker, but still traceable. The self-replicating vonoomans exhausted themselves after a few days and decayed unrecoverably. He ran the sensor up and down a scale to test it. Satisfied that Jeta Fromm had at least stayed here for more than an hour, giving his tiny tracers a chance to proliferate in the environment, he pocketed the monitor. He palmed a flash and switched it on as he kicked in the flimsy plastic door and stepped through.
In the harsh blue-white illumination, the cubicle leapt into sharp relief. A cot stretched against the wall to his left, a sleeping bag and extra blankets wadded up at the head. A makeshift desk stood along the back wall, cluttered with objects that formed an indecipherable tangle. Along the wall to the right was a trunk, the lid open, the contents spilling over the edge–clothing, from the look of it.