Traskeluk, like many billions of other people on many worlds, had heard of Jay Nash, and had enjoyed some of the producer's shows. So had Gift, Traskeluk supposed. But he couldn't remember the rotten apple of the crew ever mentioning Nash's name in conversation, or claiming any relationship with celebrities. "And I think he would have done so, if he could. He would have made a big thing of it. He's that type."
"What type is that, exactly?"
"Basically selfish."
Jory said to him: "I get the impression that you don't much like your shipmate."
Traskeluk didn't say anything.
"Did he do something he shouldn't have done? When you two were aboard ship together?"
The tough-looking man looked at her for a while. Then he asked, "You want a good story? A big story?"
"Of course I do."
"Then help me find him."
Jory, with a lot of other things to keep her busy, had still been wondering what Traskeluk was going to do when he got out of the hospital, whether he was really going to look up Nifty Gift. Maybe she'd even heard that Trask was somewhere on Uhao, and that he'd been asking after his old shipmate, asking with an air of urgency. Her journalist's curiosity, never satisfied with the story of the mysterious scout ship or whatever it had been, had been tweaked anew.
Jory had no security tracers available to help her locate people when she wanted them, but she had her own methods, and she was good at using them. Some of them worked on the people who did have physical tracers to employ. And Traskeluk was not making any effort to conceal his own whereabouts.
Jory and Trask talked about Nash's injuries too.
"So," she concluded, "you're all three in pretty good shape, then. Lucky none of you wound up in a marcus box." That was the fate of folk whose organic bodies were so severely damaged as to lose the ability to effectively support an organic brain. More often than not, near-total regrowth and reconstruction was possible, but such a project took years. Meanwhile, the surrogate of metal and composites, or marcus box, was never made in anthropomorphic form. A few people who had them came to prefer them over nature's way.
"Yeah," said Traskeluk. "There are worse things than marcus boxes too. Like being dead, or being goodlife."
"Mmm-hmm." She nodded at him thoughtfully. "You know, it always strikes me as just a little odd that folk I've known with real heavy handicaps usually aren't that bitter. In my experience, most people who have such very real practical problems don't take up the game of playing goodlife. And that's what it is for most of those who do—a game. Many start to play it as a way of getting back at their parents—for God knows what—for whatever bad things, as they see it, their parents once did to them."
"Yeah. I guess it must work that way."
Continuing her efforts to draw him out, Jory told Traskeluk she had heard of his home planet. And she had always wanted to talk to a member of his kind of clan or family, or simply to someone from his planet.
"It's a great long way from here."
"It certainly is. A great many of your fellow clansmen join the Templars, I've heard."
"A lot of our young men do, yes."
"Why did you join the Space Force?"
For one thing, I wanted to get away from home. He didn't speak those words aloud, but as he thought them he knew that they were true.
"But no Templars for you, hey?"
"No. They seem too…" He made a vague gesture.
"Fanatical?"
"That's about it." Traskeluk nodded.
Jory said: "Let me tell you something I've heard. I'd like your reaction."
"Shoot."
"It has to do with your people, and it says that among them, certain weapons and methods are traditionally specified for the settlement of personal grievances. I wonder how much truth there is in that."
The car was driving itself, and she could take her eyes from the road to give him a long inquiring look.
"There's some truth in it. But of course the main idea is not to let any serious wrong go unavenged—whatever kind of weapons you have to use. The one-shot firearm is a favorite. Has been, for centuries, I guess."
"Very interesting. Say, hypothetically, you were engaged in one of these feuds, or—what Would be your weapon of choice?"
"That would all depend," said Traskeluk. He was thinking that he could give this woman a good story, all right. See, lady, what I've got hidden in my new arm here is not a gun in the usual sense. Rather a whole set of hardware, including some things that turn my hand into a motorized claw or meat grinder. A tiny battery for power supply that will give my fingers a berserker's strength, and maybe enough heat to melt through steel, for just a handful of seconds. And then there is what my cousin, who knows all about this stuff, calls the shotgun.
See, by turning my gaze to the proper section of my icon, which is a little glowing skull that I can always see, and controlling my thought-images, I can activate any or all of these destructive powers. Not too hard a trick for a spacer to learn, not for someone who's had some years of practice in controlling ships' systems in much the same way.
It also seems appropriate, don't you think, that the limb I lost by Nifty's treachery is the same one I'm going to use to pull his guts out?
In response to Jory's questions, Trask tried to explain the world in which his family lived. Even the most traditional clan members admitted that in special situations, including wartime, almost any kind of weapon would do. The code was flexible enough to allow for that. In a real emergency, any means, however untraditional, could be used to punish treachery. The worst thing would be simply to allow it to go unpunished.
The journalist in Jory wanted to ask him if he had ever been involved personally in any such death feud. But the expression on the young man's face suggested that the answer might not be one she wanted to hear, and she moved on to say something else.
Traskeluk and Jory reached Nash's house around noon, within a few hours of their first phone conversation.
Approaching the front door down a curving walk, they could hear from around back the waterfall sound of what was doubtless a very fancy swimming pool.
The house sensed their approach to the front door, and the butler met them there. Only a machine. Two machines, because in the nearest room an active holostage was playing, showing a news program.
"Mr. Nash sent me," Jory informed the butler.
There was a noticeable pause before it said: "Yes, madam."
Sometimes, thought Traskeluk, the fancier they make these machines, the less reliably they work.
In its right hand the metal butler supported a tray, near shoulder level, as if it might be about to serve a round of drinks. But at the moment there was no burden at all upon the tray that was being held in such a perfectly level plane. Trask assumed that somewhere in the thing's programming a fairly high priority must have been assigned to the act of carrying a tray about.
Why, Trask wondered, would a robot watch news programs on a holostage?
One reason might be that someone had commissioned it to find out something that was going to be mentioned on the news. But as a rule it was perfectly easy to call up any kind of news program for yourself, wherever you were.
He let the mystery drop for the moment.
On impulse, Trask took a chance and asked the robot if a man called Spacer Sebastian Gift had been here.
Burymore protested demurely that his programming did not allow him to record personal conversations Unless instructed. Therefore, he had no record of the names of people who had been here in the past.
"Could you give me then: personal descriptions, then?"
"I regret, sir, that is not possible in the absence of my employer, whose approval would be necessary."
The gist of what the robot was willing to admit on the subject appeared to be that three people, one of whom might have been Nifty Gift, had indeed departed this house days ago—or possibly only hours ago. It seemed impossible to learn from Burymore whether Gift was expect
ed back, or when.
"Then whenever this recent departure was, exactly," Jory summarized, "it involved three people. A fourth stayed behind." This was not a question, and so it was not answered. She pursued. "Where is this person who stayed behind?"
The robot seemed to be thinking the question over.
Traskeluk prodded it. "You're not counting yourself as a person, I hope."
For once the reply was prompt and definite. "No, I am not." Jory's turn again. "Well then, where is he, or she? Is there anyone here or not?"
"Now you are here, ma'am. And you, sir. Otherwise not." The two humans exchanged looks, signaling their mutual willingness to give up.
TWENTY-SIX
The butler stood back and with a sweeping gesture admitted the pair of visitors to the house. Well, a household robot wearing human clothing. Trask had lately been developing some definite feelings about machinery, and in his opinion it was just too much to dress up a machine like some kind of goddamned doll. The robot had, of course, a human shape to fit those clothes, and it also walked on two legs like a Solarian human. Slightly taller than the average man, so that the dark lens-eyes were noticeably angled downward at Traskeluk when he stood before it. The facial features were only suggested by curved metal of a neutral color. They were immobile, except for the eyes, where recessed lenses could be seen to move. Straight nose, gently smiling lips that did not change their position when the well-modulated voice came out.
After it had allowed the couple in, and had seen to it that the front door was closed again, it turned and walked away down a broad and sunny hall, leaving the visitors uncertain as to whether they were presently going to be welcomed by a human being or not. From the back, and from a distance, you might easily be fooled into thinking the thing in human garments was a man.
Except that it had no hair, the top of its head had been sculpted into a smooth curve of dark brown, suggesting hair of medium length combed neatly back.
But the most immediately noticeable thing about the almost humanoid machine, when viewed from the back, was that it wore an enigmatic, hand-lettered placard: MY NAME is BURYMORE.
Traskeluk stared. Burymore?
Jory frowned in concentration, ferocious but brief. Evidently as intrigued as Trask was, she called after the machine. "Wait a moment. Shouldn't your name be spelled 'B-a-r-r-y-m-o-r-e'? With an a and two r's? At least I seem to recall that there was once a famous fictional butler of that name."
And Jory was trying to remember if her boss had said anything about having acquired a robot butler.
The tall shape stopped. Walking and turned back when it was called, but then stood silent and motionless. Jory had to repeat her question about its name.
In its mellow voice the robot said: "My name was given me by my owner, madam, during his last period of residence here… some days ago. I had no part in its selection. Will there be anything else?"
It sounded to Jory like the butler, or maybe the whole house, was having some kind of system trouble. Nash had told her that sometimes he had trouble getting a message through to the house. After exchanging a glance with Traskeluk she turned back to the machine and repeated an earlier question. "Are there any people here now? Besides this gentleman and me?" She spoke slowly and distinctly, as if to a child.
"Not at the moment, madam." And Burymore turned away, as if to go about some household business.
Jory shrugged, exchanged a glance with Traskeluk, and said: "Well. Why don't you wait here? Or in the next room; it looks like a library. I don't want to have to report to my boss that I brought a stranger into his inner sanctuary. It shouldn't take me more than a minute to pick up the items he sent me for."
Traskeluk nodded. Feeling ready to be distracted, he went wandering into the next room, hearing behind him Jory's steps go crisply down the hall. This house indeed looked like an interesting place to wander in. From time to time he shot a glance into the adjoining rooms. The butler was hovering vaguely in the background, dusting and rearranging things, but meanwhile giving the impression that it was keeping an eye on him. Well, that would have been natural behavior for a human attendant, with a stranger in the house.
Jory had no trouble locating the room Nash had described to her as his inner sanctuary, and the key he had given her promptly let her in. It was a sunny chamber, whose comfortable furnishings included a narrow bed, now neatly made up, various tables and chairs and three holostages, two of which seemed to be intended for technical work, such as graphics editing. Against one wall stood a small, manually operated stove, cabinets, a sink, and a refrigerator, the latter about half the size of the usual kitchen appliance. Everything was neatly in order, except for one or two minor oddities. First, a set of small plastic grillwork shelves that looked like they would probably fit inside the refrigerator were neatly arranged on the little stove's flat cook top. That would seem like one place you wouldn't want to store them. Also a faint, unpleasant odor hung in the air, as if the refrigerator might not be working properly, and something inside had begun to spoil.
Willing to do what she could to be helpful, Jory reached for the handle of the refrigerator door and pulled it open. The bad smell gushed out powerfully, but she hardly noticed.
The woman Jory was looking at, whoever she might be, had obviously been dead for days.
What kind of household robot concealed the presence of a human body, violently done to death? Either an extremely, incredibly defective robot. Or else…
Even with the shelves all taken out, the woman's corpse, clad in a simple brown dress, was a tight fit. It looked like a good many of her bones had probably been broken to get her in there. Arms and legs were folded into improbable positions. Startled-looking brown eyes stared dully somewhere past Jory's waist. In life she had been young, and probably attractive. Now…
Letting go of the open door, Jory backed up a step. She could hear herself making little whining noises, as if experimenting to see how a full-throated scream would go over… then she mastered the impulse, and pushed the door shut silently. Gagging from the smell, she turned away.
Certainly Jay Nash hadn't killed a woman and put her there. Certainly Nash wouldn't have then gone off and forgotten all about it. So, either the man who had been engaged as caretaker was a murderer, or…
The thought occurred to Jory that maybe the male human caretaker had been mangled too, his lifeless body crammed into some other improvised hiding place. In the face of that second possibility, it wasn't going to do to run out of the room screaming, mindlessly raising a general alarm.
She had to remind herself forcibly to actually find and pick up the material Nash had sent her to find. Then, struck by a thought, she looked at the wall opposite that where the refrigerator stood holding its ghastly burden.
A pair of handguns were mounted as a decoration on that wall. Maybe they were fakes, props from some holostage drama, and in any case their power charges had probably been removed. But she could think of nothing else to try.
Acting almost without conscious thought, she took one of the pistols down from its support, and slid it into her briefcase along with the things Nash had sent her to get.
Then she walked firmly to the door, and stepped out into the hall, knowing that she was going to scream uncontrollably if the robot should be waiting for her there.
But there was only the peaceful-looking, almost silent house. Somewhere in the background an antique clock, or its simulacrum, was ticking audibly. Jory remembered to lock the door of the private room behind her.
She was thinking that if Burymore was some kind of a berserker, as he evidently was, he couldn't be a normal one. Not the kind of machine people went out into space to fight. Be-cause he was certainly also capable of functioning as a butler. A kind of specialized device, then, an infiltrator and observer, rather than an all-out killer; physically stronger than almost any human, but almost certainly lacking the physical power, and the sharpness of senses that you would expect from one of them.
Now it was vitally important that she somehow let Trask know what was going on, or at least convey to him that they had to get out of here as quickly as they could, without letting the robot know what she had found.
"Trask. Let's get out of here."
He turned to see her standing in the doorway of the library, clutching her briefcase, looking pale and strange.
He put the book he had been looking at—all paper, no electronics—back into its place on the shelf. "What's up? You look like you've seen a ghost."
"I want to show you this," she said in a tight voice, and reached into her briefcase. Trask had barely time to register that the object she pulled out was a gun, and that it was aimed at Burymore, before the butler, moving with the lethal speed of a sprung trap, struck out at Jory's hand holding the weapon.
The robot had been watching Jory since she came out of the locked room—it hadn't realized that she might have a key, and it couldn't compute with certainty whether she had discovered the dead body or not.
Thus the brawl began, with a crash and a scream, right near the middle of the house.
The pistol fired when the robot struck and grabbed at it. The sharply focused blast damaged one of Burymore's legs, so that it went down on one knee, and had to hobble when it regained its footing.
But despite that, Burymore could move with frightening, speed. Jory was knocked down and slightly dazed, the pistol pulled from her grip before she could try to fire it again.
Trask stood for a long moment paralyzed with astonishment, a delay that was almost fatal, since it gave his enemy a chance to regain its footing. Then Traskeluk and the robot both went scrambling after the pistol, which had gone skittering across the floor and under an overstuffed chair. The machine hurled the chair aside and came up with the weapon, and fired it at Traskeluk from three meters away. But the old charge was now almost exhausted. The blast seared Trask's shirt, and scorched his skin beneath, but left him standing.
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