Caliban

Thatwas an interesting tidbit. Tonya Welton and Fredda Leving, each with a real reputation for being a hard-edged infighter. He could easily imagine them coming to a parting of the ways. It was far harder to imagine them becoming friends in the first place.

But being personally involved with the victim made it just that much more peculiar that Welton would barge into the investigation. She must have known that Kresh would quickly learn about the friction between herself and the victim. It was very early in the going, but right now, she was the one with the best motive for the attack. Why draw attention to herself?

Alvar Kresh leaned back in his chair and looked across the desk at the man he was interviewing. Jomaine Terach was a tall, thin man, sandy-haired, pale, with a long, thin face and a sharp-pointed nose. There was something a bit overrefined, overformal, about his manner of speech.

Kresh repressed a yawn. It hardly seemed worth staying up all night just to listen to the likes of Terach.

Alvar rubbed his eyes and brought his mind back to where he was in the questioning.” I find it hard to imagine the two of them as friends. Settlers hate robots, and Leving was one of the leading proponents of more and better robots. I can’t see how much they would have in common,” Kresh said.

“I think perhaps that was part of what made the friendship work-at least for a while. They enjoyed debating each other. But then things fell apart between them. Maybe it just got a little too intense,” Terach suggested.

“But if she wasn’t Tonya Welton’s employee, Master Terach, and they were no longer friends,” Donald 111 said, “might one ask what their relationship was?”

Terach glared at Donald. It clearly annoyed him to be questioned by a robot. But he was smart enough not to protest out loud.

Kresh watched Terach with a detached, professional interest. He often ordered Donald to take an active part in the questioning. It was a variation on the ancient good-cop, bad-cop routine. Donald unsettled the interrogation subjects, and then the subjects answered Kresh, looking to him for support and understanding, unwisely trusting him over Donald.

“They were collaborators, I suppose.” Terach turned toward Kresh. “There’s a lot I can’t say about the work at the lab,” he apologized.

“I’ve heard that more than once,” Kresh growled. “Every employee I’ve talked to has told me that. Those seem to be the only words most of your people know.”

“I’m sorry about that.”

“Don’t be. We’ll be back once I’ve gotten the Governor to grant me some clearances.”

That prospect didn’t seem to please the rather reedy-looking Jomaine Terach. “Well, perhaps you needn’t bother, once the public announcement is made.”

“And I’ve heardthat, too, and I know bloody damn well you’re about to tell me you can’t say anything more,” Kresh said. “So let’s talk about something else. Tell me why Fredda Leving would be in Gubber Anshaw’s lab in the middle of the night.”

Terach seemed genuinely astonished. “Oh, my heavens, I wouldn’t attach any great importance tothat,” he said. “We’re in and out of each other’s labs all the time. The work is of a highly-ah-collaborative nature, and I expect that she was simply working on some subcomponent that happened to be in his lab.”

“Infernals tend to be rather territorial people,” Kresh suggested. “We like to have our own space.”

Terach shrugged. “That may be so, but that doesn’t meaneveryone is compulsive about it,” he said, a bit pointedly.

“Mmmph,” Kresh grunted, not altogether convinced, and ignoring the gibe that was clearly intended to distract him. “Well, then, maybe you can tell me where the devil Gubber Anshawis. He hasn’t shown up this morning and we have not been able to reach him at home. We assume he’s there, but his robots flatly refuse to confirm that, or to pass on any messages.”

“I’m not surprised,” Jomaine said. “Gubber likes to work at home, in complete privacy. He’s taken to doing it more and more recently. Sometimes we kid him that if you police threw an arrest perimeter around his house, he wouldn’t even notice.”

Kresh grunted noncommittally. Privacy, and the sanctity of the home, were indeed highly valued commodities on Inferno. Indeed, it was illegal to arrest a person in his or her home. The law was very precise on that point, and on the procedures that could and could not be followed. The police and their robots could wait outside until hell froze over, they could search the premises once an arrest was made, but they could not enter the home to effect the arrest.