“He was afraid that if he pulled on one thread, everything else would unravel, “ Kresh said. “ Arrest Sero Phrost, and Phrost would implicate Tonya Welton. Grieg needed Welton’s support. Grieg also knew the Spacer bid on the control system would probably collapse without Phrost. Arrest Verick, and Grieg knew he would lose the Settler bid on the system.”
Devray looked confused. “But wait a second. The robots just said that Grieg didn’t seem to care if they blew the lid off everything.”
“Exactly,” Kresh said. “Because, on the night he died, he knew it didn’t matter anymore. He had made his final decisions about the control system, and about the New Law robots. He was going to announce them the next day. What the robots were doing was threatening to sweep all his enemies out of the way, and threatening to do so at the exact moment he no longer needed to keep his enemies happy. “ Kresh turned toward the robots. “He couldn’t smear his opponents without making himself look very, very bad. But you two could. You were threatening him with the biggest favor of his political career.”
“It couldn’t all be good for him,” Melloy protested. “With that much mudslinging set loose, he would have gotten messed up a little himself. Someone would have tried to fight back.”
“Fight back at who? The robots?” Kresh asked. “They were the ones about to release the material, not Grieg. But even if you’re right-and you probably are-Grieg would have accepted any amount of damage to his prestige if it meant getting rid of Simcor Beddle.”
“And you are saying Grieg no longer cared because he had made his decisions,” Caliban said. “Might I ask what those decisions were, and if you intend to abide by them?”
“I do not wish to answer either of those questions, just at the moment,” Kresh said. “I have a rather cryptic note Grieg made to himself. I believe it contains his answer. But I don’t need to decipher the note. Tierlaw Verick here has done it for me.”
“He told you what Grieg had decided?” Fredda asked. “When? I never heard it.”
Tierlaw Verick opened his mouth to protest again, but then thought better of it.
“Good thinking, Verick,” Kresh said. “If I were you, I wouldn’t say one thing more.”
“But what did he say?” Fredda asked. “What did I miss?”
“You heard everything I did,” Kresh said. “And his reactions told me what Grieg’s decisions were. ”
“Then he was telling the truth,” Caliban said. “When he came out of Grieg’s office, he told Prospero and myself we were going to kingdom come. An archaic reference to the hereafter. He was telling us that Grieg had decided to destroy the New Law robots.”
“And that scared the hell out of you, and you went into Grieg full of bluff and bluster and threatened him before he even had a chance to tell you he intended to destroy you. ” Kresh shook his head. “A mistake. A very serious mistake on your part. ”
“A mistake in what way?” Caliban asked.
“And you claim to be high-function beings,” Donald said, speaking for the first time as he stepped down from his wall niche. “If you were true robots, human behavior would have been your constant study, and you would not have erred. Can you truly understand so little of human nature?”
“What do you mean?” Caliban asked. “Governor Kresh, is he speaking with your authority?”
“Donald is speaking for himself,” Kresh said, “but he’s getting it right for all of that. Go on, Donald.”
“It might be logical to expect Governor Grieg to tell you his decision in the same way no matter what that decision was, but that is not the human way. It does not account for the Governor’s personality. To expect him to act in such a way takes no account of the emotions of pleasure in bringing good news, or the embarrassment and sorrow humans feel when reporting bad news for which they are responsible. It would not be in Grieg’s character to call you into his office and tell you he intended to wipe you out. You would have found out by seeing it on the news, or by written notice-or by getting a blaster shot through the head.”
“What are you saying?” Prospero demanded.
“That you should have known his decision would be in your favor as soon as he asked to see you face-to-face,” Donald said.
“And when Verick told you that you were going to kingdom come, he was just telling what Grieg had told him,”
Kresh said. “Except he got it wrong. Grieg had been looking for a third way, some solution between tolerating the current intolerable state of affairs and extermination. And he found it. He found it and told it to Verick.”
