The maintenance chamber’s interior was far more complex than the switch chamber, and it took Fredda a moment to find what she was looking for.
Or, more accurately, to confirm that what she was looking for was not there. But it had most decidedly left its mark.
She smiled and stepped back from the Sapper. “Get me a magnified scan of the entire exposed surface in there. Maximum definition. ”
The tiny robot moved in and set to work, and Fredda watched. It was a good first step. There were all the other robots to check, of course, and she would have to be careful, thorough. But she felt a bit of excitement, of pleasure, all the same. She was starting to see how they did it-whoever they were.
But that sensation of pleasure did not last long. Because then she remembered what they had done.
Justen Devray was at his desk, working on the Huthwitz case, when the call came. “Damnation, Kresh, why the devil did you wait two hours to tell me?” Justen Devray was angry, and felt he had the right to be. He glared at the comm screen, feeling dead tired, horrified, and angry all at once. But not surprised. Somehow, he did not feel the least bit surprised.
“I had my reasons, Commander. Not the most pleasant reasons, but reasons-and I would prefer not to discuss them over a hyperwave line-even one that is supposed to be secure.”
“Very well,” Devray said. “I will be at the Residence in twenty minutes. Have you informed the SSS yet, or did you call me before Cinta Melloy?”
Kresh’s image in the viewtank shifted a bit, and the man looked uncomfortable. “I was not proposing to inform the SSS at all at this point. They will find out soon enough. ”
“The hell you say. Kresh-have you taken leave of your senses? This is not some drunk who’s been rolled in an alley. It’s the assassination of the Governor. You have to call in every law enforcement service available. ”
“I agree, Commander. However, I am not certain whether it is wise to consider the SSS to be a law enforcement service so far as this case is concerned.”
“What the hell are you saying?” Devray demanded.
“I’m saying I don’t know whose security the Settler Security Service is interested in. It is possible that it is not ours. Please get here as soon as you can. ”
Kresh cut the connection before Devray could say anything more-but Devray realized he had very little to say in any event. Kresh had all but come out and said he suspected the SSS of complicity in Grieg’s death. And, try as he might, Devray had to accept that it was possible.
But there was something far worse than that. The only reason Devray could see for Kresh to delay notifying the Rangers was that he suspected them as well.
And while it pained Devray to the depths of his soul to admit it, he knew damned well that was possible as well. He thought of Emoch Huthwitz, dead in the rain, and of all the things Devray had learned about Huthwitz in the last few hours.
He got moving.
The rain was letting up, and the sun was showing signs of rising in the east as Fredda Leving popped open the interior maintenance chamber on yet another SPR robot. Fredda was vaguely aware that the world outside the windows was getting lighter, but she was too tired for more than that.
She had lost track of the number of robots she had examined, but that didn’t matter. She could do a count later. Right now her job was to be thorough, to check every single SPR. At least she was getting faster at the job. If not for the need to do the interior scans searching for evidence, she could have been in and out of a given robot in twenty seconds. That in itself was an important piece of information.
But it was not enough. So far, she had only found minute traces, all but undetectable signs of what she was looking for. She could see the tiny scratches left behind when some sort of device had been removed from the robots-two tiny marks in the main power bus. Fredda was all but certain that those marks were the traces of some sort of cutoff device, some way of deactivating the robots by remote control. But guesses and being all but certain were not enough. So far, whoever had removed them had been as thorough removing them as she had been in checking.
But maybe that was not going to hold. After all, she had all the time in the world, and the fact that daylight was coming on did not concern her. She had no fear of sudden detection or something going wrong with the plan. But whoever had done this the night before-with the corpse of the Governor upstairs, the rain lashing down, with the clock running and all the lights off, that person might well make a mistake.
