Leving looked toward Kresh, a bit startled. “But I-oh,” she said, about to protest and then thinking better of it… Forgive me, Sheriff.”
“No harm done. In any event, it’s a very minor point,” Kresh said, hoping that he was telling the truth, now that Verick’s attention had been drawn to it. “But you weren’t the only one to meet with the Governor last night, were you?”
“No, no, of course not,” Verick said. “There were a number of other people waiting their turn before me. Eight or ten of them altogether, but in twos and threes. I had to wait until they were done, but I didn’t much mind. After all, I didn’t have to fly home afterwards-and besides, by being the last one in line, I had the chance to stay a little longer. No one was waiting behind me. ”
And you’ve just told us you were the last one to see Grieg alive, Kresh thought. He stole the tiniest of glances at Devray, and saw the point had not been lost on him, either. “So what did the two of you talk about?” Kresh asked.
It was plainly obvious that Verick’s patience was running thin. “I have told you and told you. About my desire to sell him a control station. He seemed most interested in it, for a number of reasons-mostly because it wasn’t a robotic system.”
“I beg your pardon?” Kresh asked. That was the benefit of repeated questioning. Verick hadn’t offered that little tidbit in the previous go-rounds.
“Our Settler system is not robotic,” Verick said. “I did what I could to point out the advantages of that to the Governor. That was mostly what we talked about. He seemed quite receptive.”
“Why would he be against a robotic system?” Fredda asked.
“Too conservative for a situation as far gone as Inferno,” Verick said. “Hook a robot-brain control unit up to the terraforming system and it will avoid all potentially risky operations, for fear of doing harm to human beings, or some damn thing. ” He was warming to his subject, obviously going through the arguments he had used on Grieg. “ A robotic control system would do all it could to avoid all risk during the terraforming process-almost certainly delaying completion, and possibly causing the project to fail altogether. Even if it succeeded in terraforming the planet, its goal would be to create an utterly risk-free final environment when the reterraforming was complete. There are Spacer worlds that are virtually nothing more than planetwide well-manicured lawns. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that those are the worlds where the populations have fallen asleep-or vanished completely. ”
That was a low blow. Solaria. No Spacer liked to be reminded of-or think about-the collapse of Solaria.
Verick looked around and saw that he had scored a point. “A robotic system, obsessed with risk avoidance, would lead to a very bland sort of world here. As I told the Governor, not exactly a fit environment if you want future generations to be able to deal with challenges.”
“All right,” Kresh said, not having to try much in trying to play the part of the rude cop. “That’s enough speeches for now. So you talked to the Governor. Then what?”
“Then we said our good nights, and he said he had some other things to attend to, and so he saw me to the door of his office. We shook hands there, and I stepped around the robots in the hallway and went on my way. I’m afraid I got a bit turned around in the hallways and walked around in a bit of a circle. After a bit, I realized that I was going to end up right back where I had started, at the door to the Governor’s apartment. I thought of asking the two robots I had seen by the door for directions, but by then they weren’t there anymore. I suppose they had already gone in. ”
“Gone in?” Kresh asked. He had assumed the robots Verick had mentioned by the door were SPRs on sentry duty. But sentry robots stay where they were. “Where did the robots go?”
“To tuck him in for the night, I suppose. I’ve heard you Spacers can’t even get undressed without a robot to help.”
Fredda seemed about to respond to that, but Kresh stepped forward and put a hand on her shoulder. It did no good at all for the suspect to find out he could bait the inquisitors.
“Some of us can manage on our own,” Kresh said, a bit of steel behind the soft words. But the sentry should not have left its post. And there should have been one robot on door duty, not two. Kresh had a feeling he knew the answer to his next question. “These robots,” he said. “Can you describe them?”
“I don’t have much time for robots,” Verick said. “I don’t like ‘em and I don’t trust ‘em.”
“But you can see them,” Kresh said, his voice hard-edged. “What did the two robots look like?”
Verick looked up at Kresh, visibly annoyed. “There was a very tall, angular-looking red one. Shiny red. I wouldn’t want to mess with him. The other was shorter, and shiny black.”
Justen Devray and Fredda Leving both looked from Verick to Kresh, both of them understanding.
The last two beings to see Grieg alive were Prospero and Caliban. New Law and No Law.
