It was strange to see it all this way, from this godlike angle, but it was a remarkably useful way to sort out the movements of this person and that. Stranger still to see her own image and eliminate it, to see Alvar Kresh and make him vanish. It made her doubt his reality-and her own.
But should she make Alvar vanish? After all, he was the one who found the body. That in and of itself was a trifle suspicious. Donald had been a few steps behind him at the time. Kresh had not been alone in Grieg’s room for long, but suppose it had been for long enough-and even though it was a point open to interpretation, you could read the fact that Grieg had offered no struggle as a hint that he had been killed by someone he knew…
It seemed absurd-and yet someone had killed Grieg, and as of right now the rest of the universe only had Kresh’s word for it that he had found Grieg dead.
No. It couldn’t be. Not Kresh. The man might be stubborn and infuriating as hell, but there was no more honorable man on the planet. It was absurd to think that a man of his character could have done it. She knew him too well to believe such things. She was reluctant to admit such a thing, even to herself, but she liked him too well to believe such a thing.
Fredda glanced at Donald, seated impassively at the integrator’s control panel. Did fretful, disturbing thoughts like that flit through his mind? Was he troubled by such delusional nonsense? She, Fredda, ought to know. She had, after all, designed his brain, his mind, herself. But that meant nothing at a time like this. The short, sky-blue robot seemed unflappable-but what lurked under the surface? Was he intelligent enough to have doubts, to see that the universe was not the well-ordered, every-peg-in-its-proper-hole place that the Three Laws would make it seem? He was a police robot, after all, and knew as well as any robot in existence what sort of madness humans were capable of.
“Who do you think did it, Donald?” she asked, more or less on impulse. “Who killed Chanto Grieg?”
Donald had been watching the image playback, but now he turned toward Fredda and regarded her with an unreadable stare for a full ten seconds before he replied. “It is impossible for me to say,” he replied. “There is so much information already in our hands, and yet so little of it appears to be useful data. We are forced to eliminate meaningless information as a first step toward the truth. ”
“But you are more familiar with the case data than anyone. I know you suspect Caliban and Prospero, but leave them to one side for a moment. Who is your prime human suspect?”
Donald swiveled his head back and forth in an imitation of the human gesture of shaking his head to report uncertainty., ‘I am afraid I do not, and cannot, have an opinion on that. Before I could get to who, I would have to deal with why, to the question of motive. And I am simply incapable of imagining anyone wishing the-the death of a human being. I have seen death, I have witnessed the evidence of murder. I know there must, therefore, be motives for murder. But even though I know such things are real, I still cannot imagine them. ”
“Hmmph. Strange,” Fredda said. “Very strange. Humans are certainly capable of all sorts of remarkable delusions-but not that particular one. Sometimes I forget just how different robots are from humans. ”
“I don’t think I have ever forgotten that fact, even for a moment,” Donald said. “Shall we return to the task at hand?”
“Hmmm? Yes, of course. ” Fredda turned back to the integrator and watched the silent dance of the simulacra. They could have put sound in, of course, but that would do little more than add to the confusion at this point.
Wait a second. Confusion. Confusion. They were missing the point of all the confusion. “Donald. Go to the time reference five minutes before the attack on Tonya Welton-and delete Tonya Weltlon, the attackers, the SSS intervention, along with all the people we’ve identified so far. Let’s get rid of the diversion and see if we can spot what they were trying to divert us from. ”
“Yes, ma’am,” Donald said, manipulating the controls. He reset the system once again, running back to the proper moment in time. The image reappeared, affording the strange sight of all the bystanders reacting to the fight that was not happening. It was like watching an audience without being able to see the play. The little clumps of people turned and pointed at nothing at all in the center of the room, scuttled backwards to avoid the brawlers who were not there.
