"Nothing"s wrong," St. Cyr said. "In fact, I think I know which one of them did it."
Nothing could shock the master unit; he had no capacity for genuine surprise or outrage. He said, "Do you require any a.s.sistance in the apprehension, Mr. St. Cyr?"
"Thank you, Teddy, but not just yet. I have some prowling to do first, to be sure my suspicions are right."
"I"ll help with that, if you want."
"You can help most by standing guard right here and making certain that none of them leave that room."
"I"ll do that, sir." Efficient. Polite. Obedient. And just about as human as anyone in this strangely cool Alderban family.
"Excellent I"m going up to the fourth level, and I"ll be back in about half an hour."
"Good luck, sir," the master unit said.
In the bas.e.m.e.nt workshop some minutes later, Baker St. Cyr located a prybar in an open-front tool rack and used it to break into the cabinet in which Teddy kept the keys that he had shown Inspector Rainy and the cyberdetective only a few days before. The cabinet door was strong, and it screeched loudly as the lock tore loose and it grated open over the jagged ruin. St. Cyr hesitated when he had it open, listening for some sound that would indicate the break-in had been heard. He did not know if the house computer monitored things like that. When two minutes had pa.s.sed in agonizing silence, he decided that he was un.o.bserved, and he began to read the tags on the keys, looking for those that he might be able to use.
He found them and placed them on the counter below the cabinet, then forced the violated door shut again.
This is all a useless endeavor.
He looked at his watch and saw that he had fifteen minutes of his half hour left. He did not want to keep them waiting beyond that time, for he did not want anyone to go onto the fourth level to look for him.
Five minutes later, he was done. He left the workshop carrying a paper sack full of interesting discoveries, crossed the garage, and stepped into the elevator shaft through the doors that he had forced open from the inside a short while ago. The shaft was lighted only by the glow that spilled through the open doors. The floor was only three feet below those lift doors on this last level, and he was able to use that minimal illumination to find the pair of parallel tracks on the righthand wall. It was on these that the lift rode; because the system was designed for horizontal as well as vertical movement, there were no cables to contend with. Standing on the thick lower rail, holding the sack in his left hand, he grasped the notched upper rail in his good right hand and began to laboriously work his way upwards.
Teddy was waiting outside the door to the kitchen, where St. Cyr had left him. "n.o.body tried to leave?"
"No, Mr. St, Cyr." Teddy did not show any interest in the paper sack or its contents. "Do you want support in there, sir?"
"Not yet. If you"d continue to guard the door, I"d feel as if my back was well covered."
"Yes, sir."
St. Cyr vocal-coded the door and went inside, made certain it shut completely behind him, and walked to the table, where he put down the sackful of evidence.
Tina was sitting on the floor with the others again, her black hair fallen across her face like a mourning cloth. He supposed that if anyone here had it in him to mourn, it was Alicia. Still, the girl held that same mournful image in his mind. Dane also sat on the floor, Hirschel on a stool, Jubal and Alicia on matching white chairs. They almost looked, St. Cyr thought, like some medieval court-the king and queen above everyone else, the n.o.bleman on the stool, the distant and unimportant cousins on the lowest level. They all watched him cross the room, put the sack down and seat himself on the table. Then, suddenly, as if realizing that he was not the one most to be feared, they looked furtively at one another, wondering... Only Tina made no attempt to read something sinister in the others" eyes; she stared at her hands, which were folded in her lap.
"The proof?" Jubal asked.
"Yes."
"Who?" He sounded very old, and not at all cantankerous. He sounded as if he would rather not know who, would rather St. Cyr took the evidence away and never came back again.
"I"ll come to that in a moment," the cyberdetective said. "First, I want to tell you who I"ve suspected over the last several days and my reasons for not trusting each. That way, when I come to whom I now know know committed those four murders, you"ll understand that I"ve not made a rash decision." committed those four murders, you"ll understand that I"ve not made a rash decision."
No one said anything.
Sr. Cyr said, "I first suspected Hirschel."
The hunter smiled. He looked like a wolf.
Succinctly, the detective explained the circ.u.mstances under which he had first seen their uncle: the storm, the rider on the horse, the b.l.o.o.d.y heads of the two boar. "I recognized quite early that Hirschel was the one individual in this household most capable of violence."
And still is.
Not quite.
St. Cyr continued: "Furthermore, he was basically an outsider who visited for a month or two every couple of years. Though the victims of the killer were his relatives, they were more distantly related to him than to any of you, perhaps distantly enough to be thought of as mere obstacles between Hirschel and the family fortune. He was also suspect because he was the sole living Alderban outside of this immediate family, heir to the entire industrial complex."
"Which I wouldn"t want," Hirschel said. "I can"t think of anything more boring than managing wealth."
"That"s one of the reasons I finally rejected you," St. Cyr said. When the others stirred, aware that the number of suspects had just dropped twenty percent, the detective said, "Then I thought that it very well might be Dane."
"I tell you it"s the wolf, the du-aga-klava du-aga-klava."
"No," St. Cyr said. "But your superst.i.tion and your insistence on supernatural forces being involved were what first put you in a bad light. You"re an educated young man, supposedly beyond such foolishness as that. Tina, however, has shown me how a hypno-keyed man might very well adopt such an unreasonable att.i.tude despite the breadth of his education."
Jubal frowned and pulled on his nose as if he were not artistically satisfied with its proportions. ""What on earth does hypno-keying have to do with all of this?"
"I won"t go into that now," St. Cyr said. "Besides, Tina can give you a much better lecture on the topic than I can."
Jubal looked at his daughter, perplexed, but she did not raise her eyes to meet his.
Possibility: Hypno-keying has unsettled Dane Alderban"s mind. His reliance on superst.i.tions would seem to indicate this and might also evidence an underlying taint of more serious psychosis.
At most: neurosis.
Psychosis.
St. Cyr ignored the other half of his symbiote and said, "For a long while, I suspected Jubal." The old man looked away from Tina, his face coloring. "From the beginning, Jubal insisted that I should look outside of the family for the killer, and he would not entertain for a moment any other likelihood. Each time that he attempted to redirect my attention away from a member of the family, I had to wonder about his intent. Now it seems clear that this was only naiveti. Secondly, I was unfavorably impressed with Jubal"s lack of emotional response to the deaths of his children. He seemed to view it all with a detached, almost academic academic sterility. Again, it was Tina who made me see how hypno-keying could be responsible for this unemotional reaction. And since Jubal has been a hypno-keyed artist a good deal longer than anyone else in the family, he has had more time to grow even cooler and more impersonal than his children are rapidly becoming." sterility. Again, it was Tina who made me see how hypno-keying could be responsible for this unemotional reaction. And since Jubal has been a hypno-keyed artist a good deal longer than anyone else in the family, he has had more time to grow even cooler and more impersonal than his children are rapidly becoming."
"What the h.e.l.l is is this?" the old man asked. This time, St. Cyr noticed that Jubal"s rage even appeared to be acquired rather than genuine, as if he were imitating an actor he admired. St. Cyr could not be angry with him now. He could only pity him. this?" the old man asked. This time, St. Cyr noticed that Jubal"s rage even appeared to be acquired rather than genuine, as if he were imitating an actor he admired. St. Cyr could not be angry with him now. He could only pity him.
"Finally," St. Cyr said, not answering the question, "Jubal seemed suspect because of his reluctance to allow the family to be armed with deadly weapons. It appears now that this was only due to some genuine dislike for weaponry."
"Of course it was," Jubal said. "And what motive would I have had for killing my own family?"
"The same motive Dane had-no motive at all. You could have been mentally unbalanced." He turned immediately to Alicia and said, "Then I suspected you. For one thing, you were the only one in the family who wept at Betty"s death. That made you suspect simply because it was a different sort of reaction. When Tina explained that you had undergone hypno-keying much later in life than the others in the family, when you married Jubal, I felt that you were even more of a candidate for prison. What must it have been like, all these years, being at least somewhat emotional and caring in a house of people growing constantly more machinelike, colder, more selfish."
"It hasn"t been easy," she said.
Jubal looked stunned. St. Cyr thought he really was, for once, what he appeared to be.
"But," the woman said, I"ve had the guitar, my music, for comfort."
"You"ve left me," Tina said, after a long moment of silence.
St. Cyr sensed the ripple of surprise that pa.s.sed through the others, heard Hirschel"s quickly drawn breath of disbelief, waited for all of that to subside. He said, "You came on the list of possibilities when I learned that you were the only one in the family who fully understood what hypno-keying had done to you and and the only one in the family who seemed to be angry that your life had been perverted, against your will, before you were old enough to understand what was happening. It seemed distinctly possible that you might have become unbalanced by having to live with this realization for years, and that you might have felt that murdering your brothers and sisters, one-by-one, was the most fitting revenge on your father. Then again, you"re a bright girl, too intelligent not to realize that Jubal"s life has been tainted by hypno-keying, too, and that when he had each of you treated, he could not be said to be a rational man making a rational choice." the only one in the family who seemed to be angry that your life had been perverted, against your will, before you were old enough to understand what was happening. It seemed distinctly possible that you might have become unbalanced by having to live with this realization for years, and that you might have felt that murdering your brothers and sisters, one-by-one, was the most fitting revenge on your father. Then again, you"re a bright girl, too intelligent not to realize that Jubal"s life has been tainted by hypno-keying, too, and that when he had each of you treated, he could not be said to be a rational man making a rational choice."
"But you still suspected me." She was still looking at her hands.
"Yes. You lived separate from the others. At a glance, that seemed to be because of the s.p.a.ce limitations on other floors. However, it was soon clear to me that, with your family"s resources, you could have adapted any part of the house to make a fine studio. You wanted wanted to be separate from them. Perhaps because you hated them." to be separate from them. Perhaps because you hated them."
"Felt sorry for them," she corrected. "I didn"t want to have to see them."
"Finally," the cyberdetective said, "I was wary of the relationship that seemed to be growing between us-at the same time that I encouraged it. Had I become s.e.xually involved with you, or had I allowed my fondness for you to become something deeper than mere liking liking, my judgment in your sphere would have been severely affected."
"Very logical," she said. Her voice was bitter, not at all pleasant. St. Cyr thought that there might even be tears in it.
"I have to be."
"It"s your job."
"Yes."
She looked at him for the first time now, and she did have tears in the corners of her eyes. She said, "Anything else I did that was suspicious?"
Yes, he thought, you always seemed, somehow, to be an extension of my nightmare, an a.n.a.logue of the stalker...
Illogical.
He knew it was illogical even without the bio-computer"s judgment. "No other reasons," he said.
Jubal roused himself. "But why do you hate your hypno-keyed talents, Tina? I don"t understand. How can you hate me enough to murder your own brothers and sisters?"
"She didn"t," St. Cyr said.
Jubal said, "What?"
"She didn"t murder them."
They all looked at him again, surprised more than before. He saw that Tina was shocked too, and he realized that she had expected him to prove logically that she was the killer even though she was not. That made him feel tired and ill.
"Then what has been the purpose of all of this?" Hirschel asked.
"As I said when I started, I wanted you to see that I have been very careful to consider every angle before making an outright accusation. I want you to understand that I haven"t been rash."
You are being rash now, and you know it.
I have proof.
You seem to. But what you are about to suggest is impossible.
"Who is it, then?" Hirschel asked St. Cyr got a grip on the table and said, evenly, though the bio-computer still tried to reason him out of vocalizing the absurdity, "Teddy, the master unit, killed all four of them."
THIRTEEN: Proof
"But that"s impossible!" Dane was the first to realize that they were no longer restricted to the open floor and that the cyberdetective would no longer be suspicious of any movement in his direction. He got to his feet and approached the detective, shaking his finger like a schoolmaster from the old days making a point with a misbehaving child. "You"re grasping at straws to keep from admitting the truth, what we all know is the truth, that the du-aga-klava du-aga-klava-"
"I have proof," St. Cyr said.
Hirschel was on his feet now, obviously intrigued by the prospect of a murderous robot but reluctant to believe it. "What about the Three Laws of Robotics? They"ve never been proven wrong before. Robots didn"t turn against man as everyone once feared they might. Those three directives keep it from happening."
"There is a simple flaw in all those laws," St. Cyr said. "They leave out the human equation."
"Look," Hirschel said, approaching the detective and pointing at his own palm as if all of this were written there. "The First Law of Robotics: "A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm." "
"Unless," St. Cyr amended, "he has been programmed especially to circ.u.mvent that directive."
"Programmed to kill?" Tina asked. She was standing next to him, her long black hair tucked behind her ears, out of mourning now.
"To kill," St. Cyr affirmed.
But Hirschel was not finished. He proceeded, almost as if he were reading a litany: "The Second Law of Robotics-"A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law."" except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.""
"But," St, Cyr pointed out, "if the First Law was already circ.u.mvented to a large degree, the robot would unfailingly obey an order to kill."
Convinced yet not convinced, Hirschel recited the Third Law: "A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.""
"Teddy will protect himself, despite the fact that it might mean killing to do it, because the First and Second Laws have no application in his case."
"But this is unheard of!" Hirschel said. Despite his insistence, it was evident that he had been convinced and that he looked upon the affair as one of those moments of excitement he traveled from world to world in search of. His dark eyes were bright.
"Perhaps it isn"t as unheard of as we think. Perhaps the robot industries have encountered such misprogramming before but have always managed to catch it before much damage was done, and to quiet the news media about it." He lifted the paper sack, then decided not to use that just yet. "For instance, I have a feeling that Salardi was on the run from private police hired by one of the major robot design and construction companies in the Inner Galaxy. I know he was a roboticist on the archaeological expedition, for he told me that much himself." He turned to Dane and said, "Did Salardi know about the killings down here?"
"You told him," Dane said. "Just the other day when you asked him those questions."
"That was the first he had heard of it?"
"It looked that way to me," Dane said. "He was a hermit of sorts. I hadn"t talked to him in six months, since the last time I interviewed him to gather background for my book."
"Norya knew about the killings," St. Cyr said.
"But in confidence, as we planned how to make the authorities follow up on the du-aga-klava du-aga-klava lead. Norya is exceedingly-professional. She would never gossip about such things to anyone." lead. Norya is exceedingly-professional. She would never gossip about such things to anyone."
"Then Salardi learned of the clueless murders when I told him about them the other day. He had a few days to think about them and-perhaps because he had once illegally mis-programmed a robot himself-realized that Teddy could be to blame. When he came to tell us, he made the mistake of addressing part or all of his business to the house computer that welcomed him. Teddy has a tie-in to the house computer and got to him before anyone knew he was here. Not having time to perform the sort of misleading slaughter he had on the other victims, he quickly broke Salardi"s neck."
"You think Salardi once programmed a robot to kill?" Tina asked.