Caliban - By Isaac Asimov,Roger E. Allen Page 0,6

easily have been fatal. That changed a simple assault with a deadly weapon case into one of attempted murder. At last he turned to go inside the building, to see what Donald and his forensic team had come up with.
Chapter 2
"ALL right, Donald," Kresh said as he came in, "what have you got?"

"Good evening, Sheriff Kresh," Donald replied, speaking with a smooth and urbane courtesy. "I am afraid we do not have a great deal. The crime scene does not tell us much that we can use, though of course you may well note something we have missed. I have not been able to form a satisfactory interpretation of the evidence. Did you have the opportunity to examine my update regarding the maintenance robot's statements?"

"Yes, I did. Damn strange. You did right to get the data out of him, but I don't want to take any chances on the rest of the staff robots. I don't even want to get near them myself. I want the department's staff roboticists to interview them all-carefully." Normally the police roboticists dealt with robots who had been tricked into this or that by con artists skilled in lying to robots and convincing them to obey illegal orders under some carefully designed misapprehension. A man could make a pretty fair living convincing household robots to reveal their masters' financial account codes. It would do the roboticists good to deal with something a little out of the ordinary." But we can worry about that tomorrow. Is the scene clear?"

"Yes, sir. The observer robots have completed their basic scan of the area. I believe you can examine the room without danger of destroying clues, so long as you practice some care."

Alvar looked closely at Donald. After a lifetime of dealing with robots, he still did that, still looked toward the machines as if he could read an emotion or a thought in their expressions or postures. On some robots, on the very rare ones that mimicked human appearance perfectly, that was at least possible. But there were precious few of those on Inferno, and with any other robot type the effort was pointless.

Even so, the habit gave him a moment of time to consider the indirect meaning of the robot'swords. No "satisfactory interpretation of the evidence." What the hell didthat mean? Donald was trying to tell him something, something the robot did not choose to say directly, for fear of presuming too far. But Donald was never cryptic without a purpose. When Donald got that way, it was for a reason. Alvar Kresh was tempted to order Donald to explain precisely what he was suggesting, but he restrained his impatience.

It might be better to see if he could spot the point that was bothering Donald himself, evaluate it independently without prejudgment. There was, of course, precious little a robot would miss that a human could notice. Much of what Donald had said was so much deferential nonsense, salve for the ego. But the words Donald had used were interesting:"The crime scene does not tell us much that we can use." As if therewere something there, but something distracting, meaningless, deceptive.So much for avoiding prejudgment, Alvar thought sardonically. That was the trouble with robot assistants as good as Donald-you tended to lean on them to much, let them influence your thinking, trust them to do too much of the background work.Hell, Donald could probably do this job better than me, Alvar thought.

He shook his head angrily. No. Robots are the servants of humans, incapable of independent action. Alvar stepped through the doorway, fully into the room, and began to look around.

Alvar Kresh felt a strange and familiar tingle course through him as he set to work. There was always something oddly thrilling about this moment, where the case was opened and the chase was on. A strange chase it was, one that started with Alvar not so much as knowing who it was that he pursued.

And there was something stranger still, always, about standing in the middle of someone' s very private space with that person absent. He had stood in the bedrooms and salons and spacecraft of the dead and the missing, read their diaries, traced their financial dealings, stumbled across the evidence of their secret vices and private pleasures, their grand crimes and tiny, pathetic secrets. He had come to know their lives and deaths from the clues they left behind, been made privy by the power of his office to the most intimate parts of