Utopia - By Isaac Asimov,Roger E. Allen Page 0,29

on."

"And it gets you out of the office now and then," Kresh said with a smile. "I used to do the same thing when I was running the Sheriff's Department."

Justen smiled back. It helped a great deal to have a governor who used to run a law enforcement agency. He understood things without needing too much explanation. "Yes, sir. In any event, I sat in on the Settlertown main entrance stakeout. Normally the officer assigned to that duty is expected to provide his or her own vehicle or other watch post, and his or her own robotic assistance, and is later reimbursed. The thinking is that keeps us from using the same three vehicles and the same three robots over and over. It should make us harder to spot. It also encourages the officers to be a bit more creative, show some initiative. In any event, I did the drill myself. I brought my own personal robot, and rented a second robot and an aircar. That stakeout is sort of a grab-bag affair, more than anything. Every once in a while we spot someone going in who shouldn't be, and we can run some checks."

"But something a little different happened."

"Yes, sir. My robots spotted someone not on the watch lists. My robot could ID him, but the rental unit could not, even though it was a security model. I later found out that the ID database in my personal robot had been altered. My robot's list is a copy of the standard CIP list-and I've confirmed that the standard list has been altered as well."

"Someone inserted a false ID profile into the CIP database?"

"Yes, sir. And I might add that the real identity of the person in question is not in the file. I'm not sure if that's because he was deleted by the same people who inserted the false idea, or if the real identity's file was culled in a routine file purge."

"I see. And who is someone pretending to be?"

"Dr. Barnsell Ardosa, of the University of Hades Center for Terraforming." Justen pulled hardcopies of the original images out of his carry bag. "This is the university's ID image," he said, handing them over. "And this is the surveillance image."

Kresh took the two images, and let out a low whistle. "Norlan Fiyle. The rustbacking Settler in the Grieg case. The mustache hides some of him, but it's not exactly an impenetrable disguise."

Justen Devray looked at Kresh in impressed surprised. "The face looked familiar to me," he said, "but it took me hours and hours, and every image-manipulating trick in the book, before I was able to place him."

"You've been a working cop since then," Kresh said, still looking thoughtfully at the images of Fiyle/Ardosa. "There have been a lot of other faces for you to deal with, on a lot of other cases. Fiyle-I never met him, of course, but he was part of the last case I ever worked. I can still shut my eyes and see every page of the case file. Did you ever meet him?"

"No, sir. I wasn't in on that interrogation. Maybe I should have been."

"Don't be absurd," Kresh said, his voice gentler than his words. "You were running a big part of a vital case. He was picked up on the far side of the Great Bay from where you were working, and he gave up the one piece of information we needed almost at once. Why in the devil should you have chased after him? Just in case he popped up five years later?"

"I suppose you're right. But even so, right now I wish I had gone to get a look at him."

"Hmmmph. Water under the bridge. Let's get back to the point. You've had a chance to check the files, and maybe my memory isn't as infallible as I'd like it to be. Give me a quick summary on friend Fiyle."

"Norlan Fiyle. A Settler, but not any part of the terraforming team. It seems he took advantage of a few loopholes in the immigration laws to come to Inferno, presumably in hopes of making some quick and easy money. He was working with a gang of rustbackers, helping to smuggle illegal New Law robots off the island of Purgatory. He got caught just about the time Grieg was murdered. He made a deal, all charges dropped and freedom to leave the planet, in exchange for the name of a Governor's Ranger who was on the take. The Ranger in question was