"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 passed 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 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 space 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 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 sexually involved with you, or had I allowed my fondness for you to become something deeper than mere 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 analogue 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—"
"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 circumvent 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.'"
"But," St, Cyr pointed out, "if the First Law was already circumvented 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."