"I gutted, cured and tanned the hides, left the heads intact except for the eyes. I knew the species was slated for eradication, and I knew that the hides would be worth a great deal of money some day, for museums and such. I have a lot of animal skins stored here on the second level. It's another eccentricity that Jubal allows me." He smiled at Jubal, and St. Cyr thought there was genuine affection on the older man's part for the younger.
The cyberdetective pulled the last item from the paper bag. It was one of the wolf hides that Hirschel had prepared and stored. "Teddy used it to plant wolf hairs with the bodies — and as a partial disguise when he attacked me in the gardens. He was wise enough to realize that if I were hallucinating, this minimal diversion would confuse me enough to keep me from recognizing him. He was also clever enough to disguise himself at all, on the chance that he might fail to kill me then — as he did."
"But," Jubal said, "what about the TDX-4, the drug he used on you? He could destroy all of this when he had finished with all of us — but the house computer would keep a record of the drug purchase. The police, if they were clever enough, could figure him out on the basis of that — and find out who illegally programmed him to kill."
"Except that Teddy didn't buy the hallucinogenic drug. It was already here, in the house."
"Where?" the patriarch asked. "No one in this house uses hallucinogens." He spoke with smug authority.
"I use them," Alicia said. She said so little, spoke so seldom, that when she did say anything her gentle voice cut like a knife.
"You?" her husband asked, uncomprehending.
No one else spoke.
Alicia said, "There are times — times when I simply can't stand it any more — when I need some escape."
"Can't stand what?" he asked.
Reluctantly, sadly, but beyond tears now, she said, "This house, my family, the coldness, the way we seldom speak to one another, the fact that we barely know each other…"
Jubal was speechless. This was a time of changes, large changes, or at least a time of intimations of changes, and he was going to have to make a great many adjustments, examine a long list of his cherished attitudes. None of it would be easy.
"Have you noticed that you're missing any TDX?" the cyberdetective asked the lonely woman.
"I haven't noticed."
"We'll look later," St. Cyr said. "But I'm certain that your supply has been reduced."
"Okay, okay," Jubal said, suddenly impatient, trying to wipe out his hurt and confusion with feigned anger. "The proof is conclusive. But who got to Teddy? Who re-programmed him with all these directives to kill?"
"May I try to answer that?" Hirschel asked. He was grinning, his hands swinging at his sides, like a high school kid meeting his first date.
"Go on," St. Cyr said.
"Teddy was never re-programmed," Hirschel said.
"Right," the detective said.
"The illegal directives were worked into his program in the factory," Hirschel said. "From the moment that he came here, he was prepared to kill everyone in the house."
"Once he had made the proper impression, generated trust, and got the necessary tools together," St. Cyr added.
Hirschel smiled and said, "And the man who programmed him was Walter Dannery."
"The man I fired?" Jubal asked.
"The same," Hirschel said. "Right?"
"I believe so," St. Cyr said.
"But that's insane!" Jubal said.
"I have no certain proof of it yet," the cyberdetective said. "But I probably will have in the morning — at least a bit of circumstantial evidence. Consider that Reiss Master Units are produced on Ionus, the same world to which Dannery went after he lost his job here. Also consider that he was one of your chief roboticists, as you've told me, and would very likely be a candidate for executive-level employment with Reiss."
Jubal looked as if he had been caught on the back of the head by a boomerang just after stating flatly that such toys didn't work.
St. Cyr got down from the table and began to put the evidence into the paper sack again. He said, "Did you have any proof — anything admissible in a court of law — that it was Walter Dannery who embezzled those funds?"
"He was in charge of that section and the only human authorized to handle the books. And computer tapes had been altered, rather crudely in fact. We couldn't flatly prove that it was Dannery — but we knew that it couldn't be anyone else." He sounded defensive, without reason.
"Therefore," the detective said, twisting the top on the bag, "no charge was leveled against him with Darmanian authorities."
"None," Jubal said.
"And without a mark on his work record, Reiss would have no reason to pass up his application for a job."
Jubal still could not accept the devious resurrection of the past. He said, "But the man embezzled the money. He knows he did. Knowing he was guilty, wouldn't he be relieved at getting off so lightly? When he'd had time to think it over, would he feed his hatred until he was willing to commit murder?"
"People have killed for less," St. Cyr said. "And it may just be possible that he was not lying to you when he told you that sob story about dependent children and a sick wife. If you'll excuse my saying so, you are not a proper judge of human emotions, not sensitive enough to such things to distinguish between a lie and the truth."
Jubal apparently was willing to accept the judgment. He said nothing more, but he looked at Alicia and took her hands and held her beside him, close.
"Question?" Tina asked.
"Yes?"
"How could Walter Dannery have known the circumstances of daily life in this house? He would have had to be familiar with so much to have so minutely programmed Teddy. For instance, he would have to know about the wolf skins in storage, about Dane's superstitions—"
"Not at all," St. Cyr interrupted. "All that Dannery needed to do was implant the prime directive: 'Kill everyone in the Alderban family, but protect yourself against discovery.' He would have needed a number of qualifying directives, of course: 'Choose an exotic means of murder; establish suspects outside of yourself; to all overt intents and purposes, perform according to the Three Laws of Robotics…" He may even have chosen the werewolf scheme, since he lived on Darma and may have known the legends. After that, however, it was up to Teddy to work out a viable plan for the extermination of the family. Remember that a master unit has a fantastic capacity for the storage of new data, while its logic circuits are four times as large and eight times better than those in the bio-computer that I wear. With the minimum of directives, Teddy could have worked out the rest of it."
"Now what do we do?" Alicia asked.
"We call Teddy in here and ask him to open his service panel for inspection. Unless I miss my guess, I believe he will obey. We simply shut him down."
"Like pulling a plug," Hirschel said.
St. Cyr crossed the room, opened the door and said, 'Teddy?"
Teddy did not respond.
St. Cyr stepped into the hall. "Teddy, come here, please."
He received no answer.
"Where is he?" Hirschel asked.
"Gone," the cyberdetective said. "I seem to have guessed wrong. Apparently he was eavesdropping through the house computer."
FOURTEEN: Confrontation with the Killer
Hirschel maintained a small arsenal in his suite on the fifth level — pistols, rifles, revolvers, traps, and more insidious devices — and it was here that they armed themselves before making a thorough search of the mansion. Conventional weapons, for the most part, were useless against a robot, because the projectiles from few rifles — and from no handgun known — could be expected to pierce quarter-inch multi-pressed steel. In Hirschel's collection, however, were four vibra-beam weapons, guns that projected a powerful but rapidly dissipating beam of sound, carried and magnified in a high-intensity laser that moved on a line-of-sight between hunter and target. The light was visible as a quick flash, the sound beyond the range of the human ear. In close quarters, the weapon could kill a man and pretty well mangle the innards of a robot. Two of Hirschel's pieces were rifles, which he and St. Cyr chose, since they were more familiar with weaponry and would know how to use a rifle within the confines of a room, if the opportunity should come for that Tina and Dane took the pistols.