“Sim,” he said again.
It raised its eyes and stared directly at the cameras.
“Sim, there is a young woman at the window in the bedroom. She is—dead. I want you to bring her into the utility room. Be careful and don’t spill her blood on the carpet. Go.”
“Right,” the Sim said, turning toward the bedroom. A moment later, he returned, the body cradled in his arms. The blood had ceased to flow and was drying on her lacy garment. The simulacrum stalked across the living room and out of sight.
Ti shifted into the kitchen receiver, watched the android march through and into the utility area. He could only see part of that room through the door, for there was no receiver in it. “Empty the freezer,” he directed the android. It complied, piling the hams and roasts and vegetables on the floor.
“Now put her body in it.”
It did this thing too.
He ordered it to retrieve Taguster’s corpse and do the same with it. If it took a day or so for this plan to be worked out and put into operation, if it required a couple of days to trap Margle, he wanted to be certain the bodies were well preserved for a future autopsy. This was gruesome, but it was the only thing he could do. When both bodies were in the freezer and the food that had been there was dumped into the incinerator chute, he sent the android about cleaning up all traces of the muder, scrubbing the blood from the floor and carpet, washing the wall down where the musician had scribbled upon it. When the machine-man had finished, the house looked perfectly normal, completely serene.
“Sit down and wait for me,” he directed it.
It complied.
He dropped into the Mindlink beam and returned home. He went into the library, sat down at his typer, and used his nimble servos to compose a new headline story for the four thirty edition. Polly London would surely read Enterstat to see if she were mentioned, and it was quite possible that she would pass along the story to Klaus Margle. If Margle didn’t subscribe to Enterstat himself . . . When he had finished the eight hundred words to the piece, he rang Creol. The man’s melancholy eyes resolved first, then the rest of his face. “Chief. Wasn’t the info complete enough?”
“Fine, George, fine. Look, I have another story that goes in the four thirty edition. I want you to tear out the lead story, no matter what it is, and put this one in with two-inch caps.”
“Bu—”
“I know you have the paper ready, but this is what I want.”
“Stat it, Chief.”
He did. Seconds later, he saw it drop into Creol’s desk tray. The editor picked it up, read over it. “What’s the headline?” he asked, picking up a pencil.
“Ah – CONCERT GUITARIST VICTIM OF WOULD-BE KILLER.”
“But he wasn’t killed?”
“Right.”
“Then this doesn’t make such a sensational headline, Chief. The one we have is—”
“I know. But I want this as the lead anyhow.”
“It means resetting page one—”
“Do it.”
“You’re the boss.”
“Right you are.”
He rang off. His heart was beating unreasonably fast. He could feel his pulse throbbing in his neck. He moved back to the Mindlink set and shifted into Taguster’s house again. The simulacrum waited, hands folded on its lap. He thought a moment, then gave it orders. “I want you to phone Harvard Detective Agency, Incorporated, and contract an investigator—one of their best. Tell him an attempt was made on your life and you want to find who it was. Tell him you want to see him tomorrow after you have compiled what information you can on your own. Tell him—four o’clock tomorrow.”
The android stood, found the number of the agency and dialed it on the com-screen system. He made the transaction, even bargaining over the going rate per diem for a Class I agent, hung up, and returned to his chair. “It’s all fixed,” he said in the very tones Leonard Taguster would have used. “Anything else?”
“Not yet. You might as well go inactive.” He sent his psi power under the sportscoat again, flipped off the android. It seemed to sag in its chair. Its eyes clouded again, then slipped shut as if it were sleeping.