"Asimov, Isaac - Robot Mystery - Chimera" - читать интересную книгу автора (Asimov Isaac)

But it put her in almost daily contact with Spacers and Settlers, both factions of whom had embassy branches on the station.
Nevertheless, he trusted her. That, he recognized, had not changed.
"All right," he said slowly. "Tell me your reasoning."
"That robot is collapsed. Positronic nervous breakdown. Something happened to cause it, and if it could break down like that then it could not have harmed any of those people. If it were still walking around, calmly trying to do its business, then I might agree with you." She sat back. "I've been up here five years, Coren. I've learned a little bit about robots. Have to, when you deal with Spacers who won't leave home without them. I had to learn to discount my own prejudices a long time ago if I wanted any chance of running my department efficiently and doing my job honestly. It wasn't easy--I still don't like them--but I know their limitations. It wasn't the robot. Not that one, anyway. And I doubt it was this other one--there's no in-built compunction that prevents a robot from harming another robot, especially in the defense of humans. As far as we've been able to tell, that second robot wasn't even on board when this happened." She gestured toward the bay. "Besides, what motive? Suicide? Bringing along a robot would have been the best way to fail to commit suicide. They're programmed to save our lives for us, whether we want them to or not."
Coren nodded. "All right, that's all logical. As far as it goes. Sorry about the remark. "
"Forget it. So--how do you want to proceed?"
"Why do I get a say? Isn't this official now?"
Sipha pursed her lips thoughtfully. "Maybe." She seemed to consider carefully. "See, this bay is Settler. When you contacted me about this little favor you wanted, I called in a few favors of my own. Right now, this whole business exists in an official vacuum. No one knows but you, me, and my immediate staff. " She stabbed a finger in the direction of the cargo bin. "And whoever killed all those people."
"You'll have to make it official sooner or later."
"True. But maybe by then we can figure this out."
Coren studied her for a moment. Something in her expression teased at him.
"There's something else," he stated.
Sipha still pondered, then nodded. "I agreed to do this for you because I need you. "
"I'm flattered. But I'm also private now."
"Oh, I think we can change that if we need to. But...I have a problem I can't take to my superiors. I'm not even sure who among my own people I can trust with it. I need outside help. I didn't know how I was going to get it till you called."
"Is it related?"
"I wouldn't be surprised. Probably. It has to do with baleys, at least. Dead ones, too, though this is the first load of corpses to show up on my station. "
Coren raised an eyebrow in amusement. "'Your' station?"
Sipha smiled wolfishly. "Oh, yes, old partner mine. Never doubt it. My station. It has trouble and I want it fixed." She gazed past him, into the bay. "As I say, this is the first load of corpses. The occasional body has been turning up from time to time. The sorts of people who easily get crushed when they learn the wrong thing, or know too much, or who just show up where they shouldn't. Most of them have been thoroughly professional kills...till about three months ago."
Coren waited. She seemed to come to a decision and activated the datum on the desk. The paper-thin screen extruded and winked on. She worked intently for a couple of minutes, then crooked a finger at him to have a look.
"We found this in one of our detention cells," she said.
On the screen Coren saw a body, laid out on a morgue table. It had been a woman--the basic shape was still intact--but he had never seen a body so thoroughly bruised: blue, green, and sickly yellow marks ran from the scalp to the toes. Faint red laceration marks interrupted the mottling here and there.
"What was it? Explosive decompression? Something fall on her?"
"In a detention cell?" Sipha asked wryly. "She was alive when we put her in there. Small-quantity Brethe peddler, nothing major, ever-public nuisance, more than anything else. She was supposed to be, you see, because she worked for me."
"Regular cop?"
"No, she really did used to deal in black market. I made her a better deal. It worked out. She worked the Settler section for me."
Coren felt himself smile. "And when there was something really important to report...?"
"She got herself arrested. This hadn't been the first time she'd visited one of my cells. The next shift, we found her like this. Very simply, every bone in her body had been broken. A lot of them were crushed."
"What was she reporting?"
"I don't know. She came in 'under the influence.' I was tied up with arranging all this for you and didn't get a chance to talk to her."
"No one heard or saw anything?"
"Evidently not. That's why I'm not really sure about my people. Can you think of a way that could happen and no one on watch would know about it?"
Coren shook his head. "What about surveillance?"
"Blank for that section. I suspended two of my officers for negligence, but I honestly don't think they were the ones who did it. Someone with a bit more expertise fiddled the recorders. The problem with that is, I have at least five people on my staff who could have done it, but none of them has a motive." Sipha gestured toward the image on the screen. "Besides, look at that and tell me how it was done. A couple of adjusters with clubs? I don't think so."
"But since you don't really suspect your two discipline cases, you have an idea. "
Sipha nodded. "During autopsy we came up with this. " She tapped the keypad. "The bruising is uninterrupted over the entire body and none of the fractures are consistent with blows. "
The screen changed, showing an image of a shoulder, blackened like rotting fruit. Sipha adjusted the scan and one shape emerged, slightly darker than the surrounding bruise. Coren stared at the vague outline of a hand. An odd hand, to be sure, the fingers too thick and short, the spread too wide.
"Was it clear enough for any kind of prints?" he asked.
"No prints. Perfectly smooth except for a couple of joints. And the bone beneath this impression had been ground nearly to powder. No, partner mine, this isn't a human hand."
"A robot?" He shook his head. "But you said--"
"I said that robot--" she pointed out at the bay "--didn't do it. But that's still my best guess. And if a robot did this--" she gestured at the screen "--if a robot--maybe your second mystery robot --got into my cells and did this, then I have a serious problem." She looked up at him. "Will you help me?"
"I--" Coren began.
The door opened. One of Sipha's men leaned in. "Chief, you need to see this. "

"Couple things," the older man--Baxin, Sipha's staff pathologist --said when Sipha and Coren entered the bin. He pointed at the rebreather unit. The umbilicals had all been disconnected and had retracted into the unit. "That's a standard Fain-Bischer rebreather. About six years old, out of date, but still in good working order. No reason it won't last another hundred years once it's been cleaned out."
"Cleaned out of what?" Sipha asked.
"We don't know yet, but it's evident from the postures of the deceased that they've been poisoned. Something in the rebreather, we assume. Something clever, too. The filtration system should have blocked it, but it didn't." He nodded sharply. "That's one thing. The other..." He pointed up.
Nyom's body had been taken down and now they could see how she had been suspended. The roof had a crack in it, about half a meter long and perhaps five to eight centimeters at the widest. The metal around it was discolored, heat-scored.
"The bin was pressurized," the tech explained. "The air leaked out through that crack. My guess is that the body was drawn to it during freefall. The fabric of her pants got caught in it. "
"Did decompression kill her?" Coren asked.