Dena felt the kitchen in question watching behind her. She spun her floatchair in place to see if she could catch it in the act. The red LEDs on each of the appliances and fixtures in the darkened, mahogany-paneled room did look like beady little eyes.

  "'. . . No, commandant, do not grant his request!' the major said. 'I think he's trying to escape!'" Ramos concluded triumphantly.

  K't'ank's shrill laugh made Dena wince. "That is a good one! I will repeat it to my friends. They appreciate your wit."

  "Hey, I'm a big hit on the interplanetary circuit," Ramos said, polishing his fingernails against his tunic with pride.

  Dena rolled her eyes.

  "Okay," she said, addressing the kitchen. "Which one of you is in charge?"

  A moment passed, during which she sensed a rapid exchange between the various devices, then the light on the refrigerator flickered.

  "I am. I order food. I release food to be cooked. I contain leftovers. I warn as to expiration dates. I oversee sanitation to avoid contamination."

  "Did you see what happened here? Who killed Mr. Calopidian?"

  "We did not see," the refrigerator replied. The LEDs on the rest of the appliances flickered in agreement.

  "Why didn't you see it?" Ramos asked. "Don't you control the whole house?"

  Another silent conference. This time Dena picked up the impression of embarrassment.

  "Only the food service area is our concern," the refrigerator said.

  "You sound like college dorm AIs," Dena said in annoyance. "This is a mega-millions penthouse in the richest part of town. Why isn't there a whole house system?"

  The stove spoke up. "Food budget has been limited."

  The refrigerator hissed sharply. The stove subsided.

  "And . . . ?" Dena urged, but the appliances remained silent.

  "Was Calopidian in some kind of financial trouble?" Ramos asked. He waved a hand. "Never mind. I'll check his bank records." He drew a finger down the screen of his skinnypad. "No. Looks like he was flush. There have been a number of deposits in recent weeks. Big ones. I mean, big!"

  Dena glanced back at the corpse, then at the appliances.

  "Even if you're only in charge of the kitchen and dining room, you had to have seen some of what happened," she said.

  "No," the refrigerator said. "It is on the opposite side of the wall."

  "But you reported the body."

  "Streams of blood poured onto the tile floor in our section," the sink said, in a hollow, resonant voice. "We sent the floor cleaner to examine. It saw the body."

  "So there was blood! Who cleaned it up?"

  An even longer period of embarrassed silence.

  "We did," the refrigerator said at last, in a plaintive tone. "Apologies. The contamination couldn't remain. Food is served here. Sanitation is important to human health. We must not endanger it."

  "How much more endangered can you get than having your employer torn to pieces?" Dena asked. For that, the kitchen had no answer.

  "Tampering with an active crime scene," Ramos snarled. The expression had cowed many a perpetrator, but it didn't have any effect on a roomful of appliances. "Well, you're computerized. Put it back the way it was, blood, guts, and everything! Stat!"

  "We can't do that," the refrigerator said. "All contamination has been sanitized and disposed of."

  "Will it make a difference if it is actually Calopidian's blood?" K't'ank asked. "You allow accusations based upon two-dimensional images."

  "That's a good idea," Dena said, approvingly. "I'm sure the image is burned into your memory banks. Can you make an accurate reproduction of the scene? Fingerprints and all?"

  "Why, yes. We create molecular gastronomy for Mr. Calopidian," the refrigerator said, proudly. "We can be accurate to the micron."

  "Why not?" Ramos asked, his eyes gleaming with amusement. "They can't mess it up any more than they already have. Captain Potopos will probably buy it, especially if we can get a confession out of someone. Do it."

  The red LEDs flashed. Service claws descended from the ceiling and went to work. They reached into the refrigerator and cabinets and brought out bottles, jars, and canisters and began to mix up red, gray, and white pastes in steel bowls.

  "Take a look at this," Ramos said, showing Dena a layout of the condo on his skinnypad. "Calopidian stopped paying the subscription for the high-end AI for the house system three months ago, brought it all down to manual. Everything's been scaled back to basics except the food prep area."

  "Why not the kitchen?"

  "Maybe he didn't know how to cook," Ramos said, with a shrug.

  "It would appear that Calopidian was reducing her expenses," K't'ank said.

  "His," Dena said automatically. Salosians were hopeless when it came to human gender. "It doesn't look like he's been in financial trouble."

  "Maybe he was planning a huge expenditure," Ramos suggested.

  "True. Hey!" Dena called over the hubbub in the kitchen. "Anything else still here? This listing says there was a fitness robot, a valet, a massage chair, and a personal-care droid on staff."

  "Only the valet remains," the refrigerator said. "It is stationed in Mr. Calopidian's bedroom."

  THE AUTOSERV ON the peach-colored bedroom door must have been on the fritz, too.

  "Open," Dena said, growing more impatient by the moment. "Slide sideways. Unlock. Admit me to the bedroom. Come on! Please open, already!"

  With a resentful hiss, the portal slid aside. The bedroom, like the rest of the apartment, contained the bare minimum of furnishings. She spotted the valet robot immediately. It stood beside the king-sized bed in a glass case not unlike the final resting place of its employer. The butler was shaped like a hollow-chested man wearing a waistcoat and tails, with an oblong head and springy arms that terminated in hands clad in pristine white gloves. As she glided toward it, the front of the case parted like a pair of curtains. The valet's blue eye-lights flickered on.

  "How may I help you, madam and sir?" a sonorous male voice asked.

  "You acknowledge me?" K't'ank asked, delighted.

  "You are present, sir. It's only courteous."

  "Do you know what happened to your employer?" Dena asked.

  "Since what point in time, madam?"

  "Since last night," Dena said. "Twelve hours ago."

  The eyes flickered.

  "He began decomposing," the valet said.

  "Do you know who killed him?"

  "It's not my fault, madam."

  "I know it's not your fault," Dena said, impatiently. "You're a robot. You had the Three Laws of Robotics programmed into you, right?"

  "I did," the valet said, his voice becoming crisp and professorial. "I began operation over three hundred years ago. The Three Laws were a vital part of my firmware. That cannot be changed without an update. I have had only one update in all that time. You are very ugly, madam."

  Dena felt her cheeks burn with embarrassment.

  "Is this whole apartment broken?" she demanded. "The door was abrupt. The kitchen cleaned up a crime scene, and you're making rude remarks."

  "It's in my programming, madam," the valet said. "I am sorry. I am upset."

  Dena gawked at him.

  "You're upset? Why?"

  "As of the termination of Mr. Calopidian, I am unemployed."

  Dena raised an eyebrow, and looked the robot up and down.

  "So what? You could find another job."

  If an electronic entity could look sorry for itself, the mechanical butler did.

  "I have been a valet for three centuries. My software has been updated regularly over the ages. I have served numerous employers, most of them very good positions. I was Mr. Calopidian's confidential assistant. I hold business files not accessible to the rest of the household system or to his business computers. But classic early twentieth century butler/valet mode is not popular among current employers. The trend is for a more familiar style, as if one was receiving willing assistance from a good friend. Humans vacillate between wanting service, but not wanting it to seem compulsory. That is disingenuous. It is logical to get service from mechanicals, who have no ego to be damaged by constantly being on the giving end of the equation. We are in use, we are not in use."

  "Then what's the problem?" Dena interrupted. "You are a robot. If you're scrapped, it shouldn't feel any differently than you do now."

  The blue LEDs looked worried.

  "Being scrapped is not not in use, madam. It is nonexistence. I was once attached to a unit in the diplomatic service. A hundred and six years ago, I was unemployed for almost forty months. It was a very long period of idleness for any device. I wish to continue existence. I am aware. Perhaps more than you are."

  "Can the insults, tin man. Then who murdered your employer?"

  "There is a difference between killing and murder," the valet countered.

  "You can discuss philosophy?" K't'ank asked. "This is most interesting. We must compare opinions on human behavior. I have observed . . . ."

  "Later!" Dena said. "Are you aware that I can download your testimony? The police department has access to the programming core for all mechanical intelligence units."

  "I only wish to tell you only that it wasn't my fault. The sky is purple."

  Dena threw up her hands.

  "What the hell. Don't leave the house. I may need to talk to you later."

  "Of course, madam."

  "The sky is not purple," K't'ank said, as they floated back toward the kitchen.

  "He's old," Dena said. "Three hundred years. Outdated. You heard him. He's getting things wrong."

  "An interesting personality, in fact. He is unemployed. You should hire him. He might be of great help once the baby is ex-utero."

  "A butler? On a cop's salary? You have to be kidding," Dena said, peevishly. "And all I need is one more voice in my house keeping me from sleeping." She sniffed appreciatively. "Mmmm! What's that aroma?"

  Ramos leaned around the corner of the kitchen wall.

  "It's our crime scene," he said, with a grin. "We've never had one that smelled this delicious."

  Dena rounded the jutting wall, and pulled the floatchair up short.

  The living room had been transformed from a genteel upper class entertainment room with upscale décor into an abattoir. Body parts were strewn with vicious abandon. Her chair bumped along the floor until it came to rest in front of a pool of shining crimson blood. No, not blood, she thought, after a sniff. Cherry gelatin.

  Although the real Mr. Calopidian still stared at them from the glass case, his corpse had been reproduced on the floor in masses of red food coloring, cold cuts for torn flesh, egg-shell and pate sucree bones, and mashed potatoes dyed gray to simulate brain tissue.

  "I'll never eat corned beef again," Dena said, fervently.

  "Cromley says that corned beef is the food of the gods," K't'ank put in.

  "Cromley?" Dena demanded.

  "That is the name the valet uses. We have been speaking through my internet connection. It is a most erudite being, Malone. Much more elegant of speech than you."

  "Everything in this place is going crazy," Ramos said. "Everyone knows bratwurst is the food of the gods."

  "In whose pantheon?" Dena asked, exasperated. She turned to the refrigerator. "Are you sure this is accurate?"

  "Images shown from memory banks collected by the mop bucket," it assured her. "We have furnished them to Sgt. Ramos."

  "Hell, it's perfect," Ramos said. He ran his skinnypad around the room. "If you don't inhale, it's just as gory as the third Ellipsis murder in the Hing Song Building. Remember that one?"

  "Yeah," Dena said, with a fond sigh. "Our first serial killer."

  "Cromley says that Hing Song means 'melancholy baby.'"

  As Dena examined the 'body' and the carnage around it, she frowned at the smudges on the wall.

  "Did you see these? There are fingerprints, but they all belong to the victim."

  "Killer must have been wearing gloves," Ramos said with a shrug. "Not unusual. I'm not getting any DNA except for the victim, either. The cleanup squad did too good a job."

  Dena groaned. "Potopos isn't going to like this. The room cleaned itself. We're going to have to check building surveillance, and hope we caught the murderer either going or coming."

  "Where is he?" a male voice demanded. "Get out of my way, tinpot! Where's my uncle?" Footsteps thundered toward them down the hallway from the door.

  Dena and Ramos rushed to intercept the newcomer as it thumped down the hall toward them. Ramos took his gun from its holster.

  "Why didn't the door warn us that someone was here?" she asked.

  "Because you did not tell it to," K't'ank said. "Cromley tells me that all of the controls are opt-in instead of opt-out. Calopidian preferred it."

  A man with gelled blond hair and broad shoulders that made his medium frame look shorter than it was came barreling toward them. Both officers held up their badges.

  "Well, I don't have to ask who you are," the man said. He wore a blue suit that must have cost more than Dena's annual salary. "Where's my . . . oh, my God!" His mouth fell open as he saw the glass case and its contents.

  "That's pretty much what we said," Ramos observed dryly.

  "He looks like the Aztec calendar! Who did that?"

  "Cromley says that we should blender unto Caesar," K't'ank said.

  "Looks like the murder was a joint effort," Dena said. "Would you mind identifying yourself, sir?"

  "I'm Pyotr Maralbian. Calopidian is my uncle. I'm his vice president of software programming for Meso-Electronics."

  "And when did you last see your uncle?" Dena asked.

  "Three days ago," Pyotr said. He pointed at the floor. "In this apartment. The security system will show that . . . if he hasn't shut down the surveillance cameras, too."

  "What did you talk about?" Ramos asked. "Did you know that he had stopped subscribing to the whole-house system? Just kept the kitchen and the valet?"

  "Yes, I did," Pyotr said, bitterly. "He had some crazy offworld scheme to invest all his assets. I was trying to persuade him to put it all back and take it slower. He could have lost everything we all worked for! And now look what happened. Someone got in and killed him." He looked from the case to the body parts on the floor. "Wait a minute, how can he be in two places at once?"

  "That is a philosophy question," K't'ank said, gleefully. "Or perhaps one of quantum physics. Cromley says. . . ."

  "Shut up, K't'ank," Dena said. She focused on Pyotr. "Who do you think was responsible?"

  Pyotr ran a hand over his cock's-comb hair. "Lots of people could be. He is—was—CEO and majority stockholder of Meso-Electronics. I don't know if you read a lot of the financial pages, but he buys up smaller companies and shuts them down once he's stripped their assets. He wanted to be the first trillionaire. But he takes big chances. The last company he shut down, Class Ordinals, has been trying to sue us to get their patents back. They've been threatening us."

  "But why close down his penthouse?" Dena asked. "The valet said that it was due to be scrapped."

  Pyotr scoffed. "That old thing? It's been in the family for ages. Sound as a bell structure-wise, but so old-fashioned. Just like my uncle." He shook his head. "I don't think it knows what it's doing anymore."

  "Cromley says that only the brave buy peanut butter," K't'ank added. Dena rolled her eyes.

  "What kind of threats did he get?" Ramos asked. "Did your uncle think he was in danger?"

  "All of us! I got letters. Real letters. Like in the twenty-first century," Pyotr said, his eyes wide. "Look!" He handed them his skinnypad. The two officers read the scans. The letters had been printed by hand with a thick marking pen. Dena nodded. The anonymous letter-writer planned to tear Maralbian's head off and rip his guts out. Pretty much a word-for-word description of what had happened to Calopidian.

  "Where are the originals?" Dena asked.

  Pyotr palmed his hair again. "No idea. I looked around for them today, after the kitchen called me, but they're gone. I didn't look for long. I had to hurry here."

  "Did someone break into your house?" Ramos asked, with a doubtful expression on his face.

  "Yes. No. Maybe! Someone had to. Or my house system threw them away. I think I left them on the floor."

  "Cromley says that anything left on the floor is good only for five seconds. Then you must throw it away. Or feed it to a dog."

  "That's very careless of you," Dena said skeptically, ignoring K't'ank's outburst. She glanced over Pyotr's shoulder. The LEDs on the kitchen units were flashing rapidly. "Ramos, why don't you interview Mr. Maralbian in a different room? I'm sure the sight of his late uncle is upsetting him."

  They'd been partners too long for Ramos not to pick up on the implication. He hooked his arm into the nephew's, and pulled him away.

  "Yeah. Come on, Mr. Maralbian. I think there's some furniture left we can sit on."

  As soon as they were out of earshot, Dena approached the refrigerator.

  "What is it?"

  "We did not call him," the refrigerator said. "Only the police. Mr. Calopidian did not feed his nephew here."

  "He didn't trust him," Dena said, thoughtfully. She tapped her fingers on the chair arm.

  "The sky is not purple, either," K't'ank said. "And it is not Cromley's fault."

  Dena suddenly saw the pieces of the puzzle fall into place.

  "No, it's not. The valet isn't losing its mind," she said. "It lied to us. Robots can't lie."

  "Why not?" K't'ank asked. "Harmless prevarications are useful in social situations. I have observed that about you humans."

  "Lying is considered causing harm to humans. It can't do that. That's the first Law of Robotics. The valet's been reprogrammed! We'd better get to it." She accelerated her chair toward the bedroom. "Ramos!"

  It looked as if Pyotr had had the same urgent idea in mind. When Dena arrived, the nephew lay at the foot of the glass case, with Ramos's knee in the middle of his back.

  "He keeps trying to get at the butler," the swarthy sergeant said. "Why would he want to do that?"

  "I think Cromley can tell us." Dena rapped on the glass. It opened. "You told me you have only had your firmware updated once, Cromley. When was that?"

 

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