Asgard's Secret by Brian Stableford Page A

when Jacinthe Siani tells him the
bad news about me than he was when he found out that someone else had started
gunning down his henchmen. It would be nice to think that the peace-officers
might take him in for questioning, although they're probably a bit too
scrupulous about matters of evidence to do it on my say-so. Shall we go?"
    Her Medusa stare
was mingled with curiosity. She didn't know quite what to make of me. She
didn't seem to approve of me, but wasn't quite ready to say so—yet.
    Crucero had taken
three men with him to the police station. It took twenty minutes for the
remaining four of us to get back to my place, but the interval passed without
any discernible assassination attempts. My room was locked, and showed no signs
of having been broken into, but I
    opened the door very cautiously, just in
case there was anyone inside who shouldn't have been there. There was.
    He was lying on my
bed, but he didn't get up to greet me. He couldn't, because he was very
obviously dead. It was Saul Lyndrach.

11
    The peace-officers arrived in a matter of
minutes to conduct their investigation. The team was headed by the same Tetron
who'd spoken to us in the plaza, who obviously felt that Saul's murder was linked
to the others, although he didn't explain why. He was right, of course, but he
didn't seem to attach any particular significance to my confident assurance
that Amara Guur was definitely responsible.
    At least my own
alibi was still cast iron.
    It was a long
afternoon, but I was eventually allowed back into my apartment. The body had
been removed once the forensic team had completed their examination, and
someone had tidied up. The officer who'd interrogated us was kind enough to sum
up his preliminary findings.
    Saul had died at
approximately eleven twenty that morning, while I was still secure in my cell.
Myrlin had logged out of lock five in my truck at eleven ninety-four. According
to the Tetron medical examiner, Saul must have been unconscious for several
Tetron units before he died. He'd lost a lot of blood. He had, apparently, been
tortured for some considerable time over a period of days. He had several
broken fingers and numerous electrical burns. Although he would have been able
to control the pain to some degree by virtue of his internal technology, it
would still have been an extremely unpleasant experience.
    In the opinion of
the medical examiner, the person or persons who had inflicted Saul's injuries
had not been trying to kill him—in fact, he or they had been trying to keep him
alive. The process must have begun, he deduced, on the same day that Saul had
accepted responsibility for Myrlin the Homeless Android, probably within sixty
Tetron units.
    Before lapsing into
unconsciousness for the last time, however, Saul—or someone with a very similar
voice, in possession of all the necessary identification codes—had used my
phone to make a series of purchases, including an outsized cold-suit and enough
supplies to stock my truck for a couple of hundred days. In so doing, he had
used up every last vestige of his—by which I mean Saul's—remaining credit. The
goods had been delivered to the lockup where my truck was kept.
    In the course of
making these calls, Saul—or the person pretending to be him—had not requested
medical assistance, but he—or the person pretending to be him—had taken the
trouble to leave a message for me inscribed, in English, on the answerphone's
display screen.
    Dear Mike, it read,
    We have
no idea where you are and can't ask your permission, but we need a truck badly
and we can't get to mine. After we're gone, though, mine is yours and you
should have no difficulty getting to it. It's a fair trade, I think—maybe a
little more than fair, to compensate for the inconvenience. All the best, Saul.
    "Does that count as a will?" I asked
the peace-officer. "No," he told me. "It would not matter, in
any case. I shall be forced to impound the vehicle in question, on the grounds
that