Daneel was one of the many robots who had become disguised Sherlocks among the masses; tens of thousands throughout the Galaxy, trying not just to solve a mystery, but to prevent further and greater crimes.
The leader of these dedicated servants, the first Eternal, brushed as much of the street’s filth from his rags as he could manage, and left the cramped and empty General Habitation Project hovel in search of finer clothes.
7.
“They’ve searched the entire apartment,” Sonden Asgar moaned, rubbing his elbows and looking smaller and more frail than she had ever seen him before. Klia’s respect for her father had not been high in the last few years, but she still felt a pang for his misery--and an abiding sense of guilt that strengthened a sense of responsibility. “They went through our records--imagine that! Private records! Some Imperial authority...”
“Why your records, Father?” Klia asked. The apartment was a shambles. She could imagine the investigators pulling up cabinets and throwing out the boxes and few dishes within, tugging up the worn carpets...She was glad she hadn’t been here, and for more than one reason.
“Not my records!” Sonden shouted. “They were looking for you. School papers, bookfilms, and they took our family album. With all your mother’s pictures. Why? What have you done now?”
Klia shook her head and upturned a stool to sit. “If they’re looking for me, I can’t stay,” she said.
“Why, daughter? What could--”
“If I’ve done anything illegal, Father, it’s not worth the attention of Imperial Specials. It must be something else...” She thought of the conversation with the man in dusty green, and frowned.
Sonden Asgar stood in the middle of the main room, three meters square, hardly a room at all--more of a closet--and shivered like a frightened animal. “They were not kind,” he said. “They grabbed me and shook me hard...They acted like thugs. I might as well have gotten mugged in Billibotton!”
“What did they say?” Klia asked softly.
“They asked where you were, how you had done in school, how you made your living. They asked whether you knew a Kindril Nashak. Who is that?”
“A man,” she said, hiding her surprise. Kindril Nashak! He had been the kingpin in her greatest success so far, a deal that had put four hundred New Credits in her accounts with the Banker in Billibotton. But even that had been trivial--surely nothing worth their attention. Imperial Special police were supposed to seek out the Lords of the Underground, not clever girls with purely personal ambitions.
“A man!” her father said sharply. “Someone who’s willing to take you off my hands, I hope!”
“I haven’t been a burden to you for years,” Klia said sourly. “I only dropped by to see how you were doing.”And to discover why any thought of you made my head itch.
“I told them you’re never here!” Sonden cried. “I said we hadn’t seen each other in months. None of it makes sense! It will take days to clean this mess. The food! They spilled the entire cookery!”
“I’ll help you pick up,” Klia said. “Shouldn’t take more than an hour.”
She certainly hoped not. Other faces were making her head itch now: Friends, colleagues, anyone associated with Nashak. One thing she was sure of: She had suddenly become important, and not because she was a clever member of the black market community.
An hour later, with the mess largely taken care of and Sonden at least beginning to recover his calm. she kissed him on the top of the head and said good-bye, and she meant it.
She could not look at her father without her scalp seeming to burn. Nothing to do with the Guilt, she told herself. Something new.
Hereafter, any contact with him would be extremely dangerous.
8.
Major Perl Namm of Special Investigations, Imperial Security, assigned to the Dahl Sector, had been waiting for two hours in the private Palace office of Imperial Councilor Farad Sinter. He adjusted his collar nervously. The desk of Farad Sinter was smooth and elegant, crafted from Karon wood from the Imperial Gardens, a gift from Klayus I. The top of the desk held only an inactive Imperial-class informer. A sun-and-spaceship plaque hovered to one side of the desk. The office’s high ceiling was supported by beams of Trantorian basalt, with intricate floral patterns spun-carved by tuned blaster beams. The major looked up at these beams, and when he looked down again, Farad Sinter stood behind the desk, wearing an irritated frown.
“Yes?”
Major Namm, very blond and compact, was not used to private audiences at this social level, and in the Palace, as well. “Second report on the search for Klia Asgar, daughter of Sonden and Bethel Asgar. Survey of the father’s apartment.”
“What else did you learn?”
“Her early intelligence tests were normal, not exceptional. After the age of ten, however, those tests showed extraordinary jumps--then, by the age of twelve, they revealed that she was an idiot.”
“Standard Imperial aptitude tests, I assume?”
“Yes, sir, adjusted for Dahlite...ah...needs.”
Sinter walked across the room and poured himself a drink. He did not offer any to the major, who wouldn’t have known what to do with fine wine anyway. No doubt his tastes were limited to the cruder forms of stimulk, or even the more direct stims favored in the military and police services. “There are no records of childhood illness, I presume,” Sinter said.
“Two possible explanations for that, sir,” the blond major said.
“Yes?”
“Hospitals in Dahl typically record only exceptional illnesses. And in those cases, if the exceptions might reflect badly on the hospital, they report nothing at all.”
“So perhaps she never had brain fever at all...as a child, when almost everyone of any intelligence contracts brain fever.”
“It’s possible, sir, though unlikely. Only one out of a hundred normal children escape brain fever. Only idiots escape completely, sir. She may have avoided it for that reason.”
Sinter smiled. The officer was stepping outside his expertise; the number was actually closer to one in thirty million normals, though many claimed they had never had it. And that claim in itself was evocative, as if escaping conferred some added status.
“Major, are you at all curious about the Sectors you do not patrol?”
“No, sir. Why should I be?”
“Do you know the tallest structure on Trantor, above sea level, I mean?”