"His, or somebody else's?"
    "I don't know, we haven't done tests yet. The cell is empty, there's no body."
    "Shit."
    "I'm trying to piece out what happened, I came down here to question him again, and he..." She sighed. "The cop on duty said that he had never been away from the door. I haven't been able to find the one who was on duty before him. Presumably, he went home. The room's empty, no one went in, no one went out. Just a straitjacket, and blood. I have to admit, I'm not pleased."
    "Hm. You think there'd be a riot if I showed up?"
    "I should be able to clear it," she decided. "I'm going to start questioning people here, try and find out what happened."
    "Avoid talking to a Dr. Lanigan until after I get there."
    "Okay."
    Even grimmer silence descended after she hung up. The bastards were still one step ahead of us, if not more.
    "Are you leaving, M. L'automaton?" Albert inquired.
    "Soon."
    "Are we all going?" I asked him. Given the climate, that might not be good.
    "I'm going back to Chandler's, there's nothing I can do," Lucky announced.
    "What information do we have that is solid enough to move on? Anything, any piece?" Albert inquired of the group at large.
    "Do you still have all the corporate data I got on SysGen?" Scott asked me.
    "In there."
    Albert limped over and opened up the box, brought it to the table and started lifting out items. The Tempest file, the SysGen stuff, "my" photo album and address book, documents, yearbooks. He reached the bottom of the box and looked up me sharply. "What did you say earlier?"
    "What about?"
    "There's no gun." He turned the empty box over on the table, dropped it to the floor.
    "Well." I sat down.
    "I told you to get rid of that thing," Lucky muttered.
    "I was hoping to trace it one of these days." Procrastination might well be the death of me.
    "You don't leave a live grenade in your own damn bedroom."
    "Okay, there's no point to this," Scott interrupted sharply.
    Lucky took an angry breath and deflated. "Sorry," she muttered. "I'm just under a lot of...."
    "Understood," I assured her."I think we're all a little bit edgy at this point." I looked at Scott. "You're going to the mental hospital?"
    "Yes."
    "The Blood Boards have it," Lucky said, her tone more resigned now. "They were the only people in our base." She's probably right. They hadn't obviously disturbed anything in my room, so I'd rather dumbly assumed they had been interrupted before reaching it. Although if it had been the Blood Boards, TECH might have picked it up when they arrived to reclaim their property. No use crying about it now, I suppose. If it's TECH, they probably don't know who it's targeted to (unless they built it in the first place, mutters that paranoid sector of my mind), and if it's the Boards—at least they've only got one of them this time.
    "Albert?" I queried.
    "I will start going over these materials, as well as anything else I can find," he assured me.
    "Do you think offer from His Honor is still open?" Scott inquired.
    It took me a moment to remember what he was talking about. "I really doubt it, but I'll give him a call if you think it's worth it." If I was a politician, I wouldn't touch myself with a twenty-foot pole right now.
    "Well, he's certainly better at hunting through corporate records than any of us would be."
    A knock sounded.
    "Mr. Silver?" Stephanie poked her head in. "There's a gentleman here to speak with you."
    He wore a nice suit and carried a clipboard and briefcase.
    "You are Scott?" he asked, not blinking an eye at the robot's liquid silver form.
    "Yes?"
    "Dr. Jeffrey Scott?"
    "No. I'm sorry."
    "Oh. Are you a relative of Dr. Jeffrey Scott? Do you live in this domicile?"
    "Yes."
    "I'm from the U.S. Census Bureau, if you're a relative of his and living in this domicile I can ask these questions of you. How long have you lived in this building?"
    "About a month."
    "Your full name?"
    "Scott Silver."
    Note. "Age?"
    "Two months."
    "Profession?"
    "Unemployed," I muttered in the background.
    "Freelance," Scott told him. There are benefits to being totally unreadable.
    "Freelance... freelance what?"
    "Yes."
    "Former profession?" the man asked doggedly.
    "Employee of the state of Massachusetts."
    He nodded. "Civil servant. Degree of education?"
    "Difficult to quantify."
    Another nod. "I'll put 'tutors.' Are you a native of the United States?"
    "Yes."
    "Where were you born?"
    "Methuen, Massachusetts."
    "Do any of these other people live here with you?"
    "No."
    "I notice that you're running an office out of your home, how long have you been doing this?"
    Lucky was gesturing for Scott to stop talking. "Don't tell anybody information they don't need to know," she growled at him.
    "It would cost him a twenty-five cent call to get my incorporation papers," the robot pointed out.
    "Yeah, but why is he here? It's not a census year!"
    "Miss, we do sampling throughout the entirety of the decade—"
    "Can I see your credentials, please?" she demanded.
    "Sure." He handed them over. She called. He checked out. She remained suspicious.
    "Census information is voluntary," she said darkly. "Have a nice day."
    "I'm aware of that. Miss, I'm not asking you any questions," the man pointed out calmly. "Mr. Silver here is the one whom I am questioning."

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