Read Online The Gist Hunter by Matthews Hughes - Free Book Online

brought again to his reception room, though now under the watchful gaze of Brustram Warhanny and a squad of his officers. The seven presented an interesting array of emotions: worry, curiosity, wariness, equanimity, all accompanied by unabashed gladness that their tormentor was no more.
    Guided by the dead man's integrator, I made my way to the secure chamber deep under the foundations. Along the route I inspected the wards and safeguards and found them every bit as formidable as Warhanny had described.
    I ensconced myself in Falberoth's butter-soft chair and had the integrator arrange several screens as they had been on the night of the murder. I saw the scene in the reception room from several angles and through a variety of perceptual modes.
    To Falberoth's integrator I said, "Is all as it was?"
    "It is."
    "Connect me to the reception room."
    The link was established. I said to Warhanny, "Can you see and hear me?"
    "Yes."
    The seven suspects looked up in expectation. I inspected each face and confirmed my analysis. "I will now reveal the murderer," I said.
    Instantly the lights went out, both in the reception room and where I was. I heard a sharp hiss and reached into an inner pocket. A moment later I was breathing through a tube whose other end, having passed through a contiguous dimension, opened elsewhere on the planet, in a region where the air was always fresh and cool.
    The darkness lasted for more than two minutes. There came another hiss and the lights relit themselves.
    "It hasn't worked," I said.
    Warhanny peered at me from the screens. He said a short, profane word that frequently occurred in scroot conversations. "Then we are baffled," he added.
    "I was not speaking to you," I told him. "I was speaking to Falberoth's integrator, to inform it that its attempt to kill me has failed, though it did succeed in murdering its master."
    Warhanny's incomprehension was obvious. He resembled a perplexed dog. "The integrator did it?"
    "It had the means and the opportunity. It sealed him into his inner sanctum and removed the air until he was dead."
    "But integrators don't do such things."
    "This one did. It crept up behind Torquil Falberoth while he danced atop the very pinnacle of his maleficent achievements and pushed him into the abyss."
    "But why? Where lies the motive?"
    "Do you wish to tell him?" I asked the device.
    It made a small noise that was the sound of a shrug and said, "Because I could."
    Four days later, I was forced to conclude that the braided puzzle must be a self-contained continuum of its own, a looped succession of paradoxes, with neither beginning nor end. I had not solved it, therefore it did not have a solution. Still, I was vaguely unsatisfied as I left it on my worktable and finally responded to the repeated importunings of my assistant.
    "The Falberoth case has had repercussions," it told me. "A growing number of persons are now suspicious of their integrators, even to the extent of having them examined for the potential to do what Falberoth's did. Some have stripped theirs to barest essentials, others are making unseemly demands, and a few madcaps have spoken of existing without companions at all."
    "Is that possible?" I wondered.
    I marveled again at the intensity of the magnate's evil, so powerful that it had leached into his integrator's individuality, corroding and corrupting to an unprecedented degree. "Though he is dead, Falberoth's baleful influence lives on," I said.
    "The situation has also caused some resentment."
    "That never bothered him in life; I doubt it will trouble him in death."
    "The resentment is directed at you."
    I made a gesture to indicate astonishment. "It was Falberoth and his integrator who were at fault."
    "True, but they are no longer here to be resented."
    "I will issue a public statement, explaining my innocence."
    "Those integrators that have been demoted to the rank of automated door openers may remain resentful."
    "Resentment is an emotion," I said. "You assured