The Planet on the Table by Kim Stanley Robinson

our minds, it’s just that Freya wants to know if there’s anything you saw that would help,” and so on. Then I had to do the difficult scheduling of Freya’s interviews, at the same time I was supposed to keep an eye out for anything suspicious. Oh, the watson does the dirty work, all right. No wonder we always look dense when the detective unveils the solutions; we never have the time even to get the facts straight, much less meditate on their meaning. All I got that day were fragments: Lucinda whispered to me that Musgrave had worked for George Butler before Heidi hired him. Harvey Washburn told me that Musgrave had once been an artist, and that he had only recently moved to Mercury from Earth; this was his first Solday. That didn’t give him much time to be hired by Butler, fired, and then hired by Van Seegeren. But was that of significance?
    Late in the day I spoke with one of the police officers handling the case. She was relieved to have the help of Freya Grindavik; Terminator’s police force is small, and often relies on the help of the city’s famous detective for the more difficult cases. The officer gave me a general outline of what they had learned: Lucinda had heard a shout for help, had stepped into the atrium and seen a bloodied figure crawling down the hallway toward the patio. She had screamed and run for help, but only in the hallway was clear vision possible, and she had quickly gotten lost. After that, chaos; everyone at the party had a different tale of confusion.
    After that conversation I had nothing more to do, so I got all the sequestered guests coffee and helped pick up some of the broken hail mirrors and passed some time prowling Heidi’s villa, getting down on my hands and knees with the police robots to inspect a stain or two.
    When Freya was finished with her interrogations, she promised Heidi and the police that she would see the case to its end—at least provisionally: “I only do this for entertainment,” she told them irritably. “I’ll stay with it as long as it entertains me. And I shall entertain myself with it.”
    “That’s all right,” said the police, who had heard this before. “Just so long as you’ll take the case.” Freya nodded, and we left.
    The Solday celebration was long since over, the Great Gates were closed, and once again through the dome shone the black sky. I said to Freya. “Did you hear about Musgrave working for Butler? And how he came from Earth just recently?” For you see, once on the scent I am committed to seeing a case solved.
    “Please. Nathaniel,” Freya said. “l heard all that and more. Musgrave stole the concept of Harvey Washburn’s first series of paintings; he blackmailed both Butler and our host Heidi to obtain his jobs from them—or so I deduce from their protestations and certain facts concerning their recent questionable merger that I am privy to. And he tried to assault Lucinda, who is engaged to the cook Delaurence—” She let out a long sigh. “Motives are everywhere.”
    “It seems this Musgrave was a thoroughly despicable sort,” I said.
    “Yes. An habitual blackmailer.”
    “Nothing
suggests
itself to you?”
    “No. I don’t know why I agree to solve these things. Here I am committed to this headbashing, and my best clue is something that
you
suggested.”
    “I wasn’t aware that I had suggested anything!”
    “There is a fresh perspective to ignorance that can be very helpful.”
    “So it is important that Musgrave just arrived from Earth?”
    She laughed. “Let’s stop in the Plaza Dubrovnik and get something to eat. I’m starving.”
     
    Almost three weeks passed without a word from Freya, and I began to suspect that she was ignoring the case. Freya has no real sense of right and wrong, you see; she regards her cases as games, to be tossed aside if they prove too taxing. More than once she has cheerfully admitted defeat, and blithely forgotten any promises she may have made. She is
not
a moral