A werewolf among us

and I can't blame you for anything, certainly. But what about the proof you mentioned?"
    "First of all," St. Cyr said, "the fact that the killer left no footprints in the damp garden soil can be explained by the fact that Teddy has a gravplate mobility system and never touches the ground. The lack of fingerprints is easily accounted for; stainless steel fingers are not whorled."
    "But this is not conclusive," Hirschel said.
    "Also, consider that he has access to the house, everywhere in the house. He can override the voice locks on all the bedroom doors, enter silently and at will. And, in those cases where the victims were murdered on their balconies, it is possible that he could increase the power input on the gravplate generators and drift up the side of the house to attack them without ever entering their rooms. He could get very close to anyone, for he was uniformly trusted."
    Everyone but Tina and Hirschel seemed too stunned to take it all in. One trusted one's mechanical servants, for they were incapable of doing anything to make that trust hollow. If one could not trust robots, then all of modern society came in for suspicion. If robots could turn against men, all the underpinnings of this life might be as shaky as rotted planks. Hirschel was less affected because he was more the primitive than any of them. If the entire fabric of human existence, across the hundreds of settled worlds in the galaxy, fell apart tomorrow from some unimaginable cosmic event, he would survive with just his hands and a knife. Tina also, though a child of civilization, was not so affected by the disclosure as the others were—perhaps because she had ceased to care about a lot of things.
    "How did he get the corpses to look as if they'd been clawed by an animal?" Hirschel asked. "His fingers are blunt, not sharp."
    St. Cyr lifted the paper sack onto his lap, opened the top and lifted out a long tool that looked very much like a back-scratcher, with a long shaft terminating in four hideously sharpened tines that were curved at the tips like well-honed claws. "As you know, the 'hands' at the ends of Teddy's arms are only attachments which are removable so that he can accommodate the insertion of various other tools. The ends of his arms are something like drill clamps that will take any number of bits. This set of claws is one of those 'bits.'"
    "Where in hell did he get that?" Jubal asked.
    "He made it," St. Cyr said. "He's perfectly capable of operating a machine shop—just as you ordered him—a function he usually performs in order to transfer your silver designs from paper to reality. Somewhere along the line he took the time to make himself this dandy little ripper."
    "What I'd like to know is where
you
got that," Hirschel said.
    "In Teddy's workshop."
    "Just a while ago?"
    "Yes."
    "And he doesn't know what you went down there for?" Hirschel clearly felt St. Cyr had made a serious tactical error.
    "He doesn't even know I went down there," St. Cyr said. "I told him I was going to the fourth floor. I sent the elevator up there, empty. Since there was no one else in the house to use it just then—you were all in the kitchen—I knew I had the elevator shaft to myself. I just used it to go down one floor to the garage, then into the workshop."
    "With that arm?" Hirschel asked.
    "The arm wasn't any problem going down," the cyberdetective said. "Coming up was a real bitch, though."
    Hirschel smiled admiringly and said, "I believe that I have been underestimating you all along."
    St. Cyr acknowledged the compliment with a nod, though it pleased him very much. On his left, Tina moved closer to him, until he felt their hips brush.
    Hirschel said, "I expect that you can explain where he got that narcotic-dart gun that he used against you in the garden."
    The detective reached into the paper sack, removed a pistol and handed it to the hunter. "Recognize the make?"
    Hirschel gave it a careful scrutiny, pulled back the slide and peered at as much of the workings as he could see. "Very simplistic, but well-made. The mechanisms look too fragile to last long."
    "Teddy machined it," St. Cyr said.
    Jubal spoke up again: "But it was never stipulated that he know weaponry. I wouldn't want a master unit of mine to have that kind of knowledge."
    "You never stipulated that he kill your sons and daughters, either," St. Cyr said.
    Hirschel handed the gun back, and the detective put it with the artificial claws. To Hirschel, he said, "There is a wolfs