Soft come the dragons

the screen went blank again.
    Ti mixed himself a strong whiskey sour and waited.
    An hour later, the com-screen bleeped. He flipped it to reception and watched Creol's face fade in. "Got it, Chief," Creol said. "Hey, he's quite a fellow!"
    "Stat it."
    "Sure thing."
    Creol placed the documents under his recorder scope, one sheet at a time, then punched the transmit button. Moments later, the wet copies dropped into the tray in Ti's wall. He didn't rush to pick them up, though his nerves screamed for action. Creol was already too interested. He didn't want to blow any of this until he knew what he was doing. When all the papers had dropped, he thanked the editor and rang off. He sent a servo to retrieve the data and carried it back into the living room. He slid into a cup-chair beneath a reading globe and shut off the grav plates.
    When he had finished reading everything the researchers had found on Klaus Margle, he knew, beyond doubt, that the man was head of the Dark Brethren. The list of other gangsters liquidated under his auspices was awesome. By studying the killings tentatively credited to Klaus Margle, Ti could see the story of an industrious criminal assassinating his way up the ranks and right into the top roost. The information told him one other thing: he had been wise not to contact the police. Klaus Margle had been arrested nine different times. And he had beaten every rap. Whether he had clever lawyers or whether he spread money around where it would do him the most good was of little consequence. What counted was that if the police investigated this, Margle would eventually go free as he had before. Then he would come hunting for a reject named Timothy. No, this was not something he could turn over to the police. Not until he had conclusive evidence against Margle, evidence the crook could not buy his way out of. He was going to have to handle this thing himself . . .
     
    Ti slid into his Mindlink cup-chair, cut his grav plates, and breathed deeply. As he lowered the helmet and fitted it, his mind raced through the alleyways of the situation. Why should Klaus Margle want to kill a concert guitarist? And how had Taguster come to know the gangster in the first place? It was not his usual type of acquaintance. They were questions that would need answering if he wanted to sew up this case before reporting it to the authorities. But Taguster was dead, and Margle would certainly not talk, so where did that leave Ti? Nowhere. He flipped the toggles, leaped into the beam, and settled into the receiver in Taguster's living room. The body was still there, of course, twisted grotesquely in its death agonies.
    Ti swung the cameras from left to right and found the closet door he wanted. He hoped the thing was where Taguster usually kept it. He palmed open the closet door with his power. Multicolored warning lights flashed amber and crimson and green. He shut off the alarm and looked at the simulacrum. It was a perfect likeness of the musician— except that it wasn't now full of poisoned pins.
    Taguster had had the simulacrum made to help him avoid the adulation of his fans. When he was on tour, it was always the android that entered the hotels through the front door, while Taguster sneaked in a service entrance. The simulacrum could walk, talk, think, do almost everything Taguster could do. Its complex, brain was cored with his memory tapes and his psychological reaction patterns, so that it could pass for him even in the company of casual friends, though someone as close to him as Ti could not really be fooled.
    Ti reached psionically under the flowered sports coat the machine wore, brought it to active status, its eyes opened, cloudy at first, then clearing until its gaze was penetrating. "You," Ti said. "Sim, come here."
    It walked out of the closet and stopped before the receiver. For a moment, Ti had the eerie sensation that Taguster had returned from the dead. It was suddenly distasteful to, be ordering this image of his friend about like a peasant before a monarch—but it was also essential to the half-conceived plan still taking shape in his mind.
    "Sim," he said again.
    It raised its eyes and stared directly at the cameras.
    "Sim, there is a young woman at the window in the bedroom. She is—dead. I want you to bring her into the utility room. Be careful and don't spill her blood on the carpet. Go."
    "Right," the Sim said, turning toward the bedroom. A moment later, he returned, the body cradled in his