"If I understand your motives correctly," I said, "you killed Dr. Ozoneff because he'd somehow forced you to write for him as a sort of slave-scribe. He stole your writing from you to publish it under his own name. Am I correct in assuming this?" "Not at all, sir," the gardener said. "Can your right hand steal from your left? Can your liver cheat your spleen from its birthright?" He held his gloved hands toward me, palms-up. "These are his hands, sir. I am he. I am a mere extension of Dr. Axel Ozoneff's mind, a pseudopod of his intelligence. I am his creature, sir." He dropped his hands to his sides. "And I, his creature, killed him." There were sirens sounding down the street. "You'll be taken care of," I told the gardener. "There are doctors who understand your sickness, who will work to cure you." "Can your doctors heal the positronic brain that lost its hold on the great First Law?" he asked me. "Can your psychiatrists console me for the fact that my creator created badly? Do you have robopsychologists to patch the chinks my maker left in my mental armor? No, human, you have not!" He stood glaring at me as the trio of sirens screamed toward the foot of the hill and stopped; as heavy footsteps rattled up the walk; as the front door slammed open. "I believe," he said, "that I'll now be able to do what I must." He tugged the glove from his right hand. I saw the glint of steel as he balled a fist like a sledge-hammer. "The shame, to be the first of my kind, and a failure," he said. He hammered his fist down upon the apex of his skull. The roof of his head bent inward. There was a sputtering of sparks, and the gardener's eyes went dead. His arm dropped to his side. He was lifeless as his master at the desk. THE END