Baley could sense the vague aroma of Yeast-town growing stronger, more pervasive. He did not find it as unpleasant as some did; Jessie, for instance. He even liked it, rather. It had pleasant connotations.
Every time he smelled raw yeast, the alchemy of sense perception threw him more than three decades into the past. He was a ten-year-old again, visiting his Uncle Boris, who was a yeast farmer. Uncle Boris always had a little supply of yeast dehectables: small cookies, chocolaty things filled with sweet liquid, hard confections in the shape of cats and dogs. Young as he was, he knew that Uncle Boris shouldn’t really have had them to give away and he always ate them very quietly, sitting in a corner with his back to the center of the room. He would eat them quickly for fear of being caught.
They tasted all the better for that.
Poor Uncle Boris! He had an accident and died. They never told him exactly how, and he had cried bitterly because he thought Uncle Boris had been arrested for smuggling yeast out of the plant. He expected to be arrested and executed himself. Years later, he poked carefully through police files and found the truth. Uncle Boris had fallen beneath the treads of a transport. It was a disillusioning ending to a romantic myth.
Yet the myth would always arise in his mind, at least momentarily, at the whiff of raw yeast.
Yeast-town was not the official name of any part of New York City. It could be found in no gazetteer and on no official map. What was called Yeast-town in popular speech was, to the Post Office, merely the boroughs of Newark, New Brunswick, and Trenton. It was a broad
strip across what was once Medieval New Jersey, dotted with residential areas, particularly in Newark Center and Trenton Center, but given over mostly to the many-layered farms in which a thousand varieties of yeast grew and multiplied.
One fifth of the City’s population worked in the yeast farms; another fifth worked in the subsidiary industries. Beginning with the mountains of wood and coarse cellulose that were dragged into the City from the tangled forests of the Alleghenies, through the vats of acid that hydrolyzed it to glucose, the carloads of niter and phosphate rock that were the most important additives, down to the jars of organics supplied by the chemical laboratories--it all came to only one thing, yeast and more yeast.
Without yeast, six of Earth’s eight billions would starve in a year.
Baley felt cold at the thought. Three days before the possibility existed as deeply as it did now, but three days before it would never have occurred to him.
They whizzed out of the motorway through an exit on the Newark outskirts. The thinly populated avenues, flanked on either side by the featureless blocks that were the farms, offered little to act as a brake on their speed.
“What time is it, Daneel?” asked Baley.
“Sixteen-oh-five,” replied R. Daneel.
“Then he’ll be at work, if he’s on day shift.”
Baley parked the squad car in a delivery recess and froze the controls.
“This is New York Yeast then, Elijah?” asked the robot.
“Part of it,” said Baley.
They entered into a corridor flanked by a double now of offices. A receptionist at a bend in the corridor was instantly smiles. “Whom do you wish to see?”
Baley opened his wallet. “Police. Is there a Francis Clousarr working for New York Yeast?”
The girl looked perturbed. “I can check.”
She connected her switchboard through a line plainly marked “Personnel,” and her lips moved slightly, though no sound could be heard.
Baley was no stranger to the throat phones that translated the small movements of the larynx into words. He said, “Speak up, please. Let me hear you.”
Her words became audible, but consisted only of, “. . . he says he’s a policeman, sir.”
A dark, well-dressed man came out a door. He had a thin mustache and his hairline was beginning to retreat. He smiled whitely, and said, “I’m Prescott of Personnel. What’s the trouble, Officer?”
Baley stared at him coldly and Prescott’s smile grew strained.
Prescott said, “I just don’t want to upset the workers. They’re touchy about the police.”
Baley said, “Tough, isn’t it? Is Clousarr in the building now?”
“Yes, Officer.”
“Let’s have a nod, then. And if he’s gone when we get there, I’ll bespeaking to you again.”
The other’s smile was quite dead. He muttered, “I’ll get you a rod, Officer.”
The guide rod was set for Department CG, Section 2. What that meant in factory terminology, Baley didn’t know. He didn’t have to. The nod was an inconspicuous thing which could be palmed in the hand. Its tip warmed gently when lined up in the direction for which it was set, cooled quickly when turned away. The warmth increased as the final goal was approached.
To an amateur, the guide rod was almost useless, with its quick little differences of heat content, but few City dwellers were amateurs at this particular game. One of the most popular and perennial of the games of childhood was hide-and-seek through the school-level corridors with the use of toy guide rods. (“Hot or Not, Let Hot-Spot Spot. Hot-Spot Guide Rods Are Keen.”)
Baley had found his way through hundreds of massive piles by guide rod, and he could follow the shortest course with one of them in his hand as though it had been mapped out for him.
When he stepped into a large and brilliantly lit room after ten minutes, the guide rod’s tip was almost hot.
Baley said to the worker nearest the door, “Francis Clousarr here?”
The worker jerked his head. Baley walked in the indicated direction. The odor of yeast was sharply penetrating, despite the laboring air pumps whose humming made a steady background noise.
A man had risen at the other end of the room, and was taking off an apron. He was of moderate height, his face deeply lined despite his comparative youth, and his hair just beginning to grizzle. He had large, knobby hands which he wiped slowly on a celltex towel.
“I’m Francis Clousarr,” he said.
Baley looked briefly at R. Daneel. The robot nodded.
“Okay,” said Baley. “Anywhere here we can talk?”
“Maybe,” said Clousarr slowly, “but it’s just about the end of my shift. How about tomorrow?”
“Lots of hours between now and tomorrow. Let’s make it now.” Baley opened his wallet and palmed it at the yeast farmer.
But Clousarr’s hands did not waver in their somber wiping motions. He said, coolly, “I don’t know the system in the Police Department, but around here you get tight eating hours with no leeway. I eat at 17:00 to 17:45, or I don’t eat.”
“It’s all right,” said Baley. “I’ll arrange to have your supper brought to you.”
“Well, well,” said Clousarr, joylessly. “Just like an aristocrat, or a C-class copper. What’s next? Private bath?”
“You just answer questions, Clousarr,” said Baley, “and save your big jokes for your girl friend. Where can we talk?”
“If you want to talk, how about the balance room? Suit yourself about that. Me, I’ve got nothing to say.”
Baley thumbed Clousarr into the balance room. It was square and antiseptically white, air-conditioned independently of the larger room (and more efficiently), and with its walls lined with delicate electronic balances, glassed off and manipulable by field forces only. Baley had used cheaper models in his college days. One make, which he recognized, could weigh a mere billion atoms.
Clousarr said, “I don’t expect anyone will be in here for a while.”
Baley grunted, then turned to Daneel and said, “Would you step out and have a meal sent up here? And if you don’t mind, wait outside for it.”
He watched R. Daneel leave, then said to Clousarr, “You’re a chemist?”
“I’m a zymologist, if you don’t mind.”
“What’s the difference?”
Clousarr looked lofty. “A chemist is a soup-pusher, a stink-operator. A zymologist is a man who helps keep a few billion people alive. I’m a yeast-culture specialist.”
“All right,” said Baley.
But Clousarr went on, “This laboratory keeps New York Yeast going. There isn’t one day, not one damned hour, that we haven’t got cultures of every strain of yeast in the company growing in our kettles. We check and adjust the food factor requirements. We make sure it’s breeding true. We twist the genetics, start the new strains and weed them out, sort out their properties and mold them again.
“When New Yorkers started getting strawberries out of season a couple of years back, those weren’t strawberries, fella. Those were a special high-sugar yeast culture with true-bred color and just a dash of flavor additive. It was developed right here in this room.
“Twenty years ago Saccharomyces olei Benedictae was just a scrub strain with a lousy taste of tallow and good for nothing. It still tastes of tallow, but its fat content has been pushed up from 15 per cent to 87 per cent. If you used the expressway today, just remember that it’s greased strictly with S. 0. Benedictae, Strain AG-7. Developed right here in this room.
“So don’t call me a chemist. I’m a zymologist.”
Despite himself, Baley retreated before the fierce pride of the other.
He said abruptly, “Where were you last night between the hours of eighteen and twenty?”
Clousarr shrugged. “Walking. I like to take a little walk after dinner.”
“You visited friends? Or a subetheric?”
“No. Just walked.”
Baley’s lips tightened. A visit to the subetherics would have involved a notch in Clousarr’s ration plack. A meeting with a friend would have involved naming a man or woman, and a cross check. “No one saw you, then?”
“Maybe someone did. I don’t know. Not that I know of, though.”
“What about the night before last?”
“Same thing.”
“You have no alibi then for either night?”
“If I had done anything criminal, Officer, I’d have one. What do I need an alibi for?”
Baley didn’t answer. He consulted his little book. “You were up before the magistrate once. Inciting to riot.”
“All right. One of the K things pushed past me and I tripped him up. Is that inciting to riot?”
“The court thought so. You were convicted and fined.”
“That ends it, doesn’t it? Or do you want to fine me again?”
“Night before last, there was a near riot at a shoe department in the Bronx. You were seen there.”
“By whom?”
Baley said, “It was at mealtime for you here. Did you eat the evening meal night before last?”
Clousarr hesitated, then shook his head. “Upset stomach. Yeast gets you that way sometimes. Even an old-timer.”
“Last night, there was a near riot in Williamsburg and you were seen there.”
“By whom?”
“Do you deny you were present on both occasions?”
“You’re not giving me anything to deny. Exactly where did these things happen and who says he saw me?”
Baley stared at the zymologist levelly. “I think you know exactly what I’m talking about. I think you’re an important man in an unregistered Medievalist organization.”
“I can’t stop you from thinking, Officer, but thinking isn’t evidence. Maybe you know that.” Clousarr was grinning.
“Maybe,” said Baley, his long face stony, “I can get a little truth out of you right now.”
Baley stepped to the door of the balance room and opened it. He said to R. Daneel, who was waiting stolidly outside, “Has Clousarr’s evening meal arrived?”
“It is coming now, Elijah.”
“Bring it in, will you, Daneel?”
R. Daneel entered a moment later with a metal compartmented tray.
“Put it down in front of Mr. Clousarr, Daneel,” said Baley. He sat down on one of the stools lining the balance wall, legs crossed, one shoe swinging rhythmically. He watched Clousarr edge stiffly away as R. Daneel placed the tray on a stool near the zymologist.
“Mr. Clousarr,” said Baley. “I want to introduce you to my partner, Daneel Olivaw.”
Daneel put out his hand and said, “How do you do, Francis.”
Clousarr said nothing. He made no move to grasp Daneel’s extended hand. Daneel maintained his position and Clousarr began to redden.
Baley said softly, “You are being rude, Mr. Clousarr. Are you too proud to shake hands with a policeman?”
Clousarr muttered, “If you don’t mind, I’m hungry.” He unfolded a pocket fork out of a clasp knife he took from his pocket and sat down, eyes bent on his meal.
Baley said, “Daneel, I think our friend is offended by your cold attitude. You are not angry with him, are you?”
“Not at all, Elijah,” said R. Daneel.
“Then show that there are no hard feelings. Put your arm about his shoulder.”
“I will be glad to,” said R. Daneel, and stepped forward.
Clousarr put down his fork. “What is this? What’s going on?”
R. Daneel, unruffled, put out his arm.
Clousarr swung backhanded, wildly, knocking R. Daneel’s arm to one side. “Damn it, don’t touch me.”
He jumped up and away, the tray of food tipping and hitting the floor in a messy clatter.
Baley, hard-eyed, nodded curtly to R. Daneel, who thereupon continued a stolid advance toward the retreating zymologist. Baley stepped in front of the door.
Clousarr yelled, “Keep that thing off me.”
“That’s no way to speak,” said Baley with equanimity. “The man’s my partner.”
“You mean he’s a damned robot,” shrieked Clousarr.
“Get away from him, Daneel,” said Baley promptly.
R. Daneel stepped back and stood quietly against the door just behind Baley. Clousarr, panting harshly, fists clenched, faced Baley.
Baley said, “All right, smart boy. What makes you think Daneel’s a robot?”
“Anyone can tell!”
“We’ll leave that to a judge. Meanwhile, I think we want you at headquarters, Clousarr. We’d like to have you explain exactly how you
knew Daneel was a robot. And lots more, mister, lots more. Daneel, step outside and get through to the Commissioner. He’ll be at his home by now. Tell him to come down to the office. Tell him I have a fellow who can’t wait to be questioned.”
R. Daneel stepped out.
Baley said, “What makes your wheels go round, Clousarr?”
“I want a lawyer.”
“You’ll get one. Meanwhile, suppose you tell me what makes you Medievalists tick?”
Clousarr looked away in a determined silence.
Baley said, “Jehoshaphat, man, we know all about you and your organization. I’m not bluffing. Just tell me for my own curiosity: What do you Medievalists want?”
“Back to the soil,” said Clousarr in a stifled voice. “That’s simple, isn’t it?”
“It’s simple to say,” said Baley. “But it isn’t simple to do. How’s the soil going to feed eight billions?”
“Did I say back to the soil overnight? Or in a year? Or in a hundred years? Step by step, mister policeman. It doesn’t matter how long it takes, but let’s get started out of these caves we live in. Let’s get out into the fresh air.”
“Have you ever been out into the fresh air?”
Clousarr squirmed. “All right, so I’m ruined, too. But the children aren’t ruined yet. There are babies being born continuously. Get them out, for God’s sake. Let them have space and open air and sun. If we’ve got to, we’ll cut our population little by little, too.”
“Backward, in other words, to an impossible past.” Baley did not really know why he was arguing, except for the strange fever that was burning in his own veins. “Back to the seed, to the egg, to the womb. Why not move forward? Don’t cut Earth’s population. Use it for export. Go back to the soil, but go back to the soil of other planets. Colonize!”
Clousarr laughed harshly. “And make more Outer Worlds? More Spacers?”
“We won’t. The Outer Worlds were settled by Earthmen who came from a planet that did not have Cities, by Earthmen who were individualists and materialists. Those qualities were carried to an unhealthy extreme. We can now colonize out of a society that has built co-operation, if anything, too far. Now environment and tradition can interact to form a new middle way, distinct from either old Earth or the Outer Worlds. Something newer and better.”
He was parroting Dr. Fastolfe, he knew, but it was coming out as though he himself had been thinking of it for years.
Clousarr said, “Nuts! Colonize desert worlds with a world of our own at our fingertips? What fools would try?”
“Many. And they wouldn’t be fools. There’d be robots to help.”
“No,” said Clousarr, fiercely. “Never! No robots!”
“Why not, for the love of Heaven? I don’t like them, either, but I’m not going to knife myself for the sake of a prejudice. What are we afraid of in robots? If you want my guess, it’s a sense of inferiority. We, all of us, feel inferior to the Spacers and hate it. We’ve got to feel superior somehow, somewhere, to make up for it, and it kills us that we can’t at least feel superior to robots. They seem to be better than us--only they’re not. That’s the damned irony of it.”
Baley felt his blood heating as he spoke. “Look at this Daneel I’ve been with for over two days. He’s taller than I am, stronger, handsomer. He looks like a Spacer, in fact. He’s got a better memory and knows more facts. He doesn’t have to sheep on eat. He’s not troubled by sickness or panic or love or guilt.
“But he’s a machine. I can do anything I want to him, the way I can to that microbalance night there. If I slam the microbalance, it won’t hit me back. Neither will Daneel. I can order him to take a blaster to himself and he’ll do it.
“We can’t ever build a robot that will be even as good as a human being in anything that counts, let alone better. We can’t create a robot with a sense of beauty or a sense of ethics or a sense of religion. There’s no way we can raise a positronic brain one inch above the level of perfect materialism.
“We can’t, damn it, we can’t. Not as long as we don’t understand what makes our own brains tick. Not as long as things exist that science can’t measure. What is beauty, or goodness, or art, or love, or God? We’re forever teetering on the brink of the unknowable, and trying to understand what can’t be understood. It’s what makes us men.
“A robot’s brain must be finite or it can’t be built. It must be calculated to the final decimal place so that it has an end. Jehoshaphat, what are you afraid of? A robot can look like Daneel, he can look like a god, and be no more human than a lump of wood is. Can’t you see that?”
Clousarr had tried to interrupt several times and failed against Baley’s furious torrent. Now, when Baley paused in sheer emotional exhaustion, he said weakly, “Copper turned philosopher. What do you know?”
R. Daneel re-entered.
Baley looked at him and frowned, partly with the anger that had not yet heft him, partly with new annoyance.
He said, “What kept you?”
R. Daneel said, “I had trouble in reaching Commissioner Enderby, Elijah. It turned out he was still at his office.”
Baley looked at his watch. “Now? What for?”
“There is a certain confusion at the moment. A corpse has been discovered in the Department.”
“What! For God’s sake, who?”
“The errand boy, R. Sammy.”
Baley gagged. He stared at the robot and said in an outraged voice, “I thought you said a corpse.”
R. Daneel amended smoothly, “A robot with a completely deactivated brain, if you prefer.”
Clousarr laughed suddenly and Baley turned on him, saying huskily, “Nothing out of you! Understand?” Deliberately, he unlimbered his blaster. Clousarr was very silent.
Baley said, “Well, what of it? R. Sammy blew a fuse. So what?”
“Commissioner Enderby was evasive, Elijah, but while he did not say so outright, my impression is that the Commissioner believes R. Sammy to have been deliberately deactivated.”
Then, as Baley absorbed that silently, R. Daneel added gravely, “Or, if you prefer the phrase--murdered.”
Baley replaced his blaster, but kept his hand unobtrusively upon its butt.
He said, “Walk ahead of us, Clousarr, to Seventeenth Street Exit B.”
Clousarr said, “I haven’t eaten.”
“Tough,” said Baley, impatiently. “There’s your meal on the floor where you dumped it.”
“I have a right to eat.”
“You’ll eat in detention, or you’ll miss a meal. You won’t starve. Get going.”
All three were silent as they threaded the maze of New York Yeast, Clousarr moving stonily in advance, Baley night behind him, and R. Daneel in the rear.
It was after Baley and R. Daneel had checked out at the receptionist’s desk, after Clousarr had drawn a leave of absence and requested that a man be sent in to clean up the balance room, after they were out in the open just to one side of the parked squad car, that Clousarr said, “Just a minute.”
He hung back, turned toward R. Daneel, and, before Baley could make a move to stop him, stepped forward and swung his open hand full against the robot’s cheek.
“What the devil,” cried Baley, snatching violently at Clousarr.
Clousarr did not resist the plain-clothes man’s grasp. “It’s all right. I’ll go. I just wanted to see for myself.” He was grinning.
R. Daneel, having faded with the slap, but not having escaped it entirely, gazed quietly at Clousarr. There was no reddening of his cheek, no mark of any blow.
He said, “That was a dangerous action, Francis. Had I not moved
backward, you might easily have damaged your hand. As it is, I regret that I must have caused you pain.”
Clousarr laughed.
Baley said, “Get in, Clousarr. You, too, Daneel. Right in the back seat with him. And make sure he doesn’t move. I don’t care if it means breaking his arm. That’s an order.”
“What about the First Law?” mocked Clousarr.
“I think Daneel is strong enough and fast enough to stop you without hurting you, but it might do you good to have an arm or two broken at that.”
Baley got behind the wheel and the squad car gathered speed. The empty wind ruffled his hair and Clousarr’s, but R. Daneel’s remained smoothly in place.
R. Daneel said quietly to Clousarr, “Do you fear robots for the sake of your job, Mr. Clousarr?”
Baley could not turn to see Clousarr’s expression, but he was certain it would be a hard and rigid mirror of detestation, that he would be sitting stiffly apart, as far as he might, from R. Daneel.
Clousarr’s voice said, “And my kids’ jobs. And everyone’s kids.”
“Surely adjustments are possible,” said the robot. “If your children, for instance, were to accept training for emigration--”
Clousarr broke in. “You, too? The policeman talked about emigration. He’s got good robot training. Maybe he is a robot.”
Baley growled, “That’s enough, you!”
R. Daneel said, evenly, “A training school for emigrants would involve security, guaranteed classification, an assured career. If you are concerned over your children, that is something to consider.”
“I wouldn’t take anything from a robot, or a Spacer, or any of your trained hyenas in the Government.”
That was all. The silence of the motorway engulfed them and there was only the soft whirr of the squad-car motor and the hiss of its wheels on the pavement.
Back at the Department, Baley signed a detention certificate for Clousarr and left him in appropriate hands. Following that, he and R. Daneel took the motospiral up the levels to Headquarters.
R. Daneel showed no surprise that they had not taken the elevators, nor did Baley expect him to. He was becoming used to the robot’s queer mixture of ability and submissiveness and tended to leave him out of his calculations. The elevator was the logical method of heaping the vertical gap between Detention and Headquarters. The long moving stairway that was the motospiral was useful only for short climbs or drops of two or three levels at most. People of all sorts and varieties of administrative occupation stepped on and then off in less than a minute. Only Baley and R. Daneel remained on continuously, moving upward in a slow and stolid measure.
Baley felt that he needed the time. It was only minutes at best, but up in Headquarters he would be thrown violently into another phase of the problem and he wanted a rest. He wanted time to think and orient himself. Slowly as it moved, the motospiral went too quickly to satisfy him.
R. Daneel said, “It seems then we will not be questioning Clousarr just yet.”
“He’ll keep,” said Baley, irritably. “Let’s find out what the R. Sammy thing is all about.” He added in a mutter, far more to himself than to R. Daneel, “It can’t be independent; there must be a connection.”
R. Daneel said, “It is a pity. Clousarr’s cerebric qualities--”
“What about them?”
“They have changed in a strange way. What was it that took place between the two of you in the balance room while I was not present?”
Baley said, absently, “The only thing I did was to preach at him. I passed along the gospel according to St. Fastolfe.”
“I do not understand you, Elijah.”
Baley sighed and said, “Look, I tried to explain that Earth might as well make use of robots and get its population surplus onto other planets. I tried to knock some of the Medievalist hogwash out of his head. God knows why. I’ve never thought of myself as the missionary type. Anyway, that’s all that happened.”
“I see. Well, that makes some sense. Perhaps that can be fitted in. Tell me, Elijah, what did you tell him about robots?”
“You really want to know? I told him robots were simply machines. That was the gospel according to St. Gerrigel. There are any number of gospels, I think.”
“Did you by any chance tell him that one could strike a robot without fear of a return blow, much as one could strike any other mechanical object?”
“Except a punching bag, I suppose. Yes. But what made you guess that?” Baley looked curiously at the robot.
“It fits the cerebric changes,” said R. Daneel, “and it explains his blow to my face just after we left the factory. He must have been thinking of what you said, so he simultaneously tested your statement, worked off his aggressive feelings, and had the pleasure of seeing me placed in what seemed to him a position of inferiority. In order to be so motivated and allowing for the delta variations in his quintic . . .”
He paused a long moment and said, “Yes, it is quite interesting, and now I believe I can form a self-consistent whole of the data.”
Headquarters level was approaching. Baley said, “What time is it?”
He thought, pettishly: Nuts, I could look at my watch and take less time that way.
But he knew why he asked him, nevertheless. The motive was not so different from Clousarr’s in punching R. Daneel. To give the robot a trivial order that he must fulfill emphasized his roboticity and, contrariwise, Baley’s humanity.
Baley thought: We’re all brothers. Under the skin, over it, everywhere. Jehoshaphat!
R. Daneel said, “Twenty-ten.”
They stepped off the motospiral and for a few seconds Baley had the usual queen sensation that went with the necessary adjustment to non-motion after long minutes of steady movement.
He said, “And I haven’t eaten. Damn this job, anyway.”
Baley saw and heard Commissioner Enderby through the open door of his office. The common room was empty, as though it had been wiped clean, and Enderby’s voice rang through it with unusual hollowness. His round face looked bare and weak without its glasses, which he held in his hand, while he mopped his smooth forehead with a flimsy paper napkin.
His eyes caught Baley just as the latter reached the door and his voice rose into a petulant tenor.
“Good God, Baley, where the devil were you?”
Baley shrugged off the remark and said, “What’s doing? Where’s the night shift?” and then caught sight of the second person in the office with the Commissioner.
He said, blankly, “Dr. Gerrigel!”
The gray-haired roboticist returned the involuntary greeting by nodding briefly. “I’m glad to see you again, Mr. Baley.”
The Commissioner readjusted his glasses and stared at Baley through them. “The entire staff is being questioned downstairs. Signing statements. I was going mad trying to find you. It looked queer, your being away.”
“My being away!” cried Baley, strenuously.
“Anybody’s being away. Someone in the Department did it and there’s going to be hell to pay for that. What an unholy mess! What an unholy, rotten mess!”
He raised his hands as though in expostulation to heaven and as he did so, his eyes fell on R. Daneel.
Baley thought sardonically: First time you’ve looked Daneel in the face. Take a good look, Julius!
The Commissioner said in a subdued voice, “He’ll have to sign a statement. Even I’ve had to do it. I!”
Baley said, “Look, Commissioner, what makes you so sure that R. Sammy didn’t blow a gasket all by himself? What makes it deliberate destruction?”
The Commissioner sat down heavily. “Ask him,” he said, and pointed to Dr. Gerrigel.
Dr. Gerrigel cleared his throat. “I scarcely know how to go about this, Mr. Baley. I take it from your expression that you are surprised to see me.”
“Moderately,” admitted Baley.
“Well, I was in no real hurry to return to Washington and my visits to New York are few enough to make me wish to linger. And what’s more important, I had a growing feeling that it would be criminal for me to leave the City without having made at least one more effort to be allowed to analyze your fascinating robot, whom, by the way,” (he looked very eager) “I see you have with you.”
Baley stirred restlessly. “That’s quite impossible.”
The roboticist looked disappointed. “Now, yes. Perhaps later?”
Baley’s long face remained woodenly unresponsive.
Dr. Gerrigel went on. “I called you, but you weren’t in and no one knew where you could be located. I asked for the Commissioner and he asked me to come to headquarters and wait for you.”
The Commissioner interposed quickly. “I thought it might be important. I knew you wanted to see the man.”
Baley nodded. “Thanks.”
Dr. Gerrigel said, “Unfortunately my guide rod was somewhat off, or perhaps in my overanxiety I misjudged its temperature. In either case I took a wrong turning and found myself in a small room--”
The Commissioner interrupted again. “One of the photographic supply rooms, Lije.”
“Yes,” said Dr. Gerrigel. “And in it was the prone figure of what was obviously a robot. It was quite clear to me after a brief examination that he was irreversibly deactivated. Dead, you might say. Nor was it very difficult to determine the cause of the deactivation.”
“What was it?” asked Baley
“In the robot’s partly clenched right fist,” said Dr. Gerrigel, “was a shiny ovoid about two inches long and half an inch wide with a mica window at one end. The fist was in contact with his skull as though the robot’s last act had been to touch his head. The thing he was holding was an alpha-sprayer. You know what they are, I suppose?”
Baley nodded. He needed neither dictionary nor handbook to be told what an alpha-sprayer was. He had handled several in his lab courses in physics: a head-alloy casing with a narrow pit dug into it longitudinally, at the bottom of which was a fragment of a plutonium salt. The pit was capped with a shiver of mica, which was transparent to alpha particles. In that one direction, hard radiation sprayed out.
An alpha-sprayer had many uses, but killing robots was not one of them, not a legal one, at least.
Baley said, “He held it to his head mica first, I take it.”
Dr. Gerrigel said, “Yes, and his positronic brain paths were immediately randomized. Instant death, so to speak.”
Baley turned to the pale Commissioner. “No mistake? It really was an alpha-sprayer?”
The Commissioner nodded, his plump hips thrust out. “Absolutely. The counters could spot it ten feet away. Photographic film in the storeroom was fogged. Cut and dried.”
He seemed to brood about it for a moment or two, then said abruptly, “Dr. Gerrigel, I’m afraid you’ll have to stay in the City a day or two until we can get your evidence down on wine-film. I’ll have you escorted to a room. You don’t mind being under guard, I hope?”
Dr. Gerrigel said nervously, “Do you think it’s necessary?”
“It’s safer.”
Dr. Gerrigel, seeming quite abstracted, shook hands all around, even with R. Daneel, and left.
The Commissioner heaved a sigh. “It’s one of us, Lije. That’s what bothers me. No outsider would come into the Department just to knock off a robot. Plenty of them outside where it’s safer. And it had to be somebody who could pick up an alpha-sprayer. They’re hard to get hold of.”
R. Daneel spoke, his cool, even voice cutting through the agitated words of the Commissioner. He said, “But what is the motive for this murder?”
The Commissioner glanced at R. Daneel with obvious distaste, then looked away. “We’re human, too. I suppose policemen can’t get to like robots any more than anyone else can. He’s gone now and maybe it’s a relief to somebody. He used to annoy you considerably, Lije, remember?”
“That is scarcely murder motive,” said R. Daneel.
“No,” agreed Baley, with decision.
“It isn’t murder,” said the Commissioner. “It’s property damage. Let’s keep our legal terms straight. It’s just that it was done inside the Department. Anywhere else it would be nothing. Nothing. Now it could be a first-class scandal. Lije!”
“Yes?”
“When did you last see R. Sammy?”
Baley said, “R. Daneel spoke to R. Sammy after lunch. I should judge it was about 13:30. He arranged to have us use your office, Commissioner.”
“My office? What for?”
“I wanted to talk over the case with R. Daneel in moderate privacy. You weren’t in, so your office was an obvious place.”
“I see.” The Commissioner looked dubious, but let the matter ride. “You didn’t see him yourself?”
“No, but I heard his voice perhaps an hour afterward.”
“Are you sure it was he?”
“Perfectly.”
“That would be about 14:30?”
“Or a little sooner.”
The Commissioner bit his pudgy lower lip thoughtfully. “Well, that settles one thing.”
“It does?”
“Yes. The boy, Vincent Barrett, was here today. Did you know that?”
“Yes. But, Commissioner, he wouldn’t do anything like this.”
The Commissioner lifted his eyes to Baley’s face. “Why not? R. Sammy took his job away. I can understand how he feels. There would be a tremendous sense of injustice. He would want a certain revenge. Wouldn’t you? But the fact is that he left the building at 14:00 and you heard R. Sammy alive at 14:30. Of course, he might have given the alpha-sprayer to R. Sammy before he left with instructions not to use it for an hour, but then where could he have gotten an alpha-sprayer? It doesn’t bear thinking of. Let’s get back to R. Sammy. When you spoke to him at 14:30, what did he say?”
Baley hesitated a perceptible moment, then said carefully, “I don’t remember. We left shortly afterward.”
“Where did you go?”
“Yeast-town, eventually. I want to talk about that, by the way.”
“Later. Later.” The Commissioner rubbed his chin. “Jessie was in today, I noticed. I mean, we were checking on all visitors today and I just happened to see hen name.”
“She was here,” said Baley, coldly. “What for?”
“Personal family matters.”
“She’ll have to be questioned as a pure formality.”
“I understand police routine, Commissioner. Incidentally, what about the alpha-sprayer itself? Has it been traced?”
“Oh, yes. It came from one of the power plants.”
“How do they account for having lost it?”
“They don’t. They have no idea. But look, Lije, except for routine statements, this has nothing to do with you. You stick to your case. It’s just that. . . Well, you stick to the Spacetown investigation.”
Baley said, “May I give my routine statements later, Commissioner? The fact is, I haven’t eaten yet.”
Commissioner Enderby’s glassed -eyes turned full on Baley. “By all means get something to eat. But stay inside the Department, will you? Your partner’s right, though, Lije”--he seemed to avoid addressing R. Daneel or using his name--”it’s the motive we need. The motive.”
Baley felt suddenly frozen.
Something outside himself, something completely alien, took up the events of this day and the day before and the day before and juggled them. Once again pieces began to dovetail; a pattern began to form.
He said, “Which power plant did the alpha-sprayer come from, Commissioner?”
“The Williamsburg plant. Why?”
“Nothing. Nothing.”
The last word Baley heard the Commissioner mutter as he strode out of the office, with R. Daneel immediately behind him, was, “Motive. Motive.”
Baley ate a sparse meal in the small and infrequently used Department lunchroom. He devoured the stuffed tomato on lettuce without being entirely aware of its nature and for a second or so after he had gulped down the last mouthful his fork still slithered aimlessly over the slick cardboard of his plate, searching automatically for something that was no longer there.
He became aware of that and put down his fork with a muffled, “Jehoshaphat!”
He said, “Daneel!”
R. Daneel had been sitting at another table, as though he wished to leave the obviously preoccupied Baley in peace, or as though he required privacy himself. Baley was past caring which.
Daneel stood up, moved to Baley’s table, and sat down again. “Yes, partner Elijah?”
Baley did not look at him. “Daneel, I’ll need your co-operation.”
“In what way?”
“They will question Jessie and myself. That is certain. Let me answer the questions in my own way. Do you understand?”
“I understand what you say, of course. Nevertheless, if I am asked a direct question, how is it possible for me to say anything but what is so?”
“If you are asked a direct question, that’s another matter. I ask only that you don’t volunteer information. You can do that, can’t you?”
“I believe so, Elijah, provided it does not appear that I am hurting a human being by remaining silent.”
Baley said, grimly, “You will hurt me if you don’t. I assure you of that.”
“I do not quite understand your point of view, partner Elijah. Surely the matter of R. Sammy cannot concern you.”
“No? It all centers about motive, doesn’t it? You’ve questioned the motive. The Commissioner questioned it. I do, for that matter. Why should anyone want to kill R. Sammy? Mind you, it’s not just a question of who would want to smash up robots in general. Any Earthman, practically, would want to do that. The question is, who would want to single out R. Sammy. Vincent Barrett might, but the Commissioner said he couldn’t get hold of an alpha-sprayer, and he’s right. We have to look somewhere else, and it so happens that one other person has a motive. It glares out. It yells. It stinks to top level.”
“Who is the person, Elijah?”
And Baley said, softly, “I am, Daneel.”
R. Daneel’s expressionless face did not change under the impact of the statement. He merely shook his head.
Baley said, “You don’t agree. My wife came to the office today. They know that already. The Commissioner is even curious. If I weren’t a personal friend, he wouldn’t have stopped his questioning so soon. Now they’ll find out why. That’s certain. She was part of a conspiracy; a foolish and harmless one, but a conspiracy just the same. And a policeman can’t afford to have his wife mixed up with anything like that. It would be to my obvious interest to see that the matter was hushed up.
“Well, who knew about it? You and I, of course, and Jessie--and R. Sammy. He saw her in a state of panic. When he told her that we had left orders not to be disturbed, she must have lost control. You saw the way she was when she first came in.”
R. Daneel said, “It is unlikely that she said anything incriminating to him.”
“That may be so. But I’m reconstructing the case the way they will. They’ll say she did. There’s my motive. I killed him to keep him quiet.”
“They will not think so.”
“They will think so. The murder was arranged deliberately in order to throw suspicion on me. Why use an alpha-sprayer? It’s a rather risky way. It’s hard to get and it can be traced. I think that those were the very reasons it was used. The murderer even ordered R. Sammy to go into the photographic supply room and kill himself there. It seems obvious to me that the reason for that was to have the method of murder unmistakable. Even if everyone was so infantile as not to recognize the alpha-sprayer immediately, someone would be bound to notice fogged photographic film in fairly short order.”
“How does that all relate to you, Elijah?”
Bailey grinned tightly, his long face completely devoid of humor. “Very neatly. The alpha-sprayer was taken from the Williamsburg power plant. You and I passed through the Williamsburg power plant yesterday. We were seen, and the fact will come out. That gives me opportunity to get the weapon as well as motive for the crime. And it may turn out that we were the last ones to see or hear R. Sammy alive, except for the real murderer, of course.”
“I was with you in the power plant and I can testify that you did not have the opportunity to steal an alpha-sprayer.”
“Thanks,” said Baley sadly, “but you’re a robot and your testimony will be invalid.”
“The Commissioner is your friend. He will listen.”
“The Commissioner has a job to keep, and he already is a bit uneasy about me. There’s only one chance of saving myself from this very nasty situation.”
“Yes?”
“I ask myself, why am I being framed? Obviously to get rid of me. But why? Again obviously, because I am dangerous to someone. I am doing my best to be dangerous to whoever killed Dr. Sarton in Spacetown. That might mean the Medievalists, of course, or at least, the inner group among them. It would be this inner group that would know I had passed through the power plant; at least one of them might have followed me along the strips that far, even though you thought we had lost them.
“So the chances are that if I find the murderer of Dr. Sarton, I find the man or men who are trying to get me out of the way. If I think it through, if I crack the case, if I can only crack it, I’ll be safe. And Jessie. I couldn’t stand to have her. . . But I don’t have much time.” His fist clenched and unclenched spasmodically. “I don’t have much time.”
Baley looked at R. Daneel’s chiseled face with a sudden burning hope. Whatever the creature was, he was strong and faithful, animated by no selfishness. What more could you ask of any friend? Baley needed a friend and he was in no mood to cavil at the fact that a gear replaced a blood vessel in this particular one.
But R. Daneel was shaking his head.
The robot said, “I am sorry, Elijah”--there was no trace of sorrow on his face, of course--”but I anticipated none of this. Perhaps my action was to your harm. I am sorry if the general good requires that.”
“What general good?” stammered Baley.
“I have been in communication with Dr. Fastolfe.”
“Jehoshaphat! When?”
“While you were eating.”
Baley’s lips tightened.
“Well?” he managed to say. “What happened?”
“You will have to clear yourself of suspicion of the murder of R. Sammy through some means other than the investigation of the murder of my designer, Dr. Sarton. Our people at Spacetown, as a result of my information, have decided to bring that investigation to an end, as of today, and to begin plans for leaving Spacetown and Earth.”
Baley looked at his watch with something approaching detachment. It was 21:45. In two and a quarter hours it would be midnight. He had been awake since before six and had been under tension now for two and a half days. A vague sense of unreality pervaded everything.
He kept his voice painfully steady as he reached for his pipe and for the little bag that held his precious crumbs of tobacco. He said, “What’s it all about, Daneel?”
R. Daneel said, “Do you not understand? Is it not obvious?”
Baley said, patiently, “I do not understand. It is not obvious.”
“We are here,” said the robot, “and by we, I mean our people at Spacetown, to break the shell surrounding Earth and force its people into new expansion and colonization.”
“I know that. Please don’t labor the point.”
“I must, since it is the essential one. If we were anxious to exact punishment for the murder of Dr. Sarton, it was not that in doing so we expected to bring Dr. Sarton back to life, you understand; it was only that failure to do so would strengthen the position of our home planet politicians who are against the very idea of Spacetown.”
“But now,” said Baley, with sudden violence, “you say you’re getting ready to go home of your own accord. Why? In heaven’s name, why? The answer to the Sarton case is close. It must be close or they wouldn’t be trying so hard to blast me out of the investigation. I have a feeling I have all the facts I need to work out the answer. It must be in here somewhere.” He knuckled his temple wildly. “A sentence might bring it out. A word.”
He clenched his eyes fiercely shut, as though the quivering opaque jelly of the last sixty hours were indeed on the point of clarifying and becoming transparent. But it did not. It did not.
Baley drew a shuddering breath and felt ashamed. He was making a weak spectacle of himself before a cold and unimpressed machine that could only stare at him silently.
He said harshly, “Well, never mind that. Why are the Spacers breaking off?”
The robot said, “Our project is concluded. We are satisfied that Earth will colonize.”
“You’ve switched to optimism then?” The plain-clothes man drew in his first calming puff of tobacco smoke and felt his grip upon his own emotions grow firmer.
“I have. For a long time now, we of Spacetown have tried to change Earth by changing its economy. We have tried to introduce our own C/Fe culture. Your planetary and various City governments co-operated with us because it was expedient to do so. Still, in twenty-five years, we have failed. The harder we tried, the stronger the opposing party of the Medievalists grew.”
“I know all this,” said Baley. He thought: No use. He’s got to tell this in his own way, like a field recording. He yelled silently at R. Daneel: Machine!
R. Daneel went on, “It was Dr. Sarton who first theorized that we must reverse our tactics. We must first find a segment of Earth’s population that desired what we desired or could be persuaded to do so. By encouraging and helping them, we could make the movement a native one rather than a foreign one. The difficulty was in finding the native element best suited for our purposes. You, yourself, Elijah, were an interesting experiment.”
“I? I? What do you mean?” demanded Baley.
“We were glad your Commissioner recommended you. From your psychic profile we judged you to be a useful specimen. Cerebroanalysis, a process I conducted upon you as soon as I met you, confirmed our judgment. You are a practical man, Elijah. You do not moon romantically oven Earth’s past, despite your healthy interest in it. Nor do you stubbornly embrace the City culture of Earth’s present day. We felt that people such as yourself were the ones that could lead Earthmen to the stars once more. It was one reason Dr. Fastolfe was anxious to see you yesterday morning.
“To be sure, your practical nature was embarrassingly intense. You refused to understand that the fanatical service of an ideal, even a mistaken ideal, could make a man do things quite beyond his ordinary capacity, as, for instance, crossing open country at night to destroy someone he considered an archenemy of his cause. We were not overly surprised, therefore, that you were stubborn enough and daring enough to attempt to prove the murder a fraud. In a way, it proved you were the man we wanted for our experiment.”
“For God’s sake, what experiment?” Baley brought his fist down on the table.
“The experiment of persuading you that colonization was the answer to Earth’s problems.”
“Well, I was persuaded. I’ll grant you that.”
“Yes, under the influence of the appropriate drug.”
Baley’s teeth loosened their grip on his pipestem. He caught the pipe as it fell. Once again, he was seeing that scene in the Spacetown dome. Himself swimming back to awareness after the shock of learning that R. Daneel was a robot after all; R. Daneel’s smooth fingers pinching up the flesh of his arm; a hypo-shiver standing out darkly under his skin and then fading away.
He said, chokingly, “What was in the hypo-shiver?”
“Nothing that need alarm you, Elijah. It was a mild drug intended only to make your mind more receptive.”
“And so I believed whatever was told me. Is that it?”
“Not quite. You would not believe anything that was foreign to the basic pattern of your thought. In fact, the results of the experiment were disappointing. Dr. Fastolfe had hoped you would become fanatical and single-minded on the subject. Instead you became rather distantly approving, no more. Your practical nature stood in the way of anything further. It made us realize that our only hope was the romantics after all, and the romantics, unfortunately, were all Medievalists, actual or potential.”
Baley felt incongruously proud of himself, glad of his stubbornness, and happy that he had disappointed them. Let them experiment with someone else.
He grinned savagely. “And so now you’ve given up and are going home?”
“Why, that is not it. I said a few moments ago that we were satisfied Earth would colonize. It was you that gave us the answer.”
“I gave it to you? How?”
“You spoke to Francis Clousarr of the advantages of colonization. You spoke rather fervently, I judge. At least our experiment on you had that result. And Clousarr’s cerebroanalytic properties changed. Very subtly, to be sure, but they changed.”
“You mean I convinced him that I was right? I don’t believe that.”
“No, conviction does not come that easily. But the cerebroanalytic changes demonstrated conclusively that the Medievalist mind is open to that sort of conviction. I experimented further myself. When leaving Yeast-town, guessing what might have happened between you two from his cerebric changes, I made the proposition of a school for emigrants as a way of insuring his children’s future. He rejected that, but again his aura changed, and it seemed to me quite obvious that it was the proper method of attack.”
R. Daneel paused, then spoke on.
“The thing called Medievalism shows a craving for pioneering. To be sure, the direction in which that craving turns itself is toward Earth itself, which is near and which has the precedent of a great past. But the vision of worlds beyond is a similar something and the romantic can turn to it easily, just as Clousarr felt the attraction as a result of one lecture from you.
“So you see, we of Spacetown had already succeeded without knowing it. We ourselves, rather than anything we tried to introduce, were the unsettling factor. We crystallized the romantic impulses on Earth into Medievahism and induced an organization in them. After all, it is the Medievalist who wishes to break the cake of custom, not the City officials who have most to gain from preserving the status quo. If we leave Spacetown now, if we do not irritate the Medievalist by our continued presence until he has committed himself to Earth, and only Earth, past redemption, if we leave behind a few obscure individuals or robots such as myself who, together with sympathetic Earthmen such as yourself, can establish the training schools for emigrants that I spoke of, the Medievalist will eventually turn away from Earth. He will need robots and will either get them from us or build his own. He will develop a C/Fe culture to suit himself.”
It was a long speech for R. Daneel. He must have realized that himself, for, after another pause, he said, “I tell you all this to explain why it is necessary to do something that may hurt you.”
Baley thought bitterly: A robot must not hurt a human being, unless he can think of a way to prove it is for the human being’s ultimate good after all.
Baley said, “Just a minute. Let me introduce a practical note. You’ll go back to your worlds and say that an Earthman killed a Spacer and is unpunished. The Outer Worlds will demand an indemnity from Earth, and I warn you, Earth is no longer in a mood to endure such treatment. There will be trouble.”
“I am sure that will not happen, Elijah. The elements on our planets that would be most interested in pressing for an indemnity would be also most interested in forcing an end to Spacetown. We can easily offer the latter as an inducement to abandon the former. It is what we plan to do, anyway. Earth will be left in peace.”
And Baley broke out, his voice hoarse with sudden despair, “And where does that leave me? The Commissioner will drop the Sarton investigation at once if Spacetown is willing, but the R. Sammy thing will have to continue, since it points to corruption inside the Department. He’ll be in any minute with a ream of evidence against me. I know that. It’s been arranged. I’ll be declassified, Daneel. There’s Jessie to consider. She’ll be smeared as a criminal. There’s Bentley--”
R. Daneel said, “You must not think, Elijah, that I do not understand the position in which you find yourself. In the service of humanity’s good, the minor wrongs must be tolerated. Dr. Sarton has a surviving wife, two children, parents, a sister, many friends. All must grieve at his death and be saddened at the thought that his murderer has not been found and punished.”
“Then why not stay and find him?”
“It is no longer necessary.”
Baley said, bitterly, “Why not admit that the entire investigation was an excuse to study us under field conditions? You never gave a damn who killed Dr. Sarton.”
“We would have liked to know,” said R. Daneel, coolly, “but we were never under any delusions as to which was more important, an individual or humanity. To continue the investigation now would involve interfering with a situation which we now find satisfactory. We could not foretell what damage we might do.”
“You mean the murderer might turn out to be a prominent Medievalist and right now the Spacers don’t want to do anything to antagonize their new friends.”
“It is not as I would say it, but there is truth in your words.”
“Where’s your justice circuit, Daneel? Is this justice?”
“There are degrees of justice, Elijah. When the lesser is incompatible with the greater, the lesser must give way.”
It was as though Baley’s mind were circling the impregnable logic of R. Daneel’s positronic brain, searching for a loophole, a weakness.
He said, “Have you no personal curiosity, Daneel? You’ve called yourself a detective. Do you know what that implies? Do you understand that an investigation is more than a job of work? It is a challenge. Your mind is pitted against that of the criminal. It is a clash of intellect. Can you abandon the battle and admit defeat?”
“If no worthy end is served by a continuation, certainly.”
“Would you feel no loss? No wonder? Would there be no little speck of dissatisfaction? Frustrated curiosity?”
Baley’s hopes, not strong in the first place, weakened as he spoke. The word “curiosity,” second time repeated, brought back his own remarks to Francis Clousarr four hours before. He had known well enough then the qualities that marked off a man from a machine. Curiosity had to be one of them. A six-week-old kitten was curious, but how could there be a curious machine, be it ever so humanoid?
R. Daneel echoed those thoughts by saying, “What do you mean by curiosity?”
Baley put the best face on it. “Curiosity is the name we give to a desire to extend one’s knowledge.”
“Such a desire exists within me, when the extension of knowledge is necessary for the performance of an assigned task.”
“Yes,” said Baley, sarcastically, “as when you ask questions about Bentley’s contact lenses in order to learn more of Earth’s peculiar customs.”
“Precisely,” said R. Daneel, with no sign of any awareness of sarcasm. “Aimless extension of knowledge, however, which is what I think you really mean by the term curiosity, is merely inefficiency. I am designed to avoid inefficiency.”
It was in that way that the “sentence” he had been waiting for came to Elijah Baley, and the opaque jelly shuddered and settled and changed into luminous transparency.
While R. Daneel spoke, Baley’s mouth opened and stayed so.
It could not all have burst full-grown into his mind. Things did not work so. Somewhere, deep inside his unconscious, he had built a case, built it carefully and in detail, but had been brought up short by a single inconsistency. One inconsistency that could be neither jumped oven, burrowed under, nor shunted aside. While that inconsistency existed, the case remained buried below his thoughts, beyond the reach of his conscious probing.
But the sentence had come; the inconsistency had vanished; the case was his.
The glare of mental light appeared to have stimulated Baley mightily. At least he suddenly knew what R. Daneel’s weakness must be, the weakness of any thinking machine. He thought feverishly, hopefully: The thing must be literal-minded.
He said, “Then Project Spacetown is concluded as of today and with it the Sarton investigation. Is that it?”
“That is the decision of our people at Spacetown,” agreed R. Daneel, calmly.
“But today is not yet over.” Baley looked at his watch. It was 22:30. “There is an hour and a half until midnight.”
R. Daneel said nothing. He seemed to consider.
Baley spoke rapidly. “Until midnight, the project continues then. You are my partner and the investigation continues.” He was becoming almost telegraphic in his haste. “Let us go on as before. Let me work. It will do your people no harm. It will do them great good. My word upon it. If, in your judgment, I am doing harm, stop me. It is only an hour and a half I ask.”
R. Daneel said, “What you say is correct. Today is not over. I had not thought of that, partner Elijah.”
Baley was “partner Elijah” again.
He grinned, and said, “Didn’t Dr. Fastolfe mention a film of the scene of the murder when I was in Spacetown?”
“He did,” said R. Daneel.
Baley said, “Can you get a copy of the film?”
“Yes, partner Elijah.”
“I mean now! Instantly!”
“In ten minutes, if I can use the Department transmitter.”
The process took less time than that. Baley stared at the small aluminum block he held in his trembling hands. Within it the subtle forces transmitted from Spacetown had strongly fixed a certain atomic pattern.
And at that moment, Commissioner Julius Enderby stood in the doorway. He saw Baley and a certain anxiety passed from his round face, leaving behind it a look of growing thunder.
He said, uncertainly, “Look here, Lije, you’re taking a devil of a time, eating.”
“I was bone-tired, Commissioner. Sorry if I’ve delayed you.”
“I wouldn’t mind, but. . . You’d better come to my office.”
Baley’s eyes flicked toward R. Daneel, but met no answering look. Together they moved out of the lunchroom.
Julius Enderby tramped the floor before his desk, up and down, up and down. Baley watched him, himself fan from composed. Occasionally, he glanced at his watch.
22:45.
The Commissioner moved his glasses up onto his forehead and rubbed his eyes with thumb and forefinger. He left red splotches in the flesh around them, then restored the glasses to their place, blinking at Baley from behind them.
“Lije,” he said suddenly, “when were you last in the Williamsburg power plant?”
Baley said, “Yesterday, after I left the office. I should judge at about eighteen or shortly thereafter.”
The Commissioner shook his head. “Why didn’t you say so?”
“I was going to. I haven’t given an official statement yet.”
“What were you doing there?”
“Just passing through on my way to our temporary sleeping quarters.”
The Commissioner stopped short, standing before Baley, and said, “That’s no good, Lije. No one just passes through a power plant to get somewhere else.”
Baley shrugged. There was no point in going through the story of the pursuing Medievalists, of the dash along the strips. Not now.
He said, “If you’re trying to hint that I had an opportunity to get the alpha-sprayer that knocked out R. Sammy, I’ll remind you that Daneel was with me and will testify that I went right through the plant without stopping and that I had no alpha-sprayer on me when I left.”
Slowly, the Commissioner sat down. He did not look in R. Daneel’s direction or offer to speak to him. He put his pudgy white hands on the desk before him and regarded them with a look of acute misery on his face.
He said, “Lije, I don’t know what to say or what to think. And it’s no use having your--your partner as alibi. He can’t give evidence.”
“I still deny that I took an alpha-sprayer.”
The Commissioner’s fingers intertwined and writhed. He said, “Lije, why did Jessie come to see you here this afternoon?”
“You asked me that before, Commissioner. Same answer. Family matters.”
“I’ve got information from Francis Clousarr, Lije.”
“What kind of information?”
“He claims that a Jezebel Baley is a member of a Medievalist society dedicated to the overthrow of the government by force.”
“Are you sure he has the right person? There are many Baleys.”
“There aren’t many Jezebel Baleys.”
“He used her name, did he?”
“He said Jezebel. I heard him, Lije. I’m not giving you a secondhand report.”
“All right. Jessie was a member of a harmless lunatic-fringe organization. She never did anything but attend meetings and feel devilish about it.”
“It won’t look that way to a board of review, Lije.”
“You mean I’m going to be suspended and held on suspicion of destroying government property in the form of R. Sammy?”
“I hope not, Lije, but it looks awfully bad. Everyone knows you didn’t like R. Sammy. Your wife was seen talking to him this afternoon. She was in tears and some of her words were heard. They were harmless in themselves, but two and two can be added up, Lije. You might feel it was dangerous to leave him in a position to talk. And you had an opportunity to obtain the weapon.”
Baley interrupted. “If I were wiping out all evidence against Jessie, would I bring in Francis Clousarr? He seems to know a lot more about her than R. Sammy could have. Another thing. I passed through the power plant eighteen hours before R. Sammy spoke to Jessie. Did I know that long in advance that I would have to destroy him and pick up an alpha-sprayer out of clairvoyance?”
The Commissioner said, “Those are good points. I’ll do my best. I’m sorry about this, Lije.”
“Yes? Do you really believe I didn’t do it, Commissioner?”
Enderby said slowly, “I don’t know what to think, Lije. I’ll be frank with you.”
“Then I’ll tell you what to think. Commissioner, this is all a careful and elaborate frame.”
The Commissioner stiffened. “Now, wait, Lije. Don’t strike out blindly. You won’t get any sympathy with that line of defense. It’s been used by too many bad eggs.”
“I’m not after sympathy. I’m just telling the truth. I’m being taken out of circulation to prevent me from learning the facts about the Sarton murder. Unfortunately for my framing pal, it’s too late for that.”
“What!”
Baley looked at his watch. It was 23:00.
He said, “I know who is framing me, and I know how Dr. Sarton was killed and by whom, and I have one hour to tell you about it, catch the man, and end the investigation.”
Commissioner Enderby’s eyes narrowed and he glared at Baley. “What are you going to do? You tried something like this in Fastolfe’s dome yesterday morning. Not again. Please.”
Baley nodded. “I know. I was wrong the first time.”
He thought, fiercely: Also the second time. But not now, not this time, not. . .
The thought faded out, spluttering like a micropile under a positronic damper.
He said, “Judge for yourself, Commissioner. Grant that the evidence against me has been planted. Go that far with me and see where it takes you. Ask yourself who could have planted that evidence. Obviously only someone who’d known I was in the Williamsburg plant yesterday evening.”
“All right. Who would that be?”
Baley said, “I was followed out of the kitchen by a Medievalist group. I lost them, or I thought I did, but obviously at least one of them saw me pass through the plant. My only purpose in doing so, you understand, was to help me lose them.”
The Commissioner considered. “Clousarr? Was he with them?”
Baley nodded.
Enderby said, “All right, we’ll question him. If he’s got anything in him, we’ll have it out of him. What more can I do, Lije?”
“Wait, now. Don’t quit on me. Do you see my point?”
“Well, let’s see if I do?” The Commissioner clasped his hands. “Clousarr saw you go into the Williamsburg power plant, or else someone in his group did and passed the information along to him. He decided to utilize that fact to get you into trouble and off the investigation. Is that what you’re saying?”
“It’s close to it.”
“Good.” The Commissioner seemed to warm to the task. “He knew your wife was a member of his organization, naturally, and so he knew you wouldn’t face a really close probe into your private life. He thought you would resign rather than fight circumstantial evidence. By the way, Lije, what about a resignation? I mean, if things looked really bad. We could keep things quiet--”
“Not in a million years, Commissioner.”
Enderby shrugged. “Well, where was I? Oh, yes, so he got an alpha-sprayer, presumably through a confederate in the plant, and had another confederate arrange the destruction of R. Sammy.” His fingers drummed lightly on the desk. “No good, Lije.”
“Why not?”
“Too farfetched. Too many confederates. And he has a cast-iron alibi for the night and morning of the Spacetown murder, by the way. We checked that almost right away, though I was the only one who knew the reason for checking that particular time.”
Baley said, “I never said it was Clousarr, Commissioner. You did. It could be anyone in the Medievalist organization. Clousarr is just the owner of a face that Daneel happened to recognize. I don’t even think he’s particularly important in the organization. Though there is one queer thing about him.”
“What?” asked Enderby, suspiciously.
“He did know Jessie was a member. Does he know every member in the organization, do you suppose?”
“I don’t know. He knew about Jessie, anyway. Maybe she was important because she was the wife of a policeman. Maybe he remembered her for that reason.”
“You say he came right out and said that Jezebel Baley was a member. Just like that? Jezebel Baley?”
Enderby nodded. “I keep telling you I heard him.”
“That’s the funny thing, Commissioner. Jessie hasn’t used her full first name since before Bentley was born. Not once. I know that for certain. She joined the Medievalists after she dropped her full name. I know that for sure, too. How would Clousarr come to know her as Jezebel, then?”
The Commissioner flushed and said, hastily, “Oh well, if it comes to that, he probably said Jessie. I just filled it in automatically and gave her full name. In fact, I’m sure of that. He said Jessie.”
“Until now you were quite sure he said Jezebel. I asked several times.”
The Commissioner’s voice nose. “You’re not saying I’m a liar, are you?”
“I’m just wondering if Clousarr, perhaps, said nothing at all. I’m wondering if you made that up. You’ve known Jessie for twenty years, and you knew her name was Jezebel.”
“You’re off your head, man.”
“Am I? Where were you after hunch today? You were out of your office for two hours at least.”
“Are you questioning me?”
“I’ll answer for you, too. You were in the Williamsburg power plant.”
The Commissioner rose from his seat. His forehead glistened and there were dry, white flecks at the corners of his hips. “What the hell are you trying to say?”
“Weren’t you?”
“Baley, you’re suspended. Hand me your credentials.”
“Not yet. Hear me out.”
“I don’t intend to. You’re guilty. You’re guilty as the devil, and what gets me is your cheap attempt to make me, look as though I were conspiring against you.” He host his voice momentarily in a squeak of indignation. He managed to gasp out, “In fact, you’re under arrest.”
“No,” said Baley, tightly, “not yet. Commissioner, I’ve got a blaster on you. It’s pointed straight and it’s cocked. Don’t fool with me, please, because I’m desperate and I will have my say. Afterward, you can do what you please.”
With widening eyes, Julius Enderby stared at the wicked muzzle in Baley’s hands.
He stammered, “Twenty years for this, Baley, in the deepest prison level in the City.”
R. Daneel moved suddenly. His hand clamped down on Baley’s wrist. He said, quietly, “I cannot permit this, partner Elijah. You must do no harm to the Commissioner.”
For the first time since R. Daneel had entered the City, the Commissioner spoke directly to him. “Hold him, you. First Law!”
Baley said quickly, “I have no intention of hurting him, Daneel, if you will keep him from arresting me. You said you would help me clear this up. I have forty-five minutes.”
R. Daneel, without releasing Baley’s wrist, said, “Commissioner, I believe Elijah should be allowed to speak. I am in communication with Dr. Fastolfe at this moment--”
“How? How?” demanded the Commissioner, wildly.
“I possess a self-contained subetheric unit,” said R. Daneel. The Commissioner stared.
“I am in communication with Dr. Fastolfe,” the robot went on inexorably, “and it would make a bad impression, Commissioner, if you were to refuse to listen to Elijah. Damaging inferences might be drawn.”
The Commissioner fell back in his chair, quite speechless.
Baley said, “I say you were in the Williamsburg power plant today, Commissioner, and you got the alpha-sprayer and gave it to R. Sammy. You deliberately chose the Williamsburg power plant in order to incriminate me. You even seized Dr. Gerrigel’s reappearance to invite him down to the Department and give him a deliberately maladjusted guide rod to lead him to the photographic supply room and allow him to find R. Sammy’s remains. You counted on him to make a correct diagnosis.”
Baley put away his blaster. “If you want to have me arrested now, go ahead, but Spacetown won’t take that for an answer.”
“Motive,” spluttered Enderby breathlessly. His glasses were fogged and he removed them, looking once again curiously vague and helpless in their absence. “What motive could I have for this?”
“You got me into trouble, didn’t you? It will put a spoke in the Sarton investigation, won’t it? And all that aside, R. Sammy knew too much.”
“About what, in Heaven’s name?”
“About the way in which a Spacer was murdered five and a half days ago. You see, Commissioner, you murdered Dr. Sarton of Spacetown.”
It was R. Daneel who spoke. Enderby could only clutch feverishly at his hair and shake his head.
The robot said, “Partner Elijah, I am afraid that this theory is quite untenable. As you know, it is impossible for Commissioner Enderby to have murdered Dr. Sarton.”
“Listen, then. Listen to me. Enderby begged me to take the case, not any of the men who over-ranked me. He did that for several reasons. In the first place, we were college friends and he thought he could count on its never occurring to me that an old buddy and respected superior could be a criminal. He counted on my well-known loyalty, you see. Secondly, he knew Jessie was a member of an underground organization and expected to be able to maneuver me out of the investigation or blackmail me into silence if I got too close to the truth. And he wasn’t really worried about that. At the very beginning he did his best to arouse my distrust of you, Daneel, and make certain that the two of us worked at cross-purposes. He knew about my father’s declassification. He could guess how I would react. You see, it is an advantage for the murderer to be in charge of the murder investigation.”
The Commissioner found his voice. He said, weakly, “How could I know about Jessie?” He turned to the robot. “You! If you’re transmitting this to Spacetown, tell them it’s a lie! It’s all a lie!”
Baley broke in, raising his voice for a moment and then lowering it into a queer sort of tense calm. “Certainly you would know about Jessie. You’re a Medievalist, and part of the organization. Your old-fashioned spectacles! Your windows! It’s obvious your temperament is turned that way. But there’s better evidence than that.
“How did Jessie find out Daneel was a robot? It puzzled me at the time. Of course we know now that she found out through her Medievalist organization, but that just shoves the problem one step backward. How did they know? You, Commissioner, dismissed it with a theory that Daneel was recognized as a robot during the incident at the shoe counter. I didn’t quite believe that. I couldn’t. I took him for human when I first saw him, and there’s nothing wrong with my eyes.
“Yesterday, I asked Dr. Gerrigel to come in from Washington. Later I decided I needed him for several reasons, but, at the time I first
called him, my only purpose was to see if he would recognize Daneel for what he was with no prompting on my part.
“Commissioner, he didn’t! I introduced him to Daneel, he shook hands with him, we all talked together, and it was only after the subject got around to humanoid robots that he suddenly caught on. Now, that was Dr. Gerrigel, Earth’s greatest expert on robots. Do you mean to say a few Medievalist rioters could do better than he under conditions of confusion and tension, and be so certain about it that they would throw their entire organization into activity based on the feeling that Daneel was a robot?
“It’s obvious now that the Medievalists must have known Daneel to be a robot to begin with. The incident at the shoe counter was deliberately designed to show Daneel and, through him, Spacetown, the extent of antirobot feeling in the City. It was meant to confuse the issue, to turn suspicion away from individuals and toward the population as a whole.
“Now, if they knew the truth about Daneel to begin with, who told them? I didn’t. I once thought it was Daneel himself, but that’s out. The only other Eanthman who knew about it was you, Commissioner.”
Enderby said, with surprising energy, “There could be spies in the Department, too. The Medievalists could have us riddled with them. Your wife was one, and if you don’t find it impossible that I should be one, why not others in the Department?”
The corners of Baley’s hips pulled back a savage trifle. “Let’s not bring up mysterious spies until we see where the straightforward solution leads us. I say you’re the obvious informer and the real one.
“It’s interesting now that I look back on it, Commissioner, to see how your spirits rose and fell accordingly as I seemed to be far from a solution or possibly close to it. You were nervous to begin with. When I wanted to visit Spacetown yesterday morning and wouldn’t tell you the reason, you were practically in a state of collapse. Did you think I had you pinned, Commissioner? That it was a trap to get you into their hands? You hated them, you told me. You were virtually in tears. For a time, I thought that to be caused by the memory of humiliation in Spacetown when you yourself were a suspect, but then Daneel told me that your sensibilities had been carefully regarded. You had never known you were a suspect. Your panic was due to fear, not humiliation.
“Then when I came out with my completely wrong solution, while you listened over trimensional circuit, and you saw how fan, how immensely far, from the truth I was, you were confident again. You even argued with me, defended the Spacers. After that, you were quite master of yourself for a while, quite confident. It surprised me at the time that you so easily forgave my false accusations against the Spacers when earlier you had so lectured me on their sensitivity. You enjoyed my mistake.
“Then I put in my call for Dr. Gerrigel and you wanted to know why and I wouldn’t tell you. That plunged you into the abyss again because you feared--”
R. Daneel suddenly raised his hand. “Partner Elijah!”
Baley looked at his watch. 23:42! He said, “What is it?”
R. Daneel said, “He might have been disturbed at thinking you would find out his Medievalist connections, if we grant their existence. There is nothing, though, to connect him with the murder. He cannot have had anything to do with that.”
Baley said, “You’re quite wrong, Daneel. He didn’t know what I wanted Dr. Gerrigel for, but it was quite safe to assume that it was in connection with information about robots. This frightened the Commissioner, because a robot had an intimate connection with his greaten crime. Isn’t that so, Commissioner?”
Enderby shook his head. “When this is over--” he began, but choked into inarticulacy.
“How was the murder committed?” demanded Baley with a suppressed fury. “C/Fe, damn it! C/Fe! I use your own term, Daneel. You’re so full of the benefits of a C/Fe culture, yet you don’t see where an Earthman might have used it for at least a temporary advantage. Let me sketch it in for you.
“There is no difficulty in the notion of a robot crossing open country. Even at night. Even alone. The Commissioner put a blaster into R. Sammy’s hand, told him where to go and when. He himself entered Spacetown through the Personal and was relieved of his own blaster. He received the other from R. Sammy’s hands, killed Dr. Sarton, returned the blaster to R. Sammy, who took it back across the fields to New York City. And today he destroyed R. Sammy, whose knowledge had become dangerous.
“That explains everything. The presence of the Commissioner, the absence of a weapon. And it makes it unnecessary to suppose any human New Yorker had crawled a mile under the open sky at night.”
But at the end of Baley’s recitation, R. Daneel said, “I am sorry, partner Elijah, though happy for the Commissioner, that your story explains nothing. I have told you that the cerebroanalytic properties of the Commissioner are such that it is impossible for him to have committed deliberate murder. I don’t know what English word would be applied to the psychological fact: cowardice, conscience, or compassion. I know the dictionary meanings of all these, but I cannot judge. At any rate, the Commissioner did not murder.”
“Thank you,” muttered Enderby. His voice gained strength and confidence. “I don’t know what your motives are, Baley, or why you should try to ruin me this way, but I’ll get to the bottom--”
“Wait,” said Baley. “I’m not through. I’ve got this.”
He slammed the aluminum cube on Enderby’s desk, and tried to feel the confidence he hoped he was radiating. For half an hour now, he had been hiding from himself one little fact: that he did not know what the picture showed. He was gambling, but it was all that was heft to do.
Enderby shrank away from the small object. “What is it?”
“It isn’t a bomb,” said Baley, sardonically. “Just an ordinary microprojector.”
“Well? What will that prove?”
“Suppose we see.” His fingernail probed at one of the slits in the cube, and a corner of the Commissioner’s office blanked out, then lit up in an alien scene in three dimensions.
It reached from floor to ceiling and extended out past the walls of the room. It was awash with a gray light of a sort the City’s utilities never provided.
Baley thought, with a pang of mingled distaste and perverse attraction: It must be the dawn they talk about.
The pictured scene was of Dr. Sarton’s dome. Dr. Sarton’s dead body, a horrible, broken remnant, filled its center.
Enderby’s eyes bulged as he stared.
Baley said, “I know the Commissioner isn’t a killer. I don’t need you to tell me that, Daneel. If I could have gotten around that one fact earlier, I would have had the solution earlier. Actually, I didn’t see a way out of it until an hour ago when I carelessly said to you that you had once been curious about Bentley’s contact lenses.--That was it, Commissioner. It occurred to me then that your nearsightedness and your glasses were the key. They don’t have nearsightedness on the Outer Worlds, I suppose, or they might have reached the true solution of the murder almost at once. Commissioner, when did you break your glasses?”
The Commissioner said, “What do you mean?”
Baley said, “When I first saw you about this case, you told me you had broken your glasses in Spacetown. I assumed that you broke them in your agitation on hearing the news of the murder, but you never said so, and I had no reason for making that assumption. Actually, if you were entering Spacetown with crime on your mind, you were already sufficiently agitated to drop and break your glasses before the murder. Isn’t that so, and didn’t that, in fact, happen?”
R. Daneel said, “I do not see the point, partner Elijah.”
Baley thought: I’m partner Elijah for ten minutes more. Fast! Talk fast! And think fast!
He was manipulating Sarton’s dome image as he spoke. Clumsily, he expanded it, his fingernails unsure in the tension that was overwhelming him. Slowly, in jerks, the corpse widened, broadened, heightened, came closer. Baley could almost smell the stench of its scorched flesh. Its head, shoulders, and one upper arm lolled crazily, connected to hips and legs by a blackened remnant of spine from which charred rib stumps jutted.
Baley cast a side glance at the Commissioner. Enderby had closed his eyes. He looked sick. Baley felt sick, too, but he had to look. Slowly he circled the trimensional image by means of the transmitter controls, rotating it, bringing the ground about the corpse to view in successive quadrants. His fingernail slipped and the imaged floor tilted suddenly and expanded till floor and corpse alike were a hazy mass, beyond the resolving power of the transmitter. He brought the expansion down, let the corpse slide away.
He was still talking. He had to. He couldn’t stop till he found what he was looking for. And if he didn’t, all his talk might be useless. Worse than useless. His heart was throbbing, and so was his head.
He said, “The Commissioner can’t commit deliberate murder. True! Deliberate. But any man can kill by accident. The Commissioner didn’t enter Spacetown to kill Dr. Sarton. He came in to kill you, Daneel, you! Is there anything in his cerebroanalysis that says he is incapable of wrecking a machine? That’s not murder, merely sabotage.
“He is a Medievalist, an earnest one. He worked with Dr. Sarton and knew the purpose for which you were designed, Daneel. He feared that purpose might be achieved, that Earthmen would eventually be weaned away from Earth. So he decided to destroy you, Daneel. You were the only one of your type manufactured as yet and he had good reason to think that by demonstrating the extent and determination of Medievalism on Earth, he would discourage the Spacers. He knew how strong popular opinion was on the Outer Worlds to end the Spacetown project altogether. Dr. Sarton must have discussed that with him. This, he thought, would be the last nudge in the proper direction.
“I don’t say even the thought of killing you, Daneel, was a pleasant one. He would have had R. Sammy do it, I imagine, if you didn’t look so human that a primitive robot such as Sammy could not have told the difference, or understood it. First Law would stop him. Or the Commissioner would have had another human do it if he, himself, were not the only one who had ready access to Spacetown at all times.
“Let me reconstruct what the Commissioner’s plan might have been. I’m guessing, I admit, but I think I’m close. He made the appointment with Dr. Sarton, but deliberately came early, at dawn, in fact. Dr. Sarton would be sleeping, I imagine, but you, Daneel, would be awake. I assume, by the way, you were living with Dr. Sarton, Daneel.”
The robot nodded. “You are quite right, partner Elijah.”
Baley said, “Then let me go on. You would come to the dome door, Daneel, receive a blaster charge in the chest or head, and be done with. The Commissioner would leave quickly, through the deserted streets of Spacetown’s dawn, and back to where R. Sammy waited. He would give him back the blaster, then slowly walk again to Dr. Sarton’s dome. If necessary, he would ‘discover’ the body himself, though he would prefer to have someone else do that. If questioned concerning his early arrival, he could say, I suppose, that he had come to tell Dr. Sarton of rumors of a Medievalist attack on Spacetown, urge him to
take secret precautions to avoid open trouble between Spacers and Earthmen. The dead robot would lend point to his words.
“If they asked about the long interval between your entering Spacetown, Commissioner, and your arrival at Dr. Sarton’s dome, you could say--let’s see--that you saw someone lurking through the streets and heading for open country. You pursued for a while. That would also encourage them along a false path. As for R. Sammy, no one would notice him. A robot among the truck farms outside the City is just another robot.
“How close am I, Commissioner?”
Enderby writhed, “I didn’t--”
“No,” said Baley, “you didn’t kill Daneel. He’s here, and in all the time he’s been in the City, you haven’t been able to look him in the face or address him by name. Look at him now, Commissioner.”
Enderby couldn’t. He covered his face with shaking hands.
Baley’s shaking hands almost dropped his transmitter. He had found it.
The image was now centered upon the main door to Dr. Sarton’s dome. The door was open; it had been slid into its wall receptacle along its shining metal runner grooves. Down within them. There! There!
The sparkle was unmistakable.
“I’ll tell you what happened,” said Baley. “You were at the dome when you dropped your glasses. You must have been nervous and I’ve seen you when you’re nervous. You take them off; you wipe them. You did that then. But your hands were shaking and you dropped them; maybe you stepped on them. Anyway, they were broken, and just then, the door opened and a figure that looked like Daneel faced you.
“You blasted him, scrabbled up the remains of your glasses, and ran. They found the body, not you, and when they came to find you, you discovered that it was not Daneel, but the early-rising Dr. Sarton, that you had killed. Dr. Sarton had designed Daneel in his own image, to his great misfortune, and without your glasses in that moment of tension, you could not tell them apart.
“And if you want the tangible proof, it’s there!” The image of Sarton’s dome quivered and Baley put the transmitter carefully upon the desk, his hand tightly upon it.
Commissioner Enderby’s face was distorted with terror and Baley’s with tension. R. Daneel seemed indifferent.
Baley’s finger was pointing. “That glitter in the grooves of the door. What was it, Daneel?”
“Two small slivers of glass,” said the robot, coolly. “It meant nothing to us.”
“It will now. They’re portions of concave lenses. Measure their optical properties and compare them with those of the glasses Enderby is wearing now. Don’t smash them, Commissioner!”
He lunged at the Commissioner and wrenched the spectacles from the other’s hand. He held them out to R. Daneel, panting, “That’s proof enough, I think, that he was at the dome earlier than he was thought to be.”
R. Daneel said, “I am quite convinced. I can see now that I was thrown completely off the scent by the Commissioner’s cerebroanalysis. I congratulate you, partner Elijah.”
Baley’s watch said 24:00. A new day was beginning.
Slowly, the Commissioner’s head went down on his arms. His words were muffled wails. “It was a mistake. A mistake. I never meant to kill him.?’ Without warning, he slipped from the chair and lay crumpled on the floor.
R. Daneel sprang to him, saying, “You have hurt him, Elijah. That is too bad.”
“He isn’t dead, is he?”
“No. But unconscious.”
“He’ll come to. It was too much for him, I suppose. I had to do it, Daneel, I had to. I had no evidence that would stand up in court, only inferences. I had to badger him and badger him and let it out little by little, hoping he would break down. He did, Daneel. You heard him confess, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Now, then, I promised this would be to the benefit of Spacetown’s project, so-- Wait, he’s coming to.”
The Commissioner groaned. His eyes fluttered and opened. He stared speechlessly at the two.
Baley said, “Commissioner, do you hear me?”
The Commissioner nodded listlessly.
“All night, then. Now, the Spacers have more on their minds than your prosecution. If you co-operate with them--”
“What? What?” There was a dawning flicker of hope in the Commissioner’s eyes.
“You must be a big wheel in New York’s Medievalist organization, maybe even in the planetary setup. Maneuver them in the direction of the colonization of space. You can see the propaganda line, can’t you? We can go back to the soil all right--but on other planets.”
“I don’t understand,” mumbled the Commissioner.
“It’s what the Spacers are after. And God help me, it’s what I’m after now, too, since a small conversation I had with Dr. Fastolfe. It’s what they want more than anything. They risk death continually by coming to Earth and staying here for that purpose. If Dr. Sarton’s murder will make it possible for you to swing Medievalism into line for the resumption of Galactic colonization, they’ll probably consider it a worth-while sacrifice. Do you understand now?”
R. Daneel said, “Elijah is quite correct. Help us, Commissioner, and we will forget the past. I am speaking for Dr. Fastolfe and our people generally in this. Of course, if you should agree to help and later betray us, we would always have the fact of your guilt to hold over your head. I hope you understand that, too. It pains me to have to mention that.”
“I won’t be prosecuted?” asked the Commissioner.
“Not if you help us.”
Tears filled his eyes. “I’ll do it. It was an accident. Explain that. An accident. I did what I thought right.”
Baley said, “If you help us, you will be doing right. The colonization of space is the only possible salvation of Earth. You’ll realize that if you think about it without prejudice. If you find you cannot, have a short talk with Dr. Fastolfe. And now, you can begin helping by quashing the R. Sammy business. Call it an accident or something. End it!”
Baley got to his feet. “And remember, I’m not the only one who knows the truth, Commissioner. Getting rid of me will ruin you. All Spacetown knows. You see that, don’t you?”
R. Daneel said, “It is unnecessary to say more, Elijah. He is sincere and he will help. So much is obvious from his cerebroanalysis.”
“All right. Then I’ll go home. I want to see Jessie and Bentley and take up a natural existence again. And I want to sleep.--Daneel, will you stay on Earth after the Spacers go?”
R. Daneel said, “I have not been informed. Why do you ask?”
Baley bit his lip, then said, “I didn’t think I would ever say anything like this to anyone like you, Daneel, but I trust you. I even--admire you. I’m too old ever to leave Earth myself, but when schools for emigrants are finally established, there’s Bentley. If someday, perhaps, Bentley and you, together. .
“Perhaps.” R. Daneel’s face was emotionless.
The robot turned to Julius Enderby, who was watching them with a flaccid face into which a certain vitality was only now beginning to return.
The robot said, “I have been trying, friend Julius, to understand some remarks Elijah made to me earlier. Perhaps I am beginning to, for it suddenly seems to me that the destruction of what should not be, that is, the destruction of what you people call evil, is less just and desirable than the conversion of this evil into what you call good.”
He hesitated, then, almost as though he were surprised at his own words, he said, “Go, and sin no more!”
Baley, suddenly smiling, took R. Daneel’s elbow, and they walked out the door, arm in arm.