The Caves of Steel

by Isaac Asimov

  “That’s all right,” said Baley, gently. “I’m not hungry. You just get rid of it.”

  R. Daneel’s food sac was of fluorocarbon plastic, Baley decided. At least the food did not cling to it. It came out smoothly and was placed little by little into the pipe. A waste of good food at that, he thought.

  He sat down on one bed and removed his shirt. He said, “I suggest an early start tomorrow.”

  “For a specific reason?”

  “The location of this apartment isn’t known to our friends yet. Or at least I hope not. If we leave early, we are that much safer. Once in City Hall, we will have to decide whether our partnership is any longer practical.”

  “You think it is perhaps not?” Baley shrugged and said dourly, “We can’t go through this sort of thing every day.”

  “But it seems to me—”

  R. Daneel was interrupted by the sharp scarlet sliver of the door signal.

  Baley rose silently to his feet and unlimbered his blaster. The door signal flashed once more.

  He moved silently to the door, put his thumb on the blaster contact while he threw the switch that activated the one-way transparency patch. It wasn’t a good view-patch; it was small and had a distorting effect, but it was quite good enough to show Baley’s youngster, Ben, outside the door.

  Baley acted quickly. He flung the door open, snatched brutally at Ben’s wrist as the boy raised his hand to signal a third time, and pulled him in.

  The look of fright and bewilderment faded only slowly from Ben’s eyes as he leaned breathlessly against the wall toward which he had been hurled. He rubbed his wrist.

  “Dad!” he said in grieved tones. “You didn’t have to grab me like that.”

  Baley was staring through the view-patch of the once-again-closed door. As nearly as he could tell, the corridor was empty.

  “Did you see anyone out there, Ben?”

  “No. Gee, Dad, I just came to see if you were all right.”

  “Why shouldn’t I be all right?”

  “I don’t know. It was Mom. She was crying and all like that. She said I had to find you. If I didn’t go, she said she would go herself, and then she didn’t know what would happen. She made me go, Dad.”

  Baley said, “How did you find me? Did your mother know where I was?”

  “No, she didn’t. I called up your office.”

  “And they told you?”

  Ben looked startled at his father’s vehemence. He said, in a low voice, “Sure. Weren’t they supposed to?”

  Baley and Daneel looked at one another.

  Baley rose heavily to his feet. He said, “Where’s your mother now, Ben? At the apartment?”

  “No, we went to Grandma’s for dinner and stayed there. I’m supposed to go back there now. I mean, as long as you’re all right, Dad.”

  “You’ll stay here. Daneel, did you notice the exact location of the floor communo?”

  The robot said, “Yes. Do you intend leaving the room to use it?”

  “I’ve got to. I’ve got to get in touch with Jessie.”

  “Might I suggest that it would be more logical to let Bentley do that. It is a form of risk and he is less valuable.”

  Baley stared. “Why you—”

  He thought: Jehoshaphat, what am I getting angry about?

  He went on more calmly, “You don’t understand, Daneel. Among us, it is not customary for a man to send his young son into possible danger, even if it is logical to do so.”

  “Danger!” squeaked Ben in a sort of horrified pleasure. “What’s going on, Dad? Huh, Dad?”

  “Nothing, Ben. Now, this isn’t any of your business. Understand? Get ready for bed. I want you in bed when I get back. You hear me?”

  “Aw, gosh. You could tell a fellow. I won’t say anything.”

  “In bed!”

  “Gosh!”

  Baley hitched his jacket back as he stood at the floor communo, so that his blaster butt was ready for snatching. He spoke his personal number into the mouthpiece and waited while a computer fifteen miles away checked it to make sure the call was permissible. It was a very short wait that was involved, since a plain-clothes man had no limit on the number of his business calls. He spoke the code number of his mother-in-law’s apartment.

  The small screen at the base of the instrument lit up, and her face looked out at him.

  He said, in a low voice, “Mother, put on Jessie.”

  Jessie must have been waiting for him. She was on at once. Baley looked at her face and then darkened the screen deliberately.

  “All right, Jessie. Ben’s here. Now, what’s the matter?” His eyes roved from side to side continuously, watching.

  “Are you all right? You aren’t in trouble?”

  “I’m obviously all right, Jessie. Now stop it.”

  “Oh, Lije, I’ve been so worried.”

  “What about?” he asked tightly.

  “You know. Your friend.”

  “What about him?”

  “I told you last night. There’ll be trouble.”

  “Now, that’s nonsense. I’m keeping Ben with me for tonight and you go to bed. Good-by, dear.”

  He broke connections and waited for two breaths before starting back. His face was gray with apprehension and fear.

  Ben was standing in the middle of the room when Baley returned. One of his contact lenses was neatly pocketed in a little suction cup. The other was still in his eye.

  Ben said, “Gosh, Dad, isn’t there any water in this place? Mr. Olivaw says I can’t go to the Personal.”

  “He’s right. You can’t. Put that thing back in your eye, Ben. It won’t hurt you to sleep with them for one night.”

  “All right.” Ben put it back, put away his suction cup and climbed into bed. “Boy, what a mattress!”

  Baley said to R. Daneel, “I suppose you won’t mind sitting up.”

  “Of course not. I was interested, by the way, in the queer glass Bentley wears close to his eyes. Do all Earthmen wear them?”

  “No. Just some,” said Baley, absently. “I don’t, for instance.”

  “For what reason is it worn?”

  Baley was too absorbed with his own thoughts to answer. His own uneasy thoughts.

  The lights were out.

  Baley remained wakeful. He was dimly aware of Ben’s breathing as it turned deep and regular and became a bit rough. When he turned his head, he grew somehow conscious of R. Daneel, sitting in a chair with grave immobility, face turned toward the door.

  Then he fell asleep, and when he slept, he dreamed.

  He dreamed Jessie was falling into the fission chamber of a nuclear power plant, falling and falling. She held out her arms to him, shrieking, but he could only stand frozenly just outside a scarlet line and watch her distorted figure turn as it fell, growing smaller until it was only a dot.

  He could only watch her, in the dream, knowing that it was he, himself, who had pushed her.

  12.

  WORDS FROM AN EXPERT

  Elijah Baley looked up as Commissioner Julius Enderby entered the office. He nodded wearily.

  The Commissioner looked at the clock and grunted, “Don’t tell me you’ve been here all night!”

  Baley said, “I won’t.”

  The Commissioner said in a low voice, “Any trouble last night?”

  Baley shook his head.

  The Commissioner said, “I’ve been thinking that I could be minimizing the possibility of riots. If there’s anything to—”

  Baley said tightly, “For God’s sake, Commissioner, if anything happened, I’d tell you. There was no trouble of any sort.”

  “All right.” The Commissioner moved away, passing beyond the door that marked off the unusual privacy that became his exalted position.

  Baley looked after him and thought: He must have slept last night.

  Baley bent to the routine report he was trying to write as a cover-up for the real activities of the last two days, but the words he had tapped o
ut by finger touch blurred and danced. Slowly, he became aware of an object standing by his desk.

  He lifted his head. “What do you want?”

  It was R. Sammy. Baley thought: Julius’s private flunky. It pays to be a Commissioner.

  R. Sammy said through his fatuous grin, “The Commissioner wants to see you, Lije. He says right away.”

  Baley waved his hand. “He just saw me. Tell him I’ll be in later.”

  R. Sammy said, “He says right away.”

  “All right. All right. Go away.”

  The robot backed away, saying, “The Commissioner wants to see you right away, Lije. He says right away.”

  “Jehoshaphat,” said Baley between his teeth. “I’m going. I’m going.” He got up from his desk, headed for the office, and R. Sammy was silent.

  Baley said as he entered, “Damn it, Commissioner, don’t send that thing after me, will you?”

  But the Commissioner only said, “Sit down, Lije. Sit down.”

  Baley sat down and stared. Perhaps he had done old Julius an injustice. Perhaps the man hadn’t slept after all. He looked fairly beat.

  The Commissioner was tapping the paper before him. “There’s a record of a call you made to a Dr. Gerrigel at Washington by insulated beam.”

  “That’s right, Commissioner.”

  “There’s no record of the conversation, naturally, since it was insulated. What’s it all about?”

  “I’m after background information.”

  “He’s a roboticist, isn’t he?”

  “That’s right.”

  The Commissioner put out a lower lip and suddenly looked like a child about to pout. “But what’s the point? What kind of information are you after?”

  “I’m not sure, Commissioner. I just have a feeling that in a case like this, information on robots might help.” Baley clamped his mouth shut after that. He wasn’t going to be specific, and that was that.

  “I wouldn’t, Lije. I wouldn’t. I don’t think it’s wise.”

  “What’s your objection, Commissioner?”

  “The fewer the people who know about all this, the better.”

  “I’ll tell him as little as I can. Naturally.”

  “I still don’t think it’s wise.”

  Baley was feeling just sufficiently wretched to lose patience.

  He said, “Are you ordering me not to see him?”

  “No. No. You do as you see fit. You’re heading this investigation. Only …”

  “Only what?”

  The Commissioner shook his head. “Nothing.—Where is he? You know who I mean.”

  Baley did. He said, “Daneel’s still at the files.”

  The Commissioner paused a long moment, then said, “We’re not making much progress, you know.”

  “We’re not making any so far. Still, things may change.”

  “All right, then,” said the Commissioner, but he didn’t look as though he really thought it were all right.

  R. Daneel was at Baley’s desk, when the latter returned.

  “Well, and what have you got?” Baley asked gruffly.

  “I have completed my first, rather hasty, search through the files, partner Elijah, and I have located two of the people who tried to track us last night and who, moreover, were at the shoe store during the former incident.”

  “Let’s see.”

  R. Daneel placed the small, stamp-size cards before Baley. They were mottled with the small dots that served as code. The robot also produced a portable decoder and placed one of the cards into an appropriate slot. The dots possessed electrical conduction properties different from that of the card as a whole. The electric field passing through the card was therefore distorted in a highly specific manner and in response to that specification the three-by-six screen above the decoder was filled with words. Words which, uncoded, would have filled several sheets of standard size report paper. Words, moreover, which could not possibly be interpreted by anyone not in possession of an official police decoder.

  Baley read through the material stolidly. The first person was Francis Clousarr, age thirty-three at time of arrest two years before; cause of arrest, inciting to riot; employee at New York Yeast; home address, so-and-so; parentage, so-and-so; hair, eyes, distinguishing marks, educational history, employment history, psychoanalytic profile, physical profile, data here, data there, and finally reference to tri-photo in the rogues’ gallery.

  “You checked the photograph?” asked Baley.

  “Yes, Elijah.”

  The second person was Gerhard Paul. Baley glanced at the material on that card and said, “This is all no good.”

  R. Daneel said, “I am sure that cannot be so. If there is an organization of Earthmen who are capable of the crime we are investigating, these are members. Is that not an obvious likelihood? Should they then not be questioned?”

  “We’d get nothing out of them.”

  “They were there, both at the shoe store and in the kitchen. They cannot deny it.”

  “Just being there’s no crime. Besides which, they can deny it. They can just say they weren’t there. It’s as simple as that. How can we prove they’re lying?”

  “I saw them.”

  “That’s no proof,” said Baley, savagely. “No court, if it ever came to that, would believe you could remember two faces in a blur of a million.”

  “It is obvious that I can.”

  “Sure. Tell them what you are. As soon as you do that, you’re no witness. Your kind have no status in any court of law on Earth.”

  R. Daneel said, “I take it, then, that you have changed your mind.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Yesterday, in the kitchen, you said there was no need to arrest them. You said that as long as I remembered their faces, we could arrest them at any time.”

  “Well, I didn’t think it through,” said Baley. “I was crazy. It can’t be done.”

  “Not even for psychological reasons? They would not know we had no legal proof of their complicity in conspiracy.”

  Baley said, tensely, “Look, I am expecting Dr. Gerrigel of Washington in half an hour. Do you mind waiting till he’s been here and gone? Do you mind?”

  “I will wait,” said R. Daneel.

  Anthony Gerrigel was a precise and very polite man of middle height, who looked far from being one of the most erudite roboticists on Earth. He was nearly twenty minutes late, it turned out, and quite apologetic about it. Baley, white with an anger born of apprehension, shrugged off the apologies gracelessly. He checked his reservation on Conference Room D, repeated his instructions that they were not to be disturbed on any account for an hour, and led Dr. Gerrigel and R. Daneel down the corridor, up a ramp, and through a door that led to one of the spy-beam-insulated chambers.

  Baley checked the walls carefully before sitting down, listening to the soft burr of the pulsometer in his hand, waiting for any fading of the steady sound which would indicate a break, even a small one, in the insulation. He turned it on the ceiling, floor, and, with particular care, on the door. There was no break.

  Dr. Gerrigel smiled a little. He looked like a man who never smiled more than a little. He was dressed with a neatness that could only be described as fussy. His iron-gray hair was smoothed carefully back and his face looked pink and freshly washed. He sat with a posture of prim stiffness as though repeated maternal advice in his younger years concerning the desirability of good posture had rigidified his spine forever.

  He said to Baley, “You make this all seem very formidable.”

  “It’s quite important, Doctor. I need information about robots that only you can give me, perhaps. Anything we say here, of course, is top secret and the City will expect you to forget it all when you leave.” Baley looked at his watch.

  The little smile on the roboticist’s face winked away. He said, “Let me explain why I am late.” The matter obviously weighed upon him. “I decided not to go by air. I get airsick.”

  “That’s too b
ad,” said Baley. He put away the pulsometer, after checking its standard settings to make last-minute certain that there was nothing wrong with it, and sat down.

  “Or at least not exactly airsick, but nervous. A mild agoraphobia. It’s nothing particularly abnormal, but there it is. So I took the expressways.”

  Baley felt a sudden sharp interest. “Agoraphobia?”

  “I make it sound worse than it is,” the roboticist said at once. “It’s just the feeling you get in a plane. Have you ever been in one, Mr. Baley?”

  “Several times.”

  “Then you must know what I mean. It’s that feeling of being surrounded by nothing; of being separated from—from empty air by a mere inch of metal. It’s very uncomfortable.”

  “So you took the expressway?”

  “Yes.”

  “All the way from Washington to New York?”

  “Oh, I’ve done it before. Since they built the Baltimore-Philadelphia tunnel, it’s quite simple.”

  So it was. Baley had never made the trip himself, but he was perfectly aware that it was possible. Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York had grown, in the last two centuries, to the point where all nearly touched. The Four-City Area was almost the official name for the entire stretch of coast, and there were a considerable number of people who favored administrational consolidation and the formation of a single super-City. Baley disagreed with that, himself. New York City by itself was almost too large to be handled by a centralized government. A larger City, with over fifty million population, would break down under its own weight.

  “The trouble was,” Dr. Gerrigel was saying, “that I missed a connection in Chester Sector, Philadelphia, and lost time. That, and a little difficulty in getting a transient room assignment, ended by making me late.”

  “Don’t worry about that, Doctor. What you say, though, is interesting. In view of your dislike for planes, what would you say to going outside City limits on foot, Dr. Gerrigel?”

  “For what reason?” He looked startled and more than a little apprehensive.

  “It’s just a rhetorical question. I’m not suggesting that you really should. I want to know how the notion strikes you, that’s all.”