The Caves of Steel

by Isaac Asimov

  “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 left to do.

  Enderby shrank away from the small object. “What is it?”

  “It isn’t a bomb,” said Baley, sardonically. “Just an ordinary micro-projector.”

  “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 in 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 ’til floor and corpse alike were a hazy mess, 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 headed 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 right. 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 worthwhile 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.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ISAAC ASIMOV was America’s most prolific author, with more than 440 published books to his credit. His Foundation Trilogy was given a special Hugo Award as Best All-Time Science Fiction Series, Foundation’s Edge won a Hugo Award as Best Science Fiction Novel of 1982, and Dr. Asimov was presented the Science Fiction Writers of America Grand Master Award in 1988.