"It's late afternoon," called Gladia back to him. She had run toward the pond and was sitting on a stone bench at its edge. "Come here," she shouted, waving. "You can stand if you don't like to sit On stone."
Baley advanced slowly. "Does it get this low every day?" and at once he was sorry he asked. If the planet rotated, the sun must be
low in the sky both mornings and afternoons. Only at midday could it be high.
Telling himself this couldn't change a lifetime of pictured thought. He knew there was such a thing as night and had even experienced it, with a planet's whole thickness interposing safely between a man and the sun. He knew there were clouds and a protective grayness hiding the worst of outdoors. And still, when he thought of planetary surfaces, it was always a picture of a blaze of light with a sun high in the sky.
He looked over his shoulder, just quickly enough to get a flash of sun, and wondered how far the house was if he should decide to return.
Gladia was pointing to the other end of the stone bench.
Baley said, "That's pretty close to you, isn't it?"
She spread out her little hands, palms up. "I'm getting used to it. Really."
He sat down, facing toward her to avoid the sun.
She leaned over backward toward the water and pulled a small cup-shaped flower, yellow without and white-streaked within, not at all flamboyant. She said, "This is a native plant. Most of the flowers here are from Earth originally."
Water dripped from its severed stem as she extended it gingerly toward Baley.
Baley reached for it as gingerly. "You killed it," he said.
"It's only a flower. There are thousands more." Suddenly, before his fingers more than touched the yellow cup, she snatched it away, her eyes kindling. "Or are you trying to imply I could kill a human being because I pulled a flower?"
Baley said in soft conciliation, "I wasn't implying anything. May I see it?"
Baley didn't really want to touch it. It had grown in wet soil and there was still the effluvium of mud about it. How could these people, who were so careful in contact with Earthmen and even with one another, be so careless in their contact with ordinary dirt?
But he held the stalk between thumb and forefinger and looked at it. The cup was formed of several thin pieces of papery tissue, curving up from a common center. Within it was a white convex swelling, damp with liquid and fringed with dark hairs that trembled lightly in the wind.
She said, "Can you smell it?"
At once Baley was aware of the odor that emanated from it. He leaned toward it and said, "It smelislike a woman's perfume."
Gladia clapped her hands in delight. "How like an Earthman. What you really mean is that a woman's perfume smells like that."
Baley nodded ruefully. He was growing weary of the outdoors. The shadows were growing longer and the land was becoming somber. Yet he was determined not to give in. He wanted those gray walls of light that dimmed his portrait removed. It was quixotic, but there it was.
Gladia took the flower from Baley, who let it go without reluctance. Slowly she pulled its petals apart. She said, "I suppose every woman smells different."
"It depends on the perfume," said Baley indifferently.
"Imagine being close enough to tell. I don't wear perfume because no one is close enough. Except now. But I suppose you smell perfume often, all the time. On Earth, your wife is always with you, isn't she?" She was concentrating very hard on the flower, frowning as she plucked it carefully to pieces.
"She's not always with me," said Baley. "Not every minute."
"But most of the time. And whenever you want to--"
Baley said suddenly, "Why did Dr. Leebig try so hard to teach you robotics, do you suppose?"
The dismembered flower consisted now of a stalk and the inner swelling. Gladia twirled it between her fingers, then tossed it away, so that it floated for a moment on the surface of the pond. "I think he wanted me to be his assistant," she said.
"Did he tell you so, Gladia?"
"Toward the end, Elijah. I think he grew impatient. Anyway, he asked me if I didn't think it would be exciting to work in robotics. Naturally, I told him I could think of nothing duller. He was quite angry."
"And he never walked with you again after that."
She said, "You know, I think that may have been it. I suppose his feelings were hurt. Really, though, what could I do?"
"It was before that, though, that you told him about your quarrels with Dr. Delmarre."
Her hands became fists and held so in a tight spasm. Her body
held stiffly to its position, head bent and a little to one side. Her voice was unnaturally high. "What quarrels?"
"Your quarrels with your husband. I understand you hated him." Her face was distorted and blotched as she glared at him. "Who told you that? Jothan?"
"Dr. Leebig mentioned it. I think it's true."
She was shaken. "You're still trying to prove I killed him. I keep thinking you're my friend and you're only-only a detective."
She raised her fists and Baley waited.
He said, "You know you can't touch me."
Her hands dropped and she began crying without a sound. She turned her head away.
Baley bent his own head and closed his eyes, shutting out the disturbing long shadows. He said, "Dr. Delmarre was not a very affectionate man, was he?"
She said in a strangled way, "He was a very busy man."
l3aley said, "You are affectionate, on the other hand. You find a man interesting. Do you understand?"
"I c-can't help it. I know it's disgusting, but I can't help it. It's even disgusting t-to talk about it."
"You did talk about it to Dr. Leebig, though?"
"I had to do something and Jothan was handy and he didn't seem to mind and it made me feel better."
"Was this the reason you quarreled with your husband? Was it that he was cold and unaffectionate and you resented it?"
"Sometimes I hated him." She shrugged her shoulders helplessly. "He was just a good Solarian and we weren't scheduled for ch-for ch--" She broke down.
Baley waited. His own stomach was cold and open air pressed down heavily upon him. When Gladia's sobs grew quieter, he asked, as gently as he could, "Did you kill him, Gladia?"
"N-no." Then, suddenly, as though all resistance had corroded within her: "I haven't told you everything."
"Well, then, please do so now." -
"We were quarreling that time, the time he died. The old quarrel.
I screamed at him but he never shouted back. He hardly ever even
said anything and that just made it worse. I was so angry, so angry.
I don't remember after that."
"Jehoshaphat!" Baley swayed slightly and his eyes sought the
neutral stone of the bench. "What do you mean you don't remember?"
"I mean he was dead and I was screaming and the robots came--"
"Did you kill him?"
"I don't remember it, Elijah, and I would remember it if I did, wouldn't I? Only I don't remember anything else, either, and I've been so frightened, so frightened. Help me, please, Elijah."
"Don't worry, Gladia. I'll help you." Baley's reeling mind fastened on the murder weapon. What happened to it? It must have been removed. If so, only the murderer could have done it. Since Gladia was found immediately after the murder on the scene, she could not have done it. The murderer would have to be someone else. No matter how it looked to everyone on Solaria, it had to be someone else.
Baley thought sickly: I've got to get back to the house.
He said, "Gladia--"
Somehow he was staring at the sun. It was nearly at the horizon. He had to turn his head to look at it and his eyes locked with a morbid fascination. He had never seen it so. Fat, red, and dim somehow, so that one could look at it without blinding, arid see the bleeding clouds above it in thin lines, with one crossing it in a bar of black.
Baley mumbled, "The sun is so red."
He
heard Gladia's choked voice say drearily, "It's always red at sunset, red and dying."
Baley had a vision. The sun was moving down to the horizon because the planet's surface was moving away from it, a thousand miles an hour, spinning under that naked sun, spinning with nothing to guard the microbes called men that scurried over its spinning surface, spinning madly forever, spinning-spinning. .
It was his head that was spinning and the stone bench that was slanting beneath him and the sky heaving, blue, dark blue, and the sun was gone, with the tops of trees and the ground rushing up and Gladia screaming thinly and another sound. .
16
A Solution Is Offered
BALEY WAS aware first of enclosure, the absence of the open, and then of a face bending over him.
He stared for a moment without recognition. Then: "Daneell"
The robot's face showed no sign of relief or of any other recognizable emotion at being addressed. He said, "It is well that you have recovered consciousness, Partner Elijah. I do not believe you have suffered physical injury."
"I'm all right," said Baley testily, struggling to his elbows. "Jehoshaphat, am I in bed? What for?"
"You have been exposed to the open a number of times today. The effects upon you have been cumulative and you need rest."
"I need a few answers first." Baley looked about and tried to deny to himself that his head was spinning just a little. He did not recognize the room. The curtains were drawn. Lights were comfortably artificial. He was feeling much better. "For instance, where am I?"
"In a room of Mrs. Delmarre's mansion."
"Next, let's get something straight. What are you doing here? How did you get away from the robots I set over you?"
Daneel said, "It had seemed to me that you would be displeased at this development and yet in the interests of your safety and of my orders, I felt that I had no choice but-"
'What did you do? Jehoshaphat!"
"It seems Mrs. Delmarre attempted to view you some hours ago."
"Yes." Baley remembered Gladia saying as much earlier in the day. "I know that."
"Your order to the robots that held me prisoner was, in your
words: 'Do not allow him' (meaning myself) 'to establish contact with other humans or other robots, either by seeing or by viewing.' However, Partner Elijah, you said nothing about forbidding other humans or robots to contact me. You see the distinction?"
Baley groaned.
Daneel said, "No need for distress, Partner Elijah. The flaw in your orders was instrumental in saving your life, since it brought me to the scene. You see, when Mrs. Delmarre viewed me, being allowed to do so by my robot guardians, she asked after you and I answered, quite truthfully, that I did not know of your whereabouts, but that I could attempt to find out. She seemed anxious that I do so. I said I thought it possible you might have left the house temporarily and that I would check that matter and would she, in the meanwhile, order the robots in the room with me, to search the mansion for your presence."
'Wasn't she surprised that you didn't deliver the orders to the robots yourself?"
"I gave her the impression, I believe, that as an Auroran I was not as accustomed to robots as she was; that she might deliver the orders with greater authority and effect a more speedy consummation. Solarians, it is quite clear, are vain of their skill with robots and contemptuous of the ability of natives of other planets to handJe them. Is that not your opinion as well, Partner Elijah?"
"And she ordered them away, then?"
"With difficulty. They protested previous orders but, of course, could not state the nature thereof since you had ordered them to tell no one of my own true identity. She overrode them, although the final orders had to be thrilled out in fury."
"And then you left."
"I did, Partner Elijah."
A pity, thought Baley, that Gladia did not consider that episode important enough to relay to him when he viewed her. He said, "It took you long enough to find me, Daneel."
"The robots on Solaria have a network of information through subetheric contact. A skilled Solarian could obtain information readily, but, mediated as it is through millions of individual machines, one such as myself, without experience in the matter, must take time to unearth a single datum. It was better than an hour before the information as to your whereabouts reached me. I lost further
time by visiting Dr. Delmarre's place of business after you had departed."
"What were you doing there?"
"Pursuing researches of my own. I regret that this had to be done in your absence, but the exigencies of the investigation left me no choice."
Baley said, "Did you view Kiorissa Cantoro, or see her?" -
"I viewed her, but from another part of her building, not from our own estate. There were records at the farm I had to see. Ordinarily viewing would have been sufficient, but it might have been inconvenient to remain on our own estate since three robots knew my real nature and might easily have imprisoned me once more."
Baley felt almost well. He swung his legs out of bed and found himself in a kind of nightgown. He stared at it with distaste. "Get me my clothes."
Daneel did so.
As Baley dressed, he said, "Where's Mrs. Delmarre?"
"Under house arrest, Partner Elijah."
"What? By whose order?"
"By my order. She is confined to her bedroom under robotic guard and her right to give orders other than to meet personal needs has been neutralized."
"By yourself?"
"The robots on this estate are not aware of my identity."
Baley finished dressing. "I know the case against Gladia," he said. "She had the opportunity; more of it, in fact, than we thought at first. She did not rush to the scene at the sound of her husband's cry, as she first said. She was there all along."
"Does she claim to have witnessed the murder and seen the murderer?"
"No. She remembers nothing of the crucial moments. That happens sometimes. It turns out, also, that she has a motive."
"What was it, Partner Elijah?"
"One that I had suspected as a possibility from the first. I said to myself, if this were Earth, and Dr. Delmarre were as he was described to be and Gladia Delmarre as she seemed to be, I would say that she was in love with him, or had been, and that he was in love only with himself. The difficulty was to tell whether Solarians felt love or reacted to love in any Earthly sense. My judgment as to their
emotions and reactions wasn't to be trusted. It was why I had to see a few. Not view them, but see them."
"I do not follow you, Partner Elijah."
"I don't know if I can explain it to you. These people have their gene possibilities carefully plotted before birth and the actual gene distribution tested after birth."
"I know that."
"But genes aren't everything. Environment counts too, and environment can bend into actual psychosis where genes indicate only a potentiality for a particular psychosis. Did you notice Gladia's interest in Earth?"
"I remarked upon it, Partner Elijah, and considered it an assumed interest designed to influence your opinions."
"Suppose it were a real interest, even a fascination. Suppose there were something about Earth's crowds that excited her. Suppose she were attracted against her will by something she had been taught to consider filthy. There was possible abnormality. I had to test it by seeing Solarians and noticing how they reacted to it, and seeing her and noticing how she reacted to it. It was why I had to get away from you, Daneel, at any cost. It was why I had to abandon viewing as a method for carrying on the investigation."
"You did not explain this, Partner Elijah."
'Would the explanation have helped against what you conceived your duty under First Law to be?"
Daneel was silent.
Baley said, "The experiment worked. I saw or tried to see several people. An old sociologist tried to see me and had to give up midway. A roboticist refused to see me at all even under terrific force, The bare po
ssibility sent him into an almost infantile frenzy. He sucked his finger and wept. Dr. Delmarre's assistant was used to personal presence in the way of her profession and so she tolerated me, but at twenty feet only. Gladia, on the other hand--"
"Yes, Partner Elijah?"
"Gladia consented to see me without more than a slight hesitation. She tolerated my presence easily and actually showed signs of decreasing strain as time went on. It all fits into a pattern of psychosis. She didn't mind seeing me; she was interested in Earth; she might have felt an abnormal interest in her husband. All of it could be explained by a strong and, for this world, psychotic interest in the
personal presence of members of the opposite sex. Dr. Delmarre, himself, was not the type to encourage such a feeling or co-operate with it. It must have been very frustrating for her."
Daneel nodded. "Frustrating enough for murder in a moment of passion."
"In spite of everything, I don't think so, Daneel."
"Are you perhaps being influenced by extraneous motives of your own, Partner Elijah? Mrs. Delmarre is an attractive woman and you are an Farthman in whom a preference for the personal presence of an attractive woman is not psychotic."
"I have better reasons," said Baley uneasily. (Daneel's cool glance was too penetrating and soul-dissecting by half. Jehoshaphat! The thing was only a machine.) He said, "If she were the murderess of her husband, she would also have to be the attempted murderess of Gruer." He had almost the impulse to explain the way murder could be manipulated through robots, but held back. He was not sure how Daneel would react to a theory that made unwitting murderers of robots.
Daneel said, "And the attempted murderess of yourself as well." Baley frowned. He had had no intention of telling Daneel of the poisoned arrow that had missed; no intention of strengthening the other's already too strong protective complex vis-à-vis himself.
He said angrily, "What did Klorissa tell you?" He ought to have warned her to keep quiet, but then, how was he to know that Daneel would be about, asking questions?
Daneel said calmly, "Mrs. Cantoro had nothing to do with the matter. I witnessed the murder attempt myself."
Baley was thoroughly confused. "You were nowhere about."
Asimov, Isaac - Foundation 03 - Naked Sun Page 18