The Caves of Steel trs-1

by Isaac Asimov

“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 pack. 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 R 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?”

&
nbsp; 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 sleep or 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 right 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 left 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.”

  Chapter 16.

  QUESTIONS CONCERNING A MOTIVE

  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 right 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 o
f 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.”