Asimov’s Future History Volume 4

by Isaac Asimov

  “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.”

  17: Conclusion of a Project

  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.