by Isaac Asimov
“So you see, we of Spacetown had already succeeded without knowing it. We ourselves, rather than anything we tried to introduce, were the unsettling factor. We crystallized the romantic impulses on Earth into Medievahism and induced an organization in them. After all, it is the Medievalist who wishes to break the cake of custom, not the City officials who have most to gain from preserving the status quo. If we leave Spacetown now, if we do not irritate the Medievalist by our continued presence until he has committed himself to Earth, and only Earth, past redemption, if we leave behind a few obscure individuals or robots such as myself who, together with sympathetic Earthmen such as yourself, can establish the training schools for emigrants that I spoke of, the Medievalist will eventually turn away from Earth. He will need robots and will either get them from us or build his own. He will develop a C/Fe culture to suit himself.”
It was a long speech for R. Daneel. He must have realized that himself, for, after another pause, he said, “I tell you all this to explain why it is necessary to do something that may hurt you.”
Baley thought bitterly: A robot must not hurt a human being, unless he can think of a way to prove it is for the human being’s ultimate good after all.
Baley said, “Just a minute. Let me introduce a practical note. You’ll go back to your worlds and say that an Earthman killed a Spacer and is unpunished. The Outer Worlds will demand an indemnity from Earth, and I warn you, Earth is no longer in a mood to endure such treatment. There will be trouble.”
“I am sure that will not happen, Elijah. The elements on our planets that would be most interested in pressing for an indemnity would be also most interested in forcing an end to Spacetown. We can easily offer the latter as an inducement to abandon the former. It is what we plan to do, anyway. Earth will be left in peace.”
And Baley broke out, his voice hoarse with sudden despair, “And where does that leave me? The Commissioner will drop the Sarton investigation at once if Spacetown is willing, but the R. Sammy thing will have to continue, since it points to corruption inside the Department. He’ll be in any minute with a ream of evidence against me. I know that. It’s been arranged. I’ll be declassified, Daneel. There’s Jessie to consider. She’ll be smeared as a criminal. There’s Bentley–”
R. Daneel said, “You must not think, Elijah, that I do not understand the position in which you find yourself. In the service of humanity’s good, the minor wrongs must be tolerated. Dr. Sarton has a surviving wife, two children, parents, a sister, many friends. All must grieve at his death and be saddened at the thought that his murderer has not been found and punished.”
“Then why not stay and find him?”
“It is no longer necessary.”
Baley said, bitterly, “Why not admit that the entire investigation was an excuse to study us under field conditions? You never gave a damn who killed Dr. Sarton.”
“We would have liked to know,” said R. Daneel, coolly, “but we were never under any delusions as to which was more important, an individual or humanity. To continue the investigation now would involve interfering with a situation which we now find satisfactory. We could not foretell what damage we might do.”
“You mean the murderer might turn out to be a prominent Medievalist and right now the Spacers don’t want to do anything to antagonize their new friends.”
“It is not as I would say it, but there is truth in your words.”
“Where’s your justice circuit, Daneel? Is this justice?”
“There are degrees of justice, Elijah. When the lesser is incompatible with the greater, the lesser must give way.”
It was as though Baley’s mind were circling the impregnable logic of R. Daneel’s positronic brain, searching for a loophole, a weakness.
He said, “Have you no personal curiosity, Daneel? You’ve called yourself a detective. Do you know what that implies? Do you understand that an investigation is more than a job of work? It is a challenge. Your mind is pitted against that of the criminal. It is a clash of intellect. Can you abandon the battle and admit defeat?”
“If no worthy end is served by a continuation, certainly.”
“Would you feel no loss? No wonder? Would there be no little speck of dissatisfaction? Frustrated curiosity?”
Baley’s hopes, not strong in the first place, weakened as he spoke. The word “curiosity,” second time repeated, brought back his own remarks to Francis Clousarr four hours before. He had known well enough then the qualities that marked off a man from a machine. Curiosity had to be one of them. A six-week-old kitten was curious, but how could there be a curious machine, be it ever so humanoid?
R. Daneel echoed those thoughts by saying, “What do you mean by curiosity?”
Baley put the best face on it. “Curiosity is the name we give to a desire to extend one’s knowledge.”
“Such a desire exists within me, when the extension of knowledge is necessary for the performance of an assigned task.”
“Yes,” said Baley, sarcastically, “as when you ask questions about Bentley’s contact lenses in order to learn more of Earth’s peculiar customs.”
“Precisely,” said R. Daneel, with no sign of any awareness of sarcasm. “Aimless extension of knowledge, however, which is what I think you really mean by the term curiosity, is merely inefficiency. I am designed to avoid inefficiency.”
It was in that way that the “sentence” he had been waiting for came to Elijah Baley, and the opaque jelly shuddered and settled and changed into luminous transparency.
While R. Daneel spoke, Baley’s mouth opened and stayed so.
It could not all have burst full-grown into his mind. Things did not work so. Somewhere, deep inside his unconscious, he had built a case, built it carefully and in detail, but had been brought up short by a single inconsistency. One inconsistency that could be neither jumped oven, burrowed under, nor shunted aside. While that inconsistency existed, the case remained buried below his thoughts, beyond the reach of his conscious probing.
But the sentence had come; the inconsistency had vanished; the case was his.
The glare of mental light appeared to have stimulated Baley mightily. At least he suddenly knew what R. Daneel’s weakness must be, the weakness of any thinking machine. He thought feverishly, hopefully: The thing must be literal-minded.
He said, “Then Project Spacetown is concluded as of today and with it the Sarton investigation. Is that it?”
“That is the decision of our people at Spacetown,” agreed R. Daneel, calmly.
“But today is not yet over.” Baley looked at his watch. It was 22:30. “There is an hour and a half until midnight.”
R. Daneel said nothing. He seemed to consider.
Baley spoke rapidly. “Until midnight, the project continues then. You are my partner and the investigation continues.” He was becoming almost telegraphic in his haste. “Let us go on as before. Let me work. It will do your people no harm. It will do them great good. My word upon it. If, in your judgment, I am doing harm, stop me. It is only an hour and a half I ask.”
R. Daneel said, “What you say is correct. Today is not over. I had not thought of that, partner Elijah.”
Baley was “partner Elijah” again.
He grinned, and said, “Didn’t Dr. Fastolfe mention a film of the scene of the murder when I was in Spacetown?”
“He did,” said R. Daneel.
Baley said, “Can you get a copy of the film?”
“Yes, partner Elijah.”
“I mean now! Instantly!”
“In ten minutes, if I can use the Department transmitter.”
The process took less time than that. Baley stared at the small aluminum block he held in his trembling hands. Within it the subtle forces transmitted from Spacetown had strongly fixed a certain atomic pattern.
And at that moment, Commissioner Julius Enderby stood in the doorway. He saw Baley and a certain anxiety passed from his round face, leaving behind it a look of growing thunder.
He said, uncertainly, “Look here, Lije, you’re taking a devil of a time, eating.”
“I was bone-tired, Commissioner. Sorry if I’ve delayed you.”
“I wouldn’t mind, but... You’d better come to my office.”
Baley’s eyes flicked toward R. Daneel, but met no answering look. Together they moved out of the lunchroom.
Julius Enderby tramped the floor before his desk, up and down, up and down. Baley watched him, himself fan from composed. Occasionally, he glanced at his watch.
22:45.
The Commissioner moved his glasses up onto his forehead and rubbed his eyes with thumb and forefinger. He left red splotches in the flesh around them, then restored the glasses to their place, blinking at Baley from behind them.
“Lije,” he said suddenly, “when were you last in the Williamsburg power plant?”
Baley said, “Yesterday, after I left the office. I should judge at about eighteen or shortly thereafter.”
The Commissioner shook his head. “Why didn’t you say so?”
“I was going to. I haven’t given an official statement yet.”
“What were you doing there?”
“Just passing through on my way to our temporary sleeping quarters.”
The Commissioner stopped short, standing before Baley, and said, “That’s no good, Lije. No one just passes through a power plant to get somewhere else.”
Baley shrugged. There was no point in going through the story of the pursuing Medievalists, of the dash along the strips. Not now.
He said, “If you’re trying to hint that I had an opportunity to get the alpha-sprayer that knocked out R. Sammy, I’ll remind you that Daneel was with me and will testify that I went right through the plant without stopping and that I had no alpha-sprayer on me when I left.”
Slowly, the Commissioner sat down. He did not look in R. Daneel’s direction or offer to speak to him. He put his pudgy white hands on the desk before him and regarded them with a look of acute misery on his face.
He said, “Lije, I don’t know what to say or what to think. And it’s no use having your–your partner as alibi. He can’t give evidence.”
“I still deny that I took an alpha-sprayer.”
The Commissioner’s fingers intertwined and writhed. He said, “Lije, why did Jessie come to see you here this afternoon?”
“You asked me that before, Commissioner. Same answer. Family matters.”
“I’ve got information from Francis Clousarr, Lije.”
“What kind of information?”
“He claims that a Jezebel Baley is a member of a Medievalist society dedicated to the overthrow of the government by force.”
“Are you sure he has the right person? There are many Baleys.”
“There aren’t many Jezebel Baleys.”
“He used her name, did he?”
“He said Jezebel. I heard him, Lije. I’m not giving you a secondhand report.”
“All right. Jessie was a member of a harmless lunatic-fringe organization. She never did anything but attend meetings and feel devilish about it.”
“It won’t look that way to a board of review, Lije.”
“You mean I’m going to be suspended and held on suspicion of destroying government property in the form of R. Sammy?”
“I hope not, Lije, but it looks awfully bad. Everyone knows you didn’t like R. Sammy. Your wife was seen talking to him this afternoon. She was in tears and some of her words were heard. They were harmless in themselves, but two and two can be added up, Lije. You might feel it was dangerous to leave him in a position to talk. And you had an opportunity to obtain the weapon.”
Baley interrupted. “If I were wiping out all evidence against Jessie, would I bring in Francis Clousarr? He seems to know a lot more about her than R. Sammy could have. Another thing. I passed through the power plant eighteen hours before R. Sammy spoke to Jessie. Did I know that long in advance that I would have to destroy him and pick up an alpha-sprayer out of clairvoyance?”
The Commissioner said, “Those are good points. I’ll do my best. I’m sorry about this, Lije.”
“Yes? Do you really believe I didn’t do it, Commissioner?”
Enderby said slowly, “I don’t know what to think, Lije. I’ll be frank with you.”
“Then I’ll tell you what to think. Commissioner, this is all a careful and elaborate frame.”
The Commissioner stiffened. “Now, wait, Lije. Don’t strike out blindly. You won’t get any sympathy with that line of defense. It’s been used by too many bad eggs.”
“I’m not after sympathy. I’m just telling the truth. I’m being taken out of circulation to prevent me from learning the facts about the Sarton murder. Unfortunately for my framing pal, it’s too late for that.”
“What!”
Baley looked at his watch. It was 23:00.
He said, “I know who is framing me, and I know how Dr. Sarton was killed and by whom, and I have one hour to tell you about it, catch the man, and end the investigation.”
18: End of an Investigation
COMMISSIONER ENDERBY’S EYES narrowed and he glared at Baley. “What are you going to do? You tried something like this in Fastolfe’s dome yesterday morning. Not again. Please.”
Baley nodded. “I know. I was wrong the first time.”
He thought, fiercely: Also the second time. But not now, not this time, not...
The thought faded out, spluttering like a micropile under a positronic damper.
He said, “Judge for yourself, Commissioner. Grant that the evidence against me has been planted. Go that far with me and see where it takes you. Ask yourself who could have planted that evidence. Obviously only someone who’d known I was in the Williamsburg plant yesterday evening.”
“All right. Who would that be?”
Baley said, “I was followed out of the kitchen by a Medievalist group. I lost them, or I thought I did, but obviously at least one of them saw me pass through the plant. My only purpose in doing so, you understand, was to help me lose them.”
The Commissioner considered. “Clousarr? Was he with them?”
Baley nodded.
Enderby said, “All right, we’ll question him. If he’s got anything in him, we’ll have it out of him. What more can I do, Lije?”
“Wait, now. Don’t quit on me. Do you see my point?”
“Well, let’s see if I do?” The Commissioner clasped his hands. “Clousarr saw you go into the Williamsburg power plant, or else someone in his group did and passed the information along to him. He decided to utilize that fact to get you into trouble and off the investigation. Is that what you’re saying?”
“It’s close to it.”
“Good.” The Commissioner seemed to warm to the task. “He knew your wife was a member of his organization, naturally, and so he knew you wouldn’t face a really close probe into your private life. He thought you would resign rather than fight circumstantial evidence. By the way, Lije, what about a resignation? I mean, if things looked really bad. We could keep things quiet–”
“Not in a million years, Commissioner.”
Enderby shrugged. “Well, where was I? Oh, yes, so he got an alpha-sprayer, presumably through a confederate in the plant, and had another confederate arrange the destruction of R. Sammy.” His fingers drummed lightly on the desk. “No good, Lije.”
“Why not?”
“Too farfetched. Too many confederates. And he has a cast-iron alibi for the night and morning of the Spacetown murder, by the way. We checked that almost right away, though I was the only one who knew the reason for checking that particular time.”
Baley said, “I never said it was Clousarr, Commissioner. You did. It could be anyone in the Medievalist organization. Clousarr is just the owner of a face that Daneel happened to recognize. I don’t even think he’s particularly important in the organization. Though there is one queer thing about him.”
“What?” asked Enderby, suspiciously.
“He did
know Jessie was a member. Does he know every member in the organization, do you suppose?”
“I don’t know. He knew about Jessie, anyway. Maybe she was important because she was the wife of a policeman. Maybe he remembered her for that reason.”
“You say he came right out and said that Jezebel Baley was a member. Just like that? Jezebel Baley?”
Enderby nodded. “I keep telling you I heard him.”
“That’s the funny thing, Commissioner. Jessie hasn’t used her full first name since before Bentley was born. Not once. I know that for certain. She joined the Medievalists after she dropped her full name. I know that for sure, too. How would Clousarr come to know her as Jezebel, then?”
The Commissioner flushed and said, hastily, “Oh well, if it comes to that, he probably said Jessie. I just filled it in automatically and gave her full name. In fact, I’m sure of that. He said Jessie.”
“Until now you were quite sure he said Jezebel. I asked several times.”
The Commissioner’s voice nose. “You’re not saying I’m a liar, are you?”
“I’m just wondering if Clousarr, perhaps, said nothing at all. I’m wondering if you made that up. You’ve known Jessie for twenty years, and you knew her name was Jezebel.”
“You’re off your head, man.”
“Am I? Where were you after hunch today? You were out of your office for two hours at least.”
“Are you questioning me?”
“I’ll answer for you, too. You were in the Williamsburg power plant.”
The Commissioner rose from his seat. His forehead glistened and there were dry, white flecks at the corners of his hips. “What the hell are you trying to say?”
“Weren’t you?”
“Baley, you’re suspended. Hand me your credentials.”
“Not yet. Hear me out.”
“I don’t intend to. You’re guilty. You’re guilty as the devil, and what gets me is your cheap attempt to make me, look as though I were conspiring against you.” He host his voice momentarily in a squeak of indignation. He managed to gasp out, “In fact, you’re under arrest.”
