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R. Daneel said in a low voice, “You may help yourself to my serving, if you wish.”
For a moment, Baley was scandalized. Then he remembered and mumbled, “That’s bad ma
Baley ate industriously but without the relaxation that allows complete enjoyment. Carefully, he flicked an occasional glance at R. Daneel. The robot ate with precise motions of his jaws. Too precise. It didn’t look quite natural.
Strange! Now that Baley knew for a fact that R. Daneel was in truth a robot, all sorts of little items showed up clearly. For instance, there was no movement of an Adam’s apple when R. Daneel swallowed.
Yet he didn’t mind so much. Was he getting used to the creature? Suppose people started afresh on a new world (how that ran through his mind ever since Dr. Fastolfe had put it there); suppose Bentley, for instance, were to leave Earth; could he get so he didn’t mind working and living alongside robots? Why not? The Spacers themselves did it.
R. Daneel said, “Elijah, is it bad ma
“If you mean stare directly at him, of course. That’s only common sense, isn’t it? A man has a right to his privacy. Ordinary conversation is entirely in order, but you don’t peer at a man while he’s swallowing.”
“I see. Why is it then that I count eight people watching us closely, very closely?”
Baley put down his fork. He looked about as though he were searching for the salt-pinch dispenser. “I see nothing out of the ordinary.”
But he said it without conviction. The mob of diners was only a vast conglomeration of chaos to him. And when R. Daneel turned his impersonal brown eyes upon him, Baley suspected uncomfortably that those were not eyes he saw, but sca
“I am quite certain,” said R. Daneel, calmly.
“Well, then, what of it? It’s crude behavior, but what does it prove?”
“I ca
Chapter 11.
ESCAPE ALONG THE STRIPS
Baley’s grip tightened convulsively on his fork.
“Are you sure?” he asked automatically, and as he said it, he realized the uselessness of the question. You don’t ask a computer if it is sure of the answer it disgorges; not even a computer with arms and legs.
R. Daneel said, “Quite!”
“Are they close to us?”
“Not very. They are scattered.”
“All right, then.” Baley returned to his meal, his fork moving mechanically. Behind the frown on his long face, his mind worked furiously.
Suppose the incident last night had been organized by a group of anti-robot fanatics, that it had not been the spontaneous trouble it had seemed. Such a group of agitators could easily include men who had studied robots with the intensity born of deep opposition. One of them might have recognized R. Daneel for what he was. (The Commissioner had suggested that, in a way. Damn it, there were surprising depths to that man.)
It worked itself out logically. Granting they had been unable to act in an organized ma
It followed then that observers at City Hall (or perhaps agents within City Hall) would be bound to spot Baley, R. Daneel, or both before too long a time had passed. That they had done so within twenty-four hours was not surprising. They might have done so in less time if so much of Baley’s day had not been spent in Spacetown and along the motorway.
R. Daneel had finished his meal. He sat quietly waiting, his perfect hands resting lightly on the end of the table.
“Had we not better do something?” he asked.
“We’re safe here in the kitchen,” said Baley. “Now leave this to me. Please.”
Baley looked about him cautiously and it was as though he saw a kitchen for the first time.
People! Thousands of them. What was the capacity of an average kitchen? He had once seen the figure. Two thousand two hundred, he thought. This one was larger than average.
Suppose the cry, “Robot,” were sent out into the air. Suppose it were tossed among the thousands like a…
He was at a loss for a comparison, but it didn’t matter. It wouldn’t happen.
A spontaneous riot could flare anywhere, in the kitchens as easily as in the corridors or in the elevators. More easily, perhaps. There was a lack of inhibition at mealtimes, a sense of horseplay that could degenerate into something more serious at a trifle.
But a pla
No, a safe riot would have to be pla
Baley felt trapped. There were probably others waiting outside. Baley and R. Daneel were to be followed to a proper point and the fuse would be set off.
R. Daneel said, “Why not arrest them?”
“That would only start the trouble sooner. You know their faces, don’t you? You won’t forget?”
“I am not capable of forgetting.”
“Then we’ll nab them another time. For now, we’ll break their net. Follow me. Do exactly as I do.”
He rose, turned his dish carefully upside down, centering it on the movable disc from below which it had risen. He put his fork back in its recess. R. Daneel, watching, matched his action. The dishes and utensils dropped out of sight.
R. Daneel said, “They are getting up, too.”
“All right. It’s my feeling they won’t get too close. Not here.”
The two moved into line now, drifting toward an exit where the click-click-click of the tags sounded ritualistically, each click recording the expenditure of a ration unit.
Baley looked back through the steamy haze and the noise and, with incongruous sharpness, thought of a visit to the City Zoo with Ben six or seven years ago. No, eight, because Ben had just passed his eighth birthday then. (Jehoshaphat! Where did the time go?)
It had been Ben’s first visit and he had been excited. After all, he had never actually seen a cat or a dog before. Then, on top of that, there was the bird cage! Even Baley himself, who had seen it a dozen times before, was not immune to its fascination.
There is something about the first sight of living objects hurtling through air that is incomparably startling. It was feeding time in the sparrow cage and an attendant was dumping cracked oats into a long trough (human beings had grown used to yeast substitutes, but animals, more conservative in their way, insisted on real grain).
The sparrows flocked down in what seemed like hundreds. Wing to wing, with an ear-splitting twitter, they lined the trough…
That was it; that was the picture that came to Baley’s mind as he looked back at the kitchen he was leaving. Sparrows at the trough. The thought repelled him.
He thought: Jehoshaphat, there must be a better way.
But what better way? What was wrong with this way? It had never bothered him before.