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“Are you all right? You aren’t in trouble?”
“I’m obviously all right, Jessie. Now stop it.”
“Oh, Lije, I’ve been so worried.”
“What about?” he asked tightly. “You know. Your friend.”
“What about him?”
“I told you last night. There’ll be trouble.”
“Now, that’s nonsense. I’m keeping Ben with me for tonight and you go to bed. Good-by, dear.”
He broke co
Ben was standing in the middle of the room when Baley returned. One of his contact lenses was neatly pocketed in a little suction cup. The other was still in his eye.
Ben said, “Gosh, Dad, isn’t there any water in the place? Mr. Olivaw says I can’t go to the Personal.”
“He’s right. You can’t. Put that thing back in your eye, Ben. It won’t hurt you to sleep with them for one night.”
“All right.” Ben put it back, put away his suction cup and climbed into bed. “Boy, what a mattress!”
Baley said to R. Daneel. “I suppose you won’t mind sitting up.”
“Of course not. I was interested, by the way, in the queer glass Bentley wears close to his eyes. Do all Earthmen wear them?”
“No. Just some,” said Baley, absently. “I don’t, for instance.”
“For what reason is it worn?”
Baley was too absorbed with his own thoughts to answer. His own uneasy thoughts.
The lights were out.
Baley remained wakeful. He was dimly aware of Ben’s breathing as it turned deep and regular and became a bit rough. When he turned his head, he grew somehow conscious of R. Daneel, sitting in a chair with grave immobility, face turned toward the door.
Then he fell asleep, and when he slept, he dreamed.
He dreamed Jessie was falling into the fission chamber of a nuclear power plant, falling and falling. She held out her arms to him, shrieking, but he could only stand frozenly just outside a scarlet line and watch her distorted figure turn as it fell, growing smaller until it was only a dot.
He could only watch her, in the dream, knowing that it was he, himself, who had pushed her.
Chapter 12.
WORDS FROM AN EXPERT
Elijah Baley looked up as Commissioner Julius Enderby entered the office. He nodded wearily.
The Commissioner looked at the clock and grunted, “Don’t tell me you’ve been here all night!”
Baley said, “I won’t.”
The Commissioner said in a low voice, “Any trouble last night?” Baley shook his head.
The Commissioner said, “I’ve been thinking that I could be minimizing the possibility of riots. If there’s anything to—”
Baley said tightly, “For God’s sake, Commissioner, if anything happened, I’d tell you. There was no trouble of any sort.”
“All right.” The Commissioner moved away, passing beyond the door that marked off the unusual privacy that became his exalted position.
Baley looked after him and thought: He must have slept last night.
Baley bent to the routine report he was trying to write as a cover-up for the real activities of the last two days, but the words he had tapped out by finger touch blurred and danced. Slowly, he became aware of an object standing by his desk.
He lifted his head. “What do you want?”
It was R. Sammy. Baley thought: Julius’s private flunky. It pays to be a Commissioner.
R. Sammy said through his fatuous grin, “The Commissioner wants to see you, Lije. He says right away.”
Baley waved his hand. “He just saw me. Tell him I’ll be in later.”
R. Sammy said, “He says right away.”
“All right. All right. Go away.”
The robot backed away, saying, “The Commissioner wants to see you right away, Lije. He says right away.”
“Jehoshaphat,” said Baley between his teeth. “I’m going. I’m going.” He got up from his desk, headed for the office, and R. Sammy was silent.
Baley said as he entered, “Damn it, Commissioner, don’t send that thing after me, will you?”
But the Commissioner only said, “Sit down, Lije. Sit down.” Baley sat down and stared. Perhaps he had done old Julius an injustice. Perhaps the man hadn’t slept after all. He looked fairly beat.
The Commissioner was tapping the paper before him. “There’s a record of a call you made to a Dr. Gerrigel at Washington by insulated beam.”
“That’s right, Commissioner.”
“There’s no record of the conversation, naturally, since it was insulated. What’s it all about?”
“I’m after background information.”
“He’s a roboticist, isn’t he?”
“That’s right.”
The Commissioner put out a lower lip and suddenly looked like a child about to pout. “But what’s the point? What kind of information are you after?”
“I’m not sure, Commissioner. I just have a feeling that in a case like this, information on robots might help.” Baley clamped his mouth shut after that. He wasn’t going to be specific, and that was that.
“I wouldn’t, Lije. I wouldn’t. I don’t think it’s wise.”
“What’s your objection, Commissioner?”
“The fewer the people who know about all this, the better.”
“I’ll tell him as little as I can. Naturally.”
“I still don’t think it’s wise.”
Baley was feeling just sufficiently wretched to lose patience.
He said, “Are you ordering me not to see him?”
“No. No. You do as you see fit. You’re heading this investigation. Only…”
“Only what?”
The Commissioner shook his head. “Nothing.—Where is he? You know who I mean.”
Baley did. He said, “Daneel’s still at the files.”
The Commissioner paused a long moment, then said, “We’re not making much progress, you know.”
“We’re not making any so far. Still, things may change.”
“All right, then,” said the Commissioner, but he didn’t look as though he really thought it were all right.
R. Daneel was at Baley’s desk, when the latter returned.
“Well, and what have you got?” Baley asked gruffly.
“I have completed my first, rather hasty, search through the files, partner Elijah, and I have located two of the people who tried to track us last night and who, moreover, were at the shoe store during the former incident.”
“Let’s see.”
R. Daneel placed the small, stamp-size cards before Baley. They were mottled with the small dots that served as code. The robot also produced a portable decoder and placed one of the cards into an appropriate slot. The dots possessed electrical conduction properties different from that of the card as a whole. The electric field passing through the card was therefore distorted in a highly specific ma
Baley read through the material stolidly. The first person was Francis Clousarr, age thirty-three at time of arrest two years before; cause of arrest, inciting to riot; employee at New York Yeast; home address, so-and-so; parentage, so-and-so; hair, eyes, distinguishing marks, educational history, employment history, psychoanalytic profile, physical profile, data here, data there, and finally reference to a photo in the rogues’ gallery.
“You checked the photograph?” asked Baley. “Yes, Elijah.”
The second person was Gerhard Paul. Baley glanced at the material on that card and said, “This is all no good.”
R. Daneel said, “I am sure that ca
“We’d get nothing out of them.”
“They were there, both at the shoe store and in the kitchen. They ca