The Caves of Steel

“Just being there’s no crime. Besides which, they can deny it. They can just say they weren’t there. It’s as simple as that. How can we prove they’re lying?”

“I saw them.”

“That’s no proof,” said Baley, savagely. “No court, if it ever came to that, would believe that you could remember two faces in a blur of a million.”

“It is obvious that I can.”

“Sure. Tell them what you are. As soon as you do that, you’re no witness. Your kind have no status in any court of law on Earth.”

R. Daneel said, “I take it, then, that you have changed your mind.”

“What do you mean?”

“Yesterday, in the kitchen, you said there was no need to arrest them. You said that as long as I remembered their faces, we could arrest them at any time.”

“Well, I didn’t think it through,” said Baley. “I was crazy. It can’t be done.”

“Not even for psychological reasons? They would not know we had no legal proof of their complicity in conspiracy.”

Baley said, tensely, “Look, I am expecting Dr. Gerrigel of Washington in half an hour. Do you mind waiting till he’s been here and gone? Do you mind?”

“I will wait,” said R. Daneel.

Anthony Gerrigel was a precise and very polite man of middle height, who looked far from being one of the most erudite roboticists on Earth. He was nearly twenty minutes late, it turned out, and quite apologetic about it. Baley, white with an anger born of apprehension, shrugged off the apologies gracelessly. He checked his reservation on Conference Room D, repeated his instructions that they were not to be disturbed on any account for an hour, and led Dr. Gerrigel and R. Daneel down the corridor, up a ramp, and through a door that led to one of the spy-beam-insulated chambers.

Baley checked the walls carefully before sitting down, listening to the soft burr of the pulsometer in his hand, waiting for any fading of the steady sound which would indicate a break, even a small one, in the insulation. He turned it on the ceiling, floor, and, with particular care, on the door. There was no break.

Dr. Gerrigel smiled a little. He looked like a man who never smiled more than a little. He was dressed with a neatness that could only be described as fussy. His iron-gray hair was smoothed carefully back and his face looked pink and freshly washed. He sat with a posture of prim stiffness as though repeated maternal advice in his younger years concerning the desirability of good posture had rigidified his spine forever.

He said to Baley, “You make this all seem very formidable.”

“It’s quite important, Doctor. I need information about robots that only you can give me, perhaps. Anything we say here, of course, is top secret and the City will expect you to forget it all when you leave.” Baley looked at his watch.

The little smile on the roboticist’s face winked away. He said, “Let me explain why I am late.” The matter obviously weighed upon him. “I decided not to go by air. I get airsick.”

“That’s too bad,” said Baley. He put away the pulsometer, after checking its standard settings to make last-minute certain that there was nothing wrong with it, and sat down.

“Or at least not exactly airsick, but nervous. A mild agoraphobia. It’s nothing particularly abnormal, but there it is. So I took the expressways.”

Baley felt a sudden sharp interest. “Agoraphobia?”

“I make it sound worse than it is,” the roboticist said at once. “It’s just the feeling you get in a plane. Have you ever been in one, Mr. Baley?”

“Several times.”

“Then you must know what I mean. It’s that feeling of being surrounded by nothing; of being separated from—from empty air by a mere inch of metal. It’s very uncomfortable.”

“So you took the expressway?”

“Yes.”

“All the way from Washington to New York?”

“Oh, I’ve done it before. Since they built the Baltimore-Philadelphia tu

So it was. Baley had never made the trip himself, but he was perfectly aware that it was possible. Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York had grown, in the last two centuries, to the point where all nearly touched. The Four-City Area was almost the official name for the entire stretch of coast, and there were a considerable number of people who favored administrational consolidation and the formation of a single super-City. Baley disagreed with that, himself. New York City by itself was almost too large to be handled by a centralized government. A larger City, with over fifty million population, would break down under its own weight.

“The trouble was,” Dr. Gerrigel was saying, “that I missed a co

“Don’t worry about that, Doctor. What you say, though, is interesting. In view of your dislike for planes, what would you say to going outside City limits on foot, Dr. Gerrigel?”

“For what reason?” He looked startled and more than a little apprehensive.

“It’s just a rhetorical question. I’m not suggesting that you really should. I want to know how the notion strikes you, that’s all.”

“It strikes me very unpleasantly.”

“Suppose you had to leave the City at night and walk cross country for half a mile or more.”

“I—I don’t think I could be persuaded to.”

“No matter how important the necessity?”

“If it were to save my life or the lives of my family, I might try.…” He looked embarrassed. “May I ask the point of these questions, Mr. Baley?”

“I’ll tell you. A serious crime has been committed, a particularly disturbing murder. I’m not at liberty to give you the details. There is a theory, however, that the murderer, in order to commit the crime, did just what we were discussing; he crossed open country at night and alone. I was just wondering what kind of man could do that.”

Dr. Gerrigel shuddered. “No one I know. Certainly not I. Of course, among millions I suppose you could find a few hardy individuals.”

“But you wouldn’t say it was a very likely thing for a human being to do?”

“No. Certainly not likely.”

“In fact, if there’s any other explanation for the crime, any other conceivable explanation, it should be considered.”

Dr. Gerrigel looked more uncomfortable than ever as he sat bolt upright with his well-kept hands precisely folded in his lap. “Do you have an alternate explanation in mind?”

“Yes. It occurs to me that a robot, for instance, would have no difficulty at all in crossing open country.”

Dr. Gerrigel stood up. “Oh, my dear sir!”

“What’s wrong?”

“You mean a robot may have committed the crime?”

“Why not?”

“Murder? Of a human being?”

“Yes. Please sit down, Doctor.”

The roboticist did as he was told. He said, “Mr. Baley, there are two acts involved: walking cross country, and murder. A human being could commit the latter easily, but would find difficulty in doing the former. A robot could do the former easily, but the latter act would be completely impossible. If you’re going to replace an unlikely theory by an impossible one—”

“Impossible is a hell of a strong word, Doctor.”

“You’ve heard of the First Law of Robotics, Mr. Baley?”

“Sure. I can even quote it: A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.” Baley suddenly pointed a finger at the roboticist and went on, “Why can’t a robot be built without the First Law? What’s so sacred about it?”

Dr. Gerrigel looked startled, then tittered, “Oh, Mr. Baley.”

“Well, what’s the answer?”

“Surely, Mr. Baley, if you even know a little about robotics, you must know the gigantic task involved, both mathematically and electronically, in building a positronic brain.”

“I have an idea,” said Baley. He remembered well his visit to a robot factory once in the way of business. He had seen their library of book-films, long ones, each of which contained the mathematical analysis of a single type of positronic brain. It took more than an hour for the average such film to be viewed at standard sca