Asimov's Future History Volume 4 (2 page)

The Commissioner was going through some documents as Baley entered, stopping occasionally to make notations.

He said, “That was a fairly giant-size blooper you pulled out in Spacetown.”

It flooded back strongly. The verbal duel with Fastolfe.

His long face took on a lugubrious expression of chagrin. “I’ll admit I did, Commissioner. I’m sorry.”

Enderby looked up. His expression was keen through his glasses. He seemed more himself than at any time these thirty hours. He said, “No real matter. Fastolfe didn’t seem to mind, so we’ll forget it. Unpredictable, these Spacers. You don’t deserve your luck, Lije. Next time you talk it over with me before you make like a one-man subether hero,”

Baley nodded. The whole thing rolled off his shoulders. He had tried a grandstand stunt and it hadn’t worked. Okay. He was a little surprised that he could be so casual about it, but there it was.

He said, “Look, Commissioner. I want to have a two-man apartment assigned to Daneel and myself. I’m not taking him home tonight.”

“What’s all this?”

“The news is out that he’s a robot. Remember? Maybe nothing will happen, but if there is a riot, I don’t want my family in the middle of it.”

“Nonsense, Lije. I’ve had the thing checked. There’s no such rumor in the City.”

“Jessie got the story somewhere, Commissioner.”

“Well, there’s no organized rumor. Nothing dangerous. I’ve been checking this ever since I got off the trimensic at Fastolfe’s dome. It was why I left. I had to track it down, naturally, and fast. Anyway, here are the reports. See for yourself. There’s Doris Gillid’s report. She went through a dozen Women’s Personals in different parts of the City. You know Doris. She’s a competent girl. Well, nothing showed. Nothing showed anywhere.”

“Then how did Jessie get the rumor, Commissioner?”

“It can be explained. R. Daneel made a show of himself in the shoe store. Did he really pull a blaster, Lije, or were you stretching it a little?”

“He really pulled one. Pointed it, too.”

Commissioner Enderby shook his head. “All right. Someone recognized him. As a robot, I mean.”

“Hold on,” said Baley, indignantly. “You can’t tell him for a robot.”

“Why not?”

“Could you? I couldn’t.”

“What does that prove? We’re no experts. Suppose there was a technician out of the Westchester robot factories in the crowd. A professional. A man who has spent his life building and designing robots. He notices something queer about R. Daneel. Maybe in the way he talks or holds himself. He speculates about it. Maybe he tells his wife. She tells a few friends. Then it dies. It’s too improbable. People don’t believe it. Only it got to Jessie before it died.”

“Maybe,” said Baley, doubtfully. “But how about an assignment to a bachelor room for two, anyway?”

The Commissioner shrugged, lifted the intercom. After a while, he said, “Section Q-27 is all they can do. It’s not a very good neighborhood.”

“It’ll do,” said Baley.

“‘Where’s R. Daneel now, by the way?”

“He’s at our record files. He’s trying to collect information on Medievalist agitators.”

“Good Lord, there are millions.”

“I know, but it keeps him happy.”

Baley was nearly at the door, when he turned, half on impulse, and said, “Commissioner, did Dr. Sarton ever talk to you about Spacetown’s program? I mean, about introducing the C/Fe culture?”

“The what?”

“Introducing robots.”

“Occasionally.” The Commissioner’s tone was not one of any particular interest.

“Did he ever explain what Spacetown’s point was?”

“Oh, improve health, raise the standard of living. The usual talk; it didn’t impress me. Oh, I agreed with him. I nodded my head and all that. What could I do? It’s just a matter of humoring them and hoping they’ll keep within reason in their notions. Maybe some day..

Baley waited but he didn’t say what maybe-some-day might bring.

Baley said, “Did he ever mention anything about emigration?”

“Emigration! Never. Letting an Earthman into an Outer World is like finding a diamond asteroid in the rings of Saturn.”

“I mean emigration to new worlds.”

But the Commissioner answered that one with a simple stare of incredulousness.

Baley chewed that for a moment, then said with sudden bluntness, “What’s cerebroanalysis, Commissioner? Ever hear of it?”

The Commissioner’s round face didn’t pucker; his eyes didn’t blink. He said evenly, “No, what’s it supposed to be?”

“Nothing. Just picked it up.”

He left the office and at his desk continued thinking. Certainly, the Commissioner wasn’t
that
good an actor. Well, then...

At 16:05 Baley called Jessie and told her he wouldn’t be home that night nor probably any night for a while. It took a while after that to disengage her.

“Lije, is there trouble? Are you in danger?”

A policeman is always in a certain amount of danger, he explained lightly. It didn’t satisfy her. “Where will you be staying?”

He didn’t tell her. “If you’re going to be lonely tonight,” he said, “stay at your mother’s.” He broke connections abruptly, which was probably just as well.

At 16:20 he made a call to Washington. It took a certain length of time to reach the man he wanted and an almost equally long time to convince him he ought to make an air trip to New York the next day. By 16:40, he had succeeded.

At 16:55 the Commissioner left, passing him with an uncertain smile. The day shift left en masse. The sparser population that filled the offices in the evening and through the night made its way in and greeted him in varied tones of surprise.

R. Daneel came to his desk with a sheaf of papers.

“And those are?” asked Baley.

“A list of men and women who might belong to a Medievalist organization.”

“How many does the list include?”

“Over a million,” said R. Daneel. “These are just part of them.”

“Do you expect to check them all, Daneel?”

“Obviously that would be impractical, Elijah.”

“You see, Daneel, almost all Earthmen are Medievalists in one way or another. The Commissioner, Jessie, myself. Look at the Commissioner’s–” (He almost said, “spectacles,” then remembered that Earthmen must stick together and that the Commissioner’s face must be protected in the figurative as well as the literal sense.) He concluded, lamely, “eye ornaments.”

“Yes,” said R. Daneel, “I had noticed them, but thought it indelicate, perhaps, to refer to them. I have not seen such ornaments on other City dwellers.”

“It is a very old-fashioned sort of thing.”

“Does it serve a purpose of any sort?”

Baley said, abruptly, “How did you get your list?”

“It was a machine that did it for me. Apparently, one sets it for a particular type of offense and it does the rest. I let it scan all disorderly conduct cases involving robots over the past twenty-five years. Another machine scanned all City newspapers over an equal period for the names of those involved in unfavorable statements concerning robots or men of the Outer Worlds. It is amazing what can be done in three hours. The machine even eliminated the names of non-survivors from the lists.”

“You are amazed? Surely you’ve got computers on the Outer Worlds?”

“Of many sorts, certainly. Very advanced ones. Still, none are as massive and complex as the ones here. You must remember, of course, that even the largest Outer World scarcely has the population of one of your Cities and extreme complexity is not necessary.”

Baley said, “Have you ever been on Aurora?”

“No,” said R. Daneel, “I was assembled here on Earth.”

“Then how do you know about Outer World computers?”

“But surely that is obvious, partner Elijah. My data store is drawn from that of the late Dr. Sarton. You may take it for granted that it is rich in factual material concerning the Outer Worlds.”

“I see. Can you eat, Daneel?”

“I am nuclear-powered. I had thought you were aware of that.”

“I’m perfectly aware of it. I didn’t ask if you needed to eat. I asked if you
could
eat. If you could put food in your mouth, chew it, and swallow it. I should think that would be an important item in seeming to be a man.”

“I see your point. Yes, I can perform the mechanical operations of chewing and swallowing. My capacity is, of course, quite limited, and I would have to remove the ingested material from what you might call my stomach sooner or later.”

“All right. You can regurgitate, or whatever you do, in the quiet of our room tonight. The point is that I’m hungry. I’ve missed lunch, damn it, and I want you with me when I eat. And you can’t sit there and
not
eat without attracting attention. So if you can eat, that’s what I want to hear. Let’s go!”

Section kitchens were the same all over the City. What’s more, Baley had been in Washington, Toronto, Los Angeles, London, and Budapest in the way of business, and they had been the same there, too. Perhaps it had been different in Medieval times when languages had varied and dietaries as well. Nowadays, yeast products were just the same from Shanghai to Tashkent and from Winnipeg to Buenos Aires; and English might not be the “English” of Shakespeare or Churchill, but it was the final potpourri that was current over all the continents and, with some modification, on the Outer Worlds as well.

But language and dietary aside, there were the deeper similarities. There was always that particular odor, undefinable but completely characteristic of “kitchen.” There was the waiting triple line moving slowly in, converging at the door and splitting up again, right, left, center. There was the rumble of humanity, speaking and moving, and the sharper clatter of plastic on plastic. There was the gleam of simulated wood, highly polished, highlights on glass, long tables, the touch of steam in the air.

Baley inched slowly forward as the line moved (with all possible staggering of meal hours, a wait of at least ten minutes was almost unavoidable) and said to R. Daneel in sudden curiosity, “Can you smile?”

R. Daneel, who had been gazing at the interior of the kitchen with cool absorption, said, “I beg your pardon, Elijah.”

“I’m just wondering, Daneel. Can you smile?” He spoke in a casual whisper.

R. Daneel smiled. The gesture was sudden and surprising. His lips curled back and the skin about either end folded. Only the mouth smiled, however. The rest of the robot’s face was untouched.

Baley shook his head. “Don’t bother, R. Daneel. It doesn’t do a thing for you.”

They were at the entrance. Person after person thrust his metal food tag through the appropriate slot and had it scanned. Click-click-click-

Someone once calculated that a smoothly running kitchen could allow the entrance of two hundred persons a minute, the tags of each one being fully scanned to prevent kitchen-jumping, meal-jumping, and ration-stretching. They had also calculated how long a waiting line was necessary for maximum efficiency and how much time was lost when any one person required special treatment.

It was therefore always a calamity to interrupt that smooth click-click by stepping to the manual window, as Baley and R. Daneel did, in order to thrust a special-permit pass at the official in charge.

Jessie, filled with the knowledge of an assistant dietitian, had explained it once to Baley.

“It upsets things completely,” she had said. “It throws off consumption figures and inventory estimates. It means special checks. You have to match slips with all the different Section kitchens to make sure the balance isn’t too unbalanced, if you know what I mean. There’s a separate balance sheet to be made out each week. Then if anything goes wrong and you’re overdrawn, it’s always your fault. It’s never the fault of the City Government for passing out special tickets to everybody and his kid sister. Oh, no. And when we have to say that free choice is suspended for the meal, don’t the people in line make a fuss. It’s always the fault of the people behind the counter...

Baley had the story in the fullest detail and so he quite understood the dry and poisonous look he received from the woman behind the window. She made a few hurried notes. Home Section, occupation, reason for meal displacement (“official business,” a very irritating reason indeed, but quite irrefutable). Then she folded the slip with firm motions of her fingers and pushed it into a slot. A computer seized it, devoured the contents, and digested the information.

She turned to R. Daneel.

Baley let her have the worst. He said, “My friend is out-of-City.”

The woman looked finally and completely outraged. She said, “Home City, please.”

Baley intercepted the ball for Daneel once again. “All records are to be credited to the Police Department. No details necessary. Official business.”

The woman brought down a pad of slips with a jerk of her arm and filled in the necessary matter in dark-light code with practiced pressings of the first two fingers of her right hand.

She said, “How long will you be eating here?”

“Till further notice,” said Baley.

“Press fingers here,” she said, inverting the information blank.

Baley had a short qualm as R. Daneel’s even fingers with their glistening nails pressed downward. Surely, they wouldn’t have forgotten to supply him with fingerprints.

The woman took the blank away and fed it into the all-consuming machine at her elbow. It belched nothing back and Baley breathed more easily.

She gave them little metal tags that were in the bright red that meant “temporary.”

She said, “No free choices. We’re short this week. Take table DF.”

They made their way toward DF.

R. Daneel said, “I am under the impression that most of your people eat in kitchens such as these regularly.”

“Yes. Of course, it’s rather gruesome eating in a strange kitchen. There’s no one about whom you know. In your own kitchen, it’s quite different. You have your own seat which you occupy all the time. You’re with your family, your friends. Especially when you’re young, mealtimes are the bright spot of the day.” Baley smiled in brief reminiscence.