Asimov's Future History Volume 4 (21 page)

But Daneel made no attempt to take precedence over Baley, nor did Gruer seem surprised or displeased at that. Instead, he turned his attention at once to Baley to the exclusion of Daneel.

Gruer said, “You have been told nothing, Plainclothesman Baley, about the crime for which your services have been solicited. I imagine you are quite curious about that.” He shook his arms so that the sleeves fell backward and clasped his hands loosely in his lap. “Won’t you gentlemen sit down?”

They did so and Baley said, “We
are
curious.” He noted that Gruer’s hands were not protected by gloves.

Gruer went on. “That was on purpose, Plainclothesman. We wanted you to arrive here prepared to tackle the problem with a fresh mind. We wanted no preconceived notions. You will have available to you shortly a full report of the details of the crime and of the investigations we have been able to conduct. I am afraid, Plainclothesman, that you will find our investigations ridiculously incomplete from the standpoint of your own experience. We have no police force on Solaria.”

“None at all?” asked Baley.

Gruer smiled and shrugged. “No crime, you see. Our population is tiny and widely scattered. There is no occasion “for crime; therefore no occasion for police.”

“I see. But for all that, you
do
have crime now.”

“True, but the first crime of violence in two centuries of history.”

“Unfortunate, then, that you must begin with murder.”

“Unfortunate, yes. More unfortunately still, the victim was a man we could scarcely afford to lose. A most inappropriate victim. And the circumstances of the murder were particularly brutal.”

Baley said, “I suppose the murderer is completely unknown.” (Why else would the crime be worth the importation of an Earthly detective?)

Gruer looked particularly uneasy. He glanced sideways at Daneel, who sat motionless, an absorptive, quiet mechanism. Baley knew that Daneel would, at any time in the future, be able to reproduce any conversation he heard, of whatever length. He was a recording machine that walked and talked like a man.

Did Gruer know that? His look at Daneel had certainly something of the furtive about it.

Gruer said, “No, I cannot say the murderer is completely unknown. In fact, there is only one person that can possibly have done the deed.”

“Are you sure you don’t mean only one person who is
likely
to have done the deed?” Baley distrusted overstatement and had no liking for the armchair deducer who discovered certainty rather than probability in the workings of logic.

But Gruer shook his bald head. “No. Only one possible person. Anyone else is impossible. Completely impossible.”

“Completely?”

“I assure you.”

“Then you have no problem.”

“On the contrary. We do have a problem. That one person couldn’t have done it either.”

Baley said calmly, “Then no one did it.”

“Yet the deed was done. Rikaine Delmarre is dead.”

That’s something, thought Baley. Jehoshaphat, I’ve got
something
. I’ve got the victim’s name.

He brought out his notebook and solemnly made note of it, partly

out of a wry desire to indicate that he had scraped up, at last, a nubbin of fact, and partly to avoid making it too obvious that he sat by the side of a recording machine who needed no notes.

He said, “How is the victim’s name spelled?”

Gruer spelled it.

“His profession, sir?”

“Fetologist.”

Baley spelled that as it sounded and let it go. He said, “Now who would be able to give me a personal account of the circumstances surrounding the murder? As firsthand as possible.”

Gruer’s smile was grim and his eyes shifted to Daneel again, and then away. “His wife, Plainclothesman.”

“His wife...

“Yes. Her name is Gladia.” Gruer pronounced it in three syllables, accenting the second.

“Any children?” Baley’s eyes were fixed on his notebook. When no answer came, he looked up. “Any children?”

But Gruer’s mouth had pursed up as though he had tasted something sour. He looked sick. Finally he said, “I would scarcely know.”

Baley said, “What?”

Gruer added hastily, “In any case, I think you had better postpone actual operations till tomorrow. I know you’ve had a hard trip, Mr. Baley, and that you are tired and probably hungry.”

Baley, about to deny it, realized suddenly that the thought of food had an uncommon attraction for him at the moment. He said, “Will you join us at our meal?” He didn’t think Gruer would, being a Spacer. (Yet he had been brought to the point of saying “Mr. Baley” rather than “Plainclothesman Baley,” which was something.)

As expected, Gruer said, “A business engagement makes that impossible. I will have to leave. I am sorry.”

Baley rose. The polite thing would be to accompany Gruer to the door. In the first place, however, he wasn’t at all anxious to approach the door and the unprotected open. And in the second he wasn’t sure where the door was.

He remained standing in uncertainty.

Cruet smiled and nodded. He said, “I will see you again. Your robots will know the combination if you wish to talk to me.”

And he was gone.

Baley exclaimed sharply.

Cruet and the chair he was sitting on were simply not there. The wall behind Cruet, the floor under his feet changed with explosive suddenness. Daneel said calmly, “He was not there in the flesh at any time. It was a trimensional image. It seemed to me you would know. You have such things on Earth.”

“Not like this,” muttered Baley.

A trimensional image on Earth was encased in a cubic force-field that glittered against the background. The image itself had a tiny flicker. On Earth there was no mistaking image for reality. Here.

No wonder Gruer had worn no gloves. He needed no nose filters, for that matter.

Daneel said, “Would you care to eat now, Partner Elijah?”

Dinner was an unexpected ordeal. Robots appeared. One set the table. One brought in the food.

“How many are there in the house, Daneel?” Baley asked.

“About fifty, Partner Elijah.”

“Will they stay here while we eat?” (One had backed into a corner, his glossy, glowing-eyed face turned toward Baley.)

“It is the usual practice,” said Daneel, “for one to do so in case its service is called upon. If you do not wish that, you have only to order it to leave.”

Baley shrugged. “Let it stay!”

Under normal conditions Baley might have found the food delicious. Now he ate mechanically. He noted abstractedly that Daneel ate also, with a kind of unimpassioned efficiency. Later on, of course, he would empty the fluorocarbon sac within him into which the “eaten” food was now being stored. Meanwhile Daneel maintained his masquerade.

“Is it night outside?” asked Baley.

“It is,” replied Daneel.

Baley stared somberly at the bed. It was too large. The whole bedroom was too large. There were no blankets to burrow under, only sheets. They would make a poor enclosure.

Everything was difficult! He had already gone through the Unnerving experience of showering in a stall that actually adjoined the bedroom. It was the height of luxury in a way, yet, on the other hand, it seemed an unsanitary arrangement.

He said abruptly, “How is the light put out?” The headboard of the bed gleamed with a soft light. Perhaps that was to facilitate book viewing before sleeping, but Baley was in no mood for that.

“It will be taken care of once you’re in bed, if you compose yourself for sleep.”

“The robots watch, do they?”

“It is their job.”

“Jehoshaphat! What do these Solarians do for
themselves
?” Baley muttered. “I wonder now why a robot didn’t scrub my back in the shower.”

With no trace of humor Daneel said, “One would have, had you required it. As for the Solarians, they do what they choose. No robot performs his duty if ordered not to, except, of course, where the performance is necessary to the well-being of the human.”

“Well, good night, Daneel.”

“I will be in another bedroom, Partner Elijah. If, at any time during the night, you need anything–”

“I know. The robots will come.”

“There is a contact patch on the side table. You have only to touch it. I will come too.”

Sleep eluded Baley. He kept picturing the house he was in, balanced precariously at the outer skin of the world, with emptiness waiting just outside like a monster.

On Earth his apartment–his snug, comfortable, crowded apartment–sat nestled beneath many others. There were dozens of Levels and thousands of people between himself and the rim of Earth.

Even on Earth, he tried to tell himself, there were people on the topmost Level. They would be immediately adjacent to the outside. Sure! But that’s what made those apartments low-rent.

Then he thought of Jessie, a thousand light-years away.

He wanted terribly to get out of bed right now, dress, and walk to her. His thoughts grew mistier. If there were only a tunnel, a nice, safe tunnel burrowing its way through safe, solid rock and metal from Solaria to Earth, he would walk and walk and walk...

He would walk back to Earth, back to Jessie, back to comfort and security.

Security.

Baley’s eyes opened. His arms grew rigid and he rose up on his elbow, scarcely aware that he was doing so.

Security! This man, Hannis Gruer, was head of Solarian security. So Daneel had said. What did “security” mean? If it meant the same as it meant on Earth, and surely it must, this man Gruer was responsible for the protection of Solaria against invasion from without and subversion from within.

Why was he interested in a murder case? Was it because there were no police on Solaria and the Department of Security would come the closest to knowing what to do about a murder?

Gruer had seemed at ease with Baley, yet there had been those furtive glances, again and again, in the direction of Daneel.

Did Gruer suspect the motives of Daneel? Baley, himself, had been ordered to keep his eyes open and Daneel might very likely have received similar instructions.

It would be natural for Gruer to suspect that espionage was possible. His job made it necessary for him to suspect that in any case where it was conceivable. And he would not fear Baley overmuch, an Earthman, representative of the least formidable world in the

Galaxy. But Daneel was a native of Aurora, the oldest and largest and strongest of the Outer Worlds. That would be different.

Gruer, as Baley now remembered, had not addressed one word to Daneel.

For that matter, why should Daneel pretend so thoroughly to be a man? The earlier explanation that Baley had posed for himself, that it was a vainglorious game on the part of Daneel’s Auroran designers, seemed trivial. It seemed obvious now that the masquerade was something more serious.

A man could be expected to receive diplomatic immunity; a certain courtesy and gentleness of treatment. A robot could not. But then why did not Aurora send a real man in the first place. Why gamble so desperately on a fake? The answer suggested itself instantly to Baley. A real man of Aurora, a real Spacer, would not care to associate too closely or for too long a time with an Earthman.

But if all this were true, why should Solaria find a single murder so important that it must allow an Earthman and an Auroran to come to their planet?

Baley felt trapped.

He was trapped on Solaria by the necessities of his assignment.

He was trapped by Earth’s danger, trapped in an environment he could scarcely endure, trapped by a responsibility he could not shirk.

And, to add to all this, he was trapped somehow in the midst of a Spacer conflict the nature of which he did not understand.

4: A Woman Is Viewed

H
E
SLEPT
AT
last. He did not remember when he actually made the transition to sleep. There was just a period when his thoughts grew more erratic and then the headboard of his bed was shining and the ceiling was alight with a cool, daytime glow. He looked at his watch.

Hours had passed. The robots who ran the house had decided it was time for him to wake up and had acted accordingly.

He wondered if Daneel were awake and at once realized the illogic of the thought. Daneel could not sleep. Baley wondered if he had counterfeited sleep as part of the role he was playing. Had he undressed and put on nightclothes?

As though on cue Daneel entered. “Good morning, Partner Elijah.”

The robot was completely dressed and his face was in perfect repose. He said, “Did you sleep well?”

“Yes,” said Baley dryly, “did you?”

He got out of bed and tramped into the bathroom for a shave and for the remainder of the morning ritual. He shouted, “If a robot comes in to shave me, send him out again. They get on my nerves. Even if I don’t see them, they get on my nerves.”

He stared at his own face as he shaved, marveling a bit that it looked so like the mirrored face he saw on Earth. If only the image were another Earthman with whom he could consult instead of only the light-mimicry of himself. If he could go over what he had already learned, small as it was..

“Too small! Get more,” he muttered to the mirror.

He came out, mopping his face, and pulled trousers over fresh shorts. (Robots supplied everything, damn them.)

He said, “Would you answer a few questions, Daneel?”

“As you know, Partner Elijah, I answer all questions to the best of my knowledge.”

Or to the letter of your instructions, thought Baley. He said, “Why are there only twenty thousand people on Solaria?”

“That is a mere fact,” said Daneel. “A datum. A figure that is the result of a counting process.”

“Yes, but you’re evading the matter. The planet can support millions; why, then, only twenty thousand? You said the Solarians consider twenty thousand optimum. Why?”

“It is their way of life.”

“You mean they practice birth control?”

“Yes.”

“And leave the planet empty?” Baley wasn’t sure why he was pounding away at this one point, but the planet’s population was one of the few hard facts he had learned about it and there was little else he could ask about.