Asimov's Future History Volume 4 (35 page)

“I suppose it isn’t likely the boy did it himself. Would you have any way of telling who his parents were?”

“We could check the records,” said Klorissa gloomily.

“Then you do keep records of relationships?”

“We have to for gene analysis.”

“Would the youngster know who his parents were?”

“Never,” said Klorissa energetically.

“Would he have any way of finding out?”

“He would have to break into the records room. Impossible.”

“Suppose an adult visited the estate and wanted to know who his child was–”

Klorissa flushed. “Very unlikely.”

“But suppose. Would he be told if he were to ask?”

“I don’t know. It isn’t exactly illegal for him to know. It certainly isn’t customary.”

“Would
you
tell him?”

“I’d try not to. I know Dr. Delmarre wouldn’t have. He believed knowledge of relationship was for gene analysis only. Before him things may have been looser.... Why do you ask all this, anyway?”

“I don’t see how the youngster could have a motive on his own account. I thought that through his parents he might have.”

“This is all horrible.” In her disturbed state of mind Klorissa approached more closely than at any previous time. She even stretched out an arm in his direction. “How can it all be happening? The boss killed; you nearly killed. We have no motives for violence on Solaria. We all have all we can want, so there is no personal ambition. We have no knowledge of relationship, so there is no family ambition. We are all in good genic health.”

Her face cleared all at once. ‘Wait. This arrow can’t be poisoned. I shouldn’t let you convince me it is.”

“Why have you suddenly decided that?”

“The robot with Bik. He would never have allowed poison. It’s inconceivable that he could have done anything that might bring harm to a human being. The First Law of Robotics makes sure of that.”

Baley said, “Does it? What is the First Law, I wonder?”

Klorissa stared blankly. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing. You have the arrow tested and you will find it poisoned.” Baley himself was scarcely interested in the matter. He knew it for poison beyond any internal questionings. He said, “Do you still believe Mrs. Delmarre to have been guilty of her husband’s death?”

“She was the only one present.”

“I see. And you are the only other human adult present on this estate at a time when I have just been shot at with a poisoned arrow.”

She cried energetically, “I had nothing to do with it.”

“Perhaps not. And perhaps Mrs. Delmarre is innocent as well. May I use your viewing apparatus?”

“Yes, of course.”

Baley knew exactly whom he intended to view and it was
not
Gladia. It came as a surprise to himself then to hear his voice say, “Get Gladia Delmarre.”

The robot obeyed without comment, and Baley watched the manipulations with astonishment, wondering why he had given the order.

Was it that the girl had just been the subject of discussion, or was it that he had been a little disturbed over the manner of the end of their last viewing, or was it simply the sight of the husky, almost overpoweringly practical figure of Klorissa that finally enforced the necessity of a glimpse of Gladia as a kind of counterirritant?

He thought defensively: Jehoshaphat! Sometimes a man has to play things by ear.

She was there before him all at once, sitting in a large, upright chair that made her appear smaller and more defenseless than ever. Her hair was drawn back and bound into a loose’ coil. She wore pendant earrings bearing gems that looked like diamonds. Her dress was a simple affair that clung tightly at the waist.

She said in a low voice, “I’m glad you viewed, Elijah. I’ve been trying to reach you.”

“Good morning, Gladia.” (Afternoon? Evening? He didn’t know Gladia’s time and he couldn’t tell from the manner in which she was dressed what time it might be.) ‘Why have you been trying to reach me?”

“To tell you I was sorry I had lost my temper last time we viewed. Mr. Olivaw didn’t know where you were to be reached.”

Baley had a momentary vision of Daneel still bound fast by the overseeing robots and almost smiled. He said, “That’s all right. In a few hours, I’ll be seeing you.”

“Of course, if–
Seeing
me?”

“Personal presence,” said Baley gravely.

Her eyes grew wide and her fingers dug into the smooth plastic of the chair arms. “Is there any reason for that?”

“It is necessary.”

“Would you allow it?”

She looked away. “Is it absolutely necessary?”

“It is. First, though, there is someone else I must see. Your husband was interested in robots. You told me that, and I have heard it from other sources, but he wasn’t a roboticist, was he?”

“That wasn’t his training, Elijah.” She still avoided his eyes.

“But he worked with a roboticist, didn’t he?”

“Jothan Leebig,” she said at once. “He’s a good friend of mine.”

“He is?” said Baley energetically.

Gladia looked startled. “Shouldn’t I have said that?”

“Why not, if it’s the truth?”

“I’m always afraid that I’ll say things that will make me seem as though–You don’t know what it’s like when everyone is sure you’ve done something.”

“Take it easy. How is it that Leebig is a friend of yours?”

“Oh, I don’t know. He’s in the next estate, for one thing. Viewing energy is just about nil, so we can just view all the time in free motion with hardly any trouble. We go on walks together all the time; or we did, anyway.”

“I didn’t know you could go on walks together with anyone.” Gladia flushed. “I said
viewing
. Oh well, I keep forgetting you’re an Earthman. Viewing in free motion means we focus on ourselves and we can go anywhere we want to without losing contact. I walk on my estate and he walks on his and we’re together.” She held her chin high. “It can be pleasant.”

Then, suddenly, she giggled. “Poor Jothan.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I was thinking of you thinking we walked together without viewing. He’d die if he thought anyone could think that.”

“Why?”

“He’s terrible that way. He told me that when he was five years old he stopped seeing people. Insisted on viewing only. Some children are like that. Rikaine”, she paused in confusion, then went on, “Rikaine, my husband, once told me, when I talked about Jothan, that more and more children would be like that too. He said it was a kind of social evolution that favored survival of pro-viewing. Do you think that’s so?”

“I’m no authority,” said Baley.

“Jothan won’t even get married. Rikaine was angry with him, told him he was anti-social and that he had genes that were necessary in the common pool, but Jothan just refused to consider it.”

“Has he a right to refuse?”

“No-o,” said Gladia hesitantly, “but he’s a very brilliant roboticist, you know, and roboticists are valuable on Solaria. I suppose they stretched a point. Except I think Rikaine was going to stop working with Jothan. He told me once Jothan was a bad Solarian.”

“Did he tell Jothan that?”

“I don’t know. He was working with Jothan to the end.”

“But he thought Jothan was a bad Solarian for refusing to marry?”

“Rikaine once said that marriage was the hardest thing in life, but that it had to be endured.”

“What did you think?”

“About what, Elijah?”

“About marriage. Did you think it was the hardest thing in life?” Her expression grew slowly blank as though she were painstakingly washing emotion out of it. She said, “I never thought about it.”

Baley said, “You said you go on walks with Jothan Leebig all the time, then corrected yourself and put that in the past. You don’t go on walks with him any more, then?”

Gladia shook her head. Expression was back in her face. Sadness. “No. We don’t seem to. I viewed him once or twice. He always seemed busy and I didn’t like to–You know.”

“Was this since the death of your husband?”

“No, even some time before. Several months before.”

“Do you suppose Dr. Delmarre ordered him not to pay further attention to you?”

Gladia looked startled. “Why should he? Jothan isn’t a robot and neither am I. How can we take orders and why should Rikaine give them?”

Baley did not bother to try to explain. He could have done so only in Earth terms and that would make things no clearer to her. And if it did manage to clarify, the result could only be disgusting to her.

Baley said, “Only a question. I’ll view you again, Gladia, when I’m done with Leebig. What time do you have, by the way?” He was sorry at once for asking the question. Robots would answer in Terrestrial equivalents, but Gladia might answer in Solarian units and Baley was weary of displaying ignorance.

But Gladia answered in purely qualitative terms. “Mid afternoon,” she said.

“Then that’s it for Leebig’s estate also?”

“Oh yes.”

“Good. I’ll view you again as soon as I can and we’ll make arrangements for seeing.”

Again she grew hesitant. “Is it absolutely necessary?”

“It is.”

She said in a low voice, “Very well.”

There was some delay in contacting Leebig and Baley utilized it in consuming another sandwich, one that was brought to him in its original packaging. But he had grown more cautious. He inspected the seal carefully before breaking it, then looked over the contents painstakingly.

He accepted a plastic container of milk, not quite unfrozen, bit an opening with his own teeth, and drank from it directly. He thought gloomily that there were such things as odorless, tasteless, slow-acting poisons that could be introduced delicately by means of hypodermic needles or high-pressure needle jets, then put the thought aside as being childish.

So far murders and attempted murders had been committed in the most direct possible fashion. There was nothing delicate or subtle about a blow on the head, enough poison in a glass to kill a dozen men, or a poisoned arrow shot openly at the victim.

And then he thought, scarcely less gloomily, that as long as he hopped between time zones in this fashion, he was scarcely likely to have regular meals. Or, if this continued, regular sleep.

The robot approached him. “Dr. Leebig directs you to call sometime tomorrow. He is engaged in important work.”

Baley bounced to his feet and roared, “You tell that guy–”

He stopped. There was no use in yelling at a robot. That is, you could yell if you wished, but it would achieve results no sooner than a whisper.

He said in a conversational tone, “You tell Dr. Leebig, or his robot if that is as far as you’ve reached, that I am investigating the murder of a professional associate of his and a good Solarian. You tell him that I cannot wait on his work. You tell him that if I am not viewing him in five minutes, I will be in a plane and at his estate
seeing
him in less than an hour. You use that word, seeing, so there’s no mistake.”

He returned to his sandwich.

The five minutes were not quite gone, when Leebig, or at least a Solarian whom Baley presumed to be Leebig, was glaring at him.

Baley glared back. Leebig was a lean man, who held himself rigidly erect. His dark, prominent eyes had a look of intense abstraction about them, compounded now with anger. One of his eyelids drooped slightly.

He said, “Are you the Earthman?”

“Elijah Baley,” said Baley, “Plainclothesman C-7, in charge of the investigation into the murder of Dr. Rikaine Delmarre. What is your name?”

“I’m Dr. Jothan Leebig. Why do you presume to annoy me at my work?”

“It’s easy,” said Baley quietly. “It’s my business.”

“Then take your business elsewhere.”

“I have a few questions to ask first, Doctor. I believe you were a close associate of Dr. Delmarre. Right?”

One of Leebig’s hands clenched suddenly into a fist and he strode hastily toward a mantelpiece on which tiny clockwork contraptions went through complicated periodic motions that caught hypnotically at the eye.

The viewer kept focused on Leebig so that his figure did not depart from central projection as he walked. Rather the room behind him seemed to move backward in little rises and dips as he strode.

Leebig said, “If you are the foreigner whom Gruer threatened to bring in–”

“I am.”

“Then you are here against my advice. Done viewing.”

“Not yet. Don’t break contact.” Baley raised his voice sharply and a finger as well. He pointed it directly at the roboticist, who shrank visibly away from it, full lips spreading into an expression of disgust.

Baley said, “I wasn’t bluffing about seeing you, you know.”

“No Earthman vulgarity, please.”

“A straightforward statement is what it is intended to be. I will see you, if I can’t make you listen any other way. I will grab you by the collar and make you listen.”

Leebig stared back. “You are a filthy animal.”

“Have it your way, but I will do as I say.”

“If you try to invade my estate, I will–I will–”

Baley lifted his eyebrows. “Kill me? Do you often make such threats?”

“I made no threat.”

“Then talk now. In the time you have wasted, a good deal might have been accomplished. You were a close associate of Dr. Delmarre. Right?”

The roboticist’s head lowered. His shoulders moved slightly to a slow, regular breathing. When he looked up, he was in command of himself. He even managed a brief, sapless smile.

“I was.”

“Delmarre was interested in new types of robots, I understand.”

“He was.”

“What kind?”

“Are you a roboticist?”

“No. Explain it for the layman.”

“I doubt that I can.”

“Try! For instance, I think he wanted robots capable of disciplining children. What would that involve?”

Leebig raised his eyebrows briefly and said, “To put it very simply, skipping all the subtle details, it means a strengthening of the Cintegral governing the Sikorovich tandem route response at the W-65 level.”

“Double-talk,” said Baley.

“The truth.”

“It’s double-talk to me. How else can you put it?”