“It isn’t that, Lije. It’s not you, it’s the Spacers. You don’t know what they’re like.”
Baley deepened his frown. “Well, then, Commissioner, suppose you come along.” His right hand rested on his knee, and two of his fingers crossed automatically as he said that.
The Commissioner’s eyes widened. “No, Lije. I won’t go there. Don’t ask me to.” He seemed visibly to catch hold of his runaway words. More quietly, he said, with an unconvincing smile, “Lots of work here, you know. I’m days behind.”
Baley regarded him thoughtfully. “I tell you what, then. Why not get into it by trimension later on. Just for a while, you understand. In case I need help.”
“Well, yes. I suppose I can do that.” He sounded unenthusiastic.
“Good.” Baley looked at the wall clock, nodded, and got up. “I’ll be in touch with you.”
Baley looked back as he left the office, keeping the door open for part of an additional second. He saw the Commissioner’s head begin bending down toward the crook of one elbow as it rested on the desk. The plain-clothes man could almost swear he heard a sob.
Jehoshaphat! he thought, in outright shock.
He paused in the common room and sat on the corner of a nearby desk, ignoring its occupant, who looked up, murmured a casual greeting, and returned to his work.
Baley unclipped the baffle from the bowl of the pipe and blew into it. He inverted the pipe itself over the desk’s small ash vacuum and let the powdery white tobacco ash vanish. He looked regretfully at the empty pipe, readjusted the baffle, and put it away. Another pipeful gone forever!
He reconsidered what had just taken place. In one way, Enderby had not surprised him. He had expected resistance to any attempt on his own part to enter Spacetown. He had heard the Commissioner talk often enough about the difficulties of dealing with Spacers, about the dangers of allowing any but experienced negotiators to have anything to do with them, even over trifles.
He had not expected, however, to have the Commissioner give in so easily. He had supposed, at the very least, that Enderby would have insisted on accompanying him. The pressure of other work was meaningless in the face of the importance of this problem.
And that was not what Baley wanted. He wanted exactly what he had gotten. He wanted the Commissioner to be present by trimensional personification so that he could witness the proceedings from a point of safety.
Safety was the key word. Baley would need a witness that could not be put out of the way immediately. He needed that much as the minimum guarantee of his own safety.
The Commissioner had agreed to that at once. Baley remembered the parting sob, or ghost of one, and thought: Jehoshaphat, the man’s into this past his depth.
A cheerful, slurring voice sounded just at Baley’s shoulder and Baley started.
“What the devil do you want?” he demanded savagely.
The smile on R. Sammy’s face remained foolishly fixed. “Jack says to tell you Daneel is ready, Lije.”
“All right. Now get out of here.”
He frowned at the robot’s departing back. There was nothing so irritating as having that clumsy metal contraption forever making free with your front name. He’d complained about that when R. Sammy first arrived and the Commissioner had shrugged his shoulders and said, “You can’t have it both ways, Lije. The public insists that City robots be built with a strong friendship circuit. All right, then. He is drawn to you. He calls you by the friendliest name he knows.”
Friendship circuit! No robot built, of any type, could possibly hurt a human being. That was the First Law of Robotics:
“A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.”
No positronic brain was ever built without that injunction driven so deeply into its basic circuits that no conceivable derangement could displace it. There was no need for specialized friendship circuits.
Yet the Commissioner was right. The Earthman’s distrust for robots was something quite irrational and friendship circuits had to be incorporated, just as all robots had to be made smiling. On Earth, at any rate.
R. Daneel, now, never smiled.
Sighing, Baley rose to his feet. He thought: Spacetown, next stop—or, maybe, last stop!
The police forces of the City, as well as certain high officials, could still make use of individual squad cars along the corridors of the City and even along the ancient underground motorways that were barred to foot traffic. There were perennial demands on the part of the Liberals that these motorways be converted to children’s playgrounds, to new shopping areas, or to expressway or localway extensions.
The strong pleas of “Civic safety!” remained unvanquished, however. In cases of fires too large to be handled by local devices, in cases of massive breakdowns in power lines or ventilators, most of all in cases of serious riot, there had to be some means whereby the forces of the City could be mobilized at the stricken point in a hurry. No substitute for the motorways existed or could exist.
Baley had traveled along a motorway several times before in his life, but its indecent emptiness always depressed him. It seemed a million miles from the warm, living pulsation of the City. It stretched out like a blind and hollow worm before his eyes as he sat at the controls of the squad car. It opened continuously into new stretches as he moved around this gentle curve or that. Behind him, he knew without looking, another blind and hollow worm continually contracted and closed. The motorway was well lit, but lighting was meaningless in the silence and emptiness.
R. Daneel did nothing to break that silence or fill that emptiness. He looked straight ahead, as unimpressed by the empty motorway as by the bulging expressway.
In one sounding moment, to the tune of a wild whine of the squad car’s siren, they popped out of the motorway and curved gradually into the vehicular lane of a City corridor.
The vehicular lanes were still conscientiously marked down each major corridor in reverence for one vestigial portion of the past. There were no vehicles any longer, except for squad cars, fire engines, and maintenance trucks, and pedestrians used the lanes in complete self-assurance. They scattered in indignant hurry before the advance of Baley’s squealing car.
Baley, himself, drew a freer breath as noise surged in about him, but it was an interval only. In less than two hundred yards they turned into the subdued corridors that led to Spacetown Entrance.
They were expected. The guards obviously knew R. Daneel by sight and, although themselves human, nodded to him without the least self-consciousness.
One approached Baley and saluted with perfect, if frigid, military courtesy. He was tall and grave, though not the perfect specimen of Spacer physique that R. Daneel was.
He said, “Your identification card, if you please, sir.”
It was inspected quickly but thoroughly. Baley noticed that the guard wore flesh-colored gloves and had an all but unnoticeable filter in each nostril.
The guard saluted again and returned the card. He said, “There is a small Men’s Personal here which we would be pleased to have you use if you wish to shower.”
It was in Baley’s mind to deny the necessity, but R. Daneel plucked gently at his sleeve, as the guard stepped back to his place.
R. Daneel said, “It is customary, partner Elijah, for City dwellers to shower before entering Spacetown. I tell you this since I know you have no desire, through lack of information on this matter, to render yourself or ourselves uncomfortable. It is also advisable for you to attend to any matters of personal hygiene you may think advisable. There will be no facilities within Spacetown for that purpose.”