“All this,” said R. Daneel, “follows, perhaps, if we can take Jessie’s story at face value.”
“I think,” Baley said stiffly, “that Jessie’s story can be accepted as completely true.”
“So it would seem,” said R. Daneel. “There is nothing about her cerebra-impulses that would indicate a pathological addiction to lying.”
Baley turned an offended look upon the robot. “I should say not. And there will be no necessity to mention her name in our reports. Do you understand that?”
“If you wish it so, partner Elijah,” said R. Daneel calmly, “but our report will then be neither complete nor accurate.”
Baley said, “Well, maybe so, but no real harm will be done. She has come to us with whatever information she had and to mention her name will only put her in the police records. I do not want that to happen.”
“In that case, certainly not, provided we are certain that nothing more remains to be found out.”
“Nothing remains as far as she’s concerned. My guarantee.”
“Could you then explain why the word, Jezebel, the mere sound of a name, should lead her to abandon previous convictions and assume a new set? The motivation seems obscure.”
They were traveling slowly through the curving, empty tunnel.
Baley said, “It is hard to explain. Jezebel is a rare name. It belonged once to a woman of very bad reputation. My wife treasured that fact. It gave her a vicarious feeling of wickedness and compensated for a life that was uniformly proper.”
“Why should a law-abiding woman wish to feel wicked?”
Baley almost smiled. “Women are women, Daneel. Anyway, I did a very foolish thing. In a moment of irritation, I insisted that the historic Jezebel was not particularly wicked and was, if anything, a good wife. I’ve regretted that ever since.
“It turned out,” he went on, “that I had made Jessie bitterly unhappy. I had spoiled something for her that couldn’t be replaced. I suppose what followed was her way of revenge. I imagine she wished to punish me by engaging in activity of which she knew I wouldn’t approve. I don’t say the wish was a conscious one.”
“Can a wish be anything but conscious? Is that not a contradiction in terms?”
Baley stared at R Daneel and despaired at attempting to explain the unconscious mind. He said, instead, “Besides that, the Bible has a great influence on human thought and emotion.”
“What is the Bible?”
For a moment Baley was surprised, and then was surprised at himself for having felt surprised. The Spacers, he knew, lived under a thoroughly mechanistic personal philosophy, and R. Daneel could know only what the Spacers knew; no more.
He said, curtly, “It is the sacred book of about half of Earth’s population.”
“I do not grasp the meaning here of the adjective.”
“I mean that it is highly regarded. Various portions of it, when properly interpreted, contain a code of behavior which many men consider best suited to the ultimate happiness of mankind.”
R. Daneel seemed to consider that. “Is this code incorporated into your laws?”
“I’m afraid not. The code doesn’t lend itself to legal enforcement. It must be obeyed spontaneously by each individual out of a longing to do so. It is in a sense higher than any law can be.”
“Higher than law? Is that not a contradiction in terms?”
Baley smiled wryly. “Shall I quote a portion of the Bible for you? Would you be curious to hear it?”
“Please do.”
Baley let the car slow to a halt and for a few moments sat with his eyes closed, remembering. He would have liked to use the sonorous Middle English of the Medieval Bible, but to R. Daneel, Middle English would be gibberish.
He began, speaking almost casually in the words of the Modern Revision, as though he were telling a story of contemporary life, instead of dredging a tale out of Man’s dimmest past:
“Jesus went to the mount of Olives, and at dawn returned to the temple. All the people came to him, and he sat down and preached to them. And the scribes and Pharisees brought to him a woman caught in adultery, and when they had placed her before him, they said to him, ‘Master, this woman was caught in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses, in the law, commanded us to stone such offenders. What do you say?’
“They said this, hoping to trap him, that they might have grounds for accusations against him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he had not heard them. But when they continued asking him, he stood up and said to them, ‘He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.’
“And again he stooped down and wrote on the ground. And those that heard this, being convicted by their own conscience, went away one by one, beginning with the oldest, down to the last: and Jesus was left alone, with the woman standing before him. When Jesus stood up and saw no one but the woman, he said to her, ‘Woman, where are your accusers? Has no one condemned you?’
“She said, ‘No one, Lord.’
“And Jesus said to her, ‘Nor do I condemn you. Go, and sin no more.’ ”
R. Daneel listened attentively. He said, “What is adultery?”
“That doesn’t matter. It was a crime and at the time, the accepted punishment was stoning; that is, stones were thrown at the guilty one until she was killed.”
“And the woman was guilty?”
“She was.”
“Then why was she not stoned?”
“None of the accusers felt he could after Jesus’s statement. The story is meant to show that there is something even higher than the justice which you have been filled with. There is a human impulse known as mercy; a human act known as forgiveness.”
“I am not acquainted with those words, partner Elijah.”
“I know,” muttered Baley. “I know.”
He started the squad car with a jerk and let it tear forward savagely. He was pressed back against the cushions of the seat.
“Where are we going?” asked R. Daneel.
“To Yeast-town,” said Baley, “to get the truth out of Francis Clousarr, conspirator.”
“You have a method for doing this, Elijah?”
“Not I, exactly. But you have, Daneel. A simple one.”
They sped onward.
Chapter 15.
ARREST OF A CONSPIRATOR
Baley could sense the vague aroma of Yeast-town growing stronger, more pervasive. He did not find it as unpleasant as some did; Jessie, for instance. He even liked it, rather. It had pleasant connotations.
Every time he smelled raw yeast, the alchemy of sense perception threw him more than three decades into the past. He was a ten-year-old again, visiting his Uncle Boris, who was a yeast farmer. Uncle Boris always had a little supply of yeast delectables: small cookies, chocolaty things filled with sweet liquid, hard confections in the shape of cats and dogs. Young as he was, he knew that Uncle Boris shouldn’t really have had them to give away and he always ate them very quietly, sitting in a corner with his back to the center of the room. He would eat them quickly for fear of being caught.
They tasted all the better for that.
Poor Uncle Boris! He had an accident and died. They never told him exactly how, and he had cried bitterly because he thought Uncle Boris had been arrested for smuggling yeast out of the plant. He expected to be arrested and executed himself. Years later, he poked carefully through police files and found the truth. Uncle Boris had fallen beneath the treads of a transport. It was a disillusioning ending to a romantic myth.
Yet the myth would always arise in his mind, at least momentarily, at the whiff of raw yeast.
Yeast-town was not the official name of any part of New York City. It could be found in no gazetteer and on no official map. What was called Yeast-town in popular speech was, to the Post Office, merely the boroughs of Newark, New Brunswick, and Trenton. It was a broad strip across what was once Medieval New Jersey, dotted with residential areas, particularly in Newark Center and Trenton Center, but given over mostly to the many-layered farms in which a thousand varieties of yeast grew and multiplied.