R. Daneel continued, “One by one, the various exit points from the City were investigated. Do you know how many there are, Elijah?”
Baley shook his head, then hazarded, “Twenty?”
“Five hundred and two.”
“What?”
“Originally, there were many more. Five hundred and two are all that remain functional. Your City represents a slow growth, Elijah. It was once open to the sky and people crossed from City to country freely.”
“Of course. I know that.”
“Well, when it was first enclosed, there were many exits left. Five hundred and two still remain. The rest are built over or blocked up. We are not counting, of course, the entrance points for air freight.”
“Well, what of the exit points?”
“It was hopeless. They are unguarded. We could find no official who was in charge or who considered them under his jurisdiction. It seemed as though no one even knew they existed. A man could have walked out of any of them at any time and returned at will. He would never have been detected.”
“Anything else? The weapon was gone, I suppose.”
“Oh, yes.”
“Any clues of any sort?”
“None. We have investigated the grounds surrounding Spacetown thoroughly. The robots on the truck farms were quite useless as possible witnesses. They are little more than automatic farm machinery, scarcely humanoid. And there were no humans.”
“Uh-huh. What next?”
“Having failed, so far, at one end, Spacetown, we will work at the other, New York City. It will be our duty to track down all possible subversive groups, to sift all dissident organizations—”
“How much time do you intend to spend?” interrupted Baley.
“As little as possible, as much as necessary.”
“Well,” said Baley, thoughtfully, “I wish you had another partner in this mess.”
“I do not,” said R. Daneel. “The Commissioner spoke very highly of your loyalty and ability.”
“It was nice of him,” said Baley sardonically. He thought: Poor Julius. I’m on his conscience and he tries hard.
“We didn’t rely entirely on him,” said R. Daneel. “We checked your records. You have expressed yourself openly against the use of robots in your department.”
“Oh? Do you object?”
“Not at all. Your opinions are, obviously, your own. But it made it necessary for us to check your psychological profile very closely. We know that, although you dislike R’s intensely, you will work with one if you conceive it to be your duty. You have an extraordinarily high loyalty aptitude and a respect for legitimate authority. It is what we need. Commissioner Enderby judged you well.”
“You have no personal resentment toward my anti-robot sentiments?”
R. Daneel said, “If they do not prevent you from working with me and helping me do what is required of me, how can they matter?”
Baley felt stopped. He said, belligerently, “Well, then, if I pass the test, how about you? What makes you a detective?”
“I do not understand you.”
“You were designed as an information-gathering machine. A manimitation to record the facts of human life for the Spacers.”
“That is a good beginning for an investigator, is it not? To be an information-gathering machine?”
“A beginning, maybe. But it’s not all there is, by a long shot.”
“To be sure, there has been a final adjustment of my circuits.”
“I’d be curious to hear the details of that, Daneel.”
“That is easy enough. A particularly strong drive has been inserted into my motivation banks; a desire for justice.”
“Justice!” cried Baley. The irony faded from his face and was replaced by a look of the most earnest distrust.
But R. Daneel turned swiftly in his chair and stared at the door. “Someone is out there.”
Someone was. The door opened and Jessie, pale and thin-lipped, walked in.
Baley was startled. “Why, Jessie! Is anything wrong?”
She stood there, eyes not meeting his. “I’m sorry. I had to… Her voice trailed off.
“Where’s Bentley?”
“He’s to stay the night in the Youth Hall.”
Baley said, “Why? I didn’t tell you to do that.”
“You said your partner would stay the night. I felt he would need Bentley’s room.”
R. Daneel said, “There was no necessity, Jessie.”
Jessie lifted her eyes to R. Daneel’s face, staring at it earnestly.
Baley looked at his fingertips, sick at what might follow, somehow unable to interpose. The momentary silence pressed thickly on his eardrums and then, far away, as though through folds of plastex, he heard his wife say, “I think you are a robot, Daneel.”
And R. Daneel replied, in a voice as calm as ever, “I am.”
Chapter 6.
WHISPERS IN A BEDROOM
On the uppermost levels of some of the wealthiest subsections of the City are the natural Solariums, where a partition of quartz with a movable metal shield excludes the air but lets in the sunlight. There the wives and daughters of the City’s highest administrators and executives may tan themselves. There a unique thing happens every evening.
Night falls.
In the rest of the City (including the UV-Solariums, where the millions, in strict sequence of allotted time, may occasionally expose themselves to the artificial wavelengths of arc lights) there are only the arbitrary cycles of hours.
The business of the City might easily continue in three eight-hour or four six-hour shifts, by “day” and “night” alike. Light and work could easily proceed endlessly. There are always civic reformers who periodically suggest such a thing in the interests of economy and efficiency.
The notion is never accepted.
Much of the earlier habits of Earthly society have been given up in the interests of that same economy and efficiency: space, privacy, even much of free will. They are the products of civilization, however, and not more than ten thousand years old.
The adjustment of sleep to night, however, is as old as man: a million years. The habit is not easy to give up. Although the evening is unseen, apartment lights dim as the hours of darkness pass and the City’s pulse sinks. Though no one can tell noon from midnight by any cosmic phenomenon along the enclosed avenues of the City, mankind follows the mute partitionings of the hour hand.
The expressways empty, the noise of life sinks, the moving mob among the colossal alleys melts away; New York City lies in Earth’s unnoticed shadow, and its population sleeps.
Elijah Baley did not sleep. He lay in bed and there was no light in his apartment, but that was as far as it went.
Jessie lay next to him, motionless in the darkness. He had not felt nor heard her move.
On the other side of the wall sat, stood, lay (Baley wondered which) R. Daneel Olivaw.
Baley whispered, “Jessie!” Then again, “Jessie!”
The dark figure beside him stirred slightly under the sheet. “What do you want?”
“Jessie, don’t make it worse for me.”
“You might have told me.”
“How could I? I was planning to, when I could think of a way. Jehoshaphat, Jessie—”
Baley’s voice returned to its whisper. “How did you find out? Won’t you tell me?”
Jessie turned toward him. He could sense her eyes looking through the darkness at him.
“Lije.” Her voice was scarcely more than a stirring of air. “Can he hear us? That thing?”
“Not if we whisper.”
“How do you know? Maybe he has special ears to pick up tiny sounds. Spacer robots can do all sorts of things.”