He stopped speaking. He sat up in bed, eyes uselessly wide in the darkness.
He felt his wife move against his side. His hand leaped, found her lips and pressed against them. She heaved against his grip, her hands grasping his wrist and wrenching, but he leaned down against her the more heavily.
Then, suddenly, he released her. She whimpered.
He said, huskily, “Sorry, Jessie. I was listening.”
He was getting out of bed, pulling warm Plastofilm over the soles of his feet.
“Lije, where are you going? Don’t leave me.”
“It’s all right. I’m just going to the door.”
The Plastofilm made a soft, shuffling noise as he circled the bed. He cracked the door to the living room and waited a long moment. Nothing happened. It was so quiet, he could hear the thin whistle of Jessie’s breath from their bed. He could hear the dull rhythm of blood in his ears.
Baley’s hand crept through the opening of the door, snaking out to the spot he needed no light to find. His fingers closed upon the knob that controlled the ceiling illumination. He exerted the smallest pressure he could and the ceiling gleamed dimly, so dimly that the lower half of the living room remained in semidusk.
He saw enough, however. The main door was closed and the living room lay lifeless and quiet.
He turned the knob back into the off position and moved back to bed.
It was all he needed. The pieces fit. The pattern was complete. Jessie pleaded with him. “Lije, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong, Jessie. Everything’s all right. He’s not here.”
“The robot? Do you mean he’s gone? For good?”
“No, no. He’ll be back. And before he does, answer my question.”
“What question?”
“What are you afraid of?” Jessie said nothing.
Baley grew more insistent. “You said you were scared to death.”
“Of him.”
“No, we went through that. You weren’t afraid of him and, besides, you know quite well a robot cannot hurt a human being.”
Her words came slowly. “I thought if everyone knew he was a robot there might be a riot. We’d be killed.”
“Why kill us?”
“You know what riots are like.”
“They don’t even know where the robot is, do they?”
“They might find out.”
“And that’s what you’re afraid of, a riot?”
“Well—”
“Sh!” He pressed Jessie down to the pillow.
Then he put his lips to her ear. “He’s come back. Now listen and don’t say a word. Everything’s fine. He’ll be gone in the morning and he won’t be back. There’ll be no riot, nothing.”
He was almost contented as he said that, almost completely contented. He felt he could sleep.
He thought again: No riot, nothing. And no declassification. And just before he actually fell asleep, he thought: Not even a murder investigation. Not even that. The whole thing’s solved…
He slept.
Chapter 7.
EXCURSION INTO SPACETOWN
Police Commissioner Julius Enderby polished his glasses with exquisite care and placed them upon the bridge of his nose.
Baley thought: It’s a good trick. Keeps you busy while you’re thinking what to say, and it doesn’t cost money the way lighting up a pipe does.
And because the thought had entered his mind, he drew out his pipe and dipped into his pinched store of rough-cut. One of the few luxury crops still grown on Earth was tobacco, and its end was visibly approaching. Prices had gone up, never down, in Baley’s lifetime; quotas down, never up.
Enderby, having adjusted his glasses, felt for the switch at one end of his desk and flicked his door into one-way transparency for a moment. “Where is he now, by the way?”
“He told me he wanted to be shown through the Department, and I let Jack Tobin do the honors.” Baley lit his pipe and tightened its baffle carefully. The Commissioner, like most non-indulgers, was petty about tobacco smoke.
“I hope you didn’t tell him Daneel was a robot.”
“Of course I didn’t.”
The Commissioner did not relax. One hand remained aimlessly busy with the automatic calendar on his desk.
“How is it?” he asked, without looking at Baley.
“Middling rough.”
“I’m sorry, Lije.”
Baley said, firmly, “You might have warned me that he looked completely human.”
The Commissioner looked surprised. “I didn’t?” Then, with sudden petulance, “Damn it, you should have known. I wouldn’t have asked you to have him stay at your house if he looked like R. Sammy. Now would I?”
“I know, Commissioner, but I’d never seen a robot like that and you had. I didn’t even know such things were possible. I just wish you’d mentioned it, that’s all.”
“Look, Lije, I’m sorry. I should have told you. You’re right. It’s just that this job, this whole deal, has me so on edge that half the time I’m just snapping at people for no reason. He, I mean this Daneel thing, is a new-type robot. It’s still in the experimental stage.”
“So he explained himself.”
“Oh. Well, that’s it, then.”
Baley tensed a little. This was it, now. He said, casually, teeth clenched on pipestem. “R. Daneel has arranged a trip to Spacetown for me.”
“To Spacetown!” Enderby looked up with instant indignation. “Yes. It’s the logical next move, Commissioner. I’d like to see the scene of the crime, ask a few questions.”
Enderby shook his head decidedly. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Lije. We’ve gone over the ground. I doubt there’s anything new to be learned. And they’re strange people. Kid gloves! They’ve got to be handled with kid gloves. You don’t have the experience.”
He put a plump hand to his forehead and added, with unexpected fervor, “I hate them.”
Baley inserted hostility into his voice. “Damn it, the robot came here and I should go there. It’s bad enough sharing a front seat with a robot; I hate to take a back seat. Of course, if you don’t think I’m capable of running this investigation, Commissioner—”
“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.