“Wait now,” said Baley, sick at heart, “that’s feather-fine reasoning.”
There was no need to wait. The signal on the Commissioner’s desk was flickering madly. R. Daneel waited for Baley to answer, but the latter could only stare at it helplessly. The robot closed contact.
“What is it?”
R. Sammy’s slurring voice said, “There is a lady here who wishes to see Lije. I told her he was busy, but she will not go away. She says her name is Jessie.”
“Let her in,” said R. Daneel calmly, and his brown eyes rose unemotionally to meet the panicky glare of Baley’s.
Chapter 14.
POWER OF A NAME
Baley remained standing in a tetany of shock, as Jessie ran to him, seizing his shoulders, huddling close.
His pale lips formed the word, “Bentley?”
She looked at him and shook her head, her brown hair flying with the force of her motion. “He’s all right.”
“Well, then…”
Jessie said through a sudden torrent of sobs, in a low voice that could scarcely be made out, “I can’t go on, Lije. I can’t. I can’t sleep or eat. I’ve got to tell you.”
“Don’t say anything,” Baley said in anguish. “For God’s sake, Jessie, not now.”
“I must. I’ve done a terrible thing. Such a terrible thing. Oh, Lije…” She lapsed into incoherence.
Baley said, hopelessly, “We’re not alone, Jessie.”
She looked up and stared at R. Daneel with no signs of recognition. The tears in which her eyes were swimming might easily be refracting the robot into a featureless blur.
R. Daneel said in a low murmur, “Good afternoon, Jessie.”
She gasped. “Is it the—the robot?”
She dashed the back of her hand across her eyes and stepped out of Baley’s encircling right arm. She breathed deeply and, for a moment, a tremulous smile wavered on her lips. “It is you, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Jessie.”
“You don’t mind being called a robot?”
“No, Jessie. It is what I am.”
“And I don’t mind being called a fool and an idiot and a—a subversive agent, because it’s what I am.”
“Jessie!” groaned Baley.
“It’s no use, Lije,” she said. “He might as well know if he’s your partner. I can’t live with it any more. I’ve had such a time since yesterday. I don’t care if I go to jail. I don’t care if they send me down to the lowest levels and make me live on raw yeast and water. I don’t care if… You won’t let them, will you, Lije? Don’t let them do anything to me. I’m fuh—frightened.”
Baley patted her shoulder and let her cry.
He said to R. Daneel. “She isn’t well. We can’t keep her here. What time is it?”
R. Daneel said without any visible signs of consulting a timepiece, “Fourteen-forty-five.”
“The Commissioner could be back any minute. Look, commandeer a squad car and we can talk about this in the motorway.”
Jessie’s head jerked upright. “The motorway? Oh, no, Lije.”
He said, in as soothing a tone as he could manage, “Now, Jessie, don’t be superstitious. You can’t go on the expressway the way you are. Be a good girl and calm down or we won’t even be able to go through the common room. I’ll get you some water.”
She wiped her face with a damp handkerchief and said drearily, “Oh, look at my makeup.”
“Don’t worry about your makeup,” said Baley. “Daneel, what about the squad car?”
“It’s waiting for us now, partner Elijah.”
“Come on, Jessie.”
“Wait. Wait just a minute, Lije. I’ve got to do something to my face.”
“It doesn’t matter now.”
But she twisted away. “Please. I can’t go through the common room like this. I won’t take a second.”
The man and the robot waited, the man with little jerky clenchings of his fists, the robot impassively.
Jessie rummaged through her purse for the necessary equipment. (If there were one thing, Baley had once said solemnly, that had resisted mechanical improvement since Medieval times, it was a woman’s purse. Even the substitution of magnetic clotures for metal clasps had not proven successful.) Jessie pulled out a small mirror and the silver-cased cosmetokit that Baley had bought her on the occasion of three birthdays before.
The cosmetokit had several orifices and she used each in turn. All but the last spray were invisible. She used them with that fineness of touch and delicacy of control that seems to be the birthright of women even at times of the greatest stress.
The base went on first in a smooth even layer that removed all shininess and roughness from the skin and left it with the faintly golden glow which long experience had taught Jessie was just the shade most suited to the natural coloring of her hair and eyes. Then the touch of tan along the forehead and chin, a gentle brush of rouge on either cheek, tracing back to the angle of the jaw; and a delicate drift of blue on the upper eyelids and along the earlobes. Finally there was the application of the smooth carmine to the lips. That involved the one visible spray, a faintly pink mist that glistened liquidly in air, but dried and deepened richly on contact with the lips.
“There,” said Jessie, with several swift pats at her hair and a look of deep dissatisfaction. “I suppose that will do.”
The process had taken more than the promised second, but less than fifteen seconds. Nevertheless, it had seemed interminable to Baley.
“Come,” he said.
She barely had time to return the cosmetokit to the purse before he had pushed her through the door.
The eerie silence of the motorway lay thick on either side.
Baley said, “All right, Jessie.”
The impassivity that had covered Jessie’s face since they first left the Commissioner’s office showed signs of cracking. She looked at her husband and at Daneel with a helpless silence.
Baley said, “Get it over with, Jessie. Please. Have you committed a crime? An actual crime?”
“A crime?” She shook her head uncertainly.
“Now hold on to yourself. No hysterics. Just say yes or no, Jessie. Have you—” he hesitated a trifle, “killed anyone?”
The look on Jessie’s face was promptly transmuted to indignation. “Why, Lije Baley!”
“Yes or no, Jessie.”
“No, of course not.”
The hard knot in Baley’s stomach softened perceptibly. “Have you stolen anything? Falsified ration data? Assaulted anyone? Destroyed property? Speak up, Jessie.”
“I haven’t done anything—anything specific. I didn’t mean anything like that.” She looked over her shoulder. “Lije, do we have to stay down here?”
“Right here until this is over. Now, start at the beginning. What did you come to tell us?” Over Jessie’s bowed head, Baley’s eyes met R. Daneel’s.
Jessie spoke in a soft voice that gained in strength and articulateness as she went on.
“It’s these people, these Medievalists; you know, Lije. They’re always around, always talking. Even in the old days when I was an assistant dietitian, it was like that. Remember Elizabeth Thornbowe? She was a Medievalist. She was always talking about how all our troubles came from the City and how things were better before the Cities started.
“I used to ask her how she was so sure that was so, especially after you and I met, Lije (remember the talks we used to have), and then she would quote from those small book-reels that are always floating around. You know, like Shame of the Cities that the fellow wrote. I don’t remember his name.”