Baley said, absently, “Ogninsky.”
“Yes, only most of them were lots worse. Then, when I married you, she was really sarcastic. She said, ‘I suppose you’re going to be a real City woman now that you’ve married a policeman.’ After that, she didn’t talk to me much and then I quit the job and that was that. Lots of things she used to say were just to shock me, I think, or to make herself look mysterious and glamorous. She was an old maid, you know; never got married till the day she died. Lots of those Medievalists don’t fit in, one way or another. Remember, you once said, Lije, that people sometimes mistake their own shortcomings for those of society and want to fix the Cities because they don’t know how to fix themselves.”
Baley remembered, and his words now sounded flip and superficial in his own ears. He said, gently, “Keep to the point, Jessie.”
She went on, “Anyway, Lizzy was always talking about how there’d come a day and people had to get together. She said it was all the fault of the Spacers because they wanted to keep Earth weak and decadent. That was one of her favorite words, ‘decadent.’ She’d look at the menus I’d prepare for the next week and sniff and say, ‘Decadent, decadent.’ Jane Myers used to imitate her in the cook room and we’d die laughing. She said, Elizabeth did, that someday we were going to break up the Cities and go back to the soil and have an accounting with the Spacers who were trying to tie us forever to the Cities by forcing robots on us. Only she never called them robots. She used to say ‘soulless monster-machines,’ if you’ll excuse the expression, Daneel.”
The robot said, “I am not aware of the significance of the adjective you used, Jessie, but in any case, the expression is excused. Please go on.”
Baley stirred restlessly. It was that way with Jessie. No emergency, H no crisis could make her tell a story in any way but her own circuitous one.
She said, “Elizabeth always tried to talk as though there were lots of people in it with her. She would say, ‘At the last meeting,’ and then stop and look at me sort of half proud and half scared as though she wanted me to ask about it so she could look important, and yet scared I might get her in trouble. Of course, I never asked her. I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.
“Anyway, after I married you, Lije, it was all over, until—” She stopped.
“Go on, Jessie,” said Baley.
“You remember, Lije, that argument we had? About Jezebel, I mean?”
“What about it?” It took a second or two for Baley to remember that it was Jessie’s own name, and not a reference to another woman.
He turned to R. Daneel in an automatically defensive explanation.
“Jessie’s full name is Jezebel. She is not fond of it and doesn’t use it.”
R. Daneel nodded gravely and Baley thought: Jehoshaphat, why waste worry on him?
“It bothered me a lot, Lije,” Jessie said. “It really did. I guess it was silly, but I kept thinking and thinking about what you said. I mean about your saying that Jezebel was only a conservative who fought for the ways of her ancestors against the strange ways the newcomers had brought. After all, I was Jezebel and I always…”
She groped for a word and Baley supplied it. “Identified yourself?”
“Yes.” But she shook her head almost immediately and looked away. “Not really, of course. Not literally. The way I thought she was, you know. I wasn’t like that.”
“I know that, Jessie. Don’t be foolish.”
“But still I thought of her a lot and, somehow, I got to thinking, it’s just the same now as it was then. I mean, we Earth people had our old ways and here were the Spacers coming in with a lot of new ways and trying to encourage the new ways we had stumbled into ourselves and maybe the Medievalists were right. Maybe we should go back to our old, good ways. So I went back and found Elizabeth.”
“Yes. Go on.”
“She said she didn’t know what I was talking about and besides I was a cop’s wife. I said that had nothing to do with it and finally she said, well, she’d speak to somebody, and then about a month later she came to me and said it was all right and I joined and I’ve been at meetings ever since.”
Baley looked at her sadly. “And you never told me?”
Jessie’s voice trembled. “I’m sorry, Lije.”
“Well, that won’t help. Being sorry, I mean. I want to know about the meetings. In the first place, where were they held?”
A sense of detachment was creeping over him, a numbing of emotions. What he had tried not to believe was so, was openly so, was unmistakably so. In a sense, it was a relief to have the uncertainty over.
She said, “Down here.”
“Down here? You mean on this spot? What do you mean?”
“Here in the motorway. That’s why I didn’t want to come down here. It was a wonderful place to meet, though. We’d get together—”
“How many?”
“I’m not sure. About sixty or seventy. It was just a sort of local branch. There’d be folding chairs and some refreshments and someone would make a speech, mostly about how wonderful life was in the old days and how someday we’d do away with the monsters, the robots, that is, and the Spacers, too. The speeches were sort of dull really, because they were all the same. We just endured them. Mostly, it was the fun of getting together and feeling important. We would pledge ourselves to oaths and there’d be secret ways we could greet each other on the outside.”
“Weren’t you ever interrupted? No squad cars or fire engines passed?”
“No. Never.”
R. Daneel interrupted, “Is that unusual, Elijah?”
“Maybe not,” Baley answered thoughtfully. “There are some side passages that are practically never used. It’s quite a trick, knowing which they are, though. Is that all you did at the meetings, Jessie? Make speeches and play at conspiracy?”
“It’s about all. And sing songs, sometimes. And of course, refreshments. Not much. Sandwiches, usually, and juice.”
“In that case,” he said, almost brutally, “what’s bothering you now?”
Jessie winced. “You’re angry.”
“Please,” said Baley, with iron patience, “answer my question. If it were all as harmless as that, why have you been in such a panic for the last day and a half?”
“I thought they would hurt you, Lije. For heaven’s sake, why do you act as though you don’t understand? I’ve explained it to you.”
“No, you haven’t. Not yet. You’ve told me about a harmless little secret kaffee-klatsch you belonged to. Did they ever hold open demonstrations? Did they ever destroy robots? Start riots? Kill people?”
“Never! Lije, I wouldn’t do any of those things. I wouldn’t stay a member if they tried it.”
“Well, then, why do you say you’ve done a terrible thing? Why do you expect to be sent to jail?”
“Well… Well, they used to talk about someday when they’d put pressure on the government. We were supposed to get organized and then afterward there would be huge strikes and work stoppages. We could force the government to ban all robots and make the Spacers go back where they came from. I thought it was just talk and then, this thing started; about you and Daneel, I mean. Then they said, ‘Now we’ll see action,’ and ‘We’re going to make an example of them and put a stop to the robot invasion right now.’ Right there in Personal they said it, not knowing it was you they were talking about. But I knew. Right away.”
Her voice broke.
Baley softened. “Come on, Jessie. It was all nothing. It was just talk. You can see for yourself that nothing has happened.”
“I was so—so suh—scared. And I thought: I’m part of it. If there were going to be killing and destruction, you might be killed and Bentley and somehow it would be all muh—my fault for taking part in it, and I ought to be sent to jail.”
Baley let her sob herself out. He put his arm about her shoulder and stared tight-lipped at R. Daneel, who gazed calmly back.