He said, “Now, I want you to think, Jessie. Who was the head of your group?”
She was quieter now, patting the corners of her eyes with a handkerchief. “A man called Joseph Klemin was the leader, but he wasn’t really anybody. He wasn’t more than five feet four inches tall and I think he was terribly henpecked at home. I don’t think there’s any harm in him. You aren’t going to arrest him, are you, Lije? On my say-so?” She looked guiltily troubled.
“I’m not arresting anyone just yet. How did Klemin get his instructions?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did any strangers come to meeting? You know what I mean: big shots from Central Headquarters?”
“Sometimes people would come to make speeches. That wasn’t very often, maybe twice a year or so.”
“Can you name them?”
“No. They were always just introduced as ‘one of us’ or ‘a friend from Jackson Heights’ or wherever.”
“I see. Daneel!”
“Yes, Elijah,” said R. Daneel.
“Describe the men you think you’ve tabbed. We’ll see if Jessie can recognize them.”
R. Daneel went through the list with clinical exactness. Jessie listened with an expression of dismay as the categories of physical measurements lengthened and shook her head with increasing firmness.
“It’s no use. It’s no use,” she cried. “How can I remember? I can’t remember how any of them looked. I can’t—”
She stopped, and seemed to consider. Then she said, “Did you say one of them was a yeast farmer?”
“Francis Clousarr,” said R. Daneel, “is an employee at New York Yeast.”
“Well, you know, once a man was making a speech and I happened to be sitting in the first row and I kept getting a whiff, just a whiff, really, of raw yeast smell. You know what I mean. The only reason that I remember is that I had an upset stomach that day and the smell kept making me sick. I had to stand up and move to the back and of course I couldn’t explain what was wrong. It was so embarrassing. Maybe that’s the man you’re speaking of. After all, when you work with yeast all the time, the odor gets to stick to your clothes.” She wrinkled her nose.
“You don’t remember what he looked like?” said Baley.
“No,” she replied, with decision.
“All right, then. Look, Jessie, I’m going to take you to your mother’s. Bentley will stay with you, and none of you will leave the Section. Ben can stay away from school and I’ll arrange to have meals sent in and the corridors around the apartment watched by the police.”
“What about you?” quavered Jessie.
“I’ll be in no danger.”
“But how long?”
“I don’t know. Maybe just a day or two.” The words sounded hollow even to himself.
They were back in the motorway, Baley and R. Daneel, alone now. Baley’s expression was dark with thought.
“It would seem to me,” he said, “that we are faced with an organization built up on two levels. First, a ground level with no specific program, designed only to supply mass support for an eventual coup. Secondly, a much smaller elite dedicated to a well-planned program of action. It is this elite we must find. The comic-opera groups that Jessie spoke of can be ignored.”
“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?’