“She said, ‘No one, Lord.’
“And Jesus said to her, ‘Nor do I condemn you. Go, and sin no more.’ ”
R. Daneel listened attentively. He said, “What is adultery?”
“That doesn’t matter. It was a crime and at the time, the accepted punishment was stoning; that is, stones were thrown at the guilty one until she was killed.”
“And the woman was guilty?”
“She was.”
“Then why was she not stoned?”
“None of the accusers felt he could after Jesus’s statement. The story is meant to show that there is something even higher than the justice which you have been filled with. There is a human impulse known as mercy; a human act known as forgiveness.”
“I am not acquainted with those words, partner Elijah.”
“I know,” muttered Baley. “I know.”
He started the squad car with a jerk and let it tear forward savagely. He was pressed back against the cushions of the seat.
“Where are we going?” asked R. Daneel.
“To Yeast-town,” said Baley, “to get the truth out of Francis Clousarr, conspirator.”
“You have a method for doing this, Elijah?”
“Not I, exactly. But you have, Daneel. A simple one.”
They sped onward.
Chapter 15.
ARREST OF A CONSPIRATOR
Baley could sense the vague aroma of Yeast-town growing stronger, more pervasive. He did not find it as unpleasant as some did; Jessie, for instance. He even liked it, rather. It had pleasant connotations.
Every time he smelled raw yeast, the alchemy of sense perception threw him more than three decades into the past. He was a ten-year-old again, visiting his Uncle Boris, who was a yeast farmer. Uncle Boris always had a little supply of yeast delectables: small cookies, chocolaty things filled with sweet liquid, hard confections in the shape of cats and dogs. Young as he was, he knew that Uncle Boris shouldn’t really have had them to give away and he always ate them very quietly, sitting in a corner with his back to the center of the room. He would eat them quickly for fear of being caught.
They tasted all the better for that.
Poor Uncle Boris! He had an accident and died. They never told him exactly how, and he had cried bitterly because he thought Uncle Boris had been arrested for smuggling yeast out of the plant. He expected to be arrested and executed himself. Years later, he poked carefully through police files and found the truth. Uncle Boris had fallen beneath the treads of a transport. It was a disillusioning ending to a romantic myth.
Yet the myth would always arise in his mind, at least momentarily, at the whiff of raw yeast.
Yeast-town was not the official name of any part of New York City. It could be found in no gazetteer and on no official map. What was called Yeast-town in popular speech was, to the Post Office, merely the boroughs of Newark, New Brunswick, and Trenton. It was a broad strip across what was once Medieval New Jersey, dotted with residential areas, particularly in Newark Center and Trenton Center, but given over mostly to the many-layered farms in which a thousand varieties of yeast grew and multiplied.
One fifth of the City’s population worked in the yeast farms; another fifth worked in the subsidiary industries. Beginning with the mountains of wood and coarse cellulose that were dragged into the City from the tangled forests of the Alleghenies, through the vats of acid that hydrolyzed it to glucose, the carloads of niter and phosphate rock that were the most important additives, down to the jars of organics supplied by the chemical laboratories-it all came to only one thing, yeast and more yeast.
Without yeast, six of Earth’s eight billions would starve in a year. Baley felt cold at the thought. Three days before the possibility existed as deeply as it did now, but three days before it would never have occurred to him.
They whizzed out of the motorway through an exit on the Newark outskirts. The thinly populated avenues, flanked on either side by the featureless blocks that were the farms, offered little to act as a brake on their speed.
“What time is it, Daneel?” asked Baley.
“Sixteen-oh-five,” replied R. Daneel.
“Then he’ll be at work, if he’s on day shift.”
Baley parked the squad car in a delivery recess and froze the controls.
“This is New York Yeast then, Elijah?” asked the robot.
“Part of it,” said Baley.
They entered into a corridor flanked by a double row of offices. A receptionist at a bend in the corridor was instantly smiles. “Whom do you wish to see?”
Baley opened his wallet. “Police. Is there a Francis Clousarr working for New York Yeast?”
The girl looked perturbed. “I can check.”
She connected her switchboard through a line plainly marked “Personnel,” and her lips moved slightly, though no sound could be heard.
Baley was no stranger to the throat phones that translated the small movements of the larynx into words. He said, “Speak up, please. Let me hear you.”
Her words became audible, but consisted only of, “… he says he’s a policeman, sir.”
A dark, well-dressed man came out a door. He had a thin mustache and his hairline was beginning to retreat. He smiled whitely, and said, “I’m Prescott of Personnel. What’s the trouble, Officer?”
Baley stared at him coldly and Prescott’s smile grew strained.
Prescott said, “I just don’t want to upset the workers. They’re touchy about the police.”
Baley said, “Tough, isn’t it? Is Clousarr in the building now?”
“Yes, Officer.”
“Let’s have a nod, then. And if he’s gone when we get there, I’ll be speaking to you again.”
The other’s smile was quite dead. He muttered, “I’ll get you a rod, Officer.”
The guide rod was set for Department CG, Section 2. What that meant in factory terminology, Baley didn’t know. He didn’t have to. The rod was an inconspicuous thing which could be palmed in the hand. Its tip warmed gently when lined up in the direction for which it was set, cooled quickly when turned away. The warmth increased as the final goal was approached.
To an amateur, the guide rod was almost useless, with its quick little differences of heat content, but few City dwellers were amateurs at this particular game. One of the most popular and perennial of the games of childhood was hide-and-seek through the school-level corridors with the use of toy guide rods. (“Hot or Not, Let Hot-Spot Spot. Hot-Spot Guide Rods Are Keen.”)
Baley had found his way through hundreds of massive piles by guide rod, and he could follow the shortest course with one of them in his hand as though it had been mapped out for him.
When he stepped into a large and brilliantly lit room after ten minutes, the guide rod’s tip was almost hot.
Baley said to the worker nearest the door, “Francis Clousarr here?”
The worker jerked his head. Baley walked in the indicated direction. The odor of yeast was sharply penetrating, despite the laboring air pumps whose humming made a steady background noise.
A man had risen at the other end of the room, and was taking off an apron. He was of moderate height, his face deeply lined despite his comparative youth, and his hair just beginning to grizzle. He had large, knobby hands which he wiped slowly on a celltex towel.
“I’m Francis Clousarr,” he said.
Baley looked briefly at R. Daneel. The robot nodded.
“Okay,” said Baley. “Anywhere here we can talk?”
“Maybe,” said Clousarr slowly, “but it’s just about the end of my shift. How about tomorrow?”
“Lots of hours between now and tomorrow. Let’s make it now.” Baley opened his wallet and palmed it at the yeast farmer.