R. Daneel said quietly to Clousarr, “Do you fear robots for the sake of your job, Mr. Clousarr?”
Baley could not turn to see Clousarr’s expression, but he was certain it would be a hard and rigid mirror of detestation, that he would be sitting stiffly apart, as far as he might, from R. Daneel.
Clousarr’s voice said, “And my kids’ jobs. And everyone’s kids.”
“Surely adjustments are possible,” said the robot. “If your children, for instance, were to accept training for emigration—”
Clousarr broke in. “You, too? The policeman talked about emigration. He’s got good robot training. Maybe he is a robot.”
Baley growled, “That’s enough, you!”
R. Daneel said, evenly, “A training school for emigrants would involve security, guaranteed classification, an assured career. If you are concerned over your children, that is something to consider.”
“I wouldn’t take anything from a robot, or a Spacer, or any of your trained hyenas in the Government.”
That was all. The silence of the motorway engulfed them and there was only the soft whirr of the squad-car motor and the hiss of its wheels on the pavement.
Back at the Department, Baley signed a detention certificate for Clousarr and left him in appropriate hands. Following that, he and R. Daneel took the motospiral up the levels to Headquarters.
R. Daneel showed no surprise that they had not taken the elevators, nor did Baley expect him to. He was becoming used to the robot’s queer mixture of ability and submissiveness and tended to leave him out of his calculations. The elevator was the logical method of heaping the vertical gap between Detention and Headquarters. The long moving stairway that was the motospiral was useful only for short climbs or drops of two or three levels at most. People of all sorts and varieties of administrative occupation stepped on and then off in less than a minute. Only Baley and R. Daneel remained on continuously, moving upward in a slow and stolid measure.
Baley felt that he needed the time. It was only minutes at best, but up in Headquarters he would be thrown violently into another phase of the problem and he wanted a rest. He wanted time to think and orient himself. Slowly as it moved, the motospiral went too quickly to satisfy him.
R. Daneel said, “It seems then we will not be questioning Clousarr just yet.”
“He’ll keep,” said Baley, irritably. “Let’s find out what the R. Sammy thing is all about.” He added in a mutter, far more to himself than to R. Daneel, “It can’t be independent; there must be a connection.”
R. Daneel said, “It is a pity. Clousarr’s cerebric qualities—”
“What about them?”
“They have changed in a strange way. What was it that took place between the two of you in the balance room while I was not present?”
Baley said, absently, “The only thing I did was to preach at him. I passed along the gospel according to St. Fastolfe.”
“I do not understand you, Elijah.”
Baley sighed and said, “Look, I tried to explain that Earth might as well make use of robots and get its population surplus onto other planets. I tried to knock some of the Medievalist hogwash out of his head. God knows why. I’ve never thought of myself as the missionary type. Anyway, that’s all that happened.”
“I see. Well, that makes some sense. Perhaps that can be fitted in. Tell me, Elijah, what did you tell him about robots?”
“You really want to know? I told him robots were simply machines. That was the gospel according to St. Gerrigel. There are any number of gospels, I think.”
“Did you by any chance tell him that one could strike a robot without fear of a return blow, much as one could strike any other mechanical object?”
“Except a punching bag, I suppose. Yes. But what made you guess that?” Baley looked curiously at the robot.
“It fits the cerebric changes,” said R. Daneel, “and it explains his blow to my face just after we left the factory. He must have been thinking of what you said, so he simultaneously tested your statement, worked off his aggressive feelings, and had the pleasure of seeing me placed in what seemed to him a position of inferiority. In order to be so motivated and allowing for the delta variations in his quintic…”
He paused a long moment and said, “Yes, it is quite interesting, and now I believe I can form a self-consistent whole of the data.”
Headquarters level was approaching. Baley said, “What time is it?” He thought, pettishly: Nuts, I could look at my watch and take less time that way.
But he knew why he asked him, nevertheless. The motive was not so different from Clousarr’s in punching R. Daneel. To give the robot a trivial order that he must fulfill emphasized his roboticity and, contrariwise, Baley’s humanity.
Baley thought: We’re all brothers. Under the skin, over it, everywhere. Jehoshaphat!
R. Daneel said, “Twenty-ten.”
They stepped off the motospiral and for a few seconds Baley had the usual queen sensation that went with the necessary adjustment to non-motion after long minutes of steady movement.
He said, “And I haven’t eaten. Damn this job, anyway.”
Baley saw and heard Commissioner Enderby through the open door of his office. The common room was empty, as though it had been wiped clean, and Enderby’s voice rang through it with unusual hollowness. His round face looked bare and weak without its glasses, which he held in his hand, while he mopped his smooth forehead with a flimsy paper napkin.
His eyes caught Baley just as the latter reached the door and his voice rose into a petulant tenor.
“Good God, Baley, where the devil were you?”
Baley shrugged off the remark and said, “What’s doing? Where’s the night shift?” and then caught sight of the second person in the office with the Commissioner.
He said, blankly, “Dr. Gerrigel!”
The gray-haired roboticist returned the involuntary greeting by nodding briefly. “I’m glad to see you again, Mr. Baley.”
The Commissioner readjusted his glasses and stared at Baley through them. “The entire staff is being questioned downstairs. Signing statements. I was going mad trying to find you. It looked queer, your being away.”
“My being away!” cried Baley, strenuously.
“Anybody’s being away. Someone in the Department did it and there’s going to be hell to pay for that. What an unholy mess! What an unholy, rotten mess!”
He raised his hands as though in expostulation to heaven and as he did so, his eyes fell on R. Daneel.
Baley thought sardonically: First time you’ve looked Daneel in the face. Take a good look, Julius!
The Commissioner said in a subdued voice, “He’ll have to sign a statement. Even I’ve had to do it. I!”
Baley said, “Look, Commissioner, what makes you so sure that R. Sammy didn’t blow a gasket all by himself? What makes it deliberate destruction?”
The Commissioner sat down heavily. “Ask him,” he said, and pointed to Dr. Gerrigel.
Dr. Gerrigel cleared his throat. “I scarcely know how to go about this, Mr. Baley. I take it from your expression that you are surprised to see me.”
“Moderately,” admitted Baley.
“Well, I was in no real hurry to return to Washington and my visits to New York are few enough to make me wish to linger. And what’s more important, I had a growing feeling that it would be criminal for me to leave the City without having made at least one more effort to be allowed to analyze your fascinating robot, whom, by the way,” (he looked very eager) “I see you have with you.”
Baley stirred restlessly. “That’s quite impossible.”
The roboticist looked disappointed. “Now, yes. Perhaps later?”
Baley’s long face remained woodenly unresponsive.
Dr. Gerrigel went on. “I called you, but you weren’t in and no one knew where you could be located. I asked for the Commissioner and he asked me to come to headquarters and wait for you.”