R. Daneel said, “You must not think, Elijah, that I do not understand the position in which you find yourself. In the service of humanity’s good, the minor wrongs must be tolerated. Dr. Sarton has a surviving wife, two children, parents, a sister, many friends. All must grieve at his death and be saddened at the thought that his murderer has not been found and punished.”
“Then why not stay and find him?”
“It is no longer necessary.”
Baley said, bitterly, “Why not admit that the entire investigation was an excuse to study us under field conditions? You never gave a damn who killed Dr. Sarton.”
“We would have liked to know,” said R. Daneel, coolly, “but we were never under any delusions as to which was more important, an individual or humanity. To continue the investigation now would involve interfering with a situation which we now find satisfactory. We could not foretell what damage we might do.”
“You mean the murderer might turn out to be a prominent Medievalist and right now the Spacers don’t want to do anything to antagonize their new friends.”
“It is not as I would say it, but there is truth in your words.”
“Where’s your justice circuit, Daneel? Is this justice?”
“There are degrees of justice, Elijah. When the lesser is incompatible with the greater, the lesser must give way.”
It was as though Baley’s mind were circling the impregnable logic of R. Daneel’s positronic brain, searching for a loophole, a weakness.
He said, “Have you no personal curiosity, Daneel? You’ve called yourself a detective. Do you know what that implies? Do you understand that an investigation is more than a job of work? It is a challenge. Your mind is pitted against that of the criminal. It is a clash of intellect. Can you abandon the battle and admit defeat?”
“If no worthy end is served by a continuation, certainly.”
“Would you feel no loss? No wonder? Would there be no little speck of dissatisfaction? Frustrated curiosity?”
Baley’s hopes, not strong in the first place, weakened as he spoke. The word “curiosity,” second time repeated, brought back his own remarks to Francis Clousarr four hours before. He had known well enough then the qualities that marked off a man from a machine. Curiosity had to be one of them. A six-week-old kitten was curious, but how could there be a curious machine, be it ever so humanoid?
R. Daneel echoed those thoughts by saying, “What do you mean by curiosity?”
Baley put the best face on it. “Curiosity is the name we give to a desire to extend one’s knowledge.”
“Such a desire exists within me, when the extension of knowledge is necessary for the performance of an assigned task.”
“Yes,” said Baley, sarcastically, “as when you ask questions about Bentley’s contact lenses in order to learn more of Earth’s peculiar customs.”
“Precisely,” said R. Daneel, with no sign of any awareness of sarcasm. “Aimless extension of knowledge, however, which is what I think you really mean by the term curiosity, is merely inefficiency. I am designed to avoid inefficiency.”
It was in that way that the “sentence” he had been waiting for came to Elijah Baley, and the opaque jelly shuddered and settled and changed into luminous transparency.
While R. Daneel spoke, Baley’s mouth opened and stayed so.
It could not all have burst full-grown into his mind. Things did not work so. Somewhere, deep inside his unconscious, he had built a case, built it carefully and in detail, but had been brought up short by a single inconsistency. One inconsistency that could be neither jumped over, burrowed under, nor shunted aside. While that inconsistency existed, the case remained buried below his thoughts, beyond the reach of his conscious probing.
But the sentence had come; the inconsistency had vanished; the case was his.
The glare of mental light appeared to have stimulated Baley mightily. At least he suddenly knew what R. Daneel’s weakness must be, the weakness of any thinking machine. He thought feverishly, hopefully: The thing must be literal-minded.
He said, “Then Project Spacetown is concluded as of today and with it the Sarton investigation. Is that it?”
“That is the decision of our people at Spacetown,” agreed R. Daneel, calmly.
“But today is not yet over.” Baley looked at his watch. It was 22:30. “There is an hour and a half until midnight.”
R. Daneel said nothing. He seemed to consider.
Baley spoke rapidly. “Until midnight, the project continues then. You are my partner and the investigation continues.” He was becoming almost telegraphic in his haste. “Let us go on as before. Let me work. It will do your people no harm. It will do them great good. My word upon it. If, in your judgment, I am doing harm, stop me. It is only an hour and a half I ask.”
R. Daneel said, “What you say is correct. Today is not over. I had not thought of that, partner Elijah.”
Baley was “partner Elijah” again.
He grinned, and said, “Didn’t Dr. Fastolfe mention a film of the scene of the murder when I was in Spacetown?”
“He did,” said R. Daneel.
Baley said, “Can you get a copy of the film?”
“Yes, partner Elijah.”
“I mean now! Instantly!”
“In ten minutes, if I can use the Department transmitter.”
The process took less time than that. Baley stared at the small aluminum block he held in his trembling hands. Within it the subtle forces transmitted from Spacetown had strongly fixed a certain atomic pattern.
And at that moment, Commissioner Julius Enderby stood in the doorway. He saw Baley and a certain anxiety passed from his round face, leaving behind it a look of growing thunder.
He said, uncertainly, “Look here, Lije, you’re taking a devil of a time, eating.”
“I was bone-tired, Commissioner. Sorry if I’ve delayed you.”
“I wouldn’t mind, but… You’d better come to my office.” Baley’s eyes flicked toward R. Daneel, but met no answering look. Together they moved out of the lunchroom.
Julius Enderby tramped the floor before his desk, up and down, up and down. Baley watched him, himself far from composed. Occasionally, he glanced at his watch.
22:45.
The Commissioner moved his glasses up onto his forehead and rubbed his eyes with thumb and forefinger. He left red splotches in the flesh around them, then restored the glasses to their place, blinking at Baley from behind them.
“Lije,” he said suddenly, “when were you last in the Williamsburg power plant?”
Baley said, “Yesterday, after I left the office. I should judge at about eighteen or shortly thereafter.”
The Commissioner shook his head. “Why didn’t you say so?”
“I was going to. I haven’t given an official statement yet.”
“What were you doing there?”
“Just passing through on my way to our temporary sleeping quarters.”
The Commissioner stopped short, standing before Baley, and said, “That’s no good, Lije. No one just passes through a power plant to get somewhere else.”
Baley shrugged. There was no point in going through the story of the pursuing Medievalists, of the dash along the strips. Not now.
He said, “If you’re trying to hint that I had an opportunity to get the alpha-sprayer that knocked out R. Sammy, I’ll remind you that Daneel was with me and will testify that I went right through the plant without stopping and that I had no alpha-sprayer on me when I left.”
Slowly, the Commissioner sat down. He did not look in R. Daneel’s direction or offer to speak to him. He put his pudgy white hands on the desk before him and regarded them with a look of acute misery on his face.
He said, “Lije, I don’t know what to say or what to think. And it’s no use having your—your partner as alibi. He can’t give evidence.”
“I still deny that I took an alpha-sprayer.”
The Commissioner’s fingers intertwined and writhed. He said, “Lije, why did Jessie come to see you here this afternoon?”