Asimov's Future History Volume 4 (39 page)

“N-no.” Then, suddenly, as though all resistance had corroded within her: “I haven’t told you everything.”

“Well, then, please do so now.”

“We were quarreling that time, the time he died. The old quarrel. I screamed at him but he never shouted back. He hardly ever even said anything and that just made it worse. I was so angry, so angry. I don’t remember after that.”

“Jehoshaphat!” Baley swayed slightly and his eyes sought the neutral stone of the bench. “What do you mean you don’t remember?”

“I mean he was dead and I was screaming and the robots came–”

“Did you kill him?”

“I don’t remember it, Elijah, and I would remember it if I did, wouldn’t I? Only I don’t remember anything else, either, and I’ve been so frightened, so frightened. Help me, please, Elijah.”

“Don’t worry, Gladia. I’ll help you.” Baley’s reeling mind fastened on the murder weapon. What happened to it? It must have been removed. If so, only the murderer could have done it. Since Gladia was found immediately after the murder on the scene, she could not have done it. The murderer would have to be someone else. No matter how it looked to everyone on Solaria, it had to be someone else.

Baley thought sickly: I’ve got to get back to the house.

He said, “Gladia–”

Somehow he was staring at the sun. It was nearly at the horizon. He had to turn his head to look at it and his eyes locked with a morbid fascination. He had never seen it so. Fat, red, and dim somehow, so that one could look at it without blinding, arid see the bleeding clouds above it in thin lines, with one crossing it in a bar of black.

Baley mumbled, “The sun is so red.”

He heard Gladia’s choked voice say drearily, “It’s always red at sunset, red and dying.”

Baley had a vision. The sun was moving down to the horizon because the planet’s surface was moving away from it, a thousand miles an hour, spinning under that naked sun, spinning with nothing to guard the microbes called men that scurried over its spinning surface, spinning madly forever, spinning–spinning.

It was his head that was spinning and the stone bench that was slanting beneath him and the sky heaving, blue, dark blue, and the sun was gone, with the tops of trees and the ground rushing up and Gladia screaming thinly and another sound..

16: A Solution Is Offered

B
ALEY
WAS
AWARE
first of enclosure, the absence of the open, and then of a face bending over him.

He stared for a moment without recognition. Then: “
Daneel!
”

The robot’s face showed no sign of relief or of any other recognizable emotion at being addressed. He said, “It is well that you have recovered consciousness, Partner Elijah. I do not believe you have suffered physical injury.”

“I’m all right,” said Baley testily, struggling to his elbows. “Jehoshaphat, am I in bed? What for?”

“You have been exposed to the open a number of times today. The effects upon you have been cumulative and you need rest.”

“I need a few answers first.” Baley looked about and tried to deny to himself that his head was spinning just a little. He did not recognize the room. The curtains were drawn. Lights were comfortably artificial. He was feeling much better. “For instance, where am I?”

“In a room of Mrs. Delmarre’s mansion.”

“Next, let’s get something straight. What are
you
doing here? How did you get away from the robots I set over you?”

Daneel said, “It had seemed to me that you would be displeased at this development and yet in the interests of your safety and of my orders, I felt that I had no choice but–”

“What did you
do?
Jehoshaphat!”

“It seems Mrs. Delmarre attempted to view you some hours ago.”

“Yes.” Baley remembered Gladia saying as much earlier in the day. “I know that.”

“Your order to the robots that held me prisoner was, in your words: ‘Do not allow him’ (meaning myself) ‘to establish contact with other humans or other robots, either by seeing or by viewing.’ However, Partner Elijah, you said nothing about forbidding other humans or robots to contact me. You see the distinction?”

Baley groaned.

Daneel said, “No need for distress, Partner Elijah. The flaw in your orders was instrumental in saving your life, since it brought me to the scene. You see, when Mrs. Delmarre viewed me, being allowed to do so by my robot guardians, she asked after you and I answered, quite truthfully, that I did not know of your whereabouts, but that I could attempt to find out. She seemed anxious that I do so. I said I thought it possible you might have left the house temporarily and that I would check that matter and would she, in the meanwhile, order the robots in the room with me, to search the mansion for your presence.”

“Wasn’t she surprised that you didn’t deliver the orders to the robots yourself?”

“I gave her the impression, I believe, that as an Auroran I was not as accustomed to robots as she was; that she might deliver the orders with greater authority and effect a more speedy consummation. Solarians, it is quite clear, are vain of their skill with robots and contemptuous of the ability of natives of other planets to handle them. Is that not your opinion as well, Partner Elijah?”

“And she ordered them away, then?”

“With difficulty. They protested previous orders but, of course, could not state the nature thereof since you had ordered them to tell no one of my own true identity. She overrode them, although the final orders had to be thrilled out in fury.”

“And then you left.”

“I did, Partner Elijah.”

A pity, thought Baley, that Gladia did not consider that episode important enough to relay to him when he viewed her. He said, “It took you long enough to find me, Daneel.”

“The robots on Solaria have a network of information through subetheric contact. A skilled Solarian could obtain information readily, but, mediated as it is through millions of individual machines, one such as myself, without experience in the matter, must take time to unearth a single datum. It was better than an hour before the information as to your whereabouts reached me. I lost further time by visiting Dr. Delmarre’s place of business after you had departed.”

“What were you doing there?”

“Pursuing researches of my own. I regret that this had to be done in your absence, but the exigencies of the investigation left me no choice.”

Baley said, “Did you view Kiorissa Cantoro, or see her?” “I viewed her, but from another part of her building, not from our own estate. There were records at the farm I had to see. Ordinarily viewing would have been sufficient, but it might have been inconvenient to remain on our own estate since three robots knew my real nature and might easily have imprisoned me once more.”

Baley felt almost well. He swung his legs out of bed and found himself in a kind of nightgown. He stared at it with distaste. “Get me my clothes.”

Daneel did so.

As Baley dressed, he said, “Where’s Mrs. Delmarre?”

“Under house arrest, Partner Elijah.”

“What? By whose order?”

“By my order. She is confined to her bedroom under robotic guard and her right to give orders other than to meet personal needs has been neutralized.”

“By yourself?”

“The robots on this estate are not aware of my identity.”

Baley finished dressing. “I know the case against Gladia,” he said. “She had the opportunity; more of it, in fact, than we thought at first. She did not rush to the scene at the sound of her husband’s cry, as she first said. She was there all along.”

“Does she claim to have witnessed the murder and seen the murderer?”

“No. She remembers nothing of the crucial moments. That happens sometimes. It turns out, also, that she has a motive.”

“What was it, Partner Elijah?”

“One that I had suspected as a possibility from the first. I said to myself, if this were Earth, and Dr. Delmarre were as he was described to be and Gladia Delmarre as she seemed to be, I would say that she was in love with him, or had been, and that he was in love only with himself. The difficulty was to tell whether Solarians felt love or reacted to love in any Earthly sense. My judgment as to their emotions and reactions wasn’t to be trusted. It was why I had to see a few.
Not
view them, but see them.”

“I do not follow you, Partner Elijah.”

“I don’t know if I can explain it to you. These people have their gene possibilities carefully plotted before birth and the actual gene distribution tested after birth.”

“I know that.”

“But genes aren’t everything. Environment counts too, and environment can bend into actual psychosis where genes indicate only a potentiality for a particular psychosis. Did you notice Gladia’s interest in Earth?”

“I remarked upon it, Partner Elijah, and considered it an assumed interest designed to influence your opinions.”

“Suppose it were a real interest, even a fascination. Suppose there were something about Earth’s crowds that excited her. Suppose she were attracted against her will by something she had been taught to consider filthy. There was possible abnormality. I had to test it by seeing Solarians and noticing how they reacted to it, and seeing her and noticing how
she
reacted to it. It was why I had to get away from you, Daneel, at any cost. It was why I had to abandon viewing as a method for carrying on the investigation.”

“You did not explain this, Partner Elijah.”

“Would the explanation have helped against what you conceived your duty under First Law to be?”

Daneel was silent.

Baley said, “The experiment worked. I saw or tried to see several people. An old sociologist tried to see me and had to give up midway. A roboticist refused to see me at all even under terrific force, The bare possibility sent him into an almost infantile frenzy. He sucked his finger and wept. Dr. Delmarre’s assistant was used to personal presence in the way of her profession and so she tolerated me, but at twenty feet only. Gladia, on the other hand–”

“Yes, Partner Elijah?”

“Gladia consented to see me without more than a slight hesitation. She tolerated my presence easily and actually showed signs of decreasing strain as time went on. It all fits into a pattern of psychosis. She didn’t mind seeing me; she was interested in Earth; she might have felt an abnormal interest in her husband. All of it could be explained by a strong and, for this world, psychotic interest in the personal presence of members of the opposite sex. Dr. Delmarre, himself, was not the type to encourage such a feeling or co-operate with it. It must have been very frustrating for her.”

Daneel nodded. “Frustrating enough for murder in a moment of passion.”

“In spite of everything, I don’t think so, Daneel.”

“Are you perhaps being influenced by extraneous motives of your own, Partner Elijah? Mrs. Delmarre is an attractive woman and you are an Earthman in whom a preference for the personal presence of an attractive woman is not psychotic.”

“I have better reasons,” said Baley uneasily. (Daneel’s cool glance was too penetrating and soul-dissecting by half. Jehoshaphat! The thing was only a machine.) He said, “If she were the murderess of her husband, she would also have to be the attempted murderess of Gruer.” He had almost the impulse to explain the way murder could be manipulated through robots, but held back. He was not sure how Daneel would react to a theory that made unwitting murderers of robots.

Daneel said, “And the attempted murderess of yourself as well.” Baley frowned. He had had no intention of telling Daneel of the poisoned arrow that had missed; no intention of strengthening the other’s already too strong protective complex vis-a-vis himself.

He said angrily, “What did Klorissa tell you?” He ought to have warned her to keep quiet, but then, how was he to know that Daneel would be about, asking questions?

Daneel said calmly, “Mrs. Cantoro had nothing to do with the matter. I witnessed the murder attempt myself.”

Baley was thoroughly confused. “You were nowhere about.”

Daneel said, “I caught you myself and brought you here an hour ago.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Do you not remember, Partner Elijah? It was almost a perfect murder. Did not Mrs. Delmarre suggest that you go into the open? I was not a witness to that, but I feel certain she did.”

“She did suggest it. Yes.”

“She may even have enticed you to leave the house.”

Baley thought of the “portrait” of himself, of the enclosing gray walls. Could it have been clever psychology? Could a Solarian have that much intuitive understanding of the psychology of an Earthman?

“No,” he said.

Daneel said, “Was it she who suggested you go down to the ornamental pond and sit on the bench?”

“Well, yes.”

“Does it occur to you that she might have been watching you, noticing your gathering dizziness?”

“She asked once or twice if I wanted to go back.”

“She might not have meant it seriously. She might have been watching you turn sicker on that bench. She might even have pushed you, or perhaps a push wasn’t necessary. At the moment I reached you and caught you in my arms, you were in the process of falling backward off the stone bench and into three feet of water, in which you would surely have drowned.”

For the first time Baley recalled those last fugitive sensations. “Jehoshaphat!”

“Moreover,” said Daneel with calm relentlessness, “Mrs. Delmarre sat beside you, watching you fall, without a move to stop you. Nor would she have attempted to pull you out of the water. She would have let you drown. She might have called a robot, but the robot would surely have arrived too late. And afterward, she would explain merely that, of course, it was impossible for her to touch you even to save your life.”

True enough, thought Baley. No one would question her inability to touch a human being. The surprise, if any, would come at her ability to be as close to one as she was.

Daneel said, “You see, then, Partner Elijah, that her guilt can scarcely be in question. You stated that she would have to be the attempted murderess of Agent Gruer as though this were an argument against her guilt. You see now that she must have been. Her only motive to murder you was the same as her motive for trying to murder Gruer; the necessity of getting rid of an embarrassingly persistent investigator of the first murder.”