The Caves of Steel (25 page)

Jessie’s voice trembled. “I’m sorry, Lije.”

“Well, that won’t help. Being sorry, I mean. I want to know about the meetings. In the first place, where were they held?”

A sense of detachment was creeping over him, a numbing of emotions. What he had tried not to believe was so, was openly so, was unmistakably so. In a sense, it was a relief to have the uncertainty over.

She said, “Down here.”

“Down here? You mean on this spot? What
do
you mean?”

“Here in the motorway. That’s why I didn’t want to come down here. It was a wonderful place to meet, though. We’d get together—”

“How many?”

“I’m not sure. About sixty or seventy. It was just a sort of local branch. There’d be folding chairs and some refreshments and someone would make a speech, mostly about how wonderful life was in the old days, and how someday we’d do away with the monsters, the robots, that is, and the Spacers, too. The speeches were sort of dull really, because they were all the same. We just endured them. Mostly, it was the fun of getting together and feeling important. We would pledge ourselves to oaths and there’d be secret ways we would greet each other on the outside.”

“Weren’t you ever interrupted? No squad cars or fire engines passed?”

“No. Never.”

R. Daneel interrupted, “Is that unusual, Elijah?”

“Maybe not,” Baley answered thoughtfully. “There are some side-passages that are practically
never used. It’s quite a trick, knowing which they are, though. Is that all you did at the meetings, Jessie? Make speeches and play at conspiracy?”

“It’s about all. And sing songs, sometimes. And of course, refreshments. Not much. Sandwiches, usually, and juice.”

“In that case,” he said, almost brutally, “what’s bothering you now?”

Jessie winced. “You’re angry.”

“Please,” said Baley, with iron patience, “answer my question. If it were all as harmless as that, why have you been in such panic for the last day and a half?”

“I thought they would hurt you, Lije. For heaven’s sake, why do you act as though you don’t understand? I’ve explained it to you.”

“No, you haven’t. Not yet. You’ve told me about a harmless little secret kaffee-klatsch you belonged to. Did they ever hold open demonstrations? Did they ever destroy robots? Start riots? Kill people?”

“
Never
! Lije, I wouldn’t do any of those things. I wouldn’t stay a member if they tried it.”

“Well, then, why do you say you’ve done a terrible thing? Why do you expect to be sent to jail?”

“Well … Well, they used to talk about someday when they’d put pressure on the government. We were supposed to get organized and then afterward there would be huge strikes and work stoppages. We could force the government to ban all robots and make the Spacers go back where they came from. I thought it was just talk and then, this thing started; about you and Daneel, I mean. Then they said, ‘Now we’ll see action,’ and ‘We’re going to make an example of them and put a stop to the robot invasion right now.’ Right there in Personal they said it, not knowing it was you they were talking about. But I knew. Right away.”

Her voice broke.

Baley softened. “Come on, Jessie. It was all nothing. It was just talk. You can see for yourself that nothing has happened.”

“I was so—so suh—scared. And I thought:
I’m
part of it. If there were going to be killing and destruction,
you
might be killed and Bentley and somehow it would be all muh—my fault for taking part in it, and I ought to be sent to jail.”

Baley let her sob herself out. He put his arm about her shoulder and stared tight-lipped at R. Daneel, who gazed calmly back.

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 hen-pecked 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 meetings? 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 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 cerebro-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 of 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?”

“ ‘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.

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.