The Caves of Steel (28 page)

“
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 the Commissioner and he asked me to come to headquarters and wait for you.”

The Commissioner interposed quickly. “I thought it might be important. I knew you wanted to see the man.”

Baley nodded. “Thanks.”

Dr. Gerrigel said, “Unfortunately my guide rod was somewhat off, or perhaps in my overanxiety I misjudged its temperature. In either case I took a wrong turning and found myself in a small room—”

The Commissioner interrupted again. “One of the photographic supply rooms, Lije.”

“Yes,” said Dr. Gerrigel. “And it was the prone figure of what was obviously a robot. It was quite clear to me after brief examination that he was irreversibly
deactivated. Dead, you might say. Nor was it very difficult to determine the cause of the deactivation.”

“What was it?” asked Baley.

“In the robot’s partly clenched right fist,” said Dr. Gerrigel, “was a shiny ovoid about two inches long and half an inch wide with a mica window at one end. The fist was in contact with his skull as though the robot’s last act had been to touch his head. The thing he was holding was an alpha-sprayer. You know what they are, I suppose?”

Baley nodded. He needed neither dictionary nor handbook to be told what an alpha-sprayer was. He had handled several in his lab courses in physics: a lead-alloy casing with a narrow pit dug into it longitudinally, at the bottom of which was a fragment of a plutonium salt. The pit was capped with a sliver of mica, which was transparent to alpha particles. In that one direction, hard radiation sprayed out.

An alpha-sprayer had many uses, but killing robots was not one of them, not a legal one, at least.

Baley said, “He held it to his head mica first, I take it.”

Dr. Gerrigel said, “Yes, and his positronic brain paths were immediately randomized. Instant death, so to speak.”

Baley turned to the pale Commissioner. “No mistake? It really
was
an alpha-sprayer?”

The Commissioner nodded, his plump lips thrust out. “Absolutely. The counters could spot it ten feet away. Photographic film in the storeroom was fogged. Cut and dried.”

He seemed to brood about it for a moment or two, then said abruptly, “Dr. Gerrigel, I’m afraid you’ll have to stay in the City a day or two until we can get your evidence down on wire-film. I’ll have you escorted
to a room. You don’t mind being under guard, I hope?”

Dr. Gerrigel said nervously, “Do you think it’s necessary?”

“It’s safer.”

Dr. Gerrigel, seeming quite abstracted, shook hands all around, even with R. Daneel, and left.

The Commissioner heaved a sigh. “It’s one of us, Lije. That’s what bothers me. No outsider would come into the Department just to knock off a robot. Plenty of them outside where it’s safer. And it had to be somebody who could pick up an alpha-sprayer. They’re hard to get hold of.”

R. Daneel spoke, his cool, even voice cutting through the agitated words of the Commissioner. He said, “But what is the motive for this murder?”

The Commissioner glanced at R. Daneel with obvious distaste, then looked away. “We’re human, too. I suppose policemen can’t get to like robots any more than anyone else can. He’s gone now and maybe it’s a relief to somebody. He used to annoy you considerably, Lije, remember?”

“That is scarcely a murder motive,” said R. Daneel.

“No,” agreed Baley, with decision.

“It isn’t murder,” said the Commissioner. “It’s property damage. Let’s keep our legal terms straight. It’s just that it was done inside the Department. Anywhere else it would be nothing. Nothing. Now it could be a first-class scandal. Lije!”

“Yes?”

“When did you last see R. Sammy?”

Baley said, “R. Daneel spoke to R. Sammy after lunch. I should judge it was about 13:30. He arranged to have us use your office, Commissioner.”

“My office? What for?”

“I wanted to talk over the case with R. Daneel in moderate privacy. You weren’t in, so your office was an obvious place.”

“I see.” The Commissioner looked dubious, but let the matter ride. “You didn’t see him yourself?”

“No, but I heard his voice perhaps an hour afterward.”

“Are you sure it was he?”

“Perfectly.”

“That would be about 14:30?”

“Or a little sooner.”

The Commissioner bit his pudgy lower lip thoughtfully. “Well, that settles one thing.”

“It does?”

“Yes. The boy, Vincent Barrett, was here today. Did you know that?”

“Yes. But, Commissioner, he wouldn’t do anything like this.”

The Commissioner lifted his eyes to Baley’s face. “Why not? R. Sammy took his job away. I can understand how he feels. There would be a tremendous sense of injustice. He would want a certain revenge. Wouldn’t you? But the fact is that he left the building at 14:00 and you heard R. Sammy alive at 14:30. Of course, he might have given the alpha-sprayer to R. Sammy before he left with instructions not to use it for an hour, but then where could he have gotten an alpha-sprayer? It doesn’t bear thinking of. Let’s get back to R. Sammy. When you spoke to him at 14:30, what did he say?”

Baley hesitated a perceptible moment, then said carefully, “I don’t remember. We left shortly afterward.”

“Where did you go?”

“Yeast-town, eventually. I want to talk about that, by the way.”

“Later. Later.” The Commissioner rubbed his chin. “Jessie was in today, I noticed. I mean, we were checking on all visitors today and I just happened to see her name.”

“She was here,” said Baley, coldly.

“What for?”

“Personal family matters.”

“She’ll have to be questioned as a pure formality.”

“I understand police routine, Commissioner. Incidentally, what about the alpha-sprayer itself? Has it been traced?”

“Oh, yes. It came from one of the power plants.”

“How do they account for having lost it?”

“They don’t. They have no idea. But look, Lije, except for routine statements, this has nothing to do with you. You stick to your case. It’s just that Spacetown investigation.”

Baley said, “May I give my routine statements later, Commissioner? The fact is, I haven’t eaten yet.”

Commissioner Enderby’s glassed eyes turned full on Baley. “By all means get something to eat. But stay inside the Department, will you? Your partner’s right, though, Lije”—he seemed to avoid addressing R. Daneel or using his name—“it’s the motive we need. The motive.”

Baley felt suddenly frozen.

Something outside himself, something completely alien, took up the events of this day and the day before and the day before and juggled them. Once again pieces began to dovetail; a pattern began to form.

He said, “Which power plant did the alpha-sprayer come from, Commissioner?”

“The Williamsburg plant. Why?”

“Nothing. Nothing.”

The last word Baley heard the Commissioner
mutter as he strode out of the office, with R. Daneel immediately behind him, was, “Motive. Motive.”

   Baley ate a sparse meal in the small and infrequently used Department lunchroom. He devoured the stuffed tomato on lettuce without being entirely aware of its nature and for a second or so after he had gulped down the last mouthful his fork still slithered aimlessly over the slick cardboard of his plate, searching automatically for something that was no longer there.

He became aware of that and put down his fork with a muffled, “Jehoshaphat!” He said, “Daneel!”

R. Daneel had been sitting at another table, as though he wished to leave the obviously preoccupied Baley in peace, or as though he required privacy himself. Baley was past caring which.

Daneel stood up, moved to Baley’s table, and sat down again. “Yes, partner Elijah?”

Baley did not look at him. “Daneel, I’ll need your cooperation.”

“In what way?”

“They will question Jessie and myself. That is certain. Let me answer the questions in my own way. Do you understand?”

“I understand what you say, of course. Nevertheless, if I am asked a direct question, how is it possible for me to say anything but what is so?”

“
If
you are asked a direct question, that’s another matter. I ask only that you don’t volunteer information. You can do that, can’t you?”

“I believe so, Elijah, provided it does not appear that I am hurting a human being by remaining silent.”

Baley said, grimly, “You will be hurting
me
if you don’t. I assure you of that.”

“I do not quite understand your point of view, partner Elijah. Surely the matter of R. Sammy cannot concern you.”

“No? It all centers about motive, doesn’t it? You’ve questioned the motive. The Commissioner questioned it. I do, for that matter. Why should anyone want to kill R. Sammy? Mind you, it’s not just a question of who would want to smash up robots in general. Any Earthman, practically, would want to do that. The question is, who would want to single out R. Sammy? Vincent Barrett might, but the Commissioner said he couldn’t get hold of an alpha-sprayer, and he’s right. We have to look somewhere else, and it so happens that one other person has a motive. It glares out. It yells. It stinks to top level.”

“Who is the person, Elijah?”

And Baley said, softly, “I am, Daneel.”

R. Daneel’s expressionless face did not change under the impact of the statement. He merely shook his head.

Baley said, “You don’t agree. My wife came to the office today. They know that already. The Commissioner is even curious. If I weren’t a personal friend, he wouldn’t have stopped his questioning so soon. Now they’ll find out why. That’s certain. She was part of a conspiracy; a foolish and harmless one, but a conspiracy just the same. And a policeman can’t afford to have his wife mixed up with anything like that. It would be to my obvious interest to see that the matter was hushed up.

“Well, who knew about it? You and I, of course, and Jessie—
and R. Sammy
. He saw her in a state of panic. When he told her that we had left orders not to be disturbed, she must have lost control. You saw the way she was when she first came in.”

R. Daneel said, “It is unlikely that she said anything incriminating to him.”

“That may be so. But I’m reconstructing the case the way they will. They’ll say she did. There’s my motive. I killed him to keep him quiet.”

“They will not think so.”

“They
will
think so. The murder was arranged deliberately in order to throw suspicion on me. Why use an alpha-sprayer? It’s a rather risky way. It’s hard to get and it can be traced. I think that those were the very reasons it was used. The murderer even ordered R. Sammy to go into the photographic supply room and kill himself there. It seems obvious to me that the reason for that was to have the method of murder unmistakable. Even if everyone was so infantile as not to recognize the alpha-sprayer immediately, someone would be bound to notice fogged photographic film in fairly short order.”

“How does all that relate to you, Elijah?”

Baley grinned tightly, his long face completely devoid of humor. “Very neatly. The alpha-sprayer was taken from the Williamsburg power plant. You and I passed through the Williamsburg power plant yesterday. We were seen, and the fact will come out. That gives me opportunity to get the weapon as well as motive for the crime. And it may turn out that we were the last ones to see or hear R. Sammy alive, except for the real murderer, of course.”

“I was with you in the power plant and I can testify that you did not have the opportunity to steal an alpha-sprayer.”

“Thanks,” said Baley sadly, “but you’re a robot and your testimony will be invalid.”

“The Commissioner is your friend. He will listen.”

“The Commissioner has a job to keep, and he already is a bit uneasy about me. There’s only one
chance of saving myself from this very nasty situation.”

“Yes?”

“I ask myself,
why
am I being framed? Obviously to get rid of me. But why? Again obviously, because I am dangerous to someone. I am doing my best to be dangerous to whoever killed Dr. Sarton in Spacetown. That might mean the Medievalists, of course, or at least, the inner group among them. It would be this inner group that would know I had passed through the power plant; at least one of them might have followed me along the strips that far, even though you thought we had lost them.

“So the chances are that if I find the murderer of Dr. Sarton, I find the man or men who are trying to get me out of the way. If I think it through, if I crack the case, if I can only crack it, I’ll be safe. And Jessie. I couldn’t stand to have her … But I don’t have much time.” His fist clenched and unclenched spasmodically. “I don’t have much time.”