by Isaac Asimov
“Treated?”
“Only routine biochemical adjustment, Elijah. You had been rather psychic-damaged and we wanted no repercussions.—Do eat!”
Baley lifted an experimental spoonful to his lips. It was not bad chicken soup, though it had the queer tendency of Auroran food to be rather spicier than Baley would prefer. Or perhaps it was prepared with different spices than those he was used to.
He remembered his mother suddenly—a sharp thrust of memory that made her appear younger than he himself was right now. He remembered her standing over him when he rebelled at eating his “nice soup.”
She would say to him, “Come, Lije. This is real chicken and very expensive. Even the Spacers don’t have anything better.”
They didn’t. He called to her in his, mind across the years: They don’t, Mom!
Really! If he could trust memory and allow for the power of youthful taste buds, his mother’s chicken soup, when it wasn’t dulled by repetition, was far superior.
He sipped again and again—and when he finished, he muttered in a shamefaced way, “Would there be a little more?”
“As much as you want, Elijah.”
“Just a little more.”
Gladia said to him, as he was finishing, “Elijah, this meeting tomorrow morning—”
“Yes, Gladia?”
“Does it mean that your investigation is over? Do you know what happened to Jander?”
Baley said judiciously, “I have an idea as to what might have happened to Jander. I don’t think I can necessarily persuade anyone that I am right.”
“Then why are you having the conference?”
“It’s not my idea, Gladia. It’s Master Roboticist Amadiro’s idea. He objects to the investigation and he’s going to try to have me sent back to Earth.”
“Is he the one who tampered with your airfoil and tried to have his robots take Daneel?”
“I think he is.”
“Well, can’t he be tried and convicted and punished for that?”
“He certainly could,” said Baley feelingly, “except for the very small problem that I can’t prove it.”
“And can he do all that and get away with it—and stop the investigation, too?”
“I’m afraid he has a good chance of being able to do so. As he himself says, people who don’t expect justice don’t have to suffer disappointment.”
“But he mustn’t. You mustn’t let him. You’ve got to complete your investigation and find out the truth.”
Baley sighed. “What if I can’t find out the truth? Or what if I can—but can’t make people listen to me?”
“You can find out the truth. And you can make people listen to you.”
“You have a touching faith in me, Gladia. Still, if the Auroran World Legislature wants to send me back and orders the investigation ended, there’s nothing I’m going to be able to do about it.”
“Surely you won’t be willing to go back with nothing accomplished.”
“Of course I won’t. It’s worse than just accomplishing nothing, Gladia. I’ll go back with my career ruined and with Earth’s future destroyed.”
“Then don’t let them do that, Elijah.”
And he said, “Jehoshaphat, Gladia, I’m going to try not to, but I can’t lift a planet with my bare hands. You can’t ask me for miracles.”
Gladia nodded and, eyes downcast, put her fist to her mouth, sitting there motionlessly, as though in thought. It took a while for Baley to realize that she was weeping soundlessly.
68
Baley stood up quickly and walked around the table to her. He noted absently—and with some annoyance—that his legs were trembling and that there was a tic in the muscle of his right thigh.
“Gladia,” he said urgently, “don’t cry.”
“Don’t bother, Elijah,” she whispered. “It will pass.”
He stood helplessly at her side, reaching out to her yet hesitating. “I’m not touching you,” he said. “I don’t think I had better do so, but—”
“Oh, touch me. Touch me. I’m not all that fond of my body, and I won’t catch anything from you. I’m not—what I used to be.”
So Baley reached out and touched her elbow and stroked it very slightly and clumsily with his fingertips. “I’ll do what I can tomorrow, Gladia,” he said. “I’ll give it my very best try.”
She rose at that, turned toward him, and said, “Oh, Elijah.”
Automatically, scarcely knowing what he was doing, Baley held out his arms. And, just as automatically, she walked into them and he was holding her while her head cradled—against his chest.
He held her as lightly as he could, waiting for her to realize that she was embracing an Earthman. (She had undoubtedly embraced a humaniform robot, but he had been no Earthman.)
She sniffed loudly and spoke while her mouth was half obscured in Baley’s shirt.
She said, “It isn’t fair. It’s because I’m a Solarian. No one really cares what happened to Jander and they would if I were an Auroran. It just boils down to prejudice and politics.”
Baley thought: Spacers are people. This is exactly what Jessie would say in a similar situation. And if it were Gremionis who was holding Gladia, he’d say exactly what I’ll say—if I knew what I would say.
And then he said, “That’s not entirely so. I’m sure Dr. Fastolfe cares what happened to Jander.”
“No, he doesn’t. Not really. He just wants to have his way in the Legislature, and that Amadiro wants to have his way, and either one would trade Jander for his way.”
“I promise you, Gladia, I won’t trade Jander for anything.”
“No? If they tell you that you can go back to Earth with your career saved and no penalty for your world, provided you forget all about Jander, what would you do?”
“There’s no use setting up hypothetical situations that can’t possibly come to pass. They’re not going to give me anything in return for abandoning Jander. They’re just going to try to send me back with nothing at all except ruin for me and my world. But, if they were to let me, I would get the man who destroyed Jander and see to it that he was adequately punished.”
“What do you mean if they were to let you? Make them let you!”
Baley smiled bitterly. “If you think Aurorans pay no attention to you because you’re a Solarian, imagine how little you would get if you were from Earth, as I am.”
He held her closer, forgetting he was from Earth, even as he said the word. “But I’ll try, Gladia. It’s no use raising hopes, but I don’t have a completely empty hand. I’ll try—”
His voice trailed off.
“You keep saying, you’ll try.—But how?” She pushed away from him a bit to look up into his face.
Baley said, bewildered, “Why, I may—”
“Find the murderer?”
“Whatever.—Gladia, please, I must sit down.”
He reached out for the table, leaning on it.
She said, “What is it, Elijah?”
“I’ve had a difficult day, obviously, and I haven’t quite recovered, I think.”
“You’d better go to bed, then.”
“To tell the truth, Gladia, I would like to.”
She released him, her face full of concern and with no further room in it for tears. She lifted her arm and made a rapid motion and he was (it seemed to him) surrounded by robots at once.
And when, he was in bed eventually and the last robot had left him, he found himself staring up at darkness.
He could not tell whether it was still raining Outside or whether some feeble lightning flashes were still making their last sleepy sparks, but he knew he heard no thunder.
He drew a deep breath and thought: Now what is it I have promised Gladia? What will happen tomorrow?
Last act: Failure?
And as Baley drifted into the borderland of sleep, he thought of that unbelievable flash of illumination that had come before sleep.
69
Twice before, it had happ
ened. Once the night before when, as now, he was falling asleep and once earlier this evening when he had slipped into unconsciousness beneath the tree in the storm. Each time, something had occurred to him, some enlightenment that had unmystified the problem as the lightning had undarkened the night.
And it had stayed with him as briefly as the lightning had.
What was it?
Would it come to him again?
This time, he tried consciously to seize it, to catch the elusive truth.—Or was it the elusive illusion? Was it the slipping away of conscious reason and the coming of attractive nonsense that one couldn’t analyze properly in the absence of a properly thinking brain?
The search for whatever it was, however, slid slowly away. It would no more come on call than a unicorn would in a world in which unicorns did not exist.
It was easier to think of Gladia and of how she had felt. There had been the direct touch of the silkiness of her blouse, but beneath it were the small and delicate arms, the smooth back.
Would he have dared to kiss her if his legs had not begun to buckle beneath him? Or would that have been going too far?
He heard his breath exhale in a soft snore and, as always, that embarrassed him. He flogged himself awake and thought of Gladia again. Before he left, surely—but not if he could gam nothing for her in ret—Would that be payment for services then—He heard the soft snore again and cared less this time.
Gladia—He had never thought he would see her again—let alone touch her—let alone hold her—hold her—
And he had no way of telling at what point he passed from thought to dream.
He was holding her again, as before—But there was no blouse—and her skin was warm and soft—and his hand moved slowly down the slope of shoulder blade and down the hidden ridges of her ribs—
There was a total aura of reality about it. All of his senses were engaged. He smelled her hair and his lips tasted the faint, faint salt of her skin—and now somehow they were no longer standing. Had they lain down or were they lying down from the start? And what had happened to the light?
He felt the mattress beneath him and the cover over him darkness—and she was still in his arms and her body was bare.
He was shocked awake. “Gladia?”
Rising inflection—disbelieving—
“Shh, Elijah.” She placed the fingers of one hand gently on his lips. “Don’t say anything.”
She might as well have asked him to stop the current of his blood.
He said, “What are you doing?”
She said, “Don’t you know what I’m doing? I’m in bed with you.”
“But why?”
“Because I want to.” Her body moved against his.
She pinched the top of his night garment and the seam that held it together fell apart.
“Don’t move, Elijah. You’re tired and I don’t want you to wear yourself out further.”
Elijah felt a warmth stirring within him. He decided not to protect Gladia against herself. He said, “I’m not that tired, Gladia.”
“No,” she said sharply. “Rest! I want you to rest. Don’t move.”
Her mouth was on his as though intent on forcing him to keep quiet. He relaxed and the small thought flitted past him that he was following orders that he was tired and was willing to be done to rather than to do. And, tinged with shame, it occurred to him that it rather diluted his guilt. (I couldn’t help it, he heard, himself say. She made me.) Jehoshaphat, how cowardly! How unbearably demeaning!
But those thoughts washed away, too. Somehow there was soft music in the air and the temperature had risen a bit. The cover had vanished and so had his nightclothes. He felt his head moved into the cradle of her arms and pressed against softness.
With a detached surprise, he knew, from her position, that the softness was her left breast and that it was centered, contrastingly, with its nipple hard against his lips.
Softly, she was singing to the music, a sleepily joyful tune he did not recognize.
She rocked gently back and forth and her fingertips grazed his chin and neck. He relaxed, content to do nothing, to let her initiate and carry through every activity. When she moved his arms, he did not resist and let them rest wherever she placed them.
He did not help and, when he did respond with heightened excitement and climax, it was only out of helplessness to do otherwise.
She seemed tireless and he did not want her to stop. Aside from the sensuality of sexual response, he felt again what he had felt earlier, the total luxury of the infant’s passivity.
And, finally, he could respond no more and, it seemed, she could do no more and she lay with her head in the hollow where his left shoulder met his chest and her left arm lay across his ribs, her fingers stroking the short, curling hairs tenderly.
He seemed to hear her murmuring, “Thank you—Thank you—”
For what? he wondered.
He was scarcely conscious of her now, for this utterly soft end of a hard day was as soporific as, the fabled nepenthe and he could feel himself slipping away, as though his fingertips were relaxing from the edge of the cliff of harsh reality in order that he might drop—drop—through the soft clouds of gathering sleep into the slowly swaying ocean of dreams.
And as he did so, what had not come on call came of itself. For the third time, the curtain was lifted and all the events since he had left Earth shuffled once more into hard focus. Again, it was all clear. He struggled to speak, to hear the words he needed to hear, to fix them and make them part of his thought processes, but though he clutched at them with every tendril of his mind, they slipped past and through and were gone.
So that, in this respect, Baley’s second day on Aurora ended very much as his first had.
PART 17.
THE CHAIRMAN
70
When Baley opened his eyes, it was to find sunlight streaming through the window and he welcomed it. To his still-sleepy surprise, he welcomed it.
It meant the storm was over and it was, as though the storm had never happened. Sunlight—when viewed only as an alternative to the smooth, soft, warm, controlled light of the Cities—could only be considered harsh and uncertain. But compare it with the storm and it was the promise of peace itself. Everything, Baley thought, is relative and he knew he would never think of sunshine as entirely evil again.
“Partner Elijah?” Daneel was standing at the side of the bed. A little behind him stood Giskard.
Baley’s long face dissolved in a rare smile of pure pleasure. He held out his hands, one to each. “Jehoshaphat, men!”, and he was totally unaware, at the moment, of any inappropriateness in the word—“when I last saw you two together, I wasn’t in the least sure I would ever see either of you again.”
“Surely,” said Daneel softly, “none of us would have been harmed under any circumstances.”
“With the sunlight coming in, I see that,” said Baley. “But last night, I felt as though the storm would kill me and I was certain you were in deadly danger, Daneel. It even seemed possible that Giskard might be damaged in some way, trying to defend me against overwhelming odds. Melodramatic, I admit, but I wasn’t quite myself, you know.”
“We were aware of that, sir,” said Giskard. “That was what made it difficult for us to leave you, despite your urgent order. We trust that this is not a source of displeasure for you at present.”
“Not at all, Giskard.”
“And,” said Daneel, “we also know that you have been well cared for since we left you.”
It was only then that Baley remembered the events of the night before.
Gladia!
He looked about in sudden astonishment. She was not anywhere in the room. Had he imagined—
No, of course not. That would be impossible.
And then he looked at Daneel with a frown, as though suspecting his remark to bear a libidinous character.
But no, that would be impossible, too. A robot, however humaniform, would not be design
ed to take lubricious delight in innuendo.
He said, “Quite well cared for. But what—I need at the moment is to be shown to the Personal.”
“We are here, sir,” said Giskard, “to direct you and help you through the morning. Miss Gladia felt you would be more comfortable with us than with any of her own staff and she stressed that we were to leave nothing wanting for your comfort.”
Baley looked doubtful. “How far did she instruct you to go? I feel pretty well now, so I don’t have to have anyone wash and dry me. I can take care of myself. She does understand that, I hope.”
“You need fear no embarrassment, Partner Elijah,” said Daneel, with the small smile that (it seemed to Baley) came at those moments when, in a human being, it might be judged that a feeling of affection would have arisen. “We are merely to see to your comfort. If, at any time, you are most comfortable in privacy, we will wait at some distance.”
“In that case, Daneel, we’re all set.” Baley scrambled out of bed. It pleased him to see that he felt quite steady on his legs. The night’s rest and the treatment when he was brought back (whatever it might have been) had done marvels.—And Gladia, too.
71
Still nude and just damp enough from his shower to feel thoroughly fresh, Baley, having brushed his hair, studied the result critically. It seemed natural that he would have breakfast with Gladia and he wasn’t certain how he might be received. It might be best, perhaps, to take the attitude that nothing had happened and to be guided by her attitude. And somehow, he thought, it might help if he looked reasonably good—provided that was within the realm of the possible. He made a dissatisfied face at his reflection in the mirror.
“Daneel!” he called.
“Yes, Partner Elijah.”
Speaking through and around toothpaste, Baley said, “Those are new clothes you are wearing, it seems.”
“Not mine originally, Partner Elijah. They had been friend Jander’s.”
Baley’s eyebrows climbed. “She let you have Jander’s?”