Isaac Asimov - The Robots of Dawn

“I have no further questions, Gladia, and the only other business I have here, at the moment, is to see Jander—what remains of Jander—if I have your permission.”

She was suspicious again, hostile. “Why? Why?”

“Gladia! Please! I don’t expect it to be of any use, but I must see Jander and know that seeing him is of no use. I will try to do nothing that will offend your sensibilities.”

Gladia stood up. Her gown, so simple as to be nothing more than a closely fitting sheath, was not black (as it would have been on Earth) but of a dull color that showed no sparkle anywhere in it. Baley, no connoisseur of clothing, realized how well it represented—mourning.

“Come with me,” she whispered.

Baley followed Gladia through several rooms, the walls of which glowed dully. On one or two occasions, he caught a hint of movement, which he took to be a robot getting rapidly out of the way, since they had been told not to intrude.

Through a hallway, then, and up a short flight of stairs into a small room in which one part of one wall gleamed to give the effect of a spotlight.

The room held a cot and a chair—and no other furnishings.

“This was his room,” said Gladia. Then, as though answering Baley’s thought, she went on to say, “It was all he needed. I left him alone as much as I could—all day if I could. I did not want to ever grow fired of him.” She shook her head. “I wish now I had stayed with him every second. I didn’t know our time would be so short.—Here he is.”

Jander was lying on the cot and Baley looked at him gravely. The robot was covered with a smooth and shiny material. The spotlighted wall cast its glow on, Jander’s head, which was smooth and almost inhuman in its serenity. The eyes were wide open, but they were opaque and lusterless. He looked enough like Daneel to give ample point to Gladia’s discomfort at Daneel’s presence. His neck and bare shoulders showed above the sheet.

Baley said, “Has Dr. Fastolfe inspected him?”

“Yes, thoroughly. I came to him in despair and, if you had seen him rush here, the concern he felt, the pain, the—the panic, you would never think he could have been responsible. There was nothing he could do.”

“Is he unclothed?”

“Yes. Dr. Fastolfe had to remove the clothing for a thorough examination. There was no point in replacing them.”

“Would you permit me to remove the covering, Gladia?”

“Must you?”

“I do not wish to be blamed for having missed some obvious point of examination.”

“What can you possibly find that Dr. Fastolfe didn’t?”

“Nothing, Gladia, but I must know that there is nothing for me to find. Please cooperate.”

“Well, then, go ahead, but please put the covering back exactly as it is now when you are done.”

She turned her back on him and on Jander, put her left arm against the wall, and rested her forehead on it. There was no sound from her—no motion—but Baley knew that she was weeping again.

The body was, perhaps, not quite human. The muscular contours were somehow simplified and a bit schematic, but all the parts were there: nipples, navel, penis, testicles, pubic hair, and so on. Even fine, light hair on the chest.

How many days was it since Jander had been killed? It struck Baley that he didn’t know, but it had been sometime before his trip to Aurora had begun. Over a week had passed and there was no sign of decay, either visually or olfactorily. A clear robotic difference.

Baley hesitated and then thrust one arm under Jander’s shoulders and another under his hips, working them through to the other side. He did not consider asking for Gladia’s help—that would be impossible. He heaved and, with some difficulty, turned Jander over without throwing him off the cot.

The cot creaked. Gladia must know what he was doing, but she did not turn around. Though she did not offer to help, she did not protest either.

Baley withdrew his arms. Jander felt warm to the touch. Presumably, the power unit continued to do so simple a thing as to maintain temperature, even with the brain inoperative. The body felt firm and resilient, too. Presumably, it never went through any stage analogous to rigor mortis.

One arm was now dangling off the cot in quite a human fashion. Baley moved it gently and released it. It swung to and fro slightly and came to a halt. He bent one leg at the knee and studied the foot, then the other. The buttocks were perfectly formed and there was even an anus.

Baley could not get rid of the feeling of uneasiness. The notion that he was violating the privacy of a human being would not go away. If it were a human corpse, its coldness and its stiffness would have deprived it of humanity.

He thought uncomfortably: A robot corpse is much more human than a human corpse.

Again he reached under Jander, lifted, and turned him over.

He smoothed out the sheet as best he could, then replaced the cover as it had been and smoothed that. He stepped back and decided it was as it had been at first—or as near to that as he could manage.

“I’m finished, Gladia,” he said.

She turned, looked at Jander with wet eyes, and said, “May we go, then?”

“Yes, of course, but Gladia—”

“Well?”

“Will you be keeping him this way? I imagine he won’t decay.”

“Does it matter if I do?”

“In some ways, yes. You must give yourself a chance to recover. You can’t spend three centuries mourning. What is over is over.” (His statements sounded hollowly sententious in his own ear. What must they have sounded like in hers?)

She said, “I know you mean it kindly, Elijah. I have been requested to keep Jander till the investigation is done. He will then be torched at my request.”

“Torched?”

“Put under a plasma torch and reduced to his elements, as human corpses are. I will have holograms of him—and memories. Will that satisfy you?”

“Of course. I must return to Dr. Fastolfe’s house now.”

“Yes. Have you learned anything from Jander’s body?”

“I did not expect to, Gladia.”

She faced him full. “And Elijah, I want you to find who did this and—why. I must know.”

“But Gladia—”

She shook her head violently, as though keeping out anything she wasn’t ready to hear. “I know you can do this.”

Baley emerged from Gladia’s house into the sunset. He turned toward what he assumed must be the western horizon and found Aurora’s sun, a deep scarlet in color, topped by thin strips of ruddy clouds set in an apple-green sky.

“Jehoshaphat,” he murmured. Clearly, Aurora’s sun, cooler and more orange than Earth’s sun, accentuated the difference at setting, when its light passed through a greater thickness of Aurora.

Daneel was behind him; Giskard, as before, well in front.

Daneel’s voice was in his ear. “Are you well, Partner Elijah?”

“Quite well,” said Baley, pleased with himself. “I’m handling the Outside well, Daneel. I can even admire the sunset. Is it always like this?”

Daneel gazed dispassionately at the setting sun and said, “Yes. But let us move quickly toward Dr. Fastolfe’s establishment. At this time of year, the twilight does not last long, Partner Elijah, and I would wish you there while you can still see easily.”

“I’m ready. Let’s go.” Baley wondered if it might not be better to wait for the darkness. It would not be pleasant not to see, but, then, it would give him the illusion of being enclosed—and he was not, in his heart, sure as to how long this euphoria induced by admiring a sunset (a sunset, mind you, Outside) would last. But that was a cowardly uncertainty and he would not own up to it.