Isaac Asimov - The Robots of Dawn

Vasilia’s jaw muscles tightened and she said, in a low and angry voice, “See, here, little Earthman, my position is vulnerable and you probably know it. I am the daughter of Dr. Fastolfe and there are some here at the Institute who are foolish enough—or knavish enough—to mistrust me therefor. I don’t know what kind of story you may have heard—or made up but that it’s more or less farcical is certain. Nevertheless, no matter how farcical, it might be used effectively against me. So I am willing to trade for it. I have told you some things and I might tell you more, but only if you now tell me what you have in your hand and convince me you are telling me the truth. So tell me now.

“If you try to play games with me, I will be in no worse position than at present if I kick you out—and I will at least get pleasure out of that. And I will use what leverage I have with the Chairman to get him to cancel his decision to let you come here and have you sent right back to Earth. There is considerable pressure on him now to do this and you won’t want the addition of mine.

“So, talk! Now!”

Baley’s impulse was to lead up to the crucial point, feeling his way to see if he were right. That, he felt, would not work. She would see what he was doing—she was no fool—and would stop him. He was on the track of something, he knew, and he didn’t want to spoil it. What she said about her vulnerable position as the result of her relationship to her father might well be true, but she still would not have been frightened into seeing him if she hadn’t suspected that some notion he had was not completely farcical.

He had to come out with something, then, with something important that would establish, at once, some sort of domination over her. Therefore—the gamble.

He said, “Santirix Gremionis offered himself to you.” And, before Vasilia could react, he raised the ante by saying, with an added touch of harshness, “And not once but many times.”

Vasilia clasped her hands over one knee, then pulled herself up and seated herself on the stool, as though to make herself more comfortable. She looked at Giskard, who stood motionless and expressionless at her side.

Then she looked at Baley and said, “Well, the idiot offers himself to everyone he sees, regardless of age and sex—I would be unusual if he paid me no attention.”

Baley made the gesture of brushing that to one side. (She had not laughed. She had not brought the interview to an end. She had not even put on a display of fury. She was waiting to see what he would build out of the statement, so he did have something by the tail.)

He said, “That is exaggeration, Dr. Vasilia. No one, how ever undiscriminating, would fail to make choices and, in the case of this Gremionis, you were selected and, despite your refusal to accept him, he continued to offer himself, quite out of keeping with Auroran custom.”

Vasilia said, “I am glad you realize, I refused him. There are some who feel that, as a matter of courtesy, any offer or almost any offer—or almost any offer—should be accepted, but that is not my opinion. I see no reason why I have to subject myself to some uninteresting event that will merely waste my time. Do you find something objectionable in that, Earthman?”

“I have no opinion to offer—either favorable or unfavorable—in connection with Auroran custom.” (She was still waiting, listening to him. What was she waiting for? Would it be for what he wanted to say but yet wasn’t sure he dared to?)

She said, with an effort at lightness, “Do you have anything at all to offer—or are we through?”

“Not through,” said Baley, who was now forced to take another gamble. “You recognized this non-Auroran perseverance in Gremionis and it occurred to you that you could make use of it.”

“Really? How mad! What possible use could I make of it?”

“Since he was clearly attracted to you very strongly, it would not be difficult to arrange to have him attracted by another who resembled you very closely. You urged him to do so, perhaps promising to accept him if the other did not.

“Who is this poor woman who resembles me closely?”

“You do not know? Come now, that is naive, Dr. Vasilia. I am talking of the Solarian woman, Gladia, whom I already have said has come under the protection of Dr. Fastolfe precisely because she does resemble you. You expressed no surprise when I referred to this at the beginning of our talk. It is too late to pretend ignorance now.”

Vasilia looked at him sharply. “And from his interest in her, you deduced that he must first have been interested in me? It was this wild guess with which you approached me?”

“Not entirely a wild guess. There are other substantiating factors. Do you deny all this?”

She brushed thoughtfully at the long desk beside her and Baley wondered what details were carried by the long sheets of paper on it. He could make out, from a distance, complexities of patterns that he knew would be totally meaningless to him, no matter how carefully and thoroughly he studied them.

Vasilia said, “I grow weary. You have told me that Gremionis was interested first in me, and then in my look-alike, the Solarian. And now you want me to deny it. Why should I take the trouble to deny it? Of what importance is it? Even if it were true, how could this damage me in any way? You are saying that I was annoyed by attentions I didn’t want and that I ingeniously deflected them. Well?”

Baley said, “It is not so much what you did, as why. You knew that Gremionis was the type of person who would be persistent. He had offered himself to you over and over and he would offer himself to Gladia over and over.”

“If she would refuse him.”

“She was a Solarian, having trouble with sex, and was refusing everyone, something I dare say you knew, since I imagine that, for all your estrangement from your fa—from Dr. Fastolfe, you have enough feeling to keep an eye on your replacement.”

“Well, then, good for her. If she refused Gremionis, she showed good taste.”

“You knew there was no ‘if’ about it. You knew she would.

“Still—what of it?”

“Repeated offers to her would mean that Gremionis would be in Gladia’s establishment frequently, that he would cling to her.”

“One last time. Well?”

“And in Gladia’s establishment was a very unusual object, one of the two humaniform robots in existence, Jander Panell.”

Vasilia hesitated. Then, “What are you driving at?”

“I think it struck you that if, somehow, the humaniform robot were killed under circumstances that would implicate Dr. Fastolfe, that could be used as a weapon—to force the secret of the humaniform positronic brain out of him. Gremionis, annoyed over Gladia’s persistent refusal to accept him and given the opportunity by his constant presence at Gladia’s establishment, could be induced to seek a fearful revenge by killing the robot.

Vasilia blinked rapidly. “That poor barber might have twenty such motives, and twenty such opportunities and it wouldn’t matter. He wouldn’t know how to order a robot to shake hands with any efficiency. How would he manage to come within a light-year of imposing mental freeze—out on a robot?”

“Which now,” said Baley softly, “finally brings us to the point, a point I think you have been anticipating, for you have somehow restrained yourself from throwing me out because you had to make sure whether I had this point in mind or not. What I’m saying is that Gremionis did the job, with the help of this Robotics Institute, working through you.”

It was as though a hyperwave drama had come to a halt in a holographic still.