Isaac Asimov - The Robots of Dawn

Baley turned and fled back the way he had come, whimpering.

Baley felt Daneel’s strong grip on his arms, just beneath his shoulders. He hatted and forced himself to stop making that infantile sound. He could feel himself trembling.

Daneel said with infinite respect, “Partner Elijah, it is a thunderstorm—expected—predicted—normal.”

“I know that,” whispered Baley.

He did know it. Thunderstorms had been described innumerable times in the books he had read, whether fiction or nonfiction. He had seen them in holographs and on hyperwave shows—sound, sight, and all.

The real thing, however, the actual sound and sight, had never penetrated into the bowels of the City and he had never in his life actually experienced such a thing.

With all he knew—intellectually—about thunderstorms, he could not face—viscerally—the actuality. Despite the descriptions, the collections of words, the sight in small pictures and in recordings on small screens, the sounds aptured despite all that, he had no idea the flashes were so bright and streaked so across the sky; that the sound was so vibratorily bass in sound when it rattled across a hollow world; that both were so sudden; and that rain could be so like an inverted bowl of water, endlessly pouring.

He muttered in despair, “I can’t go out in that.”

“You won’t have to,” said Daneel urgently. “Giskard will get the airfoil. It will be brought right to the door for you. Not a drop of rain will fall on you.”

“Why not wait until it’s over?”

“Surely that would not be advisable, Partner Elijah. Some rain, at least, will continue past midnight and if the Chairman arrives tomorrow morning, as Dr. Amadiro implied he might, it might be wise to spend the evening in consultation with Dr. Fastolfe.”

Baley forced himself to turn around, face in the direction from which he wanted to flee, and look into Daneel’s eyes. They seemed deeply concerned, but Baley thought dismally that that was merely the result of his own interpretation of the appearance of those eyes. The robot had no feelings, only positronic surges that mimicked those feelings. (And perhaps human beings had no feelings, only neuronic surges that were interpreted as feelings.)

He was somehow aware that Amadiro was gone. He said, “Amadiro delayed me deliberately—by ushering me into the Personal, by his senseless talk, by his preventing you or Giskard from interrupting and warning me about the storm. He would even have tried to persuade me to tour the building or dine with him. He desisted only at the sound of the storm. That was what he was waiting for.”

“It would seem so. If the storm now keeps you here, that may be what he was waiting for.”

Baley drew a deep breath. “You are right. I must leave somehow.”

Reluctantly, he took a step toward the door, which was still open, still filled with a dark gray vista of whipping rain. Another step. And still another—leaning heavily on Daneel.

Giskard was waiting quietly at the door.

Baley paused and closed his eyes for a moment. Then he said in a low voice, to himself rather than to Daneel, “I must do it,” and moved forward again.

“Are you well, sir?” asked Giskard.

It was a foolish question, dictated by the programming of the robot, thought Baley, though, at that, it was no worse than the questions asked by human beings, sometimes with wild inappropriateness, out of the programming, of etiquette.

“Yes,” said Baley in a voice he tried—and failed—to raise above a husky whisper. It was a useless answer to the foolish question, for Giskard, robot though he was, could surely see that Baley was unwell and that Baley’s answer was a palpable lie.

The answer was, however, given and accepted and that freed Giskard for the next step. He said, “I will now leave to get the airfoil and bring it to the door.”

“Will it work—in all this—this water, Giskard?”

“Yes, sir. This is not an uncommon rain.”

He left, moving steadily into the downpour. The lightning was flickering almost continuously and the thunder was a muted growl that rose to a louder crescendo every few minutes.

For the first time in his life, Baley found himself envying a robot. Imagine being able to walk through that; to be indifferent to water, to sight, to sound; to be able to, ignore surroundings and to have a pseudo-life that was absolutely courageous; to know no fear of pain or of death, because there was no pain or death.

And yet to be incapable of originality of thought, to be incapable of unpredictable leaps of intuition.

Were such gifts worth what humanity paid for them?

At the moment, Baley could not say. He knew that, once he no longer felt terror, he would know that no price was too high to pay for being human. But now that he experienced nothing but the pounding of his heart and the collapse of his will, he could not help but wonder of what use it might be to be a human being if one could not overcome these deep-seated terrors, this intense agoraphobia.

Yet he had been in the open for much of two days and had managed to be almost comfortable.

But the fear had not been conquered. He knew that now.

He had suppressed it by thinking intensely of other things, but the storm overrode all intensity of thought.

He could not allow this. If all else failed—thought, pride, will—then he would have to fall back on shame. He could not collapse under the impersonal, superior gaze of the robots. Shame would have to be stronger than fear.

He felt Daneel’s steady arm about his waist and shame prevented him from doing what, at the moment, he most wanted to do—to turn and hide his face against the robotic chest. He might have been unable to resist if Daneel had been human—

He had lost contact with reality, for he was becoming aware of Daneel’s voice as though it were reaching him from a long distance. It sounded as though Daneel was feeling something akin to panic.

“Partner Elijah, do you hear me?”

Giskard’s voice, from an equal distance, said, “We must carry him.”

“No,” mumbled Baley. “Let me walk.”

Perhaps they did not hear him. Perhaps he did not really speak, but merely thought he did. He felt himself lifted from the ground. His left arm dangled helplessly and he strove to lift it, to push it against someone’s shoulder, to lift himself upright again from the waist, to grope for the floor with his feet and stand upright.

But his left arm continued to dangle helplessly and his striving went for nothing.

He was somehow aware that he was moving through the air and he felt a wash of spray against his face. Not actually water but the sifting of damp air. Then there was the pressure of a hard surface against his left side, a more resilient one against his right side.

He was in the airfoil, wedged in once more between Giskard and Daneel. What he was most conscious of was that Giskard was very wet.

He felt a jet of warm air cascading over him. Between the near-darkness outside and the film of trickling water upon the glass, they might as well have been opacified—or so Baley thought till opacification actually took place and total darkness descended. The soft noise of the jet, as the airfoil rose above the grass and swayed, muted, the thunder and seemed to draw its teeth.

Giskard said, “I regret the discomfort of my wet surface, Sir. I will dry quickly. We will wait here a short while till you recover.”

Baley was breathing more easily. He felt wonderfully and comfortably enclosed. He thought: Give me back my City. Wipe out all the Universe and let the Spacers colonize it. Earth is all we need.