Isaac Asimov - The Robots of Dawn

Baley said, “Listen to me, Gladia. What did I say? ‘I have it. I have it.’ Did I say what it was I had?”

She frowned again. “No. I don’t remember—Wait, you did say one thing in a very low voice. You, said, ‘He was there first.’”

“‘He was there first.’ That’s what I said?”

“Yes. I took it for granted that you meant Giskard was there before the other robots, that you were trying to overcome your fears of being taken away, that you were reliving that time in the storm. Yes! That’s why I stroked you and said, ‘Don’t be frightened, Elijah. You’re safe now, till you relaxed.’”

“‘He was there first.’ ‘He was there first.’—I won’t forget it now. Gladia, thanks for last night. Thanks for talking to me now.”

Gladia said, “Is there something important about you saying that Giskard found you first? He did. You know that.”

“It can’t be that, Gladia. It must be something I don’t know but manage to discover only when my mind is totally relaxed.”

“But what does it mean, then?”

“I’m not sure, but if that’s what I said, it must mean something. And I have an hour or so to figure it out.” He stood up. “I must leave now.”

He had taken a few steps toward the door, but Gladia flew to him and put her arms around him. “Wait, Elijah.”

Baley hesitated, then lowered his head to kiss her. For a long moment, they clung together.

“Will I see you again, Elijah?”

Baley said, sadly, “I can’t say; I hope so.”

And he went off to find Daneel and Giskard, so that he could make the necessary preparations for the confrontation about to come.

Baley’s sadness persisted as he walked across the long lawn to Fastolfe’s establishment.

The robots walked on either side. Daneel seemed at his ease, but Giskard, faithful to his programming and apparently unable to relax it, maintained his close watch on the surroundings.

Baley said, “What is the name of the Chairman of the Legislature, Daneel?”

“I cannot say, Partner Elijah. On the occasions when he has been referred to in my hearing, he has been referred to only as ‘the Chairman.’ He is addressed as ‘Mr. Chairman.’”

Giskard said, “His name is Rutilan Horder, sir, but it is never mentioned officially. The title alone is used. That serves to impress continuity on the government. Human holders of the position have, individually, fixed terms, but ‘the Chairman’ always exists.”

“And this particular individual Chairman—how old is he?”

“Quite old, sir. Three hundred and thirty-one,” said Giskard, who typically had statistics on tap.

“In good health?”

“I know nothing to the contrary, sir.”

“Any outstanding personal characteristics it might be well for me to be prepared for?”

That seemed to stop Giskard. He said, after a pause, “That is difficult for me to say, sir. He is in his second term. He is considered an efficient Chairman who works hard and gets results.”

“Is he short-tempered? Patient? Domineering? Understanding?”

Giskard said, “You must judge such things for yourself.”

Daneel said, “Partner Elijah, the Chairman is above partisanship. He is just and evenhanded, by definition.”

“I’m sure of that,” muttered Baley, “but definitions are abstract, as is ‘the Chairman,’ while individual Chairmen—with names—are concrete and may have minds to match.”

He shook his head. His own mind, he would swear, had a strong measure of concrete itself. Having three times thought of something and three times lost it, he was now presented with his own comment at the time of having the thought and it still didn’t help.

“He was there first.”

Who was there first? When?

Baley had no answer.

Baley found Fastolfe waiting for him at the door of his establishment, with a robot behind him who seemed most unrobotically restless, as though unable to perform his proper function of greeting a visitor and upset by the fact. (But then, one was always reading human motivations and responses into robots. What was more likely true was no upsettedness—no feeling of any kind—merely a slight oscillation of positronic potentials resulting from the fact that his orders were to greet and inspect all visitors and he could not quite perform the task without pushing past Fastolfe, which he also could not do, in the absence of overriding necessity. So he made false starts, one after the other, and that made him seem restless.)

Baley found himself staring at the robot absently and only with difficulty managing to bring his eyes back to Fastolfe. (He was thinking of robots but he didn’t know why.)

“I’m glad to see you again, Dr. Fastolfe,” he said and thrust his hand forward. After his encounter with Gladia, it was rather difficult to remember that Spacers were reluctant to make physical contact with an Earthman.

Fastolfe hesitated a moment and then, as manners triumphed over prudence, he took the hand offered him, held it lightly and briefly, and let it go. He said, “I am even more delighted to see you, Mr. Baley. I was quite alarmed over your experience last evening. It was not a particularly bad storm, but to an Earthman it must have seemed overwhelming.”

“You know about what happened, then?”

“Daneel and Giskard have brought me fully up to date in that respect would have felt better if they had come here directly and, eventually, brought you here with them, but their decision was based on the fact that Gladia’s establishment was closer to the breakdown point of the airfoil and that your orders had been extremely intense and had placed Daneel’s safety ahead of your own. They did not misinterpret you?”

“They did not. I forced them to leave me.”

“Was that wise?” Fastolfe led the way indoors and pointed to a chair.

Baley sat down. “It seemed the proper thing to do. We were being pursued.”

“So Giskard reported. He also reported that—”

Baley intervened. “Dr. Fastolfe, please. I have very little time and I have questions that I must ask you.”

“Go ahead, please,” said Fastolfe at once, with his usual air of unfailing politeness.

“It has been suggested that you place your work on brain function above everything else, that you—”

“Let me finish, Mr. Baley. That I will let nothing stand in my way, that I am totally ruthless, oblivious to any consideration of immorality or evil, would stop at nothing, would excuse everything, all in the name of the importance of my work.”

“Yes.”

“Who told you this, Mr. Baley?” asked Fastolfe.

“Does it matter?”

“Perhaps not. Besides, it’s not difficult to guess. It was my daughter Vasilia. I’m sure of that.”

Baley said, “Perhaps. What I want to know is whether this estimate of your character is correct.”

Fastolfe smiled sadly. “Do you expect an honest answer from me about my own character? In some ways, the accusations against me are true. I do consider my work the most important matter there is and I do have the impulse to sacrifice anything and everything to it. I would ignore conventional notions of evil and immorality if these got in my way.—The thing is, however, that I don’t. I can’t bring myself to. And in particular, if I have been accused of killing Jander because that would in some way advance my study of the human brain, I deny it. It is not so. I did not kill Jander.”

Baley said, “You suggested I submit to a Psychic Probe to get some information that I can’t reach otherwise out of my brain. Has it occurred to you that, if you submitted to a Psychic Probe, your innocence could be demonstrated?”