Isaac Asimov: The Caves of Steel

He said, chokingly, “What was in the hypo-shiver?”

“Nothing that need alarm you, Elijah. It was a mild drug intended only to make your mind more receptive.”

“And so I believed whatever was told me. Is that it?”

“Not quite. You would not believe anything that was foreign to the basic pattern of your thought. In fact, the results of the experiment were disappointing. Dr. Fastolfe had hoped you would become fanatical and single-minded on the subject. Instead you became rather distantly approving, no more. Your practical nature stood in the way of anything further. It made us realize that our only hope was the romantics after all, and the romantics, unfortunately, were all Medievalists, actual or potential.”

Baley felt incongruously proud of himself, glad of his stubbornness, and happy that he had disappointed them. Let them experiment with someone else.

He grinned savagely. “And so now you’ve given up and are going home?”

“Why, that is not it. I said a few moments ago that we were satisfied Earth would colonize. It was you that gave us the answer.”

“I gave it to you? How?”

“You spoke to Francis Clousarr of the advantages of colonization. You spoke rather fervently, I judge. At least our experiment on you had that result. And Clousarr’s cerebroanalytic properties changed. Very subtly, to be sure, but they changed.”

“You mean I convinced him that I was right? I don’t believe that.”

“No, conviction does not come that easily. But the cerebroanalytic changes demonstrated conclusively that the Medievalist mind is open to that sort of conviction. I experimented further myself. When leaving Yeast-town, guessing what might have happened between you two from his cerebric changes, I made the proposition of a school for emigrants as a way of insuring his children’s future. He rejected that, but again his aura changed, and it seemed to me quite obvious that it was the proper method of attack.”

R. Daneel paused, then spoke on.

“The thing called Medievalism shows a craving for pioneering. To be sure, the direction in which that craving turns itself is toward Earth itself, which is near and which has the precedent of a great past. But the vision of worlds beyond is a similar something and the romantic can turn to it easily, just as Clousarr felt the attraction as a result of one lecture from you.

“So you see, we of Spacetown had already succeeded without knowing it. We ourselves, rather than anything we tried to introduce, were the unsettling factor. We crystallized the romantic impulses on Earth into Medievalism and induced an organization in them. After all, it is the Medievalist who wishes to break the cake of custom, not the City officials who have most to gain from preserving the status quo. If we leave Spacetown now, if we do not irritate the Medievalist by our continued presence until he has committed himself to Earth, and only Earth, past redemption, if we leave behind a few obscure individuals or robots such as myself who, together with sympathetic Earthmen such as yourself, can establish the training schools for emigrants that I spoke of, the Medievalist will eventually turn away from Earth. He will need robots and will either get them from us or build his own. He will develop a C/Fe culture to suit himself.”

It was a long speech for R. Daneel. He must have realized that himself, for, after another pause, he said, “I tell you all this to explain why it is necessary to do something that may hurt you.”

Baley thought bitterly: A robot must not hurt a human being, unless he can think of a way to prove it is for the human being’s ultimate good after all.

Baley said, “Just a minute. Let me introduce a practical note. You’ll go back to your worlds and say that an Earthman killed a Spacer and is unpunished. The Outer Worlds will demand an indemnity from Earth, and I warn you, Earth is no longer in a mood to endure such treatment. There will be trouble.”

“I am sure that will not happen, Elijah. The elements on our planets that would be most interested in pressing for an indemnity would be also most interested in forcing an end to Spacetown. We can easily offer the latter as an inducement to abandon the former. It is what we plan to do, anyway. Earth will be left in peace.”

And Baley broke out, his voice hoarse with sudden despair, “And where does that leave me? The Commissioner will drop the Sarton investigation at once if Spacetown is willing, but the R. Sammy thing will have to continue, since it points to corruption inside the Department. He’ll be in any minute with a ream of evidence against me. I know that. It’s been arranged. I’ll be declassified, Daneel. There’s Jessie to consider. She’ll be smeared as a criminal. There’s Bentley—”

R. Daneel said, “You must not think, Elijah, that I do not understand the position in which you find yourself. In the service of humanity’s good, the minor wrongs must be tolerated. Dr. Sarton has a surviving wife, two children, parents, a sister, many friends. All must grieve at his death and be saddened at the thought that his murderer has not been found and punished.”

“Then why not stay and find him?”

“It is no longer necessary.”

Baley said, bitterly, “Why not admit that the entire investigation was an excuse to study us under field conditions? You never gave a damn who killed Dr. Sarton.”

“We would have liked to know,” said R. Daneel, coolly, “but we were never under any delusions as to which was more important, an individual or humanity. To continue the investigation now would involve interfering with a situation which we now find satisfactory. We could not foretell what damage we might do.”

“You mean the murderer might turn out to be a prominent Medievalist and right now the Spacers don’t want to do anything to antagonize their new friends.”

“It is not as I would say it, but there is truth in your words.”

“Where’s your justice circuit, Daneel? Is this justice?”

“There are degrees of justice, Elijah. When the lesser is incompatible with the greater, the lesser must give way.”

It was as though Baley’s mind were circling the impregnable logic of R. Daneel’s positronic brain, searching for a loophole, a weakness.

He said, “Have you no personal curiosity, Daneel? You’ve called yourself a detective. Do you know what that implies? Do you understand that an investigation is more than a job of work? It is a challenge. Your mind is pitted against that of the criminal. It is a clash of intellect. Can you abandon the battle and admit defeat?”

“If no worthy end is served by a continuation, certainly.”

“Would you feel no loss? No wonder? Would there be no little speck of dissatisfaction? Frustrated curiosity?”

Baley’s hopes, not strong in the first place, weakened as he spoke. The word “curiosity,” second time repeated, brought back his own remarks to Francis Clousarr four hours before. He had known well enough then the qualities that marked off a man from a machine. Curiosity had to be one of them. A six-week-old kitten was curious, but how could there be a curious machine, be it ever so humanoid?

R. Daneel echoed those thoughts by saying, “What do you mean by curiosity?”

Baley put the best face on it. “Curiosity is the name we give to a desire to extend one’s knowledge.”

“Such a desire exists within me, when the extension of knowledge is necessary for the performance of an assigned task.”

“Yes,” said Baley, sarcastically, “as when you ask questions about Bentley’s contact lenses in order to learn more of Earth’s peculiar customs.”

“Precisely,” said R. Daneel, with no sign of any awareness of sarcasm. “Aimless extension of knowledge, however, which is what I think you really mean by the term curiosity, is merely inefficiency. I am designed to avoid inefficiency.”