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stared at it, pinching the skin along the median line. Was there a faint seam?
It was logical, of course, that there should be. A robot, covered with
synthetic skin, and deliberately made to look human, could not be repaired in
the ordinary fashion. A chest plate could not be unriveted for the purpose. A
skull could not be hinged up and outward. Instead, the various parts of the
mechanical body would have to be put together along a line of micromagnetic
fields. An arm, a head, an entire body, must fall in two at the proper touch,
then come together again at a contrary touch.
Baley looked up. Where s the Commissioner? he mumbled, hot with
mortification.
Pressing business, said Dr. Fastolfe. I encouraged him to leave, I m
afraid. I assured him we would take care of you.
You ve taken care of me quite nicely already, thank you, said Baley, grimly.
I think our business is done.
He lifted himself erect on tired joints. He felt an old man, very suddenly.
Too old to start over again. He needed no deep insight to foresee that future.
The Commissioner would be half frightened and half furious. He would face
Baley whitely, taking his glasses off to wipe them every fifteen seconds. His
soft voice (Julius Enderby almost never shouted)
would explain carefully that the Spacers had been mortally offended.
You can t talk to Spacers that way, Lije. They won t take it. (Baley could
hear Enderby s voice very plainly down to the finest shade of intonation.) I
warned you. No saying how much damage you ve done. I can see your point, mind
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you. I see what you were trying to do. If they were Earthmen, it would be
different. I d say yes, chance it. Run the risk. Smoke them out. But Spacers!
You might have told me, Lije. You might have consulted me. I know them. I know
them inside and out.
And what would Baley be able to say? That Enderby was exactly the man he
couldn t tell. That the project was one of tremendous risk and Enderby a man
of tremendous caution. That it had been Enderby himself who had pointed up the
supreme dangers of either outright failure or of the wrong kind of success.
That the one way of defeating declassification was to show that guilt lay in
Spacetown itself ...
Enderby would say, There ll have to be a report on this, Lije. There ll be
all sorts of repercussions. I
know the Spacers. They ll demand your removal from the case, and it ll have to
be that way. You understand that, Lije, don t you? I ll try to make it easy on
you. You can count on that. I ll protect you as far as I can, Lije.
Baley knew that would be exactly true. The Commissioner would protect him, but
only as far as he
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could, not to the point, for instance, of infuriating further an angry Mayor.
He could hear the Mayor, too. Damn it, Enderby, what is all this? Why wasn t
I consulted? Who s running the City? Why was an unauthorized robot allowed
inside the City? And just what the devil did this Baley ...
If it came to a choice between Baley s future in the Department and the
Commissioner s own, what possible result could Baley expect? He could find no
reasonable way of blaming Enderby.
The least he could expect was demotion, and that was bad enough. The mere act
of living in a modern
City insured the bare possibility of existence, even for those entirely
declassified. How bare that possibility was he knew only too well.
It was the addition of status that brought the little things: a more
comfortable seat here, a better cut of meat there, a shorter wait in line at
the other place. To the philosophical mind, these items might seem scarcely
worth any great trouble to acquire.
Yet no one, however philosophical, could give up those privileges, once
acquired, without a pang. That was the point.
What a trifling addition to the convenience of the apartment an activated
washbasin was when for thirty years previously the trip to Personal had been
an automatic and unregarded one. How useless it was even as a device to prove
status when it was considered the height of ill form to parade status. Yet
were the washbasin to be deactivated, how humiliating and unbearable would
each added trip to
Personal be! How yearningly attractive the memory of the bedroom shave! How
filled with a sense of lost luxury!
It was fashionable for modern political writers to look back with a smug
disapproval at the fiscalism of
Medieval times, when economy was based on money. The competitive struggle for
existence, they said, was brutal. No truly complex society could be maintained
because of the strains introduced by the eternal
fight-for-the-buck. (Scholars had varying interpretations of the word
buck, but there was no dispute over the meaning as a whole.)
By contrast, modern civism was praised highly as efficient and enlightened.
Maybe so. There were historical novels both in the romantic and the
sensational tradition, and the
Medievalists thought fiscalism had bred such things as individualism and
initiative.
Baley wouldn t commit himself, but now he wondered sickly if ever a man fought
harder for that buck, whatever it was, or felt its loss more deeply, than a
City dweller fought to keep from losing his Sunday night option on a chicken
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drumstick--a real-flesh drumstick from a once-living bird.
Baley thought: Not me so much. There s Jessie and Ben.
Dr. Fastolfe s voice broke in upon his thoughts. Mr. Baley, do you hear me?
Baley blinked. Yes? How long had he been standing there like a frozen fool?
Won t you sit down, sir? Having taken care of the matter on your mind, you
may now be interested in some films we have taken of the scene of the crime
and of the events immediately following.
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No, thank you. I have business in the City.
Surely the case of Dr. Sarton comes first.
Not with me. I imagine I m off the case already. Suddenly, he boiled over.
Damn it, if you could prove R. Daneel was a robot, why didn t you do it at
once? Why did you make such a farce of it all?
My dear Mr. Baley, I was very interested in your deductions. As for being off
the case, I doubt it.
Before the Commissioner left, I made a special point of asking that you be
retained. I believe he will co-operate.
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