“Dr. Han Fastolfe did destroy Jander Panell. I am certain of it. Does that satisfy you?”
42
Baley stared at the distraught woman in horror.
He stuttered and began again. “I don’t understand at all, Dr. Vasilia. Please quiet down and consider. Why should Dr. Fastolfe destroy the robot? What has that to do with his treatment of you? Do you imagine it is some kind of retaliation against you?”
Vasilia was breathing rapidly (Baley noted absently and without conscious intention that, although Vasilia was as smallboned as Gladia was, her breasts were larger) and she seemed to wrench at her voice to keep it under control.
She said, “I told you, Earthman, did I not, that Han Fastolfe was interested in observing the human brain? He did not hesitate to put it under stress in order to observe the results. And he preferred brains that were out of the ordinary—that of an infant, for instance—so that he might watch their development. Any brain but a commonplace one.”
“But what has that to do—”
“Ask yourself, then, why he gained this interest in the foreign woman.”
“In Gladia? I asked him and he told me. She reminded him of you and the resemblance is indeed distinct.”
“And when you told me this earlier, I was amused and asked if you believed him? I ask again. Do you believe him?”
“Why shouldn’t I believe him?”
“Because it’s not true. The resemblance may have attracted his attention, but the real key to his interest is that the foreign woman is—foreign. She had been brought up in Solaria, under assumptions and social axioms not like those on Aurora. He could therefore study a brain that was differently molded from ours and could gain an interesting perspective. Don’t you understand that?—For that matter, why is he interested in you, Earthman? Is he silly enough to imagine that you can solve an Auroran problem when you know nothing about Aurora?”
Daneel suddenly intervened again and Baley started at the sound of the other’s voice. Daneel said, “Dr. Vasilia, Partner Elijah solved a problem on Solaria, though he knew nothing of Solaria.”
“Yes,” said Vasilia sourly, “so all the worlds noted on that hyperwave program. And lightning may strike, too, but I don’t think that Han Fastolfe is confident it will strike twice in the same place in rapid succession. No, Earthman, he was attracted to you, in the first place, because you are an Earthman. You possess another alien brain he can study and manipulate.”
“Surely you cannot believe, Dr. Vasilia, that he would risk matters of vital importance to Aurora and call in someone he knew to be useless, merely to study an unusual brain.”
“Of course he would. Isn’t that the whole point of what I am telling you? There is no crisis that could face Aurora that he would believe, for a single moment, to be as important as solving the problem of the brain. I can tell you exactly what he would say if you were to ask him. Aurora might rise or fall; flourish or decay, and that would all be of little concern compared to the problem of the brain, for if human beings really understood the brain, all that might have been lost in the course of a millennium of neglect or wrong decisions would be regained in a decade of cleverly directed human development guided by his dream of ‘psychohistory.’ He would use the same argument to justify anything—lies, cruelty, anything—by merely saying that it is all intended to serve the purpose of advancing the knowledge of the brain.”
“I can’t imagine that Dr. Fastolfe would be cruel. He is the gentlest of men.”
“Is he? How long have you been with him?”
Baley said, “A few hours on Earth three years ago. A day, now, here on Aurora.”
“A whole day. A whole day. I was with him for thirty years almost constantly and I have followed his career from a distance with some attention ever since. And you have been with him a whole day, Earthman? Well, on that one day, has he done nothing that frightened or humiliated you?”
Baley kept silent. He thought of the sudden attack with the spicer from which Daneel had rescued him; of the Personal that presented him with such difficulty, thanks to its masked nature; the extended walk Outside designed to test his ability to adapt to the open.
Vasilia said, “I see he did. Your face, Earthman, is not quite the mask of disguise you may think it is. Did he threaten you with a Psychic Probe?”
Baley said, “It was mentioned.”
“One day—and it was already mentioned. I assume it made you feel uneasy?”
“It did.”
“And that there was no reason to mention it?”
“Oh, but there was,” said Baley quickly. “I had said that, for a moment, I had a thought which I then lost and it was certainly legitimate to suggest that a Psychic Probe might help me relocate that thought.”
Vasilia said, “No, it wasn’t. The Psychic Probe cannot be used with sufficient delicacy of touch for that—and, if it were attempted, the chances would be considerable that there would be permanent brain damage.”
“Surely not if it were wielded by an expert—by Dr. Fastolfe, for instance.”
“By him? He doesn’t know one end of the Probe from the other. He is a theoretician, not a technician.”
“By someone else, then. He did not, in actual fact, specify himself.”
“No, Earthman. By no one. Think! Think! If the Psychic Probe could be used on human beings safely by anyone, and if Han Fastolfe were so concerned about the problem of the inactivation of the robot, then why didn’t he suggest the Psychic Probe be used on himself?”
“On himself?”
“Don’t tell me this hasn’t occurred to you? Any thinking person would come to the conclusion that Fastolfe is guilty. The only point in favor of his innocence is that he himself insists he is innocent. Well, then, why does he not offer to prove his innocence by being psychically probed and showing that no trace of guilt can be dredged up from the recesses of his brain? Has he suggested such a thing, Earthman?”
“No, he hasn’t. At least, not to me.”
“Because he knows very well that it is deadly dangerous. Yet he does not hesitate to suggest it in your case, merely to observe how your brain works under pressure, how you react to fright. Or perhaps it occurs to him that, however dangerous the Probe is to you, it may come up with some interesting data for him, as far as the details of your Earth-molded brain are concerned. Tell me, then, isn’t that cruel?”
Baley brushed it aside with a tight gesture of his right arm. “How does this apply to the actual case—to the roboticide?”
“The Solarian woman, Gladia, caught my onetime father’s eye. She had an interesting brain—for his purposes. He therefore gave her the robot, Jander, to see what would happen if a woman not raised on Aurora were faced with a robot that seemed human in every particular. He knew that an Auroran woman would very likely make use of the robot for sex immediately and have no trouble doing so. I myself would have some trouble, I admit, because I was not brought up normally, but no ordinary Auroran would. The Solarian woman, on the other hand, would have a great deal of trouble because she was brought up on an extremely robotic world and had unusually rigid mental attitudes toward robots. The difference, you see, might be very instructive to my father, who tried, out of these variations, to build his theory of brain functioning. Han Fastolfe waited half a year for the Solarian woman to get to the point where she could perhaps begin making the first experimental approaches—”
Baley interrupted. “Your father knew nothing at all about the relationship between Gladia and Jander.”