The Caves of Steel

Chapter 4. INTRODUCTION TO A FAMILY

It had been her name that had first made Elijah Baley really conscious of Jessie. He had met her at the Section Christmas party back in ’02, over a bowl of punch. He had just finished his schooling, just taken his first job with the City, just moved into the Section. He was living in one of the bachelor alcoves of Common Room 122A. Not bad for a bachelor alcove.

She was handing out the punch. “I’m Jessie,” she said. “Jessie Navodny. I don’t know you.”

“Baley,” he said, “Lije Baley. I’ve just moved into the Section.” He took his glass of punch and smiled mechanically. She impressed him as a cheerful and friendly person, so he stayed near her. He was new and it is a lonely feeling to be at a party where you find yourself watching people standing about in cliques of which you aren’t a part. Later, when enough alcohol had trickled down throats, it might be better.

Meanwhile, he remained at the punch bowl, watching the folks come and go and sipping thoughtfully.

“I helped make the punch.” The girl’s voice broke in upon him. “I can guarantee it. Do you want more?”

Baley realized his little glass was empty. He smiled and said, “Yes.” The girl’s face was oval and not precisely pretty, mostly because of a slightly overlarge nose. Her dress was demure and she wore her light brown hair in a series of ringlets over her forehead.

She joined him in the next punch and he felt better.

“Jessie,” he said, feeling the name with his tongue. “It’s nice. Do you mind if I use it when I’m talking to you?”

“Certainly. If you want to. Do you know what it’s short for?”

“Jessica?”

“You’ll never guess.”

“I can’t think of anything else.”

She laughed and said archly, “My full name is Jezebel.”

That was when his interest flared. He put his punch glass down and said, intently, “No, really?”

“Honestly. I’m not kidding. Jezebel. It’s my real-for-true name on all my records. My parents liked the sound of it.”

She was quite proud of it, even though there was never a less likely Jezebel in the world.

Baley said, seriously, “My name is Elijah, you know. My full name, I mean.”

It didn’t register with her.

He said, “Elijah was Jezebel’s great enemy.”

“He was?”

“Why, sure. In the Bible.”

“Oh? I didn’t know that. Now isn’t that funny? I hope that doesn’t mean you’ll have to be my enemy in real life.”

From the very beginning there was no question of that. It was the coincidence of names at first that made her more than just a pleasant girl at the punch bowl. But afterward he had grown to find her cheerful, tender-hearted, and, finally, even pretty. He appreciated her cheerfulness particularly. His own sardonic view of life needed the antidote.

But Jessie never seemed to mind his long grave face.

“Oh, goodness,” she said, “what if you do look like an awful lemon? I know you’re not really, and I guess if you were always grinning away like clockwork, the way I do, we’d just explode when we got together. You stay the way you are, Lije, and keep me from floating away.”

And she kept Lije Baley from sinking down. He applied for a small Couples apartment and got a contingent admission pending marriage.

He showed it to her and said, “Will you fix it so I can get out of Bachelor’s, Jessie? I don’t like it there.”

Maybe it wasn’t the most romantic proposal in the world, but Jessie liked it.

Baley could only remember one occasion on which Jessie’s habitual cheer deserted her completely and that, too, had involved her name. It was in their first year of marriage, and their baby had not yet come.

In fact, it had been the very month in which Bentley was conceived.

(Their I.Q. rating, Genetic Values status, and his position in the Department entitled him to two children, of which the first might be conceived during the first year.) Maybe, as Baley thought back upon it, Bentley’s beginnings might explain part of her unusual skittishness. Jessie had been drooping a bit because of Baley’s consistent overtime.

She said, “It’s embarrassing to eat alone at the kitchen every night.”

Baley was tired and out of sorts. He said, “Why should it be? You can meet some nice single fellows there.”

And of course she promptly fired up. “Do you think I can’t make an impression on them, Lije Baley?”

Maybe it was just because he was tired; maybe because Julius Enderby, a classmate of his, had moved up another notch on the C-scale rating while he himself had not. Maybe it was simply because he was a little tired of having her try to act up to the name she bore when she was nothing of the sort and never could be anything of the sort.

In any case, he said bitingly, “I suppose you can, but I don’t think you’ll try. I wish you’d forget your name and be yourself.”

“I’ll be just what I please.”

“Trying to be Jezebel won’t get you anywhere. If you must know the truth, the name doesn’t mean what you think, anyway. The Jezebel of the Bible was a faithful wife and a good one according to her lights. She had no lovers that we know of, cut no high jinks, and took no moral liberties at all.”

Jessie stared angrily at him. “That isn’t so. I’ve heard the phrase, ‘a painted Jezebel.’ I know what that means.”

“Maybe you think you do, but listen. After Jezebel’s husband, King Ahab died, her son, Jehoram, became king. One of the captains of his army, Jehu, rebelled against him and assassinated him. Jehu then rode to Jezreel where the old queen-mother, Jezebel, was residing. Jezebel heard of his coming and knew that he could only mean to kill her. In her pride and courage, she painted her face and dressed herself in her best clothes so that she could meet him as a haughty and defiant queen. He had her thrown from the window of the palace and killed, but she made a good end, according to my notions. And that’s what people refer to when they speak of ‘a painted Jezebel,’ whether they know it or not.”

The next evening Jessie said in a small voice, “I’ve been reading the Bible, Lije.”

“What?” For a moment, Baley was honestly bewildered.

“The parts about Jezebel.”

“Oh! Jessie, I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings. I was being childish.”

“No. No.” She pushed his hand from her waist and sat on the couch, cool and upright, with a definite space between them. “It’s good to know the truth. I don’t want to be fooled by not knowing. So I read about her. She was a wicked woman, Lije.”

“Well, her enemies wrote those chapters. We don’t know her side.”

“She killed all the prophets of the Lord she could lay her hands on.”

“So they say she did.” Baley felt about in his pocket for a stick of chewing gum. (In later years he abandoned that habit because Jessie said that with his long face and sad, brown eyes, it made him look like an old cow stuck with an unpleasant wad of grass it couldn’t swallow and wouldn’t spit out.) He said, “If you want her side, I could think of some arguments for you. She valued the religion of her ancestors who had been in the land long before the Hebrews came. The Hebrews had their own God, and, what’s more, it was an exclusive God. They weren’t content to worship Him themselves; they wanted everyone in reach to worship Him as well.

“Jezebel was a conservative, sticking to the old beliefs against the new ones. After all, if the new beliefs had a higher moral content, the old ones were more emotionally satisfying. The fact that she killed priests just marks her as a child of her times. It was the usual method of proselytization in those days. If you read I Kings, you must remember that Elijah (my namesake this time) had a contest with 850 prophets of Baal to see which could bring down fire from heaven. Elijah won and promptly ordered the crowd of onlookers to kill the 850 Baalites. And they did.”

Jessie bit her lip. “What about Naboth’s vineyard, Lije. Here was this Naboth not bothering anybody, except that he refused to sell the King his vineyard. So Jezebel arranged to have people perjure themselves and say that Naboth had committed blasphemy or something.”

“He was supposed to have blasphemed God and the king,” said Baley.

“Yes. So they confiscated his property after they executed him.”

“That was wrong. Of course, in modern times, Naboth would have been handled quite easily. If the City wanted his property or even if one of the Medieval nations had wanted his property, the courts would have ordered him off, had him removed by force if necessary, and paid him whatever they considered a fair price. King Ahab didn’t have that way out. Still, Jezebel’s solution was wrong. The only excuse for her is that Ahab was sick and unhappy over the situation and she felt that her love for her husband came ahead of Naboth’s welfare. I keep telling you, she was the model of a faithful wi—”

Jessie flung herself away from him, red-faced and angry. “I think you’re mean and spiteful.”

He looked at her with complete dismay. “What have I done? What’s the matter with you?”

She left the apartment without answering and spent the evening and half the night at the subetheric video levels, traveling petulantly from showing to showing and using up a two-month supply of her quota allowance (and her husband’s, to boot).

When she came back to a still wakeful Lije Baley, she had nothing further to say to him.

It occurred to Baley later, much later, that he had utterly smashed an important part of Jessie’s life. Her name had signified something intriguingly wicked to her. It was a delightful makeweight for her prim, over-respectable past. It gave her an aroma of licentiousness, and she adored that.

But it was gone. She never mentioned her full name again, not to Lije, not to her friends, and maybe, for all Baley knew, not even to herself. She was Jessie and took to signing her name so.

As the days passed she began speaking to him again, and after a week or so their relationship was on the old footing and, with all subsequent quarrels, nothing ever reached that one bad spot of intensity. Only once was there even an indirect reference to the matter. It was in her eighth month of pregnancy. She had left her own position as dietitian’s assistant in Section Kitchen A-23 and with unaccustomed time on her hands was amusing herself in speculation and preparation for the baby’s birth.

She said, one evening, “What about Bentley?”

“Pardon me, dear?” said Baley, looking up from a sheaf of work he had brought home with him. (With an additional mouth soon to feed and Jessie’s pay stopped and his own promotions to the non-clerical levels as far off, seemingly, as ever, extra work was necessary.)

“I mean if the baby’s a boy. What about Bentley as a name?”

Baley pulled down the corners of his mouth. “Bentley Baley? Don’t you think the names are too similar?”

“I don’t know. It has a swing, I think. Besides, the child can always pick out a middle name to suit himself when he gets older.”

“Well, it’s all right with me.”

“Are you sure? I mean… Maybe you wanted him to be named Elijah?”

“And be called Junior? I don’t think that’s a good idea. He can name his son Elijah, if he wants to.”

Then Jessie said, “There’s just one thing,” and stopped. After an interval, he looked up. “What one thing?”

She did not quite meet his eye, but she said, forcefully enough, “Bentley isn’t a Bible name, is it?”

“No,” said Baley, “I’m quite sure it isn’t.”

“All right, then. I don’t want any Bible names.”

And that was the only harking back that took place from that time to the day when Elijah Baley was coming home with Robot Daneel Olivaw, when he had been married for more than eighteen years and when his son Bentley Baley (middle name still unclose) was past sixteen.

Baley paused before the large double door on which there glowed in large letters PERSONAL-MEN. In smaller letters were written SUBSECTIONS 1A-1E. In still smaller letters, just above the key slit, it stated:

“In case of loss of key, communicate at once with 27-101-51.”

A man inched past them, inserted an aluminum sliver into the key slit, and walked in. He closed the door behind him, making no attempt to hold it open for Baley. Had he done so, Baley would have been seriously offended. By strong custom men disregarded one another’s presence entirely either within or just outside the Personals. Baley remembered one of the more interesting marital confidences to have been Jessie’s telling him that the situation was quite different at Women’s Personals.

She was always saying, “I met Josephine Greely at Personal and she said…”

It was one of the penalties of civic advancement that when the Baleys were granted permission for the activation of the small washbowl in their bedroom, Jessie’s social life suffered.

Baley said, without completely masking his embarrassment, “Please wait out here, Daneel.”

“Do you intend washing?” asked R. Daneel.

Baley squirmed and thought: Damned robot! If they were briefing him on everything under steel, why didn’t they teach him manners? I’ll be responsible if he ever says anything like this to anyone else. He said, “I’ll shower. It gets crowded evenings. I’ll lose time then. If I get it done now we’ll have the whole evening before us.”

R. Daneel’s face maintained its repose. “Is it part of the social custom that I wait outside?”

Baley’s embarrassment deepened. “Why need you go in for—for no purpose.”

“Oh, I understand you. Yes, of course. Nevertheless, Elijah, my hands grow dirty, too, and I will wash them.”

He indicated his palms, holding them out before him. They were pink and plump, with the proper creases. They bore every mark of excellent and meticulous workmanship and were as clean as need be. Baley said, “We have a washbasin in the apartment, you know.” He said it casually. Snobbery would be lost on a robot.

“Thank you for your kindness. On the whole, however, I think it would be preferable to make use of this place. If I am to live with you men of Earth, it is best that I adopt as many of your customs and attitudes as I can.”

“Come on in, then.”

The bright cheerfulness of the interior was a sharp contrast to the busy utilitarianism of most of the rest of the City, but this time the effect was lost on Baley’s consciousness.

He whispered to Daneel, “I may take up to half an hour or so. Wait for me.” He started away, then returned to add, “And listen, don’t talk to anybody and don’t look at anybody. Not a word, not a glance! It’s a custom.”

He looked hurriedly about to make certain that his own small conversation had not been noted, was not being met by shocked glances. Nobody, fortunately, was in the antecorridor, and after all it was only the antecorridor.

He hurried down it, feeling vaguely dirty, past the common chambers to the private stalls. It had been five years now since he had been awarded one—large enough to contain a shower, a small laundry, and other necessities. It even had a small projector that could be keyed in for the news films.

“A home away from home,” he had joked when it was first made available to him. But now, he often wondered how he would bear the adjustment back to the more Spartan existence of the common chambers if his stall privileges were ever canceled.

He pressed the button that activated the laundry and the smooth face of the meter lighted.

R. Daneel was waiting patiently when Baley returned with a scrubbed body, clean underwear, a freshened shirt, and, generally, a feeling of greater comfort.

“No trouble?” Baley asked, when they were well outside the door and able to talk.

“None at all, Elijah,” said R. Daneel.

Jessie was at the door, smiling nervously. Baley kissed her.

“Jessie,” he mumbled, “this is my new partner, Daneel Olivaw.”

Jessie held out a hand, which R. Daneel took and released. She turned to her husband, then looked timidly at R. Daneel.

She said, “Won’t you sit down, Mr. Olivaw? I must talk to my husband on family matters. It’ll take just a minute. I hope you won’t mind.”

Her hand was on Baley’s sleeve. He followed her into the next room.

She said, in a hurried whisper, “You aren’t hurt, are you? I’ve been so worried ever since the broadcast.”

“What broadcast?”

“It came through nearly an hour ago. About the riot at the shoe counter. They said two plain-clothes men stopped it. I knew you were coming home with a partner and this was right in our subsection and right when you were coming home and I thought they were making it better than it was and you were—”

“Please, Jessie. You see I’m perfectly all right.”

Jessie caught hold of herself with an effort. She said, shakily, “Your partner isn’t from your division, is he?”

“No,” replied Baley miserably. “He’s—a complete stranger.”

“How do I treat him?”

“Like anybody else. He’s just my partner, that’s all.”

He said it so unconvincingly, that Jessie’s quick eyes narrowed. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Come, let’s go back into the living room. It’ll begin to look queer.”

Lije Baley felt a little uncertain about the apartment now. Until this very moment, he had felt no qualms. In fact, he had always been proud of it. It had three large rooms; the living room, for instance, was an ample fifteen feet by eighteen. There was a closet in each room. One of the main ventilation ducts passed directly by. It meant a little rumbling noise on rare occasions, but, on the other hand, assured first-rate temperature control and well-conditioned air. Nor was it too far from either Personal, which was a prime convenience.

But with the creature from worlds beyond space sitting in the midst of it, Baley was suddenly uncertain. The apartment seemed mean and cramped.

Jessie said, with a gaiety that was slightly synthetic, “Have you and Mr. Olivaw eaten, Lije?”

“As a matter of fact,” said Baley, quickly, “Daneel will not be eating with us. I’ll eat, though.”

Jessie accepted the situation without trouble. With food supplies so narrowly controlled and rationing tighter than ever, it was good form to refuse another’s hospitality.

She said, “I hope you won’t mind our eating, Mr. Olivaw. Lije, Bentley, and I generally eat at the Community kitchen. It’s much more convenient and there’s more variety, you see, and just between you and me, bigger helpings, too. But then, Lije and I do have permission to eat in our apartment three times a week if we want to—Lije is quite successful at the Bureau and we have very nice status—and I thought that just for this occasion, if you wanted to join us, we would have a little private feast of our own, though I do think that people who overdo their privacy privileges are just a bit anti-social, you know.”

R. Daneel listened politely.

Baley said, with an undercover “shushing” wiggle of his fingers, “Jessie, I’m hungry.”

R. Daneel said, “Would I be breaking a custom, Mrs. Baley, if I addressed you by your given name?”

“Why, no, of course not.” Jessie folded a table out of the wall and plugged the plate warmer into the central depression on the table top. “You just go right ahead and call me Jessie all you feel like—uh—Daneel.” She giggled.

Baley felt savage. The situation was getting rapidly more uncomfortable. Jessie thought R. Daneel a man. The thing would be someone to boast of and talk about in Women’s Personal. He was good-looking in a wooden way, too, and Jessie was pleased with his deference. Anyone could see that.

Baley wondered about R. Daneel’s impression of Jessie. She hadn’t changed much in eighteen years, or at least not to Lije Baley. She was heavier, of course, and her figure had lost much of its youthful vigor. There were lines at the angles of the mouth and a trace of heaviness about her cheeks. Her hair was more conservatively styled and a dimmer brown than it had once been.

But that’s all beside the point, thought Baley, somberly. On the Outer Worlds the women were tall and as slim and regal as the men. Or, at least, the book-films had them so and that must be the kind of women R. Daneel was used to.

But R. Daneel seemed quite unperturbed by Jessie’s conversation, her appearance, or her appropriation of his name. He said, “Are you sure that is proper? The name, Jessie, seems to be a diminutive. Perhaps its use is restricted to members of your immediate circle and I would be more proper if I used your full given name.”

Jessie, who was breaking open the insulating wrapper surrounding the dinner ration, bent her head over the task in sudden concentration.

“Just Jessie,” she said, tightly. “Everyone calls me that. There’s nothing else.”

“Very well, Jessie.”

The door opened and a youngster entered cautiously. His eyes found R. Daneel almost at once.

“Dad?” said the boy, uncertainly.

“My son, Bentley,” said Baley, in a low voice. “This is Mr. Olivaw, Ben.”

“He’s your partner, huh, Dad? How d’ya do, Mr. Olivaw.” Ben’s eyes grew large and luminous. “Say, Dad, what happened down in the shoe place? The newscast said—”

“Don’t ask any questions now, Ben,” interposed Baley sharply.

Bentley’s face fell and he looked toward his mother, who motioned him to a seat.

“Did you do what I told you, Bentley?” she asked, when he sat down. Her hands moved caressingly over his hair. It was as dark as his father’s and he was going to have his father’s height, but all the rest of him was hers. He had Jessie’s oval face, her hazel eyes, her light-hearted way of looking at life.

“Sure, Mom,” said Bentley, hitching himself forward a bit to look into the double dish from which savory vapors were already rising.

“What we got to eat? Not zymoveal again, Mom? Huh, Mom?”

“There’s nothing wrong with zymoveal,” said Jessie, her lips pressing together. “Now, you just eat what’s put before you and let’s not have any comments.”

It was quite obvious they were having zymoveal.

Baley took his own seat. He himself would have preferred something other than zymoveal, with its sharp flavor and definite aftertaste, but Jessie had explained her problem before this.

“Well, I just can’t, Lije,” she had said. “I live right here on these levels all day and I can’t make enemies or life wouldn’t be bearable. They know I used to be assistant dietitian and if I just walked off with steak or chicken every other week when there’s hardly anyone else on the floor that has private eating privileges even on Sunday, they’d say it was pull or friends in the prep room. It would be talk, talk, talk, and I wouldn’t be able to put my nose out the door or visit Personal in peace. As it is, zymoveal and protoveg are very good. They’re well-balanced nourishment with no waste and, as a matter of fact, they’re full of vitamins and minerals and everything anyone needs and we can have all the chicken we want when we eat in Community on the chicken Tuesdays.”

Baley gave in easily. It was as Jessie said; the first problem of living is to minimize friction with the crowds that surround you on all sides. Bentley was a little harder to convince.

On this occasion, he said, “Gee, Mom, why can’t I use Dad’s ticket and eat in Community myself? I’d just as soon.”

Jessie shook her head in annoyance and said, “I’m surprised at you, Bentley. What would people say if they saw you eating by yourself as though your own family weren’t good enough for you or had thrown you out of the apartment?”

“Well, gosh, it’s none of people’s business.”

Baley said, with a nervous edge in his voice, “Do as your mother tells you, Bentley.”

Bentley shrugged, unhappily.

R. Daneel said, suddenly; from the other side of the room, “Have I the family’s permission to view these book-films during your meal?”

“Oh, sure,” said Bentley, slipping away from the table, a look of instant interest upon his face. “They’re mine. I got them from the library on special school permit. I’ll get you my viewer. It’s a pretty good one. Dad gave it to me for my last birthday.”

He brought it to R. Daneel and said, “Are you interested in robots, Mr. Olivaw?”

Baley dropped his spoon and bent to pick it up.

R. Daneel said, “Yes, Bentley. I am quite interested.”

“Then you’ll like these. They’re all about robots. I’ve got to write an essay on them for school, so I’m doing research. It’s quite a complicated subject,” he said importantly. “I’m against them myself.”

“Sit down, Bentley,” said Baley, desperately, “and don’t bother Mr. Olivaw.”

“He’s not bothering me, Elijah. I’d like to talk to you about the problem, Bentley, another time. Your father and I will be very busy tonight.”

“Thanks, Mr. Olivaw.” Bentley took his seat and, with a look of distaste in his mother’s direction, broke off a portion of the crumbly pink zymoveal with his fork.

Baley thought: Busy tonight?

Then, with a resounding shock, he remembered his job. He thought of a Spacer lying dead in Spacetown and realized that for hours he had been so involved with his own dilemma that he had forgotten the cold fact of murder.