The Naked Sun

16. A SOLUTION IS OFFERED

Baley was aware first of enclosure, the absence of the open, and then of a face bending over him.

He stared for a moment without recognition. Then: “Daneel”

The robot’s face showed no sign of relief or of any other recognizable emotion at being addressed. He said, “It is well that you have recovered consciousness, Partner Elijah. I do not believe you have suffered physical injury.”

“I’m all right,” said Baley testily, struggling to his elbows. “Jehoshaphat, am I in bed? What for?”

“You have been exposed to the open a number of times today. The effects upon you have been cumulative and you need rest.”

“I need a few answers first.” Baley looked about and tried to deny to himself that his head was spinning just a little. He did not recognize the room. The curtains were drawn. Lights were comfortably artificial. He was feeling much better. “For instance, where am I?”

“In a room of Mrs. Delmarre’s mansion.”

“Next, let’s get something straight. What are you doing here? How did you get away from the robots I set over you?”

Daneel said, “It had seemed to me that you would be displeased at this development and yet in the interests of your safety and of my orders, I felt that I had no choice but—”

“What did you do? Jehoshaphat!”

“It seems Mrs. Delmarre attempted to view you some hours ago.”

“Yes.” Baley remembered Gladia saying as much earlier in the day. “I know that.”

“Your order to the robots that held me prisoner was, in your words: ‘Do not allow him’ (meaning myself) ‘to establish contact with other humans or other robots, either by seeing or by viewing.’ However, Partner Elijah, you said nothing about forbidding other humans or robots to contact me. You see the distinction?”

Baley groaned.

Daneel said, “No need for distress, Partner Elijah. The flaw in your orders was instrumental in saving your life, since it brought me to the scene. You see, when Mrs. Delmarre viewed me, being allowed to do so by my robot guardians, she asked after you and I answered, quite truthfully, that I did not know of your whereabouts, but that I could attempt to find out. She seemed anxious that I do so. I said I thought it possible you might have left the house temporarily and that I would check that matter and would she, in the meanwhile, order the robots in the room with me, to search the mansion for your presence.”

“Wasn’t she surprised that you didn’t deliver the orders to the robots yourself?”

“I gave her the impression, I believe, that as an Auroran I was not as accustomed to robots as she was; that she might deliver the orders with greater authority and effect a more speedy consummation. Solarians, it is quite clear, are vain of their skill with robots and contemptuous of the ability of natives of other planets to handle them. Is that not your opinion as well, Partner Elijah?”

“And she ordered them away, then?”

“With difficulty. They protested previous orders but, of course, could not state the nature thereof since you had ordered them to tell no one of my own true identity. She overrode them, although the final orders had to be thrilled out in fury.”

“And then you left.”

“I did, Partner Elijah.”

A pity, thought Baley, that Gladia did not consider that episode important enough to relay to him when he viewed her. He said, “It took you long enough to find me, Daneel.”

“The robots on Solaria have a network of information through subetheric contact. A skilled Solarian could obtain information readily, but, mediated as it is through millions of individual machines, one such as myself, without experience in the matter, must take time to unearth a single datum. It was better than an hour before the information as to your whereabouts reached me. I lost further

time by visiting Dr. Delmarre’s place of business after you had departed.”

“What were you doing there?”

“Pursuing researches of my own. I regret that this had to be done in your absence, but the exigencies of the investigation left me no choice.”

Baley said, “Did you view Kiorissa Cantoro, or see her?”

“I viewed her, but from another part of her building, not from our own estate. There were records at the farm I had to see. Ordinarily viewing would have been sufficient, but it might have been inconvenient to remain on our own estate since three robots knew my real nature and might easily have imprisoned me once more.”

Baley felt almost well. He swung his legs out of bed and found himself in a kind of nightgown. He stared at it with distaste. “Get me my clothes.”

Daneel did so.

As Baley dressed, he said, “Where’s Mrs. Delmarre?”

“Under house arrest, Partner Elijah.”

“What? By whose order?”

“By my order. She is confined to her bedroom under robotic guard and her right to give orders other than to meet personal needs has been neutralized.”

“By yourself?”

“The robots on this estate are not aware of my identity.”

Baley finished dressing. “I know the case against Gladia,” he said. “She had the opportunity; more of it, in fact, than we thought at first. She did not rush to the scene at the sound of her husband’s cry, as she first said. She was there all along.”

“Does she claim to have witnessed the murder and seen the murderer?”

“No. She remembers nothing of the crucial moments. That happens sometimes. It turns out, also, that she has a motive.”

“What was it, Partner Elijah?”

“One that I had suspected as a possibility from the first. I said to myself, if this were Earth, and Dr. Delmarre were as he was described to be and Gladia Delmarre as she seemed to be, I would say that she was in love with him, or had been, and that he was in love only with himself. The difficulty was to tell whether Solarians felt love or reacted to love in any Earthly sense. My judgment as to their

emotions and reactions wasn’t to be trusted. It was why I had to see a few. Not view them, but see them.”

“I do not follow you, Partner Elijah.”

“I don’t know if I can explain it to you. These people have their gene possibilities carefully plotted before birth and the actual gene distribution tested after birth.”

“I know that.”

“But genes aren’t everything. Environment counts too, and environment can bend into actual psychosis where genes indicate only a potentiality for a particular psychosis. Did you notice Gladia’s interest in Earth?”

“I remarked upon it, Partner Elijah, and considered it an assumed interest designed to influence your opinions.”

“Suppose it were a real interest, even a fascination. Suppose there were something about Earth’s crowds that excited her. Suppose she were attracted against her will by something she had been taught to consider filthy. There was possible abnormality. I had to test it by seeing Solarians and noticing how they reacted to it, and seeing her and noticing how she reacted to it. It was why I had to get away from you, Daneel, at any cost. It was why I had to abandon viewing as a method for carrying on the investigation.”

“You did not explain this, Partner Elijah.”

“Would the explanation have helped against what you conceived your duty under First Law to be?”

Daneel was silent.

Baley said, “The experiment worked. I saw or tried to see several people. An old sociologist tried to see me and had to give up midway. A roboticist refused to see me at all even under terrific force, The bare possibility sent him into an almost infantile frenzy. He sucked his finger and wept. Dr. Delmarre’s assistant was used to personal presence in the way of her profession and so she tolerated me, but at twenty feet only. Gladia, on the other hand—”

“Yes, Partner Elijah?”

“Gladia consented to see me without more than a slight hesitation. She tolerated my presence easily and actually showed signs of decreasing strain as time went on. It all fits into a pattern of psychosis. She didn’t mind seeing me; she was interested in Earth; she might have felt an abnormal interest in her husband. All of it could be explained by a strong and, for this world, psychotic interest in the

personal presence of members of the opposite sex. Dr. Delmarre, himself, was not the type to encourage such a feeling or co-operate with it. It must have been very frustrating for her.”

Daneel nodded. “Frustrating enough for murder in a moment of passion.”

“In spite of everything, I don’t think so, Daneel.”

“Are you perhaps being influenced by extraneous motives of your own, Partner Elijah? Mrs. Delmarre is an attractive woman and you are an Earthman in whom a preference for the personal presence of an attractive woman is not psychotic.”

“I have better reasons,” said Baley uneasily. (Daneel’s cool glance was too penetrating and soul-dissecting by half. Jehoshaphat! The thing was only a machine.) He said, “If she were the murderess of her husband, she would also have to be the attempted murderess of Gruer.” He had almost the impulse to explain the way murder could be manipulated through robots, but held back. He was not sure how Daneel would react to a theory that made unwitting murderers of robots.

Daneel said, “And the attempted murderess of yourself as well.” Baley frowned. He had had no intention of telling Daneel of the poisoned arrow that had missed; no intention of strengthening the other’s already too strong protective complex vis-a-vis himself.

He said angrily, “What did Klorissa tell you?” He ought to have warned her to keep quiet, but then, how was he to know that Daneel would be about, asking questions?

Daneel said calmly, “Mrs. Cantoro had nothing to do with the matter. I witnessed the murder attempt myself.”

Baley was thoroughly confused. “You were nowhere about.”

Daneel said, “I caught you myself and brought you here an hour ago.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Do you not remember, Partner Elijah? It was almost a perfect murder. Did not Mrs. Delmarre suggest that you go into the open? I was not a witness to that, but I feel certain she did.”

“She did suggest it. Yes.”

“She may even have enticed you to leave the house.”

Baley thought of the “portrait” of himself, of the enclosing gray walls. Could it have been clever psychology? Could a Solarian have

that much intuitive understanding of the psychology of an Earthman?

“No,” he said.Daneel said, “Was it she who suggested you go down to the ornamental pond and sit on the bench?”

“Well, yes.”

“Does it occur to you that she might have been watching you, noticing your gathering dizziness?”

“She asked once or twice if I wanted to go back.”

“She might not have meant it seriously. She might have been watching you turn sicker on that bench. She might even have pushed you, or perhaps a push wasn’t necessary. At the moment I reached you and caught you in my arms, you were in the process of falling backward off the stone bench and into three feet of water, in which you would surely have drowned.”

For the first time Baley recalled those last fugitive sensations. “Jehoshaphat!”

“Moreover,” said Daneel with calm relentlessness, “Mrs. Delmarre sat beside you, watching you fall, without a move to stop you. Nor would she have attempted to pull you out of the water. She would have let you drown. She might have called a robot, but the robot would surely have arrived too late. And afterward, she would explain merely that, of course, it was impossible for her to touch you even to save your life.”

True enough, thought Baley. No one would question her inability to touch a human being. The surprise, if any, would come at her ability to be as close to one as she was.

Daneel said, “You see, then, Partner Elijah, that her guilt can scarcely be in question. You stated that she would have to be the attempted murderess of Agent Gruer as though this were an argument against her guilt. You see now that she must have been. Her only motive to murder you was the same as her motive for trying to murder Gruer; the necessity of getting rid of an embarrassingly persistent investigator of the first murder.”

Baley said, “The whole sequence might have been an innocent one. She might never have realized how the outdoors would affect

“She studied Earth. She knew the peculiarities of Earthmen.”

“I assured her I had been outdoors today and that I was growing used to it.”

“She may have known better.”

Baley pounded fist against palm. “You’re making her too clever. It doesn’t fit and I don’t believe it. In any case, no murder accusation can stick unless and until the absence of the murder weapon can be accounted for.”

Daneel looked steadily at the Earthman, “I can do that, too, Partner Elijah.”

Baley looked at his robot partner with a stunned expression. “How?”

“Your reasoning, you will remember, Partner Elijah, was this. Were Mrs. Delmarre the murderess, then the weapon, whatever it was, must have remained at the scene of the murder. The robots, appearing almost at once, saw no sign of such a weapon, hence it must have been removed from the scene, hence the murderer must have removed it, hence the murderer could not be Mrs. Delmarre. Is all that correct?”

“Correct.”

“Yet,” continued the robot, “there is one place where the robots did not look for the weapon.”

“Where?”

“Under Mrs. Delmarre. She was lying in a faint, brought on by the excitement and passion of the moment, whether murderess or not, and the weapon, whatever it was, lay under her and out of sight.”

Baley said, “Then the weapon would have been discovered as soon as she was moved.”

“Exactly,” said Daneel, “but she was not moved by the robots. She herself told us yesterday at dinner that Dr. Thool ordered the robots to put a pillow under her head and leave her. She was first moved by Dr. Altim Thool, himself, when he arrived to examine her.”

“So?”

“It follows, therefore, Partner Elijah, that a new possibility arises. Mrs. Delmarre was the murderess, the weapon was at the scene of the crime, but Dr. Thool carried it off and disposed of it to protect Mrs. Delmarre.”

Baley felt contemptuous. He had almost been seduced into expecting something reasonable. He said, “Completely motiveless. Why should Dr. Thool do such a thing?”

“For a very good reason. You remember Mrs. Delmarre’s remarks concerning him: ‘He always treated me since I was a child and was always so friendly and kind.’ I wondered if he might have some motive for being particularly concerned about her. It was for that reason that I visited the baby farm and inspected the records. What I had merely guessed at as a possibility turned out to be the truth.”

“What?”

“Dr. Altim Thool was the father of Gladia Delmarre, and what is more, he knew of the relationship.”

Baley had no thought of disbelieving the robot. He felt only a deep chagrin that it had been Robot Daneel Olivaw and not himself that had carried through the necessary piece of logical analysis. Even so, it was not complete.

He said, “Have you spoken to Dr. Thool?”

“Yes. I have placed him under house arrest, also.”

“What does he say?”

“He admits that he is the father of Mrs. Delmarre. I confronted him with the records of the fact and the records of his inquiries into her health when she was a youngster. As a doctor, he was allowed more leeway in this respect than another Solarian might have been allowed.”

“Why should he have inquired into her health?”

“I have considered that, too, Partner Elijah. He was an old man when he was given special permission to have an additional child and, what is more, he succeeded in producing one. He considers this a tribute to his genes and to his physical fitness. He is prouder of the result, perhaps, than is quite customary on this world. Moreover, his position as physician, a profession little regarded on Solaria because it involves personal presences, made it the more important to him to nurture this sense of pride. For that reason, he maintained unobtrusive contact with his offspring.”

“Does Gladia know anything of it?”

“As far as Dr. Thool is aware, Partner Elijah, she does not.”

Baley said, “Does Thool admit removing the weapon?”

“No. That he does not.”

“Then you’ve got nothing, Daneel.”

“Nothing?”

“Unless you can find, the weapon and prove he took it, or at the very least induce him to confess, you have no evidence. A chain of deduction is pretty, but it isn’t evidence.”

“The man would scarcely confess without considerable questioning of a type I myself could not carry through. His daughter is dear to him.”

“Not at all,” said Baley. “His feeling for his daughter is not at all what you and I are accustomed to. Solaria is different!”

He strode the length of the room and back, letting himself cool. He said, “Daneel, you have worked out a perfect exercise in logic, but none of it is reasonable, just the same.” (Logical but not reasonable. Wasn’t that the definition of a robot?)

He went on, “Dr. Thool is an old man and past his best years, regardless of whether he was capable of siring a daughter thirty years or so ago. Even Spacers get senile. Picture him then examining his daughter in a faint and his son-in-law dead by violence. Can you imagine the unusual nature of the situation for him? Can you suppose he could have remained master of himself? So much the master of himself, in fact, as to carry out a series of amazing actions?

“Look! First, he would have had to notice a weapon under his daughter, one that must have been so well covered by her body that the robots never noticed it. Secondly, from whatever small scrap of object he noted, he must have deduced the presence of the weapon and seen at once that if he could but sneak off with that weapon, unseen, a murder accusation against his daughter would be hard to substantiate. That’s pretty subtle thinking for an old man in a panic. Then, thirdly, he would have had to carry the plan through, also tough for an old man in a panic. And now, lastly, he would have to dare to compound the felony further by sticking to his lie. It all may be the result of logical thinking, but none of it is reasonable.”

Daneel said, “Do you have an alternate solution to the crime, Partner Elijah?”

Baley had sat down during the course of his last speech and now he tried to rise again, but a combination of weariness and the depth of the chair defeated him. He held out his hand petulantly. “Give me a hand, will you, Daneel?”

Daneel stared at his own hand. “I beg your pardon, Partner Elijah?”

Baley silently swore at the other’s literal mind and said, “Help me out of the chair.” Daneel’s strong arm lifted him out of the chair effortlessly.

Baley said, “Thanks. No, I haven’t an alternate solution. At least, I have, but the whole thing hinges on the location of the weapon.”

He walked impatiently to the heavy curtains that lined most of one wall and lifted a corner without quite realizing what he was doing. He stared at the black patch of glass until he became aware of the fact that he was looking out into the early night, and then dropped the curtain just as Daneel, approaching quietly, took it out of his fingers.

In the split fraction of a moment in which Baley watched the robot’s hand take the curtain away from him with the loving caution of a mother protecting her child from the fire, a revolution took place within him.

He snatched the curtain back, yanking it out of Daneel’s grasp. Throwing his full weight against it, he tore it away from the window, leaving shreds behind.

“Partner Elijah!” said Daneel softly. “Surely you know now what the open will do to you.”

“I know,” said Baley, “what it will do for me.”

He stared out the window. There was nothing to see, only blackness, but that blackness was open air. It was unbroken, unobstructed space, even if unlit, and he was facing it.

And for the first time he faced it freely. It was no longer bravado, or perverse curiosity, or the pathway to a solution of a murder. He faced it because he knew he wanted to and because he needed to. That made all the difference.

Walls were crutches! Darkness and crowds were crutches! He must have thought them so, unconsciously, and hated them even when he most thought he loved and needed them. Why else had he so resented Gladia’s gray enclosure of his portrait?

He felt himself filling with a sense of victory, and, as though victory were contagious, a new thought came, bursting like an inner shout.

Baley turned dizzily to Daneel. “I know,” he whispered. “Jehoshaphat! I know!”

“Know what, Partner Elijah?”

“I know what happened to the weapon; I know who is responsible. All at once, everything falls into place.”