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.Daneel suddenly raised his hand. Partner Elijah! Baley looked at his watch.23:42! He said, Whatis it? R.Daneel said, He might have been disturbed atthinking you would find out his Medievalist connec-tions, if we grant their existence.There is nothing,though, to connect him with the murder.He cannothave had anything to do with that. Baley said, You re quite wrong, Daneel.He did-n t know what I wanted Dr.Gerrigel for, but it wasquite safe to assume that it was in connection withinformation about robots.This frightened theCommissioner, because a robot had an intimate con-nection with this greater crime.Isn t that so,Commissioner? Enderby shook his head. When this is over he began, but choked into inarticulacy. How was the murder committed? demandedBaley with a suppressed fury. C/Fe, damn it! C/Fe!I use your own term, Daneel.You re so full of thebenefits of a C/Fe culture, yet you don t see where anEarthman might have used it for at least a temporaryadvantage.Let me sketch it in for you. There is no difficulty in the notion of a robotcrossing open country.Even at night.Even alone.The Commissioner put a blaster into R.Sammy shand, told him where to go and when.He himselfentered Spacetown through the Personal and wasrelieved of his own blaster.He received the other288 Caves of Steel 6/23/03 10:08 AM Page 289THE CAVES OF STEELfrom R.Sammy s hands, killed Dr.Sarton, returnedthe blaster to R.Sammy, who took it back across thefields to New York City.And today he destroyed R.Sammy, whose knowledge had become dangerous. That explains everything.The presence of theCommissioner, the absence of a weapon.And it makesit unnecessary to suppose any human New Yorker hadcrawled a mile under the open sky at night. But at the end of Baley s recitation, R.Daneel said, I am sorry, partner Elijah, though happy for theCommissioner, that your story explains nothing.I havetold you that the cerebroanalytic properties of theCommissioner are such that it is impossible for him tohave committed deliberate murder.I don t know whatEnglish word would be applied to the psychologicalfact: cowardice, conscience, or compassion.I knowthe dictionary meanings of all these, but I cannotjudge.At any rate, the Commissioner did not murder. Thank you, muttered Enderby.His voice gainedstrength and confidence. I don t know what yourmotives are, Baley, or why you should try to ruin methis way, but I ll get to the bottom Wait, said Baley. I m not through.I ve got this. He slammed the aluminum cube on Enderby sdesk, and tried to feel the confidence he hoped hewas radiating.For half an hour now, he had been hid-ing from himself one little fact; that he did not knowwhat the picture showed.He was gambling, but it wasall that was left to do.Enderby shrank away from the small object. What is it? 289 Caves of Steel 6/23/03 10:08 AM Page 290ISAAC ASIMOV It isn t a bomb, said Baley, sardonically. Just anordinary micro-projector. Well? What will that prove? Suppose we see. His fingernail probed at one ofthe slits in the cube, and a corner of theCommissioner s office blanked out, then lit up in analien scene in three dimensions.It reached from floor to ceiling and extended outpast the walls of the room.It was awash with a graylight of a sort the City s utilities never provided.Baley thought, with a pang of mingled distaste andperverse attraction: It must be the dawn they talk about.The pictured scene was of Dr.Sarton s dome.Dr.Sarton s dead body, a horrible, broken remnant, filledits center.Enderby s eyes bulged as he stared.Baley said, I know the Commissioner isn t a killer.I don t need you to tell me that, Daneel.If I could havegotten around that one fact earlier, I would have hadthe solution earlier.Actually, I didn t see a way out ofit until an hour ago when I carelessly said to you thatyou had once been curious about Bentley s contactlenses. That was it, Commissioner.It occurred tome then that your nearsightedness and your glasseswere the key.They don t have nearsightedness on theOuter Worlds, I suppose, or they might have reachedthe true solution of the murder almost at once.Commissioner, when did you break your glasses? The Commissioner said, What do you mean? Baley said, When I first saw you about this case,you told me you had broken your glasses in290 Caves of Steel 6/23/03 10:08 AM Page 291THE CAVES OF STEELSpacetown.I assumed that you broke them in youragitation on hearing the news of the murder, but younever said so, and I had no reason for making thatassumption.Actually, if you were enteringSpacetown with crime in your mind, you werealready sufficiently agitated to drop and break yourglasses before the murder.Isn t that so, and didn tthat, in fact, happen? R.Daneel said, I do not see the point, partner Elijah. Baley thought: I m partner Elijah for ten minutesmore.Fast! Talk fast! And think fast!He was manipulating Sarton s dome image as hespoke.Clumsily, he expanded it, his fingernails unsurein the tension that was overwhelming him.Slowly, injerks, the corpse widened, broadened, heightened, camecloser.Baley could almost smell the stench of itsscorched flesh.Its head, shoulders, and one upper armlolled crazily, connected to hips and legs by a blackenedremnant of spine from which charred rib stumps jutted.Baley cast a side glance at the Commissioner.Enderby had closed his eyes.He looked sick.Baley feltsick, too, but he had to look.Slowly he circled the tri-mensional image by means of the transmitter controls,rotating it, bringing the ground about the corpse toview in successive quadrants.His fingernail slippedand the imaged floor tilted suddenly and expanded tilfloor and corpse alike were a hazy mess, beyond theresolving power of the transmitter.He brought theexpansion down, let the corpse slide away.He was still talking.He had to.He couldn t stoptill he found what he was looking for.And if he did-291 Caves of Steel 6/23/03 10:08 AM Page 292ISAAC ASIMOVn t, all his talk might be useless.Worse than useless.His heart was throbbing, and so was his head.He said, The Commissioner can t commit delib-erate murder.True! Deliberate.But any man can killby accident.The Commissioner didn t enterSpacetown to kill Dr.Sarton.He came in to kill you,Daneel, you! Is there anything in his cerebroanalysisthat says he is incapable of wrecking a machine?That s not murder, merely sabotage. He is a Medievalist, an earnest one.He workedwith Dr.Sarton and knew the purpose for which youwere designed, Daneel.He feared that purpose mightbe achieved, that Earthmen would eventually beweaned away from Earth.So he decided to destroyyou, Daneel.You were the only one of your typemanufactured as yet and he had good reason to thinkthat by demonstrating the extent and determinationof Medievalism on Earth, he would discourage theSpacers.He knew how strong popular opinion wason the Outer Worlds to end the Spacetown projectaltogether.Dr.Sarton must have discussed that withhim.This, he thought, would be the last nudge in theproper direction. I don t say even the thought of killing you,Daneel, was a pleasant one.He would have had R.Sammy do it, I imagine, if you didn t look so humanthat a primitive robot such as Sammy could not havetold the difference, or understood it
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