A Little Knowledge Can Go A Long Way....

"The distraction could well prove fatal!" Daneel added emphatically.

Daneel then gives a very brief, to the point summary of what Stacy had told AND what he'd actually seen underneath her human seeming.

Inquirer hisses softly, seeing where this situation could lead and why. She also thanks the Creator silently that Daneel hasn't thought to check the Time Lords and her to see how human (or not) they all were.

The situation before now had been precarious before due to this murder of Dr. Sarton (the Spacer that Daneel was made to look like). Inquirer remembered how the officials of Earth and the Spacers wished to keep this as quiet as possible. The idea was to discover who was the murderer and by doing so defuse what could well be a provocation for the Spacers to take dire measures against Earth. Lot of political issues and plays were going on here in the background not covered all that well in the Asimov book, the mechanical maiden was sure, but that was not important right now! Things obviously had been tense before, but now?

Several other policemen show up, some babbling about the rumors of war in the air. Baley shouts for quiet and then goes over to a corner to think like he's never thought before. So much was riding on him right now. Of that he was deadly sure!

Over protests, he has Stacy and her group taken into "protective custody." Given the situation right now, an actual, honest to god alien was going to make panics run wild. Human beings had never encountered anyone besides their own and remembering the hysteria over the well known robots.....

He explains in no uncertain terms what could happen, and that satisfied some enough to quiet them. Others (Stacy's group) look like they still will protest, but after Inquirer sends them a "burst" of telepathic information (telling the others who she and her group were and what they were doing here), they quiet down (mostly due to acceptance of the Golem's reasons...but some to massive headaches brought on by information overload). Inquirer adds for them to stand by and hang tight over Stacy, she and the others would help here ASAP!

That they do as Stacy is lead out for protective custody.

Others (the policemen) ask how Daneel could possibly know that Stacy was an alien. Inquirer butts in and says that he's a Spacer and has all kinds of fancy sensing equipment even smaller than the thing that she holds up (a tricorder).

"Wouldn't even put it past them to have ventured into the realm of cybernetics," Iquirer finished up, "I....have a passing knowledge of what Earth is capable of....and have my....er.... sources for what Spacers are capable of doing. With their fondness of robots, can't see them being too squeamish about becoming a little more like their favorite toys in a sense."

The last makes a lot of people look at Inquirer in the oddest of ways. Some shudder, but some...begin to hide smiles.

"Good God, this woman just let Daneel have more leeway in how much to use his robot abilities in one fell swoop!" Baley whispered, understanding.

Cyborgs were still the stuff of legend and fantasy, but rumors abound and the public at large was familiar with the concept of what they were. No self respecting Earthman would willingly forgo his organic parts to replace them with stronger, quicker mechanical equivalents (replacing what had been lost was acceptable....but nothing else). But Daneel was a Spacer (as rumor had it...now confirmed) and Spacers....were different!

And if anyone had any questions about what that thing that thing that she was carrying around couldn't do what had been implied here.....nobody said anything. They were still very nervous about her being a TBI agent and all that.....

Best to not dig too deeply into things that could well get you into deep trouble!

Betty overhears one uniformed officer asking about what this deal was about the people who either were short and with pointed ears, wearing archaic clothing, and such. The other laughed and scolding him for not keeping up with current fashion.

"Oh yes, the Gemini looks the latest thing with body sculpting over in Paris City," the other cop says quietly, "As for the costumes and such....well....the Medievalist movement seems to have taken a taste for fantasy now, in addition to a lower tech, simpler time."

"At least that's what I think," he mutters, looking over at the laughing elves, who shouldn't have been able to overhear the last, but appeared to have.

He then looks over at Inquirer, wonders about Medievalists perhaps in the TBI....and then decides to drop it. Maybe they'd all been at some kind of costume party or something. Whatever the case, he's not going to ask and get his C rating cut!

Apparently those large ears were more special than just being sharp pointed?

Daneel, meanwhile, opens his mouth to protest, but closes it again when he sees Baley shake his head slightly.

"We....need to do something," Baley says softly, looking over at Daneel, "Something to buy us some time so we can win the trust. Something like bringing a person to justice!"

"Daneel, tell me again what was at that scene that didn't fit?" Baley begins, "Maybe I overlooked?"

Daneel runs through a list, only to stop halfway through when he gets to "broken glass" and Baley waves for him to stop.

He has the oddest....look on his face. That and a sudden sick feeling in his stomach.

"Do you have pictures of this glass?" he asks softly, hopping against hope that....

Daneel looks over at a video terminal, seems to think for a second, and then removes a chord from somewhere on him and plugs into the blasted thing (bringing hisses of surprise from some...now are believing that Daneel is a cyborg).

The glass is shown, and after another order from Baley a familiar shape forms when the glass shards are put together like a jigsaw puzzle....into the shape of the kind of lenses found in old style spectacles.

"The kind that Commissioner Enderby wears?" he whispers, shaking his head, "He killed Sarton?"

"Partner Elijah, that's not possible," Daneel protested, equally as soft as Baley, "He did not have a blaster on him at the time of the murder, for we remove weapons as a normal course of things. Furthermore, he was cerebroanalysed and it proved he was incapable of doing such an act upon Dr. Sarton. Quiet incapable. That and...."

"Oh, but he's quiet capable of killing on particular artificial being who looked like him," Inquirer put in, interrupting. "Isn't like a Spacer wears glasses, you know! He's the only one there that night who'd been invited who wore glasses!"

"Pardon?" Daneel asks, blinking in a rather unrobotic fashion, surprised.

"Try this on," Inquirer says, pushing on, "The blaster got brought in from Outside. That route I know you Spacers don't cover, by the way. The blaster was given to Embry. Embry, nervous, breaks his glasses by accident. Sees some blur that looks like Daneel and fires but.... the gore proves it to have been Dr. Sarton. In a mad dash he gives the blaster to his accomplice to remove the evidence. Very upset, he still manages to play innocent enough and avoid giving himself away....when your investigators failed to ask him the right questions."

Inquirer had known how it had happened in the book, but hadn't been sure if it would have been like this in reality. This had confirmed it.

"But no City dweller could travel Outside without suffering panic attacks," Baley protested.

"Who said that the accomplice was human?" Inquirer said sadly, "I believe that your place of work recently got a new robot? One of the simpler kind of robots? One who would and could willingly carry a blaster Outside without panic and return it to the Station if he didn't know about Enderby plans on using it?"

Baley hissed in frustration, not liking it at all. Enderby was....something of a friend and..... But why had he put him on this case in the first place, especially knowing his feeling about Robots (something that he...was having to wonder about now after seeing the distress that Daneel had been showing....and was showing now at the distress he'd cause Baley). Daneel was, was so....damn real!

He mutters a curse when he realises.

"He wanted me to fail!" he whispered, sick to his stomach.

Wanted him to fail, despite the ruin it would bring to Baley's career and his family by association. Wanted Baley to fail to hide the crime he'd accidently commited. The crime of manslaughter instead of "roboticide" he'd planned on committing in the first place.

"You knew he did it," Baley said softly, a growl in his voice, "You knew and were playing with me!"

"I suspected," Inquirer snapped back, "Daneel confirmed! I do NOT accuse those of crimes without evidence...which we now have. Robots on Earth can't give testimony as evidence, but other recording devices were used so as to make no difference. What Daneel showed us can be backed up by that other stuff in a court of law...if it comes to that."

"But it will suffice to gain the trust of some moderate Spacers back in Spacetown," Daneel puts in calmly, "And right now, I dare say that is what we must do next, if I am not mistaken."

To do anything else would come dangerously close to breaking the Rule against not letting a human being come to harm! Wars had a way of doing the most dreadful of harm to human beings....

1. "I need to talk to a few people ASAP in regards to that," Baley sighs, "Things like getting my hands on R. Sammy and getting a private car to Spacetown before they raise their Forcefields!"

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