| "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....
|
