Chapter 17 Chapter Seventeen Before Midnight

Bailey looked at his watch with an almost detached mood.It's twenty one forty-five.In two hours and fifteen minutes it will be midnight.He hasn't closed his eyes since he woke up before six o'clock.He has lived this stressful and tense life for two and a half days.Everything feels unreal. He reached for his pipe and the pouch of the precious tobacco, and tried to keep his voice calm. "What the hell is going on, Daniel?" "You don't understand? Didn't I make it very clear?" Bailey said patiently, "I don't understand. You don't make it clear."

"What I mean is," said the robot; "the purpose of setting up the space city here is to break the shell that wraps the earth and force the earth people to accept new expansion and colonization plans." "I know this, please don't repeat it again and again." "I have to start at the beginning because it's important. You know, we were anxious to punish Dr. Shatton's murderer not in the hope that Dr. Shatton would come back from the dead; Those politicians in the motherland who oppose the space city plan have all the more reason to obstruct us."

"But now," Bailey said suddenly, in a very excited voice, "you said you were going to evacuate automatically, why? God, why is that? The truth about the Shatton case is about to be revealed! Its answer must be revealed soon. Otherwise, they wouldn't be so eager to get rid of me and stop me from investigating. I have a feeling that I already have all the clues to solve the case. As long as I figure it out...the answer must be here! ’ He tapped his temple hard. "Just one sentence to say it, just one word, one word!" He closed his eyes tightly.Something vague that had been condensed for sixty hours seemed to be about to become clear.He waits.However, it is still blurred and not clear.No.Bailey took a deep breath and shivered slightly.He felt ashamed.He actually showed a weak and incompetent ugly face in front of a machine that was indifferent and just watched him quietly.

"Uh, forget it." His voice was hoarse, "Why do you people from Space City leave?" The robot said: "Our project has come to an end. The result is satisfactory, and the earth will be colonized." "You've become more optimistic?" Bailey smoked peacefully for the first time, and finally stabilized his emotions. "We have indeed become optimistic. For a long time, we in space cities have been trying to change the earth by changing the economic structure. We once wanted to introduce C/Fe civilization. Your planetary government and the various city governments So they work with us because they know it's good. And yet, after twenty-five years of trying, we've failed. The harder we try, the louder the medievalist opposition grows."

"I know all of this." Bailey thought to himself: Forget it, it's useless.The robot can only explain the whole thing in his own way, like playing a tape.As he was thinking, he couldn't help shouting silently at R. Daniel: "Machine!" R. Daniel continued: "The first person who put forward this theory that we must change the way is Dr. Shatton. He believes that we must find some people who share our ideas among the people of the earth, or some people who have the same ideas as us. People who can be persuaded to do what we want to do. We just encourage and assist from the sidelines, which becomes a spontaneous action, not an external intervention. The difficulty is how to find the most Earthlings suitable for our purposes. And you, Ilya, are an interesting experiment in your own right."

"Me? What do you mean?" Bailey asked anxiously. "We are very pleased that Director Enderby recommended you. From your mental state data, we concluded that you would be a useful sample. Immediately after I met you, I performed a brainwave analysis on you. The results of the analysis proved that , we were right. You are a very down-to-earth person, Ilya. You have no romantic fantasies about Earth's past, only a healthy interest in it. Nor do you stubbornly embrace Earth's cities today Civilization doesn't let go. We feel that someone like you is the one who can lead the Earthlings to colonize other planets again. That's why Dr. Fastoff was so anxious to see you yesterday morning.

"Your down-to-earth personality is very strong, even so strong that you don't care about other people's face. You refuse to understand that a person is crazy enough to do things beyond his own ability for his ideals, no matter whether the ideals are right or wrong. For example, someone will hinder his ideals in order to destroy them. the archenemy of the country, and crossed the country alone at night. So we were not too surprised when, with your tenaciousness, you dared to accuse the murder of a hoax. It kind of proves that you are the test subject we need .” "My God! What experiment?" Bailey slammed his fist on the table.

"Convince you that the answer to Earth's problems is to colonize." "Yes, I am persuaded. I admit it." "Yes, persuaded under the influence of the right amount of medicine." Bailey's teeth loosened, and the pipe fell, and he reached out just in time to catch it.Suddenly, the scene in the space city dome yesterday appeared in front of him.He saw himself unconscious in shock after learning that R. Daniel was indeed a robot, and then slowly regained consciousness; he saw R. Daniel's smooth fingers pinch the skin on his arm; he saw a black patch under his skin The hypodermic injection is slowly fading... His voice seemed to be swallowing hard, very unstable: "What did you inject me?"

"Don't be nervous, Ilya, it's just a mild potion that can make your mind more receptive to foreign things." "That way I'll believe whatever they say, won't it?" "Not really. If it's something foreign to your basic thought-form, you won't believe it. In fact, the results of the experiment were disappointing. Dr. Fastoff had expected you to become obsessive and fanatical about the subject .But you only generally agree, not too enthusiastically. Your practical nature prevents you from further reactions. So we finally understand that our only hope is still pinned on romantic ideas. Unfortunately, romanticism Mostly Medievalists, actual and potential Medievalists." It was absurd that Bailey had a sense of ego.He was proud of his tenacious personality, and it pleased him to disappoint them.Let them find someone else to experiment with.

He sneered and said, "So you gave up and went back to your hometown?" "Oh, I'm not done yet. As I said earlier, we are happy that Earth will be colonized. You gave us the answer." "I gave it to you? How come?" "You once spoke to Francis Crowther about the benefits of colonization. I judged that you said this with considerable enthusiasm. At least judging from the results of previous experiments. And Crowther's brainwaves changed . Although the change is not obvious, it has indeed changed. " "You mean I've convinced him? I don't believe it."

"Of course, it's not that easy to convince a person. But the change in brainwaves is enough to prove that the medievalist's mind can accept the idea of ​​colonization. I have done further experiments myself. When we left the yeast factory, I was guessing Something may have happened between the two of you that caused his brainwaves to change. So I suggested setting up a colonial training center to safeguard the future of his children. He rejected the proposal, but his brainwaves It has changed again. It is clear to me that this is a very suitable direction to promote the colonization of the earth." R. Daniel paused and continued. "Medievalism has a strong characteristic of being a pioneer. Of course, this pioneering characteristic is not aimed at the outside world, but at the earth itself. Because the earth is at its feet and has a glorious past. However, The imagining of exploring worlds beyond Earth is also akin to this pioneering quality, which appeals to Romantics as easily as Crowther found it appealing to you after hearing you speak only once. "So, you see, we people in the space city have already succeeded, but we don't know it. If we continue to do what we did, the situation will become unstable. We set up a space city, which leads to romanticism on Earth. Concretization, the formation of medievalism, and the emergence of medievalist organizations. In fact, it is the medievalists who really want to break the rules, not the city bureaucrats who want to maintain the status quo in order to obtain the greatest benefit. If we evacuate the space city at this time; If we don't continue to pressurize these Medievalists into giving themselves up to Earth with no room for change; if we leave some unnoticed individuals or robots like me; One day we and earthlings like you can create the kind of colonial training centers I mentioned, and the medievalists will eventually leave Earth. They're going to need robots and they're going to ask us for robots, or build their own. They will develop a C/Fe civilization that suits them.” It was a long speech for R. Daniel.He must have felt this way himself, for after a pause he said to Bailey; "I'm telling you this to explain to you why I have to do things that might hurt you." Bailey was furious. He thought to himself: A robot must not harm a human being, unless the robot can prove that the harm to him is ultimately for his own good. "Wait a minute, I'm going to make a very practical argument," said Belley. "You will go back to your world and say that an Earthling killed an Outerworlder and got away with it. So the Outerworld The world would then demand compensation from Earth. But I warn you, Earth is in no mood to put up with this anymore. It will be troublesome." "I don't think there will be such a thing, Ilya. On our planet, the people who advocate strong claims are the same people who advocate ending the space city. We can easily make the end of the space city a condition that they drop their claims. As a matter of fact we have planned to do so, and Earth will be fine." "Then what should I do?" Bailey blurted out, and there was a hint of despair in his hoarse voice. "Chief Enderby will stop the Sutton case if Space City wants to. The R. Sammy case, however, must go ahead because it shows corruption in the police department. Pile of evidence against me. I know. It's prearranged. I'll be fired, Daniel. And Jessie, she'll be a criminal. And Bentleigh." "You must not think that I do not understand your situation, Elijah." R. Daniel said: "For the benefit of mankind as a whole, personal grievances must be endured. Dr. Shatton left behind his parents, wife, two children, A sister, many friends. Everyone mourns his death and must be sorry to think that his killer is still at large and not punished." "Then why don't you stay and find the murderer?" "It's no longer necessary." Bailey was furious: "Why don't you just admit that this whole investigation is just an excuse? An excuse to study us directly? You don't care who killed Dr. Shatton!" "We wanted to know the truth of the murder case," R. Daniel said calmly, "but we have never considered individuals more important than all human beings. If we continue to investigate, it will interfere with the current situation we are satisfied with." .We cannot predict what harm this may cause." "You mean the murderer was probably a well-known medievalist? Now the outsiders don't want to make enemies of their new friends?" "I wouldn't say that, but what you say makes sense." "Where is your line of justice, Daniel? Is this justice?" "There are levels of justice, Elijah. When the justice of the lower level conflicts with the justice of the higher level, the justice of the lower level must give way." Bailey's thinking seemed to be spinning around R. Daniel's unbreakable positronic brain logic, trying to find a loophole, a weakness. "Don't you have a personal curiosity, Daniel?" he said. "You call yourself a cop. Do you know what that term means? It's a challenge. Your mind is pitted against the criminal's mind." .It's an intellectual battle. Can you give up the battle and admit defeat?" "If you continue to fight and the result is worthless, of course I give up the fight and admit defeat." "You don't feel lost? No doubts? No dissatisfaction? No never-ending curiosity?" Baley, who had been hopeless at first, became weaker when he said it.When he said the word "curiosity" for the second time, he suddenly remembered what he said to Crowther four hours ago.At that time, he understood very well some characteristics of human beings that were different from robots.Curiosity is one of those traits.You can be sure that a six-month-old kitten is full of curiosity, but how can you expect a robot, even if it is very human-like in appearance, to be curious? R. Daniel seemed to be responding to what he was thinking: "What do you mean by curiosity?" Bailey put on the most amiable expression he could: "We call the desire to expand one's knowledge curiosity." "If expanding knowledge is to perform tasks, then I would have this desire." "That's right," Bailey said sarcastically, "it's like you asked about Bentleley's contact lenses in order to know more about the weird customs of the people on Earth." "Yes, that's right." R. Daniel looked normal, of course he didn't know that Bailey was mocking him, "However, if your so-called definition of curiosity is just expanding knowledge aimlessly, it just means that the efficiency is not good. .and I was engineered to avoid inefficiency." Just as R. Daniel was speaking, the "sentence" that Bailey was waiting for suddenly appeared.The blurry image flickered, slowly stabilized, and finally became completely clear. Bailey opened his mouth. R. Daniel's voice drifted past his ears, and he just stood there with his mouth open.The words didn't quite come to his mind right away.It didn't just pop out of nowhere.In fact, somewhere deep in his subconscious, he had already carefully and carefully set up an answer, but this answer had contradictions, so it never entered his consciousness.This contradiction cannot be resolved in any case.As the contradiction persisted, the answer remained buried deep in his thoughts, out of reach of his conscious mind. But the word suddenly appeared, the contradiction disappeared, and the answer was already in his hands. The surprise of a flash of inspiration greatly lifted Bailey's mood.At least, he suddenly knew what R. Daniel's weakness was, and he knew what the weakness of any thinking machine was.He was full of hope, thinking excitedly: the head of this kind of thing must not know how to work around. He opened the mouth and said: "So, the work plan of the space city ends today, and the investigation of the Sharton case ends at the same time, right?" "Yes. People in our space city have already decided." R. Daniel said calmly. "But today hasn't passed yet." Bailey looked at his watch, it was twenty-two thirty, "it's still an hour and a half to midnight." R. Daniel did not speak, and seemed to be thinking about something. Bailey went on at once: "Then, until midnight, the work continues. You are still my work partner, and we continue to investigate the Shatton case." He spoke quickly.The words are as terse as a telegram, "We continue to work, as before. Let me work. I will do you no harm, and it will be to your great advantage. I keep my word. If you think I am doing something harmful, Stop me. I just ask for an hour and a half." "You're right," said R. Daniel, "it's not over yet. I didn't think of that, Partner Elijah." He was "Partner Elijah" again. Bailey smiled, "When I was in Space City, didn't Dr. Fastoff mention that there was a film of the murder scene?" "Yes, he mentioned it." "Can you get a copy?" "Okay, partner Ilya." "I mean now! Immediately!" "If I can use the teleporter at the bureau, I can have it in ten minutes." The whole process didn't take ten minutes.Bailey looked at the small square block of aluminum in his trembling hands.The subtle power from the space city has solidified some kind of atomic replication pattern in this small block of aluminum. Juliell appeared at the door of the dining room.A look of anxiety flashed across his round face when he saw Baley, but then it turned to anger. "Hey, Ilya! You must have eaten this meal for too long!" There seemed to be some hesitation in his strong tone. "I'm exhausted, Chief. I apologize if I took your time." "I don't mind. But . . . you'd better come to my office." Bailey looked at R. Daniel, who didn't seem to want to speak.They walked out of the dining room together. Julier paced back and forth at his desk.Bailey looked at him.In fact, Bailey himself looked very disturbed. He looks at his watch from time to time. Twenty-two forty-five. Julier pushed his glasses to his forehead and rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger until the area around the eyes became red. He put his glasses back on and stared at Bale. "Elia," he said sharply, "when was the last time you were inside the Williamsburg Power Plant?" "Yesterday," Bailey replied, "after I left the office. Around eighteen o'clock, or later—Juriel shook his head. "Why didn't you tell me?" "I'm going to tell. I haven't made a formal report yet." "What are you doing in there?" "It's just crossing on the way back to the temporary residence." Julier stopped pacing suddenly and stood in front of Bailey. "That's not a good word, Ilya. Who would walk through a power plant to get somewhere?" Bailey shrugged.There's no need to tell about the fact that the Medievalists were chasing him and he was racing on the road belt.There is no need now. He said, "If you're implying that I had access to the alpha emitter that killed R. It didn't stop, and I left the power plant without an alpha emitter in my hand." Julier sat down slowly, and didn't look at R. Daniel, nor did he intend to talk to him.He put his chubby hands on the table and looked at them wistfully. "I don't know what to say or think, Ilya. It's no use you calling out your partner as a witness. He can't testify." "I still deny taking the alpha emitter." Julier intertwined his fingers and moved around, "Why did Jessie come to you this afternoon?" "Director, you have already asked me about this matter, and I have answered you. The answer is still the same, housework." "I have a tip from Francis Crowther." "What information?" "He said there was a woman named Jezebel Bale who was part of a medievalist organization whose goal was to overthrow the government by force." "Are you sure he identified the right person? There are many people with the surname Bailey." "There are not many people with the surname Bailey and the name Jezebel." "He said her name, didn't he?" "He's talking about Jezebel. I heard it myself, Elijah. I'm not giving you second-hand information." "Well, yes, Jessie is in a non-dangerous group of idiot extremists. She's never done anything but attend meetings, and besides, she's sick of them." "Not so in the eyes of the investigative committee, Ilya." "You mean, I'm going to be suspended? And I'm going to be locked up for damage to government property, R. Sammy?" "I don't want it, Elijah, but it's a bad situation. Everyone at the Bureau knows you don't like R. Sammy. Your wife was seen talking to him this afternoon. She was crying, and what she said was a bit Overheard. Those two things, taken individually, don't seem like much, but together they make a difference, Elijah. Maybe you'll think it's too dangerous to give R. Sammy a chance to speak, and besides, you There is a chance of getting the murder weapon." "If I were to eliminate all the evidence against Jessie, would I still bring Francis Crowther back to the bureau? Crowther seems to know a lot more about Jessie than R. Sammy! Yes, I crossed the power plant eighteen hours before R. Sammy spoke to Jessie. Do I have superhuman predictive ability, I knew in advance that I had to kill him, so I took an alpha radiation at the power plant Is the weapon ready to be used as a weapon?" "Well, these are all words in your favor. I will do my best." Julier said: "I am very sorry about this, Elijah." "Really? Do you really believe I didn't kill R. Sammy, Chief?" Julier said slowly, "I don't know what to think, Ilya, really, what I'm telling you is the truth." "Then let me tell you what to think! Director, this is a carefully arranged and well-designed conspiracy." Zhuliel was stunned: "Slow down, Ilya, wait a moment. Don't attack blindly. This kind of self-defense will not get sympathy. Many bad apples in the bureau have used this trick before." "I'm not seeking sympathy, I'm just stating the facts. Removing me would have prevented me from knowing the truth about Sutton's murder. Unfortunately, the friend who set me up was a big step too late." "What?" Bailey looked at his watch.Twenty-three o'clock. "I know who set me up," he said. "I also know how and by whom Dr. Sutton was killed. I have an hour to tell you the whole thing and arrest the killer. , and end the investigation."