And what would Amadiro do with Baley then?

Nothing, except to keep him quiet and helpless for a time. Baley was not himself the quarry. That was the point.

Amadiro would also have two robots and they would now be helpless. Their instructions forced them, in the strongest manner, to guard Baley and, if Baley were ill and being cared for, they could only follow Amadiro’s orders if those orders were clearly and apparently for Baley’s benefit. Nor would Baley be (perhaps) sufficiently himself to protect them with further orders—certainly not if he were kept under sedation.

It was clear! It was clear! Amadiro had had Baley, Daneel, and Giskard—but in unusable fashion. He had sent them out into the storm in order to bring them back and have them again—in usable fashion. Especially Daneel! It was Daneel who was the key.

To be sure, Fastolfe would be searching for them eventually and would find them, too, and retrieve them, but by then it would be too late, wouldn’t it?

And what did Amadiro want with Daneel?

Baley, his head aching, was sure he knew—but how could he possibly prove it?

He could think no more.—If he could opacify the windows, he could make a little interior world again, enclosed and motionless, and then maybe he could continue his thoughts.

But he did not know how to opacify the windows. He could only sit there and look at the flagging storm beyond those windows, hear the whip of rain against the windows, watch the fading lightning, and listen to the muttering thunder.

He closed his eyes tightly. The eyelids made a wall, too, but he dared not sleep.

The car door on his right opened. He heard the sighing noise it made. He felt the cool, damp breeze enter, the temperature drop, the sharp smell of things green and wet enter and drown, out the faint and friendly smell of oil and upholstery that reminded him somehow of the City that he wondered if he would ever see again.

He opened his eyes and there was the odd sensation of a robotic face staring at him—and drifting sideways, yet not really moving. Baley felt dizzy.

The robot, seen as a darker shadow against the darkness, seemed a large one. He had, somehow, an air of capability about him. He—said, “Your pardon, sir. Did you not have the company of two robots?”

“Gone,” muttered Baley, acting as ill as he could and aware that it did not require acting. A brighter flash of the heavens made its way through the eyelids that were now half-open.

“Gone! Gone where, sir?” And then, as he waited for an answer, he said, “Are you ill, sir?”

Baley felt a distant twinge of satisfaction within the inner scrap of himself that was still capable of thinking. If the robot had been without special instruction, he would have responded to Baley’s clear signs of illness before doing anything else. To have asked first about the robots implied hard and close-pressed directions as to their importance.

It fit.

He tried to assume a strength and normality he did not possess and said, “I am well. Don’t concern yourself with me.”

It could not possibly have convinced an ordinary robot, but this one had been so intensified in connection with Daneel, (obviously) that he accepted it—He said, “Where have the robots gone, sir?”

“Back to the Robotics Institute.”

“To the Institute? Why, sir?”

“They were called by Master Roboticist Amadiro and he ordered them to return. I am waiting for them.”

“But why did you not go with them, sir?”

“Master Roboticist Amadiro did not wish me to be exposed to the storm. He ordered me to wait here. I am following Master Roboticist Amadiro’s orders.”

He hoped the repetition of the prestige-filled name with the inclusion of the honorific, together with the repetition of the word “order,” would have its effect on the robot and persuade him to leave Baley where he was.

On the other hand, if they had been instructed, with particular care, to bring back Daneel, and if they were convinced that Daneel was already on his way back to the Institute, there would be a decline in the intensity of their need in connection with that robot. They would have time to think of Baley again. They would say—

The robot said, “But it appears you are not well, sir.”

Baley felt another twinge of satisfaction. He said, “I am well.”

Behind the robot, he could vaguely see a crowding of several other robots—he could not count them—with their faces gleaming in the occasional lightning flash. As Baley’s eyes adapted to the return of darkness, he could see the dim shine of their eyes.

He turned his head. There were robots at the left door, too, though that remained closed.

How many had Amadiro sent? Were they to have been returned, by force, if necessary?

He said, “Master Roboticist Amadiro’s orders were that my robots were to return to the Institute and I was to wait. You see that they are returning and that I am waiting. If you were sent to help, if you have a vehicle, find the robots, who are on their way back, and transport them. This airfoil is no longer operative.” He tried to say it all without hesitation and firmly, as a well man would. He did not entirely succeed.

“They have returned on foot, sir?”

Baley said, “Find them. Your orders are clear.”

There was hesitation. Clear hesitation.

Baley finally remembered to move his right foot—he hoped properly. He should have done it before, but his physical body was not responding properly to his thoughts.

Still the robots hesitated and Baley grieved over that. He was not a Spacer. He did not know the proper words, the proper tone, the proper air with which to handle robots with the proper efficiency. A skilled roboticist could, with a gesture, a lift of an eyebrow, direct a robot as though it were a marionette of which he held the strings.—Especially if the robot were of his own design.

But Baley was only an Earthman.

He frowned—that was easy to do in his misery—and whispered a weary “Go!” and motioned with his hands.

Perhaps that added the last small and necessary quantity of weight to his order—or perhaps an end had simply been reached, to the time it took for the robots’ positronic pathways to determine, by voltage and counter-voltage, how to sort out their instructions according to the Three Laws.

Either way, they had made up their minds and, after that, there was no further hesitation. They moved back to their vehicle, whatever and wherever it was, with such determined speed that they seemed simply to disappear.

The door the robot had held open now closed of its own accord. Baley had moved his foot in order to place it in the pathway of the closing door. He wondered distantly if his foot would be cut off cleanly or if its bones would be crushed, but he didn’t move it. Surely no vehicle would be designed to make such a misadventure possible.

He was alone again. He had forced robots to leave a patently unwell human being by playing on the force of the orders given them by a competent robot master who had been intent on strengthening the Second Law for his own purposes—and had done it to the point—where Baley’s own quite apparent lies had subordinated the First Law to it.

How well he had done it, Baley thought with distant self-satisfaction—and became aware that the door which had swung shut was still ajar, held so by his foot, and that that foot had not been the least bit damaged as a result.