The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov Page B

talk often enough about the difficulties of dealing with Spacers, about the dangers of allowing any but experienced negotiators to have anything to do with them, even over trifles.
    He had not expected, however, to have the Commissioner give in so easily. He had supposed, at the very least, that Enderby would have insisted on accompanying him. The pressure of other work was meaningless in the face of the importance of this problem.
    And that was not what Baley wanted. He wanted exactly what he had gotten. He wanted the Commissioner to be present by trimensional personification so that he could witness the proceedings from a point of safety.
    Safety was the key word. Baley would need a witness that could not be put out of the way immediately. He needed that much as the minimum guarantee of his own safety.
    The Commissioner had agreed to that at once. Baley remembered the parting sob, or ghost of one, and thought: Jehoshaphat, the man’s into this past his depth.
    A cheerful, slurring voice sounded just at Baley’s shoulder and Baley started.
    “What the devil do you want?” he demanded savagely.
    The smile on R. Sammy’s face remained foolishly fixed. “Jack says to tell you Daneel is ready, Lije.”
    “All right. Now get out of here.”
    He frowned at the robot’s departing back. There was nothing so irritating as having that clumsy metal contraption forever making free with your front name. He’d complained about that when R. Sammy first arrived and the Commissioner had shrugged his shoulders and said, “You can’t have it both ways, Lije. The public insists that City robots be built with a strong friendship circuit. All right, then. He is drawn to you. He calls you the friendliest name he knows.”
    Friendship circuit! No robot built, of any type, could possibly hurt a human being. That was the First Law of Robotics:
    “A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.”
    No positronic brain was ever built without that injunction driven so deeply into its basic circuits that no conceivable derangement could displace it. There was no need for specialized friendship circuits.
    Yet the Commissioner was right. The Earthman’s distrust for robots was something quite irrational and friendship circuits had to be incorporated, just as all robots had to be made smiling. On Earth, at any rate.
    R. Daneel, now, never smiled.
    Sighing, Baley rose to his feet. He thought: Spacetown, next stop—or, maybe, last stop!
       The police forces of the City, as well as certain high officials, could still make use of individual squadcars along the corridors of the City and even along the ancient underground motorways that were barred to foot traffic. There were perennial demands on the part of the Liberals that these motorways be converted to children’s playgrounds, to new shopping areas, or to expressway or localway extensions.
    The strong pleas of “Civic safety!” remained un-vanquished, however. In cases of fires too large to be handled by local devices, in cases of massive breakdowns in power lines or ventilators, most of all in cases of serious riot, there had to be some means whereby the forces of the City could be mobilized at the stricken point in a hurry. No substitute for the motorways existed or could exist.
    Baley had traveled along a motorway several times before in his life, but its indecent emptiness always depressed him. It seemed a million miles from the warm, living pulsation of the City. It stretched out like a blind and hollow worm before his eyes as he sat at the controls of the squad car. It opened continuously into new stretches as he moved around this gentle curve or that. Behind him, he knew without looking, another blind and hollow worm continually contracted and closed. The motorway was well lit, but lighting was meaningless in the silence and emptiness.
    R. Daneel did nothing to break the silence or fill that emptiness. He looked straight ahead, as