Baley shook his head. "That is not what I was asking."
She drove furiously over him. "You insisted that I speak and I will speak - and it will answer you. - One thing interests Dr. Han Fastolfe. One thing. One thing only. That is the functioning of the human brain. He wishes to reduce it to equations, to a wiring diagram, to a solved maze, and thus found a mathematical science of human behavior which will allow him to predict the human future. He calls the science 'psychohistory.' I can't believe that you have talked to him for as little as an hour without his mentioning it. It is the monomania that drives him."
Vasilia searched Baley's face and cried out in a fierce joy, "I can tell! He has talked to you about it. Then he must have told you that he is interested in robots only insofar as they can bring him to the human brain. He is interested in humaniform robots only insofar as they can bring him still closer to the human brain. - Yes, he's told you that, too.
"The basic theory that made humaniform robots possible arose, I am quite certain, out of his attempt to understand the human brain and he hugs that theory to himself and will allow no one else to see it because he wants to solve the problem of the human brain totally by himself in the two centuries or so he has left. Everything is subordinate to that. And that most certainly included me."
Baley, trying to breast his way against the flood of fury, said in a low voice, "In what way did it include you, Dr. Vasilia?"
"When I was born, I should have been placed with others of my kind, with professionals who knew how to care for infants. I should not have been kept by myself in the charge of an amateur - father or not, scientist or not. Dr. Fastolfe should not have been allowed to subject a child to such an environment and would not - if he had been anyone else but Han Fastolfe. He used all his prestige to bring it about, called in every debt he had, persuaded every key person he could, until he had control of me."
"He loved you," muttered Baley.
"Loved me? Any other infant would have done as well, but no other infant was available. What he wanted was a growing child in his presence, a developing brain. He wanted to make a careful study of the method of its development, the fashion of its growth. He wanted a human brain in simple form, growing complex, so that he could study it in detail. For that purpose, he subjected me to an abnormal environment and to subtle experimentation, with no consideration for me as a human being at all."
"I can't believe that. Even if he were interested in you as an experimental object, he could still care for you as a human being."
"No. You speak as an Earthman. Perhaps on Earth there is some sort of regard for biological connections. Here there is not. I was an experimental object to him. Period."
"Even if that were so to start with, Dr. Fastolfe couldn't help but learn to love you - a helpless object entrusted to his care. Even if there were no biological connection at all, even if you were an animal, let us say, he would have learned to love you."
"Oh, would he now?" she said bitterly. "You don't know the force of indifference in a man like Dr. Fastolfe. If it would have advanced his knowledge to snuff out my life, he would have done so without hesitation."
"That is ridiculous, Dr. Vasilia. His treatment of you was so kind and considerate that it evoked love from you. I know that. You - you offered yourself to him."
"He told you that, did he? Yes, he would. Not for a moment, even today, would he stop to question whether such a revelation might not embarrass me. - Yes, I offered myself to him and why not? He was the only human being I really knew. He was superficially gentle to me and I didn't understand his true purposes. He was a natural target for me. Then, too, he saw to it that I was introduced to sexual stimulation under controlled conditions - the controls he set up. It was inevitable that eventually I would turn to him. I had to, for there was no one else - and he refused."
"And you hated him for that?"
"No. Not at first. Not for years. Even though my sexual development was stunted and distorted, with effects I feel to this day, I did not blame him. I did not know enough. I found excuses for him. He was busy. He had others. He needed older women. You would be astonished at the ingenuity with which I uncovered reasons for his refusal. It was only years later that I became aware that something was wrong and I managed to bring it out openly, face-to-face. 'Why did you refuse me?' I asked. Obliging me might have put me on the right track, solved everything."
She paused, swallowing, and for a moment covered her eyes. Baley waited, frozen with embarrassment. The robots were expressionless (incapable, for all Baley knew, of experiencing any balance or imbalance of the positronic pathways that would produce a sensation in any way analogous to human embarrassment).
She said, calmer, "He avoided the question for as long as he could, but I faced him with it over and over. 'Why did you refuse me?' 'Why did you refuse me?' He had no hesitation in engaging in sex. I knew of several occasions - I remember wondering if he simply preferred men. Where children are not involved, personal preference in such things is not of any importance and some men can find women distasteful or, for that matter, vice versa. It was not so with this man you call my father, however. He enjoyed women - sometimes young women - as young as I was when I first offered myself. 'Why did you refuse me?' He finally answered me - and you are welcome to guess what that answer was."
She paused and waited sardonically.
Baley stirred uneasily and said in a mumble, "He didn't want to make love to his daughter?"
"Oh, don't be a fool. What difference does that make? Considering that hardly any man on Aurora knows who his daughter is, any man making love to any woman a few decades younger might be - But never mind, it's self-evident. - What he answered - and oh, how I remember the words - was 'You great fool! If I involved myself with you in that manner, how could I maintain my objectivity - and of what use would my continuing study of you be?'