"All right," said Baley, "we learn something every minute. Now see here, boy, you tell me how to work whatever it is I am supposed to work; give me the connection pattern, or whatever you call it, and then step out."
There was a perceptible pause before the robot answered. It said, "Do you wish to make contact yourself, sir?"
"That's right."
Daneel touched Baley's sleeve gently. "One moment, Partner Elijah."
"Now what is it?"
"It is my belief that the robot could make the necessary contact with greater ease. It is his specialization."
Baley said grimly, "I'm sure he can do it better than I can. Doing it myself, I may make a mess of it." He stared levelly at the impassive Daneel. "Just the same, I prefer to make contact myself. Do I give the orders or don't I?"
Daneel said, "You give the orders, Partner Elijah, and your orders, where First Law permits, will be obeyed. However, with your permission, I would like to give you what pertinent information I have concerning the Solarian robots. Far more than on any other world, the robots on Solaria are specialized. Although Solarian robots are physically capable of many things, they are heavily equipped mentally for one particular type of job. To perform functions outside their specialty requires the high potentials produced by direct application of one of the Three Laws. Again, for them not to perform the duty for which they are equipped also requires the direct application of the Three Laws."
"Well, then, a direct order from me brings the Second Law into play, doesn't it?"
"True. Yet the potential set up by it is 'unpleasant' to the robot. Ordinarily, the matter would not come up, since almost never does a Solarian interfere with the day-to-day workings of a robot. For one
thing, he would not care to do a robot's work; for another, he would feel no need to."
"Are you trying to tell me, Daneel, that it hurts the robot to have me do its work?"
"As you know, Partner Elijah, pain in the human sense is not applicable to robotic reactions."
Baley shrugged. "Then?"
"Nevertheless," went on Daneel, "the experience which the robot undergoes is as upsetting to it as pain is to a human, as nearly as I can judge."
"And yet," said Baley, "I'm not a Solarian. I'm an Earthman. I don't like robots doing what I want to do."
"Consider, too," said Daneel, "that to cause distress to a robot might be considered on the part of our hosts to be an act of impoliteness since in a society such as this there must be a number of more or less rigid beliefs concerning how it is proper to treat a robot and how it is not. To offend our hosts would scarcely make our task easier."
"All right," said Baley. "Let the robot do its job."
He settled back. The incident had not been without its uses. It was an educational example of how remorseless a robotic society could be. Once brought into existence, robots were not so easily removed, and a human who wished to dispense with them even temporarily found he could not.
His eyes half closed, he watched the robot approach the wall. Let the sociologists on Earth consider what had just occurred and draw their conclusions. He was beginning to have certain notions of his own.
Half a wall slid aside and the control panel that was revealed would have done justice to a City Section power station.
Baley longed for his pipe. He had been briefed that smoking on non-smoking Solaria would be a terrible breach of decorum, so he had not even been allowed to take his fixings. He sighed. There were moments when the feel of pipe stem between teeth and a warm bowl in his hand would have been infinitely comforting.
The robot was working quickly, adjusting variable resistances a trifle here and there and intensifying field-forces in proper pattern by quick finger pressures.
Daneel said, "It is necessary first to signal the individual one desires to view. A robot will, of course, receive the message. If the individual being signaled is available and wishes to receive the view, full contact is established."
"Are all those controls necessary?" asked Baley. "The robot's hardly touching most of the panel."
"My information on the matter is not complete, Partner Elijah. There is, however, the necessity of arranging, upon occasion, for multiple viewings and for mobile viewings. The latter, particularly, call for complicated and continuing adjustment."
The robot said, "Masters, contact is made and approved. When you are ready, it will be completed."
"Ready," growled Baley, and as though the word were a signal, the far half of the room was alive with light.
Daneel said at once, "I neglected to have the robot specify that all visible openings to the outside be draped. I regret that and we must arrange - "
"Never mind," said Baley, wincing. "I'll manage. Don't interfere." It was a bathroom he was staring at, or he judged it to be so from its fixtures. One end of it was, he guessed, a kind of beautician's establishment and his imagination pictured a robot (or robots?) working with unerring swiftness on the details of a woman's coiffure and on the externals that made up the picture she presented to the world.
Some gadgets and fittings he simply gave up on. There was no way of judging their purpose in the absence of experience. The walls were inlaid with an intricate pattern that all but fooled the eye into believing some natural object was being represented before fading away into an abstraction. The result was soothing and almost hypnotic in the way it monopolized attention.
What might have been the shower stall, a large one, was shielded off by nothing that seemed material, but rather by a trick of lighting that set up a wall of flickering opacity. No human was in sight.