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She laughed

The laughter grew and fed on itself till she was gasping for breath and her pluainst the wall and gasped for breath

"No, don&039;t coht"

Baley said gravely, "Is the possibility that huain Then, in a whisper, she said, "Oh, you are an Earthman? How could it ever be me?"

"You knew him well," said Baley "You knew his habits You could have planned it"

"And you think I would see hih to bash hi? You just don&039;t know anything at all about it, Baley"

Baley felt hih to hi"

"With the children"

"One thing leads to another You seem to be able to stand my presence"

"At twenty feet," she said contemptuously

"I&039;ve just visited a man who nearly collapsed because he had to endure my presence for a while"

Klorissa sobered and said, "A difference in degree"

"I suggest that a difference in degree is all that is necessary The habit of seeing children h"

"I would like to point out, Mr Baley," said Klorissa, no longer ap

pearing the least amused, "that it doesn&039;t matter a speck what I can endure Dr Del hi hi me Mrs Delmarre is the only one he could possibly have alloithin seeing distance"

Baley said, "Who&039;s this Leebig you ed "One of these odd genius types, if you knohat I mean He&039;s done ith the boss on robots"

Baley checked that off mentally and returned to the matter at hand He said, "It could also be said you had a motive"

"What e of this establishave you position"

"You call that a motive? Skies above, who could want this position? Who on Solaria? This is aover hi him You&039;ll have to do better than that, Earthman"

Baley scratched his neck uncertainly with one finger He saw the justice of that

Kiorissa said, "Did you notice , Mr Baley?"

For a ht hand, but she refrained

"I noticed it," said Baley

"You don&039;t know its significance, I suppose?"

"I don&039;t" (He would never have done with ignorance, he thought bitterly)

"Do you mind a small lecture, then?"

"If it will help me make sense of this damned world," blurted out Baley, "by all means"

"Skies above!" Klorissa smiled "I suppose we seeine Say, here&039;s an empty chamber Come in here and we&039;ll sit down - no, the rooh You take a seat in there and I&039;ll stand out here"

She stepped farther down the corridor, giving hi up her stand against the opposite wall at a point from which she could see hihtest quiver of chivalry countering it He thought rebelliously: Why not? Let the Spacer woman stand

Klorissa folded her muscular arms across her chest and said, "Gene analysis is the key to our society We don&039;t analyze for genes directly, of course Each gene, however, governs one enzyme, and we can analyze for enzymes Know the enzymes, know the body che You see all that?"

"I understand the theory," said Baley "I don&039;t kno it&039;s applied"

"That part&039;s done here Blood samples are taken while the infant is still in the late fetal stage That gives us our rough first approximation Ideally, we should catch all e whether birth can be risked In actual fact, we still don&039;t quite know enough to eliminate all possibility ofafter birth; biopsies as well as body fluids In any case, long before adulthood, we know exactly what our little boys and girls are ar and spice A nonsense phrase went unbidden through Baley&039;s ene constitution," said Klorissa "It&039;s an old custom, a bit of the primitive left behind froenically Nowadays, we&039;re all healthy"

Baley said, "But you still wear yours Why?"

"Because I&039;m exceptional," she said with an une ti for an assistant He needed soenuity, industry, stability Most of all, stability Sole with children and not break down"

"He couldn&039;t, could he? Was that a measure of his instability?"

Kiorissa said, "In a way, it was, but at least it was a desirable type of instability under most circumstances You wash your hands, don&039;t you?"

Baley&039;s eyes dropped to his hands They were as clean as need be "Yes," he said

"All right I suppose it&039;s a measure of instability to feel such revulsion at dirty hands as to be unable to clean an oily ency Still, in the ordinary course of living, the revulsion keeps you clean, which is good"

"I see Go ahead"

"There&039;s nothing hest ever recorded on Solaria, so I wearwith ratulate you"

"You needn&039;t sneer ItIt enes, but it&039;s a proud thing to own, anyway And no one would believe me capable of so seriously psychotic an act as ene make-up So don&039;t waste accusations onThe woene make-up and evidence and presumably the rest of Solaria would do the sasters now?"

"Thank you Yes"

The corridors see was obviously a tree banks of apartle building clinging to the outside skin of a planet it must be a mountainous structure

There were hundreds of cribs, with pink babies squalling, or sleeping, or feeding Then there were play rooms for the crawlers

"They&039;re not too bad even at this age," said Klorissa grudgingly, "though they take up a tremendous sum of robots It&039;s practically a robot per baby till walking age"

"Why is that?"

"They sicken if they don&039;t get individual attention"

Baley nodded "Yes, I suppose the require that can&039;t be done aith"

Klorissa frowned and said brusquely, "Babies require attention"

Baley said, "I am a little surprised that robots can fulfill the need for affection"

She whirled toward hi to hide her displeasure "See here, Baley, if you&039;re trying to shockunpleasant terms, you won&039;t succeed Skies above, don&039;t be childish"

"Shock you?"

"I can use the word too Affection! Do you want a short word, a good four-letter word I can say that, too Love! Love! Now if it&039;s out of your system, behave yourself"

Baley did not trouble to dispute the ive the necessary attention, then?"

"Obviously, or this farm would not be the success it is They fool with the child They nuzzle it and snuggle it The child doesn&039;t care that it&039;s only a robot But then, things grow more difficult between three and ten"

"Oh?"

"During that interval, the children insist on playing with one another Quite indiscriminately"

"I take it you let theation to teach them the requirements of adulthood Each has a separate room that can be closed off Even from the first, they must sleep alone We insist on that And then we have an isolation time every day and that increases with the years By the time a child reaches ten, he is able to restrict hi arrangements are elaborate They can view outdoors, under mobile conditions, and can keep it up all day"

Baley said, "I&039;hly You do counter it; I see that Still, it surprises me"

"What instinct?" deariousness There is one You say yourself that as children they insist on playing with each other"

Klorissa shrugged "Do you call that instinct? But then, what if it is? Skies above, a child has an instinctive fear of falling, but adults can be trained to work in high places even where there is constant danger of falling Haven&039;t you ever seen gyh wires? There are sos And children have instinctive fear of loud noises, too, but are you afraid of them?"

"Not within reason," said Baley

"I&039; to bet that Earth people couldn&039;t sleep if things were really quiet Skies above, there isn&039;t an instinct around that can&039;t give way to a good, persistent education Not in huo about it right, education gets easier with each generation It&039;s a matter of evolution"

Baley said, "How is that?"

"Don&039;t you see? Each individual repeats his own evolutionary history as he develops Those fetuses back there have gills and a tail for a tio through the social-anih in one et through, so our children can hurry through the social anienerations, we&039;d get through that stage faster and faster"

"Is that so?"

"In three thousand years, he estiress, we&039;d have children who&039;d take to viewing at once The boss had other notions, too He was interested in i the mentally unstable Why not? Discipline today for a better life tomorrow is a true expression of First Law if robots could only be made to see it"

"Have such robots been developed yet?"

Klorissa shook her head "I&039; hard on some experimental models"

"Did Dr Delmarre have soh roboticist to conduct tests himself?"

"Oh yes He tested robots frequently"

"Do you know that he had a robot with him when he was murdered?"

"I&039;ve been told so"

"Do you knohat kind of aAs I told you, he&039;s the roboticist orked with Dr Del about it?"

"Not a thing"

"If you think of anything, let me know"

"I will And don&039;t think new robot models are all that Dr Delmarre was interested in Dr Delmarre used to say the time would come when unfertilized ova would be stored in banks at liquid-air temperatures and utilized for artificial inseenic principles could be truly applied and we could get rid of the last vestige of any need for seeing I&039; with hiood Solarian"

She added quickly, "Do you want to go outside? The five through eight group are encouraged to take part in outdoor play and you could see them in action"

Baley said cautiously, "I&039;ll try that I may have to come back inside on rather short notice"

"Oh yes, I forgot Maybe you&039;d rather not go out at all?"

"No" Baley forced a srow accustomed to the outdoors"

The as hard to bear Itdifficult It wasn&039;t cold, in a direct physical sense, but the feel of it, the feel of his clothes ave Baley a kind of chill

His teeth chattered when he tried to talk and he had to force his words out in little bits It hurt his eyes to look so far at a horizon so hazy green and blue and there was only limited relief when he looked at the pathway i up at the empty blue, empty, that is, but for the piled-up white of occasional clouds and the glare of the naked sun

And yet he could fight off the urge to run, to return to enclosure

He passed a tree, following Klorissa by some ten paces, and he reached out a cautious hand to touch it It was rough and hard to the touch Frondy leaves moved and rustled overhead, but he did not raise his eyes to look at the tree!

Klorissa called out "How do you feel?"

"All right"