Finally Robertson stirred. “Peter—”
“Well?”
“Let’s ask Susan.”
Bogert stiffened. “What!”
“Let’s ask Susan. Let’s call her and ask her to come in.”
“Why? What can she possibly do?”
“I don’t know. But she’s a robopsychologist, too, and she might understand Madarian better than we do. Besides, she—Oh, hell, she always had more brains than any of us.”
“She’s nearly eighty.”
“And you’re seventy. What about it?”
Bogert sighed. Had her abrasive tongue lost any of its rasp in the years of her retirement? He said, “Well, I’ll ask her.”
Susan Calvin entered Bogert’s office with a slow look around before her eyes fixed themselves on the Research Director. She had aged a great deal since her retirement. Her hair was a fine white and her face seemed to have crumpled. She had grown so frail as to be almost transparent and only her eyes, piercing and uncompromising, seemed to remain of all that had been.
Bogert strode forward heartily, holding out his hand. “Susan!”
Susan Calvin took it, and said, “You’re looking reasonably well, Peter, for an old man. If I were you, I wouldn’t wait till next year. Retire now and let the young men get to it. . . . And Madarian is dead. Are you calling me in to take over my old job? Are you determined to keep the ancients till a year past actual physical death?”
“No, no, Susan. I’ve called you in—” He stopped. He did not, after all, have the faintest idea of how to start.
But Susan read his mind now as easily as she always had. She seated herself with the caution born of stiffened joints and said, “Peter, you’ve called me in because you’re in bad trouble. Otherwise you’d sooner see me dead than within a mile of you.”
“Come, Susan—”
“Don’t waste time on pretty talk. I never had time to waste when I was forty and certainly not now. Madarian’s death and your call to me are both unusual, so there must be a connection. Two unusual events without a connection is too low-probability to worry about. Begin at the beginning and don’t worry about revealing yourself to be a fool. That was revealed to me long ago.”
Bogert cleared his throat miserably and began. She listened carefully, her withered hand lifting once in a while to stop him so that she might ask a question.
She snorted at one point. “Feminine intuition? Is that what you wanted the robot for? You men. Faced with a woman reaching a correct conclusion and unable to accept the fact that she is your equal or superior in intelligence, you invent something called feminine intuition.”
“Oh, yes, Susan, but let me continue—”
He did. When she was told of Jane’s contralto voice, she said, “It is a difficult choice sometimes whether to feel revolted at the male sex or merely to dismiss them as contemptible.”
Bogert said, “Well, let me go on—”
When he was quite done, Susan said, “May I have the private use of this office for an hour or two?”
“Yes, but—”
She said, “I want to go over the various records—Jane’s programming, Madarian’s calls, your interviews at Flagstaff. I presume I can use that beautiful new shielded laser-phone and your computer outlet if I wish.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Well, then, get out of here, Peter.”
It was not quite forty-five minutes when she hobbled to the door, opened it, and called for Bogert.
When Bogert came, Robertson was with him. Both entered and Susan greeted the latter with an unenthusiastic “Hello, Scott.”
Bogert tried desperately to gauge the results from Susan’s face, but it was only the face of a grim old lady who had no intention of making anything easy for him.
He said cautiously, “Do you think there’s anything you can do, Susan?”
“Beyond what I have already done? No! There’s nothing more.” Bogert’s lips set in chagrin, but Robertson said, “What have you already done, Susan?”
Susan said, “I’ve thought a little; something I can’t seem to persuade anyone else to do. For one thing, I’ve thought about Madarian. I knew him, you know. He had brains but he was a very irritating extrovert. I thought you would like him after me, Peter.”
“It was a change,” Bogert couldn’t resist saying.
“And he was always running to you with results the very minute he had them, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, he was.”
“And yet,” said Susan, “his last message, the one in which he said Jane had given him the answer, was sent from the plane. Why did he wait so long? Why didn’t he call you while he was still at Flagstaff, immediately after Jane had said whatever it was she said?”
“I suppose,” said Peter, “that for once he wanted to check it thoroughly and—well, I don’t know. It was the most important thing that had ever happened to him; he might for once have wanted to wait and be sure of himself.”
“On the contrary; the more important it was, the less he would wait, surely. And if he could manage to wait, why not do it properly and wait till he was back at U. S. Robots so that he could check the results with all the computing equipment this firm could make available to him? In short, he waited too long from one point of view and not long enough from another.”
Robertson interrupted. “Then you think he was up to some trickery—”
Susan looked revolted. “Scott, don’t try to compete with Peter in making inane remarks. Let me continue. . . . A second point concerns the witness. According to the records of that last call, Madarian said, ‘Poor guy jumped two feet when Jane suddenly began to reel out the answer in her gorgeous voice.’ In fact, it was the last thing he said. And the question is, then, why should the witness have jumped? Madarian had explained that all the men were crazy about that voice, and they had had ten days with the robot—with Jane. Why should the mere act of her speaking have startled them?”
Bogert said, “I assumed it was astonishment at hearing Jane give an answer to a problem that has occupied the minds of planetologists for nearly a century.”
“But they were waiting for her to give that answer. That was why she was there. Besides, consider the way the sentence is worded. Madarian’s statement makes it seem the witness was startled, not astonished, if you see the difference. What’s more, that reaction came ‘when Jane suddenly began’—in other words, at the very start of the statement. To be astonished at the content of what Jane said would have required the witness to have listened awhile so that he might absorb it. Madarian would have said he had jumped two feet after he had heard Jane say thus-and-so. It would be ‘after’ not ‘when’ and the word ‘suddenly’ would not be included.”
Bogert said uneasily, “I don’t think you can refine matters down to the use or non-use of a word.”
“I can,” said Susan frostily, “because I am a robopsychologist. And I can expect Madarian to do so, too, because he was a robopsychologist. We have to explain those two anomalies, then. The queer delay before Madarian’s call and the queer reaction of the witness.”
“Can you explain them?” asked Robertson.
“Of course,” said Susan, “since I use a little simple logic. Madarian called with the news without delay, as he always did, or with as little delay as he could manage. If Jane had solved the problem at Flagstaff, he would certainly have called from Flagstaff. Since he called from the plane, she must clearly have solved the problem after he had left Flagstaff.”
“But then—”
“Let me finish. Let me finish. Was Madarian not taken from the airport to Flagstaff in a heavy, enclosed ground car? And Jane, in her crate, with him?”
“Yes.”
“And presumably, Madarian and the crated Jane returned from Flagstaff to the airport in the same heavy, enclosed ground car. Am I right?”
