must understand, my good Mr. Baley," he went on, "that I am quite an aficionado of Earth and its culture. It is not the most popular of subjects on Aurora, but I find it fascinating. I am particularly interested in Earth's past history, the days when it had a hundred languages and Interstellar Standard had not yet been developed. - May I compliment you, by the way, on your own handling of Interstellar?
"This way, this way," he said, turning a corner. "We'll be coming to the pathway-simulation room, which has its own weird beauty, and we may have a mock-up in operation. Quite symphonic, actually. - But I was talking about your handling of Interstellar. It is one of the many Auroran superstitions concerning Earth, that Earthpeople speak an all, but incomprehensible version of Interstellar. When the show about you was produced, there were many who said that the actors could not be Earthpeople because they could be understood, yet I can understand you." He smiled as he said that.
"I've tried reading Shakespeare," he continued with a confidential air, "but I can't read him in the original, of course, and the translation is curiously flat. I can't help but believe that the fault lies with the translation and not with Shakespeare. I do better with Dickens and Tolstoy, perhaps because that is prose, although the names of the characters are, in both cases, virtually unpronounceable to me.
"What I'm trying to say, Mr. Baley, is that I'm a friend of Earth. I really am. I want what is best for it. Do you understand?" He looked at Baley and again the wolf showed in his twinkling eyes.
Baley raised his voice, forcing it between the softly running sentences of the other. "I'm afraid I cannot oblige you, Dr. Amadiro. I must be about my business and I have no further questions to ask of either you or anyone else here. If you - "
Baley paused. There was a faint and curious rumble of sound in the air. He looked up, startled. "What is that?"
"What is what?" asked Amadiro. "I sense nothing." He looked at the robots, who had been following the two human beings in grave silence. "Nothing!" he said forcefully. "Nothing."
Baley recognized that as the equivalent of an order. Neither robot could now claim to have heard the rumble in direct contradiction to a human being, unless Baley himself applied a counter-pressure - and he was sure he could not manage to do it skillfully enough in the face of Amadiro's professionalism.
Nevertheless, it didn't matter. He had heard something and he was not a robot; he would not be talked out of it. He said, "By your own statement, Dr. Amadiro, I have little time left me. That is all the more reason that I must - "
The rumble again. Louder.
Baley said, with a sharp, cutting edge to his voice, "That, I suppose, is precisely what you didn't hear before and what you don't hear now. Let me go, sir, or I will ask my robots for help."
Amadiro loosened his grip on Baley's upper arm at once. "My friend, you had but to express the wish. Come! I will take you to the nearest exit and, if ever you are on Aurora again, which seems unlikely in the extreme, please return and you may have the tour I promised you."
They were walking faster. They moved down the spiral ramp, out along a corridor to the commodious and now empty anteroom and the door by which they had entered.
The windows in the anteroom showed utterly dark. Could it be night already?
It wasn't. Amadiro muttered to himself, "Rotten weather! They've opacified the windows."
He turned to Baley, "I imagine it's raining. They predicted it and the forecasts can usually be relied on - always, when they're unpleasant."
The door opened and Baley jumped backward with a gasp. A cold wind gusted inward and against the sky - not black but a dull, dark gray - the tops of trees were whipping back and forth.
There was water pouring, from the sky - descending in streams. And as Baley watched, appalled, a streak of light flashed across the sky with blinding brilliance and then the rumble came again, this time with a cracking report, as though the light-streak had split the sky and the rumble was the noise it had made.
Baley turned and fled back the way he had come, whimpering.
Chapter 15. AGAIN DANEEL AND GISKARD
60
Baley felt Daneel's strong grip on his arms, just beneath his shoulders.