him as you do, you must be able to bear witness that his character is such that he could not harm a robot, certainly not a robot that is one of his supreme achievements. Would you be willing to bear such witness openly? To all the worlds? It would help a great deal."
Vasilia's face seemed to harden. "Understand me," she said, pronouncing the words distinctly. "I will not be involved."
"You must be involved."
"Why?"
"Do you owe nothing to your father? He is your father. Whether the word means anything to you or not, there is a biological connection. And besides that - father or not - he took care of you, nurtured and brought you up, for years. You owe him something for that."
Vasilia trembled. It was a visible shaking and her teeth were chattering. She tried to speak, failed, took a deep breath, another, then tried again. She said, "Giskard, do you hear all that is going on?"
Giskard bowed his head. "Yes, Little Miss."
"And you, the humaniform - Daneel?"
"Yes, Dr. Vasilia."
"You hear all this, too?"
"Yes, Dr. Vasilia."
"You both understand the Earthman insists that I bear evidence on Dr. Fastolfe's character?"
Both nodded.
"Then I will speak - against my will and in anger. It is because I have felt that I did owe this father of mine some minimum consideration as my gene-bearer and, after a fashion, my upbringer, that I have not borne witness. But now I will. Earthman, listen to me. Dr. Han Fastolfe, some of whose genes I share, did not take care of me - me - me - as a separate, distinct human being. I was to him nothing more than an experiment, an observational phenomenon."
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."