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When Elijah is gone, Daneel tries to stay for a while.
On this new planet, Daneel has been the grandfather (and great-grandfather) the Baleys all love best. He tells the best and wildest stories of Great-Grandpa Lije. He remembers all the younger children’s own imagined battles and fantasy worlds, and asks them about updates to their play-characters’ lives and adventures each time they visit. He teaches them words he knows, words for things they have never yet seen on their new, growing world, and looks up new ones with them. They teach him, too, about their dreams and changing friendships, the little fights and games they start and abandon, all with the underlying goal, he thinks, of practice being human.
Baleyworld’s ban of robots has held firm, and Daneel is glad to see the humans who settled there learning to forge their own communities with their own hands. He makes sure any of the little jobs he takes on the planet are based in academic work, helping them keep track of their histories, and never anything a human being could not do. He knows they remember what he is every time he visits a university, and feels distinctly unwelcome in government buildings. The children come back from school sometimes angry or irritated by classmates’ prying questions about his presence. When they have friends over, and in fact when Bentley has any company, Daneel goes out to walk or work, avoiding causing discomfort to other children who are deeply conscious of his identity. Walking in public, he can still attract tense attention, but he can give those wary humans space.
But he tries to stay. Elijah’s former apartment ends up housing a growing family of grandchildren, so Bentley invites Daneel to live in the large home he’s built since the first move. He puts him up in a spare room which used to be a study. Bentley clears out part of the room to put in a couch and chairs for him to sit with family visitors in his own space, and removes most of the work papers and books. When Daneel arrives, he finds on the desk a framed image he had not seen in a long time: a twelve-year-old photo of Elijah, Daneel, and the grandkids building a huge card tower here at Bentley’s. He stands still to see it, and remains there unmoving for ten minutes. Daneel places the photo in prominence on the desk.
When the grandkids and great-grandchildren visit, his presence is requested unanimously. He helps one of the older children build a model ship that immediately flies out of range and gets lost for weeks. She and Daneel chart its possible courses together, considering where it might have landed. With nothing better to do, he searches for it daily across the unclaimed planet surface around their settlement. He comes back from one such trip with the model spaceship in tow, along with a letter from the settlement nearby where it had landed, addressed to the granddaughter who built it. The university students there, authors of the letter, apologize for the absence of the toy, but explain that they were studying its propulsion, and they say whenever she’s old enough, they hope she’ll study engineering with them. But Daneel also has in his pocket a letter which he shares only with Bentley, from the mayor of that neighboring city requesting politely that robots, however famous, refrain from further visits to their borders.
Daneel tries to stay. He arbitrates an argument between Bentley and the middle grandson. The boy wants to set up an exchange program to Aurora so Baleyworld can learn more about settlement technology, and maybe, he explains proudly, Aurora can be the first Spacer world to learn more about the first generations of this new way of life. Bentley reminds the boy that there is no way an Earth-descended student will be allowed on Aurora, let alone any Auroran come to their planet. The boy is certain Bentley’s bias makes him say that, and he asks Daneel to speak to Auroran state heads about the request. Daneel tries his best to fulfill the demand, and eventually Dr. Fastolfe pulls a string for him to speak with someone peripheral. Even given the faint impact of the token diplomat’s role over this matter, he gets the expected vehement refusal. And he spends a full week trying to come up with a way to break the news to the young boy. He finally tells Bentley first, and Bentley just calls the kid in from the next room, saying he’ll have to hear the truth about lots of things eventually.
Daneel wonders what other truths the boy will witness, and spends an entire night weighing paths for the boy’s life. In the weeks following, he develops a habit of imagining extended lifelines for each child, envisioning likely futures for them considering their personalities as they are now. He acknowledges obstacles they may face, and when they visit, he starts suggesting books or subjects of interest that may help them down their paths. He knows even now that the complexities of their futures are too great for him to plan out. He wishes there were a way to predict things for them, at least the big risks and turns in their lives. He thinks humans would be better at that than he is.
Daneel tries to stay.
He makes it almost two years. But eventually, Bentley--not Daneel--receives a letter, this time from heads of the planet itself, requesting politely that robots not directly involved in partnership with onworld leadership please remove themselves from the planet in accordance with Baleyworld policy.
Daneel is no longer involved in a partnership with anyone.
Bentley rages. He tells Daneel he’ll write to the authorities, request an extension, demand that they make an exception, remind them what Daneel has done for the entire planet’s population. He’ll show them the damn hyperwave drama again if he has to. But Daneel points out to Bentley that the world has its regulations for good reason. He doesn’t want to open a loophole that could lead to eventual over-reliance on robots again. The humans here want to make their own way.
When Bentley gathers everyone at home the following day, Daneel tries to wait outside the room, tries not to listen to the response. But the kids stream in first, then the rest of the adults, and they swarm him. The kids hug his legs, grab his hands, most of them already crying or beginning to cry. The adults have tears in their eyes, too. Daneel is paralyzed in response to this display of pain, and the smallest great-granddaughter climbs into his lap to hug his neck. He holds the child lightly. Bentley is looking at the other adults in the room. “He stays until they come and get him.” The older kids nod furiously along with the adults.
One day soon the Auroran government calls for Daneel’s presence on a matter of historical reference. He tells Bentley a moment after receiving the call. Bentley squares his jaw. He asks Daneel, “Are you sure you want to leave planet for this? You can stay. With us.”
Daneel was told to go, so he does. Bentley sees him to the spaceport. He stands outside the car awkwardly, can’t quite bring himself to clap Daneel on the shoulder.
In three months, when Aurora is finished with him, he boards a ship back to Baleyworld. He is stopped at customs. They know his face. “No robots are given entry onto the world without specific permission.”
Daneel is very still. He looks back up at the customs agent after a few moments. “I was granted exceptional permission to stay on Baleyworld in association with Elijah Baley.”
The woman looks over his papers again. “These are dated. I see no sign of renewal. Where’s Elijah Baley now?” Surely she knows. But she just raises her brows at him.
He hasn’t had to say it in two years.
He hasn’t ever had to.
He opens his mouth, and no sound comes out at all. He tries again. She watches him open and close his mouth for twenty-five seconds. Then she calls over a colleague. When her attention leaves him, he looks down at the paperwork between them on the counter, and at his hands. He thinks about what Elijah would say to him now, seeing his distress.
“You’ve done a lot for this world, Daneel. You’ve given Bentley a friend to trust, much as he might pause to say as much. Jehoshaphat!” Daneel imagines the slap to his back and Elijah’s wry grin. “There are six children who quote the Three Laws of Robotics at each other to stop themselves from fighting.”
Daneel asks for a hyperwave contact cubicle to make a call. Bentley answers with his boots half on.
“Bentley, I’m sorry to have interrupted you in a moment of dressing.”
“Don’t worry. I saw it was you so I’m getting ready to pick you up. All okay with Aurora and--customs?”
“All is well with the Aurorans I met, and their matter is settled. But I am not permitted to return to the planet proper again.”
Bentley stops lacing his shoe. His face looks the way some of the children do when one has hurt the other, almost more anger than pain. Daneel feels a vague stiffness in his limbs until he realizes that Bentley is neither hurt nor angry at him. Bentley’s face turns flustered, then desperately calculating. He looks so much like his father in the eyes now that Daneel half expects him, too, to mutter, “Jehoshaphat!” But he does not.
“Where will you go, if not here?”
“I...don’t know. I may be able to return to Aurora for a time.”
“Daneel, how will you get there? Aurorans just dropped you back here. I doubt our world is going to finance the return trip.”
The robot pauses, considering. “I had accumulated some savings from my work with the anthropologists a few years ago. But it’s all in place at your apartment. I don’t think I will be able to enter the city to--”
“I’ll bring it. Tell me what else you want and I’ll deliver it all to you. I’ll leave right away.” Someone knocks, or maybe kicks, at the thin door behind Daneel, and Bentley looks past Daneel on the screen. “They’re not booting you out now, are they?”
“No, I think that sound was another traveler hoping to use the cubicle. The savings is in a book on Earth history in your study. I should go. Thank you.”
Daneel waits in the outer terminal for an hour and four minutes. He sits looking at his hands. Then, finally, he looks up to the sound of small voices screeching, getting rapidly closer. He stands. The grandchildren are galloping toward him across white vinyl flooring, hands outstretched and, he now sees just before they collide with his knees, with red-rimmed eyes. He crouches to meet them and holds each one close to him, murmuring their names and touching their heads. He looks up only when Bentley’s shoes appear at the edge of his view.
“They demanded it. I’m sorry not all of us made it. Middle of the workday. If they’re not pushing you, maybe we can wait it out until after the rest of the family can come?”
“I am told the last departure of the month is the same ship on which I arrived, which leaves in two hours. I am not sure what the policy on overnight stays in the spaceport may be for humans, but for…”
“Got it. Well we have, what, an hour and a half then. Here’s your book, with everything in it. Nice choice. My dad used to read this all the time.” Bentley passes a thick, worn book-tape of The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire to Daneel, who lowers it to the ground amid the still huddling children. He hasn’t quite managed to stand again.
“And I’ll get you on that flight. Be right back.”
Daneel grabs the book and stands now. “You've left my--”
Bentley turns back fast with a raised hand. “You need that for later. This one’s on me. The intention to do it is much stronger than the need I have for this cash, so keep your book and all.” He inclines his head, a moment of softness on his face giving way to determination as he continues toward the ticket agent. Daneel slowly lowers the book, watches him walk to the counter and speak to the same customs agent with what he can only infer from here is a tone of extreme brusqueness. A small bubble of awe disrupts his thoughts as he sees that Bentley’s demeanor is rougher because he is arguing on Daneel’s behalf. He finds that, even though this means some other human is having a curt conversation directed at them, this realization makes him feel lighter.
He looks down at the children, who have watched this interruption in his attention on them with silence and seriousness. At once he finds himself sinking back into the chair, weak-kneed for perhaps the third time in his existence. He waits with the children until Bentley returns, hands him a ticket, and sits as well. They all wait for the boarding call.
Daneel tries to stay until the last minute. Finally he realizes he may actually miss the ship, and stands. He submits to a neck hug by each child in order of age, and whispers something nice for each of them to think of later so they don’t cry again. He stands to face a fidgeting Bentley, and then the son of Elijah Baley holds his arm out for a handshake. Moved, Daneel shakes his hand with gentle, firm grip. He looks in Bentley's eyes as the man, much older now than his father was on the day they first met, wraps Daneel's hand in both of his, eyes blazing. The grasp, Daneel knows, represents gratitude and intended comfort, and for a moment he lets himself absorb the way this moment alters the movement of his positronic brain. The protective sharpness of Bentley's voice earlier, the fire in his eye now, and the solidity of his hold surround and steady Daneel's awareness like a set of arms holding him up. He has not felt that sense of ease - a lightness of thought, a relief like being lifted - in a long time. He feels the comfort of this touch for the proper length of a handshake and then he lets Bentley's hands release him. The lightness leaves him slowly, but he keeps an eye on Bentley's face. He sees that Bentley is struggling with something to say, so he does not turn away yet.
Bentley tells him, “We’ll be thinking of you, Daneel. My family wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you. In more specific ways than I think we know.” Bentley tilts his head, swallows, looks away. “Be safe.”
“Thank you,” Daneel says with as much clarity as he can. He lays his fingertips, lightly, against the front of his shirt, checking that he is intact; he feels that his chest must be open. He feels this way as he turns away from the family - his family - and begins to step toward the terminal. He feels that way as his steps slow upon hearing the children begin to cry again and be quieted by Bentley. He feels that way as he offers his ticket to the new customs agent on duty, a man who peers at him with slow recognition and a raise of his eyebrows.
He knows his chest is covered by the artificial skin given him by his makers, and covered again by the clothing he bought while residing under Elijah Baley’s roof. He still feels that it lays open.