Read Asimov's Future History Volume 4 for Free Online Page A

corridor, up a ramp, and through a door that led to one of the spy-beam-insulated chambers.
    Baley checked the walls carefully before sitting down, listening to the soft burr of the pulsometer in his hand, waiting for any fading of the steady sound which would indicate a break, even a small one, in the insulation. He turned it on the ceiling, floor, and, with particular care, on the door. There was no break.
    Dr. Gerrigel smiled a little. He looked like a man who never smiled more than a little. He was dressed with a neatness that could only be described as fussy. His iron-gray hair was smoothed carefully back and his face looked pink and freshly washed. He sat with a posture of prim stiffness as though repeated maternal advice in his younger years concerning the desirability of good posture had rigidified his spine forever.
    He said to Baley, “You make this all seem very formidable.”
    “It’s quite important, Doctor. I need information about robots that only you can give me, perhaps. Anything we say here, of course, is top secret and the City will expect you to forget it all when you leave.” Baley looked at his watch.
    The little smile on the roboticist’s face winked away. He said, “Let me explain why I am late.” The matter obviously weighed upon him. “I decided not to go by air. I get airsick.”
    “That’s too bad,” said Baley. He put away the pulsometer, after checking its standard settings to make last-minute certain that there was nothing wrong with it , and sat down.
    “Or at least not exactly airsick, but nervous. A mild agoraphobia. It’s nothing particularly abnormal, but there it is. So I took the expressways.”
    Baley felt a sudden sharp interest. “Agoraphobia?”
    “I make it sound worse than it is,” the roboticist said at once. “It’s just the feeling you get in a plane. Have you ever been in one, Mr. Baley?”
    “Several times.”
    “Then you must know what I mean. It’s that feeling of being surrounded by nothing; of being separated from–from empty air by a mere inch of metal. It’s very uncomfortable.”
    “So you took the expressway?”
    “Yes.”
    “All the way from Washington to New York?”
    “Oh, I’ve done it before. Since they built the Baltimore-Philadelphia tunnel, it’s quite simple.”
    So it was. Baley had never made the trip himself, but he was perfectly aware that it was possible. ‘Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York had grown, in the last two centuries, to the point where all nearly touched. The Four-City Area was almost the official name for the entire stretch of coast, and there were a considerable number of people who favored administrational consolidation and the formation of a single super-City. Baley disagreed with that, himself. New York City by itself was almost too large to be handled by a centralized government. A larger City, with over fifty million population, would break down under its own weight.
    “The trouble was,” Dr. Gerrigel was saying, “that I missed a connection in Chester Sector, Philadelphia, and lost time. That, and a little difficulty in getting a transient room assignment, ended by making me late.”
    “Don’t worry about that, Doctor. What you say, though, is interesting. In view of your dislike for planes, what would you say to going outside City limits on foot, Dr. Gerrigel?”
    “For what reason?” He looked startled and more than a little apprehensive.
    “It’s just a rhetorical question. I’m not suggesting that you really should. I want to know how the notion strikes you, that’s all.”
    “It strikes me very unpleasantly.”
    “Suppose you had to leave the City at night and walk cross country for half a mile or more.”
    “I–I don’t think I could be persuaded to.”
    “No matter how important the necessity?”
    “If it were to save my life or the lives of my family, I might try....” He looked embarrassed. “May I ask the point of these questions, Mr. Baley?”
    “I’ll tell