Enderby–Daneel relationship

The Enderby–Daneel relationship is a concealed antagonism that turns on a profound misrecognition: Julius Enderby sought to destroy R. Daneel Olivaw because he feared what the robot’s creation might mean for Earth, but instead killed Roj Sarton, who had designed R. Daneel in his own image. The confrontation that exposes this history finds Enderby unable to look at R. Daneel, while R. Daneel, even after hearing how he had been targeted, attends to Enderby when he collapses.

Origins of the Hostility

Enderby’s opposition was political as well as personal. Elijah Baley’s reconstruction identifies him as an earnest Medievalist who had worked with Sarton and knew the purpose for which R. Daneel had been designed. He feared that this purpose would be achieved—that Earth’s people might eventually be weaned away from Earth. Destroying R. Daneel, Baley argues, would also demonstrate the strength of Medievalism on Earth and discourage the Spacers from continuing the Spacetown project. Enderby expected that such a demonstration might strengthen popular opinion in the Outer Worlds for ending the project altogether.

R. Daneel’s unusual human likeness shaped the danger Enderby posed. Baley reasons that a primitive robot such as R. Sammy could not distinguish R. Daneel from a human, so the First Law would prevent it from attacking him. Enderby himself, meanwhile, was the only person with ready access to Spacetown at all times. In Baley’s account, that combination left Enderby with both a political motive and a practical opportunity, while limiting the means by which he could carry out his plan.

The Intended Attack and Fatal Mistake

Baley reconstructs an intended attack timed for dawn. Enderby had made an appointment with Sarton but arrived early, when Sarton was likely asleep and R. Daneel awake. Baley supposes that R. Daneel, living with Sarton, would have come to the dome door and that Enderby planned to shoot him there, return the blaster to R. Sammy, then come back later and present an explanation for his early arrival. The supposed warning of a Medievalist threat and a fabricated account of seeing someone flee toward open country would have directed suspicion away from Enderby and toward a wider political disturbance.

The plan failed because Enderby could not distinguish the two men at the dome. Baley explains that Enderby was nervous, removed and wiped his glasses, and dropped them; they broke, leaving him without them when the door opened. The person he mistook for R. Daneel was Sarton, whose face resembled the robot’s because Sarton had designed R. Daneel in his own image. Enderby fired at the figure and fled. Only afterward, when the body was found, did the mistake become clear: it was Sarton, not R. Daneel, who had been killed.

Exposure and Confrontation

Baley’s accusation makes explicit that Enderby’s target had been R. Daneel, even though R. Daneel remained alive. He confronts Enderby with the difference between intention and outcome: Enderby had not killed R. Daneel, but he had entered Spacetown intending to do so. Baley then presses Enderby to look at R. Daneel. Enderby cannot meet his gaze and covers his face with shaking hands, making the history of attempted violence visible in the present encounter without any further denial being needed.

The revelation also overturns the apparent direction of the case. The death at the dome was not the result of an attack by R. Daneel or of the intended killing of the robot; Enderby’s plan to eliminate R. Daneel had accidentally killed the scientist who created him. In this reversal, resemblance becomes consequential: Sarton’s act of making R. Daneel in his own image is what causes Enderby, deprived of his glasses at a moment of tension, to confuse creator and creation.

Aftermath and Significance

At midnight, Enderby lowers his head onto his arms, repeats that the killing was a mistake, and slips unconscious from his chair. R. Daneel springs to him and tells Baley that Enderby has been hurt, expressing concern rather than seeking revenge. When Baley asks whether Enderby is dead, R. Daneel confirms that he is unconscious. The exchange gives their antagonistic relationship a final asymmetry: Enderby’s fear and attempted destruction of R. Daneel do not determine R. Daneel’s response to Enderby in distress.

The relationship also links a private act of political violence to the threatened future of Spacetown. Enderby’s hostility originates in fear that R. Daneel’s designed purpose could change Earth’s relationship to its own world, and his intended attack was meant to help make the project politically untenable. Yet his failure to identify his target turns the attempt into the death of Sarton, while the surviving R. Daneel becomes the witness before whom Enderby cannot raise his eyes. The story’s final contrast is not reconciliation, but a difference in conduct: Enderby’s opposition culminates in an unintended killing; R. Daneel’s immediate response to the exposed antagonist is care.