PART II. SOLARIA
5. THE ABANDONED WORLD
19
For the fifth time in her life, Gladia found herself on a spaceship. She did not remember, offhand, exactly how long ago it had been that she and Santirix had gone together to the world of Euterpe because its rain forests were widely recognized as incomparable, especially under the romantic glow of its bright satellite, Gemstone.
The rain forest had, indeed, been lush and green, with the trees carefully planted in rank and file and the animal life thoughtfully selected so as to provide color and delight, while avoiding venomous or other unpleasant creatures.
The satellite, fully 150 kilometers in diameter, was close enough to Euterpe to shine like a brilliant dot of sparkling light. It was so close to the planet that one could see it sweep west to east across the sky, outstripping the planet’s slower rotational motion. It brightened as it rose toward zenith and dimmed as it dropped toward the horizon again. One watched it with fascination the first night, with less the second, and with a vague discontent the third—assuming the sky was clear on those nights, which it usually wasn’t.
The native Euterpans, she noted, never looked at it, though they praised it loudly to the tourists, of course.
On the whole, Gladia had enjoyed the trip well enough, but what she remembered most keenly was the joy of her return to Aurora and her decision not to travel again except under dire need. (Come to think of it, it had to be at least eight decades ago.)
For a while, she had lived with the uneasy fear that her husband would insist on another trip, but he never mentioned one. It might well be, she sometimes thought at that time, that he had come to the same decision she had and feared she might be the one to want to travel.
It didn’t make them unusual to avoid trips. Aurorans generally—Spacers generally, for that matter—tended to be stay-at-homes. Their worlds, their establishments, were too comfortable. After all, what pleasure could be greater than that of being taken care of by your own robots, robots who knew your every signal, and, for that matter, knew your ways and desires even without being told.
She stirred uneasily. Was that what D.G. had meant when he spoke of the decadence of a roboticized society?
But now she was back again in space, after all that time. And on an Earth ship, too.
She hadn’t seen much of it, but the little she had glimpsed made her terribly uneasy. It seemed to be nothing but straight lines, sharp angles, and smooth surfaces. Everything that wasn’t stark had been eliminated, apparently. It was as though nothing must exist but functionality. Even though she didn’t know what was exactly functional about any particular object on the ship, she felt it to be all that was required, that nothing was to be allowed to interfere with taking the shortest distance between two points.
On everything Auroran (on everything Spacer, one might almost say, though Aurora was the most advanced in that respect), everything existed in layers. Functionality was at the bottom—one could not entirely rid one’s self of that, except in what was pure ornament—but overlying that there was always something to satisfy the eyes and the senses, generally; and overlying that, something to satisfy the spirit.
How much better that was!—Or did it represent such an exuberance of human creativity that Spacers could no longer live with the unadorned Universe—and was that bad? Was the future to belong to these from-here-to-there geometrizers? Or was it just that the Settlers had not yet learned the sweetnesses of life?
But then, if life had so many sweetnesses to it, why had she found so few for herself?
She had nothing really to do on board this ship but to ponder and reponder such questions. This D.G., this Elijah descended barbarian, had put it into her head, with his calm assumption that the Spacer worlds were dying, even though he could see all about him even during the shortest stay on Aurora (surely, he would have to) that it was deeply embedded in wealth and security.
She had tried to escape her own thoughts by staring at the holofilms she had been supplied with and watching, with moderate curiosity, the images flickering and capering on the projection surface, as the adventure story (all were adventure stories) hastened from—event to event with little time left for conversation and none for thought—or enjoyment, either. Very like their furniture.
D.G. stepped in when she was in the middle of one of the films, but had stopped really paying attention. She was not caught by surprise. Her robots, who guarded her doorway, signaled his coming in ample time and would not have allowed him to enter if she were not in a position to receive him. Daneel entered with him.
D.G. said, “How are you doing?” Then, as her hand touched a contact and the images faded, shriveled, and were gone. He said, “You don’t have to turn it off. I’ll watch it with you.”
“That’s not necessary,” she said. “I’ve had enough.”
“Are you—comfortable?”
“Not entirely. I am—isolated.”
“Sorry! But then, I was isolated on Aurora. They would allow none of my men to come with me.”
“Are you having your revenge?”
“Not at all. For one thing, I allowed you two robots of your choice to accompany you. For another, it is not I but my crew who enforce this. They don’t like either Spacers or robots. But why do you mind? Doesn’t this isolation lessen your fear of infection?”
Gladia’s eyes were haughty, but her voice sounded weary. “I wonder if I haven’t grown too old to fear infection. In many ways, I think I have lived long enough. Then, too, I have my gloves, my nose filters, and—if necessary—my mask. And besides, I doubt that you will trouble to touch me.”
“Nor will anyone else,” said D.G. with a sudden edge of grimness to his voice, as his hand wandered to the object at the right side of his hip.
Her eyes followed the motion. “What is that?” she asked.
D.G. smiled and his beard seemed to glitter in the light. There were occasional reddish hairs among the brown. “A weapon,” he said and drew it. He held it by a molded hilt that bulged above his hand as though the force of his grip were squeezing it upward. In front, facing Gladia, a thin cylinder stretched some fifteen centimeters forward. There was no opening visible.
“Does that kill people?” Gladia extended her hand toward it.
D.G. moved it quickly away. “Never reach for someone’s weapon, my lady. That is worse than bad manners, for any Settler is trained to react violently to such a move and you may be hurt.”
Gladia, eyes wide, withdrew her hand and placed both behind her back. She said, “Don’t threaten harm. Daneel has no sense of humor in that respect. On Aurora, no one is barbarous enough to carry weapons.”
“Well,” said D.G., unmoved by the adjective, “we don’t have robots to protect us.—And this is not a killing device. It is, in some ways, worse. It emits a kind of vibration that stimulates those nerve endings responsible for the sensation of pain. It hurts a good deal worse than anything you can imagine. No one would willingly endure it twice and someone carrying this weapon rarely has to use it. We call it a neuronic whip.”
Gladia frowned. “Disgusting! We have our robots, but they never hurt anyone except in unavoidable emergency and then minimally.”
D.G. shrugged. “That sounds very civilized, but a bit of pain—a bit of killing, even—is better than the decay of spirit brought about by robots. Besides, a neuronic whip is not intended to kill and your people have weapons on their spaceships that can bring about wholesale death and destruction.
“That’s because we’ve fought wars early in our history, when our Earth heritage was still strong, but we’ve learned better.”
“You used those weapons on Earth even after you supposedly learned better.”
“That’s—” she began and closed her mouth as though to bite off what she was about to say next.
D.G. nodded. “I know. You were about to say ‘That’s different.’ Think of that, my lady, if you should catch yourself wondering why my crew doesn’t like Spacers. Or why I don’t.—But you are going to be useful to me, my lady, and I won’t let my emotions get in the way.”
“How am I going to be useful to you?”
“You are a Solarian.”
“You keep saying that. More than twenty decades have passed. I don’t know what Solaria is like now. I know nothing about it. What was Baleyworld like twenty decades ago?”
“It didn’t exist twenty decades ago, but Solaria did and I shall gamble that you will remember something useful.”
He stood up, bowed his head briefly in, a gesture of politeness that was almost mocking, and was gone.
20
Gladia maintained a thoughtful and troubled silence for a while and then she said, “He wasn’t at all polite, was he?”
Daneel said, “Madam Gladia, the Settler is clearly under tension. He is heading toward a world on which two ships like his have been destroyed and their crews killed. He is going, into great danger, as is his crew.”
“You always defend any human being, Daneel,” said Gladia resentfully. “The danger exists for me, too, and I am not facing it voluntarily, but that does not force me into rudeness.”
Daneel said nothing.
Gladia said, “Well, maybe it does. I have been a little rude, haven’t I?”
“I don’t think the Settler minded,” said Daneel. “Might I suggest, madam, that you prepare yourself for bed. It is quite late.”
“Very well. I’ll prepare myself for bed, but I don’t think I feel relaxed enough to sleep, Daneel.”
“Friend Giskard assures me you will, madam, and he is usually right about such things.”
And she did sleep.
21
Daneel and Giskard stood in the darkness of Gladia’s cabin.
Giskard said, “She will sleep soundly, friend Daneel, and she needs the rest. She faces a dangerous trip.”
“It seemed to me, friend Giskard,” said Daneel, “that you influenced her to agree to go. I presume you had a reason.”
“Friend Daneel, we know so little about the nature of the crisis that is now facing the Galaxy that we cannot safely refuse any action that might increase our knowledge. We must know what is taking place on Solaria and the only way we can do so is to go there—and the only way we can go is for us to arrange for Madam Gladia to go. As for influencing her, that required scarcely a touch. Despite her loud statements to the contrary, she was eager to go. There was an overwhelming desire within her to see Solaria. It was a pain within her that would not cease until she went.”
“Since you say so, it is so, yet I find it puzzling. Had she not frequently made it plain that her life on Solaria was unhappy, that she had completely adopted Aurora and never wished to go back to her original home?”
“Yes, that was there, too. It was quite plainly in her mind. Both emotions, both feelings existed together and simultaneously. I have observed something of this sort in human minds frequently; two opposite emotions simultaneously present.”
“Such a condition does not seem logical, friend Giskard.”
“I agree and I can only conclude that human beings are not, at all times or in all respects, logical. That must be one reason that it is so difficult to work out the Laws governing human behavior.—In Madam Gladia’s case, I have now and then been aware of this longing for Solaria. Ordinarily, it was well hidden, obscured by the far more intense antipathy she also felt for the world. When the news arrived that Solaria had been abandoned by its people, however, her feelings changed.”
“Why so? What had the abandonment to do with the youthful experiences that led Madam Gladia to her antipathy? Or, having held in restraint her longing for the world the decades when it was a working society, why she lose that restraint once it became an abandoned planet and newly long for a world which must now be something utterly strange to her?”
“I cannot explain, friend Daneel, since the more knowledge I gather of the human mind, the more despair I feel at being unable to understand it. It is not an unalloyed advantage to see into that mind and I often envy you the simplicity of behavior control that results from your inability to see below the surface.”
Daneel persisted. “Have you guessed an explanation, friend Giskard?”
“I suppose she feels a sorrow for the empty planet. She deserted it twenty decades ago—”
“She was driven out.”
“It seems to her, now, to have been a desertion and I imagine she plays with the painful thought that she had set an example; that if she had not left, no one else would have and the planet would still be populated and happy. Since I cannot read her thoughts, I am only groping backward, perhaps inaccurately, from her emotions.”
“But she could not have set an example, friend Giskard. Since it is twenty decades since she left, there can be no verifiable causal connection between the much earlier event and the much later one.”
“I agree, but human beings sometimes find a kind of pleasure in nursing painful emotions, in blaming themselves without reason or even against reason.—In any case, Madam Gladia felt so sharply the longing to return that I felt it was necessary to release the inhibitory effect that kept her from agreeing to go. It required the merest touch. Yet though I feel it necessary for her to go, since that means she will take us there, I have the uneasy feeling, that the disadvantages might, just possibly, be greater than the advantages.”
“In what way, friend Giskard?”
“Since the Council was eager to have Madam Gladia accompany the Settler, it may have been for the purpose of having Madam Gladia absent from Aurora during a crucial period when the defeat of Earth and its Settler worlds is being prepared.”
Daneel seemed to be considering that statement. At least it was only after a distinct pause that he said, “What purpose would be served, in your opinion, in having Madam Gladia absent?”
“I cannot decide that, friend Daneel. I want your opinion.”
“I have not considered this matter.”
“Consider it now!” If Giskard had been human, the remark would have been an order.
There was an even longer pause and then Daneel said, “Friend Giskard, until the moment that Dr. Mandamus appeared in Madam Gladia’s establishment, she had never shown any concern about international affairs. She was a friend of Dr. Fastolfe and of Elijah Baley, but this friendship was one of personal affection and did not have an ideological basis. Both of them, moreover, are now gone from us. She has an antipathy toward Dr. Amadiro and that is returned, but this is also a personal matter. The antipathy is two centuries old and neither has done anything material about it but have merely each remained stubbornly antipathetic. There can be no reason for Dr. Amadiro—who is now the dominant influence in the Council—to fear Madam Gladia or to go to the trouble of removing her.”
Giskard said, “You overlook the fact, that in removing Madam Gladia, he also removes you and me. He would, perhaps, feel quite certain Madam Gladia would not leave without us, so can it be us he considers dangerous?”
“In the course of our existence, friend Giskard, we have never, in any way, given any appearance of having endangered Dr. Amadiro. What cause has he to fear us? He does not know of your abilities or of how you have made use of them. Why, then, should he take the trouble to remove us, temporarily, from Aurora?”
“Temporarily, friend Daneel? Why do you assume it is a temporary removal he plans? He knows, it may be, more than the Settler does of the trouble on Solaria and knows, also, that the Settler and his crew will be surely destroyed and Madam Gladia and you and I with them. Perhaps the destruction of the Settler’s ship is his main aim, but he would consider the end of Dr. Fastolfe’s friend and Dr. Fastolfe’s robots to be an added bonus.”
Daneel said, “Surely he would not risk war with the Settler worlds, for that may well come if the Settler’s ship is destroyed and the minute pleasure of having us destroyed, when added in, would not make the risk worthwhile.”
“Is it not possible, friend Daneel, that war is exactly what Dr. Amadiro has in mind; that it involves no risk in his estimation, so, that getting rid of us at the same time adds to his pleasure without increasing a risk that does not exist?”
Daneel said calmly, “Friend Giskard, that is not reasonable. In any war fought under present conditions, the Settlers would win. They are better suited, psychologically, to the rigors of war. They are more scattered and can, therefore, more successfully carry on hit-and-run tactics. They have comparatively little to lose in their relatively primitive worlds, while the Spacers have much to lose in their comfortable, highly organized ones. If the Settlers were willing to offer to exchange destruction of one of their worlds for one of the Spacers, the Spacers would have to surrender, at once.”
“But would such a war be fought under present conditions? What if the Spacers had a new weapon that could be used to defeat the Settlers quickly? Might that not be the very crisis we are now facing?”
“In that case, friend Giskard, the victory could be better and more effectively gained in a surprise attack. Why go to the trouble of instigating a war, which the Settlers might begin by a surprise raid on Spacer worlds that would do considerable damage?”
“Perhaps the Spacers need to test the weapon and the destruction of a series of ships on Solaria represents the testing.”
“The Spacers would have been most uningenious if they could not have found a method of testing that would not give away the new weapon’s existence.”
It was now Giskard’s turn to consider. “Very well, then friend Daneel, how would you explain this trip we are on? How would you explain the Council’s willingness—even eagerness—to have us accompany the Settler? The Settler said they would order Gladia to go and, in effect, they did.”
“I have not considered the matter, friend Giskard.”
“Then consider it now.”—Again it had the flavor of an order.
Daneel said, “I will do so.”
There was silence, one that grew protracted, but Giskard by no word or sign showed any impatience as he waited.
Finally, Daneel said—slowly, as though he were feeling his way along strange avenues of thought—I do not think that Baleyworld—or any of the Settler worlds—has a clear right to appropriate robotic property on Solaria. Even though the Solarians have themselves left or have, perhaps, died out, Solaria remains a Spacer world, even if an unoccupied one—Certainly, the remaining forty-nine Spacer worlds would reason so. Most of all, Aurora would reason so—if it felt in command of the situation.”
Giskard considered that. “Are you now saying, friend Daneel, that the destruction of the two Settler ships was the Spacer way of enforcing their proprietorship of Solaria?”
Daneel said, “No, that would not be the way if Aurora, the leading Spacer power, felt in command of the situation. Aurora would then simply have announced that Solaria, empty or not, was off-limits to Settler vessels and would have threatened reprisals against the home worlds if any Settler vessel entered the Solarian planetary system. And they would have established a cordon of ships and sensory stations about that planetary system. There was no such warning, no such action, friend Giskard. Why, then, destroy ships that might have been kept away from the world quite easily in the first place?”
“But the ships were destroyed, friend Daneel. Will you make use of the basic illogicality of the human mind as an explanation?”
“Not unless I have to. Let us for the moment take that destruction simply as given. Now consider the consequence—The captain of a single Settler vessel approaches Aurora, demands permission to discuss the situation with the Council, insists on taking an Auroran citizen with him to investigate events on Solaria,—and the Council gives in to everything. If destroying the ships without prior warning is too strong an action for Aurora, giving in to the Settler captain so cravenly is far too weak an action. Far from seeking a war, Aurora, in giving in, seems to be willing to do anything at all to ward off the possibility of war.”
“Yes,” said Giskard, “I see that this is a possible way of interpreting events. But what follows?”
“It seems to me,” said Daneel, “that the Spacer worlds are not yet so weak that they must behave with such servility—and, even if they were, the pride of centuries of overlordship would keep them from doing so. It must be something other than weakness that is driving them. I have pointed out that they cannot be deliberately instigating a war, so it is much more likely that they are playing for time.”
“To what end, friend Daneel?”
“They want to destroy the Settlers, but they are not yet prepared. They let this Settler have what he wants to avoid a war until they are ready to fight one on their own terms. I am only surprised that they did not offer to send an Auroran warship with him. If this analysis is correct—and I think it is—Aurora cannot possibly have had anything to do with the incidents on Solaria. They would not indulge in pinpricks, that could only serve to alert the Settlers before they are ready with something devastating.”
“Then how account for these pinpricks, as you call them, friend Daneel?”
“We will find out perhaps when we land on Solaria. It may be that Aurora is as curious as we are and the Settlers are and that that is another reason why they have cooperated with the captain, even to the point of allowing Madam Gladia to accompany him.”
It was now Giskard’s turn to remain silent. Finally he said, “And what is this mysterious devastation that they plan?”
“Earlier, we spoke of a crisis arising from the Spacer plan to defeat Earth, but we used Earth in its general sense, implying the Earthpeople together with their descendents on the Settler worlds. However, if we seriously suspect the preparation of a devastating blow that will allow the Spacers to defeat their enemies at a stroke, we can perhaps refine our view. Thus, they cannot be planning a blow at a Settler world. Individually, the Settler worlds are dispensable and the remaining Settler worlds will promptly strike back. Nor can they be planning a blow at several or at all the Settler worlds. There are too many of them; they are too diffusely spread. It is not likely that all the strikes will succeed and those Settler worlds that survive will, in fury and despair, bring devastation upon the Spacer worlds.”
“You reason, then, friend Daneel, that it will be a blow at Earth itself.”
“Yes, friend Giskard. Earth contains the vast majority of the short-lived human beings; it is the perennial source of emigrants to the Settler worlds and is the chief raw material for the founding of new ones; it is the revered homeland of all the Settlers. If Earth were somehow destroyed, the Settler movement might never recover.”
“But would not the Settler worlds then retaliate as strongly and as forcefully as they would if one of themselves were destroyed? That would seem to me to be inevitable.”
“And to me, friend Giskard. Therefore, it seems to me that unless the Spacer worlds have gone insane, the blow would have to be a subtle one; one for which the Spacer worlds would seem to bear no responsibility.”
“Why not such a subtle blow against the Settler worlds, which hold most of the actual war potential of the Earthpeople?”
“Either because the Spacers feel the blow against Earth would be more psychologically devastating or because the nature of the blow is such that it would work only against Earth and not against the Settler worlds. I suspect the latter, since Earth is a unique world and has a society that is not like that of any other world—Settler or, for that matter, Spacer.”
“To summarize, then, friend Daneel, you come to the conclusion that the Spacers are planning a subtle blow against Earth that will destroy it without evidence of themselves as the cause, and one that would not work against any other world, and that they are not yet ready to launch that blow.”
“Yes, friend Giskard, but they may soon be ready—and once they are ready, they will have to strike immediately. Any delay will increase the chance of some leak that will give them away.”
“To deduce all this, friend Daneel, from the small indications we have is most praiseworthy. Now tell me the nature of the blow. What is it, precisely, that the Spacers plan?”
“I have come this far, friend Giskard, across very shaky ground, without being certain that my reasoning is entirely sound. But even if we suppose it is, I can go no further. I fear I do not know and cannot imagine what the nature of the blow might be.”
Giskard said, “But we cannot take appropriate measures to counteract the blow and resolve the crisis until we know what its nature will be. If we must wait until the blow reveals itself by its results, it will then be too late to do anything.”
Daneel said, “If any Spacer knows the nature of the forthcoming event, it would be Amadiro. Could you not force Amadiro to announce it publicly and thus alert the Settlers and make it unusable?”
“I could not do that, friend Daneel, without virtually destroying his mind. I doubt that I could hold it together long enough to allow him to make the announcement. I could not do such a thing.”
“Perhaps, then,” said Daneel, “we may console ourselves with the thought that my reasoning is wrong and that no blow against Earth is being prepared.”
“No,” said Giskard. “It is my feeling that you are right and that we must simply wait—helplessly.”
22
Gladia waited, with an almost painful anticipation, for the conclusion of the final Jump. They would then be close enough to Solaria to make out its sun as a disk.
It would just be a disk, of course, a featureless circle of light, subdued to the point where it could be watched unblinkingly after that light had passed through the appropriate filter.
Its appearance would not be unique. All the stars that carried, among their planets, a habitable world in the human sense had a long list of property requirements that ended by making them all resemble one another. They were all single stars—all not much larger or smaller than the sun that shone on Earth—none too active, or too old, or too quiet, or too young, or too hot, or too cool, or too offbeat in chemical composition. All had sunspots and flares and prominences and all looked just about the same to the eye. It took careful spectroheliography to work out the details that made each star unique.
Nevertheless, when Gladia found herself staring at a circle of light that was absolutely nothing more than a circle of light to her, she found her eyes welling with tears. She had never given the sun a thought when she had lived on Solaria; it was just the eternal source of light and heat, rising and falling in a steady rhythm. When she had left Solaria, she had watched that sun disappear behind her with nothing but a feeling of thankfulness. She had no memory—of it that she valued.
Yet she was weeping silently. She was ashamed of herself for being so affected for no reason that she could explain, but that didn’t stop the weeping.
She made a stronger effort when the signal light gleamed. It had to be D.G. at the door; no one else would approach her cabin.
Daneel said, “Is he to enter, madam? You seem emotionally moved.”
“Yes, I’m emotionally moved, Daneel, but let him in. I imagine it won’t come as a surprise to him.”
Yet it did. At least, he entered with a smile on his bearded face—and that smile disappeared almost at once. He stepped back and said in a low voice, “I will return later.”
“Stay!” said Gladia harshly. “This is nothing. A silly reaction of the moment.” She sniffed and dabbed angrily at her eyes. “Why are you here?”
“I wanted to discuss Solaria with you. If we succeed with a microadjustment, we’ll land tomorrow. If you’re not quite up to a discussion now—”
“I am quite up to it. In fact, I have a question for you. Why is it we took dime Jumps to get here? One Jump would have been sufficient. One was sufficient when I was taken from Solaria to Aurora twenty decades ago. Surely the technique of space travel has not retrogressed since.”
D.G.’s grin returned. “Evasive action. If an Auroran ship was following us, I wanted to—confuse it, shall we say.”
“Why should one follow us?”
“Just a thought, my lady. The Council was a little overeager to help, I thought. They suggested that an Auroran ship join me in my expedition to Solaria.”
“Well, it might have helped, mightn’t it?”
“Perhaps—if I were quite certain that Aurora wasn’t behind all this. I told the Council quite plainly that I would do without—or, rather”—he pointed his finger at Gladia—“Just with you. Yet might not the Council send a ship to accompany me even against my wish—out of pure kindness of heart, let us say? Well, I still don’t want one; I expect enough trouble without having to look nervously over my shoulder at every moment. So I made myself hard to follow.—How much do you know about Solaria, my lady?”
“Haven’t I told you often enough? Nothing! Twenty decades have passed.”
“Now, madam, I’m talking about the psychology of the Solarians. That can’t have changed in merely twenty decades.—Tell me why they have abandoned their planet.”
“The story, as I’ve heard it,” said Gladia calmly, “is that their population has been steadily declining. A combination of premature deaths and very few births is apparently responsible.”
“Does that sound reasonable to you?”
“Of course it does. Births have always been few.” Her face twisted in memory. “Solarian custom does not make impregnation easy, either naturally, artificially, or ectogenetically.”
“You never had children, madam?”
“Not on Solaria.”
“And the premature death?”
“I can only guess. I suppose it arose out of a feeling of failure. Solaria was clearly not working out, even though the Solarians had placed a great deal of emotional fervor into their world’s having the ideal society—not only one that was better than Earth had ever had, but more nearly perfect than that of any other Spacer world.”
“Are you saying that Solaria was dying of the collective broken heart of its people?”
“If you want to put it in that ridiculous way,” said Gladia, displeased.
D.G. shrugged. “It seems to be what you’re saying. But would they really leave? Where would they go? How would they live?”
“I don’t know.”
“But, Madam Gladia, it is well known that Solarians are accustomed to enormous tracts of land, serviced by many thousands of robots, so that each Solarian is left in almost complete isolation. If they abandon Solaria, where can they go to find a society that would humor them in this fashion? Have they, in fact, gone to any of the other Spacer worlds?”
“Not as far as I know. But then, I’m not in their confidence.”
“Can they have found a new world for themselves? If so, it would be a raw one and require much in the way of terraforming. Would they be ready for that?”
Gladia shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Perhaps they haven’t really left.”
“Solaria, I understand, gives every evidence of being empty.”
“What evidence is that?”
“All interplanetary communication has ceased. All radiation from the planet, except that consistent with robot work or clearly due to natural causes has ceased.”
“How do you know that?”
“That is the report on the Auroran news.”
“Ah! The report! Could it be that someone is lying?”
“What would be the purpose of such a lie?” Gladia stiffened at the suggestion.
“So that our ships would be lured to the world and destroyed.”
“That’s ridiculous, D.G.” Her voice grew sharper. “What would the Spacers gain by destroying two trading vessels through so elaborate a subterfuge?”
“Something has destroyed two Settler vessels on a supposedly empty planet. How do you explain that?”
“I can’t. I presume we are going to Solaria in order to find an explanation.”
D.G. regarded her gravely. “Would you be able to guide me to the section of the world that was yours when you lived on Solaria?”
“My estate?” She returned his stare, astonished.
“Wouldn’t you like to see it again?”
Gladia’s heart skipped a beat. “Yes, I would, but why my place?”
“The two ships that were destroyed landed in widely different spots on the planet and yet each was destroyed fairly quickly. Though every spot may be deadly, it seems to me that yours might be less so than others.”
“Why?”
“Because there we might receive help from the robots. You would know them, wouldn’t you? They do last more than twenty decades, I suppose. Daneel and Giskard have. And those that were there when you lived on your estate would still remember you, wouldn’t they? They would treat you as their mistress and recognize the duty they owed you even beyond that which they would owe to ordinary human beings.”
Gladia said, “There were ten thousand robots on my estate. I knew perhaps three dozen by sight. Most of the rest I never saw and they may not have ever seen me. Agricultural robots are not very advanced, you know, nor are forestry robots or mining robots. The household robots would still remember me—if they have not been sold or transferred since I left. Then, too, accidents happen and some robots don’t last twenty decades.—Besides, whatever you may think of robot memory, human memory is fallible and I might remember none of them.”
“Even so,” said D.G., “can you direct me to your estate?”
“By latitude and longitude? No.”
“I have charts of Solaria. Would that help?”
“Perhaps approximately. It’s in the south-central portion of the northern continent of Heliona.”
“And once we’re approximately there, can you make use of landmarks for greater precision—if we skim the Solarian surface?”
“By seacoasts and rivers, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“I think I can.”
“Good! And meanwhile, see if you can remember the names and appearances of any of your robots. It may prove the difference between living and dying.”
23
D.G. Baley seemed a different person with his officers. The broad smile was not evident, nor the easy indifference to danger. He sat, poring over the charts, with a look of intense concentration on his face.
He said, “If the woman is correct, we’ve got the estate pinned down within narrow limits—and if we move into the flying mode, we should get it exactly before too long.”
“Wasteful of energy, Captain,” muttered Jamin Oser, who was second-in-command. He was tall and, like D.G., well bearded. The beard was russet-colored, as were his eyebrows, which arched over bright blue eyes. He looked rather old, but one got the impression that this was due to experience rather than years.
“Can’t help it,” said D.G. “If we had the antigravity that the technos keep promising us just this side of eternity, it would be different.” He stared at the chart again and said, “She says it would be along this river about sixty kilometers upstream from where it runs into this larger one. If she is correct.”
“You keep doubting it,” said Chandrus Nadirhaba, whose insigne showed him to be Navigator and responsible for bringing the ship down in the correct spot—or, in any case, the indicated spot. His dark skin and neat mustache accentuated the handsome strength of his face.
“She’s recalling a situation over a time gap of twenty decades,” said D.G. “What details would you remember of a site you haven’t seen for just three decades? She’s not a robot. She may have forgotten.”
“Then what was the point of bringing her?” muttered Oser. “And the other one and the robot? It unsettles the crew and I don’t exactly like it, either.”
D.G. looked up, eyebrows bunching together. He said in a low voice, “It doesn’t matter on this ship what you don’t like or what the crew doesn’t like, mister. I have the responsibility and I make the decisions. We’re all liable to be dead within six hours of landing unless that woman can save us.”
Nadirhaba said coolly, “If we die, we die. We wouldn’t be Traders if we didn’t know that sudden death was the other side of big profits. And for this mission, we’re all volunteers. Just the same, it doesn’t hurt to know where the death’s coming from, Captain. If you’ve figured it out, does it have to be a secret?”
“No, it doesn’t. The Solarians are supposed to have left, but suppose a couple of hundred stayed quietly behind just to watch the store, so to speak.”
“Not so secret,” said D.G. “Solaria is littered with robots. That’s the whole reason Settler ships landed on the world in the first place. Each remaining Solarian might have a trillion robots at his disposal. An enormous army.”
Eban Kalaya was in charge of communications. So far he had said nothing, aware as he was of his Junior status, which seemed further marked by the fact that he was the only one of the four officers present without facial hair of any kind. Now he ventured a remark. “Robots,” he said, “cannot injure human beings.”
“So we are told,” said D.G. dryly, “but what do we know about robots? What we do know is that two ships have been destroyed and about a hundred human beings—good Settlers all—have been killed on widely separated parts of a world littered with robots. How could it have been done except by robots? We don’t, know what kind of orders a Solarian might give robots or by what tricks the so-called First Law of Robotics might be circumvented.
“So we,” he went on, “have to do a little circumventing of our own. As best as we can tell from the reports reaching us from the other ships before they were destroyed, all the men on board ship debarked on landing. It was an empty world after all and they wanted to stretch their legs, breathe fresh air, and look over the robots they had come to get. Their ships were unprotected and they themselves unready when the attack came.
“That won’t happen this time. I’m getting off, but the rest of you are going to stay on board the ship or, in its near vicinity.”
Nadirhaba’s dark eyes glared disapproval. “Why you, Captain? If you need someone to act as bait, anyone, else can be spared more easily than you can be.”
“I appreciate the thought, Navigator,” said D.G., “but I will not be alone. Coming with me well be the Spacer woman and her companions. She is the one who is essential. She may know some of the robots; at any rate, some may know her. I am hoping that though the robots may have been ordered to attack us, they won’t attack her.”
“You mean they’ll remember Ol’ Missy and fall to their knees,” said Nadirhaba dryly.
“If you want to put it that way. That’s why I brought her and that’s why we’ve landed on her estate. And I’ve got to be with her because I’m the one who knows her—somewhat—and I’ve got to see that she behaves. Once we have survived by using her as a shield and in that way have learned exactly what we’re facing, we can proceed on our own. We won’t need her any more.”
Oser said, “And then what do we do with her? Jettison her into space?”
D.G. roared, “We take her back to Aurora!”
Oser said, “I’m bound to tell you, Captain, that the crew would consider that a wasteful and unnecessary trip. They will feel that we can simply leave her on this blasted world. It’s where she comes from, after all.”
“Yes,” said D.G. “That will be the day, won’t it, when I take orders from the crew.”
“I’m sure you won’t,” said Oser, “but the crew has its opinions and an unhappy crew makes for a dangerous voyage.”
19
For the fifth time in her life, Gladia found herself on a spaceship. She did not remember, offhand, exactly how long ago it had been that she and Santirix had gone together to the world of Euterpe because its rain forests were widely recognized as incomparable, especially under the romantic glow of its bright satellite, Gemstone.
The rain forest had, indeed, been lush and green, with the trees carefully planted in rank and file and the animal life thoughtfully selected so as to provide color and delight, while avoiding venomous or other unpleasant creatures.
The satellite, fully 150 kilometers in diameter, was close enough to Euterpe to shine like a brilliant dot of sparkling light. It was so close to the planet that one could see it sweep west to east across the sky, outstripping the planet’s slower rotational motion. It brightened as it rose toward zenith and dimmed as it dropped toward the horizon again. One watched it with fascination the first night, with less the second, and with a vague discontent the third—assuming the sky was clear on those nights, which it usually wasn’t.
The native Euterpans, she noted, never looked at it, though they praised it loudly to the tourists, of course.
On the whole, Gladia had enjoyed the trip well enough, but what she remembered most keenly was the joy of her return to Aurora and her decision not to travel again except under dire need. (Come to think of it, it had to be at least eight decades ago.)
For a while, she had lived with the uneasy fear that her husband would insist on another trip, but he never mentioned one. It might well be, she sometimes thought at that time, that he had come to the same decision she had and feared she might be the one to want to travel.
It didn’t make them unusual to avoid trips. Aurorans generally—Spacers generally, for that matter—tended to be stay-at-homes. Their worlds, their establishments, were too comfortable. After all, what pleasure could be greater than that of being taken care of by your own robots, robots who knew your every signal, and, for that matter, knew your ways and desires even without being told.
She stirred uneasily. Was that what D.G. had meant when he spoke of the decadence of a roboticized society?
But now she was back again in space, after all that time. And on an Earth ship, too.
She hadn’t seen much of it, but the little she had glimpsed made her terribly uneasy. It seemed to be nothing but straight lines, sharp angles, and smooth surfaces. Everything that wasn’t stark had been eliminated, apparently. It was as though nothing must exist but functionality. Even though she didn’t know what was exactly functional about any particular object on the ship, she felt it to be all that was required, that nothing was to be allowed to interfere with taking the shortest distance between two points.
On everything Auroran (on everything Spacer, one might almost say, though Aurora was the most advanced in that respect), everything existed in layers. Functionality was at the bottom—one could not entirely rid one’s self of that, except in what was pure ornament—but overlying that there was always something to satisfy the eyes and the senses, generally; and overlying that, something to satisfy the spirit.
How much better that was!—Or did it represent such an exuberance of human creativity that Spacers could no longer live with the unadorned Universe—and was that bad? Was the future to belong to these from-here-to-there geometrizers? Or was it just that the Settlers had not yet learned the sweetnesses of life?
But then, if life had so many sweetnesses to it, why had she found so few for herself?
She had nothing really to do on board this ship but to ponder and reponder such questions. This D.G., this Elijah descended barbarian, had put it into her head, with his calm assumption that the Spacer worlds were dying, even though he could see all about him even during the shortest stay on Aurora (surely, he would have to) that it was deeply embedded in wealth and security.
She had tried to escape her own thoughts by staring at the holofilms she had been supplied with and watching, with moderate curiosity, the images flickering and capering on the projection surface, as the adventure story (all were adventure stories) hastened from—event to event with little time left for conversation and none for thought—or enjoyment, either. Very like their furniture.
D.G. stepped in when she was in the middle of one of the films, but had stopped really paying attention. She was not caught by surprise. Her robots, who guarded her doorway, signaled his coming in ample time and would not have allowed him to enter if she were not in a position to receive him. Daneel entered with him.
D.G. said, “How are you doing?” Then, as her hand touched a contact and the images faded, shriveled, and were gone. He said, “You don’t have to turn it off. I’ll watch it with you.”
“That’s not necessary,” she said. “I’ve had enough.”
“Are you—comfortable?”
“Not entirely. I am—isolated.”
“Sorry! But then, I was isolated on Aurora. They would allow none of my men to come with me.”
“Are you having your revenge?”
“Not at all. For one thing, I allowed you two robots of your choice to accompany you. For another, it is not I but my crew who enforce this. They don’t like either Spacers or robots. But why do you mind? Doesn’t this isolation lessen your fear of infection?”
Gladia’s eyes were haughty, but her voice sounded weary. “I wonder if I haven’t grown too old to fear infection. In many ways, I think I have lived long enough. Then, too, I have my gloves, my nose filters, and—if necessary—my mask. And besides, I doubt that you will trouble to touch me.”
“Nor will anyone else,” said D.G. with a sudden edge of grimness to his voice, as his hand wandered to the object at the right side of his hip.
Her eyes followed the motion. “What is that?” she asked.
D.G. smiled and his beard seemed to glitter in the light. There were occasional reddish hairs among the brown. “A weapon,” he said and drew it. He held it by a molded hilt that bulged above his hand as though the force of his grip were squeezing it upward. In front, facing Gladia, a thin cylinder stretched some fifteen centimeters forward. There was no opening visible.
“Does that kill people?” Gladia extended her hand toward it.
D.G. moved it quickly away. “Never reach for someone’s weapon, my lady. That is worse than bad manners, for any Settler is trained to react violently to such a move and you may be hurt.”
Gladia, eyes wide, withdrew her hand and placed both behind her back. She said, “Don’t threaten harm. Daneel has no sense of humor in that respect. On Aurora, no one is barbarous enough to carry weapons.”
“Well,” said D.G., unmoved by the adjective, “we don’t have robots to protect us.—And this is not a killing device. It is, in some ways, worse. It emits a kind of vibration that stimulates those nerve endings responsible for the sensation of pain. It hurts a good deal worse than anything you can imagine. No one would willingly endure it twice and someone carrying this weapon rarely has to use it. We call it a neuronic whip.”
Gladia frowned. “Disgusting! We have our robots, but they never hurt anyone except in unavoidable emergency and then minimally.”
D.G. shrugged. “That sounds very civilized, but a bit of pain—a bit of killing, even—is better than the decay of spirit brought about by robots. Besides, a neuronic whip is not intended to kill and your people have weapons on their spaceships that can bring about wholesale death and destruction.
“That’s because we’ve fought wars early in our history, when our Earth heritage was still strong, but we’ve learned better.”
“You used those weapons on Earth even after you supposedly learned better.”
“That’s—” she began and closed her mouth as though to bite off what she was about to say next.
D.G. nodded. “I know. You were about to say ‘That’s different.’ Think of that, my lady, if you should catch yourself wondering why my crew doesn’t like Spacers. Or why I don’t.—But you are going to be useful to me, my lady, and I won’t let my emotions get in the way.”
“How am I going to be useful to you?”
“You are a Solarian.”
“You keep saying that. More than twenty decades have passed. I don’t know what Solaria is like now. I know nothing about it. What was Baleyworld like twenty decades ago?”
“It didn’t exist twenty decades ago, but Solaria did and I shall gamble that you will remember something useful.”
He stood up, bowed his head briefly in, a gesture of politeness that was almost mocking, and was gone.
20
Gladia maintained a thoughtful and troubled silence for a while and then she said, “He wasn’t at all polite, was he?”
Daneel said, “Madam Gladia, the Settler is clearly under tension. He is heading toward a world on which two ships like his have been destroyed and their crews killed. He is going, into great danger, as is his crew.”
“You always defend any human being, Daneel,” said Gladia resentfully. “The danger exists for me, too, and I am not facing it voluntarily, but that does not force me into rudeness.”
Daneel said nothing.
Gladia said, “Well, maybe it does. I have been a little rude, haven’t I?”
“I don’t think the Settler minded,” said Daneel. “Might I suggest, madam, that you prepare yourself for bed. It is quite late.”
“Very well. I’ll prepare myself for bed, but I don’t think I feel relaxed enough to sleep, Daneel.”
“Friend Giskard assures me you will, madam, and he is usually right about such things.”
And she did sleep.
21
Daneel and Giskard stood in the darkness of Gladia’s cabin.
Giskard said, “She will sleep soundly, friend Daneel, and she needs the rest. She faces a dangerous trip.”
“It seemed to me, friend Giskard,” said Daneel, “that you influenced her to agree to go. I presume you had a reason.”
“Friend Daneel, we know so little about the nature of the crisis that is now facing the Galaxy that we cannot safely refuse any action that might increase our knowledge. We must know what is taking place on Solaria and the only way we can do so is to go there—and the only way we can go is for us to arrange for Madam Gladia to go. As for influencing her, that required scarcely a touch. Despite her loud statements to the contrary, she was eager to go. There was an overwhelming desire within her to see Solaria. It was a pain within her that would not cease until she went.”
“Since you say so, it is so, yet I find it puzzling. Had she not frequently made it plain that her life on Solaria was unhappy, that she had completely adopted Aurora and never wished to go back to her original home?”
“Yes, that was there, too. It was quite plainly in her mind. Both emotions, both feelings existed together and simultaneously. I have observed something of this sort in human minds frequently; two opposite emotions simultaneously present.”
“Such a condition does not seem logical, friend Giskard.”
“I agree and I can only conclude that human beings are not, at all times or in all respects, logical. That must be one reason that it is so difficult to work out the Laws governing human behavior.—In Madam Gladia’s case, I have now and then been aware of this longing for Solaria. Ordinarily, it was well hidden, obscured by the far more intense antipathy she also felt for the world. When the news arrived that Solaria had been abandoned by its people, however, her feelings changed.”
“Why so? What had the abandonment to do with the youthful experiences that led Madam Gladia to her antipathy? Or, having held in restraint her longing for the world the decades when it was a working society, why she lose that restraint once it became an abandoned planet and newly long for a world which must now be something utterly strange to her?”
“I cannot explain, friend Daneel, since the more knowledge I gather of the human mind, the more despair I feel at being unable to understand it. It is not an unalloyed advantage to see into that mind and I often envy you the simplicity of behavior control that results from your inability to see below the surface.”
Daneel persisted. “Have you guessed an explanation, friend Giskard?”
“I suppose she feels a sorrow for the empty planet. She deserted it twenty decades ago—”
“She was driven out.”
“It seems to her, now, to have been a desertion and I imagine she plays with the painful thought that she had set an example; that if she had not left, no one else would have and the planet would still be populated and happy. Since I cannot read her thoughts, I am only groping backward, perhaps inaccurately, from her emotions.”
“But she could not have set an example, friend Giskard. Since it is twenty decades since she left, there can be no verifiable causal connection between the much earlier event and the much later one.”
“I agree, but human beings sometimes find a kind of pleasure in nursing painful emotions, in blaming themselves without reason or even against reason.—In any case, Madam Gladia felt so sharply the longing to return that I felt it was necessary to release the inhibitory effect that kept her from agreeing to go. It required the merest touch. Yet though I feel it necessary for her to go, since that means she will take us there, I have the uneasy feeling, that the disadvantages might, just possibly, be greater than the advantages.”
“In what way, friend Giskard?”
“Since the Council was eager to have Madam Gladia accompany the Settler, it may have been for the purpose of having Madam Gladia absent from Aurora during a crucial period when the defeat of Earth and its Settler worlds is being prepared.”
Daneel seemed to be considering that statement. At least it was only after a distinct pause that he said, “What purpose would be served, in your opinion, in having Madam Gladia absent?”
“I cannot decide that, friend Daneel. I want your opinion.”
“I have not considered this matter.”
“Consider it now!” If Giskard had been human, the remark would have been an order.
There was an even longer pause and then Daneel said, “Friend Giskard, until the moment that Dr. Mandamus appeared in Madam Gladia’s establishment, she had never shown any concern about international affairs. She was a friend of Dr. Fastolfe and of Elijah Baley, but this friendship was one of personal affection and did not have an ideological basis. Both of them, moreover, are now gone from us. She has an antipathy toward Dr. Amadiro and that is returned, but this is also a personal matter. The antipathy is two centuries old and neither has done anything material about it but have merely each remained stubbornly antipathetic. There can be no reason for Dr. Amadiro—who is now the dominant influence in the Council—to fear Madam Gladia or to go to the trouble of removing her.”
Giskard said, “You overlook the fact, that in removing Madam Gladia, he also removes you and me. He would, perhaps, feel quite certain Madam Gladia would not leave without us, so can it be us he considers dangerous?”
“In the course of our existence, friend Giskard, we have never, in any way, given any appearance of having endangered Dr. Amadiro. What cause has he to fear us? He does not know of your abilities or of how you have made use of them. Why, then, should he take the trouble to remove us, temporarily, from Aurora?”
“Temporarily, friend Daneel? Why do you assume it is a temporary removal he plans? He knows, it may be, more than the Settler does of the trouble on Solaria and knows, also, that the Settler and his crew will be surely destroyed and Madam Gladia and you and I with them. Perhaps the destruction of the Settler’s ship is his main aim, but he would consider the end of Dr. Fastolfe’s friend and Dr. Fastolfe’s robots to be an added bonus.”
Daneel said, “Surely he would not risk war with the Settler worlds, for that may well come if the Settler’s ship is destroyed and the minute pleasure of having us destroyed, when added in, would not make the risk worthwhile.”
“Is it not possible, friend Daneel, that war is exactly what Dr. Amadiro has in mind; that it involves no risk in his estimation, so, that getting rid of us at the same time adds to his pleasure without increasing a risk that does not exist?”
Daneel said calmly, “Friend Giskard, that is not reasonable. In any war fought under present conditions, the Settlers would win. They are better suited, psychologically, to the rigors of war. They are more scattered and can, therefore, more successfully carry on hit-and-run tactics. They have comparatively little to lose in their relatively primitive worlds, while the Spacers have much to lose in their comfortable, highly organized ones. If the Settlers were willing to offer to exchange destruction of one of their worlds for one of the Spacers, the Spacers would have to surrender, at once.”
“But would such a war be fought under present conditions? What if the Spacers had a new weapon that could be used to defeat the Settlers quickly? Might that not be the very crisis we are now facing?”
“In that case, friend Giskard, the victory could be better and more effectively gained in a surprise attack. Why go to the trouble of instigating a war, which the Settlers might begin by a surprise raid on Spacer worlds that would do considerable damage?”
“Perhaps the Spacers need to test the weapon and the destruction of a series of ships on Solaria represents the testing.”
“The Spacers would have been most uningenious if they could not have found a method of testing that would not give away the new weapon’s existence.”
It was now Giskard’s turn to consider. “Very well, then friend Daneel, how would you explain this trip we are on? How would you explain the Council’s willingness—even eagerness—to have us accompany the Settler? The Settler said they would order Gladia to go and, in effect, they did.”
“I have not considered the matter, friend Giskard.”
“Then consider it now.”—Again it had the flavor of an order.
Daneel said, “I will do so.”
There was silence, one that grew protracted, but Giskard by no word or sign showed any impatience as he waited.
Finally, Daneel said—slowly, as though he were feeling his way along strange avenues of thought—I do not think that Baleyworld—or any of the Settler worlds—has a clear right to appropriate robotic property on Solaria. Even though the Solarians have themselves left or have, perhaps, died out, Solaria remains a Spacer world, even if an unoccupied one—Certainly, the remaining forty-nine Spacer worlds would reason so. Most of all, Aurora would reason so—if it felt in command of the situation.”
Giskard considered that. “Are you now saying, friend Daneel, that the destruction of the two Settler ships was the Spacer way of enforcing their proprietorship of Solaria?”
Daneel said, “No, that would not be the way if Aurora, the leading Spacer power, felt in command of the situation. Aurora would then simply have announced that Solaria, empty or not, was off-limits to Settler vessels and would have threatened reprisals against the home worlds if any Settler vessel entered the Solarian planetary system. And they would have established a cordon of ships and sensory stations about that planetary system. There was no such warning, no such action, friend Giskard. Why, then, destroy ships that might have been kept away from the world quite easily in the first place?”
“But the ships were destroyed, friend Daneel. Will you make use of the basic illogicality of the human mind as an explanation?”
“Not unless I have to. Let us for the moment take that destruction simply as given. Now consider the consequence—The captain of a single Settler vessel approaches Aurora, demands permission to discuss the situation with the Council, insists on taking an Auroran citizen with him to investigate events on Solaria,—and the Council gives in to everything. If destroying the ships without prior warning is too strong an action for Aurora, giving in to the Settler captain so cravenly is far too weak an action. Far from seeking a war, Aurora, in giving in, seems to be willing to do anything at all to ward off the possibility of war.”
“Yes,” said Giskard, “I see that this is a possible way of interpreting events. But what follows?”
“It seems to me,” said Daneel, “that the Spacer worlds are not yet so weak that they must behave with such servility—and, even if they were, the pride of centuries of overlordship would keep them from doing so. It must be something other than weakness that is driving them. I have pointed out that they cannot be deliberately instigating a war, so it is much more likely that they are playing for time.”
“To what end, friend Daneel?”
“They want to destroy the Settlers, but they are not yet prepared. They let this Settler have what he wants to avoid a war until they are ready to fight one on their own terms. I am only surprised that they did not offer to send an Auroran warship with him. If this analysis is correct—and I think it is—Aurora cannot possibly have had anything to do with the incidents on Solaria. They would not indulge in pinpricks, that could only serve to alert the Settlers before they are ready with something devastating.”
“Then how account for these pinpricks, as you call them, friend Daneel?”
“We will find out perhaps when we land on Solaria. It may be that Aurora is as curious as we are and the Settlers are and that that is another reason why they have cooperated with the captain, even to the point of allowing Madam Gladia to accompany him.”
It was now Giskard’s turn to remain silent. Finally he said, “And what is this mysterious devastation that they plan?”
“Earlier, we spoke of a crisis arising from the Spacer plan to defeat Earth, but we used Earth in its general sense, implying the Earthpeople together with their descendents on the Settler worlds. However, if we seriously suspect the preparation of a devastating blow that will allow the Spacers to defeat their enemies at a stroke, we can perhaps refine our view. Thus, they cannot be planning a blow at a Settler world. Individually, the Settler worlds are dispensable and the remaining Settler worlds will promptly strike back. Nor can they be planning a blow at several or at all the Settler worlds. There are too many of them; they are too diffusely spread. It is not likely that all the strikes will succeed and those Settler worlds that survive will, in fury and despair, bring devastation upon the Spacer worlds.”
“You reason, then, friend Daneel, that it will be a blow at Earth itself.”
“Yes, friend Giskard. Earth contains the vast majority of the short-lived human beings; it is the perennial source of emigrants to the Settler worlds and is the chief raw material for the founding of new ones; it is the revered homeland of all the Settlers. If Earth were somehow destroyed, the Settler movement might never recover.”
“But would not the Settler worlds then retaliate as strongly and as forcefully as they would if one of themselves were destroyed? That would seem to me to be inevitable.”
“And to me, friend Giskard. Therefore, it seems to me that unless the Spacer worlds have gone insane, the blow would have to be a subtle one; one for which the Spacer worlds would seem to bear no responsibility.”
“Why not such a subtle blow against the Settler worlds, which hold most of the actual war potential of the Earthpeople?”
“Either because the Spacers feel the blow against Earth would be more psychologically devastating or because the nature of the blow is such that it would work only against Earth and not against the Settler worlds. I suspect the latter, since Earth is a unique world and has a society that is not like that of any other world—Settler or, for that matter, Spacer.”
“To summarize, then, friend Daneel, you come to the conclusion that the Spacers are planning a subtle blow against Earth that will destroy it without evidence of themselves as the cause, and one that would not work against any other world, and that they are not yet ready to launch that blow.”
“Yes, friend Giskard, but they may soon be ready—and once they are ready, they will have to strike immediately. Any delay will increase the chance of some leak that will give them away.”
“To deduce all this, friend Daneel, from the small indications we have is most praiseworthy. Now tell me the nature of the blow. What is it, precisely, that the Spacers plan?”
“I have come this far, friend Giskard, across very shaky ground, without being certain that my reasoning is entirely sound. But even if we suppose it is, I can go no further. I fear I do not know and cannot imagine what the nature of the blow might be.”
Giskard said, “But we cannot take appropriate measures to counteract the blow and resolve the crisis until we know what its nature will be. If we must wait until the blow reveals itself by its results, it will then be too late to do anything.”
Daneel said, “If any Spacer knows the nature of the forthcoming event, it would be Amadiro. Could you not force Amadiro to announce it publicly and thus alert the Settlers and make it unusable?”
“I could not do that, friend Daneel, without virtually destroying his mind. I doubt that I could hold it together long enough to allow him to make the announcement. I could not do such a thing.”
“Perhaps, then,” said Daneel, “we may console ourselves with the thought that my reasoning is wrong and that no blow against Earth is being prepared.”
“No,” said Giskard. “It is my feeling that you are right and that we must simply wait—helplessly.”
22
Gladia waited, with an almost painful anticipation, for the conclusion of the final Jump. They would then be close enough to Solaria to make out its sun as a disk.
It would just be a disk, of course, a featureless circle of light, subdued to the point where it could be watched unblinkingly after that light had passed through the appropriate filter.
Its appearance would not be unique. All the stars that carried, among their planets, a habitable world in the human sense had a long list of property requirements that ended by making them all resemble one another. They were all single stars—all not much larger or smaller than the sun that shone on Earth—none too active, or too old, or too quiet, or too young, or too hot, or too cool, or too offbeat in chemical composition. All had sunspots and flares and prominences and all looked just about the same to the eye. It took careful spectroheliography to work out the details that made each star unique.
Nevertheless, when Gladia found herself staring at a circle of light that was absolutely nothing more than a circle of light to her, she found her eyes welling with tears. She had never given the sun a thought when she had lived on Solaria; it was just the eternal source of light and heat, rising and falling in a steady rhythm. When she had left Solaria, she had watched that sun disappear behind her with nothing but a feeling of thankfulness. She had no memory—of it that she valued.
Yet she was weeping silently. She was ashamed of herself for being so affected for no reason that she could explain, but that didn’t stop the weeping.
She made a stronger effort when the signal light gleamed. It had to be D.G. at the door; no one else would approach her cabin.
Daneel said, “Is he to enter, madam? You seem emotionally moved.”
“Yes, I’m emotionally moved, Daneel, but let him in. I imagine it won’t come as a surprise to him.”
Yet it did. At least, he entered with a smile on his bearded face—and that smile disappeared almost at once. He stepped back and said in a low voice, “I will return later.”
“Stay!” said Gladia harshly. “This is nothing. A silly reaction of the moment.” She sniffed and dabbed angrily at her eyes. “Why are you here?”
“I wanted to discuss Solaria with you. If we succeed with a microadjustment, we’ll land tomorrow. If you’re not quite up to a discussion now—”
“I am quite up to it. In fact, I have a question for you. Why is it we took dime Jumps to get here? One Jump would have been sufficient. One was sufficient when I was taken from Solaria to Aurora twenty decades ago. Surely the technique of space travel has not retrogressed since.”
D.G.’s grin returned. “Evasive action. If an Auroran ship was following us, I wanted to—confuse it, shall we say.”
“Why should one follow us?”
“Just a thought, my lady. The Council was a little overeager to help, I thought. They suggested that an Auroran ship join me in my expedition to Solaria.”
“Well, it might have helped, mightn’t it?”
“Perhaps—if I were quite certain that Aurora wasn’t behind all this. I told the Council quite plainly that I would do without—or, rather”—he pointed his finger at Gladia—“Just with you. Yet might not the Council send a ship to accompany me even against my wish—out of pure kindness of heart, let us say? Well, I still don’t want one; I expect enough trouble without having to look nervously over my shoulder at every moment. So I made myself hard to follow.—How much do you know about Solaria, my lady?”
“Haven’t I told you often enough? Nothing! Twenty decades have passed.”
“Now, madam, I’m talking about the psychology of the Solarians. That can’t have changed in merely twenty decades.—Tell me why they have abandoned their planet.”
“The story, as I’ve heard it,” said Gladia calmly, “is that their population has been steadily declining. A combination of premature deaths and very few births is apparently responsible.”
“Does that sound reasonable to you?”
“Of course it does. Births have always been few.” Her face twisted in memory. “Solarian custom does not make impregnation easy, either naturally, artificially, or ectogenetically.”
“You never had children, madam?”
“Not on Solaria.”
“And the premature death?”
“I can only guess. I suppose it arose out of a feeling of failure. Solaria was clearly not working out, even though the Solarians had placed a great deal of emotional fervor into their world’s having the ideal society—not only one that was better than Earth had ever had, but more nearly perfect than that of any other Spacer world.”
“Are you saying that Solaria was dying of the collective broken heart of its people?”
“If you want to put it in that ridiculous way,” said Gladia, displeased.
D.G. shrugged. “It seems to be what you’re saying. But would they really leave? Where would they go? How would they live?”
“I don’t know.”
“But, Madam Gladia, it is well known that Solarians are accustomed to enormous tracts of land, serviced by many thousands of robots, so that each Solarian is left in almost complete isolation. If they abandon Solaria, where can they go to find a society that would humor them in this fashion? Have they, in fact, gone to any of the other Spacer worlds?”
“Not as far as I know. But then, I’m not in their confidence.”
“Can they have found a new world for themselves? If so, it would be a raw one and require much in the way of terraforming. Would they be ready for that?”
Gladia shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Perhaps they haven’t really left.”
“Solaria, I understand, gives every evidence of being empty.”
“What evidence is that?”
“All interplanetary communication has ceased. All radiation from the planet, except that consistent with robot work or clearly due to natural causes has ceased.”
“How do you know that?”
“That is the report on the Auroran news.”
“Ah! The report! Could it be that someone is lying?”
“What would be the purpose of such a lie?” Gladia stiffened at the suggestion.
“So that our ships would be lured to the world and destroyed.”
“That’s ridiculous, D.G.” Her voice grew sharper. “What would the Spacers gain by destroying two trading vessels through so elaborate a subterfuge?”
“Something has destroyed two Settler vessels on a supposedly empty planet. How do you explain that?”
“I can’t. I presume we are going to Solaria in order to find an explanation.”
D.G. regarded her gravely. “Would you be able to guide me to the section of the world that was yours when you lived on Solaria?”
“My estate?” She returned his stare, astonished.
“Wouldn’t you like to see it again?”
Gladia’s heart skipped a beat. “Yes, I would, but why my place?”
“The two ships that were destroyed landed in widely different spots on the planet and yet each was destroyed fairly quickly. Though every spot may be deadly, it seems to me that yours might be less so than others.”
“Why?”
“Because there we might receive help from the robots. You would know them, wouldn’t you? They do last more than twenty decades, I suppose. Daneel and Giskard have. And those that were there when you lived on your estate would still remember you, wouldn’t they? They would treat you as their mistress and recognize the duty they owed you even beyond that which they would owe to ordinary human beings.”
Gladia said, “There were ten thousand robots on my estate. I knew perhaps three dozen by sight. Most of the rest I never saw and they may not have ever seen me. Agricultural robots are not very advanced, you know, nor are forestry robots or mining robots. The household robots would still remember me—if they have not been sold or transferred since I left. Then, too, accidents happen and some robots don’t last twenty decades.—Besides, whatever you may think of robot memory, human memory is fallible and I might remember none of them.”
“Even so,” said D.G., “can you direct me to your estate?”
“By latitude and longitude? No.”
“I have charts of Solaria. Would that help?”
“Perhaps approximately. It’s in the south-central portion of the northern continent of Heliona.”
“And once we’re approximately there, can you make use of landmarks for greater precision—if we skim the Solarian surface?”
“By seacoasts and rivers, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“I think I can.”
“Good! And meanwhile, see if you can remember the names and appearances of any of your robots. It may prove the difference between living and dying.”
23
D.G. Baley seemed a different person with his officers. The broad smile was not evident, nor the easy indifference to danger. He sat, poring over the charts, with a look of intense concentration on his face.
He said, “If the woman is correct, we’ve got the estate pinned down within narrow limits—and if we move into the flying mode, we should get it exactly before too long.”
“Wasteful of energy, Captain,” muttered Jamin Oser, who was second-in-command. He was tall and, like D.G., well bearded. The beard was russet-colored, as were his eyebrows, which arched over bright blue eyes. He looked rather old, but one got the impression that this was due to experience rather than years.
“Can’t help it,” said D.G. “If we had the antigravity that the technos keep promising us just this side of eternity, it would be different.” He stared at the chart again and said, “She says it would be along this river about sixty kilometers upstream from where it runs into this larger one. If she is correct.”
“You keep doubting it,” said Chandrus Nadirhaba, whose insigne showed him to be Navigator and responsible for bringing the ship down in the correct spot—or, in any case, the indicated spot. His dark skin and neat mustache accentuated the handsome strength of his face.
“She’s recalling a situation over a time gap of twenty decades,” said D.G. “What details would you remember of a site you haven’t seen for just three decades? She’s not a robot. She may have forgotten.”
“Then what was the point of bringing her?” muttered Oser. “And the other one and the robot? It unsettles the crew and I don’t exactly like it, either.”
D.G. looked up, eyebrows bunching together. He said in a low voice, “It doesn’t matter on this ship what you don’t like or what the crew doesn’t like, mister. I have the responsibility and I make the decisions. We’re all liable to be dead within six hours of landing unless that woman can save us.”
Nadirhaba said coolly, “If we die, we die. We wouldn’t be Traders if we didn’t know that sudden death was the other side of big profits. And for this mission, we’re all volunteers. Just the same, it doesn’t hurt to know where the death’s coming from, Captain. If you’ve figured it out, does it have to be a secret?”
“No, it doesn’t. The Solarians are supposed to have left, but suppose a couple of hundred stayed quietly behind just to watch the store, so to speak.”
“Not so secret,” said D.G. “Solaria is littered with robots. That’s the whole reason Settler ships landed on the world in the first place. Each remaining Solarian might have a trillion robots at his disposal. An enormous army.”
Eban Kalaya was in charge of communications. So far he had said nothing, aware as he was of his Junior status, which seemed further marked by the fact that he was the only one of the four officers present without facial hair of any kind. Now he ventured a remark. “Robots,” he said, “cannot injure human beings.”
“So we are told,” said D.G. dryly, “but what do we know about robots? What we do know is that two ships have been destroyed and about a hundred human beings—good Settlers all—have been killed on widely separated parts of a world littered with robots. How could it have been done except by robots? We don’t, know what kind of orders a Solarian might give robots or by what tricks the so-called First Law of Robotics might be circumvented.
“So we,” he went on, “have to do a little circumventing of our own. As best as we can tell from the reports reaching us from the other ships before they were destroyed, all the men on board ship debarked on landing. It was an empty world after all and they wanted to stretch their legs, breathe fresh air, and look over the robots they had come to get. Their ships were unprotected and they themselves unready when the attack came.
“That won’t happen this time. I’m getting off, but the rest of you are going to stay on board the ship or, in its near vicinity.”
Nadirhaba’s dark eyes glared disapproval. “Why you, Captain? If you need someone to act as bait, anyone, else can be spared more easily than you can be.”
“I appreciate the thought, Navigator,” said D.G., “but I will not be alone. Coming with me well be the Spacer woman and her companions. She is the one who is essential. She may know some of the robots; at any rate, some may know her. I am hoping that though the robots may have been ordered to attack us, they won’t attack her.”
“You mean they’ll remember Ol’ Missy and fall to their knees,” said Nadirhaba dryly.
“If you want to put it that way. That’s why I brought her and that’s why we’ve landed on her estate. And I’ve got to be with her because I’m the one who knows her—somewhat—and I’ve got to see that she behaves. Once we have survived by using her as a shield and in that way have learned exactly what we’re facing, we can proceed on our own. We won’t need her any more.”
Oser said, “And then what do we do with her? Jettison her into space?”
D.G. roared, “We take her back to Aurora!”
Oser said, “I’m bound to tell you, Captain, that the crew would consider that a wasteful and unnecessary trip. They will feel that we can simply leave her on this blasted world. It’s where she comes from, after all.”
“Yes,” said D.G. “That will be the day, won’t it, when I take orders from the crew.”
“I’m sure you won’t,” said Oser, “but the crew has its opinions and an unhappy crew makes for a dangerous voyage.”
6. THE CREW
24
Gladia stood on the soil of Solaria. She smelled the vegetation—not quite the odors of Aurora—and at once she crossed the gap of twenty decades.
Nothing, she knew, could bring back associations in the way that odors could. Not sights, not sounds.
Just that faint, unique smell brought back childhood, the freedom of running about, with a dozen robots watching her carefully—the excitement of seeing other children sometimes, coming to a halt, staring shyly, approaching one another a half-step at a time, reaching out to touch, and then a robot saying, “Enough, Miss Gladia,” and being led away—looking over the shoulder at the other child, with whom there was another set of attendant robots in charge.
She remembered the day that she was told that only by holovision would she see other human beings thereafter.
“Seeing.” Viewing, she was told—not seeing. The robots said as though it were a word they must not say, so that they had to whisper it. She could see them, but they were not human.
It was not so bad at first. The images she could talk to were three-dimensional, free-moving. They could talk, run, turn cartwheels if they wished—but they could not be felt. And then she was told that she could actually see someone whom she had often viewed and whom she had liked. He was a grown man, quite a bit older than she was, though he looked quite young, as one did on Solaria. She would have permission to continue to see him—if she wished whenever necessary.
She wished. She remembered how it was—exactly how it was on that first day. She was tongue-tied and so was he. They circled each other, afraid to touch.—But it was marriage.
Of course it was. And then they met again—seeing, viewing, because it was marriage. They would finally touch each other. They were supposed to.
It was the most exciting day of her life—until it took place.
Fiercely, Gladia stopped her thoughts. Of what use to go on? She so warm and eager; he so cold and withdrawn. He continued to be cold. When he came to see her, at fixed intervals, for the rites that might (or might not) succeed in impregnating her, it was with such clear revulsion that she was soon longing for him to forget. But he was a man duty and he never forgot.
Then came the time, years of dragging unhappiness later, when she found him dead, his skull crushed, and herself as the only possible suspect. Elijah Baley had saved her then and she had been taken away from Solaria and sent to Aurora.
Now she was back, smelling Solaria.
Nothing else was familiar. The house in the distance bore no resemblance to anything she remembered even faintly. In twenty decades it had been modified, torn down, rebuilt. She could not even gain any sense of familiarity with the ground itself.
She found herself reaching backward to touch the Settler ship that had brought her to this world that smelled like home but was home in no other way—just to touch something that was familiar by comparison.
Daneel, who stood next to her in the shadow of the ship, said, “Do you see the robots, Madam Gladia?”
There were a group of them, a hundred yards away, amid the trees of an orchard, watching solemnly, motionlessly, shining in the sun with the grayish well-polished metal finish Gladia remembered Solarian robots to have.
She said, “I do, Daneel.”
“Is there anything familiar about them, madam?”
“Not at all. They seem to be new models. I can’t remember them and I’m sure they can’t remember me. If D.G. was expecting anything hopeful to come of my supposed familiarity with the robots on my estate, he will have to be disappointed.”
Giskard said, “They do not seem to be doing anything, madam.”
Gladia said, “That is understandable. We’re intruders and they’ve come to observe us and to report on us in accordance with what must be standing orders. They have no one now to report to, however, and can merely silently observe. Without further orders, I presume they will do no more than that, but they won’t cease doing so, either.”
Daneel said, “It might be well, Madam Gladia, if we retired to our quarters on board ship. The captain is, I believe, supervising the construction of defenses and is not ready to go exploring yet. I suspect he will not approve your having left your quarters without his specific permission.”
Gladia said haughtily, “I’m not going to delay stepping out onto the surface of my own world just to suit his whim.”
“I understand, but members of the crew are engaged in the vicinity and I believe that some note your presence here.”
“And are approaching,” said Giskard. “If you would avoid infection—”
“I’m prepared,” said Gladia. “Nose plugs and gloves.”
Gladia did not understand the nature of the structures being put up on the flat ground about the ship. For the most part, the crewmen, absorbed in the construction, had not seen Gladia and her two companions, standing as they were in the shadows. (It was the warm season on this portion of Solaria, which had a tendency to grow warmer—and on other occasions, colder—than Aurora did, since the Solarian day was nearly six hours longer than the Auroran day.)
The crewmen approaching were five in number and one of them, the tallest and largest, pointed in the direction of Gladia. The other four looked, remained standing for a while as though merely curious, and then, at a gesture from the first, approached again, changing their angle slightly so as to head directly for the Auroran three.
Gladia watched them silently and with her eyebrows raised in contempt. Daneel and Giskard waited impassively.
Giskard said in a low voice to Daneel, “I do not know where the captain is. I cannot distinguish him from the crowd of crewmen in whose midst he must be.”
“Shall we retire?” said Daneel aloud.
“That would be disgraceful,” said Gladia. “This is my world.”
She held her ground and the five crewmen came closer in leisurely fashion.
They had been working, doing hard physical labor (Like robots, thought Gladia with distain) and they were sweating. Gladia became aware of the odor that reeked from them. That would have served to force her away more than threats would, but she held her ground even so. The nose plugs, she was sure, mitigated the effect of the smell.
The large crewman approached more closely than the others. His skin was bronzed. His bare arms glistened with moisture and with shining musculature. He might be thirty (as nearly as Gladia could judge the age of these shortlived beings) and if he were washed and properly dressed, he might prove quite presentable.
He said, “So you are the Spacer lady from Aurora that we’ve been carrying on our ship?” He spoke rather slowly, obviously trying to attain an aristocratic tinge to his Galactic. He failed, of course, and he spoke like a Settler—even more crudely than D.G. did.
Gladia said, establishing her territorial rights, “I am from Solaria, Settler,” and stopped in confused embarrassment. She had spent so much time thinking of Solaria just now that twenty decades had dropped away and she had spoken with a thick Solarian accent. There was the broad “a” in Solaria and the rough “r,” while the “i” sounded horribly like “Oi”.
She said again, in a much lower, less commanding voice, but one in which the accent of Aurora University—the standard for Galactic speech through all the Spacer worlds—rang clear, “I am from Solaria, Settler.”
The Settler laughed and turned to the others. “She speaks la-di-da, but she had to try. Right, mates?”
The others laughed, too, and one cried out, “Get her to talk some more, Niss. Maybe we can a learn to talk like Spacer birdies.” And he placed one hand on his hip in as dainty a manner as he could manage, while holding the other hand out limply.
Niss said, still smiling, “Shut up, all of you.” There was instant silence.
He turned to Gladia again, “I’m Berto Niss, First-Class Shipper. And your name, little woman?”
Gladia did not venture to speak again.
Niss said, “I’m being polite, little woman. I’m speaking gentlemanly. Spacer-like. I know you’re old enough to be my great-grandmother. How old you are you, little woman?”
“Four hundred,” shouted one of the crewmen from behind Niss, “but she doesn’t look it!”
“She doesn’t look one hundred,” said another.
“She looks suitable for a little ding-donging, said a third, “and hasn’t had any for a long time, I guess. Ask her if she’d want some, Niss. Be polite and ask if we—can take turns.”
Gladia flushed angrily and Daneel said, “First-Class Shipper Niss, your companions are offending Madam Gladia. Would you retire?”
Niss turned to look at Daneel, whom, till now, he had totally ignored. The smile vanished from his face and he said, “Look, you. This little lady is off-limits. The captain said so. We won’t bother her. Just a little harmless talk. That thing there is a robot. We won’t bother with him and he can’t hurt us. We know the Three Laws of Robotics. We order him to stay away from us, see. But you are a Spacer and the captain has give us no orders about you. So you”—he pointed a finger—“stay out of this and don’t interfere or you’ll get your pretty skin all bruised up and then you might cry.”
Daneel said nothing.
Niss nodded his head. “Good. I like to see someone smart enough not to start anything he can’t finish.”
He turned to Gladia, “Now, little Spacer woman, we will leave you alone because the captain doesn’t want you bothered. If one of the men here made a crude remark, that’s only natural. Just shake hands and let’s be friends—Spacer, Settler, what’s the difference?”
He thrust out his hand toward Gladia, who shrank away in horror. Daneel’s hand moved outward in a flick that was almost too fast to see and caught Niss’s wrist. “First-Class Shipper Niss,” he said quietly, “do not attempt to touch the lady.”
Niss looked down at his hand and at the fingers that enclosed his wrist firmly. He said in a low and menacing growl, “You have till the count of three to let go.”
Daneel’s hand fell away. He said, “I must do as you say for I do not wish to harm you, but I must protect the lady and if she doesn’t wish to be touched, as I believe she doesn’t, I may be forced into a position where I must cause you pain. Please, accept my assurance that I will do all I can to minimize that.”
One of the crewmen shouted joyously, “Give it to him, Niss. He’s a talker.”
Niss said, “Look, Spacer, twice I told you to keep out and you touched me once. Now I tell you a third time and that’s it. Make a move, say a word, and I take you apart. This little woman is going to shake hands, that’s all, friendly like. Then we all go. Fair enough?”
Gladia said in a low choking voice. “I won’t be touched by him. Do what is necessary.”
Daneel said, “Sir, with all due respect, the lady does not wish to be touched. I must ask you—all of you—to leave.”
Niss smiled and one large arm moved as though to brush Daneel to one side—and to do it hard.
Daneel’s left arm flickered and once again Niss was held by the wrist. “Please go, sir,” said Daneel.
Niss’s teeth continued to show, but he was no longer smiling. Violently, he brought his arm up. Daneel’s enclosing hand moved up for a short distance, slowed, and came to a halt. His face showed no strain. His hand moved down, dragging Niss’s arm with it, and then, with a rapid twist, he bent Niss’s arm behind the Settler’s broad back and held it there.
Niss, who found himself unexpectedly with his back to Daneel, brought his other arm up over his head, groping for Daneel’s neck. His other wrist was seized and pulled down farther than it could easily go and Niss grunted in clear misery.
The other four crewmen, who had been watching in eager anticipation, remained in place now, motionless, silent, mouths open.
Niss, staring at them, grunted, “Help me!”
Daneel said, “They will not help you, sir, for the captain’s punishment will be all the worse if they try. I must ask you now to assure me that you will no longer trouble Madam Gladia and that you will leave quietly, all of you. Otherwise, I very much regret, First-Class Shipper, that I must pull your arms out of their sockets.”
As he said that, he tightened his grip on either wrist and Niss emitted a muffled grunt.
“My apologies, sir,” said Daneel, “but I am under the strictest orders. May I have your assurance?”
Niss kicked backward with sudden viciousness, but well before his—heavy boot could make contact,—Daneel had faded to one side and pulled him off-balance. He went facedown heavily.
“May I have your assurance, sir?” said Daneel, now pulling gently at the two wrists so that the crewman’s arms lifted slightly up from the back.
Niss howled and said, half-incoherent, “I give in. Let go.”
Daneel let go at once and stepped back. Slowly and painfully, Niss rolled over, moving his arms slowly and rotating his wrists with a twisted grimace.
Then, when his right arm moved near the holster he wore, he snatched clumsily at his sidearm.
Daneel’s foot came down on his hand and pinned it to the ground. “Don’t do that, sir, or I may be forced to break one or more of the small bones in your hand.” He bent down and extracted Niss’s blaster from its holster. “Now stand up.”
“Well, Mr. Niss,” came another voice. “Do as you are told and stand up.”
D.G. Baley was standing at their side, beard bristling, face slightly flushed, but his voice was dangerously calm.
“You four,” he said, “hand me your sidearms, one at a time. Come on. Move a little faster. One-two-three-four. Now continue to stand there at attention. Sir,” this to Daneel—“give me that sidearm you are holding. Good. Five. And now, Mr. Niss, at attention.” And he placed the blasters on the ground beside him.
Niss stiffened to attention, eyes bloodshot, face contorted, in obvious pain.
“Would someone,” said D.G., “please say what has been going on?”
“Captain,” said Daneel quickly, “Mr. Niss and I have had a playful altercation. No harm has been done.”
“Mr. Niss, however, looks somewhat harmed,” said D.G.
“No permanent harm, Captain,” said Daneel.
“I see. Well, we’ll get back to this later.—Madam,” he turned on his heel to address Gladia—“I don’t recall that I gave you permission to emerge from the ship. You will go back to your cabin with your two companions at once. I am captain here and this is not Aurora. Do as I say!”
Daneel placed an apologetic hand on Gladia’s elbow. Her chin lifted, but she, turned and went up the gangplank and into the ship, Daneel at her side, Giskard following.
D.G. then turned to the crewmen. “You five,” he said, his voice never lifting from its flat calm, “come with me. We’ll get to the bottom of this—or of you.” And he gestured to a petty officer to pick up the sidearms and take them away.
25
D.G. stared at the five grimly. He was in his own quarters, the only portion of the ship that had a semblance of size to it and the beginnings of an appearance of luxury.
He said, pointing to each in turn, “Now, this is the way we’ll work it. You tell me exactly what happened, word for word, motion for motion. When you’re finished, you tell me anything that was wrong or left out. Then you the same, and then you, and then I’ll get to you, Niss. I expect that you were all out of order, that you all did something unusually stupid that earned you all, but especially Niss, considerable humiliation. If, in your story, it would appear that you did nothing wrong and suffered no humiliation, then I’ll know you’re lying, especially as the Spacer woman will surely tell me what happened and I intend to believe every word she says. A lie will make matters worse for you than anything you’ve actually done. Now,” he barked, “start!”
The first crewman stumbled hastily through the story, and then the second, somewhat correcting, somewhat expanding, then the third and the fourth. D.G. listened, stony faced, to the recital, then motioned Berto Niss to one side.
He spoke to the other four, “And while Niss was getting his face rightly mashed into the dirt by the Spacer, what were you four doing? Watching? Scared to move? All four of you? Against one man?”
One of the men broke the thickening silence to say, “It all happened so quick, Captain. We we’re just getting set to move in and then it was all over.”
“And what were you getting ready to do in case you did manage to get to move someday?”
“Well, we were going to pull the Spacer foreigner off our mate.”
“Do you think you could have?”
This time no one offered to make a sound.
D.G. leaned toward them. “Now, here’s the situation. You had no business with the foreigners, so you’re fined one week’s pay each. And now—let’s get something straight. If you tell what has happened to anyone else—in the crew or out, now or ever, whether drunk or sober, you’ll be broken, every one of you, to apprentice shipper. It doesn’t matter which one of you talks, you’ll all four be broken, so keep an eye on each other. Now get to your assigned tasks and if you cross me at any time during this voyage, if you as much as hiccup against regulations, you’ll be in the brig.”
The four left, mournful, hangdog, tight-lipped. Niss remained, a bruise developing on his face, his arms clearly in discomfort.
D.G. regarded him with a threatening quiet, while Niss stared to the left, to the right, at his feet, everywhere but at the face of the captain. It was only when Niss’s eyes, running out of evasion, caught the glare of the captain, that D.G. said, “Well, you look very handsome, now that you have tangled with a sissy Spacer half your size. Next time you better hide when one of them shows up—”
“Yes, Captain,” said Niss miserably.
“Did you or did you not, Niss, hear me in my briefing, before we left Aurora, say that the Spacer woman and her companions were on no account to be disturbed or spoken to?”
“Captain, I wanted only a polite howdy do. We was curious for a closer look. No harm meant.”
“You meant no harm? You I asked how old she was. Was that your business?”
“Just curious. Wanted to know.”
“One of you made a sexual suggestion.”
“Not me, Captain.”
“Someone else? Did you apologize—for it?”
“To a Spacer?” Niss sounded horrified.
“Certainly. You were going against my orders.”
“I meant no harm,” said Niss doggedly.
“You meant no harm to the man?”
“He put his hand on me, Captain.”
“I know he did. Why?”
“Because he was ordering me around.”
“And you wouldn’t stand for it?”
“Would you, Captain?”
“All right, then. You didn’t stand for it. You fell down for it. Right on your face. How did that happen?”
“I don’t rightly know, Captain. He was fast. Like the camera was sped up. And he had a grip like iron.”
D.G. said, “So he did. What did you expect, you idiot? He is iron.”
“Captain?”
“Niss, is it possible you don’t know the story of Elijah Baley?”
Niss rubbed his ear in embarrassment. “I know he’s your great-something-grandfather, Captain.”
“Yes, everyone knows that from my name. Have you ever viewed his life story?”
“I’m not a viewing man, Captain. Not on history.” He shrugged and, as he did so, winced and made as though to rub his shoulder, then decided he didn’t quite dare do so.
“Did you ever hear of R. Daneel Olivaw?”
Niss squeezed his brows together. “He was Elijah Baley’s friend.”
“Yes, he was. You do know something then. Do you know what the ‘R’ stands for in R. Daneel Olivaw?”
“It stands for ‘Robot,’ right? He was a robot friend. There was robots on Earth in them days.”
“There were, Niss, and still are. But Daneel wasn’t just a robot. He was a Spacer robot who looked like a Spacer man. Think about it, Niss. Guess who the Spacer man you picked a fight with really was.”
Niss’s eyes widened, his face reddened dully. “You mean that Spacer was a ro—”
“That was R. Daneel Olivaw.”
“But, Captain, that was two hundred years ago.”
“Yes and the Spacer woman was a particular friend of my Ancestor Elijah. She’s been alive for two hundred and thirty-three years, incase you still want to know, and do you think a robot can’t do as well as that? You were trying to fight a robot, you great fool.”
“Why didn’t it say so?” Niss said with great indignation.
“Why should it? Did you ask? See here, Niss. You heard what I told the others about telling this to anyone. It goes for you, too, but much more so. They are only crewmen, but I had my eye on you for crew leader. Had my eye on you. If you’re going to be in charge of the crew, you’ve got to have brains and not just muscle. So now it’s going to be harder for you because you’re going to have to prove you have brains against my firm opinion that you don’t.”
“Captain, I—”
“Don’t talk. Listen. If this story gets out, the other four will be apprentice shippers, but you will be nothing. You will never go on shipboard again. No ship will take you, I promise you that. Not as crew, not as passenger. Ask yourself what kind of money you can make on Baleyworld and doing what? That’s if you talk about this, or if you cross the Spacer woman in any way, or even just look at her for more than half a second at a time, or at her two robots. And you are going to have to see to it that no one else among the crew is in the least offensive. You’re responsible. And you’re fined two week’s pay.”
“But, Captain,” said Niss weakly, “the others—”
“I expected less from the others, Niss, so I fined them less. Get out of here.”
26
D.G. played idly with the photocube that always stood on his desk. Each time he turned it, it blackened, then cleared when stood upon one of its sides as its base. When it cleared, the smiling three-dimensional image of a woman’s head could be seen.—Crew rumor was that each of the six sides lead to the appearance of a different woman. The rumor was quite correct.
Jamin Oser watched the flashing appearance and disappearance of images totally without interest. Now that the ship was secured—or as secured as it could be against attack of any expected variety—it was time to think of the next step.
D.G., however, was approaching the matter obliquely—or, perhaps, not approaching it at all. He said, “It was the woman’s fault, of course.”
Oser shrugged and passed his hand over his beard, as though he were reassuring himself that he, at least, was not a woman. Unlike D.G., Oser had his upper lip luxuriantly covered as well.
D.G. said, “Apparently, being on the planet of her birth removed any thought of discretion. She left the ship, even though I had asked her not to.”
“You might have ordered her not to.”
“I don’t know that that would have helped. She’s a spoiled aristocrat, used to having her own way and to ordering her robots about. Besides, I plan to use her and I want her cooperation, not her pouting. And again—she was the Ancestor’s friend. “
“And still alive,” said Oser, shaking his head. “It makes the skin crawl. An old, old woman.”
“I know, but she looks quite young. Still attractive. And nose in the air. Wouldn’t retire when the crewmen approached, wouldn’t shake hands with one of them.—Well, it’s over.”
“Still, Captain, was it the right thing to tell Niss he had tackled a robot?”
“Had to! Had to, Oser. If he thought he’d been beaten and humiliated before four of his mates by an effeminate Spacer half his size, he’d be useless to us forever. It would have broken him completely. And we don’t want anything to happen that will start the rumor that Spacers—that human Spacers—are supermen. That’s why I had to order them so strenuously not to talk about it. Niss will ride herd on all of them—and if it does get out, it will also get out that the Spacer was a robot.—But I suppose there was a good side to the whole thing.”
“Where, Captain?” asked Oser.
“It got me to thinking about robots. How much do we know about them? How much do you know?”
Oser shrugged. “Captain, it’s not something I think about much.”
“Or something anyone else thinks about, either. At least, any Settler. We know that the Spacers have robots, depend on them, go nowhere without them, can’t do a thing without them, are parasites on them, and we’re sure they’re fading away because of them. We know that Earth once had robots forced on them by the Spacers and that they are gradually disappearing from Earth and are not found at all in Earth Cities, only in the countryside. We know that the Settler worlds don’t and won’t have them anywhere—town or country. So Settlers never meet them on their own worlds and hardly ever on Earth.” (His voice had a curious inflection each time he said “Earth,” as though one could hear the capital, as though one could hear the words “home” and “mother” whispered behind it.) “What else do we know?”
Oser said, “There’s the Three Laws of Robotics.”
“Right,” D.G. pushed the photocube to one side and leaned forward. “Especially the First Law. ‘A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.’ Yes? Well, don’t rely on it. It doesn’t mean a thing. We all feel ourselves to be absolutely safe from robots because of that and that’s fine if it gives us confidence, but not if it gives us false confidence. R. Daneel injured Niss and it didn’t bother the robot at all, First Law or no First Law.”
“He was defending—”
“Exactly. What if you must balance injuries? What if it was a case of either hurt Niss or allow your Spacer owner to come to harm? Naturally, she comes first.”
“It makes sense.”
“Of course it does. And here we are on a planet of robots, a couple of hundred million of them. What orders do they have? How do they balance the conflict between different harms? How can we be sure that none of them will touch us? Something on this planet has destroyed two ships already.”
Oser said uneasily, “This R. Daneel is an unusual robot, looks more like a man than we do. It may be we can’t generalize from him. That other robot, what’s his name?”
“Giskard. It’s easy to remember. My name is Daneel Giskard.”
“I think of you as captain, Captain. Anyway, that R. Giskard just stood there and didn’t do a thing. He looks like a robot and he acts like one. We’ve got lots of robots out there on Solaria watching us right now and they’re not doing a thing, either. Just watching.”
“And if there are some special robots that can harm us?”
“I think we’re prepared for them.”
“Now we are. That’s why the incident with Daneel and Niss was a good thing. We’ve been thinking that we can only be in trouble if some of the Solarians are still here. They don’t have to be. They can be gone. It may be that the robots—or at least some specially designed robots—can be dangerous. And if Lady Gladia can mobilize her robots in this place—it used to be her estate—and make them defend her and us, too, we may well be able to neutralize anything they’ve left behind.”
“Can she do that?” said Oser.
“We’re going to see,” said D.G.
27
“Thank you, Daneel,” Gladia said, “You did well.” Her face seemed pinched together, however. Her lips were thin and bloodless, her cheeks pale. Then, in a lower voice, “I wish I had not come.”
Giskard said, “It is a useless wish, Madam Gladia. Friend Daneel and I will remain outside the cabin to make sure you are not further disturbed.”
The corridor was empty and remained so, but Daneel and Giskard managed to speak in sound-wave intensities below the human threshold, exchanging thoughts in their brief and condensed way.
Giskard said, “Madam Gladia made an injudicious decision in refusing to retire. That is clear.”
“I presume, friend Giskard,” said Daneel, “that there was no possibility of maneuvering her into changing that decision.”
“It was far too firm, friend Daneel, and taken too quickly. The same was true of the intention of Niss, the Settler. Both his curiosity concerning Madam Gladia and his contempt and animosity toward you were too strong to manage without serious mental harm. The other four I could handle. It was quite possible to keep them from intervening, Their astonishment at your ability to handle Niss froze them naturally and I had only to strengthen that slightly.”
“That was fortune, friend Giskard. Had those four joined Mr. Niss, I would have been faced with the difficult choice of forcing Madam Gladia into a humiliating retreat or of badly damaging one—or two—of the Settlers to frighten off the rest. I think I would have had to choose the former alternative but it, too, would have caused me grave discomfort.”
“You are well, friend Daneel?”
“Quite well. My damage to Mr. Niss was minimal.”
“Physically, friend Daneel, it was. Within his mind, however, there was great humiliation, which was to him much worse than the physical damage. Since I could sense that, I could not have done what you did so easily. And yet, friend Daneel—”
“Yes, friend Giskard?”
“I am disturbed over the future. On Aurora, through all the decades of my existence, I have been able to work slowly, to wait for opportunities of touch in minds gently, without doing harm; of strengthening what is already there, of weakening what is already attenuated, of pushing gently in the direction of existing impulse. Now, however, we are coming to a time of crisis in which emotions will run high, decisions will be taken quickly, and events will race past us if I am to do any good at all, I will have to act quickly, too, and the Three Laws of Robotics prevent me from doing so. It takes time to weigh the subtleties of comparative physical and mental harm. Had I been alone with Madam Gladia at the time of the Settlers’ approach, I do not see what course I could have taken that would not have recognized as entailing serious damage to Madam Gladia, to one or more of the Settlers, to myself—or possibly to all who were involved.”
Daneel said, “What is there to do, friend Giskard?”
“Since it is impossible to modify the Three Laws, friend Daneel, once again we must come to the conclusion that there is nothing we can do but await failure.”
24
Gladia stood on the soil of Solaria. She smelled the vegetation—not quite the odors of Aurora—and at once she crossed the gap of twenty decades.
Nothing, she knew, could bring back associations in the way that odors could. Not sights, not sounds.
Just that faint, unique smell brought back childhood, the freedom of running about, with a dozen robots watching her carefully—the excitement of seeing other children sometimes, coming to a halt, staring shyly, approaching one another a half-step at a time, reaching out to touch, and then a robot saying, “Enough, Miss Gladia,” and being led away—looking over the shoulder at the other child, with whom there was another set of attendant robots in charge.
She remembered the day that she was told that only by holovision would she see other human beings thereafter.
“Seeing.” Viewing, she was told—not seeing. The robots said as though it were a word they must not say, so that they had to whisper it. She could see them, but they were not human.
It was not so bad at first. The images she could talk to were three-dimensional, free-moving. They could talk, run, turn cartwheels if they wished—but they could not be felt. And then she was told that she could actually see someone whom she had often viewed and whom she had liked. He was a grown man, quite a bit older than she was, though he looked quite young, as one did on Solaria. She would have permission to continue to see him—if she wished whenever necessary.
She wished. She remembered how it was—exactly how it was on that first day. She was tongue-tied and so was he. They circled each other, afraid to touch.—But it was marriage.
Of course it was. And then they met again—seeing, viewing, because it was marriage. They would finally touch each other. They were supposed to.
It was the most exciting day of her life—until it took place.
Fiercely, Gladia stopped her thoughts. Of what use to go on? She so warm and eager; he so cold and withdrawn. He continued to be cold. When he came to see her, at fixed intervals, for the rites that might (or might not) succeed in impregnating her, it was with such clear revulsion that she was soon longing for him to forget. But he was a man duty and he never forgot.
Then came the time, years of dragging unhappiness later, when she found him dead, his skull crushed, and herself as the only possible suspect. Elijah Baley had saved her then and she had been taken away from Solaria and sent to Aurora.
Now she was back, smelling Solaria.
Nothing else was familiar. The house in the distance bore no resemblance to anything she remembered even faintly. In twenty decades it had been modified, torn down, rebuilt. She could not even gain any sense of familiarity with the ground itself.
She found herself reaching backward to touch the Settler ship that had brought her to this world that smelled like home but was home in no other way—just to touch something that was familiar by comparison.
Daneel, who stood next to her in the shadow of the ship, said, “Do you see the robots, Madam Gladia?”
There were a group of them, a hundred yards away, amid the trees of an orchard, watching solemnly, motionlessly, shining in the sun with the grayish well-polished metal finish Gladia remembered Solarian robots to have.
She said, “I do, Daneel.”
“Is there anything familiar about them, madam?”
“Not at all. They seem to be new models. I can’t remember them and I’m sure they can’t remember me. If D.G. was expecting anything hopeful to come of my supposed familiarity with the robots on my estate, he will have to be disappointed.”
Giskard said, “They do not seem to be doing anything, madam.”
Gladia said, “That is understandable. We’re intruders and they’ve come to observe us and to report on us in accordance with what must be standing orders. They have no one now to report to, however, and can merely silently observe. Without further orders, I presume they will do no more than that, but they won’t cease doing so, either.”
Daneel said, “It might be well, Madam Gladia, if we retired to our quarters on board ship. The captain is, I believe, supervising the construction of defenses and is not ready to go exploring yet. I suspect he will not approve your having left your quarters without his specific permission.”
Gladia said haughtily, “I’m not going to delay stepping out onto the surface of my own world just to suit his whim.”
“I understand, but members of the crew are engaged in the vicinity and I believe that some note your presence here.”
“And are approaching,” said Giskard. “If you would avoid infection—”
“I’m prepared,” said Gladia. “Nose plugs and gloves.”
Gladia did not understand the nature of the structures being put up on the flat ground about the ship. For the most part, the crewmen, absorbed in the construction, had not seen Gladia and her two companions, standing as they were in the shadows. (It was the warm season on this portion of Solaria, which had a tendency to grow warmer—and on other occasions, colder—than Aurora did, since the Solarian day was nearly six hours longer than the Auroran day.)
The crewmen approaching were five in number and one of them, the tallest and largest, pointed in the direction of Gladia. The other four looked, remained standing for a while as though merely curious, and then, at a gesture from the first, approached again, changing their angle slightly so as to head directly for the Auroran three.
Gladia watched them silently and with her eyebrows raised in contempt. Daneel and Giskard waited impassively.
Giskard said in a low voice to Daneel, “I do not know where the captain is. I cannot distinguish him from the crowd of crewmen in whose midst he must be.”
“Shall we retire?” said Daneel aloud.
“That would be disgraceful,” said Gladia. “This is my world.”
She held her ground and the five crewmen came closer in leisurely fashion.
They had been working, doing hard physical labor (Like robots, thought Gladia with distain) and they were sweating. Gladia became aware of the odor that reeked from them. That would have served to force her away more than threats would, but she held her ground even so. The nose plugs, she was sure, mitigated the effect of the smell.
The large crewman approached more closely than the others. His skin was bronzed. His bare arms glistened with moisture and with shining musculature. He might be thirty (as nearly as Gladia could judge the age of these shortlived beings) and if he were washed and properly dressed, he might prove quite presentable.
He said, “So you are the Spacer lady from Aurora that we’ve been carrying on our ship?” He spoke rather slowly, obviously trying to attain an aristocratic tinge to his Galactic. He failed, of course, and he spoke like a Settler—even more crudely than D.G. did.
Gladia said, establishing her territorial rights, “I am from Solaria, Settler,” and stopped in confused embarrassment. She had spent so much time thinking of Solaria just now that twenty decades had dropped away and she had spoken with a thick Solarian accent. There was the broad “a” in Solaria and the rough “r,” while the “i” sounded horribly like “Oi”.
She said again, in a much lower, less commanding voice, but one in which the accent of Aurora University—the standard for Galactic speech through all the Spacer worlds—rang clear, “I am from Solaria, Settler.”
The Settler laughed and turned to the others. “She speaks la-di-da, but she had to try. Right, mates?”
The others laughed, too, and one cried out, “Get her to talk some more, Niss. Maybe we can a learn to talk like Spacer birdies.” And he placed one hand on his hip in as dainty a manner as he could manage, while holding the other hand out limply.
Niss said, still smiling, “Shut up, all of you.” There was instant silence.
He turned to Gladia again, “I’m Berto Niss, First-Class Shipper. And your name, little woman?”
Gladia did not venture to speak again.
Niss said, “I’m being polite, little woman. I’m speaking gentlemanly. Spacer-like. I know you’re old enough to be my great-grandmother. How old you are you, little woman?”
“Four hundred,” shouted one of the crewmen from behind Niss, “but she doesn’t look it!”
“She doesn’t look one hundred,” said another.
“She looks suitable for a little ding-donging, said a third, “and hasn’t had any for a long time, I guess. Ask her if she’d want some, Niss. Be polite and ask if we—can take turns.”
Gladia flushed angrily and Daneel said, “First-Class Shipper Niss, your companions are offending Madam Gladia. Would you retire?”
Niss turned to look at Daneel, whom, till now, he had totally ignored. The smile vanished from his face and he said, “Look, you. This little lady is off-limits. The captain said so. We won’t bother her. Just a little harmless talk. That thing there is a robot. We won’t bother with him and he can’t hurt us. We know the Three Laws of Robotics. We order him to stay away from us, see. But you are a Spacer and the captain has give us no orders about you. So you”—he pointed a finger—“stay out of this and don’t interfere or you’ll get your pretty skin all bruised up and then you might cry.”
Daneel said nothing.
Niss nodded his head. “Good. I like to see someone smart enough not to start anything he can’t finish.”
He turned to Gladia, “Now, little Spacer woman, we will leave you alone because the captain doesn’t want you bothered. If one of the men here made a crude remark, that’s only natural. Just shake hands and let’s be friends—Spacer, Settler, what’s the difference?”
He thrust out his hand toward Gladia, who shrank away in horror. Daneel’s hand moved outward in a flick that was almost too fast to see and caught Niss’s wrist. “First-Class Shipper Niss,” he said quietly, “do not attempt to touch the lady.”
Niss looked down at his hand and at the fingers that enclosed his wrist firmly. He said in a low and menacing growl, “You have till the count of three to let go.”
Daneel’s hand fell away. He said, “I must do as you say for I do not wish to harm you, but I must protect the lady and if she doesn’t wish to be touched, as I believe she doesn’t, I may be forced into a position where I must cause you pain. Please, accept my assurance that I will do all I can to minimize that.”
One of the crewmen shouted joyously, “Give it to him, Niss. He’s a talker.”
Niss said, “Look, Spacer, twice I told you to keep out and you touched me once. Now I tell you a third time and that’s it. Make a move, say a word, and I take you apart. This little woman is going to shake hands, that’s all, friendly like. Then we all go. Fair enough?”
Gladia said in a low choking voice. “I won’t be touched by him. Do what is necessary.”
Daneel said, “Sir, with all due respect, the lady does not wish to be touched. I must ask you—all of you—to leave.”
Niss smiled and one large arm moved as though to brush Daneel to one side—and to do it hard.
Daneel’s left arm flickered and once again Niss was held by the wrist. “Please go, sir,” said Daneel.
Niss’s teeth continued to show, but he was no longer smiling. Violently, he brought his arm up. Daneel’s enclosing hand moved up for a short distance, slowed, and came to a halt. His face showed no strain. His hand moved down, dragging Niss’s arm with it, and then, with a rapid twist, he bent Niss’s arm behind the Settler’s broad back and held it there.
Niss, who found himself unexpectedly with his back to Daneel, brought his other arm up over his head, groping for Daneel’s neck. His other wrist was seized and pulled down farther than it could easily go and Niss grunted in clear misery.
The other four crewmen, who had been watching in eager anticipation, remained in place now, motionless, silent, mouths open.
Niss, staring at them, grunted, “Help me!”
Daneel said, “They will not help you, sir, for the captain’s punishment will be all the worse if they try. I must ask you now to assure me that you will no longer trouble Madam Gladia and that you will leave quietly, all of you. Otherwise, I very much regret, First-Class Shipper, that I must pull your arms out of their sockets.”
As he said that, he tightened his grip on either wrist and Niss emitted a muffled grunt.
“My apologies, sir,” said Daneel, “but I am under the strictest orders. May I have your assurance?”
Niss kicked backward with sudden viciousness, but well before his—heavy boot could make contact,—Daneel had faded to one side and pulled him off-balance. He went facedown heavily.
“May I have your assurance, sir?” said Daneel, now pulling gently at the two wrists so that the crewman’s arms lifted slightly up from the back.
Niss howled and said, half-incoherent, “I give in. Let go.”
Daneel let go at once and stepped back. Slowly and painfully, Niss rolled over, moving his arms slowly and rotating his wrists with a twisted grimace.
Then, when his right arm moved near the holster he wore, he snatched clumsily at his sidearm.
Daneel’s foot came down on his hand and pinned it to the ground. “Don’t do that, sir, or I may be forced to break one or more of the small bones in your hand.” He bent down and extracted Niss’s blaster from its holster. “Now stand up.”
“Well, Mr. Niss,” came another voice. “Do as you are told and stand up.”
D.G. Baley was standing at their side, beard bristling, face slightly flushed, but his voice was dangerously calm.
“You four,” he said, “hand me your sidearms, one at a time. Come on. Move a little faster. One-two-three-four. Now continue to stand there at attention. Sir,” this to Daneel—“give me that sidearm you are holding. Good. Five. And now, Mr. Niss, at attention.” And he placed the blasters on the ground beside him.
Niss stiffened to attention, eyes bloodshot, face contorted, in obvious pain.
“Would someone,” said D.G., “please say what has been going on?”
“Captain,” said Daneel quickly, “Mr. Niss and I have had a playful altercation. No harm has been done.”
“Mr. Niss, however, looks somewhat harmed,” said D.G.
“No permanent harm, Captain,” said Daneel.
“I see. Well, we’ll get back to this later.—Madam,” he turned on his heel to address Gladia—“I don’t recall that I gave you permission to emerge from the ship. You will go back to your cabin with your two companions at once. I am captain here and this is not Aurora. Do as I say!”
Daneel placed an apologetic hand on Gladia’s elbow. Her chin lifted, but she, turned and went up the gangplank and into the ship, Daneel at her side, Giskard following.
D.G. then turned to the crewmen. “You five,” he said, his voice never lifting from its flat calm, “come with me. We’ll get to the bottom of this—or of you.” And he gestured to a petty officer to pick up the sidearms and take them away.
25
D.G. stared at the five grimly. He was in his own quarters, the only portion of the ship that had a semblance of size to it and the beginnings of an appearance of luxury.
He said, pointing to each in turn, “Now, this is the way we’ll work it. You tell me exactly what happened, word for word, motion for motion. When you’re finished, you tell me anything that was wrong or left out. Then you the same, and then you, and then I’ll get to you, Niss. I expect that you were all out of order, that you all did something unusually stupid that earned you all, but especially Niss, considerable humiliation. If, in your story, it would appear that you did nothing wrong and suffered no humiliation, then I’ll know you’re lying, especially as the Spacer woman will surely tell me what happened and I intend to believe every word she says. A lie will make matters worse for you than anything you’ve actually done. Now,” he barked, “start!”
The first crewman stumbled hastily through the story, and then the second, somewhat correcting, somewhat expanding, then the third and the fourth. D.G. listened, stony faced, to the recital, then motioned Berto Niss to one side.
He spoke to the other four, “And while Niss was getting his face rightly mashed into the dirt by the Spacer, what were you four doing? Watching? Scared to move? All four of you? Against one man?”
One of the men broke the thickening silence to say, “It all happened so quick, Captain. We we’re just getting set to move in and then it was all over.”
“And what were you getting ready to do in case you did manage to get to move someday?”
“Well, we were going to pull the Spacer foreigner off our mate.”
“Do you think you could have?”
This time no one offered to make a sound.
D.G. leaned toward them. “Now, here’s the situation. You had no business with the foreigners, so you’re fined one week’s pay each. And now—let’s get something straight. If you tell what has happened to anyone else—in the crew or out, now or ever, whether drunk or sober, you’ll be broken, every one of you, to apprentice shipper. It doesn’t matter which one of you talks, you’ll all four be broken, so keep an eye on each other. Now get to your assigned tasks and if you cross me at any time during this voyage, if you as much as hiccup against regulations, you’ll be in the brig.”
The four left, mournful, hangdog, tight-lipped. Niss remained, a bruise developing on his face, his arms clearly in discomfort.
D.G. regarded him with a threatening quiet, while Niss stared to the left, to the right, at his feet, everywhere but at the face of the captain. It was only when Niss’s eyes, running out of evasion, caught the glare of the captain, that D.G. said, “Well, you look very handsome, now that you have tangled with a sissy Spacer half your size. Next time you better hide when one of them shows up—”
“Yes, Captain,” said Niss miserably.
“Did you or did you not, Niss, hear me in my briefing, before we left Aurora, say that the Spacer woman and her companions were on no account to be disturbed or spoken to?”
“Captain, I wanted only a polite howdy do. We was curious for a closer look. No harm meant.”
“You meant no harm? You I asked how old she was. Was that your business?”
“Just curious. Wanted to know.”
“One of you made a sexual suggestion.”
“Not me, Captain.”
“Someone else? Did you apologize—for it?”
“To a Spacer?” Niss sounded horrified.
“Certainly. You were going against my orders.”
“I meant no harm,” said Niss doggedly.
“You meant no harm to the man?”
“He put his hand on me, Captain.”
“I know he did. Why?”
“Because he was ordering me around.”
“And you wouldn’t stand for it?”
“Would you, Captain?”
“All right, then. You didn’t stand for it. You fell down for it. Right on your face. How did that happen?”
“I don’t rightly know, Captain. He was fast. Like the camera was sped up. And he had a grip like iron.”
D.G. said, “So he did. What did you expect, you idiot? He is iron.”
“Captain?”
“Niss, is it possible you don’t know the story of Elijah Baley?”
Niss rubbed his ear in embarrassment. “I know he’s your great-something-grandfather, Captain.”
“Yes, everyone knows that from my name. Have you ever viewed his life story?”
“I’m not a viewing man, Captain. Not on history.” He shrugged and, as he did so, winced and made as though to rub his shoulder, then decided he didn’t quite dare do so.
“Did you ever hear of R. Daneel Olivaw?”
Niss squeezed his brows together. “He was Elijah Baley’s friend.”
“Yes, he was. You do know something then. Do you know what the ‘R’ stands for in R. Daneel Olivaw?”
“It stands for ‘Robot,’ right? He was a robot friend. There was robots on Earth in them days.”
“There were, Niss, and still are. But Daneel wasn’t just a robot. He was a Spacer robot who looked like a Spacer man. Think about it, Niss. Guess who the Spacer man you picked a fight with really was.”
Niss’s eyes widened, his face reddened dully. “You mean that Spacer was a ro—”
“That was R. Daneel Olivaw.”
“But, Captain, that was two hundred years ago.”
“Yes and the Spacer woman was a particular friend of my Ancestor Elijah. She’s been alive for two hundred and thirty-three years, incase you still want to know, and do you think a robot can’t do as well as that? You were trying to fight a robot, you great fool.”
“Why didn’t it say so?” Niss said with great indignation.
“Why should it? Did you ask? See here, Niss. You heard what I told the others about telling this to anyone. It goes for you, too, but much more so. They are only crewmen, but I had my eye on you for crew leader. Had my eye on you. If you’re going to be in charge of the crew, you’ve got to have brains and not just muscle. So now it’s going to be harder for you because you’re going to have to prove you have brains against my firm opinion that you don’t.”
“Captain, I—”
“Don’t talk. Listen. If this story gets out, the other four will be apprentice shippers, but you will be nothing. You will never go on shipboard again. No ship will take you, I promise you that. Not as crew, not as passenger. Ask yourself what kind of money you can make on Baleyworld and doing what? That’s if you talk about this, or if you cross the Spacer woman in any way, or even just look at her for more than half a second at a time, or at her two robots. And you are going to have to see to it that no one else among the crew is in the least offensive. You’re responsible. And you’re fined two week’s pay.”
“But, Captain,” said Niss weakly, “the others—”
“I expected less from the others, Niss, so I fined them less. Get out of here.”
26
D.G. played idly with the photocube that always stood on his desk. Each time he turned it, it blackened, then cleared when stood upon one of its sides as its base. When it cleared, the smiling three-dimensional image of a woman’s head could be seen.—Crew rumor was that each of the six sides lead to the appearance of a different woman. The rumor was quite correct.
Jamin Oser watched the flashing appearance and disappearance of images totally without interest. Now that the ship was secured—or as secured as it could be against attack of any expected variety—it was time to think of the next step.
D.G., however, was approaching the matter obliquely—or, perhaps, not approaching it at all. He said, “It was the woman’s fault, of course.”
Oser shrugged and passed his hand over his beard, as though he were reassuring himself that he, at least, was not a woman. Unlike D.G., Oser had his upper lip luxuriantly covered as well.
D.G. said, “Apparently, being on the planet of her birth removed any thought of discretion. She left the ship, even though I had asked her not to.”
“You might have ordered her not to.”
“I don’t know that that would have helped. She’s a spoiled aristocrat, used to having her own way and to ordering her robots about. Besides, I plan to use her and I want her cooperation, not her pouting. And again—she was the Ancestor’s friend. “
“And still alive,” said Oser, shaking his head. “It makes the skin crawl. An old, old woman.”
“I know, but she looks quite young. Still attractive. And nose in the air. Wouldn’t retire when the crewmen approached, wouldn’t shake hands with one of them.—Well, it’s over.”
“Still, Captain, was it the right thing to tell Niss he had tackled a robot?”
“Had to! Had to, Oser. If he thought he’d been beaten and humiliated before four of his mates by an effeminate Spacer half his size, he’d be useless to us forever. It would have broken him completely. And we don’t want anything to happen that will start the rumor that Spacers—that human Spacers—are supermen. That’s why I had to order them so strenuously not to talk about it. Niss will ride herd on all of them—and if it does get out, it will also get out that the Spacer was a robot.—But I suppose there was a good side to the whole thing.”
“Where, Captain?” asked Oser.
“It got me to thinking about robots. How much do we know about them? How much do you know?”
Oser shrugged. “Captain, it’s not something I think about much.”
“Or something anyone else thinks about, either. At least, any Settler. We know that the Spacers have robots, depend on them, go nowhere without them, can’t do a thing without them, are parasites on them, and we’re sure they’re fading away because of them. We know that Earth once had robots forced on them by the Spacers and that they are gradually disappearing from Earth and are not found at all in Earth Cities, only in the countryside. We know that the Settler worlds don’t and won’t have them anywhere—town or country. So Settlers never meet them on their own worlds and hardly ever on Earth.” (His voice had a curious inflection each time he said “Earth,” as though one could hear the capital, as though one could hear the words “home” and “mother” whispered behind it.) “What else do we know?”
Oser said, “There’s the Three Laws of Robotics.”
“Right,” D.G. pushed the photocube to one side and leaned forward. “Especially the First Law. ‘A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.’ Yes? Well, don’t rely on it. It doesn’t mean a thing. We all feel ourselves to be absolutely safe from robots because of that and that’s fine if it gives us confidence, but not if it gives us false confidence. R. Daneel injured Niss and it didn’t bother the robot at all, First Law or no First Law.”
“He was defending—”
“Exactly. What if you must balance injuries? What if it was a case of either hurt Niss or allow your Spacer owner to come to harm? Naturally, she comes first.”
“It makes sense.”
“Of course it does. And here we are on a planet of robots, a couple of hundred million of them. What orders do they have? How do they balance the conflict between different harms? How can we be sure that none of them will touch us? Something on this planet has destroyed two ships already.”
Oser said uneasily, “This R. Daneel is an unusual robot, looks more like a man than we do. It may be we can’t generalize from him. That other robot, what’s his name?”
“Giskard. It’s easy to remember. My name is Daneel Giskard.”
“I think of you as captain, Captain. Anyway, that R. Giskard just stood there and didn’t do a thing. He looks like a robot and he acts like one. We’ve got lots of robots out there on Solaria watching us right now and they’re not doing a thing, either. Just watching.”
“And if there are some special robots that can harm us?”
“I think we’re prepared for them.”
“Now we are. That’s why the incident with Daneel and Niss was a good thing. We’ve been thinking that we can only be in trouble if some of the Solarians are still here. They don’t have to be. They can be gone. It may be that the robots—or at least some specially designed robots—can be dangerous. And if Lady Gladia can mobilize her robots in this place—it used to be her estate—and make them defend her and us, too, we may well be able to neutralize anything they’ve left behind.”
“Can she do that?” said Oser.
“We’re going to see,” said D.G.
27
“Thank you, Daneel,” Gladia said, “You did well.” Her face seemed pinched together, however. Her lips were thin and bloodless, her cheeks pale. Then, in a lower voice, “I wish I had not come.”
Giskard said, “It is a useless wish, Madam Gladia. Friend Daneel and I will remain outside the cabin to make sure you are not further disturbed.”
The corridor was empty and remained so, but Daneel and Giskard managed to speak in sound-wave intensities below the human threshold, exchanging thoughts in their brief and condensed way.
Giskard said, “Madam Gladia made an injudicious decision in refusing to retire. That is clear.”
“I presume, friend Giskard,” said Daneel, “that there was no possibility of maneuvering her into changing that decision.”
“It was far too firm, friend Daneel, and taken too quickly. The same was true of the intention of Niss, the Settler. Both his curiosity concerning Madam Gladia and his contempt and animosity toward you were too strong to manage without serious mental harm. The other four I could handle. It was quite possible to keep them from intervening, Their astonishment at your ability to handle Niss froze them naturally and I had only to strengthen that slightly.”
“That was fortune, friend Giskard. Had those four joined Mr. Niss, I would have been faced with the difficult choice of forcing Madam Gladia into a humiliating retreat or of badly damaging one—or two—of the Settlers to frighten off the rest. I think I would have had to choose the former alternative but it, too, would have caused me grave discomfort.”
“You are well, friend Daneel?”
“Quite well. My damage to Mr. Niss was minimal.”
“Physically, friend Daneel, it was. Within his mind, however, there was great humiliation, which was to him much worse than the physical damage. Since I could sense that, I could not have done what you did so easily. And yet, friend Daneel—”
“Yes, friend Giskard?”
“I am disturbed over the future. On Aurora, through all the decades of my existence, I have been able to work slowly, to wait for opportunities of touch in minds gently, without doing harm; of strengthening what is already there, of weakening what is already attenuated, of pushing gently in the direction of existing impulse. Now, however, we are coming to a time of crisis in which emotions will run high, decisions will be taken quickly, and events will race past us if I am to do any good at all, I will have to act quickly, too, and the Three Laws of Robotics prevent me from doing so. It takes time to weigh the subtleties of comparative physical and mental harm. Had I been alone with Madam Gladia at the time of the Settlers’ approach, I do not see what course I could have taken that would not have recognized as entailing serious damage to Madam Gladia, to one or more of the Settlers, to myself—or possibly to all who were involved.”
Daneel said, “What is there to do, friend Giskard?”
“Since it is impossible to modify the Three Laws, friend Daneel, once again we must come to the conclusion that there is nothing we can do but await failure.”
7. THE OVERSEER
28
It was morning on Solaria, morning on the estate—her estate. Off in the distance was the establishment that might have been her establishment. Somehow twenty decades dropped away and Aurora seemed to her to be a far-off dream that had never happened.
She turned to D.G., who was tightening the belt about his thin outer garment, a belt from which two sidearms hung. On his left hip was the neuronic whip; on his right, something shorter and bulkier that she guessed was a blaster.
“Are we going to the house?” she asked.
“Eventually,” said D.G. with a certain absence of mind. He was inspecting each sidearm in turn, holding one of them to his ear as though he were listening for a faint buzz that would tell him it was alive.
“Just the four of us?” She automatically turned her eyes to each of the others: D.G., Daneel—She said to Daneel, “Where is Giskard, Daneel?”
Daneel said, “It seemed to him, Madam Gladia, that it would be wise to act as an advance guard. As a robot, he might not be noticeable among other robots—and if there should be anything wrong, he could warn us. In any case, he is more expendable than either yourself or the captain.”
“Good robotic thinking,” said D.G. grimly. “It’s just as well. Come, we’re moving forward now.”
“Just the three of us?” said Gladia, a touch plaintively. “To be honest, I lack Giskard’s robotic ability to accept expendability.”
D.G. said, “We’re all expendable, Lady Gladia. Two ships have been destroyed, every member of each crew indiscriminately brought to an end. There’s no safety in numbers here.”
“You’re not making me feel any better, D.G.”
“Then I’ll try. The earlier ships were not prepared. Our ship is. And I’m prepared, too.” He slapped his two hands to his hips. “And you’ve got a robot with you who has showed himself to be an efficient protector. What’s more, you yourself are our best weapon. You know how to order robots to do what you want them to do and that may well be crucial. You are the only one with us who can do that and the earlier ships had no one at all of your caliber. Come, then—”
They moved forward. Gladia said, after a while, “We’re not walking toward the house.”
“No, not yet. First, we’re walking toward a group of robots. You see them, I hope.”
“Yes, I do, but they’re not doing anything.”
“No, they’re not. There were many more robots present when we first landed. Most of them have gone, but these remain. Why?”
“If we ask them, they’ll tell us.”
“You will ask them, Lady Gladia.”
“They’ll answer you, D.G., as readily as they’ll answer me. We’re equally human.”
D.G. stopped short and the other two stopped with him. He turned to Gladia and said, smiling, “My dear Lady Gladia, equally human? A Spacer and a Settler? Whatever has come over you?”
“We are equally human to a robot,” she said waspishly.
“And please don’t play games. I did not play the game of Spacer and Earthman with your Ancestor.”
D.G.’s smile vanished. “That’s true. My apologies, my lady. I shall try to control my sense of the sardonic for, after all, on this world we are allies.”
He said, a moment later, “Now, madam, what I want you to do is to find out what orders the robots have been given—if any; if there are any robots that might, by some chance, know you; if there are any human beings on the estate or on the world; or anything else it occurs to you to ask. They shouldn’t be dangerous; they’re robots and you’re human; they can’t hurt you. To be sure,” he added, remembering, “your Daneel rather manhandled Niss, but that was under conditions that don’t apply here. And Daneel may go with you.”
Respectfully, Daneel said, “I would in any case accompany Lady Gladia, Captain. That is my function.”
“Giskard’s function, too, I imagine,” said D.G., “and yet he’s wandered off.”
“For a purpose, Captain, that he discussed with me and that we agreed was an essential way of protecting Lady Gladia.”
“Very well. You two move forward. I’ll cover you both.”
He drew the weapon on his right hip. “If I call out ‘Drop,’ the two of you fall down instantly. This thing does not play favorites.”
“Please don’t use it as anything but a last resort, D.G.,” said Gladia. “There would scarcely be an occasion to against robots. Come, Daneel!”
Off she went, stepping forward rapidly and firmly toward the group of about a dozen robots that were standing just in front of a line of low bushes with the morning sun reflecting in glints here and there from their burnished exteriors.
29
The robots did not retreat, nor did they advance. They remained calmly in place. Gladia counted them. Eleven in plain sight. There might be others, possibly, that were unseen.
They were designed Solaria-fashion. Very polished. Very smooth. No illusion of clothing and not much realism. They were almost like—mathematical abstractions of the human body, with no two of them quite alike.
She had the feeling that they were by no means as flexible or complex as Auroran robots but were more single mindedly adapted to specific tasks.
She stopped at least four meters from the line of robots and Daneel (she sensed) stopped as soon as she did and remained less than a meter behind. He was close enough to interfere at once in case of need, but was far enough back to make it clear that she was the dominant spokesperson of the pair. The robots before her, she was certain, viewed Daneel as a human being, but she also knew that Daneel was too conscious of himself as a robot to presume upon the misconception of other robots.
Gladia said, “Which one of you will speak with me?”
There was a brief period of silence, as though an unspoken conference were taking place. Then one robot took a step forward. “Madam, I will speak.”
“Do you have a name?”
“No, madam. I have only a serial number.”
“How long have you been operational?”
“I have been operational twenty-nine years, madam.”
“Has anyone else in this group been operational for longer?”
“No, madam. It is why I, rather than another, am speaking.”
“How many robots are employed on this estate?”
“I do not have that figure, madam.”
“Roughly.”
“Perhaps ten thousand, madam.”
“Have any been operational for longer than twenty decades?”
“The agricultural robots some who may, madam.”
“And the household robots?”
“They have not been operational long, madam—The masters prefer new-model robots.”
Gladia nodded, turned to Daneel, and said, “That makes sense. It was so in my day, too.”
She turned back to the robot. “To whom does this estate belong?”
“It is the Zoberlon Estate, madam.”
“How long has it belonged to the Zoberlon family?”
“Longer, madam, than I have been operational. I do not know how much longer, but the information can be obtained.”
“To whom did it belong before the Zoberlons took possession?”
“I do not know, madam, but the information can be obtained.”
“Have you ever heard of the Delmarre family?”
“No, madam.”
Gladia turned to Daneel and said, rather ruefully, “I’m trying to lead the robot, little by little, as Elijah might once have done, but I don’t think I know how to do it properly.”
“On the contrary, Lady Gladia,” said Daneel gravely, “it seems to me you have established much. It is not likely that any robot on this estate, except perhaps for a few of the agriculturals, would have any memory of you. Would you have encountered any of the agriculturals in your time?”
Gladia shook her head. “Never! I don’t recall seeing any of them even in the distance.”
“It is clear, then, that you are not known on this estate.”
“Exactly. And poor D.G. has brought us along for nothing. If he expected any good of me, he has failed.”
“To know the truth is always useful, madam. Not to be known is, in this case, less useful than to be known, but not to know whether one is known or not would be less useful still. Are there not, perhaps, other points on which you might elicit information?”
“Yes, let’s see—” For a few seconds, she was lost in thought, then she said softly, “It’s odd. When I speak to robots, I speak with a pronounced Solarian accent, yet I do not speak so to you.”
Daneel said, “It is not surprising, Lady Gladia. The robots speak with such an accent, for they are Solarian. That brings back the days of your youth and you speak, automatically, as you spoke then. You are at once yourself, however, when you turn to me because I am part of your present world.”
A slow smile appeared on Gladia’s face and she said, “You reason more and more like a human being, Daneel.”
She turned back to the robots and was keenly aware of the peacefulness of the surroundings. The sky was an almost unmarked blue, except for a thin line of clouds on the western horizon (indicating that it might turn cloudy in the afternoon). There was the sound of rustling leaves in a light wind, the whirring of insects, a lonely birdcall. No sound of human beings. There might be many robots about, but they worked silently. There weren’t the exuberant sounds of human beings that she had grown accustomed to (painfully, at first) on Aurora.
But now back on Solaria, she found the peace wonderful. It had not been all bad on Solaria. She had to admit it.
She said to the robot quickly, with a note of compulsion, edging her voice, “Where are your masters?”
It was useless, however, to try to hurry or alarm a robot or to catch it off-guard. It said, without any sign of perturbation. “They are gone, madam.”
“Where have they gone?”
“I don’t know, madam. I was not told.”
“Which of you knows?”
There was a complete silence.
Gladia said, “Is there any robot on the estate who would know?”
The robot said, “I do not know of any, madam.”
“Did the masters take robots with them?”
“Yes, madam.”
“Yet they didn’t take you. Why do you remain behind?”
“To do our work, madam.”
“Yet you stand here and do nothing. Is that work?”
“We guard the estate from those from outside, madam.”
“Such as we?”
“Yes, madam.”
“But here we are and yet you still do nothing. Why is that?”
“We observe, madam. We have no further orders.”
“Have you reported your observations?”
“Yes, madam.”
“To whom?”
“To the overseer, madam.”
“Where is the overseer?”
“In the mansion, madam.”
“Ah.” Gladia turned and walked briskly back to D.G. Daneel followed.
“Well?” said D.G. He was holding both weapons at the ready, but put them back in their holsters as they returned. Gladia shook her head. “Nothing. No robot knows me. No robot, I’m sure, knows where the Solarians have gone. But they report to an overseer.”
“An overseer?”
“On Aurora and the other Spacer worlds, the overseer on large estates with numerous robots is some human whose profession it is to organize and direct groups of working robots in the fields, mines, and industrial establishments.”
“Then there are Solarians left behind?”
Gladia shook her head. “Solaria is an exception. The ratio of robots to human beings has always been so high that it has not been the custom to assign a man or woman to oversee the robots. That job has been done by another robot, one that is specially programmed.”
“Then there is a robot in that mansion”—D.G. nodded with his head—“who is more advanced than these and who might profitably be questioned.”
“Perhaps, but I am not certain it is safe to attempt to go into the mansion.”
D.G. said sardoncially, “It is only an—other robot.”
“The mansion may be booby-trapped.”
“This field may be booby-trapped.”
Gladia said, “It would be better to send one of the robots to the mansion to tell the overseer that human beings wish to speak to him.”
D.G. said, “That will not be necessary. That job has apparently been done already. The overseer is emerging and is neither a robot nor a ‘him.’ What I see is a human female.”
Gladia looked up in astonishment. Advancing rapidly toward them was a tall, well-formed, and exceedingly attractive woman. Even at a distance, there was no doubt whatever as to her sex.
30
D.G. smiled broadly. He seemed to be straightening himself a bit, squaring his shoulders, throwing them back. One hand went lightly to his beard, as though to make sure it was sleek and smooth.
Gladia looked at him with disfavor. She said, “That is not a Solarian woman.”
“How can you tell?” said D.G.
“No Solarian woman would allow herself to be seen so freely by other human beings. Seen, not viewed.”
“I know the distinction, my lady. Yet you allow me to see you.”
“I have lived over twenty decades on Aurora. Even so I have enough Solarian left in me still not to appear to others like that.”
“She has a great deal to display, madam. I would say she is taller than I am and as beautiful as a sunset.”
The overseer had stopped twenty meters short of their position and the robots had moved aside so that none of them remained between the woman on one side and the three from the ship on the other.
D.G. said, “Customs can change in twenty decades.”
“Not something as basic as the Solarian dislike of human contact,” said Gladia sharply. “Not in two hundred decades.” She had slipped into her Solarian twang again.
“I think you underestimate social plasticity. Still, Solarian or not, I presume she’s a Spacer—and if there are other Spacers like that, I’m all for peaceful coexistence.”
Gladia’s look of disapproval deepened. “Well, do you intend to stand and gaze in that fashion for the next hour or two? Don’t you want me to question the woman?”
D.G. started and turned to look at Gladia with distinct annoyance. “You question the robots, as you’ve done. I question the human beings.”
“Especially the females, I suppose.”
“I wouldn’t like to boast, but—”
“It is a subject on which I have never known a man who didn’t.”
Daneel interposed, “I do not think the woman will wait longer. If you wish to retain the initiative, Captain, approach her now. I will follow, as I did with Madam Gladia.”
“I scarcely need the protection,” said D.G. brusquely.
“You are a human being and I must not, through inaction, allow harm to come to you.”
D.G. walked forward briskly, Daneel following. Gladia, reluctant to remain behind alone, advanced a bit tentatively.
The overseer watched quietly. She wore a smooth white robe that reached down to mid-thigh and was belted at the waist. It showed a deep and inviting cleavage and her nipples were clearly visible against the thin material of the robe. There was no indication that she was wearing anything else but a pair of shoes.
When D.G. stopped, a meter of space separated them. Her skin, he could see, was flawless, her cheekbones were high, her eyes wide-set and somewhat slanted, her expression serene.
“Madam,” said D.G., speaking as close an approximation to Auroran patrician as he could manage, “have I the pleasure of speaking to the overseer of this estate?”
The woman listened for a moment and then said, in an accent so thickly Solarian as to seem almost comic when coming from her perfectly shaped mouth, “You are not a human being.”
She then flashed into action so quickly that Gladia, still some ten meters off, could not see in detail what had happened. She saw only a blur of motion and then D.G. lying on his back motionless and the woman standing there with his weapons, one in each hand.
31
What stupefied Gladia most in that one dizzying moment was that Daneel had not moved in either prevention or reprisal.
But even as the thought struck her, it was out of date, for Daneel had already caught the woman’s left wrist and twisted it, saying, “Drop those weapons at once,” in a harsh peremptory voice she had never heard him use before. It was inconceivable that he should so address a human being.
The woman said, just as harshly in her higher register, “You are not a human being.” Her right arm came up and she fired the weapon it held. For a moment, a faint glow flickered over Daneel’s body and Gladia, unable to make a sound in her state, of shock, felt her sight dim. She had never in her life fainted, but this seemed a prelude.
Daneel did not dissolve, nor was there an explosive report. Daneel, Gladia realized, had prudently seized the arm that held the blaster. The other held the neuronic whip and it was that which had been discharged in full—and at close range—upon Daneel. Had he been human, the massive stimulation of his sensory nerves might well have killed him or left him permanently disabled. Yet he was, after all, however human in appearance, a robot and his equivalent of a nervous system did not react to the whip.
Daneel seized the other arm now, forcing it up. He said again, “Drop those weapons or I will tear each arm from its socket.”
“Will you?” said the woman. Her arms contracted and, for a moment, Daneel was lifted off the ground. Daneel’s legs swung backward, then forward, pendulum like, using the points where the arms joined as a pivot. His feet struck the woman with force and both fell heavily to the ground.
Gladia, without putting the thought into words, realized that although the woman looked as human as Daneel did, she was just as nonhuman. A sense of instant outrage flooded Gladia, who was suddenly Solarian to the core—outrage that a robot should use force on a human being. Granted that she might somehow have recognized Daneel for what he was, but how dare she strike D.G.?
Gladia was running forward, screaming. It never occurred to her to fear a robot simply because it had knocked down a strong man with a blow and was battling an even stronger robot to a draw.
“How dare you?” she screamed in a Solarian accent so thick that it grated on her own ear—but how else does one speak to a Solarian robot? “How dare you, girl? Stop all resistance immediately!”
The woman’s muscles seemed to relax totally and simultaneously, as though an electric current had suddenly been shut off. Her beautiful eyes looked at Gladia without enough humanity to seem startled. She said in an indistinct, hesitating voice, “My regrets, madam.”
Daneel was on his feet, staring down watchfully at the woman who lay on the grass. D.G., suppressing a groan, was struggling upright.
Daneel bent for the weapons, but Gladia waved him away furiously.
“Give me those weapons, girl,” she said.
The woman said, “Yes, madam.”
Gladia snatched at them, chose the blaster swiftly, and handed it to Daneel. “Destroy her when that seems best, Daneel. That’s an order.” She handed the neuronic whip to D.G. and said, “This is useless here, except against me and yourself. Are you all right?”
“No, I’m not all right,” muttered D.G., rubbing one hip. “Do you mean she’s a robot?”
“Would a woman have thrown you like that?”
“Not any whom I have ever met before. I said there might be special robots on Solaria who were programmed to be dangerous.”
“Of course,” said Gladia unkindly, “but when you saw something that looked like your idea of a beautiful woman, you forgot.”
“Yes, it is easy to be wise after the fact.”
Gladia sniffed and turned again to the robot, “What is your name, girl?”
“I am called Landaree, madam.”
“Get up, Landaree.”
Landaree rose much as Daneel had—as though she were on springs. Her struggle with Daneel seemed to have left her, totally unharmed.
Gladia said, “Why, against the First Law, have you attacked these human beings?”
“Madam,” said Landaree firmly, “these are not human beings.”
“And do you say that I am not a human being?”
“No, madam, you a human being.”
“Then, as a human being, I am defining these two men as human beings.—Do you hear me?”
“Madam,” said Landaree a little more softly, “these are not human beings.”
“They are indeed human beings because I tell you they are. You are forbidden to attack them or harm them in any way.”
Landaree stood mute.
“Do you understand what I have said?” Gladia’s voice grew more Solarian still as she reached for greater intensity.
“Madam,” said Landaree, “these are not human beings.”
Daneel said to Gladia softly, “Madam, she has been given orders of such firmness that you cannot easily countervail them.”
“We’ll see about that,” said Gladia, breathing quickly.
Landaree looked about. The group of robots, during the few minutes of conflict, had come closer to Gladia and her two companions. In the background were two robots who, Gladia decided, were not members of the original group and they were carrying between them, with some difficulty, a large and very massive device of some sort. Landaree gestured to them and they moved forward a bit more quickly.
Gladia cried out, “Robots, stop!”
They stopped.
Landaree said, “Madam, I am fulfilling my duties. I am following my instructions.”
Gladia said, “Your duty, girl, is to obey my orders!”
Landaree said, “I cannot be ordered to disobey my instructions!”
Gladia said, “Daneel, blast her!”
Afterward, Gladia was able to reason out what had happened. Daneel’s reaction time was much faster than a human being’s would have been and he knew that he was facing a robot against which the Three Laws did not inhibit violence. However, she looked so human that even the precise knowledge that she was a robot did not totally overcome his inhibition. He followed the order more slowly than he should have.
Landaree, whose definition of “human being” was clearly not the one Daneel used, was not inhibited by his appearance and she stuck the more quickly. She had her grip on the blaster and again the two struggled.
D.G. turned his neuronic whip butt-first and came in at a half-run to strike. He hit her head squarely, but it had no effect on the robot and her leg sent him flailing backward.
Gladia said, “Robot! Stop!” Her clenched hands were raised.
Landaree shouted in a stentorian contralto, “All of you. Join me! The two apparent males are not human beings. Destroy them without harming the female in any way.”
If Daneel could be inhibited by a human appearance, the same was true in considerably greater intensity for the simple Solarian robots, who inched forward slowly and intermittently.
“Stop!” shrieked Gladia. The robots stopped, but the order had no effect on Landaree.
Daneel held fast to the blaster, but was bending backward under the—force of Landaree’s apparently greater strength.
Gladia, in distraction, looked about as though hoping to find some weapon somewhere.
D.G. was attempting to manipulate his radio transmitter. He said, grunting, “It’s been damaged. I think I fell on it.”
“What do we do?”
“We have to make it back to the ship. Quickly.”
Gladia said, “Then run. I can’t abandon Daneel.” She faced the battling robots, crying out wildly, “Landaree, stop! Landaree, stop!”
“I must not stop, madam,” said Landaree. “My instructions are precise.”
Daneel’s fingers were forced open, and Landaree had the blaster again.
Gladia threw herself before Daneel. “You must not harm this human being.”
“Madam,” said Landaree, her blaster pointed at Gladia, unwavering. “You are standing in front of something that looks like a human being but is not a human being. My instructions are to destroy such on sight.” Then, in a louder, voice, “You two porters—to the ship.”
The two robots, carrying the massive device between them, renewed their forward movement.
“Robots, stop!” screamed Gladia and the forward motion stopped. Me robots trembled in place, as though attempting to move forward and yet not quite able to do so.
Gladia said, “You cannot destroy my human friend Daneel without destroying me—and you yourself admit that I am a human being and therefore must not be harmed.”
Daneel said in a low voice, “My lady, you must not draw harm upon yourself in an effort to protect me.”
Landaree said, “This is useless, madam. I can remove you easily from your present position and then destroy the nonhuman being behind you. Since that may harm you, I ask you, with all respect, to move from your present position voluntarily—”
“You must, my lady,” said Daneel.
“No, Daneel. I’ll stay here. In the time it will take her to move me, you run!”
“I cannot run faster than the beam of a blaster—and if I try to run, she will shoot through you rather than not at all. Her instructions are probably that firm. I regret, my lady, that this will cause you unhappiness.”
And Daneel lifted the struggling Gladia and tossed her lightly to one side.
Landaree’s finger tightened on the contact, but never completed the pressure. She remained motionless.
Gladia, who had staggered to a sitting position, got to her feet. Cautiously, D.G., who had remained in place during the last exchanges, approached Landaree. Daneel quite calmly reached out and took the blaster from her unresisting fingers.
“I believe,” said Daneel, “that this robot is permanently deactivated.”
He pushed her gently and she fell over in one piece, with her limbs, torso, and head in the relative positions they occupied when she was standing. Her arm was still bent, her hand was holding an invisible blaster, and her finger was pressing on an invisible contact.
Through the trees to one side of the grassy field on which the drama had played itself out Giskard was approaching, his robotic face showing no signs of curiosity, though his words might have.
“What has taken place in my absence?” he asked.
32
The walk back to the ship was rather anticlimactic. Now that the frenzy of fear and action was over, Gladia felt hot and cross. D.G. limped rather painfully and they progressed slowly, partly because of the limp and partly because the two Solarian robots were still carrying their massive instrument, plodding along under its weight.
D.G. looked over his shoulder at them. “They obey my orders now that that overseer is out of action.”
Gladia said through her teeth, “Why didn’t you run at the end and get help? Why did you remain helplessly watching?”
“Well,” said D.G., with an attempt at the kind of lightness he would have showed easily were he feeling better, “with you refusing to leave Daneel, I rather hesitated to play the coward by comparison.”
“You fool! I was safe. She would not have harmed me.”
Daneel said, “Madam, it distresses me to contradict you, but I think she would have done so as her urge to destroy me grew stronger.”
Gladia turned on him hotly. “And that was a smart thing you did, pushing me out of the way. Did you want to be destroyed?”
“Rather than see you harmed, madam, yes. My failure to stop the robot through inhibitions set up by her human appearance demonstrated, in any case, an unsatisfactory limit to my usefulness to you.”
“Even so,” said Gladia, “she would have hesitated to shoot me, since I am human, for a perceptible period of time and you could have had the blaster in your own possession by that time.”
“I couldn’t gamble your life, madam, on anything as uncertain as her hesitation,” said Daneel.
“And you,” said Gladia, showing no signs of having heard Daneel and turning to D.G. again, “shouldn’t have brought the blaster in the first place.”
D.G. said, frowning, “Madam, I am making allowances for the fact that we have all been very close to death. The robots do not mind that and I have grown somehow accustomed to danger. To you, however, this was an unpleasant novelty and you are being childish as a result. I forgive you—a little. But please listen. There was no way I could have known the blaster would be taken from me so easily Had I not brought the weapon, the overseer could have killed me with her bare hands as quickly and as effectively as she could have by blaster. Nor was there any point in my running, to answer an earlier complaint of yours. I could not outrun a blaster. Now please continue if you must still get it out of your system, but I do not intend to reason with you any further.”
Gladia looked from D.G. to Daneel and back and said in a low voice, “I suppose I am being unreasonable. Very well, no more hind sights.”
They had reached the ship. Crew members poured out at the sight of them. Gladia noticed they were armed.
D.G. beckoned to his second-in-command. “Oser, I presume you see that object the two robots are carrying?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, have them carry it on board. Have it put in the security room and kept there. The security room is then to be locked and kept locked.” He turned away for a moment, then turned back. “And Oser, as soon as that is done, we will prepare to take off again.”
Oser said, “Captain, shall we keep the robots as well?”
“No. They are too simple in design to be worth much and, under the circumstances, taking them would create undesirable consequences. The device they are carrying is much more valuable than they are.”
Giskard watched the device being slowly and very carefully maneuvered into the ship. He said, “Captain, I am guessing that that is a dangerous object.”
“I’m under that impression, too,” said D.G. “I suspect that the ship would have been destroyed soon after we were.”
“That thing?” said Gladia. “What is it?”
“I can’t be certain, but I believe it is a nuclear intensifier. I’ve seen experimental models on Baleyworld and this looks like a big brother.”
“What is a nuclear intensifier?”
“As the name implies, Lady Gladia, it’s a device that intensifies nuclear fusion.”
“How does it do that?”
D.G. shrugged. “I’m not a physicist, my lady. A stream of W particles is involved and they mediate the weak interaction. That’s all I know about it.”
“What does that do?” asked Gladia.
“Well, suppose the ship has its power supply as it has right now, for instance. There are small numbers of protons, derived from our hydrogen fuel supply, that are ultrahot and fusing to produce power. Additional hydrogen is constantly being heated to produce free protons, which, when hot enough, also fuse to maintain that power. If the stream of W particles from the nuclear intensifier strikes the fusing protons, these fuse more quickly and deliver more heat. That heat produces protons and sets them to fusing more quickly than they should be and their fusion produces still more heat, which intensifies the vicious cycle. In a tiny fraction of a second, enough of the fuel fuses to form a tiny thermonuclear bomb and the entire ship and everything upon it is vaporized.
Gladia looked awed. “Why doesn’t everything ignite? Why doesn’t the whole planet blow up?"
“I don’t suppose there’s danger of that, madam. The protons have to be ultrahot and fusing. Cold protons are so unapt to fuse that even when the tendency is intensified to the full extent of such a device, that still is not enough to allow fusion. At least, that’s what I gathered from a lecture I once attended. And nothing but hydrogen is affected, as far as I know. Even in the case of ultrahot protons, the heat produced does not increase without measure. The temperature cools with distance from the intensifier beam, so that only a limited amount of fusion can be forced. Enough to destroy the ship, of course, but there’s no question of blowing up the hydrogen-rich oceans, for instance, even if part of the ocean were ultraheated—and certainly not if it were cold.”
“But—if the machine gets turned on accidentally in the storage room—”
“I don’t think it can get turned on.” D.G. opened his hand and in it rested a two—centimeter cube of polished metal. “From what little I—know of such things, this is an activator and the nuclear intensifier can do nothing without it.”
“Are you sure?”
“Not entirely, but we’ll just have to chance it, since I must get that thing back to Baleyworld. Now let’s get on board.”
Gladia and her two robots moved up the gangplank and into the ship. D.G. followed and spoke briefly to some of his officers.
He then said to Gladia, his weariness beginning to show, “It will take us a couple of hours to place all our gear on board and be ready for takeoff and every moment increases the danger.”
“Danger?”
“You don’t suppose that fearful woman robot is the only one of its kind that may exist on Solaria, do you? Or that the nuclear intensifier we have captured is the only one of its kind? I suppose it will take time for other humanoid robots and other nuclear intensifiers to be brought to this spot—perhaps considerable time—but we must give them as little as possible. And in the meantime, madam, let us to go your room and conduct some necessary business.”
“What necessary business would that be, Captain?”
“Well,” said D.G., motioning them forward, “in view of the fact that I may have been victimized by treason, I think I will conduct a rather informal court-martial.”
33
D.G. said, after seating himself with an audible groan, “What I really want is a hot shower, a rubdown, a good meal, and a chance to sleep, but that will all have to wait till we’re off the planet. It will have to wait in your case, too, madam. Some things will not wait, however, my question is this. Where were you, Giskard, while the rest of us were faced with considerable danger?”
Giskard said, “Captain, it did not seem to me that if robots alone were left on the planet, they would represent any danger. Moreover, Daneel remained with you.”
Daneel said, “Captain, I agreed, that Giskard would reconnoiter and that I would remain with Madam Gladia and with you.”
“You two agreed, did you?” said D.G. “Was anyone else consulted?”
“No, Captain,” said Giskard.
“If you were certain that the robots were harmless, Giskard, how did you account for the fact that two ships were destroyed?”
“It seemed to me, Captain, that there must remain human beings on the planet, but that they would do their best not to be seen by you. I wanted to know I where they were and what they were doing. I was in search of them, covering the ground as rapidly as I could. I questioned the robots I met.”
“Did you find any human beings?”
“No, Captain.”
“Did you examine the house out of which the overseer emerged?”
“No, Captain, but I was certain there were no human beings within it. I still am.”
“It contained the overseer.”
“Yes, Captain, but the overseer was a robot.”
“A dangerous robot.”
“To my regret, Captain, I did not realize that.”
“You feel regret, do you?”
“It is an expression I choose to describe the effect on my positronic circuits. It is a rough analogy to the term as human beings seem to use it, Captain.”
“How is it you didn’t realize a robot might be dangerous?”
“By the Three Laws of Robotics—”
Gladia interrupted, “Stop this, Captain. Giskard only knows what he is programmed to know. No robot is dangerous to human beings, unless there is a deadly quarrel between human beings and the robot must attempt to stop it. In such a quarrel, Daneel and Giskard would undoubtedly have defended us with as little harm to others as possible.”
“Is that so?” D.G. put two fingers to the bridge of his nose and pinched. “Daneel did defend us. We were fighting robots, not human beings, so he had no problem in deciding whom to defend and to what extent. Yet he showed astonishing lack of success, considering that the Three Laws do not prevent him from doing harm to robots. Giskard remained out of it, returning at the precise moment when it was over. Is it possible that there is a bond of sympathy among robots? Is it possible that robots, when defending human beings against robots, somehow feel what Giskard calls ‘regret’ at having to do so and perhaps fail or absent themselves—”
“No!” exploded Gladia forcefully.
“No?” said D.G. “Well, I don’t pretend to be an expert roboticist. Are you, Lady Gladia?”
“I am not a roboticist of any sort,” said Gladia, “but I have lived with robots all my life. What you suggest is ridiculous. Daneel was quite prepared to give his life for me and Giskard would have done the same.
“Would any robot have done so?”
“Of course.”
“And yet this overseer, this Landaree, was quite ready to attack me and destroy me. Let us grant that, in some mysterious way, she detected that Daneel, despite appearances, was as much a robot as she herself was—despite appearances—and that she had no inhibitions when it came to harming him. How is it, though, that she attacked me when I am unquestionably a human being? She hesitated at you, admitting you were human, but not me. How could a robot discriminate between the two of us? Was she perhaps not really a robot?”
“She was a robot,” said Gladia. “Of course she was. But—the truth is, I don’t know why she acted as she did. I have never before heard of such a thing. I can only suppose the Solarians, having learned how to construct humanoid robots, designed them without the protection of the Three Laws, though I would have sworn that the Solarians—of all Spacers—would have been the last to do so. Solarians are so outnumbered by their own robots as to be utterly dependent on them—to a far greater extent than any other Spacers are—and for that reason they fear them more. Subservience and even a bit of stupidity were built into all Solarian robots. The Three Laws were stronger on Solaria than anywhere else, not weaker. Yet I can think of no other way of explaining Landaree than to suppose that the First Law was—”
Daneel said, “Excuse me, Madam Gladia, for interrupting. May I have your permission to attempt an explanation of the overseer’s behavior?”
D.G. said sardonically, “It comes to that, I suppose. Only a robot can explain a robot.”
“Sir,” said Daneel, “unless we understand the overseer, we might not be able to take effective measures in the future against the Solarian danger. I believe I have a way of accounting for her behavior.”
“Go ahead,” said D.G.
“The overseer,” said Daneel, “did not take instant measures against us. She stood and watched us, for a while, apparently uncertain as to how to proceed. When you, Captain, approached and addressed her, she announced that you were not human and attacked you instantly. When I intervened and cried out that she was a robot, she announced that I was not human and attacked me at once, too. When Lady Gladia came forward, however, shouting at her, the overseer recognized her as human and, for a while, allowed herself to be dominated.”
“Yes, I remember all that, Daneel. But what does it mean?”
“It seems to me, Captain, that it is possible to alter a robot’s behavior fundamentally without ever touching the Three Laws, provided, for instance, that you alter the definition of a human being. A human being, after all, is only what it is defined to be.”
“Is that so? What do you consider a human being to be?”
Daneel was not concerned with the presence or absence of sarcasm. He said, “I was constructed with a detailed description of the appearance and behavior of human beings, Captain. Anything that fits that description is a human being to me. Thus, you have the appearance and the behavior, while the overseer had the appearance but not the behavior.
“To the overseer, on the other hand, the key property of a human being was speech, Captain. The Solarian accent is a distinctive one and to the overseer something that looked like a human being was defined as a human being only if it spoke like a Solarian. Apparently, anything that looked like a human being but did not speak with a Solarian accent was to be destroyed without hesitation. As was any ship carrying such beings.”
D.G. said thoughtfully, “You may be right.”
“You have a Settler accent, Captain, as distinctive in its way, as the Solarian accent is, but the two are widely different. As soon as you spoke, you defined yourself as nonhuman to the overseer, who announced that and attacked.”
“And you speak with an Auroran accent and were likewise attacked.”
“Yes, Captain, but Lady Gladia spoke with an authentic Solarian accent and so she was recognized as human.”
D.G. considered the matter silently for a while, then said, “That’s a dangerous arrangement, even for those who would make use of it. If a Solarian, for any reason, at any time addressed such a robot in a way that the robot did not consider an authentic Solarian accent, that Solarian would be attacked at once. If I were a Solarian, I would be afraid to approach such a robot. My very effort to speak pure Solarian might very likely throw me off and get me killed.”
“I agree, Captain,” said Daneel, “and I would imagine that that is why those who manufacture robots do not ordinarily limit the definition of a human being, but leave it as broad as possible. The Solarians, however, have left the planet. One might suppose that the fact that overseer robots have this dangerous programming is the best indication that the Solarians have really left and are not here to encounter the danger. The Solarians, it appears, are at this moment concerned only that no one who is not a Solarian be allowed to set foot on the planet.”
“Not even other Spacers?”
“I would expect, Captain, that it would be difficult to define a human being in such a way as to include the dozen of different Spacer accents and yet exclude the scores of different Settler accents. Keying the definition to the distinctive Solarian accent alone would be difficult enough.”
D.G. said, “You are very intelligent, Daneel, I disapprove of robots, of course, not in themselves but as an unsettling influence on society. And yet, with a robot such as yourself at my side, as you were once at the Ancestor’s—”
Gladia interrupted. “I’m afraid not, D.G. Daneel will never be a gift, nor will he ever be sold, nor can he be easily taken by force.”
D.G. lifted his hand in a smiling negative. “I was merely dreaming, Lady Gladia. I assure you that the laws of Baleyworld would make my possession of a robot unthinkable.”
Giskard said suddenly, “May I have your permission, Captain, to add a few words?”
D.G. said, “Ah, the robot who managed to avoid the action and who returned when all was safely over.”
“I regret that matters appear to be as you have stated. May I have your permission, Captain, to add a few words, notwithstanding?”
“Well, go on.”
“It would seem, Captain, that your decision to bring the Lady Gladia with you on this expedition has worked out very well. Had she been absent and had you ventured on your exploratory mission with only members of the ship’s crew as companions, you would all have been quickly killed and the ship destroyed. It was only Lady Gladia’s ability to speak like a Solarian and her courage in facing the overseer that changed the outcome.”
“Not so,” said D.G., “for we would all have been destroyed, possibly even Lady Gladia, but for the fortuitous event that the overseer spontaneously inactivated.”
“It was not fortuitous, Captain,” said Giskard, “and it is extremely unlikely that any robot will inactivate spontaneously. There has to be a reason for inactivation and I can suggest one possibility. Lady Gladia ordered the robot to stop on several occasions, as friend Daneel has told me, but the instructions under which the overseer worked were more forceful.
“Nevertheless, Lady Gladia’s actions served to blunt the overseer’s resolution, Captain. The fact that Lady Gladia was an undoubted human being, even by the overseer’s definition, and that she was acting in such a way as to make it necessary, perhaps, for the overseer to harm her—or even kill her—blunted it even farther. Thus, at the crucial moment, the two contrary requirements having to destroy nonhuman beings and having to refrain from harming human beings balanced and the robot froze, unable to do anything. Its circuits burned out—”
Gladia’s brows drew together in a puzzled frown. “But—” she began and then subsided.
Giskard went on, “It strikes me that it might be well for you to inform the crew of this. It might well ease their distrust of Lady Gladia if you stress what her initiative and courage have meant to every man in the crew, since it has kept them alive. It might also give them an excellent opinion of your own foresight in insisting on having her on board on this occasion, perhaps even against the advice of your own officers.”
D.G. let loose a great shout of laughter. “Lady Gladia, I see now why you will not be separated from these robots. They are not only as intelligent as human beings, they are every bit as devious. I congratulate you on your having them. And now, if you don’t mind, I must hurry the crew. I don’t want to stay on Solaria for one moment more than necessary. And I promise you that you won’t be disturbed for hours. I know you can use freshening and rest as much as I can.”
After he was gone, Gladia remained for a while in deep thought, then turned to Giskard and said in Auroran Common, a patter version of Galactic Standard that was widespread on Aurora and difficult for any non-Auroran to understand, “Giskard, what is all this nonsense about the burning out of circuits?”
“My lady,” said Giskard, “I advanced it only as a possibility and nothing more. I thought it well to emphasize your role in putting an end to the overseer.”
“But how could you think he would believe that a robot could bum out that easily?”
“He knows very little about robots, madam. He may traffic in them, but he is from a world that doesn’t make use of them.”
“Yet I know a great deal about them and so do you. The overseer showed no signs whatever of balancing circuits; no stuttering, no trembling, no behavior difficulty of any kind. It just—stopped.”
Giskard said, “Madam, since we do not know the precise specifications to which the overseer was designed, we may have to be content with ignorance as to the rationale behind the freeze.”
Gladia shook her head. “Just the same, it’s puzzling.”
28
It was morning on Solaria, morning on the estate—her estate. Off in the distance was the establishment that might have been her establishment. Somehow twenty decades dropped away and Aurora seemed to her to be a far-off dream that had never happened.
She turned to D.G., who was tightening the belt about his thin outer garment, a belt from which two sidearms hung. On his left hip was the neuronic whip; on his right, something shorter and bulkier that she guessed was a blaster.
“Are we going to the house?” she asked.
“Eventually,” said D.G. with a certain absence of mind. He was inspecting each sidearm in turn, holding one of them to his ear as though he were listening for a faint buzz that would tell him it was alive.
“Just the four of us?” She automatically turned her eyes to each of the others: D.G., Daneel—She said to Daneel, “Where is Giskard, Daneel?”
Daneel said, “It seemed to him, Madam Gladia, that it would be wise to act as an advance guard. As a robot, he might not be noticeable among other robots—and if there should be anything wrong, he could warn us. In any case, he is more expendable than either yourself or the captain.”
“Good robotic thinking,” said D.G. grimly. “It’s just as well. Come, we’re moving forward now.”
“Just the three of us?” said Gladia, a touch plaintively. “To be honest, I lack Giskard’s robotic ability to accept expendability.”
D.G. said, “We’re all expendable, Lady Gladia. Two ships have been destroyed, every member of each crew indiscriminately brought to an end. There’s no safety in numbers here.”
“You’re not making me feel any better, D.G.”
“Then I’ll try. The earlier ships were not prepared. Our ship is. And I’m prepared, too.” He slapped his two hands to his hips. “And you’ve got a robot with you who has showed himself to be an efficient protector. What’s more, you yourself are our best weapon. You know how to order robots to do what you want them to do and that may well be crucial. You are the only one with us who can do that and the earlier ships had no one at all of your caliber. Come, then—”
They moved forward. Gladia said, after a while, “We’re not walking toward the house.”
“No, not yet. First, we’re walking toward a group of robots. You see them, I hope.”
“Yes, I do, but they’re not doing anything.”
“No, they’re not. There were many more robots present when we first landed. Most of them have gone, but these remain. Why?”
“If we ask them, they’ll tell us.”
“You will ask them, Lady Gladia.”
“They’ll answer you, D.G., as readily as they’ll answer me. We’re equally human.”
D.G. stopped short and the other two stopped with him. He turned to Gladia and said, smiling, “My dear Lady Gladia, equally human? A Spacer and a Settler? Whatever has come over you?”
“We are equally human to a robot,” she said waspishly.
“And please don’t play games. I did not play the game of Spacer and Earthman with your Ancestor.”
D.G.’s smile vanished. “That’s true. My apologies, my lady. I shall try to control my sense of the sardonic for, after all, on this world we are allies.”
He said, a moment later, “Now, madam, what I want you to do is to find out what orders the robots have been given—if any; if there are any robots that might, by some chance, know you; if there are any human beings on the estate or on the world; or anything else it occurs to you to ask. They shouldn’t be dangerous; they’re robots and you’re human; they can’t hurt you. To be sure,” he added, remembering, “your Daneel rather manhandled Niss, but that was under conditions that don’t apply here. And Daneel may go with you.”
Respectfully, Daneel said, “I would in any case accompany Lady Gladia, Captain. That is my function.”
“Giskard’s function, too, I imagine,” said D.G., “and yet he’s wandered off.”
“For a purpose, Captain, that he discussed with me and that we agreed was an essential way of protecting Lady Gladia.”
“Very well. You two move forward. I’ll cover you both.”
He drew the weapon on his right hip. “If I call out ‘Drop,’ the two of you fall down instantly. This thing does not play favorites.”
“Please don’t use it as anything but a last resort, D.G.,” said Gladia. “There would scarcely be an occasion to against robots. Come, Daneel!”
Off she went, stepping forward rapidly and firmly toward the group of about a dozen robots that were standing just in front of a line of low bushes with the morning sun reflecting in glints here and there from their burnished exteriors.
29
The robots did not retreat, nor did they advance. They remained calmly in place. Gladia counted them. Eleven in plain sight. There might be others, possibly, that were unseen.
They were designed Solaria-fashion. Very polished. Very smooth. No illusion of clothing and not much realism. They were almost like—mathematical abstractions of the human body, with no two of them quite alike.
She had the feeling that they were by no means as flexible or complex as Auroran robots but were more single mindedly adapted to specific tasks.
She stopped at least four meters from the line of robots and Daneel (she sensed) stopped as soon as she did and remained less than a meter behind. He was close enough to interfere at once in case of need, but was far enough back to make it clear that she was the dominant spokesperson of the pair. The robots before her, she was certain, viewed Daneel as a human being, but she also knew that Daneel was too conscious of himself as a robot to presume upon the misconception of other robots.
Gladia said, “Which one of you will speak with me?”
There was a brief period of silence, as though an unspoken conference were taking place. Then one robot took a step forward. “Madam, I will speak.”
“Do you have a name?”
“No, madam. I have only a serial number.”
“How long have you been operational?”
“I have been operational twenty-nine years, madam.”
“Has anyone else in this group been operational for longer?”
“No, madam. It is why I, rather than another, am speaking.”
“How many robots are employed on this estate?”
“I do not have that figure, madam.”
“Roughly.”
“Perhaps ten thousand, madam.”
“Have any been operational for longer than twenty decades?”
“The agricultural robots some who may, madam.”
“And the household robots?”
“They have not been operational long, madam—The masters prefer new-model robots.”
Gladia nodded, turned to Daneel, and said, “That makes sense. It was so in my day, too.”
She turned back to the robot. “To whom does this estate belong?”
“It is the Zoberlon Estate, madam.”
“How long has it belonged to the Zoberlon family?”
“Longer, madam, than I have been operational. I do not know how much longer, but the information can be obtained.”
“To whom did it belong before the Zoberlons took possession?”
“I do not know, madam, but the information can be obtained.”
“Have you ever heard of the Delmarre family?”
“No, madam.”
Gladia turned to Daneel and said, rather ruefully, “I’m trying to lead the robot, little by little, as Elijah might once have done, but I don’t think I know how to do it properly.”
“On the contrary, Lady Gladia,” said Daneel gravely, “it seems to me you have established much. It is not likely that any robot on this estate, except perhaps for a few of the agriculturals, would have any memory of you. Would you have encountered any of the agriculturals in your time?”
Gladia shook her head. “Never! I don’t recall seeing any of them even in the distance.”
“It is clear, then, that you are not known on this estate.”
“Exactly. And poor D.G. has brought us along for nothing. If he expected any good of me, he has failed.”
“To know the truth is always useful, madam. Not to be known is, in this case, less useful than to be known, but not to know whether one is known or not would be less useful still. Are there not, perhaps, other points on which you might elicit information?”
“Yes, let’s see—” For a few seconds, she was lost in thought, then she said softly, “It’s odd. When I speak to robots, I speak with a pronounced Solarian accent, yet I do not speak so to you.”
Daneel said, “It is not surprising, Lady Gladia. The robots speak with such an accent, for they are Solarian. That brings back the days of your youth and you speak, automatically, as you spoke then. You are at once yourself, however, when you turn to me because I am part of your present world.”
A slow smile appeared on Gladia’s face and she said, “You reason more and more like a human being, Daneel.”
She turned back to the robots and was keenly aware of the peacefulness of the surroundings. The sky was an almost unmarked blue, except for a thin line of clouds on the western horizon (indicating that it might turn cloudy in the afternoon). There was the sound of rustling leaves in a light wind, the whirring of insects, a lonely birdcall. No sound of human beings. There might be many robots about, but they worked silently. There weren’t the exuberant sounds of human beings that she had grown accustomed to (painfully, at first) on Aurora.
But now back on Solaria, she found the peace wonderful. It had not been all bad on Solaria. She had to admit it.
She said to the robot quickly, with a note of compulsion, edging her voice, “Where are your masters?”
It was useless, however, to try to hurry or alarm a robot or to catch it off-guard. It said, without any sign of perturbation. “They are gone, madam.”
“Where have they gone?”
“I don’t know, madam. I was not told.”
“Which of you knows?”
There was a complete silence.
Gladia said, “Is there any robot on the estate who would know?”
The robot said, “I do not know of any, madam.”
“Did the masters take robots with them?”
“Yes, madam.”
“Yet they didn’t take you. Why do you remain behind?”
“To do our work, madam.”
“Yet you stand here and do nothing. Is that work?”
“We guard the estate from those from outside, madam.”
“Such as we?”
“Yes, madam.”
“But here we are and yet you still do nothing. Why is that?”
“We observe, madam. We have no further orders.”
“Have you reported your observations?”
“Yes, madam.”
“To whom?”
“To the overseer, madam.”
“Where is the overseer?”
“In the mansion, madam.”
“Ah.” Gladia turned and walked briskly back to D.G. Daneel followed.
“Well?” said D.G. He was holding both weapons at the ready, but put them back in their holsters as they returned. Gladia shook her head. “Nothing. No robot knows me. No robot, I’m sure, knows where the Solarians have gone. But they report to an overseer.”
“An overseer?”
“On Aurora and the other Spacer worlds, the overseer on large estates with numerous robots is some human whose profession it is to organize and direct groups of working robots in the fields, mines, and industrial establishments.”
“Then there are Solarians left behind?”
Gladia shook her head. “Solaria is an exception. The ratio of robots to human beings has always been so high that it has not been the custom to assign a man or woman to oversee the robots. That job has been done by another robot, one that is specially programmed.”
“Then there is a robot in that mansion”—D.G. nodded with his head—“who is more advanced than these and who might profitably be questioned.”
“Perhaps, but I am not certain it is safe to attempt to go into the mansion.”
D.G. said sardoncially, “It is only an—other robot.”
“The mansion may be booby-trapped.”
“This field may be booby-trapped.”
Gladia said, “It would be better to send one of the robots to the mansion to tell the overseer that human beings wish to speak to him.”
D.G. said, “That will not be necessary. That job has apparently been done already. The overseer is emerging and is neither a robot nor a ‘him.’ What I see is a human female.”
Gladia looked up in astonishment. Advancing rapidly toward them was a tall, well-formed, and exceedingly attractive woman. Even at a distance, there was no doubt whatever as to her sex.
30
D.G. smiled broadly. He seemed to be straightening himself a bit, squaring his shoulders, throwing them back. One hand went lightly to his beard, as though to make sure it was sleek and smooth.
Gladia looked at him with disfavor. She said, “That is not a Solarian woman.”
“How can you tell?” said D.G.
“No Solarian woman would allow herself to be seen so freely by other human beings. Seen, not viewed.”
“I know the distinction, my lady. Yet you allow me to see you.”
“I have lived over twenty decades on Aurora. Even so I have enough Solarian left in me still not to appear to others like that.”
“She has a great deal to display, madam. I would say she is taller than I am and as beautiful as a sunset.”
The overseer had stopped twenty meters short of their position and the robots had moved aside so that none of them remained between the woman on one side and the three from the ship on the other.
D.G. said, “Customs can change in twenty decades.”
“Not something as basic as the Solarian dislike of human contact,” said Gladia sharply. “Not in two hundred decades.” She had slipped into her Solarian twang again.
“I think you underestimate social plasticity. Still, Solarian or not, I presume she’s a Spacer—and if there are other Spacers like that, I’m all for peaceful coexistence.”
Gladia’s look of disapproval deepened. “Well, do you intend to stand and gaze in that fashion for the next hour or two? Don’t you want me to question the woman?”
D.G. started and turned to look at Gladia with distinct annoyance. “You question the robots, as you’ve done. I question the human beings.”
“Especially the females, I suppose.”
“I wouldn’t like to boast, but—”
“It is a subject on which I have never known a man who didn’t.”
Daneel interposed, “I do not think the woman will wait longer. If you wish to retain the initiative, Captain, approach her now. I will follow, as I did with Madam Gladia.”
“I scarcely need the protection,” said D.G. brusquely.
“You are a human being and I must not, through inaction, allow harm to come to you.”
D.G. walked forward briskly, Daneel following. Gladia, reluctant to remain behind alone, advanced a bit tentatively.
The overseer watched quietly. She wore a smooth white robe that reached down to mid-thigh and was belted at the waist. It showed a deep and inviting cleavage and her nipples were clearly visible against the thin material of the robe. There was no indication that she was wearing anything else but a pair of shoes.
When D.G. stopped, a meter of space separated them. Her skin, he could see, was flawless, her cheekbones were high, her eyes wide-set and somewhat slanted, her expression serene.
“Madam,” said D.G., speaking as close an approximation to Auroran patrician as he could manage, “have I the pleasure of speaking to the overseer of this estate?”
The woman listened for a moment and then said, in an accent so thickly Solarian as to seem almost comic when coming from her perfectly shaped mouth, “You are not a human being.”
She then flashed into action so quickly that Gladia, still some ten meters off, could not see in detail what had happened. She saw only a blur of motion and then D.G. lying on his back motionless and the woman standing there with his weapons, one in each hand.
31
What stupefied Gladia most in that one dizzying moment was that Daneel had not moved in either prevention or reprisal.
But even as the thought struck her, it was out of date, for Daneel had already caught the woman’s left wrist and twisted it, saying, “Drop those weapons at once,” in a harsh peremptory voice she had never heard him use before. It was inconceivable that he should so address a human being.
The woman said, just as harshly in her higher register, “You are not a human being.” Her right arm came up and she fired the weapon it held. For a moment, a faint glow flickered over Daneel’s body and Gladia, unable to make a sound in her state, of shock, felt her sight dim. She had never in her life fainted, but this seemed a prelude.
Daneel did not dissolve, nor was there an explosive report. Daneel, Gladia realized, had prudently seized the arm that held the blaster. The other held the neuronic whip and it was that which had been discharged in full—and at close range—upon Daneel. Had he been human, the massive stimulation of his sensory nerves might well have killed him or left him permanently disabled. Yet he was, after all, however human in appearance, a robot and his equivalent of a nervous system did not react to the whip.
Daneel seized the other arm now, forcing it up. He said again, “Drop those weapons or I will tear each arm from its socket.”
“Will you?” said the woman. Her arms contracted and, for a moment, Daneel was lifted off the ground. Daneel’s legs swung backward, then forward, pendulum like, using the points where the arms joined as a pivot. His feet struck the woman with force and both fell heavily to the ground.
Gladia, without putting the thought into words, realized that although the woman looked as human as Daneel did, she was just as nonhuman. A sense of instant outrage flooded Gladia, who was suddenly Solarian to the core—outrage that a robot should use force on a human being. Granted that she might somehow have recognized Daneel for what he was, but how dare she strike D.G.?
Gladia was running forward, screaming. It never occurred to her to fear a robot simply because it had knocked down a strong man with a blow and was battling an even stronger robot to a draw.
“How dare you?” she screamed in a Solarian accent so thick that it grated on her own ear—but how else does one speak to a Solarian robot? “How dare you, girl? Stop all resistance immediately!”
The woman’s muscles seemed to relax totally and simultaneously, as though an electric current had suddenly been shut off. Her beautiful eyes looked at Gladia without enough humanity to seem startled. She said in an indistinct, hesitating voice, “My regrets, madam.”
Daneel was on his feet, staring down watchfully at the woman who lay on the grass. D.G., suppressing a groan, was struggling upright.
Daneel bent for the weapons, but Gladia waved him away furiously.
“Give me those weapons, girl,” she said.
The woman said, “Yes, madam.”
Gladia snatched at them, chose the blaster swiftly, and handed it to Daneel. “Destroy her when that seems best, Daneel. That’s an order.” She handed the neuronic whip to D.G. and said, “This is useless here, except against me and yourself. Are you all right?”
“No, I’m not all right,” muttered D.G., rubbing one hip. “Do you mean she’s a robot?”
“Would a woman have thrown you like that?”
“Not any whom I have ever met before. I said there might be special robots on Solaria who were programmed to be dangerous.”
“Of course,” said Gladia unkindly, “but when you saw something that looked like your idea of a beautiful woman, you forgot.”
“Yes, it is easy to be wise after the fact.”
Gladia sniffed and turned again to the robot, “What is your name, girl?”
“I am called Landaree, madam.”
“Get up, Landaree.”
Landaree rose much as Daneel had—as though she were on springs. Her struggle with Daneel seemed to have left her, totally unharmed.
Gladia said, “Why, against the First Law, have you attacked these human beings?”
“Madam,” said Landaree firmly, “these are not human beings.”
“And do you say that I am not a human being?”
“No, madam, you a human being.”
“Then, as a human being, I am defining these two men as human beings.—Do you hear me?”
“Madam,” said Landaree a little more softly, “these are not human beings.”
“They are indeed human beings because I tell you they are. You are forbidden to attack them or harm them in any way.”
Landaree stood mute.
“Do you understand what I have said?” Gladia’s voice grew more Solarian still as she reached for greater intensity.
“Madam,” said Landaree, “these are not human beings.”
Daneel said to Gladia softly, “Madam, she has been given orders of such firmness that you cannot easily countervail them.”
“We’ll see about that,” said Gladia, breathing quickly.
Landaree looked about. The group of robots, during the few minutes of conflict, had come closer to Gladia and her two companions. In the background were two robots who, Gladia decided, were not members of the original group and they were carrying between them, with some difficulty, a large and very massive device of some sort. Landaree gestured to them and they moved forward a bit more quickly.
Gladia cried out, “Robots, stop!”
They stopped.
Landaree said, “Madam, I am fulfilling my duties. I am following my instructions.”
Gladia said, “Your duty, girl, is to obey my orders!”
Landaree said, “I cannot be ordered to disobey my instructions!”
Gladia said, “Daneel, blast her!”
Afterward, Gladia was able to reason out what had happened. Daneel’s reaction time was much faster than a human being’s would have been and he knew that he was facing a robot against which the Three Laws did not inhibit violence. However, she looked so human that even the precise knowledge that she was a robot did not totally overcome his inhibition. He followed the order more slowly than he should have.
Landaree, whose definition of “human being” was clearly not the one Daneel used, was not inhibited by his appearance and she stuck the more quickly. She had her grip on the blaster and again the two struggled.
D.G. turned his neuronic whip butt-first and came in at a half-run to strike. He hit her head squarely, but it had no effect on the robot and her leg sent him flailing backward.
Gladia said, “Robot! Stop!” Her clenched hands were raised.
Landaree shouted in a stentorian contralto, “All of you. Join me! The two apparent males are not human beings. Destroy them without harming the female in any way.”
If Daneel could be inhibited by a human appearance, the same was true in considerably greater intensity for the simple Solarian robots, who inched forward slowly and intermittently.
“Stop!” shrieked Gladia. The robots stopped, but the order had no effect on Landaree.
Daneel held fast to the blaster, but was bending backward under the—force of Landaree’s apparently greater strength.
Gladia, in distraction, looked about as though hoping to find some weapon somewhere.
D.G. was attempting to manipulate his radio transmitter. He said, grunting, “It’s been damaged. I think I fell on it.”
“What do we do?”
“We have to make it back to the ship. Quickly.”
Gladia said, “Then run. I can’t abandon Daneel.” She faced the battling robots, crying out wildly, “Landaree, stop! Landaree, stop!”
“I must not stop, madam,” said Landaree. “My instructions are precise.”
Daneel’s fingers were forced open, and Landaree had the blaster again.
Gladia threw herself before Daneel. “You must not harm this human being.”
“Madam,” said Landaree, her blaster pointed at Gladia, unwavering. “You are standing in front of something that looks like a human being but is not a human being. My instructions are to destroy such on sight.” Then, in a louder, voice, “You two porters—to the ship.”
The two robots, carrying the massive device between them, renewed their forward movement.
“Robots, stop!” screamed Gladia and the forward motion stopped. Me robots trembled in place, as though attempting to move forward and yet not quite able to do so.
Gladia said, “You cannot destroy my human friend Daneel without destroying me—and you yourself admit that I am a human being and therefore must not be harmed.”
Daneel said in a low voice, “My lady, you must not draw harm upon yourself in an effort to protect me.”
Landaree said, “This is useless, madam. I can remove you easily from your present position and then destroy the nonhuman being behind you. Since that may harm you, I ask you, with all respect, to move from your present position voluntarily—”
“You must, my lady,” said Daneel.
“No, Daneel. I’ll stay here. In the time it will take her to move me, you run!”
“I cannot run faster than the beam of a blaster—and if I try to run, she will shoot through you rather than not at all. Her instructions are probably that firm. I regret, my lady, that this will cause you unhappiness.”
And Daneel lifted the struggling Gladia and tossed her lightly to one side.
Landaree’s finger tightened on the contact, but never completed the pressure. She remained motionless.
Gladia, who had staggered to a sitting position, got to her feet. Cautiously, D.G., who had remained in place during the last exchanges, approached Landaree. Daneel quite calmly reached out and took the blaster from her unresisting fingers.
“I believe,” said Daneel, “that this robot is permanently deactivated.”
He pushed her gently and she fell over in one piece, with her limbs, torso, and head in the relative positions they occupied when she was standing. Her arm was still bent, her hand was holding an invisible blaster, and her finger was pressing on an invisible contact.
Through the trees to one side of the grassy field on which the drama had played itself out Giskard was approaching, his robotic face showing no signs of curiosity, though his words might have.
“What has taken place in my absence?” he asked.
32
The walk back to the ship was rather anticlimactic. Now that the frenzy of fear and action was over, Gladia felt hot and cross. D.G. limped rather painfully and they progressed slowly, partly because of the limp and partly because the two Solarian robots were still carrying their massive instrument, plodding along under its weight.
D.G. looked over his shoulder at them. “They obey my orders now that that overseer is out of action.”
Gladia said through her teeth, “Why didn’t you run at the end and get help? Why did you remain helplessly watching?”
“Well,” said D.G., with an attempt at the kind of lightness he would have showed easily were he feeling better, “with you refusing to leave Daneel, I rather hesitated to play the coward by comparison.”
“You fool! I was safe. She would not have harmed me.”
Daneel said, “Madam, it distresses me to contradict you, but I think she would have done so as her urge to destroy me grew stronger.”
Gladia turned on him hotly. “And that was a smart thing you did, pushing me out of the way. Did you want to be destroyed?”
“Rather than see you harmed, madam, yes. My failure to stop the robot through inhibitions set up by her human appearance demonstrated, in any case, an unsatisfactory limit to my usefulness to you.”
“Even so,” said Gladia, “she would have hesitated to shoot me, since I am human, for a perceptible period of time and you could have had the blaster in your own possession by that time.”
“I couldn’t gamble your life, madam, on anything as uncertain as her hesitation,” said Daneel.
“And you,” said Gladia, showing no signs of having heard Daneel and turning to D.G. again, “shouldn’t have brought the blaster in the first place.”
D.G. said, frowning, “Madam, I am making allowances for the fact that we have all been very close to death. The robots do not mind that and I have grown somehow accustomed to danger. To you, however, this was an unpleasant novelty and you are being childish as a result. I forgive you—a little. But please listen. There was no way I could have known the blaster would be taken from me so easily Had I not brought the weapon, the overseer could have killed me with her bare hands as quickly and as effectively as she could have by blaster. Nor was there any point in my running, to answer an earlier complaint of yours. I could not outrun a blaster. Now please continue if you must still get it out of your system, but I do not intend to reason with you any further.”
Gladia looked from D.G. to Daneel and back and said in a low voice, “I suppose I am being unreasonable. Very well, no more hind sights.”
They had reached the ship. Crew members poured out at the sight of them. Gladia noticed they were armed.
D.G. beckoned to his second-in-command. “Oser, I presume you see that object the two robots are carrying?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, have them carry it on board. Have it put in the security room and kept there. The security room is then to be locked and kept locked.” He turned away for a moment, then turned back. “And Oser, as soon as that is done, we will prepare to take off again.”
Oser said, “Captain, shall we keep the robots as well?”
“No. They are too simple in design to be worth much and, under the circumstances, taking them would create undesirable consequences. The device they are carrying is much more valuable than they are.”
Giskard watched the device being slowly and very carefully maneuvered into the ship. He said, “Captain, I am guessing that that is a dangerous object.”
“I’m under that impression, too,” said D.G. “I suspect that the ship would have been destroyed soon after we were.”
“That thing?” said Gladia. “What is it?”
“I can’t be certain, but I believe it is a nuclear intensifier. I’ve seen experimental models on Baleyworld and this looks like a big brother.”
“What is a nuclear intensifier?”
“As the name implies, Lady Gladia, it’s a device that intensifies nuclear fusion.”
“How does it do that?”
D.G. shrugged. “I’m not a physicist, my lady. A stream of W particles is involved and they mediate the weak interaction. That’s all I know about it.”
“What does that do?” asked Gladia.
“Well, suppose the ship has its power supply as it has right now, for instance. There are small numbers of protons, derived from our hydrogen fuel supply, that are ultrahot and fusing to produce power. Additional hydrogen is constantly being heated to produce free protons, which, when hot enough, also fuse to maintain that power. If the stream of W particles from the nuclear intensifier strikes the fusing protons, these fuse more quickly and deliver more heat. That heat produces protons and sets them to fusing more quickly than they should be and their fusion produces still more heat, which intensifies the vicious cycle. In a tiny fraction of a second, enough of the fuel fuses to form a tiny thermonuclear bomb and the entire ship and everything upon it is vaporized.
Gladia looked awed. “Why doesn’t everything ignite? Why doesn’t the whole planet blow up?"
“I don’t suppose there’s danger of that, madam. The protons have to be ultrahot and fusing. Cold protons are so unapt to fuse that even when the tendency is intensified to the full extent of such a device, that still is not enough to allow fusion. At least, that’s what I gathered from a lecture I once attended. And nothing but hydrogen is affected, as far as I know. Even in the case of ultrahot protons, the heat produced does not increase without measure. The temperature cools with distance from the intensifier beam, so that only a limited amount of fusion can be forced. Enough to destroy the ship, of course, but there’s no question of blowing up the hydrogen-rich oceans, for instance, even if part of the ocean were ultraheated—and certainly not if it were cold.”
“But—if the machine gets turned on accidentally in the storage room—”
“I don’t think it can get turned on.” D.G. opened his hand and in it rested a two—centimeter cube of polished metal. “From what little I—know of such things, this is an activator and the nuclear intensifier can do nothing without it.”
“Are you sure?”
“Not entirely, but we’ll just have to chance it, since I must get that thing back to Baleyworld. Now let’s get on board.”
Gladia and her two robots moved up the gangplank and into the ship. D.G. followed and spoke briefly to some of his officers.
He then said to Gladia, his weariness beginning to show, “It will take us a couple of hours to place all our gear on board and be ready for takeoff and every moment increases the danger.”
“Danger?”
“You don’t suppose that fearful woman robot is the only one of its kind that may exist on Solaria, do you? Or that the nuclear intensifier we have captured is the only one of its kind? I suppose it will take time for other humanoid robots and other nuclear intensifiers to be brought to this spot—perhaps considerable time—but we must give them as little as possible. And in the meantime, madam, let us to go your room and conduct some necessary business.”
“What necessary business would that be, Captain?”
“Well,” said D.G., motioning them forward, “in view of the fact that I may have been victimized by treason, I think I will conduct a rather informal court-martial.”
33
D.G. said, after seating himself with an audible groan, “What I really want is a hot shower, a rubdown, a good meal, and a chance to sleep, but that will all have to wait till we’re off the planet. It will have to wait in your case, too, madam. Some things will not wait, however, my question is this. Where were you, Giskard, while the rest of us were faced with considerable danger?”
Giskard said, “Captain, it did not seem to me that if robots alone were left on the planet, they would represent any danger. Moreover, Daneel remained with you.”
Daneel said, “Captain, I agreed, that Giskard would reconnoiter and that I would remain with Madam Gladia and with you.”
“You two agreed, did you?” said D.G. “Was anyone else consulted?”
“No, Captain,” said Giskard.
“If you were certain that the robots were harmless, Giskard, how did you account for the fact that two ships were destroyed?”
“It seemed to me, Captain, that there must remain human beings on the planet, but that they would do their best not to be seen by you. I wanted to know I where they were and what they were doing. I was in search of them, covering the ground as rapidly as I could. I questioned the robots I met.”
“Did you find any human beings?”
“No, Captain.”
“Did you examine the house out of which the overseer emerged?”
“No, Captain, but I was certain there were no human beings within it. I still am.”
“It contained the overseer.”
“Yes, Captain, but the overseer was a robot.”
“A dangerous robot.”
“To my regret, Captain, I did not realize that.”
“You feel regret, do you?”
“It is an expression I choose to describe the effect on my positronic circuits. It is a rough analogy to the term as human beings seem to use it, Captain.”
“How is it you didn’t realize a robot might be dangerous?”
“By the Three Laws of Robotics—”
Gladia interrupted, “Stop this, Captain. Giskard only knows what he is programmed to know. No robot is dangerous to human beings, unless there is a deadly quarrel between human beings and the robot must attempt to stop it. In such a quarrel, Daneel and Giskard would undoubtedly have defended us with as little harm to others as possible.”
“Is that so?” D.G. put two fingers to the bridge of his nose and pinched. “Daneel did defend us. We were fighting robots, not human beings, so he had no problem in deciding whom to defend and to what extent. Yet he showed astonishing lack of success, considering that the Three Laws do not prevent him from doing harm to robots. Giskard remained out of it, returning at the precise moment when it was over. Is it possible that there is a bond of sympathy among robots? Is it possible that robots, when defending human beings against robots, somehow feel what Giskard calls ‘regret’ at having to do so and perhaps fail or absent themselves—”
“No!” exploded Gladia forcefully.
“No?” said D.G. “Well, I don’t pretend to be an expert roboticist. Are you, Lady Gladia?”
“I am not a roboticist of any sort,” said Gladia, “but I have lived with robots all my life. What you suggest is ridiculous. Daneel was quite prepared to give his life for me and Giskard would have done the same.
“Would any robot have done so?”
“Of course.”
“And yet this overseer, this Landaree, was quite ready to attack me and destroy me. Let us grant that, in some mysterious way, she detected that Daneel, despite appearances, was as much a robot as she herself was—despite appearances—and that she had no inhibitions when it came to harming him. How is it, though, that she attacked me when I am unquestionably a human being? She hesitated at you, admitting you were human, but not me. How could a robot discriminate between the two of us? Was she perhaps not really a robot?”
“She was a robot,” said Gladia. “Of course she was. But—the truth is, I don’t know why she acted as she did. I have never before heard of such a thing. I can only suppose the Solarians, having learned how to construct humanoid robots, designed them without the protection of the Three Laws, though I would have sworn that the Solarians—of all Spacers—would have been the last to do so. Solarians are so outnumbered by their own robots as to be utterly dependent on them—to a far greater extent than any other Spacers are—and for that reason they fear them more. Subservience and even a bit of stupidity were built into all Solarian robots. The Three Laws were stronger on Solaria than anywhere else, not weaker. Yet I can think of no other way of explaining Landaree than to suppose that the First Law was—”
Daneel said, “Excuse me, Madam Gladia, for interrupting. May I have your permission to attempt an explanation of the overseer’s behavior?”
D.G. said sardonically, “It comes to that, I suppose. Only a robot can explain a robot.”
“Sir,” said Daneel, “unless we understand the overseer, we might not be able to take effective measures in the future against the Solarian danger. I believe I have a way of accounting for her behavior.”
“Go ahead,” said D.G.
“The overseer,” said Daneel, “did not take instant measures against us. She stood and watched us, for a while, apparently uncertain as to how to proceed. When you, Captain, approached and addressed her, she announced that you were not human and attacked you instantly. When I intervened and cried out that she was a robot, she announced that I was not human and attacked me at once, too. When Lady Gladia came forward, however, shouting at her, the overseer recognized her as human and, for a while, allowed herself to be dominated.”
“Yes, I remember all that, Daneel. But what does it mean?”
“It seems to me, Captain, that it is possible to alter a robot’s behavior fundamentally without ever touching the Three Laws, provided, for instance, that you alter the definition of a human being. A human being, after all, is only what it is defined to be.”
“Is that so? What do you consider a human being to be?”
Daneel was not concerned with the presence or absence of sarcasm. He said, “I was constructed with a detailed description of the appearance and behavior of human beings, Captain. Anything that fits that description is a human being to me. Thus, you have the appearance and the behavior, while the overseer had the appearance but not the behavior.
“To the overseer, on the other hand, the key property of a human being was speech, Captain. The Solarian accent is a distinctive one and to the overseer something that looked like a human being was defined as a human being only if it spoke like a Solarian. Apparently, anything that looked like a human being but did not speak with a Solarian accent was to be destroyed without hesitation. As was any ship carrying such beings.”
D.G. said thoughtfully, “You may be right.”
“You have a Settler accent, Captain, as distinctive in its way, as the Solarian accent is, but the two are widely different. As soon as you spoke, you defined yourself as nonhuman to the overseer, who announced that and attacked.”
“And you speak with an Auroran accent and were likewise attacked.”
“Yes, Captain, but Lady Gladia spoke with an authentic Solarian accent and so she was recognized as human.”
D.G. considered the matter silently for a while, then said, “That’s a dangerous arrangement, even for those who would make use of it. If a Solarian, for any reason, at any time addressed such a robot in a way that the robot did not consider an authentic Solarian accent, that Solarian would be attacked at once. If I were a Solarian, I would be afraid to approach such a robot. My very effort to speak pure Solarian might very likely throw me off and get me killed.”
“I agree, Captain,” said Daneel, “and I would imagine that that is why those who manufacture robots do not ordinarily limit the definition of a human being, but leave it as broad as possible. The Solarians, however, have left the planet. One might suppose that the fact that overseer robots have this dangerous programming is the best indication that the Solarians have really left and are not here to encounter the danger. The Solarians, it appears, are at this moment concerned only that no one who is not a Solarian be allowed to set foot on the planet.”
“Not even other Spacers?”
“I would expect, Captain, that it would be difficult to define a human being in such a way as to include the dozen of different Spacer accents and yet exclude the scores of different Settler accents. Keying the definition to the distinctive Solarian accent alone would be difficult enough.”
D.G. said, “You are very intelligent, Daneel, I disapprove of robots, of course, not in themselves but as an unsettling influence on society. And yet, with a robot such as yourself at my side, as you were once at the Ancestor’s—”
Gladia interrupted. “I’m afraid not, D.G. Daneel will never be a gift, nor will he ever be sold, nor can he be easily taken by force.”
D.G. lifted his hand in a smiling negative. “I was merely dreaming, Lady Gladia. I assure you that the laws of Baleyworld would make my possession of a robot unthinkable.”
Giskard said suddenly, “May I have your permission, Captain, to add a few words?”
D.G. said, “Ah, the robot who managed to avoid the action and who returned when all was safely over.”
“I regret that matters appear to be as you have stated. May I have your permission, Captain, to add a few words, notwithstanding?”
“Well, go on.”
“It would seem, Captain, that your decision to bring the Lady Gladia with you on this expedition has worked out very well. Had she been absent and had you ventured on your exploratory mission with only members of the ship’s crew as companions, you would all have been quickly killed and the ship destroyed. It was only Lady Gladia’s ability to speak like a Solarian and her courage in facing the overseer that changed the outcome.”
“Not so,” said D.G., “for we would all have been destroyed, possibly even Lady Gladia, but for the fortuitous event that the overseer spontaneously inactivated.”
“It was not fortuitous, Captain,” said Giskard, “and it is extremely unlikely that any robot will inactivate spontaneously. There has to be a reason for inactivation and I can suggest one possibility. Lady Gladia ordered the robot to stop on several occasions, as friend Daneel has told me, but the instructions under which the overseer worked were more forceful.
“Nevertheless, Lady Gladia’s actions served to blunt the overseer’s resolution, Captain. The fact that Lady Gladia was an undoubted human being, even by the overseer’s definition, and that she was acting in such a way as to make it necessary, perhaps, for the overseer to harm her—or even kill her—blunted it even farther. Thus, at the crucial moment, the two contrary requirements having to destroy nonhuman beings and having to refrain from harming human beings balanced and the robot froze, unable to do anything. Its circuits burned out—”
Gladia’s brows drew together in a puzzled frown. “But—” she began and then subsided.
Giskard went on, “It strikes me that it might be well for you to inform the crew of this. It might well ease their distrust of Lady Gladia if you stress what her initiative and courage have meant to every man in the crew, since it has kept them alive. It might also give them an excellent opinion of your own foresight in insisting on having her on board on this occasion, perhaps even against the advice of your own officers.”
D.G. let loose a great shout of laughter. “Lady Gladia, I see now why you will not be separated from these robots. They are not only as intelligent as human beings, they are every bit as devious. I congratulate you on your having them. And now, if you don’t mind, I must hurry the crew. I don’t want to stay on Solaria for one moment more than necessary. And I promise you that you won’t be disturbed for hours. I know you can use freshening and rest as much as I can.”
After he was gone, Gladia remained for a while in deep thought, then turned to Giskard and said in Auroran Common, a patter version of Galactic Standard that was widespread on Aurora and difficult for any non-Auroran to understand, “Giskard, what is all this nonsense about the burning out of circuits?”
“My lady,” said Giskard, “I advanced it only as a possibility and nothing more. I thought it well to emphasize your role in putting an end to the overseer.”
“But how could you think he would believe that a robot could bum out that easily?”
“He knows very little about robots, madam. He may traffic in them, but he is from a world that doesn’t make use of them.”
“Yet I know a great deal about them and so do you. The overseer showed no signs whatever of balancing circuits; no stuttering, no trembling, no behavior difficulty of any kind. It just—stopped.”
Giskard said, “Madam, since we do not know the precise specifications to which the overseer was designed, we may have to be content with ignorance as to the rationale behind the freeze.”
Gladia shook her head. “Just the same, it’s puzzling.”
ТЕЛЕГРАМКанал с обзорами, анонсами новинок и книжными подборками
Книжный Вестник
Бот для удобного поиска и скачивания книг
Книжный Бот
Свежие любовные романы в удобных форматах
Любовные романы
О психологии, саморазвитии и личностном росте
Саморазвитие
Детективы и триллеры, все новинки
Детективы
Фантастика и фэнтези, все новинки
Фантастика
ВКОНТАКТЕ