Robots and Empire

34

D.G.’s ship was in space again, surrounded by the everlasting changelessness of the endless vacuum.

It had not come too soon for Gladia, who had but imperfectly suppressed the tension that arose from the possibility that a second overseer—with a second intensifier—might arrive without warning. The fact that it would be a quick death if it happened, an unexperienced death, was not quite satisfying. The tension had spoiled what would have otherwise been a luxuriant shower, along with various other forms of renewal of comfort.

It was not till after actual takeoff, after the coming of the soft, distant buzz of the protonic jets, that she could compose herself to sleep. Odd, she thought as consciousness began to slip away, that space should feel safer than the world of her youth, that she should leave Solaria with even greater relief the second time than she had the first.

But Solaria was no longer the world of her youth. It was a world without humanity, guarded over by distorted parodies of humanity; humanoid robots that made a mockery of the gentle Daneel and the thought-filled Giskard.

She slept at last—and while she slept, Daneel and Giskard, standing guard, could once more speak to each other.

Daneel said, “Friend Giskard, I am quite certain that it was you who destroyed the overseer.”

“Mere was clearly no choice, friend Daneel. It was purely an accident that I arrived in time, for my senses were entirely occupied with searching out human beings and I found none. Nor would I have grasped the significance of events if it were not for Lady Gladia’s rage and despair. It was that which I sensed at a distance and which caused me to race to the scene—barely in time. In that respect, Lady Gladia did save the situation, at least as far as the captain’s existence and yours were concerned. I would still have saved the ship, I believe, even if I had arrived too late to save you.” He paused a moment and added, “I would have found it most unsatisfactory, friend Daneel, to arrive too late to save you.”

Daneel said, with a grave and formal tone of voice, “I thank you, friend Giskard. I am pleased that you were not inhibited by the human appearance of the overseer. That had slowed my reactions, as my appearance had slowed hers.”

“Friend Daneel, her physical appearance meant nothing to me because I was aware of the pattern of her thoughts. That pattern was so limited and so entirely different from the full range of human patterns that there was no need for me to make any effort to identify her in a positive manner. The negative identification as nonhuman was so clear I acted at once. I was not aware of my action, in fact, until after it had taken place.”

“I had thought this, friend Giskard, but I wished confirmation lest I misunderstand. May I assume, then, that you feel no discomfort over having killed what was, in appearance, a human being?”

“None, since it was a robot.”

“It seems to me that, had I succeeded in destroying her, I would have suffered some obstruction to the free positronic flow, no matter how thoroughly I understood her to be a robot.”

“The humanoid appearance, friend Daneel, cannot be fought off when that is all one can directly judge by. Seeing is so much more immediate than deducing. It was only because I could observe her mental structure and concentrate on that, that I could ignore her physical structure.”

“How do you suppose the overseer would have felt if she had destroyed us, judging from her mental structure?”

“She was given exceedingly firm instructions and there was no doubt in her circuits that you, and the captain were nonhuman by her definition.”

“But she might have destroyed Madam Gladia as well.”

“Of that we cannot be certain, friend Daneel.”

“Had she done so, friend Giskard, would she have survived? Have you any way of telling?”

Giskard was silent for a considerable period. “I had insufficient time to study the mental pattern. I cannot say what her reaction might have been had she killed Madam Gladia.”

“If I imagine myself in, the place of the overseer”—Daneel’s voice trembled and grew slightly lower in pitch, “it seems to me that I might kill a human being in order to save the life of another human being, whom, there might be some reason to think, it was more necessary to save. The action would, however, be difficult and damaging. To kill a human being merely in order to destroy something I considered nonhuman would be inconceivable.”

“She merely threatened. She did not carry through the threat.”

“Might she have, friend Giskard?”

“How can we say, since we don’t know the nature of her instructions?”

“Could the instructions have so completely negated the First Law?”

Giskard said, “Your whole purpose in this discussion, I see, has been to raise this question. I advise you to go no further.”

Daneel said stubbornly, “I will put it in the conditional, friend Giskard. Surely what may not be expressed as fact can be advanced as fantasy. If instructions could be hedged about with definitions and conditions, if the instructions could be made sufficiently detailed in a sufficiently forceful manner, might it be possible to kill a human being for a purpose less overwhelming than the saving of the life of another human being?”

Giskard said tonelessly, “I do not know, but I suspect that this might be possible.”

“But, then, if your suspicion should be collect, that would imply that it was possible to neutralize the First Law under specialized conditions. The First Law, in that case, and, therefore, certainly the other Laws might be modified into almost nonexistence. The Laws, even the First Law, might not be an absolute then, but might be whatever those who design robots defined it to be.”

Giskard said, “It is enough, friend Daneel. Go no further.”

Daneel said, “There is one more step, friend Giskard. Partner Elijah would have taken that additional step.”

“He was a human being. He could.”

“I must try. If the Laws of Robotics—even the First Law—are not absolutes and if human beings can modify them, might it not be that perhaps, under proper conditions, we ourselves might mod—” He stopped.

Giskard said faintly, “Go no further.”

Daneel said, a slight hum obscuring his voice, “I go no further.”

There was a silence for a long time. It was with difficulty that the positronic circuitry in each ceased undergoing discords.

Finally, Daneel said, “Another thought arises. The overseer was dangerous not only because of the set of her instructions but because of her appearance. It inhibited me and probably the captain and could mislead and deceive human beings generally, as I deceived, without meaning to, First Class Shipper Niss. He clearly was not aware, at first, that I was a robot.”

“And what follows from that, friend Daneel?”

“On Aurora, a number of humanoid robots were constructed at the Robotics Institute, under the leadership of Dr. Amadiro, after the designs of Dr. Fastolfe had been obtained.”

“This is well known.”

“What happened to those humanoid robots?”

“The project failed.”

In his turn, Daneel said, “This is well known. But it does not answer the question. What happened to those humanoid robots?”

“One can assume they were destroyed.”

“Such an assumption need not necessarily be correct. Were they, in actual fact, destroyed?”

“That would have been the sensible thing to do. What else with a failure?”

“How do we know the humanoid robots were a failure, except in that they were removed from sight?”

“Isn’t that sufficient, if they were removed from sight and destroyed?”

“I did not say ‘and destroyed,’ friend Giskard. That is more than we know. We know only that they were removed from sight.”

“Why should that be so, unless they were failures?”

“And if they were not failures, might there be no reason for their being removed from sight?”

“I can think of none, friend Daneel.”

“Think again, friend Giskard. Remember, we are talking now of humanoid robots who, we now think, might from the mere fact of their humanoid nature be dangerous. It has seemed to us in our previous discussion that there was a plan on foot on Aurora to defeat the Settlers drastically, surely, and at a blow. We decided that these plans must be centered on the planet Earth. Am I correct so far?”

“Yes, friend Daneel.”

“Then might it not be that Dr. Amadiro is at the focus and center of this plan? His antipathy to Earth has been made plain these twenty decades. And if Dr. Amadiro has constructed a number of humanoid robots, where might these have been sent if they have disappeared from view? Remember that if Solarian roboticists can distort the Three Laws, Auroran roboticists can do the same.”

“Are you suggesting, friend Daneel, that the humanoid robots have been sent to Earth?”

“Exactly. There to deceive the Earthpeople through their human appearance and to make possible whatever it is that Dr. Amadiro intends as his blow against Earth.”

“You have no evidence for this.”

“Yet it is possible. Consider for yourself the steps of the argument.”

“If that were so, we would have to go to Earth. We would have to be there and somehow prevent the disaster.”

“Yes, that is so.”

“But we cannot go unless Lady Gladia goes and that is not likely.”

“If you can influence the captain to take this ship to Earth, Madam Gladia would have no choice but to go as well.”

Giskard said, “I cannot without harming him. He is firmly set on going to his own planet of Baleyworld. We must maneuver his trip to Earth—if we can—after he has done whatever he plans in Baleyworld.”

“Afterward may be too late.”

“I cannot help that. I must not harm a human being.”

“If it is too late—Friend Giskard, consider what that would mean.”

“I cannot consider what that would mean. I know only that I cannot harm a human being.”

“Then the First Law is not enough and we must—” He could go no farther and both robots lapsed into helpless silence.

35

Baleyworld came slowly into sharper view as the ship approached it. Gladia watched it intently in her cabin’s viewer; it was the first time she had ever seen a Settler world.

She had protested this leg of the journey when she had first been made aware of it by D.G., but he shrugged it off with a small laugh. “What would you have, my lady? I must lug this weapon of your people”—he emphasized “your” slightly—“to my people. And I must report to them, too.”

Gladia said, coldly, “Your permission to take me along to Solaria was granted you by the Auroran Council on the condition that you bring me back.”

“Actually that is not so, my lady. There may have been some informal understanding to that effect, but there is nothing in writing. No formal agreement.”

“An informal understanding would bind me—or any civilized individual, D.G.”

“I’m sure of that, Madam Gladia, but we Traders live by money and by written signatures on legal documents. I would never, under any circumstances, violate a written contract or refuse to do that for which I have accepted payment.”

Gladia’s chin turned upward. “Is that a hint that I must pay you in order to be taken home?”

“Madam!”

“Come, come, D.G. Don’t waste mock indignation on me. If I am to be kept prisoner on your planet, say so and tell me why. Let me know exactly where I stand.”

“You are not my prisoner and will not be. In fact, I will honor this unwritten understanding. I will take you home—eventually. First, however, I must go to Baleyworld and you must come with me.”

“Why must I come with you?”

“The people of my world will want to see you. You are the heroine of Solaria. You saved us. You can’t deprive them of a chance of shouting themselves hoarse for you. Besides, you were the good friend of the Ancestor.”

“What do they know—or think they know—of that?” Gladia said sharply.

D.G. grinned. “Nothing to your discredit—I assure you. You are a legend and legends are larger than life—though I admit it would be easy for a legend to be larger than you, my lady—and a good deal nobler. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t want you on the world because you couldn’t live up to the legend. You’re not tall enough, beautiful enough, majestic enough. But when the story of Solaria comes out, you will suddenly meet all requirements. In fact, they may not want to let you go. You must remember we are talking of Baleyworld, the planet on which the story of the Ancestor is taken more seriously than on any other—and you are part of the story.”

“You are not to use that as an excuse to keep me in prison.”

“I promise you I won’t. And I promise I will get you home—when I can—when I can.”

Gladia did not remain as indignant somehow as she felt she had every right to be. She did want to see what a Settler world was like and, after all, this was Elijah Baley’s peculiar world. His son had founded it. He himself had spent his last decades here. On Baleyworld, there would be remnants of him—the name of the planet, his descendants, his legend.

So she watched the planet—and thought of Elijah.

36

The watching brought her little and she felt disappointed. There was not much to be seen through the cloud layer that covered the planet. From her relatively small experience as a space traveler it seemed to her that the cloud layer was denser than usual for inhabited planets. They would be landing within hours, now, and—

The signal light flashed and Gladia scrambled to push the HOLD button in answer. A few moments more and she pushed the ENTER button.

D.G. came in, smiling. “Inconvenient moment, my lady?”

“Not really,” said Gladia. “Simply a matter of putting on my gloves and inserting my nose plugs. I suppose I should wear them all the time, but both grow tiresome and, for some reason, I grow less concerned about infection.”

“Familiarity breeds contempt, my lady.”

“Let’s not call it contempt,” said Gladia, who found herself smiling.

“Thank you,” said D.G. “We’ll be landing soon, madam, and I have brought you a coverall, carefully sterilized and placed inside this plastic bag so that it has since been untouched by Settler hands. It’s simple to put on. You’ll have no trouble and you’ll find it covers everything but the nose and eyes.”

“Just for me, D.G.?”

“No, no, my lady. We all wear such things when outdoors at this season of the year. It is winter in our capital city at the present time and it is cold. We live on a rather cold world—heavy cloud cover, much precipitation, often snow.”

“Even in the tropical regions?”

“No, there it tends to be hot and dry. The population clusters in the cooler regions, however. We rather like it. It’s bracing and stimulating. The seas, which were seeded with Earth species of life, are fertile, so that fish and other creatures have multiplied abundantly. There’s no food shortage, consequently, even though land agriculture is limited and we’ll never be the breadbasket of the Galaxy.—The summers are short but quite hot and the beaches are then well populated, although you might find them uninteresting since we have a strong nudity taboo.”

“It seems like peculiar weather.”

“A matter of land-sea distribution, a planetary orbit that is a bit more eccentric than most, and a few other things. Frankly, I don’t bother with it.” He shrugged. “It’s not my field of interest.”

“You’re a Trader. I imagine you’re not on the planet often.”

“True, but I’m not a Trader in order to escape. I like it here. And yet perhaps I would like it less if I were here more. If we look at it that way, Baleyworld’s harsh conditions serve an important purpose. They encourage trading. Baleyworld produces men who scour the seas for food and there’s a certain similarity between sailing the seas and sailing through space. I would say fully a third of all the Traders plying the space lanes are Baleypeople.”

“You seem in a semimanic state, D.G.,” said Gladia.

“Do I? I think of myself right now as being in a good humor. I have reason to be. So have you.”

“Oh?”

“It’s obvious, isn’t it? We got off Solaria alive. We know exactly what the Solarian danger is. We’ve gained control of an unusual weapon that should interest our military. And you will be the heroine of Baleyworld. The world officials already know the outline of events and are eager to greet you. For that matter, you’re the heroine of this ship. Almost every man on board volunteered to bring you this coverall. They are all anxious to get close and bathe in your aura, so to speak.”

“Quite a change,” said Gladia dryly.

“Absolutely. Niss—the crewman whom your Daneel chastised—”

“I remember well, D.G.”

“He is anxious to apologize to you. And bring his four mates so that they, too, might apologize. And to kick, in you presence, the one of them who made an improper suggestion. He is not a bad person, my lady.”

“I am certain he isn’t. Assure him, he is forgiven and the incident forgotten. And if you’ll arrange matters, I will shake hands with him and perhaps some of the others before debarking. But you mustn’t let them crowd about me.”

“I understand, but I can’t guarantee there won’t be a certain amount of crowding in Baleytown—that’s the capital city of Baleyworld. There’s no way of stopping various government officials from trying to gain political advantage by being seen with you, while grinning away and bowing.”

“Jehoshaphat! As your Ancestor would say.”

“Don’t say that once we land, madam. It’s an expression reserved for him. It is considered bad taste for anyone else to say it.—There’ll be speeches and cheering and all kinds of meaningless formalities. I’m sorry, my lady.”

She said thoughtfully, “I could do without it, but I suppose there’s no way of stopping it.”

“No way, my lady.”

“How long will it continue?”

“Till they get tired. Several days, perhaps, but there’ll be a certain variety to it.”

“And how long do we stay on the planet?”

“Till I get tired. I’m sorry, my lady, but I have much to do—places to go—friends to see—”

“Women to make love to.”

“Alas for human frailty,” said D.G., grinning broadly.

“You’re doing everything but slobber.”

“A weakness. I can’t bring myself to slobber.”

Gladia smiled. “You’re not totally committed to sanity, are you?”

“I never claimed to be. But, leaving that aside, I also have to consider such dull matters as the fact that my officers and crew would want to see their families and friends, catch up on their sleep, and have a little planetside fun.—And if you want to consider the feelings of inanimate objects, the ship will have to be repaired, refurbished, refreshed, and refueled. Little things like that.”

“How long will all those little things take?”

“It could be months. Who knows?”

“And what do I do meanwhile?”

“You could see our world, broaden your horizons.”

“But your world is not exactly the playground of the Galaxy.”

“Too true, but we’ll try to keep you interested.” He looked at his watch. “One more warning, madam. Do not refer to your age.”

“What cause would I have to do that?”

“It might show up in some casual reference. You’ll be expected to say a few words and you might say, for instance, In all my more than twenty-three decades of life, I have never been so glad to see anyone as I am to see, the people of Baleyworld. If you’re tempted to say anything like that initial clause, resist it.”

“I will. I have no intention of indulging in hyperbole in any case.—But, as a matter of idle curiosity, why not?”

“Simply because it is better for them not to know your age—”

“But they do know my age, don’t they? They know I was your Ancestor’s friend and they know how long ago he lived. Or are they under the impression”—she looked at him narrowly—“that I’m a distant descendant of the Gladia?”

“No, no, they know who you are and how old you are, but they know it only with their heads”—he tapped his forehead—“and few people have working heads, as you may have noticed.”

“Yes, I have. Even on Aurora.”

“That’s good. I wouldn’t want the Settlers to be special in this respect. Well, then, you have the appearance of”—he paused judiciously—“Forty, maybe forty-five, and they’ll accept you as that in their guts, which is where the average person’s real thinking mechanism is located. If you don’t rub it in about your real age.”

“Does it really make a difference?”

“Does it? Look, the average Settler really doesn’t want robots. He has no liking for robots, no desire for robots. There we are satisfied to differ from the Spacers. Long life is different. Forty decades is considerably more than ten.

“Few of us actually reach the forty-decade mark.”

“And few of us actually reach the ten-decade mark. We teach the advantage of short life-quality versus quantity, evolutionary speed, ever-changing world—but nothing really makes people happy about living ten decades when they imagine they could live forty, so past a point the propaganda produces a backlash and it’s best to keep quiet about it. They don’t often see Spacers, as you can imagine, and so they don’t have occasion to grind their teeth over the fact that Spacers look young and vigorous even when they are twice as old as the oldest Settler who ever lived. They’ll see that in you and if they think about it, it will unsettle them.

Gladia said bitterly, “Would you like to have me make a speech and tell them exactly what forty decades means? Shall I tell them for how many years one outlives the spring time of hope, to say nothing of friends and acquaintances. Shall I tell them of the meaninglessness of children and family; of the endless comings and goings of one husband after another, of the misty blurring of the informal matings between and alongside; of the coming of the time when you’ve seen all you want to see, and heard all you want to hear, and find it impossible to think a new thought, of how you forget what excitement and discovery are all about, and learn each year how much more intense boredom can become?”

“Baleypeople wouldn’t believe that. I don’t think I do. Is that the way all Spacers feel or are you making it up?”

“I only know for certain how I myself feel, but I’ve watched others dim as they aged; I’ve watched their dispositions sour, and their ambitions narrow, and their indifferences broaden. “

D.G.’s lips pressed together and he looked somber. “Is the suicide rate high among Spacers? I’ve never heard that it is.”

“It’s virtually zero.”

“But that doesn’t fit what you’re saying.”

“Consider! We’re surrounded by robots who are dedicated to keeping us alive. There’s no way we can kill ourselves when our sharp-eyed and active robots are forever about us. I doubt that any of us would even think of trying. I wouldn’t dream of it myself, if only because I can’t bear the thought of what it would mean to all my household robots and, even more so, to Daneel and Giskard.”

“They’re not really alive, you know. They don’t have feelings.”

Gladia shook her head. “You say that only because you’ve never lived with them.—In any case, I think you overestimate the longing for prolonged life among your people. You know my age, you look at my appearance, yet it doesn’t bother you.”

“Because I’m convinced that the Spacer worlds must dwindle and die, that it is the Settler worlds that are the hope of humanity’s future, and that it is our short-lived characteristic that ensures it. Listening to what you’ve just said, assuming it is all true, makes me the more certain.”

“Don’t be too sure. You may develop your own insuperable problems—if you haven’t already.”

“That is undoubtedly possible, my lady, but for now I must leave you. The ship is coasting in for a landing and I must stare intelligently at the computer that controls it or no one will believe that I am the captain.”

He left and she remained in gloomy abstraction for a while, her fingers plucking at the plastic that enclosed the coverall.

She had come to a sense of equilibrium on Aurora, a way of allowing life to pass quietly. Meal by meal, day, by day, season by season, it had been passing and the quiet had insulated her, almost, from the tedious waiting for the only adventure that remained, the final one of death.

And now she had been to Solaria—and had awakened the memories of a childhood that had long passed on a world that had long passed, so that the quiet had been shattered perhaps forever—and so that she now lay uncovered and bare to the horror of continuing life.

“What could substitute for the vanished quiet?”

She caught Giskard’s dimly glowing eyes upon her and she said, “Help me on with this, Giskard.”

37

It was cold. The sky was gray with clouds and the air glittered with a very light snowfall. Patches of powdery snow were swirling in the fresh breeze and off beyond the landing field Gladia could see distant heaps of snow.

There were crowds of people gathered here and there, held off by barriers from approaching too closely. They were all wearing coveralls of different types and colors and they all seemed to balloon outward, turning humanity into a crowd of shapeless objects with eyes. Some were wearing visors that glittered transparently over their faces.

Gladia pressed her mittened hand to her face. Except for her nose, she felt warm enough. The coverall did more than insulate; it seemed to exude warmth of its own.

She looked behind her. Daneel and Giskard were within reach, each in a coverall.

She had protested that at first. “They don’t need coveralls. They’re not sensitive to cold.”

“I’m sure they’re not,” D.G. had said, “but you say you won’t go anywhere without them and we can’t very well have Daneel sitting there exposed to the cold. It would seem against nature. Nor do we wish to arouse hostility by making it too clear you have robots.”

“They must know I’ve got robots with me and Giskard’s face will give him away—even in a coverall.”

“They might know,” said D.G., “but the chances are they won’t think about it if they’re not forced to—so let’s not force it.

Now D.G. was motioning her into a ground-car that had a transparent roof and sides. “They’ll want to see you as we travel, my lady,” he said, smiling.

Gladia seated herself at one side and D.G. followed on the other. “I’m co-hero,” he said.

“Do you value that?”

“Oh, yes. It means a bonus for my crew and a possible promotion for me. I don’t scorn that.”

Daneel and Giskard entered, too, and sat down in seats that faced the two human beings. Daneel faced Gladia; Giskard faced D.G.

There was a ground-car before them, without transparency, and a line of about a dozen behind them. There was the sound of cheering and a forest of arm-waving from the assembled crowd. D.G. smiled and lifted an arm in response and motioned to Gladia to do the same. She waved in a perfunctory manner. It was warm inside the car and her nose had lost its numbness.

She said, “There’s a rather unpleasant glitter to these windows. Can that be removed?”

“Undoubtedly, but it won’t be,” said D.G. “That’s as unobtrusive a force field as we can set up. Those are enthusiastic people out there and they’ve been searched, but someone may have managed to conceal a weapon and we don’t want you hurt.”

“You mean someone might try to kill me?”

(Daneel’s eyes were calmly scanning the crowd to one side of the car; Giskard’s scanned the other side.)

“Very unlikely, my lady, but you’re a Spacer and Settlers don’t like Spacers. A few might hate them with such a surpassing hatred as to see only the Spacerness in you.—But don’t worry. Even if someone were to try—which is, as I say, unlikely—they won’t succeed.”

The line of cars began to move, all together and very smoothly.

Gladia half-rose in astonishment. There was no one in front of the partition that closed them off. “Who’s driving?” she asked.

“The cars are thoroughly computerized,” said D.G. “I take it that Spacer cars are not?”

“We have robots to drive them.”

D.G. continued waving and Gladia followed his lead automatically. “We don’t,” he said.

“But a computer is essentially the same as a robot.”

“A computer is not humanoid and it does not obtrude itself on one’s notice. Whatever the technological similarities might be, they are worlds apart psychologically.”

Gladia watched the countryside and found it oppressively barren. Even allowing for winter, there was something desolate in the scattering of leafless bushes and in the sparsely distributed trees, whose stunted and dispirited appearance emphasized the death that seemed to grip everything.

D.G., noting her depression and correlating it with her darting glances here and there, said, “It doesn’t look like much now, my lady. In the summer, though, it’s not bad. There are grassy plains, orchards, grain fields—”

“Forests?”

“Not wilderness forests. We’re still a growing world. It’s still being molded. We’ve only had a little over a century and a half, really. The first step was to cultivate home plots for the initial Settlers, using imported seed. Then we placed fish and invertebrates of all kinds in the ocean, doing our best to establish a self-supporting ecology. That is a fairly easy procedure—if the ocean chemistry is suitable. If it isn’t, then the planet is not habitable without extensive chemical modification and that has never been tried in actuality, though there are all sorts of plans for such procedures.—Finally, we try to make the land flourish, which is always difficult, always slow.”

“Have all the Settler worlds followed that path?”

“Are following. None are really finished. Baleyworld is the oldest and we’re not finished. Given another couple of centuries, the Settler worlds will be rich and full of life land as well as sea—though by that time there will by many still-newer worlds that will be working their way through various preliminary stages. I’m sure the Spacer worlds went through the same procedure.”

“Many centuries ago—and less strenuously, I think. We had robots to help.”

“We’ll manage,” said D.G. briefly.

“And what about the native life—the plants and animals that evolved on this world before human beings arrived?”

D.G. shrugged. “Insignificant. Small, feeble things. The scientists are, of course, interested, so the indigenous life still exists in special aquaria, botanical gardens, zoos. There are out-of-the-way bodies of water and considerable stretches of land area that have not yet been converted. Some indigenous life still lives out there in the wild.”

“But these stretches of wilderness will eventually all be converted.”

“We hope so.

“Don’t you feel that the planet really belongs to these insignificant, small, feeble things?”

“No. I’m not that sentimental. The planet and the whole Universe belongs to intelligence. The Spacers agree with that. Where is the indigenous life of Solaria? Or of Aurora?”

The line of cars, which had been progressing tortuously from the spaceport, now came to a flat, paved area on which several low, domed buildings were evident.

“Capital Plaza,” said D.G. in a low voice. “This is the official heartbeat of the planet. Government offices are located here, the Planetary Congress meets here, the Executive Mansion is found here, and so on.”

“I’m sorry, D.G., but this is not very impressive. These are small and uninteresting buildings.”

D.G. smiled. “You see only an occasional top, my lady. The buildings themselves are located underground—all interconnected. It’s a single complex, really, and is still growing. It’s a self-contained city, you know. It, along with the surrounding residential areas, makes up Baleytown.”

“Do you plan to have everything underground eventually? The whole city? The whole world?”

“Most of us look forward to an underground world, yes.”

“They have underground Cities on Earth, I understand.”

“Indeed they do, my lady. The so-called Caves of Steel.”

“You imitate that here, then?”

“It’s not simple imitation. We add our own ideas and we’re coming to a halt, my lady, and any moment we’ll be asked to step out. I’d cling to the coverall openings if I were you. The whistling wind on the Plaza in winter is legendary.”

Gladia did so, fumbling rather as she tried to put the edges of the openings together. “It’s not simple imitation, you say.”

“No. We design our underground with the weather in mind. Since our weather is, on the whole, harsher than Earth’s, some modification in architecture is required. Properly built, almost no energy is required to keep the complex warm in winter and cool in summer. In a way, indeed, we keep warm in winter, in part, with the stored warmth of the previous summer and cool in summer with the coolness of the previous winter.”

“What about ventilation?”

“That uses up some of the savings, but not all. It works, my lady, and someday we will match Earth’s structures. That, of course, is the ultimate ambition—to make Baleyworld a reflection of Earth.”

“I never knew that Earth was so admirable as to make imitation desirable,” said Gladia lightly.

D.G. turned his eyes on her sharply. “Make no jokes of that sort, my lady, while you are with Settlers—not even with me. Earth is no joking matter.”

Gladia said, “I’m sorry, D.G. I meant no disrespect.”

“You didn’t know. But now you know. Come, let’s get out.”

The side door of the car slid open noiselessly and D.G. turned in his seat and stepped out. He then held out one hand to help Gladia and said, “You’ll be addressing the Planetary Congress, you know, and every government official who can squeeze in will do so.”

Gladia, who had stretched out her hand to seize D.G.’s and who already felt—painfully—the cold wind on her face, shrank back suddenly. “I must make an address? I hadn’t been told that.”

D.G. looked surprised. “I rather thought you would take something of the sort for granted.”

“Well, I didn’t. And I can’t make an address. I’ve never done such a thing.”

“You must. It’s nothing terrible. It’s just a matter of saying a few words after some long and boring speeches of welcome.”

“But what can I possibly say?”

“Nothing fancy, I assure you. Just peace and love and blah—Give them half a minute’s worth. I’ll scrawl out something for you if you wish.”

And Gladia stepped out of the car and her robots followed her. Her mind was in a whirl.

38

As they walked into the building, they removed their coveralls and handed them to attendants. Daneel and Giskard removed theirs, too, and the attendants cast sharp glances at the latter, approaching him gingerly.

Gladia adjusted her nose plugs nervously. She had never before been in the presence of large crowds of short-lived human beings—short-lived in part, she knew (or had always been told), because they carried in their bodies chronic infections and hordes of parasites.

She whispered, “Will I get back my own coverall?”

“You will wear no one else’s,” said D.G. “They will be kept safe and radiation-sterilized.”

Gladia looked about cautiously. Somehow she felt that even optical contact might be dangerous.

“Who are those people?” She indicated several people who wore brightly colored clothing and were obviously armed.

“Security guards, madam,” said D.G.

“Even here? In a government building?”

“Absolutely. And when we’re on the platform, there will be a force-field curtain dividing us from the audience.”

“Don’t you trust your own legislature?”

D.G. half-smiled. “Not entirely. This is a raw world still and we go our own ways. We haven’t had all the edges knocked off and we don’t have robots watching over us. Then, too, we’ve got militant minority parties; we’ve got our war hawks.”

“What are war hawks?”

Most of the Baleyworlders had their coveralls removed now and were helping themselves to drinks. There was a buzz of conversation in the air and many people stared at Gladia, but no one came over to speak to her. Indeed, it was clear to Gladia that there was a circle of avoidance about her.

D.G. noticed her glance from side to side and interpreted it correctly. “They’ve been told,” he said, “that you would appreciate a little elbow room. I think they understand your fear of infection.”

“They don’t find it insulting, I hope.”

“They may, but you’ve got something that is clearly a robot with you and most Baleyworlders don’t want that kind of infection. The war hawks, particularly.”

“You haven’t told me what they are.”

“I will if there’s time. You and I and others on the platform will have to move in a little while.—Most Settlers think that, in time, the Galaxy will be theirs, that the Spacers cannot and will not compete successfully in the race for expansion. We also know it will take time. We won’t see it. Our children probably won’t. It may take a thousand years, for all we know. The war hawks don’t want to wait. They want it settled now.”

“They want war?”

“They don’t say that, precisely. And they don’t call themselves war hawks. That’s what we sensible people call them. They call themselves Earth Supremacists. After all, it’s hard to argue with people who announce they are in favor of Earth being supreme. We all favor that, but most of us don’t necessarily expect it to happen tomorrow and are not ferociously upset that it won’t.”

“And these war hawks may attack me? Physically?”

D.G. gestured for her to move forward. “I think we’ll have to get moving, madam. They’re getting us into line. No, I don’t think you’ll really be attacked, but it’s always best to be cautious.”

Gladia held back as D.G. indicated her place in line.

“Not without Daneel and Giskard, D.G. I’m still not going anywhere without them. Not even onto the platform. Not after what you just told me about the war hawks.”

“You’re asking a lot, my lady.”

“On the contrary, D.G. I’m not asking for anything. Take me home right now—with my robots.”

Gladia watched tensely as D.G. approached a small group of officials. He made a half-bow, arms in downward pointing diagonals. It was what Gladia suspected to be a Baleyworlder gesture of respect.

She did not hear what D.G. was saying, but a painful and quite involuntary fantasy passed through her mind. If there was any attempt to separate her from her robots against her will, Daneel and Giskard would surely do what they could to prevent it. They would move too quickly and precisely to really hurt anyone—but the security guards would use their weapons at once. “

She would have to prevent that at all costs—pretend she was separating from Daneel and Giskard voluntarily and ask them to wait behind for her. How could she do that? She had never been entirely without robots in her life. How could she feel safe without them? And yet what other way out of the dilemma offered itself?

D.G. returned. “Your status as heroine, my lady, is a useful bargaining chip. And, of course, I am a persuasive fellow. Your robots may go with you. They will sit on the platform behind you, but there will be no spotlight upon them. And, for the sake of the Ancestor, my lady, don’t call attention to them. Don’t even look at them.”

Gladia sighed with relief. “You’re a good fellow, D.G.,” she said shakily. “Thank you.”

She took her place near the head of the line, D.G. at her left, Daneel and Giskard behind her, and behind them a long tail of officials of both sexes.

A woman Settler, carrying a staff that seemed to be a symbol of office, having surveyed the line carefully, nodded, moved forward to the head of the line, then walked on. Everyone followed.

Gladia became aware of music in simple and rather repetitive march rhythm up ahead and wondered if she were supposed to march in some choreographed fashion. (Customs vary infinitely and irrationally from world to world, she told herself.)

Looking out of the corner of her eye, she noticed D.G. ambling forward in an indifferent way. He was almost slouching. She pursed her lips disapprovingly and walked rhythmically, head erect, spine stiff. In the absence of direction, she was going to march the way she wanted to.

They came out upon a stage and, as they did so, chairs rose smoothly from recesses in the floor. The line split up, but D.G. caught her sleeve lightly and she accompanied him. The two robots followed her.

She stood in front of the seat that D.G. quietly pointed to. The music grew loud, but the light was not quite as bright as it had been. And then, after what seemed an almost interminable wait, she felt D.G.’s touch pressing lightly downward. She sat and so did they all.

She was aware of the faint shimmer of the force-field curtain and beyond that an audience of several thousand. Every seat was filled in an amphitheater that sloped steeply upward. All were dressed in dull colors, browns and blacks, both sexes alike (as nearly as she could tell them apart). The security guards in the aisles stood out in their green and crimson uniforms. No doubt it lent them instant recognition. (Though, Gladia thought, it must make them instant targets as well.)

She turned to D.G. and said in a low voice, “You people have an enormous legislature.”

D.G. shrugged slightly. “I think everyone in the governmental apparatus is here, with mates and guests. A tribute to your popularity, my lady.”

She cast a glance over the audience from right to left and back and tried at the extreme of the arc to catch sight, out of the corner of her eye, of either Daneel or Giskard—just to be sure they were there. And then she thought, rebelliously, that nothing would happen because of a quick glance and deliberately turned her head. They were there. She also caught D.G., rolling his eyes upward in exasperation.

She started suddenly as a spotlight fell upon one of the persons on the stage, while the rest of the room dimmed further into shadowy insubstantiality.

The spotlighted figure rose and began to speak. His voice was not terribly loud, but Gladia could hear a very faint reverberation bouncing back from the far walls. It must penetrate every cranny of the large hall, she thought. Was it some form of amplification by a device so unobtrusive that she did not see it or was there a particularly clever acoustical shape to the hall? She did not know, but she encouraged her puzzled speculation to continue, for it relieved her, for a while, of the necessity of having to listen to what was being said.

At one point she heard a soft call of “Quackenbush” from some undetermined point in the audience. But for the perfect acoustics (if that was what it was), it would probably have gone unheard.

The word meant nothing to her, but from the soft, brief titter of laughter that swept the audience, she suspected it was a vulgarism. The sound quenched itself almost at once and Gladia rather admired the depth of the silence that followed.

Perhaps if the room were so perfectly acoustic that every sound could be heard, the audience had to be silent or the noise and confusion would be intolerable. Then, once the custom of silence was established and audience noise became a taboo, anything but silence would become unthinkable.—Except where the impulse to mutter “Quackenbush” became irresistible, she supposed.

Gladia realized that her thinking was growing muddy and her eyes were closing. She sat upright with a small jerk. The people of the planet were trying to honor her and if she fell asleep during the proceedings, that would surely be an intolerable insult. She tried to keep herself awake by listening, but that seemed to make her sleepier. She bit the inside of her cheeks instead and breathed deeply.

Three officials spoke, one after the other, with semimerciful semibrevity, and then Gladia jolted wide awake (Had she been actually dozing despite all her efforts—with thousands of pairs of eyes on her?) as the spotlight fell just to her left and D.G. rose to speak, standing in front of his chair.

He seemed completely at ease, with his thumbs hooked in his belt.

“Men and women of Baleyworld,” he began. “Officials, lawgivers, honored leaders, and fellow planetfolk, you have heard something of what happened on Solaria. You know that we were completely successful. You know that Lady Gladia of Aurora contributed to that success. It is time now to present some of the details to you and to all my fellow planetfolk who are watching on hypervision.”

He proceeded to describe the events in modified form and Gladia found herself dryly amused at the nature of the modifications. He passed over his own discomfiture at the hands of a humanoid robot lightly. Giskard was never mentioned; Daneel’s role was minimized; and Gladia’s heavily emphasized. The incident became a duel between two women—Gladia, and Landaree—and it was the courage and sense of authority of Gladia that had won out.

Finally, D.G. said, “And now Lady Gladia, Solarian by birth, Auroran by citizenship, but Baleyworlder by deed—” (There was strong applause at the last, the loudest Gladia had yet heard, for the earlier speakers had been but tepidly received.)

D.G. raised his hands for silence and it came at once. He then concluded, “—will now address you.”

Gladia found the spotlight on herself and turned to D.G. in sudden panic. There was applause in her ears and D.G., too, was clapping his hands. Under the cover of the applause, he leaned toward her and whispered, “You love them all, you want peace, and since you’re not a legislator, you’re unused to long speeches of small content. Say that, then sit down.”

She looked at him uncompirehendingly, far too nervous to have heard what he said.

She rose and found herself staring at endless tiers of people.

39

Gladia felt very small (not for the first time in her life, to be sure) as she faced the stage. The men on the stage were all taller than she was and so were the other three women. She felt that even though they were all sitting and she was standing, they still towered over her. As for the audience, winch was waiting now in almost menacing silence, those who composed it were, she felt quite certain, one and all larger than her in every dimension.

She took a deep breath and said, “Friends—” but it came out in a thin, breathless whistle. She cleared her throat (in what seemed a thunderous rasp) and tried again.

“Friends!” This time there was a certain normality to the sound. “You are all descended from Earthpeople, every one of you. I am descended from Earthpeople. There are no human beings anywhere on all the inhabited worlds whether Spacer worlds, Settler worlds, or Earth itself—that are not either Earthpeople by birth or Earthpeople by descent. All other differences fade to nothing in the face of that enormous fact.”

Her eyes flickered leftward to look at D.G. and she found that he was smiling very slightly and that one eyelid trembled as though it were about to wink.

She went on. “That should be our guide in every thought and act. I thank you all for thinking of me as a fellow human being and for welcoming me among you without regard to any other classification in which you might have been tempted to place me. Because of that, and in the hope that the day will soon come when sixteen billion human beings, living in love and peace, will consider themselves as just that and nothing more—or less—I think of you not merely as friends but as kinsmen and kinswomen.”

There was an outbreak of applause that thundered in upon her and Gladia half-closed her eyes in relief. She remained standing to let it continue and bathe her in its welcome indication that she had spoken well and—what was more—enough. When it began to fade, she smiled, bowed to right and left, and began to sit down.

And then a voice came out of the audience. “Why don’t you speak in Solarian?”

She froze halfway, to her seat and looked, in shock, at D.G.

He shook his head slightly and mouthed soundlessly: “Ignore it.” He gestured as unobtrusively as possible that she seat herself.

She stared—at him for a second or two, then realized what an ungainly sight she must present, with her posterior protruding in the unfinished process of seating herself. She straightened at once and flashed a smile at the audience as she turned her head slowly from side to side. For the first time she became aware of objects in the rear whose glistening lenses focused upon her.

Of course! D.G. had mentioned that the proceedings were being watched via hyperwave. Yet it scarcely seemed to matter now. She had spoken and had been applauded and she was facing the audience she could see, erect and without, nervousness. What could the unseen addition matter?

She said, still smiling, “I consider that a friendly question. You want me to show you my accomplishments. How many want me to speak as a Solarian might? Don’t hesitate. Raise your right hands.”

A few right arms went up.

Gladia said, “The humanoid robot on Solaria heard me speak Solarian. That was what defeated it in the end. Come let me see everyone who would like a demonstration.”

More right arms went up and, in a moment, the audience became a sea of upraised arms. Gladia felt a hand tweaking at her pants leg and, with a rapid movement, she brushed it away.

“Very well. You may lower your arms now, kinsmen and kinswomen. Understand that what I speak now is Galactic Standard, which is your language, too. I, however, am speaking it as an Auroran would and I know you all understand me even though the way I pronounce my words may well strike you as amusing and my choice of words may on occasion puzzle you a bit. You’ll notice that my way of speaking has notes to it and goes up and down almost as though I were singing my words. This always sounds ridiculous to anyone not an Auroran, even to other Spacers.

“On the other hand, if I slip into the Solarian way of speaking as I am now doing, you will notice at once that the notes stop and that it becomes throaty with r’s that just about neverrr let go—especially if therrre is no ‘rrrr’ anywherrrre on the vocal panoramarrrm.”

There was a burst of laughter from the audience and Gladia confronted it with a serious expression on her face. Finally, she held up her arms and made a cutting movement downward and outward and the laughter stopped.

“However,” she said, “I will probably never go to Solaria again, so I will have no occasion to use the Solarian dialect any further. And the good Captain Baley”—she turned and made a half-bow in his direction, noting that there was a distinct outbreak, of perspiration on his brow—“informs me there is no telling when I’ll be going back to Aurora, so I may have to drop the Auroran dialect as well. My only choice, then, will be to speak the Baleyworld dialect, which I shall at once begin to practice.”

She hooked the fingers of each hand into an invisible belt, stretched her chest outward, pulled her chin downward, put on D.G.’s unselfconscious grin, and said, in a gravelly attempt at baritone, “Men and women of Baleyworld, officials, lawgivers, honored leaders, and fellow planetfolk and that should include everyone, except, perhaps, dishonored leaders—” She did her best to include the glottal stops and the flat “a’s” and carefully pronounced the “h” of “honored” and “dishonored” in what was almost a gasp.

The laughter was still louder this time and more prolonged and Gladia allowed herself to smile and to wait calmly while it went on and on. After all, she was persuading them to laugh at themselves.

And when things were quiet again, she said simply, in an unexaggerated version of the Auroran dialect, “Every dialect is amusing—or peculiar—to those who are not accustomed to it and it tends to mark off human beings into separate—and frequently mutually unfriendly—groups. Dialects, however, are only languages of the tongue. Instead of those, you and I and every other human being on every inhabited world should listen to the language of the heart and there are no dialects to that. That language—if we will only listen—rings out the same in all of us.”

That was it. She was ready to sit down again, but another question sounded. It was a woman’s voice this time.

“How old are you?”

Now D.G. forced a low growl between his teeth. “Sit down, madam! Ignore the question.”

Gladia turned to face D.G. He had half-risen. The others on the stage, as nearly as she could see them in the dimness outside the spotlight, were tensely leaning toward her.

She turned back to the audience and cried out ringingly,

“The people here on the stage want me to sit down. How many of you out there want me to sit down?—I find you are silent.—How many want me to stand here and answer the question honestly?”

There was sharp applause and cries of “Answer! Answer!”

Gladia said, “The voice of the people! I’m sorry, D.G. and all the rest of you, but I am commanded to speak.”

She looked up at the spotlight, squinting, and shouted, “I don’t know who controls the lights, but light the auditorium and turn off the spotlight. I don’t care what it does to the hyperwave cameras. Just make sure the sound is going out accurately. No one will care if I look dim, as long as they can hear me. Right?”

“Right!” came the multivoiced answer. Then “Lights! Lights!”

Someone on the stage signaled in a distraught manner and the audience was bathed in light.

“Much better,” said Gladia. “Now I can see you all, my kinspeople. I would like, particularly, to see the woman who asked the question, the one who wants to know my age. I would like to speak to her directly. Don’t be backward or shy. If you have the courage to ask the question, you should have the courage to ask it openly.”

She waited and finally a woman rose in the middle distance. Her dark hair was pulled back tightly, the color of her skin was a light brown, and her clothing, worn tightly to emphasize a slim figure, was in shades of darker brown.

She said, just a bit stridently, “I’m not afraid to stand up. And I’m not afraid to ask the question again. How old are you?”

Gladia faced her calmly and found herself even welcoming the confrontation. (How was this possible? Throughout her first three decades, she had been carefully trained to find the real presence of even one human being intolerable. Now look at her—facing thousands without a tremble. She was vaguely astonished and entirely pleased.)

Gladia said, “Please remain standing, madam, and let us talk together. How shall we measure age? In elapsed years since birth?”

The woman said with composure “My name is Sindra Lambid. I’m a member of the legislature and therefore one of Captain Baley’s ‘lawgivers’ and ‘honored leaders.’ I hope ‘honored,’ at any rate.” (There was a ripple of laughter as the audience seemed to grow increasingly good-natured.) “To answer your question, I think that the number of Galactic Standard Years that have elapsed since birth is the usual definition of a person’s age. Thus, I am fifty-four years old. How old are you? How about just giving us a figure?”

“I will do so. Since my birth, two hundred and thirty-three Galactic Standard Years have come and gone, so that I am over twenty-three decades old—or a little more than four times as old as you are.” Gladia held herself straight and she knew that her small, slim figure and the dim light made her look extraordinarily childlike at that moment.

There was a confused babble from the audience and something of a groan from her left. A quick glance in that direction showed her that D.G. had his hand to his forehead.

Gladia said, “But that is an entirely passive way of measuring time lapse. It is a measure of quantity that takes no account of quality. My life has been spent quietly, one might say dully. I have drifted through a set routine, shielded from all untoward events by a smoothly functioning social system that left no room for either change or experimentation and by my robots, who stood between me and misadventure of any kind.

“Only twice in my life have I experienced the breath of excitement and both times tragedy was involved. When I was thirty-three, younger in years than many of you who are now listening to me, there was a time—not a long one—during which a murder accusation hung over me. Two years later, there was another period of time—not long during which I was involved in another murder. On both those occasions, Plainclothesman Elijah Baley, was at my side. I believe most of you—or perhaps all of you—are familiar with the story as given in the account written by Elijah Baley’s son.

“I should now add a third occasion for, this last month, I have faced a great deal of excitement, reaching its climax with my being required to stand up before you all, something which is entirely different from anything I have ever done in all my long life. And I must admit it is only your own good nature and kind acceptance of me that makes it possible.

“Consider, each of you, the contrast of all this with your own lives. You are pioneers and you live on a pioneer world. This world has been growing all your lives and will continue to grow. This world is anything but settled down and each day is—and must be—an adventure. The very climate is an adventure. You have first cold, then heat, then cold again. It is a climate rich in wind and storms and sudden change. At no time can you sit back and let time pass drowsily in a world that changes gently or not at all.

“Many Baleyworlders are Traders or can choose to be Traders and can then spend half their time scouring the space lanes. And if ever this world grows tame, many of its inhabitants can choose to transfer their sphere of activities to another less-developed world or join an expedition that will find a suitable world that has not yet felt the step of human beings and take their share in shaping it and seeding it and making it fit for human occupancy.

“Measure the length of life by events and deeds, accomplishments and excitements, and I am a child, younger than any of you. The large number of my years has served merely to bore and weary me; the smaller number of yours to enrich and excite you.—So tell me again, Madam Lambid, how old are you?”

Lambid smiled. “Fifty-four good years, Madam Gladia.”

She sat down and again the applause welled up and continued. Under cover of that, D.G. said hoarsely, “Lady Gladia, who taught you how to handle an audience like this?”

“No one,” she whispered back. “I never tried before.”

“But quit while you’re ahead. The person now getting to his feet is our leading war hawk. There’s no need to face him. Say you are tired and sit down. We will tackle Old Man Bistervan ourselves.”

“But I’m not tired,” said Gladia. “I’m enjoying myself.”

The man now facing her from her extreme right but rather near the stage was a tall, vigorous man with shaggy white eyebrows hanging over his eyes. His thinning hair was also white and his garments were a somber black, relieved by a white stripe running down each sleeve and trouser leg, as though setting sharp limits to his body.

His voice was deep and musical. “My name,” he said, “is Tomas Bistervan and I’m known to many as the Old Man, largely, I think, because they wish I were and that I would not delay too long in dying. I do not know how to address you because you do not seem to have a family name and because I do not know you well enough to use your given name. To be honest, I do not wish to know you that well.

“Apparently, you helped save a Baleyworld ship on your world against the booby traps and weapons set up by your people and we are thanking you for that. In return, you have delivered some pious nonsense about friendship and kinship. Pure hypocrisy!

“When have your people felt kin to us? When have the Spacers felt any relationship to Earth and its people? Certainly, you Spacers are descended from Earthmen. We don’t forget that. Nor do we forget that you have forgotten it. For well over twenty decades, the Spacers controlled the Galaxy and treated Earthpeople as though they were hateful, shortlived, diseased animals. Now that we are growing strong, you hold out the hand of friendship, but that hand has a glove on it, as your hands do. You try to remember not to turn up your nose at us, but the nose, even if not turned up, has plugs in it. Well? Am I correct?”

Gladia held up her hands. “It may be,” she said, “that the audience here in this room—and, even more so, the audience outside the room that sees me, via hyperwave—is not aware that I am wearing gloves. They are not obtrusive, but they are there. I do not deny that. And, I have nose plugs that filter out dust and microorgamsms without too much interference with breathing. And I am careful to spray my throat periodically. And I wash perhaps a bit more than the requirements of cleanliness alone make necessary. I deny none of it.

“But this is the result of my shortcomings, not yours. My immune system is not strong. My life has been too comfortable and I have been exposed to too little. That was not my deliberate choice, but I must pay the penalty for it. If any of you were in my unfortunate position, what would you do? In particular, Mr. Bistervan, what would you do?”

Bistervan said grimly, “I would do as you do and I would consider it a sign of weakness, a sign that I was unfit and unadjusted to life and that I therefore ought to make way for those who are strong. Woman, don’t speak of kinship to us. You are no kin of mine. You are of those who persecuted and tried to destroy us when you were strong and who come whining to us when you are weak.”

There was a stir in the audience—and by no means a friendly one—but Bistervan held his ground firmly.

Gladia said softly, “Do you remember the evil we did when we were strong?”

Bistervan said,—“Don’t fear that we will forget. It is in our minds every day.”

“Good! Because now you know what to avoid. You have learned that when the strong oppress the weak, that is wrong. Therefore, when the table turns and when you are strong and we are weak, you will not be oppressive.”

“Ah, yes. I have heard the argument. When you were strong, you never heard of morality, but now that you are weak, you preach it earnestly.”

“In your case, though, when you were weak, you knew all about morality and were appalled by the behavior of the strong—and now that you are strong, you forget morality. Surely it is better that the immoral learn morality through adversity than that the moral forget morality in prosperity.”

“We will give what we received,” said Bistervan, holding up his clenched fist.

“You should give what you would have liked to receive,” said Gladia, holding out her arms, as though embracing. “Since everyone can think of some past injustice to avenge, what you are saying, my friend, is that it is right for the strong to oppress the weak. And when you say that, you justify the Spacers of the past and should therefore have no complaint of the present. What I say is that oppression was wrong when we practiced it in the past and that it will be equally wrong when you practice it in the future. We cannot change the past, unfortunately, but we can still decide on what the future shall be.”

Gladia paused. When Bistervan did not answer immediately, she called out, “How many want a new Galaxy, not the bad old Galaxy endlessly repeated?”

The applause began, but Bistervan threw his arms up and shouted in stentorian fashion, “Wait! Wait! Don’t be fools! Stop!”

There was a slow quieting and Bistervan said, “Do you suppose this woman believes what she is saying? Do you suppose the Spacers intend us any good whatever? They still think they are strong, and they still despise us, and they intend to destroy us—if we don’t destroy them first. This woman comes here and, like fools, we greet her and make much of her. Well, put her words to the test. Let any of you apply for permission to visit a Spacer world and see if you can. Or if you have a world behind you and can use threats, as Captain Baley did, so that you are allowed to land on the world, how will you be treated? Ask the captain if he was treated like kin.

“This woman is a hypocrite, in spite of all her words—no, because of them. They are the spoken advertisements of her hypocrisy. She moans and whines about her inadequate immune system and says that she must protect herself against the danger of infection. Of course, she doesn’t do this because she thinks we are foul and diseased. That thought, I suppose, never occurs to her.

“She whines of her passive life, protected from mischance and misfortune by a too-settled society and a too solicitous crowd of robots. How she must hate that.

“But what endangers her here? What mischance does she feel will befall her on our planet? Yet she has brought two robots with her. In this hall, we meet in order to honor her and make much of her, yet she brought her two robots even here. They are there on the platform with her. Now that the room is generally lit, you can see them. One is an imitation human being and its name is R. Daneel Olivaw. Another is a shameless robot, openly metallic in structure, and its name is R. Giskard Reventlov. Greet them, my fellow Baleyworlders. They are this woman’s kinfolk.”

“Checkmate!” groaned D.G. in a whisper.

“Not yet,” said Gladia.

There were craning necks in the audience, as if a sudden itch had affected them all, and the word “Robots” ran across the length and breadth of the hall in thousands of intakes of breath.

“You can see them without trouble,” Gladia’s voice rang out. “Daneel, Giskard, stand up.”

The two robots rose at once behind her.

“Step to either side of me,” she said, “so that my body does not block the view.—Not that my body is large enough to do much blocking, in any case.

“Now let me make a few things clear to all of you. These two robots did not come with me in order to service me. Yes, they help run my establishment on Aurora, along with fifty-one other robots, and I do no work for myself that I wish a robot to do for me. That is the custom on the world on which I live.

“Robots vary in complexity, ability, and intelligence and these two rate very high in those respects. Daneel, in particular, is, in my opinion, the robot, of all robots, whose intelligence most nearly approximates the human in those areas where comparison is possible.

“I have brought only Daneel and Giskard with me, but they perform no great services for me. If you are interested, I dress myself, bathe myself, use my own utensils when I eat, and walk without being carried.

“Do I use them for personal protection? No. They protect me, yes, but they equally well protect anyone else who needs protection. On Solaria, just recently, Daneel did what he could to protect Captain Baley and was ready to give up his existence to protect me. Without him, the ship could not have been saved.

“And I certainly need no protection on this platform. After all, there is a force field stretched across the stage that is ample protection. It is not there at my request, but it is there and it supplies all the protection I need.

“Then why are my robots here with me?

“Those of you who know the story of Elijah Baley, who freed Earth of its Spacer overlords, who initiated the new policy of settlement, and whose son led the first human being to Baleyworld—why else is it called that?—know that well before he knew me, Elijah Baley worked with Daneel. He worked with him on Earth, on Solaria, and on Aurora—on each of his great cases. To Daneel, Elijah Baley was always ‘Partner Elijah.’ I don’t know if that fact appears in his biography, but you may safely take my word for it. And although Elijah Baley, as an Earthman, began with a strong distrust of Daneel, a friendship between them developed. When Elijah Baley was dying, here on this planet over sixteen decades ago, when it was just a cluster of prefabricated houses surrounded by garden patches, it was not his son who was with him in his last moment. Nor was it I” (For a treacherous moment, she thought her voice would not hold steady.) “He sent for Daneel and he held on to life until Daneel arrived.

“Yes, this is Daneel’s second visit to this planet. I was with him, but I remained in orbit.” (Steady!) “It was Daneel alone who made planetfall, Daneel who received his last words.—Well, does this mean nothing to you?”

Her voice rose a notch as she shook her fists in the air. “Must I tell you this? Don’t you already know it? Here is the robot that Elijah Baley loved. Yes, loved. I wanted to see Elijah before he died, to say good-bye to him; but he wanted Daneel—and this is Daneel. This is the very one.

“And this other is Giskard, who knew Elijah only on Aurora, but who managed to save Elijah’s life there.

“Without these two robots, Elijah Baley would not have achieved his goal. The Spacer worlds would still be supreme, the Settler worlds would not exist, and none of you would be here. I know that. You know that. I wonder if Mr. Tomas Bistervan knows that?

“Daneel and Giskard are honored names on this world. They are used commonly by the descendants of Elijah Baley at his request. I have arrived on a ship the captain of which is named Daneel Giskard Baley. How many, I wonder, among the people I face now—in person and via hyperwave bear the name of Daneel or Giskard? Well, these robots behind me are the robots those names commemorate. And are they to be denounced by Tomas Bistervan?”

The growing murmur among the audience was becoming loud and Gladia lifted her arms imploringly. “One moment. One moment. Let me finish. I have not told you why I brought these two robots.”

There was immediate silence.

“These two robots,” Gladia said, “have never forgotten Elijah Baley, anymore than I have forgotten him. The passing decades have not in the least dimmed those memories. When I was ready to step on to Captain Baley’s ship, when I knew that I might visit Baleyworld, how could I refuse to take Daneel and Giskard with me? They wanted to see the planet that Elijah Baley had made possible, the planet on which he passed his old age and on which he died.

“Yes, they are robots, but they are intelligent robots who served Elijah Baley faithfully and well. It is not enough to have respect for all human beings; one must have respect for all intelligent beings. So I brought them here.” Then, in a final outcry that demanded a response, “DID I DO WRONG?”

She received her response. A gigantic cry of “NO!” resounded throughout the hall and everyone was on his or her feet, clapping, stamping, roaring, screaming—on… and on… and on.

Gladia watched, smiling, and, as the noise continued endlessly, became aware of two things. First, she was wet with perspiration. Second, she was happier than she had ever been in her life.

It, was as though all her life, she had waited for this moment—the moment when she, having been brought up in isolation, could finally learn, after twenty-three decades, that she could face crowds, and move them, and bend them to her will.

She listened to the unwearying, noisy response—on… and on… and on…

40

It was a considerable time later—how long she had no way of telling—that Gladia finally came to herself.

There had first been unending noise, the solid wedge of security people herding her through the crowd, the plunge into endless tunnels that seemed to sink deeper and deeper into the ground.

She lost contact with D.G. early and was not sure that Daneel and Giskard were safely with her. She wanted to ask for them, but only faceless, people surrounded her. She thought distantly that the robots had to be with her, for they would resist separation and she would hear the tumult if an attempt were made.

When she finally reached a room, the two robots were there with her. She didn’t know precisely where she was, but the room was fairly large and clean. It was poor stuff compared to her home on Aurora, but compared to the shipboard cabin it was quite luxurious.

“You will be safe here, madam,” said the last of the guards as he left. “If you need anything, just let us know.” He indicated a device on a small table next to the bed.

She stared at it, but by the time she turned back to ask what it was and how it worked, he was gone.

Oh, well, she thought, I’ll get by.

“Giskard,” she said wearily, “find out which of those doors leads to the bathroom and find out how the shower works. What I must have now is a shower.”

She sat down gingerly, aware that she was damp and unwilling to saturate the chair with her perspiration. She was beginning to ache with the unnatural rigidity of her position when Giskard emerged.

“Madam, the shower is running,” he said, “and the temperature is adjusted. There is a solid material which I believe is soap and a primitive sort of toweling material, along with various other articles that may be useful.”

“Thank you, Giskard,” said Gladia, quite aware that despite her grandiloquence on the manner in which robots such as Giskard did not perform menial service, that is precisely what she had required him to do. But circumstances alter cases.

If she had never needed a shower, it seemed to her, as badly as now, she had also never enjoyed one as much. She remained in it much longer than she had to and when it was over it didn’t even occur to her to wonder if the towels had been in any way irradiated to sterility until after she had dried herself—and by that time it was too late.

She rummaged about among the material Giskard had laid out for her—powder, deodorant, comb, toothpaste, hair dryer—but she could not locate anything that would serve as a toothbrush. She finally gave up and used her finger, which she found most unsatisfactory. There was no hairbrush and that too was unsatisfactory. She scrubbed the comb with soap before using it, but cringed away from it just the same. She found a garment that looked as though it were suitable for wearing to bed. It smelled clean, but it hung far too loosely, she decided.

Daneel said quietly, “Madam, the captain wishes to know if he may see you.”

“I suppose so,” said Gladia, still rummaging for alternate nightwear. “Let him in.”

D.G. looked tired and even haggard, but when she turned to greet him, he smiled wearily at her and said, “It is hard to believe that you are over twenty-three decades old.”

“What? In this thing?”

“Mat helps. It’s semitransparent.—Or didn’t you know?”

She looked down at the nightgown uncertainly, then said, “Good, if it amuses you, but I have been alive, just the same, for two and a third centuries.”

“No one would guess it to look at you. You must have been very beautiful in your youth.”

“I have never been told so, D.G. Quiet charm, I always believed, was the most I could aspire to.—In any case, how do I use that instrument?”

“The call box? Just touch the patch on the right side and someone will ask if you can be served and you can carry on from there.”

“Good. I will need a toothbrush, a hairbrush, and clothing.”

“The toothbrush and hairbrush I will see that you get. As for clothing, that has been thought of. You have a clothes bag hanging in your closet. You’ll find it contains the best in Baleyworld fashion, which may not appeal to you, of course. And I won’t guarantee they’ll fit you. Most Baleyworld women are taller than you and certainly wider and thicker.—But it doesn’t matter. I think you’ll remain in seclusion for quite a while.”

“Why?”

“Well, my lady. It seems you delivered a speech this past evening and, as I recall, you would not sit down, though I suggested you do that more than once.”

“It seemed quite successful to me, D.G.”

“It was. It was a howling success.” D.G. smiled broadly and scratched the right side of his beard as though considering the word very carefully. “However, success has its penalties too. Right now, I should say you are the most famous person on Baleyworld and every Baleyworlder wants to see you and touch you. If we take you out anywhere, it will mean an instant riot. At least, until things cool down. We can’t be sure how long that will take.

“Then, too, you had even the war hawks yelling for you, but in the cold light of tomorrow, when the hypnotism and hysteria dies down, they’re going to be furious. If Old Man Bistervan didn’t actually consider killing you outright after your talk, then by tomorrow he will certainly have it as the ambition of his life to murder you by slow torture. And there are people, of his party who might conceivably try to oblige the Old Man in this small whim of his.

“That’s why you’re here, my lady. That’s why this room, this floor, this entire hotel is being watched—by I don’t know how many platoons of security people, among whom, I hope, are no cryptowar hawks. And because I have been so closely associated with you in this hero-and-heroine game, I’m penned up here, too, and can’t get out.”

“Oh,” said Gladia blankly. “I’m sorry about that. You can’t see your family, then.”

D.G. shrugged. “Traders don’t really have much in the way of family.”

“Your woman friend, then.”

“She’ll survive.—Probably better than I will.” He cast his eyes on Gladia speculatively.

Gladia said evenly, “Don’t even think it, Captain.”

D.G.’s eyebrows rose. “There’s no way I can be prevented from thinking it, but I won’t do anything, madam.”

Gladia said, “How long do you think I will stay here? Seriously.”

“It depends on the Directory.”

“The Directory?”

“Our five-fold executive board, madam. Five people”—he held up his hand, with the fingers spread apart—“each serving five years in staggered fashion, with one replacement each year, plus special elections in case of death or disability. This supplies continuity and reduces the danger of one-person rule. It also means that every decision must be argued out and that takes time, sometimes more time than we can afford.”

“I should think,” said Gladia, “that if one of the five were a determined and forceful individual—”

“That he could impose his views on the others. Things like that have happened at times, but these times are not one of those times—if you know what I mean. The Senior Director is Genovus Pandaral. There’s nothing evil about him, but he’s indecisive—and sometimes that’s the same thing. I talked him into allowing your robots on the stage with you and that turned out to be a bad idea. Score one against both of us.”

“But why was it a bad idea? The people were pleased.”

“Too pleased, my lady. We wanted you to be our pet Spacer heroine and help keep public opinion cool so that we wouldn’t launch a premature war. You were good on longevity; you had them cheering short life. But then you had them cheering robots and we don’t want that. For that matter, we’re not so keen on the public cheering the notion of kinship with the Spacers.”

“You don’t want premature war, but you don’t want premature peace, either. Is that it?”

“Very well put, madam.”

“But, then, what do you want?”

“We want the Galaxy, the whole Galaxy. We want to settle and populate every habitable planet in it and establish nothing less than a Galactic Empire. And we don’t want the Spacers to interfere. They can remain on their own worlds and live in peace as they please, but they must not interfere.”

“But then you’ll be penning them up on their fifty worlds, as we penned up Earthpeople on Earth for so many years. The same old injustice. You’re as bad as Bistervan.”

“The situations are different. Earthpeople were penned up in defiance of their expansive potential. You Spacers have no such potential. You took the path of longevity and robots and the potential vanished. You don’t even have fifty worlds any longer. Solaria has been abandoned. The others will go, too, in time. The Settlers have no interest in pushing the Spacers along the path to extinction, but why should we interfere with their voluntary choice to do so? Your speech tended to interfere with that.”

“I’m glad. What did you think I would say?”

“I told you. Peace and love and sit down. You could have finished in about one minute.”

Gladia said angrily, “I can’t believe you expected anything so foolish of me. What did you take me for?

“For what you took yourself—for someone frightened to death of speaking. How did we know that you were a madwoman who could, in half an hour, persuade the Baleyworlders to howl in favor of what for lifetimes we have been persuading them to howl against? But talk will get us nowhere”—he rose heavily to his feet—“I want a shower, too, and I had better get a night’s sleep—if I can. See you tomorrow.

“But when do we find out what the Directors will decide to do with me?”

“When they find out, which may not be soon. Good night, madam.”

41

“I have made a discovery,” said Giskard, his voice carrying no shade of emotion. “I have made it because, for the first time in my existence, I faced thousands of human beings. Had I done this two centuries ago, I would have made the discovery then. Had I never faced so many at once, then I would never have made the discovery at all.

“Consider, then, how many vital points I might easily grasp, but never have and never will, simply because the proper conditions for it will never come my way. I remain ignorant except where circumstance helps me and I cannot count on circumstance.”

Daneel said, “I did not think, friend Giskard, that Lady Gladia, with her long-sustained way of life, could face thousands with equanimity. I did not think she would be able to speak at all. When it turned out that she could, I assumed you had adjusted her and that you had discovered that it could be done without harming her. Was that your discovery?”

Giskard said, “Friend Daneel, actually all I dared do was loosen a very few strands of inhibition, only enough to allow her to speak a few words, so that she might be heard.”

“But she did far more than that.”

“After this microscopic adjustment, I turned to the multiplicity of minds I faced in the audience. I had never experienced so many, any more than Lady Gladia had, and I was as taken aback as she was. I found, at first, that I could do nothing in the vast mental interlockingness that beat in upon me. I felt helpless.”

“And then I noted small friendlinesses, curiosities, interests—I cannot describe them in words—with a color of sympathy for Lady Gladia about them. I played with what I could find that had this color of sympathy, tightening and thickening them just slightly. I wanted some small response in Lady Gladia’s favor that might encourage her, that might make it unnecessary for me to be tempted to tamper further with Lady Gladia’s mind. That was all I did. I do not know how many threads of the proper color I handled. Not many.”

Daneel said, “And what then, friend Giskard?”

“I found, friend Daneel, that I had begun something that was autocatalytic. Each thread I strengthened, strengthened a nearby thread of the same kind and the two together strengthened several others nearby. I had to do nothing further. Small stirs, small sounds, and small glances that seemed to approve of what Lady Gladia said encouraged still others.

“Then I found something stranger yet. All these little indications of approval, which I could detect only because the minds were open to me, Lady Gladia must have also detected in some manner, for further inhibitions in her mind fell without my touching them. She began to speak faster, more confidently, and the audience responded better than ever—without my doing anything. And in the end, there was hysteria, a storm, a tempest of mental—thunder and lightning so intense that I had to close my mind to it or it would have overloaded my circuits.”

“Never, in all my existence, had I encountered anything like that and yet it started with no more modification introduced by me in all that crowd than I have, in the past, introduced among a mere handful of people. I suspect, in fact, that the effect spread beyond the audience sensible to my mind—to the greater audience reached via hyperwave.”

Daneel said, “I do not see how this can be, friend Giskard.”

“Nor I, friend Daneel. I am not human. I do not directly experience the possession of a human mind with all its complexities and contradictions, so I do not grasp the mechanisms by which they respond. But, apparently, crowds are more easily managed than individuals. It seems paradoxical. Much weight takes more effort to move than little weight. Much energy takes more effort to counter than little energy. Much distance takes longer to traverse than little distance. Why, then, should many people, be easier to sway than few? You think like a human being, friend Daneel. Can you explain?”

Daneel said, “You yourself, friend Giskard, said that it was an autocatalytic effect, a matter of contagion. A single spark of flame may end by burning down a forest.”

Giskard paused and seemed deep in thought. Then he said, “It is not reason that is contagious but emotion. Madam Gladia chose arguments she felt would move her audience’s feelings. She did not attempt to reason with them. It may be, then, that the larger the crowd, the more easily they are swayed by emotion rather than by reason.

“Since emotions are few and reasons are many, the behavior of a crowd can be more easily predicted than the behavior of one person can. And that, in turn, means that if laws are to be developed that enable the current of history to be predicted, then one must deal with large populations, the larger the better. That might itself be the First Law of Psychohistory, the key to the study of Humanics. Yet—”

“Yes?”

“It strikes me that it has taken me so long to understand this only because I am not a human being. A human being would, perhaps, instinctively understand his own mind well enough to know how to handle others like himself. Madam Gladia, with no experience at all in addressing huge crowds, carried off the matter, expertly. How much better off we would be if we had someone like Elijah Baley with us.

“Friend Daneel, are you not thinking of him?”

Daneel said, “Can you see his image in my mind? That is surprising, friend Giskard.”

“I do not see him, friend Daneel. I cannot receive your thoughts. But I can sense emotions and mood—and your mind has a texture which, by past experience, I know to be associated with Elijah Baley.”

“Madam Gladia made mention of the fact that I was the last to see Partner Elijah alive, so I listen again, in memory, to that moment. I think again of what he said.”

“Why, friend Daneel?”

“I search for the meaning. I feel it was important.”

“How could what he said have meaning beyond the import of the words? Had there been hidden meaning, Elijah Baley would have expressed it.”

“Perhaps,” said Daneel slowly, “Partner Elijah did not himself understand the significance of what he was saying.”

42

Memory!

It lay in Daneel’s mind like a closed book of infinite detail, always available for his use. Some passages were called upon frequently for their information, but only a very few were called upon merely because Daneel wished to feel their texture. Those very few were, for the most part, those that contained Elijah Baley.

Many decades ago, Daneel had come to Baleyworld while Elijah Baley was still alive. Madam Gladia had come with him, but after they entered into orbit about Baleyworld, Bentley Baley soared upward in his small ship to meet them and was brought aboard. By then, he was a rather gnarled man of middle age.

He looked at Gladia with faintly hostile eyes and said, “You cannot see him, madam.”

And Gladia, who had been weeping, said, “Why not?”

“He does not wish it, madam, and I must respect his wishes.”

“I cannot believe that, Mr. Baley.”

“I have a handwritten note and I have a voice recording, madam. I do not know if you can recognize his handwriting or his voice, but you have my word of honor these are his and that no untoward influence was used upon him to produce—”

She went into her own cabin to read and listen alone. Then she emerged—with an air of defeat about her—but she managed to say firmly, “Daneel, you are to go down alone to see him. It is his wish. But you are to report to me everything that is done and said.”

“Yes, madam,” Daneel said.

Daneel went down, in Bentley’s ship and Bentley said to him, “Robots are not allowed on this world, Daneel, but an exception is being made in your case because it is my father’s wish and because he is highly revered here. I have no personal animus against you, you understand, but your presence here must be an entirely limited one. You will be taken directly to my father. When he is done with you, you will be taken back into orbit at once. Do you understand?”

“I understand, sir. How is your father?”

“He is dying,” Bentley said with perhaps conscious brutality.

“I understand that, too,” said Daneel, his voice quivering noticeably, not out of ordinary emotion but because the consciousness of the death of a human being, however unavoidable, disordered his positronic brain paths. “I mean, how much longer before he must die?”

“He should have died some time ago. He is tied to life because he refuses to go, until he sees you.”

They landed. It was a large world, but the inhabited portion—if this were all—was small and shabby. It was a cloudy day and it had rained recently. The wide, straight streets were empty, as though what population existed there was in no mood to assemble in order to stare at a robot.

The ground-car took them through the emptiness and brought them to a house somewhat larger and more impressive than most. Together they entered. At an inner door, Bentley halted.

“My father is in there,” he said sadly. “You are to go in alone. He will not have me there with you. Go in. You might not recognize him.”

Daneel went into the gloom of the room. His eyes adjusted rapidly and he was aware of a body covered by a sheet inside a transparent cocoon that was made visible only by its faint glitter. The light within the room brightened a bit and Daneel could then see the face clearly.

Bentley had been right. Daneel saw nothing of his old partner in it. It was gaunt and bony. The eyes were closed and it seemed to Daneel that what he saw was a dead body. He had never seen a dead human being and when this thought struck him, he staggered and it seemed to him that his legs would not hold him up.

But the old-man’s eyes opened and Daneel recovered his equilibrium, though he continued to feel an unaccustomed weakness just the same.

The eyes looked at him and a small, faint smile curved the pale, cracked lips.

“Daneel. My old friend Daneel.”

There was the faint timbre of Elijah Baley’s remembered voice in that whispered sound. An arm emerged slowly from under the sheet and it seemed to Daneel that he recognized Elijah after all.

“Partner Elijah,” he said softly.

“Thank you—thank you for coming.”

“It was important for me to come, Partner Elijah.”

“I was afraid they might not allow it. They—the others—even my son—think of you as a robot.”

“I am a robot.”

“Not to me, Daneel. You haven’t changed, have you? I don’t see you clearly, but it seems to me you are exactly the same as I remember. When did I last see you? Twenty-nine years ago?”

“Yes—and in all that time, Partner Elijah, I have not changed, so you see, I am a robot.”

“I have changed, though, and a great deal. I should not have let you see me like this, but I was too weak to resist my desire to see you once again.” Baley’s voice seemed to have grown a bit stronger, as though it had been fortified by the sight of Daneel.

“I am pleased to see you, Partner Elijah, however you have changed.”

“And Lady Gladia? How is she?”

“She is well. She came with me.”

“She is not—” A touch of painful alarm came into his voice as he tried to look about.

“She is not on this world, but is still in orbit. It was explained to her that you did not wish to see her—and she understood.”

“That is wrong. I do wish to see her, but I have been able to withstand that temptation. She has not changed, has she?”

“She still has the appearance she had when you last saw her.

“Good.—But I couldn’t let her see me like this. I could not have this be her last memory of me. With you, it is different.”

“That is because I am a robot, Partner Elijah.”

“Stop insisting on that, “ said the dying man peevishly. “You could not mean more to me, Daneel, if you were a man.”

He lay silently in his bed for a while, then he said, “All these years, I have never hypervised, never written to her. I could not allow myself to interfere with her life.—Is Gladia still married to Gremionis?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And happy?”

“I cannot judge that. She does not behave in a fashion that might be interpreted as unhappy.”

“Children?”

“The permitted two.”

“She has not been angry that I have not communicated?”

“It is my belief she understood your motives.”

“Does she ever—mention me?”

“Almost never, but it is Giskard’s opinion that she often thinks of you.”

“How is Giskard?”

“He functions properly—in the manner that you know.”

“You know, then—of his abilities.”

“He has told me, Partner Elijah.”

Again Baley lay there silently. Then he stiffed and said, “Daneel, I wanted you here out of a selfish desire to see you, to see for myself that you haven’t changed, that there is a breath of the great days of my life still existing, that you remember me and will continue to remember me.—But I also want to tell you something.

“I will be dead soon, Daneel, and I knew the word would reach you. Even if you weren’t here, even if you were on Aurora, the word would come to you. My death will be Galactic news.” His chest heaved in a weak and silent laugh. “Who would have thought it once?”

He said, “Gladia would hear of it as well, of course, but Gladia knows I must die and she will accept the fact, how ever sadly. “I feared the effect on you, however, since you are—as you insist and I deny—a robot. For old time’s sake you may feel it is incumbent upon you to keep me from dying and the fact that you cannot do so may perhaps have a permanently deleterious effect on you. Let me, then, argue with you about that.”

Baley’s voice was growing weaker. Though Daneel sat motionless, his face was in the unusual condition of reflecting emotion. It was set in an expression of concern and sorrow. Baley’s eyes were closed and he could not see that.

“My death, Daneel,” he said, “is not important. No individual death among human beings is important. Someone who dies leaves his work behind and that does not entirely die. It never entirely dies as long as humanity exists.—Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Daneel said, “Yes, Partner Elijah.”

“The work of each individual contributes to a totality and so becomes an undying part of the totality. That totality of human lives—past and present and to come—forms a tapestry that has been in existence now for many tens of thousands of years and has been growing more elaborate and, on the whole, more beautiful in all that time. Even the Spacers are an offshoot of the tapestry and they, too, add to the elaborateness and beauty of the pattern. An individual life is one thread in the tapestry and what is one thread compared to the whole?

“Daneel, keep your mind fixed firmly on the tapestry and do not let the trailing off of a single thread affect you. There are so many other threads, each valuable, each contributing—!”

Baley stopped speaking, but Daneel waited patiently.

Baley’s eyes opened and, looking at Daneel, he frowned slightly.

“You are still here? It is time for you to go. I have told you what I meant to tell you.”

“I do not wish to go, Partner Elijah.”

“You must. I cannot hold off death any longer. I am tired—desperately tired. I want to die. It is time.”

“May I not wait while you live?”

“I don’t wish it. If I die while you watch, it may affect you badly despite all my words. Go now. That is an order. I will allow you to be a robot if you wish but, in that case, you must follow my orders. You cannot save my life by anything you can do, so there is nothing to come ahead of Second Law. Go!”

Baley’s finger pointed feebly and he said, “Good-bye, friend Daneel.”

Daneel turned slowly, following Baley’s orders with unprecedented difficulty “Good-bye, Partner—” He paused and then said, with a faint hoarseness, “Good-bye, friend Elijah.”

Bentley confronted Daneel in the next room. “Is he still alive?”

“He was alive when I left.”

Bentley went in and came out almost at once. “He isn’t now. He saw you and then—let go.”

Daneel found he had to lean against the wall. It was some time before he could stand upright.

Bentley, eyes averted, waited and—then together they returned to the small ship and moved back up into orbit where Gladia waited.

And she, too, asked if Elijah Baley was still-alive and when they told her gently that he was not, she turned away, dry-eyed, and went into her own cabin to weep.

43

Daneel continued his thought as though the sharp memory of Baley’s death in all its details had not momentarily intervened. “And yet I may understand something more of what Partner Elijah was saying now in the light of Madam Gladia’s speech.

“In what way?”

“I am not yet sure. It is very difficult to think in the direction—I am trying to think.”

“I will wait for as long as is necessary,” said Giskard.

44

Genovus Pandaral was tall and not, as yet, very old for all his thick shock of white hair which, together with his fluffy white sideburns, gave him a look of dignity and distinction. His general air of looking like a leader had helped his advancement through the ranks, but as he himself knew very well, his appearance was much stronger than his inner fiber.

Once he had been elected to the Directory, he had gotten over the initial elation rather rapidly. He was in beyond his depth and, each year, as he was automatically pushed up a notch, he knew that more clearly. Now he was Senior Director.

Of all the times to be Senior Director!

In the old days, the task of ruling had been nothing. In the time of Nephi Morler, eight decades before, the same Morler who was always being held up to the schoolchildren as the greatest of all Directors, it had been nothing. What had Baleyworld been then? A small world, a trickle of farms, a handful of towns clustered along natural lines of communication. The total population had been no more than five million and its most important exports had been raw wood and some titanium.

The Spacers had ignored them completely under the more or less benign influence of Han Fastolfe of Aurora and life was simple. People could always make trips back to Earth—if they wanted a breath of culture or the feel of technology—and there was a steady flow of Earthpeople arriving as immigrants. Earth’s mighty population was inexhaustible.

Why shouldn’t Morler have been a great Director, then? He had had nothing to do.

And, in the future, ruling would again be simple. As the Spacers continued to degenerate (every schoolchild was told that they would, that they must drown in the contradictions of their society—though Pandaral wondered, sometimes, whether this was really certain) and as the Settlers continued to increase in numbers and strength, the time would soon come when life would be again secure. The Settlers would live in peace and develop their own technology to the utmost.

As Baleyworld filled, it would assume the proportion and ways of another Earth, as would all the worlds, while new ones would spring up here and there in ever greater numbers, finally making up the great Galactic Empire to come. And surely Baleyworld, as the oldest and most populous of the Settler worlds, would always have a prime place in that Empire, under the benign and perpetual rule of Mother Earth.

But it was not in the past that Pandaral was Senior Director. Nor was it in the future. It was now.

Han Fastolfe was dead, now, but Kelden Amadiro was alive. Amadiro had held out against Earth being allowed to send out Settlers twenty decades ago and he was still alive now to make trouble. The Spacers were still too strong to be disregarded; the Settlers were still not quite strong enough to move forward with confidence. Somehow the Settlers had to hold off the Spacers till the balance had shifted sufficiently.

And the task of keeping the Spacers quiet and the Settlers at once resolute and yet sensible fell more upon Pandaral’s shoulders than on anyone else’s—and it was a task he neither liked nor wanted.

Now it was morning, a cold, gray morning with more snow coming—though that was no surprise—and he made his way through the hotel alone. He wanted no retinue.

The security guards, out in force, snapped to attention as he passed and he acknowledged them wearily. He spoke to the captain of the—guard when the latter advanced to meet him. “Any trouble, Captain?”

“None, Director. All is quiet.”

Pandaral nodded. “In which room has Baley been put?—Ah.—And the Spacer woman and her robots are under strict guard?—Good.”

He passed on. On the whole, D.G. had behaved well. Solaria, abandoned, could be used by Traders as an almost endless supply of robots and as a source of large profits though profits were not to be taken as the natural equivalent of world security, Pandaral thought morosely. But Solaria, booby-trapped, had best be left alone. It was not worth a war. D.G. had done well to leave at once.

And to take the nuclear intensifier with him. So far, such devices were so overwhelmingly massive that they could be used only in huge and expensive installations designed to destroy invading ships—and even these had never gotten beyond the planning stage. Too expensive. Smaller and cheaper versions were absolutely necessary, so D.G. was right in feeling that bringing home a Solarian intensifier was more important than all the robots on that world put together. That intensifier should help the scientists of Baleyworld enormously.

And yet if one Spacer world had a portable intensifier, why not others? Why not Aurora? If those weapons grew small enough to place on warships, a Spacer fleet could wipe out any number of Settler ships without trouble. How far toward that development were they? And how fast could Baleyworld progress in the same direction with the help of the intensifier D.G. had brought back?

He signaled at D.G.’s hotel room door, then entered without quite waiting for a response and sat down without quite waiting for an invitation. There were some useful perquisites that went along with being Senior Director…

D.G. looked out of the bathroom and said through the towel with which he was giving his hair a first dry, “I would have liked to greet your Directorial Excellence in a properly imposing manner, but you catch me at a disadvantage, since I am in the extremely undignified predicament of having just emerged from my shower.”

“Oh, shut up,” said Pandaral pettishly.

Ordinarily, he enjoyed D.G.’s irrepressible breeziness, but not now. In some ways, he never really understood D.G. at all. D.G. was a Baley, a lineal descendant of the great Elijah and the Founder, Bentley. That made D.G. a natural for a Director’s post, especially since he had the kind of bonhomie that endeared him to the public. Yet he chose to be a Trader, which was a difficult life—and a dangerous one. It might make you rich, but it was much more likely to kill you or—what was worse—prematurely age you.

What’s more, D.G.’s life as a Trader took him away from Baleyworld for months at a time and Pandaral preferred his advice to those of most of his department heads. One couldn’t always tell when D.G. was serious, but, allowing for that, he was worth listening to.

Pandaral said heavily, “I don’t think that that woman’s speech was the best thing that could have happened to us.”

D.G., mostly dressed, shrugged his shoulders, “Who could have foretold it?”

“You might have. You must have looked up her background—if you had made up your mind to carry her off.”

“I did look up her background, Director. She spent over three decades on Solaria. It was Solaria that formed her and she lived there entirely with robots. She saw human beings only by holographic images, except for her husband and he didn’t visit her often. She had a difficult adjustment to make when she came to Aurora and even there she lived mostly with robots. At no time in twenty-three decades would she have faced as many as twenty people all together, let alone four thousand. I assumed she wouldn’t be able to speak more than a few words—if that. I had no way of knowing she was a rabble-rouser.”

“You might have stopped her, once you found out she was. You were sitting right next to her.”

“Did you want a riot? The people were enjoying her. You were there. You know they were. If I had forced her down, they would have mobbed the stage. After all, Director, you didn’t try to stop her.”

Pandaral cleared his throat. “I had that in mind, actually, but each time I looked back, I’d catch the eye of her robot the one who looks like a robot.”

“Giskard. Yes, but what of it? He wouldn’t harm you.”

“I know. Still, he made me nervous and it put me off somehow.”

“Well, never mind, Director,” said D.G. He was fully clothed now and he shoved the breakfast tray toward the other. “The coffee is still warm. Help yourself to the buns and jams if you want any.—It will pass. I don’t think the public will really overflow with love for the Spacers and spoil our policy. It might even serve a purpose. If the Spacers hear of it, it might strengthen the Fastolfe party. Fastolfe may be dead, but his party isn’t—not altogether—and we need to encourage their policy of moderation.”

“What I’m thinking of,” said Pandaral, “is the All-Settler Congress that’s coming up in five months. I’m going to have to listen to any number of sarcastic references to Baleyworld appeasement and to Baleyworlders being Spacer lovers. I tell you,” he added gloomily, “the smaller the world, the more war hawkish it is.”

“Then tell them that,” said D.G. “Be very statesmanlike in public, but when you get them to one side, look them right in the eye—unofficially—and say that there’s freedom of expression on Baleyworld and we intend to keep it that way. Tell them Baleyworld has the interests of Earth at heart, but that if any world wishes to prove its greater devotion to Earth by declaring war on the Spacers, Baleyworld will watch with interest but nothing more. That would shut them up.

“Oh, no,” said Pandaral with alarm. “A remark like that would leak out. It would create an impossible stink.”

D.G. said, “You’re right, which is a pity. But think it and don’t let those big mouthed small brains get to you.”

Pandaral sighed. “I suppose we’ll manage, but last night upset our plans to end on a high note. That’s what I really regret.

“What high note?”

Pandaral said, “When you left Aurora for Solaria, two Auroran warships went to Solaria as well. Did you know that?”

“No, but it was something I expected,” said D.G. indifferently. “It was for that reason I took the trouble of going to Solaria by way of an evasive path.”

“One of the Auroran ships landed on Solaria, thousands of kilometers away from you—so it didn’t seem to be making any effort to keep tabs on you—and the second remained in orbit.”

“Sensible. It’s what I would have done if I had had a second ship at my disposal.”

“The Auroran ship that landed was destroyed in a matter of hours. The ship in orbit reported the fact and was ordered to return.—A Trader monitoring station picked up the report and it was sent to us.”

“Was the report uncoded?”

“Of course not, but it was in one of the codes we’ve broken.”

D.G. nodded his head thoughtfully, then said, “Very interesting. I take it they didn’t have anyone who could speak Solarian.”

“Obviously,” said Pandaral weightily. “Unless someone can find where the Solarians went, this woman of yours is the only available Solarian in the Galaxy.”

“And they let me have her, didn’t they? Tough on the Aurorans.”

“At any rate, I was going to announce the destruction of the Auroran ship last night. In a matter-of-fact way—no gloating. Just the same, it would have excited every Settler in the Galaxy. I mean, we got away and the Aurorans didn’t.”

“We had a Solarian,” said D.G. dryly. “The Aurorans didn’t.”

“Very well. It would make you and the woman look good, too.—But it all came to nothing. After what the woman did, anything else would have come as anticlimax, even the news of the destruction of an Auroran warship.”

D.G. said, “To say nothing of the fact that once everyone has finished applauding kinship and love, it would go against the grain—for the next half hour anyway—to applaud the death of a couple of hundred of the Auroran kin.”

“I suppose so. So that’s an enormous psychological blow that we’ve lost.”

D.G. was frowning. “Forget that, Director. You can always work the propaganda at some other, more appropriate time. The important thing is what it all means.—An Auroran ship was blown up. That means they weren’t expecting a nuclear intensifier to be used. The other ship was ordered away and that may mean it wasn’t equipped with a defense against it—and maybe they don’t even have a defense. I should judge from this that the portable intensifier—or semiportable one, anyway—is a Solarian development specifically and not a Spacer development generally. That’s good news for us—if it’s true. For the moment, let’s not worry about propaganda brownie points but concentrate on squeezing every bit of information we can out of that intensifier. We want to be ahead of the Spacers in this—if possible.”

Pandaral munched away at a bun and said, “Maybe you’re right. But in that case, how do we fit in the other bit of news?”

D.G. said, “What other bit of news? Director, are you going to give me the information I need to make intelligent conversation or do you intend to toss them into the air one by one and make me jump for them?”

“Don’t get huffy, D.G. There’s no point in talking with you if I can’t be informal. Do you know what it’s like at a Directory meeting? Do you want my job? You can have it, you know.”

“No, thank you, I don’t want it. What I want is your bit of news.”

“We have a message from Aurora. An actual message. They actually deigned to communicate directly with us instead of sending it by way of Earth.”

“We might consider it an important message, then—to them. What do they want?”

“They want the Solarian woman back again.”

“Obviously, then, they know our ship got away from Solaria and has come to Baleyworld. They have their monitoring stations, too, and eavesdrop on our communications as we eavesdrop on theirs.”

“Absolutely,” said Pandaral with considerable irritation. “They break our codes as fast as we break theirs. My own feeling is we ought to come to an agreement that we both send messages in the clear. Neither of us would be worse off.”

“Did they say why they want the woman?”

“Of course not. Spacers don’t give reasons; they give orders.”

“Have they found out exactly what it was that the woman accomplished on Solaria? Since she’s the only person who speaks authentic Solarian, do they want her to clear the planet of its overseers?”

“I don’t see how they could have found out, D.G. We only announced her role last night. The message from Aurora was received well before that.—But it doesn’t matter why they want her. The question is: What do we do? If we don’t return her, we may have a crisis with Aurora that I don’t want. If we do return her, it will look bad to the Baleyworlders and Old Man Bistervan will have a field day pointing out that we’re crawling to the Spacers.”

They stared at each other, then D.G. said slowly, “We’ll have to return her. After all, she’s a Spacer and an Auroran citizen. We can’t keep her against Aurora’s will or we’ll put at risk every Trader who ventures into Spacer territory on business. But I’ll take her back, Director, and you can put the blame on me. Say that the conditions of my taking her to Solaria were that I would return her to Aurora, which is true, actually, even if not a matter of written formality, and that I am a man of ethics and felt I had to keep my agreement.—And it may turn out to our advantage.”

“In what way?”

“I’ll have to work it out. But if it’s to be done, Director, my ship will have to be refitted at planetary expense. And my men will need healthy bonuses.—Come, Director, they’re giving up their leave.”

45

Considering that he had not intended to be in his ship again for at least three additional months, D.G. seemed in genial spirits.

And considering that Gladia had larger and more luxurious quarters than she had before, she seemed rather depressed.

“Why all this?” she asked.

“Looking a gift horse in the mouth?” asked D.G.

“I’m just asking. Why?”

“For one thing, my lady, you’re a class-A heroine and when the ship was refurbished, this place was rather tarted up for you.”

“Tarted up?”

“Just an expression. Fancied up, if you prefer.”

“This space wasn’t just created. Who lost out?”

“Actually, it was the crew’s lounge, but they insisted, you know. You’re their darling, too. In fact, Niss—you remember Niss?”

“Certainly.”

“He wants you to take him on in place of Daneel. He says Daneel doesn’t enjoy the job and keeps apologizing to his victims. Niss says he will destroy anyone who gives you the least trouble, will take pleasure in it, and will never apologize.”

Gladia smiled. “Tell him I will keep his offer in mind and tell him I would enjoy shaking his hand if that can be arranged. I didn’t get a chance to do so before we landed on Baleyworld.”

“You’ll wear your gloves, I hope, when you shake hands.”

“Of course, but I wonder if that’s entirely necessary. I haven’t as much as sniffed since I left Aurora. The injections I’ve been getting have probably strengthened my immune system beautifully.” She looked about again. “You even have wall niches for Daneel, and Giskard. That’s quite thoughtful of you, D.G.”

“Madam,” said D.G., “we work hard to please and we’re delighted that you’re pleased.”

“Oddly enough”—Gladia sounded as though she were actually puzzled by what she was about to say—“I’m not entirely pleased. I’m not sure I want to leave your world.”

“No? Cold—snow—dreary—primitive—endlessly cheering crowds everywhere. What can possibly attract you here?”

Gladia reddened. “It’s not the cheering crowds.”

“I’ll pretend to believe you, madam.”

“It’s not. It’s something altogether different. I—I have never done anything. I’ve amused myself in various trivial ways, I’ve engaged in force-field coloring and robot exodesign. I’ve made love and been a wife and mother and—and—in none of these things have I ever been an individual of any account. If I had suddenly disappeared from existence, or if I had never been born, it wouldn’t have affected anyone or anything—except, perhaps, one, or two close personal friends. Now it’s different.”

“Yes?” There was the faintest touch of mockery in D.G.’s voice.

Gladia said, “Yes! I can influence people. I can choose a cause and make it my own. I have chosen a cause. I want to prevent war. I want the Universe populated by Spacer and Settler alike. I want each group to keep their own peculiarities, yet freely accept the others, too. I want to work so hard at this that after I am gone, history will have changed because of me and people will say things would not be as satisfactory as they are had it not been for her.”

She turned to D.G., her face glowing. “Do you know what a difference it makes, after two and one-third centuries of being nobody, to have a chance, of being somebody; to find that a life you thought of as empty turns out to contain something after all, something wonderful; to be happy long, long after you had given up any hope of being happy?”

“You don’t have to be on Baleyworld, my lady, to have all that.” Somehow D.G. seemed a little abashed.

“I wouldn’t have it on Aurora. I’m only a Solarian immigrant on Aurora. On a Settler world, I’m a Spacer, something unusual.”

“Yet on a number of occasions—and quite forcefully you have stated you wanted to return to Aurora.”

“Some time ago, yes—but I’m not saying it now, D.G. I don’t really want it now.”

“Which would influence us a great deal, except that Aurora wants you. They’ve told us so.”

Gladia was clearly astonished. “They want me?”

“An official message from Aurora’s Chairman of the Council tells us they do,” said D.G. lightly. “We would enjoy keeping you, but the Directors have decided that keeping you is not worth an interstellar crisis. I’m not sure I agree with them, but they outrank me.”

Gladia frowned. “Why should they want me? I’ve been on Aurora for over twenty decades and at no time have they ever seemed to want me.—Wait! Do you suppose they see me now as the only way of stopping the overseers on Solaria?”

“That thought had occurred to me, my lady.”

“I won’t do it. I held off that one overseer by a hair and I may never be able to repeat what I did then. I know I won’t.—Besides, why need they land on the planet? They can destroy the overseers from a distance, now that they know what they are.”

“Actually,” said D.G., “the message demanding your return was sent out long before they could possibly have known of your conflict with the overseer. They must want you for something else.”

“Oh—” She looked taken aback. Then, catching fire again, “I don’t care what else. I don’t want to return. I have my work out here and I mean to continue it.”

D.G. rose. “I am glad to hear you say so, Madam Gladia. I was hoping you would feel like that. I promise you I will do my best to take you with me when we leave Aurora. Right now, though, I must go to Aurora and you must go with me.

46

Gladia watched Baleyworld, as it receded, with emotions quite different from those with which she had watched it approach. It was precisely the cold, gray, miserable world now that it had seemed at the start, but there was a warmth and life to the people. They were real, solid.

Solaria, Aurora, the other Spacer worlds that she had visited or had viewed on hypervision, all seemed filled with people who were insubstantial—gaseous.

That was the word. Gaseous.

No matter how few the human beings who lived upon a Spacer world, they spread out to fill the planet in the same way that molecules of gas spread out to fill a container. It was as if Spacers repelled each other.

And they did, she thought gloomily. Spacers had always repelled her. She had been brought up to such repulsion on Solaria, but even on Aurora, when she was experimenting madly with sex just at first, the least enjoyable aspect of it was the closeness it made necessary.

Except—except with Elijah.—But he was not a Spacer.

Baleyworld was not like that. Probably all the Settler worlds were not. Settlers clung together, leaving large tracts desolate about them as the price of the clinging—empty, that is, until population increase filled it. A Settler world was a world of people clusters, of pebbles and boulders, not gas.

Why was this? Robots, perhaps! They lessened the dependence of people upon people. They filled the interstices between. They were the insulation that diminished the natural attraction people had for each other, so that the whole system fell apart into isolates.

It had to be. Nowhere were there more robots than on Solaria and the insulating effect there had been so enormous that the separate gas molecules that were human beings became so totally inert that they almost never interrelated at all. (Where had the Solarians gone, she wondered again, and how were they living?)

And long life had something to do with it, too. How could one make an emotional attachment that wouldn’t turn slowly sour as the multidecades passed—or, if one died, how could another bear the loss for multidecades? One learned, then, not to make emotional attachments but to stand off, to insulate one’s self.

On the other hand, human beings, if short-lived, could not so easily outlive fascination with life. As the generations passed by rapidly, the ball of fascination bounced from hand to hand without ever touching the ground.

How recently she had told D.G. that there was no more to do or know, that she had experienced and thought everything, that she had to live on in utter boredom.—And she hadn’t known or even dreamed, as she spoke, of crowds of people, one upon another; of speaking to many as they melted into a continuous sea of heads; of hearing their response, not in words but in wordless sounds; of melting together with them, feeling their feelings, becoming one large organism.

It was not merely that she had never experienced such a thing before, it was that she had never dreamed anything like that might be experienced. How much more did she know nothing of despite her long life? What more existed for the experiencing that she was incapable of fantasying?

Daneel said gently, “Madam Gladia, I believe the captain is signaling for entrance.”

Gladia started. “Let him enter, then.”

D.G. entered, eyebrows raised. “I am relieved. I thought perhaps you were not at home.”

Gladia smiled. “In a way, I wasn’t. I was lost in thought. It happens to me sometimes.”

“You are fortunate,” said D.G. “My thoughts are never large enough to be lost in. Are you reconciled to visiting Aurora, madam?”

“No, I’m not. And among the thoughts in which I was lost was one to the effect that I still do not have any idea why you must go to Aurora. It can’t be only to return me. Any space worthy cargo tug could have done the job.”

“May I sit down, madam?”

“Yes, of course. That goes without saying, Captain. I wish you’d stop treating me as aristocracy. It becomes wearing. And if it’s an ironic indication that I’m a Spacer, then it’s worse than wearing. In fact, I’d almost rather you called me Gladia.”

“You seem to be anxious to disown your Spacer identity, Gladia,” said D.G. as he seated himself and crossed his legs.

“I would rather forget nonessential distinctions.”

“Nonessential? Not while you live five times as long as I do.”

“Oddly enough, I have been thinking of that as a rather annoying disadvantage for Spacers.—How long before we reach Aurora?”

“No evasive action this time. A few days to get far enough from our sun to be able to make a Jump through hyperspace that will take us to within a few days of Aurora and that’s it.”

“And why must you go to Aurora, D.G.?”

“I might say it was simply politeness, but in actual fact, I would like an opportunity to explain to your Chairman—or even to one of his subordinates—exactly what happened on Solaria.

“Don’t they know what happened?”

“In essentials, they do. They were kind enough to tap our communications, as we would have done theirs if the situation had been reversed. Still, they may not have drawn the proper conclusions. I would like to correct them—if that is so.”

“What are the proper conclusions, D.G.?”

“As you know, the overseers on Solaria were geared to respond to a person as human only if he or she spoke with a Solarian accent, As you did. That means that not only were Settlers not considered human, but non-Solarian Spacers were not considered human, either. To be precise, Aurorans would not be considered human beings if they had landed on Solaria.

Gladia’s eyes widened. “That’s unbelievable. The Solarians wouldn’t arrange to have the overseers treat Aurorans as they treated you.”

“Wouldn’t they? They have already destroyed an Auroran ship. Did you know that?”

“An Auroran ship! No, I didn’t know that.”

“I assure you they did. It landed about the time we did. We got away, but they didn’t. We had you, you see, and they didn’t. The conclusion is—or should be—that Aurora cannot automatically treat other Spacer worlds as—allies. In an emergency, it will be each Spacer world for itself.”

Gladia shook her head violently. “It would be unsafe to generalize from a single instance. The Solarians would have found it difficult to have the overseers react favorably to fifty accents and unfavorably to scores of others, it was easier to pin them to a single accent. That’s all. They gambled that no other Spacers would try to land on their world and they lost.”

“Yes, I’m sure that is how the Auroran leadership will argue, since people generally find it much easier to make a pleasant deduction than an unpleasant one. What I want to do is to make certain they see the possibility of the unpleasant one—and that this makes them uncomfortable indeed. Forgive my self-love, but I can’t trust anyone to do it as well as I can and therefore I think that I, rather than anyone else, should go to Aurora.”

Gladia felt uncomfortably torn. She did not want to be a Spacer; she wanted to be a human being and forget what she had just called “nonessential distinctions.” And yet when D.G. spoke with obvious satisfaction of forcing Aurora into a humiliating position, she found herself still somehow a Spacer.

She said in annoyance, “I presume the Settler worlds are at odds among themselves, too. Is it not each Settler world for itself?”

D.G. shook his head. “It may seem to you that this must be so and I wouldn’t be surprised if each individual Settler world had the impulse at times to put its own interest over the good of the whole, but we have something you Spacers lack.”

“And what is that. A greater nobility?”

“Of course not. We’re no more noble than Spacers are. What we’ve got is the Earth. It’s our world. Every Settler visits Earth as often as he can. Every Settler knows that there is a world, a large, advanced world, with an incredibly rich history and cultural variety and ecological complexity that is his or hers and to which he or she belongs. The Settler worlds might quarrel with each other, but the quarrel cannot possibly result in violence or in a permanent breach of relations, for the Earth government is automatically called in to mediate all problems and its decision is sufficient and unquestioned.

“Those are our three advantages, Gladia: the lack of robots, something that allows us to build new worlds with our own hands; the rapid succession of generations, which makes for constant change; and, most of all, the Earth, which gives us our central core.”

Gladia said urgently, “But the Spacers—” and she stopped.

D.G. smiled and said with an edge of bitterness, “Were you going to say that the Spacers are also descended from Earthpeople and that it is their planet, too? Factually true, but psychologically false. The Spacers have done their best to deny their heritage. They don’t consider themselves Earthmen once-removed—or any-number-removed. If I were a mystic, I would say that by cutting themselves away from their roots, the Spacers cannot survive long. Of course, I’m not a mystic so I don’t put it that way—but they cannot survive long, just the same. I believe that.”

Then, after a short pause, he added, with a somewhat troubled—kindness, as though he realized that in his exultation he was striking a sensitive spot within her, “But please think of yourself as a human being, Gladia, rather than as a Spacer, and I will think of myself as a human being, rather than as a Settler. Humanity will survive, whether it will be in the form of Settlers or Spacers or both. I believe it will be in the form of Settlers only, but I may be wrong.”

“No,” said Gladia, trying to be unemotional. “I think you’re right—unless somehow people learn to stop making the Spacer/Settler distinction. It is my goal—to help people do that.”

“However,” said D.G., glancing at the dim time strip that circled the wall, “I delay your dinner. May I eat with you?”

“Certainly,” said Gladia.

D.G. rose to his feet. “Then I’ll go get it. I’d send Daneel or Giskard, but I don’t ever want to get into the habit of ordering robots about. Besides, however much the crew adores you, I don’t think their adoration extends to your robots.”

Gladia did not actually enjoy the meal when D.G. brought it. She did not seem to grow accustomed to the lack of subtlety in its flavors that might be the heritage of Earth cooking of yeast for mass consumption, but then, neither was it particularly repulsive. She ate stolidly.

D.G., noting her lack of enthusiasm, said, “The food doesn’t upset you, I hope?”

She shook her head. “No. Apparently, I’m acclimated. I had some unpleasant episodes when I first got on the ship, but nothing really severe.”

“I’m glad of that, but, Gladia—”

“Yes?”

“Can you suggest no reason why the Auroran government should want you back so urgently? It can’t be your handling of the overseer and it can’t be your speech. The request was sent out well before they could have known of either.”

“In that case, D.G.,” Gladia said sadly, “they can’t possibly want me for anything. They never have.”

“But there must be something. As I told you, the message arrived in the name of the Chairman of the Council of Aurora.”

“This particular Chairman at this particular time is thought to be rather a figurehead.”

“Oh? Who stands behind him? Kelden Amadiro?”

“Exactly. You know of him, then.”

“Oh, yes,” said D.G. grimly, “the center of anti-Earth fanaticism. The man who was politically smashed by Dr. Fastolfe twenty decades ago survives to threaten us again. There’s an example of the dead hand of longevity.”

“But there’s the puzzle, too.” Gladia said. “Amadiro is a vengeful man. He knows that it was Elijah Baley who was the cause of that defeat you speak of and Amadiro believes I shared responsibility. His dislike—extreme dislike—extends to me. If the Chairman wants me, that can only be because Amadiro wants me—and why should Amadiro want me? He would rather get rid of me. That’s probably why he sent me along with you to Solaria. Surely he expected your ship would be destroyed—and me along with it. And that would not have pained him at all.”

“No uncontrollable tears, eh?” said D.G. thoughtfully.

“But surely that’s not what you were told. No one said to you, ‘Go with this mad Trader because it would give us pleasure to have you killed.’”

“No. They said that you wanted my help badly and that it was politic to cooperate with the Settler worlds at the moment and that it would do Aurora a great deal of good if I would report back to them on all that occurred on Solaria once I returned.”

“Yes, they would say so. They might even have meant it to some extent. Then, when—against all their expectations—our ship got off safely while an Auroran ship was destroyed, they might well have wanted a firsthand account of what happened. Therefore, when I took you to Baleyworld instead of back to Aurora, they would scream for your return. That might possibly be it. By now, of course, they know the story, so they might no longer want you though”—he was talking to himself rather than to Gladia—“what they know is what they picked up from Baleyworld hypervision and they may not choose to accept that at face value. And yet—”

“And yet what, D.G.?”

“Somehow instinct tells me that their message could not have been sparked only by their desire to have you report. The forcefulness of the demand, it seems to me, went beyond that.”

“There’s nothing else they can want. Nothing,” said Gladia.

“I wonder,” said D.G.

47

“I wonder as well,” said Daneel from his wall niche that night.

“You wonder concerning what, friend Daneel?” asked Giskard.

“I wonder concerning the true significance of the message from Aurora demanding Lady Gladia. To me, as to the captain, a desire for a report seems a not altogether sufficient motivation.”

“Have you an alternate suggestion?”

“I have a thought, friend Giskard.”

“May I know it, friend Daneel?”

“It has occurred to me that, in demanding the return of Madam Gladia, the Auroran Council may expect to see more than they ask for—and it may not be Madam Gladia they want.”

“What is there more than Madam Gladia that they will get?”

“Friend Giskard, is it conceivable that Lady Gladia will return without you and me?”

“No, but of what use to the Auroran Council would you and I be?”

“I, friend Giskard, would be of no use to them. You, however, are unique, for you can sense minds directly.”

“That is true, friend Daneel, but they do not know this.”

“Since our leaving, is it not possible that they have somehow discovered the fact and have come to regret bitterly having allowed you to leave Aurora?”

Giskard did not hesitate perceptibly. “No, it is not possible, friend Daneel. How would they have found out?”

Daneel said carefully, “I have reasoned in this fashion. You have, on your long-ago visit to Earth with Dr. Fastolfe, managed to adjust a few Earth robots so as to allow them a very limited mental capacity, merely enough to enable them to continue your work of influencing officials on Earth to look with courage and favor on the process of Settlement. So, at least, you once told me. There are, therefore, robots on Earth that are capable of mind adjusting.

“Then, too, as we have come recently to suspect, the Robotics Institute of Aurora has sent humanoid robots to Earth. We do not know their precise purpose in doing so, but the least that can be expected of such robots is that they observe events there on Earth and report on them.”

“Even if the Auroran robots cannot sense minds, they can send back reports to the effect that this or that official has suddenly changed his attitude toward Settlement and, perhaps, in the time since we have left Aurora, it has dawned on someone in power in Aurora—on Dr. Amadiro himself perhaps—that this can only be explained by the existence of mind-adjusting robots on Earth. It may be, then, that the establishment of mind-adjusting can be traced back to either Dr. Fastolfe or yourself.

“This might, in turn, make clear to Auroran officials the meaning of certain other events, which might be traced back to you rather than to Dr. Fastolfe. As a result, they would want you back desperately, yet not be able to ask for you directly, for that would give away the fact of their new knowledge. So they ask for Lady Gladia—a natural request knowing that if she is brought back, you will be, too.”

Giskard was silent for a full minute, then he said, “It is interestingly reasoned, friend Daneel, but it does not hold together. Those robots whom I designed for the task of encouraging Settlement completed their job more than eighteen decades ago and have been inactive since, at least as far as mind-adjustment is concerned. What’s more, the Earth removed robots from their Cities and confined them to the unpopulated non-City areas quite a considerable time ago.

“This means that the humanoid robots who were, we speculate, sent to Earth, would, even so, not have had occasion to meet my mind-adjusting robots or be aware of any mind-adjustment either, considering that the robots are no longer engaged in that. It is impossible, therefore, for my special ability to have been uncovered in the manner you suggest.”

Daneel said, “Is there no other way of discovery, friend Giskard?”

“None,” said Giskard firmly.

“And yet—I wonder,” said Daneel.