Robots and Empire

48

Kelden Amadiro was not immune from the human plague of memory. He was, in fact, more subject to it than most. In his case, moreover, the tenacity of memory had, as its accompaniment, a content unusual for the intensity of its deep and prolonged rage and frustration.

All had been going so well for him twenty decades before. He was the founding head of the Robotics Institute (he was still the founding head) and for one flashing and triumphant moment it had seemed to him that he could not fail to achieve total control of the Council, smashing his great enemy, Han Fastolfe, and leaving him in helpless opposition.

If he had—if he only had—

(How he tried not to think of it and, how his memory presented him with it, over and over again, as though it could never get enough of grief and despair.)

If he had won out, Earth would have remained isolated and alone and he would have seen to it that Earth declined, decayed, and finally faded into dissolution. Why not? The short-lived people of a diseased, overcrowded world were better off dead—a hundred times better off dead than living the life they had forced themselves to lead.

And the Spacer worlds, calm and secure, would then have expanded further, Fastolfe had always complained that the Spacers were too long-lived and too comfortable on their robotic cushions to be pioneers, but Amadiro would have proved him wrong.

Yet Fastolfe had won out. At the moment of certain defeat, he had somehow, unbelievably, incredibly, reached into empty space, so to speak, and found victory in his grasp—plucked from nowhere.

It was that Earthman, of course, Elijah Baley—

But Amadiro’s otherwise uncomfortable memory always balked at the Earthman and turned away. He could not picture that face, hear that voice, remember that deed. The name was enough. Twenty centuries had not sufficed to dim the hatred he felt in the slightest—or to soften the pain he felt by an iota.

And with Fastolfe in charge of policy, the miserable Earthmen had fled their corrupting planet and established themselves on world after world. The whirlwind of Earth’s progress dazed the Spacer worlds and forced them into frozen paralysis.

How many times had Amadiro addressed the Council and pointed out that the Galaxy was slipping from Spacer fingers, that Aurora was watching blankly while world after world was being occupied by submen, that each year apathy was taking firmer hold of the Spacer spirit?

“Rouse yourself,” he had called out. “Rouse yourself. See their numbers grow. See the Settler worlds multiply. What is it you wait for? To have them at your throats?”

And always Fastolfe would answer in that soothing lullaby of a voice of his and the Aurorans and the other Spacers (always following Aurora’s lead, when Aurora chose not to lead) would settle back and return to their slumber.

The obvious did not seem to touch them. The facts, the figures, the indisputable worsening of affairs from decade to decade left them unmoved. How was it possible to shout the truth at them so steadily, to have every prediction he made come to pass, and yet to have to watch a steady majority following Fastolfe like sheep?

How was it possible that Fastolfe himself could watch everything he said prove to be sheer folly and yet never swerve from his policies? It was not even that he stubbornly insisted on being wrong, it was that he simply never seemed to notice he was wrong.

If Amadiro were the kind of man who doted on fantasy, he would surely imagine that some kind of spell, some kind of apathetic enchantment, had fallen upon the Spacer worlds. He would imagine that somewhere someone possessed the magic power of lulling otherwise active brains and blinding to the truth otherwise sharp eyes.

To add the final exquisite agony, people pitied Fastolfe for having died in frustration. In frustration, they said, because the Spacers would not seize new worlds of their own.

It was Fastolfe’s own policies that kept them from doing so! What right had he to feel frustration over that? What would he do if he had, like Amadiro, always seen and spoken the truth and been unable to force the Spacers enough Spacers—to listen to him.

How many times had he thought that it would be better for the Galaxy to be empty than under the domination of the submen? Had he had some magic power to destroy the Earth—Elijah Baley’s world—with a nod of his head, how eagerly he would.

Yet to find refuge in such fantasy could only be a sign of his total despair. It was the other side of his recurrent, futile wish Ito give up and welcome death—if his robots would allow it.

And then the time came when the power to destroy Earth was given him—even forced upon him against his will. That time was some three-fourths of a decade before, when he had first met Levular Mandamus.

49

Memory! Three-fourths of a decade before—

Amadiro looked up and noted that Maloon Cicis had entered the office. He had undoubtedly signaled and he had the right to enter if the signal were not acknowledged.

Amadiro sighed and put down his small computer. Cicis had been his right-hand man ever since the Institute had been established. He was getting old in his service. Nothing drastically noticeable, just a general air of mild decay. His nose seemed to be a bit more asymmetrical than it once had been.

He rubbed his own somewhat bulbous nose and wondered how badly the flavor of decay was enveloping him. He had once been 1.95 meters tall, a good height even by Spacer standards. Surely he stood as straight now as he always had and yet when he had actually measured his height recently, he could not manage to make it more than 1.93 meters. Was he beginning to stoop, to shrivel, to settle?

He put away these dour thoughts that were themselves a surer sign of aging than mere measurements and said, “What is it, Maloon?”

Cicis had a new personal robot dogging his steps very modernistic and with glossy trim. That was a sign of aging, too. If one can’t keep one’s body young, one can always buy a new young robot. Amadiro was determined never to rouse smiles among the truly young by falling prey to that particular delusion—especially since Fastolfe, who was eight decades older than Amadiro, had never done so.

Cicis said, “It’s this Mandamus fellow again, Chief.”

“Mandamus?”

“The one who keeps wanting to see you.”

Amadiro thought a while. “You mean the idiot who’s a descendant of the Solarian woman?”

“Yes, Chief.”

“Well, I don’t want to see him. Haven’t you made that clear to him yet, Maloon?”

“Abundantly clear. He asks that I hand you a note and he says you will then see him.”

Amadiro said slowly, “I don’t think so, Maloon. What does the note say?”

“I don’t understand it, Chief. It isn’t Galactic.”

“In that case, why should I understand it any more than you do?”

“I don’t know, but he asked me to give it to you. If you care to look at it, Chief, and say the word, I will go back and get rid of him one more time.”

“Well, then, let me see it,” said Amadiro, shaking his head. He glanced at it with distaste.

It read: “Ceterum censeo, delenda est Carthago.”

Amadiro read the message, glared up at Maloon, then turned his eyes back to the message. Finally, he said, “You must have looked at this, since you know it isn’t Galactic. Did you ask him what it meant?”

“Yes, I did, Chief. He said it was Latin, but that left me no wiser. He said you would understand. He is a very determined man and said he would sit there all day waiting till you read this.”

“What does he look like?”

“Thin. Serious. Probably humorless. Tall, but not quite as tall as you. Intense, deep-set eyes, thin lips.”

“How old is he?”

“From the texture of his skin, I should say four decades or so. He is very young.”

“In that case, we must make allowances for youth. Send him in.”

Cicis looked surprised. “You will see him?”

“I have just said so, haven’t I? Send him in.”

50

The young man entered the room in what was almost a march step. He stood there stiffly in front of the desk and said, “I thank you, sir, for agreeing to see me. May I have your permission to have my robots join me?”

Amadiro raised his eyebrows. “I would be pleased to see them. Would you permit me to keep mine with me?”

It had been many years since he had heard anyone mouth the old robot formula. It was one of those good old customs that sank into abeyance as the notion of formal politeness decayed and as it came to be taken more and more for granted that one’s personal robots were part of one’s self.

“Yes, sir,” said Mandamus and two robots entered. They did not do so, Amadiro noted, till permission had been given. They were new robots, clearly efficient, and showed all the signs of good workmanship.

“Your own design, Mr. Mandamus?” There was always some extra value in robots that were designed by their owners.

“Indeed, sir.”

“Then you are a roboticist?”

“Yes, sir. I have my degree from the University of Eons.”

“Working under—”

Mandamus said smoothly, “Not under Dr. Fastolfe, sir. Under Dr. Maskellnik.”

“Ah, but you are not a member of the Institute.”

“I have applied for entrance, sir.”

“I see.” Amadiro adjusted the papers on his desk and then said quickly, without looking up, “Where did you learn Latin?”

“I do not know Latin well enough to speak it or read it but I know enough about it to know that quotation and where to find it.”

“That in itself is remarkable. How does that come about?”

“I cannot devote every moment of my time to robotics, so I have my side interests. One of them is planetology, with particular reference to Earth. That led me to Earth’s history and culture.”

“That is not a popular study among Spacers.”

“No, sir, and that is too bad. One should always know one’s enemies—as you do, sir.”

“As I do?”

“Yes, sir. I believe you are acquainted with many aspects of Earth and are more learned in that respect than I am, for you have studied the subject longer.”

“How do you know that?”

“I have tried to learn as much about you as I can, sir.”

“Because I am another one of your enemies?”

“No, sir, but because I want to make you an ally.”

“Make me an ally? You plan to make use of me, then? Does it strike you that you are being a little impertinent?”

“No, sir, for I am sure you will want to be an ally of mine.”

Amadiro stared at him. “Nevertheless, it strikes me that you are being rather more than a little impertinent.—Tell me, do you understand this quotation you have found for me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then translate it into Standard Galactic.”

“It says, ‘In my opinion, Carthage must be destroyed.’”

“And what does that mean, in your opinion?”

“The speaker was Marcus Porcius Cato, a senator of the Roman Republic, a political unit of ancient Earth. It had defeated its chief rival, Carthage, but had not destroyed it. Cato held that Rome could not be secure until Carthage was entirely destroyed—and eventually, sir, it was.”

“But what is Carthage to us, young man?”

“There are such things as analogies.”

“Which means?”

“That the Spacer worlds, too, have a chief rival that, in my opinion, must be destroyed.”

“Name the enemy.”

“The planet Earth, sir.”

Amadiro drummed his fingers very softly upon the desk before him. “And you want me to be your ally in such a project. You assume I will be happy and eager to be one.—Tell me, Dr. Mandamus, when have I ever said in any of my numerous speeches and writings on the subject that Earth must be destroyed?”

Mandamus’s thin lips tightened and his nostrils flared. “I am not here,” he said, “in an attempt to trap you into something that can be used against you. I have not been sent here by Dr. Fastolfe, or any of his party. Nor am I of his party. Nor do I attempt to say what is in your mind. I tell you only what is in my mind. In my opinion, Earth must be destroyed.”

“And how do you propose to destroy Earth? Do you suggest that we drop nuclear bombs on it until the blasts and radiation and dust clouds destroy the planet? Because, if so, how do you propose to keep avenging Settler ships from doing the same to Aurora and to as many of the other Spacer worlds as they can reach? Earth might have been blasted with impunity as recently as fifteen decades ago. It can’t be now.”

Mandamus looked revolted. “I have nothing like that in mind, Dr. Amadiro. I would not unnecessarily destroy human beings, even if they are Earthpeople. There is a way, however, in which Earth can be destroyed without necessarily killing its people wholesale—and there will be no retaliation.”

“You are a dreamer,” said Amadiro, “or perhaps not quite sane.”

“Let me explain.”

“No, young man. I have little time and because your quotation, which I understood perfectly well, piqued my curiosity, I have already allowed myself to spend too much of it on you.”

Mandamus stood up. “I understand, Dr. Amadiro, and I beg your pardon for taking up more of your time than you could afford. Think of what I have said, however, and if you should become curious, why not call upon me when you have more time to devote to me than you now have. Do not wait too long, however, for if I must, I will turn in other directions, for destroy Earth I will. I am frank with you, you see.”

The young man attempted a smile that stretched his thin cheeks without producing much of an effect on his face otherwise. He said, “Good-bye—and thank you again,” turned, and left.

Amadiro looked after him for a while thoughtfully, then touched a contact on the side of his desk.

“Maloon,” he said when Cicis entered, “I want that young man watched around the clock and I want to know everyone he speaks to—everyone. I want them all identified and I want them all questioned. Those whom I indicate are to be brought to me.—But, Maloon, everything must be done quietly and with an attitude of sweet and friendly persuasion. I am not yet master here, as you know.”

But he would be eventually. Fastolfe was thirty-six decades old and clearly failing and Amadiro was eight decades younger.

51

Amadiro received his reports for nine days.

Mandamus talked to his robots, occasionally to colleagues at the university, and even more occasionally to individuals at the establishments neighboring his. His conversations were utterly trivial and, long before the nine days had passed, Amadiro had decided he could not outwait the young man. Mandamus was only at the beginning of a long life and might have thirty decades ahead of him; Amadiro had only eight to ten at the very most.

And Amadiro, thinking of what the young man had said, felt, with increasing restlessness, that he could not take the chance that a way of destroying Earth might exist and, that he might be ignoring it. Could he allow the destruction to take place after his death, so that he would not witness it? Or, almost as bad, have it take place during his lifetime, but with someone else’s mind in command, someone else’s fingers on the contact?

No, he had to see it, witness it, and do it, else why had he endured his long frustration? Mandamus might be a fool or a madman, but, in that case, Amadiro had to know for certain that he was a fool or a madman.

Having reached that point in his thinking, Amadiro called Mandamus to his office.

Amadiro realized that in so doing, he was humiliating himself, but the humiliation was the price he had to pay to make certain that there wasn’t the slightest chance of Earth being destroyed without him. It was a price he was willing to pay—

He steeled himself even for the possibility that Mandamus would enter his presence, smirking and contemptuously triumphant. He would have to endure that, too. After the endurance, of course, if the young man’s suggestion proved foolish, he would see him punished to the full extent that a civilized society would permit, but otherwise—

He was pleased, then, when Mandamus entered his office with an attitude of reasonable humility and thanked him, in all apparent sincerity, for a second interview. It seemed to Amadiro he would have to be gracious in his turn.

“Dr. Mandamus,” he said, “in sending you away without listening to your plan, I was guilty of discourtesy. Tell me, then, what you have in mind and I will listen until it is quite clear to me—as I suspect it will be—that your plan is, perhaps, more the result of enthusiasm than of cold reason. At that time, I will dismiss you again, but without contempt on my part, and I hope that you will respond without anger on your part.”

Mandamus said, “I could not be angry at having been accorded a fair and patient hearing, Dr. Amadiro, but what if what I say makes sense to you and offers hope?”

“In that case,” said Amadiro slowly, “it would be conceivable that we two could work together.”

“That would be wonderful, sir. Together we could accomplish more than we could separately. But would there be something more tangible than the privilege of working together? Would there be a reward?”

Amadiro looked displeased. “I would be grateful, of course, but all I am is a Councilman and the head of the Robotics Institute. There would be a limit to what I could do for you.”

“I understand that, Dr. Amadiro. But within those limits could I not have something on account? Now?” He looked at Amadiro steadily.

Amadiro frowned at finding himself gazing into a pair of keen and unblinkingly determined eyes. No humility there!

Amadiro said coldly, “What do you have in mind?”

“Nothing you can’t give me, Dr. Amadiro. Make me a member of the Institute.”

“If you qualify—”

“No fear. I qualify.”

“We can’t leave that decision to the candidate. We have to—”

“Come, Dr. Amadiro, this is no way to begin a relationship. Since you’ve had me under observation every moment since I left you last, I can’t believe you haven’t studied my record thoroughly. As a result, you must know I qualify. If, for any reason, you felt I did not qualify, you would have no hope whatever that I would be ingenious enough to work out a plan for the destruction of our particular Carthage and I wouldn’t be back here at your call.”

For an instant, Amadiro felt a fire blaze within him. For that instant, he felt that even Earth’s destruction was not worth enduring this hectoring attitude from a child. But only for that instant. Then his sense of due proportion was back and he could even tell himself that a person so young, yet so bold and so icily sure of himself, was the kind of man he needed. Besides, he had studied Mandamus’s record and there was no question that he qualified for the Institute.

Amadiro said evenly (at some cost to his blood pressure), “You are right. You qualify.”

“Then enroll me. I’m sure you have the necessary forms in your computer. You have but to enter my name, my school, my year of graduation, and whatever other statistical trivia you require and then sign your own name.”

Without a word in reply, Amadiro turned to his computer. He entered the necessary information, retrieved the form, signed it, and handed it to Mandamus. “It is dated today. You are a fellow of the Institute.”

Mandamus studied the paper, then handed it to one of his robots, who placed it in a small portfolio which he then placed under his ann.

“Thank you,” said Mandamus, “it is most kind of you and I hope I will never fail you or cause you to regret this kind estimate you have given me of my abilities. That, however, leaves one more thing.”

“Indeed? What?”

“Might we discuss the nature of the final reward—in case of success only, of course. Total success.

“Might we not leave that, more logically, to the point where total success is achieved or is reasonably close to being achieved?”

“As a matter of rationality, yes. But I am a creature of dreams as well as of reason. I would like to dream a little.

“Well,” said Amadiro, “what is it you would like to dream?”

“It seems to me, Dr. Amadiro, that Dr. Fastolfe is now by no means well. He has lived long and cannot stave off death for many more years.”

“And if so?”

“Once he dies, your party will become more aggressive and the more lukewarm members of Fastolfe’s party will find it expedient to change allegiance, perhaps. The next election, without Fastolfe, will surely be yours.”

“It is possible. And if so?”

“You will become the de facto leader of the Council and the guide of Aurora’s foreign policy which would, in fact, mean the foreign policy of the Spacer worlds in general. And if my plans flourish, your direction will be so successful that the Council will scarcely fail to elect you Chairman at their earliest opportunity.”

“Your dreams soar, young man. And if all you foresee were to come true, what then?”

“You would scarcely have time to run Aurora and the Robotics Institute, too. So I ask that when you finally decide to resign from your present position as the head of the Institute, you be prepared to support me as your successor to the post. You could scarcely expect to have your personal choice rejected.”

Amadiro said, “There is such a thing as qualification for the post.”

“I will qualify.”

“Let us wait and see.”

“I am willing to wait and see, but you will find that well before complete success is ours, you will wish to grant this request of mine. Please grow accustomed to the idea, therefore.”

“All this before I hear a word,” murmured Amadiro. “Well, you are a member of the Institute and I will strive to grow accustomed to your personal dream, but now let us have an end to preliminaries and tell me how you intend to destroy Earth.”

Almost automatically, Amadiro made the sign that indicated to his robots that they were not to remember any part of the conversation. And Mandamus, with a small smile, did the same for his.

“Let us start then,” said Mandamus.

But before he could speak further, Amadiro moved to the attack.

“Are you sure you’re not pro-Earth?”

Mandamus looked startled. “I am coming to you with a proposal to destroy Earth.”

“And yet you are a descendant of the Solarian woman in the fifth generation, I understand.”

“Yes, sir, it is on public record. What of that?”

“The Solarian woman is, and has been for a long time, a close associate—friend—protegee—of Fastolfe. I wonder you do not sympathize with his pro-Earth views, therefore.”

“Because of my ancestry?” Mandamus seemed honestly astonished. For a moment, what might have been a flash of annoyance or even anger seemed to tighten his nostrils, but that vanished and he said quietly, “An equally longtime close associate—friend—protegee—of your own is Dr. Vasilia Fastolfe, who is Dr. Fastolfe’s daughter. She is a descendant in the first generation. I wonder she does not sympathize with his views.”

“I have in the past also wondered,” said Amadiro, “but she doesn’t sympathize with them and, in her case, I have ceased wondering.”

“You may cease wondering in my case, too, sir. I am a Spacer and I want to see the Spacers in control of the Galaxy.”

“Very well, then. Go on with the description of your plan.”

Mandamus said, “I will, but—if you don’t mind—from the beginning.

“Dr. Amadiro, astronomers agree that there are millions of Earthlike planets in our Galaxy, planets on which human beings can live after necessary adjustments to the environment but without any need for geological terraforming. Their atmospheres are breathable, an ocean of water is present, the land and climate is suitable, life exists. Indeed, the atmospheres would not contain free oxygen without the presence of ocean plankton at the very least.

“The land is often barren, but once it and the ocean undergo biological terraforming—that is, once they are seeded with Earth life—such life flourishes and the planet can then be settled. Hundreds of such planets have been recorded and studied and about half of them are already occupied by Settlers.

“And yet not one habitable planet of all those which have been discovered to date has the enormous variety and excess of life that Earth has. Not one has anything larger or more complex than a small array of wormlike or insect like invertebrates or, in the plant world, anything more advanced than some fernlike shrubbery. No question of intelligence, of anything even approaching intelligence.”

Amadiro listened to the stiff sentences and thought: He’s speaking by rote. He’s memorized all this.—He stirred and said, “I am not a planetologist, Dr. Mandamus, but I ask you to believe that you are telling me nothing I don’t already know.”

“As I said, Dr. Amadiro, I am starting from the beginning.—Astronomers are increasingly of the belief that we have a fair sample of the habitable planets of the Galaxy and that all—or almost all—are markedly different from Earth. For some reason, Earth is a surprisingly unusual Planet and evolution has proceeded on it at a radically rapid pace and m a radically abnormal manner.”

Amadiro said, “The usual argument is that if there were another intelligent species in the Galaxy that was as advanced as we are, it would have become aware of our expansion by now and have made themselves known to us one way or another.”

Mandamus said, “Yes, sir. In fact, if there were another intelligent species in the Galaxy that was more advanced than we are, we would not have had a chance to expand in the first place. That we are the only species in the Galaxy capable of traveling in hyperspace would seem certain, then. That we are the only species in the Galaxy that is intelligent is perhaps not quite certain, but there is a very good chance that we are.”

Amadiro was now listening with a weary half-smile. The young man was being didactic, like a man stamping out the rhythm of his monomania in a dull beat. It was one of the marks of the crank and the mild hope Amadiro had had that Mandamus might actually have something that would turn the tide of history was beginning to fade.

He said, “You continue to tell me the known, Dr. Mandamus. Everyone knows Earth seems unique and that we are probably the only intelligent species in the Galaxy.”

“But no one seems to ask the simple question: ‘Why?’ The Earthpeople and the Settlers don’t ask it. They accept it. They have a mystic attitude toward Earth and consider it a holy world, so that its unusual nature is taken as a matter of course. As for the Spacers, we don’t ask it. We ignore it. We do our best not to think of Earth at all, since if we do, we are liable to go further and think of ourselves as having descended from Earthpeople.”

Amadiro said, “I see no virtue in the question. We need not seek for complex answers to the ‘Why?’ Random processes play an important role in evolution and, to some extent, in all things. If there are millions of habitable worlds, evolution may proceed on each of them at a different rate. On most, the rate will have some intermediate value; on some the rate will be distinctly slow, on others distinctly fast; on perhaps one it would proceed exceedingly slow and on another exceedingly fast. Earth happens to be the one on which it proceeded exceedingly fast and we are here because of that. Now if we ask ‘Why?’ the natural—and sufficient—answer is ‘Chance.’”

Amadiro waited for the other to betray the crank by exploding in rage at a preeminently logical statement presented in an amused way, that served to shatter his thesis completely. Mandamus, however, merely stared at him for a few moments out of his deep-set eyes and then said quietly, “NO.”

Mandamus let that stand for perhaps two beats and then said, “It takes more than a lucky chance or two to speed evolution a thousand fold. On every planet but Earth, the speed of evolution is closely related to the flux of cosmic radiation in which that planet is bathed. That speed is not the result of chance at all but the result of cosmic radiation producing mutations at a slow rate. On Earth, something produces many more mutations than are produced on other habitable planets and that has nothing to do with cosmic rays, for they do not strike Earth in any remarkable profusion. Perhaps you see a little more clearly, now, why the ‘Why?’ could be important.”

“Well, then, Dr. Mandamus, since I am still listening, with rather more patience than I would have expected myself to possess, answer the question you so insistently raise. Or do you merely have the question and no answer?”

“I have an answer,” said Mandamus, “and it depends upon the fact that Earth is unique in a second way.”

Amadiro said, “Let me anticipate. You are referring to its large satellite. Surely, Dr. Mandamus, you are not advancing this as a discovery of yours.”

“Not at all,” said Mandamus stiffly, “but consider that large satellites seem to be common. Our planetary system has five, Earth’s has seven and so on. All the known large satellites but one, however, circle gas giants. Only Earth’s satellite, the moon, circles a planet not much larger than itself.”

“Dare I use the word ‘chance’ again, Dr. Mandamus?”

“In this case, it may be chance, but the moon remains unique.”

“Even so. What possible connection can the satellite have with Earth’s profusion of life?”

“That may not be obvious and a connection may be unlikely—but it is far more unlikely that two such unusual examples of uniqueness in a single planet can have no connection at all. I have found such a connection.”

“Indeed?” said Amadiro alertly. Now ought to come unmistakable evidence of crackpotism. He looked casually at the time strip on the wall. There really wasn’t much more time he could possibly spend on this, for all that his curiosity continued to be aroused.

“The moon,” said Mandamus, “is slowly receding from Earth, due to its tidal effect on the Earth. Earth’s large tides are a unique consequence of the existence of this large satellite. Earth’s sun produces tides, too, but to only a third of the extent of the moon’s tides—just as our sun produces small tides on Aurora.

“Since the moon recedes because of its tidal action, it was far closer to Earth during the early history of its planetary system. The closer the moon to the Earth, the higher the tides on Earth. These tides had two important effects on Earth. It flexed the Earth’s crust continually as the Earth rotated and it slowed the Earth’s rotation, both through that flexing and through the friction of the ocean’s water tides on shallow sea bottoms—so that rotational energy was converted to heat.

“The Earth, therefore, has a thinner crust than any other habitable planet we know of and it is the only habitable planet that displays volcanic action and that has a lively system of plate tectonics.”

Amadiro said, “But even all this can have nothing to do with Earth’s profusion of life. I think you must either get to the point, Dr. Mandamus, or leave.”

“Please bear with me, Dr. Amadiro, for just a little while longer. It is important to understand the point once we get to it. I have made a careful computer simulation of the chemical development of Earth’s crust, allowing for the effect of tidal action and plate tectonics, something that no one has ever done before in as meticulous and elaborate a way as I have managed to do—if I may praise myself.”

“Oh, by all means,” murmured Amadiro.

“And it turns out, quite clearly—I will show you all the necessary data at any time you wish—that uranium and thorium collect in Earth’s crust and upper mantle in concentrations of up to a thousand times as high as in any other habitable world. Moreover, they collect unevenly, so that scattered over the Earth are occasional pockets where uranium and thorium are even more concentrated.”

“And, I take it, dangerously high in radioactivity?”

“No, Dr. Amadiro. Uranium and thorium are very weakly radioactive and even where they are relatively concentrated, they are not very concentrated in an absolute sense.—All this, I repeat, is because of the presence of a large moon.”

“I assume, then, that the radioactivity, even if not intense enough to be dangerous to life, does suffice to increase the mutation rate. Is that it, Dr. Mandamus?”

“That is it. There would be more rapid extinctions now and then, but also more rapid development of new species—resulting in an enormous variety and profusion of life-forms. And, eventually, on Earth alone, this would have reached the point of developing an intelligent species and a civilization.”

Amadiro nodded. The young man was not a crank. He might be wrong, but he was not a crank. And he might be right, too—

Amadiro was not a planetologist, so he would have to check books on the subject to see whether Mandamus had perhaps discovered only the already-known, as so many enthusiasts did. There was, however, a more important point he had to check at once.

He said in a soft voice, “You’ve spoken of the possible destruction of Earth. Is there some connection between that and Earth’s unique properties?”

“One can take advantage of unique properties in a unique manner,” said Mandamus just as softly.

“In this particular case—in what way?”

“Before discussing the method, Dr. Amadiro, I must explain that, in one respect, the question as to whether destruction is physically possible depends on you.”

“On me?”

“Yes,” said Mandamus firmly. “On you. Why, otherwise, should I come to you with this long story if not to persuade you that I know what I’m talking about, so that you would be willing to cooperate with me in a manner that will be essential to my success?”

Amadiro drew a long breath. “And if I refused, would anyone else serve your purpose?”

“It might be possible for me to turn to others if you refuse. Do you refuse?”

“Perhaps not, but I am wondering how essential I am to you.”

“The answer is, not quite as essential as I am to you. You must cooperate with me.”

“Must?”

“I would like you to—if you prefer it phrased in that fashion. But if you wish Aurora and the Spacers to triumph, now and forever, over Earth and the Settlers, then you must cooperate with me, whether you like the phrase or not.”

Amadiro said, “Tell me what it is, exactly, that I must do.”

“Begin by telling me if it is not true that the Institute has, in the past, designed and constructed humanoid robots.”

“Yes, we did. Fifty of them all together. That was between fifteen and twenty decades ago.”

“That long ago? And what happened to them?”

“They failed,” said Amadiro indifferently.

Mandamus sat back in his chair with a horrified expression on his face. “They were destroyed?”

Amadiro’s eyebrows shot upward. “Destroyed? No one destroys expensive robots. They are in storage. The power units are removed and a special long-lived microfusion battery is in each to keep the positronic paths minimally alive.”

“Then they can be brought back to full action?”

“I am sure they can.”

Mandamus’s right hand beat out a tightly controlled rhythm against the arm of the chair. He said grimly, “Then we can win!”

52

It had been a long time since Amadiro had thought of the humanoid robots. It was a painful thought and he had, with some difficulty, trained himself to keep his mind away from that topic. And now Mandamus had unexpectedly brought it up.

The humanoid robot had been Fastolfe’s great trump card in those long-gone days when Amadiro had been within a millimeter of taking the game, trump card and all. Fastolfe had designed and built two humanoid robots (of which one still existed) and no one else could build any. The entire membership of the Robotics Institute, working together, could not build them.

All that Amadiro had salvaged out of his great defeat had been that trump card. Fastolfe had been forced to make public the nature of the humanoid design.

That meant humanoid robots could be built and were built and—behold—they were not wanted. The Aurorans would not have them in their society.

Amadiro’s mouth twisted in the remnant of remembered chagrin. The tale of the Solarian woman had somehow come to be known—the fact that she had had the use of Jander, one of Fastolfe’s two humanoid robots, and that the use had been sexual. Aurorans had no objection to such a situation in theory. When they stopped to think of it, however, Auroran women simply did not enjoy the thought of having to compete with robot women. Nor did Auroran men wish to compete with robot men.

The Institute had labored mightily to explain that the humanoid robots were not intended for Aurora itself, but were meant to serve as the initial wave of pioneers who would seed and adjust new habitable planets for Aurorans to occupy later, after they had been terraformed.

That, too, was rejected, as suspicion and objection fed on itself. Someone had called the humanoids “the entering wedge.” The expression spread and the Institute was forced to give up.

Stubbornly, Amadiro had insisted on mothballing those which existed for possible future use—a use that had never yet materialized.

Why had there been this objection to the humanoids?

Amadiro felt a faint return of the irritation that had all but poisoned his life those n any decades ago. Fastolfe himself, though reluctant, had agreed to back the project and, to do him justice, had done so, though without quite the eloquence he devoted to those matters to which his heart was truly given.—But it had not helped.

And yet—and yet—if Mandamus now really had some project in mind that would work and would require the robots.

Amadiro had no great fondness for mystical cries of: “It was better so. It was meant to be.” Yet it was only with an effort that he kept himself from thinking this, as the elevator took them down to a spot well below ground level the only place in Aurora that might be similar, in a tiny way, to Earth’s fabled Caves of Steel.

Mandamus stepped out of the elevator at Amadiro’s gesture and found himself in a dim corridor. It was chilly and there was a soft ventilating wind. He shivered slightly. Amadiro joined him. But a single robot followed each.

“Few people come here,” Amadiro said matter-of-factly.

“How far underground are we?” asked Mandamus.

“About fifteen meters. There are a number of levels. It is on this one that the humanoid robots are stored.”

Amadiro stopped a moment, as though in thought, then turned firmly to the left. “This way!”

“No directing signs?”

“As I said, few people come here. Those who do know where they should go to find what they need.”

As he said that, they came to a door that looked solid and formidable in the dim light. On either side stood a robot. They were not humanoid.

Mandamus regarded them critically and said, “These are simple models.”

“Very simple. You wouldn’t expect us to waste anything elaborate on the task of guarding a door.” Amadiro raised his voice, but kept it impassive. “I am Kelden Amadiro.”

The eyes of both robots glowed briefly. They turned outward, away from the door, which opened noiselessly, rising upward.

Amadiro directed the other through and, as he passed the robots, said calmly, “Leave it open and adjust the lighting to personal need.”

Mandamus said, “I don’t suppose just anyone could enter here.”

“Certainly not. Those robots recognize my appearance and voiceprint and require both before opening the door.” Half to himself, he added, “No need for locks or keys or combinations anywhere on the Spacer worlds. The robots guard us faithfully and always.”

“I had sometimes thought,” said Mandamus broodingly, “that if an Auroran were to borrow one of those blasters that Settlers seem to carry with them wherever they go, there would be no locked doors for him. He could destroy robots in an instant, then go wherever he wished, do whatever he wanted.”

Amadiro darted a fiery glance at the other. “But what Spacer would dream of using such weapons on a Spacer world? We live our lives without weapons and without violence. Don’t you understand that that is why I have devoted my life to the defeat and destruction of Earth and its poisoned brood.—Yes, we had violence once, but that was long ago, when the Spacer worlds were first established and we had not yet rid ourselves of the poison of the Earth from which we came, and before we had learned the value of robotic security.

“Aren’t peace and security worth fighting for? Worlds without violence! Worlds in which reason rules! Was it right for us to hand over scores of habitable worlds to short-lived barbarians who, as you say, carry blasters about with them everywhere?”

“And yet,” murmured Mandamus, “are you ready to use violence to destroy Earth?”

“Violence briefly—and for a purpose—is the price we probably will have to pay for putting an end to violence forever.

“I am Spacer enough,” said Mandamus, “to want even that violence minimized.”

They had now entered a large and cavernous room and, as they entered, walls and ceiling came to life with diffuse and unglaring light.

“Well, is this what you want, Dr. Mandamus?” asked Amadiro.

Mandamus looked about, stunned. Finally, he managed to say, “Incredible!”

They stood there, a solid regiment of human beings, with a little more life to them than so many statues might have showed, but with far less life than sleeping human beings would have displayed.

“They’re standing,” muttered Mandamus.

“They take up less room that way. Obviously.”

“But they’ve been standing about fifteen decades. They can’t still be in working order. Surely their joints are frozen, their organs broken down.”

Amadiro shrugged. “Perhaps. Still, if the joints have deteriorated—and that isn’t out of the question, I suppose those can be replaced—if necessary. It would depend on whether there would be reason to do so.”

“There would be reason,” said Mandamus. He looked from head to head. They were staring in slightly different directions and that gave them a somewhat unsettling appearance, as though they were on the point of breaking ranks.

Mandamus said, “Each has an individual appearance and they differ in height, build, and so on.”

“Yes. Does that surprise you? We were planning to have these, along with others we might have built, be the pioneers in the development of new worlds. To have them do so properly, we wanted them to be as human as possible, which meant making them as individual as Aurorans are. Doesn’t that seem sensible to you?”

“Absolutely. I’m glad this is so. I’ve read all I can about the two protohumaniforms that Fastolfe himself built—Daneel Olivaw and Jander Panell. I’ve seen holographs of them and they seemed identical.”

“Yes,” said Amadiro impatiently. “Not only identical, but each virtually a caricature of one’s conception of the ideal Spacer. That was Fastolfe’s romanticism. I’m sure that he would have built a race of interchangeable humanoid robots, with both sexes possessing such ethereal good looks—or what he considered to be that—as to make them completely inhuman. Fastolfe may be a brilliant roboticist, but he is an incredibly stupid man.”

Amadiro shook his head. To have been beaten by such an incredibly stupid man, he thought—and then he thrust the thought away. He had not been beaten by Fastolfe, but by that infernal Earthman. Lost in thought, he did not hear Mandamus’s next question.

“Pardon me,” he said with an edge of irritation.

“I said, ‘Did you design these, Dr. Amadiro?’”

“No, by an odd coincidence—and one that strikes me as possessing a peculiar irony—these were designed by Fastolfe’s daughter Vasilia. She’s as brilliant as he is and much more intelligent—which may be one reason why they never got along.”

“As I have heard the story concerning them—” began Mandamus.

Amadiro waved him into silence. “I have heard the story, too, but it doesn’t matter. It’s enough that she does her work very well and that there is no danger that she will ever find herself in sympathy with someone who, despite the accident that he is her biological father, is—and must remain forever alien and hateful to her. She even calls herself Vasilia Aliena, you know.”

“Yes, I know. Do you have the brain patterns of these humanoid robots on record?”

“Certainly.”

“For each of these?”

“Of course.”

“And can they be made available to me?”

“If there’s a reason for it.”

“There will be,” said Mandwnus funnily. “Since these robots were designed for pioneering activities, may I assume they are equipped to explore a world and deal with primitive conditions?”

“That should be self-evident.”

“That’s perfect—but there may have to be some modifications. Do you suppose that Vasilia Fast—Aliena would be able to help me with that—if necessary? Obviously, she would be best-acquainted with the brain patterns.”

“Obviously. Still, I don’t know whether she would be willing to help you. I do know that it is physically impossible for her to do so at the moment, since she is not on Aurora.”

Mandamus looked surprised and displeased. “Where is she, then, Dr. Amadiro?”

Amadiro said, “You have seen these humaniforms and I do not wish to expose myself to these rather dismal surroundings. You have kept me waiting long enough and you must not complain if I keep you waiting now. If you have any further questions, let us deal with them in my office.”

53

Once in the office, Amadiro delayed things a while longer. “Wait here for me,” he said rather peremptorily and left.

Mandamus waited stiffly, sorting out his thoughts, wondering when Amadiro would return—or if he would. Was he to be arrested or simply ejected? Had Amadiro grown tired of waiting for the point?

Mandamus refused to believe that. He had gained a shrewd idea of Amadiro’s desperate desire for evening an old score. It seemed evident that Amadiro wouldn’t get tired of listening as long as there seemed the slightest chance that Mandamus would make revenge possible.

As he looked idly about Amadiro’s office, Mandamus found himself wondering whether there might be any information that might be of help to him in the computerized files almost immediately at hand. It would be useful not to have to depend directly on Amadiro for everything.

The thought was a useless one. Mandamus did not know the entry code for the files and, even if he did, there were several of Amadiro’s personal robots standing in their niches and they would stop him if he took a single step toward anything that was labeled in their minds as sensitive. Even his own robots would.

Amadiro was right. Robots were so useful and efficient—and incorruptible—as guards that the very concept of anything criminal, illegal, or simply underhanded did not occur to anyone. The tendency just atrophied—at least as against other Spacers.

He wondered how Settlers could manage without robots. Mandamus tried to imagine human personalities clashing, with no robotic bumpers to cushion the interaction, no robotic presence to give them a decent sense of security and to enforce—without their being consciously aware of it most of the time—a proper mode of morality.

It would be impossible for Settlers to be anything but barbarians under the circumstance and the Galaxy could not be left to them. Amadiro was right in that respect and had always been right, while Fastolfe was fantastically wrong.

Mandamus nodded, as though he had once again persuaded himself as to the correctness of what he was planning. He sighed and wished it were not necessary, then prepared to go over, once again, the line of reasoning that proved to him that it was necessary, when Amadiro strode in.

Amadiro was still an impressive figure, even though he was within a year of his twenty-eighth decade-day. He was very much what a Spacer ought to look like, except for the unfortunate shapelessness of his nose.

Amadiro said, “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, but there was business I had to attend to. I am the head of this Institute and that entails responsibilities.”

Mandamus said, “Could you tell me where Dr. Vasilia Aliena is? I will then describe my project to you without delay.”

“Vasilia is on tour. She’s visiting each of the Spacer worlds to find out where they stand on robot research. She appears to think that, since the Robot Institute was founded to coordinate individual research on Aurora, interplanetary coordination would advance the cause even farther. A good idea, actually.”

Mandamus laughed, shortly and without humor. “They won’t tell her anything. I doubt any Spacer world wants to hand Aurora a more enormous lead than she already has.”

“Don’t be too sure. The Settler situation has disturbed us all.”

“Do you know where she is now?”

“We have her itinerary.”

“Get her back, Dr. Amadiro.”

Amadiro frowned. “I doubt I can do that easily. I believe she wants to be away from Aurora until her father dies.”

“Why?” asked Mandamus in surprise.

Amadiro shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t care.—But what I do know is that your time has run out. Do you understand? Get to the point or leave.” He pointed to the door grimly and Mandamus felt that the other’s patience would stretch no farther.

Mandamus said, “Very well. There is yet a third way in which Earth is unique.”

He talked easily and with due economy, as though he were going through an exposition that he had frequently rehearsed and polished for the very purpose of presenting it to Amadiro. And Amadiro found himself increasingly absorbed.

That was it! Amadiro first felt a huge sense of relief. He had been correct to gamble on the young man’s not being a crackpot. He was entirely sane.

Then came triumph. It would surely work. Of course, the young man’s view, as it was expounded, veered a bit from the path Amadiro felt it ought to follow, but that could be taken care of eventually. Modifications were always possible.

And when Mandamus was done, Amadiro said in a voice he strove to hold steady, “We won’t need Vasilia. There is appropriate expertise at the Institute to allow us to begin at once. Dr. Mandamus”—a note of formal respect entered Amadiro’s voice—“let this thing work out as planned and I cannot help but think it will—and you will be the head of the Institute when I am Chairman of the Council.”

Mandamus smiled narrowly and briefly, while Amadiro sat back in his chair and, just as briefly, allowed himself to look into the future with satisfaction and confidence, something he had not been able to do for twenty long and weary decades.

How long would it take? Decades? One decade? Part of a decade?

Not long. Not long. It must be hastened by all means so that he could live to see that old decision overturned and himself lord of Aurora—and therefore of the Spacer worlds—and therefore (with Earth and the Settler worlds doomed) even lord of the Galaxy before he died.

54

When Dr. Han Fastolfe died, seven years after Amadiro and Mandamus met and began their project, the hyperwave carried the news with explosive force to every corner of the occupied worlds. It merited the greatest attention everywhere.

In the Spacer worlds it was important because Fastolfe had been the most powerful man on Aurora and, therefore, in the Galaxy for over twenty decades. In the Settler worlds and on Earth, it was important because Fastolfe had been a friend insofar as a Spacer could be a friend—and the question now was whether Spacer policy would change and, if so, how.

The news came also to Vasilia Aliena and it was complicated by the bitterness that had tinged her relationship with her biological father almost from the beginning.

She had schooled herself to feel nothing when he died, yet she had not wanted to be on the same world that he was on at the time the event took place. She did not want the questions that would be leveled at her anywhere, but most frequently and insistently on Aurora.

The parent-child relationship among the Spacers was a weak and indifferent one at best. With long lives, that was a matter of course. Nor would anyone have been interested in Vasilia in that respect, but for the fact that Fastolfe was so continually prominent a party leader and Vasilia almost as prominent a partisan on the other side.

It was poisonous. She had gone to the trouble of making Vasilia Aliena her legal name and of using it on all documents, in all interviews, in all dealings of any kind—and yet she knew for a fact that most people thought of her as Vasilia Fastolfe. It was as though nothing could wipe out that thoroughly meaningless relationship, so that she was reduced to having to be content with being addressed by her first name only. It was, at least, an uncommon name.

And that, too, seemed to emphasize her mirror-image relationship with the Solarian woman who, for thoroughly independent reasons, had denied her first husband as Vasilia had denied her father. The Solarian woman, too, could not live with the early surnames fastened upon her and ended with a first name only—Gladia.

Vasilia and Gladia, misfits, deniers—They even resembled each other.

Vasilia stole a look at the mirror hanging in her spaceship cabin. She had not seen Gladia in many decades, but she was sure that the resemblance remained. They were both small and slim. Both were blond and their faces were somewhat alike.

But it was Vasilia who always lost and Gladia who always won. When Vasilia had left her father and had struck him from her life, he had found Gladia instead—and she was the pliant and passive daughter he wanted, the daughter that Vasilia could never be.

Nevertheless, it embittered Vasilia. She herself was a roboticist; as competent and as skillful, at last, as ever Fastolfe had been, while Gladia was merely an artist, who amused herself with force-field coloring and with the illusions of robotic clothing. How could Fastolfe have been satisfied to lose the one and gain, in her place, nothing more than the other?

And when that policeman from Earth, Elijah Baley, had come to Aurora, he had bullied Vasilia into revealing far more of her thoughts and feelings than she had ever granted anyone else. He was, however, softness itself to Gladia and had helped her—and her protector, Fastolfe—win out against all the odds, though to this day Vasilia had not been able to understand clearly how that had happened.

It was Gladia who had been at Fastolfe’s bedside during the final illness, who had held his hand to the end, and who had heard his last words. Why Vasilia should resent that, she didn’t know, for she herself would, under no circumstances, have acknowledged the old man’s existence to the extent of visiting him to witness his passage into nonexistence in an absolute, rather than a subjective sense—and yet she raged against Gladia’s presence.

It’s the way I feel, she told herself defiantly, and I owe no one an explanation.

And she had lost Giskard. Giskard had been her robot, Vasilia’s own robot when she had been a young girl, the robot granted her by a then seemingly fond father. It was Giskard through whom she had learned robotics and from whom she had felt the first genuine affection. She had not, as a child, speculated on the Three Laws or dealt with the philosophy of positronic automatism. Giskard had seemed affectionate, he had acted as though he were affectionate, and that was enough for a child. She had never found such affection in any human being—certainly not her father.

To this day, she had yet to be weak enough to play the foolish love game with anyone. Her bitterness over her loss of Giskard had taught her that any initial gain was not worth the final deprivation.

When she had left home, disowning her father, he would not let Giskard go with her, even though she herself had improved Giskard immeasurably in the course of her careful reprogramming of him. And when her father had died, he had left Giskard to the Solarian woman. He had also left her Daneel, but Vasilia cared nothing for that pale imitation of a man. She wanted Giskard, who was her own.

Vasilia was on her way back to Solaria now. Her tour was quite done. In fact, as far as usefulness was concerned, it had been essentially over months ago. But she had remained on Hesperos for a needed rest, as she had explained in her official notice to the Institute.

Now, however, Fastolfe was dead and she could return. And while she could not undo the past entirely, she could undo part of it. Giskard must be hers again.

She was determined on that.

55

Amadiro was quite ambivalent in his response to Vasilia’s return. She had not come back until old Fastolfe (he could say the name to himself quite easily now that he was dead) was a month in his um. That flattered his opinion of his own understanding. After all, he had told Mandamus her motive had been that of remaining away from Aurora till her father died.

Then, too, Vasilia was comfortably transparent. She lacked the exasperating quality of Mandamus, his new favorite, who always seemed to have yet another unexpressed thought tucked away—no matter how thoroughly he seemed to have discharged the contents of his mind.

On the other hand, she was irritatingly hard to control the least likely to go quietly along the path he indicated. Leave it to her to probe the otherworld Spacers to the bone during the years she had spent away from Aurora—but then leave it also to her to interpret it all in dark and riddling words.

So he greeted her with an enthusiasm that was somewhere between feigned and unfeigned.

“Vasilia, I’m so happy to have you back. The Institute flies on one wing when you’re gone.”

Vasilia laughed. “Come, Kelden”—she alone had no hesitation or inhibition in using his given name, though she was two and a half decades younger than he—“that one remaining wing is yours and how long has it been now since you ceased being perfectly certain that your one wing was sufficient?”

“Since you decided to stretch out your absence to years. Do you find Aurora much changed in the interval?”

“Not a bit—which ought perhaps to be a concern of ours. Changelessness is decay.”

“A paradox. There is no decay without a change for the worse.”

“Changelessness is a change for the worse, Kelden, in comparison to the surrounding Settler worlds. They change rapidly, extending their control into more numerous worlds and over each individual world more thoroughly. They increase their strength and power and self-assurance, while we sit here dreaming and find our unchanging might diminishing steadily in comparison.”

“Beautiful, Vasilia! I think you memorized that carefully on your flight here. However, there has been a change in the political situation on Aurora.”

“You mean my biological father is dead.”

Amadiro spread his arms with a little bow of his head. “As you say. He was largely responsible for our paralysis and he is gone, so I imagine there will now be change, though it may not necessarily be visible change.”

“You keep secrets from me, do you?”

“Would I do that?”

“Certainly. That false smile of yours gives you away every time.”

“Then I must learn to be grave with you.—Come, I have your report. Tell me what is not included in it.”

“All is included in it—almost. Each Spacer world states vehemently that it is disturbed by growing Settler arrogance. Each is firmly determined to resist the Settlers to the end, enthusiastically following the Auroran lead with vigor and death-defying gallantry.

“Follow our lead, yes. And if we don’t lead?”

“Then they’ll wait and try to mask their relief that we are not leading. Otherwise—Well, each one is engaged in technological advance and each one is reluctant to reveal what it is, exactly, that it is doing. Each is working independently and is not even unified within its own globe. There is not a single research team anywhere on any of the Spacer worlds that resembles our own Robotics Institute. Each world consists of individual researchers, each of whom diligently guards his own data from all the rest.”

Amadiro was almost complacent as he said, “I would not expect them to have advanced as far as we have.”

“Too bad they haven’t,” replied Vasilia, tartly. “With all the Spacer worlds a jumble of individuals, progress is too slow. The Settler worlds meet regularly at conventions, have their institutes—and though they lag well behind us, they will catch up.—Still, I’ve managed to uncover a few technological advances being worked on by the Spacer worlds and I have them all listed in my report. They are all working on the nuclear intensifier, for instance, but I don’t believe that such a device has passed beyond the laboratory demonstration level on a single world. Something that would be practical on shipboard is not yet here.”

“I hope you are right in that, Vasilia. The nuclear intensifier is a weapon our fleets could use, for it would finish the Settlers at once. However, I think, on the whole, it would be better if Aurora had the weapon ahead of our Spacer brothers.—But you said that all was included in your report—almost. I heard that ‘almost.’ What is not included, then?”

“Solaria!”

“Ah, the youngest and most peculiar of the Spacer worlds.”

“I got almost nothing directly out of them. They viewed me with absolute hostility as, I believe, they would have viewed any non-Solarian, whether Spacer or Settler. And when I say ‘viewed,’ I mean that in their sense. I remained nearly a year on the world, a considerably longer time than I spent on any other world, and in all those months I never saw a single Solarian face-to-face. In every case, I viewed him—or her—by hyperwave hologram. I could never deal with anything tangible—images only. The world was comfortable, incredibly luxurious, in fact, and for a nature lover, totally unspoiled, but how I missed seeing.”

“Well, viewing is a Solarian custom.—We all know that, Vasilia. Live and let live.”

“Humph,” said Vasilia. “Your tolerance may be misplaced. Are your robots in the nonrepeat mode?”

“Yes, they are. And I assure you we are not being eavesdropped upon.”

“I hope not, Kelden.—I am under the distinct impression that the Solarians are closer to developing a miniaturized nuclear intensifier than any other world—than we are. They may be close to making one that’s portable and that’s possessed of a power consumption small enough to make it practical for space vessels.”

Amadiro frowned deeply. “How do they manage that?”

“I cannot say. You don’t suppose they showed me blueprints, do you? My impressions are so inchoate I dared not put them in the report, but from small things I heard here or observed there—I think they are making important progress. This is something we should think about carefully.”

“We will.—Is there anything else you would like to tell me?”

“Yes—and also not in the report. Solaria has been working toward humanoid robots for many decades and I think they have achieved that goal. No other Spacer would—outside of ourselves, of course—has even attempted the matter. When I asked, on each world, what they were doing with respect to humanoid robots, the reaction was uniform. They found the very concept unpleasant and horrifying. I suspect they all noticed our failure and took it to heart.”

“But not Solaria? Why not?”

“For one thing, they have always lived in the most extremely robotized society in the Galaxy. They’re surrounded by robots—ten thousand per individual. The world is saturated with them. If you were to wander through it aimlessly, searching for humans, you would find nothing. So why should the few Solarians, living in such a world, be upset by the thought of a few more robots just because they’re humaniform? Then, too, that pseudo-human wretch that Fastolfe designed and built and that still exists.”

“Daneel,” said Amadiro.

“Yes, that one. He—it was on Solaria twenty decades ago and the Solarians treated it as human. They have never recovered from that. Even if they had no use for humaniforms, they were humiliated at having been deceived. It was an unforgettable demonstration that Aurora was far ahead of them in that one facet of robotics, at any rate. The Solarians take inordinate pride in being the most advanced roboticists in the Galaxy and, ever since, individual Solarians have been working on humaniforms—if for no other reason than to wipe out that disgrace. If they had had greater numbers or an institute that could coordinate their work, they would undoubtedly have come up with some long ago. As it is, I think they have them now.”

“You don’t really know, do you? This is just suspicion based on scraps of data here and there.”

“Exactly right, but it’s a fairly strong suspicion and it merits further investigation.—And a third point. I could swear they were working on telepathic communication. There was some equipment that I was incautiously allowed to see. And once when I had one of their roboticists on view the hyperwave screen showed a blackboard with a positronic pattern matrix that was like nothing I ever remember seeing, yet it seemed to me that pattern might fit a telepathic program.”

“I suspect, Vasilia, that this item is woven of even airier gossamer than the bit about the humanoid robots.”

A look of mild embarrassment crossed Vasilia’s face. “I must admit you’re probably right there.”

“In fact, Vasilia, it sounds like mere fantasy. If the pattern matrix you saw was like nothing you remember ever having seen before, how could you think it would fit anything?”

Vasilia hesitated. “To tell you the truth, I’ve been wondering about that myself. Yet when I saw the pattern, the word ‘telepathy’ occurred to me at once.”

“Even though telepathy is impossible, even in theory.”

“It is thought to be impossible, even in theory. That is not quite the same thing.”

“No one has ever been able to make any progress toward it.”

“Yes, but why should I have looked at that pattern and thought ‘telepathy’?”

“Ah well, Vasilia, there may be a personal psychoquirk there that is useless to try to analyze. I’d forget it.”

“Anything else?”

“One more thing—and the most puzzling of all. I gathered the impression, Kelden, from one little indication or another, that the Solarians are planning to leave their planet.

“I don’t know. Their population, small as it is, is declining further. Perhaps they want to make a new start elsewhere before they die out altogether.”

“What kind of new start? Where would they go?”

Vasilia shook her head. “I have told you all I know.”

Amadiro said slowly, “Well, then, I will take all this into account. Four things: nuclear intensifier, humanoid robots, telepathic robots, and abandoning the planet. Frankly, I have no faith in any of the four, but I’ll persuade the Council to authorize talks with the Solarian regent.—And now, Vasilia, I believe you could use a rest, so why not take a few weeks off and grow accustomed to the Auroran sun and fine weather before getting back to work?”

“That is kind of you, Kelden,” said Vasilia—remaining firmly seated, “but there remain two items I must bring up.”

Involuntarily, Amadiro’s eyes sought the time strip. “This won’t take up very much time, will it, Vasilia?”

“However much time it takes, Kelden, is what it will take up.”

“What is it you want then?”

“To begin with, who is this young know-it-all who seems to think he is running, the Institute, this what’s-his-name, Mandamus?”

“You’ve met him, have you?” said Amadiro, his smile masking a certain uneasiness. “You see, things do change on Aurora.”

“Certainly not for the better in this case,” said Vasilia grimly. “Who is he?”

“He is exactly what you have described—a know-it-all. He is a brilliant young man, bright enough in robotics, but, just as knowledgeable in general physics, in chemistry, in planetology—”

“And how old is this monster of erudition?”

“Not quite five decades.”

“And what will this child be when he grows up?”

“Wise as well as brilliant, perhaps.”

“Don’t pretend to mistake my meaning, Kelden. Are you thinking of grooming him as the next head of the Institute?”

“I intend to live for a good many decades yet.”

“That is no answer.”

“It is the only answer I have.”

Vasilia shifted in her seat restlessly and her robot, standing behind her, sent his eyes from side to side as though preparing to ward off an attack—pushed into that mode of behavior, perhaps, by Vasilia’s uneasiness.

Vasilia said, “Kelden, I am to be the next head. That is settled. You have told me so.”

“I have, but in actual fact, Vasilia, once I die, the Board of Directors will make the choice. Even if I leave behind me a directive as to who the next head will be, the Board can reverse me. That much is clear in the terms of incorporation that founded the Institute.”

“You just write your directive, Kelden, and I will take care of the Board of Directors.”

And Amadiro, the space between his eyebrows furrowing said, “This is not something I will discuss any further at this moment. What is the other item you want to bring up? Please make it brief.”

She stared at him in silent anger for a moment, then said, seeming to bite off the word, “Giskard!”

“The robot?”

“Of course the robot. Do you know any other Giskard that I am likely to be talking about?”

“Well, what of him?”

“He is mine.”

Amadiro looked surprised. “He is—or was—the legal property of Fastolfe.”

“Giskard was mine when I was a child.”

“Fastolfe lent him to you and eventually took him back. There was no formal transfer of ownership, was there?”

“Morally, he was mine. But in any case, Fastolfe owns him no longer. He is dead.”

“He made a will, too. And if I remember correctly, by that will, two robots—Giskard and Daneel—are now the property of the Solarian woman.”

“But I don’t want them to be. I am Fastolfe’s daughter.”

“Oi?”

Vasilia flushed. “I have a claim to Giskard. Why should a stranger—an alien—have him?”

“For one thing, because Fastolfe willed it so. And she’s an Auroran citizen.”

“Who says so? To every Auroran she is ‘the Solarian woman.’”

Amadiro brought his fist down on the arm of his chair in a sudden spilling over of fury. “Vasilia, what is it you wish of me? I have no liking for the Solarian woman. I have, in fact, a profound dislike of her and, if there were a way, I would”—he looked briefly at the robots, as though unwilling to unsettle them—“get her off the planet. But I can’t upset the will. Even if there were a legal way to do so—and there isn’t—it wouldn’t be wise to do it. Fastolfe is dead.”

“Precisely the reason Giskard should be mine now.”

Amadiro ignored her. “And the coalition he headed is falling apart. It was held together in the last few decades only by his personal charisma. Now what I would like to do is to pick up fragments of that coalition and add it to my own following. In that way, I may put a group together that would be strong enough to dominate the Council and win control in the coming elections.”

“With you becoming the next Chairman?”

“Why not? Aurora could do worse, for it would give me a chance to reverse our longtime policy of built-in disaster before it is too late. The trouble is that I don’t have Fastolfe’s personal popularity. I don’t have his gift of exuding saintliness as a cover for stupidity. Consequently, if I seem to be triumphing in an unfair and petty way over a dead man, it will not look good. No one must say that having been defeated by Fastolfe while he was alive, I overturned his will out of trivial spite after he was dead. I won’t have anything as ridiculous as that standing in the way of the great life-and death decisions Aurora must make. Do you understand me? You’ll have to do without Giskard!”

Vasilia arose, body stiff, eyes narrow. “We’ll see about that.”

“We have already seen. This meeting is over and if you have any ambitions to be the head of the Institute, I don’t ever want to see you threatening me about anything. So if you’re going to make a threat now, of any kind at all, I advise you to reconsider.”

“I make no threats,” said Vasilia, every ounce of body language contradicting her words—and she left with a sweep, beckoning her robot, unnecessarily, to follow.

56

The emergency—or rather, the series of emergencies began some months later when Maloon Cicis entered Amadiro’s office for the usual morning conference.

Ordinarily, Amadiro looked forward to that. Cicis was always a restful interlude in the course of the busy day. He was the one senior member of the Institute who had no ambitions and who was not calculating against the day of Amadiro’s death or retirement. Cicis was, in fact, the perfect subordinate. He was happy to be of service and delighted to be in Amadiro’s confidence.

For this reason, Amadiro had been disturbed, in the last year or so, at the flavor of decay, the slight concavity of the chest, the touch of stiffness in the walk of his perfect subordinate. Could Cicis be getting old? Surely he was only a few decades older than Amadiro.

It struck Amadiro most unpleasantly that perhaps along with the gradual degeneration of so many facets of Spacer life, the life expectancy was falling. He meant to look up the statistics, but kept forgetting to do so—or was unconsciously afraid of doing so.

On this occasion, though, the appearance of age in Cicis was drowned in violent emotion. His face was red (pointing up the graying of his bronze hair) and he appeared virtually exploding with astonishment.

Amadiro did not have to inquire as to the news. Cicis delivered it as though it was something he could not contain.

When he finished exploding, Amadiro said, stupefied, “All radio-wave emissions ceased? All?”

“All, Chief. They must all be dead—or gone. No inhabited world can avoid emitting some electromagnetic radiation at our level of—”

Amadiro waved him silent. One of Vasilia’s points—the fourth, as he recalled—had been that the Solarians were preparing to leave their world. It had been a nonsensical suggestion; all four had been more or less nonsensical. He had said he would keep it in mind and, of course, he hadn’t. Now, apparently, that had proved to be a mistake.

What had made it seem nonsensical when Vasilia had advanced the notion still made it seem nonsensical. He asked the question now that he had asked then, even though he expected no answer. (What answer could there be?) “Where in Space could they go, Maloon?”

“There’s no word on that, Chief.”

“Well, then, when did they go?”

“There’s no word on that, either. We got the news this morning. The trouble is the radiational intensity is so low on Solaria anyway. It’s very sparsely inhabited and its robots are well-shielded. The intensity is an order of magnitude lower than that of any other Spacer world; two orders lower than ours—”

“So one day someone noticed that what was very small had actually declined to zero, but no one actually caught it as it was declining. Who noticed it?”

“A Nexonian ship Chief.”

“How?”

“The ship was being forced into orbit about Solaria’s sun in order to carry through emergency repairs. They hyperwaved for permission and got no answer. They had no choice but to disregard that, continue into orbit, and carry through their repairs. They were not interfered with in any way in that time. It was not till after they had left that, in checking through their records, they found that not only had they gotten no answer, but that they had gotten no radiational signal of any kind. There’s no way of telling exactly when radiation had ceased. The last recorded receipt of any message from Solaria was over two months ago.”

“And the other three points she made?” Amadiro muttered.

“Pardon me, Chief?”

“Nothing. Nothing,” said Amadiro, but he frowned heavily and was lost in thought.

57

Mandamus was not aware of developments on Solaria when he returned some months later from an extended third trip to Earth.

On his first trip, six years before, Amadiro had managed, with some difficulty, to have him sent as an accredited emissary from Aurora to discuss some trifling matter of an overstepping into Spacer territory by Trader vessels. He had endured the ceremony and bureaucratic ennui and it quickly became clear that as such an emissary his mobility was limited. That didn’t matter, for he learned what he had come to learn.

He had returned with the news. “I doubt, Dr. Amadiro, that there will be any problem at all. There is no way, no possible way, in which the Earth officials can control either entry or exit. Every year many millions of Settlers visit Earth from any of dozens of worlds and every year as many millions of visiting Settlers leave for home again. Every Settler seems to feel that life is not complete unless he or she periodically breathes the air of Earth and treads its crowded underground spaces. It’s a search for roots, I imagine. They don’t seem to feel the absolute nightmare that existence on Earth is.”

“I know about it, Mandamus,” said Amadiro wearily.

“Only intellectually, sir. You can’t truly understand it until you experience it. Once you do, you’ll find that none of your ‘knowing’ will prepare you in the least for the reality. Why anyone should want to go back, once gone—”

“Our ancestors certainly didn’t want to go back, once they had left the planet.”

“No,” said Mandamus, “but interstellar flight was not then as advanced as it is now. It used to take months then and the hyperspatial Jump was a tricky thing. Now it takes merely days and the Jumps are routine and never go wrong. If it were as easy to return to Earth in our ancestors time as it is now, I wonder if we would have broken away as we did.

“Let’s not philosophize, Mandamus. Proceed to the point.”

“Certainly. In addition to the coming and going of endless streams of Settlers, millions of Earthmen each year head out as emigrants to one or another of the Settler worlds. Some return almost at once, having failed to adapt. Others make new homes but come back particularly frequently to visit. There’s no way of keeping track of exits and entrances and Earth doesn’t even try. To attempt to set up systematic methods for identifying and keeping track of visitors might stem the flow and Earth is very aware that each visitor brings money with him. The tourist trade—if we want to call it that—is currently Earth’s most profitable industry.”

“You are saying, I suppose, that we can get the humanoid robots into Earth without trouble.”

“With no trouble at all. There’s no question in my mind as to that. Now that we have them properly programmed, we can send them to Earth in half a dozen batches with forged papers. We can’t do anything about their robotic respect and awe of human beings, but that may not give them away. It will be interpreted as the usual Settler respect and awe for the ancestral planet.—But, then, I strongly suspect we don’t have to drop them into one of the City airports. The vast spaces between Cities are virtually untenanted except by primitive work-robots and the incoming ships would go unnoticed—or at least disregarded.”

“Too risky, I think,” said Amadiro.

58

Two batches of humanoid robots were sent to Earth and these mingled with the Earth people of the City before finding their way outward into the blank areas between and communicating with Aurora on shielded hyperbeam.

Mandamus said (he had thought about it deeply and had hesitated long), “I will have to go again, Sir. I can’t be positive they’ve found the right spot.”

“Are you sure you know the right spot, Mandamus?” asked Amadiro, sardonically.

“I have delved into Earth’s ancient history thoroughly, sir. I know I can find it.”

“I don’t think I can persuade the Council to send a warship with you.”

“No, I wouldn’t want that. It would be worse than useless. I want a one-person vessel, with just enough power to get there and back.”

And in that way, Mandamus made his second visit to Earth, dropping down into a region outside one of the smaller Cities. With mingled relief and satisfaction, he found several of the robots in the right place and remained with them to view their work, to give a few orders in connection with that work, and to make some fine adjustments in their programming.

And then, under the uninterested glance of a few primitive Earth-formed agricultural robots, Mandamus made for the nearby City.

It was a calculated risk and Mandamus, no fearless hero, could feel his heart thudding uncomfortably within his chest.

But it went well. There was some surprise shown by the gate warden when a human being presented himself at the gate, showing all signs of having spent a considerable time in the open.

Mandamus had papers identifying him as a Settler, however, and the warden shrugged. Settlers didn’t mind the open and it was far from unheard of for them to take small excursions through the fields and woods that lay about the unimpressive upper layers of a City that jutted above the ground.

The warden gave but a cursory glance at his papers and no one else asked for them at all. Mandamus’s off-Earth accent (as weakly Auroran as he could make it) was accepted without comment and, as nearly, as he could tell, no one wondered whether he might be a Spacer. But, then, why should they? The days when the Spacers held a permanent outpost on Earth was two centuries in the past and official emissaries from the Spacer worlds were few and—of late growing steadily fewer. The provincial Earthpeople might not even remember that Spacers existed.

Mandamus was a little concerned that the thin, transparent gloves he always wore might be noted or that his nose plugs would be remarked upon, but neither event took place. No restrictions were placed on his travels around the City or to other Cities. He had enough money for that and money spoke loudly on Earth (and, to tell the truth, even on Spacer worlds).

He grew accustomed to having no robot dog his heels and when he met with some of Aurora’s own humanoid robots in this City or that, he had to explain to them quite firmly that they must not dog his heels. He listened to their reports, gave them any instructions they seemed to require, and made arrangements for further robot shipments out-of-City. Eventually, he found his way back to his ship and left.

He was not challenged on his way, out, any more than he had been on his way in.

“Actually,” he said thoughtfully to Amadiro, “these Earthpeople are not really barbarians.”

“Aren’t they, though?”

“In their own world, they behave in quite a human fashion. In fact, there is something winning in their friendliness.”

“Are you beginning to regret the task you’re engaged in?”

“It does give me a grisly feeling as I wander among them thinking that they don’t know what is going to happen to them. I can’t make myself enjoy what I’m doing.”

“Of course you can, Mandamus. Think of the fact that once the job is done, you will be sure of a post as the head of the Institute before very much time has elapsed. That will sweeten the job for you.”

And Amadiro kept a close eye on Mandamus thereafter.

59

On Mandamus’s third trip, much of his earlier uneasiness had worn off and he could carry himself almost as though he were an Earthman. The project was proceeding slowly but dead center along the projected line of progress.

He had experienced no health problems on his earlier visits, but on this third one—no doubt due to his overconfidence—he must have exposed himself to something or other. At least, for a time he had an alarming drippiness of the nose, accompanied by a cough.

A visit to one of the City dispensaries resulted in a gamma globulin injection that relieved the condition at once, but he found the dispensary more frightening than the illness. Everyone there, he knew, was likely to be ill with something contagious or to be in close contact with those who were ill.

But now, at last, he was back in the quiet orderliness of Aurora and incredibly thankful to be so. He was listening to Amadiro’s account of the Solarian crisis.

“Have you heard nothing of it at all?” demanded Amadiro.

Mandamus shook his head. “Nothing, sir. Earth is an incredibly provincial world. Eight hundred Cities with a total of eight billion people—all interested in nothing but the eight hundred Cities with a total of eight billion people. You would think that Settlers existed only to visit Earth and that Spacers did not exist at all. Indeed, the news reports in any one City deal about ninety percent of the time with that City alone. Earth is an enclosed, claustrophilic world, mentally as well as physically.”

“And yet you say they are not barbarian.”

“Claustrophilia isn’t necessarily barbarism. In their own terms, they are civilized.”

“In their own terms!—But never mind. The problem at the moment is Solaria. Not one of the Spacer worlds will move. The principle of noninterference is paramount and they insist that Solaria’s internal problems are for Solaria alone. Our own Chairman is as inert as any other, even though Fastolfe is dead and his palsied hand no longer rests on us all. I can do nothing by myself—until such time as I am Chairman.”

Mandamus said, “How can they suppose Solaria to have internal problems that may not be interfered with when the Solarians are gone?”

Amadiro said sardonically, “How is it you see the folly of it at once and they don’t?—They say there is no hard evidence that the Solarians are totally gone and as long as they—or even some of them—might be on the world, there is no right for any other Spacer world to intrude uninvited.”

“How do they explain the absence of radiational activity?”

“They say that the Solarians may have moved underground or that they may have developed a technological advance of some sort that obviates radiation leakage. They also say that the Solarians were not seen to leave and that they have absolutely nowhere to go to. Of course, they were not seen leaving because no one was watching.”

Mandamus said, “How do they argue that the Solarians have nowhere to go to? There are many empty worlds.”

“The argument is that the Solarians cannot live without their incredible crowds of robots and they can’t take those robots with them. If they came here, for instance, how, many robots do you suppose we could allot to them—if any?”

“And what is your argument against that?”

“I haven’t any. Still, whether they are gone or not, the situation is strange and puzzling and it is incredible that no one will move to investigate it. I’ve warned everyone, just as strenuously as I can, that inertia and apathy will be the end of us; that as soon as the Settler worlds become aware of the fact that Solaria was—or might be—empty, they would have no hesitation in investigating the matter. Those swarmers have a mindless curiosity that I wish we had some share in. They will, without thinking twice, risk their lives if some profit lures them on.”

“What profit in this case, Dr. Amadiro?”

“If the Solarians are gone, they have, perforce, left almost all their robots behind. They are—or were—particularly ingenious roboticists and the Settlers, for all their hatred of robots, will not hesitate to appropriate them and ship them to us for good Space credits. In fact, they have announced this.

“Two Settler ships have already landed on Solaria. We have sent a protest over this, but they will surely disregard the protest and, just as surely, we will do nothing further. Quite the contrary. Some of the Spacer worlds are sending out quiet queries as to the nature of the robots that might be salvaged and what their prices would be.”

“Perhaps just as well,” said Mandamus quietly.

“Just as well that we’re behaving exactly as the Settler propagandists say we will? That we act as though we are degenerating and turning into soft pulps of decadence?”

“Why repeat their buzz words, sir? The fact is that we are quiet and civilized and have not yet been touched where it hurts. If we were, we would fight back strongly enough and, I’m sure, smash them. We still far outstrip them technologically.”

“But the damage to ourselves will not be exactly pleasurable.”

“Which means that we must not be too ready to go to war. If Solaria is deserted and the Settlers wish to plunder it, perhaps we ought to let them. After all, I predict that we will be all set to make our move within months.”

A rather hungry and ferocious look came over Amadiro’s face. “Months?”

“I’m sure of it. So the first thing we must do is to avoid being provoked. We will ruin everything if we move toward a conflict there is no need to fight and undergo damage even if we win—that we don’t need to suffer. After all, in a little while, we are going to win totally, without fighting and without damage.—Poor Earth!”

“If you’re going to be sorry for them,” said Amadiro with spurious lightness, “perhaps you’ll do nothing to them.”

“On the contrary,” said Mandamus coolly. “It’s precisely because I fully intend to do something to them—and know that it will be done—that I am sorry for them. You will be Chairman!”

“And you will be the head of the Institute.”

“A small post in comparison to yours.”

“And after I die?” said Amadiro in half a snarl.

“I do not look that far ahead.”

“I am quite—” began Amadiro, but was interrupted by the steady buzz of the message unit. Without looking and quite automatically, Amadiro placed his hand at the EXIT slot. He looked at the thin strip of paper that emerged and a slow smile appeared on his lips.

“The two Settler ships that landed on Solaria—” he said.

“Yes, sir?” asked Mandamus, frowning.

“Destroyed! Both destroyed!”

“How?”

“In an explosive blaze of radiation, easily detected from space. You see what it means? The Solarians have not left after all and the weakest of our worlds can easily handle Settler ships. It is a bloody nose for the Settlers and not something they’ll forget.—Here, Mandamus, read for yourself.”

Mandamus pushed the paper aside. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the Solarians are still on the planet. They may merely have booby-trapped it somehow.”

“What is the difference? Personal attack or booby-trap, the ships were destroyed.”

“This time they were caught by surprise. What about next time, when they are prepared? And what if they consider the event a deliberate Spacer attack?”

“We will reply that the Solarians were merely defending themselves against a deliberate Settler invasion.”

“But, sir, are you suggesting a battle of words? What if the Settlers don’t bother talking, but consider the destruction of their ships an act of war and retaliate at once?”

“Why should they?”

“Because they are as insane as we can be once pride is hurt; more so, since they have a greater background of violence.”

“They will be beaten.”

“You yourself admit they will inflict unacceptable damage upon us, even if they are beaten.”

“What would you have me do? Aurora did not destroy those ships.”

“Persuade the Chairman to make it quite plain that Aurora had nothing to do with it, that none of the Spacer worlds had anything to do with it, that the blame for the action rests on Solaria alone.”

“And abandon Solaria? That would be a cowardly act.”

Mandamus blazed into excitement. “Dr. Amadiro, have you never heard of anything called a strategic retreat? Persuade the Spacer worlds to back off for only a little while on some plausible pretext. It is only a matter of some months till our plan on Earth comes to fruition. It may be hard for everyone else to back off and be apologetic to the Spacers, for they don’t know what is coming—but we do. In fact, you and I, with our special knowledge, can look upon this event as a gift from what used to be called the gods. Let the Settlers remain preoccupied with Solaria while their destruction is prepared—all unobserved by them—on Earth.—Or would you prefer us to be ruined on the very brink of final victory?”

Amadiro found himself flinching before the direct glare of the other’s deep-set eyes.

60

Amadiro had never had a worse time than during the period following the destruction of the Settler ships. The Chairman, fortunately, could be persuaded to follow a policy of what Amadiro termed “masterful yielding.” The phrase caught the Chairman’s imagination, even though it was an oxymoron. Besides, the Chairman was good at masterful yielding.

The rest of the Council was harder to handle. The exasperated Amadiro exhausted himself in picturing the horrors of war and the necessity of choosing the proper moment to strike—and not the improper one—if war there must be. He invented novel plausibilities for why the moment was not yet and used them in discussions with the leaders of the other Spacer Worlds. Aurora’s natural hegemony had to be exercised to the utmost to get them to yield.

But when Captain D.G. Baley arrived with his ship and his demand, Amadiro felt he could do no more. It was too much.

“It is altogether impossible,” said Amadiro. “Are we to allow him to land on Aurora with his beard, his ridiculous clothing, his incomprehensible accent? Am I expected to ask the Council to agree to hand over a Spacer woman to him? It would be an act absolutely unprecedented in our history. A Spacer woman!”

Mandamus said dryly, “You have always referred to that particular Spacer woman as ‘the Solarian woman.’”

“She is ‘the Solarian woman’ to us, but she will be considered a Spacer woman once a Settler is involved. If his ship lands on Solaria, as he suggests it will, it may be destroyed as the others were, together with him and the woman. I may then be accused by my enemies, with some color of justification, of murder—and my political career may not survive that.”

Mandamus said, “Think, instead, of the fact that we have labored nearly seven years in order to arrange the final destruction of Earth and that we are now only a few months from the completion of the project. Shall we risk war now and, at a stroke, ruin everything we’ve done when we are so close to final victory?”

Amadiro shook his head. “It isn’t as though I have a choice in the matter, my friend. The Council wouldn’t follow me if I try to argue them into surrendering the woman to a Settler. And the mere fact that I have suggested it will be used against me. My political career will be shaken and we may then have a war in addition. Besides, the thought of a Spacer woman dying in service to a Settler is unbearable.”

“One would suppose you were fond of the Solarian woman.”

“You know I am not. With all my heart I wish she had died twenty decades ago, but not this way, not on a Settler ship. But I should remember that she is an ancestress of yours in the fifth generation.”

Mandamus looked a bit more dour than he usually did. “Of what consequence is that to me? I am a Spacer individual, conscious of myself and of my society. I am not an ancestor-worshiping member of a tribal conglomerate.”

For a moment, Mandamus fell silent and his thin face took on a look of intense concentration. “Dr. Amadiro,” he said, “could you not explain to the Council that this ancestress of mine is being taken, not as a Spacer hostage but only because her unique knowledge of Solaria, where she spent her childhood and youth, could make her an essential part of the exploration and that this exploration might even be helpful to us, as well as to the Settlers? After all, in truth, wouldn’t it be desirable for us to know what those miserable Solarians are up to? The woman will presumably bring back a report of the events—if she survives.”

Amadiro thrust out his lower lip. “That might work if the woman went on board voluntarily, if she made it clear that she understood the importance of the work and wished to perform her patriotic duty. To put her on board ship by force, though, is unthinkable.”

“Well, then, suppose I were to see this ancestress of mine and try to persuade her to get on the ship willingly; and suppose, also, that you speak to this Settler captain by hyperwave and tell them he can land on Aurora and have the woman if he can persuade her to go with him willingly or, at least, say that she’ll go with him willingly, whether she does or not.”

“I suppose we can’t lose by making the effort, but I don’t see how we can win.”

Yet to Amadiro’s surprise, they did win. He had listened with astonishment as Mandamus told him the details.

“I brought up the matter of the humanoid robots,” Mandamus said, “and it’s clear she knew nothing about them, from which I deduced Fastolfe had known nothing about them. It has been one of those things that nagged at me. Then I talked a great deal about my ancestry in such a way as to force her to talk of that Earthman Elijah Baley.”

“What about him?” said Amadiro harshly.

“Nothing, except that she talked about him and remembered. This Settler who wants her is a descendant of Baley and I thought it might influence her to consider the Settler’s request more favorably than she might otherwise have done.”

In any case, it had worked and for a few days Amadiro felt a relief from the almost continuous pressure that had plagued him from the start of the Solarian crisis.

But only for a very few days.

61

One point that worked to Amadiro’s advantage at this time was that he had not seen Vasilia, thus far, during the Solarian crisis.

It would certainly not have been an appropriate time to see her. He did not wish to be annoyed by her petty concern over a robot she claimed as her own—with total disregard for the legalities of the situation—at a time when a true crisis exercised his every nerve and thought. Nor did he wish to expose himself to the kind of quarrel that might easily arise between her and Mandamus over the question of which was eventually to preside over the Robotics Institute.

In any case, he had about come to the decision that Mandamus ought to be his successor. Throughout the Solarian crisis, he had kept his eye fixed on what was important. Even when Amadiro himself had felt shaken, Mandamus had remained icily calm. It was Mandamus who thought it conceivable that the Solarian woman might accompany the Settler captain voluntarily and it was he who maneuvered her into doing so.

And if his plan for the destruction of Earth worked itself out as it should—as it must—then Amadiro could see Mandamus succeeding as Council Chairman eventually. It would even be just, thought Amadiro, in a rare burst of selflessness.

On this particular evening, in consequence, he did not so much as expend a thought upon Vasilia. He left the Institute with a small squad of robots seeing him safely to his ground-car. That ground-car, driven by one robot and with two more in the backseat with him, passed quietly through a twilit and chilly rain and brought him to his establishment, where two more robots ushered him indoors. And all this time he did not think of Vasilia.

To find her sitting in his living room, then, in front of his hyperwave set, watching an intricate robot ballet, with several of Amadiro’s robots in their niches and two of her own robots behind her chair, struck him at first not as much with the anger of violated privacy, as with pure surprise.

It took some time for him to control his breathing well enough to be able to speak and then his anger arose and he said harshly, “What are you doing here? How did you get in?”

Vasilia was calm enough. Amadiro’s appearance was, after all, entirely expected. “What I’m doing here,” she said, “is waiting to see you. Getting in was not difficult. Your robots know my appearance very well and they know my standing at the Institute. Why shouldn’t they allow me to enter if I assure them I have an appointment with you?”

“Which you haven’t. You have violated my privacy.”

“Not really. There’s a limit to how much trust you can squeeze out of someone else’s robots. Look at them. They have never once taken their eyes from me. If I had wanted to disturb your belongings, look through your papers, take advantage of your absence in any way, I assure you I could not have. My two robots are no match against them.”

“Do you know,” said Amadiro, bitterly, “that you have acted in a thoroughly un-Spacer fashion. You are despicable and I will not forget this.”

Vasilia seemed to blanch slightly at the adjectives. She said in a low, hard voice, “I hope you don’t forget it, Kelden, for I’ve done what I’ve done for you—and if I reacted as I should to your foul mouth, I would leave now and let you continue for the rest of your life to be the defeated man you have been for the past twenty decades.”

“I will not remain a defeated man—whatever you do.”

Vasilia said, “You sound as though you believe that, but, you see, you do not know what I know. I must tell you that without my intervention you will remain defeated. I don’t care what scheme you have in mind. I don’t care what this thin-lipped, acid-faced Mandamus has cooked up for you—”

“Why do you mention him?” said Amadiro quickly.

“Because I wish to,”—said Vasilia with a touch of contempt. “Whatever he has done or thinks he is doing—and don’t be frightened, for I haven’t any idea what that might be—it won’t work. I may not know anything else about it, but I do know it won’t work.”

“You’re babbling idiocies,” said Amadiro.

“You had better listen to these idiocies, Kelden, if you don’t want everything to fall into ruin. Not just you, but possibly the Spacer worlds, one and all. Still, you may not want to listen to me. It’s your choice.” Which, then, is it to be?”

“Why should I listen to you? What possible reason is there for me to listen to you?”

“For one thing, I told you the Solarians were preparing to leave their world. If you had listened to me then, you would not have been caught so by surprise when they did.”

“The Solarian crisis will yet turn to our advantage.”

“No, it will not,” said Vasilia. “You may think it will, but it won’t. It will destroy you—no matter what you are doing to meet the emergency—unless you are willing to let me have my say.”

Amadiro’s lips were white and were trembling slightly. The two centuries of defeat Vasilia had mentioned had had a lasting effect upon him and the Solarian crisis had not helped, so he lacked the inner strength to order his robots to see her out, as he should have. He said sullenly, “Well, then, put it in brief.”

“You would not believe what I have to say if I did, so let me do it my own way. You can stop me at any time, but then you will destroy the Spacer worlds. Of course, they will last my time and it won’t be I who will go down in History—Settler history, by the way—as the greatest failure on record. Shall I speak?”

Amadiro folded into a chair. “Speak, then, and when you are through—leave.”

“I intend to, Kelden, unless, of course, you ask me—very politely—to stay and help you. Shall I start?”

Amadiro said nothing and Vasilia began, “I told you that during my stay on Solaria I became aware of some very peculiar positronic pathway patterns they had designed, pathways that struck me—very forcefully—as representing attempts at producing telepathic robots. Now, why should I have thought that?”

Amadiro said bitterly, “I cannot tell what pathological drives may power your thinking.”

Vasilia brushed that aside with a grimace. “Thank you, Kelden.—I’ve spent some months thinking about that, since I was acute enough to think the matter involved not pathology but some subliminal memory. My mind went back to my childhood when Fastolfe, whom I then considered my father, in one of his generous moods—he would experiment now and then with generous moods, you understand—gave me a robot of my own.”

“Giskard again?” muttered Amadiro with impatience.

“Yes, Giskard. Giskard, always. I was in my teenage years and I already had the instinct of a roboticist or, I should say, I was born with the instinct. I had as yet very little mathematics, but I had a grasp of patterns. With the passing of scores of decades, my knowledge of mathematics steadily improved, but I don’t think I have advanced very far in my feeling for patterns. My father would say, ‘Little Vas’—he also experimented in loving diminutives to see how that would affect me—‘you have a genius for patterns.’ I think I did—”

Amadiro said, “Spare me. I’ll concede your genius. Meanwhile, I have not yet had my dinner, do you know that?”

“Well,” said Vasilia sharply, “order your dinner and invite me to join you.”

Amadiro, frowning, raised his arm perfunctorily and made a quick sign. The quiet motion of robots at work made itself evident at once.

Vasilia said, “I would play with pathway patterns for Giskard. I would come to Fastolfe—my father, as I then thought of him—and I would show him a pattern. He might shake his head and laugh and say, ‘If you add that to poor Giskard’s brain, he will no longer be able to talk and he will be in a great deal of pain.’ I remember asking if Giskard could really feel pain and my father said, ‘We don’t know what he would feel, but he would act as we would act if we were in a great deal of pain, so we might as well say he would feel pain.’”

“Or else I would take one of my patterns to him and he would smile indulgently and say, ‘Well, that won’t hurt him, Little Vas, and it might be interesting to try.’”

“And I would. Sometimes I would take it out again and sometimes I would leave it. I was not simply fiddling with Giskard for the sadistic joy of it, as I imagine I might have been tempted to do if I were someone other than myself. The fact is, I was very fond of Giskard and I had no desire to harm him. When it seemed to me that one of my improvements—I always thought of them as improvements—made Giskard speak more freely or react more quickly or more interestingly—and seemed to do no harm—I would let it stay.

“And then one day—”

A robot standing at Amadiro’s elbow would not have dared to interrupt a guest unless a true emergency existed, but Amadiro had no difficulty in understanding the significance of the waiting. He said, “Is dinner ready?”

“Yes, sir,” said the robot.

Amadiro gestured rather impatiently in Vasilia’s direction. “You are invited to have dinner with me.”

They walked into Amadiro’s dining room, which Vasilia had never entered before. Amadiro was, after all, a private person and was notorious for his neglect of the social amenities. He had been told more than once that he would succeed better in politics if he entertained in his home and he had always smiled politely and said, “Too high a price.”

It was perhaps because of his failure to entertain, thought Vasilia, that there was no sign of originality or creativity in the furnishings. Nothing could be plainer than the table, the dishes, and the cutlery. As for the walls, they were merely flat colored vertical planes. Put together, in rather dampened one’s appetite, she thought.

The soup they began with a clear bouillon was as plain as the furniture and Vasilia began to dispose of it without enthusiasm.

Amadiro said, “My dear Vasilia, you see, I am being patient. I have no objection to having you write your autobiography if you wish. But is it really your plan to recite several chapters of it to me? If it is, I must tell you bluntly that I’m not really interested.”

Vasilia said, “You will become extremely interested in just a little while. Still, if you’re really enamored of failure and want to continue to achieve nothing you wish to achieve, simply say so. I will then eat in silence and leave. Is that what you wish?”

Amadiro sighed. “Well, go on, Vasilia.”

Vasilia said, “And then one day I came up with a pattern more elaborate, more pleasant, and more enticing than I had ever seen before or, in all truth, than I have ever seen since. I would have loved to show it to my father, but he was away at some meeting or other on one of the other worlds.

“I didn’t know when he’d be back and I put aside my pattern, but each day I would look at it with more interest and more fascination. Finally, I could wait no longer. I simply could not. It seemed so beautiful that I thought it ludicrous to suppose it could do harm. I was only an infant in my second decade and had not yet completely outgrown irresponsibility, so I modified Giskard’s brain by incorporating the pattern into it.

“And it did no harm. That was immediately obvious. He responded to me with perfect ease and—it seemed to me was far quicker in understanding and much more intelligent than he had been. I found him far more fascinating and lovable than before.

“I was delighted and yet I was nervous, too. What I had done—modifying Giskard without clearing it with Fastolfe was strictly against the rules Fastolfe had set for me and I knew that well. Yet clearly, I was not going to undo what I had done. When I had modified Giskard’s brain, I excused it to myself by saying that it would only be for a little while and that I would then neutralize the modification. Once the modification had been made, however, it became quite clear to me that I would not neutralize it. I was simply not going to do that. In fact, I never modified Giskard again, for fear of disturbing what I had just done.

“Nor did I ever tell Fastolfe what I had done. I destroyed all record of the marvelous pattern I had devised and Fastolfe never found out that Giskard had been modified without his knowledge. Never!

“And then we went our separate ways, Fastolfe and I, and Fastolfe would not give up Giskard. I screamed that he was mine and that I loved him, but Fastolfe’s kindly benevolence, of which he made such a parade all his life—that business of loving all things, great and small—was never allowed to stand in the way of his own desires. I received other robots I cared nothing for, but he kept Giskard for himself.

“And when he died, he left Giskard to the Solarian woman—a last bitter slap at me.”

Amadiro had only managed to get halfway through the salmon mousse. “If all this is intended to advance your case of having Giskard’s ownership transferred from the Solarian woman to yourself, it won’t help. I have already explained to you why I cannot set aside Fastolfe’s will.”

“There’s something more to it than that, Kelden,” said Vasilia. “A great deal more. Infinitely more. Do you want me to stop now?”

Amadiro stretched his lips into a rueful grin. “Having listened to so much of this, I will play the madman and listen to more.”

“You would play the madman if you did not, for I now come to the point.—I have never stopped thinking of Giskard and of the cruelty and injustice of my having been deprived of him, but somehow I never thought of that pattern with which I had modified him with no one’s knowledge but my own. I am quite certain I could not have reproduced that pattern if I had tried and from what I can now remember it was like nothing else I have ever seen in robotics until I saw, briefly, something like that pattern during my stay on Solaria.

“The Solarian pattern seemed familiar to me, but I didn’t know why. It took some weeks of intense thought before I dredged out of some well-hidden part of my unconscious mind the slippery thought of that pattern I had dreamed out of nothing twenty-five decades ago.

“Even though I can’t remember my pattern exactly, I know that the Solarian pattern was a whiff of it and no more. It was just the barest suggestion of something I had captured in miraculously complex symmetry. But I looked at the Solarian pattern with the experience I had gained in twenty-five decades of deep immersion in robotics theory and it suggested telepathy to me. If that simple, scarcely interesting pattern suggested it, what must my original have meant—the thing I invented as a child and have never recaptured since?”

Amadiro said, “You keep saying that you’re coming to the point, Vasilia. Would I be completely unreasonable if I asked you to stop moaning and reminiscing and simply set out that point in a simple, declarative sentence?”

Vasilia said, “Gladly. What I am telling you, Kelden, is that, without my ever knowing it, I converted Giskard into a telepathic robot and that he has been one ever since.”

62

Amadiro looked at Vasilia for a long time and, because the story seemed to have come to an end, he returned to the salmon mousse and ate some of it thoughtfully.

He then said, “Impossible! Do you take me for an idiot?”

“I take you for a failure,” said Vasilia. “I don’t say Giskard can read conversations in minds, that he can transmit and receive words or ideas. Perhaps that is impossible, even in theory. But I am quite certain he can detect emotions and the general set of mental activity and perhaps can even modify it.”

Amadiro shook his head violently. “Impossible!”

“Impossible? Think a while. Twenty decades ago, you had almost achieved your aims. Fastolfe was at your mercy, Chairman Horder was your ally. What happened? Why did everything go wrong?”

“The Earthman—” Amadiro began, choking at the memory.

“The Earthman,” Vasilia mimicked. “The Earthman. Or was it the Solarian woman? It was neither! Neither! It was Giskard, who was there all the time. Sensing. Adjusting.”

“Why should he be interested? He is a robot.”

“A robot loyal to his master, to Fastolfe. By the First Law, he had to see to it that Fastolfe came to no harm and, being telepathic, he could not interpret that as signifying physical harm only. He knew that if Fastolfe could not have his way, could not encourage the settlement of the habitable worlds of the Galaxy, he would undergo profound disappointment—and—that would be ‘harm’ in Giskard’s telepathic Universe. He could not let that happen and he intervened to keep it from happening.”

“No, no, no,” said Amadiro in disgust. “You want that to be so, out of some wild, romantic longing, but that doesn’t make it so. I remember too well what happened. It was the Earthman. It needs no telepathic robot to explain the events.”

“And what has happened since, Kelden?” demanded Vasilia. “In twenty decades, have you ever managed to win out over Fastolfe? With all the facts in your favor, with the obvious bankruptcy of Fastolfe’s policy, have you ever been able to dispose of a majority in the Council? Have you ever been able to sway the Chairman to the point where you could possess real power?

“How do you explain that, Kelden? In all those twenty decades, the Earthman has not been on Aurora. He has been dead for over sixteen decades, his miserably short life running out in eight decades or so. Yet you continue to fail—you have an unbroken record of failure. Even now that Fastolfe is dead, have you managed to profit completely from the broken pieces of his coalition or do you, find that success still seems to elude you?

“What is it that remains? The Earthman is gone. Fastolfe is gone. It is Giskard who has worked against you all this time—and Giskard remains. He is as loyal now to the Solarian woman as he was to Fastolfe and the Solarian woman has no cause to love you, I think.”

Amadiro’s face twisted into a mask of anger and frustration. “It’s not so. None of this is so. You’re imagining things.”

Vasilia remained quite cool. “No, I’m not. I’m explaining things. I’ve explained things you haven’t been able to explain. Or have you an alternate explanation?—And I can give you the cure. Transfer ownership of Giskard from the Solarian woman to me and, quite suddenly, events will begin to twist themselves to your benefit.”

“No,” said Amadiro. “They are moving to my benefit already.”

“You may think so, but they won’t, as long as Giskard is working against you. No matter how close you come to winning, no matter how sure of victory you become, it will all melt away as long as you don’t have Giskard on your side. That happened twenty decades ago; it will happen now.”

Amadiro’s face suddenly cleared. He said, “Well, come to think of it, though I don’t have Giskard and neither do you, it doesn’t matter, for I can show you that Giskard is not telepathic. If Giskard were telepathic, as you say, if he had the ability to order affairs to his own liking or to the liking of the human being who is his owner, then why would he have allowed the Solarian woman to be taken to what will probably be her death?”

“Her death? What are you talking about, Kelden?”

“Are you aware, Vasilia, that two Settler ships have been destroyed on Solaria? Or have you been doing nothing lately but dreaming of patterns and of the brave days of childhood when you were modifying your pet robot?”

“Sarcasm doesn’t become you, Kelden. I have heard about the Settler ships on the news. What of them?”

“A third Settler ship is going out to investigate. It may be destroyed, too.”

“Possibly. On the other hand, it would take precautions.”

“It did. It demanded and received the Solarian woman, feeling that she knows the planet well enough to enable them to avoid destruction.”

Vasilia said, “That’s scarcely likely, since she hasn’t been there in twenty decades.”

“Right! The chances are, then, that she’ll die with them. It would mean nothing to me personally. I would be delighted to have her dead and, I think, so would you. And, putting that to one side, it would give us good grounds for complaint to the Settler worlds and it would make it difficult for them to argue that the destruction of the ships is a deliberate action on the part of Aurora. Would we destroy one of our own?—Now the question is, Vasilia, why would Giskard, if he had the powers you claim he has—and the loyalties—allow the Solarian woman to volunteer to be taken to what is very likely to be her death?”

Vasilia was taken aback. “Did she go of her own free will?”

“Absolutely. She was perfectly willing. It would have been politically impossible to force her to do so against her will.”

“But I don’t understand.”

“There is nothing to understand except that Giskard is merely a robot.”

For a moment, Vasilia froze in her seat, one hand to her chin. Then she said slowly, “They don’t allow robots on Settler worlds or on Settler ships. That means she went alone. Without robots.”

“Well, no, of course not. They had to accept personal robots if they expected to get her willingly. They took along that man-mimic robot Daneel and the other was—he paused and brought out the word with a hiss—Giskard. Who else? So this miracle robot of your fantasy goes to his destruction as well. He could no more—”

His voice faded away. Vasilia was on her feet, eyes blazing, face suffused with color.

“You mean Giskard went? He’s off this world and on a Settler ship? Kelden, you may have ruined us all!”

63

Neither finished the meal.

Vasilia walked hastily out of the dining room and disappeared into the Personal. Amadiro, struggling to remain coldly logical, shouted to her through the closed door, perfectly aware that it damaged his dignity to do so.

He called out, “It’s all the stronger an indication that Giskard is no more than a robot. Why should he be willing to go to Solaria to face destruction with his owner?”

Eventually, the sound of running water and splashing ceased and Vasilia emerged with her face freshly washed and almost frozen in its grip on calmness.

She said, “You really don’t understand, do you? You amaze me, Kelden. Think it through. Giskard can never be in danger, as long as he can influence human minds, can he? Nor can the Solarian woman, as long as Giskard devotes himself to her. The Settler who carried off the Solarian woman must have found out, on interviewing her, that she had not been on Solaria in twenty decades, so he can’t really have continued to believe, after that, that she could do him much good. With her he took Giskard, but he didn’t know that Giskard could do him good, either—or could he have known that?”

She thought a while and then said slowly, “No, there is no way he could have known it. If, in more than twenty decades, no one has penetrated the fact that Giskard has mental abilities, then Giskard is clearly interested in having no one guess it—and if that is so, then no one can possibly have guessed it.”

Amadiro said spitefully, “You claim to have worked it out.”

Vasilia said, “I had special knowledge, Kelden, and even so it was not till now that I saw the obvious—and then only because of the hint on Solaria. Giskard must have darkened my mind in that respect, too, or I would have seen it long ago. I wonder if Fastolfe knew—”

“How much easier,” said Amadiro restlessly, “to accept the simple fact that Giskard is simply a robot.”

“You will walk the easy road to ruin, Kelden, but I don’t think I will let you do that, no matter how much you want to.—What it amounts to is that the Settler came for the Solarian woman and took her along, even though he discovered she would be of little—if any—use to him. And the Solarian woman volunteered to go, even though she must dread being on a Settler ship along with diseased barbarians—and even though her destruction on Solaria must have seemed to her a very likely consequence.

“It seems to me, then, that this is all the work of Giskard, who forced the Settler to continue to demand the Solarian woman against reason and forced the Solarian woman to accede to the request against reason.”

Amadiro, said, “But why? May I ask that simple question? Why?”

“I suppose, Kelden, that Giskard felt it was important to get away from Aurora.—Could he have guessed that I was on the point, of learning his secret? If so, he may well have been uncertain of his present ability to tamper with me. I am, after all, a skilled roboticist. Besides, he would remember that he was once mine and a robot does not easily ignore the demands of loyalty. The only way, perhaps, that he felt he could keep the Solarian woman secure was to move himself away from my influence.”

She looked up at Amadiro and said firmly, “Kelden, we must get him back. We can’t let him work at promoting the Settler cause in the safe haven of a Settler world. He did enough damage right here among us. We must get him back and you must make me his legal owner. I can handle him, I assure you, and make him work for us. Remember! I am the only one who can handle him.”

Amadiro said, “I do not see any reason to worry. In the very likely case that he is a mere robot, he will be destroyed on Solaria and we will be rid of both him and the Solarian woman. In the unlikely case that he is what you say he is, he won’t be destroyed on Solaria, but then he will have to return to Aurora. After all, the Solarian woman, though she is not an Auroran by birth, has lived on Aurora far too long to be able to face life among the barbarians—and when she insists on returning to civilization, Giskard will have no alternative but to return with her.”

Vasilia said, “After all this, Kelden, you still don’t understand Giskard’s abilities. If he feels it important to remain away from Aurora, he can easily adjust the Solarian woman’s emotions in such a way as to make her stand life on a Settler world, just as he made her willing to board a Settler ship.”

“Well, then, if necessary, we can simply escort that Settler ship—with the Solarian woman and with Giskard—back to Aurora.”

“How do you propose to do that?”

“It can be done. We are not fools here on Aurora, for all that it seems clearly your opinion that you yourself are the only rational person on the planet. The Settler ship is going to Solaria to investigate the destruction of the earlier two ships, but I hope you don’t think we intend to depend upon its good offices or even upon those of the Solarian woman. We are sending two of our warships to Solaria and we do not expect that they will have trouble if there are Solarians still on the planet, they may be able to destroy primitive Settler ships, but they won’t be able to touch an Auroran vessel of war. If, then, the Settler ship, through some magic on the part of Giskard—”

“Not magic,” Vasilia interrupted tartly. “Mental influence.”

“If, then, the Settler ship, for whatever reason, should be able to rise from the surface of Solaria, our ships will cut them off and politely ask for the delivery of the Solarian woman and her robots. Failing that, they will insist that the Settler ship accompany our ship to Aurora. There will be no hostility about it. Our ship will merely be escorting an Auroran national to her home world. Once the Solarian woman and her two robots disembark in Aurora, the Settler ship will then be able to proceed at will to its own destination.”

Vasilia nodded wearily at this. “It sounds good, Kelden, but do you know what I suspect will happen?”

“What, Vasilia?”

“It is my opinion that the Settler ship will rise from the surface of Solaria, but that our warships won’t. Whatever is on Solaria can be countered by Giskard, but, I fear, by nothing else.”

“If that happens,” said Amadiro with a grim smile, “then I’ll admit there may be something, after all, to your fantasy.—But it won’t happen.”

64

The next morning Vasilia’s chief personal robot, delicately designed to appear female, came to Vasilia’s bedside. Vasilia stirred and, without opening her eyes, said, “What is it, Nadila?” (There was no need to open her eyes. In many decades, no one had ever approached her bedside but Nadila.)

Nadila said softly, “Madam, you are desired at the Institute by Dr. Amadiro.”

Vasilia’s eyes flew open. “What time is it?”

“It is 05:17, madam.”

“Before sunrise?” Vasilia was indignant.

“Yes, madam.”

“When does he want me?”

“Now, madam.”

“Why?”

“His robots have not informed us, madam, but they say it is important.”

Vasilia threw aside the bed sheets. “I will have breakfast first, Nadila, and a shower before that. Inform Amadiro’s robots to take visitors’ niches and wait. If they urge speed, remind them they are in my establishment.”

Vasilia, annoyed, did not hasten unduly. If anything, her toilette was more painstaking than usual and her breakfast more leisurely. (She was not ordinarily one to spend much time over either.) The news, which she watched, gave no indication of anything that might explain Amadiro’s call.

By the time the ground-car (containing herself and four robots—two of Amadiro’s and two of her own) had brought her to the Institute, the sun was making its appearance over the horizon Amadiro looked up and said, “You are finally here, then.”

The walls of his office were still glowing, though their light was no longer needed.

“I’m sorry,” said Vasilia stiffly. “I quite realize that sunrise is a terribly late hour at which to begin work.”

“No games, Vasilia, please. Very soon I will have to be at the Council chamber. The Chairman has been up longer than I have.—Vasilia, I apologize, quite humbly, for doubting you.”

“The Settler ship has lifted off safely, then.”

“Yes. And one of our ships has been destroyed, as you predicted.—The fact has not been publicized yet, but the news will leak out eventually, of course.”

Vasilia’s eyes widened. She had predicted this outcome with a bit more in the way of outward confidence than she had felt, but clearly this was not the time to say so. What she did say was “Then you accept the fact that Giskard has extraordinary powers.”

Cautiously, Amadiro said, “I don’t consider the matter to be mathematically proven, but I’m willing to accept it pending further information. What I want to know is what we ought to do next. The Council knows nothing of Giskard and I do not propose to tell them.”

“I’m glad your thinking is clear to that extend, Kelden.”

“But you’re the one who understands Giskard and you can best tell what ought to be done. What do I tell the Council, then, and how do I explain the action without giving away the whole truth?”

“It depends. Now that the Settler ship has left Solaria, where is it going? Can we tell? After all, if it is returning now to Aurora, we need do nothing but prepare for its arrival.”

“It is not coming to Aurora,” said Amadiro emphatically. “You were right here, too, it seems. Giskard—assuming he is running the show—seems determined to stay away. We have intercepted the ship’s messages to, its own world. Encoded, of course, but there isn’t a Settler code we haven’t broken—”

“I suspect they’ve broken ours, too. I wonder why everyone won’t agree to send messages in the clear and save a lot of trouble.”

Amadiro shrugged it away. “Never mind that. The point is that the Settler ship is going back to its own planet.”

“With the Solarian woman and the robots?”

“Of course.”

“You’re sure of that? They haven’t been left on Solaria?”

“We’re sure of that,” said Amadiro impatiently. “Apparently, ‘the Solarian woman’ was responsible for their getting off the surface.”

“She? In what way?”

“We don’t yet know.”

Vasilia said, “It had to be Giskard. He made it appear to be the Solarian woman.”

“And what do we do now?”

“We must get Giskard back.”

“Yes, but I can’t very well persuade the Council to risk an interstellar crisis over the return of a robot.”

“You don’t, Kelden. You ask for the return of the Solarian woman, something we certainly have a right to request. And do you think for one moment she would return without her robots? Or that Giskard will allow the Solarian woman to return without him? Or that the Settler world would want to keep the robots if the Solarian woman returns? Ask for her. Firmly. She’s an Auroran citizen, lent out for a job on Solaria, which is done, and she must now be returned forthwith. Make it belligerent, as though it were a threat of war.”

“We can’t risk war, Vasilia.”

“You won’t risk it. Giskard can’t take an action that might lead directly to war. If the Settler leaders resist and become belligerent in their return, Giskard will perforce make the necessary modifications in the attitude of the Settler leaders so as to have the Solarian woman returned peaceably to Aurora. And he himself will, of course, have to return with her.”

Amadiro said drearily, “And once he’s back, he will alter us, I suppose, and we will forget his powers, and disregard him, and he will still be able to follow his own plan whatever it is.”

Vasilia leaned her head back and laughed. “Not a chance. I know Giskard, you see, and I can handle him. Just bring him back and persuade the Council to disregard Fastolfe’s will—it can be done and you can do it—and to assign Giskard to me. He will then be working for us; Aurora will rule the Galaxy, you will spend the remaining decades of your life as Chairman of the Council; and I will succeed you as the head of the Robotics Institute.”

“Are you sure it will work out that way?”

“Absolutely. Just send the message and make it strong and I will guarantee all the rest—victory for the Spacers, and ourselves, defeat for Earth and the Settlers.”

65

Gladia watched Aurora’s globe on the screen. Its cloud cover seemed caught in mid-swirl along the thick crescent that was shining in the light of its sun.

“Surely we’re not that close,” she said.

D.G. smiled. “By no means. We’re seeing it through a rather good lens. It’s still several days away, counting the spiral approach. If we ever get an antigravitic drive, which the physicists keep dreaming about but seem helpless to bring about, spaceflight will become really simple and fast. As it is, our Jumps can only deliver us safely to a rather goodish distance from a planetary mass.”

“It’s odd,” said Gladia thoughtfully.

“What is, madam?”

“When we went to Solaria, I thought to myself. ‘I’m going home,’ but when I landed I found that I wasn’t home at all. Now we’re going to Aurora and I thought to myself, ‘Now I’m going home,’ and yet—that world down there isn’t home, either.”

“Where is home, then, madam?”

“I’m beginning to wonder.—But why do you persist in calling me ‘madam’?”

D.G. looked surprised. “Do you prefer ‘Lady Gladia,’ Lady Gladia?”

“That’s also mock respect. Do you feel that way about me?”

“Mock respect? Certainly not. But how else does a Seater address a Spacer? I’m trying to be polite and to conform to your customs—to do what makes you feel comfortable.”

“But it doesn’t make me feel comfortable. Just call me Gladia. I’ve suggested it before. After all, I call you ‘D.G.’”

“And that suits me fine, although in front of my officers and men, I would prefer to have you address me as ‘Captain,’ and I will call you ‘madam.’” Discipline must be maintained.”

“Yes, of course,” said Gladia absently, staring at Aurora again. “I have no home.”

She whirled toward D.G., “Is it possible that you might take me to Earth, D.G.?”

“Possible,” said D.G., smiling. “You might not want to go—Gladia.”

“I think I want to go,” said Gladia, “unless I lose my courage.”

“Infection does exist,” said D.G., “and that’s what Spacers fear, isn’t it?”

“Too much, perhaps. After all, I knew your Ancestor and wasn’t infected. I have been on this ship and have survived. Look, you’re near me right now. I was even on your world, with thousands crowding near me. I think I’ve worked up a certain amount of resistance.”

“I must tell you, Gladia, that Earth is a thousand times as crowded as Baleyworld.”

“Even so,” said Gladia, her voice warming, “I’ve changed my mind completely—about many things. I’ve told you there was nothing left to live for after twenty-three decades and it turns out there is. What happened to me on Baleyworld—that talk I gave, the way it moved people—was something new, something I’d never imagined. It was like being born all over, starting again at the first decade. It seems to me now that, even if Earth kills me, it would be worth it, for I would die young and trying and fighting death, not old and weary and welcoming it.”

“Well!” said D.G., lifting his arms in a mock-heroic gesture, “you sound like a hyperwave historical. Have you ever watched them on Aurora?”

“Of course. They’re very popular.”

“Are you rehearsing for one, Gladia, or do you really mean what you say?”

Gladia laughed. “I suppose I do sound rather silly, D.G but the funny thing is that I do mean it—if I don’t lose my courage.”

“In that case, we’ll do it. We’ll go to Earth. I don’t think they’ll consider you worth a war, especially if you report fully on events on Solaria, as they want you to, and if you give your word of honor as a Spacer woman—if you do things like that—to return.”

“But I won’t.”

“But you may want to someday.—And now, my lady, I mean, Gladia—it is always a pleasure to speak with you, but I’m always tempted to spend too much time at it and I am certain I am needed in the control room. If I’m not and they can do without me, then I’d rather they didn’t find out.”

66

“Was that your doing, friend Giskard?”

“To what is it that you refer, friend Daneel?”

“Lady Gladia is anxious to go to Earth and even perhaps not to return. That is a desire so antithetical to what a Spacer such as she would want that I cannot help but suspect that you did something to her mind to make her feel so.”

Giskard said, “I did not touch her.—It is difficult enough to tamper with any human being within the cage of the Three Laws. To tamper with the mind of the particular individual for whose safety one is directly responsible is more difficult still.”

“Then why does she wish to go to Earth?”

“Her experiences on Baleyworld have changed her point of view considerably. She has a mission—that of ensuring peace in the Galaxy—and bums to work at it.”

“In that case, friend Giskard, would it not be better to do what you can to persuade the captain, in your own fashion, to go to Earth directly?”

“That would create difficulties. The Auroran authorities are so insistent on Lady Gladia being returned to Aurora that it would be better to do so, at least temporarily.”

“Yet it could be dangerous to do so,” said Daneel.

“Then you still think, friend Daneel, that it is I whom they want to retain because they have learned of my abilities?”

“I see no other reason for their insistence on Lady Gladia’s return.”

Giskard said, “Thinking like a man has its pitfalls, I see. It becomes possible to suppose difficulties that cannot exist. Even if someone on Aurora were to suspect the existence of my abilities, it is with those abilities that I would remove the suspicion. There is nothing to fear, friend Daneel.”

And Daneel said reluctantly, “As you say, friend Giskard.”

67

Gladia looked about thoughtfully, sending off the robots with a careless motion of her hand.

She looked at her hand, as she did so, almost as though she were seeing it for the first time. It had been the hand with which she had shaken the hand of each of the crewmen of the ship before getting into the small tender that took her and D.G. down to Aurora. When she promised to return, they had cheered her and Niss had bawled out, “We won’t leave without you, my lady.”

The cheering had pleased her enormously. Her robots served her endlessly, loyally, patiently, but they never cheered her.

D.G., watching her curiously, said, “Surely you are at home now, Gladia.”

“I am in my establishment,” she said in a low voice. “It has been my establishment since Dr. Fastolfe assigned it to me twenty decades ago and yet it feels strange to me.”

“It is strange to me,” said D.G. “I’d feel rather lost staying here alone.” He looked, about with a half-smile at, the ornate furnishings and the elaborately decorated walls.

“You won’t be alone, D.G.,” said Gladia. “My household robots will be with you and they have full instructions. They will devote themselves to your comfort.”

“Will they understand my Settler accent?”

“If they fail to understand, they will ask you to repeat and you must then speak slowly and make gestures. They will prepare food for you, show you how to use the facilities in the guest rooms—and they will also keep a sharp eye on you to make sure that you do not act in an unguestly manner. They will stop you—if necessary—but they will do so without hurting you.”

“I trust they won’t consider me nonhuman.”

“As the overseer did? No, I guarantee you that, D.G., though your beard and accent may confuse them to the point where they will be a second or two slow in reacting.”

“And I suppose they’ll protect me against intruders?”

“They will, but there won’t be any intruders.”

“The Council may want to come and get me.”

“Then they will send robots and mine will turn them away.”

“What if their robots overpower your robots?”

“That can’t happen, D.G. An establishment is inviolate.”

“Come on, Gladia. Do you mean that nobody has ever—”

“Nobody has ever!” she replied at once. “You just stay here comfortably and my robots will take care of all your needs. If you want to get in touch with your ship, with Baleyworld, even with the Auroran Council, they will know exactly what to do. You won’t have to lift a finger.”

D.G. sank down into the nearest chair, spread himself out over it, and sighed deeply. “How wise we are to allow no robots on the Settler worlds. Do you know how long it would take to corrupt me into idleness and sloth if I stayed in this kind of society? Five minutes at most. In fact, I’m corrupted already.” He yawned and stretched luxuriously. “Would they mind if I sleep?”

“Of course they wouldn’t. If you do, the robots will see to it that your surroundings are kept quiet and dark.”

Then D.G. straightened suddenly. “What if you don’t come back?”

“Why shouldn’t I come back?”

“The Council seems to want you rather urgently.”

“They can’t hold me. I’m a free Auroran citizen and I go where I please.”

“There are always emergencies when a government wishes to manufacture one—and in an emergency, rules can always be broken.”

“Nonsense. Giskard, am I going to be kept there?”

Giskard said, “Madam Gladia, you will not be kept there. The captain need not be concerned with respect to that.”

“There you are, D.G. And your Ancestor, the last time he saw me, told me I was always to trust Giskard.”

“Good! Excellent! Just the same, the reason I came down with you, Gladia, was to make sure I get you back. Remember that and tell it to your Dr. Amadiro if you have to. If they try to keep you against your will, they will have to try to keep me as well—and my ship, which is in orbit, is fully capable of reacting to that.”

“No, please,” said Gladia, disturbed. “Don’t think of doing that. Aurora has ships as well and I’m sure yours is under observation.”

“There’s a difference, though, Gladia. I doubt very much that Aurora would want to go to war over you. Baleyworld, on the other hand, would be quite prepared to.”

“Surely not. I wouldn’t want them to go to war on my account. And why should they, anyway? Because I was a friend of your Ancestor?”

“Not exactly. I don’t think anyone can quite believe that you were that friend. Maybe your great-grandmother, not you. Even I don’t believe it was you.”

“You know it was I.”

“Intellectually, yes. Emotionally, I find it impossible. That was twenty decades ago.”

Gladia shook her head. “You have the short-lived view.”

“Maybe we all do, but it doesn’t matter. What makes you important to Baleyworld is the speech you gave. You’re a heroine and they will decide you must be presented at Earth. Nothing will be allowed to prevent that.”

Gladia said, a trifle alarmed, “Presented at Earth? With full ceremony?”

“The fullest.”

“Why should that be thought so important as to be worth a war?”

“I’m not sure I can explain that to a Spacer. Earth is a special world. Earth is a—holy world. It’s the only real world. It’s where human beings came into being and it’s the only world in which they evolved and developed and lived against a full background of life. We have trees on Baleyworld and insects—but on Earth they have a wild riot of trees and insects that none of us ever see except on Earth. Our worlds are imitations, pale imitations. They don’t exist and can’t exist except for the intellectual, cultural, and spiritual strength they draw from Earth.”

Gladia said, “This is quite opposed to the opinion of Earth held by Spacers. When we refer to Earth, which we seldom do, it is as a world that is barbarous and in decay.”

D.G. flushed. “That is why the Spacerworlds have been growing steadily weaker. As I said before, you are like plants that have pulled themselves loose from their roots, like animals that have cut out their hearts.”

Gladia said, “Well, I look forward to seeing Earth for myself, but I will have to go now. Please treat this as your own establishment till I return.” She walked briskly toward the door, stopped, then turned. “There are no alcoholic drinks in this establishment or anywhere on Aurora, no tobacco, no alkaloidal stimulants, nothing of any artificial kinds of—of whatever you may be used to.”

D.G. grinned sourly. “We Settlers are aware of that. Very puritanical, you people.”

“Not puritanical at all,” said Gladia, frowning. “Thirty to forty decades of life must be paid for—and that’s one of the ways. You don’t suppose we do it by magic, do you?”

“Well, I’ll make do on healthful fruit juices and sanitized near-coffee—and I’ll smell flowers.”

“You’ll find an ample supply of such things,” said Gladia coldly, and when you get back to your ship, I’m sure you can compensate for any withdrawal symptoms you will now suffer.”

“I will suffer only from your withdrawal, my lady,” said D.G. gravely.

Gladia found herself forced to smile. “You’re an incorrigible liar, my captain. I’ll be back.—Daneel.—Giskard.”

68

Gladia sat stiffly in Amadiro’s office. In many decades, she had seen Amadiro only in the distance or on a viewing screen and on such occasions, she had made it a practice to turn away. She remembered him only as Fastolfe’s great enemy and now that she found herself, for the first time, in the same room with him—in face-to-face confrontation she had to freeze her face into expressionlessness, in order not to allow hate to peep through.

Although she and Amadiro were the only palpable human beings in the room, there were at least a dozen high officials—the Chairman himself among them—who were present by way of sealed-beam holovision. Gladia had recognized the Chairman and some of the others, but not all.

It was rather a grisly experience. It seemed so like the viewing that was universal of Solaria and to which she had been so accustomed as a girl—and which she recalled with such distaste.

She made an effort to speak clearly, undramatically, and concisely. When asked a question, she was as brief as was consistent with clarity and as noncommittal as was consistent with courtesy.

The Chairman listened impassively and the others took their cue from him. He was clearly elderly—Chairmen always were, somehow, for it was usually late in life that they attained the position. He had a long face, a still thick head of hair, and prominent eyebrows. His voice was mellifluous, but in no way friendly.

When Gladia was done, he said, “It is your suggestion, then, that the Solarians, had redefined ‘human being’ in a narrow sense that restricted it to Solarians.”

“I do not suggest anything, Mr. Chairman. It is merely that no one has been able to think of another explanation that would account for the events.”

“Are you aware, Madam Gladia, that in all the history of robotic science, no robot has ever been designed with a narrowed definition of ‘human being’?”

“I am not a roboticist, Mr. Chairman, and I know nothing of the mathematics of positronic pathways. Since you say it has never been done, I, of course, accept that. I cannot say, of my own knowledge, however, whether the fact that it has never been done means that it can never be done in the future.”

Her eyes had never looked as wide and innocent as they did now and the Chairman flushed and said, “It is not theoretically impossible to narrow the definition, but it is unthinkable.”

Gladia said, with a downcast glance at her hands, which were loosely clasped in her lap, “People can think such peculiar things sometimes.”

The Chairman changed the subject and said, “An Auroran ship was destroyed. How do you account for that?”

“I was not present at the site of the incident, Mr. Chairman. I have no idea what happened, so I can’t account for it.”

“You were on Solaria and you were born on the planet. Given your recent experience and early background, what would you say happened?” The Chairman showed signs of a badly strained patience.

“If I must guess,” said Gladia, “I should say that our warship was exploded by the use of a portable nuclear intensifier similar to the one that was almost used on the Settler ship.”

“Does it not strike you, however, that the two cases are different. In one, a Settler ship invaded Solaria to confiscate Solarian robots; in the other, an Auroran vessel came to Solaria to help protect a sister planet.”

“I can only suppose, Mr. Chairman, that the overseers—the humanoid robots left to guard the planet—were insufficiently well-instructed to know the difference.”

The Chairman looked offended. “It is inconceivable that they would not be instructed in the difference between Settlers and fellow Spacers.”

“If you say so, Mr. Chairman. Nevertheless, if the only definition of a human being is someone with the physical appearance of a human being, together with the ability to speak in Solarian fashion—as it seemed to us, who were on the spot, that it must be—then Aurorans, who do not speak in Solarian fashion, might not fall under the heading of human beings where the overseers were concerned.”

“Then you are saying that the Solarians defined their fellow Spacers as nonhuman and subjected them to destruction.”

“I present it merely as a possibility because I can’t think of any other way to explain the destruction of any Auroran warship. More experienced people may be able to present alternate explanations, to be sure.” Again that innocent, almost blank, look.

The Chairman said, “Are you planning to return to Solaria, Madam Gladia?”

“No, Mr. Chairman, I have no such plan.”

“Have you been requested to do so by your Settler friend, in order to clear the planet of its overseers?”

Slowly Gladia shook her head. “I have not been requested to do this. Had I been, I would have refused. Nor did I go to Solaria, to begin with, for any reason but that of fulfilling my duty to Aurora. I was requested to go to Solaria by Dr. Levular Mandamus of the Robotics Institute, working under Dr. Kelden Amadiro. I was requested to go so that, on my return, I might report on events—as I have just done. The request had, to my ears and understanding, the flavor of an order and I took the order”—she glanced briefly in Amadiro’s direction—“as coming from Dr. Amadiro himself.”

Amadiro made no visible response to that.

The Chairman said, “What are your plans for the future, then?”

Gladia waited a heartbeat or two, then decided she might as well confront the situation boldly.

“It is my intention, Mr. Chairman,” said Gladia, speaking very clearly, “to visit Earth.”

“Earth? Why should you wish to visit Earth?”

“It may be important, Mr. Chairman, for Auroran authorities to know what is taking place on Earth. Since I have been invited by the Baleyworld authorities to visit Earth and since Captain Baley stands ready to take me there, it would be an opportunity to bring back a report on events—as I have now reported on events taking place on Solaria and on Baleyworld.”

Well, then, thought Gladia, will he violate the custom and, in effect, imprison her on Aurora? If so, there had to be ways of challenging the decision.

Gladia felt her tension rising and she cast a quick glance in the direction of Daneel, who, of course, seemed totally impassive.

However, the Chairman, looking sour, said, “In that respect, Madam Gladia, you have the right of an Auroran to do as you wish—but it will be on your own responsibility. No one is requesting this of you, as some requested, according to you, your visit to Solaria. For that reason I must warn you that Aurora will not feel bound to help you in case of any misadventure.”

“I understand that, sir.”

The Chairman said brusquely, “There will be much to discuss on the matter later on, Amadiro. I will be in touch with you. “

The images blanked out and Gladia found herself and her robots suddenly alone with Amadiro and his robots.

69

Gladia rose and said stiffly, carefully refusing to look directly at Amadiro as she did so, “The meeting, I presume, is over, so I will now leave.”

“Yes, of course, but I have a question or two, which I hope you don’t mind my asking.” His tall figure seemed overwhelming as he rose and he smiled and addressed her in all courtesy, as though friendliness were long established between them. “Let me escort you, Lady Gladia. So you are going to Earth?”

“Yes. The Chairman raised no objections and an Auroran citizen may freely travel through the Galaxy in time of peace. And pardon me, but my robots—and yours, if necessary—will be sufficient escort.”

“As you say, my lady.” A robot held the door open for them. “I assume you will take robots with you when you go to Earth.”

“There’s no question as to that.”

“Which robots, madam, if I may ask?”

“These two. The two robots I have with me.” Her shoes made a firm clicking sound as she walked rapidly along the corridor, her back to Amadiro, making no effort to see to it that he heard her.

“Is that wise, my lady? They are advanced robots, unusual products of the great Dr. Fastolfe. You will be surrounded by barbarian Earthmen, who may covet them.”

“Should they covet them, they nevertheless wouldn’t get them.”

“Don’t underestimate the danger, nor overestimate robotic protection. You will be in one of their Cities, surrounded by tens of millions of these Earthmen, and robots may not harm human beings. Indeed, the more advanced a robot, the more sensitive it is to the nuances of the Three Laws and the less likely it is to take any action that will harm a human being in any way.—Isn’t that so, Daneel?”

“Yes, Dr. Amadiro,” said Daneel.

“Giskard, I imagine, agrees with you.”

“I do,” said Giskard.

“You see, my lady? Here on Aurora, in a nonviolent society, your robots can protect you against others. On Earth—mad, decadent, barbarous—there will be no way two robots can protect you or themselves. We would not want you to be deprived. Nor, to place it on a more selfish basis, would we of the Institute and the government care to see advanced robots in the hands of the barbarians. Would it not be better to take robots, of a more ordinary type that the Earthpeople would ignore? You can take any number in that case. A dozen if you wish.”

Gladia said, “Dr. Amadiro, I took these two robots on a Settler ship and visited a Settler world. No one made a move to appropriate them.”

“The Settlers don’t use robots and claim to disapprove of them. On Earth itself, they still use robots.”

Daneel said, “If I may interpose, Dr. Amadiro—It is my understanding that robots are being phased out on Earth. Mere are very few in the Cities. Almost all robots on Earth are now used in agricultural or mining operations. For the rest, nonrobotic automation is the norm.”

Amadiro looked at Daneel briefly, then said to Gladia, “Your robot is probably right and I suppose there would be no harm in taking Daneel. He could well pass as human, for that matter. Giskard, however, may well be left in your establishment. He might arouse the acquisitive instincts of an acquisitive society—even if it is true that they are trying to free themselves of robots.”

Gladia said, “Neither will be left, sir. They will come with me. I am the sole judge of which portions of my property may come with me and which may not.”

“Of course.” Amadiro smiled in his most amiable fashion. “No one disputes that.—Would you wait here?”

Another door opened, showing a room that was most comfortably furnished. It was without windows, but was illuminated by soft light and suffused with even softer music.

Gladia stopped at the threshold and said sharply, “Why?”

“A member of the Institute wishes to see you and speak to you. It will not take long, but it is necessary. Once that is done, you are free to go. You will not even be plagued by my presence from this moment on. Please.” There was a touch of hidden steel in the last word.

Gladia reached out her arms for Daneel and Giskard. “We enter together.”

Amadiro laughed genially. “Do you think I’m trying to separate you from your robots? Do you think they would allow that? You have been too long with Settlers, my dear.”

Gladia looked at the closed door and said between her teeth, “I dislike that man intensely. And most intensely when he smiles and tries to be soothing.”

She stretched, her elbow joints cracking slightly. “In any case, I’m tired. If someone comes with further questions about Solaria and Baleyworld, they are going to get short answers, I tell you.”

She sat down on a couch that gave softly under her weight. She slipped her shoes off and lifted her feet to the couch. She smiled sleepily, took a deep breath as she sank to one side, and, with her head turned away from the room, was instantly and deeply asleep.

70

“It is well she was naturally sleepy,” said Giskard. “I was able to deepen it without any hint of damage to her at all.—I would not want Lady Gladia to hear what is likely to come.”

“What is likely to come, friend Giskard?” asked Daneel.

“What is to come is the result, I think, of my being wrong, friend Daneel, and of your being right. I should have taken your excellent mind more seriously.”

“It is you, then, they want to keep on Aurora?”

“Yes. And in urgently calling for Lady Gladia’s return, they were calling for mine. You heard Dr. Amadiro ask for us to be left behind. At first both of us and then myself alone.”

“Might it be that his words have but the surface meaning, that he feels it dangerous to lose an advanced robot to the Earthmen?”

“There was an underlying current of anxiety, friend Daneel, that I judge to be far too strong to match his words.”

“Can you tell whether he knows of your special abilities?”

“I cannot tell directly, since I cannot read thoughts themselves. Nevertheless, twice in the course of the interview with the Council members, there was a sudden sharp rise in the level of emotional intensity in Dr. Amadiro’s mind. Extraordinarily sharp rises. I cannot describe it in words, but it would be analogous, perhaps, to watching a scene in black and white and having it splash—suddenly and briefly—into intense color.”

“When did this happen, friend Giskard?”

“The second time was when Lady Gladia mentioned she would be going to Earth.”

“That created no visible stir among the Council members. What were their minds like?”

“I could not tell. They were present through holovision and such images are not accompanied by any mental sensations that I can detect.”

“We may conclude, then, that whether the Council is or is not disturbed by Lady Gladia’s projected trip to Earth, Dr. Amadiro, at least, is disturbed.”

“It is not simple disturbance. Dr. Amadiro seemed anxious in the highest degree; as we would expect, for instance, if he indeed had a project in hand, as we suspect, for the destruction of Earth and feared its discovery. What is more, at Lady Gladia’s mention of this intention of hers, friend Daneel, Dr. Amadiro glanced briefly at me; the only moment in all the session that he did. The flash of emotional intensity coincided with that glance. I think it was the thought of my going to Earth that made him anxious.—As we might expect, if he felt that I, with my special powers, would be a particular danger to his plans.”

“His actions might also be taken, friend Giskard, as fitting his expressed fear that the Earthmen would try to appropriate you as an advanced robot and that this would be bad, for Aurora.”

“The chance of that happening, friend Daneel, and the extent of damage that might do the Spacer community is too small to account for his level of anxiety. What harm could I do Aurora if I were in Earth’s possession—if I were simply the Giskard I am taken to be?”

“You conclude, then, that Dr. Amadiro knows you are not simply the Giskard you are taken to be.”

“I am not sure. He may simply suspect it. If he knew what I was, would he not make every effort to avoid making his plans in my presence?”

“It may simply be his misfortune that Lady Gladia will not be separated from us. He cannot insist on your not being present, friend Giskard, without giving away his knowledge to you.” Daneel paused, then said, “It is a great advantage you have, friend Giskard, being able to weigh the emotional contents of minds.—But you said that Dr. Amadiro’s flash of emotion at the trip to Earth was the second. What was the first?”

“The first came with the mention of the nuclear intensifier—and that, too, seems significant. The concept of a nuclear intensifier is well known on Aurora. They don’t have a portable device; not one light, enough and efficient enough to be practical on shipboard, but it’s not something that would break upon him like a thunderbolt. Why, then, so much anxiety?”

“Possibly,” said Daneel, “because an intensifier of that sort has something to do with his plans on Earth.”

“Possibly.”

And it was at this point that the door opened, a person entered, and a voice said, “Well—Giskard!”

71

Giskard looked at the newcomer and said in a calm voice, “Madam Vasilia.”

“You remember me, then,” said Vasilia, smiling warmly.

“Yes, madam. You are a well-known roboticist and your face is on the hyperwave news now and then.”

“Come, Giskard. I do not mean that you recognize me. Anyone can do that. I mean, you remember me. You once called me Miss Vasilia.”

“I remember that, too, madam. It was a long time ago.”

Vasilia closed the door behind her and sat down in one of the chairs. She turned her face toward the other robot. “And you are Daneel, of course.”

Daneel said, “Yes, madam. To make use of the distinction you have just advanced, I both remember you, for I was with Plainclothesman Elijah Baley once when he interviewed you, and I recognize you, too.”

Vasilia said sharply, “You are not to refer to that Earthman again.—I recognize you as well, Daneel. You are as famous as I am in your own way. You are both famous, for you are the greatest creations of the late Dr. Han Fastolfe.”

“Of your father, madam,” said Giskard.

“You know very well, Giskard, that I attach no importance to that purely genetic relationship. You are not to refer to him in that manner again.”

“I will not, madam.”

“And this one?” She looked casually at the sleeping figure on the couch. “Since you two are here, I can reasonably assume that the sleeping beauty is the Solarian woman.”

Giskard said, “She is Lady Gladia and I am her property. Do you want her awake, madam?”

“We will merely disturb her, Giskard, if you and I talk of old times. Let her sleep.”

“Yes, madam.”

Vasilia said to Daneel, “Perhaps the discussion that Giskard and I will have will be of no interest to you, either, Daneel. Would you wait outside?”

Daneel said, “I fear I cannot leave, my lady. My task is to guard Lady Gladia.”

“I don’t think she needs much guarding from me. You’ll notice I do not have any of my robots with me, so Giskard alone will be ample protection for your Solarian lady.”

Daneel said, “You have no robots in the room, madam, but I saw four robots just outside in the corridor when the door was opened. It will be best if I stay.”

“Well, I won’t try to override your orders. You can stay—Giskard!”

“Yes, madam.”

“Do you remember when you were first activated?”

“Yes, madam.

“What do you remember?”

“First light. Then sound. Then a crystallization into the sight of Dr. Fastolfe. I could understand Galactic Standard and I had a certain amount of innate knowledge built into my positronic brain paths. The Three Laws, of course; a large vocabulary, with definitions; robotic duties; social customs. Other things I learned rapidly.”

“Do you remember your first owner?”

“As I said, Dr. Fastolfe.”

“Think again, Giskard. Wasn’t it I?”

Giskard paused, then said, “Madam, I was assigned the task of guarding you in my capacity as a possession of Dr. Han Fastolfe.”

“It was a bit more than that, I think. You obeyed only me for ten years. If you obeyed anyone else, including Dr. Fastolfe, it was only incidentally, as a consequence of your robotic duties and only insofar as it fit your prime function of guarding me.”

“I was assigned to you, it is true, Lady Vasilia, but Dr. Fastolfe retained ownership. Once you left his establishment, he resumed full control of me as my owner. He remained my owner even when he later assigned me to Lady Gladia. He was my only owner for as long as he lived. Upon his death, by his will, ownership of me was transferred to Lady Gladia and that is how it stands now.”

“Not so. I asked you if you remembered, when you were first activated and what you remembered. What you were when you were first activated is not what you are now.”

“My memory banks, madam, are now incomparably fuller than they were then and I have much in the I way of experience that I did not have then.”

Vasilia’s voice grew sterner. “I am not talking about memory, nor am I talking about experience. I am talking about capacities. I added to your positronic pathways. I adjusted them. I improved them.”

“Yes, madam, you did so, with Dr. Fastolfe’s help and approval.”

“At one time, Giskard, on one occasion, I introduced an improvement—at least, an extension, and without Dr. Fastolfe’s help and approval. Do you remember that?”

Giskard was silent for a substantial period of time. Then he said, “I remember one occasion on which I did not witness your consulting him. I assumed that you consulted him at a time when I was not a witness.”

“If you assumed that, you assumed incorrectly. In fact, since you knew he was off the world at the time, you could not possibly have assumed it. You are being evasive, to use no stronger word.”

“No, madam. You might have consulted him by hyperwave. I considered that a possibility.”

Vasilia, said, “Nevertheless, that addition was entirely mine. The result was that you became a substantially different robot afterward from what you had been before. The robot you have been ever since that change has been my design, my creation, and you know that well.”

Giskard remained silent.

“Now, Giskard, by what right was Dr. Fastolfe your master at the time you were activated?” She waited, then said sharply, “Answer me, Giskard. That is an order!”

Giskard said, “Since he was designer and supervised the construction, I was his property—”

“And when I, in effect, redesigned and reconstructed you in a very fundamental way, did you not then become my property?”

Giskard said, “I cannot answer that question. It would require the decision of a law court to argue out the specific case. It would depend, perhaps, on the degree to which I was redesigned and reconstructed.”

“Are you aware of the degree to which that took place?”

Giskard was again silent.

“This is childish, Giskard,” said Vasilia. “Am I to be required to nudge you after each question? You are not to make me do that. In this case, at any rate, silence is a sure indication of an affirmative. You know what the change was and how fundamental it was and you know that I know what it was. You put the Solarian woman to sleep because you did not want her to learn from me what it was. She doesn’t know, does she?”

“She does not, madam,” said Giskard.

“And you don’t want her to know?”

“I do not, madam,” said Giskard.

“Does Daneel know?”

“He does, madam.”

Vasilia nodded. “I rather suspected that from his eagerness to stay.—Now, then, listen to me, Giskard. Suppose that a court of law finds out that, before I redesigned you, you were an ordinary robot and that, after I redesigned you, you were a robot who could sense the mind-set of an individual human being and adjust it to his liking. Do you think they could possibly fail to consider it a change great enough to warrant the ownership to have passed into my hands?”

Giskard said, “Madam Vasilia, it would not be possible to let this come before a court of law. Under the circumstances, I would surely be declared the property of the state for obvious reasons. I might even be ordered inactivated.”

“Nonsense. Do you take me for a child? With your abilities, you could keep the court from making any such judgment. But that is not the point. I’m not suggesting that we take this to court. I am asking you for your own judgment. Would you not say that I am your rightful owner and have been since I was a very young woman?”

Giskard said, “Madam Gladia considers herself to be my owner and, until the law speaks to the contrary, she must be considered that.”

“But you know that both she and the law labor under a misapprehension. If you worry about the feelings of your Solarian woman, it would be very easy to adjust her mindset so that she wouldn’t mind your no longer being her property. You can even cause her to feel relieved that I will take you off her hands. I will order you to do so as soon as you can bring yourself to admit what you already know that I am your owner. How long has Daneel known your nature?”

“For decades, madam.”

“You can make him forget. For some time now, Dr. Amadiro has known and you can make him forget. There will be only you and I who will know.”

Daneel said suddenly, “Madam Vasilia, since Giskard does not consider himself your property, he can easily make you forget and you will then be perfectly content with matters as they are.”

Vasilia turned a cold eye on Daneel. “Can he? But you see, it is not for you to decide who it is that Giskard considers his owner. I know that Giskard knows that I am his owner, so that his duty, within the Three Laws, belongs entirely to me. If he must make someone forget and can do so without physical harm, it will be necessary for him, in making a choice, to choose anyone but me. He cannot make me forget or tamper with my mind in any way. I thank you, Daneel, for giving me the occasion of making this quite plain.”

Daneel said, “But Madam Gladia’s emotions are so enwrapped in Giskard that for him to force forgetfulness upon her might harm her.”

Vasilia said, “Giskard is the one to decide that.—Giskard, you are mine. You know you are mine and I order you to induce forgetfulness in this man-aping robot who stands beside you and in the woman who wrongfully treated you as her property. Do it while she is asleep and there will be no harm done to her of any kind.”

Daneel said, “Friend Giskard, Lady Gladia is your legal owner. If you induce forgetfulness in Lady Vasilia, it will not harm her.”

“But it will,” said Vasilia at once. “The Solarian woman will not be harmed, for she need only forget that she is under the impression that she is Giskard’s owner. I, on the other hand, also know that Giskard has mental powers. Digging that out will be more complex and Giskard can surely tell by my intense determination to keep that knowledge that he could not help but inflict damage on me in the process of removing it.”

Daneel said, “Friend Giskard—”

Vasilia said, in a voice that was diamond-hard, “I order you, Robot Daneel Olivaw, to be silent. I am not your owner, but your owner is asleep and does not countermand it, so my order must be obeyed.”

Daneel fell silent, but his lips trembled as though he were trying to talk despite the order.

Vasilia watched that manifestation with an amused smile on her lips. “You see, Daneel, you cannot talk.”

And Daneel said in a hoarse whisper, “I can, madam, I find it difficult, but I can, for I find that something takes precedence over your order, which is governed by only the Second Law.”

Vasilia’s eyes opened wide and she said sharply, “Silence, I say. Nothing takes precedence over my order but the First Law and I have already shown that Giskard will do least harm—indeed, no harm at all—if he returns to me. He will do harm to me, to whom he is least capable of doing harm, if he follows any other course of action.” She pointed her finger at Daneel and said again with a soft hiss, “Silence!”

It was a clear effort for Daneel to make any sound at all. The small pump within him that manipulated the air current that produced the sound made a small, humming noise as it labored. Yet, though he spoke in an even lower whisper, he could still be heard.

He said, “Madam Vasilia, there is something that transcends even the First Law.”

Giskard said, in a voice equally low, but unforced, “Friend Daneel, you must not say that. Nothing transcends the First Law. “

Vasilia, frowning slightly, showed a spark of interest. “Indeed? Daneel, I warn you that if you attempt to progress further in this odd line of argument, you will surely destroy yourself. I have never seen or heard of a robot doing what you are doing and it would be fascinating to watch your self-destruction. Speak on.”

With the order given, Daneel’s voice returned immediately to normal. “I thank you, Madam Vasilia.—Years ago, I sat at the deathbed of an Earthman to whom you have asked me not to refer. May I now refer to him or do you know who it is that I speak of?”

“You speak of that policeman Baley,” said Vasilia tonelessly.

“Yes, madam. He said to me on his deathbed, ‘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.’”

“Mawkish sentimentality,” murmured Vasilia.

Daneel said, “I believe Partner Elijah was attempting to protect me against the fact of his soon-to-come death. It was his own life he spoke of as but a thread in the tapestry, it was his own life that was ‘the trailing off of a single thread’ that was not to affect me. His words did protect me in that crisis.”

“No doubt,” said Vasilia, “but get to the point of transcending the First Law, for it is that which will now destroy you.”

Daneel said, “For decades I have brooded over Plainclothesman Elijah Baley’s statement and it is quite likely I would have understood it at once if the Three Laws had not stood in the way. I have been helped in my search by my friend Giskard, who has long felt the Three Laws to be incomplete. I have been helped also by points Lady Gladia made in a recent speech on a Settler world. What’s more, this present crisis, Lady Vasilia, has served to sharpen my thinking. I am certain, now, as to the manner in which the Three Laws are incomplete.”

“A robot who is also a roboticist,” said Vasilia with a touch of contempt. “How are the Three Laws incomplete, robot?”

Daneel said, “The tapestry of life is more important than a single thread. Apply that not to Partner Elijah alone, but generalize it and—and—and we conclude that humanity as a whole is more important than a single human being.”

“You stumble as you say it, robot. You do not believe.”

Daneel said, “There is a law that is greater than the First Law. A robot may not injure humanity or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm. I think of it now as the Zeroth Law of Robotics. The First Law should then be stated: ‘A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm, unless this would violate the Zeroth Law of Robotics.”

Vasilia snorted. “And you still stand on your feet, robot?”

“I still stand on my feet, madam.”

“Then I will explain something to you, robot, and we will see if you can survive the explanation.—The Three Laws of Robotics involve individual human beings and individual robots. You can point to any individual human being or to an individual robot. But what is your ‘humanity” but an abstraction? Can you point to humanity? You can injure or fail to injure a specific human being and understand the injury or lack of injury that has taken place. Can you see an injury to humanity? Can you understand it? Can you point to it?”

Daneel was silent.

Vasilia smiled broadly. “Answer, robot. Can you see an injury to humanity and can you point to it?”

“No, madam, I cannot. But I believe such injury can exist nevertheless and you see that I still stand on my feet.”

“Then ask Giskard as to whether he will—or can—obey your Zeroth Law of Robotics.”

Daneel’s head turned to Giskard. “Friend Giskard?”

Slowly Giskard said, “I cannot accept the Zeroth Law, friend Daneel. You know that I have read widely in human history. In it, I have found great crimes committed by some human beings against each other and the excuse has always been that the crimes were justified by the needs of the tribe, or of the state, or even of humanity. It is precisely because humanity is an abstraction that it can be called upon so freely to justify anything at all and your Zeroth Law is therefore unsuitable.”

Daneel said, “But you know, friend Giskard, the fact that a danger to humanity now exists and that it will surely come to fruition if you become the property of Madam Vasilia. That, at least, is not an abstraction.”

Giskard said, “The danger to which you refer is not something known, but is merely inferred. We cannot build our actions in defiance of the Three Laws on that.”

Daneel paused, then said in a lower voice, “But you hope that your studies of human history will help you develop the Laws governing human behavior, that you will learn to predict and guide human history—or at lease make a beginning, so that someone someday will learn to predict and guide it. You even call the technique ‘psychohistory.’ In this, are you not dealing with the human tapestry? Are you not trying to work with humanity as a generalized whole, rather than with collections of individual human beings?”

“Yes, friend Daneel, but it is thus far no more than a hope and I cannot base my actions upon a mere hope, nor can I modify the Three Laws in accordance with it.”

To that, Daneel did not respond.

Vasilia said, “Well, robot, all your attempts have come to nothing and yet you stand on your feet. You are strangely stubborn and a robot such as yourself that can denounce the Three Laws and still remain functional is a clear danger to every and any individual human being. For that reason, I believe you should be dismantled without delay. The case is too dangerous to await the slow majesty of the law, especially since you are, after all, a robot and not the human being you attempt to resemble.”

Daneel said, “Surely, my lady, it is not fitting for you to reach such a decision on your own.”

“I have reached it nevertheless and if there are legal repercussions hereafter, I shall deal with them.”

“You will be depriving Lady Gladia of a second robot and one to which you make no claim.”

“She and Fastolfe, between them, have deprived me of my robot, Giskard, for more than twenty decades and I do not believe this ever distressed either of them for a moment it will not now distress me to deprive her. She has dozens of other robots and there are many here at the Institute who will faithfully see to her safety until she can return to her own.”

Daneel said, “Friend Giskard, if you will wake Lady Gladia, it may be that she may persuade Lady Vasilia—”

Vasilia, looking at Giskard, frowned and said sharply, “No, Giskard. Le the woman sleep.”

Giskard, who had stirred at Daneel’s words, subsided.

Vasilia snapped the finger and thumb of her right hand three times and the door at once opened and four robots filed, in. “You were right, Daneel. There are four robots. They will dismantle you and you are ordered not to resist. Thereafter Giskard and I will deal with all remaining matters.”

She looked over her shoulder at the entering robots. “Close the door behind you. Now, quickly and efficiently, dismantle this robot,” and she pointed at Daneel.

The robots looked at Daneel and for a few seconds did not move. Vasilia said impatiently, “I’ve told you he is a robot and you must disregard his human appearance. Daneel, tell them you are a robot.”

“I am a robot,” said Daneel, “and I will not resist.”

Vasilia stepped to one side and the four robots advanced. Daneel’s arms remained at his side. He turned to look at the sleeping Gladia one last time and then he faced the robots.

Vasilia smiled and said, “This should be interesting.”

The robots paused. Vasilia said, “Get on with it.”

They did not move and Vasilia turned to stare in amazement at Giskard. She did not complete the movement. Her muscles loosened and she crumpled.

Giskard caught her and seated her with her back against the wall.

He said in a muffled voice, “I need a few moments and then we will leave.”

Those moments passed. Vasilia’s eyes remained glazed and unfocused. Her robots remained motionless. Daneel had moved to Gladia in a single stride.

Giskard looked up and said to Vasilia’s robots, “Guard your lady. Allow no one to enter until she wakes. She will waken peacefully.”

Even as he spoke, Gladia stiffed and Daneel helped her to her feet. She said, wondering, “Who is this woman? Whose robots—How did she—”

Giskard spoke firmly, but there was a weariness in his voice. “Lady Gladia, later. I will explain. For now, we must hasten.”

And they left.