by Isaac Asimov
“Not at all, Janov. I didn’t know. I merely chanced it. Bliss tells me their mental fields seem to imply they are fully functioning, and it seems to me they can’t very well be fully functioning without human beings about for care and maintenance. However, she can’t spot anything human so we’re still looking.”
Pelorat studied the viewscreen thoughtfully. “It seems to be all forest, doesn’t it?”
“Mostly forest. But there are clear patches that may be grasslands. The thing is that I see no cities, or any lights at night, or anything but thermal radiation at any time.”
“So no human beings after all?”
“I wonder. Bliss is in the galley trying to concentrate. I’ve set up an arbitrary prime meridian for the planet which means that it’s divided into latitude and longitude in the computer. Bliss has a little device which she presses whenever she encounters what seems an unusual concentration of robotic mental activity—I suppose you can’t say ‘neuronic activity’ in connection with robots—or any whiff of human thought. The device is linked to the computer, which thus gets a fix on all the latitudes and longitudes, and we’ll let it make the choice among them and pick a good place for landing.”
Pelorat looked uneasy. “Is it wise to leave the matter of choice to the computer?”
“Why not, Janov? It’s a very competent computer. Besides, when you have no basis on which to make a choice yourself, where’s the harm in at least considering the computer’s choice?”
Pelorat brightened up. “There’s something to that, Golan. Some of the oldest legends include tales of people making choices by tossing cubes to the ground.”
“Oh? What does that accomplish?”
“Each face of the cube has some decision on it—yes—no—perhaps—postpone—and so on. Whichever face happens to come upward on landing would be taken as bearing the advice to be followed. Or they would set a ball rolling about a slotted disc with different decisions scattered among the slots. The decision written on the slot in which the ball ends is to be taken. Some mythologists think such activities represented games of chance rather than lotteries, but the two are much the same thing in my opinion.”
“In a way,” said Trevize, “we’re playing a game of chance in choosing our place of landing.”
Bliss emerged from the galley in time to hear the last comment. She said, “No game of chance. I pressed several ‘maybes’ and then one sure-fire ‘yes,’ and it’s to the ‘yes’ that we’ll be going.”
“What made it a ‘yes’?” asked Trevize.
“I caught a whiff of human thought. Definite. Unmistakable.”
44.
It had been raining, for the grass was wet. Overhead, the clouds were scudding by and showing signs of breaking up.
The Far Star had come to a gentle rest near a small grove of trees. (In case of wild dogs, Trevize thought, only partly in jest.) All about was what looked like pasture land, and coming down from the greater height at which a better and wider view had been possible, Trevize had seen what looked like orchards and grain fields—and this time, an unmistakable view of grazing animals.
There were no structures, however. Nothing artificial, except that the regularity of the trees in the orchard and the sharp boundaries that separated fields were themselves as artificial as a microwave-receiving power station would have been.
Could that level of artificiality have been produced by robots, however? Without human beings?
Quietly, Trevize was putting on his holsters. This time, he knew that both weapons were in working order and that both were fully charged. For a moment, he caught Bliss’s eye and paused.
She said, “Go ahead. I don’t think you’ll have any use for them, but I thought as much once before, didn’t I?”
Trevize said, “Would you like to be armed, Janov?”
Pelorat shuddered. “No, thank you. Between you and your physical defense, and Bliss and her mental defense, I feel in no danger at all. I suppose it is cowardly of me to hide in your protective shadows, but I can’t feel proper shame when I’m too busy feeling grateful that I needn’t be in a position of possibly having to use force.”
Trevize said, “I understand. Just don’t go anywhere alone. If Bliss and I separate, you stay with one of us and don’t dash off somewhere under the spur of a private curiosity.”
“You needn’t worry, Trevize,” said Bliss. “I’ll see to that.”
Trevize stepped out of the ship first. The wind was brisk and just a trifle cool in the aftermath of the rain, but Trevize found that welcome. It had probably been uncomfortably warm and humid before the rain.
He took in his breath with surprise. The smell of the planet was delightful. Every planet had its own odor, he knew, an odor always strange and usually distasteful—perhaps only because it was strange. Might not strange be pleasant as well? Or was this the accident of catching the planet just after the rain at a particular season of the year. Whichever it was—
“Come on,” he called. “It’s quite pleasant out here.”
Pelorat emerged and said, “Pleasant is definitely the word for it. Do you suppose it always smells like this?”
“It doesn’t matter. Within the hour, we’ll be accustomed to the aroma, and our nasal receptors will be sufficiently saturated, for us to smell nothing.”
“Pity,” said Pelorat.
“The grass is wet,” said Bliss, with a shade of disapproval.
“Why not? After all, it rains on Gaia, too!” said Trevize, and as he said that a shaft of yellow sunlight reached them momentarily through a small break in the clouds. There would soon be more of it.
“Yes,” said Bliss, “but we know when and we’re prepared for it.”
“Too bad,” said Trevize; “you lose the thrill of the unexpected.”
Bliss said, “You’re right. I’ll try not to be provincial.”
Pelorat looked about and said, in a disappointed tone, “There seems to be nothing about.”
“Only seems to be,” said Bliss. “They’re approaching from beyond that rise.” She looked toward Trevize. “Do you think we ought to go to meet them?”
Trevize shook his head. “No. We’ve come to meet them across many parsecs. Let them walk the rest of the way. We’ll wait for them here.”
Only Bliss could sense the approach until, from the direction of her pointing finger, a figure appeared over the brow of the rise. Then a second, and a third.
“I believe that is all at the moment,” said Bliss.
Trevize watched curiously. Though he had never seen robots, there was not a particle of doubt in him that that was what they were. They had the schematic and impressionistic shape of human beings and yet were not obviously metallic in appearance. The robotic surface was dull and gave the illusion of softness, as though it were covered in plush.
But how did he know the softness was an illusion? Trevize felt a sudden desire to feel those figures who were approaching so stolidly. If it were true that this was a Forbidden World and that spaceships never approached it—and surely that must be so since the sun was not included in the Galactic map—then the Far Star and the people it carried must represent something the robots had never experienced. Yet they were reacting with steady certainty, as though they were working their way through a routine exercise.
Trevize said, in a low voice, “Here we may have information we can get nowhere else in the Galaxy. We could ask them for the location of Earth with reference to this world, and if they know, they will tell us. Who knows how long these things have functioned and endured? They may answer out of personal memory. Think of that.”
“On the other hand,” said Bliss, “they may be recently manufactured and may know nothing.”
“Or,” said Pelorat, “they may know, but may refuse to tell us.”
Trevize said, “I suspect they can’t refuse unless they’ve been ordered not to tell us, and why should such orders be issued when surely no one on this planet could have expected our coming?”
At a distance of about three meters, the robots stopped. They said nothing and made no further movement.
Trevize, his hand on his blaster, said to Bliss, without taking his eyes from the robot, “Can you tell whether they are hostile?”
“You’ll have to allow for the fact that I have no experience whatsoever with their mental workings, Trevize, but I don’t detect anything that seems hostile.”
Trevize took his right hand away from the butt of the weapon, but kept it near. He raised his left hand, palm toward the robots, in what he hoped would be recognized as a gesture of peace and said, speaking slowly, “I greet you. We come to this world as friends.”
The central robot of the three ducked his head in a kind of abortive bow that might also have been taken as a gesture of peace by an optimist, and replied.
Trevize’s jaw dropped in astonishment. In a world of Galactic communication, one did not think of failure in so fundamental a need. However, the robot did not speak in Galactic Standard or anything approaching it. In fact, Trevize could not understand a word.
45.
Pelorat’s surprise was as great as that of Trevize, but there was an obvious element of pleasure in it, too.
“Isn’t that strange?” he said.
Trevize turned to him and said, with more than a touch of asperity in his voice, “It’s not strange. It’s gibberish.”
Pelorat said, “Not gibberish at all. It’s Galactic, but very archaic. I catch a few words. I could probably understand it easily if it were written down. It’s the pronunciation that’s the real puzzle.”
“Well, what did it say?”
“I think it told you it didn’t understand what you said.”
Bliss said, “I can’t tell what it said, but what I sense is puzzlement, which fits. That is, if I can trust my analysis of robotic emotion—or if there is such a thing as robotic emotion.”
Speaking very slowly, and with difficulty, Pelorat said something, and the three robots ducked their head in unison.
“What was that?” said Trevize.
Pelorat said, “I said I couldn’t speak well, but I would try. I asked for a little time. Dear me, old chap, this is fearfully interesting.”
“Fearfully disappointing,” muttered Trevize.
“You see,” said Pelorat, “every habitable planet in the Galaxy manages to work out its own variety of Galactic so that there are a million dialects that are sometimes barely intercomprehensible, but they’re all pulled together by the development of Galactic Standard. Assuming this world to have been isolated for twenty thousand years, the language would ordinarily drift so far from that of the rest of the Galaxy as to be an entirely different language. That it isn’t may be because the world has a social system that depends upon robots which can only understand the language as spoken in the fashion in which they were programmed. Rather than keep reprogramming, the language remained static and we now have what is to us merely a very archaic form of Galactic.”
“There’s an example,” said Trevize, “of how a robotized society can be held static and made to turn degenerate.”
“But, my dear fellow,” protested Pelorat, “keeping a language relatively unchanged is not necessarily a sign of degeneration. There are advantages to it. Documents preserved for centuries and millennia retain their meaning and give greater longevity and authority to historical records. In the rest of the Galaxy, the language of Imperial edicts of the time of Hari Seldon already begins to sound quaint.”
“And do you know this archaic Galactic?”
“Not to say know, Golan. It’s just that in studying ancient myths and legends I’ve picked up the trick of it. The vocabulary is not entirely different, but it is inflected differently, and there are idiomatic expressions we don’t use any longer and, as I have said, the pronunciation is totally changed. I can act as interpreter, but not as a very good one.”
Trevize heaved a tremulous sigh. “A small stroke of good fortune is better than none. Carry on, Janov.”
Pelorat turned to the robots, waited a moment, then looked back at Trevize. “What am I supposed to say?”
“Let’s go all the way. Ask them where Earth is.”
Pelorat said the words one at a time, with exaggerated gestures of his hands.
The robots looked at each other and made a few sounds. The middle one then spoke to Pelorat, who replied while moving his hands apart as though he were stretching a length of rubber. The robot responded by spacing his words as carefully as Pelorat had.
Pelorat said to Trevize, “I’m not sure I’m getting across what I mean by ‘Earth.’ I suspect they think I’m referring to some region on their planet and they say they don’t know of any such region.”
“Do they use the name of this planet, Janov?”
“The closest I can come to what I think they are using as the name is ‘Solaria.’ ”
“Have you ever heard of it in your legends?”
“No—any more than I had ever heard of Aurora.”
“Well, ask them if there is any place named Earth in the sky—among the stars. Point upward.”
Again an exchange, and finally Pelorat turned and said, “All I can get from them, Golan, is that there are no places in the sky.”
Bliss said, “Ask those robots how old they are; or rather, how long they have been functioning.”
“I don’t know how to say ‘functioning,’ ” said Pelorat, shaking his head. In fact, I’m not sure if I can say ‘how old.’ I’m not a very good interpreter.”
“Do the best you can, Pel dear,” said Bliss.
And after several exchanges, Pelorat said, “They’ve been functioning for twenty-six years.”
“Twenty-six years,” muttered Trevize in disgust. “They’re hardly older than you are, Bliss.”
Bliss said, with sudden pride, “It so happens—”
“I know. You’re Gaia, which is thousands of years old. —In any case, these robots cannot talk about Earth from personal experience, and their memory-banks clearly do not include anything not necessary to their functioning. So they know nothing about astronomy.”
Pelorat said, “There may be other robots somewhere on the planet that are primordial, perhaps.”
“I doubt it,” said Trevize, “but ask them, if you can find the words for it, Janov.”
This time there was quite a long conversation and Pelorat eventually broke it off with a flushed face and a clear air of frustration.
“Golan,” he said, “I don’t understand part of what they’re trying to say, but I gather that the older robots are used for manual labor and don’t know anything. If this robot were a human, I’d say he spoke of the older robots with contempt. These three are house robots, they say, and are not allowed to grow old before being replaced. They’re the ones who really know things—their words, not mine.”
“They don’t know much,” growled Trevize. “At least of the things we want to know.”
“I now regret,” said Pelorat, “that we left Aurora so hurriedly. If we had found a robot survivor there, and we surely would have, since the very first one I encountered still had a spark of life left in it, they would know of Earth through personal memory.”
“Provided their memories were intact, Janov,” said Trevize. “We can always go back there and, if we have to, dog packs or not, we will. —But if these robots are only a couple of decades old, there must be those who manufacture them, and the manufacturers must be human, I should think.” He turned to Bliss. “Are you sure you sensed—”
But she raised a hand to stop him and there was a strained and intent look on her face. “Coming now,” she said, in a low voice.
Trevize turned his face toward the rise and there, first appearing from behind it, and then striding toward them, was the unmistakable figure of a human being. His complexion was pale and his hair light and long, standing out slightly from the sides of his head. His face was grave but quite young in appearance. His bare arms and legs were not particularly musc
led.
The robots stepped aside for him, and he advanced till he stood in their midst.
He then spoke in a clear, pleasant voice and his words, although used archaically, were in Galactic Standard, and easily understood.
“Greetings, wanderers from space,” he said. “What would you with my robots?”
46.
Trevize did not cover himself with glory. He said foolishly, “You speak Galactic?”
The Solarian said, with a grim smile, “And why not, since I am not mute?”
“But these?” Trevize gestured toward the robots.
“These are robots. They speak our language, as I do. But I am Solarian and hear the hyperspatial communications of the worlds beyond so that I have learned your way of speaking, as have my predecessors. My predecessors have left descriptions of the language, but I constantly hear new words and expressions that change with the years, as though you Settlers can settle worlds, but not words. How is it you are surprised at my understanding of your language?”
“I should not have been,” said Trevize. “I apologize. It was just that speaking to the robots, I had not thought to hear Galactic on this world.”
He studied the Solarian. He was wearing a thin white robe, draped loosely over his shoulder, with large openings for his arms. It was open in front, exposing a bare chest and loincloth below. Except for a pair of light sandals, he wore nothing else.
It occurred to Trevize that he could not tell whether the Solarian was male or female. The breasts were male certainly but the chest was hairless and the thin loincloth showed no bulge of any kind.
He turned to Bliss and said in a low voice, “This might still be a robot, but very like a human being in—”
Bliss said, her lips hardly moving, “The mind is that of a human being, not a robot.”
The Solarian said, “Yet you have not answered my original question. I shall excuse the failure and put it down to your surprise. I now ask again and you must not fail a second time. What would you with my robots?”