Foundation and Earth f-7

by Isaac Asimov

  As they rose, they could see the second Solarian ship land and several more approaching. Trevize wondered how many robots Bliss could have handled, and decided they would have been overwhelmed if they had remained on the surface fifteen minutes longer.

  Once out in space (or space enough, with only tenuous wisps of the planetary exosphere around them), Trevize made for the nightside of the planet. It was a hop away, since they had left the surface as sunset was approaching. In the dark, the Far Star would have a chance to cool more rapidly, and there the ship could continue to recede from the surface in a slow spiral.

  Pelorat came out of the room he shared with Bliss. He said, “The child is sleeping normally now. We’ve showed it how to use the toilet and it had no trouble understanding.”

  “That’s not surprising. It must have had similar facilities in the mansion.”

  “I didn’t see any there and I was looking,” said Pelorat feelingly. “We didn’t get back on the ship a moment too soon for me.”

  “Or any of us. But why did we bring that child on board?”

  Pelorat shrugged apologetically. “Bliss wouldn’t let go. It was like saving a life in return for the one she took. She can’t bear—”

  “I know,” said Trevize.

  Pelorat said, “It’s a very oddly shaped child.”

  “Being hermaphroditic, it would have to be,” said Trevize.

  “It has testicles, you know.”

  “It could scarcely do without them.”

  “And what I can only describe as a very small vagina.”

  Trevize made a face. “Disgusting.”

  “Not really, Golan,” said Pelorat, protesting. “It’s adapted to its needs. It only delivers a fertilized egg-cell, or a very tiny embryo, which is then developed under laboratory conditions, tended, I dare say, by robots.”

  “And what happens if their robot-system breaks down? If that happens, they would no longer be able to produce viable young.”

  “Any world would be in serious trouble if its social structure broke down completely.”

  “Not that I would weep uncontrollably over the Solarians.”

  “Well,” said Pelorat, “I admit it doesn’t seem a very attractive world—to us, I mean. But that’s only the people and the social structure, which are not our type at all, dear chap. But subtract the people and the robots, and you have a world which otherwise—”

  “Might fall apart as Aurora is beginning to do,” said Trevize. “How’s Bliss, Janov?”

  “Worn out, I’m afraid. She’s sleeping now. She had a very bad time, Golan.”

  “I didn’t exactly enjoy myself either.”

  Trevize closed his eyes, and decided he could use some sleep himself and would indulge in that relief as soon as he was reasonably certain the Solarians had no space capability—and so far the computer had reported nothing of artifactitious nature in space.

  He thought bitterly of the two Spacer planets they had visited—hostile wild dogs on one—hostile hermaphroditic loners on the other—and in neither place the tiniest hint as to the location of Earth. All they had to show for the double visit was Fallom.

  He opened his eyes. Pelorat was still sitting in place at the other side of the computer, watching him solemnly.

  Trevize said, with sudden conviction, “We should have left that Solarian child behind.”

  Pelorat said, “The poor thing. They would have killed it.”

  “Even so,” said Trevize, “it belonged there. It’s part of that society. Being put to death because of being superfluous is the sort of thing it’s born to.”

  “Oh, my dear fellow, that’s a hardhearted way to look at it.”

  “It’s a rational way. We don’t know how to care for it, and it may suffer more lingeringly with us and die anyway. What does it eat?”

  “Whatever we do, I suppose, old man. Actually, the problem is what do we eat? How much do we have in the way of supplies?”

  “Plenty. Plenty. Even allowing for our new passenger.”

  Pelorat didn’t look overwhelmed with happiness at this remark. He said, “It’s become a pretty monotonous diet. We should have taken some items on board on Comporellon—not that their cooking was excellent.”

  “We couldn’t. We left, if you remember, rather hurriedly, as we left Aurora, and as we left, in particular, Solaria. —But what’s a little monotony? It spoils one’s pleasure, but it keeps one alive.”

  “Would it be possible to pick up fresh supplies if we need to?”

  “Anytime, Janov. With a gravitic ship and hyperspatial engines, the Galaxy is a small place. In days, we can be anywhere. It’s just that half the worlds in the Galaxy are alerted to watch for our ship and I would rather stay out of the way for a time.”

  “I suppose that’s so. —Bander didn’t seem interested in the ship.”

  “It probably wasn’t even consciously aware of it. I suspect that the Solarians long ago gave up space flight. Their prime desire is to be left completely alone and they can scarcely enjoy the security of isolation if they are forever moving about in space and advertising their presence.”

  “What are we going to do next, Golan?”

  Trevize said, “We have a third world to visit.”

  Pelorat shook his head. “Judging from the first two, I don’t expect much from that.”

  “Nor do I at the moment, but just as soon as I get a little sleep, I’m going to get the computer to plot our course to that third world.”

  57.

  Trevize slept considerably longer than he had expected to, but that scarcely mattered. There was neither day nor night, in any natural sense, on board ship, and the circadian rhythm never worked absolutely perfectly. The hours were what they were made to be, and it wasn’t uncommon for Trevize and Pelorat (and particularly Bliss) to be somewhat out-of-sync as far as the natural rhythms of eating and sleeping were concerned.

  Trevize even speculated, in the course of his scrape-down (the importance of conserving water made it advisable to scrape off the suds rather than rinse them off), about sleeping another hour or two, when he turned and found himself staring at Fallom, who was as undressed as he was.

  He could not help jumping back, which, in the restricted area of the Personal, was bound to bring part of his body against something hard. He grunted.

  Fallom was staring curiously at him and was pointing at Trevize’s penis. What it said was incomprehensible but the whole bearing of the child seemed to bespeak a sense of disbelief. For his own peace of mind, Trevize had no choice but to put his hands over his penis.

  Then Fallom said, in its high-pitched voice, “Greetings.”

  Trevize started slightly at the child’s unexpected use of Galactic, but the word had the sound of having been memorized.

  Fallom continued, a painstaking word at a time, “Bliss—say—you—wash—me.”

  “Yes?” said Trevize. He put his hands on Fallom’s shoulders. “You—stay—here.”

  He pointed downward at the floor and Fallom, of course, looked instantly at the place to which the finger pointed. It showed no comprehension of the phrase at all.

  “Don’t move,” said Trevize, holding the child tightly by both arms, pressing them toward the body as though to symbolize immobility. He hastily dried himself and put on his shorts, and over them his trousers.

  He stepped out and roared, “Bliss!”

  It was difficult for anyone to be more than four meters from any one else on the ship and Bliss came to the door of her room at once. She said, smiling, “Are you calling me, Trevize, or was that the soft breeze sighing through the waving grass?”

  “Let’s not be funny, Bliss. What is that?” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder.

  Bliss looked past him and said, “Well, it looks like the young Solarian we brought on board yesterday.”

  “You brought on board. Why do you want me to wash it?”

  “I should think you’d want to. It’s a very bright creature. It’s picking up
Galactic words quickly. It never forgets once I explain something. Of course, I’m helping it do so.”

  “Naturally.”

  “Yes. I keep it calm. I kept it in a daze during most of the disturbing events on the planet. I saw to it that it slept on board ship and I’m trying to divert its mind just a little bit from its lost robot, Jemby, that, apparently, it loved very much.”

  “So that it ends up liking it here, I suppose.”

  “I hope so. It’s adaptable because it’s young, and I encourage that by as much as I dare influence its mind. I’m going to teach it to speak Galactic.”

  “Then you wash it. Understood?”

  Bliss shrugged. “I will, if you insist, but I would want it to feel friendly with each of us. It would be useful to have each of us perform parental functions. Surely you can co-operate in that.”

  “Not to this extent. And when you finish washing it, get rid of it. I want to talk to you.”

  Bliss said, with a sudden edge of hostility, “How do you mean, get rid of it?”

  “I don’t mean dump it through the airlock. I mean, put it in your room. Sit it down in a corner. I want to talk at you.”

  “I’ll be at your service,” she said coldly.

  He stared after her, nursing his wrath for the moment, then moved into the pilot-room, and activated the viewscreen.

  Solaria was a dark circle with a curving crescent of light at the left. Trevize placed his hands on the desk to make contact with the computer and found his anger cooling at once. One had to be calm to link mind and computer effectively and, eventually, conditioned reflex linked handhold and serenity.

  There were no artifactitious objects about the ship in any direction, out as far as the planet itself. The Solarians (or their robots, most likely) could not, or would not, follow.

  Good enough. He might as well get out of the night-shadow, then. If he continued to recede, it would, in any case, vanish as Solaria’s disc grew smaller than that of the more distant, but much larger, sun that it circled.

  He set the computer to move the ship out of the planetary plane as well, since that would make it possible to accelerate with greater safety. They would then more quickly reach a region where space curvature would be low enough to make the Jump secure.

  And, as often on such occasions, he fell to studying the stars. They were almost hypnotic in their quiet changelessness. All their turbulence and instability were wiped out by the distance that left them only dots of light.

  One of those dots might well be the sun about which Earth revolved—the original sun, under whose radiation life began, and under whose beneficence humanity evolved.

  Surely, if the Spacer worlds circled stars that were bright and prominent members of the stellar family, and that were nevertheless unlisted in the computer’s Galactic map, the same might be true of the sun.

  Or was it only the suns of the Spacer worlds that were omitted because of some primeval treaty agreement that left them to themselves? Would Earth’s sun be included in the Galactic map, but not marked off from the myriads of stars that were sunlike, yet had no habitable planet in orbit about itself?

  There were after all, some thirty billion sunlike stars in the Galaxy, and only about one in a thousand had habitable planets in orbits about them. There might be a thousand such habitable planets within a few hundred parsecs of his present position. Should he sift through the sunlike stars one by one, searching for them?

  Or was the original sun not even in this region of the Galaxy? How many other regions were convinced the sun was one of their neighbors, that they were primeval Settlers—?

  He needed information, and so far he had none.

  He doubted strongly whether even the closest examination of the millennial ruins on Aurora would give information concerning Earth’s location. He doubted even more strongly that the Solarians could be made to yield information.

  Then, too, if all information about Earth had vanished out of the great Library at Trantor; if no information about Earth remained in the great Collective Memory of Gaia; there seemed little chance that any information that might have existed on the lost worlds of the Spacers would have been overlooked.

  And if he found Earth’s sun and, then, Earth itself, by the sheerest good fortune—would something force him to be unaware of the fact? Was Earth’s defense absolute? Was its determination to remain in hiding unbreakable?

  What was he looking for anyway?

  Was it Earth? Or was it the flaw in Seldon’s Plan that he thought (for no clear reason) he might find on Earth?

  Seldon’s Plan had been working for five centuries now, and would bring the human species (so it was said) to safe harbor at last in the womb of a Second Galactic Empire, greater than the First, a nobler and a freer one—and yet he, Trevize, had voted against it, and for Galaxia.

  Galaxia would be one large organism, while the Second Galactic Empire would, however great in size and variety, be a mere union of individual organisms of microscopic size in comparison with itself. The Second Galactic Empire would be another example of the kind of union of individuals that humanity had set up ever since it became humanity. The Second Galactic Empire might be the largest and best of the species, but it would still be but one more member of that species.

  For Galaxia, a member of an entirely different species of organization, to be better than the Second Galactic Empire, there must be a flaw in the Plan, something the great Hari Seldon had himself overlooked.

  But if it were something Seldon had overlooked, how could Trevize correct the matter? He was not a mathematician; knew nothing, absolutely nothing, about the details of the Plan; would understand nothing, furthermore, even if it were explained to him.

  All he knew were the assumptions—that a great number of human beings be involved and that they not be aware of the conclusions reached. The first assumption was self-evidently true, considering the vast population of the Galaxy, and the second had to be true since only the Second Foundationers knew the details of the Plan, and they kept it to themselves securely enough.

  That left an added unacknowledge assumption, a taken-for-granted assumption, one so taken for granted it was never mentioned nor thought of—and yet one that might be false. An assumption that, if it were false, would alter the grand conclusion of the Plan and make Galaxia preferable to Empire.

  But if the assumption was so obvious and so taken for granted that it was never even expressed, how could it be false? And if no one ever mentioned it, or thought of it, how could Trevize know it was there, or have any idea of its nature even if he guessed its existence?

  Was he truly Trevize, the man with the flawless intuition—as Gaia insisted? Did he know the right thing to do even when he didn’t know why he was doing it?

  Now he was visiting every Spacer world he knew about. —Was that the right thing to do? Did the Spacer worlds hold the answer? Or at least the beginning of the answer?

  What was there on Aurora but ruins and wild dogs? (And, presumably, other feral creatures. Raging bulls? Overgrown rats? Stalking green-eyed cats?) Solaria was alive, but what was there on it but robots and energy-transducing human beings? What had either world to do with Seldon’s Plan unless they contained the secret of the location of the Earth?

  And if they did, what had Earth to do with Seldon’s Plan? Was this all madness? Had he listened too long and too seriously to the fantasy of his own infallibility?

  An overwhelming weight of shame came over him and seemed to press upon him to the point where he could barely breathe. He looked at the stars—remote, uncaring—and thought: I must be the Great Fool of the Galaxy.

  58.

  Bliss’s voice broke in on him. “Well, Trevize, why do you want to see— Is anything wrong?” Her voice had twisted into sudden concern.

  Trevize looked up and, for a moment, found it momentarily difficult to brush away his mood. He stared at her, then said, “No, no. Nothing’s wrong. I—I was merely lost in thought. Every once in a while, aft
er all, I find myself thinking.”

  He was uneasily aware that Bliss could read his emotions. He had only her word that she was voluntarily abstaining from any oversight of his mind.

  She seemed to accept his statement, however. She said, “Pelorat is with Fallom, teaching it Galactic phrases. The child seems to eat what we do without undue objection. —But what do you want to see me about?”

  “Well, not here,” said Trevize. “The computer doesn’t need me at the moment. If you want to come into my room, the bed’s made and you can sit on it while I sit on the chair. Or vice versa, if you prefer.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” They walked the short distance to Trevize’s room. She eyed him narrowly. “You don’t seem furious anymore.”

  “Checking my mind?”

  “Not at all. Checking your face.”

  “I’m not furious. I may lose my temper momentarily, now and then, but that’s not the same as furious. If you don’t mind, though, there are questions I must ask you.”

  Bliss sat down on Trevize’s bed, holding herself erect, and with a solemn expression on her wide-cheeked face and in her dark brown eyes. Her shoulder-length black hair was neatly arranged and her slim hands were clasped loosely in her lap. There was a faint trace of perfume about her.

  Trevize smiled. “You’ve dolled yourself up. I suspect you think I won’t yell quite so hard at a young and pretty girl.”

  “You can yell and scream all you wish if it will make you feel better. I just don’t want you yelling and screaming at Fallom.”

  “I don’t intend to. In fact, I don’t intend to yell and scream at you. Haven’t we decided to be friends?”

  “Gaia has never had anything but feelings of friendship toward you, Trevize.”

  “I’m not talking about Gaia. I know you’re part of Gaia and that you are Gaia. Still there’s part of you that’s an individual, at least after a fashion. I’m talking to the individual. I’m talking to someone named Bliss without regard—or with as little regard as possible—to Gaia. Haven’t we decided to be friends, Bliss?”