by Isaac Asimov
“By Gaian standards I am not remarkable, either in years or in appearance of years, Trev. – But come, have we eaten?”
Pelorat looked down at his plate, on which perceptible remnants of a most unremarkable and indifferently prepared meal remained, and said in a diffident manner, “Dom, may I attempt to ask an embarrassing question? Of course, if it’s offensive, you will please say so, and I will withdraw it.”
“Go ahead,” said Dom, smiling. “I am anxious to explain to you anything about Gaia which arouses your curiosity.”
“Why?” said Trevize at once.
“Because you are honored guests – May I have Pel’s question?”
Pelorat said, “Since all things on Gaia share in the group consciousness, how is it that you – one element of the group – can eat this, which was clearly another element?”
“True! But all things recycle. We must eat and everything we can eat, plant as well as animal – even the inanimate seasonings – are part of Gaia. But, then, you see, nothing is killed for pleasure or sport, nothing is killed with unnecessary pain. And I’m afraid we make no attempt to glorify our meal preparations, for no Gaian would eat except that one must. You did not enjoy this meal, Pel? Trev? Well, meals are not to enjoy.
“Then, too, what is eaten remains, after all, part of the planetary consciousness. Insofar as portions of it are incorporated into my body, it will participate in a larger share of the total consciousness. When I die, I, too, will be eaten – even if only by decay bacteria – and I will then participate in a far smaller share of the total. But someday, parts of me will be parts of other human beings, parts of many.”
Pelorat said, “A sort of transmigration of souls.”
“Of what, Pel?”
“I speak of an old myth that is current on some worlds.”
“Ah, I don’t know of it. You must tell me on some occasion.”
Trevize said, “But your individual consciousness – whatever it is about you that is Dom – will never fully reassemble.”
“No, of course not. But does that matter? I will still be part of Gaia and that is what counts. There are mystics among us who wonder if we should take measures to develop group memories of past existences, but the sense-of-Gaia is that this cannot be done in any practical way and would serve no useful purpose. It would merely blur present consciousness. – Of course, as conditions change, the sense-of-Gaia may change, too, but I find no chance of that in the foreseeable future.”
“Why must you die, Dom?” asked Trevize. “Look at you in your nineties. Could not the group consciousness –”
For the first time, Dom frowned. “Never,” he said. “I can contribute only so much. Each new individual is a reshuffling of molecules and genes into something new. New talents, new abilities, new contributions to Gaia. We must have them – and the only way we can is to make room. I have done more than most, but even I have my limit and it is approaching. There is no more desire to live past one’s time than to die before it.”
And then, as if realizing he had lent a suddenly somber note to the evening, he rose and stretched his arms out to the two. “Come, Trev – Pel – let us move into my studio where I can show you some of my personal art objects. You won’t blame an old man for his little vanities, I hope.”
He led the way into another room where, on a small circular table, there were a group of smoky lenses connected in pairs.
“These,” said Dom, “are Participations I have designed. I am not one of the masters, but I specialize in inanimates, which few of the masters bother with.”
Pelorat said, “May I pick one up? Are they fragile?”
“No no. Bounce them on the floor if you like. – Or perhaps you had better not. Concussion could dull the sharpness of the vision.”
“How are they used, Dom?”
“You put them over your eyes. They’ll cling. They do not transmit light. Quite the contrary. They obscure light that might otherwise distract you – though the sensations do reach your brain by way of the optic nerve. Essentially your consciousness is sharpened and is allowed to participate in other facets of Gaia. In other words, if you look at that wall, you will experience that wall as it appears to itself.”
“Fascinating,” muttered Pelorat. “may I try that?”
“Certainly, Pel. You may take one at random. Each is a different construct that shows the wall – or any other inanimate object you look at – in a different aspect of the object’s consciousness.”
Pelorat placed one pair over his eyes and they clung there at once. He started at the touch and then remained motionless for a long time.
Dom said, “When you are through, place your hands on either side of the Participation and press them toward each other. It will come right off.”
Pelorat did so, blinked his eyes rapidly, then rubbed them.
Dom said, “What did you experience?”
Pelorat said, “It’s hard to describe. The wall seemed to twinkle and glisten and, at times, it seemed to turn fluid. It seemed to have ribs and changing symmetries. I – I’m sorry, Dom, but I did not find it attractive.”
Dom sighed. “You do not participate in Gaia, so you would not see what we see. I had rather feared that. Too bad! I assure you that although these Participations are enjoyed primarily for their aesthetic value, they have their practical uses, too. A happy wall is a long-lived wall, a practical wall, a useful wall.”
“A happy wall?” said Trevize, smiling slightly.
Dom said, “There is a dim sensation that a wall experiences that is analogous to what ‘happy’ means to us. A wall is happy when it is well designed, when it rests firmly on its foundation, when its symmetry balances its parts and produces no unpleasant stresses. Good design can be worked out on the mathematical principles of mechanics, but the use of a proper Participation can fine tune it down to virtually atomic dimensions. No sculptor can possibly produce a first-class work of art here on Gaia without a well-crafted Participation and the ones I produce of this particular type are considered excellent – if I do say so myself.
“Animate Participations, which are not my field,” and Dom was going on with the kind of excitement one expects in someone riding his hobby, “give us, by analogy, a direct experience of ecological balance. The ecological balance on Gaia is rather simple, as it is on all worlds, but here, at least, we have the hope of making it more complex and thus enriching the total consciousness enormously.”
Trevize held up his hand in order to forestall Pelorat and wave him into silence. He said, “How do you know that a planet can bear a more complex ecological balance if they all have simple ones?”
“Ah,” said Dom, his eyes twinkling shrewdly, “you are testing the old man. You know as well as I do that the original home of humanity, Earth, had an enormously complex ecological balance. It is only the secondary worlds – the derived worlds – that are simple.”
Pelorat would not be kept silent. “But that is the problem I have set myself in life. Why was it only Earth that bore a complex ecology? What distinguished it from other worlds? Why did millions upon millions of other worlds in the Galaxy – worlds that were capable of bearing life – develop only an undistinguished vegetation, together with small and unintelligent animal life-forms?”
Dom said, “We have a tale about that – a fable, perhaps. I cannot vouch for its authenticity. In fact, on the face of it, it sounds like fiction.”
It was at this point that Bliss – who had not participated in the meal – entered, smiling at Pelorat. She was wearing a silvery blouse, very sheer.
Pelorat rose at once. “I thought you had left us.”
“Not at all. I had reports to make out, work to do. May I join you now, Dom?”
Dom had also risen (though Trevize remained seated). “You are entirely welcome and you ravish these aged eyes.”
“It is for your ravishment that I put on this blouse. Pel is above such things and Trev dislikes them.”
Pelorat said, “If you th
ink I am above such things, Bliss, I may surprise you someday.”
“What a delightful surprise that would be,” Bliss said, and sat down. The two men did as well. “Please don’t let me interrupt you.”
Dom said, “I was about to tell our guests the story of Eternity. – To understand it, you must first understand that there are many different Universes that can exist – virtually an infinite number. Every single event that takes place can take place or not take place, or can take place in this fashion or in that fashion, and each of an enormous number of alternatives will result in a future course of events that are distinct to at least some degree.
“Bliss might not have come in just now; or she might have been with us a little earlier; or much earlier; or having come in now, she might have worn a different blouse; or even in this blouse, she might not have smiled roguishly at elderly men as is her kindhearted custom. In each of these alternatives – or in each of a very large number of other alternatives of this one event – the Universe would have taken a different track thereafter, and so on for every other variation of every other event, however minor.”
Trevize stirred restlessly. “I believe this is a common speculation in quantum mechanics – a very ancient one, in fact.”
“Ah, you’ve heard of it. But let us go on. Imagine it is possible for human beings to freeze all the infinite number of Universes, to step from one to another at will, and to choose which one should be made ‘real’ – whatever that word means in this connection.”
Trevize said, “I hear your words and can even imagine the concept you describe, but I cannot make myself believe that anything like this could ever happen.” –
“Nor I, on the whole,” said Dom, “which is why I say that it would all seem to be a fable. Nevertheless, the fable states that there were those who could step out of time and examine the endless strands of potential reality. These people were called the Eternals and when they were out of time they were said to be in Eternity.
“It was their task to choose a Reality that would be most suitable to humanity. They modified endlessly – and the story goes into great detail, for I must tell you that it has been written in the form of an epic of inordinate length. Eventually they found (so it is said) a Universe in which Earth was the only planet in the entire Galaxy on which could be found a complex ecological system, together with the development of an intelligent species capable of working out a high technology.
“That, they decided, was the situation in which humanity could be most secure. They froze that strand of events as Reality and then ceased operations. Now we live in a Galaxy that has been settled by human beings only, and, to a large extent, by the plants, animals, and microscopic life that they carry with them – voluntarily or inadvertently – from planet to planet and which usually overwhelm the indigenous life.
“Somewhere in the dim mists of probability there are other Realities in which the Galaxy is host to many intelligences, but they are unreachable. We in our Reality are alone. From every action and every event in our Reality, there are new branches that set off, with only one in each separate case being a continuation of Reality, so that there are vast numbers of potential Universes – perhaps an infinite number – stemming from ours, but all of them are presumably alike in containing the one-intelligence Galaxy in which we live. – Or perhaps I should say that all but a vanishingly small percentage are alike in this way, for it is dangerous to rule out anything where the possibilities approach the infinite.”
He stopped, shrugged slightly, and added, “At least, that’s the story. It dates back to before the founding of Gaia. I don’t vouch for its truth.”
The three others had listened intently. Bliss nodded her head, as though it were something she had heard before and she were checking the accuracy of Dom’s account.
Pelorat reacted with a silent solemnity for the better part of a minute and then balled his fist and brought it down upon the arm of his chair.
“No,” he said is a strangled tone, “that affects nothing. There’s no way of demonstrating the truth of the story by observation or by reason, so it can’t ever be anything but a piece of speculation, but aside from that – Suppose it’s true! The Universe we live in is still one in which only Earth has developed a rich life and an intelligent species, so that in this Universe – whether it is the all-in-all or only one out of an infinite number of possibilities – there must be something unique in the nature of the planet Earth. We should still want to know what that uniqueness is.”
In the silence that followed, it was Trevize who finally stirred and shook his head.
“No, Janov,” he said, “that’s not the way it works. Let us say that the chances are one in a billion trillion – one in 1021 – that out of the billion of habitable planets in the Galaxy only Earth – through the workings of sheer chance – would happen to develop a rich ecology and, eventually, intelligence. If that is so, then one in 1021 of the various strands of potential Realities would represent such a Galaxy and the Eternals picked it. We live, therefore, in a Universe in which Earth is the only planet to develop a complex ecology, an intelligent species, a high technology – not because there is something special about Earth, but because simply by chance it developed on Earth and nowhere else.
“I suppose, in fact,” Trevize went on thoughtfully, “that there are strands of Reality in which only Gaia has developed an intelligent species, or only Sayshell, or only Terminus, or only some plane which in this Reality happens to bear no life at all. And all of these very special cases are a vanishingly small percentage of the total number of Realities in which there is more than one intelligent species in the Galaxy. – I suppose that if the Eternals had looked long enough they would have found a potential strand of Reality in which every single habitable planet had developed an intelligent species.”
Pelorat said, “Might you not also argue that a Reality had been found in which Earth was for some reason not as it was in other strands, but specially suited in some way for the development of intelligence? In fact, you can go further and say that a Reality had been found in which the whole Galaxy was not as it was in other strands, but was somehow in such a state of development that only Earth could produce intelligence.”
Trevize said, “You might argue so, but I would suppose that my version makes more sense.”
“That’s a purely subjective decision, of course –” began Pelorat with some heat, but Dom interrupted, saying “This is logic-chopping. Come, let us not spoil what is proving, at least for me, a pleasant and leisurely evening.”
Pelorat endeavored to relax and to allow his heat to drain away. He smiled finally and said, “As you say, Dom.”
Trevize, who had been casting glances at Bliss, who sat with mocking demurity, hands in her lap, now said, “And how did this world come to be, Dom? Gaia, with its group consciousness?”
Dom’s old head leaned back and he laughed in a high-pitched manner. His face crinkled as he said, “Fables again! I think about that sometimes, when I read what records we have on human history. No matter how carefully records are kept and filed and computerized, they grow fuzzy with time. Stories grow by accretion. Tales accumulate – like dust. The longer the time lapse, the dustier the history – until it degenerates into fables.”
Pelorat said, “We historians are familiar with the process, Dom. There is a certain preference for the fable. ‘The falsely dramatic drives out the truly dull,’ said Liebel Gennerat about fifteen centuries ago. It’s called Gennerat’s Law now.”
“Is it?” said Dom. “And I thought the notion was a cynical invention of my own. Well, Gennerat’s Law fills our past history with glamour and uncertainty. – Do you know what a robot is?”
“We found out on Sayshell,” said Trevize dryly.
“You saw one?”
“No. We were asked the question and, when we answered in the negative, it was explained to us.”
“I understand. – Humanity once lived with robots, you know, but it didn’
t work well.”
“So we were told.”
“The robots were deeply indoctrinated with what are called the Three Laws of Robotics, which date back into prehistory. There are several versions of what those Three Laws might have been. The orthodox view has the following reading: ’1) A robot may not harm a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm; a) A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law;~) A robot must protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.’
“As robots grew more intelligent and versatile, they interpreted these Laws, especially the all-overriding First, more and more generously and assumed, to a greater and greater degree, the role of protector of humanity. The protection stifled people and grew unbearable.
“The robots were entirely kind. Their labors were clearly humane and were meant entirely for the benefit of all – which somehow made them all the more unbearable.
“Every robotic advance made the situation worse. Robots were developed with telepathic capacity, but that meant that even human thought could be monitored, so that human behavior became still more dependent on robotic oversight.
“Again robots grew steadily more like human beings in appearance, but they were unmistakably robots in behavior and being humanoid made them more repulsive. So, of course, it had to come to an end.”
“Why ‘of course’?” asked Pelorat, who had been listening intently.
Dom said, “It’s a matter of following the logic to the bitter end. Eventually the robots grew advanced enough to become just sufficiently human to appreciate why human beings should resent being deprived of everything human in the name of their own good. In the long run, the robots were forced to decide that humanity might be better off caring for themselves, however carelessly and ineffectively.
“Therefore, it is said, it was the robots who established Eternity somehow and became the Eternals. They located a Reality in which they felt that human beings could be as secure as possible – alone in the Galaxy. Then, having done what they could to guard us and in order to fulfill the First Law in the truest sense, the robots of their own accord ceased to function and ever since we have been human beings – advancing, however we can, alone.”