Asimov’s Future History Volume 10

by Isaac Asimov

  Understanding perfectly, she walked over and touched the contact that drew the partition noiselessly across the doorway. They were, to all intents, alone.

  Baley held out his hands. “Gladia!”

  She took them in hers, never even thinking she was ungloved. She said, “Had Daneel stayed with us, he would not have hampered us.”

  “Not physically. He would have psychologically!” Baley smiled sadly and said, “Forgive me, Gladia. I had to speak to Daneel first.”

  “You’ve known him longer,” she said softly. “He takes precedence.”

  “He doesn’t – but he has no defenses. If you are annoyed with me, Gladia, you can punch me in the eye if you want to. Daneel can’t. I can ignore him, order him away, treat him as though he were a robot, and he would be compelled to obey and be the same loyal and uncomplaining partner.”

  “The fact is that he is a robot, Elijah.”

  “Never to me, Gladia. My mind knows he is a robot and has no feelings in the human fashion, but my heart considers him human and I must treat him so. I would ask Dr. Fastolfe to let me take Daneel with me, but no robots are allowed on the new Settler worlds.”

  “Would you dream of taking me with you, Elijah?”

  “No Spacers, either.”

  “It seems you Earthmen are as unreasoningly exclusive as we Spacers are.”

  Elijah nodded glumly. “Madness on both sides. But even if we were sane, I would not take you. You could not stand the life and I’d never be sure that your immune mechanisms would build up properly. I’d be afraid that you would either die quickly of some minor infection or that you would live too long and watch our generations die. – Forgive me, Gladia.”

  “For what, dear Elijah?”

  “For – this.” He put out his hands, palms upward, to either side. “For asking to see you.”

  “But I’m glad you did. I wanted to see you.”

  He said, “I know. I tried not to see you, but the thought of being in space and of not stopping at Aurora tore me apart. And yet it does no good, Gladia. It just means another leave-taking and that will tear me apart, too. It is why I have never written you; why I have never tried to reach you by hyperwave. Surely you must have wondered.”

  “Not really. I agree with you that there was no point. h would merely make it all infinitely harder. Yet I wrote to you many times.”

  “You did? I never received one letter.”

  “I never mailed one letter. Having written them, I destroyed them.”

  “But why?”

  “Because, Elijah, no private letter can be sent from Aurora to Earth without passing through the hands of the censor and I wrote you not one letter that I was willing to let the censors see. Had you sent me a letter, I assure you that not one would have gotten through to me, however innocent it might have been. I thought that was why I never received a letter. Now that I know you weren’t aware of the situation, I am extraordinarily glad that you were not so foolish as to try to remain in touch with me. You would have misunderstood my never answering your letters.”

  Baley stared at her. “How is it I see you now?”

  “Not legally, I assure you. I am using Dr. Fastolfe’s private ship, so I passed by the border guards without being challenged. Had this ship not been Dr. Fastolfe’s, I would have been stopped and sent back. I assumed you understood that, too, and that that was why you were in touch with Dr. Fastolfe and didn’t try to reach me directly.”

  “I understood nothing. I sit here amazed at the double ignorance that kept me safe. Triple ignorance, for I didn’t know the proper hyperwave combination to reach you directly and I couldn’t face the difficulty of trying to find the combination on Earth. I couldn’t have done it privately and there was already sufficient comment allover the Galaxy about you and me, thanks to that foolish hyperwave drama they put on the subwaves after Solaria. Otherwise, I promise you, I would have tried. I had Dr. Fastolfe’s combination, however, and once I was in orbit around Aurora, I contacted him at once.”

  “In any case, we’re here.” She sat down on the side of her bunk and held out her hands.

  Baley took them and tried to sit down on a stool, which he had hitched one foot over, but she drew him insistently toward the bunk and he sat down beside her.

  He said awkwardly, “How is it with you, Gladia?”

  “Quite well. And you, Elijah?”

  “I grow old. I have just celebrated my fiftieth birthday three weeks ago.”

  “Fifty is not –” She stopped.

  “For an Earthman, it’s old. We’re short-lived, you know.”

  “Even for an Earthman, fifty is not old. You haven’t changed.”

  “It’s kind of you to say so, but I can tell where the creaks have multiplied. Gladia –”

  “Yes, Elijah?”

  “I must ask. Have you and Santirix Gremionis –”

  Gladia smiled and nodded. “He is my husband. I took your advice.”

  “And has it worked out well?”

  “Well enough. Life is pleasant.”

  “Good. I hope it lasts.”

  “Nothing lasts for centuries, Elijah, but it could last for years; perhaps even for decades.”

  “Any children?”

  “Not yet. But what about your family, my married man? Your son? Your wife?”

  “Bentley moved out to the Settlements two years ago. In fact, I’ll be joining him. He’s an official on the world I’m heading for. He’s only twenty-four and he’s looked up to already.” Baley’s eyes danced. “I think I’ll have to address him as Your Honor. In public, anyway.”

  “Excellent. And Mrs. Baley? Is she with you?”

  “Jessie? No. She won’t leave Earth. I told her that we would be living in domes for a considerable time, so that it really wouldn’t be so different from Earth. Primitive, of course. Still, she may change her mind in time. I’LL make it as comfortable as possible and once I’ve settled down, I’ll ask Bentley to go to Earth and gather her in. She may be lonely enough by then to be willing to come. We’ll see.”

  “But meanwhile you’re alone.”

  “There are over a hundred other immigrants on the ship, so I’m not really alone.”

  “They are on the other side of the docking wall, however. And I’m alone, too.”

  Baley cast a brief, involuntary look toward the pilot room and Gladia said, “Except for Daneel, of course, who’s on the other side of that door and who is a robot, no matter how intensely you think of him as a person. – and surely you haven’t asked to see me only that we might ask after each other’s families?”

  Baley’s face grew solemn, almost anxious. “I can’t ask you –”

  “Then I ask you. This bunk is not really designed with sexual activity in mind, but you’ll chance the possibility of falling out of it, I hope.”

  Baley said hesitantly, “Gladia, I can’t deny that –”

  “Oh, Elijah, don’t go into a long dissertation in order to satisfy the needs of your Earth morality. I offer myself to you in accord with Auroran custom. It’s your clear right to refuse and I will have no right to question the refusal. – Except that I would question it most forcefully. I have decided that the right to refuse belongs only to Aurorans. I won’t take it from an Earthman.”

  Baley sighed. “I’m no longer an Earthman, Gladia.”

  “I am even less likely to take it from a miserable immigrant heading out for a barbarian planet on which he will have to cower under a dome. – Elijah, we have had so little time, and we have so little time now, and I may never see you again. This meeting is so totally unexpected that it would be a cosmic crime to toss it away.”

  “Gladia, do you really want an old man?”

  “Elijah, do you really want me to beg?”

  “But I’m ashamed.”

  “Then close your eyes.”

  “I mean of myself – of my decrepit body.”

  “Then suffer. Your foolish opinion of yourself has nothing to do with me.” An
d she put her arms about him, even as the seam of her robe fell apart.

  5C.

  Gladia was aware of a number of things, all simultaneously.

  She was aware of the wonder of constancy, for Elijah was as she had remembered him. The lapse of five years had not changed matters. She had not been living in the glow of a memory-intensified glitter. He was Elijah.

  She was aware, also, of a puzzle of difference. Her feeling intensified that Santirix Gremionis, without a single major flaw that she could define, was all flaw. Santirix was affectionate, gentle, rational, reasonably intelligent – and flat. Why he was flat, she could not say, but nothing he did or said could rouse her as Baley did, even when he did and said nothing. Baley was older in years, much older physiologically, not as handsome as Santirix, and what was more, Baley carried with him the indefinable air of decay – of the aura of quick aging and short life that Earthmen must. And yet –

  She was aware of the folly of men, of Elijah approaching her with hesitation, with total unappreciation of his effect on her.

  She was aware of his absence, for he had gone in to speak to Daneel, who was to be last as he was first. Earthmen feared and hated robots and yet Elijah, knowing full well that Daneel was a robot, treated him only as a person. Spacers, on the other hand, who loved robots and were never comfortable in their absence, would never think of them as anything but machines.

  Most of all, she was aware of time. She knew that exactly three hours and twenty-five minutes had elapsed since Elijah had entered Han Fastolfe’s small vessel and she knew further that not much more time could be allowed to elapse.

  The longer she remained off Aurora’s surface and the longer Baley’s ship remained in orbit, the more likely it was that someone would notice – or if the matter had already been noticed, as seemed almost certain, the more likely it would be that someone would become curious and investigate. And then Fastolfe would find himself in an annoying tangle of trouble.

  Baley emerged from the pilot room and looked at Gladia sadly. “I must go now, Gladia.”

  “I know that well.”

  Baley said, “Daneel will take care of you. He will be your friend as well as protector and you must be a friend to him – for my sake. But it is Giskard I want you to listen to. Let him be your adviser.”

  Gladia frowned. “Why Giskard? I’m not sure I like him.”

  “I do not ask you to like him. I ask you to trust him.”

  “But why, Elijah?”

  “I can’t tell you that. In this, you must trust me, too.”

  They looked at each other and said no more. It was as though silence made time stop, allowed them to hold on to the seconds and keep them motionless.

  But it could only work so long. Baley said, “You don’t regret –”

  Gladia whispered, “How could I regret – when I may never see you again?”

  Baley made as though to answer that, but she put her small clenched fist against his mouth.

  “Don’t lie uselessly,” she said. “I may never see you again.”

  And she never did. Never!

  6.

  It was with pain that she felt herself drag across the dead waste of years into the present once more.

  I never did, she thought. Never!

  She had protected herself against the bittersweet for so long and now she had plunged into it – more bitter than sweet – because she had seen this person, this Mandamus – because Giskard has asked her to and because she was compelled to trust Giskard. It was his last request.

  She focused on the present. (How much time had elapsed?)

  Mandamus was looking at her coldly. He said, “From your reaction, Madam Gladia, I gather that it is true. You could not have said so more plainly.”

  “What is true? What are you talking about?”

  “That you saw the Earthman Elijah Baley five years after his visit to Aurora. His ship was in orbit about Aurora; you traveled up to see him and were with him about the time you conceived your son.”

  “What evidence do you have for that?”

  “Madam, it was not totally a secret. The Earthman’s ship was detected in orbit. Fastolfe’s yacht was detected in its flight. It was observed to dock. It was not Fastolfe who was on board the yacht, so the presumption was that it was you. Dr. Fastolfe’s influence was sufficient to keep it off the record.”

  “If it is off the record, there is no evidence.”

  “Nevertheless, Dr. Amadiro has spent the last two thirds of his life following Dr. Fastolfe’s movements with the eyes of detestation. There were always government officials who were heart and soul with Dr. Amadiro’s policy of reserving the Galaxy for the Spacers and they would quietly report to him anything they thought he would like to know. Dr. Amadiro learned of your little escapade almost as soon as it happened. “

  “It is still not evidence. The unsupported word of a minor official currying favor is of no account. Amadiro did nothing because even he knew he had no evidence.”

  “No evidence with which he could charge anyone with even a misdemeanor; no evidence with which he could trouble Fastolfe; but evidence enough to suspect me of being a descendant of Baley’s and to cripple my career therefor.”

  Gladia said bitterly, “You may cease being troubled. My son is the son of Santirix Gremionis, a true Auroran, and it is from this son of Gremionis that you are descended.”

  “Convince me of it, madam. I ask nothing better. Convince me that you fired up into orbit and that you spent hours alone with the Earthman and that, during that time, you talked – politics, perhaps – discussed old times and mutual friends – told funny stories – and never touched each other. Convince me.”

  “What we did, did not matter, so spare me your sarcasm. At the time I saw him, I was already pregnant by my then-husband. I was carrying a three-month-old fetus, an Auroran fetus.”

  “Can you prove that?”

  “Why should I have to prove it? The date of my son’s birth is on record and Amadiro must have the date of my visit to the Earthman.”

  “He was told it at the time, as I said, but nearly twenty decades have passed and he doesn’t remember exactly. The visit is not a matter of record and cannot be referred to. I fear that Dr. Amadiro would prefer to believe that it was nine months before the birth of your son that you were with the Earthman.”

  “Six months.”

  “Prove it.”

  “You have my word.”

  “Insufficient.”

  “Well, then – Daneel, you were with me. When did I see Elijah Baley?”

  “Madam Gladia, it was one hundred and seventy-three days before the birth of your son.”

  Gladia said, “Which is just under six months before the birth.”

  “Insufficient,” said Mandamus.

  Gladia’s chin lifted. “Daneel’s memory is perfect, as can be easily demonstrated, and a robot’s statements pass for evidence in the courts of Aurora.”

  “This is not a matter for the courts and will not be and Daneel’s memory carries no weight with Dr. Amadiro. Daneel was constructed by Fastolfe and was maintained by Fastolfe for nearly two centuries. We cannot say what modifications were introduced or how Daneel might have been instructed to deal with matters relating to Dr. Amadiro.”

  “Then reason it out, man. Earthmen are quite different genetically from us. We are virtually different species. We are not interfertile.”

  “Unproven.”

  “Well, then, genetic records exist. Darrel’s do; Santirix’s do. Compare them. If my ex-husband were not his father, the genetic differences would make that unmistakable.”

  “Genetic records are not for anyone’s eyes. You know that.”

  “Amadiro is not that immersed in ethical considerations. He has the influence to see them illegally. – Or is he afraid of disproving his hypothesis?”

  “Whatever the reason, madam, he will not betray an Auroran’s right to privacy.”

  Gladia said, “Well, then, go to outer s
pace and choke on vacuum. If your Amadiro refuses to be convinced, that is no affair of mine. You, at least, ought to be convinced and it is your job to convince Amadiro in his turn. If you cannot and if your career does not move onward as you would like to have it do, please be assured that this is entirely and intensely no concern of mine.”

  “That does not surprise me. I expect nothing more. And for that matter, I am convinced. I was merely hoping that you would give me some material with which to convince Dr. Amadiro. You haven’t.”

  Gladia shrugged with disdain.

  “I will use other methods, then,” said Mandamus.

  “I’m glad you have them,” Gladia said coldly.

  Mandamus said in a low voice, almost as though he were unaware of the presence of anyone else, “So am I. There are powerful methods remaining to me.”

  “Good. I suggest you try blackmail on Amadiro. He must have much to be blackmailed for.”

  Mandamus looked up, suddenly frowning. “Don’t be a fool.”

  Gladia said, “You may go now. I think I have had all of you I wish to endure. Out of my establishment!”

  Mandamus lifted his arms. “Wait! I told you at the start that there were two reasons for seeing you – one a personal matter and one a matter of state. I have spent too long a time on the first, but I must request five minutes to discuss the second.”

  “I’ll give you no more than five minutes.”

  “There is someone else who wants to see you. An Earthman – or at least a member of one of the Settler worlds, a descendant of Earthpeople.”

  “Tell him,” said Gladia, “that neither Earthpeople nor their Settler descendants are allowed on Aurora and send him away. Why do I have to see him?”

  “Unfortunately, madam, in the last two centuries the balance of power has shifted somewhat. These Earthpeople have more worlds than we have – and have always had a far larger population. They have more ships, even though those are not as advanced as ours, and because of their short lives and their fecundity they are apparently far readier to die than we are.”

  “I don’t believe that last.” Mandamus smiled tightly. “Why not? Eight decades mean less than forty do. In any case, we must treat them politely – far more politely than we ever had to in Elijah Baley’s day. If it is any comfort to you, it is the policies of Fastolfe that have created this situation.”