by Isaac Asimov
She had to trust him. She said, “Well, then, I’ll come with you. These two robots are all I will need.”
Part II-Solaria
5. The Abandoned World
14.
FOR THE FIFTH time in her life, Gladia found herself on a spaceship. She did not remember, offhand, exactly how long ago it had been that she and Santirix had gone together to the world of Euterpe because its rain forests were widely recognized as incomparable, especially under the romantic glow of its bright satellite, Gemstone.
The rain forest had, indeed, been lush and. green, with the trees carefully planted in rank and file and the animal life thoughtfully selected so as to provide color and delight, while avoiding venomous or other unpleasant creatures.
The satellite, fully 150 kilometers in diameter, was close enough to Euterpe to shine like a brilliant dot of sparkling light. It was so close to the planet that one could see it sweep west to east across the sky, outstripping the planet’s slower rotational motion. It brightened as it rose toward zenith and dimmed as it dropped toward the horizon again. One watched it with fascination the first night, with less the second, and with a vague discontent the third – assuming the sky was clear on those nights, which it usually wasn’t.
The native Euterpans, she noted, never looked at it, though they praised it loudly to the tourists, of course.
On the whole, Gladia had enjoyed the hip well enough, but what she remembered most keenly was the joy of her return to Aurora and her decision not to travel again except under dire need. (Come to think of it, it had to be at least eight decades ago.)
For a while, she had lived with the uneasy fear that her husband would insist on another hip, but he never mentioned one. It might well be, she sometimes thought at that time, that he had come to the same decision she had and feared she might be the one to want to travel.
It didn’t make them unusual to avoid hips. Aurorans generally – Spacers generally, for that matter – tended to be stay-at-homes. Their worlds, their establishments, were too comfortable. After all, what pleasure could be greater than that of being taken care of by your own robots, robots who knew your every signal, and, for that matter. knew your ways and desires even without being told.
She stirred uneasily. Was that what D.G. had meant when he spoke of the decadence of a roboticized society?
But now she was back again in space, after all that time. And on an Earth ship, too.
She hadn’t seen much of it, but the little she had glimpsed made her terribly uneasy. It seemed to be nothing but straight lines, sharp angles, and smooth surfaces. Everything that wasn’t stark had been eliminated, apparently. It was as though nothing must exist but functionality. Even though she didn’t know what was exactly functional about any particular object on the ship, she felt it to be all that was required, that nothing was to be allowed to interfere with taking the shortest distance between two points.
On everything Auroran (on everything Spacer, one might almost say, though Aurora was the most advanced in that respect), everything existed in layers. Functionality was at the bottom – one could not entirely rid one’s self of that, except in what was pure ornament – but overlying that there was always something to satisfy the eyes and the senses, generally; and overlying that, something to satisfy the spirit.
How much better that was! – or did it represent such an exuberance of human creativity that Spacers could no longer live with the unadorned Universe – and was that bad? Was the future to belong to these from-here-to-there geometrizers? Or was it just that the Settlers had not yet learned the sweetnesses of life?
But then, if life had so many sweetnesses to it, why had she found so few for herself?
She had nothing really to do on board this ship but to ponder and reponder such questions. This D.G., this Elijah descended barbarian, had put it into her head with his calm assumption that the Spacer worlds were dying, even though he could see~II about him even during the shortest stay on Aurora (surely, he would have to) that it was deeply embedded in wealth and security.
She had tried to escape her own thoughts by staring at the holofilms she had been supplied with and watching, with moderate curiosity, the images flickering and capering on the projection surface, as the adventure story (all were adventure stories) hastened from event to event with little time left for conversation and none for thought – or enjoyment, either. Very like their furniture.
D.G. stepped in when she was in the middle of one of the films, but had stopped really paying attention. She was not caught by surprise. Her robots, who guarded her doorway, signaled his coming in ample time and would not have allowed him to enter if she were not in a position to receive him. Daneel entered with him.
D.G. said, “How are you doing?” Then, as her hand touched a contact and the images faded, shriveled, and were gone, he said, “You don’t have to turn it off. I’ll watch it with you.”
“That’s not necessary,” she said. “I’ve had enough.”
“Are you comfortable?”
“Not entirely. I am – isolated.”
“Sorry! But then, I was isolated on Aurora. They would allow none of my men to come with me.”
“Are you having your revenge?” “Not at all. For one thing, I allowed you two robots of your choice to accompany you. For another, it is not I but my crew who enforce this. They don’t like either Spacers or robots. – but why do you mind? Doesn’t this isolation lessen your fear of infection?”
Gladia’s eyes were haughty, but her voice sounded weary. “I wonder if I haven’t grown too old to fear infection. In many ways, I think I have lived long enough. Then, too, I have my gloves, my nose filters, and – if necessary – my mask. And besides, I doubt that you will trouble to touch me.”
“Nor will anyone else,” said D.G. with a sudden edge of grimness to his voice, as his hand wandered to the object at the right side of his hip.
Her eyes followed the motion. “What is that?” she asked. D.G. smiled and his beard seemed to glitter in the light.
There were occasional reddish hairs among the brown. “A weapon,” he said and drew it. He held it by a molded hilt that bulged above his hand as though the force of his grip were squeezing it upward. In front, facing Gladia, a thin cylinder stretched some fifteen centimeters forward. There was no opening visible.
“Does that kill people?” Gladia extended her hand toward it.
D.G. moved it quickly away. “Never reach for someone’s weapon, my lady. That is worse than bad manners, for any Settler is trained to react violently to such a move and you may be hurt.”
Gladia, eyes wide, withdrew her hand and placed both behind her back. She said, “Don’t threaten harm. Daneel has no sense of humor in that respect. On Aurora, no one is barbarous enough to carry weapons.”
“Well,” said D.G., unmoved by the adjective, “we don’t have robots to protect us. – And this is not a killing device. It is, in some ways, worse. It emits a kind of vibration that stimulates those nerve endings responsible for the sensation of pain. It hurts a good deal worse than anything you can imagine. No one would willingly endure it twice and someone carrying this weapon rarely has to use it. We call it a neuronic whip.”
Gladia frowned. “Disgusting! We have our robots, but they never hurt anyone except in unavoidable emergency – and then minimally.”
D.G. shrugged. “That sounds very civilized, but a bit of pain – a bit of killing, even – is better than the decay of spirit brought about by robots. Besides, a neuronic whip is not intended to kill and your people have weapons on their spaceships that can bring about wholesale death and destruction.”
“That’s because we’ve fought wars early in our history, when our Earth heritage was still strong, but we’ve learned better.”
“You used those weapons on Earth even after you supposedly learned better.”
“That’s –” she began and closed her mouth as though to bite off what she was about to say next.
D.G. nodded. “I kn
ow. You were about to say. ‘That’s different. ‘Think of that, my lady, if you should catch yourself wondering why my crew doesn’t like Spacers. Or why I don’t. – But you are going to be useful to me, my lady, and I won’t let my emotions get in the way.”
“How am I going to be useful to you?”
“You are a Solarian.”
“You keep saying that. More than twenty decades have passed. I don’t know what Solaria is like now. I know nothing about it. What was Baleyworld like twenty decades ago?”
“It didn’t exist twenty decades ago, but Solaria did and I shall gamble that you will remember something useful.”
He stood up, bowed his head briefly in a gesture of politeness that was almost mocking, and was gone.
15.
Gladia maintained a thoughtful and troubled silence for a while and then she said, “He wasn’t at all polite, was he?”
Daneel said, “Madam Gladia, the Settler is clearly under tension. He is heading toward a world on which two ships like his have been destroyed and their crews killed. He is going into great danger, as is his crew.”
“You always defend any human being, Daneel,” said Gladia resentfully. “The danger exists for me, too, and I am not facing it voluntarily, but that does not force me into rudeness.”
Daneel said nothing. Gladia said, “Well, maybe it does. I have been a little rude, haven’t I?”
“I don’t think the Settler minded,” said Daneel. “Might I suggest, madam, that you prepare yourself for bed. It is quite late.”
“Very well. I’ll prepare myself for bed, but I don’t think I feel relaxed enough to sleep, Daneel.”
“Friend Giskard assures me you will, madam, and he is usually right about such things.”
And she did sleep.
16.
Daneel and Giskard stood in the darkness of Gladia’s cabin.
Giskard said, “She will sleep soundly, friend Daneel, and she needs the rest. She faces a dangerous trip.”
“It seemed to me, friend Giskard,” said Daneel, “that you influenced her to agree to go. I presume you had a reason.”
“Friend Daneel, we know so little about the nature of the crisis that is now facing the Galaxy that we cannot safely refuse any action that might increase our knowledge. We must know what is taking place on Solaria and the only way we can do so is to go there – and the only way we can go is for us to arrange for Madam Gladia to go. As for influencing her, that required scarcely a touch. Despite her loud statements to the contrary, she was eager to go. There was an overwhelming desire within her to see Solaria. It was a pain within her that would not cease until she went.”
“Since you say so, it is so, yet I find it puzzling. Had she not frequently made it plain that her life on Solaria was unhappy, that she had completely adopted Aurora and never wished to go back to her original home?”
“Yes, that was there, too. It was quite plainly in her mind. Both emotions, both feelings, existed together and simultaneously. I have observed something of this sort in human minds frequently; two opposite emotions simultaneously present.”
“Such a condition does not seem logical, friend Giskard.”
“I agree and I can only conclude that human beings are not, at all times or in all respects, logical. That must be one reason that it is so difficult to work out the Laws governing human behavior. – In Madam Gladia’s case, I have now and then been aware of this longing for Solaria. Ordinarily, it was well hidden, obscured by the far more intense antipathy she also felt for the world. When the news arrived that Solaria had been abandoned by its people, however, her feelings changed.”
“Why so? What had the abandonment to do with the youthful experiences that led Madam Gladia to her antipathy? Or, having held in restraint her longing for the world during the decades when it was a working society, why should she lose that restraint once it became an abandoned planet and newly long for a world which must now be something utterly strange to her.”
“I cannot explain, friend Daneel, since the more knowledge I gather of the human mind, the more despair I feel at being unable to understand it. It is not an unalloyed advantage to see into that mind and I often envy you the simplicity of behavior control that results from your inability to see below the surface.” Daneel persisted. “Have you guessed an explanation, friend Giskard?”
“I suppose she feels a sorrow for the empty planet. She deserted it twenty decades ago –”
“She was driven out.”
“It seems to her, now, to have been a desertion and I imagine she plays with the painful thought that she had set an example; that if she had not left, no one else would have and the planet would still be populated and happy. Since I cannot read her thoughts, I am only groping backward, perhaps inaccurately, from her emotions.”
“But she could not have set an example, friend Giskard. Since it is twenty decades since she left, there can be no verifiable causal connection between the much earlier event and the much later one.”
“I agree, but human beings sometimes find a kind of pleasure in nursing painful emotions, in blaming themselves without reason or even against reason. – In any case, Madam Gladia felt so sharply the longing to return that I felt it was necessary to release the inhibitory effect that kept her from agreeing to go. It required the merest touch. Yet though I feel it necessary for her to go, since that means she will take us there, I have the uneasy feeling that the disadvantages might, just possibly, be greater than the advantages.”
“In what way, friend Giskard?” “Since the Council was eager to have Madam Gladia accompany the Settler, it may have been for the purpose of having Madam Gladia absent from Aurora during a crucial period when the defeat of Earth and its Settler worlds is being prepared.” Daneel seemed to be considering that statement. At least it was only after a distinct pause that he said, “What purpose would be served, in your opinion, in having Madam Gladia absent?”
“I cannot decide that, friend Daneel. I want your opinion.”
“I have not considered this matter.”
“Consider it now!” If Giskard had been human, the remark would have been an order.
There was an even longer pause and then Daneel said, “Friend Giskard, until the moment that Dr. Mandamus appeared in Madam Gladia’s establishment, she had never shown any concern about international affairs. She was a friend of Dr. Fastolfe and of Elijah Baley, but this friendship was one of personal affection and did not have an ideological basis. Both of them, moreover, are now gone from us. She has an antipathy toward Dr. Amadiro and that is returned, but this is also a personal matter. The antipathy is two centuries old and neither has done anything material about it but have merely each remained stubbornly antipathetic. There can be no reason for Dr. Amadiro – who is now the dominant influence in the Council – to fear Madam Gladia or to go to the trouble of removing her.”
Giskard said, “You overlook the fact that in removing
Madam Gladia, he also removes you and me. He would, perhaps, feel quite certain Madam Gladia would not leave without us, so can it be us he considers dangerous?”
“In the course of our existence, friend Giskard, we have never, in any way, given any appearance of having endangered Dr. Amadiro. What cause has he to fear us? He does not know of your abilities or of how you have made use of them. Why, then, should he take the trouble to remove us, temporarily, from Aurora?”
“Temporarily, friend Daneel? Why do you assume it is a temporary removal he plans? He knows, it may be, more than the Settler does of the trouble on Solaria and knows, also, that the Settler and his crew will be surely destroyed – and Madam Gladia and you and I with them. Perhaps the destruction of the Settler’s ship is his main aim, but he would consider the end of Dr. Fastolfe’s friend and Dr. Fastolfe’s robots to be an added bonus.”
Daneel said, “Surely he would not risk war with the Settler worlds, for that may well come if the Settler’s ship is destroyed and the minute pleasure of having us destroyed, when add
ed in, would not make the risk worthwhile.”
“Is it not possible, friend Daneel, that war is exactly what Dr. Amadiro has in mind; that it involves no risk in his estimation, so that getting rid of us at the same time adds to his pleasure without increasing a risk that does not exist?”
Daneel said calmly, “Friend Giskard, that is not reasonable. In any war fought under present conditions, the Settlers would win. They are better suited, psychologically, to the rigors of war. They are more scattered and can, therefore, more successfully carry on hit-and-run tactics. They have comparatively little to lose in their relatively primitive worlds, while the Spacers have much to lose in their comfortable, highly organized ones. If the Settlers were willing to offer to exchange destruction of one of their worlds for one of the Spacers’, the Spacers would have to surrender at once.”
“But would such a war be fought ‘under present conditions’? What if the Spacers had a new weapon that could be used to defeat the Settlers quickly? Might that not be the very crisis we are now facing?”
“In that case, friend Giskard, the victory could be better and more effectively gained in a surprise attack. Why go to the trouble of instigating a war, which the Settlers might begin by a surprise raid on Spacer worlds that would do considerable damage?”
“Perhaps the Spacers need to test the weapon and the destruction of a series of ships on Solaria represents the testing.”
“The Spacers would have been most uningenious if they could not have found a method of testing that would not give away the new weapon’s existence.”
It was now Giskard’s turn to consider. “Very well, then, friend Daneel, how would you explain this trip we are on? How would you explain the Council’s willingness – even eagerness – to have us accompany the Settler? The Settler said they would order Gladia to go and, in effect, they did.”
“I have not considered the matter, friend Giskard.”