Robots & Empire
Page 4
He said, "I have a message for you, Gladia."
"A pleasant one, I hope," she said politely.
He had brought Daneel with him. It was a sign of the healing of old wounds that she could look at Daneel with honest affection and no pain at all, even though he was a copy of her dead Jander in all but the most insignificant detail. She could talk to him, though he answered in what was almost Jander's voice. Five years had skinned over the ulcer and deadened the pain.
"I hope so," said Fastolfe, smiling gently. "It's from an old friend."
"It's so nice that I have old friends," she said, trying not to be sardonic.
"From Elijah Baley."
The five years vanished and she felt the stab and pang of returning memory.
"Is he well?" she asked in a half-strangled voice after a full minute of stunned silence.
"Quite well. What is even more important, he is near."
"Near? On Aurora?"
"In orbit about Aurora. He knows he can receive no permission to land, even if I were to use my full influence, or I imagine he does. He would like to see you, Gladia. He had made contact with me because he feel's that I can arrange to have you visit his ship. I suppose I can manage that much-but only if you wish it. Do you wish it?"
"I don't now. This is too sudden for thought."
"Or even impulse?" He waited, then he said, "Truthfully, Gladia, how are you getting along with Santirix?"
She looked at him wildly, as though not understanding the reason for the change of subject-then understanding. She said, "We get along well together."
"Are you happy?"
"I am-not unhappy."
"That doesn't sound like ecstasy."
"How long can ecstasy last, even if it were ecstasy?"
"Do you plan to have children someday?"
"Yes," she said.
"Are you planning a change in marital status?"
She shook her head firmly. "Not yet."
"Then, my dear Gladia, if you want advice from a rather tired man, who feels uncomfortably old-refuse the invitation. I remember what little you told me after Baley had left Aurora and, to tell you the truth, I was able to deduce more from that than you perhaps think. If you see him, you may find it all disappointing, not living up to the deepening and mellowing glow of reminiscence; or, if it is not disappointing, worse yet, for it will disrupt a perhaps rather fragile contentment, which you will then not be able to repair.
Gladia, who had been vaguely thinking precisely that, found the proposition needed only to be placed into words to be rejected.
She said, "No, Han, I must see him, but I'm afraid to, do it alone. Would you come with me?"
Fastolfe smiled wearily. "I was not invited, Gladia. And if I were, I would in any case be forced to refuse. There is an important vote coming up in the Council. Affairs of state, you know, from which I can't absent myself."
"Poor Han!"
"Yes, indeed, poor me. But you can't go alone. As far as I know, you can't pilot a ship."
"Oh! Well, I thought I'd be taken up by----"
"Commercial carrier?" Fastolfe shook his head. "Quite impossible. For you- to visit and board an Earth ship in orbit openly, as would be unavoidable if you used commercial carrier, would require special permission and that would take weeks. If you don't want to go, Gladia, you needn't put it on the basis of not wishing to see him. If the paperwork and red tape involved would take weeks, I'm sure he can't wait that long."
"But I do want to see him," said Gladia, now determined.
"In that case, you can take my private space vessel and Daneel can take you up there. He can handle the controls very well indeed and he is as anxious to see Baley as you are. We just won't report the trip."
"But you'll get into trouble, Han."
"Perhaps no one will find out-or they'll pretend not to find out. And if anyone makes trouble, I will just have to handle it.
Gladia's head bowed in a moment of thought and then she said, "If you don't mind, I will be selfish and chance your having trouble, Han. I want to go."
"Then you'll go."
It was a small ship, smaller than Gladia had imagined; cozy in a way, but frightening in another way. It was small enough, after all, to lack any provision for pseudo-gravity and the sensation of weightlessness, while constantly nudging at her to indulge in amusing gymnastics, just as constantly reminded her that she was in an abnormal environment.
She was a Spacer. There were over five billion Spacers spread over fifty worlds, all of them proud of the name. Yet how many of those who called themselves Spacers were really space travelers? Very few. Perhaps eighty percent of them never left the world of their birth. Even of the remaining twenty percent, hardly any passed through space more than two or three times.
Certainly, she-herself was no Spacer in the literal sense of the word, she thought gloomily. Once (once!) she had traveled through space and that was from Solaria to Aurora seven years before. Now she was entering space a second time on a small private space yacht for a short trip just beyond the atmosphere, a paltry hundred thousand kilometers, with one other person-not even a person-for company.
She cast another glance at Daneel in the small pilot room. She could just see a portion of him, where he sat at the controls.
She had never been anywhere with only one robot within call. There had always been hundreds -thousands -at her disposal on Solaria. On Aurora, there were routinely dozens, if not scores
Here there was but one.
She said, "Daneel!"
He did not allow his attention to wander from the controls. "Yes, Madam Gladia?"
"Are you pleased that you will be seeing Elijah Baley again.
"I am not certain, Madam Gladia, how best to describe my inner state. It may be that it is analogous to what a human being would describe as being pleased."
"But you must feel something."
"I feel as though I can make decisions more rapidly than I can ordinarily; my responses seem to come more easily; my movements seem to require less energy. I might interpret it generally as a sensation of well-being. At least I have heard human beings use that word and feel that what it is intended to describe is something that is analogous to the sensations I now experience."
Gladia said, "But what if I were to say I wanted to see him alone?"
"Then that would be arranged."
"Even though that meant you wouldn't see him?"
"Yes, madam."
"Wouldn't you then feel disappointed? I mean, wouldn't you have a sensation that was the opposite of wellbeing?
Your decisions would come less rapidly, your responses less easily, your movements would require more energy and so on."
"No, Madam Gladia, for I would have a feeling of well being at fulfilling your orders."
"Your own pleasant feeling is Third Law, and fulfilling my orders is Second Law, and Second Law takes precedence. Is that it?"
"Yes, madam."
Gladia struggled against her own curiosity. It would never have occurred to her to question an ordinary robot in this matter. A robot is a machine. But she couldn't think of Daneel as a machine, just as five years before she had been unable to think of Jander as a machine. But with, Jander that had been only the burning of passion-and that had gone with Jander himself. For all his similarity to the other, Daneel could not set the ashes alight again. With him, there was room for intellectual curiosity.
"Doesn't it bother you, Daneel," she asked, "to be so bound by the Laws?"
"I cannot imagine anything else, madam."
"All my life I have been bound to the pull of gravity, even during my one previous trip on a spaceship, but I can imagine not being bound by, it. And here I am, in fact, not bound by it."
"And do you enjoy it, madam?"
"In a way, yes."
"Does it make you uneasy?"
"In a way, that too."
"Sometimes, madam, when I think that human beings are not bound by Laws, it makes me uneasy."
Daneel was silent for a moment. He said, "I have, madam, but I do not think I would wonder about such things but for my brief associations with, Partner Elijah. He had a way
"Yes, I know," she said. "He wondered about everything. He had a restlessness about him that drove him on to ask questions at all times in all directions."
"So it seemed. And I would try to be like him and ask questions. So I asked myself what Lawlessness might be like and I found I couldn't imagine what it might be like except that it might be like being human and that made me feel uneasy. And I asked myself, as you asked me, why it made me feel uneasy."
"And what did you answer yourself?"
Daneel said, "After a long time, I decided that the Three Laws govern the manner in which my positronic pathways behave. At all times, under all stimuli" the Laws constrain the direction and intensity of positronic flow along those pathways so that I always know what to do. Yet the level of knowledge of what to do is not always the same. There are times when my doing-as-l-must is under less constraint than at other times. I have always noticed that the lower the positronornotive potential, then the further removed from certainty is my decision as to which action to take. And the further removed from certainty I am, the nearer I am to ill being. To decide an action in a millisecond rather than a nanosecond produces a sensation I would not wish to be prolonged.
"What then, I thought to myself, madam, if I were utterly without Laws, as humans are? What if I could make no clear decision on what response to make to some given set of conditions? It would be unbearable and I do not willingly think of it.
Gladia said, "Yet you do, Daneel. You are thinking of it now."
"Only because of my association with Partner Elijah, madam. I observed him under conditions when he was unable, for a time, to decide on an action because of the puzzling nature of the problems that had been set him. He was clearly in a state of ill-being as a result and I felt ill-being on his behalf because there was nothing I could do that would ease
It is possible that I only, grasped at the situation for him. A very small part of what it was he felt then. If I had grasped a larger part and better understood the, consequences of his inability to decide on action, I might have. He hesitated.
"Ceased functioning? Been inactivated?" said Gladia, thinking briefly and painfully of Jander.
"Yes, madam. My failure to understand may been an in built protection device against damage to my positronic brain. But then, I noted that no matter how painful Partner Elijah found his indecision to be, he continued to make an effort to solve his problem. I admired him greatly for that."
"You are capable of admiration then, are you?"
Daneel said solemnly, "I use the word as I have heard human beings use it. I do not know the proper word to express the response within me elicited by Partner Elijah's actions of this sort."
Gladia nodded, then said, "And yet there are rules that govern human reactions, too certain instincts, drives, teachings."
"So friend Giskard thinks, madam."
"Does he now?"
"But he finds them too complicated to analyze. He wonders if there might someday be developed a system of analyzing human behavior in mathematical detail and of deriving-from that-cogent Laws that would express the rules of that behavior."
"I doubt it," said Gladia.
"Nor is friend Giskard sanguine. He thinks it will be a very long time before such a system is developed."
"A very long time, I should say."
"And now," said Daneel, "we are approaching the Earth ship and we must carry through the docking procedure, which is not simple."
It seemed to Gladia that it took longer to dock than to move into the Earth ship's orbit in the first place,
Daneel remained calm throughout-but, then, he could not do otherwise-and assured her that all human ships could dock with each other regardless of difference in size and make.
"Like human beings," said Gladia, forcing a smile, but Daneel made no response to that. He concentrated on the delicate adjustments that had to, be made. Docking was always possible, perhaps, but not always easy, it would appear.
Gladia grew uneasier by the moment. Earthmen were short-lived and aged quickly. Five years had passed since she had seen Elijah. By how much would he have aged? How would, he appear? Would she be able to keep from looking shocked or horrified at the change?
Whatever his appearance, he would still be the Elijah to whom her gratitude could know no bounds.
Was that what it was? Gratitude?
She noticed that her hands were tightly entwined with each other, so that her arms were aching. It was only with an effort that she could force them to relax.
She knew when docking was completed. The Earth ship was large enough to have a pseudo-gravitation field generator and, at the moment of docking, the field expanded to include the small yacht. There was a slight rotational effect as the direction toward the floor suddenly became "down" and Gladia experienced a sickening drop of two inches, Her knees bent under the impact in lopsided fashion and she fell against the wall.
She straightened with a little difficulty and was annoyed with herself for not having anticipated the change and been ready for it.
Daneel said unnecessarily, "We have docked, Madam Gladia. Partner Elijah asks permission to come aboard."
"Of course, Daneel."
There was a whirring sound and a portion of the wall swirled into dilation. A crouching figure moved through and the wall tightened and contracted behind it.
The figure straightened and Gladia whispered, "Elijah!" and felt overwhelmed with gladness and relief. It seemed to her that his hair was grayer, but otherwise it was Elijah. There was no other, noticeable change, no marked aging after all.
He smiled at her and, for a moment, seemed to devour her with his eyes. Then he lifted one forefinger, as though to say, "Wait," and walked toward Daneel.
"Daneel!" He seized the robot's shoulders and shook him.
"You haven't changed. Jehoshaphat! You're the constant in all our lives."
"Partner Elijah. It is good to see you."
"It is good to hear myself called partner again and I wish that were so. This is the fifth time I have seen you, but the first time that I do not have a problem to solve. I am not even a plainclothesman any longer. I have resigned and I am now an immigrant to one of the new worlds. -Tell me, Daneel, why didn't you come with Dr. Fastolfe when he visited Earth three years ago?"
"That was Dr. Fastolfe's decision. He decided to take Giskard."
"I was disappointed, Daneel."
"It would have been pleasant for me to see you, Partner Elijah, but Dr. Fastolfe told me afterward that the trip had been highly successful, so that perhaps his decision was the correct one."
"It was successful, Daneel. Before the visit, the Earth government was reluctant to cooperate in the Settlement procedure, but now the whole planet -is pulsing and heaving and, by the million, people are anxious to go. We don't have the ships to accommodate them all-even with Auroran help-and we don't have the worlds to receive them all, for every world must be adjusted. Not one will accommodate a human community unchanged. The one I'm going to is low in free oxygen and we're going to have to live in domed towns for a generation while Earth-type vegetation spreads over the planet. " His eyes were turning more and more often to Gladia as she sat there smiling.
Daneel said, "It is to be expected. From what I have learned of human history, the Spacer worlds also went through a period of terraforming."
"They certainly did! And thanks to that experience, the process can be carried through more rapidly now. -But I wonder if you would remain in the pilot room for a while, Daneel. I must speak to Gladia."
"Certainly, Partner Elijah."
Daneel stepped through the arched doorway that led into the pilot room and Baley looked at Gladia in a questioni
ng way and made a sideways motion with his hand.
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."