Robots & Empire

by Robots

  The others laughed, too, and one cried out, "Get her to talk some more, Niss. Maybe we can a learn to talk like Spacer birdies." And he placed one hand on his hip in as dainty a manner as he could manage, while holding the other hand out limply.

  Niss said, still smiling, "Shut up, all of you." There was instant silence.

  He turned to Gladia again, "I'm Berto Niss, First-Class Shipper. And your name, little woman?"

  Gladia did not venture to speak again.

  Niss said, "I'm being polite, little woman. I'm speaking gentlemanly. Spacer-like. I know you're old enough to be my great-grandmother. How old you are you, little woman?"

  "Four hundred," shouted one of the crewmen from behind Niss, "but she doesn't look it!"

  "She doesn't look one hundred," said another.

  "She looks suitable for a little ding-donging, said a third, "and hasn't had any for a long time, I guess. Ask her if she'd want some, Niss. Be polite an4 ask if we -can take turns."

  Gladia flushed angrily and Daneel said, "First-Class

  Shipper Niss, your companions, are offending Madam Gladia. Would you retire?"

  Niss turned to look at Daneel, whom, till now, he had totally ignored. The smile vanished from his face and he said, "Look, you. This little lady is off-limits. The captain said so. We won't bother her. Just a little harmless talk. That thing there is a robot. We won't bother with him and he can't hurt us. We know the Three Laws of Robotics. We order him to stay away from us, see. But you are a Spacer and the captain has give us no orders about you. So you" -he pointed a finger---- "stay out of this and don't interfere or you'll get your pretty skin all bruised up and then you might cry."

  Daneel said nothing.

  Niss nodded his head. "Good. I like to see someone smart enough not to start anything he can't finish."

  He turned to Gladia, "Now, little Spacer woman, we will leave you alone because the captain doesn't want you bothered. If one of the men here made a crude remark, that's only natural. Just shake hands and let's be friends --Spacer, Settler, what's the difference?"

  He thrust out his hand toward Gladia, who shrank away in horror. Daneel's hand moved outward in a flick that was almost too fast to see and, caught Niss's wrist, "First-Class Shipper Niss," he said quietly, "do not attempt to touch the lady.

  Niss looked down at his hand and at the fingers that enclosed his wrist firmly. He said in a low and menacing growl, "You have till the count of three to let go."

  Daneel's hand fell away. He said, "I must do as you say for I do not wish to harm you, but I must protect the lady and if she doesn't wish to be touched, as I believe she doesn't, I may be forced into a position where I must cause you pain. Please, accept my assurance that I will do all I can to minimize that."

  One of the crewmen shouted joyously, "Give it to him, Niss. He's a talker."

  Niss said, "Look, Spacer, twice I told you to keep out and you touched me once. Now I tell you a third time and that's it. Make a move, say a word, and I take you apart. This little woman is going to shake hands, that's all, friendly like. Then we all go. Fair enough?"

  Gladia said in a low choking voice. I won't be touched by him. Do what is necessary"

  Daneel said, "Sir, with all due respect, the lady does not wish to be touched. I must ask you-all of you-to leave."

  Niss smiled and one large arm moved as though to brush Daneel to one side-and to do it hard.

  Daneel's, left arm flickered and once again Niss was held by the wrist. "Please go, Sir, said Daneel.

  Niss's teeth continued to show, but he was no longer smiling. Violently, he brought his arm up. Daneel's enclosing hand moved up for a short distance, slowed, and came to a halt. His face showed no strain. His hand moved down, dragging Niss's arm with it, and then, with a rapid twist, he bent Niss's arm behind the Settler's broad back and held it there.

  Niss, who found himself unexpectedly with his back to Daneel, brought his other arm up over his head, groping for Daneel's neck. His other wrist was seized and pulled down farther than it could easily go and Niss grunted in clear misery.

  The other four crewmen, who had been watching in eager anticipation, remained in place now, motionless, silent, mouths open.

  Niss, staring at them, grunted, "Help me!"

  Daneel said, "They will not help you, sir, for the captain's punishment will be all the worse if they try. I must ask you now to assure me that you will no longer trouble Madam Gladia and that you will leave quietly, all of you. Otherwise, I very much regret, First-Class Shipper, that I must pull your arms out of their sockets."

  As he said that, he tightened his grip on either wrist and Niss emitted a muffled grunt.

  "My apologies, sir," said Daneel, "but I am under the strictest orders. May I have your assurance?"

  Niss kicked backward with sudden viciousness, but well before his -heavy boot could make contact, -Daneel had faded to one side and pulled him off-balance. He went facedown heavily.

  "May I have your assurance, sir?" said Daneel, now pulling gently at the two wrists so that the crewman's arms lifted slightly up from the back.

  Niss howled and said, half-incoherent, "I give in. Let go.

  I Daneel let go at once and stepped back. Slowly and painfully, Niss rolled over, moving his arms slowly and rotating his wrists with a twisted grimace.

  Then, when his right arm moved near the holster he wore, he snatched clumsily at his sidearm.

  Daneel's foot came down on his hand and pinned it to the ground. "Don't do that, sir, or I may be forced to break one or more of the small bones in your hand." He bent down and extracted Niss's blaster from its holster. "Now stand up.

  "Well, Mr. Niss," came another voice. "Do as you are told and stand up."

  D.G. Baley was -standing at their side, beard bristling, face slightly flushed, but his voice was dangerously calm.

  "You four," he said, "hand me your sidearms, one at a time. Come on. Move a little faster. One-two-three-four. Now continue to stand there at attention. Sir," this to Daneel-----"give me that sidearm you are holding. Good. Five. And now, Mr. Niss, at attention." And he placed the blasters on the ground beside him.

  Niss stiffened to attention, eyes bloodshot, face contorted, in obvious pain.

  "Would someone," said D.G., "please say what has been going on?"

  "Captain," said Daneel quickly, "Mr. Niss and I have had a playful altercation. No harm has been done."

  "Mr. Niss, however, looks somewhat harmed, said D. G.

  "No permanent harm, Captain," said Daneel.

  "I see. Well, we'll get back to this later. -Madam." he turned on his heel to address Gladia----"I don't recall that I gave you permission to emerge from the ship. You will go back to your cabin with your two companions at once. I am captain here and this is not Aurora. Do as I say!"

  Daneel placed an apologetic hand on Gladia's elbow. Her chin lifted, but she, turned and went up the gangplank and into the ship, Daneel at her side, Giskard following.

  D.G. then turned to the crewmen. "You five," he said, his voice never lifting from its flat calm, "come with me. We'll get to the bottom of this -or of you." And he gestured to a petty officer to pick up the sidearms and take them away.

  D.G. stared at the five grimly. He was in his own quarters, the only portion of the ship that had a semblance of size to it and the beginnings of an appearance of luxury.

  He said, pointing to each in turn, "Now, this is the way we'll work it. You tell me exactly what happened, word for word, motion for motion. When you're finished, you tell me anything that was wrong or left out. Then you the same, and then you, and then I'll get to you, Niss. I expect that you were all out of order, that you all did something unusually stupid that earned you all, but especially Niss, considerable humiliation. If, in your story, it would appear that you did nothing wrong and suffered no humiliation, then I'll know you're lying, especially as the Spacer woman will surely tell me what happened and I intend to believe every word she says. A lie will make matters w
orse for you than anything you've actually done. Now," he barked, "start!"

  The first crewman stumbled hastily through the story, and then the second, somewhat correcting, somewhat expanding, then the third and the fourth. D.G. listened, stony faced, to the recital, then motioned Berto, Niss to one side.

  He spoke to the other four, "And while Niss was getting his face rightly mashed into the dirt by the Spacer, what were you four doing? Watching? Scared to move? All four of you? Against one man?"

  One of the men broke the thickening silence to say, "It all happened, so quick, Captain. We we're just getting set to move in and then it was all over."

  "And what were you getting ready to do in case you did manage to get to move someday?"

  "Well, we were going to pull the Spacer foreigner off our mate.

  "Do you think you could have?"

  This time no one offered to make a sound.

  D.G. leaned toward them. "Now, here I s the situation. You had no business with the foreigners, so you're fined one week's pay each. And now -let's get something straight. If you tell what has happened to anyone else-in the crew or out, now or ever, whether drunk or sober you'll be broken, every one of you, to apprentice shipper. It doesn't matter which one of you talks, you'll all four be broken, so keep an eye on each other. Now get to your assigned tasks and if you cross me at any time during this voyage, if you as much as hiccup against regulations, you'll be in the brig."

  The four left, mournful, hangdog, tight-lipped. Niss remained, a bruise developing on his face, his arms clearly in discomfort.

  D.G. regarded him with a threatening quiet, while Niss stared to the left, to the right, at his feet, everywhere but at the face of the captain. It was only when Niss's eyes, running out of evasion, caught the glare of the captain that, D.G. said, "Well, you look very handsome, now that you have tangled with a sissy Spacer half your size. Next time you better hide when one of them shows up-"

  "Yes, Captain," said Niss miserably.

  "Did you or did you not, Niss, hear me in my briefing, before we left Aurora, say that the Spacer woman and her companions were on no account to be disturbed or spoken to?"

  "Captain, I wanted only a polite howdy do. We was curious for a closer look. No harm meant."

  "You meant no harm? You I asked how old she was. Was that your business?"

  "Just curious. Wanted to know."

  "One of you made a sexual suggestion."

  "Not me, Captain."

  "Someone else? Did you apologize -for it?"

  "To a Spacer?" Niss sounded horrified,

  "Certainly. You were going against my orders."

  "I meant no harm," said Niss doggedly.

  "You meant no harm to the man?"

  "He put his hand on me, Captain."

  "I know he did. Why?"

  "Because he was ordering me around."

  "And you wouldn't stand for it?"

  "Would you, Captain."

  "All right, then. You didn't stand for it. You fell down for it. Right on your face. How did that happen?"

  "I don't rightly know, Captain. He was fast. Like the camera was sped up. And he had a grip like iron."

  D.G. said, "So he did. What did you expect, you idiot? He is iron."

  "Captain?"

  "Niss, is it possible you don't know the story of Elijah Baley?"

  Niss rubbed his ear in embarrassment. "I know he's your great-something-grandfather, Captain."

  "Yes, everyone knows that from my name. Have, you ever viewed his life story?"

  "I'm not a viewing man, Captain. Not on history." He shrugged and, as he did so, winced and made as though to rub his shoulder, then decided he didn't quite dare do so.

  "Did you ever hear of R. Daneel Olivaw?"

  Niss squeezed his brows together. "He was Eli ah Baley's friend."

  "Yes, he was. You do know something then. Do you know what the 'R' stands for in R. Daneel Olivaw?"

  "It stands for 'Robot,' right? He was a robot friend. There was robots on Earth in them days."

  "There were, Niss, and still are. But Daneel wasn't just a robot. He was a Spacer robot who looked like a Spacer man. Think about it, Niss. Guess who the Spacer man you picked a fight with really was."

  Niss's eyes widened, his face reddened dully. "You mean that Spacer was a ro-"

  "That was R. Daneel Olivaw."

  "But, Captain, that was two hundred years ago."

  "Yes and the Spacer woman was a particular friend of my Ancestor Elijah. She's been alive for two hundred and thirty-three years, incase you still want to know, and do you think a robot can't do as well as that? You were trying to fight a robot, you great fool."

  "Why didn't it say so?" Niss said with great indignation.

  "Why should it? Did you ask? See here, Niss. You heard what I told the others about telling this to anyone. It goes for you, too, but much more so. They are only crewmen, but I had, my eye on you for crew leader. Had my eye, on you. If you're going to be in charge of the crew, you've got to have brains and not just muscle. So now it s going to be harder for you because you're going to have to prove you have brains against my firm opinion that you don't."

  "Captain, I---"

  "Don't talk. Listen. If this story gets out, the other four will be apprentice shippers, but you will be nothing. You will never go on shipboard again. No ship will take you, I promise you that. Not as crew, not as passenger. Ask yourself what kind of money you can make on Baleyworld and doing what? That's if you talk about this, or if you cross the Spacer woman in any way, or even just look at her for more than half a second at a time, or at her two robots. And you are going to have to see to it that no one else among the crew is in the least offensive. You're responsible. And you're fined two week's pay."

  "But, Captain," said Niss weakly, "the others-"

  "I expected less from the others, Niss, so I fined them less. Get out of here.

  D. G. played idly with the photocube that always stood on his desk. Each time he turned it, it blackened, then cleared when stood upon one of its sides as its base. When it cleared, the smiling three-dimensional image of a woman's head could be seen. -

  Crew rumor was that each -of the six sides lead to the appearance of a different woman. The rumor was quite correct.

  Jamin Oser watched the flashing appearance and disappearance of images totally without interest. Now that the ship was secured-or as secured as it could be against attack of any expected variety-it was time to think of the next step.

  D.G., however, was approaching the matter obliquely - or, perhaps, not approaching it at all. He said, "It was the woman's fault, of course."

  Oser shrugged and passed his hand over his beard, as though he were reassuring himself that he, at least, was not a woman. Unlike D.G., Oser had his upper lip luxuriantly covered as well.

  D.G. said, "Apparently, being on the planet of her birth removed any thought of discretion. She, left the ship, even though I, had asked her not to."

  "You might have ordered her not to."

  "I don't know that that would have helped. She's a spoiled aristocrat, used to having her own way and to ordering her robots about. Besides, I plan to use her and I want her cooperation, not her pouting. And again-she was the Ancestor's friend. "

  "And still alive," said Oser, shaking his head. "It makes the skin crawl. An old, old woman."

  "I know, but she looks quite young. Still attractive. And nose in the air. Wouldn't retire when the crewmen approached, wouldn't shake hands with one of them. -----Well, it's over."

  "Still, Captain, was it the right thing to tell Niss he had tackled a robot?"

  "Had to! Had to, Oser. If he thought he'd been beaten and humiliated before four of his mates by an effeminate Spacer half his size, he'd be useless to us forever. It would have broken him completely. And we don't want anything to happen that will start the rumor that Spacers -that human Spacers -are supermen. That's why I had to order them so strenuously not to talk about it. Niss will ride herd on a
ll of them-and if it does get out, it will Also get out that the Spacer was a robot. -But I suppose there was a good side to the whole thing."

  "Where, Captain?" asked Oser.

  "It got me to thinking about robots. How much do we know about them? How much do you know?"

  Oser shrugged. "Captain, it's not something I think about much."

  "Or something anyone else thinks about, either. At least, any Settler. We know that the Spacers, have robots, depend on them, go nowhere without them, can't do a thing without them, are parasites on them, and we're sure they're fading away because of them. We know that Earth once had robots forced on them by the Spacers and that they are gradually disappearing from Earth and are, not found at all in Earth Cities, only in the countryside. We know that the Settler worlds don't and won't have them anywhere-town or country. So Settlers never meet them on their own worlds and hardly ever on Earth." (His voice had a curious inflection each time he said "Earth," as though one could hear the capital, as though one could hear the words "home" and mother" whispered behind it.) "What else do we know?"