Robots & Empire

by Robots

  It was poisonous. She had gone to the trouble of making Vasilia Aliena her legal name and of using it on all documents, in all interviews, in all dealings of any kind-and yet she knew for a fact that most people thought of her as Vasilia Fastolfe. It was as though nothing could wipe out that thoroughly meaningless relationship, so that she was reduced to having to be content with being addressed by her first name only. It-was, at least, an uncommon name.

  And that, too, seemed to emphasize her mirror-image relationship with the Solarian woman who, for thoroughly independent reasons, had denied her first husband as Vasilia had denied her father. The Solarian woman, too, could not live with the early surnames fastened upon her and ended with a first name only-Gladia.

  Vasilia and Gladia, misfits, deniers- They even resembled each other.

  Vasilia stole a look at the mirror hanging in her spaceship cabin. She had not seen Gladia in many decades, but she was sure that the resemblance remained. They were both small and slim. Both were blond and their faces were somewhat alike.

  But it was Vasilia who always, lost and Gladia who always won. When Vasilia had left her father and had struck him from her life, he had found Gladia instead-and she was the pliant and passive daughter he wanted, the daughter that Vasilia could never be.

  Nevertheless, it embittered Vasilia. She herself was a roboticist; as competent and as skillful, at last, as ever Fastolfe had been, while Gladia was merely an artist, who amused herself with force-field coloring and with the illusions of robotic clothing. How could Fastolfe have been satisfied to lose the one and gain, in her place, nothing more than the other?

  And when that policeman from Earth, Elijah Baley, had come to Aurora, he had bullied Vasilia into revealing far more of her thoughts and feelings than she had ever granted anyone else. He was, however, softness itself to Gladia and had helped her-and her protector, Fastolfe-win out against all the odds, though to this day Vasilia had not been able to understand clearly how that had happened.

  It was Gladia who had been at Fastolfe's bedside during the final illness, who had held his hand to the end, and who had heard his last words. Why Vasilia should resent that, she didn't know, for she herself would, under no circumstances, have acknowledged the old man's existence to the extent of visiting him to witness his passage into nonexistence in an absolute, rather than a subjective sense-and yet she raged against Gladia's presence.

  It's the way I feel, she told herself defiantly, and I owe no one an explanation.

  And she had lost Giskard. Giskard had been her robot, Vasilia's own robot when she had been a young girl, the robot granted her by a then seemingly fond father. It was Giskard through whom she had learned robotics and from whom she had felt the first genuine affection. She had not as a child, speculated on the Three Laws or dealt with the philosophy of positronic automatism. Giskard had seemed affectionate, he had acted as though he were affectionate, and that was enough for a child. She had never found such affection in any human being-certainly not her father.

  To this day, she had yet to be weak enough to play the foolish love game with anyone. Her bitterness over her loss of Giskard had taught her that any initial gain was not worth the final deprivation.

  When she had left home, disowning her father, he would not let Giskard go with her, even though she herself had improved Giskard immeasurably in the course of her careful reprogramming of him. And when her father had died, he had left Giskard to the Solarian woman. He had also left her Paneel, but Vasilia cared nothing for that pale imitation of a man. She wanted Giskard, who was her own.

  Vasilia was on her way back to Solaria now. Her tour was quite done. In fact, as far as usefulness was concerned, it had been essentially over months ago. But she had remained on Hesperos for a needed rest, as she had explained in her official notice to the Institute.

  Now, however, Fastolfe was dead and she could return. And while she could not undo the past entirely, she could undo part of it. Giskard must be hers again.

  She was determined on that.

  Amadiro was quite ambivalent in his response to Vasilia's return. She had not come back until old Fastolfe (he could say the name to himself quite easily now that he was dead) was a month in his um. That flattered his opinion of his own understanding. After all, he had told Mandamus her motive had been that of remaining away from Aurora till her father died.

  Then, too, Vasilia was comfortably transparent. She lacked the exasperating quality of Mandamus, his new favorite, who always seemed to have yet another unexpressed thought tucked away -no matter how thoroughly he seemed to have discharged the contents of his mind.

  On the other hand, she was irritatingly hard to control the least likely to go quietly along the path he indicated. Leave it to her to probe the otherworld Spacers to the bone during the years she had spent away from Aurora-but then leave it also to her to interpret it all in dark and riddling words.

  So he greeted her with an enthusiasm that was somewhere between feigned and unfeigned.

  "Vasilia, I'm so happy to have you back. The Institute flies on one wing when you're gone."

  Vasilia laughed. "Come, Kelden"- she alone had no hesitation or inhibition in using his given name, though she was two and a half decades younger than he-----"that one remaining wing is yours and how long has it been now since you ceased being perfectly certain that your one wing was sufficient?"

  "Since you decided to stretch out your absence to years. Do you find Aurora much changed in the interval?"

  "Not a bit- which ought perhaps to be a concern of ours. Changelessness is decay."

  "A paradox. There is no decay without a change for the worse."

  "Changelessness is a change for the worse, Kelden, in comparison to the surrounding Settler worlds. They change rapidly, extending their control into more numerous worlds and over each individual world more thoroughly. They increase their strength and power and self-assurance, while we sit here dreaming and find our unchanging might diminishing steadily in comparison."

  "Beautiful, Vasilia! I think you memorized that carefully on your flight here. However, there, has been a change in the political situation on Aurora."

  "You mean my biological father is dead."

  Amadiro spread his arms with a little "bow of his head. "As you say. He was largely responsible for our paralysis and he is gone, so I imagine there will now be change, though it may not necessarily be visible change."

  "You keep secrets from me, do you?"

  "Would I do that?"

  "Certainly. That false smile of yours gives you away every time."

  "Then I must learn to be grave with you. --Come, I have your report. Tell me what is not included in it."

  "Allis included in it-almost. Each, Spacer world states vehemently that it is disturbed by growing Settler arrogance. Each is firmly determined to resist the Settlers to the end, enthusiastically following the Auroran lead with vigor and death-defying gallantry.

  "Follow our lead, yes. And if we don't lead?"

  "Then they'll wait and try to mask their relief that we are not leading. Otherwise-Well, each one is engaged in technological advance and each one is reluctant to reveal what it is, exactly, that it is doing. Each is working independently and is not even unified within its own globe. There is not a single research team anywhere on any of the Spacer worlds that resembles our own Robotics Institute. Each world consists of individual researchers, each of whom diligently guards his own data from all the rest."

  Amadiro was almost complacent as he said, "I would not expect them to have advanced as far as we have."

  "Too bad they haven't," replied Vasilia, tartly. "With all the Spacer worlds a jumble of individuals, progress is too slow. The Settler worlds meet regularly at conventions, have their institutes-and though they lag well behind us, they will catch up.----Still, I've managed to uncover a few technological advances being worked on by the Spacer worlds and I have them all listed in my report., They are all working on I the nuclear intensifier, for instance, b
ut I don't believe that such a device has passed beyond the laboratory demonstration level on a single world. Something that would be practical on shipboard is not yet here."

  "I hope you are right in that, Vasilia. The nuclear intensifier is a weapon our fleets could use, for it would finish the Settlers at once. However, I think, on the whole, it would be better if Aurora had the weapon ahead of our Spacer brothers. -But you said that all was included in your report-almost. I heard that 'almost.' What is not included, then?"

  "Solaria!"

  "Ah, the youngest and most peculiar of the Spacer worlds."

  "I got almost nothing directly out of them. They viewed me with absolute hostility as, I believe, they would have viewed any non-Solarian, whether Spacer or Settler. And when I say 'viewed,' I mean that in their sense. I remained nearly a year on the world, a considerably longer time than I spent on any other world, and in all those months I never saw a single Solarian face-to-face. In every case, I viewed him-or her-by hyperwave hologram. I could never deal with anything tangible-images only. The world was comfortable, incredibly luxurious, in fact, and for a nature lover, totally unspoiled, but how I missed seeing."

  "Well, viewing is a Solarian custom.- We all know that, Vasilia. Live and let live."

  "Humph," said Vasilia. "Your tolerance may be misplaced. Are your robots in the nonrepeat mode?"

  "Yes, they are. And I assure you we are not being eavesdropped upon."

  "I hope not, Kelden. -I am under the distinct impression that the Solarians are closer to developing a miniaturized nuclear intensifier than any other world-than we are. They may be close to making one that's portable and that's possessed of a power consumption small enough to make it practical for space vessels."

  Amadiro frowned deeply. "How do they manage that?"

  "I cannot say. You don't suppose they showed me blueprints, do you? My impressions are so inchoate I dared not put them in the report, but from small things I heard here or observed there-I think they are making important progress. This is something we should think about carefully."

  "We will. -Is there anything else you would like to tell me?"

  "Yes-and also not in the report. Solaria has been working toward humanoid robots for many decades and I think they have achieved that goal. No other Spacer would outside of ourselves, of course-has even attempted the matter. When I asked, on each world, what they were doing with respect to humanoid robots, the reaction was uniform. They found the very concept unpleasant and horrifying. I suspect they all noticed our failure and took it to heart."

  "But not Solaria? Why not?"

  "For one thing, they, have always lived in the most extremely robotized society in the Galaxy. They're surrounded by robots-ten thousand per individual. The world is saturated with--them. If you were to wander through it aimlessly, searching for humans, you would find nothing. So why should the few Solarians, living in such a world, be upset by the thought of a few more robots just because they're humaniform? Then, too, that pseudo-human wretch that Fastolfe designed and built and that still exists--."

  "Daneel," said Amadiro.

  "Yes, that one. He--it was on Solaria twenty decades ago and the Solarians treated it as human. They have never recovered from that. Even if they had no use for humaniforms, they were humiliated at having been deceived. It was an unforgettable demonstration that Aurora was -far ahead of them in that one facet of robotics, at any rate. The Solarians take inordinate pride in being the most advanced roboticists in the Galaxy and, ever since, individual Solarians have been working on humaniforms-if for no other reason than to wipe out that disgrace. If they had had greater numbers or an institute that could coordinate their work, they would undoubtedly have come up with some long, ago. As it is, I think they have them now."

  "You don't really know, do you? This is just suspicion based on scraps of data here and there."

  "Exactly right, but it's a fairly strong suspicion and it merits further investigation. -And a third point. I could swear they were working on telepathic communication. There was some equipment that I was incautiously allowed to see. And once when I had one of their roboticists on view the hyperwave screen showed a blackboard with a positronic pattern matrix that was like nothing I ever remember seeing, yet it seemed to me that pattern might fit a telepathic program

  "I suspect, Vasilia, that this item is woven of even airier gossamer than the bit about the humanoid robots."

  A look of mild embarrassment crossed Vasilia's face. "I must admit you're probably right there."

  "In fact, Vasilia, it sounds like mere fantasy. If the pattern matrix you saw was like nothing you remember ever having seen before, how could you think it would fit, anything?"

  Vasilia hesitated. "To tell you the truth, I've been wondering about that myself. Yet when I saw the pattern, the word 'telepathy' occurred to me at once."

  "Even though telepathy is impossible, even in theory."

  "It is thought to be impossible, even in theory. That is not quite the same thing."

  "No one has ever been able to make any progress toward it."

  "Yes, but why should I have looked at that pattern and thought 'telepathy'?"

  "Ah well, Vasilia, there may be a, personal psychoquirk there that is useless to try to analyze. I'd forget it."

  "Anything else?"

  "One more thing-and the most puzzling of all. I gathered the impression, Kelden, from one little indication or another, that the Solarians, are planning to leave their planet."

  "I don't know. Their population, small as it is, is declining further. Perhaps they want to make a new start elsewhere before they die out altogether."

  "What kind of new start? Where would they go?"

  Vasilia shook her head. "I have told you all I know."

  Amadiro said slowly, "Well, then, I will take all this into account. Four things: nuclear intensifier, humanoid robots telepathic robots, and abandoning the planet. Frankly, I have no faith in any of the four, but I'll persuade the Council to authorize talks with the Solarian regent. -And now, Vasilia, I believe you could use a rest, so why not take a few weeks off and grow accustomed to the Auroran sun and fine weather before getting back to work?"

  "That is kind of you, Kelden," said Vasilia- remaining firmly seated, "but there remain two items I must bring up."

  Involuntarily, Amadiro's eyes sought the time strip. "This won't take up very much time, will it, Vasilia?"

  "However much time it takes, Kelden, is what it will take up.

  "What is it you want then?"

  "To begin with, who is this young know-it-all who seems to think he is running, the Institute, this what's-his-name, Mandamus?"

  "You've met him, have you?" said Amadiro, his smile masking a certain uneasiness. "You see, things do change on Aurora."

  "Certainly not for the better in this case," said Vasilia grimly. "Who is he?"

  "He is exactly what you have described-a know-it-all. He is a brilliant young man, bright enough in robotics, but, just as knowledgeable in general physics" in chemistry, in planetology----."

  "And how old is this monster of erudition?"

  "Not quite five decades."

  "And what will this child be when he grows up?"

  "Wise as well as brilliant, perhaps."

  "Don't pretend to mistake my meaning, Kelden. Are you thinking of grooming him as the next head of the Institute?"

  "I intend to live for a good many decades yet."

  "That is no answer."

  "It is the only answer I have."

  Vasilia shifted in her seat restlessly and her robot, standing behind her, sent his eyes from side to side as though preparing to ward off an attack-pushed into that mode of behavior, perhaps, by Vasilia's uneasiness.

  Vasilia said, "Kelden, I am to be the next head. That is settled. You have told me so."

  "I have, but in actual fact, Vasilia, once I die, the Board of Directors will make the choice. Even if I leave behind me a directive as to who the next head will be, th
e Board can reverse me. That much is clear in the terms of incorporation that founded the Institute."

  "You just write your directive, Kelden, and I will take care of the Board of Directors."

  And Amadiro, the space between his eyebrows furrowing said, "This is not something I will discuss any further at this moment. What is the other item you want to bring up? Please make it brief."

  She stared at him in silent anger for a moment, then said, seeming to bite off the word, "Giskard!"

  "The robot?"

  "Of course the robot. Do you know any other Giskard that I am likely to be talking about?"

  "Well, what of him?"

  "He is mine."

  Amadiro looked surprised. "He is-or was-the legal property of Fastolfe."