by David Brin
“Now that Jeni is gone, I’d like to hear what Horis came to tell us. Something about all the lovely dirt that our good farmers plant their seeds in, on millions of worlds. That rich soil came from somewhere, didn’t it, Horis? Most planets only had primitive sea life until just before human colonists came. So you’re implying that something was done to create all the beautiful dirt?”
Gornon Vlimt stood up so quickly that his chair toppled.
“You people are disgusting. When I think of the fine thoughts and great art we could discuss, and all you want to talk about is...” He could not bring himself to finish. More than a little tipsy, the eccentric from Ktlina stumbled off, leaving only Maserd, Hari, and Mors Planch to hear Antic’s theory. Even Planch seemed relieved to see Gornon depart.
“Yes!” The Grey Man answered Hari’s question enthusiastically. “Do you remember how I mentioned that over ninety percent of planets with seas and oxygen atmospheres only had primitive types of life on them? Some think it was because they had insufficient mutating radiation to ensure fast evolution. So their continents were mostly bare, except for mosses and ferns and stuff. Not enough complexity to develop the fantastic living skin of soil that a world needs, in order to really thrive
“And yet, twenty-five million settled worlds do have soils! Vast, rich blankets of pulverized stone, mixed with organic material to an average depth of about...” He shook his head. “That doesn’t matter. The point is that something must’ve happened to make these soils. And quite recently!”
“How recently?” Mors Planch asked, his feet propped up on the edge of Biron Maserd’s fine oak table. If he was repulsed by the topic, the dark raider captain hid it well.
“It’s been hard to gather enough data,” Antic demurred. “And official resistance against this research is incredible. Mostly it’s been pursued as a side interest, passed on from one soil man to the next, for the last--”
Planch struck the table with his fist, rattling the glasses.
“How recently!”
Lord Maserd frowned at this kind of behavior in his home. But he nodded. “Please tell us, Horis. Your best estimate.”
The Grey Man took a deep breath.
“Roughly eighteen thousand years. A bit more in Sirius Sector. A bit less as you spread outward from there. The phenomenon swept across the galaxy like a prairie fire, reaching completion in a few dozen centuries, at most.”
“The planet that’s mentioned so often in the old archives,” Planch commented, “Earth, is in Sirius Sector. So this tilling phenomenon of yours matches the pace of human expansion from the original homeworld.”
“A little earlier,” Horis agreed. “Perhaps a few hundred years ahead of the colonizing wave. Among the few of us who thought about it, we wondered if some natural phenomenon might account for this massive effect occurring on millions of planets, virtually all at once. Maybe a galaxy-wide energy wave of unknown origin, perhaps emitted by the core black hole. We guessed that the colonizers were then drawn into the affected areas, by the sudden, accidental availability of all this newly fertile land. But now I see that we had cause and effect reversed!”
Maserd uttered a low oath.
“Now you think it was done on purpose, by those big machines out there.” He glanced toward one of the bulkheads separating them from the vacuum of space. “They did this... moving just in front of the human migration, sent ahead to the next unsuspecting virgin world, where they--”
The nobleman stopped, as if unable to speak the obvious conclusion. So Horis continued.
“Yes, they are the tillers. Those energy projectors they carry, that you all thought must be weapons? They were aimed at planets, all right, focusing energy gathered in huge solar collectors. But this was not for use in war. Rather, they had a much more benign aim of preparing the way for settlers, who were soon to follow.”
“Benign?” Maserd muttered into his drink. “Not if you were one of the unfortunate natives, when such a monster appeared suddenly in your sky!”
Mors Planch chuckled.
“You’re pretty soft-hearted for funguses and ferns, aren’t you, nobleman?”
Maserd started to stand up. Hari raised a hand for peace, before the two could exchange blows.
“My lord Maserd comes from a planet near Rhodia, called Nephelos,” Hari explained. “Where complex, nonstandard animals preexisted, and survived the coming of Earthborn life. I believe right now he’s thinking there must have been many other anomaly worlds. Planets where the mutation rate was big enough to create higher life-forms, leaving the fossils Horis showed us earlier.”
“But those worlds weren’t as lucky as Nephelos,” Maserd growled. “Planets where all the native animals were blasted down to just the right consistency for good dirt farming.”
Hari tried to divert the conversation a bit. “One question, Horis. Doesn’t good soil also need nitrates and organic material?”
“It does, indeed. Some was probably provided by maser-induced reactions in the atmosphere. It then arrived mixed in rain. I suspect subsurface carbon deposits were also tapped, and fed to special kinds of rock-loving plants and bacteria...but all of that would have been easy compared to crushing, tilling, and sifting stone to just the right texture and mineral content for vegetation to dig into.”
Mors Planch objected.
“I’m impressed with this fantastic notion, Antic. But the sheer scale of such an undertaking is just too staggering. Something so epic would be remembered. I don’t care what different causes people attribute our racial amnesia to. The descendants of these workers would sing of the accomplishment forever!”
“Perhaps they still do,” said Biron Maserd, who looked at Han. “Maybe this great deed is still remembered, all the way up to the present, by those who actually did it.”
Hari winced with a realization.
Maserd knows. He’s seen the tilling machines up close. Their lack of any habitats for organic crew. He linked this fact with the archives’ mention of robots. Having never had brain fever, he’s not averse to thinking about mechanical men.
You don’t need psychohistory to conclude that some group of non-organic beings set out from the vicinity of Earth and commenced an aggressive campaign to prepare worlds with just the right conditions for settlement by humans. When shiploads of people arrived at each preconditioned planet, they would find it already seeded with a basic Earthlike ecosystem...and possibly even fields of crops ready to harvest.
Hari recalled Antic’s tale about his ancestor, who perhaps had an encounter with a real alien race. If the story was true, it only happened because the nonhumans dwelled on a world that was too hot to be a candidate for conditioning.
Might there have been others, less fortunate? Native sapients whose villages and farms and cities were transformed into mulch for newcomers from across the stars? Beings who never even got to look in the eyes of the pioneers who displaced them? Farmers who would pierce their shattered bones each time a plow bit the rich black soil?
Hari recalled the meme-entities on Trantor. Computer specialists had dismissed the wild software predators as escaped human sims, gone mad from centuries spent caroming through Trantor’s datasphere. But those digital beings had claimed to be something completely different--remnants left behind by earlier denizens of the galaxy, millions of years older than humanity itself.
One thing was clear. The meme-minds hated robots. Even more than they loathed human beings, they despised Daneel’s kind, blaming them for some past catastrophe.
Could this be what they meant? The Great Tilling Episode?
Olivaw had once said something about a “great shame” that lay buried in robot antiquity. His own faction was not to blame, Daneel declared. Another clique, rooted in Spacer culture, had perpetrated something awful. Something that Hari’s robot friend refused ever to talk about.
No wonder, he thought. One part of him found the whole concept of planetary tilling monstrous, and yet...
And yet, to co
ntemplate the mere possibility of numerous types of alien life-forms made him feel queasy. His equations had enough trouble dealing with human complexity. So many added factors would have made psychohistory virtually intractable.
Hari realized he was drifting again. With a jerk, he noticed that Antic was talking to him.
“What, Horis? Could you repeat it?”
The bureaucrat blew a frustrated sigh.
“I was just saying that the correlation is now even better, between your model and mine. It seems we’ve found one of your missing factors, Professor.”
“Missing factors? Regarding what?”
“Chaos worlds, Seldon,” Mors Planch commented. “Our little Grey Man claims there’s a twenty percent correlation between chaos outbreaks and parts of the galaxy where tilling failed. Where the machines broke down, leaving planets unaltered across several stellar veins, arcs, and spiral lanes.”
Hari blinked, sitting straight up. “You don’t mean it! Twenty percent?”
All other worries were abruptly crowded out. This had direct relevance to psychohistory. To his equations!
“Horis, why didn’t you mention this sooner? We must find out which attribute of untilled worlds contributes to the probability func--”
An ululating scream interrupted Hari, sending all four men rushing to their feet. This was no mere cry of transient pain, but an agonized wail of frustration and ravaged hopes.
Mors Planch and Biron Maserd were already out the door by the time Hari limped after Horis Antic into the passageway. Their surprised shouts echoed from inside the ship’s lounge. Then there was silence.
Horis reached the open portal next, several steps ahead of Hari. The bureaucrat stopped and stared slack-jawed into the room, as if unable to believe what he saw there.
8.
Hyperspace jumps flickered, each one taking her across a segment of the galactic spiral. She was now about halfway between Trantor and the periphery. With every step of the journey, Dors felt positronic potentials grow more tense within her already high-strung brain.
Now I know what you wanted me to perceive, Lodovic.
I can see what I did not see before.
And if I were a real person, I would hate you for it.
As things stood, she repeatedly had to trigger circuit breakers, interrupting autogenerated spirals of simulated anger.
Anger at herself for taking so long to see the obvious.
Anger at Daneel, for not telling her any of this, years ago.
But especially anger at Lodovic, for removing the last serenity in her universe. The serenity of duty.
I was designed and built to serve Hari Seldon. First in the guise of a beloved elderly teacher at his Helicon boarding school, then as an older classmate at university, and finally as his wife, loving and guarding and helping him for decades on Trantor. When I “died” and had to be repaired, I could have joined Hari in some guise, but it wasn’t allowed. Daneel expressed complete satisfaction with every detail of the job I had done, yet he simply reassigned me elsewhere.
I did not get to stay by Hari’s side, in order to be with him at the end. Ever since then I have felt...
She paused, then reemphasized the thought.
I have felt amputated. Cut off
The reason for her malady was both logical and unavoidable.
A robot is not supposed to plumb human emotions this deeply, and yet Daneel designed me to do so. I could not have succeeded at my task otherwise.
Of course she understood Daneel Olivaw’s reasons, the urgency of his haste. With the completion of Hari Seldon’s life’s work, there were now other vital chores and only a small corps of Alpha-level positronic robots to perform them. Daneel’s interest in breeding happy, healthy, mentalic humans was obviously of great importance to some plan for humanity’s ultimate benefit. And so she had dutifully followed orders, concentrating on taking care of Klia and Brann.
But her very success at that assignment meant tedium. A void into which Lodovic Trema had dropped...
Nearby, on a table festooned with wires, the head of R. Giskard Reventlov cast its frozen metal grimace back at her each time she looked its way.
Dors paced the metal deck, going over all she had learned one more time.
The recorded memories are clear. Giskard used his mentalic powers to alter human minds. At first only to save lives. Later, he did it for more subtle benevolent reasons, but he always felt compelled by the First Law, to prevent harm to those humans. Giskard’s motives were forever the purest.
This remained even more true after Daneel Olivaw convinced him to accept the Zeroth Law, and to think foremost of humanity’s long-range good.
She recalled one episode vividly, played back from an ancient memory stored in that grinning head.
Daneel and Giskard had been accompanying Lady Gladia, a prominent Auroran, during a visit to one of the Settler worlds, recently colonized by Earthlings. Giskard was himself partly responsible for the Settlers being there, having years earlier mentally adjusted many Earth politicians to smooth the way for emigration. But something important happened on that special night when the three of them attended a large cultural meeting on Baleyworld.
The crowd started out hostile to Lady Gladia, taunting her. Some shouted threats at the Spacer woman. Giskard worried at first that her feelings might be hurt. Then he fretted that the participants might turn into a hostile mob.
So he changed them.
He reached out mentally and tweaked an emotion here, an impulse there, building positive momentum like an adult pushing a child on a swing. And soon the mood began shifting. Gladia herself deserved some credit for this, delivering a wonderfully effective speech. But to a large extent it was Giskard’s work that converted thousands--and more than a million others watching by hyperwave--into chanting, cheering supporters of the Lady.
In fact, Dors had previously heard stories about that epochal evening...as she already knew the pivotal tale of Giskard’s crucial decision, just a few months later. The fateful moment when a loyal robot chose to unleash a saboteur’s machine, turning Earth’s crust radioactive, helping to destroy its ecosphere and drive its population into space. For their own good.
All the major facts had already been there, but not the color.
Not the details.
And especially not the one crucial element that suddenly became clear to Dors, one day on Smushell, when she abruptly decided to hand her duties over to an assistant, grabbed a ship, and took hurried flight across the galaxy. Ever since then, she had been chewing on the implications, unable to think of anything else.
Daneel and Giskard always had good reasons for everything they did. Or, as Lodovic might put it, convincing rationalizations.
Even when interfering in sovereign human institutions, meddling in legitimate political processes, or taking it on themselves to destroy the birthplace of mankind, they always acted for the ultimate good of humans and humanity, under the First and Zeroth Law, as they saw it.
But there lay the problem.
As they saw it.
Dors could not help imagining that Giskard’s grin was a leer, personally directed at her. She glared back at the head.
You two were completely satisfied to talk all of this out between yourselves, she thought. All of the back-and-forth reasoning about the Zeroth Law. The robo-religious Reformation you and Daneel thus set off Your decisions to alter people’s minds and change the policy of nations, even worlds. You took on all of that responsibility and power without even once bothering to confer with a wise human being.
She stared at Giskard’s head, still astonished by the realization.
Not one.
No professor, philosopher, or spiritual leader. No scientist, pundit, or author-sage.
No expert roboticist, to double-check and diagnose whether Daneel and Giskard just might be short-circuited, or malfunctioning while they cooked up a rationalization that would wind up extinguishing most of the species on Earth.
No one. They simply took it on themselves.
I always assumed that some kind of human volition had to lie somewhere beneath the Zeroth Law, just as the older Three Laws were first decreed by Calvin and her peers. The Zeroth had to be grounded with its roots and origins somehow based on the masters’ will.
It had to be!
To find out that it wasn’t, that no human being even heard of the doctrine until decades after Earth was rendered uninhabitable, struck her to the core.
This revelation wasn’t about logic. The basic arguments that Daneel and Giskard traded with each other so long ago remained valid today.
(In other words, the two of them weren’t malfunctioning--though how could they have been so sure of that, at the time? What right did they have to act without at least checking the possibility?)
No. Logic wasn’t the problem. Anyone with sense could see that the First Law of Robotics must be extended to something broader. The good of humanity at large had to supersede that of individual human beings. The early Calvinians who rejected the Zeroth Law were simply wrong, and Daneel was right.
That was not the discovery upsetting Dors.
It was finding out that Giskard and Daneel had proceeded down this path without consulting any humans at all. Without asking their opinions, or hearing what they might have to say.
For the first time, Dors understood some of the desperate energy and positronic passion with which so many Calvinians resisted Daneel’s cause, during the centuries that followed Earth’s demise--a civil war in which millions of robots were destroyed.
Suddenly, Olivaw’s campaign had to be judged at an entirely different level than deductive reason.
The level of right and wrong.
What arrogance, she thought. What utter conceit and contempt!
The Joan of Arc sim did not share her anger.
“There is nothing new about what Daneel and his friend did, so long ago. Since when have angels ever consulted human beings, when meddling in our fate?”