Robots and Empire trs-4

by Isaac Asimov

  Daneel said, “Can you see his image in my mind? That is surprising, friend Giskard.”

  “I do not see him, friend Daneel. I cannot receive your thoughts. But I can sense emotions and mood—and your mind has a texture which, by past experience, I know to be associated with Elijah Baley.”

  “Madam Gladia made mention of the fact that I was the last to see Partner Elijah alive, so I listen again, in memory, to that moment. I think again of what he said.”

  “Why, friend Daneel?”

  “I search for the meaning. I feel it was important.”

  “How could what he said have meaning beyond the import of the words? Had there been hidden meaning, Elijah Baley would have expressed it.”

  “Perhaps,” said Daneel slowly, “Partner Elijah did not himself understand the significance of what he was saying.”

  10. AFTER THE SPEECH

  42

  Memory!

  It lay in Daneel’s mind like a closed book of infinite detail, always available for his use. Some passages were called upon frequently for their information, but only a very few were called upon merely because Daneel wished to feel their texture. Those very few were, for the most part, those that contained Elijah Baley.

  Many decades ago, Daneel had come to Baleyworld while Elijah Baley was still alive. Madam Gladia had come with him, but after they entered into orbit about Baleyworld, Bentley Baley soared upward in his small ship to meet them and was brought aboard. By then, he was a rather gnarled man of middle age.

  He looked at Gladia with faintly hostile eyes and said, “You cannot see him, madam.”

  And Gladia, who had been weeping, said, “Why not?”

  “He does not wish it, madam, and I must respect his wishes.”

  “I cannot believe that, Mr. Baley.”

  “I have a handwritten note and I have a voice recording, madam. I do not know if you can recognize his handwriting or his voice, but you have my word of honor these are his and that no untoward influence was used upon him to produce—”

  She went into her own cabin to read and listen alone. Then she emerged—with an air of defeat about her—but she managed to say firmly, “Daneel, you are to go down alone to see him. It is his wish. But you are to report to me everything that is done and said.”

  “Yes, madam,” Daneel said.

  Daneel went down, in Bentley’s ship and Bentley said to him, “Robots are not allowed on this world, Daneel, but an exception is being made in your case because it is my father’s wish and because he is highly revered here. I have no personal animus against you, you understand, but your presence here must be an entirely limited one. You will be taken directly to my father. When he is done with you, you will be taken back into orbit at once. Do you understand?”

  “I understand, sir. How is your father?”

  “He is dying,” Bentley said with perhaps conscious brutality.

  “I understand that, too,” said Daneel, his voice quivering noticeably, not out of ordinary emotion but because the consciousness of the death of a human being, however unavoidable, disordered his positronic brain paths. “I mean, how much longer before he must die?”

  “He should have died some time ago. He is tied to life because he refuses to go, until he sees you.”

  They landed. It was a large world, but the inhabited portion—if this were all—was small and shabby. It was a cloudy day and it had rained recently. The wide, straight streets were empty, as though what population existed there was in no mood to assemble in order to stare at a robot.

  The ground-car took them through the emptiness and brought them to a house somewhat larger and more impressive than most. Together they entered. At an inner door, Bentley halted.

  “My father is in there,” he said sadly. “You are to go in alone. He will not have me there with you. Go in. You might not recognize him.”

  Daneel went into the gloom of the room. His eyes adjusted rapidly and he was aware of a body covered by a sheet inside a transparent cocoon that was made visible only by its faint glitter. The light within the room brightened a bit and Daneel could then see the face clearly.

  Bentley had been right. Daneel saw nothing of his old partner in it. It was gaunt and bony. The eyes were closed and it seemed to Daneel that what he saw was a dead body. He had never seen a dead human being and when this thought struck him, he staggered and it seemed to him that his legs would not hold him up.

  But the old-man’s eyes opened and Daneel recovered his equilibrium, though he continued to feel an unaccustomed weakness just the same.

  The eyes looked at him and a small, faint smile curved the pale, cracked lips.

  “Daneel. My old friend Daneel.”

  There was the faint timbre of Elijah Baley’s remembered voice in that whispered sound. An arm emerged slowly from under the sheet and it seemed to Daneel that he recognized Elijah after all.

  “Partner Elijah,” he said softly.

  “Thank you—thank you for coming.”

  “It was important for me to come, Partner Elijah.”

  “I was afraid they might not allow it. They—the others—even my son—think of you as a robot.”

  “I am a robot.”

  “Not to me, Daneel. You haven’t changed, have you? I don’t see you clearly, but it seems to me you are exactly the same as I remember. When did I last see you? Twenty-nine years ago?”

  “Yes—and in all that time, Partner Elijah, I have not changed, so you see, I am a robot.”

  “I have changed, though, and a great deal. I should not have let you see me like this, but I was too weak to resist my desire to see you once again.” Baley’s voice seemed to have grown a bit stronger, as though it had been fortified by the sight of Daneel.

  “I am pleased to see you, Partner Elijah, however you have changed.”

  “And Lady Gladia? How is she?”

  “She is well. She came with me.”

  “She is not—” A touch of painful alarm came into his voice as he tried to look about.

  “She is not on this world, but is still in orbit. It was explained to her that you did not wish to see her—and she understood.”

  “That is wrong. I do wish to see her, but I have been able to withstand that temptation. She has not changed, has she?”

  “She still has the appearance she had when you last saw her.

  “Good.—But I couldn’t let her see me like this. I could not have this be her last memory of me. With you, it is different.”

  “That is because I am a robot, Partner Elijah.”

  “Stop insisting on that, “ said the dying man peevishly. “You could not mean more to me, Daneel, if you were a man.”

  He lay silently in his bed for a while, then he said, “All these years, I have never hypervised, never written to her. I could not allow myself to interfere with her life.—Is Gladia still married to Gremionis?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And happy?”

  “I cannot judge that. She does not behave in a fashion that might be interpreted as unhappy.”

  “Children?”

  “The permitted two.”

  “She has not been angry that I have not communicated?”

  “It is my belief she understood your motives.”

  “Does she ever—mention me?”

  “Almost never, but it is Giskard’s opinion that she often thinks of you.”

  “How is Giskard?”

  “He functions properly—in the manner that you know.”

  “You know, then—of his abilities.”

  “He has told me, Partner Elijah.”

  Again Baley lay there silently. Then he stiffed and said, “Daneel, I wanted you here out of a selfish desire to see you, to see for myself that you haven’t changed, that there is a breath of the great days of my life still existing, that you remember me and will continue to remember me.—But I also want to tell you something.

  “I will be dead soon, Daneel, and I knew the word would reach you. Even if
you weren’t here, even if you were on Aurora, the word would come to you. My death will be Galactic news.” His chest heaved in a weak and silent laugh. “Who would have thought it once?”

  He said, “Gladia would hear of it as well, of course, but Gladia knows I must die and she will accept the fact, how ever sadly. “I feared the effect on you, however, since you are—as you insist and I deny—a robot. For old time’s sake you may feel it is incumbent upon you to keep me from dying and the fact that you cannot do so may perhaps have a permanently deleterious effect on you. Let me, then, argue with you about that.”

  Baley’s voice was growing weaker. Though Daneel sat motionless, his face was in the unusual condition of reflecting emotion. It was set in an expression of concern and sorrow. Baley’s eyes were closed and he could not see that.

  “My death, Daneel,” he said, “is not important. No individual death among human beings is important. Someone who dies leaves his work behind and that does not entirely die. It never entirely dies as long as humanity exists.—Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  Daneel said, “Yes, Partner Elijah.”

  “The work of each individual contributes to a totality and so becomes an undying part of the totality. That totality of human lives—past and present and to come—forms a tapestry that has been in existence now for many tens of thousands of years and has been growing more elaborate and, on the whole, more beautiful in all that time. Even the Spacers are an offshoot of the tapestry and they, too, add to the elaborateness and beauty of the pattern. An individual life is one thread in the tapestry and what is one thread compared to the whole?

  “Daneel, keep your mind fixed firmly on the tapestry and do not let the trailing off of a single thread affect you. There are so many other threads, each valuable, each contributing—!”

  Baley stopped speaking, but Daneel waited patiently.

  Baley’s eyes opened and, looking at Daneel, he frowned slightly.

  “You are still here? It is time for you to go. I have told you what I meant to tell you.”

  “I do not wish to go, Partner Elijah.”

  “You must. I cannot hold off death any longer. I am tired—desperately tired. I want to die. It is time.”

  “May I not wait while you live?”

  “I don’t wish it. If I die while you watch, it may affect you badly despite all my words. Go now. That is an order. I will allow you to be a robot if you wish but, in that case, you must follow my orders. You cannot save my life by anything you can do, so there is nothing to come ahead of Second Law. Go!”

  Baley’s finger pointed feebly and he said, “Good-bye, friend Daneel.”

  Daneel turned slowly, following Baley’s orders with unprecedented difficulty “Good-bye, Partner—” He paused and then said, with a faint hoarseness, “Good-bye, friend Elijah.”

  Bentley confronted Daneel in the next room. “Is he still alive?”

  “He was alive when I left.”

  Bentley went in and came out almost at once. “He isn’t now. He saw you and then—let go.”

  Daneel found he had to lean against the wall. It was some time before he could stand upright.

  Bentley, eyes averted, waited and—then together they returned to the small ship and moved back up into orbit where Gladia waited.

  And she, too, asked if Elijah Baley was still-alive and when they told her gently that he was not, she turned away, dry-eyed, and went into her own cabin to weep.

  43

  Daneel continued his thought as though the sharp memory of Baley’s death in all its details had not momentarily intervened. “And yet I may understand something more of what Partner Elijah was saying now in the light of Madam Gladia’s speech.

  “In what way?”

  “I am not yet sure. It is very difficult to think in the direction—I am trying to think.”

  “I will wait for as long as is necessary,” said Giskard.

  44

  Genovus Pandaral was tall and not, as yet, very old for all his thick shock of white hair which, together with his fluffy white sideburns, gave him a look of dignity and distinction. His general air of looking like a leader had helped his advancement through the ranks, but as he himself knew very well, his appearance was much stronger than his inner fiber.

  Once he had been elected to the Directory, he had gotten over the initial elation rather rapidly. He was in beyond his depth and, each year, as he was automatically pushed up a notch, he knew that more clearly. Now he was Senior Director.

  Of all the times to be Senior Director!

  In the old days, the task of ruling had been nothing. In the time of Nephi Morler, eight decades before, the same Morler who was always being held up to the schoolchildren as the greatest of all Directors, it had been nothing. What had Baleyworld been then? A small world, a trickle of farms, a handful of towns clustered along natural lines of communication. The total population had been no more than five million and its most important exports had been raw wood and some titanium.

  The Spacers had ignored them completely under the more or less benign influence of Han Fastolfe of Aurora and life was simple. People could always make trips back to Earth—if they wanted a breath of culture or the feel of technology—and there was a steady flow of Earthpeople arriving as immigrants. Earth’s mighty population was inexhaustible.

  Why shouldn’t Morler have been a great Director, then? He had had nothing to do.

  And, in the future, ruling would again be simple. As the Spacers continued to degenerate (every schoolchild was told that they would, that they must drown in the contradictions of their society—though Pandaral wondered, sometimes, whether this was really certain) and as the Settlers continued to increase in numbers and strength, the time would soon come when life would be again secure. The Settlers would live in peace and develop their own technology to the utmost.

  As Baleyworld filled, it would assume the proportion and ways of another Earth, as would all the worlds, while new ones would spring up here and there in ever greater numbers, finally making up the great Galactic Empire to come. And surely Baleyworld, as the oldest and most populous of the Settler worlds, would always have a prime place in that Empire, under the benign and perpetual rule of Mother Earth.

  But it was not in the past that Pandaral was Senior Director. Nor was it in the future. It was now.

  Han Fastolfe was dead, now, but Kelden Amadiro was alive. Amadiro had held out against Earth being allowed to send out Settlers twenty decades ago and he was still alive now to make trouble. The Spacers were still too strong to be disregarded; the Settlers were still not quite strong enough to move forward with confidence. Somehow the Settlers had to hold off the Spacers till the balance had shifted sufficiently.

  And the task of keeping the Spacers quiet and the Settlers at once resolute and yet sensible fell more upon Pandaral’s shoulders than on anyone else’s—and it was a task he neither liked nor wanted.

  Now it was morning, a cold, gray morning with more snow coming—though that was no surprise—and he made his way through the hotel alone. He wanted no retinue.

  The security guards, out in force, snapped to attention as he passed and he acknowledged them wearily. He spoke to the captain of the—guard when the latter advanced to meet him. “Any trouble, Captain?”

  “None, Director. All is quiet.”

  Pandaral nodded. “In which room has Baley been put?—Ah.—And the Spacer woman and her robots are under strict guard?—Good.”

  He passed on. On the whole, D.G. had behaved well. Solaria, abandoned, could be used by Traders as an almost endless supply of robots and as a source of large profits though profits were not to be taken as the natural equivalent of world security, Pandaral thought morosely. But Solaria, booby-trapped, had best be left alone. It was not worth a war. D.G. had done well to leave at once.

  And to take the nuclear intensifier with him. So far, such devices were so overwhelmingly massive that they could be used only in huge and expensive installations
designed to destroy invading ships—and even these had never gotten beyond the planning stage. Too expensive. Smaller and cheaper versions were absolutely necessary, so D.G. was right in feeling that bringing home a Solarian intensifier was more important than all the robots on that world put together. That intensifier should help the scientists of Baleyworld enormously.

  And yet if one Spacer world had a portable intensifier, why not others? Why not Aurora? If those weapons grew small enough to place on warships, a Spacer fleet could wipe out any number of Settler ships without trouble. How far toward that development were they? And how fast could Baleyworld progress in the same direction with the help of the intensifier D.G. had brought back?

  He signaled at D.G.’s hotel room door, then entered without quite waiting for a response and sat down without quite waiting for an invitation. There were some useful perquisites that went along with being Senior Director…

  D.G. looked out of the bathroom and said through the towel with which he was giving his hair a first dry, “I would have liked to greet your Directorial Excellence in a properly imposing manner, but you catch me at a disadvantage, since I am in the extremely undignified predicament of having just emerged from my shower.”

  “Oh, shut up,” said Pandaral pettishly.

  Ordinarily, he enjoyed D.G.’s irrepressible breeziness, but not now. In some ways, he never really understood D.G. at all. D.G. was a Baley, a lineal descendant of the great Elijah and the Founder, Bentley. That made D.G. a natural for a Director’s post, especially since he had the kind of bonhomie that endeared him to the public. Yet he chose to be a Trader, which was a difficult life—and a dangerous one. It might make you rich, but it was much more likely to kill you or—what was worse—prematurely age you.

  What’s more, D.G.’s life as a Trader took him away from Baleyworld for months at a time and Pandaral preferred his advice to those of most of his department heads. One couldn’t always tell when D.G. was serious, but, allowing for that, he was worth listening to.