Robots and Empire

by Isaac Asimov

  "That's not necessary," she said. "I've had enough."

  "Are you comfortable?"

  "Not entirely. I am—isolated."

  "Sorry! But then, I was isolated on Aurora. They would allow none of my men to come with me."

  "Are you having your revenge?"

  "Not at all. For one thing, I allowed you two robots of your choice to accompany you. For another, it is not I but my crew who enforce this. They don't like either Spacers or robots. —But why do you mind? Doesn't this isolation lessen your fear of infection?"

  Gladia's eyes were haughty, but her voice sounded weary. "I wonder if I haven't grown too old to fear infection. In many ways, I think I have lived long enough. Then, too, I have my gloves, my nose filters, and—if necessary—my mask. And besides, I doubt that you will trouble to touch me."

  "Nor will anyone else," said D.G. with a sudden edge of grimness to his voice, as his hand wandered to the object at the right side of his hip.

  Her eyes followed the motion. "What is that?" she asked.

  D.G. smiled and his beard seemed to glitter in the light. There were occasional reddish hairs among the brown. "A weapon," he said and drew it. He held it by a molded hilt that bulged above his hand as though the force of his grip were squeezing it upward. In front, facing Gladia, a thin cylinder stretched some fifteen centimeters forward. There was no opening visible.

  "Does that kill people?" Gladia extended her hand toward it.

  D.G. moved it quickly away. "Never reach for someone's weapon, my lady. That is worse than bad manners, for any Settler is trained to react violently to such a move and you may be hurt."

  Gladia, eyes wide, withdrew her hand and placed both behind her back. She said, "Don't threaten harm. Daneel has no sense of humor in that respect. On Aurora, no one is barbarous enough to carry weapons.

  "Well," said D.G., unmoved by the adjective, "we don't have robots to protect us. —And this is not a killing device. It is, in some ways, worse. It emits a kind of vibration that stimulates those nerve endings responsible for the sensation of pain. It hurts a good deal worse than anything you can imagine. No one would willingly endure it twice and someone carrying this weapon rarely has to use it. We call it a neuronic whip."

  Gladia frowned. "Disgusting! We have our robots, but they never hurt anyone except in unavoidable emergency and then minimally."

  D.G. shrugged. "That sounds very civilized, but a bit of pain—a bit of killing, even—is better than the decay of spirit brought about by robots. Besides, a neuronic whip is not intended to kill and your people have weapons on their spaceships that can bring about wholesale death and destruction."

  "That's because we've fought wars early in our history, when our Earth heritage was still strong, but we've learned better."

  "You used those weapons on Earth even after you supposedly learned better."

  "That's—" she began and closed her mouth as though to bite off what she was about to say next.

  D.G. nodded." I know. You were about to say. 'That's different.' Think of that, my lady, if you should catch yourself wondering why my crew doesn't like Spacers. Or why I don't. —But you are going to be useful to me, my lady, and I won't let my emotions get in the way."

  "How am I going to be useful to you?"

  "You are a Solarian."

  "You keep saying that. More than twenty decades have passed. I don't know what Solaria is like now. I know nothing about it. What was Baleyworld like twenty decades ago."

  "It didn't exist twenty decades ago, but Solaria did and I shall gamble that you will remember something useful."

  He stood up, bowed his head briefly in, a gesture of politeness that was almost mocking, and was gone.

  15.

  Gladia maintained a thoughtful and troubled silence for awhile and then she said, "He wasn't at all polite, was he?"

  Daneel said, "Madam Gladia, the Settler is clearly under tension. He is heading toward a world on which two ships like his have been destroyed and their crews killed. He is going into great danger, as is his crew."

  "You always defend any human being, Daneel," said Gladia resentfully. "The danger exists for me, too, and I am not facing it voluntarily, but that does not force me into rudeness."

  Daneel said nothing.

  Gladia said, "Well, maybe it does. I have been a little rude, haven't I?"

  "I don't think the Settler minded," said Daneel. "Might I suggest, madam, that you prepare yourself for bed. It is quite late.

  "Very well. I'll prepare myself for bed, but I don't think I feel relaxed enough to sleep, Daneel."

  "Friend Giskard assures me you will, madam, and he is usually right about such things."

  And she did sleep.

  16.

  Daneel and Giskard stood in the darkness of Gladia's cabin.

  Giskard said, "She will sleep soundly, friend Daneel, and she needs the rest. She faces a dangerous trip."

  "It seemed to me, friend Giskard," said Daneel, "that you influenced her to agree to go. I presume you had a reason."

  "Friend Daneel, we know so little about the nature of the crisis that is now facing the Galaxy that we cannot safely refuse any action that might increase our knowledge. We must know what is taking place on Solaria and the only way we can do so is to go there—and the only way we can go is for us to arrange for Madam Gladia to go. As for influencing her, that required scarcely a touch. Despite her loud statements to the contrary, she was eager to go. There was an overwhelming desire within her to see Solaria. It was a pain within her that would not cease until she went."

  "Since you say so, it is so, yet I find it puzzling. Had she not frequently made it plain that her life on Solaria was unhappy, that she had completely adopted Aurora and never wished to go back to her original home?"

  "Yes, that was there, too. It was quite plainly in her mind. Both emotions, both feelings, existed together and simultaneously. I have observed something of this sort in human minds frequently; two opposite emotions simultaneously present."

  "Such a condition does not seem logical, friend Giskard."

  "I agree and I can only conclude that human beings are not, at all times or in all respects, logical. That must be one reason that it is so difficult to work out the Laws governing human behavior. —In Madam Gladia's case, I have now and then been aware of this longing for Solaria. Ordinarily, it was well hidden, obscured by the far more intense antipathy she also felt for the world. When the news arrived that Solaria had been abandoned by its people, however, her feelings changed."

  "Why so? What had the abandonment to do with the youthful experiences that led Madam Gladia to her antipathy? Or, having held in restraint her longing for the world during the decades when it was a working society, why she lose that restraint once it became an abandoned planet and newly long for a world which must now be something utterly strange to her."

  I cannot explain, friend Daneel, since the more knowledge I gather of the human mind, the more despair I feel at being unable to understand it. It is not an unalloyed advantage to see into that mind and I often envy you the simplicity of behavior control that results from your inability to see below the surface."

  Daneel persisted. "Have you guessed an explanation, friend Giskard?"

  "I suppose she feels a sorrow for the empty planet. She deserted it twenty decades ago—"

  "She was driven out."

  "It seems to her, now, to have been a desertion and I imagine she plays with the painful thought that she had set an example; that if she had not left, no one else would have and the planet would still be populated and happy. Since I cannot read her thoughts, I am only groping backward, perhaps inaccurately, from her emotions."

  "But she could not have set an example, friend Giskard. Since it is twenty decades since she left, there can be no verifiable causal connection between the much earlier event and the much later one."

  "I agree, but human beings sometimes find a kind of pleasure in nursing painful emotions, in blaming themselv
es without reason or even against reason. —In any case, Madam Gladia felt so sharply the longing to return that I felt it was necessary to release the inhibitory effect that kept her from agreeing to go. It required the merest touch. Yet though I feel it necessary for her to go, since that means she will take us there, I have the uneasy feeling, that the disadvantages might, just possibly, be greater than the advantages."

  "In what way, friend Giskard?"

  "Since the Council was eager to have Madam Gladia accompany the Settler, it may have been for the purpose of having Madam Gladia absent from Aurora during a crucial period when the defeat of Earth and its Settler worlds is being prepared."

  Daneel seemed to be considering that statement. At least it was only after a distinct pause that he said, "What purpose would be served, in your opinion, in having Madam Gladia absent?"

  "I cannot decide that, friend Daneel. I want your opinion. "

  "I have not considered this matter."

  "Consider it now!" If Giskard had been human, the remark would have been an order.

  There was an even longer pause and then Daneel said, "Friend Giskard, until the moment that Dr. Mandamus appeared in Madam Gladia's establishment, she had never shown any concern about international affairs. She was a friend of Dr. Fastolfe and of Elijah Baley, but this friendship was one of personal affection and did not have an ideological basis. Both of them, moreover, are now gone from us. She has an antipathy toward Dr. Amadiro and that is returned, but this is also a personal matter. The antipathy is two centuries old and neither has done anything material about it but have merely each remained stubbornly antipathetic. There can be no reason for Dr. Amadiro—who is now the dominant influence in the Council—to fear Madam Gladia or to go to the trouble of removing her."

  Giskard said, "You overlook the fact that in removing Madam Gladia, he also removes you and me. He would, perhaps, feel quite certain Madam Gladia would not leave without us, so can it be us he considers dangerous?"

  "In the course of our existence, friend Giskard, we have never, in any way, given any appearance of having endangered Dr. Amadiro. What cause has he to fear us? He does not know of your abilities or of how you have made use of them. Why, then, should he take the trouble to remove us, temporarily, from Aurora?"

  "Temporarily, friend Daneel? Why do you assume it is a temporary removal he plans? He knows, it may be, more than the Settler does of the trouble on Solaria and knows, also, that the Settler and his crew will be surely destroyed and Madam Gladia and you and I with them. Perhaps the destruction of the Settler's ship is his main aim, but he would consider the end of Dr. Fastolfe's friend and Dr. Fastolfe's robots to be an added bonus."

  Daneel said, "Surely he would not risk war with the Settler worlds, for that may well come if the Settler's ship is destroyed and the minute pleasure of having us destroyed, when added in, would not make the risk worthwhile."

  "Is it not possible, friend Daneel, that war is exactly what Dr. Amadiro has in mind; that it involves no risk in his estimation, so that getting rid of us at the same time adds to his pleasure without increasing a risk that does not exist?"

  Daneel said calmly, "Friend Giskard, that is not reasonable. In any war fought under present conditions, the Settlers would win. They are better suited, psychologically, to the rigors of war. They are more scattered and can, therefore, more successfully carry on hit-and-run tactics. They have comparatively little to lose in their relatively primitive worlds, while the Spacers have much to lose in their comfortable, highly organized ones. If the Settlers were willing to offer to exchange destruction of one of their worlds for one of the Spacers, the Spacers would have to surrender at once."

  "But would such a war be fought under present conditions? What if the Spacers had a new weapon that could be used to defeat the Settlers quickly? Might that not be the very crisis we are now facing?"

  "In that case, friend Giskard, the victory could be better and more effectively gained in a surprise attack. Why go to the trouble of instigating a war, which the Settlers might begin by a surprise raid on Spacer worlds that would do considerable damage?"

  "Perhaps the Spacers need to test the weapon and the destruction of a series of ships on Solaria represents the testing."

  "The Spacers would have been most uningenious if they could not have found a method of testing that would not give away the new weapon s existence."

  It was now Giskard's turn, to consider. "Very well, then friend Daneel, how would you explain this trip we are on? How would you explain the Council's willingness—even eagerness—to have us accompany the Settler? The Settler said they would order Gladia to go and, in effect, they did."

  "I have not considered the matter, friend Giskard."

  "Then consider it now." Again it had the flavor of an order.

  Daneel said, "I will do so."

  There was silence, one that grew protracted, but Giskard by no word or sign showed any impatience as he waited.

  Finally, Daneel said—slowly, as though he were feeling his way along strange avenues of thought—"I do not think that Baleyworld—or any of the Settler worlds—has a clear right to appropriate robotic property on Solaria. Even though the Solarians have themselves left or have, perhaps, died out, Solaria remains a Spacer world, even if an unoccupied one. Certainly, the remaining forty-nine Spacer worlds would reason so. Most of all, Aurora would reason so—if it felt in command of the situation."

  Giskard considered that. "Are you now saying, friend Daneel, that the destruction of the two Settler ships was the Spacer way of enforcing their proprietorship of Solaria?"

  Daneel said, "No, that would not be the way if Aurora, the leading Spacer power, felt in command of the situation. Aurora would then simply have announced that Solaria, empty or not, was off-limits to Settler vessels and would have threatened reprisals against the home worlds if any Settler vessel entered the Solarian planetary system. And they would have established a cordon of ships and sensory stations about that planetary system. There was no such warning, no such action, friend Giskard. Why, then, destroy ships that might have been kept away from the world quite easily in the first place?"

  "But the ships were destroyed, friend Daneel. Will you make use of the basic illogicality of the human mind as an explanation?"

  "Not unless I have to. Let us for the moment take that destruction simply as given. Now consider the consequence. —The captain of a single Settler vessel approaches Aurora, demands permission to discuss the situation with the Council, insists on taking an Auroran citizen with him to investigate events on Solaria, and the Council gives in to everything. If destroying the ships without prior warning is too strong an action for Aurora, giving in to the Settler captain so cravenly is far too weak an action. Far from seeking a war, Aurora, in giving in, seems to be willing to do anything at all to ward off the possibility of war."

  "Yes," said Giskard, "I see that this is a possible way of interpreting events. But what follows?"

  "It seems to me," said Daneel, "that the Spacer worlds are not yet so weak that they must behave with such servility—and, even if they were, the pride of centuries of overlordship would keep them from doing so. It must be something other than weakness that is driving them. I have pointed out that they cannot be deliberately instigating a war, so it is much more likely that they are playing for time."

  "To what end, friend Daneel?"

  "They want to destroy the Settlers, but they are not yet prepared. They let this Settler have what he wants, to avoid a war until they are ready to fight one on their own terms. I am only surprised that they did not offer to send an Auroran warship with him. If this analysis is correct—and I think it is—Aurora cannot possibly have had anything to do with the incidents on Solaria. They would not indulge in pinpricks that could only serve to alert the Settlers before they are ready with something devastating."

  "Then how account for these pinpricks, as you call them, friend Daneel?"

  "We will find out perhaps when we land on Sol
aria. It may be that Aurora is as curious as we are and the Settlers are and that that is another reason why they have cooperated with the captain, even to the point of allowing Madam Gladia to accompany him."

  It was now Giskard's turn to remain silent. Finally he said, "And what is this mysterious devastation that they plan?"

  "Earlier, we spoke of a crisis arising from the Spacer plan to defeat Earth, but we used Earth in its general sense, implying the Earthpeople together with their descendents on the Settler worlds. However, if we seriously suspect the preparation of a devastating blow that will allow the Spacers to defeat their enemies at a stroke, we can perhaps refine our view. Thus, they cannot be planning a blow at a Settler world. Individually, the Settler worlds are dispensable and the remaining Settler worlds will promptly strike back. Nor can they be planning a blow at several or at all the Settler worlds. There are too many of them; they are too diffusely spread. It is not likely that all the strikes will succeed and those Settler worlds that survive will, in fury and despair, bring devastation upon the Spacer worlds."

  "You reason, then, friend Daneel, that it will be a blow at Earth itself."

  "Yes, friend Giskard. Earth contains the vast majority of the short-lived human beings; it is the perennial source of emigrants to the Settler worlds and is the chief raw material for the founding of new ones; it is the revered homeland of all the Settlers. If Earth were somehow destroyed, the Settler movement might never recover."

  "But would not the Settler worlds then retaliate as strongly and as forcefully as they would if one of themselves were destroyed? That would seem to me to be inevitable."

  "And to me, friend Giskard. Therefore, it seems to me that unless the Spacer worlds have gone insane, the blow would have to be a subtle one; one for which the Spacer worlds would seem to bear no responsibility."

  "Why not such a subtle blow against the Settler worlds, which hold most of the actual war potential of the Earthpeople?"

  "Either because the Spacers feel the blow against Earth would be more psychologically devastating or because the nature of the blow is such that it would work only against Earth and not against the Settler worlds. I suspect the latter, since Earth is a unique world and has a society that is not like that of any other world—Settler or, for that matter, Spacer."