by Isaac Asimov
D.G. noticed her glance from side to side and interpreted it correctly. "They've been told," he said, "that you would appreciate a little elbow room. I think they understand your fear of infection."
"They don't find it insulting, I hope."
"They may, but you've got something that is clearly a robot with you and most Baleyworlders, don't want that kind of infection. The war hawks, particularly."
"You haven't told me what they are."
"I will if there's time. You and I and others on the platform will have to move in a little while. —Most Settlers think that, in time, the Galaxy will be theirs, that the Spacers cannot and will not compete successfully in the race for expansion. We also know it will take time. We won't see it. Our children probably won't. It may take a thousand years, for all we know. The war hawks don't want to wait. They want it settled now."
"They want war?"
"They don't say that, precisely. And they don't call themselves war hawks. That's what we sensible people call them. They call themselves Earth Supremacists. After all, it's hard to argue with people who announce they are in favor of Earth being supreme. We all favor that, but most of us don't necessarily expect it to happen tomorrow and are not ferociously upset that it won't."
"And these war hawks may attack me? Physically?"
D.G. gestured for her to move forward. "I think we'll have to get moving, madam. They're getting us into line. No, I don't think you'll really be attacked, but it's always best to be cautious."
Gladia held back as D.G. indicated her place in line.
"Not without Daneel and Giskard, D.G. I'm still not going anywhere without them. Not even onto the platform. Not after what you just told me about the war hawks."
"You're asking a lot, my lady."
"On the contrary, D.G. I'm not asking for anything. Take me home right now—with my robots."
Gladia watched tensely as D.G. approached a small group of officials. He made a half-bow, arms in downward pointing diagonals. It was what Gladia suspected to be a Baleyworlder gesture of respect.
She did not hear what D.G. was saying, but a painful and quite involuntary fantasy passed through her mind. If there was any attempt to separate her from her robots against her will, Daneel and Giskard would surely do what they could to prevent it. They would move too quickly and precisely to really hurt anyone—but the security guards would use their weapons at once.
She would have to prevent that at all costs—pretend she was separating from Daneel and Giskard voluntarily and ask them to wait behind for her. How could she do that? She had never been entirely without robots in her life. How could she feel safe without them? And yet what other way out of the dilemma offered itself?
D.G. returned. "Your status as heroine, my lady, is a useful bargaining chip. And, of course, I am a persuasive fellow. Your robots may go with you. They will sit on the platform behind you, but there will be no spotlight upon them. And, for the sake of the Ancestor, my lady, don't call attention to them. Don't even look at them."
Gladia sighed with relief. "You're a good fellow, D.G.," she said shakily. "Thank you."
She took her place near the head of the line, D.G. at her left, Daneel and Giskard behind her, and behind them a long tail of officials of both sexes.
A woman Settler, carrying a staff that seemed to be a symbol of office, having surveyed the line carefully, nodded, moved forward to the head of the line, then walked on. Everyone followed.
Gladia became aware of music in simple and rather repetitive march rhythm up ahead and wondered if she were supposed to march in some choreographed fashion. (Customs vary infinitely and irrationally from world to world, she told herself.)
Looking out of the corner of her eye, she noticed D.G. ambling forward in an indifferent way. He was almost slouching. She pursed her lips disapprovingly and walked rhythmically, head erect, spine stiff. In the absence of direction, she was going to march the way she wanted to.
They came out upon a stage and, as they did so, chairs rose smoothly from recesses in the floor. The line split up, but D.G. caught her sleeve lightly and she accompanied him. The two robots followed her.
She stood in front of the seat that D.G. quietly pointed to. The music grew loud, but the light was not quite as bright as it had been. And then, after what seemed an almost interminable wait, she felt D.G.'s touch pressing lightly downward. She sat and so did they all.
She was aware of the faint shimmer of the force-field curtain and beyond that an audience of several thousand. Every seat was filled in an amphitheater that sloped steeply upward. All were dressed in dull colors, browns and blacks, both sexes alike (as nearly as she could tell them apart). The security guards in the aisles stood out in their green and crimson uniforms. No doubt it lent them instant recognition. (Though, Gladia thought, it must make them instant targets as well.)
She turned to D.G. and said in a low voice, "You people have an enormous legislature."
D.G. shrugged slightly. "I think everyone in the governmental apparatus is here, with mates and guests. A tribute to your popularity, my lady."
She cast a glance over the audience from right to left and back and tried at the extreme of the arc to catch sight, out of the corner of her eye, of either Daneel or Giskard—just to be sure they were there. And then she thought, rebelliously, that nothing would happen because of a quick glance and deliberately turned her head. They were there. She also caught D.G. rolling his eyes upward in exasperation.
She started suddenly as a spotlight fell upon one of the persons on the stage, while the rest of the room dimmed further into shadowy insubstantiality.
The spotlighted figure rose and began to speak. His voice was not terribly loud, but Gladia could hear a very faint reverberation bouncing back from the far walls. It must penetrate every cranny of the large hall, she thought. Was it some form of amplification by a device so unobtrusive that she did not see it or was there a particularly clever acoustical shape to the hall? She did not know, but she encouraged her puzzled speculation to continue, for it relieved her, for a while, of the necessity of having to listen to what was being said.
At one point she heard a soft call of "Quackenbush" from some undetermined point in the audience. But for the perfect acoustics (if that was what it was), it would probably have gone unheard.
The word meant nothing to her, but from the soft, brief titter of laughter that swept the audience, she suspected it was a vulgarism. The sound quenched itself almost at once and Gladia rather admired the depth of the silence that followed.
Perhaps if the room were so perfectly acoustic that every sound could be heard, the audience had to be silent or the noise and confusion would be intolerable. Then, once the custom of silence was established and audience noise became a taboo, anything but silence would become unthinkable. —Except where the impulse to mutter "Quackenbush" became irresistible, she supposed.
Gladia realized that her thinking was growing muddy and her eyes were closing. She sat upright with a small jerk. The people of the planet were trying to honor her and if she fell asleep during the proceedings, that would surely be an intolerable insult. She tried to keep herself awake by listening, but that seemed to make her sleepier. She bit the inside of her cheeks instead and breathed deeply.
Three officials spoke, one after the other, with semimerciful semibrevity, and then Gladia jolted wide awake (Had she been actually dozing despite all her efforts—with thousands of pairs of eyes on her?) as the spotlight fell just to her left and D.G. rose to speak, standing in front of his chair.
He seemed completely at ease, with his thumbs hooked in his belt.
"Men and women of Baleyworld," he began. "Officials, lawgivers, honored leaders, and fellow planetfolk, you have heard something of what happened on Solaria. You know that we were completely successful. You know that Lady Gladia of Aurora contributed to that success. It is time now to present some of the details to you and to all my fellow planetfolk who are watching on hypervision."
Finally, D.G. said, "And now Lady Gladia, Solarian by birth, Auroran by citizenship, but Baleyworlder by deed—" (There was strong applause at the last, the loudest Gladia had yet heard, for the earlier speakers had been but tepidly received.)
D.G. raised his hands for silence and it came at once. He then concluded, "—will now address you."
Gladia found the spotlight on herself and turned to D.G. in sudden panic. There was applause in her ears and D.G., too, was clapping his hands. Under the cover of the applause, he leaned toward her and whispered, "You love them all, you want peace, and since you're not a legislator, you're unused to long speeches of small content. Say that, then sit down."
She looked at him uncompirehendingly, far too nervous to have heard what he said.
She rose and found herself staring at endless tiers of people.
34.
Gladia felt very small (not for the first time in her life, to be sure) as she faced the stage. The men on the stage were all taller than she was and so were the other three women. She felt that even though they were all sitting and she was standing, they still towered over her. As for the audience, which was waiting now in almost menacing silence, those who composed it were, she felt quite certain, one and all larger than her in every dimension.
She took a deep breath and said, "Friends—" but it came out in a thin, breathless whistle. She cleared her throat (in what seemed a thunderous rasp) and tried again.
"Friends!" This time there was a certain normality to the sound. "You are all descended from Earthpeople, every one of you. I am descended from Earthpeople. There are no human beings anywhere on all the inhabited worlds whether Spacer worlds, Settler worlds, or Earth itself—that are not either Earthpeople by birth or Earthpeople by descent. All other differences fade to nothing in the face of that enormous fact."
Her eyes flickered leftward to look at D.G. and she found that he was smiling very slightly and that one eyelid trembled as though it were about to wink.
She went on. "That should be our guide in every thought and act. I thank you all for thinking of me as a fellow human being and for welcoming me among you without regard to any other classification in which you might have been tempted to place me. Because of that, and in the hope that the day will soon come when sixteen billion human beings, living in love and peace, will consider themselves as just that and nothing more—or less—I think of you not merely as friends but as kinsmen and kinswomen."
There was an outbreak of applause that thundered in upon her and Gladia half-closed her eyes in relief. She remained standing to let it continue and bathe her in its welcome indication that she had spoken well and—what was more—enough. When it began to fade, she smiled, bowed to right and left, and began to sit down.
And then a voice came out of the audience. "Why don't you speak in Solarian?"
She froze halfway, to her seat and looked, in shock, at D.G.
He shook his head slightly and mouthed soundlessly: "Ignore it." He gestured as unobtrusively as possible that she seat herself.
She stared at him for a second or two, then realized what an ungainly sight she must present, with her posterior protruding in the unfinished process of seating herself. She straightened at once and flashed a smile at the audience as she turned her head slowly from side to side. For the first time she became aware of objects in the rear whose glistening lenses focused upon her.
Of course! D.G. had mentioned that the proceedings were being watched via hyperwave. Yet it scarcely seemed to matter now. She had spoken and had been applauded and she was facing the audience she could see, erect and without nervousness. What could the unseen addition matter?
She said, still smiling, "I consider that a friendly question. You want me to show you my accomplishments. How many want me to speak as a Solarian might? Don't hesitate. Raise your right hands."
A few right arms went up.
Gladia said, "The humanoid robot on Solaria heard me speak Solarian. That was what defeated it in the end. Come—let me see everyone who would like a demonstration."
More right arms went up and, in a moment, the audience became a sea of upraised arms. Gladia felt a hand tweaking at her pants leg and, with a rapid movement, she brushed it away.
"Very well. You may lower your arms now, kinsmen and kinswomen. Understand that what I speak now is Galactic Standard, which is your language, too. I, however, am speaking it as an Auroran would and I know you all understand me even though the way I pronounce my words may well strike you as amusing and my choice of words may on occasion puzzle you a bit. You'll notice that my way of speaking has notes to it and goes up and down almost as though I were singing my words. This always sounds ridiculous to anyone not an Auroran, even to other Spacers.
"On the other hand, if I slip into the Solarian way of speaking as I am now doing, you will notice at once that the notes stop and that it becomes throaty with r's that just about neverrr let go—especially if therrre is no 'rrrr' anywherrrre on the vocal panoramarrrr."
There was a burst of laughter from the audience and Gladia confronted it with a serious expression on her face. Finally, she held up her arms and made a cutting movement downward and outward and the laughter stopped.
"However," she said, "I will probably never go to Solaria again, so I will have no occasion to use the Solarian dialect any further. And the good Captain Baley"—she turned and made a half-bow in his direction, noting that there was a distinct outbreak of perspiration on his brow—"informs me there is no telling when I'll be going back to Aurora, so I may have to drop the Auroran dialect as well. My only choice, then, will be to speak the Baleyworld dialect, which I shall at once begin to practice."
She hooked the fingers of each hand into an invisible belt, stretched her chest outward, pulled her chin downward, put on D.G.'s unselfconscious grin, and said, in a gravelly attempt at baritone, "Men and women of Baleyworld, officials, lawgivers, honored leaders, and fellow planetfolk and that should include everyone, except, perhaps, dishonored leaders—" She did her best to include the glottal stops and the flat "a's" and carefully pronounced the "h" of "honored" and "dishonored" in what was almost a gasp.
The laughter was still louder this time and more prolonged and Gladia allowed herself to smile and to wait calmly while it went on and on. After all, she was persuading them to laugh at themselves.
And when things were quiet again, she said simply, in an unexaggerated version of the Auroran dialect, "Every dialect is amusing—or peculiar—to those who are not accustomed to it and it tends to mark off human beings into separate—and frequently mutually unfriendly—groups. Dialects, however, are only languages of the tongue. Instead of those, you and I and every other human being on every inhabited world should listen to the language of the heart and there are no dialects to that. That language—if we will only listen—rings out the same in all of us."
That was it. She was ready to sit down again, but another question sounded. It was a woman's voice this time.
"How old are you?"
Now D.G. forced a low growl between his teeth. "Sit down, madam! Ignore the question."
Gladia turned to face D.G. He had half-risen. The others on the stage, as nearly as she could see them in the dimness outside the spotlight, were tensely leaning toward her.
She turned back to the audience and cried out ringingly, "The people here on the stage want me to sit down. How many of you out there want me to sit down? —I find you are silent. —How many want me to stand here and answer the question honestly?"
There was sharp applause and cries of "Answer! Answer!"
She looked up at the spotlight, squinting, and shouted, "I don't know who controls the lights, but light the auditorium and turn off the spotlight. I don't care what it does to the hyperwave cameras. Just make sure the sound is going out accurately. No one will care if I look dim, as long as they can hear me. Right?"
"Right!" came the multivoiced answer. Then "Lights! Lights!"
Someone on the stage signaled in a distraught manner and the audience was bathed in light.
"Much better," said Gladia. "Now I can see you all, my kinspeople. I would like, particularly, to see the woman who asked the question, the one who wants to know my age. I would like to speak to her directly. Don't be backward or shy. If you have the courage to ask the question, you should have the courage to ask it openly."
She waited and finally a woman rose in the middle distance. Her dark hair was pulled back tightly, the color of her skin was a light brown, and her clothing, worn tightly to emphasize a slim figure, was in shades of darker brown.
She said, just a bit stridently, "I'm not afraid to stand up. And I'm not afraid to ask the question again. How old are you?"
Gladia faced her calmly and found herself even welcoming the confrontation. (How was this possible? Throughout her first three decades, she had been carefully trained to find the real presence of even one human being intolerable. Now look at her—facing thousands without a tremble. She was vaguely astonished and entirely pleased.)
Gladia said, "Please remain standing, madam, and let us talk together. How shall we measure age? In elapsed years since birth?"
The woman said with composure "My name is Sindra Lambid. I'm a member of the legislature and therefore one of Captain Baley's 'lawgivers' and 'honored leaders.' I hope 'honored,' at any rate." (There was a ripple of laughter as the audience seemed to grow increasingly good-natured.) "To answer your question, I think that the number of Galactic Standard Years that have elapsed since birth is the usual definition of a person's age. Thus, I am fifty-four years old. How old are you? How about just giving us a figure?"
