Foundation and Earth

by Isaac Asimov

  “My dear,” he said gently, “that is quite impossible. You cannot have a reasonable civilization without records of some kind.”

  Bliss raised her eyebrows. “I understand that. I merely mean we have no records of the type that Trev—Trevize—is talking about, or was at all likely to come across. I/we/Gaia have no writings, no printings, no films, no computer data banks, nothing. We have no carvings on stone, for that matter. That’s all I’m saying. Naturally, since we have none of these, Trevize found none of these.”

  Trevize said, “What do you have, then, if you don’t have any records that I would recognize as records?”

  Bliss said, enunciating carefully, as though she were speaking to a child. “I/we/Gaia have a memory. I remember.”

  “What do you remember?” asked Trevize.

  “Everything.”

  “You remember all reference data?”

  “Certainly.”

  “For how long? For how many years back?”

  “For indefinite lengths of time.”

  “You could give me historical data, biographical, geographical, scientific? Even local gossip?”

  “Everything.”

  “All in that little head.” Trevize pointed sardonically at Bliss’s right temple.

  “No,” she said. “Gaia’s memories are not limited to the contents of my particular skull. See here”—for the moment she grew formal and even a little stern, as she ceased being Bliss solely and took on an amalgam of other units—“there must have been a time before the beginning of history when human beings were so primitive that, although they could remember events, they could not speak. Speech was invented and served to express memories and to transfer them from person to person. Writing was eventually invented in order to record memories and transfer them across time from generation to generation. All technological advance since then has served to make more room for the transfer and storage of memories and to make the recall of desired items easier. However, once individuals joined to form Gaia, all that became obsolete. We can return to memory, the basic system of record-keeping on which all else is built. Do you see that?”

  Trevize said, “Are you saying that the sum total of all brains on Gaia can remember far more data than a single brain can?”

  “Of course.”

  “But if Gaia has all the records spread through the planetary memory, what good is that to you as an individual portion of Gaia?”

  “All the good you can wish. Whatever I might want to know is in an individual mind somewhere, maybe in many of them. If it is very fundamental, such as the meaning of the word ‘chair,’ it is in every mind. But even if it is something esoteric that is in only one small portion of Gaia’s mind, I can call it up if I need it, though such recall may take a bit longer than if the memory is more widespread. —Look, Trevize, if you want to know something that isn’t in your mind, you look at some appropriate book-film, or make use of a computer’s data banks. I scan Gaia’s total mind.”

  Trevize said, “How do you keep all that information from pouring into your mind and bursting your cranium?”

  “Are you indulging in sarcasm, Trevize?”

  Pelorat said, “Come, Golan, don’t be unpleasant.”

  Trevize looked from one to the other and, with a visible effort, allowed the tightness about his face to relax. “I’m sorry. I’m borne down by a responsibility I don’t want and don’t know how to get rid of. That may make me sound unpleasant when I don’t intend to be. Bliss, I really wish to know. How do you draw upon the contents of the brains of others without then storing it in your own brain and quickly overloading its capacity?”

  Bliss said, “I don’t know, Trevize; any more than you know the detailed workings of your single brain. I presume you know the distance from your sun to a neighboring star, but you are not always conscious of it. You store it somewhere and can retrieve the figure at any time if asked. If not asked, you may with time forget it, but you can then always retrieve it from some data bank. If you consider Gaia’s brain a vast data bank, it is one I can call on, but there is no need for me to remember consciously any particular item I have made use of. Once I have made use of a fact or memory, I can allow it to pass out of memory. For that matter, I can deliberately put it back, so to speak, in the place I got it from.”

  “How many people on Gaia, Bliss? How many human beings?”

  “About a billion. Do you want the exact figure as of now?”

  Trevize smiled ruefully. “I quite see you can call up the exact figure if you wish, but I’ll take the approximation.”

  “Actually,” said Bliss, “the population is stable and oscillates about a particular number that is slightly in excess of a billion. I can tell by how much the number exceeds or falls short of the mean by extending my consciousness and—well—feeling the boundaries. I can’t explain it better than that to someone who has never shared the experience.”

  “It seems to me, however, that a billion human minds—a number of them being those of children—are surely not enough to hold in memory all the data needed by a complex society.”

  “But human beings are not the only living things on Gaia, Trev.”

  “Do you mean that animals remember, too?”

  “Nonhuman brains can’t store memories with the same density human brains can, and much of the room in all brains, human and nonhuman alike, must be given over to personal memories which are scarcely useful except to the particular component of the planetary consciousness that harbors them. However, significant quantities of advanced data can be, and are, stored in animal brains, also in plant tissue, and in the mineral structure of the planet.”

  “In the mineral structure? The rocks and mountain range, you mean?”

  “And, for some kinds of data, the ocean and atmosphere. All that is Gaia, too.”

  “But what can nonliving systems hold?”

  “A great deal. The intensity is low but the volume is so great that a large majority of Gaia’s total memory is in its rocks. It takes a little longer to retrieve and replace rock memories so that it is the preferred place for storing dead data, so to speak—items that, in the normal course of events, would rarely be called upon.”

  “What happens when someone dies whose brain stores data of considerable value?”

  “The data is not lost. It is slowly crowded out as the brain disorganizes after death, but there is ample time to distribute the memories into other parts of Gaia. And as new brains appear in babies and become more organized with growth, they not only develop their personal memories and thoughts but are fed appropriate knowledge from other sources. What you would call education is entirely automatic with me/us/Gaia.”

  Pelorat said, “Frankly, Golan, it seems to me that this notion of a living world has a great deal to be said for it.”

  Trevize gave his fellow-Foundationer a brief, sidelong glance. “I’m sure of that, Janov, but I’m not impressed. The planet, however big and however diverse, represents one brain. One! Every new brain that arises is melted into the whole. Where’s the opportunity for opposition, for disagreement? When you think of human history, you think of the occasional human being whose minority view may be condemned by society but who wins out in the end and changes the world. What chance is there on Gaia for the great rebels of history?”

  “There is internal conflict,” said Bliss. “Not every aspect of Gaia necessarily accepts the common view.”

  “It must be limited,” said Trevize. “You cannot have too much turmoil within a single organism, or it would not work properly. If progress and development are not stopped altogether, they must certainly be slowed. Can we take the chance of inflicting that on the entire Galaxy? On all of humanity?”

  Bliss said, without open emotion, “Are you now questioning your own decision? Are you changing your mind and are you now saying that Gaia is an undesirable future for humanity?”

  Trevize tightened his lips and hesitated. Then, he said, slowly, “I would like to, but—not yet. I made
my decision on some basis—some unconscious basis—and until I find out what that basis was, I cannot truly decide whether I am to maintain or change my decision. Let us therefore return to the matter of Earth.”

  “Where you feel you will learn the nature of the basis on which you made your decision. Is that it, Trevize?”

  “That is the feeling I have. —Now Dom says Gaia does not know the location of Earth. And you agree with him, I believe.”

  “Of course I agree with him. I am no less Gaia than he is.”

  “And do you withhold knowledge from me? Consciously, I mean?”

  “Of course not. Even if it were possible for Gaia to lie, it would not lie to you. Above all, we depend upon your conclusions, and we need them to be accurate, and that requires that they be based on reality.”

  “In that case,” said Trevize, “let’s make use of your world-memory. Probe backward and tell me how far you can remember.”

  There was a small hesitation. Bliss looked blankly at Trevize, as though, for a moment, she was in a trance. Then she said, “Fifteen thousand years.”

  “Why did you hesitate?”

  “It took time. Old memories—really old—are almost all in the mountain roots where it takes time to dig them out.”

  “Fifteen thousand years ago, then? Is that when Gaia was settled?”

  “No, to the best of our knowledge that took place some three thousand years before that.”

  “Why are you uncertain? Don’t you—or Gaia—remember?”

  Bliss said, “That was before Gaia had developed to the point where memory became a global phenomenon.”

  “Yet before you could rely on your collective memory, Gaia must have kept records, Bliss. Records in the usual sense—recorded, written, filmed, and so on.”

  “I imagine so, but they could scarcely endure all this time.”

  “They could have been copied or, better yet, transferred into the global memory, once that was developed.”

  Bliss frowned. There was another hesitation, longer this time. “I find no sign of these earlier records you speak of.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I don’t know, Trevize. I presume that they proved of no great importance. I imagine that by the time it was understood that the early nonmemory records were decaying, it was decided that they had grown archaic and were not needed.”

  “You don’t know that. You presume and you imagine, but you don’t know that. Gaia doesn’t know that.”

  Bliss’s eyes fell. “It must be so.”

  “Must be? I am not a part of Gaia and therefore I need not presume what Gaia presumes—which gives you an example of the importance of isolation. I, as an Isolate, presume something else.”

  “What do you presume?”

  “First, there is something I am sure of. A civilization in being is not likely to destroy its early records. Far from judging them to be archaic and unnecessary, they are likely to treat them with exaggerated reverence and would labor to preserve them. If Gaia’s preglobal records were destroyed, Bliss, that destruction is not likely to have been voluntary.”

  “How would you explain it, then?”

  “In the Library at Trantor, all references to Earth were removed by someone or some force other than that of the Trantorian Second Foundationers themselves. Isn’t it possible, then, that on Gaia, too, all references to Earth were removed by something other than Gaia itself?”

  “How do you know the early records involved Earth?”

  “According to you, Gaia was founded at least eighteen thousand years ago. That brings us back to the period before the establishment of the Galactic Empire, to the period when the Galaxy was being settled and the prime source of Settlers was Earth. Pelorat will confirm that.”

  Pelorat, caught a little by surprise by suddenly being called on, cleared his throat. “So go the legends, my dear. I take those legends seriously and I think, as Golan Trevize does, that the human species was originally confined to a single planet and that planet was Earth. The earliest Settlers came from Earth.”

  “If, then,” said Trevize, “Gaia was founded in the early days of hyperspatial travel, then it is very likely to have been colonized by Earthmen, or possibly by natives of a not very old world that had not long before been colonized by Earthmen. For that reason, the records of Gaia’s settlement and of the first few millennia thereafter must clearly have involved Earth and Earthmen and those records are gone. Something seems to be seeing to it that Earth is not mentioned anywhere in the records of the Galaxy. And if so, there must be some reason for it.”

  Bliss said indignantly, “This is conjecture, Trevize. You have no evidence for this.”

  “But it is Gaia that insists that my special talent is that of coming to correct conclusions on the basis of insufficient evidence. If, then, I come to a firm conclusion, don’t tell me I lack evidence.”

  Bliss was silent.

  Trevize went on, “All the more reason then for finding Earth. I intend to leave as soon as the Far Star is ready. Do you two still want to come?”

  “Yes,” said Bliss at once, and “Yes,” said Pelorat.

  2

  TOWARD COMPORELLON

  5.

  IT WAS RAINING LIGHTLY. TREVIZE LOOKED UP AT the sky, which was a solid grayish white.

  He was wearing a rain hat that repelled the drops and sent them flying well away from his body in all directions. Pelorat, standing out of range of the flying drops, had no such protection.

  Trevize said, “I don’t see the point of your letting yourself get wet, Janov.”

  “The wet doesn’t bother me, my dear chap,” said Pelorat, looking as solemn as he always did. “It’s a light and warm rain. There’s no wind to speak of. And besides, to quote the old saying: ‘In Anacreon, do as the Anacreonians do.’ ” He indicated the few Gaians standing near the Far Star, watching quietly. They were well scattered, as though they were trees in a Gaian grove, and none wore rain hats.

  “I suppose,” said Trevize, “they don’t mind being wet, because all the rest of Gaia is getting wet. The trees—the grass—the soil—all wet, and all equally part of Gaia, along with the Gaians.”

  “I think it makes sense,” said Pelorat. “The sun will come out soon enough and everything will dry quickly. The clothing won’t wrinkle or shrink, there’s no chilling effect, and, since there aren’t any unnecessary pathogenic microorganisms, no one will get colds, or flu, or pneumonia. Why worry about a bit of damp then?”

  Trevize had no trouble in seeing the logic of that, but he hated to let go of his grievance. He said, “Still, there is no need for it to rain as we are leaving. After all, the rain is voluntary. Gaia wouldn’t rain if it didn’t want to. It’s almost as though it were showing its contempt for us.”

  “Perhaps”—and Pelorat’s lip twitched a bit—“Gaia is weeping with sorrow at our leaving.”

  Trevize said, “That may be, but I’m not.”

  “Actually,” Pelorat went on, “I presume that the soil in this region needs a wetting down, and that need is more important than your desire to have the sun shine.”

  Trevize smiled. “I suspect you really like this world, don’t you? Even aside from Bliss, I mean.”

  “Yes, I do,” said Pelorat, a trace defensively. “I’ve always led a quiet, orderly life, and think how I could manage here, with a whole world laboring to keep it quiet and orderly. —After all, Golan, when we build a house—or that ship—we try to create a perfect shelter. We equip it with everything we need; we arrange to have its temperature, air quality, illumination, and everything else of importance, controlled by us and manipulated in a way to make it perfectly accommodating to us. Gaia is just an extension of the desire for comfort and security extended to an entire planet. What’s wrong with that?”

  “What’s wrong with that,” said Trevize, “is that my house or my ship is engineered to suit me. I am not engineered to suit it. If I were part of Gaia, then no matter how ideally the planet was devised to su
it me, I would be greatly disturbed over the fact that I was also being devised to suit it.”

  Pelorat pursed his lips. “One could argue that every society molds its population to fit itself. Customs develop that make sense within the society, and that chain every individual firmly to its needs.”

  “In the societies I know, one can revolt. There are eccentrics, even criminals.”

  “Do you want eccentrics and criminals?”

  “Why not? You and I are eccentrics. We’re certainly not typical of the people living on Terminus. As for criminals, that’s a matter of definition. And if criminals are the price we must pay for rebels, heretics, and geniuses, I’m willing to pay it. I demand the price be paid.”

  “Are criminals the only possible payment? Can’t you have genius without criminals?”

  “You can’t have geniuses and saints without having people far outside the norm, and I don’t see how you can have such things on only one side of the norm. There is bound to be a certain symmetry. —In any case, I want a better reason for my decision to make Gaia the model for the future of humanity than that it is a planetary version of a comfortable house.”

  “Oh, my dear fellow. I wasn’t trying to argue you into being satisfied with your decision. I was just making an observa—”

  He broke off. Bliss was striding toward them, her dark hair wet and her robe clinging to her body and emphasizing the rather generous width of her hips. She was nodding to them as she came.

  “I’m sorry I delayed you,” she said, panting a little. “It took longer to check with Dom than I had anticipated.”

  “Surely,” said Trevize, “you know everything he knows.”

  “Sometimes it’s a matter of a difference in interpretation. We are not identical, after all, so we discuss. Look here,” she said, with a touch of asperity, “you have two hands. They are each part of you, and they seem identical except for one being the mirror-image of the other. Yet you do not use them entirely alike, do you? There are some things you do with your right hand most of the time, and some with your left. Differences in interpretation, so to speak.”