by Isaac Asimov
“Hermaphrodites,” said Pelorat.
“Is that what it is called in your language?” asked Bander indifferently. “I have never heard the word.”
“Hermaphroditism stops evolution dead in its tracks,” said Trevize. “Each child is the genetic duplicate of its hermaphroditic parent.”
“Come,” said Bander, “you treat evolution as a hit-and-miss affair. We can design our children if we wish. We can change and adjust the genes and, on occasion, we do. —But we are almost at my dwelling. Let us enter. It grows late in the day. The sun already fails to give its warmth adequately and we will be more comfortable indoors.”
They passed through a door that had no locks of any kind but that opened as they approached and closed behind them as they passed through. There were no windows, but as they entered a cavernous room, the walls glowed to luminous life and brightened. The floor seemed bare, but was soft and springy to the touch. In each of the four corners of the room, a robot stood motionless.
“That wall,” said Bander, pointing to the wall opposite the door—a wall that seemed no different in any way from the other three—“is my vision-screen. The world opens before me through that screen but it in no way limits my freedom for I cannot be compelled to use it.”
Trevize said, “Nor can you compel another to use his if you wish to see him through that screen and he does not.”
“Compel?” said Bander haughtily. “Let another do as it pleases, if it is but content that I do as I please. Please note that we do not use gendered pronouns in referring to each other.”
There was one chair in the room, facing the vision-screen, and Bander sat down in it.
Trevize looked about, as though expecting additional chairs to spring from the floor. “May we sit, too?” he said.
“If you wish,” said Bander.
Bliss, smiling, sat down on the floor. Pelorat sat down beside her. Trevize stubbornly continued to stand.
Bliss said, “Tell me, Bander, how many human beings live on this planet?”
“Say Solarians, half-human Bliss. The phrase ‘human being’ is contaminated by the fact that half-humans call themselves that. We might call ourselves whole-humans, but that is clumsy. Solarian is the proper term.”
“How many Solarians, then, live on this planet?”
“I am not certain. We do not count ourselves. Perhaps twelve hundred.”
“Only twelve hundred on the entire world?”
“Fully twelve hundred. You count in numbers again, while we count in quality. —Nor do you understand freedom. If one other Solarian exists to dispute my absolute mastery over any part of my land, over any robot or living thing or object, my freedom is limited. Since other Solarians exist, the limitation on freedom must be removed as far as possible by separating them all to the point where contact is virtually nonexistent. Solaria will hold twelve hundred Solarians under conditions approaching the ideal. Add more, and liberty will be palpably limited so that the result will be unendurable.”
“That means each child must be counted and must balance deaths,” said Pelorat suddenly.
“Certainly. That must be true of any world with a stable population—even yours, perhaps.”
“And since there are probably few deaths, there must therefore be few children.”
“Indeed.”
Pelorat nodded his head and was silent.
Trevize said, “What I want to know is how you made my weapons fly through the air. You haven’t explained that.”
“I offered you sorcery or magic as an explanation. Do you refuse to accept that?”
“Of course I refuse. What do you take me for?”
“Will you, then, believe in the conservation of energy, and in the necessary increase of entropy?”
“That I do. Nor can I believe that even in twenty thousand years you have changed these laws, or modified them a micrometer.”
“Nor have we, half-person. But now consider. Outdoors, there is sunlight.” There was its oddly graceful gesture, as though marking out sunlight all about. “And there is shade. It is warmer in the sunlight than in the shade, and heat flows spontaneously from the sunlit area into the shaded area.”
“You tell me what I know,” said Trevize.
“But perhaps you know it so well that you no longer think about it. And at night, Solaria’s surface is warmer than the objects beyond its atmosphere, so that heat flows spontaneously from the planetary surface into outer space.”
“I know that, too.”
“And day or night, the planetary interior is warmer than the planetary surface. Heat therefore flows spontaneously from the interior to the surface. I imagine you know that, too.”
“And what of all that, Bander?”
“The flow of heat from hotter to colder, which must take place by the second law of thermodynamics, can be used to do work.”
“In theory, yes, but sunlight is dilute, the heat of the planetary surface is even more dilute, and the rate at which heat escapes from the interior makes that the most dilute of all. The amount of heat-flow that can be harnessed would probably not be enough to lift a pebble.”
“It depends on the device you use for the purpose,” said Bander. “Our own tool was developed over a period of thousands of years and it is nothing less than a portion of our brain.”
Bander lifted the hair on either side of its head, exposing that portion of its skull behind its ears. It turned its head this way and that, and behind each ear was a bulge the size and shape of the blunt end of a hen’s egg.
“That portion of my brain, and its absence in you, is what makes the difference between a Solarian and you.”
48.
TREVIZE GLANCED NOW AND THEN AT BLISS’S face, which seemed entirely concentrated on Bander. Trevize had grown quite certain he knew what was going on.
Bander, despite its paean to freedom, found this unique opportunity irresistible. There was no way it could speak to robots on a basis of intellectual equality, and certainly not to animals. To speak to its fellow-Solarians would be, to it, unpleasant, and what communication there must be would be forced, and never spontaneous.
As for Trevize, Bliss, and Pelorat, they might be half-human to Bander, and it might regard them as no more an infringement on its liberty than a robot or a goat would be—but they were its intellectual equals (or near equals) and the chance to speak to them was a unique luxury it had never experienced before.
No wonder, Trevize thought, it was indulging itself in this way. And Bliss (Trevize was doubly sure) was encouraging this, just pushing Bander’s mind ever so gently in order to urge it to do what it very much wanted to do in any case.
Bliss, presumably, was working on the supposition that if Bander spoke enough, it might tell them something useful concerning Earth. That made sense to Trevize, so that even if he had not been truly curious about the subject under discussion, he would nevertheless have endeavored to continue the conversation.
“What do those brain-lobes do?” Trevize asked.
Bander said, “They are transducers. They are activated by the flow of heat and they convert the heat-flow into mechanical energy.”
“I cannot believe that. The flow of heat is insufficient.”
“Little half-human, you do not think. If there were many Solarians crowded together, each trying to make use of the flow of heat, then, yes, the supply would be insufficient. I, however, have over forty thousand square kilometers that are mine, mine alone. I can collect heat-flow from any quantity of those square kilometers with no one to dispute me, so the quantity is sufficient. Do you see?”
“Is it that simple to collect heat-flow over a wide area? The mere act of concentration takes a great deal of energy.”
“Perhaps, but I am not aware of it. My transducer-lobes are constantly concentrating heat-flow so that as work is needed, work is done. When I drew your weapons into the air, a particular volume of the sunlit atmosphere lost some of its excess heat to a volume of the shaded area, so that I was using solar e
nergy for the purpose. Instead of using mechanical or electronic devices to bring that about, however, I used a neuronic device.” It touched one of the transducer-lobes gently. “It does it quickly, efficiently, constantly—and effortlessly.”
“Unbelievable,” muttered Pelorat.
“Not at all unbelievable,” said Bander. “Consider the delicacy of the eye and ear, and how they can turn small quantities of photons and air vibrations into information. That would seem unbelievable if you had never come across it before. The transducer-lobes are no more unbelievable, and would not be so to you, were they not unfamiliar.”
Trevize said, “What do you do with these constantly operating transducer-lobes?”
“We run our world,” said Bander. “Every robot on this vast estate obtains its energy from me; or, rather, from natural heat-flow. Whether a robot is adjusting a contact, or felling a tree, the energy is derived from mental transduction—my mental transduction.”
“And if you are asleep?”
“The process of transduction continues waking or sleeping, little half-human,” said Bander. “Do you cease breathing when you sleep? Does your heart stop beating? At night, my robots continue working at the cost of cooling Solaria’s interior a bit. The change is immeasurably small on a global scale and there are only twelve hundred of us, so that all the energy we use does not appreciably shorten our sun’s life or drain the world’s internal heat.”
“Has it occurred to you that you might use it as a weapon?”
Bander stared at Trevize as though he were something peculiarly incomprehensible. “I suppose by that,” he said, “you mean that Solaria might confront other worlds with energy weapons based on transduction? Why should we? Even if we could beat their energy weapons based on other principles—which is anything but certain—what would we gain? The control of other worlds? What do we want with other worlds when we have an ideal world of our own? Do we want to establish our domination over half-humans and use them in forced labor? We have our robots that are far better than half-humans for the purpose. We have everything. We want nothing—except to be left to ourselves. See here—I’ll tell you another story.”
“Go ahead,” said Trevize.
“Twenty thousand years ago when the half-creatures of Earth began to swarm into space and we ourselves withdrew underground, the other Spacer worlds were determined to oppose the new Earth-settlers. So they struck at Earth.”
“At Earth,” said Trevize, trying to hide his satisfaction over the fact that the subject had come up at last.
“Yes, at the center. A sensible move, in a way. If you wish to kill a person, you strike not at a finger or a heel, but at the heart. And our fellow-Spacers, not too far removed from human beings themselves in passions, managed to set Earth’s surface radioactively aflame, so that the world became largely uninhabitable.”
“Ah, that’s what happened,” said Pelorat, clenching a fist and moving it rapidly, as though nailing down a thesis. “I knew it could not be a natural phenomenon. How was it done?”
“I don’t know how it was done,” said Bander indifferently, “and in any case it did the Spacers no good. That is the point of the story. The Settlers continued to swarm and the Spacers—died out. They had tried to compete, and vanished. We Solarians retired and refused to compete, and so we are still here.”
“And so are the Settlers,” said Trevize grimly.
“Yes, but not forever. Swarmers must fight, must compete, and eventually must die. That may take tens of thousands of years, but we can wait. And when it happens, we Solarians, whole, solitary, liberated, will have the Galaxy to ourselves. We can then use, or not use, any world we wish to in addition to our own.”
“But this matter of Earth,” said Pelorat, snapping his fingers impatiently. “Is what you tell us legend or history?”
“How does one tell the difference, half-Pelorat?” said Bander. “All history is legend, more or less.”
“But what do your records say? May I see the records on the subject, Bander? —Please understand that this matter of myths, legends, and primeval history is my field. I am a scholar dealing with such matters and particularly with those matters as related to Earth.”
“I merely repeat what I have heard,” said Bander. “There are no records on the subject. Our records deal entirely with Solarian affairs and other worlds are mentioned in them only insofar as they impinge upon us.”
“Surely, Earth has impinged on you,” said Pelorat.
“That may be, but, if so, it was long, long ago, and Earth, of all worlds, was most repulsive to us. If we had any records of Earth, I am sure they were destroyed out of sheer revulsion.”
Trevize gritted his teeth in chagrin. “By yourselves?” he asked.
Bander turned its attention to Trevize. “There is no one else to destroy them.”
Pelorat would not let go of the matter. “What else have you heard concerning Earth?”
Bander thought. It said, “When I was young, I heard a tale from a robot about an Earthman who once visited Solaria; about a Solarian woman who left with him and became an important figure in the Galaxy. That, however, was, in my opinion, an invented tale.”
Pelorat bit at his lip. “Are you sure?”
“How can I be sure of anything in such matters?” said Bander. “Still, it passes the bounds of belief that an Earthman would dare come to Solaria, or that Solaria would allow the intrusion. It is even less likely that a Solarian woman—we were half-humans then, but even so—should voluntarily leave this world. —But come, let me show you my home.”
“Your home?” said Bliss, looking about. “Are we not in your home?”
“Not at all,” said Bander. “This is an anteroom. It is a viewing room. In it I see my fellow-Solarians when I must. Their images appear on that wall, or three-dimensionally in the space before the wall. This room is a public assembly, therefore, and not part of my home. Come with me.”
It walked on ahead, without turning to see if it were followed, but the four robots left their corners, and Trevize knew that if he and his companions did not follow spontaneously, the robots would gently coerce them into doing so.
The other two got to their feet and Trevize whispered lightly to Bliss, “Have you been keeping it talking?”
Bliss pressed his hand, and nodded. “Just the same, I wish I knew what its intentions were,” she added, with a note of uneasiness in her voice.
49.
THEY FOLLOWED BANDER. THE ROBOTS REMAINED at a polite distance, but their presence was a constantly felt threat.
They were moving through a corridor, and Trevize mumbled low-spiritedly, “There’s nothing helpful about Earth on this planet. I’m sure of it. Just another variation on the radioactivity theme.” He shrugged. “We’ll have to go on to the third set of co-ordinates.”
A door opened before them, revealing a small room. Bander said, “Come, half-humans, I want to show you how we live.”
Trevize whispered, “It gets infantile pleasure out of display. I’d love to knock it down.”
“Don’t try to compete in childishness,” said Bliss.
Bander ushered all three into the room. One of the robots followed as well. Bander gestured the other robots away and entered itself. The door closed behind it.
“It’s an elevator,” said Pelorat, with a pleased air of discovery.
“So it is,” said Bander. “Once we went underground, we never truly emerged. Nor would we want to, though I find it pleasant to feel the sunlight on occasion. I dislike clouds or night in the open, however. That gives one the sensation of being underground without truly being underground, if you know what I mean. That is cognitive dissonance, after a fashion, and I find it very unpleasant.”
“Earth built underground,” said Pelorat. “The Caves of Steel, they called their cities. And Trantor built underground, too, even more extensively, in the old Imperial days. —And Comporellon builds underground right now. It is a common tendency, when you come to think of
it.”
“Half-humans swarming underground and we living underground in isolated splendor are two widely different things,” said Bander.
Trevize said, “On Terminus, dwelling places are on the surface.”
“And exposed to the weather,” said Bander. “Very primitive.”
The elevator, after the initial feeling of lower gravity that had given away its nature to Pelorat, gave no sensation of motion whatsoever. Trevize was wondering how far down it would penetrate, when there was a brief feeling of higher gravity and the door opened.
Before them was a large and elaborately furnished room. It was dimly lit, though the source of the light was not apparent. It almost seemed as though the air itself were faintly luminous.
Bander pointed its finger and where it pointed the light grew a bit more intense. It pointed it elsewhere and the same thing happened. It placed its left hand on a stubby rod to one side of the doorway and, with its right hand, made an expansive circular gesture so that the whole room lit up as though it were in sunlight, but with no sensation of heat.
Trevize grimaced and said, half-aloud, “The man’s a charlatan.”
Bander said sharply. “Not ‘the man,’ but ‘the Solarian.’ I’m not sure what the word ‘charlatan’ means, but if I catch the tone of voice, it is opprobrious.”
Trevize said, “It means one who is not genuine, who arranges effects to make what is done seem more impressive than it really is.”
Bander said, “I admit that I love the dramatic, but what I have shown you is not an effect. It is real.”
It tapped the rod on which its left hand was resting. “This heat-conducting rod extends several kilometers downward, and there are similar rods in many convenient places throughout my estate. I know there are similar rods on other estates. These rods increase the rate at which heat leaves Solaria’s lower regions for the surface and eases its conversion into work. I do not need the gestures of the hand to produce the light, but it does lend an air of drama or, perhaps, as you point out, a slight touch of the not-genuine. I enjoy that sort of thing.”
