Foundation and Earth

by Isaac Asimov

  And if he found Earth’s sun and, then, Earth itself, by the sheerest good fortune—would something force him to be unaware of the fact? Was Earth’s defense absolute? Was its determination to remain in hiding unbreakable?

  What was he looking for anyway?

  Was it Earth? Or was it the flaw in Seldon’s Plan that he thought (for no clear reason) he might find on Earth?

  Seldon’s Plan had been working for five centuries now, and would bring the human species (so it was said) to safe harbor at last in the womb of a Second Galactic Empire, greater than the First, a nobler and a freer one—and yet he, Trevize, had voted against it, and for Galaxia.

  Galaxia would be one large organism, while the Second Galactic Empire would, however great in size and variety, be a mere union of individual organisms of microscopic size in comparison with itself. The Second Galactic Empire would be another example of the kind of union of individuals that humanity had set up ever since it became humanity. The Second Galactic Empire might be the largest and best of the species, but it would still be but one more member of that species.

  For Galaxia, a member of an entirely different species of organization, to be better than the Second Galactic Empire, there must be a flaw in the Plan, something the great Hari Seldon had himself overlooked.

  But if it were something Seldon had overlooked, how could Trevize correct the matter? He was not a mathematician; knew nothing, absolutely nothing, about the details of the Plan; would understand nothing, furthermore, even if it were explained to him.

  All he knew were the assumptions—that a great number of human beings be involved and that they not be aware of the conclusions reached. The first assumption was self-evidently true, considering the vast population of the Galaxy, and the second had to be true since only the Second Foundationers knew the details of the Plan, and they kept it to themselves securely enough.

  That left an added unacknowledged assumption, a taken-for-granted assumption, one so taken for granted it was never mentioned nor thought of—and yet one that might be false. An assumption that, if it were false, would alter the grand conclusion of the Plan and make Galaxia preferable to Empire.

  But if the assumption was so obvious and so taken for granted that it was never even expressed, how could it be false? And if no one ever mentioned it, or thought of it, how could Trevize know it was there, or have any idea of its nature even if he guessed its existence?

  Was he truly Trevize, the man with the flawless intuition—as Gaia insisted? Did he know the right thing to do even when he didn’t know why he was doing it?

  Now he was visiting every Spacer world he knew about. —Was that the right thing to do? Did the Spacer worlds hold the answer? Or at least the beginning of the answer?

  What was there on Aurora but ruins and wild dogs? (And, presumably, other feral creatures. Raging bulls? Overgrown rats? Stalking green-eyed cats?) Solaria was alive, but what was there on it but robots and energy-transducing human beings? What had either world to do with Seldon’s Plan unless they contained the secret of the location of the Earth?

  And if they did, what had Earth to do with Seldon’s Plan? Was this all madness? Had he listened too long and too seriously to the fantasy of his own infallibility?

  An overwhelming weight of shame came over him and seemed to press upon him to the point where he could barely breathe. He looked at the stars—remote, uncaring—and thought: I must be the Great Fool of the Galaxy.

  58.

  BLISS’S VOICE BROKE IN ON HIM. “WELL, TREVIZE, why do you want to see—Is anything wrong?” Her voice had twisted into sudden concern.

  Trevize looked up and, for a moment, found it momentarily difficult to brush away his mood. He stared at her, then said, “No, no. Nothing’s wrong. I—I was merely lost in thought. Every once in a while, after all, I find myself thinking.”

  He was uneasily aware that Bliss could read his emotions. He had only her word that she was voluntarily abstaining from any oversight of his mind.

  She seemed to accept his statement, however. She said, “Pelorat is with Fallom, teaching it Galactic phrases. The child seems to eat what we do without undue objection. —But what do you want to see me about?”

  “Well, not here,” said Trevize. “The computer doesn’t need me at the moment. If you want to come into my room, the bed’s made and you can sit on it while I sit on the chair. Or vice versa, if you prefer.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” They walked the short distance to Trevize’s room. She eyed him narrowly. “You don’t seem furious anymore.”

  “Checking my mind?”

  “Not at all. Checking your face.”

  “I’m not furious. I may lose my temper momentarily, now and then, but that’s not the same as furious. If you don’t mind, though, there are questions I must ask you.”

  Bliss sat down on Trevize’s bed, holding herself erect, and with a solemn expression on her wide-cheeked face and in her dark brown eyes. Her shoulder-length black hair was neatly arranged and her slim hands were clasped loosely in her lap. There was a faint trace of perfume about her.

  Trevize smiled. “You’ve dolled yourself up. I suspect you think I won’t yell quite so hard at a young and pretty girl.”

  “You can yell and scream all you wish if it will make you feel better. I just don’t want you yelling and screaming at Fallom.”

  “I don’t intend to. In fact, I don’t intend to yell and scream at you. Haven’t we decided to be friends?”

  “Gaia has never had anything but feelings of friendship toward you, Trevize.”

  “I’m not talking about Gaia. I know you’re part of Gaia and that you are Gaia. Still there’s part of you that’s an individual, at least after a fashion. I’m talking to the individual. I’m talking to someone named Bliss without regard—or with as little regard as possible—to Gaia. Haven’t we decided to be friends, Bliss?”

  “Yes, Trevize.”

  “Then how is it you delayed dealing with the robots on Solaria after we had left the mansion and reached the ship? I was humiliated and physically hurt, yet you did nothing. Even though every moment might bring additional robots to the scene and the number might overwhelm us, you did nothing.”

  Bliss looked at him seriously, and spoke as though she were intent on explaining her actions rather than defending them. “I was not doing nothing, Trevize. I was studying the Guardian Robots’ minds, and trying to learn how to handle them.”

  “I know that’s what you were doing. At least you said you were at the time. I just don’t see the sense of it. Why handle the minds when you were perfectly capable of destroying them—as you finally did?”

  “Do you think it so easy to destroy an intelligent being?”

  Trevize’s lips twisted into an expression of distaste. “Come, Bliss. An intelligent being? It was just a robot.”

  “Just a robot?” A little passion entered her voice. “That’s the argument always. Just. Just! Why should the Solarian, Bander, have hesitated to kill us? We were just human beings without transducers. Why should there be any hesitation about leaving Fallom to its fate? It was just a Solarian, and an immature specimen at that. If you start dismissing anyone or anything you want to do away with as just a this or just a that, you can destroy anything you wish. There are always categories you can find for them.”

  Trevize said, “Don’t carry a perfectly legitimate remark to extremes just to make it seem ridiculous. The robot was just a robot. You can’t deny that. It was not human. It was not intelligent in our sense. It was a machine mimicking an appearance of intelligence.”

  Bliss said, “How easily you can talk when you know nothing about it. I am Gaia. Yes, I am Bliss, too, but I am Gaia. I am a world that finds every atom of itself precious and meaningful, and every organization of atoms even more precious and meaningful. I/we/Gaia would not lightly break down an organization, though we would gladly build it into something still more complex, provided always that that would not harm the whole.


  “The highest form of organization we know produces intelligence, and to be willing to destroy intelligence requires the sorest need. Whether it is machine intelligence or biochemical intelligence scarcely matters. In fact, the Guardian Robot represented a kind of intelligence I/we/Gaia had never encountered. To study it was wonderful. To destroy it, unthinkable—except in a moment of crowning emergency.”

  Trevize said dryly, “There were three greater intelligences at stake: your own, that of Pelorat, the human being you love, and, if you don’t mind my mentioning it, mine.”

  “Four! You still keep forgetting to include Fallom. —They were not yet at stake. So I judged. See here—Suppose you were faced with a painting, a great artistic masterpiece, the existence of which meant death to you. All you had to do was to bring a wide brush of paint slam-bang, and at random, across the face of that painting and it would be destroyed forever, and you would be safe. But suppose, instead, that if you studied the painting carefully, and added just a touch of paint here, a speck there, scraped off a minute portion in a third place, and so on, you would alter the painting enough to avoid death, and yet leave it a masterpiece. Naturally, the revision couldn’t be done except with the most painstaking care. It would take time, but surely, if that time existed, you would try to save the painting as well as your life.”

  Trevize said, “Perhaps. But in the end you destroyed the painting past redemption. The wide paintbrush came down and wiped out all the wonderful little touches of color and subtleties of form and shape. And you did that instantly when a little hermaphrodite was at risk, where our danger and your own had not moved you.”

  “We Outworlders were still not at immediate risk, while Fallom, it seemed to me, suddenly was. I had to choose between the Guardian Robots and Fallom, and, with no time to lose, I had to choose Fallom.”

  “Is that what it was, Bliss? A quick calculation weighing one mind against another, a quick judging of the greater complexity and the greater worth?”

  “Yes.”

  Trevize said, “Suppose I tell you, it was just a child that was standing before you, a child threatened with death. An instinctive maternalism gripped you then, and you saved it where earlier you were all calculation when only three adult lives were at stake.”

  Bliss reddened slightly. “There might have been something like that in it; but it was not after the fashion of the mocking way in which you say it. It had rational thought behind it, too.”

  “I wonder. If there had been rational thought behind it, you might have considered that the child was meeting the common fate inevitable in its own society. Who knows how many thousands of children had been cut down to maintain the low number these Solarians think suitable to their world?”

  “There’s more to it than that, Trevize. The child would be killed because it was too young to be a Successor, and that was because it had a parent who had died prematurely, and that was because I had killed that parent.”

  “At a time when it was kill or be killed.”

  “Not important. I killed the parent. I could not stand by and allow the child to be killed for my deed. —Besides, it offers for study a brain of a kind that has never been studied by Gaia.”

  “A child’s brain.”

  “It will not remain a child’s brain. It will further develop the two transducer-lobes on either side of the brain. Those lobes give a Solarian abilities that all of Gaia cannot match. Simply to keep a few lights lit, just to activate a device to open a door, wore me out. Bander could have kept all the power going over an estate as great in complexity and greater in size than that city we saw on Comporellon—and do it even while sleeping.”

  Trevize said, “Then you see the child as an important bit of fundamental brain research.”

  “In a way, yes.”

  “That’s not the way I feel. To me, it seems we have taken danger aboard. Great danger.”

  “Danger in what way? It will adapt perfectly—with my help. It is highly intelligent, and already shows signs of feeling affection for us. It will eat what we eat, go where we go, and I/we/Gaia will gain invaluable knowledge concerning its brain.”

  “What if it produces young? It doesn’t need a mate. It is its own mate.”

  “It won’t be of child-bearing age for many years. The Spacers lived for centuries and the Solarians had no desire to increase their numbers. Delayed reproduction is probably bred into the population. Fallom will have no children for a long time.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “I don’t know it. I’m merely being logical.”

  “And I tell you Fallom will prove dangerous.”

  “You don’t know that. And you’re not being logical, either.”

  “I feel it Bliss, without reason. —At the moment. And it is you, not I, who insists my intuition is infallible.”

  And Bliss frowned and looked uneasy.

  59.

  PELORAT PAUSED AT THE DOOR TO THE PILOT-ROOM and looked inside in a rather ill-at-ease manner. It was as though he were trying to decide whether Trevize was hard at work or not.

  Trevize had his hands on the table, as he always did when he made himself part of the computer, and his eyes were on the viewscreen. Pelorat judged, therefore, he was at work, and he waited patiently, trying not to move or, in any way, disturb the other.

  Eventually, Trevize looked up at Pelorat. It was not a matter of total awareness. Trevize’s eyes always seemed a bit glazed and unfocused when he was in computer-communion, as though he were looking, thinking, living in some other way than a person usually did.

  But he nodded slowly at Pelorat, as though the sight, penetrating with difficulty, did, at last, sluggishly impress itself on the optic lobes. Then, after a while, he lifted his hands and smiled and was himself again.

  Pelorat said apologetically, “I’m afraid I’m getting in your way, Golan.”

  “Not seriously, Janov. I was just testing to see if we were ready for the Jump. We are, just about, but I think I’ll give it a few more hours, just for luck.”

  “Does luck—or random factors—have anything to do with it?”

  “An expression only,” said Trevize, smiling, “but random factors do have something to do with it, in theory. —What’s on your mind?”

  “May I sit down?”

  “Surely, but let’s go into my room. How’s Bliss?”

  “Very well.” He cleared his throat. “She’s sleeping again. She must have her sleep, you understand.”

  “I understand perfectly. It’s the hyperspatial separation.”

  “Exactly, old chap.”

  “And Fallom?” Trevize reclined on the bed, leaving Pelorat the chair.

  “Those books out of my library that you had your computer print up for me? The folk tales? It’s reading them. Of course, it understands very little Galactic, but it seems to enjoy sounding out the words. He’s—I keep wanting to use the masculine pronoun for it. Why do you suppose that is, old fellow?”

  Trevize shrugged. “Perhaps because you’re masculine yourself.”

  “Perhaps. It’s fearfully intelligent, you know.”

  “I’m sure.”

  Pelorat hesitated. “I gather you’re not very fond of Fallom.”

  “Nothing against it personally, Janov. I’ve never had children and I’ve never been particularly fond of them generally. You’ve had children, I seem to remember.”

  “One son. —It was a pleasure, I recall, having my son when he was a little boy. Maybe that’s why I want to use the masculine pronoun for Fallom. It takes me back a quarter of a century or so.”

  “I’ve no objection to your liking it, Janov.”

  “You’d like him, too, if you gave yourself a chance.”

  “I’m sure I would, Janov, and maybe someday I will give myself a chance to do so.”

  Pelorat hesitated again. “I also know that you must get tired of arguing with Bliss.”

  “Actually, I don’t think we’ll be arguing much, Janov. She and I are actually
getting along quite well. We even had a reasonable discussion just the other day—no shouting, no recrimination—about her delay in inactivating the Guardian Robots. She keeps saving our lives, after all, so I can’t very well offer her less than friendship, can I?”

  “Yes, I see that, but I don’t mean arguing, in the sense of quarreling. I mean this constant wrangle about Galaxia as opposed to individuality.”

  “Oh, that! I suppose that will continue—politely.”

  “Would you mind, Golan, if I took up the argument on her behalf?”

  “Perfectly all right. Do you accept the idea of Galaxia on your own, or is it that you simply feel happier when you agree with Bliss?”

  “Honestly, on my own. I think that Galaxia is what should be forthcoming. You yourself chose that course of action and I am constantly becoming more convinced that that is correct.”

  “Because I chose it? That’s no argument. Whatever Gaia says, I may be wrong, you know. So don’t let Bliss persuade you into Galaxia on that basis.”

  “I don’t think you are wrong. Solaria showed me that, not Bliss.”

  “How?”

  “Well, to begin with, we are Isolates, you and I.”

  “Her term, Janov. I prefer to think of us as individuals.”

  “A matter of semantics, old chap. Call it what you will, we are enclosed in our private skins surrounding our private thoughts, and we think first and foremost of ourselves. Self-defense is our first law of nature, even if that means harming everyone else in existence.”

  “People have been known to give their lives for others.”

  “A rare phenomenon. Many more people have been known to sacrifice the dearest needs of others to some foolish whim of their own.”

  “And what has that to do with Solaria?”

  “Why, on Solaria, we see what Isolates—or individuals, if you prefer—can become. The Solarians can hardly bear to divide a whole world among themselves. They consider living a life of complete isolation to be perfect liberty. They have no yearning for even their own offspring, but kill them if there are too many. They surround themselves with robot slaves to which they supply the power, so that if they die, their whole huge estate symbolically dies as well. Is this admirable, Golan? Can you compare it in decency, kindness, and mutual concern with Gaia? —Bliss has not discussed this with me at all. It is my own feeling.”