by Isaac Asimov
Hummin nodded. "I see what you are doing. Please continue."
"The worlds were enemies. Mother Rittah certainly made it sound so. When I compare the Mycogenians, who seem to embody Aurora, and the Dahlites, who seem to embody Earth, I imagine that Aurora, whether first or second, was nevertheless the one that was more advanced, the one that could produce more elaborate robots, even ones indistinguishable from human beings in appearance. Such a robot was designed and devised in Aurora, then. But he was a renegade, so he deserted Aurora. To the Earthpeople he was a hero, so he must have joined Earth. Why he did this, what his motives were, I can't say."
Hummin said, "Surely, you mean why it did this, what its motives were."
"Perhaps, but with you sitting across from me," said Seldon, "I find it difficult to use the inanimate pronoun. Mother Rittah was convinced that the heroic robot-her heroic robot-still existed, that he would return when he was needed. It seemed to me that there was nothing impossible in the thought of an immortal robot or at least one who was immortal as long as the replacement of worn-out parts was not neglected."
"Even the brain?" asked Hummin.
"Even the brain. I don't really know anything about robots, but I imagine a new brain could be re-recorded from the old. -And Mother Rittah hinted of strange mental powers. -I thought: It must be so. I may, in some ways, be a romantic, but I am not so much a romantic as to think that one robot, by switching from one side to the other, can alter the course of history. A robot could not make Earth's victory sure, nor Aurora's defeat certain-unless there was something strange, something peculiar about the robot."
Hummin said, "Does it occur to you, Hari, that you are dealing with legends, legends that may have been distorted over the centuries and the millennia, even to the extent of building a veil of the supernatural over quire ordinary events? Can you make yourself believe in a robot that not only seems human, but that also lives forever and has mental powers? Are you not beginning to believe in the superhuman?"
"I know very well what legends are and I am not one to be taken in by them and made to believe in fairy tales. Still, when they are supported by certain odd events chat I have seen-and even experienced myself-"
"Such as?"
"Hummin, I met you and trusted you from the start. Yes, you helped me against those two hoodlums when you didn't need to and chat predisposed me in your favor, since I didn't realize at the time that they were your hirelings, doing what you had instructed them to do. -But never mind that."
"No," said Hummin, a hint of amusement-finally-in his voice.
"I trusted you. I was easily convinced not to go home to Helicon and to make myself a wanderer over the face of Trantor. I believed everything you told me without question. I placed myself entirely in your hands. Looking back on it now, I see myself as not myself. I am not a person to be so easily led, yet I was. More than that, I did not even think it strange that I was behaving so far out of character."
"You know yourself best, Hari,"
"It wasn't only me. How is it that Dors Venabili, a beautiful woman with a career of her own, should abandon that career in order to join me in my flight? How is it that she should risk her life to save mine, seeming to take on, as a kind of holy duty, the cask of protecting me and becoming single-minded in the process? Was it simply because you asked her to?"
"I did ask her to, Hari."
"Yet she does not strike me as the kind of person to make such a radical changeover in her life merely because someone asks her to. Nor could I believe it was because she had fallen madly in love with me at first sight and could not help herself. I somehow wish she had, but she seems quite the mistress of her emotional self, more-I am now speaking to you frankly-than I myself am with respect to her."
"She is a wonderful woman," said Hummin. "I don't blame you."
Seldon went on. "How is it, moreover, that Sunmaster Fourteen, a monster of arrogance and one who leads a people who are themselves stiff-necked in their own conceit, should be willing to take in tribespeople like Dors and myself and to treat us as well as the Mycogenians could and did? When we broke every rule, committed every sacrilege, how is it that you could still talk him into letting us go?
"How could you talk the Tisalvers, with their petty prejudices, into taking us in? How can you be at home everywhere in the world, be friends with everyone, influence each person, regardless of their individual peculiarities? For that matter, how do you manage to manipulate Cleon too? And if he is viewed as malleable and easily molded, then how were you able to handle his father, who by all accounts was a rough and arbitrary tyrant? How could you do all this?
"Most of all, how is it that Mannix IV of Wye could spend decades building an army without peer, one trained to be proficient in every detail, and yet have it fall apart when his daughter tries to make use of it? How could you persuade them to play the Renegade, all of them, as you have done?"
Hummin said, "Might this mean no more than that I am a tactful person used to dealing with people of different types, that I am in a position to have done favors for crucial people and am in a position to do additional favors in the future? Nothing I have done, it might seem, requires the supernatural."
"Nothing you have done? Not even the neutralization of the Wyan army?"
"They did not wish to serve a woman."
"They must have known for years that any time Mannix laid down his powers or any time he died, Rashelle would be their Mayor, yet they showed no signs of discontent-until you felt it necessary that they show it. Dors described you at one time as a very persuasive man. And so you are. More persuasive than any man could be. But you are not more persuasive than an immortal robot with strange mental powers might be. -Well, Hummin?"
Hummin said, "What is it you expect of me, Hari? Do you expect me to admit I'm a robot? That I only look like a human being? That I am immortal? That I am a mental marvel?!"
Seldon leaned toward Hummin as he sat there on the opposite side of the table. "Yes, Hummin, I do. I expect you to tell me the truth and I strongly suspect that what you have just outlined is the truth. You, Hummin, are the robot that Mother Rittah referred to as DaNee, friend of Ba-Lee. You must admit it. You have no choice."
92.
It was as though they were sitting in a tiny Universe of their own. There, in the middle of Wye, with the Wyan army being disarmed by Imperial force, they sat quietly. There, in the midst of events that all of Trantorand perhaps all the Galaxy-was watching, there was this small bubble of utter isolation within which Seldon and Hummin were playing their game of attack and defense-Seldon trying hard to force a new reality, Hummin making no move to accept that new reality.
Seldon had no fear of interruption. He was certain that the bubble within which they sat had a boundary that could not be penetrated, that Hummin's-no, the robot's-powers would keep all at a distance rill the game was over.
Hummin finally said, "You are an ingenious fellow, Hari, but I fail to see why I must admit that I am a robot and why I have no choice but to do so. Everything you say may be true as facts-your own behavior, Dors's behavior, Sunmaster's, Tisalver's, the Wyan generals'-all, all may have happened as you said, but that doesn't force your interpretation of the meaning of the events to be true. Surely, everything that happened can have a natural explanation. You trusted me because you accepted what I said; Dors felt your safety m be important because she felt psychohistory to be crucial, herself being a historian; Sunmaster and Tisalver were beholden to me for favors you know nothing of, the Wyan generals resented being ruled by a woman, no more. Why must we flee to the supernatural?"
Seldon said, "See here, Hummin, do you really believe the Empire to be falling and do you really consider it important that it not be allowed to do so with no move made to save it or, at the least, cushion its Fall?"
"I really do." Somehow Seldon knew this statement was sincere. "And you really want me to work out the details of psychohistory and you feel that you yourself cannot do it?"
"
I lack the capability."
"And you feel that only I can handle psychohistory-even if I sometimes doubt it myself?"
"Yes."
"And you must therefore feel that if you can possibly help me in any way, you must."
"I do."
"Personal feelings-selfish considerations-could play no part?"
A faint and brief smile passed over Hummin's grave face and for a moment Seldon sensed a vast and arid desert of weariness behind Hummin's quiet manner. "I have built a long career on paying no heed to personal feelings or to selfish considerations."
"Then I ask your help. I can work out psychohistory on the basis of Trantor alone, bur I will run into difficulties. Those difficulties I may overcome, but how much easier it would be to do so if I knew certain key facts. For instance, was Earth or Aurora the first world of humanity or was it some other world altogether? What was the relationship between Earth and Aurora? Did either or both colonize the Galaxy? If one, why didn't the ocher? If both, how was the issue decided? Are there worlds descended from both or from only one? How did robots come to be abandoned? How did Trantor become the Imperial world, rather than another planet? What happened to Aurora and Earth in the meantime? There are a thousand questions I might ask right now and a hundred thousand that might arise as I go along. Would you allow me to remain ignorant, Hummin, and fail in my task when you could inform me and help me succeed?"
Hummin said, "If I were the robot, would I have room in my brain for all of twenty thousand years of history for millions of different worlds?"
"I don't know the capacity of robotic brains. I don't know the capacity of yours. Bur if you lack the capacity, then you must have that information which you cannot hold safely recorded in a place and in a way that would make it possible for you to call upon it. And if you have it and I need information, how can you deny and withhold it from me? And if you cannot withhold it from me, how can you deny that you are a robot-that robot the Renegade?"
Seldon sat back and took a deep breath. "So I ask you again: Are you that robot? If you want psychohistory, then you must admit it. If you still deny you are a robot and if you convince me you are not, then my chances at psychohistory become much, much smaller. It is up to you, then. Are you a robot? Are you Da-Nee?"
And Hummin said, as imperturbable as ever. "Your arguments are irrefutable. I am R. Daneel Olivaw. The `R' stands for 'robot.' "
93.
R. Daneel Olivaw still spoke quietly, but it seemed to Seldon that there was a subtle change in his voice, as though he spoke more easily now that he was no longer playing a part.
"In twenty thousand years," said Daneel, "no one has guessed I was a robot when it was not my intention to have him or her know. In part, that was because human beings abandoned robots so long ago that very few remember that they even existed at one time. And in part, it is because I do have the ability to detect and affect human emotion. The detection offers no trouble, but to affect emotion is difficult for me for reasons having to do with my robotic nature-although I can do it when I wish. I have the ability but must deal with my will not to use it. I try never to interfere except when I have no choice but to do so. And when I do interfere, it is rarely chat I do more than strengthen, as little as I can, what is already there. If I can achieve my purposes without doing even so much, I avoid it.
"1t was not necessary to tamper with Sunmaster Fourteen in order to have him accept you-I call it 'tampering,' you notice, because it is not a pleasant thing to do. I did not have to tamper with him because he did owe me for favors rendered and he is an honorable man, despite the peculiarities you found in him. I did interfere the second time, when you had committed sacrilege in his eyes, but it took very little. He was not anxious to hand you over to the Imperial authorities, whom he does not like. I merely strengthened the dislike a trifle and he handed you over to my care, accepting the arguments I offered, which otherwise he might have considered specious.
"Nor did I tamper with you noticeably. You distrusted the Im- perials too. Most human beings do these days, which is an impor. rant factor in the decay and deterioration of the Empire. What's more, you were proud of psychohistory as a concept, proud of having thought of it. You would not have minded having it prove to be a practical discipline. That would have further fed your pride."
Seldon frowned and said, "Pardon me, Master Robot, but I am not aware that I am quite such a monster of pride."
Daneel said mildly, "You are not a monster of pride at all. You are pee rfectly aware that is neither admirable nor useful to be driven by pride, so you try to subdue that drive, but you might as well disapprove of having yourself powered by your heartbeat. You cannot help either fact. Though you hide your pride from yourself for the sake of your own peace of mind, you cannot hide it from me. It is there, however carefully you mask it over. And I had but to strengthen it a touch and you were at once willing to take measures to hide from Demerzel, measures that a moment before you would have resisted. And you were eager to work at psychohistory with an intensity that a moment before you would have scorned.
"I saw no necessity to touch anything else and so you have reasoned out your robothood. Had I foreseen the possibility of chat, I might have stopped it, but my foresight and my abilities are not infinite. Nor am I sorry now that I failed, for your arguments are good ones and it is important that you know who I am and that I use what I am to help you.
"Emotions, my dear Seldom are a powerful engine of human action, far more powerful than human beings themselves realize, and you cannot know how much can be dome with the merest touch and how reluctant I am to do it."
Seldon was breathing heavily, trying to see himself as a man driven by pride and not liking it. "Why reluctant?"
"Because it would be so easy to overdo. I had to stop Rashelle from converting the Empire into a feudal anarchy. I might have bent minds quickly and the result might well have been a bloody uprising. Men are men-and the Wyan generals are almost all men. It does not actually take much to rouse resentment and latent fear of women in any man. It may be a biological matter that I, as a robot, cannot fully understand.
"I had but to strengthen the feeling to produce a breakdown in her plans. If I had done it the merest millimeter too much, I would have lost what I wanted-a bloodless takeover. I wanted nothing more than to have them not resist when my soldiers arrived."
Daneel paused, as though trying to pick his words, then said, "I do not wish to go into the mathematics of my positronic brain. h is more than I can understand, though perhaps not more than you can if you give it enough thought. However, I am governed by the Three Laws of Robotics that are traditionally put into words-or once were, long ago. They are these:
"'One. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
" `Two. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
" 'Three. A robot must protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.'
"But I had a . . . a friend twenty thousand years ago. Another robot. Not like myself. He could not be mistaken for a human being, but it was he who had the mental powers and it was through him that I gained mine.
"It seemed to him that there should be a still more general rule than any of the Three Laws. He called it the Zeroth Law, since zero comes before one. It is:
"'Zero. A robot may not injure humanity or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.'
"Then the First Law must read:
" `One. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm, except where that would conflict with the Zeroth Law.'
"And the other laws must be similarly modified. Do you understand?"
Daneel paused earnestly and Seldon said, "I understand."
Daneel went on. "The trouble is, Hari, that a human being is easy to identify. I can point to one. It is easy to see what
will harm a human being and what won't-relatively easy, at least. But what is humanity? To what can we point when we speak of humanity? And how can we define harm to humanity? When will a course of action do more good than harm to humanity as a whole and how can one tell? The robot who first advanced the Zeroth law died-became permanently inactive-because he was forced into an action that he felt would save humanity, yet which he could not be cure would save humanity. And as he became inactivated, he left the care of the Galaxy to me.
"Since then, I have cried. I have interfered as little as possible, relying on human beings themselves to judge what was for the good. They could gamble; I could not. They could miss their goals; I did not dare. They could do harm unwittingly; I would grow inactive if I did. The Zeroth Law makes no allowance for unwitting harm.
"But at times I am forced to take action. That I am still functioning shows that my actions have been moderate and discreet. However, as the Empire began to fail and to decline, I have had to interfere more frequently and for decades now I have had to play the role of Demerzel, trying to run the government in such a way as to stave off ruin-and yet I will function, you see.
"When you made your speech to the Decennial Convention, I realized at once that in psychohistory there was a tool that might make it possible to identify what was good and bad for humanity. With it, the decisions we would make would be less blind. I would even trust to human beings to make those decisions and again reserve myself only for the greatest emergencies. So I arranged quickly to have Cleon learn of your speech and call you in. Then, when I heard your denial of the worth of psychohistory, I was forced to think of some way to make you try anyway. Do you understand, Hari?"
More than a little daunted, Seldon said, "I understand, Hummin."
"To you, I must remain Hummin on those rare occasions when I will be able to see you. I will give you what information I have if it is something you need and in my persona as Demerzel I will protect you as much as I can. As Daneel, you must never speak of me."
