by Isaac Asimov
“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 se
riously, 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.”
Trevize said, “And it is like you to have that feeling, Janov. I share it. I think Solarian society is horrible, but it wasn’t always like that. They are descended from Earthmen, and, more immediately, from Spacers who lived a much more normal life. The Solarians chose a path, for one reason or another, which led to an extreme, but you can’t judge by extremes. In all the Galaxy, with its millions of inhabited worlds, is there one you know that now, or in the past, has had a society like that of Solaria, or even remotely like that of Solaria? And would even Solaria have such a society if it were not riddled with robots? Is it conceivable that a society of individuals could evolve to such a pitch of Solarian horror without robots?”
Pelorat’s face twitched a little. “You punch holes in everything, Golan—or at least I mean you don’t ever seem to be at a loss in defending the type of Galaxy you voted against.”
“I won’t knock down everything. There is a rationale for Galaxia and when I find it, I’ll know it, and I’ll give in. Or perhaps, more accurately, if I find it.”
“Do you think you might not?”
Trevize shrugged. “How can I say? —Do you know why I’m waiting a few hours to make the Jump, and why I’m in danger of talking myself into waiting a few days?”
“You said it would be safer if we waited.”
“Yes, that’s what I said, but we’d be safe enough now. What I really fear is that those Spacer worlds for which we have the co-ordinates will fail us altogether. We have only three, and we’ve already used up two, narrowly escaping death each time. In doing so, we have still not gained any hint as to Earth’s location, or even, in actual fact, Earth’s existence. Now I face the third and last chance, and what if it, too, fails us?”
Pelorat sighed. “You know there are old folk tales—one, in fact, exists among those I gave Fallom to practice upon—in which someone is allowed three wishes, but only three. Three seems to be a significant number in these things, perhaps because it is the first odd number so that it is the smallest decisive number. You know, two out of three wins. —The point is that in these stories, the wishes are of no use. No one ever wishes correctly, which, I have always supposed, is ancient wisdom to the effect that the satisfaction of your wants must be earned, and not—”
He fell suddenly silent and abashed. “I’m sorry, old man, but I’m wasting your time. I do tend to rattle on when I get started on my hobby.”
“I find you always interesting, Janov. I am willing to see the analogy. We have been given three wishes, and we have had two and they have done us no good. Now only one is left. Somehow, I am sure of failure again and so I wish to postpone it. That is why I am putting off the Jump as long as possible.”
“What will you do if you do fail again? Go back to Gaia? To Terminus?”
“Oh no,” said Trevize in a whisper, shaking his head. “The search must continue—if I only knew how.”
14
DEAD PLANET
60.
Trevize felt depressed. What few victories he had had since the search began had never been definitive; they had merely been the temporary staving off of defeat.
Now he had delayed the Jump to the third of the Spacer worlds till he had spread his unease to the others. When he finally decided that he simply must tell the computer to move the ship through hyperspace, Pelorat was standing solemnly in the doorway to the pilot-room, and Bliss was just behind him and to one side. Even Fallom was standing there, gazing at Trevize owlishly, while one hand gripped Bliss’s hand tightly.
/>
Trevize had looked up from the computer and had said, rather churlishly, “Quite the family group!” but that was only his own discomfort speaking.
He instructed the computer to Jump in such a way as to reenter space at a further distance from the star in question than was absolutely necessary. He told himself that that was because he was learning caution as a result of events on the first two Spacer worlds, but he didn’t believe that. Well underneath, he knew, he was hoping that he would arrive in space at a great enough distance from the star to be uncertain as to whether it did or did not have a habitable planet. That would give him a few more days of in-space travel before he could find out, and (perhaps) have to stare bitter defeat in the face.
So now, with the “family group” watching, he drew a deep breath, held it, then expelled it in a between-the-lips whistle as he gave the computer its final instruction.
The star-pattern shifted in a silent discontinuity and the viewscreen became barer, for he had been taken into a region in which the stars were somewhat sparser. And there, nearly in the center, was a brightly gleaming star.
Trevize grinned broadly, for this was a victory of sorts. After all, the third set of co-ordinates might have been wrong and there might have been no appropriate G-type star in sight. He glanced toward the other three, and said, “That’s it. Star number three.”
“Are you sure?” asked Bliss softly.
“Watch!” said Trevize. “I will switch to the equicentered view in the computer’s Galactic map, and if that bright star disappears, it’s not recorded on the map, and it’s the one we want.”
The computer responded to his command, and the star blinked out without any prior dimming. It was as though it had never been, but the rest of the starfield remained as it was, in sublime indifference.
“We’ve got it,” said Trevize.
