by Isaac Asimov
“Does Fallom understand that Bander is her father?”
“Her mother. If we agree that Fallom is to be regarded as feminine, so is Bander.”
“Either way, Bliss dear. Is Fallom aware of the parental relationship?”
“I don’t know that she would understand what that is. She may, of course, but she gave no hint. However, Pel, she has reasoned out that Bander is dead, for it’s dawned on her that Jemby’s inactivation must be the result of power loss and since Bander supplied the power— That frightens me.”
Pelorat said thoughtfully, “Why should it, Bliss? It’s only a logical inference, after all.”
“Another logical inference can be drawn from that death. Deaths must be few and far distant on Solaria with its long-lived and isolated Spacers. Experience of natural death must be a limited one for any of them, and probably absent altogether for a Solarian child of Fallom’s age. If Fallom continues to think of Bander’s death, she’s going to begin to wonder why Bander died, and the fact that it happened when we strangers were on the planet will surely lead her to the obvious cause and effect.”
“That we killed Bander?”
“It wasn’t we who killed Bander, Pel. It was I.”
“She couldn’t guess that.”
“But I would have to tell her that. She is annoyed with Trevize as it is, and he is clearly the leader of the expedition. She would take it for granted that it would be he who would have brought about the death of Bander, and how could I allow Trevize to bear the blame unjustly?”
“What would it matter, Bliss? The child feels nothing for her fath—mother. Only for her robot, Jemby.”
“But the death of the mother meant the death of her robot, too. I almost did own up to my responsibility. I was strongly tempted.”
“Why?”
“So I could explain it my way. So I could soothe her, forestall her own discovery of the fact in a reasoning process that would work it out in a way that would offer no justification for it.”
“But there was justification. It was self-defense. In a moment, we all would have been dead, if you had not acted.”
“It’s what I would have said, but I could not bring myself to explain. I was afraid she wouldn’t believe me.”
Pelorat shook his head. He said, sighing, “Do you suppose it might have been better if we had not brought her? The situation makes you so unhappy.”
“No,” said Bliss angrily, “don’t say that. It would have made me infinitely more unhappy to have to sit here right now and remember that we had left an innocent child behind to be slaughtered mercilessly because of what we had done.”
“It’s the way of Fallom’s world.”
“Now, Pel, don’t fall into Trevize’s way of thinking. Isolates find it possible to accept such things and think no more about it. The way of Gaia is to save life, however, not destroy it—or to sit idly by while it is destroyed. Life of all kinds must, we all know, constantly be coming to an end in order that other life might endure, but never uselessly, never to no end. Bander’s death, though unavoidable, is hard enough to bear; Fallom’s would have been past all bounds.”
“Ah well,” said Pelorat, “I suppose you’re right. —And in any case, it is not the problem of Fallom concerning which I’ve come to see you. It’s Trevize.”
“What about Trevize?”
“Bliss, I’m worried about him. He’s waiting to determine the facts about Earth, and I’m not sure he can withstand the strain.”
“I don’t fear for him. I suspect he has a sturdy and stable mind.”
“We all have our limits. Listen, the planet Earth is warmer than he expected it to be; he told me so. I suspect that he thinks it may be too warm for life, though he’s clearly trying to talk himself into believing that’s not so.”
“Maybe he’s right. Maybe it’s not too warm for life.”
“Also, he admits it’s possible that the warmth might possibly arise from a radioactive crust, but he is refusing to believe that also. —In a day or two, we’ll be close enough so that the truth of the matter will be unmistakable. What if Earth is radioactive?”
“Then he’ll have to accept the fact.”
“But—I don’t know how to say this, or how to put it in mental terms. What if his mind—”
Bliss waited, then said wryly, “Blows a fuse?”
“Yes. Blows a fuse. Shouldn’t you do something now to strengthen him? Keep him level and under control, so to speak?”
“No, Pel. I can’t believe he’s that fragile, and there is a firm Gaian decision that his mind must not be tampered with.”
“But that’s the very point. He has this unusual ‘rightness,’ or whatever you want to call it. The shock of his entire project falling to nothingness at the moment when it seems successfully concluded may not destroy his brain, but it may destroy his ‘rightness.’ It’s a very unusual property he has. Might it not be unusually fragile, too?”
Bliss remained for a moment in thought. Then she shrugged. “Well, perhaps I’ll keep an eye on him.”
93.
For the next thirty-six hours, Trevize was vaguely aware that Bliss and, to a lesser degree, Pelorat, tended to dog his footsteps. Still, that was not utterly unusual in a ship as compact as theirs, and he had other things on his mind.
Now, as he sat at the computer, he was aware of them standing just inside the doorway. He looked up at them, his face blank.
“Well?” he said, in a very quiet voice.
Pelorat said, rather awkwardly, “How are you, Golan?”
Trevize said, “Ask Bliss. She’s been staring at me intently for hours. She must be poking through my mind. —Aren’t you, Bliss?”
“No, I am not,” said Bliss evenly, “but if you feel the need for my help, I can try. —Do you want my help?”
“No, why should I? Leave me alone. Both of you.”
Pelorat said, “Please tell us what’s going on.”
“Guess!”
“Is Earth—”
“Yes, it is. What everyone insisted on telling us is perfectly true.” Trevize gestured at the viewscreen, where Earth presented its nightside and was eclipsing the sun. It was a solid circle of black against the starry sky, its circumference outlined by a broken orange curve.
Pelorat said, “Is that orange the radioactivity?”
“No. Just refracted sunlight through the atmosphere. It would be a solid orange circle if the atmosphere weren’t so cloudy. We can’t see the radioactivity. The various radiations, even the gamma rays, are absorbed by the atmosphere. However, they do set up secondary radiations, comparatively feeble ones, but the computer can detect them. They’re still invisible to the eye, but the computer can produce a photon of visible light for each particle or wave of radiation it receives and put Earth into false color. Look.”
And the black circle glowed with a faint, blotchy blue.
“How much radioactivity is there?” asked Bliss, in a low voice. “Enough to signify that no human life can exist there?”
“No life of any kind,” said Trevize. “The planet is uninhabitable. The last becterium, the last virus, is long gone.”
“Can we explore it?” said Pelorat. “I mean, in space suits.”
“For a few hours—before we come down with irreversible radiation sickness.”
“Then what do we do, Golan?”
“Do?” Trevize looked at Pelorat with that same expressionless face. “Do you know what I would like to do? I would like to take you and Bliss—and the child—back to Gaia and leave you all there forever. Then I would like to go back to Terminus and hand back the ship. Then I would like to resign from the Council, which ought to make Mayor Branno very happy. Then I would like to live on my pension and let the Galaxy go as it will. I won’t care about the Seldon Plan, or about the Foundation, or about the Second Foundation, or about Gaia. The Galaxy can choose its own path. It will last my time and why should I care a snap as to what happens afterward?”
“Surely
, you don’t mean it, Golan,” said Pelorat urgently.
Trevize stared at him for a while, and then he drew a long breath. “No, I don’t, but, oh, how I wish I could do exactly what I have just outlined to you.”
“Never mind that. What will you do?”
“Keep the ship in orbit about the Earth, rest, get over the shock of all this, and think of what to do next. Except that—”
“Yes?”
And Trevize blurted out, “What can I do next? What is there further to look for? What is there further to find?”
20
THE NEARBY WORLD
94.
For four successive meals, Pelorat and Bliss had seen Trevize only at meals. During the rest of the time, he was either in the pilot-room or in his bedroom. At mealtimes, he was silent. His lips remained pressed together and he ate little.
At the fourth meal, however, it seemed to Pelorat that some of the unusual gravity had lifted from Trevize’s countenance. Pelorat cleared his throat twice, as though preparing to say something and then retreating.
Finally, Trevize looked up at him and said, “Well?”
“Have you—have you thought it out, Golan?”
“Why do you ask?”
“You seem less gloomy.”
“I’m not less gloomy, but I have been thinking. Heavily.”
“May we know what?” asked Pelorat.
Trevize glanced briefly in Bliss’s direction. She was looking firmly at her plate, maintaining a careful silence, as though certain that Pelorat would get further than she at this sensitive moment.
Trevize said, “Are you also curious, Bliss?”
She raised her eyes for a moment. “Yes. Certainly.”
Fallom kicked a leg of the table moodily, and said, “Have we found Earth?”
Bliss squeezed the youngster’s shoulder. Trevize paid no attention.
He said, “What we must start with is a basic fact. All information concerning Earth has been removed on various worlds. That is bound to bring us to an inescapable conclusion. Something on Earth is being hidden. And yet, by observation, we see that Earth is radioactively deadly, so that anything on it is automatically hidden. No one can land on it, and from this distance, when we are quite near the outer edge of the magnetosphere and would not care to approach Earth any more closely, there is nothing for us to find.”
“Can you be sure of that?” asked Bliss softly.
“I have spent my time at the computer, analyzing Earth in every way it and I can. There is nothing. What’s more, I feel there is nothing. Why, then, has data concerning the Earth been wiped out? Surely, whatever must be hidden is more effectively hidden now than anyone can easily imagine, and there need be no human gilding of this particular piece of gold.”
“It may be,” said Pelorat, “that there was indeed something hidden on Earth at a time when it had not yet grown so severely radioactive as to preclude visitors. People on Earth may then have feared that someone might land and find this whatever-it-is. It was then that Earth tried to remove information concerning itself. What we have now is a vestigial remnant of that insecure time.”
“No, I don’t think so,” said Trevize. “The removal of information from the Imperial Library at Trantor seems to have taken place very recently.” He turned suddenly to Bliss, “Am I right?”
Bliss said evenly, “I/we/Gaia gathered that much from the troubled mind of the Second Foundationer Gendibal, when he, you, and I had the meeting with the Mayor of Terminus.”
Trevize said, “So whatever must have had to be hidden because there existed the chance of finding it must still be in hiding now, and there must be danger of finding it now despite the fact that Earth is radioactive.”
“How is that possible?” asked Pelorat anxiously.
“Consider,” said Trevize. “What if what was on Earth is no longer on Earth, but was removed when the radioactive danger grew greater? Yet though the secret is no longer on Earth, it may be that if we can find Earth, we would be able to reason out the place where the secret has been taken. If that were so, Earth’s whereabouts would still have to be hidden.”
Fallom’s voice piped up again. “Because if we can’t find Earth, Bliss says you’ll take me back to Jemby.”
Trevize turned toward Fallom and glared—and Bliss said, in a low voice, “I told you we might, Fallom. We’ll talk about it later. Right now, go to your room and read, or play the flute, or anything else you want to do. Go—go.”
Fallom, frowning sulkily, left the table.
Pelorat said, “But how can you say that, Golan? Here we are. We’ve located Earth. Can we now deduce where whatever it is might be if it isn’t on Earth?”
It took a moment for Trevize to get over the moment of ill humor Fallom had induced. Then, he said, “Why not? Imagine the radioactivity of Earth’s crust growing steadily worse. The population would be decreasing steadily through death and emigration, and the secret, whatever it is, would be in increasing danger. Who would remain to protect it? Eventually, it would have to be shifted to another world, or the use of—whatever it was—would be lost to Earth. I suspect there would be reluctance to move it and it is likely that it would be done more or less at the last minute. Now, then, Janov, remember the old man on New Earth who filled your ears with his version of Earth’s history?”
“Monolee?”
“Yes. He. Did he not say in reference to the establishment of New Earth that what was left of Earth’s population was brought to the planet?”
Pelorat said, “Do you mean, old chap, that what we’re searching for is now on New Earth? Brought there by the last of Earth’s population to leave?”
Trevize said, “Might that not be so? New Earth is scarcely better known to the Galaxy in general than Earth is, and the inhabitants are suspiciously eager to keep all Outworlders away.”
“We were there,” put in Bliss. “We didn’t find anything.”
“We weren’t looking for anything but the whereabouts of Earth.”
Pelorat said, in a puzzled way, “But we’re looking for something with a high technology; something that can remove information from under the nose of the Second Foundation itself, and even from under the nose—excuse me, Bliss—of Gaia. Those people on New Earth may be able to control their patch of weather and may have some techniques of biotechnology at their disposal, but I think you’ll admit that their level of technology is, on the whole, quite low.”
Bliss nodded. “I agree with Pel.”
Trevize said, “We’re judging from very little. We never did see the men of the fishing fleet. We never saw any part of the island but the small patch we landed on. What might we have found if we had explored more thoroughly? After all, we didn’t recognize the fluorescent lights till we saw them in action, and if it appeared that the technology was low, appeared, I say—”
“Yes?” said Bliss, clearly unconvinced.
“That could be part of the veil intended to obscure the truth.”
“Impossible,” said Bliss.
“Impossible? It was you who told me, back on Gaia, that at Trantor, the larger civilization was deliberately held at a level of low technology in order to hide the small kernel of Second Foundationers. Why might not the same strategy be used on New Earth?”
“Do you suggest, then, that we return to New Earth and face infection again—this time to have it activated? Sexual intercourse is undoubtedly a particularly pleasant mode of infection, but it may not be the only one.”
Trevize shrugged. “I am not eager to return to New Earth, but we may have to.”
“May?”
“May! After all, there is another possibility.”
“What is that?”
“New Earth circles the star the people call Alpha. But Alpha is part of a binary system. Might there not be a habitable planet circling Alpha’s companion as well?”
“Too dim, I should think,” said Bliss, shaking her head. “The companion is only a quarter as bright as Alpha is.”
/> “Dim, but not too dim. If there is a planet fairly close to the star, it might do.”
Pelorat said, “Does the computer say anything about any planets for the companion?”
Trevize smiled grimly. “I checked that. There are five planets of moderate size. No gas giants.”
“And are any of the five planets habitable?”
“The computer gives no information at all about the planets, other than their number, and the fact that they aren’t large.”
“Oh,” said Pelorat deflated.
Trevize said, “That’s nothing to be disappointed about. None of the Spacer worlds are to be found in the computer at all. The information on Alpha itself is minimal. These things are hidden deliberately and if almost nothing is known about Alpha’s companion, that might almost be regarded as a good sign.”
“Then,” said Bliss, in a business-like manner, “What you are planning to do is this—visit the companion and, if that draws a blank, return to Alpha itself.”
“Yes. And this time when we reach the island of New Earth, we will be prepared. We will examine the entire island meticulously before landing and, Bliss, I expect you to use your mental abilities to shield—”
And at that moment, the Far Star lurched slightly, as though it had undergone a ship-sized hiccup, and Trevize cried out, halfway between anger and perplexity, “Who’s at the controls?”
And even as he asked, he knew very well who was.
95.
Fallom, at the computer console, was completely absorbed. Her small, longfingered hands were stretched wide in order to fit the faintly gleaming handmarks on the desk. Fallom’s hands seemed to sink into the material of the desk, even though it was clearly felt to be hard and slippery.
She had seen Trevize hold his hands so on a number of occasions, and she hadn’t seen him do more than that, though it was quite plain to her that in so doing he controlled the ship.
