by Isaac Asimov
He looked down at the woman, who still maintained her pose at the stool, and said, “Dr. Vasilia Fastolfe?”
“Dr. Vasilia Aliena, if you want a full name. I do not borrow the names of others. You may call me Dr. Vasilia. It is the name by which I am commonly known at the Institute.” Her voice, which had been rather harsh, softened, “And how are you, my old friend Giskard?”
Giskard said, in tones oddly removed from his usual one, “I greet you—” He paused and then said, “I greet you, Little Miss.”
Vasilia smiled. “And this, I suppose, is the humani-form robot of whom I have heard—Daneel Olivaw?”
“Yes, Dr. Vasilia,” said Daneel briskly.
“And finally, we have—the Earthman.”
“Elijah Baley, Doctor,” said Baley stiffly.
“Yes, I'm aware that Earthmen have names and that Elijah Baley is yours,” she said coolly. “You don't look one blasted thing like the actor who played you in the hyperwave show.”
“I am aware of that, Doctor.”
“The one who played Daneel was rather a good likeness, however, but I suppose we are not here to discuss the show.”
“We are not.”
“I gather we are here, Earthman, to talk about whatever it is you want to say about Santirix Gremionis and get it over with. Right?”
“Not entirely,” said Baley. “That is not the primary reason for my coming, though I imagine we will get to it.”
“Indeed? Are you under the impression that we are here to engage in a long and complicated discussion on whatever topic you choose to deal with?”
“I think, Dr. Vasilia, you would be well-advised to allow me to manage this interview as I wish.”
“Is that a threat?”
“No.”
“Well, I have never met an Earthman and it might be interesting to see how closely you resemble the actor who played your role—that is, in ways other than appearance. Are you really the masterful person you seemed to be in the show?”
“The show,” said Baley with clear distaste, “was overdramatic and exaggerated my personality in every direction. I would rather you accept me as I am and judge me entirely from how I appear to you right now.”
Vasilia laughed. “At least you don't seem overawed by me. That's a point in your favor. Or do you think this Gremionis thing you've got in mind puts you in a position to order me about?”
“I am not here to do anything but uncover the truth in the matter of the dead humaniform robot, Jander Panell.”
“Dead? Was he ever alive, then?”
“I use one syllable in preference to phrases such as ‘rendered inoperative.’ Does saying ‘dead’ confuse you?”
Vasilia said, “You fence well.—Debrett, bring the Earthman a chair. He will grow weary standing if this is to be a long conversation. Then get into your niche. And you may choose one, too, Daneel. —Giskard, come stand by me.”
Baley sat down. “Thank you, Debrett. —Dr. Vasilia, I have no authority to question you; I have no legal means of forcing you to answer my questions. However, the death of Jander Panell has put your father in a position of some—”
“It has put whom in a position?”
“Your father.”
“Earthman, I sometimes refer to a certain individual as my father, but no one else does. Please use a proper name.”
“Dr. Han Fastolfe. He is your father, isn't he? As a matter of record?”
Vasilia said, “You are using a biological term. I share genes with him in a manner characteristic of what on Earth would be considered a father-daughter relationship. This is a matter of indifference on Aurora, except in medical and genetic matters. I can conceive of my suffering from certain metabolic states in which it would be appropriate to consider the physiology and biochemistry of those with whom I share genes—parents, siblings, children, and so on. Otherwise these relationships are not generally referred to in polite Auroran society. —I explain this to you because you are an Earthman.”
“If I have offended against custom,” said Baley, “it is through ignorance and I apologize. May I refer to the gentleman under discussion by name?”
“Certainly.”
“In that case, the death of Jander Panell has put Dr. Han Fastolfe into a position of some difficulty and I would assume that you would be concerned enough to desire to help him.”
“You assume that, do you? Why?”
“He is your— He brought you up. He cared for you. You had a profound affection for each other. He still feels a profound affection for you.”
“Did he tell you that?”
“It was obvious from the details of our conversations—even from the fact that he has taken an interest in the Solarian woman, Gladia Delmarre, because of her resemblance to you.”
“Did he tell you thatr
“He did, but even if he hadn't, the resemblance is obvious.”
“Nevertheless, Earthman, I owe Dr. Fastolfe nothing. Your assumptions can be dismissed.”
Baley cleared his throat. “Aside from any personal feelings you might or might not have, there is the matter of the future of the Galaxy. Dr. Fastolfe wishes new worlds to be explored and settled by human beings. If the political repercussions of Jander's death lead to the exploration and settlement of the new worlds by robots, Dr. Fastolfe believes that this will be catastrophic for Aurora and humanity. Surely you would not be a party to such a catastrophe.”
Vasilia said indifferently, watching him closely, “Surely not, if I agreed with Dr. Fastolfe. I do not. I see no harm in having humaniform robots doing the work. I am here at the Institute, in fact, to make that possible. I am a Globalist. Since Dr. Fastolfe is a Humanist, he is my political enemy.”
Her answers were clipped and direct, no longer than they had to be. Each time there followed a definite silence, as though she were waiting, with interest, for the next question. Baley had the impression that she was curious about him, amused by him, making wagers with herself as to what the next question might be, determined to give him just the minimum information necessary to force another question.
He said, “Have you long been a member of this Institute?”
“Since its formation.”
“Are there many members?”
“I should judge about a third of Aurora's roboticists are members, though only about half of these actually live and work on the Institute grounds.”
“Do other members of the Institute share your views on the robotic exploration of other worlds? Do they oppose Dr. Fastolfe's views one and all?”
“I suspect that most of them are Globalists, but I don't know that we have taken a vote on the matter or even discussed it formally. You had better ask them all individually.”
“Is Dr. Fastolfe a member of the Institute?”
“No.”
Baley waited a bit, but she said nothing beyond the negative. He said, “Isn't that surprising? I should think he, of all people, would be a member.”
“As it happens, we don't want him. What is perhaps less important, he doesn't want us.”
“Isn't that even more surprising?”
“I don't think so.” —And then, as though goaded into saying something more by an irritation within herself, she said, “He lives in the city of Eos. I suppose you know the significance of the name, Earthman?”
Baley nodded and said, “Eos is the ancient Greek goddess of the dawn, as Aurora is the ancient Roman goddess of the dawn.”
“Exactly. Dr. Han Fastolfe lives in the City of the Dawn on the World of the Dawn, but he is not himself a believer in the Dawn. He does not understand the necessary method of expansion through the Galaxy, of converting the Spacer Dawn into broad Galactic Day. The robotic exploration of the Galaxy is the only practical way to carry the task through and he won't accept it—or us.”
Baley said slowly, “Why is it the only practical method? Aurora and the other Spacer worlds were not explored and settled by robots but by human beings.”
“Corre
ction. By Earthpeople. It was a wasteful and inefficient procedure and there are now no Earthpeople that we will allow to serve as further settlers. We have become Spacers, long-lived and healthy, and we have robots who are infinitely more versatile and flexible than those available to the human beings who originally settled our worlds. Times and matters are wholly different—and today only robotic exploration is feasible.”
“Let us suppose you are right and Dr. Fastolfe is wrong. Even so, he has a logical view. Why won't he and the Institute accept each other? Simply because they disagree on this point?”
“No, this disagreement is comparatively minor. There is a more fundamental conflict.”
Again Baley paused and again she added nothing to her remark. He did not feel it safe to display irritation, so he said quietly, almost tentatively, “What is the more fundamental conflict?”
The amusement in Vasilia's voice came nearer the surface. It softened the lines of her face somewhat and, for a moment, she looked more like Gladia. “You couldn't guess, unless it were explained to you, I think.”
“Precisely why I am asking, Dr. Vasilia.”
“Well, then, Earthman, I have been told that Earthpeople are short-lived. I have not been misled in that, have I?”
Baley shrugged. “Some of us live to be a hundred years old, Earth time.” He thought a bit. “Perhaps a hundred and thirty or so metric years.”
“And how old are you?”
“Forty-five standard, sixty metric.”
“I am sixty-six metric. I expect to live three metric centuries more at least—if I am careful.”
Baley spread his hands wide. “I congratulate you.”
“There are disadvantages.”
“I was told this morning that, in three or four centuries, many, many losses have a chance to accumulate.”
“I'm afraid so,” said Vasilia. “And many, many gains have a chance to accumulate, as well. On the whole, it balances.”
“What, then, are the disadvantages?”
“You are not a scientist, of course.”
“I am a plainclothesman—a policeman, if you like.”
“But perhaps you know scientists on your world.”
“I have met some,” said Baley cautiously.
“You know how they work? We are told that on Earth they cooperate out of necessity. They have, at most, half a century of active labor in the course of their short lives. Less than seven metric decades. Not much can be done in that time.”
“Some of our scientists have accomplished quite a deal in considerably less time.”
“Because they have taken advantage of the findings others have made before them and profit from the use they can make of contemporary findings by others. Isn't that so?”
“Of course. We have a scientific community to which all contribute, across the expanse of space and of time.”
“Exactly. It won't work otherwise. Each scientist, aware of the unlikelihood of accomplishing much entirely by himself, is forced into the community, cannot help becoming part of the clearinghouse. Progress thus becomes enormously greater than it would be if this did not exist.”
“Is not this the case on Aurora and the other Spacer worlds, too?” asked Baley.
“In theory it is; in practice not so much. The pressures in a long-lived society are less. Scientists here have three or three and a half centuries to devote to a problem, so that the thought arises that significant progress may be made in that time by a solitary worker. It becomes possible to feel a kind of intellectual greed—to want to accomplish something on your own, to assume a property right to a particular facet of progress, to be willing to see the general advance slowed—rather than give up what you conceive to be yours alone. And the general advance is slowed on Spacer worlds as a result, to the point where it is difficult to outspace the work done on Earth, despite our enormous advantages.”
“I assume you wouldn't say this if I were not to take it that Dr. Han Fastolfe behaves in this manner.”
“He certainly does. It is his theoretical analysis of the positronic brain that has made the humaniform robot possible. He has used it to construct—with the help of the late Dr. Sarton—your robot friend Daneel, but he has not published the important details of his theory, nor does he make it available to anyone else. In this way, he—and he alone—holds a stranglehold on the production of humaniform robots.”
Baley furrowed his brow. “And the Robotics Institute is dedicated to cooperation among scientists?”
“Exactly. This Institute is made up of over a hundred top-notch roboticists of different ages, advancements, and skills and we hope to establish branches on other worlds and make it an interstellar association. All of us are dedicated to communicating our separate discoveries or speculations to the common fund—-doing voluntarily for the general good what you Earthpeople do perforce because you live such short lives.
“This, however, Dr. Han Fastolfe will not do. I'm sure you think of Dr. Han Fastolfe as a nobly idealistic Auroran patriot, but he will not put his intellectual property—as he thinks of it—into the common fund and therefore he does not want us. And because he assumes a personal property right upon scientific discoveries, we do not want him. —You no longer find the mutual distaste a mystery, I take it.”
Baley nodded his head, then said, “You think this will work—this voluntary giving up of personal glory?”
“It must,” said Vasilia grimly.
“And has the Institute, through community endeavor, duplicated Dr. Fastolfe's individual work and rediscovered the theory of the humaniform positronic brain?”
“We will, in time. It is inevitable.”
“And you are making no attempt to shorten the time it will take by persuading Dr. Fastolfe to yield the secret?”
“I think we are on the way to persuading him.”
“Through the working of the Jander scandal?”
“I don't think you really have to ask that question. —Well, have I told you what you wanted to know, Earth-man?”
Baley said, “You have told me some things I didn't know.”
“Then it is time for you to tell me about Gremionis. Why have you brought up the name of this barber in connection with me?”
“Barber?”
“He considers himself a hair stylist, among other things, but he is a barber, plain and simple. Tell me about him—or let us consider this interview at an end.”
Baley felt weary. It seemed clear to him that Vasilia had enjoyed the fencing. She had given him enough to whet his appetite and now he would be forced to buy additional material with information of his own. —But he had none. Or at least he had only guesses. And if any of them were wrong, vitally wrong, he was through.
He therefore fenced on his own. “You understand, Dr. Vasilia, that you can't get away with pretending that it is farcical to suppose there is a connection between Gremionis and yourself.”
“Why not, when it is farcical?”
“Oh no. If it were farcical, you would have laughed in my face and shut off trimensional contact. The mere fact that you were willing to abandon your earliest stand and receive me—the mere fact that you have been talking to me at length and telling me a great many things—is a clear admission that you feel that I just possibly might have my knife at your jugular,”
Vasilia's jaw muscles tightened and she said, in a low and angry voice, “See here, little Earthman, my position is vulnerable and you probably know it. I am the daughter of Dr. Fastolfe and there are some here at the Institute who are foolish enough—or knavish enough—to mistrust me therefor. I don't know what kind of story you may have heard—or made up—but that it's more or less farcical is certain. Nevertheless, no matter how farcical, it might be used effectively against me. So I am willing to trade for it. I have told you some things and I might tell you more, but only if you now tell me what you have in your hand and convince me you are telling me the truth. So tell me now.
“If you try to play games with me, I wil
l be in no worse position than at present if I kick you out—and I will at least get pleasure out of that. And I will use what leverage I have with the Chairman to get him to cancel his decision to let you come here and have you sent right back to Earth. There is considerable pressure on him now to do this and you won't want the addition of mine.
“So talk! Now!”
39
Baley's impulse was to lead up to the crucial point, feeling his way to see if he were right. That, he felt, would not work. She would see what he was doing—she was no fool—and would stop him. He was on the track of something, he knew, and he didn't want to spoil it. What she said about her vulnerable position as the result of her relationship to her father might well be true, but she still would not have been frightened into seeing him if she hadn't suspected that some notion he had was not completely farcical.
He had to come out with something, then, with something important that would establish, at once, some sort of domination over her. Therefore—the gamble.
He said, “Santirix Gremionis offered himself to you.” And, before Vasilia could react, he raised die ante by saying, with ail added touch of harshness, “And not once but many times.”
Vasilia clasped her hands over one knee, then pulled herself up and seated herself on the stool, as though to make herself more comfortable. She looked at Giskard, who stood motionless and expressionless at her side.
Then she looked at Baley and said, “Well, the idiot offers himself to everyone he sees, regardless of age and sex. I would be unusual if he paid me no attention.”
Baley made the gesture of brushing that to one side. (She had not laughed. She had not brought the interview to an end. She had not even put on a display of fury. She was waiting to see what he would build out of the statement, so he did have something by the tail.)
He said, “That is exaggeration, Dr. Vasilia. No one, however undiscriminating, would fail to make choices and, in the case of this Gremionis, you were selected and, despite your refusal to accept him, he continued to offer himself, quite out of keeping with Auroran custom.”
