by Isaac Asimov
Amadiro said, “Since it looks as though we're in for some mildly nasty weather, let's do without the ineffective daylight we are now dubiously blessed with.”
Somehow (Baley did not follow exactly what it was that Amadiro did on the control-panel of his desk) the windows opacified and the walls glowed with gentle daylight.
Amadiro's smile seemed to broaden. “We do not really have much to talk about, you and I, Mr. Baley. I took the precaution of speaking to Mr. Gremionis while you were coming here. From what he said, I decided to call Dr. Vasilia as well. Apparently, Mr. Baley, you have more or less accused both of complicity in the destruction of Jander and, if I can understand the language, you have also accused me.”
“I merely asked questions, Dr. Amadiro, as I intend to do now.”
“No doubt, but you are an Earthman, so you are not aware of the enormity of your actions and I am really sorry that you must nonetheless suffer the consequences of them. —You know perhaps that Gremionis sent me a memo concerning your slander of him.”
“He told me he had, but he misinterpreted my action. It was not slander.”
Amadiro pursed his lips as though considering the statement. “I dare say you are right from your standpoint, Mr. Baley, but you don't understand the Auroran definition of the word. I was forced to send Gremionis’ memo on to the Chairman and, as a result, it is very likely that you'll be ordered off the planet by tomorrow morning. I regret this, of course, but I fear that your investigation is about to come to an end.”
14. AGAIN AMADIRO
55
Baley was taken aback. He did not know what to make of Amadiro and he had not expected this confusion within himself. Gremionis had described him as “ standoffish.” From what Cicis had said, he expected Amadiro to be autocratic. In person, however, Amadiro seemed jovial, outgoing, even friendly. Yet if his words were to be trusted, Amadiro was calmly moving to end the investigation. He was doing it pitilessly—and yet with what seemed to be a commiserating smile.
What was he?
Automatically, Baley glanced toward the niches where Giskard and Daneel were standing, the primitive Giskard of course without expression, the advanced Daneel calm and quiet. That Daneel had ever met Amadiro in his short existence was, on the face of it, unlikely. Giskard, on the other hand, in his—how many?—decades of life might very well have met him.
Baley's lips tightened as he thought he might have asked Giskard in advance what Amadiro might be like.
He might, in that case, be now better able to judge how much of this roboticist's present persona was real and how much was cleverly calculated.
Why on Earth—or off it, Baley wondered, didn't he use these robotic resources of his more intelligently? Or why didn't Giskard volunteer information—but no, that was unfair. Giskard clearly lacked the capacity for independent activity of that sort. He would yield information on request, Baley thought, but would produce none on his own initiative.
Amadiro followed the brief flicking of Baley's eyes and said, “I'm one against three, I think. As you see, I have none of my robots here in my office—although any number are on instant call, I admit—while you have two of Fastolfe's robots: the old reliable Giskard and that marvel of design, Daneel.”
“You know them both, I see,” said Baley.
“By reputation only. I actually see them—I, a roboticist, was about to say ‘in the flesh'—I actually see them physically for the first time now, although I saw Daneel portrayed by an actor in that hyperwave show.”
“Everyone in all the worlds has apparently seen that hyperwave show,” said Baley glumly. “It makes my life—as a real and limited individual—difficult.”
“Not with me,” said Amadiro, his smile broadening. “I assure you I did not take your fictional representation with any seriousness whatever. I assumed you were limited in real life. And so you are—or you would not have indulged so freely in unwarranted accusations on Aurora.”
“Dr. Amadiro,” said Baley, “I assure you I was making no formal accusations. I was merely pursuing an investigation and considering possibilities.”
“Don't misunderstand me,” said Amadiro with sudden earnestness. “I don't blame you. I am sure that you were behaving perfectly by Earth standards. It is just that you are up against Auroran standards now. We treasure reputation with unbelievable intensity.”
“If that were so, Dr. Amadiro, then haven't you and other Globalists been slandering Dr. Fastolfe with suspicion, to a far greater extent than any small thing I have done?”
“Quite true,” agreed Amadiro, “but I am an eminent Auroran and have a certain influence, while you are an Earthman and have no influence whatever. That is most unfair, I admit, and I deplore it, but that is the way the worlds are. What can we do? Besides, the accusation against Fastolfe can be maintained—and will be maintained—and slander isn't slander when it is the truth. Your mistake was to make accusations that simply can't be maintained. I'm sure you must admit that neither Mr. Gremionis nor Dr. Vasilia Aliena—nor both together— could possibly have disabled poor Jander.”
“I did not formally accuse either.”
“Perhaps not, but you can't hide behind the word ‘formally’ on Aurora. It's too bad Fastolfe didn't warn you of this when he brought you in to take up this investigation, this—as it now is, I'm afraid—ill-fated investigation.”
Baley felt the corner of his mouth twitch as he thought that Fastolfe might indeed have warned him.
He said, “Am I to get a hearing in the matter or is it all settled?”
“Of course you will get a hearing before being condemned. We are not barbarians here on Aurora. The Chairman will consider the memo I have sent him, together with my own suggestions in the matter. He will probably consult Fastolfe as the other party intimately concerned and then arrange to meet with all three of us, perhaps tomorrow. Some decision might be reached then—or later—and it would be ratified by the full Legislature. All due process of law will be followed, I assure you.”
“The letter of the law will be followed, no doubt, but what if the Chairman has already made up his mind, what if nothing I say will be accepted, and what if the Legislature simply rubber-stamps a foregone decision? Is that possible?”
Amadiro did not exactly smile at that, but he seemed subtly amused. “You are a realist, Mr. Baley. I am pleased with that. People who dream of justice are so apt to be disappointed—and they are usually such wonderful people that one hates to see that happen.”
Amadiro's glance fixed itself on Daneel again. “A remarkable job, this humaniform robot,” he said. “It is astonishing how close to his vest Fastolfe has kept things. And it is a shame that Jander was lost. There Fastolfe did the unforgivable.”
“Dr. Fastolfe, sir, denies that he was in any way implicated.”
“Yes, Mr. Baley, of course he would. Does he say that I am implicated? Or is my implication entirely your own idea?”
Baley said deliberately, “I have no such idea. I merely wish to question you on the matter. As for Dr. Fastolfe, he is not a candidate for one of your accusations of slander. He is certain you have had nothing to do with what happened to Jander because he is quite certain you lack the knowledge and capacity to immobilize a humaniform robot.”
If Baley hoped to stir things up in that manner, he failed. Amadiro accepted the slur with no loss of good humor and said, “In that he is right, Mr. Baley. Sufficient ability is not to be found in any roboticist—alive or dead—except for Fastolfe himself. Isn't that what he says, our modest master of masters?”
“Yes, he does.”
“Then whatever does he say happened to Jander, I wonder?”
“A random event. Purely chance.”
Amadiro laughed. “Has he calculated the probability of such a random event?”
“Yes, Master Roboticist. Yet even an extremely unlikely chance might happen, especially if there were incidents that bettered the odds.”
“Such as what?”
“That is what I am hoping to find out. Since you have already arranged to have me thrown off the planet, do you now intend to forestall any questioning of yourself—or may I continue my investigation until such time as my activity in that respect is legally ended? —Before you answer, Dr. Amadiro, please consider that the investigation has not as yet been legally ended and, in any hearing that may come up, whether tomorrow or later, I will be able to accuse you of refusing to answer my questions if you should insist on now ending this interview. That might influence the Chairman in his decision.”
“It would not, my dear Mr. Baley. Don't imagine you can in any way interfere with me. —However, you may interview me for as long as you wish. I will cooperate fully with you, if only to enjoy the spectacle of the good Fastolfe trying uselessly to disentangle himself from his unfortunate deed. I am not extraordinarily vindictive, Mr. Baley, but the fact that Jander was Fastolfe's own creation does not give him the right to destroy it.”
Baley said, “It is not legally established that this is what he has done, so that what you have just said is, at least potentially, slander. Let us put that to one side, therefore, and get on with this interview. I need information. I will ask my questions briefly and directly and, if you answer in the same way, this interview may be completed quickly.”
“No, Mr. Baley. It is not you who will set the conditions for this interview,” said Amadiro. “I take it that one or both of your robots is equipped to record our conversation in full.”
“I believe so.”
“I know so. I have a recording device of my own as well. Don't think, my good Mr. Baley, that you will lead me through a jungle of short answers to something that will serve Fastolfe's purpose. I will answer as I choose and make certain I am not misinterpreted. And my own recording will help me make it certain that I am not misinterpreted.” Now, for the first time, there was the suggestion of the wolf behind Amadiro's attitude of friendliness.
“Very well, then, but if your answers are deliberately long-winded and evasive, that, too, will show up in the recording.”
“Obviously.”
“With that understood, may I have a glass of water, to begin with?”
“Absolutely. —Giskard, will you oblige Mr. Baley?”
Giskard was out of his niche at once. There was the inevitable tinkle of ice at the bar at one end of the room and a tall glass of water was on the desk immediately before Baley.
Baley said, “Thank you, Giskard,” and waited for him to move back into his niche.
He said, “Dr. Amadiro, am I correct in considering you the head of the Robotics Institute?”
“Yes, you are.”
“And its founder?”
“Correct. —You see, I answer briefly.”
“How long has it been in existence?”
“As a concept—decades. I have been gathering like-minded people for at least fifteen years. Permission was obtained from the Legislature twelve years ago. Building began nine years ago and active work began six years ago. In its present completed form, the Institute is two years old and there are long-range plans for further expansion, eventually. —There you have a long answer, sir, but presented reasonably concisely.”
“Why did you find it necessary to set up the Institute?”
“Ah, Mr. Bailey. Here you surely expect nothing but a long-winded answer.”
“As you please, sir.”
At this point, a robot brought in a tray of small sandwiches and still smaller pastries, none of which were familiar to Baley. He tried a sandwich and found it crunchy and not exactly unpleasant but odd enough for him to finish it only with an effort. He washed it down with what was left of his water.
Amadiro watched with a kind of gentle amusement and said, “You must understand, Mr. Baley, that we Aurorans are unusual people. So are Spacers generally, but I speak of Aurorans in particular now. We are descended from Earthpeople—something most of us do not willingly think about—but we are self-selected.”
“What does that mean, sir?”
“Earthpeople have long lived on an increasingly crowded planet and have drawn together into still more crowded cities that finally became the beehives and anthills you call Cities with a capital ‘C What kind o£
Earthpeople, then, would leave Earth and go to other worlds that are empty and hostile so that they might build new societies from nothing, societies that they could not enjoy in completed form in their own lifetime—trees that would still be saplings when they died, so to speak.”
“Rather unusual people, I suppose.”
“Quite unusual. Specifically, people who are not so dependent on crowds of their fellows as to lack the ability to face emptiness. People who even prefer emptiness, who would like to work on their own and face problems by themselves, rather than hide in the herd and share the burden so that their own load is virtually nothing. Individualists, Mr. Baley. Individualists!”
“I see that.”
“And our society is founded on that. Every direction in which the Spacer worlds have developed further emphasizes our individuality. We are proudly human on Aurora, rather than being huddled sheep on Earth. —Mind you, Mr. Baley, I use the metaphor not as way of deriding Earth. It is simply a different society which I find unad-mirable but which you, I suppose, find comforting and ideal.”
“What has this to do with the founding of the Institute, Dr. Amadiro?”
“Even proud and healthy individualism has its drawbacks. The greatest minds—working singly, even for centuries—cannot progress rapidly if they refuse to communicate their findings. A knotty puzzle may hold up a scientist for a century, when it may be that a colleague has the solution already and is not even aware of the puzzle that it might solve. —The Institute is an attempt, in the narrow field of robotics at least, to introduce a certain community of thought.”
“Is it possible that the particular knotty puzzle you are attacking is that of the construction of a humaniform robot?”
Amadiro's eyes twinkled. “Yes, that is obvious, isn't it? It was twenty-six years ago that Fastolfe's new mathematical system, which he calls ‘intersectional analysis,’ made it possible to design humaniform robots—but he kept the system to himself. Years afterward, when all the difficult technical details were worked out, he and Dr. Sarton applied the theory to the design of Daneel. Then Fastolfe alone completed Jander. But all of those details were kept secret, also.
“Most roboticists shrugged and felt that this was natural. They could only try, individually, to work out the details for themselves. I, on the other hand, was struck by the possibility of an Institute in which efforts would be pooled. It wasn't easy to persuade other roboticists of the usefulness of the plan, or to persuade the Legislature to fund it against Fastolfe's formidable opposition, or to persevere through the years of effort, but here we are.”
Baley said, “Why was Dr. Fastolfe opposed?”
“Ordinary self-love, to begin with—and I have no fault to find with that, you understand. All of us have a very natural self-love. It comes with the territory of individualism. The point is that Fastolfe considers himself the greatest roboticist in history and also considers the humaniform robot his own particular achievement. He doesn't want that achievement duplicated by a group of roboticists, individually faceless compared to himself. I imagine he viewed it as a conspiracy of inferiors to dilute and deface his own great victory.”
“You say that was his motive for opposition ‘to begin with.’ That means there were other motives. What were they?”
“He also objects to the uses to which we plan to put the humaniform robots.”
“What uses are these, Dr. Amadiro?”
“Not now. Let's not be ingenuous. Surely Dr. Fastolfe has told you of the Globalist plans for settling the Galaxy?”
“That he has and, for that matter, Dr. Vasilia has spoken to me of the difficulties of scientific advance among individualists. However, that does not stop me from wanting to hear your views on these matters. Nor sh
ould it stop you from wanting to tell me. For instance, do you want me to accept Dr. Fastolfe's interpretation of Globalist plans as unbiased and impartial—and would you state that for the record? Or would you prefer to describe your plans in your own words?”
“Put that way, Mr. Baley, you intend to give me no choice.”
“None, Dr. Amadiro.”
“Very well. I—we, I should say, for the people at the Institute are like-minded in this—look into the future and wish to see humanity opening ever more and ever newer planets to settlement. We do not, however, want the process of self-selection to destroy the older planets or to reduce them to moribundity, as in the case—pardon me—of Earth. We don't want the new planets to take the best of us and to leave behind the dregs. You see that, don't you?”
“Please go on.”
“In any robot-oriented society, as in the case of our own, the easy solution is to send out robots as settlers. The robots will build the society and the world and we can then all follow later without selection, for the new world will be as comfortable and as adjusted to ourselves as the old worlds were, so that we can go on to new worlds without leaving home, so to speak.”
“Won't the robots create robot worlds rather than human worlds?”
“Exactly, if we send out robots that are nothing but robots. We have, however, the opportunity of sending out humaniform robots like Daneel here, who, in creating worlds for themselves, would automatically create worlds for us. Dr. Fastolfe, however, objects to this. He finds some virtue in the thought of human beings carving a new world out of a strange and forbidding planet and does not see that the effort to do so would not only cost enormously in human life, but would also create a world molded by catastrophic events into something not at all like the worlds we know.”
“As the Spacer worlds today are different from Earth and from each other?”
Amadiro, for a moment, lost his joviality and looked thoughtful. “Actually, Mr. Baley, you touch an important point. I am discussing Aurora only. The Spacer worlds do indeed differ among themselves and I am not overly fond of most of them. It is clear to me—though I may be prejudiced—that Aurora, the oldest among them, is also the best and most successful. I don't want a variety of new worlds of which only a few might be really valuable. I want many Auroras—uncounted millions of Auroras— and for that reason I want new worlds carved into Auroras before human beings go there. That's why we call ourselves ‘Globalists’ by the way. We are concerned with this globe of ours—Aurora—and no other.”
