by Isaac Asimov
“She didn’t say. She said she wants to talk to you.”
“Then why isn’t she here, eh?”
Pelorat said, “I think-I say I think-that she is rather of the opinion that you are not fond of her, Golan, and she rather hesitates to approach you. I have done my best, old man, to assure her that you have nothing against her. I cannot believe anyone would think anything but highly of her. Still, she wanted me to broach the subject with you, so to speak. May I tell her that you’ll be willing to see her, Golan?”
“Of course, I’ll see her right now.”
“And you’ll be reasonable? You see, old man, she’s rather intense about it. She said the matter was vital and she must go with you.”
“She didn’t tell you why, did she?”
“No, but if she thinks she must go, so must Gaia.”
“Which means I mustn’t refuse. Is that right, Janov?”
“Yes, I think you mustn’t, Golan.”
3.
FOR THE FIRST time during his brief stay on Gaia, Trevize entered Bliss’s house which now sheltered Pelorat as well.
Trevize looked about briefly. On Gaia, houses tended to be simple. With the all-but-complete absence of violent weather of any kind, with the temperature mild at all times in this particular latitude, with even the tectonic plates slipping smoothly when they had to slip, there was no point in building houses designed for elaborate protection, or for maintaining a comfortable environment within an uncomfortable one. The whole planet was a house, so to speak, designed to shelter its inhabitants.
Bliss’s house within that planetary house was small, the windows screened ether than glassed, the furniture sparse and gracefully utilitarian. There were holographic images on the walls; one of them of Pelorat looking rather astonished and self-conscious. Trevize’s lips twitched but he tried not to let his amusement show, and he fell to adjusting his waist sash meticulously.
Bliss watched him. She wasn’t smiling in her usual fashion. Rather, she looked serious, her fine dark eyes wide, her hair tumbling to her shoulders in a gentle black wave. Only her full lips, touched with red, lent a bit of color to her face.
“Thank you for coming to see me, Trev.”
“Janov was very urgent in his request, Blissenobiarella.”
Bliss smiled briefly. “Well returned. If you will call me Bliss, a decent monosyllable, I will try to say your name in full, Trevize.” She stumbled, almost unnoticeably, over the second syllable.
Trevize held up his right hand. “That would be a good arrangement. I recognize the Gaian habit of using one-syllable name-portions in the common interchange of thoughts, so if you should happen to call me Trev now and then I will not be offended. Still, I will be more comfortable if you try to say Trevize as often as you can, and I shall say Bliss.”
Trevize studied her, as he always did when he encountered her. As an individual, she was a young woman in her early twenties. As part of Gaia, however, she was thousands of years old. It made no difference in her appearance, but it made a difference in the way she spoke sometimes, and in the atmosphere that inevitably surrounded her. Did he want it this way for everyone who existed? No! Surely, no, and yet-
Bliss said, “I will get to the point. You stressed your desire to find Earth-”
“I spoke to Dom,” said Trevize, determined not to give in to Gaia without a perpetual insistence on his own point of view.
“Yes, but in speaking to Dom, you spoke to Gaia and to every part of it, so that you spoke to me, for instance.”
“Did you hear me as I spoke?”
“No, for I wasn’t listening, but if, thereafter, I paid attention, I could remember what you said. Please accept that and let us go on. You stressed your desire to find Earth and insisted on its importance. I do not see that importance but you have the knack of being right so I/we/Gaia must accept what you say. If the mission is crucial to your decision concerning Gaia, It is of crucial importance to Gaia, and so Gaia must go with you, if only to try to protect you.”
“When you say Gaia must go with me, you mean you must go with me. Am I correct?”
“I am Gaia,” said Bliss simply.
“But so is everything else on and in this planet. Why, then, you? Why not some other portion of Gaia?”
“Because Pel wishes to go with you, and if he goes with you, he would not be happy with any other portion of Gaia than myself.”
Pelorat, who sat rather unobtrusively on a chair in another corner (with his back, Trevize noted, to his own image) said softly, “That’s true, Golan. Bliss is my portion of Gaia.”
Bliss smiled suddenly. “It seems rather exciting to be thought of in that way. It’s very alien, of course.”
“Well, let’s see.” Trevize put his hands behind his head and began to lean backward in his chair. The thin legs creaked as he did so, so that he quickly decided the chair was not sturdy enough to endure that game and brought it down to all four feet. “Will you still be part of Gaia if you leave her?”
“I need not be. I can isolate myself, for instance, if I seem in danger of serious harm, so that harm will not necessarily spill over into Gaia, or if there is any other overriding reason for it. That, however, is a matter of emergency only. Generally, I will remain part of Gaia.”
“Even if we Jump through hyperspace?”
“Even then, though that will complicate matters somewhat.”
“Somehow I don’t find that comforting.”
“Why not?”
Trevize wrinkled his nose in the usual metaphoric response to a bad smell. “It means that anything that is said and done on my ship that you hear and see will be heard and seen by all of Gaia.”
“I am Gaia so what I see, hear, and sense, Gaia will see, hear, and sense.”
“Exactly. Even that wall will see, hear, and sense.”
Bliss looked at the wall he pointed to and shrugged. “Yes, that wall, too. It has only an infinitesimal consciousness so that it senses and understands only infinitesimally, but I presume there are some subatomic shifts in response to what we are saying right now, for instance, that enable it to fit into Gaia with more purposeful intent for the good of the whole.”
“But what if I wish privacy? I may not want the wall to be aware of what I say or do.”
Bliss looked exasperated and Pelorat broke in suddenly. “You know, Golan, I don’t want to interfere, since I obviously don’t know much about Gaia. Still, I’ve been with Bliss and I’ve gathered somehow some of what it’s all about. If you walk through a crowd on Terminus, you see and hear a great many things, and you may remember some of it. You might even be able to recall all of it under the proper cerebral stimulation, but mostly you don’t care. You let it go. Even if you watch some emotional scene between strangers and even if you’re interested; still, if it’s of no great concern to you-you let it go-you forget. It must be so on Gaia, too. Even if all of Gaia knows your business intimately, that doesn’t mean that Gaia necessarily cares. Isn’t that so, Bliss dear?”
“I’ve never thought of it that way, Pel, but there is something in what you say. Still, this privacy Trev talks about-I mean, Trevize-is nothing we value at all. In fact, I/we/Gaia find it incomprehensible. To want to be not part-to have your voice unheard-your deeds unwitnessed-your thoughts unsensed-” Bliss shook her head vigorously. “I said that we can block ourselves off in emergencies, but who would want to live that way, even for an hour?”
“I would,” said Trevize. “That is why I must find Earth to find out the overriding reason, if any, that drove me to choose this dreadful fate for humanity.”
“It is not a dreadful fate, but let us not debate the matter. I will be with you, not as a spy, but as a friend and helper. Gaia will be with you not as a spy, but as a friend and helper.”
Trevize said, somberly, “Gaia could help me best by directing me to Earth.”
Slowly, Bliss shook her head. “Gaia doesn’t know the location of Earth. Dom has already told you that.”
&nb
sp; “I don’t quite believe that. After all, you must have records. Why have I never been able to see those records during my stay here? Even if Gaia honestly doesn’t know where Earth might be located, I might gain some knowledge from the records. I know the Galaxy in considerable detail, undoubtedly much better than Gaia does. I might be able to understand and follow hints in your records that Gaia, perhaps, doesn’t quite catch.”
“But what records are these you talk of, Trevize?”
“Any records. Books, films, recordings, holographs, artifacts, whatever it is you have. In the time I’ve been here I haven’t seen one item that I would consider in any way a record.-Have you, Janov?”
“No,” said Pelorat hesitantly, “but I haven’t really looked.”
“Yet I have, in my quiet way,” said Trevize, “and I’ve seen nothing. Nothing! I can only suppose they’re being hidden from me. Why, I wonder? Would you tell me that?”
Bliss’s smooth young forehead wrinkled into a puzzled frown. “Whydidn’t you ask before this? I/we/Gaia hide nothing, and we tell no lies. An Isolate-an individual in isolation-might tell lies. He is limited, and is fearful because he is limited. Gaia, however, is a planetary organism of great mental ability and has no fear. For Gaia to tell lies, to create descriptions that are at variance with reality, is totally unnecessary.”
Trevize snorted. “Then why have I carefully been kept from seeing any records? Give me a reason that makes sense.”
“Of course.” She held out both hands, palms up before her. “We don’t have any records.”
4.
PELORAT RECOVERED FIRST, seeming the less astonished of the two.
“My dear,” he said gently, “that is quite impossible. You cannot have a reasonable civilization without records of some kind.”
Bliss raised her eyebrows. “I understand that. I merely mean we have no records of the type that Trev-Trevize-is talking about, or was at all likely to come across. I/we/Gala have no writings, no printings, no films, no computer data banks, nothing. We have no carvings on stone, for that matter. That’s all I’m saying. Naturally, since we have none of these, Trevize found none of these.”
Trevize said, “What do you have, then, if you don’t have any records that I would recognize as records?”
Bliss said, enunciating carefully, as though she were speaking to a child. “I/we/Gala have a memory. I remember.”
“What do you remember?” asked Trevize.
“Everything.”
“You remember all reference data?”
“Certainly.”
“For how long? For how many years back?”
“For indefinite lengths of time.”
“You could give me historical data, biographical, geographical, scientific? Even local gossip?”
“Everything.”
“All in that little head.” Trevize pointed sardonically at Bliss’s right temple.
“No,” she said. “Gala’s memories are not limited to the contents of my particular skull. See here”-for the moment she grew formal and even a little stern, as she ceased being Bliss solely and took on an amalgam of other units “there must have been a time before the beginning of history when human beings were so primitive that, although they could remember events, they could not speak. Speech was invented and served to express memories and to transfer them from person to person. Writing was eventually invented in order to record memories and transfer them across time from generation to generation. All technological advance since then has served to make more room for the transfer and storage of memories and to make the recall of desired items easier. However, once individuals joined to form Gaia, all that became obsolete. We can return to memory, the basic system of record-keeping on which all else is built. Do you see that?”
Trevize said, “Are you saying that the sum total of all brains on Gaia can remember far more data than a single brain can?”
“Of course.”
“But if Gaia has all the records spread through the planetary memory, what good is that to you as an individual portion of Gaia?”
“All the good you can wish. Whatever I might want to know is in an individual mind somewhere, maybe in many of them. If it is very fundamental, such as the meaning of the word ‘chair,’ it is in every mind. But even if it is something esoteric that is in only one small portion of Gala’s mind, I can call it up if I need it, though such recall may take a bit longer than if the memory is more widespread.-Look, Trevize, if you want to know some. thing that isn’t in your mind, you look at some appropriate book-film, or make use of a computer’s data banks. I scan Gala’s total mind.”
Trevize said, “How do you keep all that information from pouring into your mind and bursting your cranium?”
“Are you indulging in sarcasm, Trevize?”
Pelorat said, “Come, Golan, don’t be unpleasant.”
Trevize looked from one to the other and, with a visible effort, allowed tightness about his face to relax. “I’m sorry. I’m borne down by a responsibility I don’t want and don’t know how to get rid of. That may make me sound unpleasant when I don’t intend to be. Bliss, I really wish to know. How do you draw upon the contents of the brains of others without then storing it in your own brain and quickly overloading its capacity?”
Bliss said, “I don’t know, Trevize; any more than you know the detailed workings of your single brain. I presume you know the distance from your sun to a neighboring star, but you are not always conscious of it. You store it somewhere and can retrieve the figure at any time if asked. If not asked, you, may with time forget it, but you can then always retrieve it from some data bank. If you consider Gala’s brain a vast data bank, it is one I can call on, but there is no need for me to remember consciously any particular item I have made use of. Once I have made use of a fact or memory, I can allow it to pass out of memory. For that matter, I can deliberately put it back, so to speak, in the place I got it from.”
“How many people on Gaia, Bliss? How many human beings?”
“About a billion. Do you want the exact figure as of now?”
Trevize smiled ruefully. “I quite see you can call up the exact figure if you wish, but I’ll take the approximation.”
“Actually,” said Bliss, “the population is stable and oscillates about a particular number that is slightly in excess of a billion. I can tell by how much the number exceeds or falls short of the mean by extending my consciousness and-well-feeling the boundaries. I can’t explain it better than that to some one who has never shared the experience.”
“It seems to me, however, that a billion human minds-a number of them being those of children-are surely not enough to hold in memory all the data needed by a complex society.”
“But human beings are not the only living things on Gaia, Trev.”
“Do you mean that animals remember, too?”
“Nonhuman brains can’t store memories with the same density human brains can, and much of the room in all brains, human and nonhuman alike, must be given over to personal memories which are scarcely useful except to the particular component of the planetary consciousness that harbors them. However, significant quantities of advanced data can be, and are, stored in animal brains, also in plant tissue, and in the mineral structure of the planet.”
“In the mineral structure? The rocks and mountain range, you mean?”
“And, for some kinds of data, the ocean and atmosphere. All that is Gaia, too.”
“But what can nonliving systems hold?”
“A great deal. The intensity is low but the volume is so great that a large majority of Gaia’s total memory is in its rocks. It takes a little longer to retrieve and replace rock memories so that it is the preferred place for storing dead data, so to speak, items that, in the normal course of events, would rarely be called upon.”
“What happens when someone dies whose brain stores data of considerable value?”
“The data is not lost. It is slowly crowded out as the brain disorganizes af
ter death, but there is ample time to distribute the memories into other parts of Gaia. And as new brains appear in babies and become more organized with growth, they not only develop their personal memories and thoughts but are fed appropriate knowledge from other sources. What you would call education is entirely automatic with me/us/Gaia.”
Pelorat said, “Frankly, Golan, it seems to me that this notion of a living world has a great deal to be said for it.”
Trevize gave his fellow-Foundationer a brief, sidelong glance. “I’m sure of that, Janov, but I’m not impressed. The planet, however big and however diverse, represents one brain. One! Every new brain that arises is melted into the whole. Where’s the opportunity for opposition, for disagreement? When you think of human history, you think of the occasional human being whose minority view may be condemned by society but who wins out in the end and changes the world. What chance is there on Gaia for the great rebels of history?”
“There is internal conflict,” said Bliss. “Not every aspect of Gaia necessarily accepts the common view.”
“It must be limited,” said Trevize. “You cannot have too much turmoil within a single organism, or it would not work properly. If progress and development are not stopped altogether, they must certainly be slowed. Can we take the chance of inflicting that on the entire Galaxy? On all of humanity?”
Bliss said, without open emotion, “Are you now questioning your own decision? Are you changing your mind and are you now saying that Gaia is an undesirable future for humanity?”
Trevize tightened his lips and hesitated. Then, he said, slowly, “I would like to, but not yet. I made my decision on some basis.-some unconscious basis-and until I find out what that basis was, I cannot truly decide whether I am to maintain or change my decision. Let us therefore return to the matter of Earth.”
“Where you feel you will learn the nature of the basis on which you made your decision. Is that it, Trevize?”
“That is the feeling I have.-Now Dom says Gaia does not know the location of Earth. And you agree with him, I believe.”
