Asimov’s Future History Volume 19

by Isaac Asimov

  “Still, he can’t be first-class, or you would have heard of him.”

  “The study of Earth-”

  “Practice saying ‘the Oldest,’ Janov. It would complicate matters otherwise.”

  “The study of the Oldest,” said Pelorat, “is not a well-rewarded niche in the corridors of learning, so that first-class scholars, even in the field of primeval history, would not tend to find their way there. Or, if we put it the other way around, those who are already there do not make enough of a name for themselves in an uninterested world to be considered first-class, even if they were.-I am not first-class in anyone’s estimation, I am sure.”

  Bliss said tenderly, “In mine, Pel.”

  “Yes, certainly in yours, my dear,” said Pelorat, smiling slightly, “but you are not judging me in my capacity as scholar.”

  It was almost night now, going by the clock, and Trevize felt himself grow slightly impatient, as he always did when Bliss and Pelorat traded endearments.

  He said, “I’ll try to arrange our seeing this Deniador tomorrow, but if he knows as little about the matter as the Minister does, we’re not going to be much better off than we are now.”

  Pelorat said, “He may be able to lead us to someone more useful.”

  “I doubt it. This world’s attitude toward Earth-but I had better practice speaking of it elliptically, too. This world’s attitude toward the Oldest is a foolish and superstitious one.” He turned away. “But it’s been a rough day and we ought to think of an evening meal-if we can face their uninspired cookery-and then begin thinking of getting some sleep. Have you two learned how to use the shower?”

  “My dear fellow,” said Pelorat, “we have been very kindly treated. We’ve received all sorts of instructions, most of which we didn’t need.”

  Bliss said, “Listen, Trevize. What about the ship?”

  “What about it?”

  “Is the Comporellian government confiscating it?”

  “No. I don’t think they will.”

  “Ah. Very pleasant. Why aren’t they?”

  “Because I persuaded the Minister to change her mind.”

  Pelorat said, “Astonishing. She didn’t seem a particularly persuadable individual to me.”

  Bliss said, “I don’t know. It was clear from the texture of her mind that 1b1 was attracted to Trevize.”

  Trevize looked at Bliss with sudden exasperation. “Did you do that, Bliss?”,

  “What do you mean, Trevize?”

  “I mean tamper with her-”

  “I didn’t tamper. However, when I noted that she was attracted to you, I couldn’t resist just snapping an inhibition or two. It was a very small thing to do. Those inhibitions might have snapped anyway, and it seemed to be important to make certain that she was filled with good will toward you.”

  “Good will? It was more than that! She softened, yes, but post-coitally.” Pelorat said, “Surely you don’t mean, old man-”

  “Why not?” said Trevize testily. “She may be past her first youth, but she knew the art well. She was no beginner, I assure you. Nor will I play the gentleman and lie on her behalf. It was her idea-thanks to Bliss’s fiddling with her inhibitions-and I was not in a position to refuse, even if that thought had occurred to me, which it didn’t.-Come, Janov, don’t stand there looking puritanical. It’s been months since I’ve had an opportunity. You’ve-” And he waved his hand vaguely in Bliss’s direction.

  “Believe me, Golan,” said Pelorat, embarrassed, “if you are interpreting my expression as puritanical, you mistake me. I have no objection.”

  Bliss said, “But she is puritanical. I meant to make her warm toward you; I did not count on a sexual paroxysm.”

  Trevize said, “But that is exactly what you brought on, my little interfering Bliss. It may be necessary for the Minister to play the puritan in public, but if so, that seems merely to stoke the fires.”

  “And so, provided you scratch the itch, she will betray the Foundation-”

  “She would have done that in any case,” said Trevize. “She wanted the ship-” He broke off, and said in a whisper, “Are we being overheard?”

  Bliss said, “No!”

  “Are you sure?”

  “It is certain. It is impossible to impinge upon the mind of Gaia in any unauthorized fashion without Gaia being aware of it.”

  “In that case, Comporellon wants the ship for itself-a valuable addition to its fleet.”

  “Surely, the Foundation would not allow that.”

  “Comporellon does not intend to have the Foundation know.”

  Bliss sighed. “There are your Isolates. The Minister intends to betray the Foundation on behalf of Comporellon and, in return for sex, will promptly betray Comporellon, too.-And as for Trevize, he will gladly sell his body’s services as a way of inducing the betrayal. What anarchy there is in this Galaxy of yours. What chaos.”

  Trevize said coldly, “You are wrong, young woman-”

  “In what I have just said, I am not a young woman, I am Gaia. I am all of Gaia.”

  “Then you are wrong, Gaia I did not sell my body’s services. I gave them gladly. I enjoyed it and did no one harm. As for the consequences, they turned out well from my standpoint and I accept that. And if Comporellon wants the ship for its own purposes, who is to say who is right in this matter? It is a Foundation ship, but it was given to me to search for Earth. It is mine then until I complete the search and I feel that the Foundation has no right to go back on its agreement. As for Comporellon, it does not enjoy Foundation domination, so it dreams of independence. In its own eyes, it is correct to do so and to deceive the Foundation, for that is not an act of treason to them but an act of patriotism. Who knows?”

  “Exactly. Who knows? In a Galaxy of anarchy, how is it possible to sort out reasonable actions from unreasonable ones? How decide between right and wrong, good and evil, justice and crime, useful and useless? And how do you explain the Minister’s betrayal of her own government, when she lets you keep the ship? Does she long for personal independence from an oppressive world? Is she a traitor or a personal one-woman self-patriot?”

  “To be truthful,” said Trevize, “I don’t know that she was willing to let me have my ship simply because she was grateful to me for the pleasure I gave: her. I believe she made that decision only when I told her I was searching for the Oldest. It is a world of ill-omen to her and we and the ship that carries u1, by searching for it, have become ill-omened, too. It is my feeling that she feet/she incurred the ill-omen for herself and her world by attempting to take the ship, which she may, by now, be viewing with horror. Perhaps she feels that by allowing us and our ship to leave and go about our business, she is averting the misfortune from Comporellon and is, in that way, performing a patriotic act.”

  “If that were so, which I doubt, Trevize, superstition is the spring of the action. Do you admire that?”

  “I neither admire nor condemn. Superstition always directs action in the absence of knowledge. The Foundation believes in the Seldon Plan, though no one in our realm can understand it, interpret its details, or use it to predict. We follow blindly out of ignorance and faith, and isn’t that superstition?”

  “Yes, it might be.”

  “And Gaia, too. You believe I have given the correct decision in judging that Gaia should absorb the Galaxy into one large organism, but you do not know why I should be right, or how safe it would be for you to follow that. decision. You are willing to go along only out of ignorance and faith, and are even annoyed with me for trying to find evidence that will remove the ignorance and make mere faith unnecessary. Isn’t that superstition?”

  “I think he has you there, Bliss,” said Pelorat.

  Bliss said, “Not so. He will either find nothing at all in this search, or he will find something that confirms his decision.”

  Trevize said, “And to back up that belief, you have only ignorance and faith. In other words, superstition!”

  25.

&nbs
p; VASIL DENIADOR WAS a small man, little of feature, with a way of looking up by raising his eyes without raising his head. This, combined with the brief smiles that periodically lit his face, gave him the appearance of laughing silently at the world.

  His office was long and narrow, filled with tapes that seemed to be in wild disorder, not because there was any definite evidence for that, but because they were not evenly placed in their recesses so that they gave the shelves a snaggle-toothed appearance. The three seats he indicated for his visitors were not matched and showed signs of having been recently, and imperfectly, dusted.

  He said, “Janov Pelorat, Golan Trevize, and Bliss.-I do not have your second name, madam.”

  “Bliss,” she said, “is all I am usually called,” and sat down.

  “It is enough after all,” said Deniador, twinkling at her. “You are attractive enough to be forgiven if you had no name at all.”

  All were sitting now. Deniador said, “I have heard of you, Dr. Pelorat, though we have never corresponded. You are a Foundationer, are you not? From Terminus?”

  “Yes, Dr. Deniador.”

  “And you, Councilman Trevize. I seem to have heard that recently you were expelled from the Council and exiled. I don’t think I have ever understood why.”

  “Not expelled, sir. I am still a member of the Council although I don’t know when I will take up my duties again. Nor exiled, quite. I was assigned a mission, concerning which we wish to consult you.”

  “Happy to try to help,” said Deniador. “And the blissful lady? Is she from Terminus, too.”

  Trevize interposed quickly. “She is from elsewhere, Doctor.”

  “Ah, a strange world, this Elsewhere. A most unusual collection of human beings are native to it.-But since two of you are from the Foundation’s capital at Terminus, and the third is an attractive young woman, and Mitza Lizalor is not known for her affection for either category, how is it that she recommends you to my care so warmly?”

  “I think,” said Trevize, “to get rid of us. The sooner you help us, you see, the sooner we will leave Comporellon.”

  Deniador eyed Trevize with interest (again the twinkling smile) and said, “Of course, a vigorous young man such as yourself might attract her whatever his origin. She plays the role of cold vestal well, but not perfectly.”

  “I know nothing about that,” said Trevize stiffly.

  “And you had better not. In public, at least. But I am a Skeptic and I am professionally unattuned to believing in surfaces. So come, Councilman, what is your mission? Let me find out if I can help you.”

  Trevize said, “In this, Dr. Pelorat is our spokesman.”

  “I have no objection to that,” said Deniador. “Dr. Pelorat?”

  Pelorat said, “To put it at the simplest, dear Doctor, I have all my mature life attempted to penetrate to the basic core of knowledge concerning the world on which the human species originated, and I was sent out along with my good friend, Golan Trevize-although, to be sure, I did not know him at the time-to find, if we could, the-uh-Oldest, I believe you call it.”

  “The Oldest?” said Deniador. “I take it you mean Earth.”

  Pelorat’s jaw dropped. Then he said, with a slight stutter, “I was under the impression-that is, I was given to understand-that one did not-”

  He looked at Trevize, rather helplessly.

  Trevize said, “Minister Lizalor told me that that word was not used on Comporellon.”

  “You mean she did this?” Deniador’s mouth turned downward, his nose screwed up, and he thrust his arms vigorously forward, crossing the first two fingers on each hand.

  “Yes,” said Trevize. “That’s what I mean.”

  Deniador relaxed and laughed. “Nonsense, gentlemen. We do it as a matter of habit, and in the backwoods they may be serious about it but, on the whole, it doesn’t matter. I don’t know any Comporellian who wouldn’t say ‘Earth’ when annoyed or startled. It’s the most common vulgarism we have.”

  “Vulgarism?” said Pelorat faintly.

  “Or expletive, if you prefer.”

  “Nevertheless,” said Trevize, “the Minister seemed quite upset when I used the word.”

  “Oh well, she’s a mountain woman.”

  “What does that mean, sir?”

  “What it says. Mitza Lizalor is from the Central Mountain Range. The children out there are brought up in what is called the good old-fashioned way, which means that no matter how well educated they become you can never knock those crossed fingers out of them.”

  “Then the word ‘Earth’ doesn’t bother you at all, does it, Doctor?” said Bliss.

  “Not at all, dear lady. I am a Skeptic.”

  Trevize said, “I know what the word ‘skeptic’ means in Galactic, but how. do you use the word?”

  “Exactly as you do, Councilman. I accept only what I am forced to accept by reasonably reliable evidence, and keep that acceptance tentative pending the arrival of further evidence. That doesn’t make us popular.”

  “Why not?” said Trevize.

  “We wouldn’t be popular anywhere. Where is the world whose people don’t prefer a comfortable, warm, and well-worn belief, however illogical, to the chilly winds of uncertainty?-Consider how you believe in the Seldon Plan without evidence.”

  “Yes,” said Trevize, studying his finger ends. “I put that forward yesterday as an example, too.”

  Pelorat said, “May I return to the subject, old fellow? What is known about Earth that a Skeptic would accept?”

  Deniador said, “Very little. We can assume that there is a single planet on which the human species developed, because it is unlikely in the extreme that the same species, so nearly identical as to be interfertile, would develop on a number of worlds, or even on just two, independently. We can choose to cal) this world of origin Earth. The belief is general, here, that Earth exists in this corner of the Galaxy, for the worlds here are unusually old and it is likely that the first worlds to be settled were close to Earth rather than far from it.”

  “And has the Earth any unique characteristics aside from being the planet of origin?” asked Pelorat eagerly.

  “Do you have something in mind?” said Deniador, with his quick smile.

  “I’m thinking of its satellite, which some call the moon. That would be unusual, wouldn’t it?”

  “That’s a leading question, Dr. Pelorat. You may be putting thoughts into my mind.”

  “I do not say what it is that would make the moon unusual.”

  “Its size, of course. Am I right?-Yes, I see I am. All the legends of Earth speak of its vast array of living species and of its vast satellite-one that is some three thousand to three thousand five hundred kilometers in diameter. The vast array of life is easy to accept since it would naturally have come about through biological evolution, if what we know of the process is accurate. A giant satellite is more difficult to accept. No other inhabited world in the Galaxy has such a satellite. Large satellites are invariably associated with the uninhabited and uninhabitable gas-giants. As a Skeptic, then, I prefer not to accept the existence of the moon.”

  Pelorat said, “If Earth is unique in its possession of millions of species, might it not also be unique in its possession of a giant satellite? One uniqueness might imply the other.”

  Deniador smiled. “I don’t see how the presence of millions of species on Earth could create a giant satellite out of nothing.”

  “But the other way around-Perhaps a giant satellite could help create the millions of species.”

  “I don’t see how that could be either.”

  Trevize said, “What about the story of Earth’s radioactivity?”

  “That is universally told; universally believed.”

  “But,” said Trevize, “Earth could not have been so radioactive as to preclude life in the billions of years when it supported life. How did it become radioactive? A nuclear war?”

  “That is the most common opinion, Councilman Trevize.”

/>   “From the manner in which you say that, I gather you don’t believe it.”

  “There is no evidence that such a war took place. Common belief, even universal belief, is not, in itself, evidence.”

  “What else might have happened?”

  “There is no evidence that anything happened. The radioactivity might be as purely invented a legend as the large satellite.”

  Pelorat said, “What is the generally accepted story of Earth’s history? I have, during my professional career, collected a large number of origin-legends, many of them involving a world called Earth, or some name very much like that. I have none from Comporellon, nothing beyond the vague mention of a Benbally who might have come from nowhere for all that Comporellian legends say.”

  “That’s not surprising. We don’t usually export our legends and I’m astonished you have found references even to Benbally. Superstition, again.”

  “But you are not superstitious and you would not hesitate to talk about it, would you?”

  “That’s correct,” said the small historian, casting his eyes upward at Pelorat. “It would certainly add greatly, perhaps even dangerously, to my unpopularity if I did, but you three are leaving Comporellon soon and I take it you will never quote me as a source.”

  “You have our word of honor,” said Pelorat quickly.

  “Then here is a summary of what is supposed to have happened, shorn of any supernaturalism or moralizing. Earth existed as the sole world of human beings for an immeasurable period and then, about’ twenty to twenty-five thousand years ago, the human species developed interstellar travel by way of the hyperspatial Jump and colonized a group of planets.

  “The Settlers on these planets made use of robots, which had first been devised on Earth before the days of hyperspatial travel and-do you know what robots are, by the way?”

  “Yes,” said Trevize. “We have been asked that more than once. We know what robots are.”

  “The Settlers, with a thoroughly roboticized society, developed a high technology and unusual longevity and despised their ancestral world. According to more dramatic versions of their story, they dominated and oppressed the ancestral world.