by Isaac Asimov
Easy to say, thought Trevize, as he found himself staring at the darkness. He was curled up, partly dressed, on the floor of the computer room. It was quite uncomfortable, but he was sure that his bed would be no more conducive to sleep at this time and here at least he could take action at once if the computer sounded an alarm.
Then he heard footsteps and automatically sat up, hitting his head against the edge of the desk-not hard enough to do damage, but hard enough to make rubbing and grimacing a necessity.
“Janov?” he said in a muffled voice, eyes tearing.
“No. It’s Bliss.”
Trevize reached over the edge of the table with one hand to make at least semicontact with the computer, and a soft light showed Bliss in a light pink wraparound.
Trevize said, “What is it?”
“I looked in your bedroom and you weren’t there. There was no mistaking your neuronic activity, however, and I followed it. You were clearly awake so I walked in.”
“Yes, but what is it you want?”
She sat down against the wall, knees up, and cradled her chin against them. She said, “Don’t be concerned. I have no designs on what’s left of your virginity.”
“I don’t imagine you do,” said Trevize sardonically. “Why aren’t you asleep? You need it more than we do.”
“Believe me,” she said in a low, heartfelt tone, “that episode with the dogs was very draining.”
“I believe that.”
“But I had to talk to you when Pel was sleeping.”
“About what?”
Bliss said, “When he told you about the robot, you said that that changes everything. What did you mean?”
Trevize said, “Don’t you see that for yourself? We have three sets of coordinates; three Forbidden Worlds. I want to visit all three to learn as much as possible about Earth before trying to reach it.”
He edged a bit closer so that he could speak lower still, then drew away sharply. He said, “Look, I don’t want Janov coming in here looking for us. I don’t know what he’d think.”
“It’s not likely. He’s sleeping and I’ve encouraged that just a bit. If he stirs, I’ll know.-Go on. You want to visit all three. What’s changed?”
“It wasn’t part of my plan to waste time on any world needlessly. If this world, Aurora, had been without human occupation for twenty thousand years, then it is doubtful that any information of value has survived. I don’t want to spend weeks or months scrabbling uselessly about the planetary surface, fighting off dogs and cats and bulls or whatever else may have become wild and dangerous, just on the hope of finding a scrap of reference material amid the dust, rust, and decay. It may be that on one or both of the other Forbidden Worlds there may be human beings and intact libraries.-So it was my intention to leave this world at once. We’d be out in space now, if I had done so, sleeping in perfect security.”
“But?”
“But if there are robots still functioning on this world, they may have important information that we could use. They would be safer to deal with than human beings would be, since, from what I’ve heard, they must follow orders and can’t harm human beings.”
“So you’ve changed your plan and now you’re going to spend time on this world searching for robots.”
“I don’t want to, Bliss. It seems to me that robots can’t last twenty thousand years without maintenance.-Yet since you’ve seen one with a spark of activity still, it’s clear I can’t rely on my commonsense guesses about robots. I mustn’t lead out of ignorance. Robots may be more enduring than I imagine, or they may have a certain capacity for self-maintenance.”
Bliss said, “Listen to me, Trevize, and please keep this confidential.”
“Confidential?” said Trevize, raising his voice in surprise. “From whom?”
“Sh! From Pel, of course. Look, you don’t have to change your plans. You were right the first time. There are no functioning robots on this world. I detect nothing.”
“You detected that one, and one is as good as-”
“I did not detect that one. It was nonfunctioning; long nonfunctioning.”
“You said-”
“I know what I said. Pel thought he saw motion and heard sound. Pel is a romantic. He’s spent his working life gathering data, but that is a difficult way of making one’s mark in the scholarly world. He would dearly love to make an important discovery of his own. His finding of the word ‘Aurora’ was legitimate and made him happier than you can imagine. He wanted desperately to find more.”
Trevize said, “Are you telling me he wanted to make a discovery so badly he convinced himself he had come upon a functioning robot when he hadn’t?”
“What he came upon was a lump of rust containing no more consciousness than the rock against which it rested.”
“But you supported his story.”
“I could not bring myself to rob him of his discovery. He means so much to me.
Trevize stared at her for a full minute; then he said, “Do you mind explaining why he means so much to you? I want to know. I really want to know. To you he must seem an elderly man with nothing romantic about him. He’s an Isolate, and you despise Isolates. You’re young and beautiful and there must 61 other parts of Gaia that have the bodies of vigorous and handsome young am. With them you can have a physical relationship that can resonate through Gaia and bring peaks of ecstasy. So what do you an in Janov?”
Bliss looked at Trevize solemnly. “Don’t you love him?”
Trevize shrugged and said, “I’m fond of him. I suppose you could say, in a nonsexual way, that I love him.”
“You haven’t known him very long, Trevize. Why do you love him, in that nonsexual way of yours?”
Trevize found himself smiling without being aware of it. “He’s such an odd fellow. I honestly think that never in his life has he given a single thought to himself. He was ordered to go along with me, and he went. No objection. He wanted me to go to Trantor, but when I said I wanted to go to Gaia, he never argued. And now he’s come along with me in this search for Earth, though he must know it’s dangerous. I feel perfectly confident that if he had to sacrifice his life for me-or for anyone-he would, and without repining.”
“Would you give your life for him, Trevize?”
“I might, if I didn’t have time to think. If I did have time to think, I would hesitate and I might funk it. I’m not as good as he is. And because of that, I have this terrible urge to protect and keep him good. I don’t want the Galaxy to teach him not to be good. Do you understand? And I have to protect him from you particularly. I can’t bear the thought of you tossing him aside when whatever nonsense amuses you now is done with.”
“Yes, I thought you’d think something like that. Don’t you suppose I see in Pel what you see in him-and even more so, since I can contact his mind directly? Do I act as though I want to hurt him? Would I support his fantasy of having seen a functioning robot, if it weren’t that I couldn’t bear to hurt him? Trevize, I am used to what you would call goodness, for every part of Gaia is ready to be sacrificed for the whole. We know and understand no other course of action. But we give up nothing in so doing, for each part is the whole, though I don’t expect you to understand that. Pel is something different.”
Bliss was no longer looking at Trevize. It was as though she were talking to herself. “He is an Isolate. He is not selfless because he is a part of a greater whole. He is selfless because he is selfless. Do you understand me? He has all to lose and nothing to gain, and yet he is what he is. He shames me for being what I am without fear of loss, when he is what he is without hope of gain.”
She looked up at Trevize again now, very solemnly. “Do you know how much more I understand about him than you possibly can? And do you think I would harm him in any way?”
Trevize said, “Bliss, earlier today, you said, ‘Come, let us be friends,’ and all I replied was, ‘If you wish.’ That was grudging of me, for I was thinking of what you might do to Janov. It is my
turn, now. Come, Bliss, let us be friends. You can keep on pointing out the advantage of Galaxia and I may keep on refusing to accept your arguments, but even so, and despite that, let us be friends.” And he held out his hand.
“Of course, Trevize,” she said, and their hands gripped each other strongly.
42.
TREVIZE GRINNED QUIETLY to himself. It was an internal grin, for the line of his mouth didn’t budge.
When he had worked with the computer to find the star (if any) of the first set of co-ordinates, both Pelorat and Bliss had watched intently and had asked questions. Now they stayed in their room and slept or, at any rate, relaxed, and left the job entirely to Trevize.
In a way, it was flattering, for it seemed to Trevize that by now they had simply accepted the fact that Trevize knew what he was doing and required no supervision or encouragement. For that matter, Trevize had gained enough experience from the first episode to rely more thoroughly on the computer and to feel that it needed, if not none, then at least less supervision.
Another star-luminous and unrecorded on the Galactic map-showed up. This second star was more luminous than the star about which Aurora circled, and that made it all the more significant that the star was unrecorded in the computer.
Trevize marveled at the peculiarities of ancient tradition. Whole centuries might be telescoped or dropped out of consciousness altogether. Entire civilizations might be banished into forgetfulness. Yet out of the midst of these centuries, snatched from those civilizations, might be one or two factual items that would be remembered undistorted-such as these co-ordinates.
He had remarked on this to Pelorat some time before, and Pelorat had at once told him that it was precisely this that made the study of myths and legends so rewarding. “The trick is,” Pelorat had said, “to work out or decide which particular components of a legend represent accurate underlying truth. That isn’t easy and different mythologists are likely to pick different components, depending, usually, on which happen to suit their particular interpretations.”.
In any case, the star was right where Deniador’s co-ordinates, corrected for time, said it would be. Trevize was prepared, at this moment, to wager a considerable sum that the third star would be in place as well. And if it was, Trevize was prepared to suspect that the legend was further correct in stating that there were fifty Forbidden Worlds altogether (despite the suspiciously even number) and to wonder where the other forty-seven might be.
A habitable world, Forbidden World, was found circling the star-and by this time its presence didn’t cause even a ripple of surprise in Trevize’s bosom. He had been absolutely sure it would be there. He set the Far Star into a slow orbit about it.
The cloud layer was sparse enough to allow a reasonable view of the surface from space. The world was a watery one, as almost all habitable worlds were. There was an unbroken tropical ocean and two unbroken polar oceans. In one set of middle latitudes, there was a more or less serpentine continent encircling the world with bays on either side producing an occasional narrow isthmus. In the other set of middle latitudes, the land surface was broken into three large parts and each of the three were thicker north-south than the opposite continent was.
Trevize wished he knew enough climatology to be able to predict, from what he saw, what the temperatures and seasons might be like. For a moment, he toyed with the idea of having the computer work on the problem. The trouble was that climate was not the point at issue.
Much more important was that, once again, the computer detected no radiation that might be of technological origin. What his telescope told him was that the planet was not moth-eaten and that there were no signs of desert. The land moved backward in various shades of green, but there were no signs of urban areas on the dayside, no lights on the nightside.
Was this another planet filled with every kind of life but human?
He rapped at the door of the other bedroom.
“Bliss?” he called out in a loud whisper, and rapped again.
There was a rustling, and Bliss’s voice said, “Yes?”
“Could you come out here? I need your help-”
“If you wait just a bit, I’ll make myself a bit presentable.”
When she finally appeared, she looked as presentable as Trevize had ever seen her. He felt a twinge of annoyance at having been made to wait, however, for it made little difference to him what she looked like. But they were friends now, and he suppressed the annoyance.
She said with a smile and in a perfectly pleasant tone, “What can I do for you, Trevize?”
Trevize waved at the viewscreen. “As you can see, we’re passing over the surface of what looks like a perfectly healthy world with a quite solid vegetation cover over its land area. No lights at night, however, and no technological radiation. Please listen and tell me if there’s any animal life. There was one point at which I thought I could see herds of grazing animals, but I wasn’t sure. It might be a case of seeing what one desperately wants to see.”
Bliss “listened.” At least, a curiously intent look came across her face. She said, “Oh yes-rich in animal life.”
“Mammalian?”
“Must be.”
“Human?”
Now she seemed to concentrate harder. A full minute passed, and then another, and finally she relaxed. “I can’t quite tell. Every once in a while it seemed to me that I detected a whiff of intelligence sufficiently intense to be considered human. But it was so feeble and so occasional that perhaps I, too, was only sensing what I desperately wanted to sense. You see-”
She paused in thought, and Trevize nudged her with a “Well?”
She said, “The thing is I seem to detect something else. It is not something I’m familiar with, but I don’t see how it can be anything but-”
Her face tightened again as she began to “listen” with still greater intensity.
“Well?” said Trevize again.
She relaxed. “I don’t see how it can be anything but robots.”
“Robots!”
“Yes, and if I detect them, surely I ought to be able to detect human beings, too. But I don’t.”
“Robots!” said Trevize again, frowning.
“Yes,” said Bliss, “and I should judge, in great numbers.”
43.
PELORAT ALSO SAID “Robots!” in almost exactly Trevize’s tone when he was told of them. Then he smiled slightly. “You were right, Golan, and I was wrong to doubt you.”
“I don’t remember your doubting me, Janov.”
“Oh well, old man, I didn’t think I ought to express it. I just thought, in my heart, that it was a mistake to leave Aurora while there was a chance we might interview some surviving robot. But then it’s clear you knew there would be a richer supply of robots here.”
“Not at all, Janov. I didn’t know. I merely chanced it. Bliss tells me their mental fields seem to imply they are fully functioning, and it seems to me they can’t very well be fully functioning without human beings about for care and maintenance. However, she can’t spot anything human so we’re still looking.»
Pelorat studied the viewscreen thoughtfully. “It seems to be all forest, doesn’t it?”
“Mostly forest. But there are clear patches that may be grasslands. The thing is that I see no cities, or any lights at night, or anything but thermal radiation at any time.”
“So no human beings after all?”
“I wonder. Bliss is in the galley trying to concentrate. I’ve set up an arbitrary prime meridian for the planet which means that it’s divided into latitude and longitude in the computer. Bliss has a little device which she presses whenever she encounters what seems an unusual concentration of robotic mental activity-I suppose you can’t say ‘neuronic activity’ in connection with robots-or any whiff of human thought. The device is linked to the computer, which thus gets a fix on all the latitudes and longitudes, and we’ll let it make the choice among them and pick a good place for landing.”
Pelorat looked uneasy. “Is it wise to leave the matter of choice to the computer?”
“Why not, Janov? It’s a very competent computer. Besides, when you have no basis on which to make a choice yourself, where’s the harm in at least considering the computer’s choice?”
Pelorat brightened up. “There’s something to that, Golan. Some of the oldest legends include tales of people making choices by tossing cubes to the ground.”
“Oh? What does that accomplish?”
“Each face of the cube has some decision on it-yes-no-perhaps-postpone-and so on. Whichever face happens to come upward on landing would be taken as bearing the advice to be followed. Or they would set a ball rolling about a slotted disc with different decisions scattered among the slots. The decision written on the slot in which the ball ends is to be taken. Some mythologists think such activities represented games of chance rather than lotteries, but the two are much the same thing in my opinion.”
“In a way,” said Trevize, “we’re playing a game of chance in choosing our place of landing.”
Bliss emerged from the galley in time to hear the last comment. She said, “No game of chance. I pressed several ‘maybes’ and then one sure-fire ‘yes,’ and it’s to the ‘yes’ that we’ll be going.”
“What made it a ‘yes’?” asked Trevize.
“I caught a whiff of human thought. Definite. Unmistakable.”
44.
IT HAD BEEN raining, for the grass was wet. Overhead, the clouds were scudding by and showing signs of breaking up.
The Far Star had come to a gentle rest near a small grove of trees. (In case of wild dogs, Trevize thought, only partly in jest.) All about was what looked like pasture land, and coming down from the greater height at which a better and wider view had been possible, Trevize had seen what looked like orchards and grain fields-and this time, an unmistakable view of grazing animals.
There were no structures, however. Nothing artificial, except that the regularity of the trees in the orchard and the sharp boundaries that separated fields were themselves as artificial as a microwave-receiving power station would have been.
