by Robots
"Yet the fate of billions of people on Earth and billions more in the rest of the Galaxy may depend on this."
"May depend on this. That is conjecture. Injury to a human being is a fact. Consider that it may be only Dr. Mandamus who knows the nature of the crisis and carry it through to a conclusion. He could not use his knowledge or ability to force Dr. Amadiro to grant him the headship if Dr. Amadiro could gain it from another source."
"True," said Daneel. "That may be well so."
"In that case, friend Daneel, it is not, necessary to know the nature of the crisis. If Dr. Mandamus could be restrained from telling Dr. Amadiro-or anyone else-whatever it is he knows, the crisis will not come to pass."
"Someone else might discover what Dr. Mandamus now knows."
"Certainly, but we don't know when that will be. Very likely, we will have time to probe further and discover more-and become better prepared to play a useful role Of our own."
"Well, then."
"If Dr. Mandamus is to be restrained, it can be done by damaging his mind to the point where it is no longer effective-or by destroying his life outright. I alone possess the ability to injure his mind appropriately, but I cannot do this. However, either one of us can physically bring his life to an end. I cannot do this, either. Can you do it, friend Daneel?"
There was a pause and Daneel finally whispered. "I cannot. You know that."
Giskard said slowly, "Even though you know that the future of billions of people on Earth and elsewhere is at stake?"
"I cannot bring myself to injure Dr. Mandamus."
"And I cannot. So we are left with the certainty of a deadly crisis coming, but a crisis whose nature we do not know, and cannot find out, and which we are therefore helpless to counter."
They stared at each other in silence, with nothing showing in their faces, but with an air of despair settling somehow over them.
4. ANOTHER DESCENDANT
Gladia had tried to relax after the harrowing session with Mandamus and did so with an intensity that fought relaxation to the death. She had opacified all the windows in her bedroom, adjusted the environment to a gentle warm breeze with the faint sound of rustling leaves and the occ4sional soft warble of a distant bird. She had then shifted it to the sound of a far-off surf and had added a faint but unmistakable tang of the sea in the air.
It didn't help. Her mind echoed helplessly with what had just been-and with what was soon to come. Why had she chattered so freely to Mandamus? What business was it of his-or of Amadiro's, for that matter-whether she had visited Elijah in orbit or not and whether or not-or when she had had a son by him or by any other man.
She had been cast into imbalance by Mandamus's claim of descent, that's what it was. In a society where no one cared about descent or relationship except for medico-genetic reasons, its sudden intrusion into a conversation was bound to be upsetting. That and the repeated (but surely accidental) references to Elijah.
She decided she was finding excuses for herself and, in impatience, she tossed it all away. She had reacted badly and had babbled like a baby and that was all there was to it.
Now there was this Settler coming.
He was not an Earthman. He had not been born on Earth, she was sure, and it was quite possible that he had never even visited Earth. His people might have lived on a strange world she had never heard of and might have done so for generations.
That would make him a Spacer, she thought. Spacers were descended from Earthmen, too-centuries further back, but what did that matter? To be sure, Spacers were long lived and these Settlers must be short-lived, but how much of a distinction was that? Even a Spacer might die prematurely through some freak accident; she had once heard of a Spacer who had died a natural death before he was sixty. Why not, then, think of the next visitor as a Spacer with an unusual accent?
But it wasn't that simple. No doubt the Settler did not feel himself to be a Spacer. It's not what you are that counts, but what you feel yourself to be. So think of him as a Settler, not a Spacer.
Yet weren't all human beings simply human beings no matter what name- you applied to them-Spacers, Settlers, Aurorans, Earthpeople. The proof of it was that robots could not do injury to any of them. Daneel would spring as quickly to the defense of the most ignorant Earthman as to the Chairman of the Auroran Council-and that meant
She could feel herself drifting, actually relaxing into a shallow sleep when a sudden thought entered her mind and seemed to ricochet there.
Why was the Settler named Baley?
Her mind sharpened and snapped out of the welcoming coils of oblivion that had all but engulfed her.
Why Baley?
Perhaps it was simply a common name among the Settlers. After all, it was Elijah who had made it all possible and he had to be a hero to them as-as
She could not think of an analogous hero to Aurorans. Who had led the expedition that first reached Aurora? Who had supervised the terraformation of the raw barely living world that Aurora had., then been? She did not know. ~
Was her ignorance born of the fact that she had been brought up on Solaria-or was it that the Aurorans simply had no founding hero? After all, the first expedition to Aurora had consisted of mere Earthpeople. It was only in later generations, with lengthening life-spans, thanks to the adjustments of sophisticated bio-engineering, that Earthpeople had become Aurorans. And after that, why should Aurorans wish to make heroes of their despised predecessors?
But Settlers might make heroes of Earthpeople. They had not yet changed, perhaps. They might change eventually and then Elijah would be forgotten in embarrassment, but till then
That must be it. Probably half the Settlers alive had adopted the Baley surname. Poor Elijah! Everyone crowding onto his shoulders and into his shadow. Poor Elijah-dear Elijah
And she did fall asleep.
The sleep was too restless to restore her to calm, let alone good humor. She was scowling without knowing that she was-and had she seen herself in the mirror, she would have been taken aback by her middle-aged appearance.
Daneel, to whom Gladia was a human being, regardless of age, appearance, or mood, said, "Madam---"
Gladia interrupted, with a small shiver. "Is the Settler here?"
She looked up at the clock ribbon on the wall and then made a quick gesture, in response to which Daneel at once adjusted the heat upward. (It had been a cool day and was going to be a cooler evening.)
Daneel said, "He is, madam."
"Where have you put him?"
"In the main guest room, madam. Giskard is with him and the household robots are all within call."
"I hope they will have the judgment to find out what he expects to eat for lunch. I don't know Settler cuisine. And I hope they can make some reasonable attempt to meet his, requests.
"I am sure, madam, that Giskard will handle the matter competently."
Gladia was sure of that, too, but she merely snorted. At least it would have been a snort if Gladia were the sort of person who snorted. She didn't think she was.
"I presume," she said, "he's been in appropriate quarantine before being allowed to land."
"It would, be inconceivable for him not to have been, madam.
She said, "Just the same, I'll wear my gloves and my nose filter.
She stepped out of her bedroom, was distantly aware that there were household robots about her, and made the sign that would get her a new pair of gloves and a fresh nose filter. Every establishment had its own vocabulary of signs and, every human member of an establishment cultivated those signs, learning to make them both rapidly and unnoticeably. A robot was expected to follow these unobtrusive orders of its human overlords as though it read minds; and it followed that a robot could not follow the orders of nonestablishment human beings except by careful speech.
Nothing would humiliate a human member of an -establishment more than to have one of the robots of the establishment hesitate in fulfilling an order or, worse, fulfill it incorrectly. That would m
ean that the human being had fumbled a sign -or that the robot had.
Generally, Gladia knew, it was the human being who was at fault, but in virtually every case, this was not admitted. It was the robot who was handed over for an unnecessary response analysis or unfairly put up for sale. Gladia had always felt that she would never fall into that trap of wounded ego, yet if at that moment she had not received her gloves and nose filter, she would have
She did not have to finish the thought. The nearest robot brought her what she, wanted, correctly and with speed.
Gladia adjusted the nose filter and snuffled a bit to make sure it was properly seated (she was in no mood to risk infection with any foul disorder that had survived the pain staking treatment during quarantine). She said, "What does he look like, Daneel?"
Daneel said, "He is, of ordinary stature and measurements, madam."
"I mean his face." (It was silly to ask. If he showed any family resemblance to Elijah Baley, Daneel would have noticed it as quickly as she herself would have and he would have remarked upon it.)
"That is difficult to say, madam. It is not in plain view."
"What does that mean? Surely he's, not masked, Daneel
"In a way, he is, madam. His face is covered with hair.
"Hair?" She found herself laughing. "You mean after the fashion of the hypervision historicals? Beards?" She made little gestures indicating a tuft of hair on the chin and another under the nose.
"Rather more than that, madam. Half his face is covered.
Gladia's eyes opened wide and for the first time she felt a surge of interest in seeing him. What would a face with hair all over it look like? Auroran males-and Spacer males, generally-had very little facial, hair and what there was would be removed permanently by the late teens-during virtual infancy.
Sometimes the upper lip was left untouched. Gladia remembered that her husband, Santirix Gremionis, before their marriage, had had a thin line of hair under his nose. A mustache, he had called it. It had looked like a misplaced and peculiarly misshapen eyebrow and once she had resigned himself to accepting him as a husband, she had insisted he destroy the follicles.
He had done so with scarcely a murmur and it occurred to her now, for the first time, to wonder if he had missed the hair. It seemed to her that she had noticed him, on occasion, in those early years, lifting a finger to his upper lip. She had thought it a nervous poking at a vague itch and it was only now that it occurred to her that he had been searching for a mustache that was gone forever.
How would a man look with a mustache all over his face? Would he be bearlike?
How would it feel? What if women had such hair, too? She thought of a man and woman trying to kiss and having trouble finding each other's mouths. She found the thought funny, in a harmlessly ribald way, and laughed out loud. She felt her petulance disappearing and actually looked forward to seeing the monster.
After all, there would be no need to fear him even if he were as animal in behavior as he was in appearance. He would have no robot of his own--Settlers were supposed to have a nonrobotic society -and she would be surrounded by a dozen. The monster would be immobilized in a split second if he made the slightest suspicious move-or if he as much as raised his voice in anger.
She said with perfect good humor, "Take me to him, Daneel."
The monster rose. He said something that sounded like "Good afternoon, muhleddy."
She at once caught the "good afternoon," but it took her a moment to translate the last word into "my lady.
Gladia absently said, "Good afternoon." She remembered the difficulty she had had understanding Auroran pronunciation of Galactic Standard in those long-ago days when, a frightened young woman, she had come to the planet from Solaria.
The monster's accent was uncouth-or did it just sound uncouth because her ear was unaccustomed to it? Elijah, she remembered, had seemed to voice his "Vs" and "Ps," but spoke pretty well otherwise. Nineteen and a half decades had passed, however, and this Settler was not from Earth. Language, in isolation, underwent changes.
I But only a small portion of Gladia's mind was on the language problem. She was staring at his beard.
It was not in the least like the beards that actors wore in historical dramas. Those always seemed tufted-a bit here, a bit there-looking gluey and glossy.
The Settler's beard was different. It covered his cheeks and chin evenly, thickly, and deeply. It was a dark brown, somewhat lighter and wavier than the hair on his head, and at least two inches long, she judged-evenly long.
It didn't cover his whole face, which was rather disappointing. His forehead was totally bare (except for his eyebrows), as were his nose and his under-eye regions.
His upper lip was bare, too, but it was shadowed as though there was the beginning of new growth upon it. There was additional bareness just under the lower lip, but with new growth less marked and concentrated mostly under the middle portion.
Since both his lips were quite bare, it was clear to Gladia that there would be no difficulty in kissing him. She said, knowing that staring was impolite and staring even so, "It seems to me you, remove the hair from about your lips."
"Yes, my lady."
"Why, if I may ask?"
"You may ask. For hygienic reasons. I don't want food catching in the hairs."
"You scrape it off, don't, you? I see it is growing again.
"I use a facial laser. It takes fifteen seconds after waking.
"Why not depilate and be done with it?"
I might want to grow it back."
"Why?"
"Esthetic reasons, my lady?"
This time Gladia did not grasp the word. It sounded like acidic" or possibly "acetic."
She said, "Pardon me?"
The Settler said, I might grow tired of the way I look now and want to grow the hair on the upper lip again. Some women like it, you know, and the Settler tried to look modest and failed------"I have a fine mustache when I grow it."
She said suddenly grasping the word, "You mean
The Settler laughed, showing fine white teeth, and said, "You talk funny, too, my lady."
Gladia tried to look haughty, but melted into a smile. Proper pronunciation was a matter of local consensus. She said, "You ought to hear me with my Solarian accent-if it comes to that. Then it would be 'estheetic rayzuns.' The "r" rolled interminably."
"I've been places where they talk a little bit like that, it sounds barbarous." He rolled both "Vs" phenomenally in the last word.
Gladia chuckled. "You do it with the tip of your tongue. It's got to be with the sides of the tongue. No one, but a Solarian can do it correctly."
"Perhaps you can teach me. A Trader like myself, who's been everywhere, hears all kinds of linguistic perversions." Again he tried to roll the, "r's" of the last word, choked slightly, and coughed.
"See. You'll tangle your tonsils and you'll never recover." was still staring at his beard and now she could curb her curiosity no longer. She reached toward it.
The Settler flinched and started back, then, realizing her, intention, was still.
I Gladia's hand, all-but-invisibly gloved, rested lightly on the left side of his face. The thin plastic that covered her fingers did not interfere with the sense of touch and she found the hair to be soft and springy.
"It's nice," she said with evident surprise.
"Widely admired," said the Settler, grinning.
She said, "But I can't stand here and manhandle you all day.
Ignoring his predictable "You can as far as I'm concerned," -she went on. "Have you told my robots what you would like to eat?"
"My lady, I told them what I now tell you-whatever is handy. I've been on a score of worlds in the last year and each has its own dietary. A Trader learns to eat everything that isn't actually toxic. I'd prefer an Auroran meal to anything you would try to make in imitation of Baleyworld"
"Baleyworld?" said Gladia sharply, a frown returning to her face.
"Named for the
leader of the first expedition to the planet-or to any of the Settled planets, for that matter. Ben Baley."
"The son of Elijah Baley."
"Yes," the Settler said and changed the subject, at once. He looked down at himself and said with a trace of petulance, "How do you people manage to stand these clothes of yours slick and puffy. Be glad to get into my own again."
"I'm sure you will have your chance to do so soon enough. But for now please come and join me at lunch. -I was told your name was Baley, by the way-like your planet."
"Not surprising. It's the most honored name on the planet, naturally. I'm Deejee Baley."
