by Robots
"You might be destroyed, too."
"Possibly. But my ship, at least, won't be caught unprepared. Besides, I am not one of those hypervision heroes and I have considered what I might do to lessen the chances of destruction. It occurred to me that one of the disadvantages of Settler penetration of Solaria is that we don't know the world at all. It might be useful, then, to take someone who knows the world-a Solarian, in short.
"You mean you want to take me?"
"Right, my lady."
"Why me?"
"I should think you could see that without explanation, my lady. Those Solarians who have left the planet are gone we know not where. If any Solarians are left on the planet, they are very likely the enemy. There are no known Solarian born Spacers living on some Spacer planet other than Solaria-except yourself. You are only Solarian available to me-the only one in all the Galaxy. That's why I must have you and that's why you must come."
"You're wrong, Settler. If I am the only one available to you, then you have no one who is available. I do not intend to come with you and there is no way-absolutely no way that you can force me to come with you. I am surrounded by my robots. Take one step in my direction and you will be immobilized at once-and if you struggle you will be hurt."
"I intend no force. You must come of your own accord and you should be willing to. It's a matter of preventing war.
"That is the job of governments on your side and mine. I refuse to have anything to do with it. I am a private citizen."
"You owe it to your world. We might suffer in case of war, but so will Aurora."
"I am not one of those hypervision heroes, any more than you are."
"You owe it to me, then."
"You're mad. I owe you nothing."
D.G. smiled narrowly. "You owe me nothing as an individual. You owe me a great deal as a descendant of Elijah Baley."
Gladia froze and remained staring at the bearded monster for a long moment. How did she come to forget who he was?
With difficulty, she finally muttered, "No."
"Yes," said D.G. forcefully. "On two different occasions, the Ancestor did more for you than you can ever repay. He is no longer here to call in the debt-a small part of the debt. I inherit the right to do so."
Gladia said in despair, "But what can I do for you if I come with you?"
"We'll find out. Will you come?"
Desperately, Gladia wanted to refuse, but was it for this that Elijah had suddenly become part of her life, once more, in the last twenty-four hours? Was is so that when this impossible demand was made upon her, it would be in his name and she would find it impossible to refuse?
She said, "What's the use? The Council will not let me go with you. They will not have an Auroran taken away on a Settler's vessel."
"My lady, you have been here on Aurora for twenty decades, so you think, the Auroran-born consider you an Auroran. It's not so. To them, you are a Solarian still. They'll let you go."
"They won't," said Gladia, her heart pounding and the skin of her upper arms turning to gooseflesh. He was right. She thought of Amadiro, who would surely think of -her as nothing but a Solarian. Nevertheless, she repeated, "They won't," trying to reassure herself.
"They will," retorted D.G. "Didn't someone from your Council come to you to ask you to see me?"
She said defiantly, "He asked me only to report this conversation we have had. And I will do so."
"If they want you to spy on me here in your own home, my lady, they will find it even more useful to have you spy on me on Solaria." He waited for a response and when there was none, he said with a trace of weariness, "My lady, if you refuse, I won't force you because I won't have to. They will force you. But I don't want that. The Ancestor would not want it if he were here. He would want you to come with me out of gratitude to him and for no other reason. - My lady, the Ancestor labored on your behalf under conditions of extreme difficulty. Won't you labor on behalf of his memory?"
Gladia's heart sank. She knew she could not resist that. She said, "I can't go anywhere without robots."
"I wouldn't expect you to." D.G. was grinning again. "Why not take my two namesakes? Do you need more?"
Gladia looked toward Daneel, but he was standing motionless. She looked toward Giskard-the same. And then it seemed to her that, for just a moment, his head moved-very slightly-up and down.
She had to trust him.
She said, "Well, then, I'll come with you. These two robots are all, I will need."
PART II
SOLARIA
5. THE ABANDONED WORLD
For the fifth time in her life, Gladia found herself on a spaceship. She did not remember, offhand, exactly how long ago it had been that she and Santirix had gone together to the world of Euterpe because its rain forests were widely recognized as incomparable, especially under the romantic glow of its bright satellite, Gemstone.
The rain forest had, indeed, been lush and green, with the trees carefully planted in rank and file and the animal life thoughtfully selected so as to provide color and delight, while avoiding venomous or other unpleasant creatures.
The satellite, fully 150 kilometers in diameter, was close enough to Euterpe to shine like a brilliant dot of sparkling light. It was so close to the planet that one could see it sweep west to east across the sky, outstripping the planet's slower rotational motion. It brightened as it rose toward zenith and dimmed as it dropped toward the horizon again. One watched it with fascination the first night, with less the second, and with a vague discontent the third-assuming the sky was clear on those nights, which it usually wasn't.
The native Euterpans, she noted, never looked at it, though they, praised it loudly to the tourists, of course.
On the whole, Gladia had enjoyed the trip well enough, but what she remembered most keenly was the joy of her return to Aurora and her decision not to travel again except under dire need. (Come to think of it, it had to be at least eight decades ago.)
For a while, she had lived with the uneasy fear that her husband would insist on another trip, but he never mentioned one. It might well be, she sometimes thought at that time, that he had come to the same decision she had and feared she might be the one to want to travel.
It didn't make them unusual to avoid trips. Aurorans generally --Spacers generally, for that matter-tended to be stay-at-homes. Their worlds, their establishments, were too comfortable. After all, what pleasure could- be greater than that of being taken care of by your own robots, robots who knew your every signal, and, for that matter, knew your ways and desires even without being told.
She stirred uneasily. Was that what D. G. had meant when he spoke of the decadence of a roboticized society?
But now she was back again in space, after all that time, And on an Earth ship, too.
She hadn't seen much of it, but the little she had glimpsed made her terribly uneasy. It seemed to be nothing but straight lines, sharp angles, and smooth surfaces. Everything that wasn't stark had been eliminated, apparently. It was as though nothing must exist but functionality. Even though she didn't know what was exactly functional about any particular object on the ship, she felt it to be all that was required, that nothing was to be allowed to interfere with taking the shortest distance between two points.
On everything Auroran (on everything, Spacer, one might almost say, though Aurora was the most advanced in that respect), everything existed in layers. Functionality was at the bottom-one could not entirely rid one's self of that, except in what was pure ornament-but overlying that there was always something to satisfy the eyes and the senses, generally; and overlying that, something to satisfy the spirit.
How much better that was!---Or did it represent such an exuberance of human creativity that Spacers could no longer live with the unadorned Universe-and was that bad? Was the future to belong to these from-here-to-there geometrizers? Or was it just that the Settlers had not yet learned the sweetnesses of life?
But then, if life had so many sweetnesses t
o it, why had she found so few for herself.
She had nothing really to do on board this ship but to ponder and reponder such questions. This D. G., this Elijah descended barbarian, had put it into her head, with his calm assumption that the Spacer worlds were dying, even though he could see all about him even during the shortest stay on Aurora (surely, he would have to) that it was deeply embedded in wealth and security.
She had tried to escape her own thoughts by staring at the holofilms she had been supplied with and watching, with moderate curiosity, the images flickering and capering on the projection surface, as the adventure story (all were adventure stories) hastened from- event to event with little time left for conversation and none for thought-or enjoyment, either. Very like their furniture.
D.G. stepped in when she was in the middle of one of the films, but had stopped really paying attention. She was not caught by surprise. Her robots, who guarded her doorway, signaled his coming in ample time and would not have allowed him to enter if she were not in a position to receive him. Daneel entered with him.
D.G. said, "How are you doing?" Then, as her hand touched a contact and the images faded, shriveled, and were gone
He said, "You don't have to turn it off. I'll watch it with you."
"That's not necessary," she said. "I've had enough."
"Are you -comfortable?"
"Not entirely. I am-isolated."
"Sorry! But then, I was isolated on Aurora. They would allow none of my men to come with me."
"Are you having your revenge?"
"Not at all. For one thing, I allowed you two robots of your choice to accompany you. For another, it is not I but my crew who enforce this. They don't like either Spacers or robots. But why do you mind? Doesn't this isolation lessen your fear of infection?"
Gladia's eyes were haughty, but her voice sounded weary. "I wonder if I haven't grown too old to fear infection. In many ways, I think I have lived long enough. Then, too, I have my gloves, my nose filters, and-if necessary-my mask. And besides, I doubt that you will trouble to touch me.
"Nor will anyone else," said D.G. with a sudden edge of grimness to his voice, as his hand wandered to the object at the right side of his hip.
Her eyes followed the motion. "What is that?" she asked.
D.G. smiled and his beard seemed to glitter in the light. There were occasional reddish hairs among the brown. "A weapon," he said and drew it. He held it by a molded hilt that bulged above his hand as though the force of his grip were squeezing it upward. In front, facing Gladia, a thin cylinder stretched some fifteen centimeters forward. There was no opening visible.
"Does that kill people?" Gladia extended her hand toward it.
D. G. moved it quickly away. "Never reach for someone's weapon, my lady. That is worse than bad manners, for any Settler is trained to react violently to such a move and you may be hurt."
Gladia, eyes wide, withdrew her hand and placed both behind her back. She said, "Don't threaten harm. Daneel has no sense of humor in that respect. On Aurora, no one is barbarous enough to carry weapons.
"Well," said D.G., unmoved by the adjective, "we don't have robots to protect us. -And this is not a killing device. It is, in some ways, worse. It emits a kind of vibration that stimulates those nerve endings responsible for the sensation of pain. It hurts a good deal worse than anything you can imagine. No one would willingly endure, it twice and someone carrying this weapon rarely has to use it. We call it a neuronic whip."
Gladia frowned. "Disgusting! We have our robots, but they never hurt anyone except in unavoidable emergency and then minimally."
D.G. shrugged. "That sounds very civilized, but a bit of pain I a bit of killing, even-is better than the decay of spirit brought about by robots. Besides, a neuronic whip is not intended to kill and your people have weapons on their spaceships that can bring about wholesale death and destruction.
"That's because we've fought wars early in our history, when our Earth heritage was still strong, but we've learned better."
"You used those weapons on Earth even after you supposedly learned better."
"That's----" she began and closed her, mouth as though to bite off what she was about to say next.
D.G. nodded. I know. You were about to say. 'That's different.' Think of that, my lady, if you should catch yourself wondering why my crew doesn't like Spacers. Or why I don't. -But you are going to be useful to me, my lady, and I won't let my emotions get in the way."
"How am I going to be useful to you?"
"You are a Solarian."
"You keep saying that. More than twenty decades have passed. I don't know what Solaria is like now. I know nothing about it. What was Baleyworld like twenty decades ago."
"It didn't exist twenty decades ago, but Solaria did and I shall gamble that you will remember something useful."
He stood up, bowed his head briefly in, a gesture of politeness that was almost mocking, and was gone.
Gladia maintained a thoughtful and troubled silence for awhile and then she said, "He wasn't at all polite, was he?"
Daneel said, "Madam Gladia, the Settler is clearly under tension. He is heading toward a world on which two ships like his have been destroyed and their crews killed. He is going, into great danger, as is his crew."
"You always defend any human, being, Daneel," said Gladia resentfully. "The danger exists for me, too, and I am not facing it voluntarily, but that does not force me into rudeness."
Daneel said nothing.
Gladia said, "Well, maybe it does. I have been a little rude, haven't I?"
I don't think the Settler minded," said Daneel. "Might I suggest, madam, that you prepare yourself for bed. It is quite late.
"Very well. I'll prepare myself for bed, but I don't think I feel relaxed enough to sleep, Daneel."
"Friend Giskard assures me you will, madam, and he is usually right about such things."
And she did sleep.
Daneel and Giskard stood in the darkness of Gladia's cabin.
Giskard said, "She will sleep soundly, friend Daneel, and she needs the rest. She faces a dangerous trip."
"It seemed to me, friend Giskard," said Daneel, "that you influenced her to agree to go. I presume you had a reason."
"Friend Daneel, we know so little, about the nature of the crisis that is now facing the Galaxy that we cannot safely refuse any action that might increase our knowledge. We must know what is taking place on Solaria and the only way we can do so is to go there--and the only way we can go is for us to arrange for Madam Gladia to go. As for influencing her, that required scarcely a touch. Despite her loud statements to the contrary, she was eager to go. There was an overwhelming desire within her to see Solaria. It was a pain within her that would not cease until she went."
"Since you say so, it is so, yet I find it puzzling. Had she not frequently made it plain that her life on Solaria was unhappy, that she had completely adopted Aurora and never wished to go back to her original home?"
"Yes, that was there, too. It was quite plainly in her mind. Both emotions, both feelings, existed together and simultaneously. I have observed something of this sort in human minds frequently; two opposite emotions simultaneously, present."
"Such a condition does not seem logical, friend Giskard.
I agree and I can only conclude that human beings are not, at all times or in all respects, logical. That must be one reason that it is so difficult to work out the Laws governing human behavior. -In Madam Gladia's case, I have now and then been aware of this longing for Solaria. Ordinarily, it was well hidden, obscured by the far more intense antipathy she also felt for the world. When the news arrived that Solaria had been abandoned by its people, however, her feelings changed."
"Why so? What had the abandonment to do with the youthful experiences that led Madam Gladia to her antipathy? Or, having held in restraint her longing for the, world the decades when it was a working society, why she lose that restraint once it became an abandoned planet and newly
long for a world which must now be something utterly strange to her."
I cannot explain, friend Daneel, since the more knowledge I gather of the human mind, the more despair I feel at being unable to understand it. It is not an unalloyed advantage to see into that mind and I often envy you the simplicity of behavior control that results from your inability to see below the surface."
Daneel persisted. "Have you guessed an explanation, friend Giskard?"
"I suppose she feels a sorrow for the empty planet. She deserted it twenty decades ago----"
"She was driven out."
"It seems to her, now, to have been a desertion and I imagine she plays with the painful thought that she had set an example; that if she had not left, no one else would have and the planet would still be populated and happy. Since I cannot read her thoughts, I am only groping backward, perhaps inaccurately, from her emotions."
