by Robots
"But she could not have set an example, friend Giskard. Since it is twenty decades since she left, there can be no verifiable causal connection between the much earlier event and the much later one."
"I agree, but human beings sometimes find a kind of pleasure in nursing painful- emotions, in blaming themselves without reason or even against reason. -In any case, Madam Gladia felt so sharply the longing to return that I felt it was necessary to release the inhibitory effect that kept her from agreeing to go. It required the merest touch. Yet though I feel it necessary for her to go, since that means she will take us there, I have the uneasy feeling, that the disadvantages might, just possibly, be greater than the advantages."
"In what way, friend Giskard?"
"Since the Council was eager to have Madam Gladia accompany the Settler, it may have been for the purpose of having Madam Gladia absent from Aurora during a crucial period when the defeat of Earth and its, Settler worlds is being prepared."
Daneel seemed to be considering that statement. At least it was only after a distinct pause that he said, "What purpose would be served, in your opinion, in having Madam Gladia absent?"
"I cannot decide that, friend Daneel. I want your opinion. "
"I have not considered this matter."
"Consider it now!" If Giskard had been human, the remark would have been an order.
There was an even longer pause and then Daneel said, "Friend Giskard, until the moment that Dr. Mandamus appeared in Madam Gladia's establishment, she had never shown any concern about international affairs. She was a friend of Dr. Fastolfe and of Elijah Baley, but this friendship was one of personal affection and did not have an ideological basis. Both of them, moreover, are now gone from us. She has an antipathy toward Dr. Amadiro and that is returned, but this is also a personal matter. The antipathy is two centuries old and neither has done anything material about it but have merely each remained stubbornly antipathetic. There can be no reason for Dr. Amadiro-who is now the dominant influence in the Council-to fear Madam Gladia or to go to the trouble of removing her."
Giskard said, "You overlook the fact, that in removing Madam Gladia, he also removes you and me. He would, perhaps, feel quite certain Madam Gladia would not leave without us, so can it be us he, considers dangerous?"
"In the course of our existence, friend Giskard, we have never, in any way, given any appearance of having endangered Dr. Amadiro. What cause has he to fear us? He does not know of your abilities or of how you have made use of them. Why, then, should he take the trouble to remove us, temporarily, from Aurora?"
"Temporarily, friend Daneel? Why do you assume it is a temporary removal he plans? He knows, it may be, more than the Settler does of the trouble on Solaria and knows, also, that the Settler and his crew will be surely destroyed and Madam Gladia and you and I with- them. Perhaps the destruction of the Settler's ship is his main aim, but he would consider the end of Dr. Fastolfe's friend and Dr. Fastolfe's robots to be an added bonus."
Daneel said, "Surely he would not risk war with the Settler worlds, for that may well come if the Settler's ship is destroyed and the minute pleasure of having us destroyed, when added in, would not make the risk worthwhile."
"Is it not possible, friend Daneel, that war is exactly, what Dr. Amadiro has in mind; that it involves no risk in his estimation, so, that getting rid of us at the same time adds to his pleasure without increasing a risk that does not exist?"
Daneel said calmly, "Friend Giskard, that is not reasonable. In any war fought under present conditions, the Settlers would win. They are better suited, psychologically, to the rigors of war. They are more scattered and can, therefore, more successfully carry on hit-and-run tactics. They have comparatively little to lose in their relatively primitive worlds, while the Spacers have much to lose in their comfortable, highly organized ones. If the Settlers were willing to offer to exchange destruction of one of their worlds for one of the Spacers, the Spacers would have to surrender, at once."
"But would such a war be fought under present conditions? What if the Spacers had a new weapon that could be used to defeat the Settlers quickly? Might that not be the very crisis we are now facing?"
"In that case, friend Giskard, the victory could be better and more effectively gained in a surprise attack. Why go to the trouble of instigating a war, which the Settlers might begin by a surprise raid on Spacer worlds that would do considerable damage?"
"Perhaps the Spacers need to test the weapon and the destruction of a series of ships on Solaria represents the testing."
"The Spacers would have been most uningenious if they could not have found a method of testing that would not give away the new weapon s existence."
It was now Giskard's turn, to consider. "Very well, then friend Daneel, how would you explain this trip we are on? How would you explain the Council's willingness -even eagerness-to have us accompany the Settler? The Settler said they would order Gladia to go and, in effect, they did.
"I have not considered the matter, friend Giskard."
"Then consider it now." -Again it had the flavor of an order.
Daneel said, "I will do so."
There was silence, one that grew protracted, but Giskard by no word or sign showed any impatience as he waited.
Finally, Daneel said-slowly, as though he were feeling his way along strange avenues of thought- I do not think that Baleyworld-or any of the Settler worlds-has a clear right to appropriate robotic property on Solaria. Even though the Solarians have themselves left or have, perhaps, died out, Solaria remains a Spacer world, even if an unoccupied one - Certainly, the remaining forty-nine Spacer worlds would reason so. Most of all, Aurora would reason so-if it felt in command of the situation."
Giskard considered that. "Are you now saying, friend Daneel, that the destruction of the two Settler ships was the Spacer way of enforcing their proprietorship of Solaria?"
Daneel said, "No, that would not be the way if Aurora, the leading Spacer power, felt in command of the situation.
Aurora would then simply have announced that Solaria, empty or not, was off-limits to Settler vessels and would have threatened reprisals against the home worlds if any Settler vessel entered the Solarian planetary system. And they would have established a cordon of ships and sensory stations about that planetary system. There was no such warning, no such action, friend Giskard. Why, then, destroy ships that might have been kept away from the world quite easily in the first place?"
"But the ships were destroyed, friend Daneel. Will you make use of the basic illogicality of the human mind as an explanation?"
"Not unless I have to. Let us for the moment take that destruction simply as given. Now consider the consequence-The captain of a single Settler vessel approaches Aurora, demands permission to discuss the situation with the Council, insists on taking an Auroran citizen with him to investigate events on Solaria, -and the Council gives in to everything. If destroying the ships without prior warning is too strong an action for Aurora, giving in to the Settler captain so cravenly is far too weak an action. Far from seeking a war, Aurora, in giving in, seems to be willing to do anything at all to ward off the possibility of war."
"Yes," said Giskard, "I see that this is a possible way of interpreting events. But what follows.
"It seems to me," said Daneel, "that the Spacer worlds are not yet so weak that they must, behave with such servility-and, even if they were, the pride of centuries of overlordship would keep them from doing so. It must t* something other than weakness that is driving them. I have pointed out that they cannot be deliberately instigating a war, so it is much more likely that they are playing for time."
"To what end, friend Daneel?"
"They want to destroy the Settlers, but they are not yet prepared. They let this Settler have what he wants, to avoid a war until they are ready to, fight one on their own terms. I am only surprised that they did not offer to send an Auroran warship with him. If this analysis is correct-and I think it is-Aurora cannot po
ssibly have had anything to do with the incidents on Solaria. They would not indulge in pinpricks, that could only serve to alert the Settlers before they are ready with something devastating."
"Then how account for these pinpricks, as you call them, friend Daneel?"
"We will find out perhaps when we land on Solaria. It may be that Aurora is as curious as we are and the Settlers are and that that is another reason why they have cooperated with the, captain, even to the point of allowing Madam Gladia to accompany him."
It was now Giskard's turn to remain silent. Finally he said, "And what is this mysterious devastation that they plan?"
"Earlier, we spoke of a crisis arising from the Spacer plan to defeat Earth, but we used Earth in its general sense, implying the Earthpeople together with their descendents on the Settler worlds. However, if we seriously suspect the preparation of a devastating blow that will allow the Spacers to defeat their enemies at a stroke, we can perhaps refine our view. Thus, they cannot be planning a blow at a Settler world. Individually, the Settler worlds are dispensable and the remaining Settler worlds will promptly strike back. Nor can they be planning a blow at several or at all the Settler worlds. There are too many of them; they are too diffusely spread. It is not likely that all the strikes will succeed and those Settler worlds that survive will, in fury and despair, bring devastation upon the Spacer worlds."
"You reason, then, friend Daneel, that it will be a blow at Earth itself."
"Yes, friend Giskard. Earth contains the vast majority of the short-lived, human beings; it is the perennial source of emigrants to the Settler worlds and is the chief raw material for the founding of new ones; it is the revered homeland of all the Settlers. If Earth were somehow destroyed, the Settler movement might never recover."
"But would not the Settler worlds then retaliate as strongly and as forcefully as they would if one of themselves were destroyed? That would seem to me to be inevitable."
"And to me, friend Giskard. Therefore, it seems to me that unless the Spacer worlds have gone insane, the blow would have to be a subtle one; one for which the Spacer worlds would seem to bear no responsibility."
"Why not such a subtle blow against the Settler worlds, which hold most of the actual war potential of the Earthpeople?"
"Either because the Spacers feel the blow against Earth would be more psychologically devastating or because the nature of the blow is such that it would work only against Earth and not against the Settler worlds. I suspect the latter, since Earth is a unique world and has a society that is not like that of any other "world-Settler or, for that matter, Spacer."
"To summarize, then, friend Daneel, you come to the conclusion that the Spacers are planning a subtle blow against Earth that will destroy it without evidence of themselves as the cause, and one that would not work against any other world, and that they are not yet ready to launch that blow."
"Yes, friend Giskard, but they may soon be ready-and once they are ready, they will have to strike immediately. Any delay will increase the chance of some leak that will give them away."
"To deduce all this, friend Daneel, from the small indications we have is most praiseworthy. Now tell m the nature of the blow. What is it, precisely, that the Spacers plan?"
I have come this far, friend Giskard, across very shaky ground, without being certain that my reasoning is entirely sound. But even if we suppose it is, I can go no further. I fear I do not know and cannot imagine what the nature of the blow might be."
Giskard said, "But we cannot take appropriate measures to counteract the blow and resolve the crisis until we know what its nature will be. If we must wait until the blow reveals itself by its results, it will then be too late to do anything."
Daneel said, "If any Spacer knows the nature of the forthcoming event, it would be Amadiro. Could you not force Amadiro to announce it publicly and thus alert the Settlers and make it unusable?"
"I could not do that, friend Daneel, without virtually destroying his mind. I doubt that I could hold it together long enough to allow him to make the announcement. I could not do such a thing."
"Perhaps, then," said Daneel, "we may console ourselves with the thought that my reasoning is wrong and that no blow against Earth is being prepared."
"No," said Giskard. "It is my feeling that you are right and that we must simply wait- helplessly."
Gladia waited, with an almost painful anticipation, for the conclusion of the final Jump. They would then be close enough to Solaria to make out its sun as a disk.
It would just be a disk, of course, a featureless -circle of light, subdued to the point where it, could be watched unblinkingly after that light had passed through the appropriate filter.
Its appearance would not be unique. All the stars that carried, among their planets, a habitable world in the human sense had a long list of property requirements that ended by making them all resemble one another. They were all single stars-all not much larger or smaller than the sun that shone on Earth-none too active, or too old, or too quiet, or too young, or too hot, or too cool, or too offbeat in chemical composition. All had sunspots and flares and prominences and all looked just about the same to the eye. It took -careful spectroheliography to work out the details that made each star unique.
Nevertheless, when Gladia found herself staring at a circle of light that was absolutely nothing more than a circle of light to her, she found her eyes welling with tears. She had never given the sun a thought when she had lived on Solaria; it was just the eternal source of light and heat, rising and falling in a steady rhythm. When she had left Solaria, she had watched that sun disappear behind her with nothing but a feeling of thankfulness. She had no memory -of it that she valued.
Yet she was weeping silently. She was ashamed of herself for being so affected for no reason that she could explain, but that didn't stop the weeping.
She made a stronger effort when the signal light gleamed. It had to be D.G. at the door; no one else would approach her cabin.
Daneel said, "Is he to enter, madam? You seem emotionally moved."
"Yes, I'm emotionally moved, Daneel, but let him in. I imagine it won't come as a surprise to him."
Yet it did. At least, he entered with a smile on his bearded face-and that smile disappeared almost at once. He stepped back and said in a low voice, "I will return later."
"Stay!" said Gladia harshly. "This is nothing. A silly reaction of the moment." She sniffed and dabbed angrily at her eyes. "Why are you here?"
I wanted to discuss Solaria with you. If we succeed with a microadjustment, we'll land tomorrow. If you're not quite up to a discussion now-"
"I am quite up to it. In fact, I have a question for you. Why is it we took dime Jumps to get here? One Jump would have been sufficient. One was sufficient when I was taken from Solaria to Aurora twenty decades ago. Surely the technique of space travel has not retrogressed since."
D.G.'s grin returned. "Evasive action. If an Auroran ship was following us, I wanted to-confuse it, shall we say?"
"Why should one follow us?"
"Just a thought, my lady. The Council was a little overeager to help, I thought. They suggested that an Auroran ship join me in my expedition to Solaria."
"Well, it might have helped, mightn't it?"
"Perhaps-if I were quite certain that Aurora wasn't behind all this. I told the Council quite plainly that I would do without-or, rather--he pointed his finger at Gladia Just with you. Yet might not the Council send a ship to accompany me even against my wish-out of pure kindness of heart, let us say? Well, I still don't want one; I expect enough trouble without having to look nervously over my shoulder at every moment. So I made, myself hard to follow.
-How much do you know about Solaria, my lady?"
Haven't I told you often enough? Nothing! Twenty decades have passed.
"Now, madam, I'm talking about the psychology of the Solarians. That can't have changed in merely twenty decades. -Tell me why they have abandoned their planet."
> "The story, as I've heard it," said Gladia calmly, "is that their population has been steadily declining. A combination of premature deaths and very few births is apparently responsible. "
"Does that sound reasonable to you?"
"Of course it does. Births have always been few." Her face twisted in memory. "Solarian custom does not make impregnation easy, either naturally, artificially, or ectogenetically."
"You never had children, madam?"
"Not on Solaria."
"And the premature death?"
"I can only guess. I suppose it arose out of a feeling of failure. Solaria was clearly not working out, even though the Solarians had placed a great deal of emotional, fervor into their world's having the ideal society-not only one that was better than Earth had ever had, but more nearly perfect than that of any other Spacer world."
