Robots & Empire

by Robots

  "Are you- saying that Solaria was dying of the collective broken heart of its people?"

  "If you want to put it in that ridiculous way," said Gladia, displeased.

  D. G. shrugged. "It seems to be what you're saying. But would they really leave? Where would they go? How would they live?"

  "I don't know."

  "But, Madam Gladia, it is well known that Solarians are accustomed to enormous tracts of land, serviced by many thousands of robots, so that each Solarian is left in almost complete isolation. If they abandon Solaria, where can they go to find a, society that would humor them in this fashion? Have they, in fact, gone to any of the other Spacer worlds?"

  "Not as far as I know. But then, I'm not in their confidence."

  "Can they have found a new world for themselves? If so, it would be a raw one and require much in the way of terraforming. Would they be ready for that?"

  Gladia shook her head. "I don't know."

  "Perhaps they haven't really left."

  "Solaria, I understand, gives every evidence of being empty."

  "What evidence is that?"

  "All interplanetary communication has ceased. All radiation from the planet, except that consistent with robot work or clearly due to natural causes has-ceased."

  "How do you know that?"

  "That is the report on the Auroran news."

  "Ah! The report! Could it be that someone is lying?"

  "What would be the, purpose of such a lie?" Gladia stiffened at the suggestion.

  "So that our ships would be lured to the world and destroyed."

  "That's ridiculous, D. G." Her voice grew sharper. "What would the Spacers gain by destroying two trading vessels through so elaborate a subterfuge?"

  "Something has destroyed two Settler vessels on a supposedly empty planet. How do you explain that?"

  "I can't. I presume we are going to Solaria in order to find an explanation."

  D.G. regarded her gravely. "Would you be able to guide me to the section of the world that was yours when you lived on Solaria?"

  "My estate?" She returned his stare, astonished.

  "Wouldn't you like to see it again?"

  Gladia's heart skipped a beat. "Yes, I would, but why my place?"

  "The two ships that were destroyed landed in widely different spots on the planet and yet each was destroyed fairly quickly. Though every spot may be deadly, it seems to me that yours might be less so than others.

  Why?"

  "Because there we might receive help from the robots. You would know them, wouldn't you? They do last more than twenty decades, I suppose. Daneel and Giskard have. And those that were there when you lived on your estate would still remember you, wouldn't they? They would treat you as their mistress and recognize the duty they owed you even beyond that which they would owe to ordinary human beings."

  Gladia said, "There were ten thousand robots on my estate. I knew perhaps three dozen by sight. Most of the rest I never saw and they may not have ever seen me, Agricultural robots are not very advanced, you know, nor are forestry robots or mining robots. The household robots would still remember me-if they have not been sold or transferred since I left. Then, too, accidents happen and some robots don" t last twenty decades. -Besides, whatever you may think of robot memory, human memory is fallible and I might remember none of them."

  "Even so," said D. G., "can you direct me to your estate?"

  "By latitude and longitude? No."

  "I have charts of Solaria. Would that help?"

  "Perhaps approximately. It's in the south-central portion of the northern continent of Heliona."

  "And once we're approximately there, can you make use of landmarks for greater precision-if we skim the Solarian surface?"

  "By seacoasts, and rivers, you mean?"

  "Yes."

  "I think I can."

  "Good! And meanwhile, see if you can remember the names and appearances of any of your robots. It may prove the difference between living and dying."

  D.G. Baley seemed a different person with his officers. The broad smile was not evident, nor the easy indifference to danger. He sat, poring over the charts, with a look of intense concentration on his face.

  He said, "If the woman is correct, we've got the estate pinned down within narrow limits-and if we move into the flying mode, we should get it exactly before too long."

  "Wasteful of energy, Captain," muttered Jamin Oser, who was second-in-command. He was tall and, like D.G., well bearded. The beard was russet-colored, as were his eyebrows, which arched over bright blue eyes. He looked rather old, but one got the impression that this was due to experience rather than years.

  "Can't help it," said D.G. "If we had the antigravity that the technos keep promising us just this side of eternity, it would be different."

  He stared at the chart again and said, "She says it would be along this river about sixty kilometers upstream from where it runs into this larger one. If she is correct."

  "You keep doubting it," said Chandrus Nadirhaba, whose insigne showed him to be Navigator and responsible for bringing the ship down in the correct spot-or, in any case, the indicated spot. His dark skin and neat mustache accentuated the handsome strength of his face.

  "She's recalling a situation over a time gap of, twenty decades," said D.G. "What details would you remember of a site you haven't seen for just three decades? She's not a robot. She may have forgotten."

  "Then what was the point of bringing her?" muttered Oser. "And the other one and the robot? It unsettles the crew and I don't exactly like it, either."

  D.G. looked up, eyebrows bunching together. He said in a low voice, "It doesn't matter on this ship what you don't like or what the crew doesn't like, mister. I have the responsibility and I make the decisions. We're all liable to be dead within six hours of landing unless that woman can save us. "

  Nadirhaba said coolly, "If we die, we die. We wouldn't be Traders if we didn't know that sudden death was the other side of big profits. And for this mission, we're all volunteers. Just the same, it doesn't hurt to know where the death's coming from, Captain. If you've figured it out, does it have to be a secret?"

  "No, it doesn't. The-Solarians are supposed to have left, but suppose a couple of hundred stayed quietly behind just to watch the store, so to speak.

  "And what can they do to an armed ship, Captain? Do they have a secret weapon?"

  "Not so secret," said D.G. "Solaria is littered with robots. That's the whole reason Settler ships landed on the world in the first place. Each remaining Solarian might have a Trillion robots at his disposal. An enormous army."

  Eban Kalaya was in charge of communications. So far he had said nothing, aware as he was of his Junior status, which seemed further marked by the fact that he was the only one of the four officers present without facial hair of any kind. Now he ventured a remark. "Robots," he said, cannot injure human beings."

  "So we are told," said D.G. dryly, "but what do we know about robots? What we do know is that two ships have been destroyed and about a hundred human beings-good Settlers all-have been killed on widely separated parts of a world littered, with robots. How could it have been done except by robots? We don't, know what kind of orders a Solarian might give robots or by what tricks the so-called First Law of Robotics might be circumvented.

  "So we," he went on, "have to do a little circumventing of our own. As best as we can tell from the reports reaching us from the other ships before they were destroyed, all the men on board ship debarked on landing. It was an empty world after all and they wanted to stretch their legs, breathe fresh air, and look over the robots they had come to get. Their, ships were unprotected and they themselves unready when the attack came.

  "That won't happen this time. I'm getting off, but the rest of you are going to stay on board the ship or, in its near vicinity."

  Nadirhaba's dark eyes glared disapproval. "Why you, Captain? If you need someone to act as bait, anyone, else can be spared more easily than you
can be."

  "I appreciate the thought, Navigator, I? said D.G., "but I will not be alone. Coming with me well be the Spacer woman and her companions. She is the one who is essential. She may know some of the robots; at any rate, some may know her. I am hoping that though the robots may have been ordered to attack us, they won't attack her."

  "You mean they'll remember Ol' Missy and fall to their knees," said Nadirhaba dryly.

  "If you want to put it that way. That's why I brought her and that's why we've landed on her estate. And I've got to be with her because I'm the one who knows her-somewhat-and I've got to see that she behaves. Once we have survived by using her as a shield and in that way have learned exactly what we're facing, we can proceed on our own. We won't need her any more.

  Oser said, "And then what do we do with her? Jettison her into space?"

  D.G. roared, "We take her back to Aurora!"

  Oser said, "I'm bound to tell you, Captain, that the crew would consider that a wasteful and unnecessary trip. They will feel that we can simply leave her on this blasted world. It's where she comes from, after all."

  "Yes," said D.G. "That will be the day, won't it, when I take orders from the crew."

  "I'm sure you won't," said Oser, "but the crew has its opinions and an unhappy crew makes for a dangerous voyage.

  6. THE CREW

  Gladia stood on the soil of Solaria. She smelled the vegetation-not quite the odors of Aurora-and at once she crossed the gap of twenty decades.

  Nothing, she knew, could bring back associations in the way that odors could. Not sights, not sounds.

  Just that faint, unique smell brought back childhood the freedom of running about, with a dozen robots watching her carefully-the excitement of seeing other children sometimes, coming to a halt, staring shyly, approaching one another a half-step at a time, reaching out to touch, and then a robot saying, "Enough, Miss Gladia," and being led away-looking over the shoulder at the other child, with whom there was another set of attendant robots in charge.

  She remembered the day that she was told that only by holovision would she see other human beings thereafter.

  "Seeing" Viewing, she was told-not seeing. The robots said as though it were a word they must not say, so that they had to whisper it. She could see them, but they were not human.

  It was not so bad at first. The images she could talk to were three-dimensional, free-moving. They could talk, run, turn cartwheels if they wished-but they could not be felt. And then she was told that she could actually see someone whom she had often viewed and whom she had liked. He was a grown man, quite a bit older than she was, though he looked quite young, as one did on Solaria. She would have permission to continue to see him-if she wished whenever necessary.

  She wished. She remembered how it was-exactly how it was on that first day. She was tongue-tied and so was he. They circled each other, afraid to touch. -But it was marriage.

  Of course it was. And then they met again-seeing, viewing, because it was marriage. They would finally touch each other. They were supposed to.

  It was the most exciting day of her life-until it took place.

  Fiercely, Gladia stopped her thoughts. Of what use to go on? She so warm and eager; he so cold and withdrawn. He continued to be -cold. When he came to see her, at fixed intervals, for the rites that might (or might not) succeed in impregnating her, it was with such clear revulsion that she was soon longing for him to forget. But he was a man duty and he never forgot.

  Then came the time, years of dragging unhappiness later, when she-found him dead, his skull crushed, and herself as the only possible suspect. Elijah Baley had saved her then and she had been taken away from Solaria and sent to Aurora.

  Now she was back, smelling Solaria.

  Nothing else was familiar. The house in the distance bore no resemblance to anything she remembered even faintly. In twenty decades it had been modified, torn down, rebuilt. She could not even gain any sense of familiarity with the ground itself.

  She found herself reaching backward to touch the Settler ship that had brought her to this world that smelled like home but was home in no other way-just to touch something that was familiar by comparison.

  Daneel, who stood next to her in the shadow of the ship, said, "Do you see the robots, Madam Gladia?"

  There were a group of them, a hundred yards away, amid the trees of an orchard, watching solemnly, motionlessly, shining in the sun with the grayish well-polished metal finish Gladia remembered Solarian robots to have.

  She said, "I do, Daneel."

  "Is there anything familiar about them, madam?"

  "Not at all. They seem to be new, models. I can't remember them and I'm sure they can't remember me. If D. G was expecting anything hopeful to come of my supposed familiarity with the robots on my estate, he will have to be disappointed."

  Giskard said, "They do not seem to be doing anything, madam."

  Gladia said, "That is understandable. We're intruders and they've come to observe us and to report on us in accordance with what must be standing orders. They have no one now to report to, however, and can merely silently, observe. Without further orders, I presume they will do no more than that, but they won't cease doing so, either."

  Daneel said, "It might be well, Madam Gladia, if we retired to our quarters on board ship. The captain is, I believe, supervising the construction of defenses and is not ready to go exploring yet. I suspect he will not approve your having left your quarters without his specific permission."

  Gladia said haughtily, "I'm not going to delay stepping out onto the surface of my own world just to suit his whim."

  "I understand, but members of the crew are engaged in the vicinity and I believe that some note your presence here.

  "And are approaching," said Giskard. "If you would avoid infection

  "I'm prepared," said Gladia. "Nose plugs and gloves."

  Gladia did not understand the nature of the structures being put up on the flat ground about the ship. For the most part, the crewmen, absorbed in the construction, had not seen Gladia and her two companions, standing as they were in the shadows. (It was the warm season on this portion of Solaria, which had a tendency to grow warmer-and on other occasions, colder-than Aurora did, since the Solarian day was nearly six hours longer than the Auroran day.)

  The crewmen approaching were five in number and one of them, the tallest and largest, pointed in the direction of Gladia. The other four looked, remained standing for a while as though merely curious, and then, at a gesture from the first, approached again, changing their angle slightly so as to head directly for the Auroran three.

  Gladia watched them silently and with her eyebrows raised in contempt. Daneel and Giskard waited impassively.

  Giskard said in a low voice to Daneel, "I do not know where the captain is. I cannot distinguish him from the crowd of crewmen in whose midst he must be."

  "Shall we retire?" said Daneel aloud.

  "That would be disgraceful," said Gladia. "This is my world."

  She held her ground and the five crewmen came closer in leisurely fashion.

  They had been working, doing hard physical labor (Like robots, thought Gladia with distain) and they were sweating. Gladia became aware of the odor that reeked from them. That would have served to force her away more than threats would, but she held her ground even so. The nose plugs, she was sure, mitigated the effect of the smell.

  The large crewman approached more closely than the others. His skin was bronzed. His bare arms glistened with moisture and with shining musculature. He might be thirty (as nearly as Gladia could judge the age of these shortlived, beings) and if he were washed and properly dressed, he might prove quite presentable.

  He said, "So you, are the Spacer lady from Aurora that we've been carrying on our ship?" He spoke rather slowly, obviously trying to attain an aristocratic tinge to his Galactic. He failed, of course, and he spoke like a Settler-even more crudely than D.G. did.

  Gladia said, establishing
her territorial rights, "I am from Solaria, Settler," and stopped in confused embarrassment. She had spent so much time thinking of Solaria just now that twenty decades had dropped away and she had spoken with a thick Solarian accent. There was the broad "a" in Solaria and the rough "r," while the "I" sounded horribly like "Oi".

  She said again, in a much lower, less commanding voice, but one in which the accent of Aurora University-the standard for Galactic speech through all the Spacer worlds - rang clear, "I am from Solaria, Settler."

  The Settler laughed and turned to the others. "She speaks la-di-da, but she had to try. Right, mates?"