by Robots
Even dangerous masses, if not guided-a meteoroid, for instance-could be handled. A vessel's computers would automatically veer the ship out of the way of any oncoming meteoroid that was too large for the shield to handle. That, however, would not work against a ship that could veer as its target veered. And if the Settler ship was the smaller of the two, it was also the more maneuverable.
There was only one way that the Auroran ship could avoid destruction
D.G. watched the other ship visibly enlarging in his viewing panel and wondered if Gladia, in her cabin, knew what was going on. She must be aware of the acceleration, despite the hydraulic suspension of her cabin ~ and the compensatory action of the pseudo-gravity field.
And then the other ship simply winked out of view, having jumped away, and D.G., with considerable chagrin, realized he was holding his breath and that his heart was racing. Had he had no confidence in the protecting influence of Earth or in his own sure diagnosis of the situation?
D.G. spoke into the transmitter in a voice that, with iron resolution, he forced into coolness. "Well done, men! Correct course and head for Earth."
16. THE CITY
Gladia said, "Are you serious, D.G.? You really intended to collide with the ship?"
"Not at all," said D.G. indifferently. "I wasn't expecting to. I merely lunged at them, knowing they would retreat. Those Spacers weren't going to risk their long, wonderful lives when they could easily preserve them."
"Those Spacers? What cowards they are."
D.G. cleared his throat. "I keep forgetting you're a Spacer, Gladia."
"Yes -and I imagine you think that that is a compliment to me. What if they had been as foolish as you-if they had shown the childish madness you think of as bravery and stayed in place? What would you have done?"
D.G. muttered, "Hit them."
"And then we would all have died."
"The transaction would have been in our favor, Gladia. One crummy old Trader ship from a Settler world for a new and advanced warship, of the leading Spacer world."
D.G. tipped his chair back against the wall and put his hands behind his neck (amazing how comfortable he felt, now that it was all over). I once saw a historical hyperdrama, in which, toward the end of the war, airplanes loaded with explosives were deliberately flown into much more expensive seaships in order to sink them. Of course, the pilot of each airplane lost his life."
"That was fiction," said Gladia. "You don't suppose civilized people do things like that in real life, do you?"
"Why not? If the cause is good enough."
"What was it, then, you felt as you plunged toward a glorious death? Exaltation? You were hurtling all your crew toward the same death."
They knew about it. We could do nothing else. Earth was watching.
"The people on Earth didn't even know."
"I mean it metaphorically. We were in Earth space. We could not act ignobly."
"Oh, what nonsense! And you risked my life, too."
D.G. looked down at his boots. "Would you like to hear something crazy? That was the only thing that bothered me."
"That I would die?"
"Not quite. That I would lose you. -When that ship ordered me to give you up, I knew I wouldn't-even if you asked me to. I would gladly ram them instead; they couldn't have you. And then, as I watched their ship expand in the viewscreen, I thought, "If they don't get out of here, I'll lose her anyway, and that's when my heart started to pound and I began to sweat. I knew they'd run, and still the thought-" He shook his head.
Gladia frowned. "I don't understand you. You weren't worrying about my dying, but you were worried about losing me? Don't the two go together?"
"I know. I'm not saying it's rational. I thought of you rushing at the overseer to save me when you knew it could murder you with a blow. I thought of you facing the crowd at Baleyworld and talking them down when you had never even seen a crowd before. I even thought of you going to Aurora when you were a young woman and learning a new way of life-and surviving. -And it seemed to me I didn't mind dying, I just minded losing you. You're right. It doesn't make sense."
Gladia said thoughtfully, "Have you forgotten my age? I was just about as old as I am now when you were born. When I was your age, I used to dream of your remote Ancestor. What's more, I've got an artificial hip joint. My left thumb-this one right here" -she wiggled it----"is strictly prosthetic. Some of my nerves have been rebuilt. My teeth are all implanted ceramic. And you talk as though any moment you're going to confess a transcendent passion. For what? -For whom? -Think, D.G.! -Look at me and see me as I am!"
D.G. tilted his chair back on two legs and rubbed at his beard with an odd scraping sound. "All right. You've made me sound silly, but I'm going to keep right on, What I know about your age is that you're going to survive me and look scarcely any older when you do, so you're younger than I am, not older. Besides, I don't care if you are older. What I would like is for you to stay with me wherever I go-for all my life, if possible."
Gladia was about to speak, but D.G. intervened hastily, "Or, if it seems more convenient, for me to stay with you wherever you go-for all my life, if possible. -If it's all right with you."
Gladia said softly, "I'm a Spacer. You're a Settler."
"Who cares, Gladia? Do you?"
"I mean, there's no question of children. I've had mine."
"What difference does that make to me! There's no danger of the name Baley dying out."
"I have a task of my own. I intend to bring peace to the Galaxy."
"I'll help you."
"And your trading? Will you give up your chance to be rich?"
"We'll do some together. Just enough to keep my crew happy and to help me support you in your task as peacebringer."
"Life will be dull for you, D.G."
"Will it? It seems to me that since you joined me it's been too exciting."
"And you'll probably insist on my giving up my robots."
D.G. looked distressed. "Is that why you've been trying to talk me out of this? I wouldn't mind your keeping the two of them-even Daneel and his small lecherous smile but if we're going to live among Settlers---2"
"Then I suppose I'll have to try to find the courage to do it."
She laughed, gently and so did D.G. He held out his arms to her and she placed her hands in his.
She said, "You're mad. I'm mad. But everything has been so strange since the evening I looked up at the sky in Aurora and, tried to find Solaria's sun that I suppose being mad is the only possible response to things."
"What you've just said isn't only mad," said D.G., "it's crazy, but that's the way I want you to be." He hesitated. "No, I'll wait. I'll shave my beard before I try to kiss you. That will lower the chances of infection."
"No, don't! I'm curious about how it might feel."
And she promptly found out.
Commander Lisiform strode back and forth across the length of his cabin. He said, "There was no use losing the ship. No use at all."
His political adviser sat quietly in his chair. His eyes did not bother to follow the agitated and rapid to-and-fro movement of the other. "Yes, of course," he said.
"What have the barbarians to lose? They only live a few decades, in any case. Life means nothing to them."
"Yes, of course."
"Still, I've never seen or heard of a Settler ship doing that. It may be a new- fanatical tactic and we have no defense against it. What if they send drone ships against us, with shields up and full momentum but no human beings aboard?"
"We might robotify our ships entirely."
"That wouldn't help. We couldn't afford to lose the ship. What we need is the shield knife they keep talking about. Something that will slice through a shield."
"Then they'll develop one, too, and we will have to devise a knife-proof shield, and so will they, and it will be a standoff again at a higher level."
"We need something completely new, then."
"Well," said the adviser, "maybe s
omething will turn up. Your mission wasn't primarily the matter of the Solarian woman and her robots, was it? It would have been pleasant if we could have forced them out of the Settler ship, but that was secondary, wasn't it?"
"The Council isn't going to like it, just the same."
"It's my job to take care of that. The important fact is that Amadiro and Mandamus left the ship and are on their way to Earth in a good speedy ferry."
"Well, yes."
"And you not only distracted the Settler ship but delayed it as well. That means Amadiro and Mandamus not, only left the ship unnoticed, but they will be on Earth before our barbarian captain will."
"I suppose so. But what of that?"
"I wonder. If it were only Mandamus, I would dismiss the matter. He's of no consequence. But Amadiro? To abandon the political wars back home at a difficult time and come to Earth? Something absolutely crucial must be going on here."
"What?" The commander seemed annoyed that he should be so nearly-and so all-but-fatally -involved in something of which he understood nothing.
"I haven't any idea."
"Do you suppose it might be secret negotiations at the highest level for some sort of overall modification of the peace settlement Fastolfe had negotiated?"
The adviser smiled. "Peace settlement? If you think that, you don't know our Dr. Amadiro. He wouldn't travel to Earth in order to modify a clause or two in a peace settlement. What he's after is a Galaxy without Settlers land if he comes to Earth-well, all I can say is that I wouldn't like to be in the shoes of the Settler barbarians at this time."
"I trust, friend Giskard," said Daneel, "that Madam Gladia is not uneasy at being without us. Can you tell at her distance?"
"I can detect her mind faintly but unmistakably, friend Daneel. She is with the captain and there is a distinct overlay of excitement and joy."
"Excellent, friend Giskard."
"Less excellent for myself, friend Daneel. I find myself in a state of some disorder. I have been under a great strain. "
"It distresses me to hear that, friend Giskard. May I ask the reason?"
"We have been here for some time while the captain negotiated with the Auroran ship."
"Yes, but the Auroran ship is now gone, apparently, so that the captain seems to have negotiated to good effect."
"He has done so in a manner of which you were apparently not aware. I was-to an extent. Though the captain was not here with us, I had little trouble sensing his mind. It exuded overwhelming tension and suspense and underneath that a gathering and strengthening sense of loss."
"Loss, friend Giskard? Were you able to determine of what that loss might consist?"
"I cannot describe my method of analysis of such things, but the loss did not seem to be the type of loss I have, in the past associated with generalities or with inanimate objects. It had the touch-that is not the word, but there is no other that fits even vaguely-of the loss of a specific person.
"Lady Gladia."
"Yes."
"That would be natural, friend Giskard. He was faced with the possibility of having to give her up to the Auroran vessel.
"It was too, intense for that. Too wailing."
"Too wailing?"
"It is the only word I can think of in this connection. There was a stressful mourning associated with the sense of loss. It was not as though Lady Gladia would move elsewhere and be unavailable for that reason. That might, after all, be corrected at some future time. It was as though Lady Gladia would cease existing-would die-and be forever unavailable."
"He felt, then, that the Aurorans would kill her? Surely that is not possible."
"Indeed, not possible. And that is not it. I felt a thread of a sense of personal responsibility associated with the deep, deep fear of loss. I searched other minds, on board ship and, putting it all together, I came to the suspicion that the captain was deliberately charging his ship into the Auroran vessel. "
"That, too, is not possible, friend Giskard," said Daneel in a low voice.
"I had to accept it. My first impulse was to alter the captain's emotional makeup in such a way as to force him to change course, but I could not. His mind was so firmly set, so saturated with determination and-despite the suspense, tension, and dread of loss -so filled with confidence of success-"
"How could there be at once a dread of loss through death and a feeling of confidence of success?"
"Friend Daneel, I have given up marveling at the capacity of the human mind to maintain two opposing emotions simultaneously. I merely accept it. In this case, to have attempted to alter the captain's mind to the point of turning the ship from its course would have killed him. I could not do that."
"But if you did not, friend Giskard, scores of human beings on this ship, including Madam Gladia, and several hundreds more on the Auroran vessel would die."
"They might not die if the captain were correct in his feeling of confidence in success. I could not bring about one certain death to prevent many merely probable ones. There is the difficulty, friend Daneel, in your Zeroth Law. The First Law deals with specific individuals and certainties. Your Zeroth Law deals with vague groups and probabilities.
"The human beings on board these ships are not vague groups. They are many specific individuals taken together."
"Yet when I must make a decision it is the specific individual I am about to influence directly whose fate must count with me. I cannot help that."
"What was it you did do, then, friend Giskard-or were you completely helpless?"
"In my desperation, friend Daneel, I attempted to contact the commander of the Auroran vessel after a small Jump had brought him quite close to us. I could not. The distance was too great. And yet the attempt was not altogether a failure. I did detect something, the equivalent of a faint hum. I puzzled over it a short while before realizing I was receiving the overall sensation of the minds of all the human beings on board the Auroran vessel. I had to filter out that faint hum from the much more prominent sensations arising from our own vessel-a difficult task."
Daneel said, "Nearly impossible, I should think, friend, Giskard."
"As you say, nearly impossible, but I managed it with an enormous effort. However, try as I might, I could make out no individual minds. -When Madam Gladia faced the large numbers of human beings in her audience on Baleyworld, I sensed an anarchic confusion of a vast jumble of minds, but I managed to pick out individual minds here and there for a moment or two. That was not so on this occasion."
Giskard paused, as though lost in his memory of the sensation.
Daneel said, "I imagine this must be analogous to the manner in which we see individual stars even among large groups of them, when the whole is comparatively close to us. In a distant galaxy, however, we cannot make out individual stars but can see only a faintly luminous fog."
"That strikes me as a good analogy, friend, Daneel. -And as I concentrated on the faint but distant hum, it seemed to me that I could detect a very dim wash of fear permeating it. I was not sure of this, but I felt I had to try to take advantage of it. I had never attempted to exert influence over anything so far, away, over anything as inchoate as a mere hum-but I tried desperately to increase that fear by however small a trifle. I cannot say whether I succeeded."
"The Auroran vessel fled. You must have succeeded."
"Not necessarily. The vessel might have fled if I had done nothing."
Daneel seemed lost in thought. "It might. If our captain were so confident that it would flee----"
Giskard said, "On the other hand, I cannot be sure that there was a rational basis to that confidence. It seemed to me that what I detected was intermixed with a feeling of awe and reverence for Earth. The confidence I sensed was rather similar to the kind I have detected in young children toward their protectors-parental or otherwise. I had the feeling that the captain believed he could not fail in the neighborhood of Earth because of the influence of Earth. I wouldn't say the feeling was exactly irrational, but it
felt nonrational, in any case."
"You are undoubtedly right in this, friend Giskard. The captain has, in our hearing, spoken of Earth, on occasion, in a reverential manner, Since Earth cannot truly influence the success of an action through any mystical influence, it is quite possible to suppose that your influence was indeed successfully exerted. And moreover-"
Giskard, his eyes glowing dimly, said, "Of what are you thinking, friend Daneel?"
"I have been thinking of the supposition that the individual human being is concrete while humanity is abstract. When you detected that faint hum from the Auroran ship, you were not detecting an individual, but a portion of humanity. Could you not, if you were at a proper distance from Earth and if the background noise were sufficiently small, detect the hum of the mental activity of Earth's human population, overall? And, extending that, can one not imagine that in the Galaxy generally there is the hum of the mental activity of all of humanity? How, then, is humanity an abstraction? It is something you can point to. Think of that in connection with the Zeroth Law and you will see that the extension of the Laws of Robotics is a justified one-justified by your own experience."
