Asimov’s Future History Volume 4

by Isaac Asimov

  “I’ve viewed books,” said Baley cautiously.

  “Ah. Then you understand.”

  Baley, who did not, said, “Let me explain exactly what I want, Dr. Quemot. I want you to tell me what you can about why Solaria is so different from the other Outer Worlds, why there are so many robots, why you behave as you do. I’m sorry if I seem to be changing the subject.”

  Baley most definitely wanted to change the subject. Any discussion of a likeness or unlikeness between Solaria’s culture and Earth’s would prove too absorbing by half. He might spend the day there and come away none the wiser as far as useful information was concerned.

  Quemot smiled. “You want to compare Solaria and the other Outer Worlds and not Solaria and Earth.”

  “I know Earth, sir.”

  “As you wish.” The Solarian coughed slightly. “Do you mind if I turn my chair completely away from you? It would be more–more comfortable.”

  “As you wish, Dr. Quemot,” said Baley stiffly.

  “Good.” A robot turned the chair at Quemot’s low voiced order, and as the sociologist sat there, hidden from Baley’s eyes by the substantial chair back, his voice took on added life and even deepened and strengthened in tone.

  Quemot said, “Solaria was first settled about three hundred years ago. The original settlers were Nexonians. Are you acquainted with Nexon?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “It is close to Solaria, only about two parsecs away. In fact, Solaria and Nexon represent the closest pair of inhabited worlds in the Galaxy. Solaria, even when uninhabited by man, was life bearing and eminently suited for human occupation. It represented an obvious attraction to the well-to-do of Nexon, who found it difficult to maintain a proper standard of living as their own planet filled up.”

  Baley interrupted. “Filled up? I thought Spacers practiced population control.”

  “Solaria does, but the Outer Worlds in general control it rather laxly. Nexon was completing its second million of population at the time I speak of. There was sufficient crowding to make it necessary to regulate the number of robots that might be owned by a particular family. So those Nexonians who could established summer homes on Solaria, which was fertile, temperate, and without dangerous fauna.

  “The settlers on Solaria could still reach Nexon without too much trouble and while on Solaria they could live as they pleased. They could use as many robots as they could afford or felt a need for. Estates could be as large as desired since, with an empty planet, room was no problem, and with unlimited robots, exploitation was no problem.

  “Robots grew to be so many that they were outfitted with radio contact and that was the beginning of our famous robot industries. We began to develop new varieties, new attachments, new capabilities. Culture dictates invention; a phrase I believe I have invented.” Quemot chuckled.

  A robot, responding to some stimulus Baley could not see beyond the barrier of the chair, brought Quemot a drink similar to that Baley had had earlier. None was brought to Baley, and he decided not to ask for one.

  Quemot went on, “The advantages of life on Solaria were obvious to all who watched. Solaria became fashionable. More Nexonians established homes, and Solaria became what I like to call a ‘villa planet.’ And of the settlers, more and more took to remaining on the planet all year round and carrying on their business on Nexon through proxies. Robot factories were established on Solaria. Farms and mines began to be exploited to the point where exports were possible.

  “In short, Mr. Baley, it became obvious that Solaria, in the space of a century or less, would be as crowded as Nexon had been. It seemed ridiculous and wasteful to find such a new world and then lose it through lack of foresight.

  “To spare you a great deal of complicated politics, I need say only that Solaria managed to establish its independence and make it stick without war. Our usefulness to other Outer Worlds as a source of specialty robots gained us friends and helped us, of course.

  “Once independent, our first care was to make sure that population did not grow beyond reasonable limits. We regulate immigration and births and take care of all needs by increasing and diversifying the robots we use.”

  Baley said, “Why is it the Solarians object to seeing one another?” He felt annoyed at the manner in which Quemot chose to expound sociology.

  Quemot peeped around the corner of his chair and retreated almost at once. “It follows inevitably. We have huge estates. An estate ten thousand square miles in area is not uncommon, although the largest ones contain considerable unproductive areas. My own estate is nine hundred fifty square miles in area but every bit of it is good land.

  “In any case, it is the size of an estate, more than anything else, that determines a man’s position in society. And one property of a large estate is this: You can wander about in it almost aimlessly with little or no danger of entering a neighbor’s territory and thus encountering your neighbor. You see?”

  Baley shrugged. “I suppose I do.”

  “In short, a Solarian takes pride in not meeting his neighbor. At the same time, his estate is so well run by robots and so self sufficient that there is no reason for him to have to meet his neighbor. The desire not to do so led to the development of ever more perfect viewing equipment, and as the viewing equipment grew better there was less and less need ever to see one’s neighbor. It was a reinforcing cycle, a kind of feed back. Do you see?”

  Baley said, “Look here, Dr. Quemot. You don’t have to make all this so simple for me. I’m not a sociologist but I’ve had the usual elementary courses in college. It’s only an Earth college, of course,” Baley added with a reluctant modesty designed to ward off the same comment, in more insulting terms, from the other, “but I can follow mathematics.”

  “Mathematics?” said Quemot, his voice squeaking the last syllable.

  “Well, not the stuff they use in robotics, which I wouldn’t follow, but sociological relationships I can handle. For instance, I’m familiar with the Teramin Relationship.”

  “The what, sir?”

  “Maybe you have a different name for it. The differential of inconveniences suffered with privileges granted: dee eye sub jay taken to the nth–”

  “What are you talking about?” It was the sharp and peremptory tone of a Spacer that Baley heard and he was silenced in bewilderment.

  Surely the relationship between inconveniences suffered and privileges granted was part of the very essentials of learning how to handle people without an explosion. A private stall in the community bathroom for one person, given for cause, would keep x persons waiting patiently for the same lightning to strike them, the value of x varying in known ways with known variations in environment and human temperament, as quantitatively described in the Teramin Relationship.

  But then again, in a world where all was privilege and nothing inconvenience, the Teramin Relationship might reduce to triviality. Perhaps he had chosen the wrong example.

  He tried again. “Look, sir, it’s one thing to get a qualitative fill-in on the growth of this prejudice against seeing, but it isn’t helpful for my purposes. I want to know the exact analysis of the prejudice so I can counteract it effectively. I want to persuade people to see me, as you are doing now.”

  “Mr. Baley,” said Quemot, “you can’t treat human emotions as though they were built about a positronic brain.”

  “I’m not saying you can. Robotics is a deductive science and sociology an inductive one. But mathematics can be made to apply in either case.”

  There was silence for a moment. Then Quemot spoke in a voice that trembled. “You have admitted you are not a sociologist.”

  “I know. But I was told you were one. The best on the planet.”

  “I am the only one. You might almost say I have invented the science.”

  “Oh?” Baley hesitated over the next question. It sounded impertinent even to himself. “Have you viewed books on the subject?”

  “I’ve looked at some Auroran books.”


  “Have you looked at books from Earth?”

  “Earth?” Quemot laughed uneasily. “It wouldn’t have occurred to me to read any of Earth’s scientific productions. No offense intended.”

  “Well, I’m sorry. I had thought I would be able to get specific data that would make it possible for me to interview others face to face without having to–”

  Quemot made a queer, grating, inarticulate sound and the large chair in which he sat scraped backward, then went over with a crash.

  A muffled “My apologies” was caught by Baley.

  Baley had a momentary glimpse of Quemot running with an ungainly stride, then he was out the room and gone.

  Baley’s eyebrows lifted. What the devil had he said this time? Jehoshaphat! What wrong button had he pushed?

  Tentatively he rose from his seat, and stopped halfway as a robot entered.

  “Master,” said the robot, “I have been directed to inform you that the master will view you in a few moments.”

  “View me, boy?”

  “Yes, master. In the meanwhile, you may desire further refreshment.”

  Another beaker of the pink liquid was at Baley’s elbow and this time a dish of some confectionery, warm and fragrant, was added.

  Baley took his seat again, sampled the liquor cautiously and put it down. The confectionery was hard to the touch and warm, but the crust broke easily in the mouth and the inner portion was at once considerably warmer and softer. He could not identify the components of the taste and wondered if it might not be a product of the native spices or condiments of Solaria.

  Then he thought of the restricted, yeast derived dietary of Earth and wondered if there might be a market for yeast strains designed to imitate the tastes of Outer World products.

  But his thoughts broke off sharply as sociologist Quemot appeared out of nowhere and faced him. Faced him this time! He sat in a smaller chair in a room in which the walls and floor clashed sharply with those surrounding Baley. And he was smiling now, so that fine wrinkles in his face deepened and, paradoxically, gave him a more youthful appearance by accentuating the life in his eyes.

  He said, “A thousand pardons, Mr. Baley. I thought I was enduring personal presence so well, but that was a delusion. I was quite on edge and your phrase pushed me over it, in a manner of speaking.”

  “What phrase was that, sir?”

  “You said something about interviewing people face to–” He shook his head, his tongue dabbing quickly at his lips. “I would rather not say it. I think you know what I mean. The phrase conjured up the most striking picture of the two of us breathing–breathing one another’s breath.” The Solarian shuddered. “Don’t you find that repulsive?”

  “I don’t know that I’ve ever thought of it so.”

  “It seems so filthy a habit. And as you said it and the picture arose in my mind, I realized that after all we were in the same room and even though I was not facing you, puffs of air that had been in your lungs must be reaching me and entering mine. With my sensitive frame of mind–”

  Baley said, “Molecules all over Solaria’s atmosphere have been in thousands of lungs. Jehoshaphat! They’ve been in the lungs of animals and the gills of fish.”

  “That is true,” said Quemot with a rueful rub of his cheek, “and I’d just as soon not think of that, either. However there was a sense of immediacy to the situation with yourself actually there and with both of us inhaling and exhaling. It’s amazing the relief I feel in viewing.”

  “I’m still in the same house, Dr. Quemot.”

  “That’s precisely what is so amazing about the relief. You are in the same house and yet just the use of the trimensionals makes all the difference. At least I know what seeing a stranger feels like now. I won’t try it again.”

  “That sounds as though you were experimenting with seeing.”

  “In a way,” said the Spacer, “I suppose I was. It was a minor motivation. And the results were interesting, even if they were disturbing as well. It was a good test and I may record it.”

  “Record what?” asked Baley, puzzled.

  “My feelings!” Quemot returned puzzled stare for puzzled stare. Baley sighed. Cross-purposes. Always cross-purposes. “I only asked because somehow I assumed you would have instruments of some sort to measure emotional responses. An electroencephalograph, perhaps.” He looked about fruitlessly, “Though I suppose you could have a pocket version of the same that works without direct electrical connection. We don’t have anything like that on Earth.”

  “I trust,” said the Solarian stiffly, “that I am able to estimate the nature of my own feelings without an instrument. They were pronounced enough.”

  “Yes, of course, but for quantitative analysis...” began Baley.

  Quemot said querulously, “I don’t know what you’re driving at. Besides I’m trying to tell you something else, my own theory, in fact, something I have viewed in no books, something I am quite proud of.”

  Baley said, “Exactly what is that, sir?”

  “Why, the manner in which Solaria’s culture is based on one existing in Earth’s past.”

  Baley sighed. If he didn’t allow the other to get it off his chest, there might be very little cooperation thereafter. He said, “And that is?”

  “Sparta!” said Quemot, lifting his head so that for a moment his white hair glistened in the light and seemed almost a halo. “I’m sure you’ve heard of Sparta!”

  Baley felt relieved. He had been mightily interested in Earth’s ancient past in his younger days (it was an attractive study to many Earthmen; Earth supreme because it was an Earth alone; Earthmen the masters because there were no Spacers), but Earth’s past was a large one. Quemot might well have referred to some phase with which Baley was unacquainted and that would have been embarrassing.

  As it was, he could say cautiously, “Yes. I’ve viewed films on the subject.”

  “Good. Good. Now Sparta in its hey day consisted of a relatively small number of Spartiates, the only full citizens, plus a somewhat larger number of second class individuals, the Perioeci, and a really large number of outright slaves, the Helots. The Helots outnumbered the Spartiates a matter of twenty to one, and the Helots were men with human feelings and human failings.

  “In order to make certain that a Helot rebellion could never be successful despite their overwhelming numbers, the Spartans became military specialists. Each lived the life of a military machine, and the society achieved its purpose. There was never a successful Helot revolt.

  “Now we human beings on Solaria are equivalent, in a way, to the Spartiates. We have our Helots, but our Helots aren’t men but machines. They cannot revolt and need not be feared even though they outnumber us a thousand times as badly as the Spartans’ human Helots outnumbered them. So we have the advantage of Spartiate exclusiveness without any need to sacrifice ourselves to rigid mastery. We can, instead, model ourselves on the artistic and cultural way of life of the Athenians, who were contemporaries of the Spartans and who–”

  Baley said, “I’ve viewed films on the Athenians, too.”

  Quemot grew warmer as he spoke. “Civilizations have always been pyramidal in structure. As one climbs toward the apex of the social edifice, there is increased leisure and increasing opportunity to pursue happiness. As one climbs, one finds also fewer and fewer people to enjoy this more and more. Invariably, there is a preponderance of the dispossessed. And remember this, no matter how well off the bottom layers of the pyramid might be on an absolute scale, they are always dispossessed in comparison with the apex. For instance, even the most poorly off humans on Aurora are better off than Earth’s aristocrats, but they are dispossessed with respect to Aurora’s aristocrats, and it is with the masters of their own world that they compare themselves.

  “So there is always social friction in ordinary human societies. The action of social revolution and the reaction of guarding against such revolution or combating it once it has begun are the causes of a great
deal of the human misery with which history is permeated.

  “Now here on Solaria, for the first time, the apex of the pyramid stands alone. In the place of the dispossessed are the robots. We have the first new society, the first really new one, the first great social invention since the farmers of Sumeria and Egypt invented cities.”

  He sat back now, smiling.

  Baley nodded. “Have you published this?”

  “I may,” said Quemot with an affectation of carelessness, “someday. I haven’t yet. This is my third contribution.”

  “Were the other two as broad as this?”

  “They weren’t in sociology. I have been a sculptor in my time. The work you see about you”–he indicated the statuary–” is my own. And I have been a composer, too. But I am getting older and Rikaine Delmarre always argued strongly in favor of the applied arts rather than the fine arts and I decided to go into sociology.”

  Baley said, “That sounds as though Delmarre was a good friend of yours.”

  “We knew one another. At my time in life, one knows all adult Solarians. But there is no reason not to agree that Rikaine Delmarre and I were well acquainted.”

  “What sort of a man was Delmarre?” (Strangely enough, the name of the man brought up the picture of Gladia in Baley’s mind and he was plagued with a sudden, sharp recall of her as he had last seen her, furious, her face distorted with anger at him.)

  Quemot looked a bit thoughtful. “He was a worthy man; devoted to Solaria and to its way of life.”

  “An idealist, in other words.”

  “Yes. Definitely. You could see that in the fact that he volunteered for his job as–as fetal engineer. It was an applied art, you see, and I told you his feelings about that.”

  “Was volunteering unusual?”

  “Wouldn’t you say–But I forget you’re an Earthman. Yes, it is unusual. It’s one of those jobs that must be done, yet finds no voluntary takers. Ordinarily, someone must be assigned to it for a period of so many years and it isn’t pleasant to be the one chosen. Delmarre volunteered, and for life. He felt the position was too important to be left to reluctant draftees, and he persuaded me into that opinion, too. Yet I certainly would never have volunteered. I couldn’t possibly make the personal sacrifice. And it was more of a sacrifice for him, since he was almost a fanatic in personal hygiene.”