Asimov's Future History Volume 5

by Isaac Asimov

  Giskard said, “His name is Rutilari Horder, sir, but it is never mentioned officially. The title alone is used. That serves to impress continuity on the government. Human holders of the position have, individually, fixed terms, but ‘the Chairman’ always exists.”

  “And this particular individual Chairman – how old is he?”

  “Quite old, sir. Three hundred and thirty – one,” said Giskard, who typically had statistics on tap.

  “In good health?”

  “I know nothing to the contrary, sir.”

  “Any outstanding personal characteristics it might be well for me to be prepared for?”

  That seemed to stop Giskard. He said, after a pause, “That is difficult for me to say, sir. He is in his second term. He is considered an efficient Chairman who works hard and gets results.”

  “Is he short – tempered? Patient? Domineering? Understanding?”

  Giskard said, “You must judge such things for yourself, sir.”

  Daneel said, “Partner Elijah, the Chairman is above partisanship. He is just and evenhanded, by definition.”

  “I’m sure of that,” muttered Baley, “but definitions are abstract, as is ‘the Chairman,’ while individual Chairmen – with names – are concrete and may have minds to match.”

  He shook his head. His own mind, he would swear, had a strong measure of concrete itself. Having three times thought of something and three times lost it, he was now presented with his own comment at the time of having the thought and it still didn’t help.

  “He was there first.”

  Who was there first? When?

  Baley had no answer.

  74.

  BALEY FOUND FASTOLFE waiting for him at the door of his establishment, with a robot behind him who seemed most unrobotically restless, as though unable to perform his proper function of greeting a visitor and upset by the fact.

  (But then, one was always reading human motivations and responses into robots. What was more likely true was no upsettedness – no feeling of any kind – merely a slight oscillation of positronic potentials resulting from the fact that his orders were to greet and inspect all visitors and he could not quite perform the task without pushing past Fastolfe, which he also could not do, in the absence of overriding necessity. So he made false starts, one after the other, and that made him seem restless.)

  Baley found himself staring at the robot absently and only with difficulty managing to bring his eyes back to Fastolfe. (He was thinking of robots, but he didn’t know why.)

  “I’m glad to see you again, Dr. Fastolfe,” he said and thrust his hand forward. After his encounter with Gladia, it was rather difficult to remember that Spacers were reluctant to make physical contact with an Earthman.

  Fastolfe hesitated a moment and then, as manners triumphed over prudence, he took the hand offered him, held it lightly and briefly, and let it go. He said, “I am even more delighted to see you, Mr. Baley. I was quite alarmed over your experience last evening. It was not a particularly bad storm, but to an Earthman it must have seemed overwhelming.”

  “You know about what happened, then?”

  “Daneel and Giskard have brought me fully up to date in that respect. I would have felt better if they had come here directly and, eventually, brought you here with them, but their decision was based on the fact that Gladia’s establishment was closer to the breakdown point of the airfoil and that your orders had been extremely intense and had placed Daneel’s safety ahead of your own. They did not misinterpret you?”

  “They did not. I forced them to leave me.”

  “Was that wise?” Fastolfe led the way indoors, and pointed to a chair.

  Baley sat down. “It seemed the proper thing to do. We were being pursued.”

  “So Giskard reported. He also reported that –”

  Baley intervened. “Dr. Fastolfe, please. I have very little time and I have questions that I must ask you.”

  “Go ahead, please,” said Fastolfe at once, with his usual air of unfailing politeness.

  “It has been suggested that you place your work on brain function above everything else, that you –”

  “Let me finish, Mr. Baley. That I will let nothing stand in my way, that I am totally ruthless, oblivious to any consideration of immorality or evil, would stop at nothing, would excuse everything, all in the name of the importance of my work.”

  “Yes.”

  “Who told you this, Mr. Baley?” asked Fastolfe.

  “Does it matter?”

  “Perhaps not. Besides, it’s not difficult to guess. It was my daughter Vasilia. I’m sure of that.”

  Baley said, “Perhaps. What I want to know is whether this estimate of your character is correct.”

  Fastolfe smiled sadly. “Do you expect an honest answer from me about my own character? In some ways, the accusations against me are true. I do consider my work the most important matter there is and I do have the impulse to sacrifice anything and everything to it. I would ignore conventional notions of evil and immorality if these got in my way. – The thing is, however, that I don’t. I can’t bring myself to. And, in particular, if I have been accused of killing Jander because that would in some way advance my study of the human brain, I deny it. It is not so. I did not kill Jander.”

  Baley said, “You suggested I submit to a Psychic Probe to get some information that I can’t reach otherwise out of my brain. Has it occurred to you that, if you submitted to a Psychic Probe, your innocence could be demonstrated?”

  Fastolfe nodded his head thoughtfully, “I imagine Vasilia suggested that my failure to offer to submit to one was proof of my guilt. Not so. A Psychic Probe is dangerous and I am as nervous about submitting myself to one as you are. Still, I would have done so, despite my fears, were it not for the fact that is what my opponents would most like to have me do. They would argue against any evidence to my innocence and the Psychic Probe is not delicate enough an instrument to demonstrate innocence beyond argument. But what they would get by use of the Probe is information about the theory and design of humaniform robots. That is what they are after and that is what I am not going to give them.”

  Baley said, “Very well. Thank you, Dr. Fastolfe.”

  Fastolfe said, “You are welcome. And now, if I may get back to what I was saying, Giskard reported that, after you were left alone in the airfoil, you were accosted by strange robots. At least, you spoke of strange robots, rather disjointedly, after you were found unconscious and exposed to the storm.”

  “The strange robots did accost me, Dr. Fastolfe. I managed to deflect them and send them away, but I thought it wise to leave the airfoil rather than await their return. I may not have been thinking clearly when I reached that decision. Giskard said I was not.”

  Fastolfe smiled. “Giskard has a simplistic view of the Universe. Have you any idea whose robots they were?”

  Baley moved about restlessly and seemed to find no way of adjusting himself to the seat in a comfortable manner. He said, “Has the Chairman arrived yet?”

  “No, but he will be here momentarily. So will Amadiro, the head of the Institute, whom, the robots told me, you met yesterday. I am not sure that was wise. You irritated him.”

  “I had to see him, Dr. Fastolfe, and he did not seem irritated.”

  “That is no guide with Amadiro. As a result of what he calls your slanders and your unbearable sullying of professional reputation, he has forced the Chairman’s hand.”

  “In what way?”

  “It is the Chairman’s job to encourage the meeting of contending parties and to work for a compromise. If Amadiro wishes to meet with me, the Chairman could not, by definition, discourage it, much less forbid it. He must hold the meeting and, if Amadiro can find enough evidence against you – and it is easy to find evidence against an Earthman – that will end the investigation.”

  “Perhaps, Dr. Fastolfe, you should not have called on an Earthman to help, considering how vulnerable we are.”

  “Pe
rhaps not, Mr. Baley, but I could think of nothing else to do. I still can’t, so I must leave it up to you to persuade the Chairman to our point of view – if you can.”

  “The responsibility is mine?” said Baley glumly.

  “Entirely yours,” said Fastolfe smoothly.

  Baley said, “Are we four to be the only ones present?” Fastolfe said, “Actually, we three: the Chairman, Amadiro, and myself. We are the two principals and the compromising agent, so to speak. You will be there as a fourth party, Mr. Baley, only on sufferance. The Chairman can order you to leave at will, so I hope you will not do anything to upset him.”

  “I’ll try not to, Dr. Fastolfe.”

  “For instance, Mr. Baley, do not offer him your hand – if you will forgive my rudeness.”

  Baley felt himself grow warm with retroactive embarrassment at his earlier gesture. “I will not.”

  “And be unfailingly polite. Make no angry accusations. Do not insist on statements for which there is no support –”

  “You mean don’t try to stampede anyone into betraying himself. Amadiro, for instance.”

  “Yes, do not do so. You will be committing slander and it will be counterproductive. Therefore, be polite! If the politeness masks an attack, we won’t quarrel with that. And try not to speak unless you are spoken to.”

  Baley said, “How is it, Dr. Fastolfe, that you are so full of careful advice now and yet you never warned me about the dangers of slander earlier.”

  “The fault is indeed mine,” said Dr. Fastolfe. “It was a matter of such basic knowledge to me that it never occurred to me that it had to be explained.”

  Baley grunted. “Yes, I thought so.”

  Fastolfe raised his head suddenly.. “I hear an airfoil outside. More than that, I can hear the steps of one of my staff, heading for the entrance. I presume the Chairman and Amadiro are at hand.”

  “Together?” asked Baley.

  “Undoubtedly. You see, Amadiro suggested my establishment as the meeting place, thus granting me the advantage of home ground. He will therefore have the chance of offering, out of apparent politeness, to call for the Chairman and bring him here. After all, they must both come here. This will give him a few minutes to talk privately with the Chairman and push his point of view.”

  “That is scarcely fair,” said Baley. “Could you have stopped that?”

  “I didn’t want to. Amadiro takes a calculated risk. He may say something that will irritate the Chairman.”

  “Is the Chairman particularly irritable by nature?”

  “No. No more so than any Chairman in the fifth decade of his term of office. Still, the necessity of strict adherence to protocol, the further necessity of never taking sides, and the actuality of arbitrary power all combine toward making a certain irritability inevitable. And Amadiro is not always wise. His jovial smile, his white teeth, his exuding bonhomie can be extremely irritating when those upon whom he lavishes it are not in a good mood, for some reason. – But I must go meet them, Mr. Baley, and supply what I hope will be a more substantial version of charm. Please stay here and don’t move from that chair.”

  Baley could do nothing but wait now. He thought, irrelevantly, that he had been on Aurora for just a bit short of fifty standard hours.

  18: Again the Chairman

  75.

  THE CHAIRMAN WAS short, surprisingly short. Amadiro towered over him by nearly thirty centimeters.

  However, since most of his shortness was in his thighs, the Chairman, when all were seated, was not noticeably inferior in height to the others. Indeed, he was thickset, with a massive chest and shoulders, and looked almost overpowering under those conditions.

  His head was large, too, but his face was lined and marked by age. Nor were its wrinkles the kindly type carved by laughter. They were impressed into his cheeks and forehead, one felt, by the exercise of power. His hair was white and sparse and he was bald in the spot where the hairs would have met in a whorl.

  His voice suited him – deep and decisive. Age had robbed it of some of its timbre, perhaps, and lent it a bit of harshness, but in a Chairman (Baley thought) that might help rather than hinder.

  Fastolfe went through the full ritual of greeting, exchanged stroking remarks without meaning, and offered food and drink. Through all of this, no mention was made of the outsider and no notice was taken of him.

  It was only when the preliminaries were finished and when all were seated that Baley (a little farther from the center than the others) was introduced.

  He said, “Mr. Chairman,” without holding out his hand. Then, with an offhand nod, he said, “And, of course, I have met Dr. Amadiro.”

  Amadiro’s smile did not waver at the touch of insolence in Baley’s voice.

  The Chairman, who had not acknowledged Baley’s greeting, placed his hands on each knee, fingers spread apart, and said, “Let us get started and let us see if we can’t make this as brief and as productive as possible.

  “Let me stress first that I wish to get past this matter of the misbehavior – or possible misbehavior – of an Earthman and strike instantly to the heart of the matter. Nor, in dealing with the heart of the matter, are we speaking of this overblown matter of the robot. Disrupting the activity of a robot is a matter for the civil courts; it can result in a judgment of the infringement of property rights and the inflicting of a penalty of costs but nothing more than that. What’s – more, if it should be proved that Dr. Fastolfe had rendered the robot, Jander Panell, inoperable, it is a robot who, after all, he helped design, whose construction he supervised, and the ownership of whom he held at the time of the inoperability. No penalty is likely to apply, since a person may do what he likes with his own.

  “What is really at issue is the matter of the exploration and settlement of the Galaxy: whether we of Aurora carry it through alone, whether we do it in collaboration with the other Spacer worlds, or whether we leave it to Earth. Dr. Amadiro and the Globalists favor having Aurora shoulder the burden alone; Dr. Fastolfe wishes to leave it to Earth.

  “If we can settle this matter, then the affair of the robot can be left to the civil courts, and the question of the Earthman’s behavior will probably become moot, and we can simply get rid of him.

  “Therefore, let me begin by asking whether Dr. Amadiro is prepared to accept Dr. Fastolfe’s position in order to achieve unity of decision or whether Dr. Fastolfe is prepared to accept Dr. Amadiro’s position with the same end in view.”

  He paused and waited.

  Amadiro said, “I am sorry, Mr. Chairman, but I must insist that Earthmen be confined to their planet and that the Galaxy be settled by Aurorans only. I would be willing to compromise, however, to the extent of allowing other Spacer worlds to share in the settlement if that would prevent needless strife among us.

  “I see,” said the Chairman. “Will you, Dr. Fastolfe, in view of this statement, abandon your position?”

  Fastolfe said, “Dr. Amadiro’s compromise has scarcely anything of substance in it, Mr. Chairman. I am willing to offer a compromise of greater significance. Why should not the worlds of the Galaxy be thrown open to Spacers and Earthpeople alike? The Galaxy is large and there would be room for both. I would be willing to accept such an arrangement.”

  “No doubt,” said Amadiro quickly, “for it is no compromise. The over eight billion population of Earth is more than half again the population of all the Spacer worlds combined. Earth’s people are short – lived and are used to replacing their losses quickly. They lack our regard for individual human life. They will swarm over the new worlds at any cost, multiplying like insects, and will preempt the Galaxy even while we are making a bare beginning. To offer Earth a supposedly equal chance at the Galaxy is to give them the Galaxy – and that is not equality. Earthpeople must be confined to Earth.”

  “And what have you to say to that, Dr. Fastolfe?” asked the Chairman.

  Fastolfe sighed. “My views are on record. I’m sure I don’t need to repeat them. Dr. Am
adiro plans to use humaniform robots to build the settled worlds that human Aurorans will then enter, ready – made, yet he doesn’t even have humaniform robots. He cannot construct them and the project would not work, even if he did have them. No compromise is possible unless Dr. Amadiro consents to the principle that Earthpeople may at least share in the task of the settlement of new worlds.”

  “Then no compromise is possible,” said Amadiro.

  The Chairman looked displeased. “I’m afraid that one of you two must give in. I do not intend Aurora to be torn apart in an emotional orgy on a question this important.”

  He looked at Amadiro blankly, his expression carefully signifying neither favor nor disfavor. “You intend to use the inoperability of the robot, Jander, as an argument against Fastolfe’s view, do you not?”

  “I do,” said Amadiro.

  “A purely emotional argument. You are going to claim that Fastolfe is trying to destroy your view by falsely making humaniform robots appear less useful than they, in effect, are.”

  “That is exactly what he is trying to do –”

  “Slander!” put in Fastolfe in a low voice.

  “Not if I can prove it, which I can,” said Amadiro. “The argument may be an emotional one, but it will be effective. You see that, Mr. Chairman, don’t you? My view will surely win, but left to itself it will be messy. I would suggest that you persuade Dr. Fastolfe to accept inevitable defeat and spare Aurora the enormous sadness of a spectacle that will weaken our position among the Spacer worlds and shake our own belief in ourselves.”

  “How can you prove that Dr. Fastolfe rendered the robot inoperative?” –

  “He himself admits he is the only human being who could have done so. You know this.”

  “I know,” said the Chairman, “but I wanted to hear you say this, not to your constituency, not to the media, but to me – in private. And you have done so.”