by Isaac Asimov
The signal light flashed and Gladia scrambled to push the HOLD button in answer. A few moments more and she pushed the ENTER button.
D.G. came in, smiling. “Inconvenient moment, my lady?”
“Not really,” said Gladia. “Simply a matter of putting on my gloves and inserting my nose plugs. I suppose I should wear them all the time, but both grow tiresome and, for some reason, I grow less concerned about infection.”
“Familiarity breeds contempt, my lady.”
“Let’s not call it contempt,” said Gladia, who found herself smiling.
“Thank you,” said D.G. “We’ll be landing soon, madam, and I have brought you a coverall, carefully sterilized and placed inside this plastic bag so that it has since been untouched by Settler hands. It’s simple to put on. You’ll have no trouble and you’ll find it covers everything but the nose and eyes.”
“Just for me, D.G.?”
“No, no, my lady. We all wear such things when outdoors at this season of the year. It is winter in our capital city at the present time and it is cold. We live on a rather cold world—heavy cloud cover, much precipitation, often snow.”
“Even in the tropical regions?”
“No, there it tends to be hot and dry. The population clusters in the cooler regions, however. We rather like it. It’s bracing and stimulating. The seas, which were seeded with Earth species of life, are fertile, so that fish and other creatures have multiplied abundantly. There’s no food shortage, consequently, even though land agriculture is limited and we’ll never be the breadbasket of the Galaxy.—The summers are short but quite hot and the beaches are then well populated, although you might find them uninteresting since we have a strong nudity taboo.”
“It seems like peculiar weather.”
“A matter of land-sea distribution, a planetary orbit that is a bit more eccentric than most, and a few other things. Frankly, I don’t bother with it.” He shrugged. “It’s not my field of interest.”
“You’re a Trader. I imagine you’re not on the planet often.”
“True, but I’m not a Trader in order to escape. I like it here. And yet perhaps I would like it less if I were here more. If we look at it that way, Baleyworld’s harsh conditions serve an important purpose. They encourage trading. Baleyworld produces men who scour the seas for food and there’s a certain similarity between sailing the seas and sailing through space. I would say fully a third of all the Traders plying the space lanes are Baleypeople.”
“You seem in a semimanic state, D.G.,” said Gladia.
“Do I? I think of myself right now as being in a good humor. I have reason to be. So have you.”
“Oh?”
“It’s obvious, isn’t it? We got off Solaria alive. We know exactly what the Solarian danger is. We’ve gained control of an unusual weapon that should interest our military. And you will be the heroine of Baleyworld. The world officials already know the outline of events and are eager to greet you. For that matter, you’re the heroine of this ship. Almost every man on board volunteered to bring you this coverall. They are all anxious to get close and bathe in your aura, so to speak.”
“Quite a change,” said Gladia dryly.
“Absolutely. Niss—the crewman whom your Daneel chastised—”
“I remember well, D.G.”
“He is anxious to apologize to you. And bring his four mates so that they, too, might apologize. And to kick, in you presence, the one of them who made an improper suggestion. He is not a bad person, my lady.”
“I am certain he isn’t. Assure him, he is forgiven and the incident forgotten. And if you’ll arrange matters, I will shake hands with him and perhaps some of the others before debarking. But you mustn’t let them crowd about me.”
“I understand, but I can’t guarantee there won’t be a certain amount of crowding in Baleytown—that’s the capital city of Baleyworld. There’s no way of stopping various government officials from trying to gain political advantage by being seen with you, while grinning away and bowing.”
“Jehoshaphat! As your Ancestor would say.”
“Don’t say that once we land, madam. It’s an expression reserved for him. It is considered bad taste for anyone else to say it.—There’ll be speeches and cheering and all kinds of meaningless formalities. I’m sorry, my lady.”
She said thoughtfully, “I could do without it, but I suppose there’s no way of stopping it.”
“No way, my lady.”
“How long will it continue?”
“Till they get tired. Several days, perhaps, but there’ll be a certain variety to it.”
“And how long do we stay on the planet?”
“Till I get tired. I’m sorry, my lady, but I have much to do—places to go—friends to see—”
“Women to make love to.”
“Alas for human frailty,” said D.G., grinning broadly.
“You’re doing everything but slobber.”
“A weakness. I can’t bring myself to slobber.”
Gladia smiled. “You’re not totally committed to sanity, are you?”
“I never claimed to be. But, leaving that aside, I also have to consider such dull matters as the fact that my officers and crew would want to see their families and friends, catch up on their sleep, and have a little planetside fun.—And if you want to consider the feelings of inanimate objects, the ship will have to be repaired, refurbished, refreshed, and refueled. Little things like that.”
“How long will all those little things take?”
“It could be months. Who knows?”
“And what do I do meanwhile?”
“You could see our world, broaden your horizons.”
“But your world is not exactly the playground of the Galaxy.”
“Too true, but we’ll try to keep you interested.” He looked at his watch. “One more warning, madam. Do not refer to your age.”
“What cause would I have to do that?”
“It might show up in some casual reference. You’ll be expected to say a few words and you might say, for instance, In all my more than twenty-three decades of life, I have never been so glad to see anyone as I am to see, the people of Baleyworld. If you’re tempted to say anything like that initial clause, resist it.”
“I will. I have no intention of indulging in hyperbole in any case.—But, as a matter of idle curiosity, why not?”
“Simply because it is better for them not to know your age—”
“But they do know my age, don’t they? They know I was your Ancestor’s friend and they know how long ago he lived. Or are they under the impression”—she looked at him narrowly—“that I’m a distant descendant of the Gladia?”
“No, no, they know who you are and how old you are, but they know it only with their heads”—he tapped his forehead—“and few people have working heads, as you may have noticed.”
“Yes, I have. Even on Aurora.”
“That’s good. I wouldn’t want the Settlers to be special in this respect. Well, then, you have the appearance of”—he paused judiciously—“Forty, maybe forty-five, and they’ll accept you as that in their guts, which is where the average person’s real thinking mechanism is located. If you don’t rub it in about your real age.”
“Does it really make a difference?”
“Does it? Look, the average Settler really doesn’t want robots. He has no liking for robots, no desire for robots. There we are satisfied to differ from the Spacers. Long life is different. Forty decades is considerably more than ten.
“Few of us actually reach the forty-decade mark.”
“And few of us actually reach the ten-decade mark. We teach the advantage of short life-quality versus quantity, evolutionary speed, ever-changing world—but nothing really makes people happy about living ten decades when they imagine they could live forty, so past a point the propaganda produces a backlash and it’s best to keep quiet about it. They don’t often see Spacers, as you can imagine, and so they don’t have occasio
n to grind their teeth over the fact that Spacers look young and vigorous even when they are twice as old as the oldest Settler who ever lived. They’ll see that in you and if they think about it, it will unsettle them.
Gladia said bitterly, “Would you like to have me make a speech and tell them exactly what forty decades means? Shall I tell them for how many years one outlives the spring time of hope, to say nothing of friends and acquaintances. Shall I tell them of the meaninglessness of children and family; of the endless comings and goings of one husband after another, of the misty blurring of the informal matings between and alongside; of the coming of the time when you’ve seen all you want to see, and heard all you want to hear, and find it impossible to think a new thought, of how you forget what excitement and discovery are all about, and learn each year how much more intense boredom can become?”
“Baleypeople wouldn’t believe that. I don’t think I do. Is that the way all Spacers feel or are you making it up?”
“I only know for certain how I myself feel, but I’ve watched others dim as they aged; I’ve watched their dispositions sour, and their ambitions narrow, and their indifferences broaden. “
D.G.’s lips pressed together and he looked somber. “Is the suicide rate high among Spacers? I’ve never heard that it is.”
“It’s virtually zero.”
“But that doesn’t fit what you’re saying.”
“Consider! We’re surrounded by robots who are dedicated to keeping us alive. There’s no way we can kill ourselves when our sharp-eyed and active robots are forever about us. I doubt that any of us would even think of trying. I wouldn’t dream of it myself, if only because I can’t bear the thought of what it would mean to all my household robots and, even more so, to Daneel and Giskard.”
“They’re not really alive, you know. They don’t have feelings.”
Gladia shook her head. “You say that only because you’ve never lived with them.—In any case, I think you overestimate the longing for prolonged life among your people. You know my age, you look at my appearance, yet it doesn’t bother you.”
“Because I’m convinced that the Spacer worlds must dwindle and die, that it is the Settler worlds that are the hope of humanity’s future, and that it is our short-lived characteristic that ensures it. Listening to what you’ve just said, assuming it is all true, makes me the more certain.”
“Don’t be too sure. You may develop your own insuperable problems—if you haven’t already.”
“That is undoubtedly possible, my lady, but for now I must leave you. The ship is coasting in for a landing and I must stare intelligently at the computer that controls it or no one will believe that I am the captain.”
He left and she remained in gloomy abstraction for a while, her fingers plucking at the plastic that enclosed the coverall.
She had come to a sense of equilibrium on Aurora, a way of allowing life to pass quietly. Meal by meal, day, by day, season by season, it had been passing and the quiet had insulated her, almost, from the tedious waiting for the only adventure that remained, the final one of death.
And now she had been to Solaria—and had awakened the memories of a childhood that had long passed on a world that had long passed, so that the quiet had been shattered perhaps forever—and so that she now lay uncovered and bare to the horror of continuing life.
“What could substitute for the vanished quiet?”
She caught Giskard’s dimly glowing eyes upon her and she said, “Help me on with this, Giskard.”
37
It was cold. The sky was gray with clouds and the air glittered with a very light snowfall. Patches of powdery snow were swirling in the fresh breeze and off beyond the landing field Gladia could see distant heaps of snow.
There were crowds of people gathered here and there, held off by barriers from approaching too closely. They were all wearing coveralls of different types and colors and they all seemed to balloon outward, turning humanity into a crowd of shapeless objects with eyes. Some were wearing visors that glittered transparently over their faces.
Gladia pressed her mittened hand to her face. Except for her nose, she felt warm enough. The coverall did more than insulate; it seemed to exude warmth of its own.
She looked behind her. Daneel and Giskard were within reach, each in a coverall.
She had protested that at first. “They don’t need coveralls. They’re not sensitive to cold.”
“I’m sure they’re not,” D.G. had said, “but you say you won’t go anywhere without them and we can’t very well have Daneel sitting there exposed to the cold. It would seem against nature. Nor do we wish to arouse hostility by making it too clear you have robots.”
“They must know I’ve got robots with me and Giskard’s face will give him away—even in a coverall.”
“They might know,” said D.G., “but the chances are they won’t think about it if they’re not forced to—so let’s not force it.
Now D.G. was motioning her into a ground-car that had a transparent roof and sides. “They’ll want to see you as we travel, my lady,” he said, smiling.
Gladia seated herself at one side and D.G. followed on the other. “I’m co-hero,” he said.
“Do you value that?”
“Oh, yes. It means a bonus for my crew and a possible promotion for me. I don’t scorn that.”
Daneel and Giskard entered, too, and sat down in seats that faced the two human beings. Daneel faced Gladia; Giskard faced D.G.
There was a ground-car before them, without transparency, and a line of about a dozen behind them. There was the sound of cheering and a forest of arm-waving from the assembled crowd. D.G. smiled and lifted an arm in response and motioned to Gladia to do the same. She waved in a perfunctory manner. It was warm inside the car and her nose had lost its numbness.
She said, “There’s a rather unpleasant glitter to these windows. Can that be removed?”
“Undoubtedly, but it won’t be,” said D.G. “That’s as unobtrusive a force field as we can set up. Those are enthusiastic people out there and they’ve been searched, but someone may have managed to conceal a weapon and we don’t want you hurt.”
“You mean someone might try to kill me?”
(Daneel’s eyes were calmly scanning the crowd to one side of the car; Giskard’s scanned the other side.)
“Very unlikely, my lady, but you’re a Spacer and Settlers don’t like Spacers. A few might hate them with such a surpassing hatred as to see only the Spacerness in you.—But don’t worry. Even if someone were to try—which is, as I say, unlikely—they won’t succeed.”
The line of cars began to move, all together and very smoothly.
Gladia half-rose in astonishment. There was no one in front of the partition that closed them off. “Who’s driving?” she asked.
“The cars are thoroughly computerized,” said D.G. “I take it that Spacer cars are not?”
“We have robots to drive them.”
D.G. continued waving and Gladia followed his lead automatically. “We don’t,” he said.
“But a computer is essentially the same as a robot.”
“A computer is not humanoid and it does not obtrude itself on one’s notice. Whatever the technological similarities might be, they are worlds apart psychologically.”
Gladia watched the countryside and found it oppressively barren. Even allowing for winter, there was something desolate in the scattering of leafless bushes and in the sparsely distributed trees, whose stunted and dispirited appearance emphasized the death that seemed to grip everything.
D.G., noting her depression and correlating it with her darting glances here and there, said, “It doesn’t look like much now, my lady. In the summer, though, it’s not bad. There are grassy plains, orchards, grain fields—”
“Forests?”
“Not wilderness forests. We’re still a growing world. It’s still being molded. We’ve only had a little over a century and a half, really. The first step was to cultivate home
plots for the initial Settlers, using imported seed. Then we placed fish and invertebrates of all kinds in the ocean, doing our best to establish a self-supporting ecology. That is a fairly easy procedure—if the ocean chemistry is suitable. If it isn’t, then the planet is not habitable without extensive chemical modification and that has never been tried in actuality, though there are all sorts of plans for such procedures.—Finally, we try to make the land flourish, which is always difficult, always slow.”
“Have all the Settler worlds followed that path?”
“Are following. None are really finished. Baleyworld is the oldest and we’re not finished. Given another couple of centuries, the Settler worlds will be rich and full of life land as well as sea—though by that time there will by many still-newer worlds that will be working their way through various preliminary stages. I’m sure the Spacer worlds went through the same procedure.”
“Many centuries ago—and less strenuously, I think. We had robots to help.”
“We’ll manage,” said D.G. briefly.
“And what about the native life—the plants and animals that evolved on this world before human beings arrived?”
D.G. shrugged. “Insignificant. Small, feeble things. The scientists are, of course, interested, so the indigenous life still exists in special aquaria, botanical gardens, zoos. There are out-of-the-way bodies of water and considerable stretches of land area that have not yet been converted. Some indigenous life still lives out there in the wild.”
“But these stretches of wilderness will eventually all be converted.”
“We hope so.
“Don’t you feel that the planet really belongs to these insignificant, small, feeble things?”
“No. I’m not that sentimental. The planet and the whole Universe belongs to intelligence. The Spacers agree with that. Where is the indigenous life of Solaria? Or of Aurora?”
The line of cars, which had been progressing tortuously from the spaceport, now came to a flat, paved area on which several low, domed buildings were evident.
