Robots and Empire trs-4

by Isaac Asimov

On his first trip, six years before, Amadiro had managed, with some difficulty, to have him sent as an accredited emissary from Aurora to discuss some trifling matter of an overstepping into Spacer territory by Trader vessels. He had endured the ceremony and bureaucratic ennui and it quickly became clear that as such an emissary his mobility was limited. That didn’t matter, for he learned what he had come to learn.

  He had returned with the news. “I doubt, Dr. Amadiro, that there will be any problem at all. There is no way, no possible way, in which the Earth officials can control either entry or exit. Every year many millions of Settlers visit Earth from any of dozens of worlds and every year as many millions of visiting Settlers leave for home again. Every Settler seems to feel that life is not complete unless he or she periodically breathes the air of Earth and treads its crowded underground spaces. It’s a search for roots, I imagine. They don’t seem to feel the absolute nightmare that existence on Earth is.”

  “I know about it, Mandamus,” said Amadiro wearily.

  “Only intellectually, sir. You can’t truly understand it until you experience it. Once you do, you’ll find that none of your ‘knowing’ will prepare you in the least for the reality. Why anyone should want to go back, once gone—”

  “Our ancestors certainly didn’t want to go back, once they had left the planet.”

  “No,” said Mandamus, “but interstellar flight was not then as advanced as it is now. It used to take months then and the hyperspatial Jump was a tricky thing. Now it takes merely days and the Jumps are routine and never go wrong. If it were as easy to return to Earth in our ancestors time as it is now, I wonder if we would have broken away as we did.

  “Let’s not philosophize, Mandamus. Proceed to the point.”

  “Certainly. In addition to the coming and going of endless streams of Settlers, millions of Earthmen each year head out as emigrants to one or another of the Settler worlds. Some return almost at once, having failed to adapt. Others make new homes but come back particularly frequently to visit. There’s no way of keeping track of exits and entrances and Earth doesn’t even try. To attempt to set up systematic methods for identifying and keeping track of visitors might stem the flow and Earth is very aware that each visitor brings money with him. The tourist trade—if we want to call it that—is currently Earth’s most profitable industry.”

  “You are saying, I suppose, that we can get the humanoid robots into Earth without trouble.”

  “With no trouble at all. There’s no question in my mind as to that. Now that we have them properly programmed, we can send them to Earth in half a dozen batches with forged papers. We can’t do anything about their robotic respect and awe of human beings, but that may not give them away. It will be interpreted as the usual Settler respect and awe for the ancestral planet.—But, then, I strongly suspect we don’t have to drop them into one of the City airports. The vast spaces between Cities are virtually untenanted except by primitive work-robots and the incoming ships would go unnoticed—or at least disregarded.”

  “Too risky, I think,” said Amadiro.

  58

  Two batches of humanoid robots were sent to Earth and these mingled with the Earth people of the City before finding their way outward into the blank areas between and communicating with Aurora on shielded hyperbeam.

  Mandamus said (he had thought about it deeply and had hesitated long), “I will have to go again, Sir. I can’t be positive they’ve found the right spot.”

  “Are you sure you know the right spot, Mandamus?” asked Amadiro, sardonically.

  “I have delved into Earth’s ancient history thoroughly, sir. I know I can find it.”

  “I don’t think I can persuade the Council to send a warship with you.”

  “No, I wouldn’t want that. It would be worse than useless. I want a one-person vessel, with just enough power to get there and back.”

  And in that way, Mandamus made his second visit to Earth, dropping down into a region outside one of the smaller Cities. With mingled relief and satisfaction, he found several of the robots in the right place and remained with them to view their work, to give a few orders in connection with that work, and to make some fine adjustments in their programming.

  And then, under the uninterested glance of a few primitive Earth-formed agricultural robots, Mandamus made for the nearby City.

  It was a calculated risk and Mandamus, no fearless hero, could feel his heart thudding uncomfortably within his chest.

  But it went well. There was some surprise shown by the gate warden when a human being presented himself at the gate, showing all signs of having spent a considerable time in the open.

  Mandamus had papers identifying him as a Settler, however, and the warden shrugged. Settlers didn’t mind the open and it was far from unheard of for them to take small excursions through the fields and woods that lay about the unimpressive upper layers of a City that jutted above the ground.

  The warden gave but a cursory glance at his papers and no one else asked for them at all. Mandamus’s off-Earth accent (as weakly Auroran as he could make it) was accepted without comment and, as nearly, as he could tell, no one wondered whether he might be a Spacer. But, then, why should they? The days when the Spacers held a permanent outpost on Earth was two centuries in the past and official emissaries from the Spacer worlds were few and—of late growing steadily fewer. The provincial Earthpeople might not even remember that Spacers existed.

  Mandamus was a little concerned that the thin, transparent gloves he always wore might be noted or that his nose plugs would be remarked upon, but neither event took place. No restrictions were placed on his travels around the City or to other Cities. He had enough money for that and money spoke loudly on Earth (and, to tell the truth, even on Spacer worlds).

  He grew accustomed to having no robot dog his heels and when he met with some of Aurora’s own humanoid robots in this City or that, he had to explain to them quite firmly that they must not dog his heels. He listened to their reports, gave them any instructions they seemed to require, and made arrangements for further robot shipments out-of-City. Eventually, he found his way back to his ship and left.

  He was not challenged on his way, out, any more than he had been on his way in.

  “Actually,” he said thoughtfully to Amadiro, “these Earthpeople are not really barbarians.”

  “Aren’t they, though?”

  “In their own world, they behave in quite a human fashion. In fact, there is something winning in their friendliness.”

  “Are you beginning to regret the task you’re engaged in?”

  “It does give me a grisly feeling as I wander among them thinking that they don’t know what is going to happen to them. I can’t make myself enjoy what I’m doing.”

  “Of course you can, Mandamus. Think of the fact that once the job is done, you will be sure of a post as the head of the Institute before very much time has elapsed. That will sweeten the job for you.”

  And Amadiro kept a close eye on Mandamus thereafter.

  59

  On Mandamus’s third trip, much of his earlier uneasiness had worn off and he could carry himself almost as though he were an Earthman. The project was proceeding slowly but dead center along the projected line of progress.

  He had experienced no health problems on his earlier visits, but on this third one—no doubt due to his overconfidence—he must have exposed himself to something or other. At least, for a time he had an alarming drippiness of the nose, accompanied by a cough.

  A visit to one of the City dispensaries resulted in a gamma globulin injection that relieved the condition at once, but he found the dispensary more frightening than the illness. Everyone there, he knew, was likely to be ill with something contagious or to be in close contact with those who were ill.

  But now, at last, he was back in the quiet orderliness of Aurora and incredibly thankful to be so. He was listening to Amadiro’s account of the Solarian crisis.

  “Have you heard nothing
of it at all?” demanded Amadiro.

  Mandamus shook his head. “Nothing, sir. Earth is an incredibly provincial world. Eight hundred Cities with a total of eight billion people—all interested in nothing but the eight hundred Cities with a total of eight billion people. You would think that Settlers existed only to visit Earth and that Spacers did not exist at all. Indeed, the news reports in any one City deal about ninety percent of the time with that City alone. Earth is an enclosed, claustrophilic world, mentally as well as physically.”

  “And yet you say they are not barbarian.”

  “Claustrophilia isn’t necessarily barbarism. In their own terms, they are civilized.”

  “In their own terms!—But never mind. The problem at the moment is Solaria. Not one of the Spacer worlds will move. The principle of noninterference is paramount and they insist that Solaria’s internal problems are for Solaria alone. Our own Chairman is as inert as any other, even though Fastolfe is dead and his palsied hand no longer rests on us all. I can do nothing by myself—until such time as I am Chairman.”

  Mandamus said, “How can they suppose Solaria to have internal problems that may not be interfered with when the Solarians are gone?”

  Amadiro said sardonically, “How is it you see the folly of it at once and they don’t?—They say there is no hard evidence that the Solarians are totally gone and as long as they—or even some of them—might be on the world, there is no right for any other Spacer world to intrude uninvited.”

  “How do they explain the absence of radiational activity?”

  “They say that the Solarians may have moved underground or that they may have developed a technological advance of some sort that obviates radiation leakage. They also say that the Solarians were not seen to leave and that they have absolutely nowhere to go to. Of course, they were not seen leaving because no one was watching.”

  Mandamus said, “How do they argue that the Solarians have nowhere to go to? There are many empty worlds.”

  “The argument is that the Solarians cannot live without their incredible crowds of robots and they can’t take those robots with them. If they came here, for instance, how, many robots do you suppose we could allot to them—if any?”

  “And what is your argument against that?”

  “I haven’t any. Still, whether they are gone or not, the situation is strange and puzzling and it is incredible that no one will move to investigate it. I’ve warned everyone, just as strenuously as I can, that inertia and apathy will be the end of us; that as soon as the Settler worlds become aware of the fact that Solaria was—or might be—empty, they would have no hesitation in investigating the matter. Those swarmers have a mindless curiosity that I wish we had some share in. They will, without thinking twice, risk their lives if some profit lures them on.”

  “What profit in this case, Dr. Amadiro?”

  “If the Solarians are gone, they have, perforce, left almost all their robots behind. They are—or were—particularly ingenious roboticists and the Settlers, for all their hatred of robots, will not hesitate to appropriate them and ship them to us for good Space credits. In fact, they have announced this.

  “Two Settler ships have already landed on Solaria. We have sent a protest over this, but they will surely disregard the protest and, just as surely, we will do nothing further. Quite the contrary. Some of the Spacer worlds are sending out quiet queries as to the nature of the robots that might be salvaged and what their prices would be.”

  “Perhaps just as well,” said Mandamus quietly.

  “Just as well that we’re behaving exactly as the Settler propagandists say we will? That we act as though we are degenerating and turning into soft pulps of decadence?”

  “Why repeat their buzz words, sir? The fact is that we are quiet and civilized and have not yet been touched where it hurts. If we were, we would fight back strongly enough and, I’m sure, smash them. We still far outstrip them technologically.”

  “But the damage to ourselves will not be exactly pleasurable.”

  “Which means that we must not be too ready to go to war. If Solaria is deserted and the Settlers wish to plunder it, perhaps we ought to let them. After all, I predict that we will be all set to make our move within months.”

  A rather hungry and ferocious look came over Amadiro’s face. “Months?”

  “I’m sure of it. So the first thing we must do is to avoid being provoked. We will ruin everything if we move toward a conflict there is no need to fight and undergo damage even if we win—that we don’t need to suffer. After all, in a little while, we are going to win totally, without fighting and without damage.—Poor Earth!”

  “If you’re going to be sorry for them,” said Amadiro with spurious lightness, “perhaps you’ll do nothing to them.”

  “On the contrary,” said Mandamus coolly. “It’s precisely because I fully intend to do something to them—and know that it will be done—that I am sorry for them. You will be Chairman!”

  “And you will be the head of the Institute.”

  “A small post in comparison to yours.”

  “And after I die?” said Amadiro in half a snarl.

  “I do not look that far ahead.”

  “I am quite—” began Amadiro, but was interrupted by the steady buzz of the message unit. Without looking and quite automatically, Amadiro placed his hand at the EXIT slot. He looked at the thin strip of paper that emerged and a slow smile appeared on his lips.

  “The two Settler ships that landed on Solaria—” he said.

  “Yes, sir?” asked Mandamus, frowning.

  “Destroyed! Both destroyed!”

  “How?”

  “In an explosive blaze of radiation, easily detected from space. You see what it means? The Solarians have not left after all and the weakest of our worlds can easily handle Settler ships. It is a bloody nose for the Settlers and not something they’ll forget.—Here, Mandamus, read for yourself.”

  Mandamus pushed the paper aside. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the Solarians are still on the planet. They may merely have booby-trapped it somehow.”

  “What is the difference? Personal attack or booby-trap, the ships were destroyed.”

  “This time they were caught by surprise. What about next time, when they are prepared? And what if they consider the event a deliberate Spacer attack?”

  “We will reply that the Solarians were merely defending themselves against a deliberate Settler invasion.”

  “But, sir, are you suggesting a battle of words? What if the Settlers don’t bother talking, but consider the destruction of their ships an act of war and retaliate at once?”

  “Why should they?”

  “Because they are as insane as we can be once pride is hurt; more so, since they have a greater background of violence.”

  “They will be beaten.”

  “You yourself admit they will inflict unacceptable damage upon us, even if they are beaten.”

  “What would you have me do? Aurora did not destroy those ships.”

  “Persuade the Chairman to make it quite plain that Aurora had nothing to do with it, that none of the Spacer worlds had anything to do with it, that the blame for the action rests on Solaria alone.”

  “And abandon Solaria? That would be a cowardly act.”

  Mandamus blazed into excitement. “Dr. Amadiro, have you never heard of anything called a strategic retreat? Persuade the Spacer worlds to back off for only a little while on some plausible pretext. It is only a matter of some months till our plan on Earth comes to fruition. It may be hard for everyone else to back off and be apologetic to the Spacers, for they don’t know what is coming—but we do. In fact, you and I, with our special knowledge, can look upon this event as a gift from what used to be called the gods. Let the Settlers remain preoccupied with Solaria while their destruction is prepared—all unobserved by them—on Earth.—Or would you prefer us to be ruined on the very brink of final victory?”

  Amadiro found himself flinchi
ng before the direct glare of the other’s deep-set eyes.

  60

  Amadiro had never had a worse time than during the period following the destruction of the Settler ships. The Chairman, fortunately, could be persuaded to follow a policy of what Amadiro termed “masterful yielding.” The phrase caught the Chairman’s imagination, even though it was an oxymoron. Besides, the Chairman was good at masterful yielding.

  The rest of the Council was harder to handle. The exasperated Amadiro exhausted himself in picturing the horrors of war and the necessity of choosing the proper moment to strike—and not the improper one—if war there must be. He invented novel plausibilities for why the moment was not yet and used them in discussions with the leaders of the other Spacer Worlds. Aurora’s natural hegemony had to be exercised to the utmost to get them to yield.

  But when Captain D.G. Baley arrived with his ship and his demand, Amadiro felt he could do no more. It was too much.

  “It is altogether impossible,” said Amadiro. “Are we to allow him to land on Aurora with his beard, his ridiculous clothing, his incomprehensible accent? Am I expected to ask the Council to agree to hand over a Spacer woman to him? It would be an act absolutely unprecedented in our history. A Spacer woman!”

  Mandamus said dryly, “You have always referred to that particular Spacer woman as ‘the Solarian woman.’”

  “She is ‘the Solarian woman’ to us, but she will be considered a Spacer woman once a Settler is involved. If his ship lands on Solaria, as he suggests it will, it may be destroyed as the others were, together with him and the woman. I may then be accused by my enemies, with some color of justification, of murder—and my political career may not survive that.”

  Mandamus said, “Think, instead, of the fact that we have labored nearly seven years in order to arrange the final destruction of Earth and that we are now only a few months from the completion of the project. Shall we risk war now and, at a stroke, ruin everything we’ve done when we are so close to final victory?”