3
AT THE ENTRY STATION
9.
BLISS, ENTERING THEIR CHAMBER, SAID, “DID TREVIZE tell you that we are going to make the Jump and go through hyperspace any moment now?”
Pelorat, who was bent over his viewing disk, looked up, and said, “Actually, he just looked in and told me ‘within the half-hour.’ ”
“I don’t like the thought of it, Pel. I’ve never liked the Jump. I get a funny inside-out feeling.”
Pelorat looked a bit surprised. “I had not thought of you as a space traveler, Bliss dear.”
“I’m not particularly, and I don’t mean that this is so only in my aspect as a component. Gaia itself has no occasion for regular space travel. By my/our/Gaia’s very nature, I/we/Gaia don’t explore, trade, or space junket. Still, there is the necessity of having someone at the entry stations—”
“As when we were fortunate enough to meet you.”
“Yes, Pel.” She smiled at him affectionately. “Or even to visit Sayshell and other stellar regions, for various reasons—usually clandestine. But, clandestine or not, that always means the Jump and, of course, when any part of Gaia Jumps, all of Gaia feels it.”
“That’s too bad,” said Pel.
“It could be worse. The large mass of Gaia is not undergoing the Jump, so the effect is greatly diluted. However, I seem to feel it much more than most of Gaia. As I keep trying to tell Trevize, though all of Gaia is Gaia, the individual components are not identical. We have our differences, and my makeup is, for some reason, particularly sensitive to the Jump.”
“Wait!” said Pelorat, suddenly remembering. “Trevize explained that to me once. It’s in ordinary ships that you have the worst of the sensation. In ordinary ships, one leaves the Galactic gravitational field on entering hyperspace, and comes back to it on returning to ordinary space. It’s the leaving and returning that produces the sensation. But the Far Star is a gravitic ship. It is independent of the gravitational field, and does not truly leave it or return to it. For that reason, we won’t feel a thing. I can assure you of that, dear, out of personal experience.”
“But that’s delightful. I wish I had thought to discuss the matter earlier. I would have saved myself considerable apprehension.”
“That’s an advantage in another way,” said Pelorat, feeling an expansion of spirit in his unusual role as explainer of matters astronautic. “The ordinary ship has to recede from large masses such as stars for quite a long distance through ordinary space in order to make the Jump. Part of the reason is that the closer to a star, the more intense the gravitational field, and the more pronounced are the sensations of a Jump. Then, too, the more intense the gravitational field the more complicated the equations that must be solved in order to conduct the Jump safely and end at the point in ordinary space you wish to end at.
“In a gravitic ship, however, there is no Jump-sensation to speak of. In addition, this ship has a computer that is a great deal more advanced than ordinary computers and it can handle complex equations with unusual skill and speed. The result is that instead of having to move away from a star for a couple of weeks just to reach a safe and comfortable distance for a Jump, the Far Star need travel for only two or three days. This is especially so since we are not subject to a gravitational field and, therefore, to inertial effects—I admit I don’t understand that, but that’s what Trevize tells me—and can accelerate much more rapidly than an ordinary ship could.”
Bliss said, “That’s fine, and it’s to Trev’s credit that he can handle this unusual ship.”
Pelorat frowned slightly. “Please, Bliss. Say ‘Trevize.’ ”
“I do. I do. In his absence, however, I relax a little.”
“Don’t. You don’t want to encourage the habit even slightly, dear. He’s so sensitive about it.”
“Not about that. He’s sensitive about me. He doesn’t like me.”
“That’s not so,” said Pelorat earnestly. “I talked to him about that. —Now, now, don’t frown. I was extraordinarily tactful, dear child. He assured me he did not dislike you. He is suspicious of Gaia and unhappy over the fact that he has had to make it into the future of humanity. We have to make allowances for that. He’ll get over it as he gradually comes to understand the advantages of Gaia.”
“I hope so, but it’s not just Gaia. Whatever he may tell you, Pel—and remember that he’s very fond of you and doesn’t want to hurt your feelings—he dislikes me personally.”
“No, Bliss. He couldn’t possibly.”
“Not everyone is forced to love me simply because you do, Pel. Let me explain. Trev—all right, Trevize—thinks I’m a robot.”
A look of astonishment suffused Pelorat’s ordinarily stolid features. He said, “Surely he can’t think you’re an artificial human being.”
“Why is that so surprising? Gaia was settled with the help of robots. That’s a known fact.”
“Robots might help, as machines might, but it was people who settled Gaia; people from Earth. That’s what Trevize thinks. I know he does.”
“There is nothing in Gaia’s memory about Earth as I told you and Trevize. However, in our oldest memories there are still some robots, even after three thousand years, working at the task of completing the modification of Gaia into a habitable world. We were at that time also forming Gaia as a planetary consciousness—that took a long time, Pel dear, and that’s another reason why our early memories are dim, and perhaps it wasn’t a matter of Earth wiping them out, as Trevize thinks—”
“Yes, Bliss,” said Pelorat anxiously, “but what of the robots?”
“Well, as Gaia formed, the robots left. We did not want a Gaia that included robots, for we were, and are, convinced that a robotic component is, in the long run, harmful to a human society, whether Isolate in nature or Planetary. I don’t know how we came to that conclusion but it is possible that it is based on events dating back to a particularly early time in Galactic history, so that Gaia’s memory does not extend back to it.”
“If the robots left—”
“Yes, but what if some remained behind? What if I am one of them—fifteen thousand years old perhaps. Trevize suspects that.”
Pelorat shook his head slowly. “But you’re not.”
“Are you sure you believe that?”
“Of course I do. You’re not a robot.”
“How do you know?”
“Bliss, I know. There’s nothing artificial about you. If I don’t know that, no one does.”
“Isn’t it possible I may be so cleverly artificial that in every respect, from largest to smallest, I am indistinguishable from the natural. If I were, how could you tell the difference between me and a true human being?”
Pelorat said, “I don’t think it’s possible for you to be so cleverly artificial.”
“What if it were possible, despite what you think?”
“I just don’t believe it.”
“Then let’s just consider it is a hypothetical case. If I were an indistinguishable robot, how would you feel about it?”
“Well, I—I—”
“To be specific. How would you feel about making love to a robot?”
Pelorat snapped the thumb and mid-finger of his right hand, suddenly. “You know, there are legends of women falling in love with artificial men, and vice versa. I always thought there was an allegorical significance to that and never imagined the tales could represent literal truth. —Of course, Golan and I never even heard the word ‘robot’ till we landed on Sayshell, but, now that I think of it, those artificial men and women must have been robots. Apparently, such robots did exist in early historic times. That means the legends should be reconsidered—”
He fell into silent thought, and, after Bliss had waited a moment, she suddenly clapped her hands sharply. Pelorat jumped.
“Pel dear,” said Bliss. “You’re using your mythography to escape the question. The question is: How would you feel about making love to a robot?”
He stared at her uneasily. “A truly undistinguishable one? One that you couldn’t tell from a human being?”
“Yes.”
“It seems to me, then, that a robot that can in no way be distinguished from a human being is a human being. If you were such a robot, you would be nothing but a human being to me.”
“That’s what I wanted to hear you say, Pel.”
Pelorat waited, then said, “Well, then, now that you’ve heard me say it, dear, aren’t you going to tell me that you are a natural human being and that I don’t have to wrestle with hypothetical situations?”
“No. I will do no such thing. You’ve defined a natural human being as an object that has all the properties of a natural human being. If you are satisfied that I have all those properties, then that ends the discussion. We’ve got the operational definition and need no other. After all, how do I know that you’re not just a robot who happens to be indistinguishable from a human being?”
“Because I tell you that I am not.”
“Ah, but if you were a robot that was indistinguishable from a human being, you might be designed to tell me you were a natural human being, and you might even be programmed to believe it yourself. The operational definition is all we have, and all we can have.”
She put her arms about Pelorat’s neck and kissed him. The kiss grew more passionate, and prolonged itself until Pelorat managed to say, in somewhat muffled fashion, “But we promised Trevize not to embarrass him by converting this ship into a honeymooners’ haven.”
Bliss said coaxingly, “Let’s be carried away and not leave ourselves any time to think of promises.”
Pelorat, troubled, said, “But I can’t do that, dear. I know it must irritate you, Bliss, but I am constantly thinking and I am constitutionally averse to letting myself be carried away by emotion. It’s a lifelong habit, and probably very annoying to others. I’ve never lived with a woman who didn’t seem to object to it sooner or later. My first wife—but I suppose it would be inappropriate to discuss that—”
“Rather inappropriate, yes, but not fatally so. You’re not my first lover either.”
“Oh!” said Pelorat, rather at a loss, and then, aware of Bliss’s small smile, he said, “I mean, of course not. I wouldn’t expect myself to have been—Anyway, my first wife didn’t like it.”
“But I do. I find your endless plunging into thought attractive.”
“I can’t believe that, but I do have another thought. Robot or human, that doesn’t matter. We agree on that. However, I am an Isolate and you know it. I am not part of Gaia, and when we are intimate, you’re sharing emotions outside Gaia even when you let me participate in Gaia for a short period, and it may not be the same intensity of emotion then that you would experience if it were Gaia loving Gaia.”
Bliss said, “Loving you, Pel, has its own delight. I look no farther than that.”
“But it’s not just a matter of you loving me. You aren’t merely you. What if Gaia considers it a perversion?”
“If it did, I would know, for I am Gaia. And since I have delight in you, Gaia does. When we make love, all of Gaia shares the sensation to some degree or other. When I say I love you, that means Gaia loves you, although it is only the part that I am that is assigned the immediate role. —You seem confused.”
“Being an Isolate, Bliss, I don’t quite grasp it.”
“One can always form an analogy with the body of an Isolate. When you whistle a tune, your entire body, you as an organism, wishes to whistle the tune, but the immediate task of doing so is assigned to your lips, tongue, and lungs. Your right big toe does nothing.”
“It might tap to the tune.”
“But that is not necessary to the act of whistling. The tapping of the big toe is not the action itself but is a response to the action, and, to be sure, all parts of Gaia might well respond in some small way or other to my emotion, as I respond to theirs.”
Pelorat said, “I suppose there’s no use feeling embarrassed about this.”
“None at all.”
“But it does give me a queer sense of responsibility. When I try to make you happy, I find that I must be trying to make every last organism on Gaia happy.”
“Every last atom—but you do. You add to the sense of communal joy that I let you share briefly. I suppose your contribution is too small to be easily measurable, but it is there, and knowing it is there should increase your joy.”
Pelorat said, “I wish I could be sure that Golan is sufficiently busy with his maneuvering through hyperspace to remain in the pilot-room for quite a while.”
“You wish to honeymoon, do you?”
“I do.”
“Then get a sheet of paper, write ‘Honeymoon Haven’ on it, affix it to the outside of the door, and if he wants to enter, that’s his problem.”
Pelorat did so, and it was during the pleasurable proceedings that followed that the Far Star made the Jump. Neither Pelorat nor Bliss detected the action, nor would they have, had they been paying attention.
10.
IT HAD BEEN ONLY A MATTER OF A FEW MONTHS since Pelorat had met Trevize and had left Terminus for the first time. Until then, for the more than half-century (Galactic Standard) of his life, he had been utterly planet-bound.
In his own mind, he had in those months become an old space dog. He had seen three planets from space: Terminus itself, Sayshell, and Gaia. And on the viewscreen, he now saw a fourth, albeit through a computer-controlled telescopic device. The fourth was Comporellon.
And again, for the fourth time, he was vaguely disappointed. Somehow, he continued to feel that looking down upon a habitable world from space meant seeing an outline of its continents against a surrounding sea; or, if it were a dry world, the outline of its lakes against a surrounding body of land.
It was never so.
If a world was habitable, it had an atmosphere as well as a hydrosphere. And if it had both air and water, it had clouds; and if it had clouds, it had an obscured view. Once again, then, Pelorat found himself looking down on white swirls with an occasional glimpse of pale blue or rusty brown.
He wondered gloomily if anyone could identify a world if a view of it from, say, three hundred thousand kilometers, were cast upon a screen. How does one tell one cloud swirl from another?
Bliss looked at Pelorat with some concern. “What is it, Pel? You seem to be unhappy.”
“I find that all planets look alike from space.”
Trevize said, “What of that, Janov? So does every shoreline on Terminus, when it is on the horizon, unless you know what you’re looking for—a particular mountain peak, or a particular offshore islet of characteristic shape.”
“I dare say,” said Pelorat, with clear dissatisfaction, “but what do you look for in a mass of shifting clouds? And even if you try, before you can decide, you’re likely to be moving into the dark side.
“Look a little more carefully, Janov. If you follow the shape of the clouds, you see that they tend to fall into a pattern that circles the planet and that moves about a center. That center is more or less at one of the poles.”
“Which one?” asked Bliss with interest.
“Since, relative to ourselves, the planet is rotating in clockwise fashion, we are looking down, by definition, upon the south pole. Since the center seems to be about fifteen degrees from the terminator—the planet’s line of shadow—and the planetary axis is tilted twenty-one degrees to the perpendicular of its plane of revolution, we’re either in mid-spring or mid-summer depending on whether the pole is moving away from the terminator or toward it. The computer can calculate its orbit and tell me in short order if I were to ask it. The capital is on the northern side of the equator so it is either in mid-fall or mid-winter.”
Pelorat frowned. “You can tell all that?” He looked at the cloud layer as though he thought it would, or should, speak to him now, but, of course, it didn’t.
“Not only that,” said Trevize, “but if you’ll look at the polar regions, you?
??ll see that there are no breaks in the cloud layer as there are away from the poles. Actually, there are breaks, but through the breaks you see ice, so it’s a matter of white on white.”
“Ah,” said Pelorat. “I suppose you expect that at the poles.”
“Of habitable planets, certainly. Lifeless planets might be airless or waterless, or might have certain stigmata showing that the clouds are not water clouds, or that the ice is not water ice. This planet lacks those stigmata, so we know we are looking at water clouds and water ice.
“The next thing we notice is the size of the area of unbroken white on the day side of the terminator, and to the experienced eye it is at once seen as larger than average. Furthermore, you can detect a certain orange glint, a quite faint one, to the reflected light, and that means Comporellon’s sun is rather cooler than Terminus’s sun. Although Comporellon is closer to its sun than Terminus is to hers, it is not sufficiently closer to make up for its star’s lower temperature. Therefore, Comporellon is a cold world as habitable worlds go.”
“You read it like a film, old chap,” said Pelorat admiringly.
“Don’t be too impressed,” said Trevize, smiling affectionately. “The computer has given me the applicable statistics of the world, including its slightly low average temperature. It is easy to deduce something you already know. In fact, Comporellon is at the edge of an ice age and would be having one, if the configuration of its continents were more suitable to such a condition.”
Bliss bit at her lower lip. “I don’t like a cold world.”
“We’ve got warm clothing,” said Trevize.
“That doesn’t matter. Human beings aren’t adapted to cold weather, really. We don’t have thick coats of hair or feathers, or a subcutaneous layer of blubber. For a world to have cold weather seems to indicate a certain indifference to the welfare of its own parts.”
Trevize said, “Is Gaia a uniformly mild world?”
“Most of it, yes. There are some cold areas for cold-adapted plants and animals, and some hot areas for heat-adapted plants and animals, but most parts are uniformly mild, never getting uncomfortably hot or uncomfortably cold, for those between, including human beings, of course.”