Robots and Empire

  Daneel said quietly, "Madam, the captain wishes to know if he may see you."

  "I suppose so," said Gladia, still rummaging for alternate nightwear. "Let him in."

  D.G. looked tired and even haggard, but when she turned to greet him, he smiled wearily at her and said, "It is hard to believe that you are over twenty-three decades old."

  "What? In this thing?"

  "That helps. It's semitransparent. —Or didn't you know?"

  She looked down at the nightgown uncertainly, then said, "Good, if it amuses you, but I have been alive, just the same, for two and a third centuries."

  "No one would guess it to look at you. You must have been very beautiful in your youth."

  "I have never been told so, D.G. Quiet charm, I always believed, was the most I could aspire to. —In any case, how do I use that instrument?"

  "The call box? Just touch the patch on the right side and someone will ask if you can be served and you can carry on from there."

  "Good. I will need a toothbrush, a hairbrush, and clothing."

  "The toothbrush and hairbrush I will see that you get. As for clothing, that has been thought of. You have a clothes bag hanging in your closet. You'll find it contains the best in Baleyworld fashion, which may not appeal to you, of course. And I won't guarantee they'll fit you. Most Baleyworld women are taller than you and certainly wider and thicker. —But it doesn't matter. I think you'll remain in seclusion for quite a while."

  "Why?"

  "Well, my lady. It seems you delivered a speech this past evening and, as I recall, you would not sit down, though I suggested you do that more than once."

  "It seemed quite successful to me, D.G."

  "It was. It was a howling success." D.G. smiled broadly and scratched the right side of his beard as though considering the word very carefully. "However, success has its penalties too. Right now, I should say you are the most famous person on Baleyworld and every Baleyworlder wants to see you and touch you. If we take you out anywhere, it will mean an instant riot. At least, until things cool down. We can't be sure how long that will take.

  "Then, too, you had even the war hawks yelling for you, but in the cold light of tomorrow, when the hypnotism and hysteria dies down, they're going to be furious. If Old Man Bistervan didn't actually consider killing you outright after your talk, then by tomorrow he will certainly have it as the ambition of his life to murder you by slow torture. And there are people of his party who might conceivably try to oblige the Old Man in this small whim of his.

  "That's why you're here, my lady. That's why this room, this floor, this entire hotel is being watched by I don't know how many platoons of security people, among whom, I hope, are no cryptowar hawks. And because I have been so closely associated with you in this hero-and-heroine game, I'm penned up here, too, and can't get out."

  "Oh," said Gladia blankly. "I'm sorry about that. You can't see your family, then."

  D.G. shrugged. "Traders don't really have much in, the way of family."

  "Your woman friend, then."

  "She'll survive. —Probably better than I will." He cast his eyes on Gladia speculatively.

  Gladia said evenly, "Don't even think it, Captain."

  D.G.'s eyebrows rose. "There's no way I can be prevented from thinking it, but I won't do anything, madam."

  Gladia said, "How long do you think I will stay here? Seriously."

  "It depends on the Directory."

  "The Directory?"

  "Our five-fold executive board, madam. Five people"—he held up his hand, with the fingers spread apart—"each serving five years in staggered fashion, with one replacement each year, plus special elections in case of death or disability. This supplies continuity and reduces the danger of one-person rule. It also means that every decision must be argued out and that takes time, sometimes more time than we can afford."

  "I should think," said Gladia, "that if one of the five were a determined and forceful individual—"

  "That he could impose his views on the others. Things like that have happened at times, but these times are not one of those times—if you know what I mean. The Senior Director is Genovus Pandaral. There's nothing evil about him, but he's indecisive—and sometimes that's the same thing. I talked him into allowing your robots on the stage with you and that turned out to be a bad idea. Score one against both of us."

  "But why was it a bad idea? The people were pleased."

  "Too pleased, my lady. We wanted you to be our pet Spacer heroine and help keep public opinion cool so that we wouldn't launch a premature war. You were good on longevity; you had them cheering short life. But then you had them cheering robots and we don't want that. For that matter, we're not so keen on the public cheering the notion of kinship with the Spacers."

  "You don't want premature war, but you don't want premature peace, either. Is that it?"

  "Very well put, madam."

  "But, then, what do you want?"

  "We want the Galaxy, the whole Galaxy. We want to settle and populate every habitable planet in it and establish nothing less than a Galactic Empire. And we don't want the Spacers to interfere. They can remain on their own worlds and live in peace as they please, but they must not interfere."

  "But then you'll be penning them up on their fifty worlds, as we penned up Earthpeople on Earth for so many years. The same, old injustice. You're as bad as Bistervan."

  "The situations are different. Earthpeople were penned up in defiance of their expansive potential. You Spacers have no such potential. You took the path of longevity and robots and the potential vanished. You don't even have fifty worlds any longer. Solaria has been abandoned. The others will go, too, in time. The Settlers have no interest in pushing the Spacers along the path to extinction, but why should we interfere with their voluntary choice to do so? Your speech tended to interfere with that."

  "I'm glad. What did you think I would say?"

  "I told you. Peace and love and sit down. You could have finished in about one minute."

  Gladia said angrily, "I can't believe you expected anything so foolish of me. What did you take me for?

  "For what you took yourself for—someone frightened to death of speaking. How did we know that you were a madwoman who could, in half an hour, persuade the Baleyworlders to howl in favor of what for lifetimes we have been persuading them to howl against? But talk will get us nowhere"—he rose heavily to his feet—"I want a shower, too, and I had better get a night's sleep—if I can. See you tomorrow."

  "But when do we find out what the Directors will decide to do with me?"

  "When they find out, which may not be soon. Good night, madam."

  36.

  "I have made a discovery," said Giskard, his voice carrying no shade of emotion. "I have made it because, for the first time in my existence, I faced thousands of human beings. Had I done this two centuries ago, I would have made the discovery then. Had I never faced so many at once, then I would never have made the discovery at all.

  "Consider, then, how many vital points I might easily grasp, but never have and never will, simply because the proper conditions for it will never come my way. I remain ignorant except where circumstance helps me and I cannot count on circumstance."

  Daneel said, "I did not think, friend Giskard, that Lady Gladia, with her long-sustained way of life, could face thousands with equanimity. I did not think she would be able to speak at all. When it turned out that she could, I assumed you had adjusted her and that you had discovered that it could be done without harming her. Was that your discovery?"

  Giskard said, "Friend Daneel, actually all I dared do was loosen a very few strands of inhibition, only enough to allow her to speak a few words, so that she might be heard."

  "But she did far more than that."

  "After this microscopic adjustment, I turned to the multiplicity of minds I faced in the audience. I had never experienced so many, any more than Lady Gladia had, and I was as taken aback as she was. I found, at first, tha
t I could do nothing in the vast mental interlockingness that beat in upon me. I felt helpless."

  "And then I noted small friendlinesses, curiosities, interests—I cannot describe them in words—with a color of sympathy for Lady Gladia about them. I played with what I could find that had this color of sympathy, tightening and thickening them just slightly. I wanted some small response in Lady Gladia's favor that might encourage her, that might make it unnecessary for me to be tempted to tamper further with Lady Gladia's mind. That was all I did. I do not know how many threads of the proper color I handled. Not many."

  Daneel said, "And what then, friend Giskard?"

  "I found, friend Daneel, that I had begun something that was autocatalytic. Each thread I strengthened, strengthened a nearby thread of the same kind and the two together strengthened several others nearby. I had to do nothing further. Small stirs, small sounds, and small glances that seemed to approve of what Lady Gladia said encouraged still others.

  "Then I found something stranger yet. All these little indications of approval, which I could detect only because the minds were open to me, Lady Gladia must have also detected in some manner, for further inhibitions in her mind fell without my touching them. She began to speak faster, more confidently, and the audience responded better than ever—without my doing anything. And in the end, there was hysteria, a storm, a tempest of mental thunder and lightning so intense that I had to close my mind to it or it would have overloaded my circuits.

  "Never, in all my existence, had I encountered anything like that and yet it started with no more modification introduced by me in all that crowd than I have, in the past, introduced among a mere handful of people. I suspect, in fact, that the effect spread beyond the audience sensible to my mind—to the greater audience reached via hyperwave."

  Daneel said, "I do not see how this can be, friend Giskard."

  "Nor I, friend Daneel. I am not human. I do not directly experience the possession of a human mind with all its complexities and contradictions, so I do not grasp the mechanisms by which they respond. But, apparently, crowds are more easily managed than individuals. It seems paradoxical. Much weight takes more effort to move than little weight. Much energy takes more effort to counter than little energy. Much distance takes longer to traverse than little distance. Why, then, should many people be easier to sway than few? You think like a human being, friend Daneel. Can you explain?"

  Daneel said, "You yourself, friend Giskard, said that it was an autocatalytic effect, a matter of contagion. A single spark of flame may end by burning down a forest."

  Giskard paused and seemed deep in thought. Then he said, "It is not reason that is contagious but emotion. Madam Gladia chose arguments she felt would move her audience's feelings. She did not attempt to reason with them. It may be, then, that the larger the crowd, the more easily they are swayed by emotion rather than by reason.

  "Since emotions are few and reasons are many, the behavior of a crowd can be more easily predicted than the behavior of one person can. And that, in turn, means that if laws are to be developed that enable the current of history to be predicted, then one must deal with large populations, the larger the better. That might itself be the First Law of Psychohistory, the key to the study of Humanics. Yet—"

  "Yes?"

  "It strikes me that it has taken me so long to understand this only because I am not a human being. A human being would, perhaps, instinctively understand his own mind well enough to know how to handle others like himself. Madam Gladia, with no experience at all in addressing huge crowds, carried off the matter, expertly. How much better off we would be if we had someone like Elijah Baley with us. —Friend Daneel, are you not thinking of him?"

  Daneel said, "Can you see his image in my mind? That is surprising, friend Giskard."

  "I do not see him, friend Daneel. I cannot receive your thoughts. But I can sense emotions and mood—and your mind has a texture which, by past experience, I know to be associated with Elijah Baley."

  "Madam Gladia made mention of the fact that I was the last to see Partner Elijah alive, so I listen again, in memory, to that moment. I think again of what he said."

  "Why, friend Daneel?"

  "I search for the meaning. I feel it was important."

  "How could what he said have meaning beyond the import of the words? Had there been hidden meaning, Elijah Baley would have expressed it."

  "Perhaps," said Daneel slowly, "Partner Elijah did not himself understand the significance of what he was saying."

  10. AFTER THE SPEECH

  37.

  Memory!

  It lay in Daneel's mind like a closed book of infinite detail, always available for his use. Some passages were called upon frequently for their information, but only a very few were called upon merely because Daneel wished to feel their texture. Those very few were, for the most part, those that contained Elijah Baley.

  Many decades ago, Daneel had come to Baleyworld while Elijah Baley was still alive. Madam Gladia had come with him, but after they entered into orbit about Baleyworld, Bentley Baley soared upward in his small ship to meet them and was brought aboard. By then, he was a rather gnarled man of middle age.

  He looked at Gladia with faintly hostile eyes and said, "You cannot see him, madam."

  And Gladia, who had been weeping, said, "Why not?"

  "He does not wish it, madam, and I must respect his wishes."

  "I cannot believe that, Mr. Baley."

  "I have a handwritten note and I have a voice recording, madam. I do not know if you can recognize his handwriting or his voice, but you have my word of honor these are his and that no untoward influence was used upon him to produce

  She went into her own cabin to read and listen alone. Then she emerged—with an air of defeat about her—but she managed to say firmly, "Daneel, you are to go down alone to see him. It is his wish. But you are to report to me everything that is done and said."

  "Yes, madam," Daneel said.

  Daneel went down in Bentley's ship and Bentley said to him, "Robots are not allowed on this world, Daneel, but an exception is being made in your case because it is my father's wish and because he is highly revered here. I have no personal animus against you, you understand, but your presence here must be an entirely limited one. You will be taken directly to my father. When he is done with you, you will be taken back into orbit at once. Do you understand?"

  "I understand, sir. How is your father?"

  "He is dying," Bentley said with perhaps conscious brutality.

  "I understand that, too," said Daneel, his voice quivering noticeably, not out of ordinary emotion but because the consciousness of the death of a human being, however unavoidable, disordered his positronic brain paths. "I mean, how much longer before he must die?"

  "He should have died some time ago. He is tied to life because he refuses to go, until he sees you."

  They landed. It was a large world, but the inhabited portion—if this were all—was small and shabby. It was a cloudy day and it had rained recently. The wide, straight streets were empty, as though what population existed there was in no mood to assemble in order to stare at a robot.

  The ground-car took them through the emptiness and brought them to a house somewhat larger and more impressive than most. Together they entered. At an inner door, Bentley halted.

  "My father is in there," he said sadly. "You are to go in alone. He will not have me there with you. Go in. You might not recognize him."

  Daneel went into the gloom of the room. His eyes adjusted rapidly and he was aware of a body covered by a sheet inside a transparent cocoon that was made visible only by its faint glitter. The light within the room brightened a bit and Daneel could then see the face clearly.

  Bentley had been right. Daneel saw nothing of his old partner in it. It was gaunt and bony. The eyes were closed and it seemed to Daneel that what he saw was a dead body. He had never seen a dead human being and when this thought struck him, he staggered and it seemed to hi
m that his legs would not hold him up.

  But the old-man's eyes opened and Daneel recovered his equilibrium, though he continued to feel an unaccustomed weakness just the same.

  The eyes looked at him and a small, faint smile curved the pale, cracked lips.

  "Daneel. My old friend Daneel."

  There was the faint timbre of Elijah Baley's remembered voice in that whispered sound. An arm emerged slowly from under the sheet and it seemed to Daneel that he recognized Elijah after all.

  Partner Elijah," he said softly.

  "Thank you—thank you for coming."

  "It was important for me to come, Partner Elijah."

  "I was afraid they might not allow it. They—the others—even my son—think of you as a robot."

  "I am a robot."

  "Not to me, Daneel. You haven't changed, have you? I don't see you clearly, but it seems to me you are exactly the same as I remember. When did I last see you? Twenty-nine years ago?"

  "Yes—and in all that time, Partner Elijah, I have not changed, so you see, I am a robot."

  "I have changed, though, and a great deal. I should not have let you see me like this, but I was too weak to resist my desire to see you once again." Baley's voice seemed to have grown a bit stronger, as though it had been fortified by the sight of Daneel.

  "I am pleased to see you, Partner Elijah, however you have changed."

  "And Lady Gladia? How is she?"

  "She is well. She came with me."

  "She is not—" A touch of painful alarm came into his voice as he tried to look about.

  "She is not on this world, but is still in orbit. It was explained to her that you did not wish to see her—and she understood."

  "That is wrong. I do wish to see her, but I have been able to withstand that temptation. She has not changed, has she?"