Asimov’s Future History Volume 11, Page 5

  Vasilia said, “Kelden, I am to be the next head. That is settled. You have told me so.”

  “I have, but in actual fact, Vasilia, once I die, the Board of Directors will make the choice. Even if I leave behind me a directive as to who the next head will be, the Board can reverse me. That much is clear in the terms of incorporation that founded the Institute.”

  “You just write your directive, Kelden, and I will take care of the Board of Directors.”

  And Amadiro, the space between his eyebrows furrowing, said, “This is not something I will discuss any further at this moment. What is the other item you want to bring up? Please make it brief.”

  She stared at him in silent anger for a moment, then said, seeming to bite off the word, “Giskard!”

  “The robot?”

  “Of course the robot. Do you know any other Giskard that I am likely to be talking about?”

  “Well, what of him?”

  “He is mine.”

  Amadiro looked surprised. “He is – or was – the legal property of Fastolfe.”

  “Giskard was mine when I was a child.”

  “Fastolfe lent him to you and eventually took him back. There was no formal transfer of ownership, was there?”

  “Morally, he was mine. But in any case, Fastolfe owns him no longer. He is dead.”

  “He made a will, too. And if I remember correctly, by~at will, two robots – Giskard and Daneel – are now the property of the Solarian woman.”

  “But I don’t want them to be. I am Fastolfe’s daughter –”

  “Oh?”

  Vasilia flushed. “I have a claim to Giskard. Why should a stranger – an alien – have him?”

  “For one thing, because Fastolfe willed it so. And she’s an Auroran citizen.”

  “Who says so? To every Auroran she is ‘the Solarian woman.” ‘

  Amadiro brought his fist down on the arm of his chair in a sudden spilling over of fury. “Vasilia, what is it you wish of me? I have no liking for the Solarian woman. I have, in fact, a profound dislike of her and, if there were a way, I would” – he looked briefly at the robots, as though unwilling to unsettle them –” get her off the planet. But I can’t upset the will. Even if there were a legal way to do so – and there isn’t – it wouldn’t be wise to do it. Fastolfe is dead.”

  “Precisely the reason Giskard should be mine now.”

  Amadiro ignored her. “And the coalition he headed is falling apart. It was held together in the last few decades only by his personal charisma. Now what I would like to do is to pick up fragments of that coalition and add it to my own following. In that way, I may put a group together that would be strong enough to dominate the Council and win control in the coming elections.”

  “With you becoming the next Chairman?”

  “Why not? Aurora could do worse, for it would give me a chance to reverse our longtime policy of built-in disaster before it is too late. The trouble is that I don’t have Fastolfe’s personal popularity. I don’t have his gift of exuding saintliness as a cover for stupidity. Consequently, if I seem to be triumphing in an unfair and petty way over a dead man, it will not look good. No one must say that, having been defeated by Fastolfe while he was alive, I overturned his will out of trivial spite after he was dead. I won’t have anything as ridiculous as that standing in the way of the great life-and-death decisions Aurora must make. Do you understand me? You’ll have to do without Giskard!”

  Vasilia arose, body stiff, eyes narrow. “We’ll see about that.”

  “We have already seen. This meeting is over and if you have any ambitions to be the head of the Institute, I don’t ever want to see you threatening me about anything. So if you’re going to make a threat now, of any kind at all, I advise you to reconsider.”

  “I make no threats,” said Vasilia, every ounce of body language contradicting her words – and she left with a sweep, beckoning her robot, unnecessarily, to follow.

  50.

  The emergency – or rather, the series of emergencies – began some months later when Maloon Cicis entered Amadiro’s office for the usual morning conference.

  Ordinarily, Amadiro looked forward to that. Cicis was always a restful interlude in the course of the busy day. He was the one senior member of the Institute who had no ambitions and who was not calculating against the day of Amadiro’s death or retirement. Cicis was, in fact, the perfect subordinate. He was happy to be of service and delighted to be in Amadiro’s confidence.

  For this reason, Amadiro had been disturbed, in the last year or so, at the flavor of decay, the slight concavity of the chest, the touch of stiffness in the walk of his perfect subordinate. Could Cicis be getting old? Surely he was only a few decades older than Amadiro.

  It struck Amadiro most unpleasantly that perhaps along with the gradual degeneration of so many facets of Spacer life, the life expectancy was falling. He meant to look up the statistics, but kept forgetting to do so – or was unconsciously afraid of doing so.

  On this occasion, though, the appearance of age in Cicis was drowned in violent emotion. His face was red (pointing up the graying of his bronze hair) and he appeared virtually exploding with astonishment.

  Amadiro did not have to inquire as to the news. Cicis delivered it as though it was something he could not contain.

  When he finished exploding, Amadiro said, stupefied, “All radio-wave emissions ceased? All?”

  “All, Chief. They must all be dead – or gone. No inhabited world can avoid emiting some electromagnetic radiation at our level of –”

  Amadiro waved him silent. One of Vasilia’s points – the fourth, as he recalled – had been that the Solarians were preparing to leave their world. It had been a nonsensical suggestion; all four had been more or less nonsensical. He had said he would keep it in mind and. of course, he hadn’t. Now, apparently, that had proved to be a mistake.

  What had made it seem nonsensical when Vasilia had advanced the notion still made it seem nonsensical. He asked the question now that he had asked then, even though he expected no answer. (What answer could there be?) “Where in Space could they go, Maloon?”

  “There’s no word on that, Chief.”

  “Well, then, when did they go?”

  “There’s no word on that, either. We got the news this morning. The trouble is the radiational intensity is so low on Solaria, anyway. It’s very sparsely inhabited and its robots are well-shielded. The intensity is an order of magnitude lower than that of any other Spacer world; two orders lower than ours.”

  “So one day someone noticed that what was very small had actually declined to zero, but no one actually caught it as it was declining. Who noticed it?”

  “A Nexonian ship, Chief.”

  “How?”

  “The ship was being forced into orbit about Solaria’s sun in order to carry through emergency repairs. They hyperwaved for permission and got no answer. They had no choice but to disregard that, continue into orbit, and carry through their repairs. They were not interfered with in any way in that time. It was not till after they had left that, in checking through their records, they found that not only had they gotten no answer, but that they had gotten no radiational signal of any kind. There’s no way of telling exactly when radiation had ceased. The last recorded receipt of any message from Solaria was over two months ago.”

  “And the other three points she made?” Amadiro muttered.

  “Pardon me, Chief?”

  “Nothing. Nothing,” said Amadiro, but he frowned heavily and was lost in thought.

  13. The Telepathic Robot

  51.

  MANDAMUS WAS NOT aware of developments on Solaria when he returned some months later from an extended third trip to Earth.

  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 enn
ui 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.

  51A.

  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.

  51B.

  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 o
f 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 anyone 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?”