Robots and Empire trs-4 Read online

  “Aren’t peace and security worth fighting for? Worlds without violence! Worlds in which reason rules! Was it right for us to hand over scores of habitable worlds to short-lived barbarians who, as you say, carry blasters about with them everywhere?”

  “And yet,” murmured Mandamus, “are you ready to use violence to destroy Earth?”

  “Violence briefly—and for a purpose—is the price we probably will have to pay for putting an end to violence forever.

  “I am Spacer enough,” said Mandamus, “to want even that violence minimized.”

  They had now entered a large and cavernous room and, as they entered, walls and ceiling came to life with diffuse and unglaring light.

  “Well, is this what you want, Dr. Mandamus?” asked Amadiro.

  Mandamus looked about, stunned. Finally, he managed to say, “Incredible!”

  They stood there, a solid regiment of human beings, with a little more life to them than so many statues might have showed, but with far less life than sleeping human beings would have displayed.

  “They’re standing,” muttered Mandamus.

  “They take up less room that way. Obviously.”

  “But they’ve been standing about fifteen decades. They can’t still be in working order. Surely their joints are frozen, their organs broken down.”

  Amadiro shrugged. “Perhaps. Still, if the joints have deteriorated—and that isn’t out of the question, I suppose those can be replaced—if necessary. It would depend on whether there would be reason to do so.”

  “There would be reason,” said Mandamus. He looked from head to head. They were staring in slightly different directions and that gave them a somewhat unsettling appearance, as though they were on the point of breaking ranks.

  Mandamus said, “Each has an individual appearance and they differ in height, build, and so on.”

  “Yes. Does that surprise you? We were planning to have these, along with others we might have built, be the pioneers in the development of new worlds. To have them do so properly, we wanted them to be as human as possible, which meant making them as individual as Aurorans are. Doesn’t that seem sensible to you?”

  “Absolutely. I’m glad this is so. I’ve read all I can about the two protohumaniforms that Fastolfe himself built—Daneel Olivaw and Jander Panell. I’ve seen holographs of them and they seemed identical.”

  “Yes,” said Amadiro impatiently. “Not only identical, but each virtually a caricature of one’s conception of the ideal Spacer. That was Fastolfe’s romanticism. I’m sure that he would have built a race of interchangeable humanoid robots, with both sexes possessing such ethereal good looks—or what he considered to be that—as to make them completely inhuman. Fastolfe may be a brilliant roboticist, but he is an incredibly stupid man.”

  Amadiro shook his head. To have been beaten by such an incredibly stupid man, he thought—and then he thrust the thought away. He had not been beaten by Fastolfe, but by that infernal Earthman. Lost in thought, he did not hear Mandamus’s next question.

  “Pardon me,” he said with an edge of irritation.

  “I said, ‘Did you design these, Dr. Amadiro?’”

  “No, by an odd coincidence—and one that strikes me as possessing a peculiar irony—these were designed by Fastolfe’s daughter Vasilia. She’s as brilliant as he is and much more intelligent—which may be one reason why they never got along.”

  “As I have heard the story concerning them—” began Mandamus.

  Amadiro waved him into silence. “I have heard the story, too, but it doesn’t matter. It’s enough that she does her work very well and that there is no danger that she will ever find herself in sympathy with someone who, despite the accident that he is her biological father, is—and must remain forever alien and hateful to her. She even calls herself Vasilia Aliena, you know.”

  “Yes, I know. Do you have the brain patterns of these humanoid robots on record?”

  “Certainly.”

  “For each of these?”

  “Of course.”

  “And can they be made available to me?”

  “If there’s a reason for it.”

  “There will be,” said Mandwnus funnily. “Since these robots were designed for pioneering activities, may I assume they are equipped to explore a world and deal with primitive conditions?”

  “That should be self-evident.”

  “That’s perfect—but there may have to be some modifications. Do you suppose that Vasilia Fast—Aliena would be able to help me with that—if necessary? Obviously, she would be best-acquainted with the brain patterns.”

  “Obviously. Still, I don’t know whether she would be willing to help you. I do know that it is physically impossible for her to do so at the moment, since she is not on Aurora.”

  Mandamus looked surprised and displeased. “Where is she, then, Dr. Amadiro?”

  Amadiro said, “You have seen these humaniforms and I do not wish to expose myself to these rather dismal surroundings. You have kept me waiting long enough and you must not complain if I keep you waiting now. If you have any further questions, let us deal with them in my office.”

  53

  Once in the office, Amadiro delayed things a while longer. “Wait here for me,” he said rather peremptorily and left.

  Mandamus waited stiffly, sorting out his thoughts, wondering when Amadiro would return—or if he would. Was he to be arrested or simply ejected? Had Amadiro grown tired of waiting for the point?

  Mandamus refused to believe that. He had gained a shrewd idea of Amadiro’s desperate desire for evening an old score. It seemed evident that Amadiro wouldn’t get tired of listening as long as there seemed the slightest chance that Mandamus would make revenge possible.

  As he looked idly about Amadiro’s office, Mandamus found himself wondering whether there might be any information that might be of help to him in the computerized files almost immediately at hand. It would be useful not to have to depend directly on Amadiro for everything.

  The thought was a useless one. Mandamus did not know the entry code for the files and, even if he did, there were several of Amadiro’s personal robots standing in their niches and they would stop him if he took a single step toward anything that was labeled in their minds as sensitive. Even his own robots would.

  Amadiro was right. Robots were so useful and efficient—and incorruptible—as guards that the very concept of anything criminal, illegal, or simply underhanded did not occur to anyone. The tendency just atrophied—at least as against other Spacers.

  He wondered how Settlers could manage without robots. Mandamus tried to imagine human personalities clashing, with no robotic bumpers to cushion the interaction, no robotic presence to give them a decent sense of security and to enforce—without their being consciously aware of it most of the time—a proper mode of morality.

  It would be impossible for Settlers to be anything but barbarians under the circumstance and the Galaxy could not be left to them. Amadiro was right in that respect and had always been right, while Fastolfe was fantastically wrong.

  Mandamus nodded, as though he had once again persuaded himself as to the correctness of what he was planning. He sighed and wished it were not necessary, then prepared to go over, once again, the line of reasoning that proved to him that it was necessary, when Amadiro strode in.

  Amadiro was still an impressive figure, even though he was within a year of his twenty-eighth decade-day. He was very much what a Spacer ought to look like, except for the unfortunate shapelessness of his nose.

  Amadiro said, “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, but there was business I had to attend to. I am the head of this Institute and that entails responsibilities.”

  Mandamus said, “Could you tell me where Dr. Vasilia Aliena is? I will then describe my project to you without delay.”

  “Vasilia is on tour. She’s visiting each of the Spacer worlds to find out where they stand on robot research. She appears to think that, since the Robot Institute was f
ounded to coordinate individual research on Aurora, interplanetary coordination would advance the cause even farther. A good idea, actually.”

  Mandamus laughed, shortly and without humor. “They won’t tell her anything. I doubt any Spacer world wants to hand Aurora a more enormous lead than she already has.”

  “Don’t be too sure. The Settler situation has disturbed us all.”

  “Do you know where she is now?”

  “We have her itinerary.”

  “Get her back, Dr. Amadiro.”

  Amadiro frowned. “I doubt I can do that easily. I believe she wants to be away from Aurora until her father dies.”

  “Why?” asked Mandamus in surprise.

  Amadiro shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t care.—But what I do know is that your time has run out. Do you understand? Get to the point or leave.” He pointed to the door grimly and Mandamus felt that the other’s patience would stretch no farther.

  Mandamus said, “Very well. There is yet a third way in which Earth is unique.”

  He talked easily and with due economy, as though he were going through an exposition that he had frequently rehearsed and polished for the very purpose of presenting it to Amadiro. And Amadiro found himself increasingly absorbed.

  That was it! Amadiro first felt a huge sense of relief. He had been correct to gamble on the young man’s not being a crackpot. He was entirely sane.

  Then came triumph. It would surely work. Of course, the young man’s view, as it was expounded, veered a bit from the path Amadiro felt it ought to follow, but that could be taken care of eventually. Modifications were always possible.

  And when Mandamus was done, Amadiro said in a voice he strove to hold steady, “We won’t need Vasilia. There is appropriate expertise at the Institute to allow us to begin at once. Dr. Mandamus”—a note of formal respect entered Amadiro’s voice—“let this thing work out as planned and I cannot help but think it will—and you will be the head of the Institute when I am Chairman of the Council.”

  Mandamus smiled narrowly and briefly, while Amadiro sat back in his chair and, just as briefly, allowed himself to look into the future with satisfaction and confidence, something he had not been able to do for twenty long and weary decades.

  How long would it take? Decades? One decade? Part of a decade?

  Not long. Not long. It must be hastened by all means so that he could live to see that old decision overturned and himself lord of Aurora—and therefore of the Spacer worlds—and therefore (with Earth and the Settler worlds doomed) even lord of the Galaxy before he died.

  54

  When Dr. Han Fastolfe died, seven years after Amadiro and Mandamus met and began their project, the hyperwave carried the news with explosive force to every corner of the occupied worlds. It merited the greatest attention everywhere.

  In the Spacer worlds it was important because Fastolfe had been the most powerful man on Aurora and, therefore, in the Galaxy for over twenty decades. In the Settler worlds and on Earth, it was important because Fastolfe had been a friend insofar as a Spacer could be a friend—and the question now was whether Spacer policy would change and, if so, how.

  The news came also to Vasilia Aliena and it was complicated by the bitterness that had tinged her relationship with her biological father almost from the beginning.

  She had schooled herself to feel nothing when he died, yet she had not wanted to be on the same world that he was on at the time the event took place. She did not want the questions that would be leveled at her anywhere, but most frequently and insistently on Aurora.

  The parent-child relationship among the Spacers was a weak and indifferent one at best. With long lives, that was a matter of course. Nor would anyone have been interested in Vasilia in that respect, but for the fact that Fastolfe was so continually prominent a party leader and Vasilia almost as prominent a partisan on the other side.

  It was poisonous. She had gone to the trouble of making Vasilia Aliena her legal name and of using it on all documents, in all interviews, in all dealings of any kind—and yet she knew for a fact that most people thought of her as Vasilia Fastolfe. It was as though nothing could wipe out that thoroughly meaningless relationship, so that she was reduced to having to be content with being addressed by her first name only. It was, at least, an uncommon name.

  And that, too, seemed to emphasize her mirror-image relationship with the Solarian woman who, for thoroughly independent reasons, had denied her first husband as Vasilia had denied her father. The Solarian woman, too, could not live with the early surnames fastened upon her and ended with a first name only—Gladia.

  Vasilia and Gladia, misfits, deniers—They even resembled each other.

  Vasilia stole a look at the mirror hanging in her spaceship cabin. She had not seen Gladia in many decades, but she was sure that the resemblance remained. They were both small and slim. Both were blond and their faces were somewhat alike.

  But it was Vasilia who always lost and Gladia who always won. When Vasilia had left her father and had struck him from her life, he had found Gladia instead—and she was the pliant and passive daughter he wanted, the daughter that Vasilia could never be.

  Nevertheless, it embittered Vasilia. She herself was a roboticist; as competent and as skillful, at last, as ever Fastolfe had been, while Gladia was merely an artist, who amused herself with force-field coloring and with the illusions of robotic clothing. How could Fastolfe have been satisfied to lose the one and gain, in her place, nothing more than the other?

  And when that policeman from Earth, Elijah Baley, had come to Aurora, he had bullied Vasilia into revealing far more of her thoughts and feelings than she had ever granted anyone else. He was, however, softness itself to Gladia and had helped her—and her protector, Fastolfe—win out against all the odds, though to this day Vasilia had not been able to understand clearly how that had happened.

  It was Gladia who had been at Fastolfe’s bedside during the final illness, who had held his hand to the end, and who had heard his last words. Why Vasilia should resent that, she didn’t know, for she herself would, under no circumstances, have acknowledged the old man’s existence to the extent of visiting him to witness his passage into nonexistence in an absolute, rather than a subjective sense—and yet she raged against Gladia’s presence.

  It’s the way I feel, she told herself defiantly, and I owe no one an explanation.

  And she had lost Giskard. Giskard had been her robot, Vasilia’s own robot when she had been a young girl, the robot granted her by a then seemingly fond father. It was Giskard through whom she had learned robotics and from whom she had felt the first genuine affection. She had not, as a child, speculated on the Three Laws or dealt with the philosophy of positronic automatism. Giskard had seemed affectionate, he had acted as though he were affectionate, and that was enough for a child. She had never found such affection in any human being—certainly not her father.

  To this day, she had yet to be weak enough to play the foolish love game with anyone. Her bitterness over her loss of Giskard had taught her that any initial gain was not worth the final deprivation.

  When she had left home, disowning her father, he would not let Giskard go with her, even though she herself had improved Giskard immeasurably in the course of her careful reprogramming of him. And when her father had died, he had left Giskard to the Solarian woman. He had also left her Daneel, but Vasilia cared nothing for that pale imitation of a man. She wanted Giskard, who was her own.

  Vasilia was on her way back to Solaria now. Her tour was quite done. In fact, as far as usefulness was concerned, it had been essentially over months ago. But she had remained on Hesperos for a needed rest, as she had explained in her official notice to the Institute.

  Now, however, Fastolfe was dead and she could return. And while she could not undo the past entirely, she could undo part of it. Giskard must be hers again.

  She was determined on that.

  55

  Amadiro was quite ambivalent in his
response to Vasilia’s return. She had not come back until old Fastolfe (he could say the name to himself quite easily now that he was dead) was a month in his um. That flattered his opinion of his own understanding. After all, he had told Mandamus her motive had been that of remaining away from Aurora till her father died.

  Then, too, Vasilia was comfortably transparent. She lacked the exasperating quality of Mandamus, his new favorite, who always seemed to have yet another unexpressed thought tucked away—no matter how thoroughly he seemed to have discharged the contents of his mind.

  On the other hand, she was irritatingly hard to control the least likely to go quietly along the path he indicated. Leave it to her to probe the otherworld Spacers to the bone during the years she had spent away from Aurora—but then leave it also to her to interpret it all in dark and riddling words.

  So he greeted her with an enthusiasm that was somewhere between feigned and unfeigned.

  “Vasilia, I’m so happy to have you back. The Institute flies on one wing when you’re gone.”

  Vasilia laughed. “Come, Kelden”—she alone had no hesitation or inhibition in using his given name, though she was two and a half decades younger than he—“that one remaining wing is yours and how long has it been now since you ceased being perfectly certain that your one wing was sufficient?”

  “Since you decided to stretch out your absence to years. Do you find Aurora much changed in the interval?”

  “Not a bit—which ought perhaps to be a concern of ours. Changelessness is decay.”

  “A paradox. There is no decay without a change for the worse.”

  “Changelessness is a change for the worse, Kelden, in comparison to the surrounding Settler worlds. They change rapidly, extending their control into more numerous worlds and over each individual world more thoroughly. They increase their strength and power and self-assurance, while we sit here dreaming and find our unchanging might diminishing steadily in comparison.”