Prelude to Foundation

Hummin finally said, “You are an ingenious fellow, Hari, but I fail to see why I must admit that I am a robot and why I have no choice but to do so. Everything you say may be true as facts-your own behavior, Dors’s behavior, Sunmaster’s, Tisalver’s, the Wyan generals’-all, all may have happened as you said, but that doesn’t force your interpretation of the meaning of the events to be true. Surely, everything that happened can have a natural explanation. You trusted me because you accepted what I said; Dors felt your safety to be important because she felt psychohistory to be crucial, herself being a historian; Sunmaster and Tisalver were beholden to me for favors you know nothing of, the Wyan generals resented being ruled by a woman, no more. Why must we flee to the supernatural?”

Seldon said, “See here, Hummin, do you really believe the Empire to be falling and do you really consider it important that it not be allowed to do so with no move made to save it or, at the least, cushion its Fall?”

“I really do.” Somehow Seldon knew this statement was sincere. “And you really want me to work out the details of psychohistory and you feel that you yourself ca

“I lack the capability.”

“And you feel that only I can handle psychohistory-even if I sometimes doubt it myself?”

“Yes.”

“And you must therefore feel that if you can possibly help me in any way, you must.”

“I do.”

“Personal feelings-selfish considerations-could play no part?” A faint and brief smile passed over Hummin’s grave face and for a moment Seldon sensed a vast and arid desert of weariness behind Hummin’s quiet ma

“Then I ask your help. I can work out psychohistory on the basis of Trantor alone, but I will run into difficulties. Those difficulties I may overcome, but how much easier it would be to do so if I knew certain key facts. For instance, was Earth or Aurora the first world of humanity or was it some other world altogether? What was the relationship between Earth and Aurora? Did either or both colonize the Galaxy? If one, why didn’t the other? If both, how was the issue decided? Are there worlds descended from both or from only one? How did robots come to be abandoned? How did Trantor become the Imperial world, rather than another planet? What happened to Aurora and Earth in the meantime? There are a thousand questions I might ask right now and a hundred thousand that might arise as I go along. Would you allow me to remain ignorant, Hummin, and fail in my task when you could inform me and help me succeed?”

Hummin said, “If I were the robot, would I have room in my brain for all of twenty thousand years of history for millions of different worlds?”

“I don’t know the capacity of robotic brains. I don’t know the capacity of yours. But if you lack the capacity, then you must have that information which you ca

Seldon sat back and took a deep breath. “So I ask you again: Are you that robot? If you want psychohistory, then you must admit it. If you still deny you are a robot and if you convince me you are not, then my chances at psychohistory become much, much smaller. It is up to you, then. Are you a robot? Are you Da-Nee?”

And Hummin said, as imperturbable as ever. “Your arguments are irrefutable. I am R. Daneel Olivaw. The ‘R’ stands for ‘robot.’ ”

R. Daneel Olivaw still spoke quietly, but it seemed to Seldon that there was a subtle change in his voice, as though he spoke more easily now that he was no longer playing a part.

“In twenty thousand years,” said Daneel, “no one has guessed I was a robot when it was not my intention to have him or her know. In part, that was because human beings abandoned robots so long ago that very few remember that they even existed at one time. And in part, it is because I do have the ability to detect and affect human emotion. The detection offers no trouble, but to affect emotion is difficult for me for reasons having to do with my robotic nature-although I can do it when I wish. I have the ability but must deal with my will not to use it. I try never to interfere except when I have no choice but to do so. And when I do interfere, it is rarely that I do more than strengthen, as little as I can, what is already there. If I can achieve my purposes without doing even so much, I avoid it.

“It was not necessary to tamper with Sunmaster Fourteen in order to have him accept you-I call it ‘tampering,’ you notice, because it is not a pleasant thing to do. I did not have to tamper with him because he did owe me for favors rendered and he is an honorable man, despite the peculiarities you found in him. I did interfere the second time, when you had committed sacrilege in his eyes, but it took very little. He was not anxious to hand you over to the Imperial authorities, whom he does not like. I merely strengthened the dislike a trifle and he handed you over to my care, accepting the arguments I offered, which otherwise he might have considered specious.

“Nor did I tamper with you noticeably. You distrusted the Imperials too. Most human beings do these days, which is an important factor in the decay and deterioration of the Empire. What’s more, you were proud of psychohistory as a concept, proud of having thought of it. You would not have minded having it prove to be a practical discipline. That would have further fed your pride.” Seldon frowned and said, “Pardon me, Master Robot, but I am not aware that I am quite such a monster of pride.”

Daneel said mildly, “You are not a monster of pride at all. You are perfectly aware that [it] is neither admirable nor useful to be driven by pride, so you try to subdue that drive, but you might as well disapprove of having yourself powered by your heartbeat. You ca

“I saw no necessity to touch anything else and so you have reasoned out your robothood. Had I foreseen the possibility of that, I might have stopped it, but my foresight and my abilities are not infinite. Nor am I sorry now that I failed, for your arguments are good ones and it is important that you know who I am and that I use what I am to help you.

“Emotions, my dear Seldon are a powerful engine of human action, far more powerful than human beings themselves realize, and you ca

Seldon was breathing heavily, trying to see himself as a man driven by pride and not liking it. “Why reluctant?”

“Because it would be so easy to overdo. I had to stop Rashelle from converting the Empire into a feudal anarchy. I might have bent minds quickly and the result might well have been a bloody uprising. Men are men-and the Wyan generals are almost all men. It does not actually take much to rouse resentment and latent fear of women in any man. It may be a biological matter that I, as a robot, ca

“I had but to strengthen the feeling to produce a breakdown in her plans. If I had done it the merest millimeter too much, I would have lost what I wanted-a bloodless takeover. I wanted nothing more than to have them not resist when my soldiers arrived.”