Robots and Empire

Amadiro said, “Don’t speak in the singular. I will go as well.”

“You? Earth is a horrible world. I must go, but why you?”

“Because I must go, too. I ca

73

Gladia was in space again and once again Aurora could be made out as a globe. D.G. was busy elsewhere and the entire ship had about it a vague but pervasive air of emergency, as though it were on a battle footing, as though it were being pursued or expected pursuit.

Gladia shook her head. She could think clearly; she felt well; but when her mind turned back to that time in the Institute, shortly after Amadiro had left her, a curiously pervasive unreality swept over her. There was a gap in time. One moment she had been sitting on the couch, feeling sleepy; the next there were four robots and a woman in the room who had not been there before.

She had fallen asleep, then, but there was no awareness, no memory, that she had done so. There was a gap of nonexistence.

Thinking back, she had recognized the woman after the fact. It was Vasilia Aliena—the daughter whom Gladia had replaced in the affections of Han Fastolfe. Gladia had never actually seen Vasilia, though she had viewed her on hyperwave several times. Gladia always thought of her as a distant and inimical other self. There was the vague similarity in appearance that others always commented on but that Gladia herself insisted she did not see—and there was the odd, antithetical co

Once they were on the ship and she was alone with her robots, she asked the inevitable question. “What was Vasilia Aliena doing in the room and why was I permitted to sleep once she had arrived?”

Daneel said, “Madam Gladia, I will answer the question, since it is a matter friend Giskard would find difficult to discuss.”

“Why should he find it difficult, Daneel?”

“Madam Vasilia arrived in the hope that she might persuade Giskard to enter her service.”

“Away from me?” said Gladia in sharp indignation. She did not entirely like Giskard, but that made no difference. What was hers was hers. “And you allowed me to sleep while you two handled the matter by yourselves?”

“We felt, madam, that you needed your sleep badly. Then, too, Madam Vasilia ordered us to allow you to sleep. Finally, it was our opinion that Giskard would not, in any case, join her service. For all these reasons, we did not wake you.”

Gladia said indignantly, “I should hope that Giskard would not for a moment consider leaving me. It would be illegal both by Auroran law and, more important, by the Three Laws of Robotics. It would be a good deed to return to Aurora and have her arraigned before the Court of Claims.”

“That would not be advisable at the moment, my lady.”

“What was her excuse for wanting Giskard? Did she have one?”

“When she was a child, Giskard had been assigned to her.

“Legally?”

“No, madam. Dr. Fastolfe merely allowed her the use of it.

“Then she had no right to Giskard.”

“We pointed that out, madam. Apparently, it was a matter of sentimental attachment on the part of Madam Vasilia.”

Gladia sniffed. “Having survived the loss of Giskard since before I came to Aurora, she might well have continued as she was without going to illegal lengths to deprive me of my property,”—Then, restlessly, “I should have been awakened.”

Daneel said, “Madam Vasilia had four robots with her. Had you been awake and had there been harsh words between the two of you, there might have been some difficulty in having the robots work out the proper responses.”

“I’d have directed the proper response, I assure you, Daneel.”

“No doubt, madam. So might Madam Vasilia and she is one of the cleverest roboticists in the Galaxy.”

Gladia shifted her attention to Giskard. “And you have nothing to say?”

“Only that it was better as it was, my lady.”

Gladia looked thoughtfully into those faintly luminous robotic eyes, so different from Daneel’s all-but-human ones, and it did seem to her that the incident wasn’t very important after all. A small thing. And there were other things with which to be concerned. They were going to Earth.

Somehow she did not think of Vasilia again.

74

“I am concerned,” said Giskard in his whisper of confidentiality in which sound waves barely trembled the air. The Settler ship was receding smoothly from Aurora and, as yet, there was no pursuit. The activity onboard had settled into routine and, with almost all routines automated, there was quiet and Gladia slept naturally.

“I’m concerned for Lady Gladia, friend Daneel.”

Daneel understood the characteristics of Giskard’s positronic circuits well enough to need no long explanation. He said, “It was necessary, friend Giskard, to adjust Lady Gladia. Had she questioned longer, she might have elicited the fact of your mental activities and adjustment would then have been more dangerous. Enough harm has already been done because Lady Vasilia discovered the fact. We do not know to whom—and to how many—she may have imparted her knowledge.”

“Nevertheless,” said Giskard, “I did not wish to make this adjustment. Had Lady Gladia wished to forget, it would have been a simple, no-risk adjustment. She wanted, however, with vigor and anger, to know more of the matter. She regretted not having played a greater role in it. I was forced, therefore, to break binding forces of considerable intensity.”

Daneel said, “Even that was necessary, friend Giskard.”

“Yet the possibility of doing harm was by no means insignificant in such a case. If you think of a binding force as a thin, elastic cord—this is a poor analogy, but I can think of no other, for what I sense in a mind has no analog outside the mind—then the ordinary inhibitions I deal with are so thin and insubstantial that they vanish when I touch them. A strong binding force, on the other hand, snaps and recoils when broken and the recoil may then break other, totally unrelated binding forces or, by whipping and coiling about other such forces, strengthen them, enormously. In either case, unintended changes can be brought about in a human being’s emotions and attitudes and that would be almost certain to bring about harm.”

Daneel said, his voice a little louder, “Is it your impression you harmed Lady Gladia, friend Giskard?”

“I think not. I was extremely careful. I worked upon the matter during all the time you were talking to her. It was thoughtful of you to bear the brunt of the conversation and to run the risk of being caught between an inconvenient truth and an untruth. But despite all my care, friend Daneel, I took a risk and I am concerned that I was willing to take that risk. It came so close to violating the First Law that it required an extraordinary effort on my part to do it. I am sure that I would not have been able to do it—”

“Yes, friend Giskard?”

“Had you not expounded your notion of the Zeroth Law.”

“You accept it, then?”

“No, I ca

“I am not sure,” said Daneel, voice trembling into all but silence. Then, with an effort, “I might. The mere concept pushes at me—and at you. It helped you decide to take the risk in adjusting Lady Gladia’s mind.”

“Yes, it did,” agreed Giskard, “and the longer we think of the Zeroth Law, the more it might help push us. Could it do so, I wonder, in more than a marginal way, however? Might it not only help us take slightly larger risks than we might ordinarily?”