Isaac Asimov: Foundation and Earth

“Because Pel wishes to go with you, and if he goes with you, he would not be happy with any other portion of Gaia than myself.”

Pelorat, who sat rather unobtrusively on a chair in another corner (with his back, Trevize noted, to his own image) said softly, “That’s true, Golan. Bliss is my portion of Gaia.”

Bliss smiled suddenly. “It seems rather exciting to be thought of in that way. It’s very alien, of course.”

“Well, let’s see.” Trevize put his hands behind his head and began to lean backward in his chair. The thin legs creaked as he did so, so that he quickly decided the chair was not sturdy enough to endure that game and brought it down to all four feet. “Will you still be part of Gaia if you leave her?”

“I need not be. I can isolate myself, for instance, if I seem in danger of serious harm, so that harm will not necessarily spill over into Gaia, or if there is any other overriding reason for it. That, however, is a matter of emergency only. Generally, I will remain part of Gaia.”

“Even if we Jump through hyperspace?”

“Even then, though that will complicate matters somewhat.”

“Somehow I don’t find that comforting.”

“Why not?”

Trevize wrinkled his nose in the usual metaphoric response to a bad smell. “It means that anything that is said and done on my ship that you hear and see will be heard and seen by all of Gaia.”

“I am Gaia so what I see, hear, and sense, Gaia will see, hear, and sense.”

“Exactly. Even that wall will see, hear, and sense.”

Bliss looked at the wall he pointed to and shrugged. “Yes, that wall, too. It has only an infinitesimal consciousness so that it senses and understands only infinitesimally, but I presume there are some subatomic shifts in response to what we are saying right now, for instance, that enable it to fit into Gaia with more purposeful intent for the good of the whole.”

“But what if I wish privacy? I may not want the wall to be aware of what I say or do.”

Bliss looked exasperated and Pelorat broke in suddenly. “You know, Golan, I don’t want to interfere, since I obviously don’t know much about Gaia. Still, I’ve been with Bliss and I’ve gathered somehow some of what it’s all about. —If you walk through a crowd on Terminus, you see and hear a great many things, and you may remember some of it. You might even be able to recall all of it under the proper cerebral stimulation, but mostly you don’t care . You let it go. Even if you watch some emotional scene between strangers and even if you’re interested; still, if it’s of no great concern to you—you let it go —you forget. It must be so on Gaia, too. Even if all of Gaia knows your business intimately, that doesn’t mean that Gaia necessarily cares . —Isn’t that so, Bliss dear?”

“I’ve never thought of it that way, Pel, but there is something in what you say. Still, this privacy Trev talks about—I mean, Trevize—is nothing we value at all. In fact, I/we/Gaia find it incomprehensible. To want to be not part—to have your voice unheard—your deeds unwitnessed—your thoughts unsensed—” Bliss shook her head vigorously. “I said that we can block ourselves off in emergencies, but who would want to live that way, even for an hour?”

“I would,” said Trevize. “That is why I must find Earth—to find out the overriding reason, if any, that drove me to choose this dreadful fate for humanity.”

“It is not a dreadful fate, but let us not debate the matter. I will be with you, not as a spy, but as a friend and helper. Gaia will be with you not as a spy, but as a friend and helper.”

Trevize said, somberly, “Gaia could help me best by directing me to Earth.”

Slowly, Bliss shook her head. “Gaia doesn’t know the location of Earth. Dom has already told you that.”

“I don’t quite believe that. After all, you must have records. Why have I never been able to see those records during my stay here? Even if Gaia honestly doesn’t know where Earth might be located, I might gain some knowledge from the records. I know the Galaxy in considerable detail, undoubtedly much better than Gaia does. I might be able to understand and follow hints in your records that Gaia, perhaps, doesn’t quite catch.”

“But what records are these you talk of, Trevize?”

“Any records. Books, films, recordings, holographs, artifacts, whatever it is you have. In the time I’ve been here I haven’t seen one item that I would consider in any way a record. —Have you, Janov?”

“No,” said Pelorat hesitantly, “but I haven’t really looked.”

“Yet I have, in my quiet way,” said Trevize, “and I’ve seen nothing. Nothing! I can only suppose they’re being hidden from me. Why, I wonder? Would you tell me that?”

Bliss’s smooth young forehead wrinkled into a puzzled frown. “Why didn’t you ask before this? I/we/Gaia hide nothing, and we tell no lies. An Isolate—an individual in isolation—might tell lies. He is limited, and he is fearful because he is limited. Gaia, however, is a planetary organism of great mental ability and has no fear. For Gaia to tell lies, to create descriptions that are at variance with reality, is totally unnecessary.”

Trevize snorted. “Then why have I carefully been kept from seeing any records? Give me a reason that makes sense.”

“Of course.” She held out both hands, palms up before her. “We don’t have any records.”

Pelorat recovered first, seeming the less astonished of the two.

“My dear,” he said gently, “that is quite impossible. You cannot have a reasonable civilization without records of some kind.”

Bliss raised her eyebrows. “I understand that. I merely mean we have no records of the type that Trev—Trevize—is talking about, or was at all likely to come across. I/we/Gaia have no writings, no printings, no films, no computer data banks, nothing. We have no carvings on stone, for that matter. That’s all I’m saying. Naturally, since we have none of these, Trevize found none of these.”

Trevize said, “What do you have, then, if you don’t have any records that I would recognize as records?”

Bliss said, enunciating carefully, as though she were speaking to a child. “I/we/Gaia have a memory. I remember .”

“What do you remember?” asked Trevize.

“Everything.”

“You remember all reference data?”

“Certainly.”

“For how long? For how many years back?”

“For indefinite lengths of time.”

“You could give me historical data, biographical, geographical, scientific? Even local gossip?”

“Everything.”

“All in that little head.” Trevize pointed sardonically at Bliss’s right temple.

“No,” she said. “Gaia’s memories are not limited to the contents of my particular skull. See here”—for the moment she grew formal and even a little stern, as she ceased being Bliss solely and took on an amalgam of other units—“there must have been a time before the beginning of history when human beings were so primitive that, although they could remember events, they could not speak. Speech was invented and served to express memories and to transfer them from person to person. Writing was eventually invented in order to record memories and transfer them across time from generation to generation. All technological advance since then has served to make more room for the transfer and storage of memories and to make the recall of desired items easier. However, once individuals joined to form Gaia, all that became obsolete. We can return to memory, the basic system of record-keeping on which all else is built. Do you see that?”

Trevize said, “Are you saying that the sum total of all brains on Gaia can remember far more data than a single brain can?”