Isaac Asimov - Foundation and Earth

“Why should you touch it?”

“Well, I suppose I couldn’t quite believe my eyes. It was an automatic response. As soon as I touched it, it crumbled. But—”

“Yes?”

“Before it quite did, its eyes seemed to glow very faintly and it made a sound as though it were trying to say something.”

“You mean it was still functioning ?”

“Just barely, Golan. Then it collapsed.”

Trevize turned to Bliss. “Do you corroborate all this, Bliss?”

“It was a robot, and we saw it,” said Bliss.

“And was it still functioning?”

Bliss said tonelessly, “As it crumbled, I caught a faint sense of neuronic activity.”

“How can there have been neuronic activity? A robot doesn’t have an organic brain built of cells.”

“It has the computerized equivalent, I imagine,” said Bliss, “and I would detect that.”

“Did you detect a robotic rather than a human mentality?”

Bliss pursed her lips and said, “It was too feeble to decide anything about it except that it was there.”

Trevize looked at Bliss, then at Pelorat, and said, in a tone of exasperation, “This changes everything.”

Trevize seemed lost in thought during dinner, and Bliss concentrated on the food.

Pelorat, the only one who seemed anxious to speak, pointed out that if the world they were on was Aurora and if it was the first settled world, it ought to be fairly close to Earth.

“It might pay to scour the immediate stellar neighborhood,” he said. “It would only mean sifting through a few hundred stars at most.”

Trevize muttered that hit-and-miss was a last resort and he wanted as much information about Earth as possible before attempting to approach it even if he found it. He said no more and Pelorat, clearly squelched, dwindled into silence as well.

After the meal, as Trevize continued to volunteer nothing, Pelorat said tentatively, “Are we to be staying here, Golan?”

“Overnight, anyway,” said Trevize. “I need to do a bit more thinking.”

“Is it safe?”

“Unless there’s something worse than dogs about,” said Trevize, “we’re quite safe here in the ship.”

Pelorat said, “How long would it take to lift off, if there is something worse than dogs about?”

Trevize said, “The computer is on launch alert. I think we can manage to take off in between two and three minutes. And it will warn us quite effectively if anything unexpected takes place, so I suggest we all get some sleep. Tomorrow morning, I’ll come to a decision as to the next move.”

Easy to say, thought Trevize, as he found himself staring at the darkness. He was curled up, partly dressed, on the floor of the computer room. It was quite uncomfortable, but he was sure that his bed would be no more conducive to sleep at this time and here at least he could take action at once if the computer sounded an alarm.

Then he heard footsteps and automatically sat up, hitting his head against the edge of the desk—not hard enough to do damage, but hard enough to make rubbing and grimacing a necessity.

“Janov?” he said in a muffled voice, eyes tearing.

“No. It’s Bliss.”

Trevize reached over the edge of the table with one hand to make at least semicontact with the computer, and a soft light showed Bliss in a light pink wraparound.

Trevize said, “What is it?”

“I looked in your bedroom and you weren’t there. There was no mistaking your neuronic activity, however, and I followed it. You were clearly awake so I walked in.”

“Yes, but what is it you want?”

She sat down against the wall, knees up, and cradled her chin against them. She said, “Don’t be concerned. I have no designs on what’s left of your virginity.”

“I don’t imagine you do,” said Trevize sardonically. “Why aren’t you asleep? You need it more than we do.”

“Believe me,” she said in a low, heartfelt tone, “that episode with the dogs was very draining.”

“I believe that.”

“But I had to talk to you when Pel was sleeping.”

“About what?”

Bliss said, “When he told you about the robot, you said that that changes everything. What did you mean?”

Trevize said, “Don’t you see that for yourself? We have three sets of co-ordinates; three Forbidden Worlds. I want to visit all three to learn as much as possible about Earth before trying to reach it.”

He edged a bit closer so that he could speak lower still, then drew away sharply. He said, “Look, I don’t want Janov coming in here looking for us. I don’t know what he’d think.”

“It’s not likely. He’s sleeping and I’ve encouraged that just a bit. If he stirs, I’ll know. —Go on. You want to visit all three. What’s changed?”

“It wasn’t part of my plan to waste time on any world needlessly. If this world, Aurora, had been without human occupation for twenty thousand years, then it is doubtful that any information of value has survived. I don’t want to spend weeks or months scrabbling uselessly about the planetary surface, fighting off dogs and cats and bulls or whatever else may have become wild and dangerous, just on the hope of finding a scrap of reference material amid the dust, rust, and decay. It may be that on one or both of the other Forbidden Worlds there may be human beings and intact libraries. —So it was my intention to leave this world at once. We’d be out in space now, if I had done so, sleeping in perfect security.”

“But?”

“But if there are robots still functioning on this world, they may have important information that we could use. They would be safer to deal with than human beings would be, since, from what I’ve heard, they must follow orders and can’t harm human beings.”

“So you’ve changed your plan and now you’re going to spend time on this world searching for robots.”

“I don’t want to, Bliss. It seems to me that robots can’t last twenty thousand years without maintenance. —Yet since you’ve seen one with a spark of activity still, it’s clear I can’t rely on my commonsense guesses about robots. I mustn’t lead out of ignorance. Robots may be more enduring than I imagine, or they may have a certain capacity for self-maintenance.”

Bliss said, “Listen to me, Trevize, and please keep this confidential.”

“Confidential?” said Trevize, raising his voice in surprise. “From whom?”

“Sh! From Pel, of course. Look, you don’t have to change your plans. You were right the first time. There are no functioning robots on this world. I detect nothing.”

“You detected that one, and one is as good as—”

“I did not detect that one. It was nonfunctioning; long nonfunctioning.”

“You said—”

“I know what I said. Pel thought he saw motion and heard sound. Pel is a romantic. He’s spent his working life gathering data, but that is a difficult way of making one’s mark in the scholarly world. He would dearly love to make an important discovery of his own. His finding of the word ‘Aurora’ was legitimate and made him happier than you can imagine. He wanted desperately to find more.”

Trevize said, “Are you telling me he wanted to make a discovery so badly he convinced himself he had come upon a functioning robot when he hadn’t?”

“What he came upon was a lump of rust containing no more consciousness than the rock against which it rested.”

“But you supported his story.”

“I could not bring myself to rob him of his discovery. He means so much to me.”

Trevize stared at her for a full minute; then he said, “Do you mind explaining why he means so much to you? I want to know. I really want to know. To you he must seem an elderly man with nothing romantic about him. He’s an Isolate, and you despise Isolates. You’re young and beautiful and there must be other parts of Gaia that have the bodies of vigorous and handsome young men. With them you can have a physical relationship that can resonate through Gaia and bring peaks of esctasy. So what do you see in Janov?”