Isaac Asimov - Foundation and Earth

Bliss looked at Trevize solemnly. “Don’t you love him?”

Trevize shrugged and said, “I’m fond of him. I suppose you could say, in a nonsexual way, that I love him.”

“You haven’t known him very long, Trevize. Why do you love him, in that nonsexual way of yours?”

Trevize found himself smiling without being aware of it. “He’s such an odd fellow. I honestly think that never in his life has he given a single thought to himself. He was ordered to go along with me, and he went. No objection. He wanted me to go to Trantor, but when I said I wanted to go to Gaia, he never argued. And now he’s come along with me in this search for Earth, though he must know it’s dangerous. I feel perfectly confident that if he had to sacrifice his life for me—or for anyone—he would, and without repining.”

“Would you give your life for him, Trevize?”

“I might, if I didn’t have time to think. If I did have time to think, I would hesitate and I might funk it. I’m not as good as he is. And because of that, I have this terrible urge to protect and keep him good. I don’t want the Galaxy to teach him not to be good. Do you understand? And I have to protect him from you particularly. I can’t bear the thought of you tossing him aside when whatever nonsense amuses you now is done with.”

“Yes, I thought you’d think something like that. Don’t you suppose I see in Pel what you see in him—and even more so, since I can contact his mind directly? Do I act as though I want to hurt him? Would I support his fantasy of having seen a functioning robot, if it weren’t that I couldn’t bear to hurt him? Trevize, I am used to what you would call goodness, for every part of Gaia is ready to be sacrificed for the whole. We know and understand no other course of action. But we give up nothing in so doing, for each part is the whole, though I don’t expect you to understand that. Pel is something different.”

Bliss was no longer looking at Trevize. It was as though she were talking to herself. “He is an Isolate. He is not selfless because he is a part of a greater whole. He is selfless because he is selfless. Do you understand me? He has all to lose and nothing to gain, and yet he is what he is. He shames me for being what I am without fear of loss, when he is what he is without hope of gain.”

She looked up at Trevize again now, very solemnly. “Do you know how much more I understand about him than you possibly can? And do you think I would harm him in any way?”

Trevize said, “Bliss, earlier today, you said, ‘Come, let us be friends,’ and all I replied was, ‘If you wish.’ That was grudging of me, for I was thinking of what you might do to Janov. It is my turn, now. Come, Bliss, let us be friends. You can keep on pointing out the advantage of Galaxia and I may keep on refusing to accept your arguments, but even so, and despite that, let us be friends.” And he held out his hand.

“Of course, Trevize,” she said, and their hands gripped each other strongly.

Trevize grinned quietly to himself. It was an internal grin, for the line of his mouth didn’t budge.

When he had worked with the computer to find the star (if any) of the first set of co-ordinates, both Pelorat and Bliss had watched intently and had asked questions. Now they stayed in their room and slept or, at any rate, relaxed, and left the job entirely to Trevize.

In a way, it was flattering, for it seemed to Trevize that by now they had simply accepted the fact that Trevize knew what he was doing and required no supervision or encouragement. For that matter, Trevize had gained enough experience from the first episode to rely more thoroughly on the computer and to feel that it needed, if not none, then at least less supervision.

Another star—luminous and unrecorded on the Galactic map—showed up. This second star was more luminous than the star about which Aurora circled, and that made it all the more significant that the star was unrecorded in the computer.

Trevize marveled at the peculiarities of ancient tradition. Whole centuries might be telescoped or dropped out of consciousness altogether. Entire civilizations might be banished into forgetfulness. Yet out of the midst of these centuries, snatched from those civilizations, might be one or two factual items that would be remembered undistorted—such as these coordinates.

He had remarked on this to Pelorat some time before, and Pelorat had at once told him that it was precisely this that made the study of myths and legends so rewarding. “The trick is,” Pelorat had said, “to work out or decide which particular components of a legend represent accurate underlying truth. That isn’t easy and different mythologists are likely to pick different components, depending, usually, on which happen to suit their particular interpretations.”

In any case, the star was right where Deniador’s co-ordinates, corrected for time, said it would be. Trevize was prepared, at this moment, to wager a considerable sum that the third star would be in place as well. And if it was, Trevize was prepared to suspect that the legend was further correct in stating that there were fifty Forbidden Worlds altogether (despite the suspiciously even number) and to wonder where the other forty-seven might be.

A habitable world, Forbidden World, was found circling the star—and by this time its presence didn’t cause even a ripple of surprise in Trevize’s bosom. He had been absolutely sure it would be there. He set the Far Star into a slow orbit about it.

The cloud layer was sparse enough to allow a reasonable view of the surface from space. The world was a watery one, as almost all habitable worlds were. There was an unbroken tropical ocean and two unbroken polar oceans. In one set of middle latitudes, there was a more or less serpentine continent encircling the world with bays on either side producing an occasional narrow isthmus. In the other set of middle latitudes, the land surface was broken into three large parts and each of the three were thicker north-south than the opposite continent was.

Trevize wished he knew enough climatology to be able to predict, from what he saw, what the temperatures and seasons might be like. For a moment, he toyed with the idea of having the computer work on the problem. The trouble was that climate was not the point at issue.

Much more important was that, once again, the computer detected no radiation that might be of technological origin. What his telescope told him was that the planet was not moth-eaten and that there were no signs of desert. The land moved backward in various shades of green, but there were no signs of urban areas on the dayside, no lights on the nightside.

Was this another planet filled with every kind of life but human?

He rapped at the door of the other bedroom.

“Bliss?” he called out in a loud whisper, and rapped again.

There was a rustling, and Bliss’s voice said, “Yes?”

“Could you come out here? I need your help.”

“If you wait just a bit, I’ll make myself a bit presentable.”

When she finally appeared, she looked as presentable as Trevize had ever seen her. He felt a twinge of annoyance at having been made to wait, however, for it made little difference to him what she looked like. But they were friends now, and he suppressed the annoyance.

She said with a smile and in a perfectly pleasant tone, “What can I do for you, Trevize?”

Trevize waved at the viewscreen. “As you can see, we’re passing over the surface of what looks like a perfectly healthy world with a quite solid vegetation cover its land area. No lights at night, however, and no technological radiation. Please listen and tell me if there’s any animal life. There was one point at which I thought I could see herds of grazing animals, but I wasn’t sure. It might be a case of seeing what one desperately wants to see.”