Isaac Asimov - Foundation and Earth

“Only seems to be,” said Bliss. “They’re approaching from beyond that rise.” She looked toward Trevize. “Do you think we ought to go to meet them?”

Trevize shook his head. “No. We’ve come to meet them across many parsecs. Let them walk the rest of the way. We’ll wait for them here.”

Only Bliss could sense the approach until, from the direction of her pointing finger, a figure appeared over the brow of the rise. Then a second, and a third.

“I believe that is all at the moment,” said Bliss.

Trevize watched curiously. Though he had never seen robots, there was not a particle of doubt in him that that was what they were. They had the schematic and impressionistic shape of human beings and yet were not obviously metallic in appearance. The robotic surface was dull and gave the illusion of softness, as though it were covered in plush.

But how did he know the softness was an illusion? Trevize felt a sudden desire to feel those figures who were approaching so stolidly. If it were true that this was a Forbidden World and that spaceships never approached it—and surely that must be so since the sun was not included in the Galactic map—then the Far Star and the people it carried must represent something the robots had never experienced. Yet they were reacting with steady certainty, as though they were working their way through a routine exercise.

Trevize said, in a low voice, “Here we may have information we can get nowhere else in the Galaxy. We could ask them for the location of Earth with reference to this world, and if they know, they will tell us. Who knows how long these things have functioned and endured? They may answer out of personal memory. Think of that.”

“On the other hand,” said Bliss, “they may be recently manufactured and may know nothing.”

“Or,” said Pelorat, “they may know, but may refuse to tell us.”

Trevize said, “I suspect they can’t refuse unless they’ve been ordered not to tell us, and why should such orders be issued when surely no one on this planet could have expected our coming?”

At a distance of about three meters, the robots stopped. They said nothing and made no further movement.

Trevize, his hand on his blaster, said to Bliss, without taking his eyes from the robot, “Can you tell whether they are hostile?”

“You’ll have to allow for the fact that I have no experience whatsoever with their mental workings, Trevize, but I don’t detect anything that seems hostile.”

Trevize took his right hand away from the butt of the weapon, but kept it near. He raised his left hand, palm toward the robots, in what he hoped would be recognized as a gesture of peace and said, speaking slowly, “I greet you. We come to this world as friends.”

The central robot of the three ducked his head in a kind of abortive bow that might also have been taken as a gesture of peace by an optimist, and replied.

Trevize’s jaw dropped in astonishment. In a world of Galactic communication, one did not think of failure in so fundamental a need. However, the robot did not speak in Galactic Standard or anything approaching it. In fact, Trevize could not understand a word.

Pelorat’s surprise was as great as that of Trevize, but there was an obvious element of pleasure in it, too.

“Isn’t that strange?” he said.

Trevize turned to him and said, with more than a touch of asperity in his voice, “It’s not strange. It’s gibberish.”

Pelorat said, “Not gibberish at all. It’s Galactic, but very archaic. I catch a few words. I could probably understand it easily if it were written down. It’s the pronunciation that’s the real puzzle.”

“Well, what did it say?”

“I think it told you it didn’t understand what you said.”

Bliss said, “I can’t tell what it said, but what I sense is puzzlement, which fits. That is, if I can trust my analysis of robotic emotion—or if there is such a thing as robotic emotion.”

Speaking very slowly, and with difficulty, Pelorat said something, and the three robots ducked their head in unison.

“What was that?” said Trevize.

Pelorat said, “I said I couldn’t speak well, but I would try. I asked for a little time. Dear me, old chap, this is fearfully interesting.”

“Fearfully disappointing,” muttered Trevize.

“You see,” said Pelorat, “every habitable planet in the Galaxy manages to work out its own variety of Galactic so that there are a million dialects that are sometimes barely intercomprehensible, but they’re all pulled together by the development of Galactic Standard. Assuming this world to have been isolated for twenty thousand years, the language would ordinarily drift so far from that of the rest of the Galaxy as to be an entirely different language. That it isn’t may be because the world has a social system that depends upon robots which can only understand the language as spoken in the fashion in which they were programmed. Rather than keep reprogramming, the language remained static and we now have what is to us merely a very archaic form of Galactic.”

“There’s an example,” said Trevize, “of how a robotized society can be held static and made to turn degenerate.”

“But, my dear fellow,” protested Pelorat, “keeping a language relatively unchanged is not necessarily a sign of degeneration. There are advantages to it. Documents preserved for centuries and millennia retain their meaning and give greater longevity and authority to historical records. In the rest of the Galaxy, the language of Imperial edicts of the time of Hari Seldon already begins to sound quaint.”

“And do you know this archaic Galactic?”

“Not to say know , Golan. It’s just that in studying ancient myths and legends I’ve picked up the trick of it. The vocabulary is not entirely different, but it is inflected differently, and there are idiomatic expressions we don’t use any longer and, as I have said, the pronunciation is totally changed. I can act as interpreter, but not as a very good one.”

Trevize heaved a tremulous sigh. “A small stroke of good fortune is better than none. Carry on, Janov.”

Pelorat turned to the robots, waited a moment, then looked back at Trevize. “What am I supposed to say?”

“Let’s go all the way. Ask them where Earth is.”

Pelorat said the words one at a time, with exaggerated gestures of his hands.

The robots looked at each other and made a few sounds. The middle one then spoke to Pelorat, who replied while moving his hands apart as though he were stretching a length of rubber. The robot responded by spacing his words as carefully as Pelorat had.

Pelorat said to Trevize, “I’m not sure I’m getting across what I mean by ‘Earth.’ I suspect they think I’m referring to some region on their planet and they say they don’t know of any such region.”

“Do they use the name of this planet, Janov?”

“The closest I can come to what I think they are using as the name is ‘Solaria.’ ”

“Have you ever heard of it in your legends?”

“No—any more than I had ever heard of Aurora.”

“Well, ask them if there is any place named Earth in the sky—among the stars. Point upward.”

Again an exchange, and finally Pelorat turned and said, “All I can get from them, Golan, is that there are no places in the sky.”

Bliss said, “Ask those robots how old they are; or rather, how long they have been functioning.”

“I don’t know how to say ‘functioning,’ ” said Pelorat, shaking his head. In fact, I’m not sure if I can say ‘how old.’ I’m not a very good interpreter.”

“Do the best you can, Pel dear,” said Bliss.

And after several exchanges, Pelorat said, “They’ve been functioning for twenty-six years.”