Isaac Asimov - Foundation and Earth

“And meanwhile, underground, we worked to solve our problems. We adjusted our genes gingerly, delicately. We had failures, but some successes, and we capitalized on the successes. It took us many centuries, but we finally became whole human beings, incorporating both the masculine and feminine principles in one body, supplying our own complete pleasure at will, and producing, when we wished, fertilized eggs for development under skilled robotic care.”

“Hermaphrodites,” said Pelorat.

“Is that what it is called in your language?” asked Bander indifferently. “I have never heard the word.”

“Hermaphroditism stops evolution dead in its tracks,” said Trevize. “Each child is the genetic duplicate of its hermaphroditic parent.”

“Come,” said Bander, “you treat evolution as a hit-and-miss affair. We can design our children if we wish. We can change and adjust the genes and, on occasion, we do. —But we are almost at my dwelling. Let us enter. It grows late in the day. The sun already fails to give its warmth adequately and we will be more comfortable indoors.”

They passed through a door that had no locks of any kind but that opened as they approached and closed behind them as they passed through. There were no windows, but as they entered a cavernous room, the walls glowed to luminous life and brightened. The floor seemed bare, but was soft and springy to the touch. In each of the four corners of the room, a robot stood motionless.

“That wall,” said Bander, pointing to the wall opposite the door—a wall that seemed no different in any way from the other three—“is my vision-screen. The world opens before me through that screen but it in no way limits my freedom for I cannot be compelled to use it.”

Trevize said, “Nor can you compel another to use his if you wish to see him through that screen and he does not.”

“Compel?” said Bander haughtily. “Let another do as it pleases, if it is but content that I do as I please. Please note that we do not use gendered pronouns in referring to each other.”

There was one chair in the room, facing the vision-screen, and Bander sat down in it.

Trevize looked about, as though expecting additional chairs to spring from the floor. “May we sit, too?” he said.

“If you wish,” said Bander.

Bliss, smiling, sat down on the floor. Pelorat sat down beside her. Trevize stubbornly continued to stand.

Bliss said, “Tell me, Bander, how many human beings live on this planet?”

“Say Solarians, half-human Bliss. The phrase ‘human being’ is contaminated by the fact that half-humans call themselves that. We might call ourselves whole-humans, but that is clumsy. Solarian is the proper term.”

“How many Solarians, then, live on this planet?”

“I am not certain. We do not count ourselves. Perhaps twelve hundred.”

“Only twelve hundred on the entire world?”

“Fully twelve hundred. You count in numbers again, while we count in quality. —Nor do you understand freedom. If one other Solarian exists to dispute my absolute mastery over any part of my land, over any robot or living thing or object, my freedom is limited. Since other Solarians exist, the limitation on freedom must be removed as far as possible by separating them all to the point where contact is virtually nonexistent. Solaria will hold twelve hundred Solarians under conditions approaching the ideal. Add more, and liberty will be palpably limited so that the result will be unendurable.”

“That means each child must be counted and must balance deaths,” said Pelorat suddenly.

“Certainly. That must be true of any world with a stable population—even yours, perhaps.”

“And since there are probably few deaths, there must therefore be few children.”

“Indeed.”

Pelorat nodded his head and was silent.

Trevize said, “What I want to know is how you made my weapons fly through the air. You haven’t explained that.”

“I offered you sorcery or magic as an explanation. Do you refuse to accept that?”

“Of course I refuse. What do you take me for?”

“Will you, then, believe in the conservation of energy, and in the necessary increase of entropy?”

“That I do. Nor can I believe that even in twenty thousand years you have changed these laws, or modified them a micrometer.”

“Nor have we, half-person. But now consider. Outdoors, there is sunlight.” There was its oddly graceful gesture, as though marking out sunlight all about. “And there is shade. It is warmer in the sunlight than in the shade, and heat flows spontaneously from the sunlit area into the shaded area.”

“You tell me what I know,” said Trevize.

“But perhaps you know it so well that you no longer think about it. And at night, Solaria’s surface is warmer than the objects beyond its atmosphere, so that heat flows spontaneously from the planetary surface into outer space.”

“I know that, too.”

“And day or night, the planetary interior is warmer than the planetary surface. Heat therefore flows spontaneously from the interior to the surface. I imagine you know that, too.”

“And what of all that, Bander?”

“The flow of heat from hotter to colder, which must take place by the second law of thermodynamics, can be used to do work.”

“In theory, yes, but sunlight is dilute, the heat of the planetary surface is even more dilute, and the rate at which heat escapes from the interior makes that the most dilute of all. The amount of heat-flow that can be harnessed would probably not be enough to lift a pebble.”

“It depends on the device you use for the purpose,” said Bander. “Our own tool was developed over a period of thousands of years and it is nothing less than a portion of our brain.”

Bander lifted the hair on either side of its head, exposing that portion of its skull behind its ears. It turned its head this way and that, and behind each ear was a bulge the size and shape of the blunt end of a hen’s egg.

“That portion of my brain, and its absence in you, is what makes the difference between a Solarian and you.”

Trevize glanced now and then at Bliss’s face, which seemed entirely concentrated on Bander. Trevize had grown quite certain he knew what was going on.

Bander, despite its paean to freedom, found this unique opportunity irresistible. There was no way it could speak to robots on a basis of intellectual equality, and certainly not to animals. To speak to its fellow-Solarians would be, to it, unpleasant, and what communication there must be would be forced, and never spontaneous.

As for Trevize, Bliss, and Pelorat, they might be half-human to Bander, and it might regard them as no more an infringement on its liberty than a robot or a goat would be—but they were its intellectual equals (or near equals) and the chance to speak to them was a unique luxury it had never experienced before.

No wonder, Trevize thought, it was indulging itself in this way. And Bliss (Trevize was doubly sure) was encouraging this, just pushing Bander’s mind ever so gently in order to urge it to do what it very much wanted to do in any case.

Bliss, presumably, was working on the supposition that if Bander spoke enough, it might tell them something useful concerning Earth. That made sense to Trevize, so that even if he had not been truly curious about the subject under discussion, he would nevertheless have endeavored to continue the conversation.

“What do those brain-lobes do?” Trevize asked.

Bander said, “They are transducers. They are activated by the flow of heat and they convert the heat-flow into mechanical energy.”

“I cannot believe that. The flow of heat is insufficient.”

“Little half-human, you do not think. If there were many Solarians crowded together, each trying to make use of the flow of heat, then, yes, the supply would be insufficient. I, however, have over forty thousand square kilometers that are mine, mine alone. I can collect heat-flow from any quantity of those square kilometers with no one to dispute me, so the quantity is sufficient. Do you see?”