Isaac Asimov - Foundation and Earth

Again Pelorat echoed, “Bliss? Bliss? What happened, Golan?”

Trevize said, “Bander must be dead. He would, in that case, be unable to supply the power for his estate. The lights would go out.”

“But how could—? You mean Bliss did it?”

“I suppose so. I hope she did not come to harm in the process.” He was on his hands and knees crawling about in the total darkness of the underground (if one did not count the occasional subvisible flashing of a radioactive atom breaking down in the walls).

Then his hand came on something warm and soft. He felt along it and recognized a leg, which he seized. It was clearly too small to be Bander’s. “Bliss?”

The leg kicked out, forcing Trevize to let go.

He said, “Bliss? Say something!”

“I am alive,” came Bliss’s voice, curiously distorted.

Trevize said, “But are you well?”

“No.” And, with that, light returned to their surroundings—weakly. The walls gleamed faintly, brightening and dimming erratically.

Bander lay crumpled in a shadowy heap. At its side, holding its head, was Bliss.

She looked up at Trevize and Pelorat. “The Solarian is dead,” she said, and her cheeks glistened with tears in the weak light.

Trevize was dumbfounded. “Why are you crying?”

“Should I not cry at having killed a living thing of thought and intelligence? That was not my intention.”

Trevize leaned down to help her to her feet, but she pushed him away.

Pelorat knelt in his turn, saying softly, “Please, Bliss, even you can’t bring it back to life. Tell us what happened.”

She allowed herself to be pulled upward and said dully, “Gaia can do what Bander could do. Gaia can make use of the unevenly distributed energy of the Universe and translate it into chosen work by mental power alone.”

“I knew that,” said Trevize, attempting to be soothing without quite knowing how to go about it. “I remember well our meeting in space when you—or Gaia, rather—held our spaceship captive. I thought of that when Bander held me captive after it had taken my weapons. It held you captive, too, but I was confident you could have broken free if you had wished.”

“No. I would have failed if I had tried. When your ship was in my/our/Gaia’s grip,” she said sadly, “I and Gaia were truly one. Now there is a hyperspatial separation that limits my/our/Gaia’s efficiency. Besides, Gaia does what it does by the sheer power of massed brains. Even so, all those brains together lack the transducer-lobes this one Solarian has. We cannot make use of energy as delicately, as efficiently, as tirelessly as he could. —You see that I cannot make the lights gleam more brightly, and I don’t know how long I can make them gleam at all before tiring. Bander could supply the power for an entire vast estate, even when it was sleeping.”

“But you stopped it,” said Trevize.

“Because it didn’t suspect my powers,” said Bliss, “and because I did nothing that would give it evidence of them. It was therefore without suspicion of me and gave me none of its attention. It concentrated entirely on you, Trevize, because it was you who bore the weapons—again, how well it has served that you armed yourself—and I had to wait my chance to stop Bander with one quick and unexpected blow. When it was on the point of killing us, when its whole mind was concentrated on that, and on you, I was able to strike.”

“And it worked beautifully.”

“How can you say something so cruel, Trevize? It was only my intention to stop it. I merely wished to block its use of its transducer. In the moment of surprise when it tried to blast us and found it could not, but found, instead, that the very illumination about us was fading into darkness, I would tighten my grip and send it into a prolonged normal sleep and release the transducer. The power would then remain on, and we could get out of this mansion, into our ship, and leave the planet. I hoped to so arrange things that, when Bander finally woke, it would have forgotten all that had happened from the instant of its sighting us. Gaia has no desire to kill in order to accomplish what can be brought about without killing.”

“What went wrong, Bliss?” said Pelorat softly.

“I had never encountered any such thing as those transducer-lobes and I lacked any time to work with them and learn about them. I merely struck out forcefully with my blocking maneuver and, apparently, it didn’t work correctly. It was not the entry of energy into the lobes that was blocked, but the exit of that energy. Energy is always pouring into those lobes at a reckless rate but, ordinarily, the brain safeguards itself by pouring out that energy just as quickly. Once I blocked the exit, however, energy piled up within the lobes at once and, in a tiny fraction of a second, the temperature had risen to the point where the brain protein inactivated explosively and it was dead. The lights went out and I removed my block immediately, but, of course, it was too late.”

“I don’t see that you could have done anything other than that which you did, dear,” said Pelorat.

“Of what comfort is that, considering that I have killed.”

“Bander was on the point of killing us,” said Trevize.

“That was cause for stopping it, not for killing it.”

Trevize hesitated. He did not wish to show the impatience he felt for he was unwilling to offend or further upset Bliss, who was, after all, their only defense against a supremely hostile world.

He said, “Bliss, it is time to look beyond Bander’s death. Because it is dead, all power on the estate is blanked out. This will be noticed, sooner or later, probably sooner, by other Solarians. They will be forced to investigate. I don’t think you will be able to hold off the perhaps combined attack of several. And, as you have admitted yourself, you won’t be able to supply for very long the limited power you are managing to supply now. It is important, therefore, that we get back to the surface, and to our ship, without delay.”

“But, Golan,” said Pelorat, “how do we do that? We came for many kilometers along a winding path. I imagine it’s quite a maze down here and, for myself, I haven’t the faintest idea of where to go to reach the surface. I’ve always had a poor sense of direction.”

Trevize, looking about, realized that Pelorat was correct. He said, “I imagine there are many openings to the surface, and we needn’t find the one we entered.”

“But we don’t know where any of the openings are. How do we find them?”

Trevize turned again to Bliss. “Can you detect anything, mentally, that will help us find our way out?”

Bliss said, “The robots on this estate are all inactive. I can detect a thin whisper of subintelligent life straight up, but all that tells us is that the surface is straight up, which we know.”

“Well, then,” said Trevize, “we’ll just have to look for some opening.”

“Hit-and-miss,” said Pelorat, appalled. “We’ll never succeed.”

“We might, Janov,” said Trevize. “If we search, there will be a chance, however small. The alternative is simply to stay here, and if we do that then we will never succeed. Come, a small chance is better than none.”

“Wait,” said Bliss. “I do sense something.”

“What?” said Trevize.

“A mind.”

“Intelligence?”

“Yes, but limited, I think. What reaches me most clearly, though, is something else.”

“What?” said Trevize, again fighting impatience.

“Fright! Intolerable fright!” said Bliss, in a whisper.

Trevize looked about ruefully. He knew where they had entered but he had no illusion on the score of being able to retrace the path by which they had come. He had, after all, paid little attention to the turnings and windings. Who would have thought they’d be in the position of having to retrace the route alone and without help, and with only a flickering, dim light to be guided by?