Isaac Asimov - Foundation's Edge

“If they are rational enough to want to question us, they may be rational enough not to kill us for no good reason.”

Trevize leaned back in his chair (it bent back at least—they hadn’t deprived the chair of its functioning) and placed his feet on the desk where ordinarily his hands made contact with the computer. He said, “They may be quite ingenious enough to work up what they consider a good reason. —Still, if they’ve touched our minds, it hasn’t been by much. If it were the Mule, for instance, he would have made us eager to go—exalted, exultant, every fiber of ourselves crying out for arrival there.” He pointed to the space station. “Do you feel that way, Janov?”

“Certainly not.”

“You see that I’m still in a state where I can indulge in cool, analytical reasoning. Very odd! Or can I tell? Am I in a panic, incoherent, mad—and merely under the illusion that I am indulging in cool, analytical reasoning?”

Pelorat shrugged. “You seem sane to me. Perhaps I am as insane as you and am under the same illusion, but that sort of argument gets us nowhere. All humanity could share a common insanity and be immersed in a common illusion while living in a common chaos. That can’t be disproved, but we have no choice but to follow our senses.” And then, abruptly, he said, “In fact, I’ve been doing some reasoning myself.”

“Yes?”

“Well, we talk about Gaia as a world of Mules, possibly, or as the Second Foundation reborn. Has it occurred to you that a third alternative exists, one that is more reasonable than either of the first two.”

“What third alternative?”

Pelorat’s eyes seemed concentrating inward. He did not look at Trevize and his voice was low and thoughtful. “We have a world—Gaia—that has done its best, over an indefinite period of time, to maintain a strict isolation. It has in no way attempted to establish contact with any other world—not even the nearby worlds of the Sayshell Union. It has an advanced science, in some ways, if the stories of their destruction of fleets is true and certainly their ability to control us right now bespeaks it—and yet they have made no attempt to expand their power. They ask only to be left alone.”

Trevize narrowed his eyes. “So?”

“It’s all very inhuman. The more than twenty thousand years of human history in space has been an uninterrupted tale of expansion and attempted expansion. Just about every known world that can be inhabited is inhabited. Nearly every world has been quarreled over in the process and nearly every world has jostled each of its neighbors at one time or another. If Gaia is so inhuman as to be so different in this respect, it may be because it really is—inhuman.”

Trevize shook his head. “Impossible.”

“Why impossible?” said Pelorat warmly. “I’ve told you what a puzzle it is that the human race is the only evolved intelligence in the Galaxy. What if it isn’t? Might there not be one more—on one planet—that lacked the human expansionist drive? In fact,” Pelorat grew more excited, “what if there are a million intelligences in the Galaxy, but only one that is expansionist—ourselves? The others would all remain at home, unobtrusive, hidden—”

“Ridiculous!” said Trevize. “We’d come across them. We’d land on their worlds. They would come in all types and stages of technology and most of them would be unable to stop us. But we’ve never come across any of them. Space! We’ve never even come across the ruins or relics of a non-human civilization, have we? You’re the historian, so you tell me. Have we?”

Pelorat shook his head. “We haven’t. —But Golan, there could be one! This one!”

“I don’t believe it. You say the name is Gaia, which is some ancient dialectical version of the name ‘Earth.’ How can that be nonhuman?”

“The name ‘Gaia’ is given the planet by human beings—and who knows why? The resemblance to an ancient world might be coincidental. —Come to think of it, the very fact that we’ve been lured to Gaia—as you explained in great detail some time ago—and are now being drawn in against our will is an argument in favor of the nonhumanity of the Gaians.”

“Why? What has that to do with nonhumanity?”

“They’re curious about us—about humans.”

Trevize said, “Janov, you’re mad. They’ve been living in a Galaxy surrounded by humans for thousands of years. Why should they be curious right now? Why not long before? And if right now, why us ? If they want to study human beings and human culture, why not the Sayshell worlds? Why would they reach all the way to Terminus for us?”

“They may be interested in the Foundation.”

“Nonsense,” said Trevize violently. “Janov, you want a nonhuman intelligence and you will have one. Right now, I think that if you thought you were going to encounter nonhumans, you wouldn’t worry about having been captured, about being helpless, about being killed even—if they but gave you a little time to sate your curiosity.”

Pelorat began to stutter an indignant negative, then stopped, drew a deep breath, and said, “Well, you may be right, Golan, but I’ll hold to my belief for a while just the same. I don’t think we’ll have to wait very long to see who’s right. —Look!”

He pointed to the screen. Trevize—who had, in his excitement, ceased watching—now looked back. “What is it?” he said.

“Isn’t that a ship taking off from the station?”

“It’s something ,” admitted Trevize reluctantly. “I can’t make out the details yet and I can’t magnify the view any further. It’s a maximum magnification.” After awhile he said, “It seems to be approaching us and I suppose it’s a ship. Shall we make a bet?”

“What sort of bet?”

Trevize said sardonically, “If we ever get back to Terminus, let’s have a big dinner for ourselves and any guests we each care to invite, up to, say, four—and it will be on me if that ship approaching us carries nonhumans and on you if it carries humans.”

“I’m willing,” said Pelorat.

“Done, then,” and Trevize peered at the screen, trying to make out details and wondering if any details could reasonably be expected to give away, beyond question, the nonhumanity (or humanity) of the beings on board.

Branno’s iron-gray hair lay immaculately in place and she might have been in the Mayoral Palace, considering her equanimity. She showed no sign that she was deep in space for only the second time in her life. (And the first time—when she accompanied her parents on a holiday tour to Kalgan—could scarcely count. She had been only three at the time.)

She said to Kodell with a certain weary heaviness, “It is Thoobing’s job, after all, to express his opinion and to warn me. Very well, he has warned me. I don’t hold it against him.”

Kodell, who had boarded the Mayor’s ship in order to speak to her without the psychological difficulty of imaging, said, “He’s been at his post too long. He’s beginning to think like a Sayshellian.”

“That’s the occupational hazard of an ambassadorship, Liono. Let us wait till this is over and we’ll give him a long sabbatical and then send him on to another assignment elsewhere. He’s a capable man. —After all, he did have the wit to forward Trevize’s message without delay.”

Kodell smiled briefly. “Yes, he told me he did it against his better judgment. ‘I do so because I must’ he said. You see, Madam Mayor, he had to, even against his better judgment, because as soon as Trevize entered the space of the Sayshell Union, I informed Ambassador Thoobing to forward, at once, any and all information concerning him.”