Isaac Asimov - Robots and Empire

Its appearance would not be unique. All the stars that carried, among their planets, a habitable world in the human sense had a long list of property requirements that ended by making them all resemble one another. They were all single stars—all not much larger or smaller than the sun that shone on Earth—none too active, or too old, or too quiet, or too young, or too hot, or too cool, or too offbeat in chemical composition. All had sunspots and flares and prominences and all looked just about the same to the eye. It took careful spectroheliography to work out the details that made each star unique.

Nevertheless, when Gladia found herself staring at a circle of light that was absolutely nothing more than a circle of light to her, she found her eyes welling with tears. She had never given the sun a thought when she had lived on Solaria; it was just the eternal source of light and heat, rising and falling in a steady rhythm. When she had left Solaria, she had watched that sun disappear behind her with nothing but a feeling of thankfulness. She had no memory—of it that she valued.

Yet she was weeping silently. She was ashamed of herself for being so affected for no reason that she could explain, but that didn’t stop the weeping.

She made a stronger effort when the signal light gleamed. It had to be D.G. at the door; no one else would approach her cabin.

Daneel said, “Is he to enter, madam? You seem emotionally moved.”

“Yes, I’m emotionally moved, Daneel, but let him in. I imagine it won’t come as a surprise to him.”

Yet it did. At least, he entered with a smile on his bearded face—and that smile disappeared almost at once. He stepped back and said in a low voice, “I will return later.”

“Stay!” said Gladia harshly. “This is nothing. A silly reaction of the moment.” She sniffed and dabbed angrily at her eyes. “Why are you here?”

“I wanted to discuss Solaria with you. If we succeed with a microadjustment, we’ll land tomorrow. If you’re not quite up to a discussion now—”

“I am quite up to it. In fact, I have a question for you. Why is it we took dime Jumps to get here? One Jump would have been sufficient. One was sufficient when I was taken from Solaria to Aurora twenty decades ago. Surely the technique of space travel has not retrogressed since.”

D.G.’s grin returned. “Evasive action. If an Auroran ship was following us, I wanted to—confuse it, shall we say.”

“Why should one follow us?”

“Just a thought, my lady. The Council was a little overeager to help, I thought. They suggested that an Auroran ship join me in my expedition to Solaria.”

“Well, it might have helped, mightn’t it?”

“Perhaps—if I were quite certain that Aurora wasn’t behind all this. I told the Council quite plainly that I would do without—or, rather”—he pointed his finger at Gladia—“Just with you. Yet might not the Council send a ship to accompany me even against my wish—out of pure kindness of heart, let us say? Well, I still don’t want one; I expect enough trouble without having to look nervously over my shoulder at every moment. So I made myself hard to follow.—How much do you know about Solaria, my lady?”

“Haven’t I told you often enough? Nothing! Twenty decades have passed.”

“Now, madam, I’m talking about the psychology of the Solarians. That can’t have changed in merely twenty decades.—Tell me why they have abandoned their planet.”

“The story, as I’ve heard it,” said Gladia calmly, “is that their population has been steadily declining. A combination of premature deaths and very few births is apparently responsible.”

“Does that sound reasonable to you?”

“Of course it does. Births have always been few.” Her face twisted in memory. “Solarian custom does not make impregnation easy, either naturally, artificially, or ectogenetically.”

“You never had children, madam?”

“Not on Solaria.”

“And the premature death?”

“I can only guess. I suppose it arose out of a feeling of failure. Solaria was clearly not working out, even though the Solarians had placed a great deal of emotional fervor into their world’s having the ideal society—not only one that was better than Earth had ever had, but more nearly perfect than that of any other Spacer world.”

“Are you saying that Solaria was dying of the collective broken heart of its people?”

“If you want to put it in that ridiculous way,” said Gladia, displeased.

D.G. shrugged. “It seems to be what you’re saying. But would they really leave? Where would they go? How would they live?”

“I don’t know.”

“But, Madam Gladia, it is well known that Solarians are accustomed to enormous tracts of land, serviced by many thousands of robots, so that each Solarian is left in almost complete isolation. If they abandon Solaria, where can they go to find a society that would humor them in this fashion? Have they, in fact, gone to any of the other Spacer worlds?”

“Not as far as I know. But then, I’m not in their confidence.”

“Can they have found a new world for themselves? If so, it would be a raw one and require much in the way of terraforming. Would they be ready for that?”

Gladia shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“Perhaps they haven’t really left.”

“Solaria, I understand, gives every evidence of being empty.”

“What evidence is that?”

“All interplanetary communication has ceased. All radiation from the planet, except that consistent with robot work or clearly due to natural causes has ceased.”

“How do you know that?”

“That is the report on the Auroran news.”

“Ah! The report! Could it be that someone is lying?”

“What would be the purpose of such a lie?” Gladia stiffened at the suggestion.

“So that our ships would be lured to the world and destroyed.”

“That’s ridiculous, D.G.” Her voice grew sharper. “What would the Spacers gain by destroying two trading vessels through so elaborate a subterfuge?”

“Something has destroyed two Settler vessels on a supposedly empty planet. How do you explain that?”

“I can’t. I presume we are going to Solaria in order to find an explanation.”

D.G. regarded her gravely. “Would you be able to guide me to the section of the world that was yours when you lived on Solaria?”

“My estate?” She returned his stare, astonished.

“Wouldn’t you like to see it again?”

Gladia’s heart skipped a beat. “Yes, I would, but why my place?”

“The two ships that were destroyed landed in widely different spots on the planet and yet each was destroyed fairly quickly. Though every spot may be deadly, it seems to me that yours might be less so than others.”

“Why?”

“Because there we might receive help from the robots. You would know them, wouldn’t you? They do last more than twenty decades, I suppose. Daneel and Giskard have. And those that were there when you lived on your estate would still remember you, wouldn’t they? They would treat you as their mistress and recognize the duty they owed you even beyond that which they would owe to ordinary human beings.”

Gladia said, “There were ten thousand robots on my estate. I knew perhaps three dozen by sight. Most of the rest I never saw and they may not have ever seen me. Agricultural robots are not very advanced, you know, nor are forestry robots or mining robots. The household robots would still remember me—if they have not been sold or transferred since I left. Then, too, accidents happen and some robots don’t last twenty decades.—Besides, whatever you may think of robot memory, human memory is fallible and I might remember none of them.”