Isaac Asimov - Robots and Empire

The four left, mournful, hangdog, tight-lipped. Niss remained, a bruise developing on his face, his arms clearly in discomfort.

D.G. regarded him with a threatening quiet, while Niss stared to the left, to the right, at his feet, everywhere but at the face of the captain. It was only when Niss’s eyes, running out of evasion, caught the glare of the captain, that D.G. said, “Well, you look very handsome, now that you have tangled with a sissy Spacer half your size. Next time you better hide when one of them shows up—”

“Yes, Captain,” said Niss miserably.

“Did you or did you not, Niss, hear me in my briefing, before we left Aurora, say that the Spacer woman and her companions were on no account to be disturbed or spoken to?”

“Captain, I wanted only a polite howdy do. We was curious for a closer look. No harm meant.”

“You meant no harm? You I asked how old she was. Was that your business?”

“Just curious. Wanted to know.”

“One of you made a sexual suggestion.”

“Not me, Captain.”

“Someone else? Did you apologize—for it?”

“To a Spacer?” Niss sounded horrified.

“Certainly. You were going against my orders.”

“I meant no harm,” said Niss doggedly.

“You meant no harm to the man?”

“He put his hand on me, Captain.”

“I know he did. Why?”

“Because he was ordering me around.”

“And you wouldn’t stand for it?”

“Would you, Captain?”

“All right, then. You didn’t stand for it. You fell down for it. Right on your face. How did that happen?”

“I don’t rightly know, Captain. He was fast. Like the camera was sped up. And he had a grip like iron.”

D.G. said, “So he did. What did you expect, you idiot? He is iron.”

“Captain?”

“Niss, is it possible you don’t know the story of Elijah Baley?”

Niss rubbed his ear in embarrassment. “I know he’s your great-something-grandfather, Captain.”

“Yes, everyone knows that from my name. Have you ever viewed his life story?”

“I’m not a viewing man, Captain. Not on history.” He shrugged and, as he did so, winced and made as though to rub his shoulder, then decided he didn’t quite dare do so.

“Did you ever hear of R. Daneel Olivaw?”

Niss squeezed his brows together. “He was Elijah Baley’s friend.”

“Yes, he was. You do know something then. Do you know what the ‘R’ stands for in R. Daneel Olivaw?”

“It stands for ‘Robot,’ right? He was a robot friend. There was robots on Earth in them days.”

“There were, Niss, and still are. But Daneel wasn’t just a robot. He was a Spacer robot who looked like a Spacer man. Think about it, Niss. Guess who the Spacer man you picked a fight with really was.”

Niss’s eyes widened, his face reddened dully. “You mean that Spacer was a ro—”

“That was R. Daneel Olivaw.”

“But, Captain, that was two hundred years ago.”

“Yes and the Spacer woman was a particular friend of my Ancestor Elijah. She’s been alive for two hundred and thirty-three years, incase you still want to know, and do you think a robot can’t do as well as that? You were trying to fight a robot, you great fool.”

“Why didn’t it say so?” Niss said with great indignation.

“Why should it? Did you ask? See here, Niss. You heard what I told the others about telling this to anyone. It goes for you, too, but much more so. They are only crewmen, but I had my eye on you for crew leader. Had my eye on you. If you’re going to be in charge of the crew, you’ve got to have brains and not just muscle. So now it’s going to be harder for you because you’re going to have to prove you have brains against my firm opinion that you don’t.”

“Captain, I—”

“Don’t talk. Listen. If this story gets out, the other four will be apprentice shippers, but you will be nothing. You will never go on shipboard again. No ship will take you, I promise you that. Not as crew, not as passenger. Ask yourself what kind of money you can make on Baleyworld and doing what? That’s if you talk about this, or if you cross the Spacer woman in any way, or even just look at her for more than half a second at a time, or at her two robots. And you are going to have to see to it that no one else among the crew is in the least offensive. You’re responsible. And you’re fined two week’s pay.”

“But, Captain,” said Niss weakly, “the others—”

“I expected less from the others, Niss, so I fined them less. Get out of here.”

D.G. played idly with the photocube that always stood on his desk. Each time he turned it, it blackened, then cleared when stood upon one of its sides as its base. When it cleared, the smiling three-dimensional image of a woman’s head could be seen.—Crew rumor was that each of the six sides lead to the appearance of a different woman. The rumor was quite correct.

Jamin Oser watched the flashing appearance and disappearance of images totally without interest. Now that the ship was secured—or as secured as it could be against attack of any expected variety—it was time to think of the next step.

D.G., however, was approaching the matter obliquely—or, perhaps, not approaching it at all. He said, “It was the woman’s fault, of course.”

Oser shrugged and passed his hand over his beard, as though he were reassuring himself that he, at least, was not a woman. Unlike D.G., Oser had his upper lip luxuriantly covered as well.

D.G. said, “Apparently, being on the planet of her birth removed any thought of discretion. She left the ship, even though I had asked her not to.”

“You might have ordered her not to.”

“I don’t know that that would have helped. She’s a spoiled aristocrat, used to having her own way and to ordering her robots about. Besides, I plan to use her and I want her cooperation, not her pouting. And again—she was the Ancestor’s friend. “

“And still alive,” said Oser, shaking his head. “It makes the skin crawl. An old, old woman.”

“I know, but she looks quite young. Still attractive. And nose in the air. Wouldn’t retire when the crewmen approached, wouldn’t shake hands with one of them.—Well, it’s over.”

“Still, Captain, was it the right thing to tell Niss he had tackled a robot?”

“Had to! Had to, Oser. If he thought he’d been beaten and humiliated before four of his mates by an effeminate Spacer half his size, he’d be useless to us forever. It would have broken him completely. And we don’t want anything to happen that will start the rumor that Spacers—that human Spacers—are supermen. That’s why I had to order them so strenuously not to talk about it. Niss will ride herd on all of them—and if it does get out, it will also get out that the Spacer was a robot.—But I suppose there was a good side to the whole thing.”

“Where, Captain?” asked Oser.

“It got me to thinking about robots. How much do we know about them? How much do you know?”

Oser shrugged. “Captain, it’s not something I think about much.”

“Or something anyone else thinks about, either. At least, any Settler. We know that the Spacers have robots, depend on them, go nowhere without them, can’t do a thing without them, are parasites on them, and we’re sure they’re fading away because of them. We know that Earth once had robots forced on them by the Spacers and that they are gradually disappearing from Earth and are not found at all in Earth Cities, only in the countryside. We know that the Settler worlds don’t and won’t have them anywhere—town or country. So Settlers never meet them on their own worlds and hardly ever on Earth.” (His voice had a curious inflection each time he said “Earth,” as though one could hear the capital, as though one could hear the words “home” and “mother” whispered behind it.) “What else do we know?”