Isaac Asimov - Robots and Empire

“Women to make love to.”

“Alas for human frailty,” said D.G., grinning broadly.

“You’re doing everything but slobber.”

“A weakness. I can’t bring myself to slobber.”

Gladia smiled. “You’re not totally committed to sanity, are you?”

“I never claimed to be. But, leaving that aside, I also have to consider such dull matters as the fact that my officers and crew would want to see their families and friends, catch up on their sleep, and have a little planetside fun.—And if you want to consider the feelings of inanimate objects, the ship will have to be repaired, refurbished, refreshed, and refueled. Little things like that.”

“How long will all those little things take?”

“It could be months. Who knows?”

“And what do I do meanwhile?”

“You could see our world, broaden your horizons.”

“But your world is not exactly the playground of the Galaxy.”

“Too true, but we’ll try to keep you interested.” He looked at his watch. “One more warning, madam. Do not refer to your age.”

“What cause would I have to do that?”

“It might show up in some casual reference. You’ll be expected to say a few words and you might say, for instance, In all my more than twenty-three decades of life, I have never been so glad to see anyone as I am to see, the people of Baleyworld. If you’re tempted to say anything like that initial clause, resist it.”

“I will. I have no intention of indulging in hyperbole in any case.—But, as a matter of idle curiosity, why not?”

“Simply because it is better for them not to know your age—”

“But they do know my age, don’t they? They know I was your Ancestor’s friend and they know how long ago he lived. Or are they under the impression”—she looked at him narrowly—“that I’m a distant descendant of the Gladia?”

“No, no, they know who you are and how old you are, but they know it only with their heads”—he tapped his forehead—“and few people have working heads, as you may have noticed.”

“Yes, I have. Even on Aurora.”

“That’s good. I wouldn’t want the Settlers to be special in this respect. Well, then, you have the appearance of”—he paused judiciously—“Forty, maybe forty-five, and they’ll accept you as that in their guts, which is where the average person’s real thinking mechanism is located. If you don’t rub it in about your real age.”

“Does it really make a difference?”

“Does it? Look, the average Settler really doesn’t want robots. He has no liking for robots, no desire for robots. There we are satisfied to differ from the Spacers. Long life is different. Forty decades is considerably more than ten.

“Few of us actually reach the forty-decade mark.”

“And few of us actually reach the ten-decade mark. We teach the advantage of short life-quality versus quantity, evolutionary speed, ever-changing world—but nothing really makes people happy about living ten decades when they imagine they could live forty, so past a point the propaganda produces a backlash and it’s best to keep quiet about it. They don’t often see Spacers, as you can imagine, and so they don’t have occasion to grind their teeth over the fact that Spacers look young and vigorous even when they are twice as old as the oldest Settler who ever lived. They’ll see that in you and if they think about it, it will unsettle them.

Gladia said bitterly, “Would you like to have me make a speech and tell them exactly what forty decades means? Shall I tell them for how many years one outlives the spring time of hope, to say nothing of friends and acquaintances. Shall I tell them of the meaninglessness of children and family; of the endless comings and goings of one husband after another, of the misty blurring of the informal matings between and alongside; of the coming of the time when you’ve seen all you want to see, and heard all you want to hear, and find it impossible to think a new thought, of how you forget what excitement and discovery are all about, and learn each year how much more intense boredom can become?”

“Baleypeople wouldn’t believe that. I don’t think I do. Is that the way all Spacers feel or are you making it up?”

“I only know for certain how I myself feel, but I’ve watched others dim as they aged; I’ve watched their dispositions sour, and their ambitions narrow, and their indifferences broaden. “

D.G.’s lips pressed together and he looked somber. “Is the suicide rate high among Spacers? I’ve never heard that it is.”

“It’s virtually zero.”

“But that doesn’t fit what you’re saying.”

“Consider! We’re surrounded by robots who are dedicated to keeping us alive. There’s no way we can kill ourselves when our sharp-eyed and active robots are forever about us. I doubt that any of us would even think of trying. I wouldn’t dream of it myself, if only because I can’t bear the thought of what it would mean to all my household robots and, even more so, to Daneel and Giskard.”

“They’re not really alive, you know. They don’t have feelings.”

Gladia shook her head. “You say that only because you’ve never lived with them.—In any case, I think you overestimate the longing for prolonged life among your people. You know my age, you look at my appearance, yet it doesn’t bother you.”

“Because I’m convinced that the Spacer worlds must dwindle and die, that it is the Settler worlds that are the hope of humanity’s future, and that it is our short-lived characteristic that ensures it. Listening to what you’ve just said, assuming it is all true, makes me the more certain.”

“Don’t be too sure. You may develop your own insuperable problems—if you haven’t already.”

“That is undoubtedly possible, my lady, but for now I must leave you. The ship is coasting in for a landing and I must stare intelligently at the computer that controls it or no one will believe that I am the captain.”

He left and she remained in gloomy abstraction for a while, her fingers plucking at the plastic that enclosed the coverall.

She had come to a sense of equilibrium on Aurora, a way of allowing life to pass quietly. Meal by meal, day, by day, season by season, it had been passing and the quiet had insulated her, almost, from the tedious waiting for the only adventure that remained, the final one of death.

And now she had been to Solaria—and had awakened the memories of a childhood that had long passed on a world that had long passed, so that the quiet had been shattered perhaps forever—and so that she now lay uncovered and bare to the horror of continuing life.

“What could substitute for the vanished quiet?”

She caught Giskard’s dimly glowing eyes upon her and she said, “Help me on with this, Giskard.”

It was cold. The sky was gray with clouds and the air glittered with a very light snowfall. Patches of powdery snow were swirling in the fresh breeze and off beyond the landing field Gladia could see distant heaps of snow.

There were crowds of people gathered here and there, held off by barriers from approaching too closely. They were all wearing coveralls of different types and colors and they all seemed to balloon outward, turning humanity into a crowd of shapeless objects with eyes. Some were wearing visors that glittered transparently over their faces.

Gladia pressed her mittened hand to her face. Except for her nose, she felt warm enough. The coverall did more than insulate; it seemed to exude warmth of its own.

She looked behind her. Daneel and Giskard were within reach, each in a coverall.

She had protested that at first. “They don’t need coveralls. They’re not sensitive to cold.”