Isaac Asimov - Robots and Empire

Oh, well, she thought, I’ll get by.

“Giskard,” she said wearily, “find out which of those doors leads to the bathroom and find out how the shower works. What I must have now is a shower.”

She sat down gingerly, aware that she was damp and unwilling to saturate the chair with her perspiration. She was beginning to ache with the unnatural rigidity of her position when Giskard emerged.

“Madam, the shower is running,” he said, “and the temperature is adjusted. There is a solid material which I believe is soap and a primitive sort of toweling material, along with various other articles that may be useful.”

“Thank you, Giskard,” said Gladia, quite aware that despite her grandiloquence on the manner in which robots such as Giskard did not perform menial service, that is precisely what she had required him to do. But circumstances alter cases.

If she had never needed a shower, it seemed to her, as badly as now, she had also never enjoyed one as much. She remained in it much longer than she had to and when it was over it didn’t even occur to her to wonder if the towels had been in any way irradiated to sterility until after she had dried herself—and by that time it was too late.

She rummaged about among the material Giskard had laid out for her—powder, deodorant, comb, toothpaste, hair dryer—but she could not locate anything that would serve as a toothbrush. She finally gave up and used her finger, which she found most unsatisfactory. There was no hairbrush and that too was unsatisfactory. She scrubbed the comb with soap before using it, but cringed away from it just the same. She found a garment that looked as though it were suitable for wearing to bed. It smelled clean, but it hung far too loosely, she decided.

Daneel said quietly, “Madam, the captain wishes to know if he may see you.”

“I suppose so,” said Gladia, still rummaging for alternate nightwear. “Let him in.”

D.G. looked tired and even haggard, but when she turned to greet him, he smiled wearily at her and said, “It is hard to believe that you are over twenty-three decades old.”

“What? In this thing?”

“Mat helps. It’s semitransparent.—Or didn’t you know?”

She looked down at the nightgown uncertainly, then said, “Good, if it amuses you, but I have been alive, just the same, for two and a third centuries.”

“No one would guess it to look at you. You must have been very beautiful in your youth.”

“I have never been told so, D.G. Quiet charm, I always believed, was the most I could aspire to.—In any case, how do I use that instrument?”

“The call box? Just touch the patch on the right side and someone will ask if you can be served and you can carry on from there.”

“Good. I will need a toothbrush, a hairbrush, and clothing.”

“The toothbrush and hairbrush I will see that you get. As for clothing, that has been thought of. You have a clothes bag hanging in your closet. You’ll find it contains the best in Baleyworld fashion, which may not appeal to you, of course. And I won’t guarantee they’ll fit you. Most Baleyworld women are taller than you and certainly wider and thicker.—But it doesn’t matter. I think you’ll remain in seclusion for quite a while.”

“Why?”

“Well, my lady. It seems you delivered a speech this past evening and, as I recall, you would not sit down, though I suggested you do that more than once.”

“It seemed quite successful to me, D.G.”

“It was. It was a howling success.” D.G. smiled broadly and scratched the right side of his beard as though considering the word very carefully. “However, success has its penalties too. Right now, I should say you are the most famous person on Baleyworld and every Baleyworlder wants to see you and touch you. If we take you out anywhere, it will mean an instant riot. At least, until things cool down. We can’t be sure how long that will take.

“Then, too, you had even the war hawks yelling for you, but in the cold light of tomorrow, when the hypnotism and hysteria dies down, they’re going to be furious. If Old Man Bistervan didn’t actually consider killing you outright after your talk, then by tomorrow he will certainly have it as the ambition of his life to murder you by slow torture. And there are people, of his party who might conceivably try to oblige the Old Man in this small whim of his.

“That’s why you’re here, my lady. That’s why this room, this floor, this entire hotel is being watched—by I don’t know how many platoons of security people, among whom, I hope, are no cryptowar hawks. And because I have been so closely associated with you in this hero-and-heroine game, I’m penned up here, too, and can’t get out.”

“Oh,” said Gladia blankly. “I’m sorry about that. You can’t see your family, then.”

D.G. shrugged. “Traders don’t really have much in the way of family.”

“Your woman friend, then.”

“She’ll survive.—Probably better than I will.” He cast his eyes on Gladia speculatively.

Gladia said evenly, “Don’t even think it, Captain.”

D.G.’s eyebrows rose. “There’s no way I can be prevented from thinking it, but I won’t do anything, madam.”

Gladia said, “How long do you think I will stay here? Seriously.”

“It depends on the Directory.”

“The Directory?”

“Our five-fold executive board, madam. Five people”—he held up his hand, with the fingers spread apart—“each serving five years in staggered fashion, with one replacement each year, plus special elections in case of death or disability. This supplies continuity and reduces the danger of one-person rule. It also means that every decision must be argued out and that takes time, sometimes more time than we can afford.”

“I should think,” said Gladia, “that if one of the five were a determined and forceful individual—”

“That he could impose his views on the others. Things like that have happened at times, but these times are not one of those times—if you know what I mean. The Senior Director is Genovus Pandaral. There’s nothing evil about him, but he’s indecisive—and sometimes that’s the same thing. I talked him into allowing your robots on the stage with you and that turned out to be a bad idea. Score one against both of us.”

“But why was it a bad idea? The people were pleased.”

“Too pleased, my lady. We wanted you to be our pet Spacer heroine and help keep public opinion cool so that we wouldn’t launch a premature war. You were good on longevity; you had them cheering short life. But then you had them cheering robots and we don’t want that. For that matter, we’re not so keen on the public cheering the notion of kinship with the Spacers.”

“You don’t want premature war, but you don’t want premature peace, either. Is that it?”

“Very well put, madam.”

“But, then, what do you want?”

“We want the Galaxy, the whole Galaxy. We want to settle and populate every habitable planet in it and establish nothing less than a Galactic Empire. And we don’t want the Spacers to interfere. They can remain on their own worlds and live in peace as they please, but they must not interfere.”

“But then you’ll be penning them up on their fifty worlds, as we penned up Earthpeople on Earth for so many years. The same old injustice. You’re as bad as Bistervan.”

“The situations are different. Earthpeople were penned up in defiance of their expansive potential. You Spacers have no such potential. You took the path of longevity and robots and the potential vanished. You don’t even have fifty worlds any longer. Solaria has been abandoned. The others will go, too, in time. The Settlers have no interest in pushing the Spacers along the path to extinction, but why should we interfere with their voluntary choice to do so? Your speech tended to interfere with that.”