Isaac Asimov - Robots and Empire

“Oh, shut up,” said Pandaral pettishly.

Ordinarily, he enjoyed D.G.’s irrepressible breeziness, but not now. In some ways, he never really understood D.G. at all. D.G. was a Baley, a lineal descendant of the great Elijah and the Founder, Bentley. That made D.G. a natural for a Director’s post, especially since he had the kind of bonhomie that endeared him to the public. Yet he chose to be a Trader, which was a difficult life—and a dangerous one. It might make you rich, but it was much more likely to kill you or—what was worse—prematurely age you.

What’s more, D.G.’s life as a Trader took him away from Baleyworld for months at a time and Pandaral preferred his advice to those of most of his department heads. One couldn’t always tell when D.G. was serious, but, allowing for that, he was worth listening to.

Pandaral said heavily, “I don’t think that that woman’s speech was the best thing that could have happened to us.”

D.G., mostly dressed, shrugged his shoulders, “Who could have foretold it?”

“You might have. You must have looked up her background—if you had made up your mind to carry her off.”

“I did look up her background, Director. She spent over three decades on Solaria. It was Solaria that formed her and she lived there entirely with robots. She saw human beings only by holographic images, except for her husband and he didn’t visit her often. She had a difficult adjustment to make when she came to Aurora and even there she lived mostly with robots. At no time in twenty-three decades would she have faced as many as twenty people all together, let alone four thousand. I assumed she wouldn’t be able to speak more than a few words—if that. I had no way of knowing she was a rabble-rouser.”

“You might have stopped her, once you found out she was. You were sitting right next to her.”

“Did you want a riot? The people were enjoying her. You were there. You know they were. If I had forced her down, they would have mobbed the stage. After all, Director, you didn’t try to stop her.”

Pandaral cleared his throat. “I had that in mind, actually, but each time I looked back, I’d catch the eye of her robot the one who looks like a robot.”

“Giskard. Yes, but what of it? He wouldn’t harm you.”

“I know. Still, he made me nervous and it put me off somehow.”

“Well, never mind, Director,” said D.G. He was fully clothed now and he shoved the breakfast tray toward the other. “The coffee is still warm. Help yourself to the buns and jams if you want any.—It will pass. I don’t think the public will really overflow with love for the Spacers and spoil our policy. It might even serve a purpose. If the Spacers hear of it, it might strengthen the Fastolfe party. Fastolfe may be dead, but his party isn’t—not altogether—and we need to encourage their policy of moderation.”

“What I’m thinking of,” said Pandaral, “is the All-Settler Congress that’s coming up in five months. I’m going to have to listen to any number of sarcastic references to Baleyworld appeasement and to Baleyworlders being Spacer lovers. I tell you,” he added gloomily, “the smaller the world, the more war hawkish it is.”

“Then tell them that,” said D.G. “Be very statesmanlike in public, but when you get them to one side, look them right in the eye—unofficially—and say that there’s freedom of expression on Baleyworld and we intend to keep it that way. Tell them Baleyworld has the interests of Earth at heart, but that if any world wishes to prove its greater devotion to Earth by declaring war on the Spacers, Baleyworld will watch with interest but nothing more. That would shut them up.

“Oh, no,” said Pandaral with alarm. “A remark like that would leak out. It would create an impossible stink.”

D.G. said, “You’re right, which is a pity. But think it and don’t let those big mouthed small brains get to you.”

Pandaral sighed. “I suppose we’ll manage, but last night upset our plans to end on a high note. That’s what I really regret.

“What high note?”

Pandaral said, “When you left Aurora for Solaria, two Auroran warships went to Solaria as well. Did you know that?”

“No, but it was something I expected,” said D.G. indifferently. “It was for that reason I took the trouble of going to Solaria by way of an evasive path.”

“One of the Auroran ships landed on Solaria, thousands of kilometers away from you—so it didn’t seem to be making any effort to keep tabs on you—and the second remained in orbit.”

“Sensible. It’s what I would have done if I had had a second ship at my disposal.”

“The Auroran ship that landed was destroyed in a matter of hours. The ship in orbit reported the fact and was ordered to return.—A Trader monitoring station picked up the report and it was sent to us.”

“Was the report uncoded?”

“Of course not, but it was in one of the codes we’ve broken.”

D.G. nodded his head thoughtfully, then said, “Very interesting. I take it they didn’t have anyone who could speak Solarian.”

“Obviously,” said Pandaral weightily. “Unless someone can find where the Solarians went, this woman of yours is the only available Solarian in the Galaxy.”

“And they let me have her, didn’t they? Tough on the Aurorans.”

“At any rate, I was going to announce the destruction of the Auroran ship last night. In a matter-of-fact way—no gloating. Just the same, it would have excited every Settler in the Galaxy. I mean, we got away and the Aurorans didn’t.”

“We had a Solarian,” said D.G. dryly. “The Aurorans didn’t.”

“Very well. It would make you and the woman look good, too.—But it all came to nothing. After what the woman did, anything else would have come as anticlimax, even the news of the destruction of an Auroran warship.”

D.G. said, “To say nothing of the fact that once everyone has finished applauding kinship and love, it would go against the grain—for the next half hour anyway—to applaud the death of a couple of hundred of the Auroran kin.”

“I suppose so. So that’s an enormous psychological blow that we’ve lost.”

D.G. was frowning. “Forget that, Director. You can always work the propaganda at some other, more appropriate time. The important thing is what it all means.—An Auroran ship was blown up. That means they weren’t expecting a nuclear intensifier to be used. The other ship was ordered away and that may mean it wasn’t equipped with a defense against it—and maybe they don’t even have a defense. I should judge from this that the portable intensifier—or semiportable one, anyway—is a Solarian development specifically and not a Spacer development generally. That’s good news for us—if it’s true. For the moment, let’s not worry about propaganda brownie points but concentrate on squeezing every bit of information we can out of that intensifier. We want to be ahead of the Spacers in this—if possible.”

Pandaral munched away at a bun and said, “Maybe you’re right. But in that case, how do we fit in the other bit of news?”

D.G. said, “What other bit of news? Director, are you going to give me the information I need to make intelligent conversation or do you intend to toss them into the air one by one and make me jump for them?”

“Don’t get huffy, D.G. There’s no point in talking with you if I can’t be informal. Do you know what it’s like at a Directory meeting? Do you want my job? You can have it, you know.”

“No, thank you, I don’t want it. What I want is your bit of news.”

“We have a message from Aurora. An actual message. They actually deigned to communicate directly with us instead of sending it by way of Earth.”