Isaac Asimov - Robots and Empire

Gladia watched Baleyworld, as it receded, with emotions quite different from those with which she had watched it approach. It was precisely the cold, gray, miserable world now that it had seemed at the start, but there was a warmth and life to the people. They were real, solid.

Solaria, Aurora, the other Spacer worlds that she had visited or had viewed on hypervision, all seemed filled with people who were insubstantial—gaseous.

That was the word. Gaseous.

No matter how few the human beings who lived upon a Spacer world, they spread out to fill the planet in the same way that molecules of gas spread out to fill a container. It was as if Spacers repelled each other.

And they did, she thought gloomily. Spacers had always repelled her. She had been brought up to such repulsion on Solaria, but even on Aurora, when she was experimenting madly with sex just at first, the least enjoyable aspect of it was the closeness it made necessary.

Except—except with Elijah.—But he was not a Spacer.

Baleyworld was not like that. Probably all the Settler worlds were not. Settlers clung together, leaving large tracts desolate about them as the price of the clinging—empty, that is, until population increase filled it. A Settler world was a world of people clusters, of pebbles and boulders, not gas.

Why was this? Robots, perhaps! They lessened the dependence of people upon people. They filled the interstices between. They were the insulation that diminished the natural attraction people had for each other, so that the whole system fell apart into isolates.

It had to be. Nowhere were there more robots than on Solaria and the insulating effect there had been so enormous that the separate gas molecules that were human beings became so totally inert that they almost never interrelated at all. (Where had the Solarians gone, she wondered again, and how were they living?)

And long life had something to do with it, too. How could one make an emotional attachment that wouldn’t turn slowly sour as the multidecades passed—or, if one died, how could another bear the loss for multidecades? One learned, then, not to make emotional attachments but to stand off, to insulate one’s self.

On the other hand, human beings, if short-lived, could not so easily outlive fascination with life. As the generations passed by rapidly, the ball of fascination bounced from hand to hand without ever touching the ground.

How recently she had told D.G. that there was no more to do or know, that she had experienced and thought everything, that she had to live on in utter boredom.—And she hadn’t known or even dreamed, as she spoke, of crowds of people, one upon another; of speaking to many as they melted into a continuous sea of heads; of hearing their response, not in words but in wordless sounds; of melting together with them, feeling their feelings, becoming one large organism.

It was not merely that she had never experienced such a thing before, it was that she had never dreamed anything like that might be experienced. How much more did she know nothing of despite her long life? What more existed for the experiencing that she was incapable of fantasying?

Daneel said gently, “Madam Gladia, I believe the captain is signaling for entrance.”

Gladia started. “Let him enter, then.”

D.G. entered, eyebrows raised. “I am relieved. I thought perhaps you were not at home.”

Gladia smiled. “In a way, I wasn’t. I was lost in thought. It happens to me sometimes.”

“You are fortunate,” said D.G. “My thoughts are never large enough to be lost in. Are you reconciled to visiting Aurora, madam?”

“No, I’m not. And among the thoughts in which I was lost was one to the effect that I still do not have any idea why you must go to Aurora. It can’t be only to return me. Any space worthy cargo tug could have done the job.”

“May I sit down, madam?”

“Yes, of course. That goes without saying, Captain. I wish you’d stop treating me as aristocracy. It becomes wearing. And if it’s an ironic indication that I’m a Spacer, then it’s worse than wearing. In fact, I’d almost rather you called me Gladia.”

“You seem to be anxious to disown your Spacer identity, Gladia,” said D.G. as he seated himself and crossed his legs.

“I would rather forget nonessential distinctions.”

“Nonessential? Not while you live five times as long as I do.”

“Oddly enough, I have been thinking of that as a rather annoying disadvantage for Spacers.—How long before we reach Aurora?”

“No evasive action this time. A few days to get far enough from our sun to be able to make a Jump through hyperspace that will take us to within a few days of Aurora and that’s it.”

“And why must you go to Aurora, D.G.?”

“I might say it was simply politeness, but in actual fact, I would like an opportunity to explain to your Chairman—or even to one of his subordinates—exactly what happened on Solaria.

“Don’t they know what happened?”

“In essentials, they do. They were kind enough to tap our communications, as we would have done theirs if the situation had been reversed. Still, they may not have drawn the proper conclusions. I would like to correct them—if that is so.”

“What are the proper conclusions, D.G.?”

“As you know, the overseers on Solaria were geared to respond to a person as human only if he or she spoke with a Solarian accent, As you did. That means that not only were Settlers not considered human, but non-Solarian Spacers were not considered human, either. To be precise, Aurorans would not be considered human beings if they had landed on Solaria.

Gladia’s eyes widened. “That’s unbelievable. The Solarians wouldn’t arrange to have the overseers treat Aurorans as they treated you.”

“Wouldn’t they? They have already destroyed an Auroran ship. Did you know that?”

“An Auroran ship! No, I didn’t know that.”

“I assure you they did. It landed about the time we did. We got away, but they didn’t. We had you, you see, and they didn’t. The conclusion is—or should be—that Aurora cannot automatically treat other Spacer worlds as—allies. In an emergency, it will be each Spacer world for itself.”

Gladia shook her head violently. “It would be unsafe to generalize from a single instance. The Solarians would have found it difficult to have the overseers react favorably to fifty accents and unfavorably to scores of others, it was easier to pin them to a single accent. That’s all. They gambled that no other Spacers would try to land on their world and they lost.”

“Yes, I’m sure that is how the Auroran leadership will argue, since people generally find it much easier to make a pleasant deduction than an unpleasant one. What I want to do is to make certain they see the possibility of the unpleasant one—and that this makes them uncomfortable indeed. Forgive my self-love, but I can’t trust anyone to do it as well as I can and therefore I think that I, rather than anyone else, should go to Aurora.”

Gladia felt uncomfortably torn. She did not want to be a Spacer; she wanted to be a human being and forget what she had just called “nonessential distinctions.” And yet when D.G. spoke with obvious satisfaction of forcing Aurora into a humiliating position, she found herself still somehow a Spacer.

She said in annoyance, “I presume the Settler worlds are at odds among themselves, too. Is it not each Settler world for itself?”

D.G. shook his head. “It may seem to you that this must be so and I wouldn’t be surprised if each individual Settler world had the impulse at times to put its own interest over the good of the whole, but we have something you Spacers lack.”