Isaac Asimov: Robots and Empire

He said, “I have the bad habit of chewing medicated gum after meals as an aid to digestion. Would you object?”

Gladia said stiffly, “I would find it distracting.”

(Being unable to chew might put him at a disadvantage. Besides, Gladia added to herself virtuously, at his age he shouldn’t need anything to aid his digestion.)

Mandamus had a small oblong package partway out of his tunic’s breast pocket. He shoved it back with no sign of disappointment and murmured, “Of course.”

“I was asking, Dr. Mandamus, your reason for wishing to see me.”

“Actually two reasons, Lady Gladia. One is a personal matter and one is a matter of state. Would you object to my taking up the personal matter first?”

“Let me say frankly, Dr. Mandamus, that I find it hard to imagine what personal matter there could be between us. You work at the Robotics Institute, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do.”

“And are close to Amadiro, I have been told.”

“I have the honor of working with Doctor Amadiro,” he said with faint emphasis.

(He’s paying me back, thought Gladia, but I’m not taking it.)

She said, “Amadiro and I had an occasion for contact twenty decades ago and it was most unpleasant. I have had no occasion for any contact with him at any time since. Nor would I have had any contact with you, as a close associate of his, but that I was persuaded that the interview might be important. Personal matters, however, would surely not make this interview in the least important to me. Shall we proceed onward, then, to the matters of state?”

Mandamus’s eyes dropped and a faint flush of something that might have been embarrassment came to his cheeks.

“Let me reintroduce myself, then. I am Levular Mandamus, your descendant in the fifth degree. I am the great-great-great grandson of Santirix and Gladia Gremionis. In reverse, you are my great-great-great-grandmother.”

Gladia blinked rapidly, trying not to look as thunderstruck as she, in actual fact, felt (and not quite, succeeding). Of course she had descendants and why should not one of them be this man?

But she said, “Are you sure?”

“Quite sure. I have had a genealogical search made. One of these years, after all, I am likely to want children and before I can have one such a search would be mandatory. If you are interested, the pattern between us is M-F-F-M.”

“You are my son’s daughter’s daughter’s son’s son?”

“Yes.”

Gladia did not ask for further details. She had had one son and one daughter. She had been a perfectly dutiful mother, but in due time the children had taken up independent lives. As to descendants beyond that son and daughter, she had, in perfectly decent Spacer fashion, never inquired and did not care. Having met one of them, she was Spacer enough still not to care.

The thought stabilized her completely. She sat back in, her chair and relaxed. “Very well,” she said. “You are my descendant in the fifth degree. If this is the personal matter you wish to discuss, it is of no importance.”

“I understand that fully, ancestress. My genealogy is not, in itself, what I wish to discuss, but it lays the foundation. Dr. Amadiro, you see, knows of this relationship. At least, so I suspect.”

“Indeed? How did that come about?”

“I believe that he quietly genealogizes all those who come to work at the Institute.”

“But why?”

“In order to find out exactly what he did find out in my case. He is not a trusting man.”

“I don’t understand. If you are my fifth-level descendant, why should it have more meaning to him than it does to me?”

Mandamus rubbed his chin with the knuckles of his right hand in a thoughtful manner. “His dislike for you is in no way less than your dislike for him, Lady Gladia. If you were ready to refuse an interview with me for his sake, he is equally ready to refuse me preferment for your sake. It might be even worse if I were a descendant of Dr. Fastolfe, but not much.”

Gladia sat stiffly, upright in her seat. Her nostrils flared and she said in a tight voice, “What is it, then, that you expect me to do? I cannot declare you a nondescendant. Shall I have an announcement placed on hypervision that you are a matter of indifference to me and that I disown you? Will that satisfy your Amadiro? If so, I must warn you I will not do it. I will do nothing to satisfy that man. If it means that he will discharge you and deprive you of your career out of some sort of disapproval of your genetic association, then that will teach you to associate with a saner, less vicious person.”

“He will not discharge me, Madam Gladia. I am entirely too valuable to him—if you will pardon my immodesty. Still, I hope someday to succeed him as head of the Institute and that, I am quite certain, he will not allow, as long as he suspects me of a descent worse than that which stems from you .”

“Does he imagine that poor Santirix is worse than I am?”

“Not at all.” Mandamus flushed and he swallowed, but his voice remained level and steady. “I mean no disrespect, madam, but I owe it to myself to learn the truth.”

“What truth?”

“I am descended from you in the fifth degree. That is clear in the genealogical records. But it is possible that I am also descended in the fifth degree, not from Santirix Gremionis but from the Earthman Elijah Baley?”

Gladia rose to her feet as quickly as though the undimensional force, fields of a puppeteer had lifted her. She was not aware that she had risen.

It was the third time in twelve hours that the name of that long-ago Earthman had been mentioned—and by three different individuals.

Her voice seemed not to be hers at all. “What do you mean?”

He said, rising in his turn and backing away slightly, “It seems to me plain enough. Was your son, my great-great-grandfather, born of a sexual union of yourself with the Earthman Elijah Baley? Was Elijah Baley your son’s father? I don’t know how to express it more plainly.”

“How dare you make such a suggestion? Or even think it?”

“I dare because my career depends upon it. If the answer is yes, my professional life may well be ruined. I want a ‘no’ but an unsupported ‘no’ will do me no good. I must be able to present proof to Dr. Amadiro at the appropriate time and show him that his disapproval of my genealogy must end with you. After all, it is clear to me that his dislike of you—and even of Dr. Fastolfe—is as nothing—nothing at all—compared to the incredible intensity of his detestation of the Earthman Elijah Baley. It is not only the fact of his being short-lived, although the thought of having inherited barbarian genes would disturb me tremendously. I think that if I presented proof I was descended from an Earthman who was not Elijah Baley, he would dismiss that. But it is the thought of Elijah Baley—and only he—that drives him to madness. I do not know why.”

The reiteration of Elijah’s name had made him seem almost alive again to Gladia. She was breathing harshly and deeply and she exulted in the best memory of her life.

“I know why,” she said. “It was because Elijah, with everything against him, with all of Aurora against him, managed anyhow to destroy Amadiro at the moment when that man thought he held success in his hand. Elijah did it by the exercise of sheer courage and intelligence. Amadiro had met his infinite superior in the person of an Earthman he had carelessly despised and what could he do in return but hate futilely? Elijah has been dead for more than sixteen decades and still Amadiro cannot forget, cannot forgive, cannot release the chains that bind him in hate and memory to that dead man. And I would not have Amadiro forget or cease hating—as long as it poisons every moment of his existence.”