Isaac Asimov - Robots and Empire

It was poisonous. She had gone to the trouble of making Vasilia Aliena her legal name and of using it on all documents, in all interviews, in all dealings of any kind—and yet she knew for a fact that most people thought of her as Vasilia Fastolfe. It was as though nothing could wipe out that thoroughly meaningless relationship, so that she was reduced to having to be content with being addressed by her first name only. It was, at least, an uncommon name.

And that, too, seemed to emphasize her mirror-image relationship with the Solarian woman who, for thoroughly independent reasons, had denied her first husband as Vasilia had denied her father. The Solarian woman, too, could not live with the early surnames fastened upon her and ended with a first name only—Gladia.

Vasilia and Gladia, misfits, deniers—They even resembled each other.

Vasilia stole a look at the mirror hanging in her spaceship cabin. She had not seen Gladia in many decades, but she was sure that the resemblance remained. They were both small and slim. Both were blond and their faces were somewhat alike.

But it was Vasilia who always lost and Gladia who always won. When Vasilia had left her father and had struck him from her life, he had found Gladia instead—and she was the pliant and passive daughter he wanted, the daughter that Vasilia could never be.

Nevertheless, it embittered Vasilia. She herself was a roboticist; as competent and as skillful, at last, as ever Fastolfe had been, while Gladia was merely an artist, who amused herself with force-field coloring and with the illusions of robotic clothing. How could Fastolfe have been satisfied to lose the one and gain, in her place, nothing more than the other?

And when that policeman from Earth, Elijah Baley, had come to Aurora, he had bullied Vasilia into revealing far more of her thoughts and feelings than she had ever granted anyone else. He was, however, softness itself to Gladia and had helped her—and her protector, Fastolfe—win out against all the odds, though to this day Vasilia had not been able to understand clearly how that had happened.

It was Gladia who had been at Fastolfe’s bedside during the final illness, who had held his hand to the end, and who had heard his last words. Why Vasilia should resent that, she didn’t know, for she herself would, under no circumstances, have acknowledged the old man’s existence to the extent of visiting him to witness his passage into nonexistence in an absolute, rather than a subjective sense—and yet she raged against Gladia’s presence.

It’s the way I feel, she told herself defiantly, and I owe no one an explanation.

And she had lost Giskard. Giskard had been her robot , Vasilia’s own robot when she had been a young girl, the robot granted her by a then seemingly fond father. It was Giskard through whom she had learned robotics and from whom she had felt the first genuine affection. She had not, as a child, speculated on the Three Laws or dealt with the philosophy of positronic automatism. Giskard had seemed affectionate, he had acted as though he were affectionate, and that was enough for a child. She had never found such affection in any human being—certainly not her father.

To this day, she had yet to be weak enough to play the foolish love game with anyone. Her bitterness over her loss of Giskard had taught her that any initial gain was not worth the final deprivation.

When she had left home, disowning her father, he would not let Giskard go with her, even though she herself had improved Giskard immeasurably in the course of her careful reprogramming of him. And when her father had died, he had left Giskard to the Solarian woman. He had also left her Daneel, but Vasilia cared nothing for that pale imitation of a man. She wanted Giskard, who was her own.

Vasilia was on her way back to Solaria now. Her tour was quite done. In fact, as far as usefulness was concerned, it had been essentially over months ago. But she had remained on Hesperos for a needed rest, as she had explained in her official notice to the Institute.

Now, however, Fastolfe was dead and she could return. And while she could not undo the past entirely, she could undo part of it. Giskard must be hers again.

She was determined on that.

Amadiro was quite ambivalent in his response to Vasilia’s return. She had not come back until old Fastolfe (he could say the name to himself quite easily now that he was dead) was a month in his um. That flattered his opinion of his own understanding. After all, he had told Mandamus her motive had been that of remaining away from Aurora till her father died.

Then, too, Vasilia was comfortably transparent. She lacked the exasperating quality of Mandamus, his new favorite, who always seemed to have yet another unexpressed thought tucked away—no matter how thoroughly he seemed to have discharged the contents of his mind.

On the other hand, she was irritatingly hard to control the least likely to go quietly along the path he indicated. Leave it to her to probe the otherworld Spacers to the bone during the years she had spent away from Aurora—but then leave it also to her to interpret it all in dark and riddling words.

So he greeted her with an enthusiasm that was somewhere between feigned and unfeigned.

“Vasilia, I’m so happy to have you back. The Institute flies on one wing when you’re gone.”

Vasilia laughed. “Come, Kelden”—she alone had no hesitation or inhibition in using his given name, though she was two and a half decades younger than he—“that one remaining wing is yours and how long has it been now since you ceased being perfectly certain that your one wing was sufficient?”

“Since you decided to stretch out your absence to years. Do you find Aurora much changed in the interval?”

“Not a bit—which ought perhaps to be a concern of ours. Changelessness is decay.”

“A paradox. There is no decay without a change for the worse.”

“Changelessness is a change for the worse, Kelden, in comparison to the surrounding Settler worlds. They change rapidly, extending their control into more numerous worlds and over each individual world more thoroughly. They increase their strength and power and self-assurance, while we sit here dreaming and find our unchanging might diminishing steadily in comparison.”

“Beautiful, Vasilia! I think you memorized that carefully on your flight here. However, there has been a change in the political situation on Aurora.”

“You mean my biological father is dead.”

Amadiro spread his arms with a little bow of his head. “As you say. He was largely responsible for our paralysis and he is gone, so I imagine there will now be change, though it may not necessarily be visible change.”

“You keep secrets from me, do you?”

“Would I do that?”

“Certainly. That false smile of yours gives you away every time.”

“Then I must learn to be grave with you.—Come, I have your report. Tell me what is not included in it.”

“All is included in it—almost. Each Spacer world states vehemently that it is disturbed by growing Settler arrogance. Each is firmly determined to resist the Settlers to the end, enthusiastically following the Auroran lead with vigor and death-defying gallantry.

“Follow our lead, yes. And if we don’t lead?”

“Then they’ll wait and try to mask their relief that we are not leading. Otherwise—Well, each one is engaged in technological advance and each one is reluctant to reveal what it is, exactly, that it is doing. Each is working independently and is not even unified within its own globe. There is not a single research team anywhere on any of the Spacer worlds that resembles our own Robotics Institute. Each world consists of individual researchers, each of whom diligently guards his own data from all the rest.”