Isaac Asimov - Robots and Empire

“And the other three points she made?” Amadiro muttered.

“Pardon me, Chief?”

“Nothing. Nothing,” said Amadiro, but he frowned heavily and was lost in thought.

Mandamus was not aware of developments on Solaria when he returned some months later from an extended third trip to Earth.

On his first trip, six years before, Amadiro had managed, with some difficulty, to have him sent as an accredited emissary from Aurora to discuss some trifling matter of an overstepping into Spacer territory by Trader vessels. He had endured the ceremony and bureaucratic ennui and it quickly became clear that as such an emissary his mobility was limited. That didn’t matter, for he learned what he had come to learn.

He had returned with the news. “I doubt, Dr. Amadiro, that there will be any problem at all. There is no way, no possible way, in which the Earth officials can control either entry or exit. Every year many millions of Settlers visit Earth from any of dozens of worlds and every year as many millions of visiting Settlers leave for home again. Every Settler seems to feel that life is not complete unless he or she periodically breathes the air of Earth and treads its crowded underground spaces. It’s a search for roots, I imagine. They don’t seem to feel the absolute nightmare that existence on Earth is.”

“I know about it, Mandamus,” said Amadiro wearily.

“Only intellectually, sir. You can’t truly understand it until you experience it. Once you do, you’ll find that none of your ‘knowing’ will prepare you in the least for the reality. Why anyone should want to go back, once gone—”

“Our ancestors certainly didn’t want to go back, once they had left the planet.”

“No,” said Mandamus, “but interstellar flight was not then as advanced as it is now. It used to take months then and the hyperspatial Jump was a tricky thing. Now it takes merely days and the Jumps are routine and never go wrong. If it were as easy to return to Earth in our ancestors time as it is now, I wonder if we would have broken away as we did.

“Let’s not philosophize, Mandamus. Proceed to the point.”

“Certainly. In addition to the coming and going of endless streams of Settlers, millions of Earthmen each year head out as emigrants to one or another of the Settler worlds. Some return almost at once, having failed to adapt. Others make new homes but come back particularly frequently to visit. There’s no way of keeping track of exits and entrances and Earth doesn’t even try. To attempt to set up systematic methods for identifying and keeping track of visitors might stem the flow and Earth is very aware that each visitor brings money with him. The tourist trade—if we want to call it that—is currently Earth’s most profitable industry.”

“You are saying, I suppose, that we can get the humanoid robots into Earth without trouble.”

“With no trouble at all. There’s no question in my mind as to that. Now that we have them properly programmed, we can send them to Earth in half a dozen batches with forged papers. We can’t do anything about their robotic respect and awe of human beings, but that may not give them away. It will be interpreted as the usual Settler respect and awe for the ancestral planet.—But, then, I strongly suspect we don’t have to drop them into one of the City airports. The vast spaces between Cities are virtually untenanted except by primitive work-robots and the incoming ships would go unnoticed—or at least disregarded.”

“Too risky, I think,” said Amadiro.

Two batches of humanoid robots were sent to Earth and these mingled with the Earth people of the City before finding their way outward into the blank areas between and communicating with Aurora on shielded hyperbeam.

Mandamus said (he had thought about it deeply and had hesitated long), “I will have to go again, Sir. I can’t be positive they’ve found the right spot.”

“Are you sure you know the right spot, Mandamus?” asked Amadiro, sardonically.

“I have delved into Earth’s ancient history thoroughly, sir. I know I can find it.”

“I don’t think I can persuade the Council to send a warship with you.”

“No, I wouldn’t want that. It would be worse than useless. I want a one-person vessel, with just enough power to get there and back.”

And in that way, Mandamus made his second visit to Earth, dropping down into a region outside one of the smaller Cities. With mingled relief and satisfaction, he found several of the robots in the right place and remained with them to view their work, to give a few orders in connection with that work, and to make some fine adjustments in their programming.

And then, under the uninterested glance of a few primitive Earth-formed agricultural robots, Mandamus made for the nearby City.

It was a calculated risk and Mandamus, no fearless hero, could feel his heart thudding uncomfortably within his chest.

But it went well. There was some surprise shown by the gate warden when a human being presented himself at the gate, showing all signs of having spent a considerable time in the open.

Mandamus had papers identifying him as a Settler, however, and the warden shrugged. Settlers didn’t mind the open and it was far from unheard of for them to take small excursions through the fields and woods that lay about the unimpressive upper layers of a City that jutted above the ground.

The warden gave but a cursory glance at his papers and no one else asked for them at all. Mandamus’s off-Earth accent (as weakly Auroran as he could make it) was accepted without comment and, as nearly, as he could tell, no one wondered whether he might be a Spacer. But, then, why should they? The days when the Spacers held a permanent outpost on Earth was two centuries in the past and official emissaries from the Spacer worlds were few and—of late growing steadily fewer. The provincial Earthpeople might not even remember that Spacers existed.

Mandamus was a little concerned that the thin, transparent gloves he always wore might be noted or that his nose plugs would be remarked upon, but neither event took place. No restrictions were placed on his travels around the City or to other Cities. He had enough money for that and money spoke loudly on Earth (and, to tell the truth, even on Spacer worlds).

He grew accustomed to having no robot dog his heels and when he met with some of Aurora’s own humanoid robots in this City or that, he had to explain to them quite firmly that they must not dog his heels. He listened to their reports, gave them any instructions they seemed to require, and made arrangements for further robot shipments out-of-City. Eventually, he found his way back to his ship and left.

He was not challenged on his way, out, any more than he had been on his way in.

“Actually,” he said thoughtfully to Amadiro, “these Earthpeople are not really barbarians.”

“Aren’t they, though?”

“In their own world, they behave in quite a human fashion. In fact, there is something winning in their friendliness.”

“Are you beginning to regret the task you’re engaged in?”

“It does give me a grisly feeling as I wander among them thinking that they don’t know what is going to happen to them. I can’t make myself enjoy what I’m doing.”

“Of course you can, Mandamus. Think of the fact that once the job is done, you will be sure of a post as the head of the Institute before very much time has elapsed. That will sweeten the job for you.”

And Amadiro kept a close eye on Mandamus thereafter.

On Mandamus’s third trip, much of his earlier uneasiness had worn off and he could carry himself almost as though he were an Earthman. The project was proceeding slowly but dead center along the projected line of progress.