Isaac Asimov - Robots and Empire

“What would you have me do? Aurora did not destroy those ships.”

“Persuade the Chairman to make it quite plain that Aurora had nothing to do with it, that none of the Spacer worlds had anything to do with it, that the blame for the action rests on Solaria alone.”

“And abandon Solaria? That would be a cowardly act.”

Mandamus blazed into excitement. “Dr. Amadiro, have you never heard of anything called a strategic retreat? Persuade the Spacer worlds to back off for only a little while on some plausible pretext. It is only a matter of some months till our plan on Earth comes to fruition. It may be hard for everyone else to back off and be apologetic to the Spacers, for they don’t know what is coming—but we do. In fact, you and I, with our special knowledge, can look upon this event as a gift from what used to be called the gods. Let the Settlers remain preoccupied with Solaria while their destruction is prepared—all unobserved by them—on Earth.—Or would you prefer us to be ruined on the very brink of final victory?”

Amadiro found himself flinching before the direct glare of the other’s deep-set eyes.

Amadiro had never had a worse time than during the period following the destruction of the Settler ships. The Chairman, fortunately, could be persuaded to follow a policy of what Amadiro termed “masterful yielding.” The phrase caught the Chairman’s imagination, even though it was an oxymoron. Besides, the Chairman was good at masterful yielding.

The rest of the Council was harder to handle. The exasperated Amadiro exhausted himself in picturing the horrors of war and the necessity of choosing the proper moment to strike—and not the improper one—if war there must be. He invented novel plausibilities for why the moment was not yet and used them in discussions with the leaders of the other Spacer Worlds. Aurora’s natural hegemony had to be exercised to the utmost to get them to yield.

But when Captain D.G. Baley arrived with his ship and his demand, Amadiro felt he could do no more. It was too much.

“It is altogether impossible,” said Amadiro. “Are we to allow him to land on Aurora with his beard, his ridiculous clothing, his incomprehensible accent? Am I expected to ask the Council to agree to hand over a Spacer woman to him? It would be an act absolutely unprecedented in our history. A Spacer woman!”

Mandamus said dryly, “You have always referred to that particular Spacer woman as ‘the Solarian woman.’”

“She is ‘the Solarian woman’ to us, but she will be considered a Spacer woman once a Settler is involved. If his ship lands on Solaria, as he suggests it will, it may be destroyed as the others were, together with him and the woman. I may then be accused by my enemies, with some color of justification, of murder—and my political career may not survive that.”

Mandamus said, “Think, instead, of the fact that we have labored nearly seven years in order to arrange the final destruction of Earth and that we are now only a few months from the completion of the project. Shall we risk war now and, at a stroke, ruin everything we’ve done when we are so close to final victory?”

Amadiro shook his head. “It isn’t as though I have a choice in the matter, my friend. The Council wouldn’t follow me if I try to argue them into surrendering the woman to a Settler. And the mere fact that I have suggested it will be used against me. My political career will be shaken and we may then have a war in addition. Besides, the thought of a Spacer woman dying in service to a Settler is unbearable.”

“One would suppose you were fond of the Solarian woman.”

“You know I am not. With all my heart I wish she had died twenty decades ago, but not this way, not on a Settler ship. But I should remember that she is an ancestress of yours in the fifth generation.”

Mandamus looked a bit more dour than he usually did. “Of what consequence is that to me? I am a Spacer individual, conscious of myself and of my society. I am not an ancestor-worshiping member of a tribal conglomerate.”

For a moment, Mandamus fell silent and his thin face took on a look of intense concentration. “Dr. Amadiro,” he said, “could you not explain to the Council that this ancestress of mine is being taken, not as a Spacer hostage but only because her unique knowledge of Solaria, where she spent her childhood and youth, could make her an essential part of the exploration and that this exploration might even be helpful to us, as well as to the Settlers? After all, in truth, wouldn’t it be desirable for us to know what those miserable Solarians are up to? The woman will presumably bring back a report of the events—if she survives.”

Amadiro thrust out his lower lip. “That might work if the woman went on board voluntarily, if she made it clear that she understood the importance of the work and wished to perform her patriotic duty. To put her on board ship by force, though, is unthinkable.”

“Well, then, suppose I were to see this ancestress of mine and try to persuade her to get on the ship willingly; and suppose, also, that you speak to this Settler captain by hyperwave and tell them he can land on Aurora and have the woman if he can persuade her to go with him willingly or, at least, say that she’ll go with him willingly, whether she does or not.”

“I suppose we can’t lose by making the effort, but I don’t see how we can win.”

Yet to Amadiro’s surprise, they did win. He had listened with astonishment as Mandamus told him the details.

“I brought up the matter of the humanoid robots,” Mandamus said, “and it’s clear she knew nothing about them, from which I deduced Fastolfe had known nothing about them. It has been one of those things that nagged at me. Then I talked a great deal about my ancestry in such a way as to force her to talk of that Earthman Elijah Baley.”

“What about him?” said Amadiro harshly.

“Nothing, except that she talked about him and remembered. This Settler who wants her is a descendant of Baley and I thought it might influence her to consider the Settler’s request more favorably than she might otherwise have done.”

In any case, it had worked and for a few days Amadiro felt a relief from the almost continuous pressure that had plagued him from the start of the Solarian crisis.

But only for a very few days.

One point that worked to Amadiro’s advantage at this time was that he had not seen Vasilia, thus far, during the Solarian crisis.

It would certainly not have been an appropriate time to see her. He did not wish to be annoyed by her petty concern over a robot she claimed as her own—with total disregard for the legalities of the situation—at a time when a true crisis exercised his every nerve and thought. Nor did he wish to expose himself to the kind of quarrel that might easily arise between her and Mandamus over the question of which was eventually to preside over the Robotics Institute.

In any case, he had about come to the decision that Mandamus ought to be his successor. Throughout the Solarian crisis, he had kept his eye fixed on what was important. Even when Amadiro himself had felt shaken, Mandamus had remained icily calm. It was Mandamus who thought it conceivable that the Solarian woman might accompany the Settler captain voluntarily and it was he who maneuvered her into doing so.

And if his plan for the destruction of Earth worked itself out as it should—as it must—then Amadiro could see Mandamus succeeding as Council Chairman eventually. It would even be just, thought Amadiro, in a rare burst of selflessness.

On this particular evening, in consequence, he did not so much as expend a thought upon Vasilia. He left the Institute with a small squad of robots seeing him safely to his ground-car. That ground-car, driven by one robot and with two more in the backseat with him, passed quietly through a twilit and chilly rain and brought him to his establishment, where two more robots ushered him indoors. And all this time he did not think of Vasilia.