Isaac Asimov - Robots and Empire

Giskard said, “Settlers could easily form a search party. They are not afraid of open environments or of strange ones.”

“But they would be as firmly convinced in the planet’s inviolability as Earthpeople are, just as insistent on refusing to believe us, and just as unlikely to find the two human beings quickly enough to save the situation—even if they should believe us.”

“What of Earth’s robots, then?” said Giskard. “They swarm in the spaces between the Cities. Some should already be aware of human beings in their midst. They should be questioned.”

Daneel said, “The human beings in their midst are expert roboticists. They would not have failed to see to it that any robots in their vicinity remain unaware of their presence. Nor, for this same reason, need they fear danger from any robots who might be part of a searching party. The party will be ordered to depart and forget. To make it worse, Earth’s robots are comparatively simple models, designed for very little more than for specific tasks in growing crops, herding animals, and operating mines. They cannot easily be adapted to such a general purpose as conducting a meaningful search.”

Giskard said, “You have eliminated every possible action, friend Daneel? Does anything remain?”

Daneel said, “We must find the two human beings ourselves and we must stop them—and we must do it now.”

“Do you know where they are, friend Daneel?”

“I do not, friend Giskard.”

“Then if it seems unlikely that an elaborate search party composed of many, many Earthpeople, or Settlers, or robots, or, I presume, all three, could succeed in finding their location in time except by the most marvelous of coincidences, how can we two do so?”

“I do not know, friend Giskard, but we must.”

And Giskard said, in a voice that seemed to have an edge of harshness in its choice of words, “Necessity is not enough, friend Daneel. You have come a long way. You have worked out the existence of a crisis and, bit by bit, you have worked out its nature. And none of it serves. Here we remain, as helpless as ever to do anything about it.”

Daneel said, “There remains one chance—a farfetched one, an all-but-useless one—but we have no choice except to try. Out of Amadiro’s fear of you, he sent an assassin robot to destroy you and that may turn out to have been his mistake.”

“And if that all-but-useless chance fails, friend Daneel?”

Daneel looked calmly at Giskard. “Then we are helpless, and Earth will be destroyed, and human history will dwindle to an eventual end.”

Kelden Amadiro was not happy. The surface gravity of Earth was a trifle too high for his liking,—the atmosphere a trifle too dense, the sound and the odor of the outdoors subtly and annoyingly different from that on Aurora, and there was no indoors that could make any pretense of being civilized.

The robots had built shelters of a sort. There were ample food supplies and there were makeshift privies that were functionally adequate but offensively inadequate in every other way.

Worst of all, though the morning was pleasant enough, it was a clear day and Earth’s too bright sun was rising. Soon the temperature would be too high, the air would be too damp, and the biting insects would appear. Amadiro had not understood, at first, why there should be small itching swellings on his arms till Mandamus explained.

Now he mumbled, as he scratched, “Dreadful! They might carry infections.”

“I believe,” said Mandamus with apparent indifference, “that they sometimes do. It isn’t likely, however. I have lotions to relieve the discomfort and we can bum certain substances that the insects find offensive, although I find the odors offensive, too.”

“Burn them,” said Amadiro.

Mandamus continued, without changing tone, “And I don’t want to do anything, however trifling—an odor, a bit of smoke—that would increase the chance of our being detected.”

Amadiro eyed him suspiciously. “You have said, over and over, that this region is never visited by either Earthpeople or their field robots.”

“That’s right, but it’s not a mathematical proposition. It’s a sociological observation and there is always the possibility of exceptions to such observations.”

Amadiro scowled. “The best road to safety lies with being done with this project. You said you’d be ready today.”

“That, too, is a sociological observation, Dr. Amadiro. I should be ready today. I would like to be. I cannot guarantee it mathematically.”

“How long before you can guarantee it?”

Mandamus spread his hands in a “Who knows?” gesture. “Dr. Amadiro, I am under the impression I have already explained this, but I’m willing to go through it again. It took me seven years to get this far. I have been counting on some months yet of personal observations at the fourteen different relay stations on Earth’s surface. I can’t do that now because we must finish before we are located and, possibly, stopped by the robot Giskard. That means I have to do my checking by communicating with our own humanoid robots at the relays. I can’t trust them as I would myself. I must check and recheck their reports and it is possible that I may have to go to one or two places before I am satisfied. That would take days—perhaps a week or two.”

“A week or two. Impossible! How long do you think I can endure this planet, Mandamus?”

“Sir, on one of my previous visits I stayed on this planet for nearly a year—on another, for over four months.”

“And you liked it?”

“No, sir, but I had a job to do and I did it—without sparing myself.” Mandamus stared coldly at Amadiro.

Amadiro flushed and said in a somewhat chastened tone, “Well, then, where do we stand?”

“I’m still weighing the reports that are coming in. We are not working with a smoothly designed laboratory-made system, you know. We have an extraordinary heterogeneous planetary crust to deal with. Fortunately, the radioactive materials are widely spread, but in places they run perilously thin, and we must place a relay in such places and leave robots in charge. If those relays are not, in every case, properly positioned and in proper order, the nuclear intensification will die out and we will have wasted all these painful years of effort on nothing. Or else, there may be a surge of localized intensification that will have the force of an explosion that will blow itself out and leave the rest of the crust unaffected. In either case, total damage would be insignificant.

“What we want, Dr. Amadiro, is to have the radioactive materials and, therefore, significantly large sections of earth’s crust grow—slowly—steadily—irreversibly—he bit the words off as he pronounced them in spaced intervals—more and more intensely radioactive, so that Earth becomes progressively, more unlivable. The social structure of the planet will break down and the Earth, as an effective abode of humanity, will be over and done with. I take it, Dr. Amadiro, that this is what you want.—It is, what I described to you years ago and what you said, at that time, you wanted.”

“I still do, Mandamus. Don’t be a fool.”

“Then bear with the discomfort, sir—or else, leave and I will carry on for whatever additional time it takes.”

“No, no,” muttered Amadiro. “I must be here when it’s done—but it can’t help being impatient. How long have you decided to allow the process to build?—I mean, once you initiate the original wave of intensification, how long before Earth becomes uninhabitable?”

“That depends on the degree of intensification I apply initially. I don’t know, just yet, what degree will be required, for that depends on the overall efficiency of the relays, so I have prepared a variable control. What I want to arrange is a lapse period of ten to twenty decades.”