Isaac Asimov - The Robots of Dawn

“What you see,” Fastolfe said, “is a tame world. It is what I have brought you out to show you, Mr. Baley.”

“There is no danger in it?”

“Always some danger. We do have storms, rock slides, earthquakes, blizzards, avalanches, a volcano or two—Accidental death can never be entirely done away with. And there are even the passions of angry or envious persons, the follies, passions of the immature, and the madness of the shortsighted. These things are very minor irritants, however, and do not much affect the civilized quiet that rests upon our world.”

Fastolfe seemed to ruminate over his words for a moment, then he sighed and said, “I can scarcely want it to be any other way, but I have certain intellectual reservations. We have brought, here to Aurora only those plants and animals we felt, would be useful, ornamental, or both. We did our best to eliminate anything we would consider weeds, vermin, or even less than standard. We selected strong, healthy, and attractive human beings, according to our own views, of course. We have tried—but you smile, Mr. Baley.”

Baley had not. His mouth had merely twitched. “No, no,” he said. “There is nothing to smile about.”

“There is, for I know as well as you do that, I myself am not attractive by Auroran standards. The trouble is that we cannot altogether control gene combinations and intrauterine influences. Nowadays, of course, with ectogenesis becoming more common—though I hope it shall never be as common as it is on Solaria—I would be eliminated in the late fetal stage.”

“In which case, Dr. Fastolfe, the worlds would have lost a great theoretical roboticist.”

“Perfectly correct,” said Fastolfe, without visible embarrassment, “but the worlds would never have known that, would they?—In any case, we have labored to set up a very simple but completely workable ecological balance, an equable climate, a fertile soil, and resources as evenly distributed as is possible. The result is a world that produces all of everything that we need, and that is, if I may personify, considerate of our wants.—Shall I tell you the ideal for which we have striven?”

“Please do,” said Baley.

“We have labored to produce a planet which, taken as a whole, would obey the Three Laws of Robotics. It does nothing to harm human beings, either by commission or omission. It does what we want it to do, as long as we do not ask it to harm human beings. And it protects itself, except at times and in places where it must serve us or save us even at the price of harm to itself. Nowhere else, neither on Earth nor in the other—Spacer worlds, is this so nearly true as here on Aurora.”

Baley said sadly, “Earthmen, too, have longed for this, but we have long since grown too numerous and we have too greatly damaged our planet in the days of our ignorance to be able to do very much about it now.—But what of Aurora’s indigenous life-forms? Surely you did not come to a dead planet.”

Fastolfe said, “You know we didn’t, if you have viewed books on our history. Aurora had vegetation and animal life when we arrived—and a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere. This was true of all the fifty Spacer worlds. Peculiarly, in every case, the life-forms were sparse and not very varied. Nor were they particularly tenacious in their hold on their own planet. We took over, so to speak, without a struggle—and what is left of the indigenous life is in our aquaria, our zoos, and in a few carefully maintained primeval areas.

“We do not really understand why the life-bearing planets that human beings have encountered have been so feebly life bearing, why only Earth itself has been overflowing with madly tenacious varieties of life filling every environmental niche, and why only Earth has developed any sign of intelligence whatever.”

Baley said, “Maybe it is coincidence, the accident of incomplete exploration. We know so few planets so far.”

“I admit,” said Fastolfe, “that that is the most likely explanation. Somewhere there may be an ecological balance as complex as that of Earth. Somewhere there may be intelligent life and a technological civilization. Yet Earth’s life and intelligence has spread outward for parsecs in every direction. If there is life and intelligence elsewhere, why have they not spread out as well—and why have we not encountered each other?”

“That might happen tomorrow, for all we know.”

“It might. And if such an encounter is imminent, all the more reason why we should not be passively waiting. For we are growing passive, Mr. Baley. No new Spacer world has been settled in two and a half centuries. Our worlds are so tame, so delightful, we do not wish to leave them. This world was originally settled, you see, because Earth had grown so unpleasant that the risks and dangers of new and empty, worlds seemed preferable by comparison. By the time our fifty Spacer worlds were developed—Solaria last of all—there was no longer any push, any need to move out elsewhere. And Earth itself had retreated to its underground caves of steel. The End. Finis.”

“You don’t really mean that.”

“If we stay as we are? If we remain placid and comfortable and unmoving? Yes, I do mean that. Humanity must expand its range somehow if it is to continue to flourish. One method of expansion is through space, through a constant pioneering reach toward other worlds. If we fail in this, some other civilization that is undergoing such expansion will reach us and we will not be able to stand against its dynamism.”

“You expect a space war — like a hyperwave shoot ’em up.”

“No, I doubt that that would be necessary. A civilization that is expanding through space will not need our few worlds and will probably be too intellectually advanced to feel the need to batter its way into hegemony here. If, however, we are surrounded by a more lively, a more vibrant civilization, we will wither away by the mere force of the comparison; we will die of the realization of what we have become and of the potential we have wasted. Of course, we might substitute other expansions—an expansion of scientific understanding or of cultural vigor, for instance. I fear, however, that these expansions are not separable. To fade in one is to, fade in all. Certainly, we are fading in all. We live too long. We are too comfortable.”

Baley said, “On Earth, we think of Spacers as all-powerful, as totally self-confident. I cannot believe I’m hearing this from one of you.”

“You won’t from any other Spacer. My views are unfashionable. Others would find, them intolerable and I don’t often speak of such things to Aurorans. Instead, I simply talk about a new drive for further settlement, without expressing my fears of the catastrophes which will result if we abandon colonization. In that, at least, I have been winning. Aurora has been seriously—even enthusiastically—considering a new era of exploration and settlement.”

“You say that,” said Baley, “without any noticeable enthusiasm. What’s wrong?”

“It’s just that we are approaching my motive for the destruction of Jander Panell.”

Fastolfe paused, shook his head, and continued, “I wish, Mr. Baley, I could understand human beings better. I have spent six decades in studying the intricacies of the positronic brain and I expect to spend fifteen to twenty more on the problem. In this time, I have barely brushed against the problem of the human brain, which is enormously more intricate. Are there Laws of Humanics as there are Laws of Robotics? How many Laws of Humanics might there be and how can they be expressed mathematically? I don’t know.

“Perhaps, though, there may come a day when someone will work out the Laws of Humanics and then be able to predict the broad strokes of the future, and know what might be in store for humanity, instead of merely guessing as I do, and know what to do to make things better, instead of merely speculating. I dream sometimes of founding a mathematical science which I think of as ‘psychohistory,’ but I know—I can’t and I fear no one ever will.”