Isaac Asimov - The Robots of Dawn

“Exactly. Dr. Han Fastolfe lives in the City of the Dawn on the World of the Dawn, but he is not himself a believer in the Dawn. He does not understand the necessary method of expansion through the Galaxy, of converting the Spacer Dawn into broad Galactic Day. The robotic exploration of the Galaxy is the only practical way to carry the task through and he won’t accept it—or us.”

Baley said slowly, “Why is it the only practical method? Aurora and the other Spacer worlds were not explored and settled by robots but by human beings.”

“Correction. By Earthpeople. It was a wasteful and inefficient procedure and there are now no Earthpeople that we will allow to serve as further settlers. We have become Spacers, long-lived, and healthy, and we have robots who are infinitely more versatile and flexible than those available to the human beings who originally settled our worlds. Times and matters are wholly different—and today only robotic exploration is feasible.”

“Let us suppose you are right and Dr. Fastolfe is wrong. Even so, he has a logical view. Why won’t he and the Institute accept each other? Simply because they disagree on this point?”

“No, this disagreement is comparatively minor—There is a more fundamental conflict.”

Again Baley paused and again she added nothing to her remark. He did not feel it safe to display irritation, so he said quietly, almost tentatively, “What is the more fundamental conflict?”

The amusement in Vasilia’s voice came nearer the surface. It softened the lines of her face somewhat and, for a moment, she looked more like Gladia. “You couldn’t guess, unless it were explained to you, I think.”

“Precisely why I am asking, Dr. Vasilia.”

“Well, then, Earthman, I have been told that Earthpeople are short-lived. I have not been misled in that, have I?”

Baley shrugged, “Some of us live to be a hundred years old, Earth time.” He thought a bit. “Perhaps a—hundred and thirty or so metric years.”

“And how old are you?”

“Forty-five standard, sixty metric.”

“I am sixty-six metric. I expect to live three metric centuries more at least—if I am careful.”

Baley spread his hands wide. “I congratulate you.”

“There are disadvantages.”

“I was told this morning that, in three or four centuries, many, many losses have a chance to accumulate.”

“I’m afraid so,” said Vasilia. “And many, many gains have a chance to accumulate, as well. On the whole, it balances.”

“What, then, are the disadvantages?”

“You are not a scientist, of course.”

“I am a plainclothesman—a policeman, if you like.”

“But perhaps you know scientists on your world.”

“I have met some,” said Baley cautiously.

“You know how they work? We are told that on Earth they cooperate out of necessity. They have, at most, half a century of active labor in the course of their short lives. Less than seven metric decades. Not much can be done in that time.”

“Some of our scientists had accomplished quite a deal in considerably less time.”

“Because they have taken advantage of the findings others have made before them and profit from the use they can make of contemporary findings by others. Isn’t that so?”

“Of course—We have a scientific community to which all contribute, across the expanse of space and of time.”

“Exactly. It won’t work otherwise. Each scientist, aware of the unlikelihood of accomplishing much entirely by himself, is forced into the community, cannot help becoming part of the clearinghouse. Progress thus becomes enormously greater than it would be if this did not exist.”

“Is not this the case on Aurora and the other Spacer worlds, too?” asked Baley.

“In theory it is; in practice not so much. The pressures in a long-lived society are less. Scientists here have three or three and a half centuries to devote to a problem, so that the thought arises that significant progress may be made in that time by a solitary worker. It becomes possible to feel a kind of intellectual greed—to want to accomplish something on your own, to assume a property right to a particular facet of progress, to be willing to see the general advance slowed—rather than give up what you conceive to be yours alone. And the general advance is slowed on Spacer worlds as a result, to the point where it is difficult to outpace the work done on Earth, despite our enormous advantages.”

“I assume you wouldn’t say this if I were not to take it that Dr. Han Fastolfe behaves in this manner.”

“He certainly does. It is his theoretical analysis of the positronic brain that has made the humaniform robot possible. He has used it to construct—with the help of the late Dr. Sarton—your robot friend Daneel, but he has not published the important details of his theory, nor does he make it available to anyone else. In this way, he—and he alone—holds a stranglehold on the production of humaniform robots.”

Baley furrowed his brow. “And the Robotics Institute is dedicated to cooperation among scientists?”

“Exactly. This Institute is made up of over a hundred topnotch roboticists of different ages, advancements, and skills and we hope to establish branches on other worlds and make it an interstellar association. All of us are dedicated to communicating our separate discoveries or speculations to the common fund—doing voluntarily for the general good what you Earthpeople do perforce because you live such short lives.

“This, however, Dr. Han Fastolfe will not do. I’m sure you think of Dr. Han Fastolfe as a nobly idealistic Auroran patriot,—but he will not put his intellectual property—as he thinks of it—into the common fund and therefore he does not want us. And because he assumes a personal property right upon scientific discoveries, we do not want him.—You no longer find the mutual distaste a mystery, I take it.”

Baley nodded his head, then said, “You think this will work—this voluntary giving up of personal glory?”

“It must,” said Vasilia grimly.

“And has the Institute, through community endeavor, duplicated Dr. Fastolfe’s individual work and rediscovered the theory of the humaniform positronic brain?”

“We will, in time. It is inevitable.”

“And you are making no attempt to shorten the time it will take by persuading Dr. Fastolfe to yield the secret?”

“I think we are on the way to persuading him.”

“Through the working of the Jander scandal?”

“I don’t think you really have to ask that question.—Well, have I told you what you wanted to know, Earthman?”

Baley said, “You have told me some things I didn’t know.”

“Then it is time for you to tell me about Gremionis. Why have you brought up the name of this barber in connection with me?”

“Barber?”

“He considers himself a hair stylist, among other things, but he is a barber, plain and simple. Tell me about him—or let us consider this interview at an end.”

Baley felt weary—It seemed clear to him that Vasilia had enjoyed the fencing. She had given him enough to whet his appetite and now he would be forced to buy additional material with information of his own.—But he had none. Or at least he had only guesses. And many of them were wrong, vitally wrong, he was through.

He therefore fenced on his own. “You understand, Dr. Vasilia, that you can’t get away with pretending that it is farcical to suppose there is a connection between Gremionis and yourself.”

“Why not, when it is farcical?”

“Oh no. If it were farcical, you would have laughed in my face and shut off trimensional contact. The mere fact that you were willing to abandon your earliest stand and receive me—the mere fact, that you have been talking to me at length and telling me a great many things—is a clear admission that you feel that I just possibly might have my knife at your jugular.”