Robots and Empire
4. ANOTHER DESCENDANT

15
Gladia had tried to relax after the harrowing session with Mandamus and did so with an intensity that fought relaxation to the death. She had opacified all the windows in her bedroom, adjusted the environment to a gentle warm breeze with the faint sound of rustling leaves and the occasional soft warble of a distant bird. She had then shifted it to the sound of a far-off surf and had added a faint but unmistakable tang of the sea in the air.
It didn't help. Her mind echoed helplessly with what had just been - and with what was soon to come. Why had she chattered so freely to Mandamus? What business was it of his - or of Amadiro's, for that matter - whether she had visited Elijah in orbit or not and whether or not - or when she had had a son by him or by any other man.
She had been cast into imbalance by Mandamus's claim of descent, that's what it was. In a society where no one cared about descent or relationship except for medico-genetic reasons, its sudden intrusion into a conversation was bound to be upsetting. That and the repeated (but surely accidental) references to Elijah.
She decided she was finding excuses for herself and, in impatience, she tossed it all away. She had reacted badly and had babbled like a baby and that was all there was to it.
Now there was this Settler coming.
He was not an Earthman. He had not been born on Earth, she was sure, and it was quite possible that he had never even visited Earth. His people might have lived on a strange world she had never heard of and might have done so for generations.
That would make him a Spacer, she thought. Spacers were descended from Earthmen, too - centuries further back, but what did that matter? To be sure, Spacers were long lived and these Settlers must be short-lived, but how much of a distinction was that? Even a Spacer might die prematurely through some freak accident; she had once heard of a Spacer who had died a natural death before he was sixty. Why not, then, think of the next visitor as a Spacer with an unusual accent?
But it wasn't that simple. No doubt the Settler did not feel himself to be a Spacer. It's not what you are that counts, but what you feel yourself to be. So think of him as a Settler, not a Spacer.
Yet weren't all human beings simply human beings no matter what name - you applied to them - Spacers, Settlers, Aurorans, Earthpeople. The proof of it was that robots could not do injury to any of them. Daneel would spring as quickly to the defense of the most ignorant Earthman as to the Chairman of the Auroran Council - and that meant -
She could feel herself drifting, actually relaxing into a shallow sleep when a sudden thought entered her mind and seemed to ricochet there.
Why was the Settler named Baley?
Her mind sharpened and snapped out of the welcoming coils of oblivion that had all but engulfed her.
Why Baley?
Perhaps it was simply a common name among the Settlers. After all, it was Elijah who had made it all possible and he had to be a hero to them as - as -
She could not think of an analogous hero to Aurorans. Who had led the expedition that first reached Aurora? Who had supervised the terraformation of the raw barely living world that Aurora had then been? She did not know.
Was her ignorance born of the fact that she had been brought up on Solaria - or was it that the Aurorans simply had no founding hero? After all, the first expedition to Aurora had consisted of mere Earthpeople. It was only in later generations, with lengthening life-spans, thanks to the adjustments of sophisticated bio-engineering, that Earthpeople had become Aurorans. And after that, why should Aurorans wish to make heroes of their despised predecessors?
But Settlers might make heroes of Earthpeople. They had not yet changed, perhaps. They might change eventually and then Elijah would be forgotten in embarrassment, but till then -
That must be it. Probably half the Settlers alive had adopted the Baley surname. Poor Elijah! Everyone crowding onto his shoulders and into his shadow. Poor Elijah - dear Elijah -
And she did fall asleep.
16
The sleep was too restless to restore her to calm, let alone good humor. She was scowling without knowing that she was - and had she seen herself in the mirror, she would have been taken aback by her middle-aged appearance.
Daneel, to whom Gladia was a human being, regardless of age, appearance, or mood, said, "Madam - " Gladia interrupted, with a small shiver. "Is the Settler here?"
She looked up at the clock ribbon on the wall and then made a quick gesture, in response to which Daneel at once adjusted the heat upward. (It had been a cool day and was going to be a cooler evening.) Daneel said, "He is, madam."
"Where have you put him?"
"In the main guest room, madam. Giskard is with him and the household robots are all within call."
"I hope they will have the judgment to find out what he expects to eat for lunch. I don't know Settler cuisine. And I hope they can make some reasonable attempt to meet his requests."
"I am sure, madam, that Giskard will handle the matter competently."
Gladia was sure of that, too, but she merely snorted. At least it would have been a snort if Gladia were the sort of person who snorted. She didn't think she was.
"I presume," she said, "he's been in appropriate quarantine before being allowed to land."
"It would be inconceivable for him not to have been, madam."
She said, "Just the same, I'll wear my gloves and my nose filter."
She stepped out of her bedroom, was distantly aware that there were household robots about her, and made the sign that would get her a new pair of gloves and a fresh nose filter. Every establishment had its own vocabulary of signs and every human member of an establishment cultivated those signs, learning to make them both rapidly and unnoticeably. A robot was expected to follow these unobtrusive orders of its human overlords as though it read minds; and it followed that a robot could not follow the orders of nonestablishment human beings except by careful speech.
Nothing would humiliate a human member of an establishment more than to have one of the robots of the establishment hesitate in fulfilling an order or, worse, fulfill it incorrectly. That would mean that the human being had fumbled a sign - or that the robot had.
Generally, Gladia knew, it was the human being who was at fault, but in virtually every case, this was not admitted. It was the robot who was handed over for an unnecessary response analysis or unfairly put up for sale. Gladia had always felt that she would never fall into that trap of wounded ego, yet if at that moment she had not received her gloves and nose filter, she would have -
She did not have to finish the thought. The nearest robot brought her what she wanted, correctly and with speed.
Gladia adjusted the nose filter and snuffled a bit to make sure it was properly seated (she was in no mood to risk infection with any foul disorder that had survived the pain staking treatment during quarantine). She said, "What does he look like, Daneel?"
Daneel said, "He is of ordinary stature and measurements, madam."
"I mean his face." (It was silly to ask. If he showed any family resemblance to Elijah Baley, Daneel would have noticed it as quickly as she herself would have and he would have remarked upon it.) "That is difficult to say, madam. It is not in plain view."
"What does that mean? Surely he's, not masked, Daneel - "
"In a way, he is, madam. His face is covered with hair."
"Hair?" She found herself laughing. "You mean after the fashion of the hypervision historicals? Beards?" She made little gestures indicating a tuft of hair on the chin and another under the nose.
"Rather more than that, madam. Half his face is covered."
Gladia's eyes opened wide and for the first time she felt a surge of interest in seeing him. What would a face with hair all over it look like? Auroran males - and Spacer males, generally - had very little facial hair and what there was would be removed permanently by the late teens - during virtual infancy.
Sometimes the upper lip was left untouched. Gladia remembered that her husband, Santirix Gremionis, before their marriage, had had a thin line of hair under his nose. A mustache, he had called it. It had looked like a misplaced and peculiarly misshapen eyebrow and once she had resigned himself to accepting him as a husband, she had insisted he destroy the follicles.
He had done so with scarcely a murmur and it occurred to her now, for the first time, to wonder if he had missed the hair. It seemed to her that she had noticed him, on occasion, in those early years, lifting a finger to his upper lip. She had thought it a nervous poking at a vague itch and it was only now that it occurred to her that he had been searching for a mustache that was gone forever.
How would a man look with a mustache all over his face? Would he be bearlike?
How would it feel? What if women had such hair, too? She thought of a man and woman trying to kiss and having trouble finding each other's mouths. She found the thought funny, in a harmlessly ribald way, and laughed out loud. She felt her petulance disappearing and actually looked forward to seeing the monster.
After all, there would be no need to fear him even if he were as animal in behavior as he was in appearance. He would have no robot of his own - Settlers were supposed to have a nonrobotic society - and she would be surrounded by a dozen. The monster would be immobilized in a split second if he made the slightest suspicious move - or if he as much as raised his voice in anger.
She said with perfect good humor, "Take me to him, Daneel."
17
The monster rose. He said something that sounded like "Good afternoon, muhleddy."
She at once caught the "good afternoon," but it took her a moment to translate the last word into "my lady."
Gladia absently said, "Good afternoon." She remembered the difficulty she had had understanding Auroran pronunciation of Galactic Standard in those long-ago days when, a frightened young woman, she had come to the planet from Solaria.
The monster's accent was uncouth - or did it just sound uncouth because her ear was unaccustomed to it? Elijah, she remembered, had seemed to voice his "Vs" and "Ps," but spoke pretty well otherwise. Nineteen and a half decades had passed, however, and this Settler was not from Earth. Language, in isolation, underwent changes.
But only a small portion of Gladia's mind was on the language problem. She was staring at his beard.
It was not in the least like the beards that actors wore in historical dramas. Those always seemed tufted - a bit here, a bit there - looking gluey and glossy.
The Settler's beard was different. It covered his cheeks and chin evenly, thickly, and deeply. It was a dark brown, somewhat lighter and wavier than the hair on his head, and at least two inches long, she judged - evenly long.
It didn't cover his whole face, which was rather disappointing. His forehead was totally bare (except for his eyebrows), as were his nose and his under-eye regions.
His upper lip was bare, too, but it was shadowed as though there was the beginning of new growth upon it. There was additional bareness just under the lower lip, but with new growth less marked and concentrated mostly under the middle portion.
Since both his lips were quite bare, it was clear to Gladia that there would be no difficulty in kissing him. She said, knowing that staring was impolite and staring even so, "It seems to me you remove the hair from about your lips."
"Yes, my lady."
"Why, if I may ask?"
"You may ask. For hygienic reasons. I don't want food catching in the hairs."
"You scrape it off, don't you? I see it is growing again."
"I use a facial laser. It takes fifteen seconds after waking."
"Why not depilate and be done with it?"
"I might want to grow it back."
"Why?"
"Esthetic reasons, my lady."
This time Gladia did not grasp the word. It sounded like "acidic" or possibly "acetic."
She said, "Pardon me?"
The Settler said, "I might grow tired of the way I look now and want to grow the hair on the upper lip again. Some women like it, you know," and the Settler tried to look modest and failed - "I have a fine mustache when I grow it."
She said suddenly grasping the word, "You mean - "
The Settler laughed, showing fine white teeth, and said, "You talk funny, too, my lady."
Gladia tried to look haughty, but melted into a smile. Proper pronunciation was a matter of local consensus. She said, "You ought to hear me with my Solarian accent - if it comes to that. Then it would be 'estheetic rayzuns.' The 'r' rolled interminably."
"I've been places where they talk a little bit like that, it sounds barbarous." He rolled both "r's" phenomenally in the last word.
Gladia chuckled. "You do it with the tip of your tongue. It's got to be with the sides of the tongue. No one, but a Solarian can do it correctly."
"Perhaps you can teach me. A Trader like myself, who's been everywhere, hears all kinds of linguistic perversions." Again he tried to roll the "r's" of the last word, choked slightly, and coughed.
"See. You'll tangle your tonsils and you'll never recover." She was still staring at his beard and now she could curb her curiosity no longer. She reached toward it.
The Settler flinched and started back, then, realizing her intention, was still.
Gladia's hand, all-but-invisibly gloved, rested lightly on the left side of his face. The thin plastic that covered her fingers did not interfere with the sense of touch and she found the hair to be soft and springy.
"It's nice," she said with evident surprise.
"Widely admired," said the Settler, grinning.
She said, "But I can't stand here and manhandle you all day."
Ignoring his predictable "You can as far as I'm concerned," - she went on. "Have you told my robots what you would like to eat?"
"My lady, I told them what I now tell you - whatever is handy. I've been on a score of worlds in the last year and each has its own dietary. A Trader learns to eat everything that isn't actually toxic. I'd prefer an Auroran meal to anything you would try to make in imitation of Baleyworld - "
"Baleyworld?" said Gladia sharply, a frown returning to her face.
"Named for the leader of the first expedition to the planet - or to any of the Settled planets, for that matter. Ben Baley."
"The son of Elijah Baley."
"Yes," the Settler said and changed the subject, at once. He looked down at himself and said with a trace of petulance, "How do you people manage to stand these clothes of yours slick and puffy. Be glad to get into my own again."
"I'm sure you will have your chance to do so soon enough. But for now please come and join me at lunch. - I was told your name was Baley, by the way - like your planet."
"Not surprising. It's the most honored name on the planet, naturally. I'm Deejee Baley."
They had walked into the dining room, Giskard preceding them, Daneel following them, each moving into his appropriate wall niche. Other robots were already in their niches and two emerged to do the serving. The room was bright with sunshine, the walls were alive with decoration, the table was set, and the odor of the food was enticing.
The Settler sniffed and let his breath out in satisfaction. "I don't think I'll have any trouble at all eating Auroran food. Where would you like me to sit, my lady?"
A robot said at once, "If you would sit here, sir?"
The Settler sat down and then Gladia, the privileges of the guest satisfied, took her own seat.
"Deejee?" she said. "I do not know the nomenclature peculiarities of your world, so excuse me if my question is offensive. Wouldn't Deejee be a feminine name?"
"Not at all," said the Settler a bit stiffly. "In any case, it is not a name, it is a pair of initials. Fourth letter of the alphabet and the seventh."
"Oh," said Gladia, enlightened, "D.G. Baley. And what do the initials stand for, if you'll excuse my curiosity?"
"Certainly. There's 'D,' for certain," he said, jerking his thumb toward one of the wall niches, "and I suspect that one may be 'G.'" He jerked his thumb toward another.
"You don't mean that," said Gladia faintly.
"But I do. My name is Daneel Giskard Baley. In every generation, my family has had at least one Daneel or one Giskard in its multiplying batches. I was the last of six children, but the first boy. My mother felt that was enough and made up for having but one son by giving me both names. That made me Daneel Giskard Baley and the double load was too great for me. I prefer D.G. as my name and I'd be honored if you used it." He smiled genially. "I'm the first to bear both names and I'm also the first to see the grand originals."
"But why those names?"
"It was Ancestor Elijah's idea, according to the family story. He had the honor of naming his grandsons and he named, the oldest Daneel, while the second was named Giskard. He insisted on those names and that established the tradition."
"And the daughters?"
"The traditional name from generation to generation is Jezebel - Jessie. Elijah's wife, you know."
"I know."
"There are no - " He caught himself and transferred his attention to the dish that had been placed before him. "If this were Baleyworld, I would say this was a slice of roast pork and that it was smothered in peanut sauce."
"Actually, it is a vegetable dish, D.G. What you were about to say was that there are no Gladias in the family?"
"There aren't," said D.G. calmly. "One explanation is that Jessie - the original Jessie - would have objected, but I don't accept that. Elijah's wife, the Ancestress, never came to Baleyworld, you know, never left Earth. How could she have objected? No, to me, it's pretty certain that the Ancestor wanted no other Gladia. No imitations, no copies, no pretense. One Gladia. Unique. - He asked that there be no later Elijah, either."
Gladia was having trouble eating. "I think your Ancestor spent the latter portion of his life trying to be as unemotional as Daneel. Just the same, he had romantic notions under his skin. He might have allowed other Elijahs and Gladias. It wouldn't have offended me, certainly, and I imagine it wouldn't have offended his wife, either." She laughed tremulously.
D.G. said, "All this doesn't seem real somehow. The Ancestor is practically ancient history; he died a hundred and sixty-four years ago. I'm his descendant in the seventh generation, yet here I am sitting with a woman who knew him when he was quite young."
"I didn't really know him," said Gladia, staring at her plate. "I saw him, rather briefly, on three separate occasions over a period of seven years."
"I know. The Ancestor's son, Ben, wrote a biography of him which is one of the literary classics of Baleyworld. Even I have read it."
"Indeed? I haven't read it. I didn't even know it existed. What - what does it say about me?"
D.G. seemed amused. "Nothing you would object to; you come out very well. But never mind that. What I'm amazed at is that here we are together, across seven generations. How old are you, my lady? Is it fair to ask the question?"
"I don't know that it's fair, but I have no objection to it. In Galactic Standard Years, I am two hundred and thirty-three years old. Over twenty-two decades."
"You look as though you were no more than in your late forties. The Ancestor died at the age of seventy-nine, an old man. I'm thirty-nine and when I die you will still be alive - "
"If I avoid death by misadventure."
"And will continue to live perhaps five decades beyond."
"Do you envy me, D.G.?" said Gladia with an edge of bitterness in her voice. "Do you envy me for having survived Elijah by over sixteen decades and for being condemned to survive him ten decades more, perhaps?"
"Of course I envy you," came the composed answer. "Why not? I would have no objection to living for several centuries, were it not that I would be setting a bad example to the people of Baleyworld. I wouldn't want them to live that long as a general thing. The pace of historical and intellectual advance would then become too slow. Those at the top would stay in power too long. Baleyworld would sink into conversation and decay - as your world has done."
Gladia's small chin lifted. "Aurora is doing quite well, you'll find."
"I'm speaking of your world. Solaria."
Gladia hesitated, then said firmly, "Solaria is not my world."
D.G. said, "I hope it is. I came to see you because I believe Solaria is your world."
"If that is why you came to seem me, you are wasting your time, young man."
"You were born Solaria, weren't you, and lived there a while?"
"I lived there for the first three decades of my life, about an eighth of my lifetime."
"Then that makes you enough of a Solarian to be able to help me in a matter that is rather important."
"I am not a Solarian, despite this so-called important matter."
"It is a matter of war and peace - if you call that important. The Spacer worlds face war with the Settler worlds and things will go badly for all of us if it comes to that. And it is up to you, my lady, to prevent that war and to ensure peace."
18
The meal was done (it had been a small one) and Gladia found herself looking at D.G. in a coldly furious way.
She had lived quietly for the last twenty decades, peeling off the complexities of life. Slowly she had forgotten the misery of Solaria and the difficulties of adjustment to Aurora. She had managed to bury quite deeply the agony of two murders and the ecstasy of two strange loves - with a robot and with an Earthman - and to get well past it all. She had ended by spinning out a long quiet marriage, having two children, and working at her applied art of costumery. And eventually the children had left, then her husband, and soon she might be retiring even from her work.
Then she would be alone with her robots, content with or, rather, resigned to - letting life glide quietly and uneventfully to a slow close in its own time - a close so gentle she might not be aware of the ending when it came.
It was what she wanted.
Then - What was happening?
It had begun the night before when she looked up vainly at the star-lit sky to see Solaria's star, which was not in the sky and would not have been visible to her if it were. It was as though this one foolish reaching for the past - a past that should have been allowed to remain dead - had burst the cool bubble she had built about herself.
First the name of Elijah Baley, the most joyously painful memory of all the ones she had so carefully brushed away, had come up again and again in a grim repetition.
She was then forced to deal with a man who thought mistakenly he might be a descendant of Elijah in the fifth degree and now with another man who actually was a descendant in the seventh degree. Finally, she was now being given problems and responsibilities similar to those that had plagued Elijah himself on various occasions.
Was she becoming Elijah, in a fashion, with none of his talent and none of his fierce dedication to duty at all costs?
What had she done to deserve it?
She felt her rage being buried under a flood tide of self-pity. She felt unjustly dealt with. No one had the right to unload responsibility on her against her will.
She said, forcing her voice level, "Why do you insist on my being a Solarian, when I tell you that I am not a Solarian?"
D.G. did not seem disturbed by the chill that had now entered her voice. He was still holding the soft napkin that had been given him at the conclusion of the meal. It had been damply hot - not too hot - and he had imitated the actions of Gladia in carefully wiping his hands and mouth. He had then doubled it over and stroked his beard with it. It was shredding now and shriveling.
He said, "I presume it will vanish altogether."
"It will."
D.G. wadded what was left of his napkin and placed it on the arm of the chair. A robot, in response to Gladia's quick and unobtrusive gesture, removed it.
Gladia had deposited her own napkin in the appropriate receptacle on the table. Holding it was unmannerly and could be excused only by D.G.'s evident unfamiliarity with civilized custom. "There are some who think it has a polluting effect on the atmosphere, but there is a gentle draft that carries the residue upward and traps it in filters. I doubt that it will give us any trouble. - But you ignore my question, sir."
D.G. said, "I don't intend to ignore your question, my lady. I am not trying to force you to be a Solarian. I merely point out that you were born on Solaria and spent your early decades there and therefore you might reasonably be considered a Solarian, after a fashion at least. - Do you know that Solaria has been abandoned?"
"So I have heard. Yes."
"Do you feel anything about that?"
"I am an Auroran and have been one for twenty decades."
"That is a non sequitur."
"A what?" She could make nothing of the last sound at all.
"It has not connection with my question."
"A non sequitur, you mean. You said a nonsense quitter."
D.G. smiled. "Very well. Let's quit the nonsense. I ask you if you feel anything about the death of Solaria and you tell me you're an Auroran. Do you maintain that is an answer? A born Auroran might feel badly at the death of a sister world. How do you feel about it?"
Gladia said icily, "It doesn't matter. Why are you interested?"
"I'll explain. We - I mean the Traders of the Settler worlds - are interested because there is business to be done, profits to be made, and a world to be gained. Solaria is already terraformed; it is a comfortable world; you Spacers seem to have no need or desire for it. Why would we not settle it?"
"Because it's not yours."
"Madam, is it yours that you object? Has Aurora any more claim to it than Baleyworld has? Can't we suppose that an empty world belongs to whoever is pleased to settle it?"
"Have you settled it?"
"No - because it's not empty - "
"Do you mean the Solarians have not entirely left?" Gladia said quickly.
D.G.'s smile returned and broadened into a grin. "You're excited at the thought. - Even though you're an Auroran."
Gladia's face twisted into a frown at once. "Answer my question."
D.G. shrugged. "There were only some five thousand Solarians on the world just before it was abandoned, according to our best estimates. The population had been declining for years. But even five thousand - can we be sure that all are gone? However, that's not the point. Even if the Solarians were indeed all gone, the planet would not be empty. There are, upon it, some two hundred million or more robots - masterless robots - some of them among the most advanced in the Galaxy. Presumably, those Solarians who left took some robots with them - it's hard to imagine Spacers doing without robots altogether." (He looked about, smiling, at the robots in their niches within the room.) "However, they can't possibly have taken forty thousand robots apiece."
Gladia said, "Well, then, since your Settler worlds are so purely robot-free and wish to stay so, I presume, you can't settle Solaria."
"That's right. Not until the robots are gone and that is where Traders such as myself come in."
"In what way?"
"We don't want a robot society, but we don't mind touching robots and dealing with them in the way of business. We don't have a superstitious fear of the things. We just know that a robot society is bound to decay. The Spacers have carefully made that plain to us by example. So that while we don't want to live with this robotic poison, we are perfectly willing to sell it to Spacers for a substantial sum - if they are so foolish as to want such a society - "
"Do you think Spacers will buy them?"
"I'm sure they will. They will welcome the elegant models that the Solarians manufacture. It's well known that they were the leading robot designers in the Galaxy, even though the late Dr. Fastolfe is said to have been unparalleled in the field, despite the fact that he was an Auroran. - Besides, even though we would charge a substantial sum, that sum would still be considerably less than the robots are worth. Spacers, and Traders would both profit - the secret of successful trade.
"The Spacers wouldn't buy robots from Settlers," said Gladia with evident contempt.
D.G. had a Trader's way of ignoring such nonessentials as anger or contempt. It was business that counted. He said, "Of course they would. Offer them advanced robots at halfprice and why should they turn them down? Where business is to be done, you would be surprised how unimportant questions of ideology become."
"I think you'll be the one to be surprised. Try to sell your robots and you'll see."
"Would that I could, my lady. Try to sell them, that is. I have none on hand."
"Why not?"
"Because none have been collected. Two separate trading vessels have landed on Solaria, each capable of storing some twenty-five robots. Had they succeeded, whole fleets of trading vessels would have followed them and I dare say we would have continued to do business for decades - and then have settled the world."
"But they didn't succeed. Why not?"
"Because both ships were destroyed on the surface of the planet and, as far as we can tell, all the crewmen are dead."
"Equipment failure?"
"Nonsense. Both landed safely; they were not wrecked. Their last reports were that Spacers were approaching whether Solarians or natives of other Spacer worlds, we don't know. We can only assume that the Spacers attacked without warning."
"That's impossible!"
"Is it?"
"Of course it's impossible. What would be the motive?"
"To keep us off the world, I would say."
"If they wished to do that," said Gladia, "they would merely have had to announce that the world was occupied."
"They might find it more pleasant to kill a few Settlers. At least, that's what many of our people think and there is pressure to settle the matter by sending a few warships to Solaria and establishing a military base on the planet."
"That would be dangerous."
"Certainly. It could lead to war. Some of our fire-eaters look forward to that. Perhaps some Spacers look forward to that, too, and have destroyed the two ships merely to provoke hostilities."
Gladia sat there amazed. There had been no hint of strained relations between Spacers and Settlers on any of the news programs.
She said, "Surely it's possible to discuss the matter. Have your people approached the Spacer Federation?"
"A thoroughly unimportant body, but we have. We've also approached the Auroran Council."
"And?"
"The Spacers deny everything. They suggest that the potential profits in the Solarian robot trade are so high that Traders, who are interested only in money - as though they themselves are not - would fight each other over the matter. Apparently, they would have us believe the two ships destroyed each other, each hoping to monopolize the trade for their own world."
"The two ships were from I two different worlds, then?"
"Yes."
"Don't you think, then, that there might indeed have been a fight between them?"
"I don't think it's likely, but I will admit it's possible. There have been no outright conflicts between the Settler worlds, but there have been some pretty strenuous disputes. All have been settled through arbitration by Earth. Still, it is indeed a fact that the Settler worlds might, in a pinch, not hang together when multibillion-dollar trade is at stake. That's why war is not such a good idea for us and why something will have to be done to discourage the hotheads. That's where we come in."
"We?"
"You and I. I have been asked to go to Solaria and find out - if I can - what really happened. I will take one ship - armed, but not heavily armed."
"You might be destroyed, too."
"Possibly. But my ship, at least, won't be caught unprepared. Besides, I am not one of those hypervision heroes and I have considered what I might do to lessen the chances of destruction. It occurred to me that one of the disadvantages of Settler penetration of Solaria is that we don't know the world at all. It might be useful, then, to take someone who knows the world - a Solarian, in short.
"You mean you want to take me?"
"Right, my lady."
"Why me?"
"I should think you could see that without explanation, my lady. Those Solarians who have left the planet are gone we know not where. If any Solarians are left on the planet, they are very likely the enemy. There are no known Solarian born Spacers living on some Spacer planet other than Solaria - except yourself. You are only Solarian available to me - the only one in all the Galaxy. That's why I must have you and that's why you must come."
"You're wrong, Settler. If I am the only one available to you, then you have no one who is available. I do not intend to come with you and there is no way - absolutely no way that you can force me to come with you. I am surrounded by my robots. Take one step in my direction and you will be immobilized at once - and if you struggle you will be hurt."
"I intend no force. You must come of your own accord and you should be willing to. It's a matter of preventing war.
"That is the job of governments on your side and mine. I refuse to have anything to do with it. I am a private citizen."
"You owe it to your world. We might suffer in case of war, but so will Aurora."
"I am not one of those hypervision heroes, any more than you are."
"You owe it to me, then."
"You're mad. I owe you nothing."
D.G. smiled narrowly. "You owe me nothing as an individual. You owe me a great deal as a descendant of Elijah Baley."
Gladia froze and remained staring at the bearded monster for a long moment. How did she come to forget who he was?
With difficulty, she finally muttered, "No."
"Yes," said D.G. forcefully. "On two different occasions, the Ancestor did more for you than you can ever repay. He is no longer here to call in the debt - a small part of the debt. I inherit the right to do so."
Gladia said in despair, "But what can I do for you if I come with you?"
"We'll find out. Will you come?"
Desperately, Gladia wanted to refuse, but was it for this that Elijah had suddenly become part of her life, once more, in the last twenty-four hours? Was is so that when this impossible demand was made upon her, it would be in his name and she would find it impossible to refuse?
She said, "What's the use? The Council will not let me go with you. They will not have an Auroran taken away on a Settler's vessel."
"My lady, you have been here on Aurora for twenty decades, so you think, the Auroran-born consider you an Auroran. It's not so. To them, you are a Solarian still. They'll let you go."
"They won't," said Gladia, her heart pounding and the skin of her upper arms turning to gooseflesh. He was right. She thought of Amadiro, who would surely think of her as nothing but a Solarian. Nevertheless, she repeated, "They won't," trying to reassure herself.
"They will," retorted D.G. "Didn't someone from your Council come to you to ask you to see me?"
She said defiantly, "He asked me only to report this conversation we have had. And I will do so."
"If they want you to spy on me here in your own home, my lady, they will find it even more useful to have you spy on me on Solaria." He waited for a response and when there was none, he said with a trace of weariness, "My lady, if you refuse, I won't force you because I won't have to. They will force you. But I don't want that. The Ancestor would not want it if he were here. He would want you to come with me out of gratitude to him and for no other reason. - My lady, the Ancestor labored on your behalf under conditions of extreme difficulty. Won't you labor on behalf of his memory?"
Gladia's heart sank. She knew she could not resist that. She said, "I can't go anywhere without robots."
"I wouldn't expect you to." D.G. was grinning again. "Why not take my two namesakes? Do you need more?"
Gladia looked toward Daneel, but he was standing motionless. She looked toward Giskard - the same. And then it seemed to her that, for just a moment, his head moved - very slightly - up and down.
She had to trust him.
She said, "Well, then, I'll come with you. These two robots are all I will need."