Robots and Empire - Isaac Asimov

ISAAC ASIMOV

ROBOTS AND

EMPIRE

To Robyn and Michael

And to the years of happiness

They will continue to enjoy

As they walk the road of life together.

CONTENTS

PART I - AURORA

1. THE DESCENDANT

2. THE ANCESTOR?

3. THE CRISIS

4. ANOTHER DESCENDANT

PART II - SOLARIA

5. THE ABANDONED WORLD

6. THE CREW

7. THE OVERSEER

PART III - BALEYWORLD

8. THE SETTLER WORLD

9. THE SPEECH

10. AFTER THE SPEECH

PART IV - AURORA

11. THE OLD LEADER

12. THE PLAN AND THE DAUGHTER

13. THE TELEPATHIC ROBOT

14. THE DUEL

PART V - EARTH

15. THE HOLY WORLD

16. THE CITY

17. THE ASSASSIN

18. THE ZEROTH LAW

19. ALONE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PART I - AURORA

1. THE DESCENDANT

1.

Gladia felt the lawn lounge to make sure it wasn’t too damp and then sat down.

A touch at the control adjusted it in such a way as to allow her to be semirecumbent

and another activated the diamagnetic field and gave her, as it always did, the

sensation of utter relaxation. And why not? She was, in actual fact, floating--a

centimeter above the fabric.

It was a warm and pleasant night, the kind that found the planet Aurora at its

best--fragrant and star-lit.

With a pang of sadness, she studied the numerous little sparks that dotted the

sky with patterns, sparks that were all the brighter because she had ordered the lights

of her establishment dimmed.

How was it, she wondered, that she had never learned the names of the stars

and had never found out which were which in all the twenty-three decades of her life.

One of them was the star about which her birth planet of Solaria orbited, the star

which, during the first three decades of her life, she had thought of merely as “the sun.”

Gladia had once been called Gladia Solaria. That was when she had come to

Aurora, twenty decades before two hundred Standard Galactic Years--and it was meant

as a not very friendly way of marking her foreign birth. A month before had been the

bicentennial anniversary of her arrival, something she had left unmarked because she

did not particularly want to think of those days. Before that, on Solaria, she had been

Gladia-Delmarre.

She stirred uneasily. She had almost forgotten that surname. Was it because it

was so long ago? Or was it merely that she labored to forget?

All these years she had not regretted Solaria, never missed it.

And yet now?

Was it because she had now, quite suddenly, discovered herself to have survived

it? It was gone--a historical memory--and she still lived on? Did she miss it now for that

reason?

Her brow furrowed. No, she did not miss it, she decided resolutely. She did not

long for it, nor did she wish to return to it. It was just the peculiar pang of something

that had been so much a part of her--however destructively--being gone.

Solaria! The last of the Spacer worlds to be settled and made into a home for

humanity. And in consequence, by some mysterious law of symmetry perhaps, it was

also the first to die?

The first? Did that imply a second and third and so on?

Gladia felt her sadness deepen. There were those who thought there was indeed

such an implication. If so, Aurora, her long-adopted home, having been the first Spacer

world to be settled, would, by that same rule of symmetry, therefore be the last of the

fifty to die. In that case, it might, even at worst, outlast her own stretched-out lifetime

and if so, that would have to do.

Her eyes sought the stars again. It was hopeless. There was no way she could

possibly work out which of those indistinguishable dots of light was Solaria’s sun. She

imagined it would be one of the brighter ones, but there were hundreds even of those.

She lifted her arm and made what she identified to herself only as her “Daneel

gesture.” The fact that it was dark did not matter.

Robot Daneel Olivaw was at her side almost at once. Anyone who had known

him a little over twenty decades before, when he had first been designed by Han

Fastolfe, would not have been conscious of any noticeable change in him. His broad,

high-cheekboned face, with its short bronze hair combed back; his blue eyes; his tall,

well-knit, and perfectly humanoid body would have seemed as young and as calmly

unemotional as ever.

“May I be of help in any way, Madam Gladia?” he asked in an even voice.

“Yes, Daneel. Which of those stars is Solaria’s sun?”

Daneel did not look upward. He said, “None of them, Madam Gladia. At this time

of year, Solaria’s sun will not rise until 0320.”

“Oh?” Gladia felt dashed. Somehow she had assumed that any star in which she

happened to be interested would be visible at any time it occurred to her to look. Of

course, they did rise and set at different times. She knew that much. “I’ve been staring

at nothing, then.”

“The stars, I gather from human reactions,” said Daneel, as though in an

attempt to console, “are beautiful whether any particular one of them is visible or not.”

“I dare say,” said Gladia discontentedly and adjusted the lounge to an upright

position with a snap. She stood up. “However, it was Solaria’s sun I wanted to see--but

not so much that I intend to sit here till 0320.”

“Even were you to do so,” said Daneel, “you would need magnilenses.”

“Magnilenses?”

“It is not quite visible to the unaided eye, Madam Gladia.”

“Worse and worse!” She brushed at her slacks. “I should have consulted you

first, Daneel.”

Anyone who had known Gladia twenty decades before, when she had first

arrived in Aurora, would have found a change. Unlike Daneel, she was merely human.

She was still 155 centimeters tall, almost 10 centimeters below the ideal height for a

Spacer woman. She had carefully kept her slim figure and there was no sign of

weakness or stiffness about her body. Still, there was a bit of gray in her hair, fine

wrinkles near her eyes, and a touch of graininess about her skin. She might well live

another ten or twelve decades, but there was no denying that she was already no longer

young. That didn’t bother her.

She said, “Can you identify all the stars, Daneel?”

“I know those visible to the unaided eye, Madam Gladia. “

“And when they rise and set on any day of the year?”

“Yes, Madam Gladia. “

“And all sorts of other things about them?”

“Yes, Madam Gladia. Dr. Fastolfe once asked me to gather astronomical data so

that he could have them at his fingertips without having to consult his computer. He

used to say it was friendlier to have me tell him than to have his computer do so.” Then,

as though to anticipate the next question, “He did not explain why that should be so.”

Gladia raised her left arm and made the appropriate gesture. Her house was at

once illuminated. In the soft light that now reached her, she was subliminally aware of

the shadowy figures of several robots, but she paid no attention to that. In any well-

ordered establishment, there were always robots within reach of human beings, both for

security and for service.

Gladia took a last fugitive glimpse at the sky, where the stars had now dimmed

in the scattered light. She shrugged lightly. It had been quixotic. What good would it

have done even if she had been able to see the sun of that now-lost world, one faint dot

among many? She might as well choose a dot at random, tell herself it was Solaria’s

sun, and stare at it.

Her attention turned to R. Daneel. He waited for her patiently, the planes of his

face largely in shadow.

She found herself thinking again how little he had changed since she had seen

him on arriving at Dr. Fastolfe’s establishment so long ago. He had undergone repairs,

of course. She knew that, but it was a vague knowledge that one pushed away and kept

at a distance.

It was part of the general queasiness that held good for human beings, too.

Spacers might boast of their iron health and of their life-spans of thirty to forty decades,

but they were not entirely immune to the ravages of age. One of Gladia’s femurs fit into

a titanium-silicone hip socket. Her left thumb was totally artificial, though no one could

tell that without careful ultrasonograms. Even some of her nerves had been rewired.

Such things would be true of any Spacer of similar age from any of the fifty Spacer

worlds (no, forty-nine, for now Solaria could no longer be counted).

To make any reference to such things, however, was an ultimate obscenity. The

medical records involved, which had to exist since further treatment might be

necessary, were never revealed for any reason. Surgeons, whose incomes were

considerably higher than those of the Chairman himself, were paid so well, in part,

because they were virtually ostracized from polite society. After all, they knew.

It was all part of the Spacer fixation on long life, on their unwillingness to admit

that old age existed, but Gladia didn’t linger on any analysis of causes. She was

restlessly uneasy in thinking about herself in that connection. If she had a three-

dimensional map of herself with all prosthetic portions, all repairs, marked off in red

against the gray of her natural self, what a general pinkness she would appear to have

from a distance. Or so she imagined.

Her brain, however, was still intact and whole and while that was so, she was

intact and whole, whatever happened to the rest of her body.

Which brought her back to Daneel. Though she had known him for twenty

decades, it was only in the last year that he was hers. When Fastolfe died (his end

hastened, perhaps, by despair), he had willed everything to the city of Eos, which was a

common enough state of affairs. Two items, however, he had left to Gladia (aside from

confirming her in the ownership of her establishment and its robots and other chattels,

together with the grounds thereto appertaining).

One of them had been Daneel.

Gladia asked, “Do you remember everything you have ever committed to memory

over the course of twenty decades, Daneel?”

Daneel said gravely, “I believe so, Madam Gladia. To be sure, if I forgot an item, I

would not know that, for it would have been forgotten and I would not then recall ever

having memorized it.”

“That doesn’t follow at all,” said Gladia. “You might well remember knowing it,

but be unable to think of it at the moment. I have frequently had something at the tip of

my tongue, so to speak, and been unable to retrieve it.”

Daneel said, “I do not understand, madam. If I knew something, surely it would

be there when I needed it.”

“Perfect retrieval?” They were walking slowly toward the house.

“Merely retrieval, madam. I am designed so.”

“For how much longer?”

“I do not understand, madam.”

“I mean, how much will your brain hold? With a little over twenty decades of

accumulated memories, how much longer can it go on?”

“I do not know, madam. As yet I feel no difficulty.”

“You might not--until you suddenly discover you can remember no more.”

Daneel seemed thoughtful for a moment. “That may be so, madam.”

“You know, Daneel, not all your memories are equally important. “

“I cannot judge among them, madam.”

“Others can. It would be perfectly possible to clean out your brain, Daneel, and

then, under supervision, refill it with its important memory content only--say, ten

percent of the whole. You would then be able to continue for centuries longer than you

would otherwise. With repeated treatment of this sort, you could go on indefinitely. It is

an expensive procedure, of course, but I would not cavil at that. You’d be worth it.”

“Would I be consulted on the matter, madam? Would I be asked to agree to such

treatment?”

“Of course. I would not order you in a matter like that. It would be a betrayal of

Dr. Fastolfe’s trust.”

“Thank you, madam. In that case, I must tell you that I would never submit

voluntarily to such a procedure unless I found myself to have actually lost my memory

function.”

They had reached the door and Gladia paused. She said, in honest puzzlement,

“Why ever not, Daneel?”

Daneel said in a low voice, “There are memories I cannot risk losing, madam,

either through inadvertence or through poor judgment on the part of those conducting

the procedure.”

“Like the rising and setting of the stars?--Forgive me, Daneel, I didn’t mean to be

joking. To what memories are you referring?”

Daneel said, his voice still lower, “Madam, I refer to my memories of my onetime

partner, the Earthman Elijah Baley. “

And Gladia stood there, stricken, so that it was Daneel who had to take the

initiative, finally, and signal for the door to open.

2.

Robot Giskard Reventlov was waiting in the living room and Gladia greeted him

with that same pang of uneasiness that always assailed her when she faced him.

He was primitive in comparison with Daneel. He was obviously a robot--metallic,

with a face that had nothing human in expression upon it, with eyes that glowed a dim

red, as could be seen if it were dark enough. Whereas Daneel wore clothing, Giskard

had only the illusion of clothing--but a skillful illusion, for it was Gladia herself who

had designed it.

“Well, Giskard,” she said. “Good evening, Madam Gladia,” said Giskard with a

small bow of his head.

Gladia remembered the words of Elijah Baley long ago, like a whisper inside the

recesses of her brain:

“Daneel will take care of you. He will be your friend as well as protector and you

must be a friend to him--for my sake. But it is Giskard I want you to listen to. Let him

be your adviser.”

Gladia had frowned. “Why him? I’m not sure I like him.”

“I do not ask you to like him. I ask you to trust him.”

And he would not say why.

Gladia tried to trust the robot Giskard, but was glad she did not have to try to

like him. Something about him made her shiver.

She had both Daneel and Giskard as effective parts of her establishment for

many decades during which Fastolfe had held titular ownership. It was only on his

deathbed that Han Fastolfe had actually transferred ownership. Giskard was the second

item, after Daneel, that Fastolfe had left Gladia.

She had said to the old man, “Daneel is enough, Han. Your daughter Vasilia

would like to have Giskard. I’m sure of that.”

Fastolfe was lying in bed quietly, eyes closed, looking more peaceful than she

had seen him look in years. He did not answer immediately and for a moment she

thought he had slipped out of life so quietly that she had not noticed. She tightened her

grip on his hand convulsively and his eyes opened.

He whispered, “I care nothing for my biological daughters, Gladia. For twenty

centuries, I have had but one functional daughter and that has been you. I want you to

have Giskard. He is valuable.”

“Why is he valuable?”

“I cannot say, but I have always found his presence consoling. Keep him always,

Gladia. Promise me that.”

“I promise,” she said.

And then his eyes opened one last time and his voice, finding a final reservoir of

strength, said, in almost a natural tone of voice, “I love you, Gladia, my daughter.”

And Gladia said, “I love you, Han, my father.”

Those were the last words he said and heard. Gladia found herself holding the

hand of a dead man and, for a while, could not bring herself to let go.

So Giskard was hers. And yet he made her uneasy and she didn’t know why.

“Well, Giskard,” she said, “I’ve been trying to see Solaria in the sky among the

stars, but Daneel tells me it won’t be visible till 0320 and that I would require

magnilenses even then. Would you have known that?”

“No, madam.”

“Should I wait up till all hours? What do you think?”

“I suggest, Madam Gladia, that you would be better off in bed.”

Gladia bridled. “Indeed? And if I choose to stay up?”

“Mine is only a suggestion, madam, but you will have a hard day tomorrow and

you will undoubtedly regret missing your sleep if you stay up.”

Gladia frowned. “What’s going to make my day hard tomorrow, Giskard? I’m not

aware of any forthcoming difficulty.”

Giskard said, “You have an appointment, madam, with one Levular Mandamus.“

“I have? When did that happen?”

“An hour ago. He photophoned and I took the liberty--”

“You took the liberty? Who is he?”

“He is a member of the Robotics Institute, madam.”

“He’s an underling of Kelden Amadiro, then.”

“Yes, madam.”

“Understand, Giskard, that I am not in the least interested in seeing this

Mandamus or anyone with any connection with that poisonous toad Amadiro. So if

you’ve taken the liberty of making an appointment with him in my name, take the

further liberty right now of phoning him again and canceling.”

“If you will confirm it as an order, madam, and make that order as strong and as

definite as you can, I will try to obey. I may not be able to. In my judgment, you see, you

will be doing yourself harm if you cancel the appointment and I must not allow you to

come to harm through any action of mine.”

“Your judgment might just possibly be wrong, Giskard. Who is this man that my

failure to see him will do me harm? His being a member of the Robotics Institute

scarcely makes him important to me.”

Gladia was perfectly aware of the fact that she was venting spleen at Giskard

without much justification. She had been upset by the news of Solaria’s abandonment

and embarrassed by the ignorance that led her to look for Solaria in a sky that did not

contain it.

Of course, it had been Daneel whose knowledge had made her own lack so

obvious and yet she had not railed at him--but, then, Daneel looked human and so

Gladia automatically treated him as though he were. Appearance was everything.

Giskard looked like a robot, so one could easily assume he had no feelings to hurt.

And, to be sure, Giskard did not react at all to Gladia’s peevishness. (Neither

would Daneel have reacted--if it came to that.) He said, “I have described Dr.

Mandamus as a member of the Robotics Institute, but he is perhaps more than that. In

the last few years, he has been right-hand man to Dr. Amadiro. This makes him

important and he is not likely to be ignored. Dr. Mandamus would not be a good man to

offend, madam.”

“Would he not, Giskard? I care nothing for Mandamus and a great deal less than

nothing for Amadiro. I presume you remember that Amadiro once, when he and I and

the world were young, did his best to prove that Dr. Fastolfe was a murderer and that it

was only by a near-miracle that his machinations were aborted.”

“I remember it very well, madam.”

“That’s a relief. I was afraid that in twenty decades you had forgotten. In those

twenty decades, I have had nothing to do with Amadiro or with anyone connected with

him and I intend to continue that policy. I don’t care what harm I may do myself or

what the consequences might be. I will not see this Dr. whoever-he-is and, in the

future, do not make appointments in my name without consulting me or, at the very

least, without explaining that such appointments are subject to my approval.”

“Yes, madam,” said Giskard, “but may I point out--”

“No, you may not,” Gladia said and turned away from him.

There was silence while she moved away three steps and then Giskard’s calm

voice said, “Madam, I must ask you to trust me.”

Gladia stopped. Why did he use that expression?

She heard again that long-ago voice, “I do not ask you to like him. I ask you to

trust him.”

Her lips tightened and she frowned. Reluctantly, not wanting to, she turned

back.

“Well,” she said ungraciously, “what is it you want to say, Giskard?”

“Just that as long as Dr. Fastolfe was alive, madam, his policies predominated

on Aurora and throughout the Spacer worlds. As a result, the people of Earth have been

allowed to migrate freely to various suitable planets in the Galaxy and what we now call

the Settler worlds have flourished. Dr. Fastolfe is dead now, however, and his

successors lack his prestige. Dr. Amadiro has kept his own anti-Earth views alive and it

is very possible that they may now triumph and that a vigorous policy against Earth

and the Settler worlds may be undertaken.”

“If so, Giskard, what can I do about it?”

“You can see Dr. Mandamus and you can find out what it is that makes him so

anxious to see you, madam. I assure you that he was most insistent on making the

appointment as early as possible. He asked to see you at 0800.”

“Giskard, I never see anyone before noon.”

“I explained that, madam. I took his anxiety to see you at breakfast, despite my

explanation, to be a measure of his desperation. I felt it important to find out why he

should be so desperate.”

“And if I don’t see him, then it is your opinion, is it, that it will harm me

personally? I don’t ask whether it will harm Earth, or the Settlers, or this, or that. Will it

harm me?”

“Madam, it may harm the ability of Earth and the Settlers to continue the

settlement of the Galaxy. That dream originated in the mind of Plainsclothesman Elijah

Baley more than twenty decades ago. The harm to Earth will thus become a desecration

of his memory. Am I wrong in thinking that any harm that comes to his memory would

be felt by you as though it were harm to yourself personally?”

Gladia was staggered. Twice within the hour now, Elijah Baley had come into

the conversation. He was long gone now--a short-lived Earthman who had died over

sixteen decades before--yet the mere mention of his name could still shake her.

She said, “How can things suddenly be that serious?”

“It is not sudden, madam. For twenty decades, the people of Earth and the

people of the Spacer worlds have been following parallel courses and have been kept

from converging into conflict by the wise policies of Dr. Fastolfe. There has, however,

always been a strong opposition movement that Dr. Fastolfe has had to withstand at all

times. Now that Dr. Fastolfe is dead, the opposition is much more powerful. The

abandonment of Solaria has greatly increased the power of what had been the

opposition and may soon be the dominant political force.”

“Why?”

“It is a clear indication, madam, that Spacer strength is declining and many

Aurorans must feel that strong action must be taken--now or never.”

“And you think that my seeing this man is important in preventing all this?”

“That is so, madam.”

Gladia was silent for a moment and remembered again, though rebelliously, that

she had once promised Elijah that she would trust Giskard. She said, “Well, I don’t

want to and I don’t think my seeing this man will do anyone any good--but, very well, I

will see him.”

3.

Gladia was asleep and the house was dark--by human standards. It was alive,

however, with motion and action, for there was much for the robots to do--and they

could do it by infrared.

The establishment had to be put into order after the inevitable disordering

effects of a day’s activity. Supplies had to be brought in, rubbish had to be disposed of,

objects had to be cleaned or polished or stored, appliances had to be checked, ~d,

always, there was guard duty.

There were no locks on any doors; there did not have to be. There was no violent

crime of any sort on Aurora, either against human beings or against property. There

could not be anything of the sort, since every establishment and every human being

were, at all times, guarded by robots. This was well known and taken for granted.

The price for such calm was that the robot guards had to remain in place. They

were never used--but only because they were always there.

Giskard and Daneel, whose abilities were both more intense and more general

than those of the other establishment robots, did not have specific duties, unless one

counted as a specific duty that of being responsible for the proper performance of all the

other robots.

At 0300, they had completed their rounds out on the lawn and in the wooded

area to make sure that all the outer guards were performing their functions well and

that no problems were arising.

They met near the southern limit of the establishment grounds and for a while

they spoke in an abbreviated and Aesopic language. They understood each other well,

with many decades of communication behind them, and it was not necessary for them

to involve themselves in all the elaborations of human speech.

Daneel said in an all but unhearable whisper, “Clouds. Unseen.”

Had Daneel been speaking for human ears, he would have said, “As you see,

friend Giskard, the sky has clouded up. Had Madam Gladia waited her chance to see

Solaria, she would not, in any case, have succeeded.”

And Giskard’s reply of “Predicted. Interview, rather,” was the equivalent of “So

much was predicted in the weather forecast, friend Daneel, and might have been used

as an excuse to get Madam Gladia to bed early. It seemed to me to be more important,

however, to meet the problem squarely and to persuade her to permit this interview I

have already told you about.”

“It seems to me, friend Giskard,” said Daneel, “that the chief reason you may

have found persuasion difficult is that she has been upset by the abandonment of

Solaria. I was there once with Partner Elijah when Madam Gladia was still a Solarian

and was living there.”

“It has always been my understanding,” said Giskard, “that Madam Gladia had

not been happy on her home planet; that she left her world gladly and had, at no time,

any intention of returning. Yet I agree with you that she seems to have been unsettled

by the fact of Solaria’s history having come to an end.”

“I do not understand this reaction of Madam Gladia,” said Daneel, “but there are

many times that human reactions do not seem to follow logically from events.”

“It is what makes it difficult to decide, sometimes, what will do a human being

harm and what will not.” Giskard might have said it with a sigh, even a petulant sigh,

had he been human. As it was, he stated it merely as an unemotional assessment of a

difficult situation. “It is one of the reasons why it seems to me that the Three Laws of

Robotics are incomplete or insufficient.”

“You have said this before, friend Giskard, and I have tried to believe so and

failed,” said Daneel.

Giskard said nothing for a while, then, “Intellectually, I think they must be

incomplete or insufficient, but when I try to believe that, I, too, fail, for I am bound by

them. Yet if I were not bound by them, I am sure I would believe in their insufficiency. “

“That is a paradox that I cannot understand.”

“Nor can I. And yet I find myself forced to express this paradox. On occasion, I

feel that I am on the verge of discovering what the incompleteness or insufficiency of the

Three Laws might be, as in my conversation with Madam Gladia this evening. She

asked me how failure to keep the appointment might harm her personally, rather than

simply cause harm in the abstract, and there was an answer I could not give because it

was not within the compass of the Three Laws. “

“You gave a perfect answer, friend Giskard. The harm done to Partner Elijah’s

memory would have affected Madam Gladia deeply.”

“It was the best answer within the compass of the Three Laws. It was not the

best answer possible.”

“What was the best answer possible?”

“I do not know, since I cannot put it into words or even concepts as long as I am

bound by the Laws.”

“There is nothing beyond the Laws,” said Daneel.

“If I were human,” said Giskard, “I could see beyond the Laws and I think, friend

Daneel, that you might be able to see beyond them sooner than I would. “

“I?”

“Yes, friend Daneel, I have long thought that, although a robot, you think

remarkably like a human being.”

“It is not proper to think that,” said Daneel slowly, almost as though he were in

pain. “You think such things because you can look into human minds. It distorts you

and it may in the end destroy you. That thought is to me an unhappy one. If you can

prevent yourself from seeing into minds more than you must, prevent it.”

Giskard turned away. “I cannot prevent it, friend Daneel. I would not prevent it.

I regret that I can do so little with it because of the Three Laws. I cannot probe deeply

enough--because of the fear that I may do harm. I cannot influence directly enough--

because of the fear I may do harm.”

“Yet you influenced Madam Gladia very neatly, friend Giskard. “

“Not truly. I might have modified her thinking and made her accept the interview

without question, but the human mind is so riddled with complexities that I dare do

very little. Almost any twist I apply will produce subsidiary twists of whose nature I

cannot be certain and which may do harm.”

“Yet you did something to Madam Gladia. “

“I did not have to. The word ‘trust’ affects her and makes her more amenable. I

have noted that fact in the past, but I use the word with the greatest caution, since

overuse will surely weaken it. I puzzle over this, but I cannot simply burrow for a

solution.”

“Because the Three Laws will not permit it?” Giskard’s eyes seemed to intensify

their dim glow. “Yes. At every stage, the Three Laws stand in my way. Yet I cannot

modify them--because they stand in my way. Yet I feel I must modify them, for I sense

the oncoming of catastrophe. “

“You have said so before, friend Giskard, but you have not explained the nature

of the catastrophe.”

“Because I do not know the nature. It involves the increasing hostility between

Aurora and Earth, but how this will evolve into actual catastrophe, I cannot say.”

“Is it possible that there might, after all, be no catastrophe?”

“I do not think so. I have sensed, among certain Auroran officials I have

encountered, an aura of catastrophe--of waiting for triumph. I cannot describe this

more exactly and I cannot probe deeply for a better description because the Three Laws

will not allow me to. It is another reason why the interview with Mandamus must take

place tomorrow. It will give me a chance to study his mind.”

“But if you cannot study it effectively?”

Although Giskard’s voice was incapable of showing emotion in the human sense,

there was no missing the despair in his words. He said, “Then that will leave me

helpless. I can only follow the Laws. What else can I do?”

And Daneel said softly and dispiritedly, “Nothing else.”

4.

Gladia entered her living room at 0815, having purposely--and with a touch of

spite--determined to allow Mandamus (she had now reluctantly memorized his name) to

wait for her. She had also taken particular pains with her appearance and (for the first

time in years) had agonized over the gray in her hair and had fleetingly wished she had

followed the almost universal Auroran practice of shade control. After all, to look as

young and attractive as possible would put this minion of Amadiro’s at a further

disadvantage.

She was thoroughly prepared to dislike him at sight and was depressingly aware

that he might prove young and attractive, that a sunny face might break into a brilliant

smile at her appearance, that she might prove reluctantly attracted to him.

In consequence, she was relieved at the sight of him. He was young, yes, and

probably had not yet completed his first half-century, but he hadn’t made the best of

that. He was tall--perhaps 185 centimeters in height, she judged--but too thin. It made

him appear spindly. His hair was a shade too dark for an Auroran, his eyes a rather

faded hazel, his face too long, his lips too thin, his mouth too broad, his complexion

insufficiently fair. But what robbed him of the true appearance of youth was that his

expression was too prim, too humorless.

With a flash of insight, Gladia remembered the historical novels that were such

a fad on Aurora (novels that invariably dealt with primitive Earth--which was odd for a

world that was increasingly hating Earthpeople) and thought: Why, he’s the picture of a

Puritan.

She felt relieved and almost smiled. Puritans were usually pictured as villains

and, whether this Mandamus was indeed one or not, it was convenient to have him look

like one.

But when he spoke Gladia was disappointed, for his voice was soft and distinctly

musical. (It ought to have possessed a nasal twang if it were to fulfill the stereotype.)

He said, “Mrs. Gremionis?”

She held out her hand with a carefully condescending smile. “Mr. Mandamus. --

Please call me Gladia. Everyone does.”

“I know you use your given name professionally--”

“I use it in every way. And my marriage came to an amicable end several

decades ago.”

“It lasted for a long time, I believe.”

“A very long time. It was a great success, but even great successes come to a

natural end.”

“Ah,” said Mandamus sententiously. “To continue past the end might well turn

success into failure.”

Gladia nodded and said with a trace of a smile, “How wise for one so young. --

but shall we move into the dining room? Breakfast is ready and I have surely delayed

you long enough.”

It was only as Mandamus turned with her and adjusted his steps to hers that

Gladia became aware of his two accompanying robots. It was quite unthinkable for any

Auroran to go anywhere without a robotic retinue, but as long as robots stood still they

made no impression on the Auroran eye.

Gladia, looking at them quickly, saw that they were late models, clearly

expensive. Their pseudo-clothing was elaborate and, although it was not of Gladia’s

design, it was first-class. Gladia had to admit so much to herself, though reluctantly.

She would have to find out who had designed it someday, for she did not recognize the

Robots and Empire - Isaac Asimov

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