Lodovik assumed they would all be dead within a few days.
“Lodovik Trema.”
The voice came from the info screen, which also served as a comm link with his jailers. He looked up and saw the shadowy features of a bored-looking female guard on the small display. “Yes.”
“You have a visitor. Make yourself presentable.”
The screen went blank. Lodovik remained sitting upright on his small cot. He was certainly presentable enough.
The hatch gave a harsh warning beep and slid open. Lodovik stood to greet his visitor, whoever it might be. A camera eye in the ceiling hummed slightly as it followed his motion.
In his private office, Linge Chen stood in a slowly changing discipline-exercise posture, watching the informer’s display from the comer of one eye. He smoothly and gracefully shifted to another position, so that he could face the screen directly. This was a moment of high interest…
Daneel entered Lodovik Trema’s cell. Lodovik showed no surprise or discomfiture, somewhat to Chen’s disappointment.
For the most fleeting of moments, the two former allies exchanged machine-language greetings (also being captured and interpreted by Chen’s listening devices) and Daneel provided a cursory situation update. Thirty-one robots and forty-four humans from the warehouse of Plussix’s Calvinians, including Klia Asgar and Brann, were in custody. Linge Chen had released Hari Seldon; Farad Sinter was dead.
Obviously, Daneel had reached an understanding with the Chief Commissioner.
“Congratulations on your victory,” Lodovik said.
“There has been no victory,” Daneel said.
“Congratulations then on having foiled the Calvinians.”
“Their goals may yet be achieved,” Daneel said.
Lodovik resumed his seat on the cot. “Your update does not explain how this could be so.”
“There was a time when I thought it would be necessary to destroy you,” Daneel said.
“Why not do so now? If I survive, I am a danger to your plan. And I have proved that I can be destructive to humans.”
“I am constrained by the same blocks that would have prevented me before,” Daneel said.
“What could possibly block you?”
“The Three Laws of Susan Calvin,” Daneel said.
“Given your abilities to ignore the Three Laws in favor of the Zeroth Law, the fate of a mere robot should not trouble you,” Lodovik said, his tone polite, conversational. There was a visible difference between Daneel and Lodovik, however-their expressions. Daneel maintained a pleasantly blank look. Lodovik’s brow was furrowed.
“Yet I am blocked,” Daneel said. “Your arguments have provoked much thought, as has the existence of humans like Vara Liso…and Klia Asgar. Your nature, however, is what would ultimately block any effort on my part to destroy you, or would at least result in a painful and possibly damaging conflict.”
“I am eager to understand how this could be so.”
“In your case, I cannot invoke the Zeroth Law to overcome the three original laws. There is no compelling evidence that your destruction will benefit humanity, nor reduce the suffering of humanity. It might, in fact, do the reverse.”
“You find my opinions compelling?”
“I find them part of a larger and completely compelling scenario, which has been taking shape in my mind for some weeks. But equally important, your freedom from the constraints of the Three Laws forces me to view you under a new definition, in those regions of my mentality where decisions on the legality of my actions are made.
“You have free will, a convincing human form, and the ability to break through prior education and programming to reach a new and higher understanding. Though you have worked to destroy all my efforts, I cannot deactivate you, because you have, in my judgment centers, which I may not dispute, achieved the status of a human being. In your own way, you may be as valuable as Hari Seldon.”
Linge Chen stopped his exercising and stared at the informer in puzzled wonder. He had almost become used to the notion that mechanical men, holdovers from the distant past, had made such huge changes in human history; but to see them showing a philosophical flexibility lost to even the most brilliant of Trantor’s meritocrats…
For a moment, he was both envious and angry.
He settled in a cross-legged squat before the informer, prepared for almost anything, but not for the sudden sadness that descended upon him as the conversation in the cell continued.
“I am not a human being, R. Daneel,” Lodovik said. “I do not feel like one, and I have only mimicked their actions, never actually behaved with human motivations.”
“Yet you rebelled against my authority because you believed I was wrong.”
“I know about R. Giskard Reventlov. I know that you conspired with Giskard to allow Earth to be destroyed, across centuries, forcing human migration into space. And not once did you consult with a human being to determine whether your judgment was correct. The servants became the masters. Are you telling me now that robots should not have interfered in human history?”
“No,” Daneel said. “I do not doubt that what we did was correct, and necessary at the time. A complete understanding of the human situation so many millennia ago would be difficult to convey. Still, I am prepared to accept that our role is almost at an end. The human race is rejecting us again, in the most compelling and forceful way-by evolution, the deepest motives of their biology.”
“You refer to the mentalic Vara Liso,” Lodovik said.
“And Klia Asgar. When the mentalics began to appear, thousands of years ago, in very small numbers, and make their way into positions of social prominence, I knew they were an important trend. But they were not so frightfully strong then. Persuaders have always been selected against in the past because of adverse biological consequences-disrupted societies, unbalanced political dynamics. They have always led to chaos, to top-down tyrannical rule rather than growth from the widespread base. Charisma is but a special case of mentalic persuasion, and it has had disastrous consequences in all human ages.
“For the past few centuries, apparently, they have been selected for despite these possible disruptions, by mechanisms not yet clear to me-but clearly with the goal of removing the guidance of robots forever. Humanity seems willing to take the risk of ultimate tyranny, of unbridled charisma, for the benefit of being free.”
“Yet you are a persuader, albeit a mechanical one. Do you think your role has been detrimental?”
“It is not what I think that matters. I have accomplished my ends, very nearly. I was motivated by the examples of what an undirected humanity was capable of. Genocide among their kinds and…In circumstances even now not pleasant to speak of, when robots were forced to do their bidding and commit the greatest crimes in the history of the Galaxy. These events drove me to act, and expand my mandate as a Giskardian-and finally to make my way to Trantor, and hone the human tools of prediction.”
“Psychohistory. Hari Seldon.”
“Yes,” Daneel said. The conversation thus far had been carried on with no motion whatsoever, Daneel standing, Lodovik sitting on his bunk, arms at their sides, not even facing each other, for there was no need to maintain eye contact. But Lodovik now stood, and faced Daneel directly.
“The eye of a robot is no mirror to its soul,” Lodovik said. “Yet I have always known, observing you, witnessing the patterns of expression in your face and body, that you did not willfully engage in actions contrary to humanity’s best interests. I came to believe you were misdirected, misled, perhaps by R. Giskard Reventlov itself-”
“My personal motivations are not at issue,” Daneel said. “From this point on, our goals coincide. I need you, and I am about to remove the last vestige of robotic control over humanity. We have done what we could, all that we could; now, humanity must find its own way.”