He stared at her uneasily. “A truly undistinguishable one? One that you couldn’t tell from a human being?”
“Yes.”
“It seems to me, then, that a robot that can in no way be distinguished from a human being is a human being. If you were such a robot, you would be nothing but a human being to me.”
“That’s what I wanted to hear you say, Pel.”
Pelorat waited, then said, “Well, then, now that you’ve heard me say it, dear, aren’t you going to tell me that you are a natural human being and that I don’t have to wrestle with hypothetical situations?”
“No. I will do no such thing. You’ve defined a natural human being as an object that has all the properties of a natural human being. If you are satisfied that I have all those properties, then that ends the discussion. We’ve got the operational definition and need no other. After all, how do I know that you’re not just a robot who happens to be indistinguishable from a human being?”
“Because I tell you that I am not.”
“Ah, but if you were a robot that was indistinguishable from a human being, you might be designed to tell me you were a natural human being, and you might even be programmed to believe it yourself. The operational definition is all we have, and all we can have.”
She put her arms about Pelorat’s neck and kissed him. The kiss grew more passionate, and prolonged itself until Pelorat managed to say, in somewhat muffled fashion, “But we promised Trevize not to embarrass him by converting this ship into a honeymooners’ haven.”
Bliss said coaxingly, “Let’s be carried away and not leave ourselves any time to think of promises.”
Pelorat, troubled, said, “But I can’t do that, dear. I know it must irritate you, Bliss, but I am constantly thinking and I am constitutionally averse to letting myself be carried away by emotion. It’s a lifelong habit, and probably very annoying to others. I’ve never lived with a woman who didn’t seem to object to it sooner or later. My first wife—but I suppose it would be inappropriate to discuss that—”
“Rather inappropriate, yes, but not fatally so. You’re not my first lover either.”
“Oh!” said Pelorat, rather at a loss, and then, aware of Bliss’s small smile, he said, “I mean, of course not. I wouldn’t expect myself to have been—Anyway, my first wife didn’t like it.”
“But I do. I find your endless plunging into thought attractive.”
“I can’t believe that, but I do have another thought. Robot or human, that doesn’t matter. We agree on that. However, I am an Isolate and you know it. I am not part of Gaia, and when we are intimate, you’re sharing emotions outside Gaia even when you let me participate in Gaia for a short period, and it may not be the same intensity of emotion then that you would experience if it were Gaia loving Gaia.”
Bliss said, “Loving you, Pel, has its own delight. I look no farther than that.”
“But it’s not just a matter of you loving me. You aren’t merely you. What if Gaia considers it a perversion?”
“If it did, I would know, for I am Gaia. And since I have delight in you, Gaia does. When we make love, all of Gaia shares the sensation to some degree or other. When I say I love you, that means Gaia loves you, although it is only the part that I am that is assigned the immediate role. —You seem confused.”
“Being an Isolate, Bliss, I don’t quite grasp it.”
“One can always form an analogy with the body of an Isolate. When you whistle a tune, your entire body, you as an organism, wishes to whistle the tune, but the immediate task of doing so is assigned to your lips, tongue, and lungs. Your right big toe does nothing.”
“It might tap to the tune.”
“But that is not necessary to the act of whistling. The tapping of the big toe is not the action itself but is a response to the action, and, to be sure, all parts of Gaia might well respond in some small way or other to my emotion, as I respond to theirs.”
Pelorat said, “I suppose there’s no use feeling embarrassed about this.”
“None at all.”
“But it does give me a queer sense of responsibility. When I try to make you happy, I find that I must be trying to make every last organism on Gaia happy.”
“Every last atom—but you do. You add to the sense of communal joy that I let you share briefly. I suppose your contribution is too small to be easily measurable, but it is there, and knowing it is there should increase your joy.”
Pelorat said, “I wish I could be sure that Golan is sufficiently busy with his maneuvering through hyperspace to remain in the pilot-room for quite a while.”
“You wish to honeymoon, do you?”
“I do.”
“Then get a sheet of paper, write ‘Honeymoon Haven’ on it, affix it to the outside of the door, and if he wants to enter, that’s his problem.”
Pelorat did so, and it was during the pleasurable proceedings that followed that the Far Star made the Jump. Neither Pelorat nor Bliss detected the action, nor would they have, had they been paying attention.
10.
It had been only a matter of a few months since Pelorat had met Trevize and had left Terminus for the first time. Until then, for the more than half-century (Galactic Standard) of his life, he had been utterly planet-bound.
In his own mind, he had in those months become an old space dog. He had seen three planets from space: Terminus itself, Sayshell, and Gaia. And on the viewscreen, he now saw a fourth, albeit through a computer-controlled telescopic device. The fourth was Comporellon.
And again, for the fourth time, he was vaguely disappointed. Somehow, he continued to feel that looking down upon a habitable world from space meant seeing an outline of its continents against a surrounding sea; or, if it were a dry world, the outline of its lakes against a surrounding body of land.
It was never so.
If a world was habitable, it had an atmosphere as well as a hydrosphere. And if it had both air and water, it had clouds; and if it had clouds, it had an obscured view. Once again, then, Pelorat found himself looking down on white swirls with an occasional glimpse of pale blue or rusty brown.
He wondered gloomily if anyone could identify a world if a view of it from, say, three hundred thousand kilometers, were cast upon a screen. How does one tell one cloud swirl from another?
Bliss looked at Pelorat with some concern. “What is it, Pel? You seem to be unhappy.”
“I find that all planets look alike from space.”
Trevize said, “What of that, Janov? So does every shoreline on Terminus, when it is on the horizon, unless you know what you’re looking for—a particular mountain peak, or a particular offshore islet of characteristic shape.”
“I dare say,” said Pelorat, with clear dissatisfaction, “but what do you look for in a mass of shifting clouds? And even if you try, before you can decide, you’re likely to be moving into the dark side.
“Look a little more carefully, Janov. If you follow the shape of the clouds, you see that they tend to fall into a pattern that circles the planet and that moves about a center. That center is more or less at one of the poles.”
“Which one?” asked Bliss with interest.
“Since, relative to ourselves, the planet is rotating in clockwise fashion, we are looking down, by definition, upon the south pole. Since the center seems to be about fifteen degrees from the terminator—the planet’s line of shadow—and the planetary axis is tilted twenty-one degrees to the perpendicular of its plane of revolution, we’re either in mid-spring or mid-summer depending on whether the pole is moving away from the terminator or toward it. The computer can calculate its orbit and tell me in short order if I were to ask it. The capital is on the northern side of the equator so it is either in mid-fall or mid-winter.”