“What if the capital is on the dark side?”
“The chance is fifty-fifty,” said Trevize, “but if it is, once the map is matched by daylight, we can skim down to the capital quite unerringly even if it is in the dark. And long before we come anywhere near the capital, we’ll be intersecting microwave beams and will be receiving messages directing us to the most convenient spaceport. —There’s nothing to worry about.”
“Are you sure?” said Bliss. “You’re bringing me down without papers and without any native world that these people here will recognize—and I’m bound and determined not to mention Gaia to them in any case. So what do we do, if I’m asked for my papers once we’re on the surface?”
Trevize said, “That’s not likely to happen. Everyone will assume that was taken care of at the entry station.”
“But if they ask?”
“Then, when that time comes, we’ll face the problem. Meanwhile, let’s not manufacture problems out of air.”
“By the time we face the problems that may arise, it might well be too late to solve them.”
“I’ll rely on my ingenuity to keep it from being too late.”
“Talking about ingenuity, how did you get us through the entry station?”
Trevize looked at Bliss, and let his lips slowly expand into a smile that made him seem like an impish teenager. “Just brains.”
Pelorat said, “What did you do, old man?”
Trevize said, “It was a matter of appealing to him in the correct manner. I’d tried threats and subtle bribes. I had appealed to his logic and his loyalty to the Foundation. Nothing worked, so I fell back on the last resort. I said that you were cheating on your wife, Pelorat.”
“My wife? But, my dear fellow, I don’t have a wife at the moment.”
“I know that, but he didn’t.”
Bliss said, “By ‘wife,’ I presume you mean a woman who is a particular man’s regular companion.”
Trevize said, “A little more than that, Bliss. A legal companion, one with enforceable rights in consequence of that companionship.”
Pelorat said nervously, “Bliss, I do not have a wife. I have had one now and then in the past, but I haven’t had one for quite a while. If you would care to undergo the legal ritual—”
“Oh, Pel,” said Bliss, making a sweeping-away movement with her right hand, “what would I care about that? I have innumerable companions that are as close to me as your arm is close companion to your other arm. It is only Isolates who feel so alienated that they have to use artificial conventions to enforce a feeble substitute for true companionship.”
“But I am an Isolate, Bliss dear.”
“You will be less Isolate in time, Pel. Never truly Gaia, perhaps, but less Isolate, and you will have a flood of companions.”
“I only want you, Bliss,” said Pel.
“That’s because you know nothing about it. You’ll learn.”
Trevize was concentrating on the viewscreen during that exchange with a look of strained tolerance on his face. The cloud cover had come up close and, for a moment, all was gray fog.
Microwave vision, he thought, and the computer switched at once to the detection of radar echoes. The clouds disappeared and the surface of Comporellon appeared in false color, the boundaries between sectors of different constitution a little fuzzy and wavering.
“Is that the way it’s going to look from now on?” asked Bliss, with some astonishment.
“Only till we drift below the clouds. Then it’s back to sunlight.” Even as he spoke, the sunshine and normal visibility returned.
“I see,” said Bliss. Then, turning toward him, “But what I don’t see is why it should matter to that official at the entry station whether Pel was deceiving his wife or not?”
“If that fellow, Kendray, had held you back, the news, I said, might reach Terminus and, therefore, Pelorat’s wife. Pelorat would then be in trouble. I didn’t specify the sort of trouble he would be in, but I tried to sound as though it would be bad. —There is a kind of free-masonry among males,” Trevize was grinning now, “and one male doesn’t betray another fellow-male. He would even help, if requested. The reasoning, I suppose, is that it might be the helper’s turn next to be helped. I presume,” he added, turning a bit graver, “that there is a similar free-masonry among women, but, not being a woman, I have never had an opportunity to observe it closely.”
Bliss’s face resembled a pretty thundercloud. “Is this a joke?” she demanded.
“No, I’m serious,” said Trevize. “I don’t say that that Kendray fellow let us through only to help Janov avoid angering his wife. The masculine free-masonry may simply have added the last push to my other arguments.”
“But that is horrible. It is its rules that hold society together and bind it into a whole. Is it such a light thing to disregard the rules for trivial reasons?”
“Well,” said Trevize, in instant defensiveness, “some of the rules are themselves trivial. Few worlds are very particular about passage in and out of their space in times of peace and commercial prosperity, such as we have now, thanks to the Foundation. Comporellon, for some reason, is out of step—probably because of an obscure matter of internal politics. Why should we suffer over that?”
“That is beside the point. If we only obey those rules that we think are just and reasonable, then no rule will stand, for there is no rule that some will not think is unjust and unreasonable. And if we wish to push our own individual advantage, as we see it, then we will always find reason to believe that some hampering rule is unjust and unreasonable. What starts, then, as a shrewd trick ends in anarchy and disaster, even for the shrewd trickster, since he, too, will not survive the collapse of society.”
Trevize said, “Society will not collapse that easily. You speak as Gaia, and Gaia cannot possibly understand the association of free individuals. Rules, established with reason and justice, can easily outlive their usefulness as circumstances change, yet can remain in force through inertia. It is then not only right, but useful, to break those rules as a way of advertising the fact that they have become useless—or even actually harmful.”
“Then every thief and murderer can argue he is serving humanity.”
“You go to extremes. In the superorganism of Gaia, there is automatic consensus on the rules of society and it occurs to no one to break them. One might as well say that Gaia vegetates and fossilizes. There is admittedly an element of disorder in free association, but that is the price one must pay for the ability to induce novelty and change. —On the whole, it’s a reasonable price.”
Bliss’s voice rose a notch. “You are quite wrong if you think Gaia vegetates and fossilizes. Our deeds, our ways, our views are under constant self-examination. They do not persist out of inertia, beyond reason. Gaia learns by experience and thought; and therefore changes when that is necessary.”
“Even if what you say is so, the self-examination and learning must be slow, because nothing but Gaia exists on Gaia. Here, in freedom, even when almost everyone agrees, there are bound to be a few who disagree and, in some cases, those few may be right, and if they are clever enough, enthusiastic enough, right enough, they will win out in the end and be heroes in future ages—like Hari Seldon, who perfected psychohistory, pitted his own thoughts against the entire Galactic Empire, and won.”