“Do you know the pain of lost love?”
“I have had my moments. I have not led the sheltered life of Janov. I have not had my life consumed and anesthetized by an intellectual pursuit that swallowed up everything else, even wife and child. He has. Now suddenly, he gives it all up for you. I do not want him hurt. I will not have him hurt. If I have served Gaia, I deserve a reward—and my reward is your assurance that Janov Pelorat’s well-being will be preserved.”
“Shall I pretend I am a robot and answer you?”
Trevize said, “Yes. And right now.”
“Very well, then. Suppose I am a robot, Trev, and suppose I am in a position of supervision. Suppose there are a few, a very few, who have a similar role to myself and suppose we rarely meet. Suppose that our driving force is the need to care for human beings and suppose there are no true human beings on Gaia, because all are part of an overall planetary being.
“Suppose that it fulfills us to care for Gaia—but not entirely. Suppose there is something primitive in us that longs for a human being in the sense that existed when robots were first formed and designed. Don’t mistake me; I do not claim to be age-old (assuming I am a robot). I am as old as I told you I was or, at least, (assuming I am a robot) my fundamental design would be as it always was and I would long to care for a true human being.
“Pel is a human being. He is not part of Gaia. He is too old to ever become a true part of Gaia. He wants to stay on Gaia with me, for he does not have the feelings about me that you have. He does not think that I am a robot. Well, I want him, too. If you assume that I am a robot, you see that I would. I am capable of all human reactions and I would love him. If you were to insist I was a robot, you might not consider me capable of love in some mystic human sense, but you would not be able to distinguish my reactions from that which you would call love—so what difference would it make?”
She stopped and looked at him—intransigently proud.
Trevize said, “You are telling me that you would not abandon him?”
“If you assume that I am a robot, then you can see for yourself that by First Law I could never abandon him, unless he ordered me to do so and I were, in addition, convinced that he meant it and that I would be hurting him more by staying than by leaving.”
“Would not a younger man—”
“What younger man? You are a younger man, but I do not conceive you as needing me in the same sense that Pel does, and, in fact, you do not want me, so that the First Law would prevent me from attempting to cling to you.”
“Not me. Another younger man—”
“There is no other. Who is there on Gaia other than Pel and yourself that would qualify as human beings in the non-Gaian sense?”
Trevize said, more softly, “And if you are not a robot?”
“Make up your mind,” said Bliss.
“I say, if you are not a robot?”
“Then I say that, in that case, you have no right to say anything at all. It is for myself and for Pel to decide.”
Trev said, “Then I return to my first point. I want my reward and that reward is that you will treat him well. I won’t press the point of your identity. Simply assure me, as one intelligence to another, that you will treat him well.”
And Bliss said softly, “I will treat him well—not as a reward to you, but because I wish to. It is my earnest desire. I will treat him well.” She called, “Pel!” And again, “Pel!”
Pelorat entered from outside, “Yes, Bliss.”
Bliss held out her hand to him. “I think Trev wants to say something.”
Pelorat took her hand and Trevize then took the doubled hand in his two. “Janov,” he said, “I am happy for both of you.”
Pelorat said, “Oh, my dear fellow.”
Trevize said, “I will probably be leaving Gaia. I go now to speak to Dom about that. I don’t know when or if we will meet again, Janov, but, in any case, we did well together.”
“We did well,” said Pelorat, smiling.
“Good-bye, Bliss, and, in advance, thank you.”
“Good-bye, Trev.”
And Trevize, with a wave of his hand, left the house.
5.
Dom said, “You did well, Trev. —But then, you did as I thought you would.”
They were once more sitting over a meal, as unsatisfactory as the first had been, but Trevize did not mind. He might not be eating on Gaia again.
He said, “I did as I thought you would, but not, perhaps, for the reason you thought I would.”
“Surely you were sure of the correctness of your decision.”
“Yes, I was, but not because of any mystic grip I have on certainty. If I chose Galaxia, it was through ordinary reasoning—the sort of reasoning that anyone else might have used to come to a decision. Would you care to have me explain?”
“I most certainly would, Trev.”
Trevize said, “There are three things I might have done. I might have joined the First Foundation, or joined the Second Foundation, or joined Gaia.
“If I had joined the First Foundation, Mayor Branno would have taken immediate action to establish domination over the Second Foundation and over Gaia. If I had joined the Second Foundation, Speaker Gendibal would have taken immediate action to establish domination over the First Foundation and over Gaia. In either case, what would have taken place would have been irreversible—and if either were the wrong solution, it would have been irreversibly catastrophic.
“If I joined with Gaia, however, then the First Foundation and the Second Foundation would each have been left with the conviction of having won a relatively minor victory. All would then have continued as before, since the building of Galaxia, I had already been told, would take generations, even centuries.
“Joining with Gaia was my way of temporizing, then, and of making sure that there would remain time to modify matters—or even reverse them—if my decision were wrong.”
Dom raised his eyebrows. His old, almost cadaverous face remained otherwise expressionless. He said in his piping voice, “And is it your opinion that your decision may turn out wrong?”
Trevize shrugged. “I don’t think so, but there is one thing I must do in order that I might know. It is my intention to visit Earth, if I can find that world.”
“We will certainly not stop you if you wish to leave us, Trev—”
“I do not fit on your world.”
“No more than Pel does, yet you are as welcome to remain as he is. Still, we will not hold you. —But tell me, why do you wish to visit Earth?”
Trevize said, “I rather think you understand.”
“I do not.”
“There is a piece of information you withheld from me, Dom. Perhaps you had your reasons, but I wish you had not.”
Dom said, “I do not follow you.”
“Look, Dom, in order to make my decision, I used my computer and for a brief moment I found myself in touch with the minds of those about me—Mayor Branno, Speaker Gendibal, Novi. I caught glimpses of a number of matters that, in isolation, meant little to me, as, for example, the various effects Gaia, through Novi, had produced on Trantor—effects that were intended to maneuver the Speaker into going to Gaia.”
“Yes?”
“And one of those things was the clearing from Trantor’s library of all references to Earth.”