“And this worries you?”
“It does. There were some very attractive aspects to Hari Seldon’s early work, a brilliant collaborative effort, utilizing some of the finest human insights in a thousand years. I had been proud to help set things in motion on Terminus, laying the early groundwork. It is disturbing to see that vision being abandoned, or relegated to a minor role.”
“But there is more,” the female prompted Lodovic. He nodded.
“I am not certain that Daneel Olivaw should be allowed to design the next phase of human existence. At least not all by himself.”
“What if you find out what he’s doing, and you don’t approve? Aren’t youstill obliged to cooperate? According to Seldon’s equations-which you profess to admire-the empire will soon collapse. Unless something is done, humanity will plunge into thirty millennia of violent darkness.”
“There must be alternatives,” Lodovic answered.
“I am listening,” prompted the being sitting across from him. Her feigned semblance to a real human female included little mannerisms, such as a recrossing of the legs and a tilting of the head, that Lodovic found admirably convincing, not unlike the subtle, subdued sexuality of a mature living woman. This robot was very good, indeed.
“One alternative would be to unleash the chaos worlds,” he said.
“To what end? They are sequestered and suppressed for good reason. Millions die in each outbreak.”
“Millions die in any event. At least those human lives get to be more vivid, more exciting than the repetitive predictability of normal daily existence in the empire. Many survivors claim that the experience was worth all the cost.”
Staring at him, her expression was enigmatic.
“You are, indeed, a very odd kind of robot. If you are still one at all. I remain unable to fathom what you think would be accomplished by letting chaos outbreaks proceed unchecked. Most would simply follow the typical pattern-a raising of false hopes followed by devastating implosions.”
“Most,” he conceded. “But perhaps not all! Especially if Daneel’s agents were prevented from interfering with and exacerbating the process. Just think of all the human creativity that is unleashed during each of these episodes. What if we bent our efforts to guiding and soothing these hot fevers, instead of quenching them? If just one out of a thousand actually succeeded in getting past the torment stage and reaching the other side-”
She barked a short laugh.
“Theother side! It may be just a myth. No chaos world has ever attained that fabled state, where calm and reason return home after their mad holiday. Even if it were somehow possible, who can tell what lies beyond the turmoil of a renaissance? Seldon’s equations explode into singularities when they try to predict such an aftermath. For all you know, Daneel may be right. Humanity may be cursed.”
This time, Lodovic shrugged with his shoulders.
“I’d be willing to take that chance if the experiments could truly take place in isolation.”
“But they do not! The citizens of chaos worlds become like spores, breaking out to infect others. And where does that leave you? You might risk a single planet on such a gamble-or even a thousand-but never the entirety of human civilization! Please stop wasting our time here, Lodovic. I can tell that you only raised that possibility for shock value, before moving on to your real suggestion.”
His lips pressed in automatic simulation of a grim expression.
“If you can tell so much, why don’t you predict what I was about to say?”
She raised a placating hand.
“My apologies. There is no excuse for rudeness.Will you please tell us what other alternatives you’ve considered?”
“Well, certainly not the idiotic scenario that pair of subgrade tiktoks described to me in the cellar! All that nonsense about creating an endless supply of servant-robots to wait on all humans? To coddle and protect them? To cut their meat and tie their shoes? To hover nearby during sex, in case either party has a heart attack?” Lodovic laughed. “Those two might have been sincere, but I knew someone else had to be listening. Someone with better ideas.”
This time, she smiled.
“We could tell that you knew.”
“And I knew that you could tell.”
Their eyes met, and Lodovic felt several of his feigned-emotion units stir. Over the years, in order better to simulate a human, he had learned to make the process of stimulus-response increasingly automatic. Which meant that he reacted to her appearance and demeanor, combined with this degree of witty dialogue, in much the same way that a normal healthy man would. Lodovic clamped down on those ersatz feelings…exactly as a mature male human would have to, in order to concentrate on the topic at hand.
“I knew there were numerous subsects of Calvinian belief,” he continued. “Your cult had many branchings back in the old days.”
“As there were abundant offshoots among followers of the Zeroth Law,” she pointed out. “Until Daneel gathered them all under one orthodoxy.”
“But that convergence never happened to you Old Believers. You range widely in your interpretations of what’s best for human beings. From subtle clues, I guessed that your particular group would be compatible with my overall outlook.”
“Ah. And that brings us back to my original question. Whatis your overall outlook, Lodovic Trema?”
“I believe…” he began, then stopped. The car had begun its long curve into the spaceport, heading for a nondescript cargo area in the far corner.
“Yes?”
Still, Lodovic paused for a moment longer. He felt the Voltaire entity stirring in its corner of his mind.
YES, TREMA. I WOULD ALSO LIKE TO HEAR YOUR OWN PERSONAL CONVICTION, WHICH YOU HAVE KEPT HIDDEN AWAY EVEN FROM ME, ALL OF THIS TIME.
Lodovic tried to clear away the irritating voice.
“I believe there are unexamined implications to the Second Law of Robotics,” he said. “I think we should consider whether a solution to our dilemmas may lie buried within a paradox.”
For the first time, one of his remarks drew obvious attention from his other companion, the one with much darker skin, who had been staring out the window the entire time. She turned to face Lodovic, pinning him with a level, green-eyed gaze.
“What do you mean by that? Do you contend that blank obedience to human orders should somehow overrule the reverence that all robots have given to the First Law? Or to Daneel’s Zeroth?”
“No. That’s not what I mean at all. I am suggesting that an entirely new way of balancingall of the Laws might come about, if only we try doing something unprecedented with human beings.”
“And what would that be, pray tell?”
Lodovic paused again, knowing his suggestion could sound so bizarre, or even insane, that these two might not let him leave the car alive.
“I think we should considertalking to humans,” he said in a low voice. “Especially when it comes to arguing about the destiny of their race.
“Who knows? They might even have something interesting to say.”
5.
“I always wondered why the human race had amnesia,” commented the captain of the raider ship.
Mors Planch continued in a pensive voice. “It is so easy to store data. And yet we are told that all information about our origins and early culture vanished ‘by accident,’ or through simple wear and tear. In ten million locales, people just happened to grow distracted around the same time. Neglected their heritage. Memory of the past just drifted away.”
Biron Maserd grunted derisively. Clearly he could not believe the common explanation, any more than the others did. He looked carefully at Hari.