She had lived quietly for the last twenty decades, peeling off the complexities of life. Slowly she had forgotten the misery of Solaria and the difficulties of adjustment to Aurora. She had managed to bury quite deeply the agony of two murders and the ecstasy of two strange loves—with a robot and with an Earthman—and to get well past it all. She had ended by spinning out a long quiet marriage, having two children, and working at her applied art of costumery. And eventually the children had left, then her husband, and soon she might be retiring even from her work.
Then she would be alone with her robots, content with or, rather, resigned to—letting life glide quietly and uneventfully to a slow close in its own time—a close so gentle she might not be aware of the ending when it came.
It was what she wanted.
Then—What was happening?
It had begun the night before when she looked up vainly at the star-lit sky to see Solaria’s star, which was not in the sky and would not have been visible to her if it were. It was as though this one foolish reaching for the past—a past that should have been allowed to remain dead—had burst the cool bubble she had built about herself.
First the name of Elijah Baley, the most joyously painful memory of all the ones she had so carefully brushed away, had come up again and again in a grim repetition.
She was then forced to deal with a man who thought mistakenly he might be a descendant of Elijah in the fifth degree and now with another man who actually was a descendant in the seventh degree. Finally, she was now being given problems and responsibilities similar to those that had plagued Elijah himself on various occasions.
Was she becoming Elijah, in a fashion, with none of his talent and none of his fierce dedication to duty at all costs?
What had she done to deserve it?
She felt her rage being buried under a flood tide of self-pity. She felt unjustly dealt with. No one had the right to unload responsibility on her against her will.
She said, forcing her voice level, “Why do you insist on my being a Solarian, when I tell you that I am not a Solarian?”
D.G. did not seem disturbed by the chill that had now entered her voice. He was still holding the soft napkin that had been given him at the conclusion of the meal. It had been damply hot—not too hot—and he had imitated the actions of Gladia in carefully wiping his hands and mouth. He had then doubled it over and stroked his beard with it. It was shredding now and shriveling.
He said, “I presume it will vanish altogether.”
“It will.”
D.G. wadded what was left of his napkin and placed it on the arm of the chair. A robot, in response to Gladia’s quick and unobtrusive gesture, removed it.
Gladia had deposited her own napkin in the appropriate receptacle on the table. Holding it was unmannerly and could be excused only by D.G.’s evident unfamiliarity with civilized custom. “There are some who think it has a polluting effect on the atmosphere, but there is a gentle draft that carries the residue upward and traps it in filters. I doubt that it will give us any trouble.—But you ignore my question, sir.”
D.G. said, “I don’t intend to ignore your question, my lady. I am not trying to force you to be a Solarian. I merely point out that you were born on Solaria and spent your early decades there and therefore you might reasonably be considered a Solarian, after a fashion at least.—Do you know that Solaria has been abandoned?”
“So I have heard. Yes.”
“Do you feel anything about that?”
“I am an Auroran and have been one for twenty decades.”
“That is a non sequitur.”
“A what?” She could make nothing of the last sound at all.
“It has not connection with my question.”
“A non sequitur, you mean. You said a nonsense quitter.”
D.G. smiled. “Very well. Let’s quit the nonsense. I ask you if you feel anything about the death of Solaria and you tell me you’re an Auroran. Do you maintain that is an answer? A born Auroran might feel badly at the death of a sister world. How do you feel about it?”
Gladia said icily, “It doesn’t matter. Why are you interested?”
“I’ll explain. We—I mean the Traders of the Settler worlds—are interested because there is business to be done, profits to be made, and a world to be gained. Solaria is already terraformed; it is a comfortable world; you Spacers seem to have no need or desire for it. Why would we not settle it?”
“Because it’s not yours.”
“Madam, is it yours that you object? Has Aurora any more claim to it than Baleyworld has? Can’t we suppose that an empty world belongs to whoever is pleased to settle it?”
“Have you settled it?”
“No—because it’s not empty—”
“Do you mean the Solarians have not entirely left?” Gladia said quickly.
D.G.’s smile returned and broadened into a grin. “You’re excited at the thought.—Even though you’re an Auroran.”
Gladia’s face twisted into a frown at once. “Answer my question.”
D.G. shrugged. “There were only some five thousand Solarians on the world just before it was abandoned, according to our best estimates. The population had been declining for years. But even five thousand—can we be sure that all are gone? However, that’s not the point. Even if the Solarians were indeed all gone, the planet would not be empty. There are, upon it, some two hundred million or more robots—masterless robots—some of them among the most advanced in the Galaxy. Presumably, those Solarians who left took some robots with them—it’s hard to imagine Spacers doing without robots altogether.” (He looked about, smiling, at the robots in their niches within the room.) “However, they can’t possibly have taken forty thousand robots apiece.”
Gladia said, “Well, then, since your Settler worlds are so purely robot-free and wish to stay so, I presume, you can’t settle Solaria.”
“That’s right. Not until the robots are gone and that is where Traders such as myself come in.”
“In what way?”
“We don’t want a robot society, but we don’t mind touching robots and dealing with them in the way of business. We don’t have a superstitious fear of the things. We just know that a robot society is bound to decay. The Spacers have carefully made that plain to us by example. So that while we don’t want to live with this robotic poison, we are perfectly willing to sell it to Spacers for a substantial sum—if they are so foolish as to want such a society—”
“Do you think Spacers will buy them?”
“I’m sure they will. They will welcome the elegant models that the Solarians manufacture. It’s well known that they were the leading robot designers in the Galaxy, even though the late Dr. Fastolfe is said to have been unparalleled in the field, despite the fact that he was an Auroran.—Besides, even though we would charge a substantial sum, that sum would still be considerably less than the robots are worth. Spacers, and Traders would both profit—the secret of successful trade.
“The Spacers wouldn’t buy robots from Settlers,” said Gladia with evident contempt.
D.G. had a Trader’s way of ignoring such nonessentials as anger or contempt. It was business that counted. He said, “Of course they would. Offer them advanced robots at halfprice and why should they turn them down? Where business is to be done, you would be surprised how unimportant questions of ideology become.”
“I think you’ll be the one to be surprised. Try to sell your robots and you’ll see.”
“Would that I could, my lady. Try to sell them, that is. I have none on hand.”
“Why not?”
“Because none have been collected. Two separate trading vessels have landed on Solaria, each capable of storing some twenty-five robots. Had they succeeded, whole fleets of trading vessels would have followed them and I dare say we would have continued to do business for decades—and then have settled the world.”