PART II.
SOLARIA
5. THE ABANDONED WORLD
19
For the fifth time in her life, Gladia found herself on a spaceship. She did not remember, offhand, exactly how long ago it had been that she and Santirix had gone together to the world of Euterpe because its rain forests were widely recognized as incomparable, especially under the romantic glow of its bright satellite, Gemstone.
The rain forest had, indeed, been lush and green, with the trees carefully planted in rank and file and the animal life thoughtfully selected so as to provide color and delight, while avoiding venomous or other unpleasant creatures.
The satellite, fully 150 kilometers in diameter, was close enough to Euterpe to shine like a brilliant dot of sparkling light. It was so close to the planet that one could see it sweep west to east across the sky, outstripping the planet’s slower rotational motion. It brightened as it rose toward zenith and dimmed as it dropped toward the horizon again. One watched it with fascination the first night, with less the second, and with a vague discontent the third—assuming the sky was clear on those nights, which it usually wasn’t.
The native Euterpans, she noted, never looked at it, though they praised it loudly to the tourists, of course.
On the whole, Gladia had enjoyed the trip well enough, but what she remembered most keenly was the joy of her return to Aurora and her decision not to travel again except under dire need. (Come to think of it, it had to be at least eight decades ago.)
For a while, she had lived with the uneasy fear that her husband would insist on another trip, but he never mentioned one. It might well be, she sometimes thought at that time, that he had come to the same decision she had and feared she might be the one to want to travel.
It didn’t make them unusual to avoid trips. Aurorans generally—Spacers generally, for that matter—tended to be stay-at-homes. Their worlds, their establishments, were too comfortable. After all, what pleasure could be greater than that of being taken care of by your own robots, robots who knew your every signal, and, for that matter, knew your ways and desires even without being told.
She stirred uneasily. Was that what D.G. had meant when he spoke of the decadence of a roboticized society?
But now she was back again in space, after all that time. And on an Earth ship, too.
She hadn’t seen much of it, but the little she had glimpsed made her terribly uneasy. It seemed to be nothing but straight lines, sharp angles, and smooth surfaces. Everything that wasn’t stark had been eliminated, apparently. It was as though nothing must exist but functionality. Even though she didn’t know what was exactly functional about any particular object on the ship, she felt it to be all that was required, that nothing was to be allowed to interfere with taking the shortest distance between two points.
On everything Auroran (on everything Spacer, one might almost say, though Aurora was the most advanced in that respect), everything existed in layers. Functionality was at the bottom—one could not entirely rid one’s self of that, except in what was pure ornament—but overlying that there was always something to satisfy the eyes and the senses, generally; and overlying that, something to satisfy the spirit.
How much better that was!—Or did it represent such an exuberance of human creativity that Spacers could no longer live with the unadorned Universe—and was that bad? Was the future to belong to these from-here-to-there geometrizers? Or was it just that the Settlers had not yet learned the sweetnesses of life?
But then, if life had so many sweetnesses to it, why had she found so few for herself?
She had nothing really to do on board this ship but to ponder and reponder such questions. This D.G., this Elijah descended barbarian, had put it into her head, with his calm assumption that the Spacer worlds were dying, even though he could see all about him even during the shortest stay on Aurora (surely, he would have to) that it was deeply embedded in wealth and security.
She had tried to escape her own thoughts by staring at the holofilms she had been supplied with and watching, with moderate curiosity, the images flickering and capering on the projection surface, as the adventure story (all were adventure stories) hastened from—event to event with little time left for conversation and none for thought—or enjoyment, either. Very like their furniture.
D.G. stepped in when she was in the middle of one of the films, but had stopped really paying attention. She was not caught by surprise. Her robots, who guarded her doorway, signaled his coming in ample time and would not have allowed him to enter if she were not in a position to receive him. Daneel entered with him.
D.G. said, “How are you doing?” Then, as her hand touched a contact and the images faded, shriveled, and were gone. He said, “You don’t have to turn it off. I’ll watch it with you.”
“That’s not necessary,” she said. “I’ve had enough.”
“Are you—comfortable?”
“Not entirely. I am—isolated.”
“Sorry! But then, I was isolated on Aurora. They would allow none of my men to come with me.”
“Are you having your revenge?”
“Not at all. For one thing, I allowed you two robots of your choice to accompany you. For another, it is not I but my crew who enforce this. They don’t like either Spacers or robots. But why do you mind? Doesn’t this isolation lessen your fear of infection?”
Gladia’s eyes were haughty, but her voice sounded weary. “I wonder if I haven’t grown too old to fear infection. In many ways, I think I have lived long enough. Then, too, I have my gloves, my nose filters, and—if necessary—my mask. And besides, I doubt that you will trouble to touch me.”
“Nor will anyone else,” said D.G. with a sudden edge of grimness to his voice, as his hand wandered to the object at the right side of his hip.
Her eyes followed the motion. “What is that?” she asked.
D.G. smiled and his beard seemed to glitter in the light. There were occasional reddish hairs among the brown. “A weapon,” he said and drew it. He held it by a molded hilt that bulged above his hand as though the force of his grip were squeezing it upward. In front, facing Gladia, a thin cylinder stretched some fifteen centimeters forward. There was no opening visible.
“Does that kill people?” Gladia extended her hand toward it.
D.G. moved it quickly away. “Never reach for someone’s weapon, my lady. That is worse than bad manners, for any Settler is trained to react violently to such a move and you may be hurt.”
Gladia, eyes wide, withdrew her hand and placed both behind her back. She said, “Don’t threaten harm. Daneel has no sense of humor in that respect. On Aurora, no one is barbarous enough to carry weapons.”
“Well,” said D.G., unmoved by the adjective, “we don’t have robots to protect us.—And this is not a killing device. It is, in some ways, worse. It emits a kind of vibration that stimulates those nerve endings responsible for the sensation of pain. It hurts a good deal worse than anything you can imagine. No one would willingly endure it twice and someone carrying this weapon rarely has to use it. We call it a neuronic whip.”
Gladia frowned. “Disgusting! We have our robots, but they never hurt anyone except in unavoidable emergency and then minimally.”
D.G. shrugged. “That sounds very civilized, but a bit of pain—a bit of killing, even—is better than the decay of spirit brought about by robots. Besides, a neuronic whip is not intended to kill and your people have weapons on their spaceships that can bring about wholesale death and destruction.