“That’s because we’ve fought wars early in our history, when our Earth heritage was still strong, but we’ve learned better.”
“You used those weapons on Earth even after you supposedly learned better.”
“That’s—” she began and closed her mouth as though to bite off what she was about to say next.
D.G. nodded. “I know. You were about to say ‘That’s different.’ Think of that, my lady, if you should catch yourself wondering why my crew doesn’t like Spacers. Or why I don’t.—But you are going to be useful to me, my lady, and I won’t let my emotions get in the way.”
“How am I going to be useful to you?”
“You are a Solarian.”
“You keep saying that. More than twenty decades have passed. I don’t know what Solaria is like now. I know nothing about it. What was Baleyworld like twenty decades ago?”
“It didn’t exist twenty decades ago, but Solaria did and I shall gamble that you will remember something useful.”
He stood up, bowed his head briefly in, a gesture of politeness that was almost mocking, and was gone.
20
Gladia maintained a thoughtful and troubled silence for a while and then she said, “He wasn’t at all polite, was he?”
Daneel said, “Madam Gladia, the Settler is clearly under tension. He is heading toward a world on which two ships like his have been destroyed and their crews killed. He is going, into great danger, as is his crew.”
“You always defend any human being, Daneel,” said Gladia resentfully. “The danger exists for me, too, and I am not facing it voluntarily, but that does not force me into rudeness.”
Daneel said nothing.
Gladia said, “Well, maybe it does. I have been a little rude, haven’t I?”
“I don’t think the Settler minded,” said Daneel. “Might I suggest, madam, that you prepare yourself for bed. It is quite late.”
“Very well. I’ll prepare myself for bed, but I don’t think I feel relaxed enough to sleep, Daneel.”
“Friend Giskard assures me you will, madam, and he is usually right about such things.”
And she did sleep.
21
Daneel and Giskard stood in the darkness of Gladia’s cabin.
Giskard said, “She will sleep soundly, friend Daneel, and she needs the rest. She faces a dangerous trip.”
“It seemed to me, friend Giskard,” said Daneel, “that you influenced her to agree to go. I presume you had a reason.”
“Friend Daneel, we know so little about the nature of the crisis that is now facing the Galaxy that we cannot safely refuse any action that might increase our knowledge. We must know what is taking place on Solaria and the only way we can do so is to go there—and the only way we can go is for us to arrange for Madam Gladia to go. As for influencing her, that required scarcely a touch. Despite her loud statements to the contrary, she was eager to go. There was an overwhelming desire within her to see Solaria. It was a pain within her that would not cease until she went.”
“Since you say so, it is so, yet I find it puzzling. Had she not frequently made it plain that her life on Solaria was unhappy, that she had completely adopted Aurora and never wished to go back to her original home?”
“Yes, that was there, too. It was quite plainly in her mind. Both emotions, both feelings existed together and simultaneously. I have observed something of this sort in human minds frequently; two opposite emotions simultaneously present.”
“Such a condition does not seem logical, friend Giskard.”
“I agree and I can only conclude that human beings are not, at all times or in all respects, logical. That must be one reason that it is so difficult to work out the Laws governing human behavior.—In Madam Gladia’s case, I have now and then been aware of this longing for Solaria. Ordinarily, it was well hidden, obscured by the far more intense antipathy she also felt for the world. When the news arrived that Solaria had been abandoned by its people, however, her feelings changed.”
“Why so? What had the abandonment to do with the youthful experiences that led Madam Gladia to her antipathy? Or, having held in restraint her longing for the world the decades when it was a working society, why she lose that restraint once it became an abandoned planet and newly long for a world which must now be something utterly strange to her?”
“I cannot explain, friend Daneel, since the more knowledge I gather of the human mind, the more despair I feel at being unable to understand it. It is not an unalloyed advantage to see into that mind and I often envy you the simplicity of behavior control that results from your inability to see below the surface.”
Daneel persisted. “Have you guessed an explanation, friend Giskard?”
“I suppose she feels a sorrow for the empty planet. She deserted it twenty decades ago—”
“She was driven out.”
“It seems to her, now, to have been a desertion and I imagine she plays with the painful thought that she had set an example; that if she had not left, no one else would have and the planet would still be populated and happy. Since I cannot read her thoughts, I am only groping backward, perhaps inaccurately, from her emotions.”
“But she could not have set an example, friend Giskard. Since it is twenty decades since she left, there can be no verifiable causal connection between the much earlier event and the much later one.”
“I agree, but human beings sometimes find a kind of pleasure in nursing painful emotions, in blaming themselves without reason or even against reason.—In any case, Madam Gladia felt so sharply the longing to return that I felt it was necessary to release the inhibitory effect that kept her from agreeing to go. It required the merest touch. Yet though I feel it necessary for her to go, since that means she will take us there, I have the uneasy feeling, that the disadvantages might, just possibly, be greater than the advantages.”
“In what way, friend Giskard?”
“Since the Council was eager to have Madam Gladia accompany the Settler, it may have been for the purpose of having Madam Gladia absent from Aurora during a crucial period when the defeat of Earth and its Settler worlds is being prepared.”
Daneel seemed to be considering that statement. At least it was only after a distinct pause that he said, “What purpose would be served, in your opinion, in having Madam Gladia absent?”
“I cannot decide that, friend Daneel. I want your opinion.”
“I have not considered this matter.”
“Consider it now!” If Giskard had been human, the remark would have been an order.
There was an even longer pause and then Daneel said, “Friend Giskard, until the moment that Dr. Mandamus appeared in Madam Gladia’s establishment, she had never shown any concern about international affairs. She was a friend of Dr. Fastolfe and of Elijah Baley, but this friendship was one of personal affection and did not have an ideological basis. Both of them, moreover, are now gone from us. She has an antipathy toward Dr. Amadiro and that is returned, but this is also a personal matter. The antipathy is two centuries old and neither has done anything material about it but have merely each remained stubbornly antipathetic. There can be no reason for Dr. Amadiro—who is now the dominant influence in the Council—to fear Madam Gladia or to go to the trouble of removing her.”
Giskard said, “You overlook the fact, that in removing Madam Gladia, he also removes you and me. He would, perhaps, feel quite certain Madam Gladia would not leave without us, so can it be us he considers dangerous?”