The line of cars began to move, all together and very smoothly.
Gladia half-rose in astonishment. There was no one in front of the partition that closed them off. “Who’s driving?” she asked.
“The cars are thoroughly computerized,” said D.G. “I take it that Spacer cars are not?”
“We have robots to drive them.”
D.G. continued waving and Gladia followed his lead automatically. “We don’t,” he said.
“But a computer is essentially the same as a robot.”
“A computer is not humanoid and it does not obtrude itself on one’s notice. Whatever the technological similarities might be, they are worlds apart psychologically.”
Gladia watched the countryside and found it oppressively barren. Even allowing for winter, there was something desolate in the scattering of leafless bushes and in the sparsely distributed trees, whose stunted and dispirited appearance emphasized the death that seemed to grip everything.
D.G., noting her depression and correlating it with her darting glances here and there, said, “It doesn’t look like much now, my lady. In the summer, though, it’s not bad. There are grassy plains, orchards, grain fields—”
“Forests?”
“Not wilderness forests. We’re still a growing world. It’s still being molded. We’ve only had a little over a century and a half, really. The first step was to cultivate home plots for the initial Settlers, using imported seed. Then we placed fish and invertebrates of all kinds in the ocean, doing our best to establish a self-supporting ecology. That is a fairly easy procedure—if the ocean chemistry is suitable. If it isn’t, then the planet is not habitable without extensive chemical modification and that has never been tried in actuality, though there are all sorts of plans for such procedures.—Finally, we try to make the land flourish, which is always difficult, always slow.”
“Have all the Settler worlds followed that path?”
“Are following. None are really finished. Baleyworld is the oldest and we’re not finished. Given another couple of centuries, the Settler worlds will be rich and full of life land as well as sea—though by that time there will by many still-newer worlds that will be working their way through various preliminary stages. I’m sure the Spacer worlds went through the same procedure.”
“Many centuries ago—and less strenuously, I think. We had robots to help.”
“We’ll manage,” said D.G. briefly.
“And what about the native life—the plants and animals that evolved on this world before human beings arrived?”
D.G. shrugged. “Insignificant. Small, feeble things. The scientists are, of course, interested, so the indigenous life still exists in special aquaria, botanical gardens, zoos. There are out-of-the-way bodies of water and considerable stretches of land area that have not yet been converted. Some indigenous life still lives out there in the wild.”
“But these stretches of wilderness will eventually all be converted.”
“We hope so.
“Don’t you feel that the planet really belongs to these insignificant, small, feeble things?”
“No. I’m not that sentimental. The planet and the whole Universe belongs to intelligence. The Spacers agree with that. Where is the indigenous life of Solaria? Or of Aurora?”
The line of cars, which had been progressing tortuously from the spaceport, now came to a flat, paved area on which several low, domed buildings were evident.
“Capital Plaza,” said D.G. in a low voice. “This is the official heartbeat of the planet. Government offices are located here, the Planetary Congress meets here, the Executive Mansion is found here, and so on.”
“I’m sorry, D.G., but this is not very impressive. These are small and uninteresting buildings.”
D.G. smiled. “You see only an occasional top, my lady. The buildings themselves are located underground—all interconnected. It’s a single complex, really, and is still growing. It’s a self-contained city, you know. It, along with the surrounding residential areas, makes up Baleytown.”
“Do you plan to have everything underground eventually? The whole city? The whole world?”
“Most of us look forward to an underground world, yes.”
“They have underground Cities on Earth, I understand.”
“Indeed they do, my lady. The so-called Caves of Steel.”
“You imitate that here, then?”
“It’s not simple imitation. We add our own ideas and we’re coming to a halt, my lady, and any moment we’ll be asked to step out. I’d cling to the coverall openings if I were you. The whistling wind on the Plaza in winter is legendary.”
Gladia did so, fumbling rather as she tried to put the edges of the openings together. “It’s not simple imitation, you say.”
“No. We design our underground with the weather in mind. Since our weather is, on the whole, harsher than Earth’s, some modification in architecture is required. Properly built, almost no energy is required to keep the complex warm in winter and cool in summer. In a way, indeed, we keep warm in winter, in part, with the stored warmth of the previous summer and cool in summer with the coolness of the previous winter.”
“What about ventilation?”
“That uses up some of the savings, but not all. It works, my lady, and someday we will match Earth’s structures. That, of course, is the ultimate ambition—to make Baleyworld a reflection of Earth.”
“I never knew that Earth was so admirable as to make imitation desirable,” said Gladia lightly.
D.G. turned his eyes on her sharply. “Make no jokes of that sort, my lady, while you are with Settlers—not even with me. Earth is no joking matter.”
Gladia said, “I’m sorry, D.G. I meant no disrespect.”
“You didn’t know. But now you know. Come, let’s get out.”
The side door of the car slid open noiselessly and D.G. turned in his seat and stepped out. He then held out one hand to help Gladia and said, “You’ll be addressing the Planetary Congress, you know, and every government official who can squeeze in will do so.”
Gladia, who had stretched out her hand to seize D.G.’s and who already felt—painfully—the cold wind on her face, shrank back suddenly. “I must make an address? I hadn’t been told that.”
D.G. looked surprised. “I rather thought you would take something of the sort for granted.”
“Well, I didn’t. And I can’t make an address. I’ve never done such a thing.”
“You must. It’s nothing terrible. It’s just a matter of saying a few words after some long and boring speeches of welcome.”
“But what can I possibly say?”
“Nothing fancy, I assure you. Just peace and love and blah—Give them half a minute’s worth. I’ll scrawl out something for you if you wish.”
And Gladia stepped out of the car and her robots followed her. Her mind was in a whirl.
9. THE SPEECH
38
As they walked into the building, they removed their coveralls and handed them to attendants. Daneel and Giskard removed theirs, too, and the attendants cast sharp glances at the latter, approaching him gingerly.
Gladia adjusted her nose plugs nervously. She had never before been in the presence of large crowds of short-lived human beings—short-lived in part, she knew (or had always been told), because they carried in their bodies chronic infections and hordes of parasites.
She whispered, “Will I get back my own coverall?”
“You will wear no one else’s,” said D.G. “They will be kept safe and radiation-sterilized.”