“But I’m not tired,” said Gladia. “I’m enjoying myself.”
The man now facing her from her extreme right but rather near the stage was a tall, vigorous man with shaggy white eyebrows hanging over his eyes. His thinning hair was also white and his garments were a somber black, relieved by a white stripe running down each sleeve and trouser leg, as though setting sharp limits to his body.
His voice was deep and musical. “My name,” he said, “is Tomas Bistervan and I’m known to many as the Old Man, largely, I think, because they wish I were and that I would not delay too long in dying. I do not know how to address you because you do not seem to have a family name and because I do not know you well enough to use your given name. To be honest, I do not wish to know you that well.
“Apparently, you helped save a Baleyworld ship on your world against the booby traps and weapons set up by your people and we are thanking you for that. In return, you have delivered some pious nonsense about friendship and kinship. Pure hypocrisy!
“When have your people felt kin to us? When have the Spacers felt any relationship to Earth and its people? Certainly, you Spacers are descended from Earthmen. We don’t forget that. Nor do we forget that you have forgotten it. For well over twenty decades, the Spacers controlled the Galaxy and treated Earthpeople as though they were hateful, shortlived, diseased animals. Now that we are growing strong, you hold out the hand of friendship, but that hand has a glove on it, as your hands do. You try to remember not to turn up your nose at us, but the nose, even if not turned up, has plugs in it. Well? Am I correct?”
Gladia held up her hands. “It may be,” she said, “that the audience here in this room—and, even more so, the audience outside the room that sees me, via hyperwave—is not aware that I am wearing gloves. They are not obtrusive, but they are there. I do not deny that. And, I have nose plugs that filter out dust and microorgamsms without too much interference with breathing. And I am careful to spray my throat periodically. And I wash perhaps a bit more than the requirements of cleanliness alone make necessary. I deny none of it.
“But this is the result of my shortcomings, not yours. My immune system is not strong. My life has been too comfortable and I have been exposed to too little. That was not my deliberate choice, but I must pay the penalty for it. If any of you were in my unfortunate position, what would you do? In particular, Mr. Bistervan, what would you do?”
Bistervan said grimly, “I would do as you do and I would consider it a sign of weakness, a sign that I was unfit and unadjusted to life and that I therefore ought to make way for those who are strong. Woman, don’t speak of kinship to us. You are no kin of mine. You are of those who persecuted and tried to destroy us when you were strong and who come whining to us when you are weak.”
There was a stir in the audience—and by no means a friendly one—but Bistervan held his ground firmly.
Gladia said softly, “Do you remember the evil we did when we were strong?”
Bistervan said,—“Don’t fear that we will forget. It is in our minds every day.”
“Good! Because now you know what to avoid. You have learned that when the strong oppress the weak, that is wrong. Therefore, when the table turns and when you are strong and we are weak, you will not be oppressive.”
“Ah, yes. I have heard the argument. When you were strong, you never heard of morality, but now that you are weak, you preach it earnestly.”
“In your case, though, when you were weak, you knew all about morality and were appalled by the behavior of the strong—and now that you are strong, you forget morality. Surely it is better that the immoral learn morality through adversity than that the moral forget morality in prosperity.”
“We will give what we received,” said Bistervan, holding up his clenched fist.
“You should give what you would have liked to receive,” said Gladia, holding out her arms, as though embracing. “Since everyone can think of some past injustice to avenge, what you are saying, my friend, is that it is right for the strong to oppress the weak. And when you say that, you justify the Spacers of the past and should therefore have no complaint of the present. What I say is that oppression was wrong when we practiced it in the past and that it will be equally wrong when you practice it in the future. We cannot change the past, unfortunately, but we can still decide on what the future shall be.”
Gladia paused. When Bistervan did not answer immediately, she called out, “How many want a new Galaxy, not the bad old Galaxy endlessly repeated?”
The applause began, but Bistervan threw his arms up and shouted in stentorian fashion, “Wait! Wait! Don’t be fools! Stop!”
There was a slow quieting and Bistervan said, “Do you suppose this woman believes what she is saying? Do you suppose the Spacers intend us any good whatever? They still think they are strong, and they still despise us, and they intend to destroy us—if we don’t destroy them first. This woman comes here and, like fools, we greet her and make much of her. Well, put her words to the test. Let any of you apply for permission to visit a Spacer world and see if you can. Or if you have a world behind you and can use threats, as Captain Baley did, so that you are allowed to land on the world, how will you be treated? Ask the captain if he was treated like kin.
“This woman is a hypocrite, in spite of all her words—no, because of them. They are the spoken advertisements of her hypocrisy. She moans and whines about her inadequate immune system and says that she must protect herself against the danger of infection. Of course, she doesn’t do this because she thinks we are foul and diseased. That thought, I suppose, never occurs to her.
“She whines of her passive life, protected from mischance and misfortune by a too-settled society and a too solicitous crowd of robots. How she must hate that.
“But what endangers her here? What mischance does she feel will befall her on our planet? Yet she has brought two robots with her. In this hall, we meet in order to honor her and make much of her, yet she brought her two robots even here. They are there on the platform with her. Now that the room is generally lit, you can see them. One is an imitation human being and its name is R. Daneel Olivaw. Another is a shameless robot, openly metallic in structure, and its name is R. Giskard Reventlov. Greet them, my fellow Baleyworlders. They are this woman’s kinfolk.”
“Checkmate!” groaned D.G. in a whisper.
“Not yet,” said Gladia.
There were craning necks in the audience, as if a sudden itch had affected them all, and the word “Robots” ran across the length and breadth of the hall in thousands of intakes of breath.
“You can see them without trouble,” Gladia’s voice rang out. “Daneel, Giskard, stand up.”
The two robots rose at once behind her.
“Step to either side of me,” she said, “so that my body does not block the view.—Not that my body is large enough to do much blocking, in any case.
“Now let me make a few things clear to all of you. These two robots did not come with me in order to service me. Yes, they help run my establishment on Aurora, along with fifty-one other robots, and I do no work for myself that I wish a robot to do for me. That is the custom on the world on which I live.
“Robots vary in complexity, ability, and intelligence and these two rate very high in those respects. Daneel, in particular, is, in my opinion, the robot, of all robots, whose intelligence most nearly approximates the human in those areas where comparison is possible.
“I have brought only Daneel and Giskard with me, but they perform no great services for me. If you are interested, I dress myself, bathe myself, use my own utensils when I eat, and walk without being carried.