Giskard said, “Friend Daneel, actually all I dared do was loosen a very few strands of inhibition, only enough to allow her to speak a few words, so that she might be heard.”
“But she did far more than that.”
“After this microscopic adjustment, I turned to the multiplicity of minds I faced in the audience. I had never experienced so many, any more than Lady Gladia had, and I was as taken aback as she was. I found, at first, that I could do nothing in the vast mental interlockingness that beat in upon me. I felt helpless.”
“And then I noted small friendlinesses, curiosities, interests—I cannot describe them in words—with a color of sympathy for Lady Gladia about them. I played with what I could find that had this color of sympathy, tightening and thickening them just slightly. I wanted some small response in Lady Gladia’s favor that might encourage her, that might make it unnecessary for me to be tempted to tamper further with Lady Gladia’s mind. That was all I did. I do not know how many threads of the proper color I handled. Not many.”
Daneel said, “And what then, friend Giskard?”
“I found, friend Daneel, that I had begun something that was autocatalytic. Each thread I strengthened, strengthened a nearby thread of the same kind and the two together strengthened several others nearby. I had to do nothing further. Small stirs, small sounds, and small glances that seemed to approve of what Lady Gladia said encouraged still others.
“Then I found something stranger yet. All these little indications of approval, which I could detect only because the minds were open to me, Lady Gladia must have also detected in some manner, for further inhibitions in her mind fell without my touching them. She began to speak faster, more confidently, and the audience responded better than ever—without my doing anything. And in the end, there was hysteria, a storm, a tempest of mental—thunder and lightning so intense that I had to close my mind to it or it would have overloaded my circuits.”
“Never, in all my existence, had I encountered anything like that and yet it started with no more modification introduced by me in all that crowd than I have, in the past, introduced among a mere handful of people. I suspect, in fact, that the effect spread beyond the audience sensible to my mind—to the greater audience reached via hyperwave.”
Daneel said, “I do not see how this can be, friend Giskard.”
“Nor I, friend Daneel. I am not human. I do not directly experience the possession of a human mind with all its complexities and contradictions, so I do not grasp the mechanisms by which they respond. But, apparently, crowds are more easily managed than individuals. It seems paradoxical. Much weight takes more effort to move than little weight. Much energy takes more effort to counter than little energy. Much distance takes longer to traverse than little distance. Why, then, should many people, be easier to sway than few? You think like a human being, friend Daneel. Can you explain?”
Daneel said, “You yourself, friend Giskard, said that it was an autocatalytic effect, a matter of contagion. A single spark of flame may end by burning down a forest.”
Giskard paused and seemed deep in thought. Then he said, “It is not reason that is contagious but emotion. Madam Gladia chose arguments she felt would move her audience’s feelings. She did not attempt to reason with them. It may be, then, that the larger the crowd, the more easily they are swayed by emotion rather than by reason.
“Since emotions are few and reasons are many, the behavior of a crowd can be more easily predicted than the behavior of one person can. And that, in turn, means that if laws are to be developed that enable the current of history to be predicted, then one must deal with large populations, the larger the better. That might itself be the First Law of Psychohistory, the key to the study of Humanics. Yet—”
“Yes?”
“It strikes me that it has taken me so long to understand this only because I am not a human being. A human being would, perhaps, instinctively understand his own mind well enough to know how to handle others like himself. Madam Gladia, with no experience at all in addressing huge crowds, carried off the matter, expertly. How much better off we would be if we had someone like Elijah Baley with us.
“Friend Daneel, are you not thinking of him?”
Daneel said, “Can you see his image in my mind? That is surprising, friend Giskard.”
“I do not see him, friend Daneel. I cannot receive your thoughts. But I can sense emotions and mood—and your mind has a texture which, by past experience, I know to be associated with Elijah Baley.”
“Madam Gladia made mention of the fact that I was the last to see Partner Elijah alive, so I listen again, in memory, to that moment. I think again of what he said.”
“Why, friend Daneel?”
“I search for the meaning. I feel it was important.”
“How could what he said have meaning beyond the import of the words? Had there been hidden meaning, Elijah Baley would have expressed it.”
“Perhaps,” said Daneel slowly, “Partner Elijah did not himself understand the significance of what he was saying.”
10. AFTER THE SPEECH
42
Memory!
It lay in Daneel’s mind like a closed book of infinite detail, always available for his use. Some passages were called upon frequently for their information, but only a very few were called upon merely because Daneel wished to feel their texture. Those very few were, for the most part, those that contained Elijah Baley.
Many decades ago, Daneel had come to Baleyworld while Elijah Baley was still alive. Madam Gladia had come with him, but after they entered into orbit about Baleyworld, Bentley Baley soared upward in his small ship to meet them and was brought aboard. By then, he was a rather gnarled man of middle age.
He looked at Gladia with faintly hostile eyes and said, “You cannot see him, madam.”
And Gladia, who had been weeping, said, “Why not?”
“He does not wish it, madam, and I must respect his wishes.”
“I cannot believe that, Mr. Baley.”
“I have a handwritten note and I have a voice recording, madam. I do not know if you can recognize his handwriting or his voice, but you have my word of honor these are his and that no untoward influence was used upon him to produce—”
She went into her own cabin to read and listen alone. Then she emerged—with an air of defeat about her—but she managed to say firmly, “Daneel, you are to go down alone to see him. It is his wish. But you are to report to me everything that is done and said.”
“Yes, madam,” Daneel said.
Daneel went down, in Bentley’s ship and Bentley said to him, “Robots are not allowed on this world, Daneel, but an exception is being made in your case because it is my father’s wish and because he is highly revered here. I have no personal animus against you, you understand, but your presence here must be an entirely limited one. You will be taken directly to my father. When he is done with you, you will be taken back into orbit at once. Do you understand?”
“I understand, sir. How is your father?”
“He is dying,” Bentley said with perhaps conscious brutality.
“I understand that, too,” said Daneel, his voice quivering noticeably, not out of ordinary emotion but because the consciousness of the death of a human being, however unavoidable, disordered his positronic brain paths. “I mean, how much longer before he must die?”
“He should have died some time ago. He is tied to life because he refuses to go, until he sees you.”
They landed. It was a large world, but the inhabited portion—if this were all—was small and shabby. It was a cloudy day and it had rained recently. The wide, straight streets were empty, as though what population existed there was in no mood to assemble in order to stare at a robot.