“You mean you want to take me?”
“Right, my lady.”
“Why me?”
“I should think you could see that without explanation, my lady. Those Solarians who have left the planet are gone we know not where. If any Solarians are left on the planet, they are very likely the enemy. There are no known Solarian born Spacers living on some Spacer planet other than Solaria—except yourself. You are only Solarian available to me—the only one in all the Galaxy. That’s why I must have you and that’s why you must come.”
“You’re wrong, Settler. If I am the only one available to you, then you have no one who is available. I do not intend to come with you and there is no way—absolutely no way that you can force me to come with you. I am surrounded by my robots. Take one step in my direction and you will be immobilized at once—and if you struggle you will be hurt.”
“I intend no force. You must come of your own accord and you should be willing to. It’s a matter of preventing war.
“That is the job of governments on your side and mine. I refuse to have anything to do with it. I am a private citizen.”
“You owe it to your world. We might suffer in case of war, but so will Aurora.”
“I am not one of those hypervision heroes, any more than you are.”
“You owe it to me, then.”
“You’re mad. I owe you nothing.”
D.G. smiled narrowly. “You owe me nothing as an individual. You owe me a great deal as a descendant of Elijah Baley.”
Gladia froze and remained staring at the bearded monster for a long moment. How did she come to forget who he was?
With difficulty, she finally muttered, “No.”
“Yes,” said D.G. forcefully. “On two different occasions, the Ancestor did more for you than you can ever repay. He is no longer here to call in the debt—a small part of the debt. I inherit the right to do so.”
Gladia said in despair, “But what can I do for you if I come with you?”
“We’ll find out. Will you come?”
Desperately, Gladia wanted to refuse, but was it for this that Elijah had suddenly become part of her life, once more, in the last twenty-four hours? Was is so that when this impossible demand was made upon her, it would be in his name and she would find it impossible to refuse?
She said, “What’s the use? The Council will not let me go with you. They will not have an Auroran taken away on a Settler’s vessel.”
“My lady, you have been here on Aurora for twenty decades, so you think, the Auroran-born consider you an Auroran. It’s not so. To them, you are a Solarian still. They’ll let you go.”
“They won’t,” said Gladia, her heart pounding and the skin of her upper arms turning to gooseflesh. He was right. She thought of Amadiro, who would surely think of her as nothing but a Solarian. Nevertheless, she repeated, “They won’t,” trying to reassure herself.
“They will,” retorted D.G. “Didn’t someone from your Council come to you to ask you to see me?”
She said defiantly, “He asked me only to report this conversation we have had. And I will do so.”
“If they want you to spy on me here in your own home, my lady, they will find it even more useful to have you spy on me on Solaria.” He waited for a response and when there was none, he said with a trace of weariness, “My lady, if you refuse, I won’t force you because I won’t have to. They will force you. But I don’t want that. The Ancestor would not want it if he were here. He would want you to come with me out of gratitude to him and for no other reason.—My lady, the Ancestor labored on your behalf under conditions of extreme difficulty. Won’t you labor on behalf of his memory?”
Gladia’s heart sank. She knew she could not resist that. She said, “I can’t go anywhere without robots.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to.” D.G. was grinning again. “Why not take my two namesakes? Do you need more?”
Gladia looked toward Daneel, but he was standing motionless. She looked toward Giskard—the same. And then it seemed to her that, for just a moment, his head moved—very slightly—up and down.
She had to trust him.
She said, “Well, then, I’ll come with you. These two robots are all I will need.”
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?