“The Council isn’t going to like it, just the same.”
“It’s my job to take care of that. The important fact is that Amadiro and Mandamus left the ship and are on their way to Earth in a good speedy ferry.”
“Well, yes.”
“And you not only distracted the Settler ship but delayed it as well. That means Amadiro and Mandamus not only left the ship unnoticed, but they will be on Earth before our barbarian captain will.”
“I suppose so. But what of that?”
“I wonder. If it were only Mandamus, I would dismiss the matter. He’s of no consequence. But Amadiro? To abandon the political wars back home at a difficult time and come to Earth? Something absolutely crucial must be going on here.”
“What?” The commander seemed annoyed that he should be so nearly—and so all-but-fatally—involved in something of which he understood nothing.
“I haven’t any idea.”
“Do you suppose it might be secret negotiations at the highest level for some sort of overall modification of the peace settlement Fastolfe had negotiated?”
The adviser smiled. “Peace settlement? If you think that, you don’t know our Dr. Amadiro. He wouldn’t travel to Earth in order to modify a clause or two in a peace settlement. What he’s after is a Galaxy without Settlers and if he comes to Earth—well, all I can say is that I wouldn’t like to be in the shoes of the Settler barbarians at this time.”
82
“I trust, friend Giskard,” said Daneel, “that Madam Gladia is not uneasy at being without us. Can you tell at her distance?”
“I can detect her mind faintly but unmistakably, friend Daneel. She is with the captain and there is a distinct overlay of excitement and joy.”
“Excellent, friend Giskard.”
“Less excellent for myself, friend Daneel. I find myself in a state of some disorder. I have been under a great strain.”
“It distresses me to hear that, friend Giskard. May I ask the reason?”
“We have been here for some time while the captain negotiated with the Auroran ship.”
“Yes, but the Auroran ship is now gone, apparently, so that the captain seems to have negotiated to good effect.”
“He has done so in a manner of which you were apparently not aware. I was—to an extent. Though the captain was not here with us, I had little trouble sensing his mind. It exuded overwhelming tension and suspense and underneath that a gathering and strengthening sense of loss.”
“Loss, friend Giskard? Were you able to determine of what that loss might consist?”
“I cannot describe my method of analysis of such things, but the loss did not seem to be the type of loss I have, in the past associated with generalities or with inanimate objects. It had the touch—that is not the word, but there is no other that fits even vaguely—of the loss of a specific person.
“Lady Gladia.”
“Yes.”
“That would be natural, friend Giskard. He was faced with the possibility of having to give her up to the Auroran vessel.”
“It was too intense for that. Too wailing.”
“Too wailing?”
“It is the only word I can think of in this connection. There was a stressful mourning associated with the sense of loss. It was not as though Lady Gladia would move elsewhere and be unavailable for that reason. That might, after all, be corrected at some future time. It was as though Lady Gladia would cease existing—would die—and be forever unavailable.”
“He felt, then, that the Aurorans would kill her? Surely that is not possible.”
“Indeed, not possible. And that is not it. I felt a thread of a sense of personal responsibility associated with the deep, deep fear of loss. I searched other minds on board ship and, putting it all together, I came to the suspicion that the captain was deliberately charging his ship into the Auroran vessel.”
“That, too, is not possible, friend Giskard,” said Daneel in a low voice.
“I had to accept it. My first impulse was to alter the captain’s emotional makeup in such a way as to force him to change course, but I could not. His mind was so firmly set, so saturated with determination and—despite the suspense, tension, and dread of loss—so filled with confidence of success—”
“How could there be at once a dread of loss through death and a feeling of confidence of success?”
“Friend Daneel, I have given up marveling at the capacity of the human mind to maintain two opposing emotions simultaneously. I merely accept it. In this case, to have attempted to alter the captain’s mind to the point of turning the ship from its course would have killed him. I could not do that.”
“But if you did not, friend Giskard, scores of human beings on this ship, including Madam Gladia, and several hundreds more on the Auroran vessel would die.”
“They might not die if the captain were correct in his feeling of confidence in success. I could not bring about one certain death to prevent many merely probable ones. There is the difficulty, friend Daneel, in your Zeroth Law. The First Law deals with specific individuals and certainties. Your Zeroth Law deals with vague groups and probabilities.”
“The human beings on board these ships are not vague groups. They are many specific individuals taken together.”
“Yet when I must make a decision it is the specific individual I am about to influence directly whose fate must count with me. I cannot help that.”
“What was it you did do, then, friend Giskard—or were you completely helpless?”
“In my desperation, friend Daneel, I attempted to contact the commander of the Auroran vessel after a small Jump had brought him quite close to us. I could not. The distance was too great. And yet the attempt was not altogether a failure. I did detect something, the equivalent of a faint hum. I puzzled over it a short while before realizing I was receiving the overall sensation of the minds of all the human beings on board the Auroran vessel. I had to filter out that faint hum from the much more prominent sensations arising from our own vessel—a difficult task.”
Daneel said, “Nearly impossible, I should think, friend, Giskard.”
“As you say, nearly impossible, but I managed it with an enormous effort. However, try as I might, I could make out no individual minds.—When Madam Gladia faced the large numbers of human beings in her audience on Baleyworld, I sensed an anarchic confusion of a vast jumble of minds, but I managed to pick out individual minds here and there for a moment or two. That was not so on this occasion.”
Giskard paused, as though lost in his memory of the sensation.
Daneel said, “I imagine this must be analogous to the manner in which we see individual stars even among large groups of them, when the whole is comparatively close to us. In a distant galaxy, however, we cannot make out individual stars but can see only a faintly luminous fog.”
“That strikes me as a good analogy, friend Daneel.—And as I concentrated on the faint but distant hum, it seemed to me that I could detect a very dim wash of fear permeating it. I was not sure of this, but I felt I had to try to take advantage of it. I had never attempted to exert influence over anything so far away, over anything as inchoate as a mere hum—but I tried desperately to increase that fear by however small a trifle. I cannot say whether I succeeded.”
“The Auroran vessel fled. You must have succeeded.”
“Not necessarily. The vessel might have fled if I had done nothing.”
Daneel seemed lost in thought. “It might. If our captain were so confident that it would flee—”
Giskard said, “On the other hand, I cannot be sure that there was a rational basis to that confidence. It seemed to me that what I detected was intermixed with a feeling of awe and reverence for Earth. The confidence I sensed was rather similar to the kind I have detected in young children toward their protectors—parental or otherwise. I had the feeling that the captain believed he could not fail in the neighborhood of Earth because of the influence of Earth. I wouldn’t say the feeling was exactly irrational, but it felt nonrational, in any case.”