Robots and Empire (Page 28)

Gladia was having trouble eating. "I think your Ancestor spent the latter portion of his life trying to be as unemotional as Daneel. Just the same, he had romantic notions under his skin. He might have allowed other Elijahs and Gladias. It wouldn’t have offended me, certainly, and I imagine it wouldn’t have offended his wife, either." She laughed tremulously.

D.G. said, "All this doesn’t seem real somehow. The Ancestor is practically ancient history; he died a hundred and sixty-four years ago. I’m his descendant in the seventh generation, yet here I am sitting with a woman who knew him when he was quite young."

"I didn’t really know him," said Gladia, staring at her plate. "I saw him, rather briefly, on three separate occasions over a period of seven years."

"I know. The Ancestor’s son, Ben, wrote a biography of him which is one of the literary classics of Baleyworld. Even I have read it."

"Indeed? I haven’t read it. I didn’t even know it existed. What – what does it say about me?"

D.G. seemed amused. "Nothing you would object to; you come out very well. But never mind that. What I’m amazed at is that here we are together, across seven generations. How old are you, my lady? Is it fair to ask the question?"

"I don’t know that it’s fair, but I have no objection to it. In Galactic Standard Years, I am two hundred and thirty-three years old. Over twenty-two decades."

"You look as though you were no more than in your late forties. The Ancestor died at the age of seventy-nine, an old man. I’m thirty-nine and when I die you will still be alive – "

"If I avoid death by misadventure."

"And will continue to live perhaps five decades beyond."

"Do you envy me, D.G.?" said Gladia with an edge of bitterness in her voice. "Do you envy me for having survived Elijah by over sixteen decades and for being condemned to survive him ten decades more, perhaps?"

"Of course I envy you," came the composed answer. "Why not? I would have no objection to living for several centuries, were it not that I would be setting a bad example to the people of Baleyworld. I wouldn’t want them to live that long as a general thing. The pace of historical and intellectual advance would then become too slow. Those at the top would stay in power too long. Baleyworld would sink into conversation and decay – as your world has done."

Gladia’s small chin lifted. "Aurora is doing quite well, you’ll find."

"I’m speaking of your world. Solaria."

Gladia hesitated, then said firmly, "Solaria is not my world."

D.G. said, "I hope it is. I came to see you because I believe Solaria is your world."

"If that is why you came to seem me, you are wasting your time, young man."

"You were born Solaria, weren’t you, and lived there a while?"

"I lived there for the first three decades of my life, about an eighth of my lifetime."

"Then that makes you enough of a Solarian to be able to help me in a matter that is rather important."

"I am not a Solarian, despite this so-called important matter."

"It is a matter of war and peace – if you call that important. The Spacer worlds face war with the Settler worlds and things will go badly for all of us if it comes to that. And it is up to you, my lady, to prevent that war and to ensure peace."

18

The meal was done (it had been a small one) and Gladia found herself looking at D.G. in a coldly furious way.

She had lived quietly for the last twenty decades, peeling off the complexities of life. Slowly she had forgotten the misery of Solaria and the difficulties of adjustment to Aurora. She had managed to bury quite deeply the agony of two murders and the ecstasy of two strange loves – with a robot and with an Earthman – and to get well past it all. She had ended by spinning out a long quiet marriage, having two children, and working at her applied art of costumery. And eventually the children had left, then her husband, and soon she might be retiring even from her work.

Then she would be alone with her robots, content with or, rather, resigned to – letting life glide quietly and uneventfully to a slow close in its own time – a close so gentle she might not be aware of the ending when it came.

It was what she wanted.

Then – What was happening?

It had begun the night before when she looked up vainly at the star-lit sky to see Solaria’s star, which was not in the sky and would not have been visible to her if it were. It was as though this one foolish reaching for the past – a past that should have been allowed to remain dead – had burst the cool bubble she had built about herself.

First the name of Elijah Baley, the most joyously painful memory of all the ones she had so carefully brushed away, had come up again and again in a grim repetition.

She was then forced to deal with a man who thought mistakenly he might be a descendant of Elijah in the fifth degree and now with another man who actually was a descendant in the seventh degree. Finally, she was now being given problems and responsibilities similar to those that had plagued Elijah himself on various occasions.

Was she becoming Elijah, in a fashion, with none of his talent and none of his fierce dedication to duty at all costs?

What had she done to deserve it?

She felt her rage being buried under a flood tide of self-pity. She felt unjustly dealt with. No one had the right to unload responsibility on her against her will.

She said, forcing her voice level, "Why do you insist on my being a Solarian, when I tell you that I am not a Solarian?"

D.G. did not seem disturbed by the chill that had now entered her voice. He was still holding the soft napkin that had been given him at the conclusion of the meal. It had been damply hot – not too hot – and he had imitated the actions of Gladia in carefully wiping his hands and mouth. He had then doubled it over and stroked his beard with it. It was shredding now and shriveling.