Robots and Empire (Page 33)

"Since you say so, it is so, yet I find it puzzling. Had she not frequently made it plain that her life on Solaria was unhappy, that she had completely adopted Aurora and never wished to go back to her original home?"

"Yes, that was there, too. It was quite plainly in her mind. Both emotions, both feelings existed together and simultaneously. I have observed something of this sort in human minds frequently; two opposite emotions simultaneously present."

"Such a condition does not seem logical, friend Giskard."

"I agree and I can only conclude that human beings are not, at all times or in all respects, logical. That must be one reason that it is so difficult to work out the Laws governing human behavior. – In Madam Gladia’s case, I have now and then been aware of this longing for Solaria. Ordinarily, it was well hidden, obscured by the far more intense antipathy she also felt for the world. When the news arrived that Solaria had been abandoned by its people, however, her feelings changed."

"Why so? What had the abandonment to do with the youthful experiences that led Madam Gladia to her antipathy? Or, having held in restraint her longing for the world the decades when it was a working society, why she lose that restraint once it became an abandoned planet and newly long for a world which must now be something utterly strange to her?"

"I cannot explain, friend Daneel, since the more knowledge I gather of the human mind, the more despair I feel at being unable to understand it. It is not an unalloyed advantage to see into that mind and I often envy you the simplicity of behavior control that results from your inability to see below the surface."

Daneel persisted. "Have you guessed an explanation, friend Giskard?"

"I suppose she feels a sorrow for the empty planet. She deserted it twenty decades ago – "

"She was driven out."

"It seems to her, now, to have been a desertion and I imagine she plays with the painful thought that she had set an example; that if she had not left, no one else would have and the planet would still be populated and happy. Since I cannot read her thoughts, I am only groping backward, perhaps inaccurately, from her emotions."

"But she could not have set an example, friend Giskard. Since it is twenty decades since she left, there can be no verifiable causal connection between the much earlier event and the much later one."

"I agree, but human beings sometimes find a kind of pleasure in nursing painful emotions, in blaming themselves without reason or even against reason. – In any case, Madam Gladia felt so sharply the longing to return that I felt it was necessary to release the inhibitory effect that kept her from agreeing to go. It required the merest touch. Yet though I feel it necessary for her to go, since that means she will take us there, I have the uneasy feeling, that the disadvantages might, just possibly, be greater than the advantages."

"In what way, friend Giskard?"

"Since the Council was eager to have Madam Gladia accompany the Settler, it may have been for the purpose of having Madam Gladia absent from Aurora during a crucial period when the defeat of Earth and its Settler worlds is being prepared."

Daneel seemed to be considering that statement. At least it was only after a distinct pause that he said, "What purpose would be served, in your opinion, in having Madam Gladia absent?"

"I cannot decide that, friend Daneel. I want your opinion."

"I have not considered this matter."

"Consider it now!" If Giskard had been human, the remark would have been an order.

There was an even longer pause and then Daneel said, "Friend Giskard, until the moment that Dr. Mandamus appeared in Madam Gladia’s establishment, she had never shown any concern about international affairs. She was a friend of Dr. Fastolfe and of Elijah Baley, but this friendship was one of personal affection and did not have an ideological basis. Both of them, moreover, are now gone from us. She has an antipathy toward Dr. Amadiro and that is returned, but this is also a personal matter. The antipathy is two centuries old and neither has done anything material about it but have merely each remained stubbornly antipathetic. There can be no reason for Dr. Amadiro – who is now the dominant influence in the Council – to fear Madam Gladia or to go to the trouble of removing her."

Giskard said, "You overlook the fact, that in removing Madam Gladia, he also removes you and me. He would, perhaps, feel quite certain Madam Gladia would not leave without us, so can it be us he considers dangerous?"

"In the course of our existence, friend Giskard, we have never, in any way, given any appearance of having endangered Dr. Amadiro. What cause has he to fear us? He does not know of your abilities or of how you have made use of them. Why, then, should he take the trouble to remove us, temporarily, from Aurora?"

"Temporarily, friend Daneel? Why do you assume it is a temporary removal he plans? He knows, it may be, more than the Settler does of the trouble on Solaria and knows, also, that the Settler and his crew will be surely destroyed and Madam Gladia and you and I with them. Perhaps the destruction of the Settler’s ship is his main aim, but he would consider the end of Dr. Fastolfe’s friend and Dr. Fastolfe’s robots to be an added bonus."

Daneel said, "Surely he would not risk war with the Settler worlds, for that may well come if the Settler’s ship is destroyed and the minute pleasure of having us destroyed, when added in, would not make the risk worthwhile."

"Is it not possible, friend Daneel, that war is exactly what Dr. Amadiro has in mind; that it involves no risk in his estimation, so, that getting rid of us at the same time adds to his pleasure without increasing a risk that does not exist?"