Robots and Empire (Page 87)

Vasilia flushed. "I have a claim to Giskard. Why should a stranger – an alien – have him?"

"For one thing, because Fastolfe willed it so. And she’s an Auroran citizen."

"Who says so? To every Auroran she is ‘the Solarian woman.’"

Amadiro brought his fist down on the arm of his chair in a sudden spilling over of fury. "Vasilia, what is it you wish of me? I have no liking for the Solarian woman. I have, in fact, a profound dislike of her and, if there were a way, I would" – he looked briefly at the robots, as though unwilling to unsettle them – "get her off the planet. But I can’t upset the will. Even if there were a legal way to do so – and there isn’t – it wouldn’t be wise to do it. Fastolfe is dead."

"Precisely the reason Giskard should be mine now."

Amadiro ignored her. "And the coalition he headed is falling apart. It was held together in the last few decades only by his personal charisma. Now what I would like to do is to pick up fragments of that coalition and add it to my own following. In that way, I may put a group together that would be strong enough to dominate the Council and win control in the coming elections."

"With you becoming the next Chairman?"

"Why not? Aurora could do worse, for it would give me a chance to reverse our longtime policy of built-in disaster before it is too late. The trouble is that I don’t have Fastolfe’s personal popularity. I don’t have his gift of exuding saintliness as a cover for stupidity. Consequently, if I seem to be triumphing in an unfair and petty way over a dead man, it will not look good. No one must say that having been defeated by Fastolfe while he was alive, I overturned his will out of trivial spite after he was dead. I won’t have anything as ridiculous as that standing in the way of the great life-and death decisions Aurora must make. Do you understand me? You’ll have to do without Giskard!"

Vasilia arose, body stiff, eyes narrow. "We’ll see about that."

"We have already seen. This meeting is over and if you have any ambitions to be the head of the Institute, I don’t ever want to see you threatening me about anything. So if you’re going to make a threat now, of any kind at all, I advise you to reconsider."

"I make no threats," said Vasilia, every ounce of body language contradicting her words – and she left with a sweep, beckoning her robot, unnecessarily, to follow.

56

The emergency – or rather, the series of emergencies began some months later when Maloon Cicis entered Amadiro’s office for the usual morning conference.

Ordinarily, Amadiro looked forward to that. Cicis was always a restful interlude in the course of the busy day. He was the one senior member of the Institute who had no ambitions and who was not calculating against the day of Amadiro’s death or retirement. Cicis was, in fact, the perfect subordinate. He was happy to be of service and delighted to be in Amadiro’s confidence.

For this reason, Amadiro had been disturbed, in the last year or so, at the flavor of decay, the slight concavity of the chest, the touch of stiffness in the walk of his perfect subordinate. Could Cicis be getting old? Surely he was only a few decades older than Amadiro.

It struck Amadiro most unpleasantly that perhaps along with the gradual degeneration of so many facets of Spacer life, the life expectancy was falling. He meant to look up the statistics, but kept forgetting to do so – or was unconsciously afraid of doing so.

On this occasion, though, the appearance of age in Cicis was drowned in violent emotion. His face was red (pointing up the graying of his bronze hair) and he appeared virtually exploding with astonishment.

Amadiro did not have to inquire as to the news. Cicis delivered it as though it was something he could not contain.

When he finished exploding, Amadiro said, stupefied, "All radio-wave emissions ceased? All?"

"All, Chief. They must all be dead – or gone. No inhabited world can avoid emitting some electromagnetic radiation at our level of – "

Amadiro waved him silent. One of Vasilia’s points – the fourth, as he recalled – had been that the Solarians were preparing to leave their world. It had been a nonsensical suggestion; all four had been more or less nonsensical. He had said he would keep it in mind and, of course, he hadn’t. Now, apparently, that had proved to be a mistake.

What had made it seem nonsensical when Vasilia had advanced the notion still made it seem nonsensical. He asked the question now that he had asked then, even though he expected no answer. (What answer could there be?) "Where in Space could they go, Maloon?"

"There’s no word on that, Chief."

"Well, then, when did they go?"

"There’s no word on that, either. We got the news this morning. The trouble is the radiational intensity is so low on Solaria anyway. It’s very sparsely inhabited and its robots are well-shielded. The intensity is an order of magnitude lower than that of any other Spacer world; two orders lower than ours – "

"So one day someone noticed that what was very small had actually declined to zero, but no one actually caught it as it was declining. Who noticed it?"

"A Nexonian ship Chief."

"How?"

"The ship was being forced into orbit about Solaria’s sun in order to carry through emergency repairs. They hyperwaved for permission and got no answer. They had no choice but to disregard that, continue into orbit, and carry through their repairs. They were not interfered with in any way in that time. It was not till after they had left that, in checking through their records, they found that not only had they gotten no answer, but that they had gotten no radiational signal of any kind. There’s no way of telling exactly when radiation had ceased. The last recorded receipt of any message from Solaria was over two months ago."