Robots and Empire (Page 92)

To find her sitting in his living room, then, in front of his hyperwave set, watching an intricate robot ballet, with several of Amadiro’s robots in their niches and two of her own robots behind her chair, struck him at first not as much with the anger of violated privacy, as with pure surprise.

It took some time for him to control his breathing well enough to be able to speak and then his anger arose and he said harshly, "What are you doing here? How did you get in?"

Vasilia was calm enough. Amadiro’s appearance was, after all, entirely expected. "What I’m doing here," she said, "is waiting to see you. Getting in was not difficult. Your robots know my appearance very well and they know my standing at the Institute. Why shouldn’t they allow me to enter if I assure them I have an appointment with you?"

"Which you haven’t. You have violated my privacy."

"Not really. There’s a limit to how much trust you can squeeze out of someone else’s robots. Look at them. They have never once taken their eyes from me. If I had wanted to disturb your belongings, look through your papers, take advantage of your absence in any way, I assure you I could not have. My two robots are no match against them."

"Do you know," said Amadiro, bitterly, "that you have acted in a thoroughly un-Spacer fashion. You are despicable and I will not forget this."

Vasilia seemed to blanch slightly at the adjectives. She said in a low, hard voice, "I hope you don’t forget it, Kelden, for I’ve done what I’ve done for you – and if I reacted as I should to your foul mouth, I would leave now and let you continue for the rest of your life to be the defeated man you have been for the past twenty decades."

"I will not remain a defeated man – whatever you do."

Vasilia said, "You sound as though you believe that, but, you see, you do not know what I know. I must tell you that without my intervention you will remain defeated. I don’t care what scheme you have in mind. I don’t care what this thin-lipped, acid-faced Mandamus has cooked up for you – "

"Why do you mention him?" said Amadiro quickly.

"Because I wish to," – said Vasilia with a touch of contempt. "Whatever he has done or thinks he is doing – and don’t be frightened, for I haven’t any idea what that might be – it won’t work. I may not know anything else about it, but I do know it won’t work."

"You’re babbling idiocies," said Amadiro.

"You had better listen to these idiocies, Kelden, if you don’t want everything to fall into ruin. Not just you, but possibly the Spacer worlds, one and all. Still, you may not want to listen to me. It’s your choice." Which, then, is it to be?"

"Why should I listen to you? What possible reason is there for me to listen to you?"

"For one thing, I told you the Solarians were preparing to leave their world. If you had listened to me then, you would not have been caught so by surprise when they did."

"The Solarian crisis will yet turn to our advantage."

"No, it will not," said Vasilia. "You may think it will, but it won’t. It will destroy you – no matter what you are doing to meet the emergency – unless you are willing to let me have my say."

Amadiro’s lips were white and were trembling slightly. The two centuries of defeat Vasilia had mentioned had had a lasting effect upon him and the Solarian crisis had not helped, so he lacked the inner strength to order his robots to see her out, as he should have. He said sullenly, "Well, then, put it in brief."

"You would not believe what I have to say if I did, so let me do it my own way. You can stop me at any time, but then you will destroy the Spacer worlds. Of course, they will last my time and it won’t be I who will go down in History – Settler history, by the way – as the greatest failure on record. Shall I speak?"

Amadiro folded into a chair. "Speak, then, and when you are through – leave."

"I intend to, Kelden, unless, of course, you ask me – very politely – to stay and help you. Shall I start?"

Amadiro said nothing and Vasilia began, "I told you that during my stay on Solaria I became aware of some very peculiar positronic pathway patterns they had designed, pathways that struck me – very forcefully – as representing attempts at producing telepathic robots. Now, why should I have thought that?"

Amadiro said bitterly, "I cannot tell what pathological drives may power your thinking."

Vasilia brushed that aside with a grimace. "Thank you, Kelden. – I’ve spent some months thinking about that, since I was acute enough to think the matter involved not pathology but some subliminal memory. My mind went back to my childhood when Fastolfe, whom I then considered my father, in one of his generous moods – he would experiment now and then with generous moods, you understand – gave me a robot of my own."

"Giskard again?" muttered Amadiro with impatience.

"Yes, Giskard. Giskard, always. I was in my teenage years and I already had the instinct of a roboticist or, I should say, I was born with the instinct. I had as yet very little mathematics, but I had a grasp of patterns. With the passing of scores of decades, my knowledge of mathematics steadily improved, but I don’t think I have advanced very far in my feeling for patterns. My father would say, ‘Little Vas’ – he also experimented in loving diminutives to see how that would affect me – ‘you have a genius for patterns.’ I think I did – "

Amadiro said, "Spare me. I’ll concede your genius. Meanwhile, I have not yet had my dinner, do you know that?"

"Well," said Vasilia sharply, "order your dinner and invite me to join you."

Amadiro, frowning, raised his arm perfunctorily and made a quick sign. The quiet motion of robots at work made itself evident at once.