Asimov's Future History Volume 4 (65 page)

“I was not told. Are all your Personals like this?”

Fastolfe said, “No. Personals on Aurora commonly possess illusory qualities, but the nature of the illusion varies with the individual. The illusion of natural greenery pleases me and I vary its details from time to time. One grows tired of anything, you know, after a while. There are some people who make use of erotic illusions, but that is not to my taste.

“Of course, when one is familiar with Personals, the illusions offer no trouble. The rooms are quite standard and one knows where everything is. It’s no worse than moving about a well-known place in the dark.–But tell me, Mr. Baley, why didn’t you find your way out and ask for directions?”

Baley said, “Because I didn’t wish to. I admit that I was extremely irritated over the illusions, but I accepted them. After all, it was Daneel who led me to the Personal and he gave me no instructions, nor any warning. He would certainly have instructed me at length, if he had been left to his own devices, for he would surely have foreseen harm to me otherwise. I had to assume, therefore, that you had carefully instructed him not to warn me and, since I didn’t really expect you to play a practical joke on me, I had to assume that you had a serious purpose in doing so.”

“Oh?”

“After all, you had asked me to come Outside and, when I agreed, you immediately asked me if I wished to visit the Personal. I decided that the purpose of sending me into an illusion of Outside was to see whether I could endure it–or if I would come running out in panic. If I could endure it, I might be trusted with the real thing. Well, I endured it. I’m a little wet, thank you, but that will dry soon enough.”

Fastolfe said, “You are a clear-thinking person, Mr. Baley. I apologize for the nature of the test and for the discomfort I caused you. I was merely trying to ward off the possibility of far greater discomfort. Do you still wish to come out with me?”

“I not only wish it, Dr. Fastolfe. I insist on it.”

20.

T
HEY
MADE
THEIR
way through a corridor, with Daneel and Giskard following close behind.

Fastolfe said chattily, “I hope you won’t mind the robots accompanying us. Aurorans never go anywhere without at least one robot in attendance and, in your case in particular, I must insist that Daneel and Giskard be with you at all times.”

He opened a door and Baley tried to stand firm against the beat of sunshine and wind, to say nothing of the envelopment of the strange and subtly alien smell of Aurora’s land.

Fastolfe stayed to one side and Giskard went out first. The robot looked keenly about for a few moments. One had the impression that all his senses were intently engaged. He looked back and Daneel joined him and did the same.

“Leave them for a moment, Mr. Baley,” said Fastolfe, “and they will tell us when they think it safe for us to emerge. Let me take the opportunity of once again apologizing for the scurvy trick I played on you with respect to the Personal. I assure you we would have known if you were in trouble–your various vital signs were being recorded. I am very pleased, though not entirely surprised, that you penetrated my purpose.” He smiled and, with almost unnoticeable hesitation, placed his hand upon Baley’s left shoulder and gave it a friendly squeeze.

Baley held himself stiffly. “You seem to have forgotten your earlier scurvy trick–your apparent attack on me with the spicer. If you will assure me that we will now deal with each other frankly and honestly, I will consider these matters as having been of reasonable intent.”

“Done!”

“Is it safe to leave now?” Baley looked out to where Giskard and Daneel had moved farther and had separated from each other to right and left, still watching and sensing.

“Not quite yet. They will move all around the establishment.

–Daneel tells me that you invited him into the Personal with you. Was that seriously meant?”

“Yes. I knew he had no need, but I felt it might be impolite to exclude him. I wasn’t sure of Auroran custom in that respect, despite all the reading I did on Auroran matters.’

“I suppose that isn’t one of those things Aurorans feel necessary to mention and of course one can’t expect the books to make any attempt to prepare visiting Earthmen concerning these subjects–”

“Because there are so few visiting Earthmen?”

“Exactly. The point is, of course, that robots never visit Personals. It is the one place where human beings can be free of them. I suppose there is the feeling that one should feel free of them at some periods and in some places.”

Baley said, “And yet when Daneel was on Earth on the occasion of Sarton’s death three years ago, I tried to keep him out of the Community Personal by saying he had no need. Still, he insisted on entering.”

“And rightly so. He was, on that occasion, strictly instructed to give no indication he was not human, for reasons you well remember. Here on Aurora, however–Ah, they are done.”

The robots were coming toward the door and Daneel gestured them outward.

Fastolfe held out his arm to bar Baley’s way. “if you don’t mind, Mr. Baley, I will go out first. Count to one hundred patiently and then join us.”

21.

B
ALEY
,
ON
THE
count of one hundred, stepped out firmly and walked toward Fastolfe. His face was perhaps too stiff, his jaws too tightly clenched, his back too straight.

He looked about. The scene was not very different from that which had been presented in the Personal. Fastolfe had, perhaps, used his own grounds as a model. Everywhere there was green and in one place there was a stream filtering down a slope. It was, perhaps, artificial, but it was not an illusion. The water was real. He could feel the spray when he passed near it.

There was somehow a tameness to it all. The Outside on Earth seemed wilder and more grandly beautiful, what little Baley had seen of it.

Fastolfe said, with a gentle touch on Baley’s upper arm and a motion of his hand, “Come in this direction. Look there!”

A space between two trees revealed an expanse of lawn.

For the first time, there was a sense of distance and on the horizon one could see a dwelling place: low-roofed, broad, and so green in color that it almost melted into the countryside.

“This is a residential area,” said Fastolfe. “it might not seem so to you, since you are accustomed to Earth’s tremendous hives, but we are in the Auroran city of Eos, which is actually the administrative center of the planet. There are twenty thousand human beings living here, which makes it the largest city, not only on Aurora but on all the Spacer worlds. There are as many people in Eos as on all of Solaria.” Fastolfe said it with pride.

“How many robots, Dr. Fastolfe?”

“In this area? Perhaps a hundred thousand. On the planet as a whole, there are fifty robots to each human being on the average, not ten thousand per human as on Solaria. Most of our robots are on our farms, in our mines, in our factories, in space. if anything, we suffer from a shortage of robots, particularly of household robots. Most Aurorans make do with two or three such robots, some with only one. Still, we don’t want to move in the direction of Solaria.”

“How many human beings have no household robots at all?”

“None at all. That would not be in the public interest. If a human being, for any reason, could not afford a robot, he or she would be granted one which would be maintained, if necessary, at public expense.”

“What happens as the population rises? Do you add more robots?”

Fastolfe shook his head. “The population does not rise. Aurora’s population is two hundred million and that has remained stable for three centuries. It is the number desired. Surely you have read that in the books you viewed.”

“Yes, I have,” admitted Baley, “but I found it difficult to believe.”

“Let me assure you it’s true. It gives each of us ample land, ample space, ample privacy, and an ample share of the world’s resources. There are neither too many people as on Earth, nor too few as on Solaria.” He held out his arm for Baley to take, so they might continue walking.

“What you see,” Fastolfe said, “is a tame world. It is what I have brought you out to show you, Mr. Baley?”

“There is no danger in it?”

“Always
some
danger. We do have storms, rock slides, earthquakes, blizzards, avalanches, a volcano or two–Accidental death can never be entirely done away with. And there are even the passions of angry or envious persons, the follies of the immature, and the madness of the shortsighted. These things are very minor irritants, however, and do not much affect the civilized quiet that rests upon our world.”

Fastolfe seemed to ruminate over his words for a moment, then he sighed and said, “I can scarcely want it to be any other way, but I have certain intellectual reservations. We have brought here to Aurora only those plants and animals we felt would be useful, ornamental, or both. We did our best to eliminate anything we would consider weeds, vermin, or even less than standard. We selected strong, healthy, and attractive human beings, according to our own views, of course. We have tried–But you smile, Mr. Baley.”

Baley had not. His mouth had merely twitched. “No no,” he said. “There is nothing to smile about.”

“There is, for I know as well as you do that I myself am not attractive by Auroran standards. The trouble is that we cannot altogether control gene combinations and intrauterine influences. Nowadays, of course, with ectogenesis becoming more common–though I hope it shall never be as common as it is on Solaria–I would be eliminated in the late fetal stage.”

“In which case, Dr. Fastolfe, the worlds would have lost a great theoretical roboticist.”

‘Perfectly correct,” said Fastolfe, without visible embarrassment, “but the worlds would never have known that, would they?–In any case, we have labored to set up a very simple but completely workable ecological balance, an equable climate, a fertile soil, and resources as evenly distributed as is possible. The result is a world that produces all of everything that we need and that is, if I may personify, considerate of our wants.

–Shall I tell you the ideal for which we have striven?”

“Please do,” said Baley.

“We have labored to produce a planet which, taken as a whole, would obey the Three Laws of Robotics. It does nothing to harm human beings, either by commission or omission. It does what we want it to do, as long as we do not ask it to harm human beings. And
it
protects itself, except at times and in places where it must serve us or save us even at the price of harm to itself. Nowhere else, neither on Earth nor in the other Spacer worlds, is this so nearly true as here on Aurora.”

Baley said sadly, “Earthmen, too, have longed for this, but we have long since grown too numerous and we have too greatly damaged our planet in the days of our ignorance to be able to do very much about it now.–But what of Aurora’s indigenous life-forms? Surely you did not come to a dead planet.”

Fastolfe said, “You know we didn’t, if you have viewed books on our history. Aurora had vegetation and animal life when we arrived–and a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere. This was true of all the fifty Spacer worlds. Peculiarly, in every case, the life-forms were sparse and not very varied. Nor were they particularly tenacious in their hold on their own planet. We took over, so to speak, without a struggle–and what is left of the indigenous life is in our aquaria, our zoos, and in a few carefully maintained primeval areas.

“We do not really understand why the life-bearing planets that human beings have encountered have been so feebly lifebearing, why only Earth itself has been overflowing with madly tenacious varieties of life filling every environmental niche, and why only Earth has developed any sign of intelligence whatever.”

Baley said, “Maybe it is coincidence, the accident of incomplete exploration. We know so few planets so far.”

“I admit,” said Fastolfe, “that that is the most likely explanation. Somewhere there may be an ecological balance as complex as that of Earth. Somewhere there may be intelligent life and a technological civilization. Yet Earth’s life and intelligence has spread outward for parsecs in every direction. If there is life and intelligence elsewhere, why have they not spread out as well–and why have we not encountered each other?”

“That might happen tomorrow, for all we know.”

“It might. And if such an encounter is imminent, all the more reason why we should not be passively waiting. For we are growing passive, Mr. Baley. No new Spacer world has been settled in two and a half centuries. Our worlds are so tame, so delightful, we do not wish to leave them. This world was originally settled, you see, because Earth had grown so unpleasant that the risks and dangers of new and empty worlds seemed preferable by comparison. By the time our fifty Spacer worlds were developed–Solaria last of all–there was no longer any push, any need to move out elsewhere. And Earth itself had retreated to its underground caves of steel. The End. Finis.”

“You don’t really mean that.”

“If we stay as we are? If we remain placid and comfortable and unmoving? Yes, I do mean that. Humanity must expand its range somehow if it is to continue to flourish. One method of expansion is through space, through a constant pioneering reach toward other worlds. If we fail in this, some other civilization that is undergoing such expansion will reach us and we will not be able to stand against its dynamism.”

“You expect a space war–like a hyperwave shoot-’em-up.”

“No, I doubt that that would be necessary. A civilization that is expanding through space will not need our few worlds and will probably be too intellectually advanced to feel the need to batter its way into hegemony here. If, however, we are surrounded by a more lively, a more vibrant civilization, we will wither away by the mere force of the comparison; we will die of the realization of what we have become and of the potential we have wasted. Of course, we might substitute other expansions–an expansion of scientific understanding or of cultural vigor, for instance. I fear, however, that these expansions are not separable. To fade in one is to fade in all. Certainly, we are fading in all. We live too long. We are too comfortable.”