Lodovik looked at Planch sympathetically. “This is not pleasant for you, ” he observed.
“No, ” Planch said with a sigh. “Look what the Empire has done-a waste. ”
“What do you mean?”
“Trantor did this because it feared it would lose its eminence. Squeezed the life out of
an entire world. ”
Lodovik looked away. “Do you blame Linge Chen? Is that why you have double-crossed him?”
Planch paled. “I never said anything about Linge Chen. ”
“No, ” Lodovik said. Planch looked at the man with sudden misgivings. If Chen ever
learned, there was no place in the Galaxy where he would be safe.
A rickety, lozenge-shaped ground taxi approached on large white wheels. The driver was an
elderly woman dressed in faded red livery. Her dialect was almost too thick to understand,
but Planch managed to communicate with her. She seemed relieved to have paying
passengers-in Imperial credits!-and even happier to be getting out of the urban center.
“I know that you have done work for Chen in the past, ” Lodovik said as they lurched along
a potholed expressway. Here, the expressways lay out in the open, rather than being routed
below domes or underground, as they were on Trantor. The morning sunshine dazzled Planch,
and the air was tinted pink, giving everything a warm, nostalgic glow. “I was privy to
some of the arrangements. ”
“Of course, ” Planch said.
“Now you work for a man named Posit, ” Lodovik said.
Planch started in shock and looked particularly miserable. “I should shoot you right now
and leave Madder Loss, ” he murmured.
“Well, you know the proper codes, ” Lodovik said. “That much is obvious. You became angry
at Chen when he carried on the policies that strangled Madder Loss... and other
Renaissance Worlds. Yet the squeezing, as you describe it, of the Renaissance Worlds was
not Linge Chen's policy initially. It began under the First Ministry of Hari Seldon, who
implemented the policy to increase stability in the Empire. ”
Planch grunted that he was well aware of the Seldon connection. “I don't approve of a lot
of Imperial actions, and Chen knew that when I worked for him. But I don't work for him
now. ”
“You have no need to worry, ” Lodovik said. “Chen will never know. ”
Planch squirmed in his cracked seat.
“Twenty minutes, ” the driver called back in a cheery voice.
The house was the most unusual Planch had ever seen-a single small building standing alone
in a field covered with short green plants, forming a kind of living carpet beneath the
warm sunshine. The outskirts of the city were ten kilometers away, and the nearest
structure similar to this one was almost five kilometers distant. The land between
consisted of low, rolling hills covered with planar bushy growths, purple or deep bluish
green. The countryside seemed elegantly vivacious, quite gaudy in comparison with the
crumbling, unkempt city.
The taxi let them out in a broad paved circle at the front of the dwelling. A single tall
male figure stood beneath a cloth awning that flapped lazily in the warm, gentle breeze.
He stepped forward and bowed toward Mors Planch.
“You've done your work well, ” the man said.
Planch returned the bow, then awkwardly spread one arm toward Lodovik, and said blandly,
“He wasn't much trouble. ” He stepped back as if they might do something unexpected, start
fighting or perhaps just burst into flames.
“You're free to go, ” the man said.
“I need release papers. You seem to be the contact I met on Trantor, but... ”
The man gestured and a worn but fully functional tiktok came out of the house carrying a
small satchel. “This will complete our agreement, for now. The bag also contains any
papers you might need to go wherever you wish to go, safely, in the territories still
controlled by the Empire. ”
“I want to get away from the empire, forever, ” Planch said.
“You will find some documents that will help you do that, as well, ” the man said.
Planch, despite his unease, seemed reluctant to return to the waiting taxi.
“What else can I offer you?” the man asked.
“An explanation. Who are you, what do you represent?”
“Nothing, ” the man said. “I regret to say you'll soon forget everything you saw here, and
your role in rescuing my friend as well. ”
“Friend?”
“Yes, ” said the man. “We've known each other for thousands of years. ”
“You're not joking. Who are you?” Planch asked, despite a tingling surge of awe blended
with real fear.
“Please go, ” the man said, and tipped his head slightly. Planch tipped his own head in
synchrony, turned without another word, and walked back to the vehicle. The door opened
with a shuddering groan to receive him.
Lodovik watched his rescuer depart. Then, using no human words whatsoever, but a
high-frequency pulse-modulated sound signal and bursts of microwave, both exchanged
greetings, and Lodovik was partially debriefed.
After, R. Daneel Olivaw said, in spoken words, “Let's do this on human time and in human
ways, for the moment. ”
“Certainly, ” Lodovik said. “I am curious as to where I might be assigned next. ”
Daneel opened the door to the dwelling, and Lodovik entered before him. “You state that
there is something different about you. Yet I examine your transmitted status profile and
see nothing amiss. ”
“Yes, ” Lodovik said. “I have been examining my mental structure and programming since the
accident, trying to pinpoint what that difference could be. ”
“Have you reached any conclusions?”
“I have. I am no longer compelled to obey the Three Laws. ”
Daneel received this declaration with no humanly observable reaction. The main room of the
house contained two chairs, and in the walls, there were niches for three tiktoks, but to
Lodovik, they looked like the niches once reserved for robots on Aurora, tens of thousands
of years ago.
“If that is true, there will be grave difficulties, for I observe you are still
functioning. You have not deactivated yourself. ”
“That would have been impossible under the circumstances, for I did not understand this
new condition until after I had been rescued by Mors Planch. I caused harm, unwittingly,
to a human being on the ship Planch had hired to find the Spear of Glory. I did not feel
even a hint of the reaction I should have felt. I conclude that the neutrino flux has
altered my positronic brain in an unanticipated fashion. Certain key elements in my logic
circuits may have been transmuted. ”
“I see. Have you decided on what action you should take now?”
“I must either deactivate, and impose on you to destroy my remains, or I must be sent to
Eos, if my continued existence will serve any purpose. ”
Daneel sat on one of the chairs, and Lodovik took the other. It no longer seemed at all
appropriate to occupy the
niches, which in any case were too narrow for their human-scale frames.
“Why did you travel all this way, rather than send an emissary?” Lodovik asked.
“I have all possible emissaries in key positions at the moment, ” Daneel said. “None could
be spared; nor can I afford to lose you. I was already scheduled to be on Madder Loss as a
jumping-off point for Eos. Normally I would have delayed my trip, since this is a very
delicate time, and the accident has caused grave difficulties. It has even triggered a
political strug-gte in the Imperial Patace that might directly involve Hari Sol-don. ”
Though Lodovik had not worked directly on the Plan, he was well-informed about the
psychohistorian.
They sat in silence for several seconds, then Daneel spoke again. “We will go to Eos. I
can arrange a small ship for you. There is a mission you can perform for me once you
return-”
“I am sorry, Daneel, ” Lodovik interrupted. “I must emphasize that I am not functioning
properly. I should not be assigned any new missions until I have been repaired or
reprogrammed, whichever is necessary. ”
“That can only be done on Eos, ” Daneel said.
“Yes, but there is a possibility I will no longer follow your instructions, ” Lodovik said.
“Please explain. ”
“Humans would call it a crisis of conscience. I have had many long and idle hours to sort
through and reexamine all my brain's memory contents, and all of my working algorithms,
from this new perspective. I must confess that I am a very confused robot at this moment,
and my behavior is not predictable. I may even be a danger. ”
Daneel stood and stepped over to Lodovik's chair, then bent from the waist and placed his
hand on Lodovik's shoulder. “What does your investigation and examination tell you?”
“That the Plan is wrong, ” Lodovik said. "I believe... I am
coming to believe... My state of thinking is such that... “ He pushed up from the chair,
past Daneel, and went to a broad window looking out on fields of planar bushes. ”This is a
beautiful world. Mors Planch thinks it is beautiful, and as I spent time with him, I
developed a deep respect for his judgment. He resents the changes imposed upon Madder
Loss. He regards them as a kind of punishment for aspiring to greatness in the Empire. His
resentment led him to betray Linge Chen. "
“I have known about his distaste for the Empire and for Chen, ” Daneel said.
Lodovik continued, “Yet it was not the Empire or Linge Chen that decreed Madder Loss be
subdued, not directly. ” He turned to Daneel, and his face bore traces of human
emotion-sadness, regret, grief, even in the presence of a robot, where it was certainly
not necessary. “It was you who decided the Renaissance Worlds must be controlled, and
induced changes in the politics of Trantor to carry out their strangulation. ”
Daneel listened with his own human expression-a troubled sort of fascination. Mimicking
human behaviors for so long had created reflex pathways in both robots that sometimes
seemed easier to display than to suppress.
“I foresaw greater instability, ” Daneel began. “Centuries of human conflict around
systems aspiring to replace the Empire and become centers of power. Not all such worlds
could win; the struggle would cause untold suffering and destruction, on a scale never
witnessed in human history. The empire will fall; we know that much. But all my efforts
have been dedicated to mitigating the effects of that fall, to reduce human suffering to a
minimum. The Zeroth Law-”
“The Zeroth Law is what concerns me. ”
“You have accepted its primacy for centuries now. Why does it concern you?”
"I believe the Zeroth Law may be a mutational function, spread between robots like a
virus. I do not know how it
arose, but it may have been provoked by another mutation- mentalic powers in robots. "
'To question the Zeroth Law could lead us to conclude that everything I have tried to
accomplish is in error, and that all the robots who follow me should be deactivated,
myself included. "
“I am aware of the magnitude of my supposition. ”
Daneel said, “Apparently, something very interesting has happened to you. ”
“Yes, ” Lodovik said, and his pleasant, plump face went through a series of random and
uncoordinated contortions. “These questions and divisive thoughts may all be due to my own
alteration. I have followed your lead for thousands of years... To feel doubts now... ”
His voice became a strained, metallic squeak. “I am miserable, Daneel!”
Daneel considered the situation carefully, as if he were walking through a minefield. “I
regret the disturbance you feel. You are not the first to disagree with the Plan. Others
expressed similar views-many more thousands of years ago. There were many schisms among
robots when the humans abandoned us. The Giskardians-those like myself, who followed the
ideas of Giskard Reventlov-were opposed by others who insisted on a strict interpretation
of the Three Laws. ”
“I do not know of these events, ” Lodovik said, his voice steadier.
“There has been no need to talk of them. Besides, these robots may all be inactive now-I
have not heard from them for centuries. ”
“What happened to them?”
“I do not know, ” Daneel said. “They called themselves Calvinians, after Susan Calvin. ”
Every robot knew of Susan Calvin-though no human remembered her now. “Before those schisms
there were far worse events. Unspeakable tasks that humans set for robots, carried out by
some of those who would become Calvinians. These memories are in themselves disturbing. ”
“It gives me no satisfaction to cause you distress, R. Daneel, ” Lodovik said.
Daneel sat in the second chair again and folded his arms. Both robots were aware of this
mimicry of human actions; both were used to the promptings of their human overlays, and
did not regard these behaviors and gestures as particularly annoying. Sometimes, they were
even reassuring, and Lodovik noticed that Daneel's posture in the chair, the inflection of
his voice, and his facial expression all seemed to become more human as their conversation
progressed. Neither wished to return to the much more rapid modes of microwave or
high-frequency sound communication; this was a situation of complexity and subtlety, and
the slower modes of human speech seemed much safer.
“You will return to Eos. We will see what can be done there, ” Daneel said. “I hope for
your complete recovery. ”
“As do I, ” Lodovik said.
Planch sat without moving for most of the ride back to the spaceport. He looked through
the front windscreen, over the shoulder of the driver, and tried to ignore her thickly
accented chatter. Then, with a small shudder, he removed the tiny recorder from its hidden
pocket in his jacket and stared at it. He could not make up his mind for several minutes
whether to play back the recording or just throw it out the window.
“This all war verra rich, co' da flow fro' tha por', aaw the ships do come in har... ” the
elderly woman said, and glanced over her shoulder. Her eyes were pale blue, very alert,
very wise. She smiled and her face wrinkled into a hundred river deltas. Planch nodded
while only half hearing what she said.