Foundation and Earth (29 page)

Trevize said, in a low voice, “Here we may have information we can get nowhere else in the Galaxy. We could ask them for the location of Earth with reference to this world, and if they know, they will tell us. Who knows how long these things have functioned and endured? They may answer out of personal memory. Think of that.”

“On the other hand,” said Bliss, “they may be recently manufactured and may know nothing.”

“Or,” said Pelorat, “they may know, but may refuse to tell us.”

Trevize said, “I suspect they can’t refuse unless they’ve been ordered not to tell us, and why should such orders be issued when surely no one on this planet could have expected our coming?”

At a distance of about three meters, the robots
stopped. They said nothing and made no further movement.

Trevize, his hand on his blaster, said to Bliss, without taking his eyes from the robot, “Can you tell whether they are hostile?”

“You’ll have to allow for the fact that I have no experience whatsoever with their mental workings, Trevize, but I don’t detect anything that seems hostile.”

Trevize took his right hand away from the butt of the weapon, but kept it near. He raised his left hand, palm toward the robots, in what he hoped would be recognized as a gesture of peace and said, speaking slowly, “I greet you. We come to this world as friends.”

The central robot of the three ducked his head in a kind of abortive bow that might also have been taken as a gesture of peace by an optimist, and replied.

Trevize’s jaw dropped in astonishment. In a world of Galactic communication, one did not think of failure in so fundamental a need. However, the robot did not speak in Galactic Standard or anything approaching it. In fact, Trevize could not understand a word.

PELORAT’S SURPRISE WAS AS GREAT AS THAT OF Trevize, but there was an obvious element of pleasure in it, too.

“Isn’t that strange?” he said.

Trevize turned to him and said, with more than a touch of asperity in his voice, “It’s not strange. It’s gibberish.”

Pelorat said, “Not gibberish at all. It’s Galactic, but very archaic. I catch a few words. I could probably understand it easily if it were written down. It’s the pronunciation that’s the real puzzle.”

“Well, what did it say?”

“I think it told you it didn’t understand what you said.”

Bliss said, “I can’t tell what it said, but what I sense is puzzlement, which fits. That is, if I can trust my analysis of robotic emotion—or if there is such a thing as robotic emotion.”

Speaking very slowly, and with difficulty, Pelorat said something, and the three robots ducked their head in unison.

“What was that?” said Trevize.

Pelorat said, “I said I couldn’t speak well, but I would try. I asked for a little time. Dear me, old chap, this is fearfully interesting.”

“Fearfully disappointing,” muttered Trevize.

“You see,” said Pelorat, “every habitable planet in the Galaxy manages to work out its own variety of Galactic so that there are a million dialects that are sometimes barely intercomprehensible, but they’re all pulled together by the development of Galactic Standard. Assuming this world to have been isolated for twenty thousand years, the language would ordinarily drift so far from that of the rest of the Galaxy as to be an entirely different language. That it isn’t may be because the world has a social system that depends upon robots which can only understand the language as spoken in the fashion in which they were programmed. Rather than keep reprogramming, the language remained static and we now have what is to us merely a very archaic form of Galactic.”

“There’s an example,” said Trevize, “of how a robotized society can be held static and made to turn degenerate.”

“But, my dear fellow,” protested Pelorat, “keeping a language relatively unchanged is not necessarily a sign of degeneration. There are advantages to it. Documents preserved for centuries and millennia retain their meaning and give greater longevity and authority to historical records. In the rest of the Galaxy, the language of Imperial edicts of the time of Hari Seldon already begins to sound quaint.”

“And do you know this archaic Galactic?”

“Not to say
know
, Golan. It’s just that in studying ancient myths and legends I’ve picked up the trick of it. The vocabulary is not entirely different, but it is inflected differently, and there are idiomatic expressions we don’t use any longer and, as I have said, the pronunciation is totally changed. I can act as interpreter, but not as a very good one.”

Trevize heaved a tremulous sigh. “A small stroke of good fortune is better than none. Carry on, Janov.”

Pelorat turned to the robots, waited a moment, then looked back at Trevize. “What am I supposed to say?”

“Let’s go all the way. Ask them where Earth is.”

Pelorat said the words one at a time, with exaggerated gestures of his hands.

The robots looked at each other and made a few sounds. The middle one then spoke to Pelorat, who replied while moving his hands apart as though he were stretching a length of rubber. The robot responded by spacing his words as carefully as Pelorat had.

Pelorat said to Trevize, “I’m not sure I’m getting across what I mean by ‘Earth.’ I suspect they think I’m referring to some region on their planet and they say they don’t know of any such region.”

“Do they use the name of this planet, Janov?”

“The closest I can come to what I think they are using as the name is ‘Solaria.’ ”

“Have you ever heard of it in your legends?”

“No—any more than I had ever heard of Aurora.”

“Well, ask them if there is any place named Earth in the sky—among the stars. Point upward.”

Again an exchange, and finally Pelorat turned and said, “All I can get from them, Golan, is that there are no places in the sky.”

Bliss said, “Ask those robots how old they are; or rather, how long they have been functioning.”

“I don’t know how to say ‘functioning,’ ” said
Pelorat, shaking his head. “In fact, I’m not sure if I can say ‘how old.’ I’m
not
a very good interpreter.”

“Do the best you can, Pel dear,” said Bliss.

And after several exchanges, Pelorat said, “They’ve been functioning for twenty-six years.”

“Twenty-six years,” muttered Trevize in disgust. “They’re hardly older than you are, Bliss.”

Bliss said, with sudden pride, “It so happens—”

“I know. You’re Gaia, which is thousands of years old. —In any case, these robots cannot talk about Earth from personal experience, and their memory-banks clearly do not include anything not necessary to their functioning. So they know nothing about astronomy.”

Pelorat said, “There may be other robots somewhere on the planet that are primordial, perhaps.”

“I doubt it,” said Trevize, “but ask them, if you can find the words for it, Janov.”

This time there was quite a long conversation and Pelorat eventually broke it off with a flushed face and a clear air of frustration.

“Golan,” he said, “I don’t understand part of what they’re trying to say, but I gather that the older robots are used for manual labor and don’t know anything. If this robot were a human, I’d say he spoke of the older robots with contempt. These three are house robots, they say, and are not allowed to grow old before being replaced. They’re the ones who really know things—their words, not mine.”

“They don’t know much,” growled Trevize. “At least of the things we want to know.”

“I now regret,” said Pelorat, “that we left Aurora so hurriedly. If we had found a robot survivor there, and we surely would have, since the very first one I encountered still had a spark of life left in it, they would know of Earth through personal memory.”

“Provided their memories were intact, Janov,” said Trevize. “We can always go back there and, if we have to, dog packs or not, we will. —But if these robots are
only a couple of decades old, there must be those who manufacture them, and the manufacturers must be human, I should think.” He turned to Bliss. “Are you
sure
you sensed—”

But she raised a hand to stop him and there was a strained and intent look on her face. “Coming now,” she said, in a low voice.

Trevize turned his face toward the rise and there, first appearing from behind it, and then striding toward them, was the unmistakable figure of a human being. His complexion was pale and his hair light and long, standing out slightly from the sides of his head. His face was grave but quite young in appearance. His bare arms and legs were not particularly muscled.

The robots stepped aside for him, and he advanced till he stood in their midst.

He then spoke in a clear, pleasant voice and his words, although used archaically, were in Galactic Standard, and easily understood.

“Greetings, wanderers from space,” he said. “What would you with my robots?”

TREVIZE DID NOT COVER HIMSELF WITH GLORY. HE said foolishly, “You speak Galactic?”

The Solarian said, with a grim smile, “And why not, since I am not mute?”

“But these?” Trevize gestured toward the robots.

“These are robots. They speak our language, as I do. But I am Solarian and hear the hyperspatial communications of the worlds beyond so that I have learned your way of speaking, as have my predecessors. My predecessors have left descriptions of the language, but I constantly hear new words and expressions that change with the years, as though you Settlers can settle worlds, but not words. How is it you are surprised at my understanding of your language?”

“I should not have been,” said Trevize. “I apologize. It was just that speaking to the robots, I had not thought to hear Galactic on this world.”

He studied the Solarian. He was wearing a thin white robe, draped loosely over his shoulder, with large openings for his arms. It was open in front, exposing a bare chest and loincloth below. Except for a pair of light sandals, he wore nothing else.

It occurred to Trevize that he could not tell whether the Solarian was male or female. The breasts were male certainly but the chest was hairless and the thin loincloth showed no bulge of any kind.

He turned to Bliss and said in a low voice, “This might still be a robot, but very like a human being in—”

Bliss said, her lips hardly moving, “The mind is that of a human being, not a robot.”

The Solarian said, “Yet you have not answered my original question. I shall excuse the failure and put it down to your surprise. I now ask again and you must not fail a second time. What would you with my robots?”

Trevize said, “We are travelers who seek information to reach our destination. We asked your robots for information that would help us, but they lacked the knowledge.”

“What is the information you seek? Perhaps I can help you.”

“We seek the location of Earth. Could you tell us that?”

The Solarian’s eyebrows lifted. “I would have thought that your first object of curiosity would have been myself. I will supply that information although you have not asked for it. I am Sarton Bander and you stand upon the Bander estate, which stretches as far as your eye can see in every direction and far beyond. I cannot say that you are welcome here, for in coming here, you have violated a trust. You are the first Settlers to touch down upon Solaria in many thousands of years and, as it turns out, you have come here merely
to inquire as to the best way of reaching another world. In the old days, Settlers, you and your ship would have been destroyed on sight.”

“That would be a barbaric way of treating people who mean no harm and offer none,” said Trevize cautiously.

“I agree, but when members of an expanding society set foot upon an inoffensive and static one, that mere touch is filled with potential harm. While we feared that harm, we were ready to destroy those who came at the instant of their coming. Since we no longer have reason to fear, we are, as you see, ready to talk.”

Trevize said, “I appreciate the information you have offered us so freely, and yet you failed to answer the question I did ask. I will repeat it. Could you tell us the location of the planet Earth?”

“By Earth, I take it you mean the world on which the human species, and the various species of plants and animals”—his hand moved gracefully about as though to indicate all the surroundings about them—“originated.”

“Yes, I do, sir.”

A queer look of repugnance flitted over the Solarian’s face. He said, “Please address me simply as Bander, if you must use a form of address. Do not address me by any word that includes a sign of gender. I am neither male nor female. I am
whole
.”

Trevize nodded (he had been right). “As you wish, Bander. What, then, is the location of Earth, the world of origin of all of us?”

Bander said, “I do not know. Nor do I wish to know. If I did know, or if I could find out, it would do you no good, for Earth no longer exists as a world. —Ah,” he went on, stretching out his arms. “The sun feels good. I am not often on the surface, and never when the sun does not show itself. My robots were sent to greet you while the sun was yet hiding behind the clouds. I followed only when the clouds cleared.”

“Why is it that Earth no longer exists as a world?”
said Trevize insistently, steeling himself for the tale of radioactivity once again.

Bander, however, ignored the question or, rather, put it to one side carelessly. “The story is too long,” he said. “You told me that you came with no intent of harm.”

“That is correct.”

“Why then did you come armed?”

“That is merely a precaution. I did not know what I might meet.”

“It doesn’t matter. Your little weapons represent no danger to me. Yet I am curious. I have, of course, heard much of your arms, and of your curiously barbaric history that seems to depend so entirely upon arms. Even so, I have never actually seen a weapon. May I see yours?”

Trevize took a step backward. “I’m afraid not, Bander.”

Bander seemed amused. “I asked only out of politeness. I need not have asked at all.”

It held out its hand and from Trevize’s right holster, there emerged his blaster, while from his left holster, there rose up his neuronic whip. Trevize snatched at his weapons but felt his arms held back as though by stiffly elastic bonds. Both Pelorat and Bliss started forward and it was clear that they were held as well.