It’s the way I feel, she told herself defiantly, and I owe no one an explanation.
And she had lost Giskard. Giskard had been her robot, Vasilia’s own robot when she had been a young girl, the robot granted her by a then seemingly fond father. It was Giskard through whom she had learned robotics and from whom she had felt the first genuine affection. She had not, as a child, speculated on the Three Laws or dealt with the philosophy of positronic automatism. Giskard had seemed affectionate, he had acted as though he were affectionate, and that was enough for a child. She had never found such affection in any human being—certainly not her father.
To this day, she had yet to be weak enough to play the foolish love game with anyone. Her bitterness over her loss of Giskard had taught her that any initial gain was not worth the final deprivation.
When she had left home, disowning her father, he would not let Giskard go with her, even though she herself had improved Giskard immeasurably in the course of her careful reprogramming of him. And when her father had died, he had left Giskard to the Solarian woman. He had also left her Daneel, but Vasilia cared nothing for that pale imitation of a man. She wanted Giskard, who was her own.
Vasilia was on her way back to Solaria now. Her tour was quite done. In fact, as far as usefulness was concerned, it had been essentially over months ago. But she had remained on Hesperos for a needed rest, as she had explained in her official notice to the Institute.
Now, however, Fastolfe was dead and she could return. And while she could not undo the past entirely, she could undo part of it. Giskard must be hers again.
She was determined on that.
55
Amadiro was quite ambivalent in his response to Vasilia’s return. She had not come back until old Fastolfe (he could say the name to himself quite easily now that he was dead) was a month in his um. That flattered his opinion of his own understanding. After all, he had told Mandamus her motive had been that of remaining away from Aurora till her father died.
Then, too, Vasilia was comfortably transparent. She lacked the exasperating quality of Mandamus, his new favorite, who always seemed to have yet another unexpressed thought tucked away—no matter how thoroughly he seemed to have discharged the contents of his mind.
On the other hand, she was irritatingly hard to control the least likely to go quietly along the path he indicated. Leave it to her to probe the otherworld Spacers to the bone during the years she had spent away from Aurora—but then leave it also to her to interpret it all in dark and riddling words.
So he greeted her with an enthusiasm that was somewhere between feigned and unfeigned.
“Vasilia, I’m so happy to have you back. The Institute flies on one wing when you’re gone.”
Vasilia laughed. “Come, Kelden”—she alone had no hesitation or inhibition in using his given name, though she was two and a half decades younger than he—“that one remaining wing is yours and how long has it been now since you ceased being perfectly certain that your one wing was sufficient?”
“Since you decided to stretch out your absence to years. Do you find Aurora much changed in the interval?”
“Not a bit—which ought perhaps to be a concern of ours. Changelessness is decay.”
“A paradox. There is no decay without a change for the worse.”
“Changelessness is a change for the worse, Kelden, in comparison to the surrounding Settler worlds. They change rapidly, extending their control into more numerous worlds and over each individual world more thoroughly. They increase their strength and power and self-assurance, while we sit here dreaming and find our unchanging might diminishing steadily in comparison.”
“Beautiful, Vasilia! I think you memorized that carefully on your flight here. However, there has been a change in the political situation on Aurora.”
“You mean my biological father is dead.”
Amadiro spread his arms with a little bow of his head. “As you say. He was largely responsible for our paralysis and he is gone, so I imagine there will now be change, though it may not necessarily be visible change.”
“You keep secrets from me, do you?”
“Would I do that?”
“Certainly. That false smile of yours gives you away every time.”
“Then I must learn to be grave with you.—Come, I have your report. Tell me what is not included in it.”
“All is included in it—almost. Each Spacer world states vehemently that it is disturbed by growing Settler arrogance. Each is firmly determined to resist the Settlers to the end, enthusiastically following the Auroran lead with vigor and death-defying gallantry.
“Follow our lead, yes. And if we don’t lead?”
“Then they’ll wait and try to mask their relief that we are not leading. Otherwise—Well, each one is engaged in technological advance and each one is reluctant to reveal what it is, exactly, that it is doing. Each is working independently and is not even unified within its own globe. There is not a single research team anywhere on any of the Spacer worlds that resembles our own Robotics Institute. Each world consists of individual researchers, each of whom diligently guards his own data from all the rest.”
Amadiro was almost complacent as he said, “I would not expect them to have advanced as far as we have.”
“Too bad they haven’t,” replied Vasilia, tartly. “With all the Spacer worlds a jumble of individuals, progress is too slow. The Settler worlds meet regularly at conventions, have their institutes—and though they lag well behind us, they will catch up.—Still, I’ve managed to uncover a few technological advances being worked on by the Spacer worlds and I have them all listed in my report. They are all working on the nuclear intensifier, for instance, but I don’t believe that such a device has passed beyond the laboratory demonstration level on a single world. Something that would be practical on shipboard is not yet here.”
“I hope you are right in that, Vasilia. The nuclear intensifier is a weapon our fleets could use, for it would finish the Settlers at once. However, I think, on the whole, it would be better if Aurora had the weapon ahead of our Spacer brothers.—But you said that all was included in your report—almost. I heard that ‘almost.’ What is not included, then?”
“Solaria!”
“Ah, the youngest and most peculiar of the Spacer worlds.”
“I got almost nothing directly out of them. They viewed me with absolute hostility as, I believe, they would have viewed any non-Solarian, whether Spacer or Settler. And when I say ‘viewed,’ I mean that in their sense. I remained nearly a year on the world, a considerably longer time than I spent on any other world, and in all those months I never saw a single Solarian face-to-face. In every case, I viewed him—or her—by hyperwave hologram. I could never deal with anything tangible—images only. The world was comfortable, incredibly luxurious, in fact, and for a nature lover, totally unspoiled, but how I missed seeing.”
“Well, viewing is a Solarian custom.—We all know that, Vasilia. Live and let live.”
“Humph,” said Vasilia. “Your tolerance may be misplaced. Are your robots in the nonrepeat mode?”
“Yes, they are. And I assure you we are not being eavesdropped upon.”
“I hope not, Kelden.—I am under the distinct impression that the Solarians are closer to developing a miniaturized nuclear intensifier than any other world—than we are. They may be close to making one that’s portable and that’s possessed of a power consumption small enough to make it practical for space vessels.”