Foundation and Earth (33 page)

He said, striving to keep his voice steady, and his words clear, “You have shown yourself a courteous and gentle Solarian, Bander. You have not grown angry at our intrusion into your world. You have been kind enough to show us over your estate and mansion, and you have answered our questions. It would suit your character better to allow us to leave now. No one need ever know we were on this world and we would have no cause to return. We arrived in all innocence, seeking merely information.”

“What you say is so,” said Bander lightly, “and, so far, I have given you life. Your lives were forfeit the instant
you entered our atmosphere. What I might have done—and should have done—on making close contact with you, would be to have killed you at once. I should then have ordered the appropriate robot to dissect your bodies for what information on Outworlders that might yield me.

“I have not done that. I have pampered my own curiosity and given in to my own easygoing nature, but it is enough. I can do it no longer. I have, in fact, already compromised the safety of Solaria, for if, through some weakness, I were to let myself be persuaded to let you go, others of your kind would surely follow, however much you might promise that they would not.

“There is, however, at least this. Your death will be painless. I will merely heat your brains mildly and drive them into inactivation. You will experience no pain. Life will merely cease. Eventually, when dissection and study are over, I will convert you to ashes in an intense flash of heat and all will be over.”

Trevize said, “If we must die, then I cannot argue against a quick and painless death, but why must we die at all, having given no offense?”

“Your arrival was an offense.”

“Not on any rational ground, since we could not know it was an offense.”

“Society defines what constitutes an offense. To you, it may seem irrational and arbitrary, but to us it is not, and this is our world on which we have the full right to say that in this and that, you have done wrong and deserve to die.”

Bander smiled as though it were merely making pleasant conversation and went on, “Nor have you any right to complain on the ground of your own superior virtue. You have a blaster which uses a beam of microwaves to induce intense killing heat. It does what I intend to do, but does it, I am sure, much more crudely and painfully. You would have no hesitation in using it on me right now, had I not drained its energy, and if I were to be so foolish as to allow you the freedom
of movement that would enable you to remove the weapon from its holster.”

Trevize said despairingly, afraid even to glance again at Bliss, lest Bander’s attention be diverted to her, “I ask you, as an act of mercy, not to do this.”

Bander said, turning suddenly grim, “I must first be merciful to myself and to my world, and to do that, you must die.”

He raised his hand and instantly darkness descended upon Trevize.

FOR A MOMENT, TREVIZE FELT THE DARKNESS choking him and thought wildly, Is this death?

And as though his thoughts had given rise to an echo, he heard a whispered, “Is this death?” It was Pelorat’s voice.

Trevize tried to whisper, and found he could. “Why ask?” he said, with a sense of vast relief. “The mere fact that you can ask shows it is not death.”

“There are old legends that there is life after death.”

“Nonsense,” muttered Trevize. “Bliss? Are you here, Bliss?”

There was no answer to that.

Again Pelorat echoed, “Bliss? Bliss? What happened, Golan?”

Trevize said, “Bander must be dead. He would, in that case, be unable to supply the power for his estate. The lights would go out.”

“But how could—? You mean Bliss did it?”

“I suppose so. I hope she did not come to harm in the process.” He was on his hands and knees crawling about in the total darkness of the underground (if one did not count the occasional subvisible flashing of a radioactive atom breaking down in the walls).

Then his hand came on something warm and soft.
He felt along it and recognized a leg, which he seized. It was clearly too small to be Bander’s. “Bliss?”

The leg kicked out, forcing Trevize to let go.

He said, “Bliss? Say something!”

“I am alive,” came Bliss’s voice, curiously distorted.

Trevize said, “But are you well?”

“No.” And, with that, light returned to their surroundings—weakly. The walls gleamed faintly, brightening and dimming erratically.

Bander lay crumpled in a shadowy heap. At its side, holding its head, was Bliss.

She looked up at Trevize and Pelorat. “The Solarian is dead,” she said, and her cheeks glistened with tears in the weak light.

Trevize was dumbfounded. “Why are you crying?”

“Should I not cry at having killed a living thing of thought and intelligence? That was not my intention.”

Trevize leaned down to help her to her feet, but she pushed him away.

Pelorat knelt in his turn, saying softly, “Please, Bliss, even you can’t bring it back to life. Tell us what happened.”

She allowed herself to be pulled upward and said dully, “Gaia can do what Bander could do. Gaia can make use of the unevenly distributed energy of the Universe and translate it into chosen work by mental power alone.”

“I knew that,” said Trevize, attempting to be soothing without quite knowing how to go about it. “I remember well our meeting in space when you—or Gaia, rather—held our spaceship captive. I thought of that when Bander held me captive after it had taken my weapons. It held you captive, too, but I was confident you could have broken free if you had wished.”

“No. I would have failed if I had tried. When your ship was in my/our/Gaia’s grip,” she said sadly, “I and Gaia were truly one. Now there is a hyperspatial separation that limits my/our/Gaia’s efficiency. Besides, Gaia does what it does by the sheer power of massed
brains. Even so, all those brains together lack the transducer-lobes this one Solarian has. We cannot make use of energy as delicately, as efficiently, as tirelessly as he could. —You see that I cannot make the lights gleam more brightly, and I don’t know how long I can make them gleam at all before tiring. Bander could supply the power for an entire vast estate, even when it was sleeping.”

“But you stopped it,” said Trevize.

“Because it didn’t suspect my powers,” said Bliss, “and because I did nothing that would give it evidence of them. It was therefore without suspicion of me and gave me none of its attention. It concentrated entirely on you, Trevize, because it was you who bore the weapons—again, how well it has served that you armed yourself—and I had to wait my chance to stop Bander with one quick and unexpected blow. When it was on the point of killing us, when its whole mind was concentrated on that, and on you, I was able to strike.”

“And it worked beautifully.”

“How can you say something so cruel, Trevize? It was only my intention to stop it. I merely wished to block its use of its transducer. In the moment of surprise when it tried to blast us and found it could not, but found, instead, that the very illumination about us was fading into darkness, I would tighten my grip and send it into a prolonged normal sleep and release the transducer. The power would then remain on, and we could get out of this mansion, into our ship, and leave the planet. I hoped to so arrange things that, when Bander finally woke, it would have forgotten all that had happened from the instant of its sighting us. Gaia has no desire to kill in order to accomplish what can be brought about without killing.”

“What went wrong, Bliss?” said Pelorat softly.

“I had never encountered any such thing as those transducer-lobes and I lacked any time to work with them and learn about them. I merely struck out forcefully
with my blocking maneuver and, apparently, it didn’t work correctly. It was not the entry of energy into the lobes that was blocked, but the exit of that energy. Energy is always pouring into those lobes at a reckless rate but, ordinarily, the brain safeguards itself by pouring out that energy just as quickly. Once I blocked the exit, however, energy piled up within the lobes at once and, in a tiny fraction of a second, the temperature had risen to the point where the brain protein inactivated explosively and it was dead. The lights went out and I removed my block immediately, but, of course, it was too late.”

“I don’t see that you could have done anything other than that which you did, dear,” said Pelorat.

“Of what comfort is that, considering that I have killed.”

“Bander was on the point of killing us,” said Trevize.

“That was cause for stopping it, not for killing it.”

Trevize hesitated. He did not wish to show the impatience he felt for he was unwilling to offend or further upset Bliss, who was, after all, their only defense against a supremely hostile world.

He said, “Bliss, it is time to look beyond Bander’s death. Because it is dead, all power on the estate is blanked out. This will be noticed, sooner or later, probably sooner, by other Solarians. They will be forced to investigate. I don’t think you will be able to hold off the perhaps combined attack of several. And, as you have admitted yourself, you won’t be able to supply for very long the limited power you are managing to supply now. It is important, therefore, that we get back to the surface, and to our ship, without delay.”

“But, Golan,” said Pelorat, “how do we do that? We came for many kilometers along a winding path. I imagine it’s quite a maze down here and, for myself, I haven’t the faintest idea of where to go to reach the surface. I’ve always had a poor sense of direction.”

Trevize, looking about, realized that Pelorat was correct.
He said, “I imagine there are many openings to the surface, and we needn’t find the one we entered.”

“But we don’t know where any of the openings are. How do we find them?”

Trevize turned again to Bliss. “Can you detect anything, mentally, that will help us find our way out?”

Bliss said, “The robots on this estate are all inactive. I can detect a thin whisper of subintelligent life straight up, but all that tells us is that the surface is straight up, which we know.”

“Well, then,” said Trevize, “we’ll just have to look for some opening.”

“Hit-and-miss,” said Pelorat, appalled. “We’ll never succeed.”

“We might, Janov,” said Trevize. “If we search, there will be a chance, however small. The alternative is simply to stay here, and if we do
that
then we will never succeed. Come, a small chance is better than none.”

“Wait,” said Bliss. “I
do
sense something.”

“What?” said Trevize.

“A mind.”

“Intelligence?”

“Yes, but limited, I think. What reaches me most clearly, though, is something else.”

“What?” said Trevize, again fighting impatience.

“Fright! Intolerable fright!” said Bliss, in a whisper.

TREVIZE LOOKED ABOUT RUEFULLY. HE KNEW where they had entered but he had no illusion on the score of being able to retrace the path by which they had come. He had, after all, paid little attention to the turnings and windings. Who would have thought they’d be in the position of having to retrace the route alone and without help, and with only a flickering, dim light to be guided by?

He said, “Do you think you can activate the car, Bliss?”

Bliss said, “I’m sure I could, Trevize, but that doesn’t mean I can run it.”

Pelorat said, “I think that Bander ran it mentally. I didn’t see it touch anything when it was moving.”

Bliss said gently, “Yes, it did it mentally, Pel, but
how
, mentally? You might as well say that it did it by using the controls. Certainly, but if I don’t know the details of using the controls, that doesn’t help, does it?”

“You might try,” said Trevize.

“If I try, I’ll have to put my whole mind to it, and if I do that, then I doubt that I’ll be able to keep the lights on. The car will do us no good in the dark even if I learn how to control it.”

“Then we must wander about on foot, I suppose?”

“I’m afraid so.”

Trevize peered at the thick and gloomy darkness that lay beyond the dim light in their immediate neighborhood. He saw nothing, heard nothing.

He said, “Bliss, do you still sense this frightened mind?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Can you tell where it is? Can you guide us to it?”

“The mental sense is a straight line. It is not refracted sensibly by ordinary matter, so I can tell it is coming from that direction.”

She pointed to a spot on the dusky wall, and said, “But we can’t walk through the wall to it. The best we can do is follow the corridors and try to find our way in whatever direction will keep the sensation growing stronger. In short, we will have to play the game of hot-and-cold.”

“Then let’s start right now.”

Pelorat hung back. “Wait, Golan; are we sure we want to find this thing, whatever it is? If it is frightened, it may be that we will have reason to be frightened, too.”

Trevize shook his head impatiently. “We have no choice, Janov. It’s a mind, frightened or not, and it may
be willing to—or may be made to—direct us to the surface.”

“And do we just leave Bander lying here?” said Pelorat uneasily.

Trevize took his elbow. “Come, Janov. We have no choice in that, either. Eventually some Solarian will reactivate the place, and a robot will find Bander and take care of it—I hope not before we are safely away.”

He allowed Bliss to lead the way. The light was always strongest in her immediate neighborhood and she paused at each doorway, at each fork in the corridor, trying to sense the direction from which the fright came. Sometimes she would walk through a door, or move around a curve, then come back and try an alternate path, while Trevize watched helplessly.

Each time Bliss came to a decision and moved firmly in a particular direction, the light came on ahead of her. Trevize noticed that it seemed a bit brighter now—either because his eyes were adapting to the dimness, or because Bliss was learning how to handle the transduction more efficiently. At one point, when she passed one of the metal rods that were inserted into the ground, she put her hand on it and the lights brightened noticeably. She nodded her head as though she were pleased with herself.