Authors: Isaac Asimov
Gendibal felt chagrined, “Are you afraid, Novi?”
“Not for myself, Master. I fear—I am afraid—for you.”
“You can say, ‘I fear,” muttered Gendibal. “That is good Galactic, too.”
For a moment he was engaged in thought. Then he looked up, took Sura Novi’s rather coarse hands in his, and said, “Novi, I don’t want you to fear anything. Let me explain. You know how you could tell there was-or rather might be—danger from the look on my face—almost as though you could read my thoughts?”
“Yes?”
“I can read thoughts better than you can. That is what scholars learn to do and I am a very good scholar.”
Novi’s eyes widened and her hand pulled loose from his. She seemed to be holding her breath. “You can read my thoughts?”
Gendibal held up a finger hurriedly. “I don’t, Novi. I don’t read your thoughts, except when I must. I do not read your thoughts.”
(He knew that, in a practical sense, he was lying. It was impossible to be with Sura Novi and not understand the general tenor of some of her thoughts. One scarcely needed to be a Second Foundationer for that. Gendibal felt himself to be on the edge of blushing. But even from a Hamishwoman, such an attitude was flattering.
—And yet she had to be reassured-out of common humanity—)
He said, “I can also change the way people think. I can make people feel hurt. I can—”
But Novi was shaking her head. “How can you do all that, Master? Rufirant—”
“Forget Rufirant,” said Gendibal testily. “I could have stopped him in a moment. I could have made him fall to the ground. I could have made all the Hamish—” He stopped suddenly and felt uneasily that he was boasting, that he was trying to impress this provincial woman. And she was shaking her head still.
“Master,” she said, “you are trying to make me not afraid, but I am not afraid except for you, so there is no need. I know you are a great scholar and can make this ship fly through space where it seems to me that no person could do aught but—I mean, anything but—be lost. And you use machines I cannot understand—and that no Hamish person could understand. But you need not tell me of these powers of mind, which surely cannot be so, since all the things you say you could have done to Rufirant, you did not do, though you were in danger.”
Gendibal pressed his lips together. Leave it at that, he thought. If the woman insists she is not afraid for herself, let it go at that. Yet he did not want her to think of him as a weakling and braggart. He simply did not.
He said, “If I did nothing to Rufirant, it was because I did not wish to. We scholars must never do anything to the Hamish. We are guests on your world. Do you understand that?”
“You are our masters. That is what we always say.”
For a moment Gendibal was diverted. “How is it, then, that this Rufirant attacked me?”
“I do not know,” she said simply. “I don’t think he knew. He must have been mind-wandering—uh, out of his mind.”
Gendibal grunted. “In any case, we do not harm the Hamish. If I had been forced to stop him by—hurting him, I might have been poorly thought of by the other scholars and might perhaps have lost my position. But to save myself being badly hurt, I might have had to handle him just a small bit—the smallest possible.”
Novi drooped. “Then I need not have come rushing in like a great fool myself.”
“You did exactly right,” said Gendibal. “I have just said I would have done ill to have hurt him. You made it unnecessary to do so. You stopped him and that was well done. I am grateful.”
She smiled again—blissfully. “I see, then, why you have been so kind to me.”
“I was grateful, of course,” said Gendibal, a little flustered, “but the important thing is that you must understand there is no danger. I can handle an army of ordinary people. Any scholar can— especially the important ones—and I told you I am the best of all of them. There is no one in the Galaxy who can stand against me.”
“If you say so, Master, I am sure of it.”
“I do say so. Now, are you afraid for me?”
“No, Master, except— Master, is it only our scholars who can read minds and— Are there other scholars, other places, who can oppose you?”
For a moment Gendibal was staggered. The woman had an astonishing gift of penetration.
It was necessary to lie. He said, “There are none.”
“But there are so many stars in the sky. I once tried to count them and couldn’t. If there are as many worlds of people as there are stars, wouldn’t some of them be scholars? Besides the scholars on our own world, I mean?”
“What if there are?”
“They would not be as strong as I am.”
“What if they leap upon you suddenly before you are aware?”
“They cannot do that. If any strange scholar were to approach, I would know at once. I would know it long before he could harm me.”
“Could you run?”
“I would not have to run. —But” (anticipating her objection) “if
I had to, I could be in a new ship soon—better than any in the Galaxy. They would not catch me.”
“Might they not change your thoughts and make you stay?”
“No.”
“There might be many of them. You are but one.”
“As soon as they are there, long before they can imagine it would be possible, I would know they were there and I would leave. Our whole world of scholars would then turn against them and they would not stand. And they would know that, so they would not dare do anything against me. In fact, they would not want me to know of them at all—and yet I will.”
“Because you are so much better than they?” said Novi, her face shining with a doubtful pride.
Gendibal could not resist. Her native intelligence, her quick understanding was such that it was simple joy to be with her. That softvoiced monster, Speaker Debra Delarmi, had done him an incredible favor when she had forced this Hamish farmwoman upon him.
He said, “No, Novi, not because I am better than they, although I am. It is because I have you with me.”
“I?”
“Exactly, Novi. Had you guessed that?”
“No, Master,” she said, wondering. “What is it I could do?”
“It is your mind.” He held up his hand at once. “I am not reading your thoughts. I see merely the outline of your mind and it is a smooth outline, an unusually smooth outline.”
She put her hand to her forehead. “Because I am unlearned, Master? Because I am so foolish?”
“No, dear.” He did not notice the manner of address. “It is because you are honest and possess no guile; because you are truthful and speak your mind; because you are warm of heart and—and other things. If other scholars send out anything to touch our minds— yours and mine—the touch will be instantly visible on the smoothness of your mind. I will be aware of that even before I would be aware of a touch on my own mind—and I will then have time for counteractive strategy; that is, to fight it off.”
There was a silence for long moments after that. Gendibal realized that it was not just happiness in Novi’s eyes, but exultation and pride, too. She said softly, “And you took me with you for that reason?”
Gendibal nodded. “That was an important reason. Yes.”
Her voice sank to a whisper. “How can I help as much as possible, Master?”
He said. “Remain calm. Don’t be afraid. And just—just stay as you are.”
She said, “I will stay as I am. And I will stand between you and danger, as I did in the case of Rufirant.”
She left the room and Gendibal looked after her.
It was strange how much there was to her. How could so simple a creature hold such complexity? The smoothness of her mind structure had, beneath it, enormous intelligence, understanding, and courage. What more could he ask-of anyone?
Somehow, he caught an image of Sura Novi—who was not a Speaker, not even a Second Foundationer, not even educated— grimly at his side, playing a vital auxiliary role in the drama that was coming.
Yet he could not see the details clearly. —He could not yet see precisely what it was that awaited them.
“A single Jump,” muttered Trevize, “and there it is.”
“Gaia?” asked Pelorat, looking over Trevize’s shoulder at the screen.
“Gaia’s sun,” said Trevize. “Call it Gaia-S, if you like, to avoid confusion. Gaiactographers do that sometimes.”
“And where is Gaia itself, then? Or do we call it Gaia-P—for planet?”
“Gaia would be sufficient for the planet. We can’t see Gaia yet, however. Planets aren’t as easy to see as stars are and we’re still a hundred microparsecs away from Gaia-S. Notice that it’s only a star, even though a very bright one. We’re not close enough for it to show as a disc. —And don’t stare at it directly, Janov. It’s still bright enough to damage the retina. I’ll throw in a filter, once I’m through with my observations. Then you can stare.”
“How much is a hundred microparsecs in units which a mythologist can understand, Golan?”
“Three billion kilometers; about twenty times the distance of Terminus from our own sun. Does that help?”
“Enormously. —But shouldn’t we get closer?”
“No!” Trevize looked up in surprise. “Not right away. After what we’ve heard about Gaia, why should we rush? It’s one thing to have guts; it’s another to be crazy. Let’s take a look first.”
“At what, Golan? You said we can’t see Gaia yet?”
“Not at a glance, no. But we have telescopic viewers and we have an excellent computer for rapid analysis. We can certainly study Gaia-S, to begin with, and we can perhaps make a few other observations. —Relax, Janov” He reached out and slapped the other’s shoulder with an avuncular flourish.
After a pause Trevize said, “Gaia-S is a single star or, if it has a companion, that companion is much farther away from it than we are at the present moment and it is, at best, a red dwarf, which means we need not be concerned with it. Gaia-S is a G4 star, which means it is perfectly capable of having a habitable planet, and that’s good. If it were an A or an M, we would have to turn around and leave right now.”
Pelorat said, “I may be only a mythologist, but couldn’t we have determined the spectral class of Gaia-S from Sayshell?”
“We could and we did, Janov, but it never hurts to check at closer quarters. —Gaia-S has a planetary system, which is no surprise. There are two gas giants in view and one of them is nice and large—if the computer’s distance estimate is accurate. There could easily be another on the other side of the star and therefore not easily detectable, since we happen—by chance—to be somewhat close to the planetary plane. I can’t make out anything in the inner regions, which is also no surprise.”
“Is that bad?”
“Not really. It’s expected. The habitable planets would be of rock and metal and would be much smaller than the gas giants and much closer to the star, if they’re to be warm enough—and on both counts they would be much harder to see from out here. It means we’ll have to get in considerably closer in order to probe the area within four microparsecs of Gaia-S.”
“I’m ready.”
“I’m not. We’ll make the Jump tomorrow.”
“Why tomorrow?”
“Why not? Let’s give them a day to come out and get us—and for us to get away, perhaps, if we spot them coming and don’t like what we see.”
It was a slow and cautious process. During the day that passed, Trevize grimly directed the calculation of several different approaches and tried to choose between them. Lacking hard data, he could depend only on intuition, which unfortunately told him nothing. He lacked that “sureness” he sometimes experienced.
Eventually he punched in directions for a Jump that moved them far out of the planetary plane.
“That will give us a better view of the region as a whole,” he said, “since we will see the planets in every part of their orbit at maximum apparent distance from the sun. And they—whoever they may be—might not be quite as watchful over regions outside the plane. —I hope.”
They were now as close to Gaia-S as the nearest and largest of the gas giants was and they were nearly half a billion kilometers from it. Trevize placed it under full magnification on the screen for Pelorat’s benefit. It was an impressive sight, even if the three sparse and narrow rings of debris were left out of account.
“It has the usual train of satellites,” said Trevize, “but at this distance from Gaia-S, we know that none of them are habitable. Nor are any of them settled by ‘human beings who survive, let us say, under a glass dome or under other strictly artificial conditions.”
“How can you tell?”
“There’s no radio noise with characteristics that point them out as of intelligent origin. Of course,” he added, qualifying his statement at once, “it is conceivable that a scientific outpost might go to great pains to shield its radio signals and the gas giant produces radio noise that could mask what I was looking for. Still, our radio reception is delicate and our computer is an extraordinarily good one. I’d say the chance of human occupation of those satellites is extremely small.”
“Does that mean there’s no Gaia?”
“No. But it does mean that if there is a Gaia, it hasn’t bothered to settle those satellites. Perhaps it lacks the capacity to do so—or the interest.”
“Well, is there a Gaia?”
“Patience, Janov. Patience.”
Trevize considered the sky with a seemingly endless supply of patience. He stopped at one point to say, “Frankly, the fact that they haven’t come out to pounce on us is disheartening, in a way. Surely, if they had the capacities they were described as having, they would have reacted to us by now.”
“It’s conceivable, I suppose,” said Pelorat glumly, “that the whole thing is a fantasy.”
“Call it a myth, Janov,” said Trevize with a wry smile, “and it will be right up your alley. Still, there’s a planet moving through the ecosphere, which means it might be habitable. I’ll want to observe it for at least a day.”
“Why?”
“To make sure it’s habitable, for one thing.”
“You just said it was in the ecosphere, Golan.”
“Yes, at the moment it is. But its orbit could be very eccentric, and could eventually carry it within a microparsec of the star, or out to fifteen microparsecs, or both. We’ll have to determine and compare the planet’s distance from Gaia-S with its orbital speed—and it would help to note the direction of its motion.”