Caves of Steel - Isaac Asimov [92]
“The experiment of persuading you that colonization was the answer to Earth’s problems.”
“Well, I was persuaded. I’ll grant you that.”
“Yes, under the influence of the appropriate drug.”
Baley’s teeth loosened their grip on his pipestem. He caught the pipe as it fell. Once again, he was seeing that scene in the Spacetown dome. Himself swimming back to awareness after the shock of learning that R. Daneel was a robot after all; R. Daneel’s smooth fingers pinching up the flesh of his arm; a hypo-sliver standing out darkly under his skin and then fading away.
He said, chokingly, “What was in the hypo-sliver?”
“Nothing that need alarm you, Elijah. It was a mild drug intended only to make your mind more receptive.”
“And so I believed whatever was told me. Is that it?”
“Not quite. You would not believe anything that was foreign to the basic pattern of your thought. In fact, the results of the experiment were disappointing. Dr. Fastolfe had hoped you would become fanatical and single-minded on the subject. Instead you became rather distantly approving, no more. Your practical nature stood in the way of anything further. It made us realize that our only hope was the romantics after all, and the romantics, unfortunately, were all Medievalists, actual or potential.”
Baley felt incongruously proud of himself, glad of his stubbornness, and happy that he had disappointed them. Let them experiment with someone else.
He grinned savagely. “And so now you’ve given up and are going home?”
“Why, this is not it. I said a few moments ago that we were satisfied Earth would colonize. It was you that gave us the answer.”
“I gave it to you? How?”
“You spoke to Francis Clousarr of the advantages of colonization. You spoke rather fervently, I judge. At least our experiment on you had that result. And Clousarr’s cerebroanalytic properties changed. Very subtly, to be sure, but they changed.”
“You mean I convinced him that I was right? I don’t believe that.”
“No, conviction does not come that easily. But the cerebroanalytic changes demonstrated conclusively that the Medievalist mind is open to that sort of conviction. I experimented further myself. When leaving Yeast-town, guessing what might have happened between you two from his cerebric changes, I made the proposition of a school of emigrants as a way of insuring his children’s future. He rejected that, but again his aura changed, and it seemed to me quite obvious that it was the proper method of attack.”
R. Daneel paused, then spoke on.
“The thing called Medievalism shows a craving for pioneering. To be sure, the direction in which that craving turns itself is toward Earth itself, which is near and which has the precedent of a great past. But the vision of worlds beyond is a similar something and the romantic can turn to it easily, just as Clousarr felt the attraction as a result of one lecture from you.
“So you see, we of Spacetown had already succeeded without knowing it. We ourselves, rather than anything we tried to introduce, were the unsettling factor. We crystallized the romantic impulses on Earth into Medievalism and induced an organization in them. After all, it is the Medievalist who wishes to break the cake of custom, not the City officials who have most to gain from preserving the status quo. If we leave Spacetown now, if we do not irritate the Medievalist by our continued presence until he has committed himself to Earth, and only Earth, past redemption, if we leave behind a few obscure individuals or robots such as myself who, together with sympathetic Earthmen such as yourself, can establish the training schools for emigrants that I spoke of, the Medievalist will eventually turn away from Earth. He will need robots and will either get them from us or build his own. He will develop a C/Fe culture to suit himself.”
It was a long speech for R. Daneel. He must have realized that himself, for, after another pause, he said, “I tell you all this to explain why it is necessary to do something that may hurt you.”
Baley thought bitterly: A robot