Foundation and Earth - Isaac Asimov [124]
“We Outworlders were still not at immediate risk, while Fallom, it seemed to me, suddenly was. I had to choose between the Guardian Robots and Fallom, and, with no time to lose, I had to choose Fallom.”
“Is that what it was, Bliss? A quick calculation weighing one mind against another, a quick judging of the greater complexity and the greater worth?”
“Yes.”
Trevize said, “Suppose I tell you, it was just a child that was standing before you, a child threatened with death. An instinctive maternalism gripped you then, and you saved it where earlier you were all calculation when only three adult lives were at stake.”
Bliss reddened slightly. “There might have been something like that in it; but it was not after the fashion of the mocking way in which you say it. It had rational thought behind it, too.”
“I wonder. If there had been rational thought behind it, you might have considered that the child was meeting the common fate inevitable in its own society. Who knows how many thousands of children had been cut down to maintain the low number these Solarians think suitable to their world?”
“There’s more to it than that, Trevize. The child would be killed because it was too young to be a Successor, and that was because it had a parent who had died prematurely, and that was because I had killed that parent.”
“At a time when it was kill or be killed.”
“Not important. I killed the parent. I could not stand by and allow the child to be killed for my deed. —Besides, it offers for study a brain of a kind that has never been studied by Gaia.”
“A child’s brain.”
“It will not remain a child’s brain. It will further develop the two transducer-lobes on either side of the brain. Those lobes give a Solarian abilities that all of Gaia cannot match. Simply to keep a few lights lit, just to activate a device to open a door, wore me out. Bander could have kept all the power going over an estate as great in complexity and greater in size than that city we saw on Comporellon—and do it even while sleeping.”
Trevize said, “Then you see the child as an important bit of fundamental brain research.”
“In a way, yes.”
“That’s not the way I feel. To me, it seems we have taken danger aboard. Great danger.”
“Danger in what way? It will adapt perfectly—with my help. It is highly intelligent, and already shows signs of feeling affection for us. It will eat what we eat, go where we go, and I/we/Gaia will gain invaluable knowledge concerning its brain.”
“What if it produces young? It doesn’t need a mate. It is its own mate.”
“It won’t be of child-bearing age for many years. The Spacers lived for centuries and the Solarians had no desire to increase their numbers. Delayed reproduction is probably bred into the population. Fallom will have no children for a long time.”
“How do you know this?”
“I don’t know it. I’m merely being logical.”
“And I tell you Fallom will prove dangerous.”
“You don’t know that. And you’re not being logical, either.”
“I feel it Bliss, without reason. —At the moment. And it is you, not I, who insists my intuition is infallible.”
And Bliss frowned and looked uneasy.
59.
PELORAT PAUSED AT THE DOOR TO THE PILOT-ROOM and looked inside in a rather ill-at-ease manner. It was as though he were trying to decide whether Trevize was hard at work or not.
Trevize had his hands on the table, as he always did when he made himself part of the computer, and his eyes were on the viewscreen. Pelorat judged, therefore, he was at work, and he waited patiently, trying not to move or, in any way, disturb the other.
Eventually, Trevize looked up at Pelorat. It was not a matter of total awareness. Trevize’s eyes always seemed a bit glazed and unfocused when he was in computer-communion, as though he were looking, thinking, living in some other way than a person usually did.
But he nodded slowly at Pelorat,