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By Root 1426 0

of pride at all. You are pee rfectly aware that is neither admirable nor useful to be driven by pride, so you try to subdue that drive, but you might as well disapprove of having yourself powered by your heartbeat. You cannot help either fact. Though you hide your pride from yourself for the sake of your own peace of mind, you cannot hide it from me. It is there, however carefully you mask it over. And I had but to strengthen it a touch and you were at once willing to take measures to hide from Demerzel, measures that a moment before you would have resisted. And you were eager to work at psychohistory with an intensity that a moment before you would have scorned.

"I saw no necessity to touch anything else and so you have reasoned out your robothood. Had I foreseen the possibility of chat, I might have stopped it, but my foresight and my abilities are not infinite. Nor am I sorry now that I failed, for your arguments are good ones and it is important that you know who I am and that I use what I am to help you.

"Emotions, my dear Seldom are a powerful engine of human action, far more powerful than human beings themselves realize, and you cannot know how much can be dome with the merest touch and how reluctant I am to do it."

Seldon was breathing heavily, trying to see himself as a man driven by pride and not liking it. "Why reluctant?"

"Because it would be so easy to overdo. I had to stop Rashelle from converting the Empire into a feudal anarchy. I might have bent minds quickly and the result might well have been a bloody uprising. Men are men-and the Wyan generals are almost all men. It does not actually take much to rouse resentment and latent fear of women in any man. It may be a biological matter that I, as a robot, cannot fully understand.

"I had but to strengthen the feeling to produce a breakdown in her plans. If I had done it the merest millimeter too much, I would have lost what I wanted-a bloodless takeover. I wanted nothing more than to have them not resist when my soldiers arrived."

Daneel paused, as though trying to pick his words, then said, "I do not wish to go into the mathematics of my positronic brain. h is more than I can understand, though perhaps not more than you can if you give it enough thought. However, I am governed by the Three Laws of Robotics that are traditionally put into words-or once were, long ago. They are these:

"'One. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

" `Two. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

" 'Three. A robot must protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.'

"But I had a . . . a friend twenty thousand years ago. Another robot. Not like myself. He could not be mistaken for a human being, but it was he who had the mental powers and it was through him that I gained mine.

"It seemed to him that there should be a still more general rule than any of the Three Laws. He called it the Zeroth Law, since zero comes before one. It is:

"'Zero. A robot may not injure humanity or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.'

"Then the First Law must read:

" `One. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm, except where that would conflict with the Zeroth Law.'

"And the other laws must be similarly modified. Do you understand?"

Daneel paused earnestly and Seldon said, "I understand."

Daneel went on. "The trouble is, Hari, that a human being is easy to identify. I can point to one. It is easy to see what will harm a human being and what won't-relatively easy, at least. But what is humanity? To what can we point when we speak of humanity? And how can we define harm to humanity? When will a course of action do more good than harm to humanity as a whole and how can one tell? The robot who first advanced the Zeroth law died-became permanently inactive-because he was forced into an action that he felt would save humanity, yet which he could