"Yes, madam."
Gladia struggled against her own curiosity. It would never have occurred to her to question an ordinary robot in this matter. A robot is a machine. But she couldn't think of Daneel as a machine, just as five years before she had been unable to think of Jander as a machine. But with Jander that had been only the burning of passion - and that had gone with Jander himself. For all his similarity to the other, Daneel could not set the ashes alight again. With him, there was room for intellectual curiosity.
"Doesn't it bother you, Daneel," she asked, "to be so bound by the Laws?"
"I cannot imagine anything else, madam."
"All my life I have been bound to the pull of gravity, even during my one previous trip on a spaceship, but I can imagine not being bound by it. And here I am, in fact, not bound by it."
"And do you enjoy it, madam?"
"In a way, yes."
"Does it make you uneasy?"
"In a way, that too."
"Sometimes, madam, when I think that human beings are not bound by Laws, it makes me uneasy."
"Why, Daneel? Have you ever tried to reason out to yourself why the thought of Lawlessness should make you feel uneasy?"
Daneel was silent for a moment. He said, "I have, madam, but I do not think I would wonder about such things but for my brief associations with Partner Elijah. He had a way - "
"Yes, I know," she said. "He wondered about everything. He had a restlessness about him that drove him on to ask questions at all times in all directions."
"So it seemed. And I would try to be like him and ask questions. So I asked myself what Lawlessness might be like and I found I couldn't imagine what it might be like except that it might be like being human and that made me feel uneasy. And I asked myself, as you asked me, why it made me feel uneasy."
"And what did you answer yourself?"
Daneel said, "After a long time, I decided that the Three Laws govern the manner in which my positronic pathways behave. At all times, under all stimuli the Laws constrain the direction and intensity of positronic flow along those pathways so that I always know what to do. Yet the level of knowledge of what to do is not always the same. There are times when my doing-as-I-must is under less constraint than at other times. I have always noticed that the lower the positronomotive potential, then the further removed from certainty is my decision as to which action to take. And the further removed from certainty I am, the nearer I am to ill being. To decide an action in a millisecond rather than a nanosecond produces a sensation I would not wish to be prolonged.
"What then, I thought to myself, madam, if I were utterly without Laws, as humans are? What if I could make no clear decision on what response to make to some given set of conditions? It would be unbearable and I do not willingly think of it."
Gladia said, "Yet you do, Daneel. You are thinking of it now."
"Only because of my association with Partner Elijah, madam. I observed him under conditions when he was unable, for a time, to decide on an action because of the puzzling nature of the problems that had been set him. He was clearly in a state of ill-being as a result and I felt ill-being on his behalf because there was nothing I could do that would ease - It is possible that I only grasped at the situation for him. A very small part of what it was he felt then. If I had grasped a larger part and better understood the consequences of his inability to decide on action, I might have - "
He hesitated.
"Ceased functioning? Been inactivated?" said Gladia, thinking briefly and painfully of Jander.
"Yes, madam. My failure to understand may been an in built protection device against damage to my positronic brain. But then, I noted that no matter how painful Partner Elijah found his indecision to be, he continued to make an effort to solve his problem. I admired him greatly for that."
"You are capable of admiration then, are you?"
Daneel said solemnly, "I use the word as I have heard human beings use it. I do not know the proper word to express the response within me elicited by Partner Elijah's actions of this sort."
Gladia nodded, then said, "And yet there are rules that govern human reactions, too certain instincts, drives, teachings."
"So friend Giskard thinks, madam."
"Does he now?"
"But he finds them too complicated to analyze. He wonders if there might someday be developed a system of analyzing human behavior in mathematical detail and of deriving - from that - cogent Laws that would express the rules of that behavior."
"I doubt it," said Gladia.
"Nor is friend Giskard sanguine. He thinks it will be a very long time before such a system is developed."
"A very long time, I should say."
"And now," said Daneel, "we are approaching the Earth ship and we must carry through the docking procedure, which is not simple."
7
It seemed to Gladia that it took longer to dock than to move into the Earth ship's orbit in the first place, Daneel remained calm throughout - but, then, he could not do otherwise - and assured her that all human ships could dock with each other regardless of difference in size and make.
"Like human beings," said Gladia, forcing a smile, but Daneel made no response to that. He concentrated on the delicate adjustments that had to be made. Docking was always possible, perhaps, but not always easy, it would appear.
Gladia grew uneasier by the moment. Earthmen were short-lived and aged quickly. Five years had passed since she had seen Elijah. By how much would he have aged? How would he appear? Would she be able to keep from looking shocked or horrified at the change?