Foundation and Earth (f-5) by Isaac Asimov

Author:Isaac Asimov [Asimov, Isaac]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: sf
ISBN: ISBN 0-553-58757-9

48.

TREVIZE glanced now and then at Bliss's face, which seemed entirely concentrated on Bander. Trevize had grown quite certain he knew what was going on.

Bander, despite its paean to freedom, found this unique opportunity irresistible. There was no way it could speak to robots on a basis of intellectual equality, and certainly not to animals. To speak to its fellow-Solarians would be, to it, unpleasant, and what communication there must be would be forced, and never spontaneous.

As for Trevize, Bliss, and Pelorat, they might be half-human to Bander, and it might regard them as no more an infringement on its liberty than a robot or a goat would be-but they were its intellectual equals (or near equals) and the chance to speak to them was a unique luxury it had never experienced before.

No wonder, Trevize thought, it was indulging itself in this way. And Bliss (Trevize was doubly sure) was encouraging this, just pushing Bander's mind ever so gently in order to urge it to do what it very much wanted to do in any case.

Bliss, presumably, was working on the supposition that if Bander spoke enough, it might tell them something useful concerning Earth. That made sense to Trevize, so that even if he had not been truly curious about the subject under discussion, he would nevertheless have endeavored to continue the conversation.

"What do those brain-lobes do?" Trevize asked.

Bander said, "They are transducers. They are activated by the flow of heat and they convert the heat-flow into mechanical energy."

"I cannot believe that. The flow of heat is insufficient."

"Little half-human, you do not think. If there were many Solarians crowded together, each trying to make use of the flow of heat, then, yes, the supply would be insufficient. I, however, have over forty thousand square kilometers that are mine, mine alone. I can collect heat-flow from any quantity of those square kilometers with no one to dispute me, so the quantity is sufficient. Do you see?"

"Is it that simple to collect heat-flow over a wide area? The mere act of concentration takes a great deal of energy."

"Perhaps, but I am not aware of it. My transducer-lobes are constantly concentrating heat-flow so that as work is needed, work is done. When I drew your weapons into the air, a particular volume of the sunlit atmosphere lost some of its excess heat to a volume of the shaded area, so that I was using solar energy for the purpose. Instead of using mechanical or electronic devices to bring that about, however, I used a neuronic device." It touched one of the transducer-lobes gently. "It does it quickly, efficiently, constantly-and effortlessly."

"Unbelievable," muttered Pelorat.

"Not at all unbelievable," said Bander. "Consider the delicacy of the eye and ear, and how they can turn small quantities of photons and air vibrations into information. That would seem unbelievable if you had never come across it before. The transducer-lobes are no more unbelievable, and would not be so to you, were they not unfamiliar."

Trevize said, "What do you do with these constantly operating transducerlobes?"

"We run our world," said Bander.

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