"Gaia doesn't know the location of Earth. Dom has already told you that."
"I don't quite believe that. After all, you must have records. Why have I never been able to see those records during my stay here? Even if Gaia honestly doesn't know where Earth might be located, I might gain some knowledge from the records. I know the Galaxy in considerable detail, undoubtedly much better than Gaia does. I might be able to understand and follow hints in your records that Gaia, perhaps, doesn't quite catch."
"But what records are these you talk of, Trevize?"
"Any records. Books, films, recordings, holographs, artifacts, whatever it is you have. In the time I've been here I haven't seen one item that I would consider in any way a record. Have you, Janov?"
"No," said Pelorat hesitantly, "but I haven't really looked."
"Yet I have, in my quiet way," said Trevize, "and I've seen nothing. Nothing! I can only suppose they're being hidden from me. Why, I wonder? Would you tell me that?"
Bliss's smooth young forehead wrinkled into a puzzled frown. "Why didn't you ask before this? I/we/Gaia hide nothing, and we tell no lies. An Isolate-an individual in isolation-might tell lies. He is limited, and is fearful because he is limited. Gaia, however, is a planetary organism of great mental ability and has no fear. For Gaia to tell lies, to create descriptions that are at variance with reality, is totally unnecessary."
Trevize snorted. "Then why have I carefully been kept from seeing any records? Give me a reason that makes sense."
"Of course." She held out both hands, palms up before her. "We don't have any records."
4.
PELORAT recovered first, seeming the less astonished of the two.
"My dear," he said gently, "that is quite impossible. You cannot have a reasonable civilization without records of some kind."
Bliss raised her eyebrows. "I understand that. I merely mean we have no records of the type that Trev-Trevize-is talking about, or was at all likely to come across. I/we/Gala have no writings, no printings, no films, no computer data banks, nothing. We have no carvings on stone, for that matter. That's all I'm saying. Naturally, since we have none of these, Trevize found none of these."
Trevize said, "What do you have, then, if you don't have any records that I would recognize as records?"
Bliss said, enunciating carefully, as though she were speaking to a child. "I/we/Gala have a memory. I remember."
"What do you remember?" asked Trevize.
"Everything."
"You remember all reference data?"
"Certainly."
"For how long? For how many years back?"
"For indefinite lengths of time."
"You could give me historical data, biographical, geographical, scientific? Even local gossip?"
"Everything."
"All in that little head." Trevize pointed sardonically at Bliss's right temple.
"No," she said. "Gala's memories are not limited to the contents of my particular skull. See here"-for the moment she grew formal and even a little stern, as she ceased being Bliss solely and took on an amalgam of other units = "there must have been a time before the beginning of history when human beings were so primitive that, although they could remember events, they could not speak. Speech was invented and served to express memories and to transfer them from person to person. Writing was eventually invented in order to record memories and transfer them across time from generation to generation. All technological advance since then has served to make more room for the transfer and storage of memories and to make the recall of desired items easier. However, once individuals joined to form Gaia, all that became obsolete. We can return to memory, the basic system of record-keeping on which all else is built. Do you see that?"
Trevize said, "Are you saying that the sum total of all brains on Gaia can remember far more data than a single brain can?"
"Of course."
"But if Gaia has all the records spread through the planetary memory, what good is that to you as an individual portion of Gaia?"
"All the good you can wish. Whatever I might want to know is in an individual mind somewhere, maybe in many of them. If it is very fundamental, such as the meaning of the word 'chair,' it is in every mind. But even if it is something esoteric that is in only one small portion of Gala's mind, I can call it up if I need it, though such recall may take a bit longer than ** if the a memory is more widespread. Look, Trevize, if you want to know some. thing that isn't in your mind, you look at some