“It seems to me, friend Giskard,” said Daneel, “that the chief reason you may have found persuasion difficult is that she has been upset by the abandonment of Solaria. I was there once with Partner Elijah when Madam Gladia was still a Solarian and was living there.”

“It has always been my understanding,” said Giskard, “that Madam Gladia had not been happy on her home planet; that she left her world gladly and had, at no time, any intention of returning. Yet I agree with you that she seems to have been unsettled by the fact of Solaria’s history having come to an end.”

“I do not understand this reaction of Madam Gladia,” said Daneel, “but there are many times that human reactions do not seem to follow logically from events.”

“It is what makes it difficult to decide, sometimes, what will do a human being harm and what will not.” Giskard might have said it with a sigh, even a petulant sigh, had he been human. As it was, he stated it merely as an unemotional assessment of a difficult situation. “It is one of the reasons, why it seems to me that the Three Laws of Robotics are incomplete or insufficient.”

“You have said this before, friend Giskard, and I have tried to believe so and failed,” said Daneel.

Giskard said nothing for a while, then, “Intellectually, I think they must be incomplete or insufficient, but when I try to believe that, I too fail, for I am bound by them. Yet if I were not bound by them, I am sure I would believe in their insufficiency.”

“That is a paradox that I cannot understand.”

“Nor can I. And yet I find myself forced to express this paradox. On occasion, I feel that I am on the verge of discovering what the incompleteness or insufficiency of the Three Laws might be, as in my conversation with Madam Gladia this evening. She asked me how failure to keep the appointment might harm her personally, rather than simply cause harm in the abstract, and there was an answer I could not give because it was not within the compass of the Three Laws.”