Foundation and Chaos (37 page)

There were endless documents to sign, releases to be obtained from offices and levels within the Commission of Public Safety and dozens of judicial bureaus to notify; it would take Hari longer to leave the courts than it had ever taken him to enter. Gaal Dornick was in a separate area, and Boon had departed three hours ago to take care of various entanglements.

Hari sat alone within the cavernous Hall of Dispensation, looking up at the ancient vault and skylights overhead, with their many-colored windows of pieced glass. He had been told to sit there until the jailer returned with the warden and issued his final documents.

Hari was not sure how he felt. A little disbelieving, that was certain; he had passed through the belly of the Imperial courts as yet undigested. The moment toward which, knowingly or in ignorance, he had worked all his life, had passed.

Now there were the first few records to be made—he would notify Wanda and Stettin of their final and, he suspected, surprising assignment, that the psychologists and mentalics of the Second Foundation would be staying on Trantor—and he would make the preparations to transfer his powers to Gaal and the others who would leave for Terminus.

The long twilight of the Empire would darkle. He would not live much longer to see it, nor did he want to. Seeing the glow of the overhead domes through the vault windows, perhaps
fifty meters above him, made him think of what a real skyglow through real stained glass would look like, on Helicon.

Stillness. Completion is near, yet I feel no real sense of satisfaction; where is my personal reward? What if I have saved humanity from thousands of years of chaos; what have I accomplished for myself? Unworthy thoughts for a prophet or a hero. I have a granddaughter, not really my own flesh; the continuity is broken biologically, if not philosophically. I have a few new friends around me, but the old are either gone, dead, or inaccessible.

He thought of standing on the upperside maintenance tower, just a few weeks ago, and of the gloom that had enveloped him then.
I cannot leave Trantor; Chen will not let me. I am still dangerous and best kept bottled. But where would I most like to go now, where would I most like to be, in my last days?

Helicon. In the sun, outside, away from these enclosing ceiled cities, away from the metal skin of Trantor. To see a night sky that was not simulated and to be unafraid of the expanse, the thousands of stars, a small glimpse of the Empire for which he had labored and which he had tried to understand.

To stand in the open, in the rain and the weather and the cold, and not be afraid; to be with old friends and family—

The obsessive thoughts that filled so many of his nights. He sighed and sat up, listening to the sounds of boots marching down the northern hallway.

Three guards and the warden entered and approached Hari.

“There’s been a disturbance in the new Commission building, near the palace and not too far from here,” the warden said. “We’ve been told to lock down until the disturbance has been explained.”

“What sort of disturbance?” Hari asked.

“I don’t know,” the warden said. “Nothing to worry about. We’re fine here. We’ve been given instructions to protect you at any cost—”

Hari heard a sound from the eastern entrance of the hall. He turned and saw a woman standing there and gave a gasp—in the light, at this distance, her stance, her bearing—the dream—

Dors Venabili had kept her own list of codes and passages in the palace buildings, and remarkably, most of them still worked. No doubt the codes that let people
out
of the buildings were changed more frequently than those that let them
in
. When Hari had been arrested and charged with assault, decades before, she had made plans to break into the Courts Building and release him, and the work she had done then served her well now.

It also possible that Joan had helped her…But how she had come here ultimately did not matter. She would have battered down walls to do so.

She was the first to enter the Hall of Dispensation. She saw Hari and three men, standing near the center, lit by the diffuse glow of the skylight. She halted for a moment. The men were not threatening Hari. Quite the contrary; she judged they were there to protect him.

Hari turned and looked in her direction. His mouth opened and she heard his intake of breath echo in the hall. The three men turned, and the eldest, a large, stocky fellow wearing the uniform of an Imperial warden, called out to her:

“Who are you? What are you doing here?”

From the northern entrance came a sizzle and a flash of light. Dors knew that sound very well: a neural whip, fired from several dozen meters. The three men around Hari jerked
and danced for a moment, then fell to the floor, moaning.

Hari stood untouched.

Dors ran as fast as she could toward the small, intense-looking woman standing near the northern entrance. This woman still held the neural whip, and seemed to have eyes only for Hari. In less than four seconds, Dors moved to within less than two meters of her.

Vara Liso cried out with the effort of her persuasion. The hall seemed to fill with voices, ugly demanding voices. Hari clutched his hands over his ears and winced, and the men on the floor twitched even more violently, but the main force of the mentalic bolt went toward Dors.

Dors had never felt such a blast, had never known humans were capable of such discharges. She had felt Daneel’s subtle persuasive abilities during her training period on Eos, nothing more.

It seemed perfectly natural, in mid-stride, on her way to incapacitating and if necessary killing this woman who threatened Hari, simply to pull up her legs and attempt to fly. Her body of metal and synthetic flesh curled into a ball and she glanced off the woman’s upper shoulder, knocking her to one side.

Dors caromed from the opposite wall and fell to the floor in a tangle. She could not move; she did not want to move, not at that moment, perhaps not ever again.

Daneel left the taxi at the Greys’ Entrance on the east side of the Imperial Courts Building, then stood by the small double metal doors. He wore the uniform of a lifetime bureaucrat, native to Trantor and not a student or pilgrim; he had reserved this identity decades ago, among many others, and if queried by any security guards, there would be files in the
personnel computers to explain him and his duties, his right to be here.

The doors were ornately inscribed with the general rules of public service. The first rule was
Do no harm to your Emperor or his subjects.

Even in the taxi, Daneel had felt the mentalic explosions, from the general vicinity of the palace, but did not know what they signified, if anything. It was easy to imagine his plans unraveling, now that they were almost complete. He had juggled for so long, keeping literally tens of millions of balls in the air at once…

He shifted the small bureaucratic valise under his arm and entered a specific and reserved code for entry by a gray administrative officer.

It was refused. The codes had all been changed; there was an emergency within the Courts Building, perhaps within the palace itself.

Here. My Other is within the building.
Joan, split into many Joans, many meme-minds, worked from both sides.

The left-hand door opened, and he entered the building.

It took him longer than he expected to make his way through the secure facilities, even with Joan’s help.

On the last door, when he knew he was within two doors of joining Hari in the beautiful, high-ceilinged Hall of Dispensation, Joan distracted a human guard by sending him revised watch instructions.

Daneel smelled electricity in the next segment of hallway. A neural whip had been discharged here in the last few minutes—

Hari faced Vara Liso across the Hall of Dispensation. She stood for a moment with hands held out, fingers wriggling, as if she fought to keep her balance. Her head swayed from
side to side. The woman who had entered before her—who had reminded him so much of Dors—lay in a heap, rolled up against the door, still, as if dead.

Hari did not feel afraid; things had happened too quickly for that emotion to take hold. Everything seemed out of place, most of all himself; he did not belong there, and they did not belong there.

The hall had been peaceful—now it smelled of electricity, of urine leaking from the pants of the three men supine on the floor around him.

“I’m saving you…” Vara Liso said from across the hall. She took a step toward him, lowering her arms. “For last.”

“Who are you?” Hari asked. He was concerned about the woman on the floor. He wanted above all else to make sure she was all right; tremors spread in his mind, memories, triggered responses, confusing and rich and evoking a sense both of intense promise and of horror, for he was sure that this woman was Dors.
She’s come back. She wanted to protect me. The way she moved…like a springing tiger!

And now she’s down like a squashed insect.

This small, thin woman…an aberration. A monster!

Hari then knew who the woman was. Wanda had mentioned her weeks ago, the woman who had not agreed to join the mentalics, who had allied instead with Farad Sinter.

“You’re Vara Liso,” he said, and started to move toward her.

“Good,” the woman said, her voice trembling. “I want you to know who I am. You’re the one to blame.”

“Blame for what?” Hari asked.

“You work with the robots.” Her expression twisted until it seemed her face might become a knot. “You’re their
lackey
, and they think they’ve won!”

Lodovik invoked the last of the codes he knew, and the door to the transfer corridor from the Courts Building still refused to open. He worked the code around again on the finger pad beside the doorframe, and the tiny simplified face in the display proclaimed once again that the code was incomplete. It would be so like the palace security detail to add a few numbers, but not change the beginning numbers.

I am working
, Voltaire told him.
There must be many security measures being triggered now—multiple intrusions, perhaps!

The girl and the large young man behind him shifted from foot to foot.

“It won’t be good to stay here,” Brann said. “Something feels very bad.”

Voltaire’s features appeared in the display, simplified to cartoon detail. The mechanical voice now said, “Additional numbers are required under the revised security procedures.” The new face winked at Lodovik. “Test procedure fifteen A for verification,” the voice added. “You may enter code for personal use only during this test period. Upon completion of test period, a formal entry code or new password must be established and fixed.”

Lodovik glanced over his shoulder at Klia as he entered seven new numbers. She stared at the display with furrowed brow.

“Who is that?” she asked.

“The sim,” Lodovik said.

The door opened. Lodovik beckoned for them to pass through first.

“Is Hari Seldon near?” Klia asked.

He is very near,
Voltaire said.
And he is in imminent danger.

“I wanted so much,” Vara Liso said. “Do you understand?”

Hari looked at her straight on. He stood perhaps four meters from her, seven meters from where the other woman lay against the half open door. He glanced at the other woman, and Liso raised the neural whip.

“You don’t need
that
,” Hari said critically, as if lecturing a student. Vara Liso hesitated. “You’re mentalic. You stopped
her
…” He raised his arm toward the collapsed woman. Toward Dors.

Vara Liso lowered her head but kept her eyes on Hari. She looked like a pouting child, but in her eyes was the purest hatred he had ever seen.

“Everything I’ve ever believed in,” she said, “is dead. They’re going to kill me, just as they killed the men and women and children I found. My own people.”

“Farad Sinter made you do that…” Hari said. “Didn’t he?”

“The Emperor,” Vara Liso said. She seemed ready to burst into tears, but she kept the whip high, and her finger lingered on the button. Hari could make out the setting: near lethality.

“Yes, but Sinter was your—”

“
He loved me
,” Vara moaned, then she dropped the whip. But a wave of grief came out of her that hit him square. The hall was filled with Vara Liso’s emotions, and they were the ugliest and bleakest Hari had ever known. They struck at his own centers of ambition and need, and he could feel the bones of his innermost self cracking.

The woman on the floor stirred, and Vara Liso lifted her head and half turned toward her.

Hari made his move, using the only chance he thought he would ever get. He had had years of training in self-defense on Helicon, but his body had long since refused to answer his
instructions promptly. He had almost reached Liso when she cocked her head back and screamed again—silently, and within her mind.

At Hari.

Simultaneously, Brann and Lodovik pushed against the door, nudging Dors, who could not yet conjure up the will to move.

Klia stumbled over Dors’ leg, fell into the Hall of Dispensation, saw Lodovik moving with inhuman speed toward her enemy, saw him raise his arm, hand open, to take the woman’s hand in his and spin her around—

To kill her if need be, exercising that human freedom—

But he stopped before his fingers touched her, frozen by a glance.

Vara Liso knelt, rubbing her wrists and hands, and faced Klia Asgar.