Foundation's Fear (56 page)

[TRANTOR WAS ONCE THE IDEAL PLACE FOR US]

[RICH IN RESOURCES]

[NO MORE IS THIS SO]

[DANGER LURKS IN THE COMING INSTABILITY]

“Ummm,” Voltaire said. “Joan and I might desire such an exit as well.”

“Wait, you two,” Hari said, talking fast. “If you want to go with these, these things, to live in a seed between the stars—then you have to earn it.”

Joan scowled. “How?”

“For now, I can make it safe for you to live widely in the Mesh. In return—” he gazed anxiously at the Voltaire eagle, flapping in brassy splendor “—I want you to help me.”

“If it is a holy cause, surely,” Joan called.

“It is. Help me lead! I’ve always felt there’s good in everybody. The job of a leader is to bring it out.”

Voltaire said, “If you think there is good in everybody, you haven’t met everybody.”

“But I’m not a man of the world. So I need you.”

“To rule?” Joan asked.

“Exactly. I’m not suited for it.”

Voltaire stopped in midair, wings stilled. “The possibilities! With enough computing space and speed, we can endow proto-Michelangelos with creative time.”

“I need to deal with a lot of, well, power problems. You can go off into these spore forms when I’m finished with politics.”

Voltaire abruptly congealed into human form, though still elegantly clothed in electric blue. “Ummm. Politics—I always found it enticing. A game of elegant ideas, played by bullies.”

“I’ve got plenty of opposition already,” Hari said soberly.

“Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate,” Voltaire said. “I
would
like that.”

Joan rolled her eyes. “Saints preserve us.”

“Precisely, my dear.”

Hari sat back at his desk. First Minister, but on his terms.

It had all worked out. He got to work here still, far from palace intrigues. Plenty of time to do math.

He would, of course, speak by 3D and holo to many. All that bother Voltaire took care of. After all, Voltaire or Joan could masquerade as Hari at the many conferences and meetings necessary for a First Minister. Digitally, they could morph to him with ease.

Joan enjoyed the virtual ceremonials, especially if
she got to hold forth on holiness. Voltaire loved imitating an ancient man he had apparently known, a Mr. Machiavelli. “Your Empire,” he had said, “is a vast, ramshackle thing of infinite nuance and multiplying self-delusions. Needs looking after.”

In between, they could explore the digital realms, labyrinths vast and vibrant. As Voltaire had said, they could be off upon “postings various and capers hilarious.”

Yugo came in bursting with energy. “The High Council just passed your vote proposals, Hari. Every Dahlite in the Galaxy’s on your side now.”

Hari smiled. “Have Voltaire make a 3D appearance, as me.”

“Right, modest and confident, that’ll work.”

“Reminds me of the old joke about the prostitute. The regular costs the regular price, but sincerity is extra.”

Yugo laughed unconvincingly and said edgily, “Uh, that woman’s here.”

“Not—”

He had forgotten utterly about the Academic Potentate. The one threat he had not neutralized. She knew about Dors, about robots—

Giving him no time to think, she swept into his office.

“
So
happy you could see me, Primary Minister.”

“Wish I could say the same.”

“And your lovely wife? Is she about?”

“I doubt she would desire to see you.”

The Academic Potentate spread her billowing robes and sat without invitation. “Surely you didn’t take that small jest of mine seriously?”

“My sense of humor doesn’t include blackmail.”

Wide eyes, a slight touch of outrage in the tone. “I was merely trying to gain leverage with your administration.”

“Sure.” Such were Imperial manners that he would not bring up her possible role in Vaddo’s plot on Panucopia.

“I was certain you would gain the ministership. My little sally—well, perhaps it
was
in poor taste—”

“Very.”

“You are a man of few words—quite admirable. My allies were so impressed with your, ah, direct handling of the tiktok crisis, the Lamurk killings.”

So that was it. He had shown that he was not an impractical academic. “Direct? How about ‘ruthless’?”

“Oh
no,
we don’t think that at all. You are
right
to let Sark ‘burn out,’ as you so eloquently put it. Despite the Greys wanting to jump in and bind up wounds. Very wise—not ruthless, no.”

“Even though Sark might never recover?” These were the questions he had asked himself through sleepless nights. People were dying that the Empire might live…for a while longer.

She waved this away. “As I was saying, I wanted a special relationship with the First Minister from our class in, well,
so
long—”

Like many he knew now, she employed speech to conceal thought, not to reveal it. He had to sit and endure some of this, he knew. She rattled on and he thought about how to handle a knotty term in the equations. He had by now mastered the art of seeming to track with eyes, mouth movements, and the occasional murmur. This was exactly what a filter program did for his 3D, and he could do it without thinking about the hypocrisy of the woman before him.

He understood her now, in a way. Power was value-free for her. He had to learn to think that way and even act that way. But he could not let it affect his true self, the personal life he would ruthlessly shelter.

He finally got rid of her and breathed a sigh of relief. Probably it was good to be seen as ruthless. That fellow Nim, for example; he could have Nim found, even executed, for playing both sides in the Artifice Associates matter.

But why? Mercy was more efficient. Hari sent a quick note to Security, directing that Nim be funneled into a productive spot, but one where his talent for betrayal would find no avenue. Let an underling figure out where and how.

He had neglected business and had one obligatory role left before he could escape. Even here at Streeling he could not avoid every Imperial duty.

A delegation of Greys filed in. They respectfully presented their arguments regarding candidacy examinations for Empire positions. Test scores had been declining for several centuries, but some argued that this was because the pool of candidates was broadening. They did not mention that the High Council had widened the pool because it appeared to be drying up—that is, fewer wished Imperial positions.

Others claimed that the tests were biased. Those from large planets said their higher gravity made them slower. Those from lighter gravities had a reverse argument, with diagrams and sheets of facts.

Also, the myriad ethnic and religious groups had congealed into an Action Front which ferreted out biases against them in the examinations. Hari could not fathom a conspiracy behind the examination questions. How could one simultaneously discriminate against several hundred, or even a thousand, ethnic strains?

“It seems an immense job to me,” he ventured, “discriminating against so many factions.”

Vehemently a Grey Woman, handsome and forceful,
told him that the prejudice was
for
a sort of Imperial norm, a common set of vocabularies, assumptions, and class purposes. All these would “shoulder others aside.”

To compensate, the Action Front wanted the usual set of preferences installed, with slight shadings between each ethnicity to compensate for their lower performance on examinations.

This was ordinary and Hari ruled it out without having to think about it very much; this allowed him to mull over the psychohistory equations a while. Then a new note caught his attention.

To dispel the common “misperception” that scores were being undermined by some ethnic worlds’ increased participation, the Action Front petitioned him to “re-norm” the examination itself. Set the average score at 1000, though in fact it had drifted downward over the last two centuries to 873.

“This will permit comparison of candidates between years, without having to look up each year’s average,” the burly woman pointed out.

“This will give a symmetric distribution?” Hari asked absently.

“Yes, and will stop the invidious comparison of one year with the next.”

“Won’t such a shift of the mean lose discriminatory power at the upper end of the distribution?” He narrowed his eyes.

“That is regrettable, but yes.”

“It’s a wonderful idea,” Hari said.

She seemed surprised. “Well, we think so.”

“We can do the same for the holoball averages.”

“What? I don’t—”

“Set the statistics so that the average hitter strikes 500, rather than the hard-to-remember 446 of the present.”

“But I don’t think a principle of social justice—”

“And the intelligence scores. Those need to be re-normed as well, I can see that. Agreed?”

“Well, I’m not sure, First Minister. We only intended—”

“No no, this is a
big idea.
I want a thorough look at all possible re-norming agendas. You have to
think big
!”

“We aren’t prepared—”

“Then get prepared! I want a report. Not a skimpy one, either. A fat, full report. Two thousand pages, at least.”

“That would take—”

“Hang the expense. And the time. This is too important to relegate to the Imperial Examinations. Let me have that report.”

“It would take years, decades—”

“Then there’s no time to waste!”

The Action Front delegation left in confusion. Hari hoped they would make it a very big report, indeed, so that he was no longer First Minister when it arrived.

Part of maintaining the Empire involved using its own inertia against itself. Some aspects of this job, he thought, could be actually enjoyable.

He reached Voltaire before leaving the office. “Here’s your list of impersonations.”

“I must say I am having trouble handling all the factions,” Voltaire said. He presented as a swain in elegant velvet. “But the chance to venture out, to
be
a presence—it is like acting! And I was always one for the stage, as you know.”

Hari didn’t, but he said, “That’s democracy for you—show business with daggers. A mongrel breed of government. Even if it is a big stable attractor in the fitness landscape.”

“Rational thinkers deplore the excesses of democracy; it abuses the individual and elevates the mob.” Voltaire’s mouth flattened into a disapproving
line. “The death of Socrates was its finest fruit.”

“Afraid I don’t go back that far,” Hari said, signing off. “Enjoy the work.”

He and Dors watched the great luminous spiral turn beneath them in its eternal night.

“I do appreciate such perks,” she said dreamily. They stood alone before the spectacle. Worlds and lives and stars, all like crushed diamonds thrown against eternal blackness.

“Getting into the palace just to look at the Emperor’s display rooms?” He had ordered all the halls cleared.

“Getting away from snoopers and eavesdroppers.”

“You…you haven’t heard from—?”

She shook her head. “Daneel pulled nearly all the rest of us off Trantor. He says little to me.”

“I’m pretty damn sure the alien minds won’t strike again. They’re
afraid
of robots. It took me a while to see that lay behind their talk about revenge.”

“Mingled hate and fear. Very human.”

“Still, I think they’ve had their revenge. They say the Galaxy was lush with life before we came. There are cycles of barren eras, then luxuriant ones. Don’t know why. Apparently that’s happened several times before, at intervals of a third of a billion years—great diebacks of intelligent life, leaving only spores. Now they’ve come to our Mesh and become digital fossils.”

“Fossils don’t kill,” she said sardonically.

“Not as well as we do, apparently.”

“Not you—us.”

“They do hate you robots. Not that they have any love of humans—after all, we made you, long ago. We’re to blame.”

“They are so strange….”

He nodded. “I believe they’ll stay in their digital preserve until Marq and Sybyl can get them transported into their ancient spore state. They once lived that way for longer than the Galaxy takes to make a rotation.”

“Your ‘pretty damn sure’ isn’t good enough for Daneel,” she said. “He wants them exterminated.”

“It’s a standoff. If Daneel goes after them, he’ll have to pull the plug on Trantor’s Mesh. That will wound the Empire. So he’s stuck, fuming but impotent.”

“I hope you have estimated the balance properly,” she said.

A glimmering, gossamer thought flitted across his mind. The tiktok attacks upon the Lamurk faction had discredited them in public opinion. Now they would be suppressed throughout the Galaxy. And in time, the meme-minds would leave Trantor.

Hari frowned. Daneel surely wanted both these outcomes.

He had undoubtedly suspected that the meme-minds had survived, perhaps that they were in action on Trantor. So could Hari’s amateur maneuverings, including the Lamurk murders, have been deftly conjured up by Daneel? Could a robot so accurately predict what he, Hari, would do?

A chill ran through him. Such ability would be breathtaking. Superhuman.

With tiktoks now soon to be suppressed, Trantor would have trouble producing its own food. Tasks once done by men would have to be re-learned, taking
generations to establish such laborers as a socially valued group again. Meanwhile, dozens of other worlds would have to send Trantor food, a lifeline slender and vulnerable. Did Daneel intend that, too? To what end?

Hari felt uneasy. He sensed social forces at work, just beyond his view.

Was such adroit thinking the product of millennia of experience and high, positronic intelligence? For just a moment, Hari had a vision of a mind both strange and measureless, in human terms. Was
that
what an immortal machine became?

Then he pushed the idea away. It was too unsettling to contemplate. Later, perhaps, when psychohistory was done…

He noticed Dors staring at him. What had she said? Oh, yes…

“Estimating the balance, yes. I’m getting the feel for these things. With Voltaire and Joan doing the scut work, and Yugo now chairman of the Mathist Department, I actually have
time
to think.”

“And suffer fools gladly?”

“The Academic Potentate? At least I understand her now.” He peered at Dors. “Daneel says he will leave Trantor. He’s lost a lot of his humaniforms. Does he need you?”

She looked up at him in the soft glow. Her expression worked with conflict. “I can’t leave you.”

“His orders?”

“Mine.”

He gritted his teeth. “The robots who died—you knew them?”

“Some. We trained together back, back when…”

“You don’t have to conceal anything from me. I know you must be at least a century old.”

Her mouth made an O of surprise, then quickly closed. “How?”

“You know more than you should.”

“So do you—in bed, anyway.” She chuckled.

“I learned it from a pan I met.”

She laughed bawdily, then sobered. “I’m one hundred sixty-three.”

“With the thighs of a teenager. If you had tried to leave Trantor, I’d have blocked you.”

She blinked. “Truly?”

He bit his lip, thinking. “Well, no.”

She smiled. “More romantic to say yes…”

“I have a habit of honesty—which I’d better drop if I want to stay First Minister.”

“So you would let me go? You still feel that you owe that to Daneel?”

“If he thought the danger to you was that great, then I would honor his judgment.”

“You still respect us so?”

“Robots work selflessly for the Empire—always. Few humans do.”

“You don’t wonder what we did to earn the aliens’ revenge?”

“Of course. Do you know?”

She shook her head, gazing out at the vast turning disk. Suns of blue and crimson and yellow swept along their orbits amid dark dust and disorder. “It was something awful. Daneel was there and he will not speak of it. There is nothing in our history of this. I’ve looked.”

“An empire lasting many millennia has manifold secrets.” Hari watched the slow spin of a hundred billion flaming stars. “I’m more interested in its future—in saving it.”

“You fear that future, don’t you?”

“Terrible things are coming. The equations show that.”

“We can face them together.”

He took her in his arms, but they both still
watched the Galaxy’s shining marvels. “I dream of founding something, a way to help the Empire, even after we’re gone….”

“And you fear something, too,” she said into his neck.

“How did you know? Yes—I fear the chaos that could come from so many forces, divergent vector turmoil—all acting to bring down the order of the Empire. I fear for the very…” His face clouded. “For the very foundations themselves. Foundations…”

“Chaos comes?”

“I know we ourselves, our minds, come out of skating on the inner rim of chaos-states. The digital world shows that.
You
show that.”

She said soberly, “I do not think positronic minds understand themselves any better than human ones.”

“We—our minds and our Empire—both spring from an emergent order of inner, basically chaotic states, but…”

“You do not want the Empire to crash from such chaos.”

“I want the Empire to survive! Or at least, if it falls, to reemerge.”

Hari suddenly felt the pain of such vast movements. The Empire was like a mind, and minds sometimes went crazy, crashed. A disaster for one solitary mind. How colossally worse for an Empire.

Seen through the prism of his mathematics, humanity was on a long march pressing forward through surrounding dark. Time battered them with storms, rewarded them with sunshine—and they did not glimpse that these passing seasons came from the shifting cadences of huge, eternal equations.

Running the equations time-forward, then backward, Hari had seen humanity’s mortal parade in snips. Somehow that made it oddly touching. Steeped in their own eras, few worlds ever glimpsed
the route ahead. There was no shortage of portentous talk, or of oafs who pretended with a wink and a nod to fathom the unseeable. Misled, whole Zones stumbled and fell.

He sought patterns, but beneath those vast sweeps lay the seemingly infinitesimal, living people. Across the realm of stars, under the laws that reigned like gods, lay innumerable lives in the process of being lost. For to live was to lose, in the end.

Social laws acted and people were maimed, damaged, robbed, and strangled by forces they could not even glimpse. People were driven to sickness, to desperation, to loneliness and fear and remorse. Shaken by tears and longing, in a world they fundamentally failed to fathom, they nonetheless carried on.

There was nobility in that. They were fragments adrift in time, motes in an Empire rich and strong and full of pride, an order failing and battered and hollow with its own emptiness.

With leaden certainty, Hari at last saw that he probably would not be able to rescue the great ramshackle Empire, a beast of fine nuance and multiplying self-delusions.

No savior, he. But perhaps he could help.

They both stood in silence for a long, aching time. The Galaxy turned in its slow majesty. A nearby fountain spewed glorious arcs into the air. The waters seemed momentarily free, but in fact were trapped forever within the steel skies of Trantor. As was he.

Hari felt a deep emotion he could not define. It tightened his throat and made him press Dors to him. She was machine and woman and…something more. Another element he could not fully know, and he cherished her all the more for that.

“You care so much,” Dors whispered.

“I have to.”

“Perhaps we should try to simply live more, worry less.”

He kissed her fervently and then laughed.

“Quite right. For who knows what the future may bring?”

Very slowly, he winked at her.