Flux Tales Of Human Futures

by Card, Orson Scott

  ago, and no one had refreshed the data. None of the secondary sources actually

  showed the battle plots or ship courses-- Misercordia had mostly been written about

  by biographers, not military historians--"

  "Of course. It was Pol Yuensau's first battle, but he was just a pilot, not a

  commander--"

  "I know you remember, my intrusive pet. The point is what Rinjy said about this

  mythical librarian."

  "You."

  "I was standing right there. I don't think Rinjy knew it was me, or she would have

  said something-- she wasn't even in the same division with me then, you know. What

  matters is that Rinjy heard a version of the story and by the time she told it, it

  was transformed into a magic hero tale. The prophetic librarian of Trantor."

  "What does that prove? You are a magic hero."

  "The way she told it, I did it all on my own initiative--"

  "You did. You were assigned to do document extrapolation, and you just happened to

  start with Misercordia."

  "But in Rinjy's version, I had already seen its usefulness with the Tellekers'

  strike. She said the librarian sent it to the Admiralty and only then did they

  realize it was the key to bloodless victory."

  "Librarian saves the Empire."

  "Exactly."

  "But you did."

  "But I didn't mean to. And Admiralty requested the information-- the only really

  extraordinary thing was that I had already finished two weeks of document

  restoration--"

  "Which you did brilliantly."

  "Using programs you had helped design, thank you very much, O Wise One, as you

  indirectly praise yourself. It was sheer coincidence that I could give them exactly

  what they wanted within five minutes of their asking. But now it's a hero story

  within the community of librarians. In the Imperial Library itself, and now

  spreading outward to all the other libraries."

  "This is so anecdotal, Deet. I don't see how you can publish this."

  "Oh, I don't intend to. Except perhaps in the introduction. What matters to me is

  that it proves my theory. "

  "It has no statistical validity."

  "It proves it to me. I know that my theories of community formation are true. That

  the vigor of a community depends on the allegiance of its members, and the

  allegiance can be created and enhanced by the dissemination of epic stories."

  "She speaks the language of academia. I should be writing this down, so you don't

  have to think up all those words again."

  "Stories that make the community seem more important, more central to human life.

  Because Rinjy could tell this story, it made her more proud to be a librarian, which

  increased her allegiance to the community and gave the community more power within

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  her."

  "You are possessing their souls."

  "And they've got mine. Together our souls are possessing each other."

  There was the rub. Deet's role in the library had begun as applied research--

  joining the library staff in order to confirm her theory of community formation. But

  that task was impossible to accomplish without in fact becoming a committed part of

  the library community. It was Deet's dedication to serious science that had brought

  them together. Now that very dedication was stealing her away. It would hurt her

  more to leave the library than it would to lose Leyel.

  Not true. Not true at all, he told himself sternly. Self-pity leads to

  self-deception. Exactly the opposite is true-- it would hurt her more to lose Leyel

  than to leave her community of librarians. That's why she consented to go to

  Terminus in the first place. But could he blame her for being glad that she didn't

  have to choose? Glad that she could have both?

  Yet even as he beat down the worst of the thoughts arising from his

  disappointment, he couldn't keep some of the nastiness from coming out in his

  conversation. "How will you know when your experiment is over?"

  She frowned. "It'll never be over, Leyel. They're all really librarians-- I don't

  pick them up by the tails like mice and put them back in their cages when the

  experiment's done. At some point I'll simply stop, that's all, and write my book."

  "Will you?"

  "Write the book? I've written books before, I think I can do it again."

  "I meant, will you stop?"

  "When, now? Is this some test of my love for you, Leyel? Are you jealous of my

  friendships with Rinjy and Animet and Fin and Urik?"

  No! Don't accuse me of such childish, selfish feelings!

  But before he could snap back his denial, he knew that his denial would be false.

  "Sometimes I am, yes, Deet. Sometimes I think you're happier with them."

  And because he had spoken honestly, what could have become a bitter quarrel

  remained a conversation. "But I am, Leyel, " she answered, just as frankly. "It's

  because when I'm with them, I'm creating something new, I'm creating something with

  them. It's exciting, invigorating. I'm discovering new things every day, in every

  word they say, every smile, every tear someone sheds, every sign that being one of

  us is the most important thing in their lives."

  "I can't compete with that."

  "No, you can't, Leyel. But you complete it. Because it would all mean nothing, it

  would be more frustrating than exhilarating if I couldn't come back to you every day

  and tell you what happened. You always understand what it means, you're always

  excited for me, you validate my experience."

  "I'm your audience. Like a parent."

  "Yes, old man. Like a husband. Like a child. Like the person I love most in all

  the world. You are my root. I make a brave show out there, all branches and bright

  leaves in the sunlight, but I come here to suck the water of life from your soil."

  "Leyel Forska, the font of capillarity. You are the tree, and I am the dirt."

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  "Which happens to be full of fertilizer." She kissed him. A kiss reminiscent of

  younger days. An invitation, which he gladly accepted.

  A softened section of floor served them as an impromptu bed. At the end, he lay

  beside her, his arm across her waist, his head on her shoulder, his lips brushing

  the skin of her breast. He remembered when her breasts were small and firm, perched

  on her chest like small monuments to her potential. Now when she lay on her back

  they were a ruin, eroded by age so they flowed off her chest to either side, resting

  wearily on her arms.

  "You are a magnificent woman," he whispered, his lips tickling her skin.

  Their slack and flabby bodies were now capable of greater passion than when they

  were taut and strong. Before, they were all potential. That's what we love in

  youthful bodies, the teasing potential. Now hers is a body of accomplishment. Three

  fine children were the blossoms, then the fruit of this tree, gone off and taken

  root somewhere else. The tension of youth could now give way to a relaxation of the

  flesh. There were no more promises in their lovemaking. Only fulfillment.

  She murmured softly in his ear, "That was a ritual, by the way. Community

  maintenance."

  "So I'm just another experi
ment?"

  "A fairly successful one. I'm testing to see if this little community can last

  until one of us drops."

  "What if you drop first? Who'll write the paper then?"

  "You will. But you'll sign my name to it. I want the Imperial medal for it.

  Posthumously. Glue it to my memorial stone."

  "I'll wear it myself. If you're selfish enough to leave all the real work to me,

  you don't deserve anything better than a cheap replica."

  She slapped his back. "You are a nasty selfish old man, then. The real thing or

  nothing."

  He felt the sting of her slap as if he deserved it. A nasty selfish old man. If

  she only knew how right she was. There had been a moment in Hari's office when he'd

  almost said the words that would deny all that there was between them. The words

  that would cut her out of his life. Go to Terminus without her! I would be more

  myself if they took my heart, my liver, my brain.

  How could I have thought I wanted to go to Terminus, anyway? To be surrounded by

  academics of the sort I most despise, struggling with them to get the encyclopedia

  properly designed. They'd each fight for their petty little province, never catching

  the vision of the whole, never understanding that the encyclopedia would be

  valueless if it were compartmentalized. It would be a life in hell, and in the end

  he'd lose, because the academic mind was incapable of growth or change.

  It was here on Trantor that he could still accomplish something. Perhaps even

  solve the question of human origin, at least to his own satisfaction-- and perhaps

  he could do it soon enough that he could get his discovery included in the

  Encyclopedia Galactica before the Empire began to break down at the edges, cutting

  Terminus off from the rest of the Galaxy.

  It was like a shock of static electricity passing through his brain; he even saw

  an afterglow of light around the edges of his vision, as if a spark had jumped some

  synaptic gap.

  "What a sham," he said.

  "Who, you? Me?"

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  "Hari Seldon. All this talk about his Foundation to create the Encyclopedia,

  Galactica."

  "Careful, Leyel." It was almost impossible that the Pubs could have found a way to

  listen to what went on in Leyel Forska's own apartments. Almost.

  "He told me twenty years ago. It was one of his first psychohistorical

  projections. The Empire will crumble at the edges first. He projected it would

  happen within the next generation. The figures were crude then. He must have it down

  to the year now. Maybe even the month. Of course he put his Foundation on Terminus.

  A place so remote that when the edges of the Empire fray, it will be among the first

  threads lost. Cut off from Trantor. Forgotten at once!"

  "What good would that do, Leyel? They'd never hear of any new discoveries then."

  "What you said about us. A tree. Our children like the fruit of that tree."

  "I never said that."

  "I thought it, then. He is dropping his Foundation out on Terminus like the fruit

  of Empire. To grow into a new Empire by and by."

  "You frighten me, Leyel. If the Pubs ever heard you say that--"

  "That crafty old fox. That sly, deceptive-- he never actually lied to me, but of

  course he couldn't send me there. If the Forska fortune was tied up with Terminus,

  the Empire would never lose track of the place. The edges might fray elsewhere, but

  never there. Putting me on Terminus would be the undoing of the real project." It

  was such a relief. Of course Hari couldn't tell him, not with the Pubs listening,

  but it had nothing to do with him or Deet. It wouldn't have to be a barrier between

  them after all. It was just one of the penalties of being the keeper of the Forska

  fortune.

  "Do you really think so?" asked Deet.

  "I was a fool not to see it before. But Hari was a fool too if he thought I

  wouldn't guess it."

  "Maybe he expects you to guess everything."

  "Oh, nobody could ever come up with everything Hari's doing. He has more twists

  and turns in his brain than a hyperpath through core space. No matter how you labor

  to pick your way through, you'll always find Hari at the end of it, nodding happily

  and congratulating you on coming this far. He's ahead of us all. He's already

  planned everything, and the rest of us are doomed to follow in his footsteps."

  "Is it doom?"

  "Once I thought Hari Seldon was God. Now I know he's much less powerful than that.

  He's merely Fate."

  "No, Leyel. Don't say that."

  "Not even Fate. Just our guide through it. He sees the future, and points the

  way."

  "Rubbish." She slid out from under him, got up, pulled her robe from its hook on

  the wall. "My old bones get cold when I lie about naked."

  Leyel's legs were trembling, but not with cold. "The future is his, and the

  present is yours, but the past belongs to me. I don't know how far into the future

  his probability curves have taken him, but I can match him, step for step, century

  for century into the past."

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  "Don't tell me you're going to solve the question of origin. You're the one who

  proved it wasn't worth solving."

  "I proved that it wasn't important or even possible to find the planet of origin.

  But I also said that we could still discover the natural laws that accounted for the

  origin of man. Whatever forces created us as human beings must still be present in

  the universe."

  "I did read what you wrote, you know. You said it would be the labor of the next

  millennium to find the answer."

  "Just now. Lying here, just now, I saw it, just out of reach. Something about your

  work and Hari's work, and the tree."

  "The tree was about me needing you, Leyel. It wasn't about the origin of

  humanity."

  "It's gone. Whatever I saw for a moment there, it's gone. But I can find it again.

  It's there in your work, and Hari's Foundation, and the fall of the Empire, and the

  damned pear tree."

  "I never said it was a pear tree."

  "I used to play in the pear orchard on the grounds Of the estate in Holdwater. To

  me the word 'tree' always means a pear tree. One of the deep-worn ruts in my brain."

  "I'm relieved. I was afraid you were reminded of pears by the shape of these

  ancient breasts when I bend over."

  "Open your robe again. Let me see if I think of pears. "

  ***

  Leyel paid for Hari Seldon's funeral. It was not lavish. Leyel had meant it to be.

  The moment he heard of Hari's death-- not a surprise, since Hari's first brutal

  stroke had left him half-paralyzed in a wheelchair-- he set his staff to work on a

  memorial service appropriate to honor the greatest scientific mind of the

  millennium. But word arrived, in the form of a visit from Commissioner Rom Divart,

  that any sort of public services would be...

  "Shall we say, inappropriate?"

  "The man was the greatest genius I've ever heard of! He virtually invented a

  branch of science that clarified things that-- he made a science out of the sort of

  thing that soothsayers and-- and-- economists u
sed to do!"

  Rom laughed at Leyel's little joke, of course, because he and Leyel had been

  friends forever. Rom was the only friend of Leyel's childhood who had never sucked

  up to him or resented him or stayed cool toward him because of the Forska fortune.

  This was, of course, because the Divart holdings were, if anything, slightly

  greater. They had played together unencumbered by strangeness or jealousy or awe.

  They even shared a tutor for two terrible, glorious years, from the time Rom's

  father was murdered until the execution of Rom's grandfather, which caused so much

  outrage among the nobility that the mad Emperor was stripped of power and the

  Imperium put under the control of the Commission of Public Safety. Then, as the

  youthful head of one of the great families, Rom had embarked on his long and

  fruitful career in politics.

  Rom said later that for those two years it was Leyel who taught him that there was

  still some good in the world; that Leyel's friendship was the only reason Rom hadn't

  killed himself. Leyel always thought this was pure theatrics. Rom was a born actor.

  That's why he so excelled at making stunning entrances and playing unforgettable

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  scenes on the grandest stage of all-- the politics of the Imperium. Someday he would

  no doubt exit as dramatically as his father and grandfather had.

  But he was not all show. Rom never forgot the friend of his childhood. Leyel knew

  it, and knew also that Rom's coming to deliver this message from the Commission of

  Public Safety probably meant that Rom had fought to make the message as mild as it

  was. So Leyel blustered a bit, then made his little joke. It was his way of

  surrendering gracefully.

  What Leyel didn't realize, right up until the day of the funeral, was exactly how

  dangerous his friendship with Hari Seldon had been, and how stupid it was for him to

  associate himself with Hari's name now that the old man was dead. Linge Chen, the

  Chief Commissioner, had not risen to the position of greatest power in the Empire

  without being fiercely suspicious of potential rivals and brutally efficient about

  eliminating them. Hari had maneuvered Chen into a position such that it was more

  dangerous to kill the old man than to give him his Foundation on Terminus. But now

  Hari was dead, and apparently Chen was watching to see who mourned.

  Leyel did-- Leyel and the few members of Hari's staff who had stayed behind on