Flux Tales Of Human Futures

by Card, Orson Scott

  thinking they're really the same. The fascinating thing, Leyel, is that the two

  species persist in marrying each other and having babies, sometimes of one species,

  sometimes of the other, and the whole time they can't understand why they can't

  understand each other."

  He laughed and embraced her. "You're right, as always, Deet. If I could once

  understand women, then perhaps I'd know what it is that makes men human."

  "Nothing could possibly make men human," she answered. "Every time they're just

  about to get it right, they end up tripping over the damned Y chromosome and turning

  back into beasts." She nuzzled his neck.

  It was then, with Deet in his arms, that he whispered to her what had happened

  when Rom visited that day. She said nothing, but held him tightly for the longest

  time. Then they had a very late supper and went about their nightly routines as if

  nothing had changed.

  Not until they were in bed, not until Deet was softly snoring beside him, did it

  finally occur to Leyel that Deet was facing a test of her own. Would she still love

  him, now that he was merely Leyel Forska, scientist on a pension, and not Lord

  Forska, master of worlds? Of course she would intend to. But just as Leyel had never

  been aware of how much he depended on his wealth to define himself, so also she

  might not have realized how much of what she loved about him was his vast power; for

  even though he didn't flaunt it, it had always been there, like a solid platform

  underfoot, hardly noticed except now, when it was gone, when their footing was

  unsure.

  Even before this, she had been slipping away into the connnunity of women in the

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  library. She would drift away even faster now, not even noticing it as Leyel became

  less and less important to her. No need for anything as dramatic as divorce. Just a

  little gap between them, an empty space that might as well be a chasm, might as well

  be the abyss. My fortune was a part of me, and now that it's gone, I'm no longer the

  same man she loved. She won't even know that she doesn't love me any more. She'll

  just get busier and busier in her work, and in five or ten years when I die of old

  age, she'll grieve-- and then suddenly she'll realize that she isn't half as

  devastated as she thought she'd be. In fact, she won't be devastated at all. And

  she'll get on with her life and won't even remember what it was like to be married

  to me. I'll disappear from all human memory then, except perhaps for a few

  scientific papers and the libraries.

  I'm like the information that was lost in all those neglected archives.

  Disappearing bit by bit, unnoticed, until all that's left is just a little bit of

  noise in people's memories. Then, finally, nothing. Blank.

  Self-pitying fool. That's what happens to everyone, in the long run. Even Hari

  Seldon-- someday he'll be forgotten, sooner rather than later, if Chen has his way.

  We all die. We're all lost in the passage of time. The only thing that lives on

  after us is the new shape we've given to the communities we lived in. There are

  things that are known because I said them, and even though people have forgotten who

  said it, they'll go on knowing. Like the story Rinjy was telling-- she had

  forgotten, if she ever knew it, that Deet was the librarian in the original tale.

  But still she remembered the tale. The community of librarians was different because

  Deet had been among them. They would be a little different, a little braver, a

  little stronger, because of Deet. She had left traces of herself in the world.

  And then, again, there came that flash of insight, that sudden understanding of

  the answer to a question that had long been troubling him.

  But in the moment that Leyel realized that he held the answer, the answer slipped

  away. He couldn't remember it. You're asleep, he said silently. You only dreamed

  that you understood the origin of humanity. That's the way it is in dreams-- the

  truth is always so beautiful, but you can never hold on to it.

  ***

  "How is he taking it, Deet?"

  "Hard to say. Well, I think. He was never much of a wanderer anyway."

  "Come now, it can't be that simple."

  "No. No, it isn't."

  "Tell me."

  "The social things-- those were easy. We rarely went anyway, but now people don't

  invite us; we're politically dangerous. And the few things we had scheduled got

  canceled or, um, postponed. You know-- we'll call you as soon as we have a new

  date."

  "He doesn't mind this?"

  "He likes that part. He always hated those things. But they've canceled his

  speeches. And the lecture series on human ecology."

  "A blow."

  "He pretends not to mind. But he's brooding."

  "Tell me."

  "Works all day, but he doesn't read it to me any more, doesn't make me sit down at

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  the lector the minute I get home. I think he isn't writing anything."

  "Doing nothing?"

  "No. Reading. That's all."

  "Maybe he just needs to do research."

  "You don't know Leyel. He thinks by writing. Or talking. He isn't doing either."

  "Doesn't talk to you?"

  "He answers. I try to talk about things here at the library, his answers are--

  what? Glum. Sullen."

  "He resents your work?"

  "That's not possible. Leyel has always been as enthusiastic about my work as about

  his own. And he won't talk about his own work, either. I ask him, and he says

  nothing."

  "Not surprising."

  "So it's all right?"

  "No. It's just not surprising."

  "What is it? Can't you tell me?"

  "What good is telling you? It's what we call ILS-- Identity Loss Syndrome. It's

  identical to the passive strategy for dealing with loss of body parts."

  "ILS. What happens in ILS?"

  "Deet, come, on, you're a scientist. What do you expect? You've just described

  Leyel's behavior, I tell you that it's called ILS, you want to know what ILS is, and

  what am I going to do?"

  "Describe Leyel's behavior back to me. What an idiot I am."

  "Good, at least you can laugh."

  "Can't you tell me what to expect?"

  "Complete withdrawal from you, from everybody. Eventually he becomes completely

  antisocial and starts to strike out. Does something self-destructive-- like making

  public statements against Chen, that'd do it."

  "No!"

  "Or else he severs his old connections, gets away from you, and reconstructs

  himself in a different set of communities."

  "This would make him happy?"

  "Sure. Useless to the Second Foundation, but happy. It would also turn you into a

  nasty-tempered old crone, not that you aren't one already, mind you."

  "Oh, you think Leyel's the only thing keeping me human?"

  "Pretty much, yes. He's your safety valve."

  "Not lately."

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  "I know." .

  "Have I been so awful?"

  "Nothing that we can't bear. Deet, if we're going to be fit to govern the human

  race someday, shoul
dn't we first learn to be good to each other?"

  "Well, I'm glad to provide you all with an opportunity to test your patience."

  "You should be glad. We're doing a fine job so far, wouldn't you say?"

  "Please. You were teasing me about the prognosis, weren't you?"

  "Partly. Everything I said was true, but you know as well as I do that there are

  as many different ways out of a B-B syndrome as there are people who have them."

  "Behavioral cause, behavioral effect. No little hormone shot, then?"

  "Deet. He doesn't know who he is."

  "Can't I help him?"

  "Yes."

  "What? What can I do?"

  "This is only a guess, since I haven't talked to him."

  "Of course."

  "You aren't home much."

  "I can't stand it there, with him brooding all the time."

  "Fine. Get him out with you."

  "He won't go."

  "Push him."

  "We barely talk. I don't know if I even have any leverage over him."

  "Deet. You're the one who wrote, 'Communities that make few or no demands on their

  members cannot command allegiance. All else being equal, members who feel most

  needed have the strongest allegiance.'"

  "You memorized that?"

  "Psychohistory is the psychology of populations, but populations can only be

  quantified as communities. Seldon's work on statistical probabilities only worked to

  predict the future within a generation or two until you first published your

  community theories. That's because statistics can't deal with cause and effect.

  Stats tell you what's happening, never why, never the result. Within a generation or

  two, the present statistics evaporate, they're meaningless, you have whole new

  populations with new configurations. Your community theory gave us a way of

  predicting which communities would survive, which would grow, which would fade. A

  way of looking across long stretches of time and space."

  "Hari never told me he was using community theory in any important way."

  "How could he tell you that? He had to walk a tightrope-- publishing enough to get

  psychohistory taken seriously, but not so much that anybody outside the Second

  Foundation could ever duplicate or continue his work. Your work was a key-- but he

  couldn't say so."

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  "Are you just saying this to make me feel better?"

  "Sure. That's why I'm saying it. But it's also true-- since lying to you wouldn't

  make you feel better, would it? Statistics are like taking cross sections of the

  trunk of a tree. It can tell you a lot about its history. You can figure how healthy

  it is, how much volume the whole tree has, how much is root and how much is branch.

  But what it can't tell you is where the tree will branch, and which branches will

  become major, which minor, and which will rot and fall off and die."

  "But you can't quantify communities, can you? They're just stories and rituals

  that bind people together--"

  "You'd be surprised what we can quantify. We're very good at what we do, Deet.

  Just as you are. Just as Leyel is."

  "Is his work important? After all, human origin is only a historical question."

  "Nonsense, and you know it. Leyel has stripped away the historical issues and he's

  searching for the scientific ones. The principles by which human life, as we

  understand it, is differentiated from nonhuman. If he finds that-- don't you see,

  Deet? The human race is re-creating itself all the time, on every world, in every

  family, in every individual. We're born animals, and we teach each other how to be

  human. Somehow. It matters that we find out how. It matters to psychohistory. It

  matters to the Second Foundation. It matters to the human race."

  "So you aren't just being kind to Leyel."

  "Yes, we are. You are, too. Good people are kind."

  "Is that all? Leyel is just one man who's having trouble?

  "We need him. He isn't important just to you. He's important to us."

  "Oh. Oh."

  "Why are you crying?"

  "I was so afraid-- that I was being selfish-- being so worried about him. Taking

  up your time like this."

  "Well, if that doesn't-- I thought you were beyond surprising me."

  "Our problems were just-- our problems. But now they're not."

  "Is that so important to you? Tell me, Deet-- do you really value this community

  so much?"

  "Yes."

  "More than Leyel?"

  "No! But enough-- that I felt guilty for caring so much about him."

  "Go home, Deet. Just go home."

  "What?"

  "That's where you'd rather be. It's been showing up in your behavior for two

  months, ever since Hari's death. You've been nasty and snappish, and now I know why.

  You resent us for keeping you away from Leyel."

  "No, it was my choice, I--"

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  "Of course it was your choice! It was your sacrifice for the good of the Second

  Foundation. So now I'm telling you-- healing Leyel is more important to Hari's plan

  than keeping up with your day-to-day responsibilities here."

  "You're not removing me from my position, are you?"

  "No. I'm just telling you to ease up. And get Leyel out of the apartment. Do you

  understand me? Demand it! Reengage him with you, or we've all lost him."

  "Take him where?"

  "I don't know. Theater. Athletic events. Dancing."

  "We don't do those things."

  "Well, what do you do?"

  "Research. And then talk about it."

  "Fine. Bring him here to the library. Do research with him. Talk about it."

  "But he'll meet people here. He'd certainly meet you."

  "Good. Good. I like that. Yes, let him come here."

  "But I thought we had to keep the Second Foundation a secret from him until he's

  ready to take part."

  "I didn't say you should introduce me as First Speaker."

  "No, no, of course you didn't. What am I thinking of? Of course he can meet you,

  he can meet everybody."

  "Deet, listen to me."

  "Yes, I'm listening."

  "It's all right to love him, Deet."

  "I know that."

  "I mean, it's all right to love him more than you love us. More than you love any

  of us. More than you love all of us. There you are, crying again."

  "I'm so--"

  "Relieved."

  "How do you understand me so well?"

  "I only know what you show me and what you tell me. It's all we ever know about

  each other. The only thing that helps is that nobody can ever lie for long about who

  they really are. Not even to themselves."

  ***

  For two months Leyel followed up on Magolissian's paper by trying to find some

  connection between language studies and human origins. Of course, this meant weeks

  of wading through old, useless point-of-origin studies, which kept indicating that

  Trantor was the focal point of language throughout the history of the Empire, even

  though nobody seriously put forth Trantor as the planet of origin. Once again,

  though, Leyel rejected the search for a particular planet; he wanted to find out

  regularities, iiot unique events.

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t

  Leyel hoped for a clue in the fairly recent work-- only two thousand years old--

  of Dagawell Kispitorian. Kispitorian came from the most isolated area of a planet

  called Artashat, where there were traditions that the original settlers came from an

  earlier world named Armenia, now uncharted. Kispitorian grew up among mountain

  people who claimed that long ago, they spoke a completely different language. In

  fact, the title of Kispitorian's most interesting book was No Man Understood Us;

  many of the folk tales of these people began with the formula "Back in the days when

  no man understood us..."

  Kispitorian had never been able to shake off this tradition of his upbringing, and

  as he pursued the field of dialect formation and evolution, he kept coming across

  evidence that at one time the human species spoke not one but many languages. It had

  always been taken for granted that Galactic Standard was the up-to-date version of

  the language of the planet of origin-- that while a few human groups might have

  developed dialects, civilization was impossible without mutually intelligible

  speech. But Kispitorian had begun to suspect that Galactic Standard did not become

  the universal human language until *after* the formation of the Empire-- that, in

  fact, one of the first labors of the Imperium was to stamp out all other competing

  languages. The mountain people of Artakshat believed that their language had been

  stolen from them. Kispitorian eventually devoted his life to proving they were

  right.

  He worked first with names, long recognized as the most conservative aspect of

  language. He found that there were many separate naming traditions, and it was not

  until about the year 6000 G.E. that all were finally amalgamated into one

  Empire-wide stream. What was interesting was that the farther back he went, the more

  complexity he found.

  Because certain worlds tended to have unified traditions, and so the simplest

  explanation of this was the one he first put forth-- that humans left their home

  world with a unified language, but the normal forces of language separation caused

  each new planet to develop its own offshoot, until many dialects became mutually

  unintelligible. Thus, different languages would not have developed until humanity

  moved out into space; this was one of the reasons why the Galactic Empire was

  necessary to restore the primeval unity of the species.