Flux Tales Of Human Futures

by Card, Orson Scott

  something that made the indexer think of transformation-- becoming old, like wrinkly

  Grandma Posey? Or it might have been a general thought about the spread of humanity

  through the stars, away from the planet of origin, that made the indexer remember

  how the poem seemed to tell of rockets that rise up, from a planet, drift for a

  while, then come down to settle on a planet. Who knows what the poem meant to the

  indexer? Who knows why it occurred to her to link it with his document on that

  particular phrase?

  Then Leyel realized that in his imagination, he was thinking of Deet making that

  particular connection. There was no reason to think it was her work, except that in

  his mind she was all the indexers. She had joined them, become one of them, and so

  when indexing work was being done, she was part of it. That's what it meant to be

  part of a community-- all its works became, to a degree, your works. All that the

  indexers did, Deet was a part of it, and therefore Deet had done it.

  Again the image of a fabric came to mind, only this time it was a topologically

  impossible fabric, twisted into itself so that no matter what part of the edge of it

  you held, you held the entire edge, and the middle, too. It was all one thing, and

  each part held the whole within it.

  But if that was true, then when Deet came to join the library, so did Leyel,

  because she contained Leyel within her. So in coming here, she had not left him at

  all. Instead, she had woven him into a new fabric, so that instead of losing

  something he was gaining. He was part of all this, because she was, and so if he

  lost her it would only be because he rejected her.

  Leyel covered his eyes with his hands. How did his meandering thoughts about the

  origin question lead him to thinking about his marriage? Here he thought he was on

  the verge of profound understanding, ahd then he fell back into self-absorption.

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  He cleared away all the references to "Wrinkly Grandma Posey" or "Wrinkle Down a

  Rosy" or whatever it was, then returned to reading his original document, trying to

  confine his thoughts to the subject at hand.

  Yet it was a losing battle. He could not escape from the seductive distraction of

  the index. He'd be reading about tool use and technology, and how it could not be

  the dividing line between human and animal because there were animals that made

  tools and taught their use to others.

  Then, suddenly, the index would have him reading an ancient terror tale about a

  man who wanted to be the greatest genius of all time, and he believed that the only

  thing preventing him from achieving greatness was the hours he lost in sleep. So he

  invented a machine to sleep for him, and it worked very well until he realized that

  the machine was having all his dreams. Then he demanded that his machine tell him

  what it was dreaming.

  The machine poured forth the most astonishing, brilliant thoughts ever imagined by

  any man-- far wiser than anything this man had ever written during his waking hours.

  The man took a hammer and smashed the machine, so that he could have his dreams

  back. But even when he started sleeping again, he was never able to come close to

  the clarity of thought that the machine had had.

  Of course he could never publish what the machine had written-- it would be

  unthinkable to put forth the product of a machine as ff it were the work of a man.

  After the man died-- in despair-- people found the printed text of what the machine

  had written, and thought the man had written it and hidden it away. They published

  it, and he was widely acclaimed as the greatest genius who had ever lived.

  This was universally regarded as an obscenely horrifying tale because it had a

  machine stealing part of a man's mind and using it to destroy him, a common theme.

  But why did the indexer refer to it in the midst of a discussion of tool-making?

  Wondering about that led Leyel to think that this story itself was a kind of tool,

  just like the machine the man in the story had made. The storyteller gave his dreams

  to the story, and then when people heard it or read it, his dreams-- his

  nightmares-- came out to live in their memories. Clear and sharp and terrible and

  true, those dreams they received. And yet if he tried to tell them the same truths,

  directly, not in the form of a story, people would think his ideas were silly and

  small.

  And then Leyel remembered what Deet had said about how people absorb stories from

  their communities and take them into themselves and use these stories to form their

  own spiritual autobiography. They remember doing what the heroes of the stories did,

  and so they continue to act out each hero's character in their own lives, or,

  failing that, they measure themselves against the standard the story set for them.

  Stories become the human conscience, the human mirror.

  Again, as so many other times, he ended these ruminations with his hands pressed

  over his eyes, trying to shut out-- or lock in? --images of fabrics and mirrors,

  worlds and atoms, until finally, finally, he opened his eyes and saw Deet and Zay

  sitting in front of him.

  No, leaning over him. He was on a low bed, and they knelt beside him.

  "Am I ill?" he asked.

  "I hope not," said Deet. "We found you on the floor. You're exhausted, Leyel. I've

  been telling you-- you have to eat, you have to get a normal amount of sleep. You're

  not young enough to keep up this work schedule."

  "I've barely started."

  Zay laughed lightly. "Listen to him, Deet. I told you he was so caught up in this

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  that he didn't even know what day it was."

  "You've been doing this for three weeks, Leyel. For the last week you haven't even

  come home. I bring you food, and you won't eat. People talk to you, and you forget

  that you're in a conversation, you just drift off into some sort of-- trance. Leyel,

  I wish I'd never brought you here, I wish I'd never suggested indexing-"

  "No!" Leyel cried. He struggled to sit up.

  At first Deet tried to push him back down, insisting he should rest. It was Zay

  who helped him sit. "Let the man talk," she said. "Just because you're his wife

  doesn't mean you can stop him from talking."

  "The index is wonderful," said Leyel. "Like a tunnel opened up into my own mind. I

  keep seeing light just that far out of reach, and then I wake up and it's just me

  alone on a pinnacle except for the pages up on the lector. I keep losing it--"

  "No, Leyel, we keep losing you. The index is poisoning you, it's taking over your

  mind--"

  "Don't be absurd, Deet. You're the one who suggested this, and you're right. The

  index keeps surprising me, making me think in new ways. There are some answers

  already."

  "Answers?" asked Zay.

  "I don't know how well I can explain it. What makes us human. It has to do with

  communities and stories and tools and-- it has to do with you and me, Deet."

  "I should hope we're human," she said. Teasing him, but also urging him on.

  "We lived together all those years, and we formed a community-- with our children,

&n
bsp; till they left, and then just us. But we were like animals."

  "Only sometimes," she said.

  "I mean like herding animals, or primate tribes, or any community that's bound

  together only by the rituals and patterns of the present moment. We had our customs,

  our habits. Our private language of words and gestures, our dances, all the things

  that flocks of geese and hives of bees can do."

  "Very primitive."

  "Yes, that's right, don't you see? That's a community that dies with each

  generation. When we, die, Deet, it will all be gone with us. Other people will

  marry, but none of them will know our dances and songs and language and--"

  "Our children will."

  "No, that's my point. They knew us, they even think they know us, but they were

  never part of the community of our marriage. Nobody is. Nobody can be. That's why,

  when I thought you were leaving me for this--"

  "When did you think that I--"

  "Hush, Deet," said Zay. "Let the man babble."

  "When I thought you were leaving me, I felt like I was dead, like I was losing

  everything, because if you weren't part of our marriage, then there was nothing

  left. You see?"

  "I don't see what that has to do with human origins, Leyel. I only know that I

  would never leave you, and I can't believe that you could think--"

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  "Don't distract him, Deet."

  "It's the children. All the children. They play Wrinkly Grandma Posey, and then

  they grow up and don't play anymore, so the actual community of these particular

  five or six children doesn't exist any more-- but other kids are still doing the

  dance. Chanting the poem. For ten thousand years!"

  "This makes us human? Nursery rhymes?"

  "They're all part of the same community! Across all the empty space between the

  stars, there are still connections, they're still somehow the same kids. Ten

  thousand years, ten thousand worlds, quintillions of children, and they all knew the

  poem, they all did the dance. Story and ritual-- it doesn't die with the tribe, it

  doesn't stop at the border. Children who never met face-to-face, who lived so far

  apart that the light from one star still hasn't reached the other, they belonged to

  the same community. We're human because we conquered time and space. We conquered

  the barrier of perpetual ignorance between one person and another. We found a way to

  slip my memories into your head, and yours into mine."

  "But these are the ideas you already rejected, Leyel. Language and community

  and--"

  "No! No, not just language, not just tribes of chimpanzees chattering at each

  other. Stories, epic tales that define a community, mythic tales that teach us how

  the world works, we use them to create each other. We became a different species, we

  became human, because we found a way to extend gestation beyond the womb, a way to

  give each child ten thousand parents that he'll never meet face-to-face."

  Then, at last, Leyel fell silerit, trapped by the inadequacy of his words. They

  couldn't tell what he had seen in his mind. ff they didn't already understand, they

  never would.

  "Yes," said Zay. "I think indexing your paper was a very good idea."

  Leyel sighed and lay back down on the bed. "I shouldn't have tried."

  "On the contrary, you've succeeded," said Zay.

  Deet shook her head. Leyel knew why-- Deet was trying to signal Zay that she

  shouldn't attempt to soothe Leyel with false praise.

  "Don't hush me, Deet. I know what I'm saying. I may not know Leyel as well as you

  do, but I know truth when I hear it. In a way, I think Hari knew it instinctively.

  That's why he insisted on all his silly holodisplays, forcing the poor citizens of

  Terminus to put up with his pontificating every few years. It was his way of

  continuing to create them, of remaining alive within them. Making them feel like

  their lives had purpose behind them. Mythic and epic story, both at once. They'll

  all carry a bit of Hari Seldon within them just the way that children carry their

  parents with them to the grave."

  At first Leyel could only hear the idea that Hari would have approved of his ideas

  of human origin. Then he began to realize that there was much more to what Zay had

  said than simple affirmation.

  "You knew Hari Seldon?"

  "A little," said Zay.

  "Either tell him or don't," said Deet. "You can't take him this far in, and not

  bring him the rest of the way."

  "I knew Hari the way you know Deet," said Zay.

  "No," said Leyel. "He would have mentioned you."

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  "Would he? He never mentioned his students."

  "He had thousands of students."

  "I know, Leyel. I saw them come and fill his lecture halls and listen to the

  half-baked fragments of psychohistory that he taught them. But then he'd come away,

  here to the library, into a room where the Pubs never go, where he could speak words

  that the Pubs would never hear, and there he'd teach his real students. Here is the

  only place where the science of psychohistory lives on, where Deet's ideas about the

  formation of community actually have application, where your own visions of the

  origin of humanity will shape our calculations for the next thousand years."

  Leyel was dumbfounded. "In the Imperial Library? Hari had his own college in the

  library?"

  "Where else? He had to leave us at the end, when it was time to go public with

  his predictions of the Empire's fall. Then the Pubs started watching him in

  earnest, and in order to keep them from finding us, he couldn't come back here

  again. It was the most terrible thing that ever happened to us. As if he died, for

  us, years before his body died. He was part of us, Leyel, the way you and Deet are

  part of each other. She knows. She joined us before he left."

  It stung. To have had such a great secret, and not to have been included. "Why

  Deet, and not me?"

  "Don't you know, Leyel? Our little community's survival was the most important

  thing. As long as you were Leyel Forska, master of one of the greatest fortunes in

  history, you couldn't possibly be part of this-- it would have provoked too much

  comment, too much attention. Deet could come, because Commissioner Chen wouldn't

  care that much what she did-- he never takes spouses seriously, just one of the ways

  he proves himself to be a fool."

  "But Hari always meant for you to be one of us," said Deet. "His worst fear was

  that you'd go off half-cocked and force your way into the First Foundation, when all

  along he wanted you in this one. The Second Foundation."

  Leyel remembered his last interview with Hari. He tried to remember-- did Hari

  ever lie to him? He told him that Deet couldn't go to Terminus-- but now that took

  on a completely different meaning. The old fox! He never lied at all, but he never

  told the truth, either.

  Zay went on. "It was tricky, striking the right balance, encouraging you to

  provoke Chen just enough that he'd strip away your fortune and then forget you, but

  not so much that he'd have you imprisoned or killed."

  "You were making that happen?"


  "No, no, Leyel. It was going to happen anyway, because you're who you are and

  Chen is who he is. But there was a range of possibility, somewhere between having

  you and Deet tortured to death on the one hand, and on the other hand having you and

  Rom conspire to assassinate Chen and take control of the Empire. Either of those

  extremes would have made it impossible for you to be part of the Second Foundation.

  Hari was convinced-- and so is Deet, and so am I-- that you belong with us. Not

  dead. Not in politics. Here."

  It was outrageous, that they should make such choices for him, without telling

  him. How could Deet have kept it secret all this time? And yet they were I so

  obviously correct. If Hari had told him about this Second Foundation, Leyel would

  have been eager, proud to join it. Yet Leyel couldn't have been told, couldn't have

  joined them-- until Chen no longer perceived him as a threat.

  "What makes you think Chen will ever forget me?"

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  "Oh, he's forgotten you, all right. In fact, I'd guess that by tonight he'll have

  forgotten everything he ever knew."

  "What do you mean?"

  "How do you think we've dared to speak so openly today, after keeping silence for

  so long? After all, we aren't in Indexing now."

  Leyel felt a thrill of fear run through him. "They can hear us?"

  "If they were listening. At the moment, though, the Pubs are very busy helping Rom

  Divart solidify his control of the Commission of Public Safety. And if Chen hasn't

  been taken to the radiation chamber, he soon will be."

  Leyel couldn't help himself. The news was too glorious-- he sprang up from his

  bed, almost danced at the news. "Rom's doing it! After all these years--

  overthrowing the old spider!"

  "It's more important than mere justice or revenge," said Zay. "We're absolutely

  certain that a significant number of governors and prefects and military commanders

  will refuse to recognize the overlordship of the Commission of Public Safety. It

  will take Rom Divart the rest of his life just to put down the most dangerous of the

  rebels. In order to concentrate his forces on the great rebels and pretenders close

  to Trantor, he'll grant an unprecedented degree of independence to many, many worlds

  on the periphery. To all intents and purposes, those outer worlds will no longer be