Asimov’s Future History Volume 15

by Isaac Asimov

  Yugo gave him a mocking grin. “First Minister is usually considered a full-time job.”

  “I know, I know. But maybe there’s a way–”

  The office holo bloomed into full presentation a meter from his head. The office familiar was coded to pipe through only high-priority messages. Hari slapped a key on his desk and the picture gave the gathering image a red, square frame–the signal that his filter-face was on. “Yes?”

  Cleon’s personal aide appeared in red tunic against a blue background. “You are summoned,” the woman said simply.

  “Uh, I am honored. When?”

  The woman went into details and Hari was immediately thankful for the filter-face. The personal officer was imposing, and he did not want to appear to be what he was, a distracted professor. His filter-face had a tailored etiquette menu. He had automatically thumbed in a suite of body language postures and gestures, tailored to mask his true feelings.

  “Very well, in two hours. I shall be there,” he concluded with a small bow. The filter would render that same motion, shaped to the protocols of the Emperor’s staff.

  “Drat!” He slapped his desk, making the holo dissolve. “My day is evaporating!”

  “What’s it mean?”

  “Trouble. Every time I see Cleon, it’s trouble.”

  “I dunno, could be a chance to straighten out–”

  “I just want to be left alone!”

  “A First Ministership”

  “You be First Minister! I will take a job as a computational specialist, change my name–” Hari stopped and laughed wryly. “But I’d fail at that, too.”

  “Look, you need to change your mood. Don’t want to walk in on the Emperor with that scowl.”

  “Ummm. I suppose not. Very well–cheer me up. What was that good news you mentioned?”

  “I turned up some ancient personality constellations.”

  “Really? I thought they were illegal.”

  “They are.” He grinned. “Laws don’t always work.”

  “Truly ancient? I wanted them for calibration of psychohistorical valences. They have to be early Empire.”

  Yugo beamed. “These are pre-Empire.”

  “Pre-impossible.”

  “I got ’em. Intact, too.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Some famous types, dunno what they did.”

  “What status did they have, to be recorded?”

  Yugo shrugged. “No parallel historical records, either.”

  “Are they authentic recordings?”

  “Might be. They’re in ancient machine languages, really primitive stuff. Hard to tell.”

  “Then they could be... sims.”

  “I’d say so. Could be they’re built on a recorded underbase, then simmed for roundness.”

  “You can kick them up to sentience?”

  “Yeah, with some work. Got to stitch data languages. Y’know, this is, ah …”

  “Illegal. Violation of the Sentience Codes.”

  “Right. These guys I got it from, they’re on that New Renaissance world, Sark. They say nobody polices those old Codes anymore.”

  “It’s time we kicked over a few of those ancient blocks.”

  “Yessir.” Yugo grinned. “These constellations, they’re the oldest anybody’s ever found.”

  “How did you...?” Hari let his question trail off. Yugo had many shady connections, built on his Dahlite origins.

  “It took a little, ah, lubrication.”

  “I thought so. Well, perhaps best that I don’t hear the details.”

  “Right. As First Minister, you don’t want dirty hands.”

  “Don’t call me that!”

  “Sure, sure, you’re just a journeyman professor. Who’s going to be late for his appointment with the Emperor if he doesn’t hurry up.”

  2.

  Walking through the Imperial Gardens, Hari wished Dors was with him. He recalled her wariness over his coming again to the attention of Cleon. “They’re crazy, often,” she had said in a dispassionate voice. “The gentry are eccentric, which allows emperors to be bizarre.”

  “You exaggerate,” he had responded.

  “Dadrian the Frugal always urinated in the Imperial Gardens,” she had answered. “He would leave state functions to do it, saying that it saved his subjects a needless expense in water.”

  Hari had to suppress a laugh; palace staff were undoubtedly studying him. He regained his sober manner by admiring the ornate, towering trees, sculpted in the Spindlerian style of three millennia before. He felt the tug of such natural beauty, despite his years buried in Trantor. Here, verdant wealth stretched up toward the blazing sun like outstretched arms. This was the only open spot on the planet, and it reminded him of Helicon, where he had begun.

  He had been a rather dreamy boy in a laboring district of Helicon. The work in fields and factories was easy enough that he could think his own shifting, abstract musings while he did it. Before the Civil Service exams changed his life, he had worked out a few simple theorems in number theory and later was crushed to find that they were already known. He lay in bed at night thinking of planes and vectors and trying to envision dimensions larger than three, listening to the distant bleat of the puff-dragons who came drifting down the mountain sides in search of prey. Bioengineered for some ancient purpose, probably hunting, they were revered beasts. He had not seen one for many years....

  Helicon, the wild–that was what he longed for. But his destiny seemed submerged in Trantor’s steel.

  Hari glanced back and his Specials, thinking they were summoned, trotted forward. “No,” he said, his hands pushing air toward them–a gesture he was making all the time these days, he reflected. Even in the Imperial Gardens they acted as though every gardener was a potential assassin.

  He had come this way, rather than simply emerge from the grav lifter inside the palace, because he liked the gardens above all else. In the distant haze a wall of trees towered, coaxed upward by genetic engineering until they obscured the ramparts of Trantor. Only here, on all the planet, was it possible to experience something resembling the out of doors.

  What an arrogant term! Hari thought. To define all of creation by its lying outside the doorways of humanity.

  His formal shoes crunched against gravel as he left the sheltered walkways and mounted the formal ramp. Beyond the forested perimeter rose a plume of black smoke. He slowed and estimated distance, perhaps ten klicks. Some major incident, surely.

  Striding between tall, neopantheonic columns, he felt a weight descend. Attendants dashed out to welcome him, his Specials tightened up behind, and they made a little procession through the long corridors leading to the Vault of Audience. Here the accumulated great artworks of millennia crowded each other, as if seeking a constituency in the present to give them life.

  The heavy hand of the Imperium lay upon most official art. The Empire was essentially about the past, its solidity, and so expressed its taste with a preference for the pretty. Emperors favored the clean straight lines of ascending slabs, the exact parabolas of arcing purple water fountains, classical columns and buttresses and arches. Heroic sculpture abounded. Noble brows eyed infinite prospects. Colossal battles stood frozen at climactic moments, shaped in glowing stone and holoid crystal.

  All were entirely proper and devoid of embarrassing challenge. No alarming art here, thank you. Nothing “disturbing” was even allowed in public places on Trantor which the Emperor might visit. By exporting to the periphs all hint of the unpleasantness and smell of human lives, the Imperium achieved its final state, the terminally bland.

  Yet to Hari, the reaction against blandness was worse. Among the galaxy’s twenty-five million inhabited planets endless variations appeared, but there simmered beneath the Imperial blanket a style based solely on rejection.

  Particularly among those Hari termed “chaos worlds,” a smug avant-garde fumbled for the sublime by substituting for beauty a love of terror, shock, and the sickeningly
grotesque. They used enormous scale, or acute disproportion, or scatology, or discord and irrational disjunction.

  Both approaches were boring. Neither had any airy joy.

  A wall dissolved, crackling, and they entered the Vault of Audience. Attendants vanished, his Specials fell behind. Abruptly Hari was alone. He padded over the cushiony floor. Baroque excess leered at him from every raised cornice, up-jutting ornament, and elaborate wainscoting.

  Silence. The Emperor was never waiting for anyone, of course. The gloomy chamber gave back no echoes, as though the walls absorbed everything.

  Indeed, they probably did. No doubt every Imperial conversation went into several ears. There might be eavesdroppers halfway across the Galaxy.

  A light, moving. Down a crackling grav column came Cleon. “Hari! So happy you could come.”

  Since refusing a summons by the Emperor was traditionally grounds for execution, Hari could barely suppress a wry smile. “My honor to serve, sire.”

  “Come, sit.”

  Cleon moved heavily. Rumor had it that his appetite, already legendary, had begun to exceed even the skills of his cooks and physicians. “We have much to discuss.”

  The Emperor’s constant attendant glow served to subtly enhance him with its nimbus. The contrast was mild, serving to draw him out from a comparative surrounding gloom. The room’s embedded intelligences tracked his eyes and shed added light where his gaze fell, again with delicate emphasis, subtly applied. The soft touch of his regard yielded a radiance which guests scarcely noticed, but which acted subconsciously, adding to their awe. Hari knew this, yet the effect still worked; Cleon looked masterful, regal.

  “I fear we have hit a snag,” Cleon said.

  “Nothing you cannot master, I am sure, sire.”

  Cleon shook his head wearily. “Now don’t you, too, go on about my prodigious powers. Some... elements–” he drew the word out with dry disdain “–object to your appointment.”

  “I see.” Hari kept his face blank, but his heart leaped.

  “Do not be glum! I do want you for my First Minister.”

  “Yes, sire.”

  “But I am not, despite commonplace assumption, utterly free to act.”

  “I realize that many others are better qualified–”

  “In their own eyes, surely.”

  “–and better trained, and–”

  “And know nothing of psychohistory.”

  “Demerzel exaggerated the utility of psychohistory.”

  “Nonsense. He suggested your name to me.”

  “You know as well as] that he was exhausted, not in his best frame of–”

  “His judgment was impeccable for decades.” Cleon eyed Hari. “One would almost think you were trying to avoid appointment as First Minister.”

  “No, sire, but–”

  “Men–and women, for that matter–have killed for far less.”

  “And been killed, once they got it.”

  Cleon chuckled. “True enough. Some First Ministers do get self-important, begin to scheme against their Emperor–but let us not dwell upon the few failures of our system.”

  Hari recalled Demerzel saying, “The succession of crises has reached the point where the consideration of the Three Laws of Robotics paralyzes me.” Demerzel had been unable to make choices because there were no good ones left. Every possible move hurt someone, badly. So Demerzel, a supreme intelligence, a clandestine humaniform robot, had suddenly left the scene. What chance did Hari have?

  “I will assume the position, of course,” Hari said quietly, “if necessary.”

  “Oh, it’s necessary. If possible, you mean. Factions on the High Council oppose you. They demand a full discussion.”

  Hari blinked, alarmed. “Will I have to debate?”

  “–and then a vote.”

  “I had no idea the Council could intervene.”

  “Read the Codes. They do have that power. Typically they do not use it, bowing to the superior wisdom of the Emperor.” A dry little laugh. “Not this time.”

  “If it would make it easier for you, I could absent myself while the discussion–”

  “Nonsense! I want to use you to counter them.”

  “I haven’t any ideas how to–”

  “I’ll scent out the issues; you advise me on answers. Division of labor, nothing could be simpler.”

  “Um.” Demerzel had said confidently, “If he believes you have the psychohistorical answer, he will follow you eagerly and that will make you a good First Minister.” Here, in such august surroundings, that seemed quite unlikely.

  “We will have to evade these opponents, maneuver against them.”

  “I have no idea how to do that.”

  “Of course you do not! I do. But you see the Empire and all its history as one unfurling scroll. You have the theory.”

  Cleon relished ruling. Hari felt in his bones that he did not. As First Minister, his word could determine the fate of millions. That had daunted even Demerzel.

  “There is still the Zeroth law,” Demerzel had said just before they parted for the last time. It placed the well-being of humanity as a whole above that of any single human. The First law then read, A robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm, unless this would violate the Zeroth Law. Fair enough, but how was Hari to carry out a job which not even Demerzel could do? Hari realized that he had been silent for too long, and that Cleon was waiting. What could he say?

  “Um, who opposes me?”

  “Several factions united behind Betan Lamurk.”

  “What’s his objection?”

  To his surprise, the Emperor laughed heartily. “That you aren’t Betan Lamurk.”

  “You can’t simply–”

  “Overrule the Council? Offer Lamurk a deal? Buy him off?”

  “I didn’t mean to imply, sire, that you would stoop to–”

  “Of course I would ‘stoop,’ as you put it. The difficulty lies with Lamurk himself. His price to allow you in as First Minister would be too high.”

  “Some high position?”

  “That, and some estates, perhaps an entire Zone.”

  Turning an entire Zone of the Galaxy over to a single man...” High stakes.”

  Cleon sighed. “We are not as rich, these days. In the reign of Fletch the Furious, he bartered whole Zones simply for seats on the Council.”

  “Your supporters, the Royalists, they can’t outmaneuver Lamurk?”

  “You really must study current politics more, Seldon. Though I suppose you’re so steeped in history, all this seems a bit trivial?”

  Actually, Hari thought, he was steeped in mathematics. Dors supplied the history he needed, or Yugo. “I will do so. So the Royalists–”

  “Have lost the Dahlites, so they cannot muster a majority coalition.”

  “The Dahlites are that powerful?”

  “They have an argument popular with a broad audience, plus a large population.”

  “I did not know they were so strong. My own close assistant, Yugo”

  “I know, a Dahlite. Watch him.”

  Hari blinked. “Yugo is a strong Dahlite, true. But he is loyal, a fine, intuitive mathist. But how did you–”

  “Background check.” Cleon waved his hand in airy dismissal. “One must know a few things about a First Minister.”

  Hari disliked being under an Imperial microscope, but he kept his face blank. “Yugo is loyal to me.”

  “I know the story, how you uplifted him from hard labor, bypassing the Civil Service filters. Very noble of you. But I cannot overlook the fact that the Dahlites have a ready audience for their fevered outpourings. They threaten to alter the representation of Sectors in the High Council, even in the Lower Council. So” Cleon jabbed a finger “–watch him.”

  “Yes, sire.” Cleon was getting steamed up about nothing, as far as Yugo was concerned, but no point in arguing.

  “You will have to be as circumspect as the Emperor’
s wife during this, ah, transitional period.”

  Hari recalled the ancient saying, that above all the Emperor’s wife (or wives, depending upon the era) must keep her skirts clean, no matter what muck she walks above. The analogy was used even when the Emperor proved to be homosexual, or even when a woman held the Imperial Palace. “Yes, sire. Uh, ‘transitional’...?”

  Cleon looked off in a distracted way at the towering, shadowy art forms looming around them. By now Hari understood that this pointed to the crux of why he had been summoned. “Your appointment will take a while, as the High Council fidgets. So I shall seek your advice...”

  “Without giving me the power.”

  “Well, yes.”

  Hari felt no disappointment. “So I can stay in my office at Streeling?”

  “I suppose it would seem forward if you came here.”

  “Good. Now, about those Specials–”

  “They must remain with you. Trantor is more dangerous than a professor knows.”

  Hari sighed. “Yes, sire.”

  Cleon lounged back, his airchair folding itself about him elaborately. “Now I would like your advice on this Renegatum matter.”

  “Renegatum?”

  For the first time, Hari saw Cleon show surprise. “You have not followed the case? It is everywhere!”

  “I am a bit out of the main stream, sire.”

  “The Renegatum–the Society of Renegades. They kill and destroy.”

  “For what?”

  “For the pleasure of destruction!” Cleon slapped his chair angrily and it responded by massaging him, apparently a standard answer. “The latest of their members to ‘demonstrate their contempt for society’ is a woman named Kutonin. She invaded the Imperial Galleries, torch-melted art many millennia old, and killed two guards. Then she peacefully turned herself over to the officers who arrived.”

  “You shall have her executed?”

  “Of course. Court decided she was guilty quickly enough–she confessed.”

  “Readily?”

  “Immediately.”

  Confession under the subtle ministrations of the Imperials was legendary. Breaking the flesh was easy enough; the Imperials broke the suspect’s psyche, as well. “So sentence can be set by you, it being a high crime against the Imperium.”