by Isaac Asimov
The guide nodded wisely, unperturbed, and added, “Also, it does give them something to contribute to. That must be a consolation.”
The protocol team had, all planned out for him, an orbit through the vast reception. Meet X, greet Y, bow to Z.
“Say nothing about the Judena Zone crisis,” an aide insisted. This was easy, since he had never heard of it.
The appetite-enhancers were excellent, the food that followed even better (or seemed so, which was the point of the enhancers), and he took a stim offered by a gorgeous woman.
“You could get through this entire evening just nodding and smiling and agreeing with people,” Dors said after the first half hour.
“It’s tempting to do just that,” Hari whispered as they followed the protocol lieutenant to the next bunch of Zonal figures. The air in the vast, foggy dome was freighted with negotiations advanced and bargains struck.
The Emperor arrived with full pomp. He would pay the traditional hour’s tribute, then by ancient custom leave before anyone else was permitted to. Hari wondered if the Emperor ever wanted to linger in the middle of an interesting conversation. Cleon was well schooled in emperorhood, though, so the issue probably never came up. Cleon greeted Hari effusively, kissed Dors’ hand, and then seemed to lose interest in them within two minutes, moving on with his entourage to another circle of expectant faces.
Hari’s next group proved different. Not the usual mix of diplomats, aristos, and anxious brownclad assistants, his lieutenant told him, but high figures. “People with punch,” the man whispered.
A large, muscular man was holding forth at the center of a circle, a dozen faces raptly following his every word. The protocol lieutenant tried to whisk them past, but Hari stopped her. “That’s...”
“Betan Lamurk, sir.”
“Knows how to hold a crowd.”
“Indeed, sir. Would you like a formal introduction?”
“No, just let me listen.”
It was always a good idea to size up an opponent before he knew he was being watched. Hari’s father had taught him that trick, just before his first matheletic competition. Such techniques had not managed to save his father, but they worked in the milder groves of academe.
Black hair invaded his broad brow like a pincer attack, two pointed wedges reaching down to nearly the end of his eyebrows. His hooded eyes were widely spaced and blazed intently from a rigging of mirth wrinkles. A slender nose seemed to point to his proudest feature, a mouth assembled from varying parts. The lower lip curled in full, impudent humor. The upper, thin and muscular, curled downward in a curve that verged on a sneer. A viewer would know the upper lip could overrule the lower at any moment, shifting mood abruptly–a disquieting effect which could not have been bettered if he had designed it himself.
Hari realized quickly that, of course, Lamurk had.
Lamurk was discussing some detail of interZonal trade in the Orion spiral arm, a hot issue before the High Council at the moment. Hari cared nothing about trade, except as a variable in stochastic equations, so he simply watched the man’s manner.
To underline a point Lamurk would raise his hands over his head, fingers open, voice rising. Then, his point made, his voice evened out and he lowered them to chest height, held precisely side by side. As his well-modulated voice became deeper and more reflective, he moved the hands apart. Then–voice rising again–his hands soared to head level and windmilled one around the other, the subject now complex, the listener thereby commanded to pay close attention.
He kept close eye contact with the whole audience, a piercing gaze sweeping the circle. A last point, a quick touch of humor, grin flashing, sure of himself–a pause for the next question.
He finished his point with, “–and for some of us, ‘Pax Imperium’ looks more like ‘Tax Imperium,’ eh?” Then he saw Hari. A quick furrowing of his brow, then, “Academician Seldon! Welcome! I’d been wondering when I was going to get to meet you.”
“Don’t let me interrupt your, ah, lecture.”
This provoked some titters and Hari saw that to accuse a member of the High Council of pontificating was a mild social jab. “I found it fascinating.”
“Pretty humdrum stuff, I’m afraid, compared to you mathists,” Lamurk said cordially.
“I am afraid my mathematics is even more dry than Zonal trade.”
More titters, though this time Hari could not quite see why.
“I just try to separate out the factions,” Lamurk said genially. “People treat money like it is a religion.”
This gained him some agreeing laughter. Hari said, “Fortunately, there are no sects in geometry.”
“We’re just trying to get the best deal for the whole Empire, Academician.”
“The best is the enemy of the good, I’d imagine.”
“I suppose then, you’ll be applying mathematical logic to our problems on the Council?” Lamurk’s voice remained friendly, but his eyes took on a veiled character. “Assuming you gain a ministership?”
“Alas, so far as the laws of mathematics are sharp and certain, they do not refer to reality. So far as they refer to reality, they are not certain.”
Lamurk glanced at the crowd, which had grown considerably. Dors grasped Hari’s hand and he realized from her squeeze that this had somehow turned into something important. He could not see why, but there was no time to size up the situation.
Lamurk said, “Then this psychohistory thing I hear about, it’s not useful?”
“Not to you, sir,” Hari said.
Lamurk’s eyes narrowed, but his affable grin remained. “Too tough for us?”
“Not ready for use, I’m afraid. I don’t have the logic of it yet.”
Lamurk chuckled, beamed at the still growing crowd, and said jovially, “A logical thinker!–what a refreshing contrast with the real world.”
General laughter. Hari tried to think of something to say. He saw one of his bodyguards block a man nearby, inspect something in the man’s suit, then let him go.
“Y’see, Academician, on the High Council we can’t be spending our time on theory.” Lamurk paused for effect, as though making a campaign speech. “We’ve got to be just... and sometimes, folks, we’ve got to be hard.”
Hari raised an eyebrow. “My father used to say, ‘It’s a hard man who’s only just, and a sad man who’s only wise.” ‘
A few ooohs in the crowd told him he had scored a hit. Lamurk’s eyes confirmed the cut.
“Well, we do try on the Council, we do. No doubt we can use some help from the learned quarters of the Empire. I’LL have to read one of your books, Academician.” He shot a look with raised eyebrows at the crowd. “Assuming I can.”
Hari shrugged. “I will send you my monograph on transfinite geometric calculus.”
“Impressive title,” Lamurk said, eyes playing to the audience.
“It’s the same with books as with men–a very small number play great parts; the rest are lost in the multitude.”
“And which would you rather be?” Lamurk shot back.
“Among the multitudes. At least I wouldn’t have to attend so many receptions.”
This got a big laugh, surprising Hari. Lamurk said, “Well, I’m sure the Emperor won’t tire you out with too much socializing. But you’ll get invited everywhere. You’ve got a sharp tongue on you, Academician.”
“My father had another saying, too. ‘Wit is like a razor. Razors are more likely to cut those who use them when they’ve lost their edge.” ‘
His father had also told him that in a public trade of barbs, the one who lost temper first lost the exchange. He had not recalled that until this instant. Hari remembered too late that Lamurk was known for his humor in High Council meetings. Probably scripted for him; certainly he displayed none here.
A quick tightening of the cheeks spread into a bloodless white line of lip. Lamurk’s features twisted into an expression of distaste–not a long way to go, for most of them–and he gave an ugly, wet la
ugh.
The crowd stood absolutely silent. Something had happened.
“Ah, there are other people who would like to meet the Academician,” Hari’s lieutenant said, sliding neatly into the growing, awkward silence.
Hari shook hands, murmured meaningless pleasantries, and let himself be whisked away.
5.
He had another stim to calm himself. Somehow he was more jittery afterward than during the social collision. Lamurk had given Hari a cold, angry stare as they parted.
“I’ll keep track of him,” Dors said. “You just enjoy your fame.”
To Hari this was a flat impossibility, but he tried. Seldom did one see such a variety of people, and he calmed himself by lapsing into a habitual role: polite observer. It was not as though the usual social chitchat demanded much concentration. A warm smile would do most of the work for him here.
The party was a microcosm of Trantorian society. In spare moments, Hari watched the social orders interact.
Cleon’s grandfather had reinstated many Ruellian traditions, and one of those customs required that members of all five classes be present at any grand Imperial function. Cleon seemed especially keen on this practice, as if it would raise his popularity among the masses. Hari kept his own doubts private.
First and obvious came the gentry–the inherited aristocracy. Cleon himself stood at the apex of a pyramid of rank that descended from the Imperium to mighty Quadrant Dukes and Spiral Arm Princes, past Life Peers, all the way down to the local barons Hari used to know back on Helicon.
Working in the fields, he had seen them pompously scudding overhead. Each governed a domain no larger than they could cross by flitter in a day. To a member of the gentry, life was busy with the Great Game–a ceaseless campaign to advance the fortunes of one’s noble house, arranging greater status for your family line through political alliances, or marriages for your many children.
Hari snorted in derision, masking it by taking another stim. He had studied anthropological reports from a thousand Fallen Worlds–those that had devolved in isolation, reverting to cruder ways of life. He knew this pyramid-shaped order to be among the most natural and enduring human social patterns. Even when a planet was reduced to simple agriculture and hand-forged metals, the same triangular format endured. People liked rank and order.
The endless competition of gentry families had been the first and easiest psychohistorological system Hari ever modeled. He had first combined basic game theory and kin selection. Then, in a moment of inspiration, he inserted them into the equations that described sand grains skidding down the slopes of a dune. That correctly described sudden transitions: social slippages.
So it was with the rise and fall of noble family lines. Long, smooth eras–then abrupt shifts.
He watched the crowd, picking out those in the second aristocracy, supposedly equal to the first: the meritocracy.
As department chairman at a major Imperial university, Hari was himself a lord in that hierarchy–a pyramid of achievement rather than of birth. Meritocrats had entirely different obsessions than the gentry’s constant dynastic bickerings. In fact, few in Hari’s class bothered to breed at all, so busy were they in their chosen fields. Gentry jostled for the top ranks of Imperial government, while second tier meritocrats saw themselves wielding the real power.
If only Cleon had such a role in mind for me, Hari thought. A vice minister position, or an advisory post. He could have managed that for a time, or else bungled it and got himself forced out of office. Either way, he would be safe back at Streeling within a year or two. They don’t execute vice ministers... not for incompetence, at least.
Nor did a vice minister feel the worst burden of rule-bearing responsibility for the lives of a quadrillion human beings.
Dors saw him drifting along in his own thoughts. Under her gentle urging, he sampled tasty savories and made small talk.
The gentry could be distinguished by their ostentatiously fashionable clothing, while the economists, generals and other meritocrats tended to wear the formal garb of their professions.
So he was making a political statement, after all, Hari realized. In wearing professor’s robes, he emphasized that there might be a non-gentry First Minister for the first time in forty years.
Not that he minded making that statement. Hari just wished he had done it on purpose.
Despite the official Ruellian ethos, the remaining three social classes seemed nearly invisible at the party.
The factotums wore somber costumes of brown or gray, with expressions to match. They seldom spoke on their own. Usually they hovered at the elbow of some aristo, supplying facts and even figures that the more gaily-dressed guests used in their arguments. Aristos generally were innumerate, unable to do simple addition. That was for machines.
Hari found that he actually had to concentrate in order to pick the fourth class, the Greys, out of the crowd. He watched them move, like finches among peacocks.
Yet their kind made up more than a sixth of Trantor’s population. Drawn from every planet in the Empire by the all-seeing Civil Service tests, they came to the Capital World, served their time like bachelor monks, and left again for outworld postings. Flowing through Trantor like water in the gloomy cisterns, the Greys were seldom thought of, as honest and commonplace and dull as the metal walls.
That might have been his life, he realized. It was the way out of the fields for many of the brighter children he had known at Helicon. Except that Hari had been plucked right over the bureaucracy, sent straight to academe by the time he could solve a mere eighth-order tensor defoliation, at age ten.
Ruellianism preached that “citizen” was the highest social class of all. In theory, even the Emperor shared sovereignty with common men and women.
But at a party like this, the most numerous Galactic group was represented mostly by the servants carrying food and drink around the hall, even more invisible than the dour bureaucrats. The majority of Trantor’s population, the laborers and mechanics and shopkeepers–the denizens of the 800 Sectors–had no station at a gathering like this. They lay outside the Ruellian ranking.
As for the Artes, that final social order was not meant to be invisible. Musicians and jugglers strolled among the guests, the smallest, most flamboyant class.
Even more dashing was an air-sculptor Hari spotted across the vast chamber, when Dors pointed him out. Hari had heard of the new art form. The “statues” were of colored smoke that the artist exhaled in rapid puffs. Shapes of eerie, ghostlike complexity floated among the bemused guests. Some figures clearly made fun of the courtly gentry, as puffy caricatures of their ostentatious clothes and poses.
To Hari’s eye, the smoke figures seemed entrancing... until they started drifting apart into tatters, without substance or predictability.
“It’s all the mode,” he heard one onlooker remark. “I hear the artist comes straight from Sark!”
“The Renaissance world?” another asked, wide-eyed. “Isn’t that a little daring? Who invited him?”
“The Emperor himself, it’s said.”
Hari frowned. Sark, where those personality simulations came from. “Renaissance world,” he muttered irritably, knowing now what he disliked about the smoke shapes: their ephemeral nature. Their intended destiny, to dissolve into chaos.
As he watched, the air-sculptor blew a satirical tableau. The first figure formed of crimson smoke, and he did not recognize it until Dors elbowed him and laughed. “It’s you!”
He clamped his gaping mouth shut, unsure how to handle the social nuances. A second cloud of coiling blue streamers formed a clear picture of Lamurk, eyebrows knotted in fury. The foggy figures hovered in confrontation, Hari smiling, Lamurk scowling.
And Lamurk looked the fool, with bulging eyes and pouting lips.
“Time for a graceful exit,” Hari’s lieutenant whispered. Hari was only too glad to agree.
When they got home, he was sure that there had been a bit extra in the stim he was
handed, something that freed his tongue. Certainly it was not the slow-spoken, reflective Seldon who had traded jabs with Lamurk. He would have to watch that.
Dors simply shook her head. “It was you. Just a portion of you that doesn’t get out to play very much.”
6.
“Parties are supposed to cheer people up,” Yugo said, sliding a cup of kaff across Hari’s smooth mahogany desktop.
“Not this one,” Hari said.
“All that luxury, powerful people, beautiful women, witty hangers-on–I think I could have stayed awake.”
“That’s what depresses me, thinking back over it. All that power! And nobody there seems to care about our decline.”
“Isn’t there some old saying about–”
“Fiddling while Roma burns. Dors knew it, of course. She says it’s from pre-Empire, about a Zone with pretensions of grandeur. ‘All worms lead to Roma’ is another one.”
“Never heard of this Roma.”
“Me either, but pomposity springs forth eternal. It looks comic in retrospect.”
Yugo moved restlessly around Hari’s office. “So they don’t care?”
“To them it’s just backdrop for their power games.” Already the Empire had worlds, Zones, and even whole arcs of spiral arms descended into squalor. Still worse, in a way, was a steady slide into garish amusements, even vulgarity. The media swarmed with the stuff. The new “renaissance” styles from worlds like Sark were popular.
To Hari the best of the Empire was its strands of restraint, of subtlety and discretion in manners, finesse and charm, intelligence, talent, and even glamour. Helicon had been crude and rural, but it knew the difference between silk and swine.
“What do the policy types say?” Yugo sat halfway on Hari’s desk, avoiding the control functions implanted beneath a woody veneer. He had come in with the kaff as a pretext, fishing for gossip about the exalted. Hari smiled to himself; people relished some aspects of hierarchy, however much they griped about it.
“They’re hoping some of the ‘moral rebirth’ movements–like revised Ruellianism, say–will take hold. Put spine into the Zones, one of them said.”
