by Isaac Asimov
“Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced,” Cleon said airily.
“Well put, sire.”
“You like it? That fellow Draius gave it to me. It has a ring, doesn’t it? True, too. Perhaps I’ll–” He broke off and said to the air, “Transcription officer! Give that line about magic to the Presepth for general distribution.”
Cleon sat back. “They’re always after me for ‘Imperial wisdom.’ A bother!”
A faint musical note announced Betan Lamurk. Hari stiffened at first sight of the man, but Lamurk had eyes only for the Emperor as he went smoothly through a litany of court ritual. As a prime member of the High Council he had to recite some time-honored and empty phrases, bow with a curious swoop, and never avert his gaze from the Emperor. That done, he could relax.
“Professor Seldon! So good to meet again.”
Hari shook hands in the formal manner. “Sorry about that little dustup. I really didn’t know the 3D was there.”
“No matter. One can’t help what the media make of things.”
“My Seldon gave me excellent advice about the Moron Decree,” Cleon said. He went on, his delight deepening the twist of Lamurk’s mouth.
Cleon led them to luxuriant chairs that popped out of the walls. Hari found himself swept immediately into a detailed discussion of Council matters. Resolutions, measures of appropriation, abstracts of proposed legislation. This stuff had been flowing through Hari’s office, as well. He had dutifully set his autosec to text–analyzing it, breaking the sea of jargon down into Galactic and smoothing out the connections. This got him through the first hour. Most of the material he had ignored, tipping piles of to-be-scanned documents into his recycler when nobody was looking.
The arcane workings of the High Council were not in principle difficult to follow–they were just boring. As Lamurk deftly conferred with the Emperor, Hari watched them as he would watch a bodyball game: a curious practice, no doubt fascinating in a narrow sort of way.
That the Council set general standards and directions, while below them mere legal mavens worked out the details and passed legislation, did not change his bemused disinterest. People spent their lives doing such things!
For tactics he cared little. Even mankind did not matter. On the Galactic chessboard the pieces were the phenomena of humanity, the rules of the game were the laws of psychohistory. The player on the other side was hidden, perhaps did not exist.
Lamurk needed an opposite player, a rival. Subtly, Hari saw that he was the inevitable foe.
Lamurk’s career had aimed him for the First Ministership and he meant to get it. At every turn Lamurk curried favor with the Emperor and waved away Hari’s points, of which there were few.
He did not directly counter Lamurk; the man was a master. He kept quiet, confining himself to an occasional expressively (he hoped) raised eyebrow. He had rarely regretted keeping quiet.
“This MacroMesh thing, do you favor it?” the Emperor abruptly asked Hari.
He barely remembered the idea. “It will alter the Galaxy considerably,” he stalled.
“Productively!” Lamurk slapped a table. “All the econ-indicators are falling. The MacroMesh will speed up info-flow, boost productivity.”
The Emperor’s mouth tilted with doubt. “I’m not altogether happy with the idea of linking so many, so easily.”
“Just think,” Lamurk pressed, “the new squeezers will let an ordinary person in, say, Eqquis Zone talk every day with a friend in the Far Reaches–or anywhere else.”
The Emperor nodded uncertainly. “Hari? What do you think?”
“I have doubts as well.”
Lamurk waved dismissively. “Failure of nerve.”
“Increased communication may worsen the Empire’s crisis.”
Lamurk’s mouth twisted derisively. “Nonsense. Contrary to every good executive rule.”
“The Empire isn’t ruled–” Hari made a half-bow to the Emperor “–alas, it’s let run.”
“More nonsense. We in the High Council–”
“Hear him out!” Cleon said. “He does not talk very much.”
Hari smiled. “Many people are grateful for that, sire.”
“No oblique answers, now. What does your psychohistory tell you about how the Empire runs?”
“It is millions of castles, webbed by’ bridges.”
“Castles?” Cleon’s famous nose rose skeptically.
“Planets. They have local concerns and run themselves as they like. The Empire doesn’t trouble itself over such details, unless a world begins making aggressive trouble.”
“True enough, and as it should be,” Cleon said. “Ah–and your bridges are the wormholes.”
“Exactly, sire.” Hari deliberately avoided looking at Lamurk and focused on the Emperor, while sketching in his vision.
Planets could have any number of lesser duchies, with disputes and wars and “microstructure” galore. The psychohistorical equations showed that none of that mattered.
What did matter was that physical resources could not be shared among indefinitely large numbers of people. Each solar system was a finite store of goods, and in the end, that meant local hierarchies to control access.
Wormholes could carry rather little mass, because the holes were seldom more than ten meters across. Massive hyperspace ships carried heavy cargoes, but they were slower and cumbersome. They distorted space-time, contracting it fore and expanding it aft, moving at super-light speeds in the Galaxy’s frame but not in its own. Trade among most stellar systems was constrained to light, compact, expensive items. Spices, fashions, technology–not bulky raw materials.
Wormholes could accommodate modulated light beams far more easily. The wormhole curvature refracted beams through to receivers at the other mouth. Data flowed freely, knitting together the Galaxy.
And information was the opposite of mass. Data could be moved, compressed, and leaked readily through copies. It was infinitely shareable. It blossomed like flowers in eternal spring, for as information was applied to a problem, the resulting solution was new information. And it was cheap, meaning that it took few mass resources to acquire it. Its preferred medium was light, quite literally–the laser beam.
“That provided enough communication to make an Empire. But the odds of a native of the Puissant Zone ever voyaging to the Zaqulot Zone–or even to the next star, since by wormhole they are equivalent trips–were tiny,” Hari said.
“So every one of your ‘castles’ kept itself isolated–except for information flow,” Cleon said, absorbed.
“But now the MacroMesh will increase the information transfer rate a thousand-fold, using these ‘squeezers’ that compress information.”
Cleon pursed his lips, puzzled. “Why is that bad?”
“It’s not,” Lamurk said. “Better data makes for better decisions, everybody knows that.”
“Not necessarily. Human life is a voyage on a sea of meaning, not a net of information. What will most people get from a close, personal flow of data? Detached, foreign logic. Uprooted details.”
“We can run things better!” Lamurk insisted. Cleon held up a finger and Lamurk choked off his next words.
Hari hesitated. Lamurk had a point, indeed.
There were mathematical relationships between technology, capital accumulation, labor, but the most important driver proved to be knowledge. About half the Empire’s economic growth came from the increase in the quality of information, as embodied in better machines and improved skills, leading to efficiency.
That was where the Empire had faltered. The innovative thrust of the sciences had slowly faltered. The Imperial universities produced fine engineers, but no inventors. Great scholars, but few true scientists. That factored into the other tides of time. But something other than data starvation had made that happen, and as yet, Hari did not know the cause.
But Hari saw the Emperor wavering, and pressed on. “Many on the High Council see the MacroMesh as an instru
ment of control. Let me point out a few facts well known to you, sire.”
Hari was in his favorite mode, a one-on-one lecture. Cleon leaned forward, eyes narrowed. Hari spun him a tale.
To get between worlds A and B, he said, one might have to take a dozen wormhole jumps–the Worm Nest was an astrophysical subway system with many transfers.
Each worm mouth imposed added fees and charges on every shipment. Control of an entire trade route yielded the maximum profit. The struggle for control was unending, often violent. From the viewpoint of economics, politics, and “historical momentum”–which meant a sort of imposed inertia on events–a local empire which controlled a whole constellation of nodes should be solid, enduring.
Not so. Time and again, regional satrapies went toes-up. It seemed natural to squeeze every worm passage for the maximum fee, by coordinating every worm mouth to optimize traffic. But that degree of control made people restive. In elaborately controlling the system, information flowed only from managers to wage slaves, with little feedback.
Extensive regulation did not deliver the best benefits. Instead, it yielded “short blanket economies”–when the collective shoulders got cold, the blanket got pulled up to cover them, and so the feet froze. Over-control failed.
“So the MacroMesh, if it lets the High Council really ‘run things,’ could decrease economic vitality.”
Lamurk smiled patronizingly. “A bunch of abstract theory, sire. Now, you listen to an old hand who’s been on the Council a good long time now...”
Hari attended to Lamurk’s famous balm and wondered why he was bothering with this. He had to admit that trading ideas with the Emperor had a certain quality of casual, almost sensual, power. Watching a man who could destroy a world with a gesture had a decided adrenaline edge.
But he didn’t really belong here, either by talent or drive. Trotting out his own views was amusing; every professor secretly thinks that what the world needs is a good, solid lecture–from him, of course.
But in this game, the pawns were real. The Moron Decree had unnerved him, even though he saw nothing morally wrong with it.
Lives hung in the balance here, among the finery. And not just the lives of others. He had to remind himself that this beaming, confident Lamurk across from him was the obvious source of the patch-weapon which had nearly killed him, just hours before.
3.
He entered their apartment and went straight to the kitchen. He punched in commands on the autoserver and then went to the range and began to heat up some oil. While it warmed he cut up onions and garlic and put them in to brown. His beer arrived and he opened one, not bothering with a glass.
“Something’s happened,” Dors said.
“We had a fine little chat. I eyed Lamurk, he eyed me.”
“That’s not why your shoulders are hunched up.”
“Um. Betrayed by my expressive body.”
So he told her about the possible assassination attempt.
After she had calmed down, she said tightly, “You also heard about the smoke artist?”
“At that reception? He made the big cloud that looked like me?”
“He died today.”
“How?”
“Looks like an accident.”
“Too bad–he was funny.”
“Too funny. He made the cartoon of Lamurk, remember? Made Lamurk look like a blowhard. It was the hit of the reception.”
Hari blinked. “You don’t...”
“Quite orderly, both of you in one day.”
“So it could be Lamurk....”
Dors said grimly, “My dear Hari, always thinking in terms of probabilities.”
After his audience with Cleon, Hari had sat through a strict talk by the head of palace security. His Specials squad was doubled. More midget-flyers for forward perimeter warning. Oh, yes, and he was not to walk close to any walls.
This last bit had made Hari chuckle, which did not improve the palace staffs attitude. Worse, Hari knew that he still had baggage to unpack. How to keep them from sniffing out Dors’ true nature?
The autoserver rang. He sat and forked up dark meat and onions and then opened another bottle of the cold beer and held it in one hand while he ate with the other.
“A hard day’s work,” Dors said.
“I always eat heartily after narrowly averting death. It’s an old family tradition.”
“I see.”
“Cleon ended up by commenting on the impasse in the High Council. Until that’s resolved, no vote on the First Minister can occur.”
“So you and Lamurk are still butting heads.”
“He’s butting. Me, I’m dodging.”
“I will never leave your side again,” she said firmly.
“It’s a deal. Could you get me something more from the autoserver? Something warm and heavy and full of things that are bad for me?”
She went into the kitchen and he ate steadily and drank the beer and did not think about anything.
She brought back something steaming in a rich brown sauce. He ate it without asking what it was.
“You are an odd man, professor.”
“Things get to me a bit later than other people.”
“You learned how to delay thinking about them, reacting to them, until there was a time and a place.”
He blinked and drank some more beer. “Could be. Have to think about it.”
“You eagerly eat working-class food. And where did you learn this trick of deferring reactions?”
“Um. You tell me.”
“Helicon.”
He thought about that. “Urn, the working class. My father got into trouble and there were plenty of hard times. About the only break I got as a boy was not getting brain fever. We couldn’t have afforded any hospital time.”
“I see. Financial trouble, I remember you saying.”
“Financial and then people muscling him to sell his land. He didn’t want to. So he mortgaged more and planted more crops and followed his best judgment. Every time chance played out against him, Dad got right back up and went at it again. That worked for a while because he did know farming. But then there was a big market fluctuation and he got caught and lost everything.” He was speaking quickly as he ate, and he didn’t know why but it felt right.
“I see. That was why he was doing that dangerous job–”
“Which killed him, yes.”
“I see. And you dealt with that. Submerged it to help your mother. learned in the hard times that followed to reserve your reactions for a moment when it was all right to let it go.”
“If you say ‘I see’ again, I won’t let you watch later when I take a shower.”
She smiled, but then the same penetrating cast came over her face. “You fit some well-defined parameters. Men who are contained. They control themselves by letting very little in. They do not show a great deal or talk too much.”
“Except to their woman.” He had stopped eating.
“You have little time for small talk–people at Streeling comment on that–yet you speak freely with me.”
“I try not to blather.”
“Being male is complicated.”
“So is being female, though you’ve mastered it beautifully.”
“I’ll take that as a rather formal compliment.”
“And so it was. Just plain being human is just plain hard.”
“So I am finding. You... learned all this on Helicon.”
“I learned to deal with essentials.”
“Also to hate fluctuations. They can kill you.”
He took a swig of the beer, still cold and biting. “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
“Why didn’t you say all this in the first place?”
“I didn’t know it in the first place.”
“A corollary, then: If you commit yourself to a woman you give away as much of yourself as you can, inside that enclosed space.”
“The volume between the two of us.’
“A geome
tric analogy is as good as any.” The tip of her tongue made her lower lip bulge out slightly, as it always did when she pondered a point. “And you commit yourself wholly to averting the price life exacts.”
“The price of... fluctuations?”
“If you can predict, you can avoid. Correct. Manage.”
“This is awfully analytic.”
“I’ve skipped over the hard parts, but they will be on the homework assignment.”
“Usually these kinds of talk use phrases like ‘optimally consolidated self.’ I’ve been waiting for the jargon to come trotting out.” He had finished the bowl and felt much better.
“Food is one of the life-affirming experiences.”
“So that’s why I do it.”
“Now you’re making fun of me.”
“No, just working out the implications of the theory. I liked the part about hating unpredictability and fluctuations because they hurt people.”
“So can Empires, if they fall.”
“Right.” He finished the beer and thought about having another. Any more would dull him a little. He would prefer another way to take from him the edge he still felt.
“Big appetite.” She smiled.
“You have no idea. And the prospect of death can stimulate more than one kind of appetite. Let’s go back to that part about the homework assignment.”
“You have something in mind.”
He grinned. “You have no idea.”
4.
He savored his work all the more, since he had less time for it.
Hari sat in his darkened office, absolutely still, watching the 3D numerics evolve like luminous fogs in the air before him.
Empire scholars had known the root basics of psychohistory for millennia. In ancient times, pedants had charted the twenty-six stable and meta-stable social systems. There were plenty of devolved planets to study, fallen into barbarism–like the Porcos and their Raging Rituals, the Lizzies and their GynoGoverns.
He watched the familiar patterns form, as his simulation stepped through centuries of Galactic evolution. Some social systems proved stable only on small scales.
In the air hung the ranks of whole worlds, caught in stable Zones: Primitive Socialism; FemoPastoralism; Macho Tribalism. These were the “strong at tractors” of human sociology, islands in the chaos sea.
