Asimov’s Future History Volume 15

by Isaac Asimov

  The man paced angrily. “Well, you just be damn sure all the ways out are covered. Those gardens are all connected.”

  Another pause. “Got the sniffers on? Cameras? Good. You guys mess this up, I’ll...” He let his voice trail off into a growl.

  He gave the room one last look and unlocked the magnetics. A man with a blood-soaked sleeve stood outside, just within view.

  “You’re drippin’, stupid,” the knife-carrier said. “Hold that arm up high and get away from here. Send a cleanup crew, too.”

  The other man said, “Where’d he–”

  “Knew I shouldn’t have you on this one. Goddamn amateur.” The knife man left at a run.

  All this had seemed to take forever. Seconds ticked by as Hari held onto a ceiling tile with all his strength.

  In darkness he was lying across support struts directly over a soothing booth. He could see down through a narrow slit. From below, he hoped, the slit was the only sign that the ceiling had been pushed up, a square dislocated. He could see the scuff marks on the top of the booth, where he had climbed up and knocked the ceiling tile out of its clamps.

  Now he had to hold the thing in place. His hands were starting to ache from gripping it.

  Below he saw a leg and foot enter the refresher, turn, walk out of view. Someone else, a backup team?

  If the tile slipped away from him, anyone below would notice the noise, see the dark slit widen. Maybe it would get away from him completely and fall.

  He closed his eyes and concentrated on his fingers, willing them to grasp. They were numb now. Getting worse. Starting to tremble.

  The tile was heavy, triple-layered for acoustic privacy. It was getting away from him, he could feel it. Slipping. It was going to

  The feet below walked out and then came the swish of the door closing. Its lock clicked.

  He did not will it, but his fingers let the tile slip. It smacked the floor loudly. Hari froze, listening.

  No click of the door lock reopening. Just the soft slur of the air circulators.

  So he was safe for a while. Safe in a trap.

  Nobody knew he was here. Only a thorough search would bring any trustworthy Imperials this far from the Lyceum area.

  And why should they? Nobody would notice that he was missing right away. Even then, they would probably think he had simply gotten fed up with the Council and gone home. He had said as much to the Minister for Sector Correlation.

  Which meant the assassins could quietly search for hours. The knife carrier had sounded systematic, determined. He would inevitably think of checking back here, starting over on the trail. There were probably scent-snoops they could muster. And by now the array of cameras throughout the palace would be looking for him.

  Luckily there were none in the refresher. He climbed down, nearly slipping on the curved top of the soothing booth. Getting the heavy ceiling tile back up into place took agility and strength. He was puffing by the time he replaced it above the refresher. He lay along the struts and got the tile secured again.

  He lay in the darkness and thought. Dors’ palace map popped up in his eye on command, its colors and details more vivid in the gloom. Of course it showed nothing as utilitarian as this crawl space. He could see he was deeply embedded in the Lyceum’s fringe areas. Perhaps his best bet would be to walk boldly out of this refresher. If he could reach a crowd...

  If. He did not like leaving his fate to chance. That included the strategy of lying here, hoping they did not come back with snoopers that could sense him up here.

  Anyway, he knew that he could not simply do nothing. That was not in his nature. When patience was needed, fine–but waiting did not necessarily improve his odds.

  He looked off into the murky space. Gloom stretched away. He could move around up here. But which way?

  Dors’ map told him that the Gardens of Respite Cormed an artful tangle around the refresher area. No doubt the competent assassins would have ushered away any potential witnesses outside the window of this refresher room.

  If he could somehow get far enough into the gardens...

  Hari realized he was thinking in two dimensions. He could reach more public areas by moving up through a few layers of the palace. Outside this refresher room, down the hallway, Dors’ map showed a lift shaft.

  He got his bearings and peered in that direction. He had no idea how an e-lift fit into a building. The map simply showed a rectangular enclosure with a lift symbol. But a burning fear made his muscles clench and fret.

  He started crawling that way, not because he knew what to do, but because he didn’t. Upright cerami-form studs provided support and he had to be careful to not knock ceiling tiles out of their mounts. He slipped and jammed a knee into one and it gave threateningly, then popped back up. Dim threads of phosphor glow seeped between the tiles. Dust tickled his nostrils and coated his lips. He was getting dirty with the grime of millennia.

  Up ahead a blue gleam came from roughly where the lift should be. As he drew closer the going got harder because ducts, pipes, optical conduits, and cross-joints thickened, converging on the hallway. Long minutes passed while he threaded his way among them. He touched a pipe that scorched his arm, a searing jolt so surprising he almost cried out. He smelled burnt flesh.

  The blue radiance leaked around the edges of a panel. Suddenly it flared, then died again as he edged closer. A sharp crackling told him that an e-cell had just passed in the lift. He could not tell whether it was going up or down.

  The panel was ceramo-steel, about a meter on a side, with electrical ribbons attached at all four sides. He did not know in detail how an e-lift worked, only that it charged the carrier compartment and then handed the weight off among a steady wave of electrodynamic fields.

  He got his feet around and kicked at the panel. It held but dented. He kicked again and it loosened. He grunted with the effort of a third, a fourth–the panel popped out and fell away.

  Hari brushed aside the thick electrical ribbons and poked his head into the shaft. It was dark, lit only by a dull radiance along a thin vertical phosphor which tapered away into obscurity, both above and below.

  The palace was more than a kilometer thick in this ancient section. Mechanical elevators using cables could not serve even small passenger lifts like this one, over heights of a kilometer. Charge coupling from the shaft walls to the e-cell handled the dynamics with ease. The technology was aged and reliable. This shaft must be at least ten millennia old, and smelled like it.

  He did not like the prospect before him. The map told him that three layers above him were spacious public rooms used to process supplicants to the Imperium. He would be in safe company there. Below were eight Lyceum layers, which he must assume were dangerous. Easier, certainly, to climb down–but also farther.

  It would not be that tricky, he reassured himself. In the shadowy shaft he saw regular electrostatic emitters sunken into the walls. He found a strand of electrical ribbon and poked into one. No sparks, no discharge. That checked with his sketchy knowledge; the emitters went on only when a cell passed. They were deep enough to get his feet halfway into.

  He listened carefully. No sound. E-cells were nearly silent, but these ancient ones were also slow. Was the risk of climbing into the shaft that great?

  He wondered if he was doing the right thing, and then a voice far behind him said loudly, “Hey! Hey there!”

  He glanced back. A head stuck up through an open panel. He could not make out features, but he did not try. He was already rolling awkwardly over the last cross-beam beside the shaft wall, twisting, thrusting himself out into the air. He felt downward with his feet, found an emitter hole, and stuck his foot into it.

  No discharge. From memory he felt for another hole. His foot went in. He slipped over the casing, holding on tight with his hands.

  His feet dangled above black nothingness. Vertigo. Sudden bile rushed in his throat.

  Shouting from above. Several voices, male. Probably someone had seen the sc
rapes on top of the soothing booth. The light from the open ceiling tile was some help now, sending pale radiance into the shaft.

  He swallowed and the bile eased.

  Can’t think about that now. lust go on.

  To his right he saw another regularly spaced emitter hole. He got his foot into it and worked his way around to the next face of the shaft. He started climbing. It was surprisingly easy because the holes were closely spaced and about the right size for his hands and feet. Hari went up swiftly, driven by the scuffling sounds behind him.

  He passed the doors of the next level. Beside them was a flat-plate emergency switch. He could open the doors, but onto what?

  Several minutes had passed since he saw the head. Word was undoubtedly spreading and they might have gotten up here, using stairs or another lift.

  He decided to climb higher. Deep gulps of the dusty air threatened to make him cough, but he fought it down. His hands grasped the emitters and found them solid, easily held, while his legs did the real work of getting him up the sheer face.

  He came to the second layer and made the same argument: only one more to go. That was when he heard the whisper. Faint, but gathering.

  A cool downward brush of air made him look up. Something was blotting out the dim line of blue phosphor, coming down fast.

  A clear crackling got louder. He could not possibly reach the above set of doors before it got here.

  Hari froze. He could scramble back down, but he did not think he could reach the next level below in time. The black mass of the e-cell swooped down, swelling huge and fast, terrifying him.

  A quick snap of blue arcs, a swoosh of air–and it stopped. At the level above.

  The sound buffers cut off even the whisk of the doors opening. Hari yelled, but there was no response. He started down, feet seeking the holes, puffing.

  A sharp crackling from above. The e-cell descended again.

  He could see the undercarriage swooping down. Thin blue-white arcs shot from the emitter holes as it passed them, adding charge. Hari clambered down with a sinking dread.

  An idea flashed across his mind, quick intuition. Wind fluttered his hair. He made himself study the undercarriage. Four rectangular clasps hung below. They were metal and would hold charge.

  The e-cell was nearly upon him. No more time to think. Hari leaped toward the nearest clasp as the massive weight fell toward him.

  He grabbed the thick rim of the clasp. A sharp, buzzing jolt snapped his eyes wide with pain. Crackling current coursed through him. His hands and forearms seized tight in electro-muscular shock. That kept him secured to the thick metal while his legs kicked involuntarily.

  He had acquired some of the charge of the e-cell. Now the electrodynamic fields of the shaft played across his body, supporting him. His arms did not have to carry all his weight.

  His hands and arms ached. Quick, sharp pains shot through the trembling muscles. But they held.

  But currents were coursing through his chest–his heart. Muscles convulsed across his upper body. He was just another circuit element.

  He let go with his left hand. That stopped current flowing, but he still held charge. The sharp pains in his chest muscles eased, but they still ached.

  Levels flashed by Hari’s dazed eyes. At least, he thought, he was getting away from his pursuers.

  His right arm tired and he switched to his left. He told himself that hanging by one arm at a time probably did not tire them any faster than using two arms. He didn’t believe it, but he wanted to.

  But how was he going to get out of this shaft? The e-cell stopped again. Hari peered up at the shadowy mass looming like a black ceiling. Levels were far apart in this archaic part of the palace. It would take several minutes to climb down to the one below.

  The e-cell could ratchet up and down the length of this shaft for a long time before getting a call from the lowest level. Even then, he had no idea how the shaft terminated. He could be crushed against a safety buffer.

  So his clever leap had in fact bought him no escape. He was trapped here in a particularly ingenious way, but still trapped.

  If he did manage to slap one of the emergency door openers as they passed, he would again feel a jolt of current as charge leaped from him to the shaft walls. His muscles would freeze in agony. How could he then hold on to anything?

  The e-cell rose two floors, descended five, stopped, descended again. Hari switched hands again and tried to think.

  His arms were tiring. The jolt of charge had strained them, and now surges of current through the shell of the e-cell made them jump with twinges of pain.

  He had not acquired precisely the right charge to assure neutral buoyancy, so there was some residual downward pull on his arms. Like silken fingers, tingling electrostatic waves washed over him. He could feel weak surges of current from the e-cell, adjusting charge to offset gravity. He thought of Dors and how he had gotten here, and it all surged past him in a strange, dreamlike rush.

  He shook his head. He had to think.

  Currents passed through him as though he were part of the conducting shell. The passengers inside felt nothing, for the net charge remained on the outside, each electron getting as far away from its repulsing neighbors as possible.

  The passengers inside.

  He switched hands again. They both hurt a lot now. Then he swung himself back and forth like a pendulum, into longer oscillations. On the fifth swing he kicked hard against the undercarriage. A solid thunk–it was massive. He smacked the hard metal several more times and then hung, listening. Ignoring the pain in his arm.

  No response. He yelled hoarsely. Probably anything he did was inaudible inside.

  These ancient e-cells were ornately decorated inside, he remembered, with an atmosphere of velvet comfort. Who would notice small sounds from below?

  The e-cell was moving again, upward. He flexed his arms and swung his feet aimlessly above the shadowy abyss. It was an odd sensation as the fields sustained him, playing across his skin. His hair stood on end all over his body. That was when the realization struck him.

  He had approximately the same buoyant charge as the e-cell–so he did not need the cell at all anymore.

  A pleasant theory, anyway. Did he have the courage to try it?

  He let go of the clasp rim. He fell. But slowly, slowly. A breeze swept by him as he drifted down a level, then two. Both arms shouted in relief.

  Letting go, he still kept his charge. The shaft fields wrapped around him, absorbing his momentum, as though he were an e-cell himself.

  But an imperfect one. With the constant feedback between an e-cell and the shaft walls, he would not be exactly buoyant for long.

  Above him, the real e-cell ascended. He looked up and saw it depart, revealing more of the blue phosphor line tapering far overhead.

  He rose a bit, stopped, began to fall again. The shaft was trying to compensate both for its e-cell and for him, an intruder charge. The feedback control program was unable to solve so complicated a problem.

  Quite soon the limited control system would probably decide that the e-cell was its business and he was not. It would stop the e-cell, secure it on a level–and dispense with him.

  Hari felt himself slow, pause–then fall again. Rivulets of charge raced along his skin. Electrons sizzled from his hair. The air around him seemed elastic, alive with electric fields. His skin jerked in fiery spasms, especially over his head and along his lower legs–where charge would accumulate most.

  He slowed again. In the dim phosphor glow he saw a level coming up from below. The walls rippled with charges and he felt a spongy sidewise pressure from them.

  Maybe he could use that. He stretched to the side, curling his legs up and thrusting against the rubbery stretch of the electrostatic fields.

  He stroked awkwardly against the cottony resistance. He was picking up speed, falling like a feather. He stretched out to snag an emission hole–and a blue-white streamer shot into his hand. It convulsed and he gasp
ed with the sudden pain. His entire lower arm and hand went numb.

  He inhaled to clear his suddenly watery vision. The wall was going by faster. A level was coming up and he was hanging just a meter away from the shaft wall. He flailed like a bad swimmer against the pliant electrostatic fields.

  The tops of the doors went by. He kicked at the emergency door opener, missed, kicked again–and caught it. The doors began to wheeze open. He twisted and gripped the threshold with his left hand as it went by.

  Another jolt through the hand. The fingers clamped down. He swung about the rigid arm and slammed into the wall. Another electrical discharge coursed through him. Smaller, but it made his right leg tighten up. In agony, he got his right hand onto the threshold and hung on.

  His full weight had returned and now he hung limply against the wall. His left foot found an emission hole, propped him up. He pulled upward slightly and found he had no more strength. Pain shot through his protesting muscles.

  Shakily he focused. His eyes were barely above the threshold. Distant shouts. Shoes in formal Imperial blues were running toward him.

  Hold... hold on... A woman in a Thurban Guards uniform reached him and knelt, eyebrows knitted. “Sir, what are you–?”

  “Call... Specials...” he croaked. “Tell them I’ve... dropped in.”

  Part 4

  A Sense Of Self

  SIMULATION SPACES–... DECIDED PERSONALITY PROBLEMS COULD ARISE. ANY SIMULATION WHICH KNEW ITS ORIGINS WAS FORCEFULLY REMINDED THAT IT WAS NOT THE ORIGINAL, BUT A FOG OF DIGITS. ALL THAT GAVE IT A SENSE OF SELF WAS CONTINUITY, THE ENDLESS STEPPING FORWARD OF PATTERN. IN ACTUAL PEOPLE, THE “REAL ALGORITHM” COMPUTES ITSELF BY FIRING SYNAPSES, RINGING NERVES, CONTINUITY FROM THE DANCE OF CAUSE AND EFFECT.

  THIS LED TO A CRITICAL PROBLEM IN THE REPRESENTATION OF REAL MINDS–A SUBJECT UNDER A DEEP (THOUGH ERODING) TABOO, IN THE CLOSING ERA OF THE EMPIRE. THE SIMULATIONS THEMSELVES DID MUCH OF THE WORK ON THIS DEEP PROBLEM, WITH MUCH SIMULATED PAIN. TO BE “THEMSELVES” THEY HAD TO EXPERIENCE LIFE STORIES WHICH GUIDED THEM, SO THAT THEY SAW THEMSELVES AS THE MOVING POINT AT THE END OF A LONG, COMPLEX LINE DRAWN BY THEIR TOTAL SELVES, AS EVOLVED FORWARD. THEY HAD TO RECOLLECT THEMSELVES, INNER AND OUTER DRAMAS ALIKE, TO SHAPE THE DEEP NARRATIVE THAT MADE AN IDENTITY. ONLY IN SIMULATIONS DERIVED FROM PERSONALITIES WHICH HAD A FIRM PHILOSOPHICAL GROUNDING DID THIS PROVE ULTIMATELY POSSIBLE...