by Isaac Asimov
“I see.”
“Humans are tougher–and smarter–than anybody. We’re here, they aren’t.”
“Who says?”
“Standard knowledge, ever since the sociotheorist, Kampfbel–”
“I’m sure you’re right,” she said quickly.
Something in her voice made him hesitate–he loved a good argument–but by then they were slipping through the excruciating tight fit of the cube. The edges glowed like a lemony Euclidean construction–and then they popped into an orbit above a black hole.
He watched the enormous energy-harvesting disks glow with fermenting scarlets and virulent purples. The Empire had stationed great conduits of magnetic field around the hole. These sucked and drew in interstellar dust clouds. The dark cyclones narrowed toward the brilliant accretion disk around the hole. Radiation from the friction and infalling was in turn captured by vast grids and reflectors. The crop of raw photon energy itself became trapped and flushed into the waiting maws of wormholes. These carried the flux to distant worlds in need of cutting lances of light, for the business of planet-shaping, world-raking, moon-carving.
But even amid this spectacle he could not forget the tone in Dors’ voice. She knew something he did not. He wondered...
Nature, some philosophers held, was itself only before humanity touched it. We did not then belong in the very idea of Nature, and so we could experience it only as it was disappearing. Our presence alone was enough to make Nature into something else, a compromised impersonation.
These ideas had unexpected implications. One world named Arcadia had been deliberately left with a mere caretaker population of humans, partly because it was difficult to reach. The nearest wormhole mouth was half a light-year away. An early emperor–so obscure his or her very name was lost–had decreed that the forests and plains of the benign planet be left “original.” But ten thousand years later, a recent report announced, some forests were not regenerating, and plains were giving way to scrubby brush.
Study showed that the caretakers had taken too much care. They had put out wild fires, suppressed species transfer. They had even held the weather nearly constant through adjustments in how much sunlight the ice poles reflected back into space.
They had tried to hold onto a static Arcadia, so the forest primeval was revealed as, in part, a human product. They had not understood cycles. He wondered how such an insight might fold into psychohistory....
Forget theory for the moment, he reminded himself. It was a fact that the Galaxy had seemed empty of high alien life-forms in the early, pre-Empire times. With so many fertile planets, did he truly believe that only humanity had emerged into intelligence?
Somehow, surveying the incomprehensible wealth of this lush, immense disk of stars... somehow, Hari could not believe it.
But what was the alternative?
8.
The Empire’s twenty-five million worlds supported an average of only four billion people per planet. Trantor had forty billion. A mere thousand light years from Galactic Center, it had seventeen wormhole mouths orbiting within its solar system–the highest density in the Galaxy. The Trantorian system had originally held only two, but a gargantuan technology of brute interstellar flight had tugged the rest there to make the nexus.
Each of the seventeen spawned occasional wild worms. One of these was Dors’ target.
But to reach it, they had to venture where few did.
“The Galactic Center is dangerous,” Dors said as they coasted toward the decisive wormhole mouth. They curved above a barren mining planet. “But necessary.”
“Trantor worries me more–” The jump cut him off
–and the spectacle silenced him.
The filaments were so large the eye could not take them in. They stretched fore and aft, shot through with immense luminous corridors and dusky lanes. These arches yawned over tens of light-years. Immense curves descended toward the white-hot True Center. There matter frothed and fumed and burst into dazzling fountains.
“The black hole,” he said simply.
The small black hole they had seen only an hour before had trapped a few stellar masses. At True Center, a million suns had died to feed gravity’s gullet.
The orderly arrays of radiance were thin, only a light-year across. Yet they sustained themselves along hundreds of light-years as they churned with change. Hari switched the polarized walls to see in different frequency ranges. Though hot and roiling in the visible, human spectrum, the radio revealed hidden intricacy. Threads laced among convoluted spindles. He had a powerful impression of layers, of labyrinthine order descending beyond his view, beyond simple understanding.
“Particle flux is high,” Dors said tensely. “And rising.”
“Where’s our junction?”
“I’m having trouble vector-fixing–ah! There.”
Hard acceleration rammed him back into his flowcouch. Dors took them diving down into a mottled pyramid-shaped wormhole.
This was an even rarer geometry. Hari had time to marvel at how accidents of the universal birth pang had shaped these serene geometries, like exhibits in some god’s Euclidean museum of the mind.
And then they plunged through, erasing the stunning views.
They popped out above the gray-brown mottled face of Trantor. A glinting disk of satellites, factories and habitats fanned out in the equatorial plane.
The wild worm they had used fizzed and glowed behind them. Dors took them swiftly toward the ramshackle, temporary wormyard. He said nothing, but felt her tense calculations. They nudged into a socket, seals sighed, his ears popped painfully.
Then they were out, arms and legs wooden from the cramped pencil ship. Hari coasted in zero-g toward the flex-lock. Dors glided ahead of him. She motioned him for silence as pressures pulsed in the lock. She peeled her skinsuit down, exposing her breasts.
A finger’s touch opened a seam below her left breast. She plucked a cylinder out. A weapon? She resealed and had her skinsuit back in place before the staging diaphragm began to open.
Beyond the opening iris Hari saw Imperial uniforms.
He crouched against the lock wall, ready to launch himself backward to avoid capture–but the situation looked hopeless.
The Imperials looked grim, determined. They clasped pistols. Dors coasted between Hari and the squad. She tossed the cylinder at them–
–a pressure wave knocked him back against the wall. His ears clogged. The squad was an expanding cloud of … debris.
“What–?”
“Shaped implosion,” Dors called. “Move!”
The injured men had been slammed into each other. How anything could shape a pressure wave so compactly he could not imagine. In any case he had no time. They shot past the tangled cloud of men. Weapons drifted uselessly.
A figure erupted from the far diaphragm. A man in a brown work sheath, middle-sized, unarmed. Hari shouted a warning. Dors showed no reaction.
The man flicked his wrist and a snout appeared from his sleeve. Dors still coasted toward him.
Hari snagged a handhold and veered to his right.
“Stay still!” the man yelled.
Hari froze, dangling by one hand. The man fired–and a silvery bolt fried past Hari.
He turned and saw that one of the Imperials had recovered his weapon. The silver line scratched fire across the Imperial’s arm. He screamed. His weapon tumbled away.
“Let’s go. I have the rest of the way secured,” the man in the work sheath called.
Dors followed him without a word. Hari pushed off and caught up to them as the diaphragm irised for them.
“You return to Trantor at the crucial moment,” the man said.
“You–who–”
The man smiled. “I have changed myself. You do not recognize your old friend, R. Daneel?”
Rendezvous
R. DANEEL GAZED at Dors without expression, letting his body go slack.
Dors said, “We must defend him against Lamurk. You could
reappear, come out in favor of him. As former First Minister, your public endorsement and support–”
“I cannot reappear as Eto Demerzel, ex-important person. That would compromise my other tasks.”
“But Hari has to have–”
“As well, you mistake my power as Demerzel. I am now history. Lamurk will care nothing about me, for I have no legions to command.”
Dors fumed silently. “But you must–”
“I shall move more of us into Lamurk’s inner circle.”
“It’s too late to infiltrate.”
Daneel activated his expressive programs and smiled. “I planted several of our kind decades ago. They shall all be in position soon.”
“You’re using... us?”
“I must. Though your implication is correct: we are few.”
“I need help protecting him, too.”
“Quite right.” He produced a thick disk, this time from a compartment beneath his armpit. “This will identify the Lamurk agents for you.”
She looked doubtful. “How? This looks like a chem snooper.”
“I have agents of my own. They can in turn label Lamurk’s agents. This device will pick up their tags. Other encoded messages will ride on the marking signal.”
“And Lamurk’s specialists won’t pick up the tags?”
“This device uses methods lost for six millennia. Install it in your right arm, at station cut six. Interface with apertures two and five.”
“How will I–”
“Specs and expertise will flow to your long-term memory upon connection.”
She installed the device as he watched. His grave presence made silence natural. Olivaw never wasted a movement or made idle conversation. Finally, intricacies done, she sighed and said, “He’s interested in those simulations, the ones which escaped.”
“He is following the best line of attack for psychohistory.”
“There’s this tiktok problem, too. Do you understand–”
“The social taboos against simulations inevitably break down during cultural resurgences,” Daneel said.
“So tiktoks–?”
“They are inherently destabilizing if they become too developed. After all, we cannot condone a new generation of robots, or the rediscovery of the positronic process.”
“There are signs in the historical record that this has happened before.”
“You are an insightful scholar.”
“There were only a few traces, but I suspect–”
“Suspect no further. You are correct. I could not expunge every scrap of data.”
“You disguised such events?”
“And much else.”
“Why? As an historian–”
“I had to. Humanity is best served by Imperial stability. Tiktoks, sims–these accompany movements such as this ‘New Renaissance,’ feeding the fire.”
“What’s to be done?”
“I do not know. Matters are slipping beyond my ability to predict.”
She frowned. “How do you predict?”
“In the first millennia of the Empire, our kind developed the simple theory I have mentioned before. Useful, but crude. It led me to expect the reemergence of these simulations as a side effect of the Sarkian ‘Renaissance’ and its turmoil.”
“Does Hari understand this?”
“Hari’s psychohistory is vastly superior to our models. He lacks certain vital historical data, however. When it is eventually included, he will be able to accurately anticipate the Empire’s devolution.”
“You do not mean ‘evolution’?”
“Quite. That is a major reason why we devote such resources to helping Hari.”
“He is crucial.”
“Of course. Why do you think I assigned you to him?”
“Does it matter that I’ve fallen in love with him?”
“No. But it helps.”
“Helps me? Or him?”
Daneel smiled thinly. “Both, I should hope. But mostly, it helps me.”
Part 8
The Eternal Equations
THE GENERAL THEORY OF PSYCHOHLSTORY
PART 8A: MATHEMATICAL ASPECTS AS THE CRISIS DEEPENS, THE DEEP SYSTEMIC LEARNING LOOPS FALTER. THE SYSTEM DRIFTS OUT OF TUNE. SUCH DRIFTS, PARTICULARLY IF DIFFUSIVE, CALL FOR FUNDAMENTAL SYSTEMIC RESTRUCTURING. THIS IS TERMED THE “MACRO DECISION PHASE” IN WHICH THE LOOPS MUST FIND FRESH CONFIGURINGS IN THE N-DIMENSIONAL LANDSCAPE.
“… ALL VISUALIZATIONS CAN BE UNDERSTOOD IN THERMODYNAMIC TERMS. THE STATISTICAL MECHANICS INVOLVED ARE NOT THOSE OF PARTICLES AND COLLISIONS, AS IN A GAS, BUT IN THE LANGUAGE OF SOCIAL MACRO-GROUPS, ACTING THROUGH “COLLISIONS” WITH OTHER SUCH MACRO-GROUPS. SUCH IMPACTS PRODUCE MUCH HUMAN DEBRIS...
–ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA
1.
HARI SELDON STOOD alone in the lift, thinking.
The door slid open. A woman asked if this elevator was going up or down. Distracted, he answered, “Yes.” Her surprised look told him that somehow his reply was off target. Only after the door closed on her puzzled stare did he see that she meant which way, not if.
He was in the habit of making precise distinctions; the world was not.
He walked into his office, still barely aware of his surroundings, and Cleon’s 3D blossomed in the air before he could sit down. The Emperor awaited no filter programs.
“I was so happy to hear you had returned from holiday!” Cleon beamed.
“Pleased, sire.” What did he want?
Hari decided not to tell him all that had transpired. Daneel had stressed secrecy. Only this morning, after a zigzag route down from the wormyards, had Hari let his presence be known even to the Imperial Specials.
“I fear you arrive at a difficult time.” Cleon scowled. “Lamurk is moving for a vote in the High Council on the First Ministership.”
“How many votes can he muster?”
“Enough that I cannot ignore the Council. I will be forced to appoint him despite my own likes.”
“I am sorry for that, sire.” In fact, his heart leaped.
“I have maneuvered against him, but...” An elaborate sigh. Cleon chewed at his ample lower lip. Had the man gained weight again? Or were Hari’s perceptions altered by his time of shortened diet on Panucopia? Most Trantorians looked pudgy to him now. “Then, too, is this irritating matter of Sark and its confounded New Renaissance. The muddle grows. Could this spread to other worlds in their Zone? Would those throw in with them? You have studied this?”
“In detail.”
“Using psychohistory?”
Hari gave way to his gut instinct. “Unrest will grow there.”
“You’re sure?”
He wasn’t, but–” I suggest you move against it.”
“Lamurk favors Sark. He says it will bring new prosperity.”
“He wants to ride this discord into office.”
“Overt opposition from me at this delicate time would be... unpolitic.”
“Even though he might be behind the attempts on my life?”
“Alas, there is no proof of that. As ever, several factions would benefit were you to.,.” Cleon coughed uncomfortably.
“Withdraw–involuntarily?”
Cleon’s mouth worked uneasily. “An Emperor is father to a perpetually unruly family.”
If even the Emperor were tip-toeing around Lamurk, matters were indeed bad. “Couldn’t you position squadrons for quick use should the opportunity arise?”
Clean nodded. “I shall. But if the High Council votes for Lamurk, I shall be powerless to move against so prominent and, well, exciting a world as Sark.”
“I believe strife will spread throughout Sark’s entire Zone.”
“Truly? What would you advise me to do against Lamurk?”
“I have no political skills, sire. You knew that.”
“Nonsense. You have psychohistory!”
Hari was still uncomfortable owning up to the theory, even with Cleon. If it were ever to be useful, word of psychohistory c
ould not be widespread, or else everyone would use it. Or try to.
Cleon went on, “And your solution to the terrorist problem–it is working well. We just executed Moron One Hundred.”
Hari shuddered, thinking of the lives obliterated by a mere passing idea of his. “A... a small issue, surely, sire.”
“Then turn your calculations to the Dahlite Sector matter, Hari. They are restive. Everyone is, these days.”
“And the Zones of Dahlite persuasion throughout the Galaxy?”
“They back the local Dahlites in the Councils. It’s about this representation question. The plan we follow on Trantor will be mirrored throughout the Galaxy. Indeed, in the votes of whole Zones.”
“Well, if most people think–”
“Ah, my dear Hari, you still have a mathist’s myopia. History is determined not by what people think, but by what they feel.”
Startled–for this remark struck him as true–Hari could only say, “I see, sire.”
“We–you and I, Hari–must decide this issue.”
“I’ll work on the decision, sire.”
How he had come to hate the very word! Decide had the same root as suicide and homicide. Decisions felt like little killings. Somebody lost.
Hari now knew why he was not cut out for these matters. If his skin was too thin, he would have too ready empathy with others, with their arguments and sentiments. Then he would not make decisions which he knew could only be approximately right and would cause some pain.
On the other hand, he had to steel himself against the personal need to be liked. In a natural politician, that would lead to a posture that said he cared about others, when in fact he cared what they thought of him–because being liked was what counted, far down in the shadowy psyche. It also came in handy for staying in office.
