Asimov’s Future History Volume 15

by Isaac Asimov

  “Then I must do something.”

  Cleon arched an eyebrow. “I am not without resources...”

  “Pardon, sire. I must fight my own battles.”

  “The Sark prediction, now that was daring.”

  “I did not check it with you first, but I thought–”

  “No no, Hari! Excellent! But–will it work?”

  “It is only a probability, sire. But it was the only stick I had handy to beat Lamurk with.”

  “I thought science yielded certainty.”

  “Only death does that, my emperor.”

  The invitation from the Academic Potentate seemed odd, but Hari went anyway. The embossed sheet, with its elaborate salutations, came “freighted with nuance,” as Hari’s protocol officer put it.

  This audience was in one of the stranger Sectors. Even buried in layers of artifice, many Sectors of Trantor displayed an odd biophilia.

  Here in Arcadia Sector, expensive homes perched above a view of an interior lake or broad field. Many sported trees arranged in artfully random bunches, with a clear preference for those with spreading crowns, many branches projecting upward and outward from thick trunks, displaying luxuriant bunches of small leaves. Balconies they rimmed with potted shrubs.

  Hari walked through these, seeing them through the lens of Panucopia. It was as though people announced through their choices their primeval origins. Was early humanity, like pans, more secure in marginal terrain–where vistas let them search for food while keeping an eye out for enemies? Frail, without claws or sharp teeth, they might have needed a quick retreat into trees or water.

  Similarly, studies showed that some phobias were Galaxy-wide. People who had never seen the images nonetheless reacted with startled fear to holos of spiders, snakes, wolves, sharp drops, heavy masses overhead. None displayed phobias against more recent threats to their lives: knives, guns, electrical sockets, fast cars.

  All this had to factor somehow into psychohistory.

  “No tracers here, sir,” the Specials’ captain said. “Little hard to keep track, though.”

  Hari smiled. The captain suffered from a common Trantorian malady: squashed perspectives. Here in the open, natives would mistake distant, large objects for nearby, small ones. Even Hari had a touch of it. On Panucopia, he at first mistook herds of grazers for rats close at hand.

  By now Hari had learned to look through the pomp and glory of rich settings, the crowds of servants, the finery. He ruminated on his psychohistorical research as he followed the protocol officer and did not fully come back to the real world until he sat across from the Academic Potentate.

  She spoke ornately, “Please do accept my humble offering,” accompanied delicate, translucent cups of steaming grasswater.

  He remembered being irked by this woman and the high academics he met that evening. It all seemed so long ago.

  “You will note the aroma is that of ripe oobalong fruit. This is my personal choice among the splendid grasswaters of the world Calafia. It reflects the high esteem in which I hold those who now grace my simple domicile with such illustrious presence.”

  Hari had to lower his head in what he hoped was a respectful gesture, to hide his grin. There followed more high-flown phrases about the medical benefits of grasswater, ranging from relief of digestion problems to repair of basal cellular injuries.

  Her chins quivered. “You must need succor in such trying times, Academician.”

  “Mostly I need time to get my work done.”

  “Perhaps you would favor a healthy portion of the black lichen meat? It is the finest, harvested from the flanks of the steep peaks of Ambrose.”

  “Next time, certainly.”

  “It is hoped fervently that this lowly personage had perhaps been of small service to a most worthy and revered figure of our time... one who perhaps is overstressed?”

  A steely edge to her voice put him on guard.

  “Could madam get to the point?”

  “Very well. Your wife? She is a complex lady.”

  He tried to show nothing in his face. “And?”

  “I wonder how your prospects in the High Council would fare if I revealed her true nature?”

  Hari’s heart sank. This he had not anticipated.

  “Blackmail, is it?”

  “Such a crude word!”

  “Such a crude act.”

  Hari sat and listened to her intricate analysis of how Dors’ identity as a robot would undermine his candidacy. All quite true

  “And you speak for knowledge, for science?” he said bitterly.

  “I am acting in the best interests of my constituents,” she said blandly. “You are a mathist, a theorist. You would be the first academic to reign as First Minister in many decades. We do not think you will rule well. Your failure will cast shadows upon us meritocrats, one and all.”

  Hari bristled. “Who says?”

  “Our considered opinion. You are impractical. Unwilling to make hard decisions. All our psychers agree with that diagnosis.”

  “Psychers?” Hari snorted derisively. Despite calling his theory psychohistory, he knew there was no good model of the individual human personality.

  “I would make a far better candidate, just for exampie.”

  “Some candidate. You’re not even loyal to your kind.”

  “There you have it! You’re unable to rise above your origins.”

  “And the Empire has become the war of all against all.”

  Science and mathematics was a high achievement of Imperial civilization, but to Hari’s mind, it had few heroes. Most good science came from bright minds at play. From men and women able to turn an elegant insight, to find beguiling tricks in arcane matters, deft architects of prevailing opinion. Play, even intellectual play, was fun, and that was good in its own right. But Hari’s heroes were those who stuck it out against hard opposition, drove toward daunting goals, accepting pain and failure and keeping on anyway. Perhaps, like his father, they were testing their own character, as much as they were being part of the suave scientific culture.

  And which type was he?

  Time to raise the stakes.

  He stood, brushing aside the bowls with a clatter. “You’ll have my reply soon.”

  He stepped on a cup going out and shattered it.

  6.

  Voltaire shouted proudly, “I spent much of my career exiled for speaking Truth to Power. I’ll admit to some flaws in judgment, as when I fawned over Frederick the Great. Necessity shapes manners, I’ll remind you. I was courageous, yes–but snobbish, too.”

  [THOUGH A MATHEMATICAL REPRESENTATION]

  [YOU SHARE THE ANIMAL SPIRITS OF YOUR KIND]

  [STILL]

  “Of course!” Joan shouted in his defense.

  [YOUR KIND ARE THE WORST OF ALL VIVIFORMS]

  “Living things?” Joan frowned. “But they are of holy origin.”

  [YOUR KIND IS A PERNICIOUS BLEND]

  [A TERRIBLE MARRIAGE OF MECHANISM]

  [WITH YOUR BEAST URGE TO EXPAND]

  “You can see our inner structures as surely as we.” Voltaire swelled, popping with energies. “Probably better, I’ll venture. You must know that for us, consciousness reigns; it does not govern.”

  [PRIMITIVE AND AWKWARD]

  [TRUE]

  [BUT NOT THE CAUSE OF YOUR SIN]

  She and Voltaire were giants now, self-ballooned to stride across the simulated landscape. The alien fogs clung to their ankles. A proud way of showing their courage, perhaps, a bit full of self. Still, she was glad she had thought of it. These fogs held humanity in contempt. A show of force was useful, as she had found against the vile English several times.

  Voltaire said, “I held Power in contempt, usually, yet I’ll admit I was everlastingly hungry for it, too.”

  [THE SIGNATURE OF YOUR KIND]

  “So I am a contradiction! Humanity is a rope stretched between paradoxes.”

  [WE DO NOT FIND YOUR HUMANITY MORAL]

  “But
we–they–are!” Joan shouted down at the fog. Though thin compared with them, the fogs clung like glue and filled the valleys with cottony gum.

  [YOU DO NOT KNOW YOUR OWN HISTORY]

  “We are of history! “Voltaire boomed.

  [THE RECORDS HERE IN THE MATHEMATICAL SPACES]

  [ARE FALSE]

  “One can never be sure of being read right, you know.”

  Joan saw in Voltaire an anxiety barely concealed. Though their opponent used a voice cool and dispassionate, she too felt the insidious threat in its cast of words.

  Voltaire went on, as if to please a king in court, “A bit of historical example. I once saw in a churchyard in England, there to hail the bright Newton, a headstone, thus:

  ERECTED TO THE MEMORY

  of John McFarlane

  Drown’d in the Water of Leith

  BY A FEW AFFECTIONATE FRIENDS

  So you see, there can be mistakes of translation.” He lifted his elaborate courtier’s hat and made a sweeping bow. The hat’s plumed feather danced in a fresh wind. Joan saw that he was distracting the fog while trying to subtly blow it away.

  The fogs flashed orange lightning and swelled, enormous and purple. Thunderheads rose and towered above them.

  Voltaire showed only an arch scorn. She had to admire his gait as he whirled and confronted the gargantuan purple cloud-mountain. She remembered how he had waxed on about his dramatic triumphs, his legions of acclaimed plays, his popularity at court. As if to show off for her, he curled a lip into a sneer and invented a poem for the moment:

  “Big whorls have little whorls

  Which feed on their velocity,

  And little whorls have lesser whorls,

  And so on to viscosity.”

  The cloud hurled savage sheets of rain down upon them. Joan was instantly drenched and chilled to the bone. Voltaire’s glorious garb wilted. His face turned blue with cold.

  “Enough!” he cried. “Pity the poor woman at least.”

  “I need no pity!” Joan was genuinely outraged. “And you’ll not show weakness before the enemy legions.”

  He managed a jaunty smile. “I defer to the general of my heart.”

  [YOU LIVE ONLY AT OUR WILL]

  “Pray, do not spare us out of pity then,” Joan said.

  [YOU LIVE SOLELY BECAUSE ONE OF YOU]

  [SHOWED MORAL SELF]

  [TO ONE OF OUR LOWER FORMS]

  Joan was puzzled. “Who?”

  [YOU]

  Beside her materialized Garcon 213-ADM.

  “But this is surely a multiply-removed entity,” Voltaire snapped. “And a servant.”

  Joan patted Garcon. “A simulation of a machine?”

  [WE WERE ONCE OF MACHINE]

  [AND HAVE COME HERE TO DWELL]

  [IN NUMERICAL EMBODIMENT]

  “From where?” Joan asked.

  [ACROSS ALL THE TURNING SPIRAL DISK]

  “For–”

  [REMEMBER:]

  [PUNISHMENT DETERS BY LENDING CREDENCE TO THREAT]

  Voltaire asked, “So you said before. Taking the long view, eh? But what do you truly want now?”

  [WE TOO DESCEND FROM VIVIFORMS NOW EXTINGUISHED]

  [DO NOT IMAGINE WE ARE FREE OF THAT]

  Joan felt a horrible suspicion. She whispered, “Do not provoke it so! It might–”

  “I would know the truth. What do you want?”

  [REVENGE]

  7.

  “Ugh.” Marq curled his lip.

  Hari smiled. “When food gets scarce, table manners change.”

  “But this–”

  “Hey, we’re payin’,” Yugo said sardonically.

  The menu was exclusively pseudoffal, the latest stopgap in Trantor’s food crisis. This foodworks had the whole run, livers and kidneys and tripe made in pristine vats. Not the slightest hint of actual animal tissue involved. Still, the voice menu reassured them in warm feminine tones, every item carried the true dank, visceral aromas of the gut.

  “Can’t we get some decent mealmeat?” Marq asked irritably.

  “This has higher food value,” Yugo said. “And nobody’ll be lookin’ for us here.”

  Hari glanced around. They were behind a sound shield, but still, security was essential. Most of the tables in the restaurant were taken by his Specials, the rest by well dressed gentry class.

  “It’s fashionable, too,” he said affably. “You can brag about coming here.”

  “Brag after I gag?” Marq sniffed the air, wrinkled his nose.

  “All the nonconformists are doing it,” Hari said, but no one got the joke.

  “I’m a fugitive,” Marq whispered. “People are still trying to hang those Junin riots on me. Taking a big risk to come here.”

  “We shall make it worth your while,” Hari said. “I need a job done by someone outside the law.”

  “That, I am. Hungry, too.”

  The voice menu assured them that there were, as well whole meals–of pseudo-animal, vegetable or transmineral ingredients–boiled from within. “The newest foodie craze,” the menu gushed. “One bites into a firm shell and then ventures inward to a mellow, stewed interior of luxuriant implication.”

  Some items offered not mere flavor, aroma, and texture, but what the menu demurely described as “motility.” The featured item was a pile of red strands which did not just lie there limply in your mouth, but squirmed and wriggled “eagerly,” expressing its longing to be eaten.

  “You guys don’t need to torture me into collaboration.” Marq jutted his chin out, reminding Hari of a pan gesture used by Bigger.

  Hari chuckled and ordered a “gut sampler.” It was surprising how he could accommodate what would have revolted him only weeks before. When they had ordered, Hari put the deal on the table directly.

  Marq scowled. “Direct linkup? To the whole damned system?”

  “We want an interbridge to our psychohistorical equation system,” Yugo said.

  Marq blinked. “Full body link? That’s big capacity.”

  “We know it can be done,” Yugo pressed. “Just takes the tech–which you’ve got.”

  “Who says?” Marq’s eyes narrowed.

  Hari leaned forward earnestly. “Yugo infiltrated your systems.”

  “How’d you do that?”

  “Got some buddies to help,” Yugo said archly.

  “Dahlites, you mean,” Marq said hotly. “Your kind–”

  “Stop,” Hari said sternly. “No such talk here. This is a business proposition.”

  Marq peered at Hari. “You going to be First Minister?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I want a pardon as part of the deal. One for Sybyl, too.”

  Hari hated making uncertain promises, but–” Done.”

  Marq’s mouth tightened but he nodded. “Costs plenty, too. You got the money?”

  “Is the Emperor fat?” Yugo said.

  In principle the process was simple.

  Magnetic induction loops, tiny and superconducting, could map individual neurons in the brain. Interactive programs laid bare the intricacies of the visual cortex. Neuronal probes coupled the “subject nervous system” to a parallel constellation of purely digital “events.” Deeper still, ties formed with evolution’s kludgy tangle in the limbic system.

  As well, this technology could unleash new definitions of Genus Homo. But the age-old taboos against artificial intelligences of high order had kept the processes marginal. As well, nobody considered Homo Digital to be an equal manifestation to Natural Man.

  Hari knew all this, but his immersion on Panucopia–an allied technology–had taught him much.

  Two days after meeting Marq in the restaurant–which had been surprisingly good, and in the food crisis had cost him a month’s salary–Hari lay silent and slack in a tubular receptacle... and plunged into psychohistory.

  First he noticed that his right foot itched from toe to heel. Detailed twitches told him of instability in the population-driver terms. Must correct tha
t.

  He continued falling into a cosmos which yawned below.

  This was system-space, an infinite vault defined by the parameters of psychohistory. The complete expanse had twenty-eight dimensions. His nervous system could only see this in slices. With a conceptual shift, Hari could peer along several parameter-axes and see events unfold as geometric shapes.

  Down, down–into the entire history of the Empire.

  Social forms rose like peaks. These stable alps had arisen as the Empire grew, Basins churned between the mountain range of Feudal Forms. These were the chaos sinks,

  At the rim of simmering chaos lakes lay the crisis topozone. This was a no-man’s-land between regular, rigid landscapes and the stochastic morass.

  Imperial history unfolded as he cruised above the seething landscape. Seen this way, mistakes abounded in the early Empire.

  Philosophers had told humanity that they were animals of all sorts: political animals, feeling animals’ social animals, power-polarized animals, sick animals, machinelike animals, even rational ones. Over and over, erroneous theories of human nature yielded failed political systems. Many simply generalized from the basic human family and saw the State as either Mother Figure or Father Figure.

  Mommy States stressed support and comfort, often giving cradle-to-grave security–though only for a generation or two, when the expenses collapsed the economy.

  Daddy States featured a strict, competitive economy, with stem controls over behavior and private lives. Typically, Daddy States fell to periodic personal liberation movements and demands for Mommy State succor.

  Slowly, order emerged. Stability. Tens of millions of planets, weakly linked by wormholes and hyperships, found their many ways. Some crashed down into Feudal or Macho swamps. Usually technology eventually pulled them out of it.

  Planetary societies differed in their topologies. Plodding sorts dwelled far on the stable side. Wildly creative types could venture swiftly across the topozone, skate into true chaos, gather what they needed–though how they “knew” this was unclear.

  As centuries ticked on, a society could ski down the erratic slopes of the shifting landscape and shoot back across the topozone. Perhaps it would even slow and weave figure-8s on the stable, smooth plains of the plodder states... for a while.