by Isaac Asimov
“They have a sonic wall up?”
Hari nodded to the captain, who was pushing a broom nearby. Daneel’s words seemed to come through a blanket. “I do not like to expose us this way.”
Knots of Specials astutely deflected passersby so that none noticed the sonic bubble. Hari had to admire the masterly method; the Empire could still do some things expertly. “Matters are worse than even you imagine.”
“Your request, to provide moment-to-moment location data of Lamurk’s people–this could expose my agents inside the Lamurk network.”
“There’s no other way,” Hari said sharply. “I’ll leave to you tracking the right figures.”
“They must be incapacitated?”
“For the rest of the crisis.”
“Which crisis?” Daneel’s face wrenched into a grimace–then went blank. He had cut the connections.
“The tiktoks. Lamurk’s moves. A bit of blackmail, for spice. Sark. Take your pick. Oh, and aspects of the Mesh I’ll describe later.”
“You will force a predictable pattern on the Lamurk factions? How?”
“With a maneuver. I imagine your agents will be able to predict positions of some principals, including Lamurk himself, at that time.”
“What maneuver?”
“I will send a signal when it is about to transpire.”
“You jest with me,” Daneel said darkly. “And the other request, to eliminate Lamurk himself–”
“Choose your method. I shall choose mine.”
“I can do that, true. An application of the Zeroth Law.” Daneel paused, face slack, in high calculation mode. “My method will take five minutes of preparation at the site we choose, to bring off the effect.”
“Good enough. Just be sure your robots keep the leading Lamurkians well spotted, and the data flowing through Dors.”
“Tell me now!”
“And spoil the anticipation?”
“Hari, you must–”
“Only if you can be absolutely sure there will be no leaks.”
“Nothing is utterly certain–”
“Then we have free will, no? Or at least I do.” Hari felt an unfamiliar zest. To act–that gave a kind of freedom, too.
Though Daneel’s face showed nothing, his body language spoke of caution: his legs crossing, a hand touching his face. “I need some assurance that you fully understand the situation.”
Hari laughed. He had never done that in the solemn presence of Daneel. It felt like a liberation.
11.
Hari waited in the antechamber of the High Council. He could see the great bowl through transparent one-way walls.
The delegates chattered anxiously. These men and women in their formal pantaloons were plainly worried. Yet they set the fates of trillions of lives, of stars and spiral arms.
Even Trantor was baffling in its sheer size. Of course Trantor mirrored the entire Galaxy in its factions and ethnicities. Both the Empire and this planet had intricate connections, meaningless coincidences, random juxtapositions, sensitive dependencies. Both clearly extended beyond the Complexity Horizon of any person or computer.
People, confronting bewildering complexity, tend to find their saturation level. They master the easy connections, use local links and rules of thumb. These they push until they meet a wall of complexity too thick and high and hard to climb. So they stall. They go back to panlike modes. They gossip, consult, and finally, gamble.
The High Council was abuzz, at a cusp point. A new at tractor in the chaos could lure them into a new orbit. Now was the time to show that path. Or so said his intuition, sharpened on Panucopia.
… And after that, he told himself, he would get back to the problem of modeling the Empire...
“I do hope you know what you’re doing,” Cleon said, bustling in. His ceremonial cape enveloped him in scarlet and his plumed hat was a turquoise fountain. Hari suppressed a chuckle. He would never get used to high formal dress.
“I am happy that I can at least appear in my academic robes, sire.”
“And damned lucky you are. Nervous?”
Hari was surprised to find that he felt no tension at all, especially considering that at his previous appearance here, he had very nearly been assassinated. “No, sire.”
“I always contemplate a great, soothing work of art before such performances as this.” Cleon waved his hand and an entire wall of the antechamber filled with light.
It portrayed a classic theme of the Trantorian School: Fruit Devoured, from the definitive Betti Uktonia sequence. It showed a tomato being eaten first by caterpillars. Then praying mantises feasting upon the caterpillars. Finally, tarantulas and frogs chewing the mantises. A later Uktonia work, Child Consumption, began with rats giving birth. The babies then were caught and eaten by various predators, some quite large.
Hari knew the theory. All this had emerged from the growing conviction of Trantorians that the wild was an ugly place, violent and without meaning. Only in cities did order and true humanity prevail. Most Sectors had diets strong in disguised natural fodder. Now the tiktok rebellion made even that difficult.
“We’ve had to go nearly entirely to synthetic foods,” Cleon said, distracted. “Trantor is now fed by twenty agriworlds, an improvised lifeline using hyperships. Imagine! Not that the palace is affected, of course.”
“Some Sectors are starving,” Hari said. He wanted to tell Cleon of the many intertwined threads, but the Imperial escort arrived.
Faces, noise, lights, the vast curving bowl–
Hari listened to the echoing formalities as he took in the sheer gravity of the place. Many millennia old, walls encrusted with historical tablets, suffused with tradition and majesty...
And then he was up and speaking, with no memory of getting to the high podium at all. The full force of their regard washed over him. Part of him recognized a Pan-deep sensation: the thrill of being paid attention to. And it was exhilarating. Political types were natural addicts of it. But not one Hari Seldon, luckily. He took a deep breath and began.
“Let me address a thorn in our side: representation. This body favors less populous Sectors. Similarly, the Spiral Council favors less populous worlds. So the Dahlites, both here and in their Zones around the Galaxy, are discontented. Yet we must all pull together to confront the gathering crises: Sark, the tiktoks, unrest.”
He took a deep breath. “What can we do? All systems of representation contain biases. I submit to the Council a formal theorem, which I have proved, showing this fact. I recommend that you have it checked by mathists.”
He smiled dryly, remembering to sweep his gaze across all the audience. “Do not take a politician at his word, even if he knows a bit of math.” The laughter was pleasantly reassuring. “Every voting system has undesirable consequences and fault lines. The question is not whether we should be democratic but how. An open, experimental approach is entirely consistent with an unwavering commitment to democracy.”
“The Dahlites aren’t!” someone shouted. Murmurs of agreement.
“They are!” Hari countered immediately. “But we must bring them into our fold by listening to their grievances!”
Cheers, boos. Time for a reflective passage, he judged. “Of course, those who benefit from a particular scheme wrap themselves in the mantle of Democracy, spelled with a big D.”
Grumbles came from a gentry faction–predictably. “So do their opponents! History teaches us–” He paused to let a small ripple spread through the crowd, upturned faces speculating–was he going to at last speak of psychohistory?–only to dash their hopes by calmly continuing, “–that such mantles come in many fashions, and all have patches.
“We have many minorities, many spread among Sectors large and small. And in the entire Galactic spiral, Zones of varying weight. Such groups are never well depicted in our politics if we elect representatives strictly by majority vote in each Sector or Zone.”
“Should be happy with what is!” cried a prominent member.
> “I respectfully disagree. We must change–history demands it!”
Shouts, applause. Onward. “Therefore I propose a new rule. If a Sector has, say, six contested seats, then do not split the Sector into six districts. Instead, give each voter six votes. He or she can distribute votes among candidates–spreading them, or casting them all for one candidate. This way, a cohesive minority can capture a representative if they vote together.”
A curious silence. Hari gave weight to his last words. He had to get the time right here; Daneel had been clear. Though Hari still did not know just what was going to transpire.
“This scheme makes no reference to ethnic or other biases. Groups can profit only if they are truly united. Their followers must vote that way in the privacy of the polls. No demagogue can control that.
“If made First Minister, I shall impose this throughout the Great Spiral!”
There–right on the button. (An odd, ancient saying–what was a button?) He left the podium to sudden, thundering applause.
Hari had always felt that, as his mother always said, “If a man has any greatness in him, it comes to light not in a flamboyant hour but in the ledger of his daily work.” This was usually intoned when Hari had neglected his daily chores in favor of a math book.
Now he saw the reverse: greatness imposed from without.
In the grand reception rooms he felt himself whisked from knot to knot of sharp-eyed delegates, each with a question. All assumed that he would parley with them for their votes.
He deliberately did not. Instead, he spoke of the tiktoks, of Sark. And waited.
Cleon had departed, as custom required. The factions gathered eagerly around Hari.
“What policy for Sark?”
“Quarantine.”
“But chaos reigns there now!”
“It must bum out.”
“That is merciless! You pessimistically assume–”
“Sir, ‘pessimist’ is a term invented by optimists to describe realists.”
“You’re avoiding our Imperial duty, letting riot–”
“I have just come from Sark. Have you?”
By such flourishes he avoided most of the grubby business of soliciting votes. He continued to trail Lamurk, of course. Still, the High Council seemed to like his somewhat dispassionate Dahlite proposal more than Lamurk’s bombast.
And his hard line on Sark provoked respect. This surprised some, who had taken him for a soft academic. Yet his voice carried real emotion about Sark; Hari hated disorder, and he knew what Sark would bring to the Galaxy.
Of course, he was not so naive as to believe that a new system of representation could alter the fate of the Empire. But it could alter his fate....
Hari had assumed, despite mounting evidence to the contrary, that hard work and punishingly high standards are demanded of all grown men, that life is tough and unforgiving, that error and disgrace were irreparable. Imperial politics had seemed to be a counterexample, but he was beginning, as talk swirled all around him
Word came by Imperial messenger that Lamurk wished to speak with him.
“Where?” Hari whispered.
“Away, outside the palace.”
“Fine by me.”
And exactly what Daneel had predicted. Even Lamurk would not attempt a move again inside the palace, after the last one.
12.
On his way, he caught a comm-squirt.
A wall decoration near the palace sent a blip of compressed data into his wrist-sponder. As Hari waited in a vestibule for Lamurk he opened it.
Fifteen Lamurk aides and allies had been injured or killed. The images were immediate: a fall here, a lift crash there. All accumulated over the last few hours, when the confluence of the High Council made their probable locations known.
Hari thought about the lives lost. His responsibility, for he had assembled the components. The robots had targeted the victims without knowing what would follow. The moral weight fell... where?
The “accidents” were spread all over Trantor. Few would immediately notice the connections... except for
“Academician! Happy to see you,” Lamurk said, settling into place opposite Hari. Without so much as a nod they let slip the formality of a handshake.
“We seem at odds,” Hari said.
A pleasant, empty comment. He had several more in store and used them, eating up time. Apparently Lamurk had not yet heard that his allies were gone.
Daneel had said he needed five minutes to “bring off the effect,” whatever that meant.
He parried with Lamurk as more moments slipped by. He carefully used a nonaggressive body posture and mild tones to calm Lamurk; such skills he now understood, after the pans.
They were in a Council House near the palace, ringed by their guard parties. Lamurk had selected the room and its elaborate floral decorations. Usually it served as a lounge for representatives of rural-style Zones and so was lush with greenery. Unusually for Trantor, insects buzzed about, servicing the plants.
Daneel had something planned. But how could he possibly get anything in place at an arbitrary point? And elude the myriad sensors and snoopers?
Lamurk’s ostensible purpose was to confer on the tiktok crisis. Beneath this lurked the subtext of their rivalry for the First Ministership. Everyone knew that Lamurk would force a vote within days.
“We have evidence that something’s propagating viruses in the tiktoks,” Lamurk said.
“Undoubtedly,” Hari said. He waved away a buzzing insect.
“But it’s a funny one. My tech people say it’s like a little submind, not just a virus.”
“A whole disease.”
“Uh, yes. Mighty close to what they call ‘sentient sickness.” ‘
“I believe it to be a self-organized set of beliefs, not a simple digital disease.”
Lamurk looked surprised. “All this tiktok talk about the ‘moral imperative’ of not eating anything living, not even plants or yeasts–”
“Is sincerely felt.”
“Pretty damn strange.”
“You have no idea. Unless we stop it, we will have to convert Trantor to a wholly artificial diet.”
Lamurk frowned. “No grains, no faux-flesh?”
“And it will soon spread throughout the Empire.”
“You’re sure?” Lamurk looked genuinely concerned.
Hari hesitated. He had to remember that others had ideals, quite lofty ones. Perhaps Lamurk did...
Then he remembered hanging by his fingernails under the e-lift. “Quite sure.”
“Do you think this is just a sign, a symptom? Of the Empire... coming apart?”
“Not necessarily. The tiktoks are a separate problem from general social decline.”
“You know why I want to be First Minister? I want to save the Empire, Professor Seldon.”
“So do I. But your way, playing political games–that’s not enough.”
“How about this psychohistory of yours? If I used that–”
“It’s mine, and it’s not ready yet.” Hari didn’t say that Lamurk would be the last person he would give psychohistory to.
“We should work together on this, no matter what happens with the First Ministership.” Lamurk smiled, obviously quite sure of what would happen.
“Even though you’ve tried to kill me several times?”
“What? Say, I heard about some attempts, but surely you don’t think–”
“I just wondered why this post meant so much to you.”
Lamurk dropped his surprised-innocence mask. His lip turned up in a derisive sneer. “Only an amateur would even ask.”
“Power alone?”
“What else is there?”
“People.”
“Ha! Your equations ignore individuals.”
“But I don’t do it in life.”
“Which proves you’re an amateur. One life here or there doesn’t matter. To lead, to really lead, you have to be above sentimentality.”
“You
could be right.” He had seen all this before, in the panlike pyramid of the Empire, in the great game of endless jockeying among the gentry. He sighed.
Something deflected his attention, a small voice. He turned his head slightly, sitting back.
The tinny voice came from an insect hovering by his ear.
Walk ‘way, it repeated, Walk ‘way.
“Glad you’re coming to your senses,” Lamurk said. “If you were to step out right now, not force things to a vote–”
“Why would I do that?”
Hari got up and strolled to one of the man-sized flowers, hands behind his back. Best to look as though he were feeling out a deal.
“People close to you could get hurt.”
“Like Yugo?”
“Small stuff. Just a way of leaving my calling card.”
“A broken leg.”
Lamurk shrugged. “Could be worse.”
“And Panucopia? Was Vaddo your man?”
Lamurk waved one hand. “I don’t keep up with details. My people worked with the Academic Potentate on that operation, I know that.”
“You went to a lot of trouble over me.”
Lamurk’s eyes narrowed shrewdly. “I want a big vote behind me. I try every avenue.”
“A bigger vote than you’ve got.”
“With you throwing support to me–right.”
Two insects left a big rosy flower and hovered beside Lamurk. He glanced at them, swatted at one. It whirred away. “Could be something in it for you, too.”
“Other than my life?”
Lamurk smiled. “And your wife’s, don’t forget her.”
“I never forget threats against my wife.”
“A man’s got to be realistic.”
Both insects were back. “So I keep hearing.”
Lamurk smirked and sat back, sure of himself now. He opened his mouth
Lightning connected the insects–through Lamurk’s head.
Hari hit the floor as the burnt-yellow electrical discharge snaked and popped in the air. Lamurk half rose. The bolt arced into both ears. His eyes bulged. A thin cry escaped his gaping mouth.
