by Isaac Asimov
Then it was gone. The insects fell like exhausted cinders.
Lamurk toppled forward. As he fell his arms reached out. His hands opened and closed convulsively. They failed to grasp anything. The body thumped and sprawled on the carpet. Arm muscles still jumped and twitched.
Frozen, Hari realized that even in Lamurk’s last moment the man had been reaching out to grab at him.
13.
He hovered in an N-dimensional space, far from politics.
As soon as Hari returned to Streeling, he went into seclusion. The pandemonium following Lamurk’s assassination were the worst hours he had ever spent.
Daneel’s advice had proved useful–” No matter what I do, remain in your role: a mathist, troubled but above the fray.” But the fray was jarring anarchy. Shouts, accusations, panics. Hari had endured fingers pointed at him, threats. Lamurk’s personal escort drew weapons when Hari finally left the assassination room. His Specials stunned five of them.
Now all of Trantor, and soon enough the Empire, would be rife with rage and speculation. The insect-shockers had carried energies stored in tiny positronic traps, a technology thought to be extinct. Attempts to trace it led nowhere.
In any case, there was no link to Hari. Yet.
By tradition, assassinations were kept at a distance, done by intermediaries. They were also safer that way. Hari’s presence was thus an argument against his involvement–just as Daneel had predicted. Hari liked that aspect of the matter particularly: a prediction holding true. In the mob hysteria which followed, no one assumed he was implicated.
Hari also knew his limits, and here they were. He could not deal with such chaos, except in the broader context of mathematics.
So it was to his familiar, supple abstractions that he fled.
He fanned through dimensions, watching the planes of psychohistory evolve. The entire Galaxy spread before him, not in its awesome spiral, but in parameter-space. Fitness peaks rose like ridges and crests. Here were societies which lasted, while those dwelling in the valleys perished.
Sark. He close-upped the Sark Zone and stepped the dynamical equations at blurring speed. The New Renaissance would effervesce into lurid cultural eruptions. Conflicts arose like orange spikes in the fitness-landscape. Stable peaks collapsed. Runoff from them clogged the valleys, making paths between peaks impassable.
This meant that not merely people but whole planets would be unable to evolve out of a depressive valley. Those worlds would steep in the mire, trapped for eons. Then
Crimson flares. Nova triggers. Once used, these made war far more dangerous.
A solar system could be “cleansed”–a horrifyingly bland term used by ancient aggressors–by inducing a mild nova burst in a balmy sun. This roasted worlds just enough to kill all but those who could swiftly find caverns and store food for the few years of the nova stage.
Hari froze with horror. He had fled into his abstract spaces, but death and irrationality dogged him even here.
In the value-free parameter spaces of the equations, war itself was simply another way to decide among paths. It was wasteful, certainly, highly centralized–and quick.
If war increased the “throughput efficiency” parameters, then the Galactic system would have selected for more wars. Instead, Zonal wars had sputtered along, becoming less frequent. In Sark’s future, glaring red war-stains shrank as time stepped forward, jumping whole years in a flicker. Pink and soft yellow splashes replaced them.
These were more continuous, decentralized decision-trees, operating to defuse conflicts. Microscopic bringers of peace, these processes. Yet the people involved probably never guessed that the long, slow undulations were bettering their lives. They never glimpsed vast agencies outside the blunt agonies and ecstasy of human life.
The “expected utility” model failed to predict this outcome. In that view, each war arose from a perfectly rational calculation by Zonal “actors,” independent of previous experience. Yet wars became unusual, so the Sarkian Zonal system was learning.
It came to him in a flash. Societies were an intricate set of parallel processors.
Each working on its own problem. Each linked to the other.
But no single processor would know that it was learning.
As Sark, so the Empire. The Empire could “know” things that no person grasped. And far more–know things that no organization, no planet, no Zone knew.
Until now. Until psychohistory.
This was new, profound.
It meant that for all these millennia, the Empire had grown a kind of self-knowing unlike any way of comprehending that a mere human had–or even could have. A deep knowing other than the self consciousness which humans bore.
Hari panted with surprise. He tried to see if he could possibly be wrong....
After all, feedback loops were scarcely new. Hari knew the general theorem, ancient beyond measure: If all variables in a system are tightly coupled, and you can change one of them precisely, then you can indirectly control all of them. The system could be guided to an exact outcome through its myriad internal feedback loops. Spontaneously, the system ordered itself–and obeyed.
In truly complex systems, how adjustments occur was beyond the human complexity horizon. Beyond knowing–and most important, not worth knowing.
But this... He expanded the N-dimensional landscape, horizons thrusting away along axes he could barely grasp.
Everywhere, the Empire bristled with... life. Patterns the equations picked out, luminous snaking pathways of data/knowledge/wisdom. All unknown to any human.
To anyone, until this moment.
Psychohistory had discovered an entity greater than human, though of humanity.
He saw suddenly that the Empire had its own landscape, greater and more subtle than anything he had suspected. The Empire’s complex adaptive system had achieved a “poised” state, hovering in the margin between order and full-spectral chaos. There it had sat for millennia, accomplishing ends and tasks that no one knew. It could adapt, evolve. Its apparent “stasis” was in fact evidence that the Empire had found the peak in a huge fitness-landscape.
And as Hari watched, the Empire veered toward the canyons of disorder.
Hari! Terrible things are happening. Come!
He yearned to stay, to learn more... but the voice was Dors’.
14.
Daneel said bleakly, “My agents, my brethren... all dead.”
The robot sat slumped over in Hari’s office. Dors comforted him. Hari rubbed his eyes, still recovering from the digital immersion. Things were moving too fast, far too–
“Tiktoks! They attacked my, my...” Daneel could not go on.
“Where?” Dors asked.
“Allover Trantor! You and I, and a few dozen others, only we survive...” Daneel buried his face in his hands.
Dors grimaced. “This must have something to do with Lamurk, his death.”
“Indirectly, yes.”
Both robots looked at Hari. He leaned against his desk, still weak. He studied them for a long moment. “It was part of a larger... deal.”
“For what?” Dors asked.
“To end the tiktok revolt. My calculations showed that it would have spread rapidly through the Empire. Fatally.”
“A bargain?” Daneel pressed his lips into thin pale wedges.
Hari blinked rapidly, fighting a leaden weight of guilt. “One I did not fully control.”
Dors said icily, “You used me in it, didn’t you? I handled the data Daneel sent, locations of Lamurk’s allies–”
“And I had it relayed to the tiktoks, yes,” Hari said soberly. “Not a difficult technical trick, if you have help from Mesh-space.”
Daneel’s eyes narrowed at this last reference. Then he relaxed his face and said, “So the tiktoks killed Lamurk’s men and women. You knew I would not allow such a mass murder, even to assist you.”
Hari nodded soberly. “I understand the constraints you act under. The Zeroth Law deman
ds rather high standards and my fate as First Minister would not justify such a breach of the First Law.”
Daneel stared stonily at Hari. “So you got around that. You used me and my robots as, as spotters.”
“Exactly. The tiktoks closely shadowed your robots. They are rather dumb creatures, devoid of subtlety. But they do not labor under the First Law. Once they knew who to hit, I only needed give the signal for when to strike.”
“The signal–when you began your speech,” Dors said. “Lamurk’s allies would be sitting before screens and watching. Easily reached and already distracted by you.”
Hari sighed. “Exactly.”
“This is so unlike you, Hari,” Dors said.
“And about time, too,” Hari said sharply. “Again and again they tried to kill me. They would have succeeded, eventually, even if I never became First Minister.”
Dors said with a trace of sympathy, “I would never have suspected you of such... cool motives.”
Hari gazed at her bleakly. “Me either. The only reason I could bring myself to do it was that I could see the future–my future–so plainly.”
Daneel’s face was a swirl of emotion, something Hari had never witnessed before. “But my brethren–why them? I cannot comprehend. For what reason did they die?”
“My deal.” Hari said, throat tight. “And I have just been double-crossed.”
“You did not know robots would die?” Hari shook his head sadly. “No. I should have seen it, though. It is obvious!” He smacked himself in the head. “Once the tiktoks had done my job, they could do the work of the memes.”
“Memes?” Daneel asked.
“Deal... for what?” Dors asked sharply.
“To end the tiktok revolt.” Hari looked at Dors, avoiding Daneel’s gaze. “My calculations showed that it would have spread rapidly through the Empire. Fatally.”
Daneel stood. “I understand your right to make human decisions about human lives. We robots cannot fathom how you can think in these ways, but then, we are not built to do so. Still, Hari!–you made a bargain with forces you do not understand.”
“I didn’t see their next move.” Hari felt miserable, but a part of him noted that Daneel already grasped who the memes were.
Dors did not. “Whose move?” she demanded.
“The ancients,” Hari said. He explained in halting phrases. Of his recent explorations of the Mesh. Of the labyrinth-minds who resided in those digital spaces, cold and analytical in their revenge.
“We robots left those?” Daneel whispered. “I had suspected...”
“They eluded you in the early, rough stages of our expansion into the Galaxy. Or so they say.” Hari looked away from Dors, who still gazed at him in silent shock.
Daneel asked cautiously, “Where were they?”
“The huge structures at the Galactic Center–you’ve seen them?”
“So that was where these electromagnetic presences were hiding?”
“For a while. They came to Trantor long ago, when the Mesh became large enough to support them. They live in the nooks and crannies of our digital webs. As the Mesh grows, so do they. Now they’re strong enough to strike. They might have waited longer, gotten better–except that two sims I found provoked them.”
Daneel said slowly, “Those Sarkian sims: Joan and Voltaire.”
“You know of them?” Hari asked.
“I... tried to stunt their impact. Sarkian modes are bad for the Empire. I employed that Nim fellow, but he proved inept.”
Hari smiled wanly. “His heart wasn’t in it. He liked those sims.”
“I should have sensed that,” Daneel said. “You have some ability to perceive our mental states, don’t you?” Hari asked.
“It is limited. Patterns are more easily sensed if the subject has had a certain childhood disease, as it happens, and Nim was lacking that. Still, I know that humans are fond of seeing their kind rendered in other media.”
Such as robots? Hari thought. Then why have we had taboos against them since antiquity? Dors was watching the two of them, aware that they were feeling each other out over murky territory.
Hari said carefully, “The meme-minds blocked Nim when he searched for the sims in the Mesh. But he worked out quite well when I needed help interfacing with the Mesh. I’ll pardon the fellow, when this is over.”
Daneel said coldly, “Those sims and their kind–they are still dangerous, Hari. I beg you–”
“Don’t worry, I know that. I’ll deal with them. It’s the meme-minds that worry me now.”
“And these minds hate us all?” Dors asked slowly, trying to grasp these ideas.
“Humans? Yes, but not nearly so much as your kind, m’love.”
“Us?” She blinked.
“Robots did damage to them long ago.”
“Yes!” Daneel said sternly. “To protect humanity.”
“And those older intelligences hate your kind for your brutality. By the time the fleets of robo-explorers were done, we found a Galaxy suitable for benign farming.” Hari flicked on his holo. “Here’s an image I brought from the meme-minds.”
Across a darkling plain swept a line of yellow. Harsh winds drove it forward as it consumed the tall stands of lush grass. Licking flames reached and ate and reached again. From the bright burning line of attack rose billowing, leaden smoke.
“A prairie fire,” Hari said. “That is how the robot-explorers of twenty thousand years ago looked to those ancient minds.”
“Burning up the Galaxy?” Dors said hollowly.
“Making it safe for the precious humans,” Hari said.
“For this,” Daneel said, “they wish revenge. But why now?”
“They are at last able... and they finally detected you robots, distinguishing you from the tiktoks.”
Daneel asked stonily, “How?”
“When they found the sims I had revived. Working backward from them, to me, they found Dors. Then you.”
“They can survey that widely?” Dors asked.
Hari said, “All digital information from surveillance cameras, from snooper pickups, microdevices–they can fish in that sea.”
“You helped them,” Daneel said.
“For the good of the Empire I made my deal with them.”
Daneel said, “They first killed the Lamurkians, then turned on my robots. Assigning a dozen tiktoks to each, they overwhelmed our kind.”
“All of us?” Dors whispered.
“About a third of us escaped.” Daneel allowed himself a hard smile. “We are far more capable than these... automatons.”
Hari nodded sadly. “That was not in the deal. They... used me.”
“I think we are all being used.” Daneel cast a sour glance at Hari. “In different ways.”
“I had to do it, friend Daneel.”
Dors stared at Hari. “I scarcely know you.”
Hari said softly, “Sometimes being human is harder than it looks.”
Dors’ eyes flashed. “Aliens slaughtering my kind!”
“I had to find a solution–”
She said, “Robots, especially the humaniforms–they’re servants, they–”
“My love, you are more human than anyone I’ve known.”
“But–murder!”
“There was going to be murder anyway. The ancient memes could not be stopped.” Hari sighed and realized how far he had come. This was power, hovering above all and seeing the world as a vast arena, its clashes unending. He had become part of that and knew he could not go back to being the simple mathist ever again.
Dors demanded, “Why are you so sure? You could have told us, we could–”
“They knew you already. If I had stalled, they would have taken you two, gone hunting for the rest.”
Daneel asked sternly, “And... for us?”
“Both of you I saved. Part of the deal.”
Daneel wilted then. “Thank you... I suppose.
“Hari gazed at his old friend, eyes misting. “You... are
carrying too much weight.”
Daneel nodded. “I carried out the imperative and obeyed you.”
Hari nodded. “Lamurk. I was there. Your insects fried him.”
“Or appeared to.”
“What?” Hari stared as Daneel pressed a button on his wrist, then turned to the office door. Through it, pausing slightly for the security screen, stepped a man of unremarkable looks in a brown workman’s coverall.
“Our Mister Lamurk,” Daneel said.
“That isn’t–” Hari then saw the subtle resemblances. The nose had been trimmed, cheeks filled out, hair thinned and browned, ears sloped back. “But I saw him die!”
“So you did. The voltage he took fully stopped him for a bit, and had my disguised guards not begun proper treatment at the site, he would have stayed dead.”
“You could pull him back from that?”
“It is an ancient craft.”
“How long can a human remain dead before–?”
“About an hour, at low temperatures. We had to work much faster than that,” Daneel said in measured tones.
“Honoring the First Law,” Hari said.
“Shading it a bit. There is no lasting harm done to Lamurk. Now he will devote his talents to better ends.”
“Why?” Hari realized that Lamurk had said nothing. The man stood attentively, watching Daneel, not Hari.
“I do have certain positive powers over human minds. An ancient robot named Giskard gave me limited sway over the neural complexities of the human cerebral cortex. I have altered Lamurk’s motivations and trimmed some memories.”
“How much?” Dors asked suspiciously. To her, Hari realized, Lamurk was still an enemy until proven otherwise.
Daneel waved a hand. “Speak.”
“I understand that I have erred.” Lamurk spoke in a dry, sincere voice, without his usual fire. “I apologize, especially to you, Hari. I cannot recall my offenses, but I regret them. I shall do better now.”
“You do not miss your memories?” Dors probed.
“They are not precious,” Lamurk said reasonably. “An endless chain of petty barbarities and insatiable ambitions, as nearly as I can recall. Blood and anger. Not great moments, so why preserve them? I will be a better person now.”
