Asimov’s Future History Volume 15

by Isaac Asimov

  “I had no idea–”

  “Don’t get nervous,” said Namarti. “I consider it the best thing you have ever done in your idle aristocratic life. You have played the role that the gods have marked out for you. If I had not known who he was, he might have fulfilled the function for which he was undoubtedly intended: to be a spy in our midst and an informant of our most secret plans. But since I know who he is, it won’t work that way. Instead, we now have everything.” Namarti rubbed his hands together in delight and, haltingly, as if he realized how far out of character it was for him, he smiled–and laughed.

  18.

  MANELLA SAID THOUGHTFULLY, “I guess I won’t be seeing you anymore, Planchet.”

  Raych was drying himself after his shower. “Why not?”

  “Gleb Andorin doesn’t want me to.”

  “Why not?”

  Manella shrugged her smooth shoulders. “He says you have important work to do and no more time to fool around. Maybe he means you’ll get a better job.”

  Raych stiffened. “What kind of work? Did he mention anything in particular?”

  “No, but he said he would be going to the Imperial Sector.”

  “Did he? Does he often tell you things like that?”

  “You know how it is, Planchet. When a fellow’s in bed with you, he talks a lot.”

  “I know,” said Raych, who was always careful not to. “What else does he say?”

  “Why do you ask?” She frowned a bit. “He always asks about you, too. I noticed that about men. They’re curious about each other. Why is that, do you suppose?”

  “What do you tell him about me?”

  “Not much. Just that you’re a very decent sort of guy. Naturally I don’t tell him that I like you better than I like him. That would hurt his feelings–and it might hurt me, too.”

  Raych was getting dressed. “So it’s good-bye, then.”

  “For a while, I suppose. Gleb may change his mind. Of course, I’d like to go to the Imperial Sector–if he’d take me. I’ve never been there.”

  Raych almost slipped, but he managed to cough, then said, “I’ve never been there, either.”

  “It’s got the biggest buildings and the nicest places and the fanciest restaurants–and that’s where the rich people live. I’d like to meet some rich people–besides Gleb, I mean.”

  Raych said, “I suppose there’s not much you can get out of a person like me.”

  “You’re all right. You can’t think of credits all the time, but you’ve got to think of them some of the time. Especially since I think Gleb is getting tired of me.”

  Raych felt compelled to say, “No one could get tired of you,” and then found, a little to his own confusion, that he meant it.

  Manella said, “That’s what men always say, but you’d be surprised. Anyway, it’s been good, you and I, Planchet. Take care of yourself and, who knows, we may see each other again.”

  Raych nodded and found himself at a loss for words. There was no way in which he could say or do anything to express his feelings.

  He turned his mind in other directions. He had to find out what the Namarti people were planning. If they were separating him from Manella, the crisis must be rapidly approaching. All he had to go on was that odd question about gardening.

  Nor could he get any further information back to Seldon. He had been kept under close scrutiny since his meeting with Namarti and all avenues of communication were cut off–surely another indication of an approaching crisis.

  But if he were to find out what was going on only after it was done–and if he could communicate the news only after it was no longer news–he would have failed.

  19.

  HARI SELDON WAS not having a good day. He had not heard from Raych since his first communiqué; he had no idea what was happening.

  Aside from his natural concern for Raych’s safety (surely he would hear if something really bad had happened), there was his uneasiness over what might be planned.

  It would have to be subtle. A direct attack on the Palace itself was totally out of the question. Security there was far too tight. But if so, what else could be planned that would be sufficiently effective?

  The whole thing was keeping him awake at night and distracted by day.

  The signal light flashed.

  “First Minister. Your two o’clock appointment, sir–”

  “What two o’clock appointment is this?”

  “Mandell Gruber, the gardener. He has the necessary certification.”

  Seldon remembered. “Yes. Send him in.”

  This was no time to see Gruber, but he had agreed to it in a moment of weakness–the man had seemed distraught. A First Minister should not have such moments of weakness, but Seldon had been Seldon long before he had become First: Minister.

  “Come in, Gruber,” he said kindly.

  Gruber stood before him, head ducking mechanically, eyes darting this way and that. Seldon was quite certain the gardener had never been in any room as magnificent as this one and he had the bitter urge to say: “Do you like it? Please take it. I don’t want it.”

  But he only said, “What is it, Gruber? Why are you so unhappy.”

  There was no immediate answer; Gruber merely smiled vacantly.

  Seldon said, “Sit down, man. Right there in that chair.”

  “Oh no, First Minister. It would not be fitting. I’ll get it dirty.”

  “If you do, it will be easy to clean. Do as I say.–Good! Now just sit there a minute or two and gather your thoughts. Then, when you are ready, tell me what’s the matter.”

  Gruber sat silent for a moment, then the words came out in a panting rush. “First Minister. It is Chief Gardener I am to be. The blessed Emperor himself told me so.”

  “Yes, I have heard of that, but that surely isn’t what is troubling you. Your new post is a matter of congratulations and I do congratulate you. I may even have contributed to it, Gruber. I have never forgotten your bravery at the time I was nearly killed and you can be sure I mentioned it to His Imperial Majesty. It is a suitable reward, Gruber, and you would deserve the promotion in any case, for it is quite clear from your record that you are fully qualified for the post. So, now that that’s out of the way, tell me what is troubling you.”

  “First Minister, it is the very post and promotion that’s troubling me. It is something I cannot manage, for I am not qualified.”

  “We are convinced you are.”

  Gruber grew agitated. “And is it in an office I will have to sit? I can’t sit in an office. I could not go out in the open air and work with the plants and animals. I would be in prison, First Minister.”

  Seldon’s eyes opened wide. “No such thing, Gruber. You needn’t stay in the office longer than you have to. You could wander around the grounds freely, supervising everything. You will have all the outdoors you want and you will merely spare yourself the hard work.”

  “I want the hard work, First Minister, and it’s no chance at all they will let me come out of the office. I have watched the present Chief Gardener. He couldn’t leave his office, though he wanted to, ever so. There is too much administration, too much bookkeeping. Sure, if he wants to know what is going on, we must go to his office to tell him. He watches things on holovision”–he said with infinite contempt “as though you can tell anything about growing, living things from pictures. It is not for me, First Minister.”

  “Come, Gruber, be a man. It’s not all that bad. You’ll get used to it. You’ll work your way in slowly.”

  Gruber shook his head. “First off–at the very first–I will have to deal with all the new gardeners. I’ll be buried.” Then, with sudden energy, “It is a job I do not want and must not have, First Minister.”

  “Right now, Gruber, perhaps you don’t want the job, but you are not alone. I’ll tell you that right now I wish I were not First Minister. This job is too much for me. I even have a notion that there are times when the Emperor himself is tired of his Imperial robes. W
e’re all in this Galaxy to do our work and the work isn’t always pleasant.”

  “I understand that, First Minister, but the Emperor must be Emperor, for he was born to that. And you must be First Minister, for there is no one else who can do the job. But in my case, it is just Chief Gardener we are ruminating upon. There are fifty gardeners in the place who could do it as well as I could and who wouldn’t mind the office. You say that you spoke to the Emperor about how I tried to help you. Can’t you speak to him again and explain that if he wants to reward me for what I did, he can leave me as I am?”

  Seldon leaned back in his chair and said solemnly, “Gruber, I would do that for you if I could, but I must explain something to you and I can only hope that you will understand it. The Emperor, in theory, is absolute ruler of the Empire. In actual fact, there is very little he can do. I run the Empire right now much more than he does and there is very little I can do, too. There are millions and billions of people at all levels of government, all making decisions, all making mistakes, some acting wisely and heroically, some acting foolishly and thievishly. There’s no controlling them. Do you understand me, Gruber?”

  “I do, but what has this to do with my case?”

  “Because there is only one place where the Emperor is really absolute ruler–and that is over the Imperial grounds. Here, his word is law and the layers of officials beneath him are few enough for him to handle. For him to be asked to rescind a decision he has made in connection with the Imperial Palace grounds would be to invade the only area that he would consider inviolate. If I were to say, ‘Take back your decision on Gruber, Your Imperial Majesty,’ he would be much more likely to relieve me of my duties than to take back his decision. That might be a good thing for me, but it wouldn’t help you any.”

  Gruber said, “Does that mean there’s no way things can be changed?”

  “That’s exactly what it means. But don’t worry, Gruber, I’ll help you all I can. I’m sorry. But now I have really spent all the time with you that I am able to spare.”

  Gruber rose to his feet. In his hands he twisted his green gardening cap. There was more than a suspicion of tears in his eyes. “Thank you, First Minister. I know you would like to help. You’re–you’re a good man, First Minister.”

  He turned and left, sorrowing.

  Seldon looked after him thoughtfully and shook his head. Multiply Gruber’s woes by a quadrillion and you would have the woes of all the people of the twenty-five million worlds of the Empire and how was he, Seldon, to work out salvation for all of them, when he was helpless to solve the problem of one single man who had come to him for help?

  Psychohistory could not save one man. Could it save a quadrillion?

  He shook his head again, checked the nature and time of his next appointment, and then suddenly stiffened. He shouted into his communications wire in sudden wild abandon, quite unlike his usually strict control. “Get that gardener back! Get him back here right now!”

  20.

  “WHAT’S THIS ABOUT new gardeners?” exclaimed Seldon. This time he did not ask Gruber to sit down.

  Gruber’s eyes blinked rapidly. He was in a panic at having been recalled so unexpectedly. “N-new g-gardeners?” he stammered.

  “You said ‘all the new gardeners.’ Those were your words. What new gardeners?”

  Gruber was astonished. “Sure, if there is a new Chief Gardener, there will be new gardeners. It is the custom.”

  “I have never heard of this.”

  “The last time we had a change of Chief Gardeners, you were not First Minister. It is likely you were not even on Trantor.”

  “But what’s it all about?”

  “Well, gardeners are never discharged. Some die. Some grow too old and are pensioned off and replaced. Still, by the time a new Chief Gardener is ready for his duties, at least half the staff is aged and beyond their best years. They are all pensioned off generously and new gardeners are brought in.”

  “For youth.”

  “Partly and partly because by that time there are usually new plans for the gardens and it is new ideas and new schemes we must have. There are almost five hundred square kilometers in the gardens and parklands and it usually takes some years to reorganize it and it is myself who will have to supervise it all. Please, First Minister.” Gruber was gasping. “Surely a clever man like your own self can find a way to change the blessed Emperor’s mind.”

  Seldon paid no attention. His forehead was creased in concentration. “Where do the new gardeners come from?”

  “There are examinations on all the worlds–there are always people waiting to serve as replacements. They’ll be coming in by the hundreds in a dozen batches. It will take me a year, at the least–”

  “From where do they come? From where?”

  “From any of a million worlds. We want a variety of horticultural knowledge. Any citizen of the Empire can qualify.”

  “From Trantor, too?”

  “No, not from Trantor. There is no one from Trantor in the gardens.” His voice grew contemptuous. “You can’t get a gardener out of Trantor. The parks they have here under the dome aren’t gardens. They are potted plants and the animals are in cages. Trantorians, poor specimens that they are, know nothing about open air, free water, and the true balance of nature.”

  “All right, Gruber. I will now give you a job. It will be up to you to get me the names of every new gardener scheduled to arrive over the coming weeks. Everything about them. Name. World. Reference number. Education. Experience. Everything. I want it all here on my desk just as quickly as possible. I’m going to send people to help you. People with machines. What kind of a computer do you use?”

  “Only a simple one for keeping track of plantings and species and things like that.”

  “All right. The people I send will be able to do anything you can’t do. I can’t tell you how important this is.”

  “If I should do this–”

  “Gruber, this is not the time to make bargains. Fail me and you will not be Chief Gardener. Instead, you will be discharged without a pension.”

  Alone again, Seldon barked into his communication wire, “Cancel all appointments for the rest of the afternoon.”

  He then let his body flop in his chair, feeling every bit of his fifty years and feeling his headache worsen. For years, for decades, security had been built up around the Imperial Palace grounds, thicker, more solid, more impenetrable, as each new layer and each new device was added.

  –and every once in a while, hordes of strangers were let into the grounds. No questions asked, probably, but one: “Can you garden?”

  The stupidity involved was too colossal to grasp.

  And he had barely caught it in time. Or had he? Was he, even now, too late?

  21.

  GLEB ANDORIN GAZED at Namarti through half-closed eyes. He never liked the man, but there were times when he liked him less than he usually did and this was one of those times. Why should Andorin, a Wyan of royal birth (that’s what it amounted to, after all) have to work with this parvenu, this near-psychotic paranoid?

  Andorin knew why and he had to endure, even when Namarti was once again in the process of telling the story of how he had built up the movement during a period of ten years to its present pitch of perfection. Did he tell this to everyone, over and over? Or was it just Andorin who was his chosen vessel?

  Namarti’s face seemed to shine with malignant glee as he said, in an odd singsong, as though it were a matter of rote, “Year after year. I worked on those lines, even through hopelessness and uselessness, building an organization, chipping away at confidence in the government, creating and intensifying dissatisfaction. When there was the banking crisis and the week of the moratorium, I–”

  He paused suddenly. “I’ve told you this many times and you’re sick of hearing it, aren’t you?”

  Andorin’s lips twitched in a brief dry smile. Namarti was not such an idiot as not to know what a bore he was; he just couldn’t help
it. Andorin said, “You’ve told me this many times.” He allowed the remainder of the question to hang in the air, unanswered. The answer, after all, was an obvious affirmative. There was no need to face him with it.

  A slight flush crossed Namarti’s sallow face. He said, “But it could have gone on forever–the building, the chipping, without ever coming to a point–if I hadn’t had the proper tool in my hands. And without any effort on my part, the tool came to me.”

  “The gods brought you Planchet,” said Andorin neutrally.

  “You’re right. There will be a group of gardeners entering the Imperial Palace grounds soon.” He paused and seemed to savor the thought.

  “Men and women. Enough to serve as a mask for the handful of our operatives who will accompany them. Among them will be you–and Planchet. And what will make you and Planchet unusual is that you will be carrying blasters.”

  “Surely,” said Andorin with deliberate malice behind a polite expression, “we’ll be stopped at the gates and held for questioning. Bringing an illicit blaster onto the Palace grounds–”

  “You won’t be stopped,” said Namarti, missing the malice. “You won’t be searched. That’s been arranged. You will all be greeted as a matter of course by some Palace official. I don’t know who would ordinarily be in charge of that task–the Third Assistant Chamberlain in Charge of Grass and Leaves, for all I know–but in this case, it will be Seldon himself. The great mathematician will hurry out to greet the new gardeners and welcome them to the grounds.”

  “You’re sure of that, I suppose.”

  “Of course, I am. It’s all been arranged. He will learn, at more or less the last minute, that his foster son is among those listed as new gardeners and it will be impossible for him to refrain from coming out to see him. And when Seldon appears, Planchet will raise his blaster. Our people will raise the cry of ‘Treason!’ In the confusion and hurly-burly, Planchet will kill Seldon and then you will kill Planchet. You will then drop your blaster and leave. There are those who will help you leave. It’s been arranged.”