by Greg Bear
“It was so with Cleon, as well, Highness,” Hari said. “He made arrangements with three princess consorts throughout his youth, then, in his middle years, foreswore women entirely. He died without an heir, as you know.”
“I’ve studied Clean, of course,” the Emperor said thoughtfully. “A solid man, not intelligent, but very capable. He liked you, didn’t he?”
“I doubt any Emperor has ever liked a man such as myself, Highness.”
“Oh, don’t be so modest! You have great charms, really. You were married to that remarkable woman-”
“Dors Venabili,” said a reedy voice behind them.
The Emperor turned gracefully, his robes swishing over the floor, and his face lit up. “Farad! How nice of you to come early.”
The Privy Councilor bowed to his Emperor and glanced in passing at Hari. “When I heard of your visitor, I could not resist, Highness.”
“You know my Privy Councilor, Farad Sinter, and Farad, this is the famous Hari Seldon.”
“We’ve never met,” Hari said. No one shook hands in the Emperor’s company; too many weapons had been transferred between conspirators and assassins in past centuries that way for a simple handshake to be any other than a gross and even dangerous breach of etiquette.
“I’ve heard much about your famous wife,” Sinter said with a smile. “A remarkable woman, as the Emperor says.”
“Hari has come here to warn me about your activities,” Klayus said with a small grin, glancing between them. “I did not know all you’ve been up to, Farad.”
“We’ve discussed my goals, Highness. What more does Professor Seldon have to add, in the way of information?”
“He says you’re hunting down mechanical men. Robots. From what he says, you appear to be obsessed with them.”
Hari stiffened. This was becoming a very dangerous situation, and he was beginning to feel a noose tighten. He almost regretted having taken this direct approach with someone so devious and unpredictable as Klayus. It would not be at all good to be singled out and marked for reprisal by Farad Sinter…
“He’s confused my goals, though perhaps the rumors have misled him. There are many false rumors about our activities, Highness.” Sinter’s smile dripped honey and bonhomie.
“This genetic study…most valuable, don’t you think, Hari? Has anyone explained it to you?”
“System-wide, and also the twelve nearest Central Stars,” Sinter said.
“It has been explained in the journals of Imperial Science,” Hari said.
“But shooting people! “ Klayus continued. “Why, Farad? To take samples?”
Hari could hardly believe what he was hearing. The Emperor could just as easily have signed Hari’s death warrant. Instead, he seemed to be handing Hari’s head to his Privy Councilor…on a plate, for dinner!
“Those, those are lies of course,” Sinter said slowly, eyes heavy-lidded. “The Emperor’s police would have reported such indiscretions.”
“I wonder,” Klayus said, eyes twinkling merrily. “At any rate, Farad, Raven here has some excellent points to make about this robot search. Hari, explain to us the political difficulties that might ensue, should such charges ever become widely disseminated. Tell Farad about-”
“Jo-jo Joranum, yes, I know,” Sinter said, his lips thinning and his cheeks going white. “A Mycogenian would-be usurper. Stupid and easily manipulated-by you, in part, am I correct, Professor Seldon?”
“His name was mentioned,” the Emperor said, glancing off to one side as if beginning to be bored.
“Actually,” Hari said, “Joranum was just a symptom of a larger myth, with consequences far worse on other worlds than Trantor.” A myth I have not thought about, not measured, not researched-all because of Daneel’s prohibitions! Even now, Hari realized he would have some difficulty discussing the topic. He coughed into his fist. Sinter offered a handkerchief, but Hari shook his head and produced his own. Accepting such an item could also be misconstrued. And would it even be dangerous? Has Trantor and the Empire come to that? Either way, Hari would not fall for such a simple set-up. “On the world of Sterrad. Nikolo Pas.”
The Emperor stared at Hari blankly. “I’m not familiar with Nikolo Pas.”
“A butcher, Highness,” Sinter said. “Responsible for the death of millions.”
“Billions, actually,” Hari said. “In a vain search for artificial humans he claimed were infiltrating the empire.”
The Emperor stared at Hari for several seconds, his face slack. “I should know about him, shouldn’t I?”
“He died in Rikerian the year before you were born, Highness,” Sinter said. “It is not a glorious moment in Imperial History.”
Something in the atmosphere had changed. Klayus had a sour, even a disappointed look, as if he were anticipating an unpleasant duty. Hari glanced sideways at Sinter and saw that the Privy Councilor was studying his Emperor’s expression with some concern. Then it was that Hari realized Klayus and Sinter had been playing with him. The Emperor already knew about the murders of citizens on Trantor. Yet neither Sinter nor any of his tutors had told him about Nikolo Pas, and this was upsetting him.
“I’m not supposed to be so ignorant,” Klayus said. “I really should set up more time for personal study. Go on, Raven. What about Nikolo Pas?”
“In decades past, and every few centuries, Highness, there have been tides and even storms of psychological disturbance, centered on the myth of the Eternals.”
Sinter visibly flinched. This gave Hari some satisfaction. He continued.
“The resurgence of that myth has almost invariably led to social unrest, and in a few extreme cases, genocide. I conducted an interview with Nikolo Pas when I served Cleon as First Minister, Highness. I spent several days speaking with him, an hour or two at a time, in his cell deep in Rikerian.”
The memories seemed to fill Hari’s mind now.
“What did Pas believe?” the Emperor asked. The servants were at their positions around the hall. All the arrangements had been completed, the dinner was being delayed; guests could not be allowed to enter until the Emperor had left, to make a more formal entrance later. Klayus did not seem concerned by this.
“Pas claimed to have captured an active artificial human. He claimed to have placed it…” Hari coughed again. In this context, he could hardly bring himself to use the word robot. He felt badly exposed and even handicapped, for the prohibition against discussion of Daneel’s nature had spread to other areas of thought, memory, even will. “He claimed to have isolated the artificial human”
“Robot. We could be here all night,” Klayus said impatiently.
That seemed to break some barrier, and Hari nodded. “Robot. In very secure quarters. The robot deactivated itself-”
“How frightening, how noble!” Klayus exclaimed.
“Pas claimed his scientists dissected and analyzed the body. And yet the body, the inactive mechanical form, was removed from these extremely secure circumstances and vanished without a trace. This was the beginning of Nikolo Pas’s crusade. The details are far too long and gruesome to be spoken of here, Highness, but I’m sure you can locate them in the Imperial Library.”
Klayus’s eyes were like marbles in the head of a wax figure, pointed in Hari’s general direction. He rotated toward Sinter. “Your point seems obvious, Hari. Professor Seldon. May I call you Hari?”
The Emperor had already asked him that at their last meeting, but Hari did not let on. Once again, he replied, “I would be honored, Highness.”
“The point being that these waves of misery inevitably begin when some high official gets a bug in his hat and begins futile investigations. And when the investigations get out of hand, they cost the Empire many lives and much of treasure. Superstitions. Myths. Always dangerous, like religions.”
Sinter said nothing. Hari merely nodded. Both had beads of moisture on their foreheads. The Emperor seemed thoughtful and calm.
“I’m willing to vouch that my Privy Co
uncilor has no such illusions, Hari. I hope I can reassure you of that.”
“Yes, Highness.”
“And you, Farad, you understand the depth of Hari’s concern, that he comes here to relay these items of information about the state of bureaucratic and popular perceptions? The citizens! Like a sea of whispers. The Greys! The eternal manipulators of human destiny, the greatest power below the Palace! And the gentry-baronial and aristocratic, aloof, conspiratorial…So important and so often subject to fluctuating themes. Eh?”
Hari did not understand quite what the Emperor meant.
“No hard feelings against Hari, eh, Farad?”
“None, of course, sire.” Sinter smiled sunnily at Hari.
“Still…” Klayus put his chin in one hand and tapped his lips with a finger. “Amazing story! I shall have to look into it. What if the butcher’s notions were true? That would change everything. What then?”
Klayus turned to receive a message from the chief servant of the private dining chamber, an older and very somber Lavrentian. “My guests, including the Chief Commissioner, are waiting,” the Emperor said. “Hari, some day you must dine at table with me, as no doubt you did with the unfortunate Clean and the almost equally unfortunate Agis. However, since you are currently in disfavor with tinge Chen, tonight would not be a good time. My servants will see you off the Palace grounds. Both my Privy Councilor and I thank you, ‘Raven!’”
Hari bowed from the waist and two burly servants, more likely disguised Palace Specials, took positions at his flanks. As he was being escorted out of the chamber, passing beneath the amazing chandelier, the main doors opened to his right, and tinge Chen entered. His eyes met Hari’s, and Seldon felt a peculiar tremor of some emotion he could not identify. He despised Chen, yet the man was playing a very important role in the Plan.
They were intimately connected, both politically and historically, and it gave Hari no satisfaction to detect a certain sadness in the Commissioner’s features, As if he’s lost a friend, Hari thought.
Nearly all my friends and loved ones are dead, too, or just…gone. Vanished. And some I cannot even speak of!
Hari nodded cordially to Chen. The Chief Commissioner turned away as if Hari were of no importance whatsoever.
The two burly servants escorted him from the Palace, and Hari was left by a taxi stand to make his way back to the library and his far more comfortable, if far humbler, quarters.
In the taxi, pressed back into the cushions of the rear seat, Hari closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He might after all last no longer than the time it would take one of Sinter’s police assassins to shoot him. What would he tell Wanda? Had he succeeded, or had he simply made things worse?
It was impossible to know just how intelligent the Emperor actually was, how much control he exerted or wished to exert over his councilors and ministers. Klayus I was apparently a master at the art of concealing his true character and emotions, not to mention his intentions.
Still, Hari had long since known that Klayus was doomed to a short reign. His chances of being assassinated or deposed by Chen in the next two years were as high as sixty percent, no matter what his character or intelligence, according to the near-term glosses distilled from the equations in his Prime Radiant.
In his apartment within the library, Hari took off his clothes and showered quickly, then donned a thin night robe and sat on the edge of his simple frame bed. He checked through his messages. All could be taken care of when he returned to his offices tomorrow.
There were no windows in this apartment, no real luxuries at all; it was a simple two-room rectangle with a ceiling barely higher than his head. In all of Trantor, this was the only place where he could feel comfortable, safe, relaxed.
The only room where such illusions could prevail.
21.
Klia shivered in the vast hollow space and looked between her feet at the conjunction of two of Trantor’s greatest rivers. Once, twelve thousand years ago, they had had names; now they were designated simply by numbers, but even those numbers hinted at greatness: One and Two. One worked its way across half of Sirta, the continent which supported some of the most populated Sectors, including the Imperial Palace, Streeling, and Dahl. Thousands of years ago, as Trantor’s population grew and engineers contemplated accommodating additional billions, they had made the decision to cover over all the landmasses, to dig beneath the crust and burrow even into the shelves which lay beneath the ocean shores.
Those ancient engineers wisely decided against attempting to reroute and change the nature of Trantor’s watersheds. To have the metal skin of their new structures support so much water on its rush to the sea was wasteful, so they lined deep channels where natural rivers once had flowed, and let the rains gather and flow into them. Where early Sectors laid claim to natural aquifers, the engineers-with the mandate of the legendary Emperor Kwan Shonam-created new porous materials for the basins to allow the aquifers to remain useful.
Klia could no more understand the intricacies of water on Trantor than any normal citizen. What she knew was that here, fifty meters below where she stood, in the roaring maelstrom where the two rivers mated, lay power. She appreciated power, but she was too young to adequately fear it; and besides, she had an arrogance born of her abilities. She could not persuade rivers of water to change, but human rivers…That was something else again.
Klia was cold and hungry and angry. She felt abused; if they only knew! She took deep breaths and contemplated the day when she could hunt down those who were now making her run and hide like a rat.
Then she sat on the grating of the maintenance walkway, calves crossed in an easy X, and brought her all-too-negative emotions under control. She had to find a place to sleep; here, it was too moist and cold and loud. She had to find food. There would be little of that below ground; she could wait for a maintenance tram to rumble past, flag it down, steal foodboxes and persuade the crew to forget…She smiled at that. She would be a ghost, a phantom, the phantom of the two rivers…
Some in Dahl believed that those who lived good lives became part of the great rivers and flowed to the covered seas, there to live in perfect communes far from the knowledge of Empire. Those who lived badly went into the heatsinks to sweat and work forever. She did not believe such things, but they were interesting to contemplate while her subconscious mind worked through her problems and presented solutions.
The tram kept popping back into her thoughts. She imagined it a big wormlike thing on many wheels, with comfortable and well-lighted compartments within. She could make friends with the maintenance workers. Perhaps one of them would be exceptional, a native Dahlite with a huge mustache, far more manly than her father or any of the furtive black marketeers; he would comfort her gently at first, forcing nothing, until she decided what she wanted, what her body wanted…
These romantic visions only made her more lonely. She felt very vulnerable. She pounded her fist on a rail and listened to the hollow boom be swallowed by the vaster roar. No time for such dreams! She would be inhuman, above all passions and needs; she would take swift vengeance and live to create fear and respect. Children would be told her name to make them behave…
Suddenly, her moist eyes dried and she simply laughed at her own ridiculous imaginings. The laughter rose high and clear and, wondrously, the river’s rage did not swallow the sound: instead, the laughter echoed through the great vaults over the confluence, and returned to her, like the laughter of hundreds.
For the time being-barring the appearance of that large, gentle Dahlite maintenance worker-she was licked. She knew it. She would have to go back up into Dahl soon, and she would need a place to hide. If people were looking for those with her talents, she would pick the best party and cooperatefor a while.
She sighed at this necessity, but Klia knew she was not an idiot. She would not languish with her dying dreams down there in the dark and wet, with no company but the great rivers.
22.
Mors Pla
nch listened to the sounds of a smooth, gentle landing from his pull-down emergency seat in the hold. Lodovik Trema sat beside him, eyes closed, face peacefully composed.
Planch knew something about Madder Loss that neither Tritch nor her crew understood. Fifty years ago, Madder Loss had been a promising jewel in the Emperor’s black robe of Galactic space, a Renaissance World where intellect and philosophy and science burned very bright indeed. The vast city-continents of Madder Loss had bid fair to outshine Trantor, even then revealing its age. And for a time, Trantor had tolerated Madder Loss as a grand dame might for a while tolerate the presence of a beautiful young woman in the court, watching her beauty mature with more amusement than envy.
But then the beautiful young woman, half unconscious of her effect, begins to attract the attentions of the grand dame’s paramours…and the tolerance turns into benign neglect, and finally comes the inexplicable cutting off of resources and the young woman finds herself a nonentity, shunned by the court, her name a blighted rumor.
Planch had visited Madder Loss thirty years before to gather information for Linge Chen. At that time Chen had served as First Grade Administrator of Second Octant trade. What Mors had seen then would have broken his younger heart if he hadn’t been prepared and forewarned by Chen himself: beautiful spaceports standing empty, gleaming new domes and plexes showing a certain air of decay, the listless officials in their out-of-date Imperial uniforms adhering to rules without enthusiasm. Flourishing black markets, and even crowds of hungry women and children outside the spaceport fence. Madder Loss had opened his eyes to the ebbs and flows of history and economics, and had also planted that seed of personal rebellion that had just flowered. He had from that moment looked for a way to counteract the cold, loveless rationality of Linge Chen and his gentry cohorts, commanding their suffocating hordes of Greys, drawing their lines and cutting off the bright young flesh of the empire for some obscure sense of Trantor’s place and pride…For political expedience.
