Foundation’s Fear f-8

by Gregory Benford

  With a wave he blew away the roof, revealing the bowl of a vast sky. Not the sprinkling of lights she had known-though when she tried, she could in fact recall no specific constellations.

  Here the sky blazed with so many stars it hurt her eyes. He said this was because they were near the center of some territory named “Galaxy” and that stars liked to dwell here.

  The sight made her suck in her breath. On such a stage, what could they do?

  Rendezvous

  “If we stay in our apartment, don’t ever leave Streeling University-”

  “No,” R. Daneel Olivaw said sternly. “The situation is too grave.”

  “Then where?”

  “Off Trantor.”

  “I am less acquainted with other worlds.”

  Olivaw waved away her point. “I have in mind a remark in your recent report. He is interested in the fundamental human drives.”

  Dors frowned. “Yes, Hari keeps saying there are elements still missing.”

  “Good. There is a world where he can explore this. Possibly he can find valuable component terms for his model equations.”

  “A primitive planet? That would be dangerous.”

  “This is a severely underpopulated place, with fewer threats.”

  “You have been there?”

  “I have been everywhere.”

  She realized that this could not be literally true. Quick calculation showed that even R. Daneel Olivaw would have had to visit several thousand worlds in each year of his life. His enduring presence stretched well beyond the twelve thousand years since the founding of the Kambal Dynasty on Trantor. Indeed, she had been told-though this was difficult to believe-that he came forth from the very Origin Eras of interstellar flight, over twenty thousand years ago.

  “Why don’t we both go with him-”

  “I must remain here. The simulations live on still in the Trantor Mesh. With the MacroMesh about to be connected, they could multiply themselves throughout the Galaxy.”.

  “Truly?” She had been concentrating on Hari; the simulations had seemed to be a small side issue.

  “I edited them, many millennia ago, to exclude knowledge I felt damaging for humans. But I should revisit that editing.”

  “Editing out? Cutting away such information as, for example, Earth’s location?”

  “They know minor data, such as how Earth’s moon eclipses its star-an amazingly accurate fit. That could narrow the search.”

  “I see.” She had never been told this, and found strange emotions stirred by the knowing.

  “I have had to do many such revisitings before. Luckily, individual humans’ memories die with them. Simulations do not.”

  She felt a dark, brooding sorrow in his words. More, she caught a glimmer of how he must view events, looking backward down a tunnel of long labor and grim sacrifice, stretching tens of millennia. She was comparatively young, less than two centuries old.

  Yet she understood that robots had to be immortal.

  This requirement arose because they had to remain ever-vigilant for humanity. Humans accomplished their cultural continuity by passing on to the next generation the essentials that bound them all together.

  But robots could not be allowed to regularly reproduce, even though the means were readily adopted from the basic organs of mankind. The robots knew their Darwin.

  To reproduce meant to evolve. Inevitably, error would creep into any method of reproduction. Most errors would cause death or subnormal performance, but some would alter the next generation of robots in subtle ways. Some of these would be unacceptable, as seen through the lens of the Four Laws.

  The most obvious selection principle, operating in all ordinarily self-reproducing organisms, was for self-interest. Evolution rewarded pressing forward in one’s own cause. Favoring the individual was the central force selecting for survivors.

  But the self-interest of a robot could conflict with the Four Laws. Inevitably, a robot would evolve which-despite outward appearances, despite intricate interrogations-would favor itself over humanity. Such a robot would not spring between a human and a speeding vehicle.

  Or between humanity and the threats that loomed out of the Galactic night…

  So R. Daneel Olivaw, of the Original Design, had to be immortal. Only special-use robots such as herself could be made fresh. The organiform variation had been arrived at over many centuries of secret research. I t was allowed expressly to fill an unusual task at hand, such as forming a cocoon, both emotional and physical, around one Hari Seldon.

  “You wish to erase all the simulations, everywhere?”

  He said, “Ideally, yes. They might produce new robots, release ancient lore, they could even uncover…”

  “Why do you stop?”

  “There are historical facts you need not know.”

  “But I am an historian.”

  “You are closer to human than I. Some knowledge is best left to forms such as myself. Believe me. The Three Laws, plus the Zeroth, have deep implications, ones the Originators did not-could not-guess. Under the Zeroth Law, we robots have had to perform certain acts-” He caught himself, abruptly shook his head.

  “Very well,” she said reluctantly, fruitlessly studying his impassive face. “I accept that. And I will go with him to this place.”

  “You will need technical aid.” R. Daneel stripped away his shirt to reveal a completely convincing human skin. He put two stiff fingers carefully below one nipple and pushed in a pressure pattern. His chest opened longitudinally for perhaps five centimeters. He removed a jet-black cylinder the size of his little finger. “Instructions are encoded in the side for optical reading.”

  “Advanced technology for a backward world?”

  He allowed himself a smile. “It should be safe, but precautions are in order. Always. Do not worry overly much. I doubt that even the crafty Lamurk will be able to plant agents quickly on Panucopia.”

  Part 5. Panucopia

  Biogenesis, History of-…it was thus only natural that biologists would use entire planets as experimental preserves, testing on a large scale the central ideas about human evolution. Humanity’s origins remained shrouded, with the parent planet (“Earth“) itself unknown-though there were thousands of earnestly supported candidates. Some primates in the scattered Galactic Zoos clearly were germane to the argument. Early in the Post-Middle Period, whole worlds came to be devoted to exploration of these apparently primordial species. One such world made groundbreaking progress in our connections to the pans, though indicative, no firm conclusions could be reached; too much of the intervening millions of years between ourselves and even close relatives like the pans lay in shadow. During the decline of Imperial science, these experiments were even turned into amusements for the gentry and meritocrats, in desperate attempts to remain self-supporting as Imperial funding dried up… .

  —Encyclopedia Galactica

  1.

  He didn’t fully relax until they were sitting on a verandah of the Excursion Station, some six thousand light years away from Trantor.

  Warily Dors gazed out at the view beyond the formidable walls. “We’re safe here from the animals?”

  “I imagine so. Those walls are high and there are guard canines. Wirehounds, I believe.”

  “Good.” She smiled in a way that he knew implied a secret was about to emerge. “I believe I have covered our tracks-to use an animal metaphor. I had records of our departure concealed.”

  “I still think you are exaggerating-”

  “Exaggerating an attempted assassination?” She bit her lip in ill-concealed irritation. This was a well-frayed argument between them by now, but something about her protectiveness always sat poorly with him.

  “I only agreed to leave Trantor in order to study pans.”

  He caught a flicker of emotion in her face and knew that she would now try to ease off. “Oh, that might be useful-or better still, fun. You need a rest.”

  “At least I won’t have to deal with La
murk.”

  Cleon had instituted what he lightly termed “traditional measures” to track down the conspirators. Some had already wormholed away to the far reaches of the Galaxy. Others had committed suicide-or so it seemed.

  Lamurk was staying low, pretending shock and dismay at “this assault on the very fabric of our Imperium.” But Lamurk still held enough votes in the High Council to block Cleon’s move to make Hari his First Minister, so the deadlock continued. Hari was numbed by the entire matter.

  “And you’re right,” Dors continued with a brittle brightness, ignoring his moody silence, “not everything is available on Trantor-or even known about. My main consideration was that if you had stayed on Trantor you would be dead.”

  He stopped looking at the striking scenery. “You think the Lamurk faction would persist…?”

  “They could, which is a better guide to action than trying to guess woulds.”

  “I see.” He didn’t, but he had learned to trust her judgment in matters of the world. Then, too, perhaps he did need a thoroughgoing vacation.

  To be on a living, natural world-he had forgotten, in his years buried in Trantor, how vivid wild things could be. The greens and yellows leaped out, after decades amid matted steel, cycled air, and crystal glitter.

  Here the sky yawned impossibly deep, unmarked by the graffiti of aircraft, wholly alive to the flapping wonder of birds. Bluffs and ridges looked like they had been shaped hastily with a putty knife. Beyond the station walls he could see a sole tree thrashed by an angry wind. Its topknot finally blew off in a pocket of wind, fluttering and fraying over somber flats like a fragmenting bird. Distant, eroded mesas had yellow streaks down their shanks, which as they met the forest turned a burnt orange tinge that suggested the rot of rust. Across the valley, where the pans ranged, lay a dusky canopy hidden behind low gray clouds and raked by winds.

  A thin cold rain fell there, and Hari wondered what it was like to cower as an animal beneath those sheets of moisture, without hope of shelter or warmth. Perhaps Trantor’s utter predictability was better, but he wondered.

  He pointed to the distant forest. “We’re going there?” He liked this fresh place, though the forest was foreboding. It had been a long time since he had even worked with his hands, alongside his father, back on Helicon. To live in the open

  “Don’t start judging.”

  “I’m anticipating.”

  She grinned. “You always have a longer word for it, no matter what I say.”

  “The treks look a little, well-touristy.”

  “Of course. We’re tourists.”

  The land here rose up into peaks as sharp as torn tin. In the thick trees beyond, mist broke on gray smooth rocks. Even here, high up the slope of an imposing ridge, the Excursion Station was hemmed in by slimy, thick-barked trees standing in deep drifts of dead, dark leaves. With rotting logs half buried in the wet layers, the air swarmed so close it was like breathing damp opium.

  Dors stood, her drink finished. “Let’s go in, socialize.”

  He followed dutifully and right away knew it was a mistake. Most of the indoor stim-party crowd was dressed in rugged safari-style gear. They were ruddy folk, faces flushed with excitement, or perhaps just enhancers. Hari waved away the bubbleglass-bearing waiter; he disliked the way it sharpened his wits in uncontrolled ways. Still, he smiled and tried to make small talk.

  This turned out to be not merely small, but microscopic. Where are you from? Oh, Trantor-what’s it like? We’re from (fill in the planet)-have you ever heard of it? Of course he had not. Twenty-five million worlds…

  Most were Primitivists, drawn by the unique experience available here. It seemed to him that every third word in their conversation was natural or vital, delivered like a mantra.

  “What a relief, to be away from straight lines,” a thin man said.

  “Um, how so?” Hari said, trying to seem interested.

  “Well, of course straight lines don’t exist in nature. They have to be put there by humans.” He sighed. “I love to be free of straightness!”

  Hari instantly thought of pine needles; strata of metamorphic rock; the inside edge of a half-moon; spider-woven silk strands; the line along the top of a breaking ocean wave; crystal patterns; white quartz lines on granite slabs; the far horizon of a vast calm lake; the legs of birds; spikes of cactus; the arrow dive of a raptor; trunks of young, fast-growing trees; wisps of high windblown clouds; ice cracks; the two sides of the V of migrating birds; icicles.

  “Not so,” he said, but no more.

  His habit of laconic implication was trampled in the headlong talk, of course; the enhancers were taking hold. They all chattered on, excited by the prospect of immersing themselves in the lives of the creatures roaming the valleys below. He listened, not commenting, intrigued. Some wanted to share the worldview of herd animals, others of hunters, some of birds. They spoke as though they were entering some athletic event, and that was not his view at all. Still, he stayed silent.

  He finally escaped with Dors, into the small park beside the Excursion Station, designed to make guests familiar with local conditions before their immersion. Panucopia, as this world was called, apparently had little native life of large size. There were animals he had seen as a boy on Helicon, and whole kraals of domestic breeds. All had sprung from common stock, less than a hundred thousand years ago, on the legendary “Earth.”

  The unique asset of Panucopia was nowhere near, of course. He stopped and stared at the kraals and thought again about the Galaxy. His mind kept attacking what he thought of as the Great Problem, diving at it from many angles. He had learned to just stand aside and let it run. The psychohistorical equations needed deeper analysis, terms which accounted for the bedrock properties of humans as a species. As…

  Animals. Was there a clue here?

  Despite millennia of trying, humans had domesticated few creatures. To be domesticated, wild beasts had to have an entire suite of traits. Most had to be herd animals, with instinctive submission patterns which humans could co-opt. They had to be placid; herds that bolt at a strange sound and can’t tolerate intruders are hard to keep.

  Finally, they had to be willing to breed in captivity. Most humans didn’t want to court and copulate under the watchful gaze of others, and neither did most animals.

  So here there were sheep and goats and cows and llamas, slightly adapted to this world but otherwise unremarkable, just like myriad other Empire planets. The similarity implied that it had all been done at about the same time.

  Except for the pans. They were unique to Panucopia. Whoever had brought them here might have been trying a domestication experiment, but the records from 13,000 years before were lost. Why?

  A wirehound came sniffing, checking them out, muttering an unintelligible apology. “Interesting,” he remarked to Dors, “that Primitivists still want to be protected from the wild by the domesticated.”

  “Well, of course. This fellow is big.”

  “Not sentimental about the natural state? We were once just another type of large mammal on some mythical Earth.”

  “Mythical? I don’t work in that area of prehistory, but most historians think there was such a place.”

  “Sure, but ‘earth’ just means ‘dirt’ in the oldest languages, correct?”

  ‘Well, we had to come from somewhere.” She thought a moment, then allowed slowly, “I think that natural state might be a pleasant place to visit, but…”

  “I want to try the pans.”

  “What? An immersion?” Her eyebrows lifted in mild alarm.

  “As long as we’re here, why not?”

  “I don’t…well, I’ll think about it.”

  “You can bailout at any time, they say.” She nodded, pursed her lips. “Um.”

  “We’ll feel at home-the way pans do.”

  “You believe everything you read in a brochure?”

  “I did some research. It’s a well-developed tech.” Her lips had a skeptical tilt. “Um.�
��

  He knew by now better than to press her. Let time do his work. The canine, quite large and alert, snuffled at his hand and slurred, “Goood naaaght, suuur.” He stroked it. In its eyes he saw a kinship, an instant rapport that he did not need to think about. For one who dwelled in his head so much, this was a welcome rub of reality.

  Significant evidence,he thought. We have a deep past together. Perhaps that was why he wanted to immerse in a pan. To go far back, beyond the vexing state of being human.

  2.

  “We’re certainly related, yes,” Expert Specialist Vaddo said. He was a big man, tanned and muscular and casually confident. He was a safari guide and immersion specialist, with a biology background. He did research using immersion techniques, but keeping the station going soaked up most of his time, he said.

  Hari looked skeptical. “You think pans were with us back on an Earth?”

  “Sure. Had to be.”

  “They could not have arisen from genetic tinkering with our own kind?”

  “Doubtful. Genetic inventory shows that they come from a small stable, probably a zoo set up here. Or else an accidental crash.”

  Dors asked, “Is there any chance this world could have been the original Earth?”

  Vaddo chuckled. “No fossil record, no ruins. Anyway, the local fauna and flora have a funny keypattern in their genetic helix, a bit different from our DNA. Extra methyl group on the purine rings. We can live here, eat the food, but neither we nor the pans are native.”

  Vaddo made a good case. Pans certainly looked quasihuman. Ancient records referred to a classification, that was all: Pan troglodytes, whatever that meant in a long-lost tongue. They had hands with thumbs, the same number of teeth as humans, no tails.

  Vaddo waved a big hand at the landscape below the station. “They were dumped here along with plenty of other related species, on top of a biosphere that supported the usual grasses and trees, very little more.”