Asimov’s Future History Volume 16

by Isaac Asimov

  Vara’s forehead furled. Then her face went smooth and she took the chit and smiled. “Thank you.”

  “It’s nothing. Come back in a few days. Things might have changed. I’ll assign a different officer to protect you.”

  “Thank you,” Vara Liso said.

  Sinter touched her chin with one finger. “You are valuable, you know,” he said, and was secretly disgusted by the look of sheer need on the woman’s exceedingly unattractive face.

  27.

  THOUGH HE WOULD go before the Commission of Public Safety alone, Hari knew very well that he needed legal coaching behind the scenes. That did not stop him from hating his meetings with his counsel, Sedjar Boon.

  Boon was an experienced lawyer with a fine reputation. He had received his training in the municipality of Bale Nola, in Nola Sector, under tutors with many decades of experience dealing with the tortuous laws of Trantor, both Imperial and Citizen.

  Trantor had ten formal constitutions and as many sets of laws drawn up for its various classes of citizens; there were literally millions of commentaries in tens of thousands of volumes on how the sets of statutes interacted. Every five years, around the planet, there would be new conventions to amend and update the laws, many of them broadcast live like sporting events for the enjoyment of billions of Greys, who relished dusty and relentlessly detailed legal proceedings far more than they did physical sports. It was said this tradition was at least as old as the Empire, perhaps much older.

  Hari was grateful that some aspects of Imperial law were private.

  Boon spread his new research results on the desk in Hari’s library office and glanced with raised eyebrows at the active Prime Radiant perched near one comer. Hari waited patiently for the lawyer to get his autoclerks and filmbook readers aligned and in tune with each other.

  “Sorry this takes so long, professor,” Boon said, sitting opposite Hari. “Your case is unique.”

  Hari smiled and nodded.

  “The laws under which you have been brought before the Judiciary of the Commission of Public Safety have been modified forty-two thousand and fifteen times since the code-books were first established, twelve thousand and five years ago,” Boon said. “There are three hundred modified versions still regarded as extant, active, and relevant, and often they contradict each other. The law are supposed to apply equally to all classes, and are all based on Citizen law, but... I don’t need to tell you the application is different. As the Commission of Public Safety has assumed its charter under Imperial canon, it may choose from any of these sets of codes. My guess is they will try you under several sets at once, as a meritocrat or even an eccentric, and not reveal the specific sets until the trial is underway. I’ve chosen the most likely sets, the ones that give the Commission the greatest leeway in your case. Here are the numbers. and I’ve provided filmbook excerpts for your study–”

  “Fine,” Hari said without enthusiasm.

  “Though I know you won’t even bother glancing at them, will you, professor?”

  “Probably not,” Hari admitted. “Sometimes you seem incredibly smug, if I may say so.”

  “The Commission will try me as they see fit, and the outcome will be to their best advantage. Has there ever been any doubt about that?”

  “Never,” Boon said. “But you can invoke certain privileges that could delay indefinitely execution of any sentence, especially if one of the sets incorporates the independence of the University of Streeling, as per the Meritocrat and Palace Treaty of two centuries ago. And you do face charges of sedition and treason–thirty-nine such charges, at the moment. Linge Chen could easily have you executed.”

  “I know,” Hari said. “I’ve faced the courts before.”

  “Never under the rule of the Chief Commissioner. He is known to be a devious and exacting scholar of jurisprudence, professor.”

  The informer on Hari’s desk chimed, and a text message rolled across its small display. It was a list of meetings for the week, the most important of which was in less than an hour, with an off world student and mathist named Gaal Dornick.

  Boon was still speaking, but Hari held up his hand. The counselor stopped and folded his arms, waiting for his client’s thought processes to reach a conclusion.

  Hari’s hands, mottled with age spots, reached briefly for a small gray pocket computer, and he did some calculations there. He then placed the computer in its port niche beside the Prime Radiant. The projected results filled half the rear wall of the room, and were very pretty, but meant nothing to Boon.

  They meant a great deal to Hari. He became agitated and stood, pacing near a false window that showed open-air fields on his home world of Helicon. If one had known where to look in the false window, one could have seen Hari’s father tending gene-tailored pharmaceutical-producing plants in the far distance. He had brought the image with him from Helicon, decades before, yet had only mounted it in this large frame a year ago. His thoughts were increasingly of his mother and father now. He glanced at the distant figure in that faraway place and time, wrinkled his brow, and said, “Who’s the best young counselor on your staff! Not too expensive–not as expensive as you!–but every bit as good?”

  Boon laughed. “Are you thinking of changing counsel, professor?”

  “No. I have a very important member of my staff arriving soon, a fine young mathist. He will be arrested almost immediately, because of his association with me. He will need counsel, of course.”

  “I can take him on as well, professor, with little increase in fees, if that’s your concern. If your cases are parallel–”

  “No. Linge Chen will lay waste all around me if he can, but in the end, he won’t touch me. I’ll need to protect my best people to carry on after the Commissioners have passed judgment.”

  Boon scowled deeply and flung up a hand. “Professor Seldon, your reputation as a prophet is much too widespread for my professional comfort. But how in the name of all that is Cosmic can you know this about the Chief Commissioner?”

  Hari’s eyes seemed for a moment almost to start out of his head, and Boon leaned forward in his chair, clearly worried for the old man’s health.

  Hari took a deep breath and relaxed. “It is a Cusp Time,” he said. “I could explain it to you, but it would bore you as much as this legal mumbo-jumbo bores me. I put up with you and credit you with knowing your profession, counselor. Please put up with me under the same terms.”

  Boon pressed his lips together and squinted dubiously at his client. “My partner’s son, Lors Avakim, is a smart young fellow. He’s worked for some years in Imperial constitutional law, with a sideline in cases adjudicated by the Commission of Public Safety.”

  “Avakim...” Hari had hoped for this name to be mentioned. It simplified things considerably. He knew that Boon was a good counselor, but suspected Boon was not as independent as might be wished. Lors Avakim was a prospective member of the Encyclopedia Project, legal division. He had applied last year. He was idealistic, fresh, not yet corrupted. Hari doubted that Boon knew of this connection to the Project. “Can he dance well enough to keep my mathist out of real trouble with these buffoons?”

  “I think so,” Boon said.

  “Good. Please retain him on the Project’s legal account for scholar and mathist Gaal Dornick, newly arrived on Trantor. I’m afraid I’m going to have to cut our meeting short today, counselor. I have to get ready to meet with Dornick.”

  “Where is he staying?”

  “At the Luxor Hotel.”

  “And when will they arrest him?” Boon asked with a wry smile.

  “Tomorrow,” Hari said, and coughed into his fist. “Sorry. It must be the dust from all these dead hands of law.” He gestured at the bookfilms.

  “Of course,” Boon said tolerantly.

  “Thank you,” Hari said, and gestured toward the office door. Boon gathered up his materials and opened the door, then turned to look back at Hari Seldon.

  “The trial is in three weeks, professor. T
hat’s not a lot of time.”

  “During a Sel–” He interrupted himself. He had almost said “Seldon Crisis.” “During a Cusp lime, counselor, an amazing number of things can happen in just three weeks.”

  “May I speak freely, professor?”

  “Certainly,” Hari said, but his tone implied the words had better be few.

  “You seem to hold my profession in contempt, yet you claim to be a student of cultural flows and ebbs. Law is the framework, the stable but growing anatomy of any culture.”

  “I am a flawed man, counselor. I have many lapses. It is my fervent wish that where I err, other people on my staff will see what I cannot, and correct for my failures. Good day.”

  28.

  LINGE CHEN RECEIVED Sedjar Boon alone in his personal residence within the Commission Pavilion and gave him five minutes to describe the meeting with Hari Seldon.

  “I admire the man, sire,” Boon said, “but he does not seem to much care about what’s going to happen. He seemed more concerned about providing counsel for a student or assistant who arrived on Trantor only a short while ago.”

  “And who is that?”

  “Gaal Dornick, sire.”

  “I do not know him. He is new to this Psychohistory Project, is he not?”

  “I believe so, sire.”

  “There are fifty working within the University and the library on Seldon’s Project, and that makes Dornick the fifty-first?”

  “Yes.”

  “And below these fifty, soon to be fifty-one, there are a hundred thousand, scattered all over Trantor, with a few thousand stationed on the food allies, and a few hundred working the receiver stations around the system. None on the defense stations. All are loyal, all conduct themselves with quiet dedication. Seldon makes himself the lightning rod to divert attention from all of this other activity. Quite an amazing accomplishment for a man as ignorant of law and as contemptuous of the minutiae of management as Seldon seems to be.”

  Boon easily caught the implied criticism. “I do not underestimate him, Commissioner. But you have ordered me to provide him with the very finest legal advice, and he does not seem at all interested.”

  “Perhaps he knows you report to me.”

  “I doubt that, Commissioner.”

  “It’s not likely, but he’s a very intelligent man. Have you studied Seldon’s psychohistory papers, counselor?”

  “Only insofar as they relate to the charges under which you are likely to try him.” Boon looked up with hopeful respect. “It would make my task so much easier if I knew what those charges might be, Commissioner.”

  Chen returned his gaze with amusement. “No,” Chen said. “Most of my Greys, and certainly most of the legals, are of the opinion that Seldon is a harmless and amusing crank, another rogue meritocrat aspiring to be an eccentric. He’s regarded with some affection on Trantor. Knowledge that he is about to stand trial is already too widespread, counselor. It might even be to Seldon’s advantage to publicize the trial, applying no little pressure on us to dismiss the charges or call the trial off completely. He could easily publicize the event as a respected academic, a creative meritocrat of the grand old style being bullied by the effete and cruel gentry.”

  “Is that a suggestion, Commissioner? It could make a fine defense.”

  “Not at all,” Chen said sourly. He leaned forward. “Do not expect me to do your work for you, counselor. Has he discussed this strategy with you?”

  “No, sire.”

  “He wants to stand trial. He is using this trial in some way, perhaps because it is necessary to him. Curious.”

  Boon studied the Chief Commissioner for several seconds, then said, “Permission to speak freely, Commissioner?”

  “Certainly,” Chen said.

  “While it may be true that Seldon’s words and predictions could be construed to be treasonous, it would be far more reasonable for the Commissioners simply to ignore him. His organization is substantial, to be sure–the largest gathering of intellectuals outside the University. But it is devoted to peaceful ends~encyclopedia, so it is said. Scholarship, purely scholarship! I do not understand your motives for bringing the professor to trial. Are you using Hari Seldon?”

  Chen smiled. “It is my misfortune to be considered omniscient. I am not omniscient, nor am I politically omnivorous, eating and transforming all those events which occur around me to my own advantage.” Chen was obviously unwilling to give any more of an answer than this.

  “Of course not, Commissioner. May I ask one more question–for purely selfish and professional reasons, to avoid excess effort when there is so much to do, and so little time?”

  “Perhaps,” Chen said, with a curl of his lip that indicated he was not going to be very magnanimous.

  “Will you have Gaal Dornick arrested, sire?”

  Chen considered briefly, then said, “Yes.”

  “Tomorrow, sire?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Boon expressed his gratitude, and to his immense relief, Chen dismissed him.

  After the counselor departed, Chen called up his personal records and spent several minutes chasing down the first mention of trying Seldon for treason, made either by him or within his presence. Chen could have sworn he had been the first to make the suggestion, but the records proved him wrong.

  Lodovik Trema had been the first to plant the notion, in a very subtle conversation that had taken place a little less than two years before. Now, the trial was going to prove both extremely troublesome, and extremely opportune–far more opportune than troublesome! A small tool with which to sweep the Palace clean... How could Lodovik have known, so long ago, that it would work out this way?

  Chen closed the files and sat in silence for ten seconds. What would Lodovik have done at this stage to take maximum political advantage?

  The Chief Commissioner drew himself up in his chair and shook loose from a feeling of despondency. To have come to rely so thoroughly on one man! Surely that was a sign of weakness.

  “I will not think of him again,” Chen vowed.

  29.

  KLIA WOKE TO a gentle tapping sound on her door and quickly dressed. When she opened the door, she was disappointed, then glad, to discover that it was not Brann who had been sent to summon her, but another young man, not a Dahlite and not nearly so handsome.

  He was small and shifty-looking, a Misaroan, with a long nose and skin severely marked by brain fever. He was also without speech, and made his errand known by sign language from the Borrower’s Guild–a language that Klia knew fairly well.

  My name is Rock, he told her, clutching his fist and striking it with his other hand to emphasize his name. Come to talk with the Blank One, he told her, and smiled when he saw she understood at least part of what he signed.

  Blank one? Klia made the double-slash sign of puzzlement across her eyes as she followed the small man.

  With his fingers, he spelled a name out, and she understood. She was to meet with Plussix, but of course she would not see him. No one ever saw him.

  Plussix did not speak while hidden behind a wall, as she had half expected. Klia stood in a small, smooth-walled cubicle with a glassy cylinder close to one wall and a single hard chair close to the opposite wall. In the two other walls there were doors, and one of these shut quietly as Rock departed with a small grunt and a nod.

  The cylinder filled with a pale glow, and a figure took shape within: a well-dressed man of middle years, with wavy brown hair cut close to his scalp and a blandly pleasant, somewhat enigmatic expression. His skin was ruddy and his lips very thin, almost ascetic.

  Klia had seen telemimics in filmbooks and other entertainments. Wherever Plussix actually was, this figure would follow his motions slavishly. She could not, of course, use any of her skills on such an image.

  She did not like deceptions, and this was no exception. She sat on the hard chair and folded her arms.

  “You know who I am,” the figure said, and sat on a ghostly chair w
ithin the cylinder. “Your name is Klia Asgar, of Dahl. Am I correctly informed?”

  She nodded.

  “You come to us on the advice of Kallusin. It’s getting very tough for your kind to survive on Trantor now, without help.”

  “I suppose,” she said, drawing her own lips tight.

  “You should find it comfortable here. There are many fascinating things within these warehouses. You could easily spend a lifetime here just studying the history of all we import.”

  “I don’t like history,” Klia said.

  Plussix smiled. “There is rather more of it than any of us can personally use.”

  “Look, I did come here of my own free will–”

  “Is there such a thing, in your opinion?”

  “Of course,” Klia said.

  “Of course,” Plussix echoed. “Please forgive me for interrupting.”

  “I was going to say, I find all this a little creepy. The warehouses, the way you hide yourself–a little creepy. I think maybe I’d like to go it on my own.”

  Plussix nodded. “An understandable wish. Not to be granted, now that you are here, for reasons I’m sure you understand.”

  “You think I could tell the others where you are. The woman who hunts us.”

  “That is a possibility.”

  “But I wouldn’t, I swear it!”

  “I appreciate your candor, Klia Asgar, and I hope you appreciate mine. We are in a kind of war here. You wish to survive the consequences of an irrational force being exerted by unknown figures. I have my means and my ends. You and your brothers and sisters here are my means. My ends are not evil, nor are they destructive. They have to do with free will and the exercise of freedom, which I’m sure you find ironic, under the circumstances.”

  Klia tossed her hair back and clamped her jaw. “Yeah,” she said tightly.

  “You have heard all this before,” Plussix said. There was not a trace of irony or humor in his voice, little trace of any emotion at all. The man’s words were clear and concise and altogether a little cold.