Asimov’s Future History Volume 16

by Isaac Asimov

  But no one was supposed to know Planch was on Madder Loss.

  Mors tipped the boy a credit, then hefted the message and considered his options. He looked up again.

  The boy on the quadricycle rounded a comer at the beginning of the next terminal wing and vanished. Two men in blue uniforms–Imperial Navy officers–stood in the broad entrance to the wing. Mors frowned. He could not see them clearly at this distance, but their bearing was both assured and mildly arrogant. He had no difficulty imagining the sun-and-spaceship logos on their jackets, the powerful blasters at their hips.

  He ran his finger over the playback slot on the card and the message scrolled down in the air before his eyes.

  MORS PLANCH.

  Imperial Councilor and Confidant Farad Sinter requests your presence for a special inquiry. You are instructed to return to Trantor by the quickest conveyance; an Imperial Navy fast frigate has been dispatched to Madder Loss for your use.

  With sincere interest and sympathy:

  FARAD SINTER.

  Mors had heard of Councilor Sinter, reputed to be the Emperor’s chief procurer of willing females, not highly regarded in any of the palace offices except, perhaps, his own, but he knew of no reason why the councilor would want to speak with him.

  Mors stifled a brief panic. If this was somehow connected with Lodovik

  It must be! But why wouldn’t Linge Chen send the ship, then? He knew of no connection between Sinter and Chen.

  Mors had a sudden foreboding. He was caught between an ancient, almost incomprehensible conspiracy, and the still tightly-meshed and broadly cast net of the Empire. His life as a free man–any life at all!–might very well be at an end.

  All because of an attachment to this peculiar and vulnerable world!

  Escape was highly unlikely.

  Best to go calmly. These days, style was all that was left to a desperate man.

  Drawing up his shoulders, Mors walked away from the gate, toward the two men in blue uniforms at the end of the long corridor.

  33.

  THE RETURN TO Trantor was both trauma and test for the robot who had been Dors Venabili. Soon she would have a new identity, and she would take a new role in the very long-range plans of R. Daneel Olivaw. But for now, this day of landing and disembarking was so similar to that time, decades before, when she had first arrived on Trantor... before she met the man she had been programmed to guard and nurture...

  Before Hari.

  Trantor had not changed much in the time since Dors’ death, but the few changes she was in a position to notice were not positive. Trantor looked seedier, less imposing and more decrepit. The ceil of the domes had become very noticeably more patchy, the slideways less efficient and more prone to breakdown. The smells were the same, however, and the people seemed much the same.

  Even the circumstances were the same. The last time she had traveled to Trantor, it had been with Daneel. They had each gone their separate ways upon arrival, but now they stuck together, and Dors dreaded the plan she was sure Daneel was concocting. She was human enough in design to be able to feel humanlike emotions–dread among them, and love–but Daneel wanted to test her resolve, as a robot, and her strength. If she failed, she was of no use to him.

  Daneel said little, but took her to the safe apartment near Streeling, where they picked up their change of clothes and new Trantorian identity papers. With a slight adjustment to her already altered physical appearance and external marks, including fingerprints and external tissue genetics, she would become Jenat Korsan, a teacher from the food ally Paskann. Lodovik would assume the identity of a merchant broker from the metals-rich province of Dau. As Rissik Numant of Dau of the Thousand Golden Suns, he would spend several years on Trantor, conducting a personal pilgrimage.

  The safe apartment was small and located in the poor municipality of Fann, less than ten kilometers from Streeling. Dors knew the place a little–had passed through here several times before forming her liaison with Hari. What had then been shabby genteel was now truly just shabby, and unhappy; police seldom came here unless it was strictly necessary.

  They stayed in the apartment for two days, just long enough for Daneel’s manipulations to spread throughout Trantor’s identity networks.

  Then, they went forth...

  Not, she hoped, to some catastrophic relapse, some unbearable return to her old mode. The great difficulty was that with Hari Seldon, she had felt truly useful for the first time in her existence, truly important, and to her human side, that importance had been translated into happiness. She was now all too aware that she was not human.

  And not happy.

  34.

  THE FIRST INTERVIEW with Gaal Dornick had proceeded satisfactorily. Hari felt he had impressed the young man, and Dornick had taken the news of the current situation well enough. Good–the man had courage, and there was about him a hint of that outer-world youth and bravado that Hari remembered himself once having.

  As a mathist, Dornick was talented, but there were many far more talented already connected with the Project. Dornick’s main use would be as a sharp observer, who would weather the present storm and help pave the way for Hari’s own peculiar method of helping the Project’s people weather future storms. And perhaps as another friend. I do like the man.

  Hari could not stand the thought of just letting his two Foundations–one secret, one, he hoped–believed! Knew!–to be sanctioned by the Empire itself–proceed on their own, after his death. If he had learned anything from Demerzel/Daneel, it had been the necessity of leaving some trail of tidbits, some prodding and provocative part of himself to spur things on after his death. Daneel did this by popping up in person every few decades, a technique Hari would only be able to imitate in extension, as it were.

  Dornick would be key to making Hari Seldon a legend, and to allowing him to appear at regular intervals, even after death, to shepherd things along.

  Hari returned to his apartment in Streeling and once more availed himself of the services of a small security tracer Stettin had procured for him on one of his journeys off Trantor. The tracer, set down in the middle of the main room, spun a web of red lines across the walls and low ceiling, then pronounced, in the sweet voice of a girl, “This room is free of known Imperial listening devices.”

  There had not been any new listening devices designed for some time. Linge Chen, for his own unknown reasons, was still allowing Hari a private personal space. Everywhere else, including his office in the Imperial Library, he was watched and listened to very carefully.

  Hari could feel the forces building. Poor Dornick! He would hardly have time to get used to Trantor.

  Hari smiled grimly, then pushed a button in the wall. A small entertainment center emerged. He instructed it to access to University music libraries–one of his privileges at Streeling–and playa selection of court music from the time of Jemmu IX. “Mostly Gand and Hayer, please,” he said. These two composers, the former male, the latter female, had competed with each other for court commissions for fifty years. After their death, it had been discovered they were secretly lovers. Music scholars had decided through exhaustive analysis that no one could tell which of their combined works had been written by Gand, and which by Hayer–or even if just one had written them all. They were elegant and soothing pieces, filled with a polite recognition of the Empire’s eternal order; music from an age when the Empire had worked, and worked well, vigorous and youthful even after thousands of years.

  Daneel’s Golden Age, Hari thought as he settled into his oldest and favorite chair. The kind of age Linge Chen still believes in. rather foolishly. The Chief Commissioner has always seemed such a pompous fool to me–of aristocratic family, trained in ancient bureaucratic disciplines, aloof and disconnected... What if I’m wrong? What if my theories are inadequate to predict these short-term results? But they can’t be–the long-term results depend on what happens in these next few weeks!

  He forced himself to relax, performed his breath
ing exercises, just as Dors had once taught him. The music played, soft and highly structured and very melodic. As Hari listened, beating time with one hand where it rested on the chair arm, he worked over in his mind the roles that would be played by the Chen and Divart families as Trantor continued its decline. The Commission of Public Safety would run the Empire for some time, until a strong leader emerged–very likely an Emperor and not a military man. Hari suspected–though he would never have recorded this prediction–that the Emperor would take on the name of Cleon, become Cleon II, to appeal to the Empire’s, and especially Trantor’s, sense of tradition and history.

  It was when a society became the most distressed and antiquated that it would recreate an overwhelming fantasy of some Golden Age, a time when all was great and glorious, when people were more noble and causes more magnificent and honorable. Chivalry is the last refuge of a rotting corpse.

  Nikolo Pas had said as much. Hari closed his eyes. He easily visualized the defeated tyrant, sitting in his bare cell, a pitiful figure who had once occupied the center of a huge social cancer, yet who had also understood the Empire’s destiny with almost as clear a vision as Hari’s.

  “I reached out to the wealthy noble families, the aristocrats, that squat on the lines of money and commerce like giant old leeches,” Pas had explained. “As provincial governor, I nurtured their sense of superiority and self-importance. I encouraged agrarian reforms–instructed that all municipalities should place farmlands back into production and require their young citizens and even gentry to work them, whether or not they were profitable, for spiritual reasons. I encouraged the development of secret religious societies, especially those that placed a premium on wealth and social position. And I encouraged the memory, the history, of a past time when life was much simpler and we were all closer to moral perfection. How easy it was! How the rich and powerful lapped up these corrupt old myths! I believed them myself for a time... Until the political tide turned, and I needed something more powerful. Then it was I began the revolution against the Eternals.”

  Hari jerked up in his seat at a sound within his room. He ordered the music to stop and listened. He was sure he had heard footsteps.

  They’ve come! He got up from his seat, heart pounding. Linge Chen had finally gotten tired of the game and was playing his hand. Just as Farad Sinter could send out assassins, so could the Chief Commissioner. Assassins–or merely arresting officers.

  There were only three rooms. Surely he would have seen someone enter.

  Hari searched the bedroom and kitchen, plodding across the soft floor in his bare feet and robe, all too aware of his vulnerability, even within his own home.

  He found no one.

  Relieved, he returned to the living room–and even before he noticed the visitors, felt a wave of reassurance. It was with little or no shock and not much surprise even that he saw three people standing in his living room, arranged in a half circle around his favorite chair.

  Despite some cosmetic changes, he knew immediately that one, the tallest, with reddish brown hair, was his old friend Daneel. The other two he did not recognize. One was female, one a bulky male.

  “Hello, Hari,” Daneel said. The voice had changed as well.

  “I thought–I remembered a visit from you,” Hari stammered, confusion fighting with joy. He felt some irrational hope that Daneel had come to take him away, to tell him the Plan was fulfilled and he did not have to stand trial, did not have to live in the shadow of the displeasure of Linge Chen...

  “Perhaps you anticipated,” Daneel said. “That’s something you do very well. But we have not been in each other’s presence for some years now.”

  “I am not much of a prophet,” Hari said wryly. “It’s good to see you again. Who are these people? Friends?” He gave the next word a suggestive emphasis. “Colleagues?”

  The female looked at him with a steady gaze he found discomfiting. Something familiar...

  “Friends. We are all here to provide assistance in a crucial time.”

  “Please, sit. Do any of you... feel thirsty, or hungry?”

  Daneel knew he did not need to reply. The bulky male shook his head, no, but the female, also, made no reply. She simply watched him, her attractive face intensely blank.

  Hari felt his heart sink, then rebound with painful excitement. His mouth hung open, and he sat in a smaller chair near the wall, to keep from collapsing. His eyes did not leave the woman. The right size, approximately. The same shapely figure, though younger than he last remembered her, but then, she had always been exceptionally resilient and youthful.

  If she was a robot–secret steel!–

  “Dors?” He could say nothing more. His mouth became too dry to talk.

  “No,” the woman said, but did not look away.

  “We are not here to renew old acquaintances,” Daneel said. “You will not remember this visit, Hari.”

  “No, of course not,” Hari said, suddenly miserable and very alone again, despite Daneel’s presence. “I sometimes wonder whether I have any freedom at all... whether I can make any of my own choices.”

  “I have never influenced you, except to prepare the way and maximize your effects, and to help you keep necessary secrets.”

  Hari held out his hands, and wailed, “Release me, Daneel! Take all this off of my shoulders! I am an old man–I feel so very, very old, and I am so afraid!”

  Daneel–listened with a concerned and sympathetic expression. “You know that is not true, Hari. There is still great strength within you, and enthusiasm. You are truly Hari Seldon.”

  Hari drew back and covered his mouth with one hand, then swiftly wiped his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he murmured.

  “Nothing to be sorry about. I am fully aware the strain is enormous. It causes me deep conflict to so burden you, my friend.”

  “Why are you here? Who are they, really?”

  “There is much work for me to do, and they will assist me. Already forces are at work that I must deal with, and that are of no concern of yours. We all have our burdens, Hari.”

  “Yes, Daneel... I understand some of that. I mean, I see it in the graphs, the displays–undercurrents, hideously complicated, difficult to track, all centered on this moment. But why have you come to me, now?”

  “To provide reassurance. You are not fighting alone. I have conducted surveys of the major centers where the Seldon Project is underway. You have quite an efficient army working for you, Hari. An army of mathists and scholars. You have done brilliantly well. They are primed and ready. I congratulate you. You are a great leader, Hari.”

  “Thank you. And them?” He could not take his eyes off the woman. “They are like you?” Even in Daneel’s presence, he had difficulty using the word “robot.”

  “They are like me.”

  Hari started to ask another question, but shut his mouth abruptly and looked away, to bring his emotions into check. The question I most want to ask–I cannot, for my own sanity. Dors! Whatever became of Dors? Is she truly gone–dead? I have suspected for so long...!

  “Hari, Linge Chen is going to move soon. You will probably be arrested tomorrow. The trial will begin early, and, of course, it will be conducted in secret.”

  “I agree,” Hari said.

  “I have certain knowledge of this,” Daneel added softly.

  “All right,” Hari said. He swallowed back a lump in his throat. The second male–bulky, not very handsome, was also starting to look familiar. Who did he remind Hari or! Someone in the palace, a public figure...

  “Linge Chen has his reasons. There are factions within the palace that are trying to overthrow the Commission of Public Safety, and to take power away from the baronial families, especially from the Chens and the Divarts.”

  “They will fail,” Hari said.

  “Yes. But it is not clear what damage may be done before they fail. If I am not very careful, the complexity could get out of hand, and we may lose our opportunity for this millennium.”


  Hari felt a chill. Accustomed as he was to dealing with time periods of thousands of years, Daneel’s phrasing gave him a sudden view of possible futures in which Hari Seldon had not succeeded, in which Daneel would start all over again with another bright young mathist, another long plan to alleviate human suffering.

  Who could understand the thinking of such a mind? Already twenty thousand years old...

  Hari stood and approached the trio. “What more can I do?” he asked, then added, with a frown, “Before you make me forget this encounter.”

  “I can tell you no more for now,” Daneel said. “But I am still here, Hari. I will always be here for you.”

  The female took a step forward, then stopped. Hari noticed a tremor in one of her arms. Her face was so rigid she might have been cut from plastic. Then she smiled and backed up. “It is our privilege to serve,” she said, and her voice was not that of Dors Venabili. In fact, Hari wondered how he could ever have thought she was Dors.

  Dors was dead. He had no doubt now. Dead, never to return.

  Hari looked around the empty room. The music had been playing for two hours and he had hardly noticed the passage of time. He felt relaxed and in control, but still wary–like an animal long used to the hunters, a survivor with skills that could always be relied upon, but never taken for granted.

  He had been thinking of Dors again. Hari smoothed his brow with his fingers.

  Lodovik watched Dors with concern as they left the grounds of Streeling University. They rode in a taxi through the main traffic tunnel from Streeling to Pasaj, the Emperor Expressway, surrounded above, below, and to all sides by a steady stream of buses and cabs, caught in red and violet control grids like blood cells in an artery. The taxi was automated, chosen at random, and scanned by Daneel for listening devices.