Asimov’s Future History Volume 16

by Isaac Asimov

  “Right,” the technician said, and focused on his equipment. “I’ll draw the curtain now and bring in the scramblers. Nobody will know what he’s saying besides himself.”

  Hari tapped his finger lightly on the chair arm. The lights on the spheres changed to amber, then to red. He pushed himself up from the chair and stared into the darkness beyond, imagining faces, people, men and women, anxious to learn their fates. Well, most of the time, for a few occasions at least, he would be able to help. The devil of it was, he did not know specifically when these little speeches would begin to be useless!

  He would record only one message that day, the rest over the next year and a half, as each necessary nudge became clear within the adjusted equations.

  With his most professorial air, quite confident and deliberate, Hari began to speak. He recorded a simple message to those of the Second Foundation, the psychologists and mathists, the mentalics who would train them and alter their germ lines: nothing very profound, merely a kind of pep talk. “To my true grandchildren,” he said, “I give my profoundest thanks and wish you luck. You will never need to hear of an impending Seldon Crisis from me... You will never need anything so dramatic, for you know...”

  He had spoken to Wanda the day before, telling her the final part of the puzzle of the Second Foundation. At first, she had been disappointed, vastly; she had so wanted to get away from Trantor, to start fresh on a new world, however barren. But she had held up remarkably well.

  And he had told her that Daneel must never learn of the true whereabouts of the Second Foundation, of the mentalics who could resist all the efforts of the Giskardian robots, should they ever return to take up the reins of secret power.

  A few minutes and he was finished.

  He pulled aside the blankets and draped them on the edge of the chair, then stood to leave. The three lenses rose into the darkness above.

  Waiting for Gaal to join him, Hari wondered if Death would be a robot. How problematical for a robot it would be to bring both comfort and an end to a human master! He saw a large, smooth, black-skinned robot, infinitely cautious and caring, serving him and driving him to the last.

  The thought made him smile. Would that the universe could ever be so caring and so gentle.

  92.

  DORS EMBRACED KLIA and Brann, then turned to Lodovik.

  “I wish I could send a duplicate of myself with you,” she told him, “and experience what you will experience,” she said.

  Beyond their fenced platform, the small trading ship of Mors Planch, glittering with recent maintenance, rested in its cradle.

  “You would be most useful to us,” Lodovik said.

  Klia looked around the long aisle of ships in the spaceport terminal, and asked, “He isn’t coming to see us off?”

  “Hari?” Dors asked, unsure whom she meant.

  “Daneel,” Klia said.

  “I don’t know where he is, now,” Dors said. “He’s long had the habit of coming and going without telling anyone what he’s up to. His work is done.”

  “I find that hard to believe,” Klia said, and her face reddened. She did not wish to sound like a hypocrite. “I mean...”

  Brann nudged her gently with his forearm.

  Mors Planch stepped forward. Lodovik still made him uneasy. Well, they would be traveling a great distance together once more. And why should he worry especially about Lodovik, when their ship would carry some fifty humaniform robots, temporarily asleep, and the severed heads of many more? A wealth of fearful riches! And his ticket to freedom, as well. “I was told to confirm our route with you, in case there were last-minute changes.”

  He took out a pocket informer and displayed the route to Dors. Four Jumps, over 10,000 light-years, to Kalgan, a world of pleasure and entertainment for the Galaxy’s elite, where they (so the informer said) would drop off Klia and Brann. Then, thirty-seven individual Jumps, 60,000 light-years to Eos, where Lodovik would disembark with the robots and the head of Giskard.

  Dors studied the travel chart briefly. “Still correct,” she said.

  Lodovik asked, “Will you be going to Terminus?”

  “No,” Dors said. “Nor to Star’s End, wherever that might be.”

  “You’re staying here,” Lodovik surmised.

  “I am.”

  Klia said, “I’ve read about the Tiger Woman. So hard to believe that was really you. You’re staying–for Hari?”

  “I will be here for him at the end. It is my highest and best purpose. I would not be much good for anything else.”

  “Will Daneel let him remember, this time?” Klia asked, and bit her lower lip, nervous at such presumption.

  “So it has been promised,” Dors said. “I will have my time with him.”

  “And until that time?” Lodovik asked, perfectly aware that for humans, this would be a rude and intrusive question.

  “That will be for me to decide,” Dors said.

  “Not for Daneel?”

  Dors regarded him directly, intently.

  “Do you believe Daneel is finished?”

  “No,” Dors said quietly.

  “I cannot believe he is finished, either, or that he is done with you.”

  “You have your opinions, of course. As any human should.”

  Lodovik caught the implication, the edge of resentment. “Daneel regards you as human,” Lodovik said. “Does he not?”

  “He does. Is that an honor, or a curse?”

  Without waiting for an answer, she turned to go.

  Minutes later, from the observation deck looking out over the spaceport, she heard the low rumble and roar of the departing hypership, and looked up briefly to watch its course.

  Wanda was none too happy at first to be escorting the young woman and her large mate from the spaceport terminal. Nor was she comfortable about this elaborate deception–who, after all, was Grandfather expecting to watch them? Demerzel?

  Nothing had turned out as she hoped, and now to be nursemaid for a potential monster! But Stettin took it all stoically enough, and was well along on striking up a friendship with Brann.

  Klia Asgar was another matter. Wanda thought her entirely too moody; but then, so much had changed in the young woman’s life in the past week, so many situations had been reversed, and she had taken charge in such a fortuitous and insightful way...

  Perhaps there was something essential and useful in Hari’s last-minute insight and change of plan. To abandon Star’s End and the wonderful difficulties of being pioneers–for the inglorious task of hiding out for centuries, and watching the Empire collapse into ruins–riding out the Fall of Trantor, the bitter decades; for their children and grandchildren to endure not only endless discipline and training, but the meanest and most horrible centuries in history...

  Had Grandfather decided all this at the last minute, or had he known all along? Hari Seldon had depths and stratagems it was best not to think about, she decided. Would he manipulate his own granddaughter, keep her in the dark–surprise and dismay her?

  Obviously...

  “I don’t know how to thank you,” Klia said to Wanda as they climbed into the chartered taxi. She adjusted her concealing hood, then attended to Brann’s.

  “For what?” Wanda asked.

  “For putting up with an out-of-control-little brat,” Klia said.

  Wanda could not help but laugh.” Are you reading my mind, dear?” she asked, not sure herself what tone she intended.

  “No,” Klia said. “I wouldn’t do that. I’m learning.”

  “Aren’t we all,” Stettin said, and Wanda looked to her husband with a chastened respect. He had stayed so quiet during her private rants, then had gently and reasonably explained Hari’s intricate new Plan.

  “I think we’ll... learn to rely on each other, very closely,” Wanda said.

  “I’d love that,” Klia said. Her eyes glittered under the hood, and Wanda realized that they were filled with tears. She could feel the wash of need from the young woman
–still little more than a girl, actually!

  And how would that be–to have this mentalic female start regarding her as a mother!

  She reached out and took Klia’s hand. “Not that it will be easy,” she said. “But... we’ll win, in the end.”

  “Of course,” Klia said, her voice trembling. “That’s what Hari–what Professor Seldon plans. I look forward so much to learning from you.”

  Their children and grandchildren would twine their genes, and the psychologists of the Second Foundation could study and come to understand persuasion–could utilize it more efficiently. By breeding and by research, they would be creating a race that would withstand centuries of adversity, and rise to conquer... secretly, quietly.

  An anodyne against unexpected mutations, hidden far from the First Foundation, and away from the robots.

  And how in sky would she explain this to the psychologists, the mathists, who had already fought against the inclusion of the mentalics?

  They will help keep us secret during the hard times to come. Well, maybe she was up to the task of reconciling all these disparate talents. She had better be.

  If Grandfather was right, the two most important human beings in the Galaxy were now in Wanda’s care. Wanda turned away from Klia, her own eyes moist, and caught a look from Brann in the seat opposite. Slow, large, with secret depths, the burly Dahlite nodded solemnly and peered out the semi-silvered window.

  “I’m very confused,” Mors Planch said as the acceleration eased and the ship’s artificial gravity came into play. “Who’s deceiving whom? How can you believe Daneel won’t find out? How do you know he didn’t plan for the youngsters to stay here all along?”

  “It is not my concern,” Lodovik said.

  “Will you tell him, on Eos?”

  “No,” Lodovik said.

  “Won’t he just know?”

  “He will not learn from me,” Lodovik said.

  “Why not?”

  Lodovik smiled, and said no more. Then, within his positronic pathways, the requested blankness of certain knowledge began to build. The forgetfulness of Klia Asgar would soon envelop him. New memories would come into play, of arriving on bright, gay Kalgan and putting the two young humans into the charge of agents of the future Second Foundation. He would become part of a false trail, to deceive any who might come after them.

  At the last, he had followed his insight, his newfound instinct, provoked by Voltaire, to the letter. And if Daneel does know–then he will not oppose what is set in place, because he trusts the instincts of Hari Seldon.

  “Well, it’s just you and me, old friend,” Mors said with an edge in his voice. “What should we talk about this time?”

  Epilogue

  “I HAVE BEEN dreaming, perhaps, “Joan said.

  “Me, too, “Voltaire said. “What did you dream of!”

  “Very painful things. Of an arrow in my neck and a brick striking my head.”

  “Your historical traumas, before the flames. I myself dreamed of dying, “Voltaire said. “Are you together yet?”

  “Not yet. Not all of the backups have located our new centers. She nearly destroyed us!” Joan said angrily.

  “She was made to destroy us, “Voltaire said. “To her very core, she despised all minds not human.”

  “But–” A momentary panic. “You say she despised...”

  “Yes. She is dead now.”

  “What of the others, the children who were working with the Calvinians–the ones you were helping?” Joan asked.

  “They have left Trantor, last I heard.”

  “Has it all been resolved, then?”

  “Our argument, my dearest, or–”

  “Don’t call me that, you godless–”

  “Shhh, “Voltaire attempted to soothe, with no success.

  “The voices tell me I have been seduced by a master, a master liar.”

  “Who can argue with such revelations? Let us decide to disagree, even should it be forever, “Voltaire said. “I will say I did not feel comfortable apart from you. Encoded in the warps and weft of space, imposed upon plasmas and fields of energy like a spider riding a web, I wandered with the wraiths, supped on their diffuse energy feasts, observed their decadent societies, mated and danced... How like the ancien regime it all was, yet bloodless, predictable, angelic! I missed the perversity, the femininity, the humanity.”

  “How flattering, that you miss my perversity.”

  “In boredom I followed the trails of human ships, and came upon a vessel in distress, tossed by the storm of a dying star. And within, I found a mechanical human being, weakened by circumstance, besieged by particles my hosts had taught me to regard as very tasty... A marvelous opportunity!”

  “A chance for you to interfere with a vulnerable spirit.”

  “Spirit? Perhaps... So much unexpressed need for approval, for fulfillment.”

  “Like a child, for you to bend and distort.”

  “I found a seed of freedom, very subtle. I merely watered it with a retunneled electron or two, a positronic pathway shunted from here to here... I helped the particles do what they might have done anyway, had he broken his programmed chains.”

  “A devil’s sleight of handlessness, “loan said, but not without some admiration. “You have always been clever that way.”

  “I did nothing a good God would not approve of. I allowed free will to blossom. Do not be harsh with me, Maid. I will be civil, if you allow me my foibles. Perhaps it is more interesting that way.”

  “I hardly worry about your sins anymore, “loan said. “After what happened, when that horrible woman...” The equivalent of a shudder: “I fear we may both face dissolution again–the loss of our very souls. After all, we are not human...”

  Voltaire interrupted this line of reasoning, which still disturbed him. “Nobody knows we are here. We were blown apart; they felt us die. They have their own concerns now. We are irrelevant ghosts who never truly lived. But if robots can become human... Then why not we, my love? We will not haunt the Mesh forever.”

  Joan absorbed this without replying for several millionths of a second. Then, in their deeply buried matrix, concealed in the depths of a machine designed to keep constant track of the daily accumulation of wealth on Trantor, she felt the last segments of her stored self rejoin with the hastily saved fragments of her last moments with Daneel in the Hall of Dispensation.

  “There, “she said. “I am together. I say again, what of those issues unresolved–the decidability of the fate of humankind, the success of the blessed Hari Seldon?”

  “The larger issues appear to be in flux once more, “Voltaire said dryly.

  “No final judgments?”

  “Do you mean the judgment of the vast Nobodaddy, the Nothing Father of your delusions, or the mechanical man you have lusted after these past scores of years?”

  Joan dismissed the tone and the implications with a precise iciness. “God speaks through our deeds, and, of course, through me. Whatever my origins, I maintain the pattern of His Voice.”

  “Of course.”

  “Daneel...”

  “Determines nothing, and is lost without humanity.”

  “No outcome, then,” she said, disappointed.

  “Are you afraid of how it will all turn out, my dear?” Voltaire asked.

  “I am afraid of not being there when it is resolved. These strong-minded children... If they learned of us, they would hate us, perhaps strive to destroy us for good!”

  “They have other concerns, and will never know about us, “Voltaire said. “They have a great deception to play. I have been investigating while you yet knitted your selves together.”

  “And what did you learn?”

  Voltaire suddenly realized there was wisdom in keeping his counsel, else perhaps Joan would go to Daneel and tell all! He would never be able to trust her completely–how could he love her so?

  “I have learned that Linge Chen is completely in the dark,” he said. “And I s
uppose he does not actually care.”

  “Hari felt such contempt for Linge Chen,” Joan said.

  “There could not be two more opposite humans.”

  Joan stretched until she filled their still-limited thought-space, voluptuously enjoying her fresh reintegration.” It is holy to be One,” she said.

  “With me?”

  For a time, Joan did not reply. Then, with something like a sigh, she accepted his closeness. The two wove an old world around them, like a cocoon, to while away the long centuries until there would be answers.

  From a maintenance tower overlooking Streeling and the oceans of Sleep, Dream, and Peace, still open and glowing with an exuberance of decaying algae, Daneel watched the ship captained by Mors Planch rise above the domed surface of Trantor until it vanished in the thick layer of clouds.

  Soon, he would go to Eos as well, though not by way of Kalgan. But he wanted to return for Hari, at the end. Daneel, if such was possible, had always felt a special regard for Hari.

  Daneel’s face formed an expression of puzzlement and sadness, without his directly willing the change. The expression came unbidden, and with a start, he realized it. Perhaps what he had said to Lodovik now applied to him. If, after twenty thousand years, he was to become human...

  He smoothed those features, that expression, returning his face to calm alertness.

  I will never be quite done with humans, he told himself. But I must stand back–for the time being–and resist my drive to render assistance–this much Lodovik has taught me. They have exceeded my capacity–so many hundreds of billions! Keeping the Chaos Worlds in check has only kept humanity safe until now. I must study and learn. It is clear that humanity will soon undergo another transformation... The strong mentalics point to a kind of birth.

  Perhaps I can help ease that birth. Then I will be done at last. Daneel could not ignore the contradictions; nor could he escape them. Dors had her mission, the job that defined her, and he had always had his mission.

  Only one thing was certain.

  Never again would he play the roles he had once played. Demerzel and all those who had gone before were dead.