Asimov’s Future History Volume 16

by Isaac Asimov

  When the message from Lodovic came, there was no time to send for instructions from Daneel. In order to make the rendezvous, she had to take the very next liner to Siwenna, where a fast ship would be waiting for her.

  I offer a truce, in the name of humanity, Lodovic had sent. I promise you’ll find the trip worthwhile.

  Klia and Brann were safe and happy. Dors had set up defenses and precautions overwhelmingly stronger than any conceivable threat, and her robot assistants were vigilant. There was no reason not to go. Yet her decision was wrenching.

  Now, with the rendezvous approaching, she flexed her hands, feeling tension in positronic receptors that had been placed in exactly the same locations as the nerves of a real woman. On the crystal viewing pane, her reflected image superimposed across the rising forestscape. She wore the same face as when she had dwelled with Hari. Her own face, as she would always think of it.

  Hari Seldon still lives, Dors thought. It was part hearsay and part intuition. Although she was not one of the robots to whom Daneel had given Giskardian mentalic powers, Dors felt certain she would know, the instant that her human husband died. A part of her would freeze at that point, locking his image and memory in permanent, revolving circuitry. While Dors knew she might last another ten thousand years, in a sense she would always be Hari’s.

  “We shall be landing in just two hours, Dors Venabili.”

  The pilot, a lesser humaniform robot, had once been part of a heretical Calvinian group that schemed to mess up Hari’s psychohistory project. Thirty of the dissident machines were captured a year ago by Daneel’s forces and dispatched to a secret repair world for conversion to accept the Zeroth Law of Robotics. But that cargo of prisoners had been hijacked en route by Lodovic Trema. Now they apparently worked for him.

  I don’t understand why Daneel trusted Trema with that mission... or any mission. Lodovic should have been destroyed as soon as we discovered that his brain no longer obeyed the Four Laws of Robotics.

  Daneel was evidently conflicted in some way. The robot who had guided humanity for twenty thousand years seemed uncertain how to treat a mechanism that behaved more like man than machine. One who chose to act ethically, instead of having it compelled by rigorous programming.

  Well, I’m not conflicted, Dors thought. Trema is dangerous. At any moment his own brand of “ethics” might persuade him to act against our cause... or to harm humans, even Hari!

  According to both the First and Zeroth laws, I am compelled to act.

  The chain of reasoning was logical, impeccable. Yet, in her case every decision came accompanied by simulated emotions, so realistic that Daneel said he couldn’t tell them from human. Anyone observing Dors at that moment would see her face crossed by steely resolve to protect and serve, no matter what it cost.

  3.

  ONCE UPON A time, it had taken 140 secretaries to handle all of Hari’s mail. Now few remembered he had been First Minister of the Empire. Even his more recent notoriety as “Raven” Seldon, prophet of doom, had surged past the public gaze with fashionable fickleness as reporters moved on to other stories. Ever since his trial ended, with the Commission of Public Safety decreeing exile on Terminus for Hari’s followers, the flow of messages began drying up. Now only half a dozen memoranda waited on the wall monitor when Kers brought him back from their daily stroll.

  First, Hari scanned the weekly Plan Report from Gaal Dornick, who still dictated it personally, as a gesture of reverence for the father of psychohistory. Gaal’s broad features were still youthful, with an expression of jovial honesty that could put anyone at ease – even though he now helped lead the most important human conspiracy in ten thousand years.

  “Right now our biggest headache appears to be the migration itself It seems that some members of the Encyclopedia Project aren’t happy about being banished from Trantor all the way to the farthest comer of the known universe!”

  Dornick chuckled, though with a tone of weariness

  “Of course we expected this, and planned for it. Commissioner Linge Chen has assigned the Special Police to prevent desertions. And our own mentalics are helping prod the volunteers’ to depart on their assigned ships. But it’s hard keeping track of over a hundred thousand people. Hari, you couldn’t count the petty aggravations!”

  Gaal ruffled papers as he changed the subject.

  “Your granddaughter sends her love from Star’s End. Wanda reports that the new mentalic colony seems to be settling down so well that she can come home soon. It’s a relief to have most of the mentalics off Trantor, at last. They were an unstable element. Now only the most trustworthy are left here in the city, and those are proving invaluable during preparations. So, we seem to have matters well in hand –”

  Indeed. Hari scanned the accompanying appendix of psychohistorical symbols, attached to Gaal’s message, and saw that they fit the Plan nicely. Dornick and Wanda and the other members of the Fifty knew their jobs well.

  After all, Hari had trained them.

  He did not have to consult his personal copy of the Prime Radiant to know what must happen next. Soon, agents would be dispatched toward Anacreon and Smyrno, to ignite a smoldering process of secession in those remote provinces, setting the stage for the Foundation’s initial set of crises... the first of many leading, eventually, to a new and better civilization.

  Of course the irony did not escape Hari – that he had spent his time as First Minister of the Empire smothering revolutions, and making sure that his successors would continue quashing all so-called “chaos worlds,” whenever those raging social upheavals threatened the human-social equilibrium. But these new rebellions that his followers must foment at the Periphery would be different. Led by ambitious local gentry seeking to augment their own royal grandeur, these insurrections would be classical in every way, fitting the equations with smooth precision.

  All according to the Plan.

  Most of Hari’s other mail was routine. He discarded one invitation to the annual reception for emeritus faculty members of Streeling University... and another to the emperor’s exhibition of new artworks created by “geniuses” of the Eccentric Order. One of the Fifty would attend that gathering, to measure levels of decadence shown by the empire’s artistic caste. But that was just a matter of calibrating what they already knew – that true creativity was declining to new historical lows. Hari was senior enough to refuse the honor. And he did.

  Next came a reminder to pay his guild dues, as an Exalted member of the Meritocratic Order – yet another duty he’d rather neglect. But there were privileges to rank, and he had no desire to become a mere citizen again, at his age. Hari gave verbal permission for the bill to be paid.

  His heart beat faster when the wall display showed a letter from the Pagamant Detective Agency. He had hired the firm years ago to search for his daughter-in-law, Manella Dubanqua, and her infant daughter Bellis. They had both vanished on a refugee ship fleeing the Santanni chaos world, the planet where Raych died. Hope briefly flared. Could they be found at last?

  But no, it was a note to say the detectives were still sifting lost-ship reports and questioning travelers along the Kalgan-Siwenna corridor, where the Arcadia VII had last been spotted. They would continue the inquiry... unless Hari had finally decided to give up?

  His jaw clenched. No. Hari’s will established a trust fund to keep them searching after he was gone.

  Of the remaining messages, two were obvious crank letters, sent by amateur mathists on far-off worlds who claimed to have independently discovered basic principles of psychohistory. Hari had ordered the mail-monitor to keep showing such missives because some were amusing. Also, once or twice a year, a letter hinted at true talent, a latent spark of brilliance that had somehow flared on a distant world, without yet being quenched among the galaxy’s quadrillion dull embers. Several members of the Fifty had come to his attention in this way. Especially his greatest colleague, Yugo Arnaryl, who deserved credit as cofounder of psychohistory. Yugo’s rise from
humble beginnings to the heights of mathematical genius reinforced Hari’s belief that any future society should be based on open social mobility, encouraging individuals to rise according to their ability. So he always gave these messages at least a cursory look.

  This time, one snared his attention.

  – I seem to have found correlations between your psychohistory technique and the mathematical models used in forecasting patterns in the flow of spacio-molecular currents in deep space! This, in turn, corresponds uncannily with the distribution of soil types on planets sampled across a wide range of galactic locales. I thought you might be interested in discussing this in person. If so, please indicate by

  Hari barked a laugh, making Kers Kantun glance over from the kitchen. This certainly was a cute one, all right! He scanned rows of mathematical symbols, finding the approach amateurish, if primly accurate and sincere. Not a kook, then. A well-meaning aficionado, compensating for poor talent with strangely original ideas. He ordered this letter sent to the juniormost member of the Fifty, instructing that it be answered with gentle courtesy – a knack that young Saha Lorwinth ought to learn, if she was going to be one of the secret rulers of human destiny.

  With a sigh, he turned his wheelchair away from the wall monitor, toward his shielded private study. Pulling Daneel’s gift from his robe, he laid it on the desk, in a slot specially made to read the ancient relic. The readout screen rippled with two-dimensional images and archaic letters that the computer translated for him.

  A Child’s Book of Knowledge

  Britannica Publishing Company

  New Tokyo, Bayleyworld, 2757 C.E.

  The info-store in front of him was highly illegal, but that would hardly stop Hari Seldon, who had once ordered the revival of those ancient simulated beings, Joan of Arc and Voltaire, from another half-melted archive. That act wound up plunging parts of Trantor into chaos when the pair of sims escaped their programmed bonds to run wild through the planet’s data corridors. In fact, the whole episode ended rather well for Hari, though not for the citizens of Junin or Sark. Anyway, he felt little compunction over breaking the Archives Law once again.

  Close to twenty thousand years ago. He pondered its publication date, just as awed as the first time he’d activated Daneel’s gift. This may have been written for children of that age, but it holds more of our deep history than all of today’s imperial scholars could pool together.

  It had taken Hari half a year to peruse and get a feel for the sweep of early human existence, which began on distant Earth, on a continent called Africa, when a race of clever apes first stood upright and blinked with dull curiosity at the stars.

  So many words emerged from that little stone cube. Some were already familiar, having come down to the present in murky form, through oral tales and traditions –

  Rome

  China

  Shake Spear

  Hamlet

  Buddha

  Apollo

  The Spacer Worlds

  Oddly enough, some fairy tales seemed to have survived virtually unchanged after two hundred centuries. Popular favorites like Pinocchio... and Frankenstein... were apparently far older than anyone imagined.

  Other items in the archive Hari had first heard of just a few decades ago, when they were mentioned by the ancient sims, Voltaire and Joan.

  France

  Christianity

  Plato

  But far greater was the list of things Hari never had an inkling of, until he first activated this little book. Facts about the human past that had only been known by Daneel Olivaw and other robots. People and places that once rang with vital import for all humanity.

  Columbus

  America

  Einstein

  The Empire of Brazil

  Susan Calvin

  And everything from the limestone caves of Lascaux to the steel catacombs where Earthlings cowered in the twenty-sixth century.

  Especially humbling to Hari had been one short essay about an ancient shaman named Karl Marx, whose crude incantations bore no similarity to psychohistory, except the blithe confidence that believers invested in their precious model of human nature. Marxists, too, once thought they had reduced history to basic scientific principles.

  Of course, we know better. We Seldonists.

  Hari smiled at the irony.

  Ostensibly, Daneel Olivaw had presented Hari with this relic for a simple reason – to give him a task. Something to occupy his mind during these final months before his frail body finally gave out. Although the brain had gone too brittle to help Gaal Dornick and the Fifty, he could still handle a simple psychohistorical project – fitting a few millennia of data from a single world into the overall Plan. Tabulating Earth’s early history might help extend the baselines – the boundary conditions – of the Prime Radiant by a decimal place or two.

  Anyway, it gave Hari a way to keep feeling useful.

  I thought this would also help answer my deepest questions, he pondered. Alas, the chief result had only been to tease his curiosity. It seems that Earth itself went through several periods as a chaos world. One of those episodes spawned Daneel’s kind. A time when humaniform robots like Dors were invented.

  A tremor shook Hari’s left hand, provoking worry that he was about to suffer another attack... until the trembling finally passed.

  Daneel had better come soon, or else I’ll never get the explanations that I’ve earned, doing his bidding all these years!

  Kers brought him dinner, a sampling of Mycogenian delicacies that Hari barely tasted. His attention was immersed in A Child’s Book of Knowledge, a chapter telling about the great migration – when Earth’s vast population strove to flee a world that was fast growing uninhabitable for some mysterious reason. Through heroic effort, nearly a billion people made it off-planet in time, streaking outward in crude hyperships to establish colonies throughout Sirius Sector.

  By the time this archive was published, the editors of A Child’s Book of Knowledge could only guess how many worlds had been settled. Reports from the frontier told of wars among human subcultures. And some rumors were even more strange. Space-ghost legends. Tales of mysterious explosions in the night, vast and worrisome, sparkling just beyond the forward wave of human exploration.

  A process of dissolution had begun, when humanity’s remote portions would lose contact. A long dark age of hard struggles and petty squabbles would soon commence, when memories would fade as barbarism swallowed countless minor kingdoms – until peace finally returned to the human universe. A peace brought by the dynamic and rising Trantorian Empire.

  Peering across that vast gulf, Hari felt struck by something odd.

  If this archive was meant for youngsters – it shows that our ancestors weren’t idiots.

  Of course Hari had been reading much more challenging tomes by age six. But this “children’s book” would have gone over the heads of nearly all his peers on Helicon. The ancients weren’t dummies. And yet, their civilization dissolved into madness and amnesia.

  So far, the psychohistorical equations did not offer any help. Hari probed the archive for explanations. But he had a lurking suspicion that answers – real answers – would have to be found elsewhere.

  4.

  TEN MINUTES BEFORE landing on Panucopia, Dors retreated to her shielded cabin. She reached into her shirt and unfolded a piece of dark fabric. It lay on the small table, creaseless and passive, until her positronic brain sent a coded microwave burst. Then the surface flickered, and a human face suddenly shimmered to life, resembling a young woman with close-cropped hair, stern-visaged and experienced beyond her apparent years. Blue eyes scanned Dors, evaluating, before the image finally spoke.

  “Months have passed since you last summoned me, Dors Venabili. Does my presence make you so uncomfortable?”

  “You are a synthetically resurrected human sim, Joan, and therefore contraband. Against the law.”

  “Against human law. But angels may see what men cannot.”


  “I’ve told you before, I’m a robot, not an angel.”

  The youthful figure shrugged. Links of chain armor rustled.

  “You are immortal, Dors. You think of nothing but service to fallen humanity, restoring opportunities that have been thrown away by obstinate men and women. You are the embodiment of faith in ultimate redemption. All of that seems to support my interpretation.”

  “But my faith is not the same as yours.”

  The ersatz Joan of Arc smiled.

  “That would have mattered to me earlier, when I was first revived – or artificially simulated – into this strange new era. But the time I spent linked to Voltaire’s sim changed me. Not as much as he hoped! But enough to learn a certain amount of prag-mat-ism.”

  She enunciated the final word with a soft grimace.

  “My beloved France is now a poisoned wasteland on a ruined world, and Christianity is long forgotten, so I will settle for the closest thing.

  “After getting to know Daneel Olivaw, I came to recognize a true apostle of chaste goodness and saintly self-sacrifice. His followers wield righteousness, for the sake of countless suffering human souls.

  “And so I ask, dear angel, what can I do for you?”

  Dors pondered. This was just one copy of the Joan sim. Millions had been dispersed into the interstellar medium – along with just as many Voltaires and a collection of ancient meme-entities – to be blown out of the galaxy by supernova winds, as part of a deal that Hari had struck forty years earlier to get the cybernetic entities away from Trantor. Until they were successfully banished, the software beings could have become a wild card in human affairs, potentially spoiling the Seldon Plan.