Psychohistorical Crisis

by Unknown Author

  Osa asked his listeners to consider a primitive planetary economy about to fall into economic disaster.

  Suppose each citizen of the planet is capable of predicting the disaster by a cause-and-effect deduction—then it won’t happen. The prophecy fails, thus telling us that the ability to predict is useless—right?

  On the other hand, suppose only one elite citizen has enough grasp of economics to predict the nature of the disaster. This single man is in no position to prevent the catastrophe—but he can use his knowledge to profit from it. He can carve out a fortune and from that commanding position dominate the new economy to be built on the ashes of the old. Prediction is then useful when it serves the interest of an elite who can predict—right?

  Osa asked the assembly to consider a Galaxy about to fall into war and ignorance and chaos.

  Suppose all men have the psychohistorical knowledge to predict a disaster abhorrent to them and to identify their coming part in it—then it won’t happen. The prediction fails, thus invalidating the methods of psychohistory and making them useless, right?

  On the other hand, suppose a group of Pscholars have enough grasp of psychohistory to see into the nature of the imminent galactic disaster. Suppose this tiny group is able to apply minute forces at critical places so that a thousand years later they are in a commanding position to dominate the new order they have created from the rubble of the old. They have lied about their presence, hiding from the rest of us while they accumulate power and special privilege. They remain misers with their methodology, unwilling to share their predictions. But their predictions come true. Psychohistory works only when it serves the benevolent self-interest of an elite, right?

  Eron ended his speech with an outburst. “Psychohistory lias served the interests of the Pscholars for too long! They lie to us in a self-serving way when they say that the gift of knowledge will drive us from paradise! Let the tools of psychohistory serve the needs of the galactic peoples! Let us negotiate our own future, not live out a future designed by men who hoard the tools of design claiming that they alone know what is best for us!”

  Before Eron was even seated, the masked Hyperlord rose. He held a jade ovoid high in his hand. “I have here a Prime Radiant! It holds the secrets of psychohistory for us to tap. I have at the moment sixtyne copies of the Prime Radiant for sale! Eron Osa has promised us a demonstration!” He looked over toward another man who approached the podium in an iron mask and then spoke to Eron. “Here is the mathist I promised you, my boy.” The crowd waited in anticipation.

  But Eron had been questioning his ghoul and was primed for an answer—there is no better state of general awareness than a zenoli pause—and what he saw from the comer of his eyes put him on instant danger alert. Under the iron mask and unkempt hair of Kikaju Jama’s mathist was Nejirt Kambu. Fams are good but it was Eron’s wetware which specialized in faces, jaw lines, gestures, gait, the first things a famless baby learns. How many hundreds of times had he and Kambu crossed? A workshop filled with ancient aero-ship design. Sneaking through the bat-infested caves of antiquity’s storehouse of radioactivity. Debating in a Lyceum seminar. Why was Konn’s right-hand man here? A quick fam check of the planted sensors detected a suspicious pattern of movements outside the caucus chamber. A police raid?

  “I’ll have to set up a holo demo,” Eron said quickly. Then to Otaria: “Help me.” He took her into the holobeam booth behind the podium, closed the soundproof entrance, activated their shields, and detonated the “spare door” behind him with the device he had already planted there. With his peripheral vision he saw the police enter through all four portals. An usher raised a forbidden blaster. The police reacted.

  At the sudden death of the usher, Kikaju Jama dropped his disguise as a fop and disappeared. All present, including the police, thought him true to form and assumed he was running. It was a tactical mistake by the raiders. An instant later the Hyperlord appeared on one of the tiny balconies and, in a flying leap, dropped on the policeman who had murdered his usher, yodeling the terrifying Hyperlord battle cry which hadn’t been heard in millennia. As the man collapsed under the falling impact, Kikaju’s mask radiated Kabuki anger, his left elbow locking around the man’s neck while his right lace-wristed hand grabbed the flying blaster. By the time they hit the floor, Jama was in command, issuing orders from behind the shield of his hostage. Chaos was his element. He was a Hyperlord in fact as well as in name.

  The raid came to a standstill. Policemen are reluctant to attack one of their own.

  But the mathist in the iron mask had no such scruples. With the reaction time of an experienced psychohistorian field agent he blasted both hostage and the Hyperlord behind him. Too much was at stake.

  Under cover of the disturbance Eron and Otaria staggered their way through the imploded wall and were gone, following the optimal escape path that Eron’s fam was spawning with graphic overlays. They reached the doctored pod and were two kilometers along their way to freedom before a police dragnet grabbed them in a vice that killed their power. Eron made a quick assessment. “We surrender,” he said to Otaria. “No choice. But not right now. Don’t make a move till they settle down.”

  Otaria saw the hidden men, blasters drawn. “They’ll kill your fam again. And mine, too.”

  “That’s the optimistic scenario.” Eron tuned the pod’s frequency to the police band and spoke loudly and clearly. ‘Truce. We will consider surrender. We are armed and shield protected.” He wanted them to know about the shields. “We do not intend to use our weapons unless provoked.” While he was calming and cautioning the police, he relayed a quick briefing for Scogil, minus the apology he would give when he had the time.

  Scogil replied by ordering Eron to order Petunia off planet immediately. No chance of that. She would stay until she knew her daddy’s ghoul was dead—or free. Her location readings on his fam must have already given her the cue that they wouldn’t be home for supper. At this moment she was probably fabricating wild media releases about the Orelian affair.

  The pod’s speaker blared with a police response. “Truce confirmed. Weapons on safety. We have a negotiator on the way. The esteemed Third Rank Nejirt Kambu. Please maintain open communications. Over.”

  “Who is Kambu?” Otaria whispered.

  “Hahukum Konn’s man. That’s much better than being cornered by Hanis. Kambu was at the masquerade posing as the Hyperlord’s mathist. Actually, he’s an old friend, so we may get in some real negotiating.” He briefed Scogil.

  The reply scrolled across Eron’s visual cortex in purple script— the trouble I have taken to escape interrogation by Konn. Death is preferable. I must tell you that I have a bomb in me and I will use it. I have no intention of being the first prisoner taken by my nemesis.

  “Sorry,” said Eron aloud so that Otaria could hear, “Rigone has already nixed your bomb.” Abruptly he abandoned Scogil to his dungeon because...

  Nejirt Kambu was arriving on the scene, well guarded. He and Eron spoke to each other from a respectful distance via their pod’s quantronics, Kambu first. “I have already noted that our famless psychohistorian is wearing the fam of the late agent Hiranimus Scogil. I have deduced the remarkable fact that you are in communication with the man’s ghost since your discussion this evening went beyond the scope of your original dissertation, rambling into recent galactic history—about which a Seventh Rank would know nothing. You possess certain facts which you could have obtained only from an enemy of the Second Empire.”

  “I’m being accused of treason by an old friend?”

  “No* You may be a traitor, but you’re being offered a deal by your old teacher—protection from Jars Hanis and a new top-of-the-pick fam in exchange for the one you are wearing.”

  “Point one: How am I and my companion to be protected from Jars Hanis?”

  “A natural sore point with you. Admiral Konn arrested Hanis about an hour ago in a general sweep-up. The situation is fluid. At the moment Konn is Rector of the Lyceum
.”

  “And king of the Galaxy?”

  “If you say so.”

  “Point two: My fam is wired with a suicide bomb over which I have no control.” Eron lied.

  “Ah. You are his hostage?”

  “No,” said Eron vehemently, “but he has veto power over my actions.”

  “You offer stalemate? We both sit here until we starve?”

  “No. I’m dealing. You want to interrogate Scogil. I can talk to him. We talk; I keep Scogil. We talk with Hahukum Konn present. That’s the deal. My Frightfulfriend comes with me and she stays with me. You get our weapons as a gesture of good faith.”

  “A reasonable man. I’m glad our honorable friendship still stands. Thank you for the weapons. As a reciprocal gesture of good faith I will allow you to keep your shields. They are not a threat to us. You may be interested to know that our mad Admiral has obtained a copy of your dissertation. He still thinks it is full of crap but you have his attention.”

  52

  FINALE, 14,810 GE

  TAMIC SMYTHOS:... born 351 Founder’s Era... no childhood record until 366 FE when he was brought to the Splendid Lyceum by his Scav godfather with a self-taught mathematics talent... not an outstanding student... volunteered for the group of fifty martyrs, 374 FE, during the rectorship of... transported to... captured in 377 FE at the end of the Lakganian War during the deception arranged by... escaped massacre of the seven at... sterilized and interned on Zural with the surviving 43 martyrs by the edict of... Tamic Smythos spent his prison years on Zural, where the stars were thin and the hyperships infrequent, reconstructing in secret the Founder’s Prime Radiant as an act of defiance... false death certificate in 386 FE... smuggled off Zural for predictive work by corrupt Chancellor Linus, 386 FE, who sought advantages in owning the only psychohistorian... disappeared... no record until 406 FE when he settled on Horan of the Thousand Suns Beyond the Helmar Rift to take up mechanical engineering... In later life he joined (or founded) the colony at... had no children or family or close friends...refused to teach...morbid recluse...His extensive hoard of psychohistorical memorabilia and personal writings, including a diatribe against the organizers of the martyrdom, was only discovered long after his death in a tailor’s warehouse...

  —Quick File of Galactic Biographies, 1898th Revised Edition

  The eight-chambered apartment that the new Lord and Rector of the Galaxy provided for the house arrest of Osa-Scogil and his Frightfulperson was a paradigm of luxury. In one of those touches of irony that the Admiral loved, it was the ex-residence of First Rank Jars Hanis. As his lieutenant Nejirt Kambu wryly put it, “This was the only prison we could find on short notice that had all the proper security features required to hold recidivist criminals/’

  The apartment might well have served as the tomb for a 784th Dynasty Rithian pharaoh, excepting perhaps the improbable dispozoria decorated with a goldsmith’s abstract Foawan birds and equipped with such items as a penis holder and shaker for urination. Every article needed for a comfortable afterlife had been provided, including toy-size artificial servants fit for a pharaoh. Hanis’ private mnemoni-fiers dominated their own special room, the machines paneled in bas-relief scenes depicting marshland reeds and grass done in gold foil and platinum and ceramic alloy, replete with extinct Rithian ducks and herons and geese and pterosaurs and various other flying beasts whose galactic origin Osa-Scogil could not identify. All devices were disconnected from the world of the living.

  They were not being allowed either news of, or contact with, the mortal sphere.

  Eron cased the mansion room by room for possible escape scenes, even the domed roof of the spiral staircase, while Scogil advised caution and grumbled that their predicament was the price Eron was paying for incomplete planning and let’s not have more of the same. Communication between ghoul and host improved hourly as a mutual mathematical ingenuity invented more efficient protocols. There was no way around using words, but they had managed to up the word rate to a hundred times normal verbal speed. It made heated arguing easier.

  With Eron’s help Scogil had learned to see at about the level of a five-month-old child and, keen for more meaning in his images, kept insisting that Eron touch everything he saw and hinting that putting things in his mouth would add to the useful data. With Scogil’s help, Eron’s limited (defammed) vocabulary was being added to at about the rate of ten thousand words per watch.

  ‘This wall is hollow,” said Eron, after slapping the location where the air-conditioning ducts must be passing through.

  Forget it! Well have to con our way out of this one.

  Under such conditions of isolation it was a major event when Magda arrived with a porter and a package of Eron’s old possessions which the Admiral had slyly salvaged from the general destruction of Osa’s records during the time of his trial. Included was his carved and inlaid Rithian skull. “Ah, my friend Yorick” He was strongly touched by Hahukum’s thoughtfulness. He's fattening us up for the slaughter was Scogil’s cautionary comment.

  “When is the Admiral coming for dinner?”

  Magda merely smiled and went off to prepare her best supper. Eron hadn’t seen her since leaving Konn to work with Hanis, and he was saddened to note that she now wore stylish inertial bracelets around her wrists which had the function of actively damping the tremor in her hands. She could no longer play the violin. Probably she would only last a few more years—the victim of a fatalistic Rithian culture that accepted as natural a random assassination lottery for ridding its gene pool of accumulated mutations, believing, perhaps, that it was Destiny’s will to let kind atheists pick up the pieces. The Admiral was, as always, a contradiction.

  Otaria, starved for company and news, invited Magda to stay for supper, but she gracefully declined. It was against orders. When they tried to steal tidbits of news from her, she confined herself to small talk. “Will you let me see the rest of your apartment? It’s fabulous.” Then she shook her head. “But it’s too full for me.” When asked again about the Admiral, Magda offered only an incomprehensible Rithian idiom about men who danced with horses. Then she was gone. The Rector’s personal search agent supplied unhelpful translations of her oblique idiom: (1) cavalry, (2) the circus, (3) when horses dance the polka under a blue moon, (4) good time partying by bovine farmhands.

  All the while Scogil’s ghoul kept up a worried dialogue about his daughter. Had she safely escaped Splendid Wisdom? What might have gone wrong? Eron didn’t have heart to tell him that she was certainly still here, probably writing and distributing mischief to underground rumor mills claiming inside knowledge of multiple (and mythical) groups of psychohistorians plotting against the government. It had been her idea of what to do in case her father failed to return from the masked ball; Eron had humored her by working out a psychomathematical diffusion estimate for the spread of such colorful stories, showing her the design parameters needed if they were to be passed by word of mouth with a high mutation factor and a ridiculous longevity. He hadn’t known then that Jars Hanis would be arrested in a coup d’etat That by itself would amplify the diffusion rate of such rumors by a factor of ten.

  Specialists from the office of Cal Bama came to question, but these polite interrogators pressed no topic the two did not wish to pursue. In counterpoint Nejirt Kambu arrived late in every third or sixth watch but did not question. He always began his visit by offered Konn’s apology for not making an appearance due to the press of “political events.” Philosophical probing seemed to be Kambu’s main pursuit He was witty, if conservative, and Otaria took pleasure in needling him. Eron was frustrated by their discussions. Nejirt was one of these men of great integrity who believed firmly in his duty as a member of the elite to give good government but a blockhead on the subject of the right of vassals of the Empire to negotiate their own future. He genuinely believed that a man untrained in psychohistory was a danger to himself and needed benevolent guidance h la Galileo.

  These debates left no doubt that Nejirt
Kambu was a brilliant Pscholar of the breed who knew how to modify futures to fit a plan. When on the theme of directed change, he lost his conservative veneer and became a wild player who had mastered all the tricks of discreet historical manipulation. It was also obvious that he had been shaken by the appearance of astrological galactaria with a seventh layer that contained an unauthorized compendium of the Founder’s lifework. At one point he tried to draw out Scogil’s comment by mentioning that a task force, escorted by the navy, had been sent to investigate the Coron’s Wisp Pentad.

  It does not matter, Scogil briefed Eron. The Eggs with the final Predictor's seventh level are not being released in the Wisp and are not being manufactured there. There are no plans to upgrade the Coronesefrom astrologer to psychohistorian. They are being used only as an astrological infection vector. Others of the Oversee are in charge of elevating talented members of the target population to advanced status. Konn’s task force will find in the Wisp only astrologers. Scogil was a game player with psychohistory as the rule book and futures as the winnings.

  Even though Eron had reworked predictive mathematics to eliminate its main contradiction, he had been brought up within a worldview where psychohistory meant a single benign future determined by a single monolithic organization, i.e., history from the Founder’s necessarily Imperial point of view. A trap. He was becoming very fond of Scogil’s mind as well as exasperated by his angry ghoul. He remembered his tutor as a mellower man, almost too mellow. Perhaps the old Murek had achieved that mellowness only by burying his anger in his fam.

  Otaria balanced the three male views of Osa-Scogil and Kambu with a lighter touch more interested in the inner energy that motivated mortal man over the vast span of galaxies and time. She knew her history. When she judged one of Eron’s moral monologs to be pretentious she offered a funny historical anecdote to blunt his sharpness. Scogil she teased because she had known him as a man. And for every point that Nejirt made, she had a mischievous counterexample, delighting in being contrary.