27 Short Stories

by Orson Scott Card

  "Which you did brilliantly."

  "Using programs you had helped design, thank you very much, O Wise One, as you indirectly praise yourself. It was sheer coincidence that I could give them exactly what they wanted within five minutes of their asking. But now it's a hero story within the community of librarians. In the Imperial Library itself, and now spreading outward to all the other libraries."

  "This is so anecdotal, Deet. I don't see how you can publish this."

  "Oh, I don't intend to. Except perhaps in the introduction. What matters to me is that it proves my theory. "

  "It has no statistical validity."

  "It proves it to me. I know that my theories of community formation are true. That the vigor of a community depends on the allegiance of its members, and the allegiance can be created and enhanced by the dissemination of epic stories."

  "She speaks the language of academia. I should be writing this down, so you don't have to think up all those words again."

  "Stories that make the community seem more important, more central to human life. Because Rinjy could tell this story, it made her more proud to be a librarian, which increased her allegiance to the community and gave the community more power within her."

  "You are possessing their souls."

  "And they've got mine. Together our souls are possessing each other."

  There was the rub. Deet's role in the library had begun as applied research-- joining the library staff in order to confirm her theory of community formation. But that task was impossible to accomplish without in fact becoming a committed part of the library community. It was Deet's dedication to serious science that had brought them together. Now that very dedication was stealing her away. It would hurt her more to leave the library than it would to lose Leyel.

  Not true. Not true at all, he told himself sternly. Self-pity leads to self-deception. Exactly the opposite is true-- it would hurt her more to lose Leyel than to leave her community of librarians. That's why she consented to go to Terminus in the first place. But could he blame her for being glad that she didn't have to choose? Glad that she could have both?

  Yet even as he beat down the worst of the thoughts arising from his disappointment, he couldn't keep some of the nastiness from coming out in his conversation. "How will you know when your experiment is over?"

  She frowned. "It'll never be over, Leyel. They're all really librarians-- I don't pick them up by the tails like mice and put them back in their cages when the experiment's done. At some point I'll simply stop, that's all, and write my book."

  "Will you?"

  "Write the book? I've written books before, I think I can do it again."

  "I meant, will you stop?"

  "When, now? Is this some test of my love for you, Leyel? Are you jealous of my friendships with Rinjy and Animet and Fin and Urik?"

  No! Don't accuse me of such childish, selfish feelings!

  But before he could snap back his denial, he knew that his denial would be false.

  "Sometimes I am, yes, Deet. Sometimes I think you're happier with them."

  And because he had spoken honestly, what could have become a bitter quarrel remained a conversation. "But I am, Leyel, " she answered, just as frankly. "It's because when I'm with them, I'm creating something new, I'm creating something with them. It's exciting, invigorating. I'm discovering new things every day, in every word they say, every smile, every tear someone sheds, every sign that being one of us is the most important thing in their lives."

  "I can't compete with that."

  "No, you can't, Leyel. But you complete it. Because it would all mean nothing, it would be more frustrating than exhilarating if I couldn't come back to you every day and tell you what happened. You always understand what it means, you're always excited for me, you validate my experience."

  "I'm your audience. Like a parent."

  "Yes, old man. Like a husband. Like a child. Like the person I love most in all the world. You are my root. I make a brave show out there, all branches and bright leaves in the sunlight, but I come here to suck the water of life from your soil."

  "Leyel Forska, the font of capillarity. You are the tree, and I am the dirt."

  "Which happens to be full of fertilizer." She kissed him. A kiss reminiscent of younger days. An invitation, which he gladly accepted.

  A softened section of floor served them as an impromptu bed. At the end, he lay beside her, his arm across her waist, his head on her shoulder, his lips brushing the skin of her breast. He remembered when her breasts were small and firm, perched on her chest like small monuments to her potential. Now when she lay on her back they were a ruin, eroded by age so they flowed off her chest to either side, resting wearily on her arms.

  "You are a magnificent woman," he whispered, his lips tickling her skin.

  Their slack and flabby bodies were now capable of greater passion than when they were taut and strong. Before, they were all potential. That's what we love in youthful bodies, the teasing potential. Now hers is a body of accomplishment. Three fine children were the blossoms, then the fruit of this tree, gone off and taken root somewhere else. The tension of youth could now give way to a relaxation of the flesh. There were no more promises in their lovemaking. Only fulfillment.

  She murmured softly in his ear, "That was a ritual, by the way. Community maintenance."

  "So I'm just another experiment?"

  "A fairly successful one. I'm testing to see if this little community can last until one of us drops."

  "What if you drop first? Who'll write the paper then?"

  "You will. But you'll sign my name to it. I want the Imperial medal for it. Posthumously. Glue it to my memorial stone."

  "I'll wear it myself. If you're selfish enough to leave all the real work to me, you don't deserve anything better than a cheap replica."

  She slapped his back. "You are a nasty selfish old man, then. The real thing or nothing."

  He felt the sting of her slap as if he deserved it. A nasty selfish old man. If she only knew how right she was. There had been a moment in Hari's office when he'd almost said the words that would deny all that there was between them. The words that would cut her out of his life. Go to Terminus without her! I would be more myself if they took my heart, my liver, my brain.

  How could I have thought I wanted to go to Terminus, anyway? To be surrounded by academics of the sort I most despise, struggling with them to get the encyclopedia properly designed. They'd each fight for their petty little province, never catching the vision of the whole, never understanding that the encyclopedia would be valueless if it were compartmentalized. It would be a life in hell, and in the end he'd lose, because the academic mind was incapable of growth or change.

  It was here on Trantor that he could still accomplish something. Perhaps even solve the question of human origin, at least to his own satisfaction-- and perhaps he could do it soon enough that he could get his discovery included in the Encyclopedia Galactica before the Empire began to break down at the edges, cutting Terminus off from the rest of the Galaxy.

  It was like a shock of static electricity passing through his brain; he even saw an afterglow of light around the edges of his vision, as if a spark had jumped some synaptic gap.

  "What a sham," he said.

  "Who, you? Me?"

  "Hari Seldon. All this talk about his Foundation to create the Encyclopedia, Galactica."

  "Careful, Leyel." It was almost impossible that the Pubs could have found a way to listen to what went on in Leyel Forska's own apartments. Almost.

  "He told me twenty years ago. It was one of his first psychohistorical projections. The Empire will crumble at the edges first. He projected it would happen within the next generation. The figures were crude then. He must have it down to the year now. Maybe even the month. Of course he put his Foundation on Terminus. A place so remote that when the edges of the Empire fray, it will be among the first threads lost. Cut off from Trantor. Forgotten at once!"

  "What g
ood would that do, Leyel? They'd never hear of any new discoveries then."

  "What you said about us. A tree. Our children like the fruit of that tree."

  "I never said that." "I thought it, then. He is dropping his Foundation out on Terminus like the fruit of Empire. To grow into a new Empire by and by."

  "You frighten me, Leyel. If the Pubs ever heard you say that--"

  "That crafty old fox. That sly, deceptive-- he never actually lied to me, but of course he couldn't send me there. If the Forska fortune was tied up with Terminus, the Empire would never lose track of the place. The edges might fray elsewhere, but never there. Putting me on Terminus would be the undoing of the real project." It was such a relief. Of course Hari couldn't tell him, not with the Pubs listening, but it had nothing to do with him or Deet. It wouldn't have to be a barrier between them after all. It was just one of the penalties of being the keeper of the Forska fortune.

  "Do you really think so?" asked Deet.

  "I was a fool not to see it before. But Hari was a fool too if he thought I wouldn't guess it."

  "Maybe he expects you to guess everything."

  "Oh, nobody could ever come up with everything Hari's doing. He has more twists and turns in his brain than a hyperpath through core space. No matter how you labor to pick your way through, you'll always find Hari at the end of it, nodding happily and congratulating you on coming this far. He's ahead of us all. He's already planned everything, and the rest of us are doomed to follow in his footsteps."

  "Is it doom?"

  "Once I thought Hari Seldon was God. Now I know he's much less powerful than that. He's merely Fate."

  "No, Leyel. Don't say that."

  "Not even Fate. Just our guide through it. He sees the future, and points the way."

  "Rubbish." She slid out from under him, got up, pulled her robe from its hook on the wall. "My old bones get cold when I lie about naked."

  Leyel's legs were trembling, but not with cold. "The future is his, and the present is yours, but the past belongs to me. I don't know how far into the future his probability curves have taken him, but I can match him, step for step, century for century into the past." "Don't tell me you're going to solve the question of origin. You're the one who proved it wasn't worth solving."

  "I proved that it wasn't important or even possible to find the planet of origin. But I also said that we could still discover the natural laws that accounted for the origin of man. Whatever forces created us as human beings must still be present in the universe."

  "I did read what you wrote, you know. You said it would be the labor of the next millennium to find the answer."

  "Just now. Lying here, just now, I saw it, just out of reach. Something about your work and Hari's work, and the tree."

  "The tree was about me needing you, Leyel. It wasn't about the origin of humanity."

  "It's gone. Whatever I saw for a moment there, it's gone. But I can find it again. It's there in your work, and Hari's Foundation, and the fall of the Empire, and the damned pear tree."

  "I never said it was a pear tree."

  "I used to play in the pear orchard on the grounds Of the estate in Holdwater. To me the word 'tree' always means a pear tree. One of the deep-worn ruts in my brain."

  "I'm relieved. I was afraid you were reminded of pears by the shape of these ancient breasts when I bend over."

  "Open your robe again. Let me see if I think of pears. "

  * * *

  Leyel paid for Hari Seldon's funeral. It was not lavish. Leyel had meant it to be. The moment he heard of Hari's death-- not a surprise, since Hari's first brutal stroke had left him half-paralyzed in a wheelchair-- he set his staff to work on a memorial service appropriate to honor the greatest scientific mind of the millennium. But word arrived, in the form of a visit from Commissioner Rom Divart, that any sort of public services would be...

  "Shall we say, inappropriate?"

  "The man was the greatest genius I've ever heard of! He virtually invented a branch of science that clarified things that-- he made a science out of the sort of thing that soothsayers and-- and-- economists used to do!" Rom laughed at Leyel's little joke, of course, because he and Leyel had been friends forever. Rom was the only friend of Leyel's childhood who had never sucked up to him or resented him or stayed cool toward him because of the Forska fortune. This was, of course, because the Divart holdings were, if anything, slightly greater. They had played together unencumbered by strangeness or jealousy or awe.

  They even shared a tutor for two terrible, glorious years, from the time Rom's father was murdered until the execution of Rom's grandfather, which caused so much outrage among the nobility that the mad Emperor was stripped of power and the Imperium put under the control of the Commission of Public Safety. Then, as the youthful head of one of the great families, Rom had embarked on his long and fruitful career in politics.

  Rom said later that for those two years it was Leyel who taught him that there was still some good in the world; that Leyel's friendship was the only reason Rom hadn't killed himself. Leyel always thought this was pure theatrics. Rom was a born actor. That's why he so excelled at making stunning entrances and playing unforgettable scenes on the grandest stage of all-- the politics of the Imperium. Someday he would no doubt exit as dramatically as his father and grandfather had.

  But he was not all show. Rom never forgot the friend of his childhood. Leyel knew it, and knew also that Rom's coming to deliver this message from the Commission of Public Safety probably meant that Rom had fought to make the message as mild as it was. So Leyel blustered a bit, then made his little joke. It was his way of surrendering gracefully.

  What Leyel didn't realize, right up until the day of the funeral, was exactly how dangerous his friendship with Hari Seldon had been, and how stupid it was for him to associate himself with Hari's name now that the old man was dead. Linge Chen, the Chief Commissioner, had not risen to the position of greatest power in the Empire without being fiercely suspicious of potential rivals and brutally efficient about eliminating them. Hari had maneuvered Chen into a position such that it was more dangerous to kill the old man than to give him his Foundation on Terminus. But now Hari was dead, and apparently Chen was watching to see who mourned.

  Leyel did-- Leyel and the few members of Hari's staff who had stayed behind on Trantor to maintain contact with Terminus up to the moment of Hari's death. Leyel should have known better. Even alive, Hari wouldn't have cared who came to his funeral. And now, dead, he cared even less. Leyel didn't believe his friend lived on in some ethereal plane, watching carefully and taking attendance at the services. No, Leyel simply felt he had to be there, felt he had to speak. Not for Hari, really. For himself. To continue to be himself, Leyel had to make some kind of public gesture toward Hari Seldon and all he had stood for.

  Who heard? Not many. Deet, who thought his eulogy was too mild by half. Hari's staff, who were quite aware of the danger and winced at each of Leyel's list of Hari's accomplishments. Naming them-- and emphasizing that only Seldon had the vision to do these great works-- was, inherently a criticism of the level of intelligence and integrity in the Empire. The Pubs were listening, too. They noted that Leyel clearly agreed with Hari Seldon about the certainty of the Empire's fall

  - that in fact as a galactic empire it had probably already fallen, since its authority was no longer coextensive with the Galaxy. If almost anyone else had said such things, to such a small audience, it would have been ignored, except to keep him from getting any job requiring a security clearance. But when the head of the Forska family came out openly to affirm the correctness of the views of a man who had been tried before the Commission of Public Safety-- that posed a greater danger to the Commission than Hari Seldon.

  For, as head of the Forska family, if Leyel Forska wanted, he could be one of the great players on the political stage, could have a seat on the Commission along with Rom Divart and Linge Chen. Of course, that would also have meant constantly watching for assassi
ns-- either to avoid them or to hire them-- and trying to win the allegiance of various military strongmen in the far-flung reaches of the Galaxy. Leyel's grandfather had spent his life in such pursuits, but Leyel's father had declined, and Leyel himself had thoroughly immersed himself in science and never so much as inquired about politics.

  Until now. Until he made the profoundly political act of paying for Hari Seldon's funeral and then speaking at it. What would he do next? There were a thousand would-be warlords who would spring to revolt if a Forska promised what would- be emperors so desperately needed: a noble sponsor, a mask of legitimacy, and money.

  Did Linge Chen really believe that Leyel meant to enter politics at his advanced age? Did he really think Leyel posed a threat?

  Probably not. If he had believed it, he would surely have had Leyel killed, and no doubt all his children as well, leaving only one of his minor grandchildren, whom Chen would carefully control through the guardians he would appoint, thereby acquiring control of the Forska fortune as well as his own.

  Instead, Chen only believed that Leyel might cause trouble. So he took what were, for him, mild steps.

  That was why Rom came to visit Leyel again, a week after the funeral. Leyel was delighted to see him. "Not on somber business this time, I hope," he said. "But such bad luck-- Deet's at the library again, she practically lives there now, but she'd want to-"

  "Leyel." Rom touched Leyel's lips with his fingers.

  So it was somber business after all. Worse than somber. Rom recited what had to be a memorized speech.

  "The Commission of Public Safety has become concerned that in your declining years--"

  Leyel opened his mouth to protest, but again Rom touched his lips to silence him.

  "That in your declining years, the burdens of the Forska estates are distracting you from your exceptionally important scientific work. So great is the Empire's need for the new discoveries and understanding your work will surely bring us, that the Commission of Public Safety has created the office of Forska Trustee to oversee all the Forska estates and holdings. You will, of course, have unlimited access to these funds for your scientific work here on Trantor, and funding will continue for all the archives and libraries you have endowed. Naturally, the Commission has no desire for you to thank us for what is, after all, our duty to one of our noblest citizens, but if your well-known courtesy required you to make a brief public statement of gratitude it would not be inappropriate."