Asimov’s Future History Volume 14

by Isaac Asimov

  “It wasn’t easy and I nearly lost out. I have spent years sparring carefully with Mannix, learning to understand his chinking and planning a countermove to his every move. I did not think, at any time, that while he was still alive he would pass on his powers to his daughter. I had not studied her and I was not prepared for her utter lack of caution. Unlike her father, she has been brought up to take power for granted and had no clear idea of its limitations. So she got you and forced me to act before I was quite ready.”

  “You almost lost me as a result. I faced the muzzle of a blaster twice.’.

  “I know,” said Hummin, nodding. “And we might have lost you Upperside coo-another accident I could not foresee.”

  “But you haven’t really answered my question. Why did you send me chasing all over the face of Trantor to escape from Demerzel when you yourself were Demerzel?”

  “You told Cleon that psychohistory was a purely theoretical concept, a kind of mathematical game that made no practical sense. That might indeed have been so, but if I approached you officially, I was sure you would merely have maintained your belief. Yet I was attracted to the notion of psychohistory. I wondered whether it might not be, after all, just a game. You must understand that I didn’t want merely to use you, I wanted a real and practical psychohistory.

  “So I sent you, as you put it, chasing all over the face of Trantor with the dreaded Demerzel close on your heels at all times. That, I felt, would concentrate your mind powerfully. It would make psychohistory something exciting and much more than a mathematical game. You would try to work it our for the sincere idealist Hummin, where you would not for the Imperial flunky Demerzel. Also, you would get a glimpse of various sides of Trantor and that too would be helpful-certainly more helpful than living in an ivory tower on a far-off planet, surrounded entirely by fellow mathematicians. Was I right? Have you made progress?”

  Seldon said, “In psychohistory? Yes, I did, Hummin. I thought you knew.”

  “How should I know?”

  “I told Dors.”

  “But you hadn’t told me. Nevertheless, you tell me so now. That is good news.”

  “Not entirely,” said Seldon. “I have made only the barest beginning. But it is a beginning.”

  “Is it the kind of beginning that can be explained to a nonmathematician?”

  “I think so. You see, Hummin, from the start I have seen psychohistory as a science that depends on the interaction of twentyfive million worlds, each with an average population of four thousand million. It’s too much. There’s no way of handling something that complex. If it was to succeed at all, if there was to be any way of finding a useful psychohistory, I would first have to find a simpler system.

  “So I thought I would go back in time and deal with a single world, a world that was the only one occupied by humanity in the dim age before the colonization of the Galaxy. In Mycogen they spoke of an original world of Aurora and in Dahl I heard word of an original world of Earth. I thought they might be the same world under different names, but they were sufficiently different in one key point, at least, to make that impossible. And it didn’t matter. So little was known of either one, and that little so obscured by myth and legend, that there was no hope of making use of psychohistory in connection with them.”

  He paused to sip at his cold juice, keeping his eyes firmly on Hummin’s face.

  Hummin said, “Well? What then?”

  “Meanwhile, Dors had told me something I call the hand-on-thigh story. It was of no innate significance, merely a humorous and entirely trivial tale. As a result, though, Dors mentioned the different sex mores on various worlds and in various sectors of Trantor. It occurred to me that she treated the different Trantorian sectors as though they were separate worlds. I thought, idly, that instead of twenty-five million different worlds, I had twenty-five million plus eight hundred to deal with. It seemed a trivial difference, so I forgot it and thought no more about it.

  “But as I traveled from the Imperial Sector to Streeling to Mycogen to Dahl to Wye, I observed for myself how different each was. The thought of Trantor-not as a world but as a complex of worlds-grew stronger, but still I didn’t see the crucial point.

  “It was only when I listened to Rashelle–you see, it was good that I was finally captured by Wye and it was good that Rashelle’s rashness drove her into the grandiose schemes that she imparted to me-When I listened to Rashelle, as I said, she told me that all she wanted was Trantor and some immediately adjacent worlds. It was an Empire in itself, she said, and dismissed the outer worlds as ‘distant nothings.’

  “It was then that, in a moment, I saw what I must have been harboring in my hidden thoughts for a considerable time. On the one hand, Trantor possessed an extraordinarily complex social system, being a populous world made up of eight hundred smaller worlds. It was in itself a system complex enough to make psychohistory meaningful and yet it was simple enough, compared to the Empire as a whole, to make psychohistory perhaps practical.

  “And the Outer Worlds, the twenty-five million of them? They were ‘distant nothings.’ Of course, they affected Trantor and were affected by Trantor, but these were second-order effects. If I could make psychohistory work as a first approximation for Trantor alone, then the minor effects of the Outer Worlds could be added as later modifications. Do you see what I mean? I was searching for a single world on which to establish a practical science of psychohistory and I was searching for it in the far past, when all the time the single world I wanted was under my feet now,”

  Hummin said with obvious relief and pleasure, “Wonderful!”

  “But it’s all left to do, Hummin. I must study Trantor in sufficient detail. I must devise the necessary mathematics to deal with it. If I am lucky and live out a full lifetime, I may have the answers before I die. If not, my successors will have to follow me. Conceivably, the Empire may have fallen and splintered before psychohistory becomes a useful technique.”

  “I will do everything I can to help you.”

  “I know it,” said Seldon.

  “You trust me, then, despite the fact I am Demerzel?”

  “Entirely. Absolutely. But I do so because you are not Demerzel.”

  “But I am, “insisted Hummin.

  “But you are not. Your persona as Demerzel is as far removed from the truth as is your persona as Hummin.”

  “What do you mean?” Hummin’s eyes grew wide and he backed away slightly from Seldon.

  “I mean that you probably chose the name ‘Hummin’ out of a wry sense of what was fitting. ‘Hummin’ is a mispronunciation of ‘human, ‘isn’t it?”

  Hummin made no response. He continued to stare at Seldon.

  And finally Seldon said, “Because you’re not human, are you, ‘Hummin/Demerzel’? You’re a robot.”

  Dors

  SELDON, HARI-... IT IS CUSTOMARY TO THINK OF HARI SELDON ONLY IN CONNECTION WITH PSYCHOHISTORY, TO SEE HIM ONLY AS MATHEMATICS AND SOCIAL CHANGE PERSONIFIED. THERE IS NO DOUBT THAT HE HIMSELF ENCOURAGED THIS FOR AT NO TIME IN HIS FORMAL WRITINGS DID HE GIVE ANY HINT AS TO HOW HE CAME TO SOLVE THE VARIOUS PROBLEMS OF PSYCHOHISTORY. HIS LEAPS OF THOUGHT MIGHT HAVE ALL BEEN PLUCKED FROM AIR, FOR ALL HE TELLS US. NOR DOES HE TELL US OF THE BLIND ALLEYS INTO WHICH HE CREPT OR THE WRONG TURNINGS HE MAY HAVE MADE.

  ... AS FOR HIS PRIVATE LIFE, IT IS A BLANK. CONCERNING HIS PARENTS AND SIBLINGS, WE KNOW A HANDFUL OF FACTORS, NO MORE. HIS ONLY SON, RAYCH SELDON, IS KNOWN TO HAVE BEEN ADOPTED, BUT HOW THAT CAME ABOUT IS NOT KNOWN. CONCERNING HIS WIFE, WE ONLY KNOW THAT SHE EXISTED. CLEARLY, SELDON WANTED TO BE A CIPHER EXCEPT WHERE PSYCHOHISTORY WAS CONCERNED. IT IS AS THOUGH HE FELT–OR WANTED IT TO BE FELT-THAT HE DID NOT LIVE, HE MERELY PSYCHOHISTORIFIED.

  ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA

  91.

  Hummin sat calmly, not a muscle twitching, still looking at Hari Seldon and Seldon, for his part, waited. It was Hummin, he thought, who should speak next.

  Hummin did, but said merely, “A robot? Me?-By robot, I pre
sume you mean an artificial being such as the object you saw in the Sacratorium in Mycogen.”

  “Not quite like that,” said Seldon.

  “Not metal? Not burnished? Not a lifeless simulacrum?” Hummin said it without any evidence of amusement.

  “No. To be of artificial life is not necessarily to be made of metal. I speak of a robot indistinguishable from a human being in appearance.’.

  “If indistinguishable, Hari, then how do you distinguish?”

  “Not by appearance.”

  “Explain.”

  “Hummin, in the course of my flight from yourself as Demerzel, I heard of two ancient worlds, as I told you-Aurora and Earth. Each seemed to be spoken of as a first world or an only world. In both cases, robots were spoken of, but with a difference.”

  Seldon was staring thoughtfully at the man across the table, wondering if, in any way, he would give some sign that he was less than a man–or more. He said, “Where Aurora was in question, one robot was spoken of as a renegade, a traitor, someone who deserted the cause. Where Earth was in question, one robot was spoken of as a hero, one who represented salvation. Was it too much to suppose that it was the same robot?”

  “Was it?” murmured Hummin.

  “This is what I thought, Hummin. I thought that Earth and Aurora were two separate worlds, co-existing in time. I don’t know which one preceded the other. From the arrogance and the conscious sense of superiority of the Mycogenians, I might suppose that Aurora was the original world and that they despised the Earthmen who derived from them–or who degenerated from them.

  “On the other hand, Mother Rittah, who spoke to me of Earth, was convinced that Earth was the original home of humanity and, certainly, the tiny and isolated position of the Mycogenians in a whole galaxy of quadrillions of people who lack the strange Mycogenian ethos might mean that Earth was indeed the original home and that Aurora was the aberrant offshoot. I cannot tell, but I pass on to you my thinking, so that you will understand my final conclusions.”

  Hummin nodded. “I see what you are doing. Please continue.”

  “The worlds were enemies. Mother Rittah certainly made it sound so. When I compare the Mycogenians, who seem to embody Aurora, and the Dahlites, who seem to embody Earth, I imagine that Aurora, whether first or second, was nevertheless the one that was more advanced, the one that could produce more elaborate robots, even ones indistinguishable from human beings in appearance. Such a robot was designed and devised in Aurora, then. But he was a renegade, so he deserted Aurora. To the Earthpeople he was a hero, so he must have joined Earth. Why he did this, what his motives were, I can’t say.”

  Hummin said, “Surely, you mean why it did this, what its motives were.”

  “Perhaps, but with you sitting across from me,” said Seldon, “I find it difficult to use the inanimate pronoun. Mother Rittah was convinced that the heroic robot-her heroic robot-still existed, that he would return when he was needed. It seemed to me that there was nothing impossible in the thought of an immortal robot or at least one who was immortal as long as the replacement of worn-out parts was not neglected.”

  “Even the brain?” asked Hummin.

  “Even the brain. I don’t really know anything about robots, but I imagine a new brain could be re-recorded from the old.–and Mother Rittah hinted of strange mental powers.-I thought: It must be so. I may, in some ways, be a romantic, but I am not so much a romantic as to think that one robot, by switching from one side to the other, can alter the course of history. A robot could not make Earth’s victory sure, nor Aurora’s defeat certain-unless there was something strange, something peculiar about the robot.”

  Hummin said, “Does it occur to you, Hari, that you are dealing with legends, legends that may have been distorted over the centuries and the millennia, even to the extent of building a veil of the supernatural over quire ordinary events? Can you make yourself believe in a robot that not only seems human, but that also lives forever and has mental powers? Are you not beginning to believe in the superhuman?”

  “I know very well what legends are and I am not one to be taken in by them and made to believe in fairy tales. Still, when they are supported by certain odd events that I have seen–and even experienced myself–”

  “Such as?”

  “Hummin, I met you and trusted you from the start. Yes, you helped me against those two hoodlums when you didn’t need to and that predisposed me in your favor, since I didn’t realize at the time that they were your hirelings, doing what you had instructed them to do.–but never mind that.”

  “No,” said Hummin, a hint of amusement-finally-in his voice.

  “I trusted you. I was easily convinced not to go home to Helicon and to make myself a wanderer over the face of Trantor. I believed everything you told me without question. I placed myself entirely in your hands. Looking back on it now, I see myself as not myself. I am not a person to be so easily led, yet I was. More than that, I did not even think it strange that I was behaving so far out of character.”

  “You know yourself best, Hari,”

  “It wasn’t only me. How is it that Dors Venabili, a beautiful woman with a career of her own, should abandon that career in order to join me in my flight? How is it that she should risk her life to save mine, seeming to take on, as a kind of holy duty, the cask of protecting me and becoming single-minded in the process? Was it simply because you asked her to?”

  “I did ask her to, Hari.”

  “Yet she does not strike me as the kind of person to make such a radical changeover in her life merely because someone asks her to. Nor could I believe it was because she had fallen madly in love with me at first sight and could not help herself. I somehow wish she had, but she seems quite the mistress of her emotional self, more-I am now speaking to you frankly-than I myself am with respect to her.”

  “She is a wonderful woman,” said Hummin. “I don’t blame you.”

  Seldon went on. “How is it, moreover, that Sunmaster Fourteen, a monster of arrogance and one who leads a people who are themselves stiff-necked in their own conceit, should be willing to take in tribespeople like Dors and myself and to treat us as well as the Mycogenians could and did? When we broke every rule, committed every sacrilege, how is it that you could still talk him into letting us go?

  “How could you talk the Tisalvers, with their petty prejudices, into taking us in? How can you be at home everywhere in the world, be friends with everyone, influence each person, regardless of their individual peculiarities? For that matter, how do you manage to manipulate Cleon too? And if he is viewed as malleable and easily molded, then how were you able to handle his father, who by all accounts was a rough and arbitrary tyrant? How could you do all this?

  “Most of all, how is it that Mannix IV of Wye could spend decades building an army without peer, one trained to be proficient in every detail, and yet have it fall apart when his daughter tries to make use of it? How could you persuade them to play the Renegade, all of them, as you have done?”

  Hummin said, “Might this mean no more than that I am a tactful person used to dealing with people of different types, that I am in a position to have done favors for crucial people and am in a position to do additional favors in the future? Nothing I have done, it might seem, requires the supernatural.”

  “Nothing you have done? Not even the neutralization of the Wyan army?”

  “They did not wish to serve a woman.”

  “They must have known for years that any time Mannix laid down his powers or any time he died, Rashelle would be their Mayor, yet they showed no signs of discontent-until you felt it necessary that they show it. Dors described you at one time as a very persuasive man. And so you are. More persuasive than any man could be. But you are not more persuasive than an immortal robot with strange mental powers might be.-Well, Hummin?”

  Hummin said, “What is it you expect of me, Hari? Do you expect me to admit I’m a robot? That I only look like a human being? That I am immortal? That I am a m
ental marvel?!”

  Seldon leaned toward Hummin as he sat there on the opposite side of the table. “Yes, Hummin, I do. I expect you to tell me the truth and I strongly suspect that what you have just outlined is the truth. You, Hummin, are the robot that Mother Rittah referred to as DaNee, friend of Ba-Lee. You must admit it. You have no choice.”

  92.

  It was as though they were sitting in a tiny Universe of their own. There, in the middle of Wye, with the Wyan army being disarmed by Imperial force, they sat quietly. There, in the midst of events that all of Trantor and perhaps all the Galaxy-was watching, there was this small bubble of utter isolation within which Seldon and Hummin were playing their game of attack and defense-Seldon trying hard to force a new reality, Hummin making no move to accept that new reality.

  Seldon had no fear of interruption. He was certain that the bubble within which they sat had a boundary that could not be penetrated, that Hummin’s-no, the robot’s-powers would keep all at a distance rill the game was over.

  Hummin finally said, “You are an ingenious fellow, Hari, but I fail to see why I must admit that I am a robot and why I have no choice but to do so. Everything you say may be true as facts-your own behavior, Dors’s behavior, Sunmaster’s, Tisalver’s, the Wyan generals’-all, all may have happened as you said, but that doesn’t force your interpretation of the meaning of the events to be true. Surely, everything that happened can have a natural explanation. You trusted me because you accepted what I said; Dors felt your safety to be important because she felt psychohistory to be crucial, herself being a historian; Sunmaster and Tisalver were beholden to me for favors you know nothing of, the Wyan generals resented being ruled by a woman, no more. Why must we flee to the supernatural?”

  Seldon said, “See here, Hummin, do you really believe the Empire to be falling and do you really consider it important that it not be allowed to do so with no move made to save it or, at the least, cushion its fall?”

  “I really do.” Somehow Seldon knew this statement was sincere. “And you really want me to work out the details of psychohistory and you feel that you yourself cannot do it?”