Foundation and Chaos (41 page)

“But the distant future—when humanity outgrows all ancient systems of belief, all psychology and morphology, all of its yolk-sacs of culture and biology—the seeds of the Second Foundation…”

Daneel did not need to finish. Through the expression on Lodovik’s face, a kind of dreaming speculation and almost religious hope, he knew he had made his point.

“Transcendence, beyond any rational prediction,” Lodovik said.

“As you realized, the forest is made healthy by the conflagrations—but not the huge burnings and wholesale, senseless winnowings that characterize the human past. Humanity is a
biological force of such power that for many thousands of years, they could have quite literally destroyed the Galaxy, and themselves. They hate and fear so much, legacies originating in their difficult past, from those times when they were not yet human, scrabbling for survival among scaled monsters on the surface of their home world. Forced to live in night and darkness, fearing the light of day. A bitter upbringing.

“These inbred tendencies toward total disaster I have worked to avoid, and I have succeeded—at some cost to free human development!

“The function of psychohistory is to actively constrain human growth and variation, until the species achieves its long-delayed maturity. Klia Asgar and her kind will breed with and train others, and humans will at long last learn to think in unison—to communicate efficiently. Together they may help overcome future mutations, even more powerful than themselves—destructive side-effects of their immune response to robots.

“There are real risks in such a strategy—risks you have fully and accurately recognized. But the alternative is unthinkable.

“If Hari Seldon does not finish his work, the disasters may begin again. And this must not be allowed to happen.”

All the arrangements had been made. R. Daneel Olivaw was prepared to render his final service to humanity. Yet to do this he would have to appear to an old and dear friend and offer him what was at most a partial truth to adjust his lifelong course.

Then, he would have to suppress that friend’s memory, hiding his tracks as it were. He had done this to others thousands of times before (and to Hari Seldon, a few times), but there was a peculiar melancholy to this particular moment,
and Daneel faced it with no enthusiasm.

On the last day in his oldest dwelling on Trantor, the apartment high on an internal tower overlooking the ivory-and-steel structures of Streeling University, his mentality—he still hesitated to use the term “mind,” reserving that for human thought patterns—was troubled. He refused to put a clear label on this sensation, but from below a word welled up that was, in the end, unavoidable.
Grief.

Daneel was finally, after more than twenty thousand years, grieving. Soon, he would have no use. His human friend would die. Things would go on without them, humanity would lumber into its future, and while Daneel would continue to exist, he would have no purpose.

Hard as his existence had been these millennia, deep and complex as his history had flowed, he had always known he was doing what robots inevitably had been constructed to do—to serve human beings.

He had awarded Lodovik with the honorific “human,” not to convince the robot to come over to his side—the circumstances had changed and his arguments were compelling enough. He could not guarantee that Lodovik would agree, but strongly suspected he would—and Daneel would proceed with his plan in any case. Lodovik was not key, though his presence would be useful.

But Daneel could not call himself “human,” whatever his service and his nature. In his own judgment, Daneel remained what he had always been, through so many physical changes and mental peregrinations. He was a robot, nothing more.

His status as a mythic Eternal meant little to him; it did not exalt him.

Another, any of a million or a billion human historians, judging Daneel on his long record, might have given him a place in history, a steely gray eminence, equal to that of any human leader, perhaps far greater.

But they knew nothing of Daneel, and would render no
such judgment. Only Linge Chen knew the salient details, and Chen was, finally, too small a man to see this robot clearly. Chen cared little for the Galaxy beyond his own lifetime.

Hari knew much more, and was brilliant enough to place Daneel’s contribution in perspective, yet Daneel had actively forbidden him from spending much time thinking about robots.

The false sky mimicked sunset with a spottiness that seemed part of Trantor’s nature now. A mottled orange glow fell over Daneel’s impassive face. No human saw him; he had no need to contort his features to meet human expectations.

He turned from the window, and walked toward Dors, who stood by the door.

“Are we going to see Hari now?” she asked eagerly.

“Yes,” Daneel said.

“Will he be allowed to remember?” she asked.

“Not yet,” Daneel replied, “but soon.”

Wanda frowned deeply. “I am very uncomfortable leaving him here alone,” she told Stettin as they left Hari’s Streeling apartment.

“He won’t have it any other way,” Stettin said.

“Chen wants him alone—to assassinate him!”

“I don’t think so, somehow,” Stettin said. “Chen could have had him killed a hundred, a thousand times. Now, he’s on record as condoning the
Encyclopedia
, and Hari is the patriarch.”

“I don’t think politics on Trantor is ever that simple.”

“You have to believe what your grandfather’s predictions say.”

“Why?” Wanda asked sharply. “
He
doesn’t believe in them anymore!”

The lift door opened and they stepped into the empty
space, to drop less than five floors. The landing was heavier than they expected—some maladjustment in the building’s grav-fields. Wanda stepped from the exit on aching ankles.

“I need to get away from here!” she lamented. “We’ve been waiting so long—a world of our own—”

But Stettin shook his head, and Wanda gazed at him in both irritation and anxiety that his doubts were justified. “What are the chances, do you think,” he asked, “that even if the Project does go on, and the Plan continues, we’ll ever really leave Trantor?”

Wanda’s face flushed. “Grandfather wouldn’t deceive me…us. Would he?”

“To keep a very important secret, and to push the Project forward?” Stettin pursed his lips together tightly. “I’m not so sure.”

Hari relaxed in his most comfortable chair in the small study. He was becoming used to this new existence, this realization of failure. He was glad for the visits of his granddaughter and her husband, but not for their wheedling attempts to “get me back on track,” as he described it.

Perhaps the most irritating thing about his new mental state was its unreliability, the interruption of mental peace by his continuing useless revision of certain minor elements in the equations of the Plan.

Something itched at the back of his mind, a realization that not all was lost—but it refused to come forward, and even worse, threatened to give him that which he least desired right now: hope.

The original first date for his recordings of the Seldon crisis announcements had passed. The studio where his voice
and image would have been permanently stored in billennial vault memory was still available…Times had been reserved at regular intervals throughout the next year and a half.

But if he kept missing recording dates, the opportunity would soon pass, and he could finally stop feeling the least shred of guilt.

Hari simply wanted to live his last few years—or however long he had—as a nonentity, unimportant, forgotten.

Being forgotten would not take long. Trantor would manufacture other interests in a few days. Memory of the trial of the year would fade…

“I don’t want to meet him,” Klia said to Daneel. They stood in the waiting room of Seldon’s apartment block. “Neither does Brann.”

Brann seemed unwilling to be caught up in a debate. He crossed his thick arms in front of him and looked for all the world like a genie in a child’s story.

“Plussix wanted me to change his mind…” Klia said. Dors shot Klia a surprisingly angry look, and Klia turned away.
She’s a robot—I know she’s a robot! How can she care what we do, what happens?
“I wouldn’t have,” she stammered. “I couldn’t have, but that was what they wanted me to do. Lodovik—Kallusin—” She took a deep breath. “I am so
embarrassed
.”

“We have discussed this,” Daneel said. “Our decision has been made.”

Her mind itched. She felt genuinely uncomfortable around the robots. “I just want to go somewhere safe with Brann and be left alone,” Klia said softly, and she turned away from Dors’ accusing stare.

“It is necessary for Hari Seldon to meet you face-to-face,” Daneel said patiently.

“I don’t understand why.”

“That may be so, but it
is
necessary.” He held his hand
out, directing them toward the lift. “A measure of freedom will follow for all of us, then.”

Klia shook her head in disbelief, but did as she was told, and Brann, holding his opinions to himself for now, followed.

Hari came out of a light doze and wandered groggily toward the door, half expecting to see Wanda and Stettin back for another pep talk. The door display allowed him to observe the group of figures standing in the hall vestibule: a tall, handsome man of middle years, whom he almost immediately recognized as Daneel; a burly Dahlite male and slender, intense-looking young woman; and another woman—

Hari backed away from the door display and closed his eyes. It was not over. He would never be his own man; history had him too firmly in its grip.

“No dream,” he said to himself, “only a nightmare,” but he felt a small surge both of anticipation and irritation. He told himself he really did not want to see anybody, but the gooseflesh on his arms betrayed him.

He let the door slide open.

“Come in,” he said, raising his eyebrows at Daneel. “You might as well be a dream. I know I’m going to forget this meeting as soon as you all leave.” Daneel returned Hari’s expression with a nod, businesslike as usual.
He would make a terrific trader in the big Galactic combines
, Hari thought.
Why do I feel affection for this machine? Sky knows—! But it’s true—I am glad to see him.

“You may remember now,” Daneel said. And Hari did remember all that had happened in the Hall of Dispensation. Vara Liso’s death at the hands of Lodovik Trema…And this young girl and her large friend.

And the female who might have been—
must
have been!—Dors.

He met the girl’s brief glance and nodded to her. He hardly dared glance at the other woman.

“They wanted me to discourage you,” Klia said in a small
voice, staring around the front room with its small pieces of furniture, its stacks of bookfilms, the Minor Radiant—a miniature and less powerful version of Yugo Amaryl’s Prime Radiant—and his portraits of Dors and Raych and the grandchildren. Despite herself, she was impressed by the sense of order, the simplicity, the monkish austerity. “There wasn’t time—and I couldn’t have, anyway,” she concluded.

“I don’t know the details, but I thank you for your restraint,” Hari said. “It seems not to have been necessary, perhaps.” He braced himself, swallowed, and half turned toward the other woman. “We’ve met…here before, I think,” he said, and swallowed again. Then he turned to Daneel. “I must
know
. I must not be made to forget! You assigned me my love, my companion—Daneel, as my friend, as my mentor,
is this Dors Venabili
?”

“I am,” Dors said, and stepping forward, she took Hari’s hand in hers, squeezing it ever so gently, as had been her habit years ago.

She hasn’t forgotten!
Hari held his free hand up to the ceiling, forming a fist, and his eyes filled with tears. He shook his fist at the ceiling as Brann and Klia watched in embarrassment, seeing such an old man exhibit his emotions so openly.

Even Hari did not quite understand what his emotions were—rage, joy, frustration? He lowered his arm and in one motion reached out to embrace Dors, their hands still awkwardly clasped between them. Secret steel, gripping him so gently. “No dream,” he murmured into her shoulder, and Dors held him, feeling his aging body, so different from the mature Hari. She looked at Daneel then, and her eyes were filled with resentment, her own anger, for Hari was in pain, their presence was causing him pain, and she had been programmed above all other imperatives to prevent harm and pain coming to Hari Seldon.

Daneel did not turn away from her stare. He had endured
worse conflicts with his robotic conscience, though this was near the top of any list.

But they were so close—and he would make it up to Hari.

“I have brought Klia here to show you the future,” Daneel said. Klia sucked in her breath and shook her head, not understanding.

Hari let go of Dors and drew himself up, his formerly stooped posture straightening. He gained fully three centimeters in height.

“What can this young woman tell me?” he said. He gestured to the furniture. “I forget my manners,” he said stiffly. “Please, make yourselves comfortable. Robots need not sit if they do not wish to.”

“I would love to sit here again, and relax with you,” Dors said, and lowered herself to the small chair beside him. “So many intense memories from this place. I have missed you so!” She could not take her eyes off him.

Hari smiled down on her. “The worst part is, I was never able to thank you. You gave me so much, and I was never able to say farewell.” His hand patted her shoulder. No gesture, no words, seemed adequate to this occasion. “But then, had you been…organic, I would not have you back with me now, would I? However transitory the experience may be.”

Suddenly, the deep anger built up for decades came to a head and Hari turned on Daneel, pointed a finger into his chest. “Get this done with! Be done with me! Do your work and make me forget, and leave me in peace! Do not torment me with your false flesh and steel bones and immortal thoughts! I am
mortal
, Daneel. I don’t have your strength or your vision!”

“You see farther than any other in this room,” Daneel said.

“No more! My seeing is over. I was wrong. I’m as blind as any of the quadrillion little points in the equations!”

Klia backed away as far as she could from this old man with his deep, sharp eyes. Brann stood staring straight ahead, embarrassed, out of his class, out of his place. Klia reached for his hand and hugged his arm, to reassure him. Together they stood among the robots and the famous meritocrat, and Klia defied anyone to think them the least of those present.

“You were not wrong,” Daneel said. “There is a balance. The Plan is made stronger, but it must take some devious routes. I think you will show us how, a few minutes from now.”

“You overestimate me, Daneel. This young woman—and her companion—and Vara Liso, represent a powerful force I can’t fold into the equations. This upwelling of biology…”

“How do you differ from Vara Liso?” Daneel asked Klia.

Brann’s nostrils flared and his face darkened. “I’ll answer that,” he said. “They’re as different as night from day. There isn’t a hateful bone in Klia’s body—”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Klia said, but she was proud of his defense.

“I mean it. Vara Liso was a monster!” Brann straightened his neck and thrust out his jaw belligerently, as if daring Daneel to contradict him.

“Are you a monster, Klia Asgar?” Hari asked, focusing on her with those deep and discerning eyes.

She did not turn away. Hari Seldon clearly did not think she was his inferior. There was something beyond respect in his gaze—there was a kind of intellectual terror.

“I’m different,” she said.

Hari smiled wolfishly and shook his head in admiring wonder. “Yes, indeed, you are that. I think Daneel will agree with me that we are done with robots for now, and you are proof of that?”

“I’m very uncomfortable around these robots,” Klia confirmed.

“Yet you worked with some—did you not? With Lodovik
Trema?” Hari turned to Daneel. These suppositions and theories had been perking in his head, subconsciously, for days since the incident in the Hall of Dispensation. Daneel could stop the conscious access of memory, but he could not halt all the deep workings of Hari’s mind. “He was a robot, wasn’t he—Daneel?”

“Yes,” Daneel said.

“One of yours?”

“Yes.”

“But—something went wrong.”

“Yes.”

“He turned against you. Is he still against you?”

“I am learning, Hari. He has taught me much. Now it is time for you to teach me…once more. Show me what must be done.” Daneel faced Hari.

“What happened to Lodovik in space?” Hari asked.

Daneel explained, then, told Hari all that had happened with the Calvinians, including the end of Plussix and the knowledge of Linge Chen.

“No more secrecy,” Hari mused. “Those who need to know will know, all over the Galaxy. What can I tell you, Daneel? Your work is done.”

“Not yet, Hari. Not until you find an answer to the problem.”

Dors spoke now. “There is a solution, Hari. I know there is—within your equations.”

“I am not an equation!” Klia shouted. “I am not an aberration or a monster! I just have certain abilities—and so does he!” She pointed to Daneel.

Hari considered with chin in hand. The itch…So deeply buried, untraceable! He clutched Dors’ shoulder, as if to draw strength from her.

“We shed the metal,” he said. “Time to take charge, for ourselves, isn’t it, Daneel? And the time will come when psychohistory’s equations will merge with the equations of all
minds, all people. Every individual will be a general example of the whole progress of the people. They will blend.

“Young woman, you are not a monster. You are the difficult future.”

Klia stared in puzzlement at Hari.

“You will have children, and they will have children…stronger than Wanda and Stettin, stronger than the mentalics we have working for us now. Something will happen, something unpredictable, that my equations can’t encompass—another and more successful mutation, a stronger Vara Liso. I can’t put that into my equations—it is an unknown variable, an individual point-tyranny, all control radiating from one individual!”

Hari’s face had become almost luminous.

“You…” He held his hand out to Klia. “Take this hand. Let me feel you.”

She reluctantly reached out.

“I need a little nudge, my young friend,” Hari said. “
Show me what you are
.”

Almost without thinking, Klia reached into his mind, saw a brightness there obscured by dark nebulosities, and with a gentle breath of persuasion, another sign of her returning strength, she blew the clouds away.

Hari gasped and closed his eyes. His head dropped to one shoulder. He was suddenly more than merely tired. He felt a great sense of release, and for the first time in decades, a knot in his mind, in his body as well, seemed to untie itself. The brightness in his thoughts was not a way around his errors and the flaws in the equations—it was a deeper understanding of his own irrelevance, in the long term.

A thousand years from now, he would be a particle in the smooth flow once again, not his own kind of point-tyranny.

Dors got up from her chair, taking hold of his arm to help him stay on his feet.

His work would be forgotten. The Plan would serve its
purpose and be swept away, merely one more hypothesis, guiding and shaping, but ultimately no more than another illusion among all the illusions of men—and robots.