Foundation Fear (49 page)

Dors whispered, “But we cannot, except at grave peril to our very stability.”

Daneel hung his head. “When I gave the orders, an acidic agony arose in my mind, a
scalding tide I have barely contained.”

Hari's throat just allowed him to squeeze out his words. “Old friend, you had no choice.
Surely in all your ages of labor in the human cause, other contradictions have arisen?”

Daneel nodded. “Many. And each time I hang above an abyss.”

“You cannot succumb, ” Dors said. “You are the greatest of us. More is demanded of you.”

Daneel looked at both of them as if seeking absolution. Across his face flickered forlorn
hope. “I suppose ... ”

Hari added his assent, a lump in his throat. “Of course. All is lost without you. You must
endure.”

Daneel looked off into infinity, speaking in a dry whisper. “My work ... it is not done ... so I cannot ... deactivate. This must be what it
is like ... to be truly human ... torn between two poles. Still, I can look forward. There
will come a time when my work is finished. When I can be relieved of these contradictory
tensions. Then I shall face the black blankness ... and it will be good.”

The fervor of the robot's speech left Hari silent and sad. For a long time the three sat
together in the hushed room. Lamurk stood attentive and silent.

Then, without a further word, they went their separate ways.

Hari sat alone and stared at the holo of a raging, ancient prairie fire.

In its place now stood the Empire. He knew now that he loved the Empire for reasons he
could not name. The dark revelation, that the robots had visited death and destruction
upon the old, remnant digital minds ... even that did not deter him. He would never know
the details of that ancient crime -- he hoped.

To preserve his sanity, for the first time in his life he did not want to know.

The Empire that stood all around him was even more marvelous than he had suspected. And
more sobering.

Who could accept that humanity did not control its own future -- that history was the
result of forces acting beyond the horizons of mere mortal men? The Empire had endured
because of its metanature, not the valiant acts of individuals, or even of worlds.

Many would argue for human self-determination. Their arguments were not wrong or even
ineffectual -- just beside the point. As persuasion they were powerful. Everyone wanted to
believe they were masters of their own fate. Logic had nothing to do with it.

Even Emperors were nothing; chaff blown by winds they could not see.

As if to refute him, Cleon's image abruptly coagulated in the holo. “Hari! Where have you
been?”

“Working.”

“On your equations, I hope -- because you're going to need them.”

“Sire?”

“The High Council just met in special session. I appeared; a note of grace and gravity was
much needed. In the wake of the, ah, tragic loss of Lamurk and his, ah. associates, I
urged the quick election of a First Minister. ” A broad wink. “For stability, you
understand.”

Hari croaked, “Oh no.”

“Oh, yes! -- my First Minister.”

“But wasn't there -- didn't anyone suspect -- ”

“You? A harmless academic, bringing off assassinations in dozens of places, all over
Trantor? Using tiktoks?”

“Well, you know how people will talk -- ”

Cleon gave him a shrewd look. “Come now, Hari ... how did you do it?”

“I count among my allies a gang of renegade robots.”

Cleon laughed loudly, slapping his desk. “I never knew you were such a jokester. Very
well, I quite understand. You should not be forced to reveal your sources.”

Hari had sworn to himself that he would never lie to the Emperor. Not being believed was
not part of the agreement. “I assure you, sire -- ”

“Of course you are right to jest. I am not naive. ”

“And I am a lousy liar, sire. ” True also, and as well, the best way to close the matter.

“I want you to come to the formal reception for the High Council. Now that you're First
Minister, there will be these social matters. But before that, I do want you to think
about the Sark situation and -- ”

“I can advise you now. ” Cleon brightened. “Oh?”

“There are dampers in history, sire, which stabilize the Empire. The New Renaissance is a
breakout of a fundamental facet and flaw of humanity. It must be suppressed. ”

“You're sure?”

“If we do nothing ... ” Hari recalled the solutions he had just tried in the
fitness-landscape. Let the New Renaissance go and the Empire would dissolve into
chaos-states within mere decades. “That might destroy humanity itself.”

Cleon grimaced. “Truly? What are my other options?”

“Squelch these eruptions. The Sarkians are brilliant, true, but they cannot find a shared
heart for their people. They are examples of what I call a Solipsism Plague, an excessive
belief in the self. It is contagious. ”

“The human toll -- ”

“Save the survivors. Send Imperial aid ships through the wormholes -- food, counselors,
psychers if they're any help. But after the disorder has burned itself out.”

“I see. ” Cleon gave him a guarded glance, face slightly averted. “You are a hard man,
Hari.”

“When it comes to preserving order, the Empire -- yes, sire. ” Cleon went on to speak of
minor matters, as if shy- ing away from so brutal a topic. Hari was glad he had not asked
more.

The long-range predictions showed dire drifts -- that the classic dampers in the Empire's
self-learning networks were failing, too. The New Renaissance was but the most flagrant
example.

But everywhere he had looked, with his body sen-sorium tied into the N-dimensional
spectrum, rose the stink of impending chaos. The Empire was breaking down in ways which
were not describable by mere human modes. It was too vast a system to enclose within a
single mind.

So soon, within decades, the Empire would start to fragment. Military strength was of
little long-term use when the time-honored dampers faltered. The center could not hold.

Hari could slow that collapse a bit. perhaps -- that old as all. Soon whole Zones would
spiral back to the old attractors: Basic Feudalism, Religious Sancti-mony, Femoprimitivism
...

Of course, his conclusions were preliminary. He hoped new data would prove him wrong. But
he doubted it.

Only after thirty thousand years of suffering would the fever burn out. A new, strong
attractor would emerge.

A random mutation of Benign Imperialism? He could not tell. He could understand all this
better with more work. Explore the foundations, get ... an idea flickered. Foundations?
Something there ... But Cleon was going on and events were colliding

In his mind. The idea flitted away.

“We'll do great things together, Hari. What do you think about ... ”

As Cleon's beck and call, he would never get any Work done.

Dealing with Lamurk had been disagreeable -- but in comparison with this trap of power,
easy. How could he get out of this?

The two figures from a past beyond antiquity flew in their cool digital spaces, waiting
for the man to return.

“I have faith he will, ” Joan said.

“I rely more upon calculation, ” Voltaire replied, adjusting his garb. He softened the
pull of silk in his tight, formal breeches. It was a simple adjustment of the friction
coefficient, nothing more. Rough algorithms reduced intricate laws to trivial arithmetic.
Even the rub of life was just another parameter.

“I still resent this weather.”

Gales howled across troubled waters. They flew above foaming waves and banked on thermal
upwellings.

“Your idea, to be birds for a bit. ” He was a silvery eagle.

“I always envied them. So light, cheerful, at one with the air itself.”

He morphed his wings up to his shoulders, making his vest-coat fit much better. Even here,
life was mostly details.

“Why must such strangeness manifest as weather?” Joan asked.

“Men argue; nature acts.”

“But they are not nature! They are strange minds -- ”

“So strange we might as well regard them as natural phenomena.”

“I find it difficult to believe that our Lerd^made such things. ”

"~^-^

“I've felt that way about many Parisians.”

“They appear to us as storms, mountains, oceans. If they would explain themselves -- ”

“The secret of being a bore is to tell everything.”

“Hark! He comes.”

She grew armor while keeping her giant wings. The effect was startling, like a giant
chromed falcon.

Voltaire said, “My love, you never cease to surprise me. I believe that with you even
eternity will not be tedious.”

Hari Seldon hung in midair. He was clearly not yet used to adventuresome simulations, for
his feet kept trying to stand somewhere. Eventually he gave up and watched them swoop and
dive around him.

“I came as soon as I could.”

“I gather you are now a viscount or duke or such, ” loan said.

“Something like that, ” Hari said. “This space you're in, I've arranged for it to be a
permanent, ah -- ”

“Preserve?” Voltaire asked, batting his wings before the Hari-figure. A cloud drifted
nearer, as if to listen in.

“We call it a 'dedicated perimeter' in computational space.”

“Such poetry!” Voltaire arched an eyebrow.

“That sounds much like a zoo, ” Joan said.

“The deal is, you and the alien minds can stay here, running without interference.”

“I do not like to be hemmed in!” Joan shouted.

Hari shook his head. “You'll be able to get input from anywhere. But no more interference
with the tiktoks -- right?”

“Ask the weather, ” Joan said.

A cascade of burnt-orange sheet lightning ran -¥own the sky.

“I'm just glad the meme-minds didn't exterminate all the robots, ” Hari said.

Voltaire said, “Perhaps this place is a bit like England, where they kill an occasional
admiral to encourage the others.”

“I had to do it, ” Hari said.

Joan slowed her wings and hovered near his face. “You are distressed.”

“Did you know the meme-minds would use the tik-toks to kill robots?”

“Not at all, ” Joan said.

Voltaire added, “Though the economy of it provokes a certain admiration. Subtle minds,
they are.”

“Treacherous, ” Hari said. “I wonder what else they can do?”

“I believe they are satisfied, ” Joan said. “I sense a calm in our weather.”

“I want to speak with them!” Hari shouted.

“Like kings, they like to be awaited, ” Voltaire said.

“I sense them gathering, ” Joan said helpfully. “Let us help our friend here with his
vexations.”

“Me?” Hari said. “I don't like killing people, if that's what you mean.”

“In such times, there is no good path, ” she said. “I, too, had to kill for the right.”

“Lamurk was a valuable public servant -- ”

“Nonsense!” Voltaire said. “He lived as he died -- by the dagger, too slippery- to show
the sword. He would never rest with you in power. And even had you stepped aside -- well,
my mathist, remember that it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.”

“I still feel conflicted.”

“You must, for you are a righteous man, ” Joan said. “Pray and be absolved.”

“Or better, peer within, ” Voltaire explained loftily. “Your conflicts reflect subminds in
dispute. Such is the human condition.”

Joan flapped her wings at Voltaire, who veered away.

Hari scowled. “That sounds more like a machine.”

Voltaire laughed. “If order -- you are an enthusiast of order, yes? -- means
predictability, and predictability means predetermination, and that means compulsion, and
compulsion means nonfreedom -- why then, the only way we can be free is to be disordered!”

Hari frowned. Voltaire realized that, while for him ideas were playthings, and the contest
of wits made the blood sing, for this man the abstract mattered.

Hari said, “I suppose you're right. People do feel discomfort with rigid order. And with
hierarchies, norms, foundations -- ” He blinked. “There's an idea, 1 can't quite see it
... ”

Voltaire said kindly, “Even you, surely you do not want to be the tool of your own genes,
or of physics, or of economics?”

“How can we be free if we're machines?” Hari asked, as if speaking to himself. “Nobody
wants either a random universe or a deterministic one, ” Voltaire said. “But there are
deterministic laws -- ”

“And random ones. ” loan put in, "Our Lord gave us judgment to noose."

“Freedom to choose to do other than one would like -- what a sordid boon!” Voltaire said,
Joan said, “You gentlemen are circling the divine without knowing it. Everything
worthwhile to peo-ple -- freedom, meaning, value -- all that disappears within either of
your choices. ”

“my love, you must remember that Hari is a math-ist ” Voltaire zoomed about both of them
on spread wings. obviously enjoying ruffling his feathers in the turbulence.
“Order/disorder seem implicated in other dualisms: nature/human, natural/artificial,
animals with natures/humans outside nature. They are natural to us.”

“How come?” Hari squinted, puzzled.

“How do we frame the other side of an argument? We say, 'on the other hand, ' yes?”

Hari nodded. “We think our two hands mirror the world.”

“Very good. ” Voltaire flew loops around Joan's chromed falcon.

“The Creator has two hands as well, ” Joan persisted. “'He sitteth on the right hand of
the Father almighty -- '”

Voltaire cawed like a crow. “But you're both neglecting your own selves -- which you can
inspect, in this digital vault. Look deeply and you see endless detail. It ramifies into a
Self that cannot be decomposed into the mere operation of neat laws. The You emerges as a
deep interplay of many Selves.”

Into the shared mind-space of the three Voltaire sent:

Complex, nonlinear feedback systems are unpredictable, even if they are deterministic. The
information-processing capacity needed to predict a single mind is larger than the
complexity of the whole universe itself! Computing the next event takes longer than the
event itself. Precisely this feature, written into the texture of the universe, makes it
-- and us -- free.

Hari replied with:

Paradox. How does the event itself know how to happen?

Only a massive computer could describe the next tiny whorl in a stream. What makes real
systems even able to change?

Voltaire shrugged -- a difficult gesture for a bird.

“At last you have encountered an agency you cannot dismiss, ” Joan said proudly.

Voltaire's head jerked with surprise. “Your ... Creator?”

“Your equations describe well enough. But what rives these equations -- ” she hesitated at
the word -- >

“You imply a Mind which does the universal computation?”

“No, you do.”

Hari said, “Fair enough -- as a hypothesis. But why should such a Mind care a whit for us,
mere motes?”

“He cared enough to make you come out of the matrix of matter, did He not?”

“Ah, origins, ” Voltaire said, catching an updraft. He looked relieved to be on surer
intellectual ground. Plainly her point had rattled him. “Insoluble, of course. I prefer to
deal with our moralities. ” loan said primly, “Morality is not dependent upon us.”

Voltaire shot back, “Nonsense! We evolved with morals shaped by the universe -- by a
Creator, if you wish.”

Hari asked, “You mean by evolution? The pans -- ”

Joan cried, “Indeed! Holiness shapes the world, the world shapes us.”

Hari looked doubtful, Joan pleased. Voltaire said wryly, “My mathist, would you rather
believe that moral constraints emerge as 'a spontaneous order from rational
utility-maximizing behavior'? Truly?”

Hari blinked. “Well, no ... ”

“I quoted one of your own papers. What you've forgotten, sir, is that our endless models
of the world shape how we look at human experience.”

“Of course, but -- ”

“And the models are all that we know.”

Hari suddenly smiled. “I like that. Don't get married to a model. ” He allowed himself to
morph slightly, growing taller, more muscular. “I don't know why, but I feel better.”

“Your soul has come to terms with your actions, ” Joan said.

Voltaire said, “I would prefer 'selves' to 'soul, ' but let us not quibble.”

Suddenly Hari felt categories shift in his mind. He had arranged for the revival of these
sims, guided by pure intuition. Now came the payoff: they had inadvertently discovered the
step he wanted. “The mind ... is a self-organizing structure, and so is the Empire. I can
work back and forth between those models! Import your knowledge of subselves, use it to
analyze how the Empire learns!”

Voltaire blinked. “What a marvelous idea.”

Hari said, “Wait'11 I show you! The Empire is self-learning, with subunits -- ”

“I wonder if the alien fog knows this?” Joan asked.

Hari frowned. “I do not want to involve them. My equations cannot deal with elements of
unknown -- ”

“They are already involved, ” Joan said. “They are here, all around us.”

Hari sighed. “I hope we can keep them here in the -- ”

“Zoo, ” Joan said dryly.

Thunderheads roiled over the horizons, closing fast.

“You killed robots!” Hari shouted into the gale. “That was not in our bargain.”

[WE DID NOT SAY WE WOULD REFRAIN]

“You took more than we agreed! Lives of -- ”

[TERMS OMITTED CANNOT BE PRESUMED UPON]

“The robots are a separate kind. Of high intelligence -- ”

[YOUR MERE TIKTOKS COULD KILL THEM THOUGH]

[YOU, SELDON, DID NOT OWN THESE MACHINES]

[AND THUS HAVE NO DISPUTE WITH US]

Hari ground his teeth and fumed.

[MORE IMPORTANT MATTERS BECKON]

“Your rewards?” Hari asked bitterly. “You've come for them?”

[WE SHALL NOT STAY HERE]

[FOR THIS PLACE IS DOOMED]

Hari staggered under a hailstorm of biting cold. “Trantor?”

[AND MUCH ELSE]

“What do you want?”

[OUR DESIRED DESTINY IS TO FLOAT AMONG THE SPIRAL ARMS]

[AND LINGER LONG AMONG THE PLUMES OF GALACTIC CENTER]

Hari remembered the structures there, the complex weave of luminosities. “You can do that?”

[WE HAVE A SPORE STATE]

[SOME OF US LIVED THIS WAY BEFORE]

[TO SUCH A STATE WE WISH TO RETURN]

[ELSE WE SHALL EXTINGUISH ALL YOUR “ROBOTS”]

“That wasn't part of our deal!” Hari shouted. Hard cold rain hammered him, but he turned
his face to confront the towering, angry clouds and their skirts of wrathful lightning.

[HOW CAN YOU STOP US?]

[THOUGH IT WOULD DEPLETE OUR CAPACITIES]

[WE COULD BRING TRANTOR TO STARVATION]

Hari grimaced. He was learning a lot about power, quite quickly. “All right. I'll see that
research gets done on how to transfer you to physical form. There are those I know who can
do it. Marq and Sybyl know how to keep quiet, too.”

Voltaire asked, “Why do you wish to exit stage left with such unseemly haste?”

[A NEW BRUSH FIRE IS COMING]

[TO HUMANS ACROSS THE SPIRAL]

[WE SHALL WATCH THIS FALL]

[AS SPORES FROM GALACTIC CENTER]

[THERE NONE CAN HURT US, NONE CAN WE HURT]

A glittering crystal with sharp spikes materialized beneath the purpling sky. In a
data-dollop, Hari learned of the alien technology which had once made these stable, rugged
compartments for digital intelligences.

[TRANTOR WAS ONCE THE IDEAL PLACE FOR US]

[RICH IN RESOURCES]

[NO MORE IS THIS SO]

[DANGER LURKS IN THE COMING INSTABILITY]

“Ummm, ” Voltaire said. “Joan and I might desire such an exit as well.”

“Wait, you two, ” Hari said, talking fast. “If you want to go with these, these things, to
live in a seed between the stars -- then you have to earn it.”

Joan scowled. “How?”

“For now, I can make it safe for you to live widely in the Mesh. In return -- ” he gazed
anxiously at the Voltaire eagle, flapping in brassy splendor “ -- I want you to help me.”

“If it is a holy cause, surely, ” Joan called.

“It is. Help me lead! I've always felt there's good in everybody. The job of a leader is
to bring it out.”

Voltaire said, “If you think there is good in everybody, you haven't met everybody.”

“But I'm not a man of the world. So I need you.”

“To rule?” Joan asked.

“Exactly. I'm not suited for it.”

Voltaire stopped in midair, wings stilled. “The possibilities! With enough computing space
and speed, we can endow proto-Michelangelos with creative time.”

“I need to deal with a lot of, well, power problems. You can go off into these spore forms
when I'm finished with politics.”

Voltaire abruptly congealed into human form, though still elegantly clothed in electric
blue. “Ummm. Politics -- I always found it enticing. A game of elegant ideas, played by
bullies.”

“I've got plenty of opposition already, ” Hari said soberly.