Foundation Fear (50 page)

“Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate, ” Voltaire said. “I would like that.”

Joan rolled her eyes. “Saints preserve us.”

“Precisely, my dear.”

Hari sat back at his desk. First Minister, but on his terms.

It had all worked out. He got to work here still, far from palace intrigues. Plenty of
time to do math.

He would, of course, speak by 3D and holo to many. All that bother Voltaire took care of.
After all, Voltaire or Joan could masquerade as Hari at the many conferences and meetings
necessary for a First Minister. Digitally, they could morph to him with ease.

Joan enjoyed the virtual ceremonials, especially if she got to hold forth on holiness.
Voltaire loved imitating an ancient man he had apparently known, a Mr. Machiavelli. “Your
Empire, ” he had said, “is a vast, ramshackle thing of infinite nuance and multiplying
self-delusions. Needs looking after.”

In between, they could explore the digital realms, labyrinths vast and vibrant. As
Voltaire had said, they could be off upon “postings various and capers hilarious.”

Yugo came in bursting with energy. “The High Council just passed your vote proposals,
Hari. Every Dahlite in the Galaxy's on your side now.”

Hari smiled. “Have Voltaire make a 3D appearance, as me.”

“Right, modest and confident, that'll work.”

“Reminds me of the old joke about the prostitute. The regular costs the regular price, but
sincerity is extra.”

Yugo laughed unconvincingly and said edgily, “Uh, that woman's here.”

“Not -- ”

He had forgotten utterly about the Academic Potentate. The one threat he had not
neutralized. She knew about Dors, about robots --

Giving him no time to think, she swept into his office.

“So happy you could see me, Primary Minister.”

“Wish I could say the same.”

“And your lovely wife? Is she about?”

“I doubt she would desire to see you.”

The Academic Potentate spread her billowing robes and sat without invitation. “Surely you
didn't take that small jest of mine seriously?”

“My sense of humor doesn't include blackmail.”

Wide eyes, a slight touch of outrage in the tone. “I was merely trying to gain leverage
with your administration.”

“Sure. ” Such were Imperial manners that he would not bring up her possible role in
Vaddo's plot on Panucopia.

“I was certain you would gain the ministership. My little sally -- well, perhaps it was in
poor taste -- ”

“Very.”

“You are a man of few words -- quite admirable. My allies were so impressed with your, ah,
direct handling of the tiktok crisis, the Lamurk killings.”

So that was it. He had shown that he was not an impractical academic. “Direct? How about
'ruthless'?”

“Oh no, we don't think that at all. You are rig/if to let Sark 'burn out, ' as you so
eloquently put it Despite the Greys wanting to jump in and bind up wounds. Very wise --
not ruthless, no.”

“Even though Sark might never recover?” These were the questions he had asked himself
through sleepless nights. People were dying that the Empire might live ... for a while
longer.

She waved this away. “As I was saying, I wanted a special relationship with the First
Minister from our class in, well, so long -- ”

Like many he knew now, she employed speech to conceal thought, not to reveal it. He had to
sit and endure some of this, he knew. She rattled on and he thought about how to handle a
knotty term in the equations. He had by now mastered the art of seeming to track with
eyes, mouth movements, and the occa-sional murmur. This was exactly what a filter program
aid for his 3D, and he could do it without thinking about the hypocrisy of the woman
before him.

He understood her now, in a way. Power was value-free for her. He had to learn to think
that way and even act that way. But he could not let it affect his true self, the personal
life he would ruthlessly shelter.

He finally got rid of her and breathed a sigh of relief. Probably it was good to be seen
as ruthless. That fellow Nim, for example; he could have Nim found, even executed, for
playing both sides in the Artifice Associates matter.

But why? Mercy was more efficient. Hari sent a quick note to Security, directing that Nim
be fun-neled into a productive spot, but one where his talent for betrayal would find no
avenue. Let an underling figure out where and how.

He had neglected business and had one obligatory role left before he could escape. Even
here at Streeling he could not avoid every Imperial duty.

A delegation of Greys filed in. They respectfully presented their arguments regarding
candidacy examinations for Empire positions. Test scores had been declining for several
centuries, but some argued that this was because the pool of candidates was broadening.
They did not mention that the High Council had widened the pool because it appeared to be
drying up -- that is, fewer wished Imperial positions.

Others claimed that the tests were biased. Those from large planets said their higher
gravity made them slower. Those from lighter gravities had a reverse argument, with
diagrams and sheets of facts.

Also, the myriad ethnic and religious groups had congealed into an Action Front which
ferreted out biases against them in the examinations. Hari could not fathom a conspiracy
behind the examination questions. How could one simultaneously discriminate against
several hundred, or even a thousand, ethnic strains?

“It seems an immense job to me, ” he ventured, “discriminating against so many factions.”

Vehemently a Grey Woman, handsome and forceful, told him that the prejudice was for a sort
of Imperial norm, a common set of vocabularies, assumptions, and class purposes. All these
would “shoulder others aside.”

To compensate, the Action Front wanted the usual set of preferences installed, with slight
shadings between each ethnicity to compensate for their lower performance on examinations.

This was ordinary and Hari ruled it out without having to think about it very much; this
allowed him to mull over the psychohistory equations a while. Then a new note caught his
attention.

To dispel the common “misperception” that scores were being undermined by some ethnic
worlds' increased participation, the Action Front petitioned him to “re-norm” the
examination itself. Set the average score at 1000, though in fact it had drifted downward
over the last two centuries to 873.

“This will permit comparison of candidates between years, without having to look up each
year's average, ” the burly woman pointed out.

“This will give a symmetric distribution?” Hari asked absently.

“Yes, and will stop the invidious comparison of one year with the next.”

“Won't such a shift of the mean lose discriminatory power at the upper end of the
distribution?” He narrowed his eyes.

“That is regrettable, but yes.”

“It's a wonderful idea, ” Hari said.

She seemed surprised. “Well, we think so.”

“We can do the same for the holoball averages.”

“What? I don't -- ”

“Set the statistics so that the average hitter strikes 500, rather than the
hard-to-remember 446 of the present.”

“But I don't think a principle of social justice -- ”

“And the intelligence scores. Those need to be re-normed as well, I can see that. Agreed?”

“Well, I'm not sure, First Minister. We only intended -- ”

“No no, this is a big idea. I want a thorough look at all possible re-norming agendas. You
have to think big\”

“We aren't prepared -- ”

“Then get prepared! I want a report. Not a skimpy one, either. A fat, full report. Two
thousand pages, at least.”

“That would take -- ”

“Hang the expense. And the time. This is too important to relegate to the Imperial
Examinations. Let me have that report.”

“It would take years, decades -- ”

“Then there's no time to waste!”

The Action Front delegation left in confusion. Hari hoped they would make it a very big
report, indeed, so that he was no longer First Minister when it arrived.

Part of maintaining the Empire involved using its own inertia against itself. Some aspects
of this job, he thought, could be actually enjoyable.

He reached Voltaire before leaving the office. “Here's your list of impersonations.”

“I must say I am having trouble handling all the factions, ” Voltaire said. He presented
as a swain in elegant velvet. “But the chance to venture out, to be a presence -- it is
like acting! And I was always one for the stage, as you know.”

Hari didn't, but he said, “That's democracy for you -- show business with daggers. A
mongrel breed of government. Even if it is a big stable attractor in the fitness
landscape.”

“Rational thinkers deplore the excesses of democracy; it abuses the individual and
elevates the mob. ” Voltaire's mouth flattened into a disap- proving line. “The death of
Socrates was its finest fruit.”

“Afraid I don't go back that far, ” Hari said, signing off. “Enjoy the work.”

He and Dors watched the great luminous spiral turn beneath them in its eternal night.

“I do appreciate such perks, ” she said dreamily. They stood alone before the spectacle.
Worlds and lives and stars, all like crushed diamonds thrown against eternal blackness.

“Getting into the palace just to look at the Emperor's display rooms?” He had ordered all
the halls cleared.

“Getting away from snoopers and eavesdroppers.”

“You ... you haven't heard from -- ?”

She shook her head. “Daneel pulled nearly all the rest of us off Trantor. He says little
to me.”

“I'm pretty damn sure the alien minds won't strike again. They're afraid of robots. It
took me a while to see that lay behind their talk about revenge.”

“Mingled hate and fear. Very human.”

“Still, I think they've had their revenge. They say the Galaxy was lush with life before
we came. There are cycles of barren eras, then luxuriant ones. Don't know why. Apparently
that's happened several times before, at intervals of a third of a billion years -- great
diebacks of intelligent life, leaving only spores. Now They've come to our Mesh and become
digital fos- sils”

“Fossils don't kill, ” she said sardonically.

“Not as well as we do, apparently.”

“Not you -- us.”

“They do hate you robots. Not that they have any love of humans -- after all, we made you,
long ago. We're to blame.”

“They are so strange ... ”

He nodded. “I believe they'll stay in their digital preserve until Marq and Sybyl can get
them transported into their ancient spore state. They once lived that way for longer than
the Galaxy takes to make a rotation.”

“Your 'pretty damn sure' isn't good enough for Daneel, ” she said. “He wants them
exterminated.”

“It's a standoff. If Daneel goes after them, he'll have to pull the plug on Tranter's
Mesh. That will wound the Empire. So he's stuck, fuming but impotent.”

“I hope you have estimated the balance properly, ” she said.

A glimmering, gossamer thought flitted across his mind. The tiktok attacks upon the Lamurk
faction had discredited them in public opinion. Now they would be suppressed throughout
the Galaxy. And in time, the meme-minds would leave Trantor.

Hari frowned. Daneel surely wanted both these outcomes.

He had undoubtedly suspected that the meme-minds had survived, perhaps that they were in
action on Trantor. So could Hari's amateur maneuverings, including the Lamurk murders,
have been deftly conjured up by Daneel? Could a robot so accurately predict what he, Hari,
would do?

A chill ran through him. Such ability would be breathtaking. Superhuman.

With tiktoks now soon to be suppressed, Trantor would have trouble producing its own food.
Tasks once done by men would have to be re-learned, taking generations to establish such
laborers as a socially valued group again. Meanwhile, dozens of other worlds would have to
send Trantor food, a lifeline slender and vulnerable. Did Daneel intend that, too? To what
end?

Hari felt uneasy. He sensed social forces at work, just beyond his view.

Was such adroit thinking the product of millennia of experience and high, positronic
intelligence? For just a moment, Hari had a vision of a mind both strange and measureless,
in human terms. Was that what an immortal machine became?

Then he pushed the idea away. It was too unsettling to contemplate. Later, perhaps, when
psychohistory was done ...

He noticed Dors staring at him. What had she said? Oh, yes ...

“Estimating the balance, yes. I'm getting the feel for these things. With Voltaire and
Joan doing the scut work, and Yugo now chairman of the Mathist Department, I actually have
time to think.”

“And suffer fools gladly?”

“The Academic Potentate? At least I understand her now. ” He peered at Dors. “Daneel says
he will leave Trantor. He's lost a lot of his humani-forms. Does he need you?”

She looked up at him in the soft glow. Her expression worked with conflict. “I can't leave
you.”

“His orders?”

“Mine.”

He gritted his teeth. “The robots who died -- you knew them?”

“Some. We trained together back, back when ... ”

“You don't have to conceal anything from me. I know you must be at least a century old.”

Her mouth made an O of surprise, then quickly closed. “How?”

“You know more than you should.”

“So do you -- in bed, anyway. ” She chuckled.

“I learned it from a pan I met.”

She laughed bawdily, then sobered. “I'm one hundred sixty-three.”

“With the thighs of a teenager. If you had tried to leave Trantor, I'd have blocked you.”

She blinked. “Truly?”

He bit his lip, thinking. “Well, no.”

She smiled. “More romantic to say yes ... ”

“I have a habit of honesty -- which I'd better drop if I want to stay First Minister.”

“So you would let me go? You still feel that you owe that to Daneel?”

“If he thought the danger to you was that great, then I would honor his judgment.”

“You still respect us so?”

“Robots work selflessly for the Empire -- always. Few humans do.”

“You don't wonder what we did to earn the aliens' revenge?”

“Of course. Do you know?”

She shook her head, gazing out at the vast turning disk. Suns of blue and crimson and
yellow swept along their orbits amid dark dust and disorder. “It was something awful.
Daneel was there and he will not speak of it. There is nothing in our history of this.
I've looked.”

“An empire lasting many millennia has manifold secrets. ” Hari watched the slow spin of a
hundred billion flaming stars. “I'm more interested in its future -- in saving it.”

“You fear that future, don't you?”

“Terrible things are coming. The equations show that.”

“We can face them together.”

He took her in his arms, but they both still watched the Galaxy's shining marvels. “I
dream of rounding something, a way to help the Empire, even after tier we're gone ... ”

“And you fear something, too, ” she said into his neck.

“How did you know? Yes -- I fear the chaos that could come from so many forces, divergent
vector turmoil -- all acting to bring down the order of the Empire. I fear for the very
... ” His face clouded. “For die very foundations themselves. Foundations ... ”

“Chaos comes?”

“I know we ourselves, our minds, come out of skating on the inner rim of chaos-states. The
digital world shows that. You show that.”

She said soberly, “I do not think positronic minds understand themselves any better than
human ones.”

“We -- our minds and our Empire -- both spring from an emergent order of inner, basically
chaotic states, but ... ”

“You do not want the Empire to crash from such chaos.”

“I want the Empire to survive! Or at least, if it falls, to reemerge.”

Hari suddenly felt the pain of such vast movements. The Empire was like a mind, and minds
sometimes went crazy, crashed. A disaster for one solitary mind. How colossally worse for
an Empire.

Seen through the prism of his mathematics, humanity was on a long march pressing forward
through surrounding dark. Time battered them with storms, rewarded them with sunshine --
and they did not glimpse that these passing seasons came from the shifting cadences of
huge, eternal equations.

Running the equations time-forward, then backward, Hari had seen humanity's mortal parade
in snips. Somehow that made it oddly touching. Steeped in their own eras, few worlds ever
glimpsed the route ahead. There was no shortage of portentous talk, or of oafs who
pretended with a wink and a nod to fathom the unseeable. Misled, whole Zones stumbled and
fell.

He sought patterns, but beneath those vast sweeps lay the seemingly infinitesimal, living
people. Across the realm of stars, under the laws that reigned like gods, lay innumerable
lives in the process of being lost. For to live was to lose, in the end.

Social laws acted and people were maimed, damaged, robbed, and strangled by forces they
could not even glimpse. People were driven to sickness, to desperation, to loneliness and
fear and remorse. Shaken by tears and longing, in a world they fundamentally failed to
fathom, they nonetheless carried on.

There was nobility in that. They were fragments adrift in time, motes in an Empire rich
and strong and full of pride, an order failing and battered and hollow with its own
emptiness.

With leaden certainty, Hari at last saw that he probably would not be able to rescue the
great ramshackle Empire, a beast of fine nuance and multiplying self-delusions.

No savior, he. But perhaps he could help.

They both stood in silence for a long, aching time. The Galaxy turned in its slow majesty.
A nearby fountain spewed glorious arcs into the air. The waters seemed momentarily free,
but in fact were trapped forever within the steel skies of Trantor. As was he.

Hari felt a deep emotion he could not define. It tightened his throat and made him press
Dors to him. She was machine and woman and ... something more. Another element he could
not fully know, and he cherished her all the more for that.

“You care so much, ” Dors whispered.

“I have to.”

“Perhaps we should try to simply live more, worry less.”

He kissed her fervently and then laughed. “Quite right. For who knows what the future may
bring?” Very slowly, he winked at her.

The Foundation series began in World War II, as America arced toward its zenith as a world
power. The series played out over decades as the United States dominated the world's
matters in a fashion no other nation ever had. Yet the Foundation is about imperium and
decline. Did this betray an anxiety, born even in the moment of approaching glory?

I had always wondered if this was so. Part of me itched to explore the issues which lace
the series.

The idea of writing further novels in the Foundation universe came from Janet Asimov and
the Asimov estate's representative, Ralph Vicinanza. Approached by them, I at first
declined, being busy with physics and my own novels. But my subconscious, once aroused,
refused to let go the notion. After half a year of struggling with ideas plainly made for
the Foundation, persistently demanding expression, I finally called up Ralph Vicinanza and
began putting together a plan to construct a fittingly complex curve of action and
meaning, to be revealed in several novels. Though we spoke to several authors about this
project, the best suited seemed two hard SF writers broadly influenced by Asimov and of
unchallenged technical ability: Greg Bear and David Brin.

Bear, Brin, and I have kept in close touch while I wrote this first volume, for we intend
to create three stand-alone novels which nonetheless carry forward an overarching mystery
to its end. Elements of this make their first appearance here, to amplify further through
Greg Bear's Foundation and Chaos, finding completion in Brin's Third Foundation. (These
are preliminary titles.) I have planted in the narrative prefiguring details and key
elements which shall bear later fruit.

Genres are constrained conversations. Constraint is essential, defining the rules and
assumptions open to an author. If hard SF occupies the center of science fiction, that is
probably because hardness gives the firmest boundary. Science itself yields crisp confines.

Genres are also like immense discussions, with ideas developed, traded, mutated, their
variations spun down through time. Players ring changes on each other -- more tike a
steppin'out jazz band than a solo concert in a plush auditorium. Contrast “serious”
fiction (mote accurately described, in my eyes, as merely self-consciously solemn). It has
canonical classics that supposedly stand outside of time, deserving awe, looming great and
intact by themselves.

Much of the pleasure of mysteries, of espionage novels or SF, lies in the interaction of
writers with each other and, particularly in SF's invention of fan-dom, with the readers
as well. This isn't a defect; it's the essential nature of popular culture, which the
United States has dominated in our age, with the invention of jazz, rock, the musical, and
written genres such as the Western, the hardboiled detective, modern fantasy, and other
rich areas. Many kinds of SF (hard, Utopian, military, satirical) share assumptions, code
words, lines of argument, narrative voices. Fond remembrance of golden age Astounding and
its letter column, of the New Wave, of Horace Gold's Galaxy -- these are echoes of distant
conversations earnestly carried out.

Genre pleasures are many, but this quality of shared values within an ongoing discussion
may be the most powerful, enlisting lifelong devotion in its fans. In contrast to the
Grand Canon view of great works standing like monoliths in a deserted landscape, genre
reading satisfactions are a striking facet of modern democratic (pop) culture, a shared
movement.

There are questions about how writers deal with what some call the “anxiety of influence,
” but which I'd prefer to term more mildly: the digestion of tradition.

I'm reminded of John Berger's definition of hack work, describing oil painting in Ways of
Seeing, as “ ... not the result of either clumsiness or provincialism; it is the result of
the market making more insistent demands than the art. ” Fair enough; but this can happen
in any context. Working in a known region of concept-space does not necessarily imply that
the territory has been mined out. Nor is fresh ground always fertile.

Surely we should notice that a novel Hemingway thought the best in American literature is
a sequel -- indeed, following on a boy's book, Tom Sawyer.

Sharing common ground isn't only a literary tradition. Are we thrown into moral confusion
when we hear Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini? Do we indignantly march from the concert
hall when assaulted by Variations on a Theme by Haydn? Sharecropping by the Greats?
Shocking!