Foundation's Fear (2 page)

R. Daneel Olivaw did not look like Eto Demerzel. That role he had already cast aside.

This Dors Vanabili expected, though it was unsettling to her. She knew that through millennia he had discarded the skin and shape of countless guises.

Dors studied him in the cramped, dingy room two Sectors away from Streeling University. She had followed a convoluted route to get here and the site was protected by elaborate, overlapping security measures. Robots were outlaws. They had lived for millennia in the deep shadow of taboo. Though Olivaw was her guide and mentor, she saw him seldom.

Yet as a humaniform robot she felt a tremor of mingled fear and reverence at this ancient, partly metallic form before her. He was nearly twenty millennia old. Though he could appear human, he did not truly wish to be human. He was inexpressibly greater than that now.

She had lived happily as a pseudo-person for so long now. Even a reminder of who and what she was came like cold fingers along her spine. “The recent increasing attention paid to Hari…”

“Indeed. You fear you will be detected.”

“The newest security measures are so invasive!”

He nodded. “You are correct to be concerned.”

“I need more help in protecting Hari.”

“Adding another of us to his close associates would double the danger of detection.”

“I know, I know, but…”

Olivaw reached out and touched her hand. She blinked back tears and studied his face. Small matters, such as consistent movement of his Adam’s apple when he swallowed, had long ago been perfected. To ease himself in this meeting, he had omitted these minor computations and movements. He obviously enjoyed even momentary freedom from such taxation.

“I am constantly fearful,” she admitted.

“You should be. He is much threatened. But you are designed to function best with a high level of apprehension.”

“I know my specifications, yes, but—take this latest move of yours, involving him in Imperial politics at the highest level. It imposes severe strain on my task.”

“A necessary move.”

“It may distract him from his work, from psychohistory.”

Olivaw shook his head slowly. “I doubt that. He is a certain special kind of human—driven. He once remarked to me, ‘Genius does what it must and talent does what it can’—thinking that he merely had talent.”

She smiled ruefully. “But he is a genius.”

“And like all such, unique. Humans have that—rare, great excursions from the mean. Evolution has selected them for it, though they do not seem to realize that.”

“And we?”

“Evolution cannot act on one who lives forever. In any case, there has not been time. We can and do develop ourselves, however.”

“Humans are also murderous.”

“We are few; they are many. And they have deep animal spirits we cannot fathom, in the end, no matter how we try.”

“I care about Hari, first.”

“And the Empire, a distant second?” He gave her a thin smile. “I care for the Empire only so far as it safeguards humanity.”

“From what?”

“From itself. Just remember, Dors: this is the Cusp Era, as anticipated by ourselves for so long. The most critical period in all of history.”

“I know the term, but what is the substance? Do we have a theory of history?”

For the first time Daneel Olivaw showed expression, a rueful grimace. “We are not capable of a deep theory. For that, we would have to understand humans far better.”

“But we have something…?”

“A different way of viewing humanity, one now badly strained. It caused us to shape this greatest of humanity’s creations, the Empire.”

“I do not know of this—”

“No need for you to. We now require a more profound view. That is why Hari is so important.”

Dors frowned, troubled for reasons she could not quite express. “This earlier, simpler theory of…ours. It tells you that humanity now must have psychohistory?”

“Exactly. We know this, from our own crude theory. But only this.”

“For more, we rely on Hari alone?”

“Alas, yes.”

He had made enough enemies to acquire a nickname, Hari Seldon mused, and not enough friends to hear what it was.

He could feel the truth of that in the murmuring energy in the crowds. Uneasily he walked from his apartment to his office across the broad squares of Streeling University. “They don’t like me,” he said.

Dors Vanabili matched his stride easily, studying the massed faces. “I do not sense any danger.”

“Don’t worry your pretty head about assassination attempts—at least, not right away.”

“My, you’re in a fine mood today.”

“I hate this security screen. Who wouldn’t?”

The Imperial Specials had fanned out in what their captain termed “an engaging perimeter” around Hari and Dors. Some carried flash-screen projectors, capable of warding off a full heavy-weapons assault. Others looked equally dangerous bare-handed.

Their scarlet-and-blue uniforms made it easy to see where the crowd was impinging on the moving security boundary as Hari walked slowly across the
main campus square. Where the crowd was thickest, the bright uniforms simply bulled their way through. The entire spectacle made him acutely uncomfortable. Specials were not noted for their diplomacy and this was, after all, a quiet place of learning. Or had been.

Dors clasped his hand in reassurance. “A First Minister can’t simply walk around without—”

“I’m not First Minister!”

“The Emperor has designated you, and that’s enough for this crowd.”

“The High Council hasn’t acted. Until they do—”

“Your friends will assume the best,” she said mildly.

“These are my friends?” Hari eyed the crowd suspiciously.

“They’re smiling.”

So they were. One called, “Hail the Prof Minister!” and others laughed.

“Is that my nickname now?”

“Well, it’s not a bad one.”

“Why do they flock so?”

“People are drawn to power.”

“I’m still just a professor!”

To offset his irritation, Dors chuckled at him, a wifely reflex. “There’s an ancient saying, ‘These are the times that fry men’s souls.’ ”

“You have a bit of historical wisdom for everything.”

“It’s one of the few perks that come with being an historian.”

Someone called, “Hey, Math Minister!”

Hari said, “I don’t like that name any better.”

“Get used to it. You’ll be called worse.”

They passed by the great Streeling fountain and Hari took refuge in a moment of contemplating its high, arching waters. The splashes drowned out the
crowd and he could almost imagine he was back in his simple, happy life. Then he had only had to worry about psychohistory and Streeling University infighting. That snug little world had vanished, perhaps forever, the moment Cleon decided to make him a figure in Imperial politics.

The fountain was glorious, yet even it reminded him of the vastness that lay beneath such simplicities. Here the tinkling streams broke free, but their flight was momentary. Trantor’s waters ran in mournful dark pipes, down dim passages scoured by ancient engineers. A maze of fresh water arteries and sewage veins twined through the eternal bowels. These bodily fluids of the planet had passed through uncountable trillions of kidneys and throats, had washed away sins, been toasted with at marriages and births, had carried off the blood of murders and the vomit of terminal agonies. They flowed on in their deep night, never knowing the clean vapor joy of unfettered weather, never free of man’s hand.

They were trapped. So was he.

Their party reached the Mathist Department and ascended. Dors rose through the traptube beside him, a breeze fluttering her hair amiably, the effect quite flattering. The Specials took up watchful, rigid positions outside.

Just as he had for the last week, Hari tried again with the captain. “Look, you don’t really need to keep a dozen men sitting out here—”

“I’ll be the judge of that, Academician sir, if you please.”

Hari felt frustrated at the waste of it. He noticed a young Specialman eyeing Dors, whose uni-suit revealed while still covering. Something made him say, “Well then, I will thank you to have your men keep their eyes where they belong!”

The captain looked startled. He glared at the offending man and stomped over to reprimand him. Hari felt a spark of satisfaction. Going in the entrance to his office, Dors said, “I’ll try to dress more strictly.”

“No, no, I’m just being stupid. I shouldn’t let tiny things like that bother me.”

She smiled prettily. “Actually, I rather liked it.”

“You did? Me being stupid?”

“Your being protective.”

Dors had been assigned years before to watch over him, by Eto Demerzel. Hari reflected that he had gotten used to that role of hers, little noticing that it conflicted in a deep, unspoken way with her also being a woman. Dors was utterly self-reliant, but she had qualities which sometimes did not easily jibe with her duty. Being his wife, for example.

“I will have to do it more often,” he said lightly.

Still, he felt a pang of guilt about making trouble for the Specialmen. Their being here was certainly not their idea; Cleon had ordered it. No doubt they would far rather be off somewhere saving the Empire with sweat and valor.

They went through the high, arched foyer of the Mathist Department, Hari nodding to the staff. Dors went into her own office and he hurried into his suite with an air of an animal retreating into its burrow. He collapsed into his airchair, ignoring, the urgent-message holo that hung a meter from his face.

A wave erased it as Yugo Amaryl came in through the connecting e-stat portal. The intrusive, bulky portal was also the fruit of Cleon’s security order. The Specials had installed the shimmering weapons-nulling fields everywhere. They lent an irksome, prickly smell of ozone to the air. One more intrusion of Reality, wearing the mask of Politics.

Yugo’s grin split his broad face. “Got some new results.”

“Cheer me up, show me something splendid.”

Yugo sat on Hari’s broad, empty desk, one leg dangling. “Good mathematics is always true and beautiful.”

“Certainly. But it doesn’t have to be
true
in the sense that ordinary people mean. It can say nothing whatever about the world.”

“You’re making me feel like a dirty engineer.”

Hari smiled. “You were once, remember?”

“Don’t I!”

“Maybe you’d rather be sweating it out as a heat-sinker?”

Hari had found Yugo by chance eight years ago, just after arriving on Trantor, when he and Dors were on the run from Imperial agents. An hour’s talk had shown Hari that Yugo was an untutored genius at trans-representational analysis. Yugo had a gift, an unconscious lightness of touch. They had collaborated ever since. Hari honestly thought he had learned more from Yugo than the other way around.

“Ha!” Yugo clapped his big hands together three times, in the Dahlite manner of showing agreeable humor. “You can grouse about doing filthy, real-world work, but as long as it’s in a nice, comfortable office, I’m in paradise.”

“I shall have to turn most of the heavy lifting over to you, I fear.” Hari deliberately put his feet up on his desk. Might as well look casual, even if he didn’t feel that way. He envied Yugo’s heavy-bodied ease.

“This First Minister stuff?”

“It is getting worse. I have to go see the Emperor again.”

“The man wants you. Must be your craggy profile.”

“That’s what Dors thinks, too. I figure it’s my disarming smile. Anyway, he can’t have me.”

“He will.”

“If he forces the ministership on me, I shall do such a lousy job, Cleon will fire me.”

Yugo shook his head. “Not wise. Failed First Ministers are usually tried and executed.”

“You’ve been talking to Dors again.”

“She
is
a historian.”

“Yes, and we’re psychohistorians. Seekers of predictability.” Hari threw up his hands in exasperation. “Why doesn’t that count for anything?”

“Because nobody in the citadels of power has seen it work.”

“And they won’t. Once people think we can predict, we will never be free of politics.”

“You’re not free now,” Yugo said reasonably.

“Good friend, your worse trait is insisting on telling me the truth in a calm voice.”

“It saves knocking sense into your head. That would take longer.”

Hari sighed. “If only muscles helped with mathematics. You would be even better at it.”

Yugo waved the thought away. “You’re the key. You’re the idea man.”

“Well, this font of ideas hasn’t got a clue.”

“Ideas, they’ll come.”

“I never get a chance to work on psychohistory anymore!”

“And as First Minister—”

“It will be worse. Psychohistory will go—”

“Nowhere, without you.”

“There will be some progress, Yugo. I am not vain enough to think everything depends on me.”

“It does.”

“Nonsense! There’s still you, the Imperial Fellows, and the staff.”

“We need leadership. Thinking leadership.”

“Well, I could continue to work here part of the time…”

Hari looked around his spacious office and felt a pang at the thought of not spending every day here,
surrounded by his tools, tomes, and friends. As First Minister he would have a minor palace, but to him it would be mere empty, meaningless extravagance.

Yugo gave him a mocking grin. “First Minister is usually considered a full-time job.”

“I know, I know. But maybe there’s a way—”

The office holo bloomed into full presentation a meter from his head. The office familiar was coded to pipe through only high-priority messages. Hari slapped a key on his desk and the picture gave the gathering image a red, square frame—the signal that his filter-face was on. “Yes?”

Cleon’s personal aide appeared in red tunic against a blue background. “You are summoned,” the woman said simply.

“Uh, I am honored. When?”

The woman went into details and Hari was immediately thankful for the filter-face. The personal officer was imposing, and he did not want to appear to be what he was, a distracted professor. His filter-face had a tailored etiquette menu. He had automatically thumbed in a suite of body language postures and gestures, tailored to mask his true feelings.

“Very well, in two hours. I shall be there,” he concluded with a small bow. The filter would render that same motion, shaped to the protocols of the Emperor’s staff.

“Drat!” He slapped his desk, making the holo dissolve. “My day is evaporating!”

“What’s it mean?”

“Trouble. Every time I see Cleon, it’s trouble.”

“I dunno, could be a chance to straighten out—”

“I just want to be left alone!”

“A First Ministership—”

“
You
be First Minister! I will take a job as a
computational specialist, change my name—” Hari stopped and laughed wryly. “But I’d fail at that, too.”

“Look, you need to change your mood. Don’t want to walk in on the Emperor with that scowl.”

“Ummm. I suppose not. Very well—cheer me up. What was that good news you mentioned?”

“I turned up some ancient personality constellations.”

“Really? I thought they were illegal.”

“They are.” He grinned. “Laws don’t always work.”

“Truly ancient? I wanted them for calibration of psychohistorical valences. They have to be early Empire.”

Yugo beamed. “These are
pre
-Empire.”

“Pre—impossible.”

“I got ’em. Intact, too.”

“Who are they?”

“Some famous types, dunno what they did.”

“What status did they have, to be recorded?”

Yugo shrugged. “No parallel historical records, either.”

“Are they authentic recordings?”

“Might be. They’re in ancient machine languages, really primitive stuff. Hard to tell.”

“Then they could be…sims.”

“I’d say so. Could be they’re built on a recorded underbase, then simmed for roundness.”

“You can kick them up to sentience?”

“Yeah, with some work. Got to stitch data languages. Y’know, this is, ah…”

“Illegal. Violation of the Sentience Codes.”

“Right. These guys I got it from, they’re on that New Renaissance world, Sark. They say nobody polices those old Codes anymore.”

“It’s time we kicked over a few of those ancient blocks.”

“Yessir.” Yugo grinned. “These constellations, they’re the oldest anybody’s ever found.”

“How did you…?” Hari let his question trail off. Yugo had many shady connections, built on his Dahlite origins.

“It took a little, ah, lubrication.”

“I thought so. Well, perhaps best that I don’t hear the details.”