Foundation's Fear (25 page)

Hari’s father had derisively referred to most public affairs as “dust-ups”—a big cloud on the horizon, a tiny speck underneath. His lip had curled back in a farmer’s disdain for making more of a thing than it was.

The incident at the Grand Imperial Universities Colloquy had become a grand dustup. Fully 3D’d,
the scandal—
PROF’S WIFE SOCKS FAN
—burgeoned with each replaying.

Cleon called, tsk-tsking, and commenting broadly on how wives could be a burden in high office. “This will hurt your candidacy, I fear,” he had said. “I must do some mending.”

Hari did not report this to Dors. Cleon’s hint was clear. It was common practice among Imperial circles to divorce on grounds of general unsuitability—which meant unfashionability. In matters of vast power, appetite for more often overwhelmed all other emotions, even love.

He went home, irked by this conversation, to find Dors at work in the kitchen. She had her arms open—literally, not in greeting.

The epidermis hung loose, as if she had pulled a tight glove halfway off. Veins interlaced with the artificial neural net and she was working with tiny tools among them. Supple skin peeled back in a curved line down from elbow to wrist, moist crimson and intricate electronics. She was working on the augmented wrist, a thin yellow collar that did not look as though it could take three times the normal human’s impact.

“That fellow damaged you?”

“No, I did it to myself—or rather, overdid it.”

“A sprain?”

She smiled without humor. “My pivots don’t sprain. The collar mounts don’t mend. I’m replacing them.”

“Jobs like this, it’s not the parts, it’s the labor.”

She looked at him quizzically and he decided not to pursue the joke. He normally put from his mind the fact that his true love was a robot—or more accurately, a humaniform, vastly technically assisted, human-robot synthesis.

She had come to him through R. Daneel Olivaw, the ancient positronic robot who had saved Hari when he
first came to Trantor and ran afoul of nasty political forces. She had been assigned at first as a bodyguard. He had known what she was from the start, at least approximately, but that did not prevent him from falling in love with her. Intelligence, character, charm, a simmering sexuality—these were not purely human facets, he had learned—by direct example.

He got her a drink as she worked, biding his time. He had ceased to be amazed by her repair work, often carried out on an utterly unsanitized field. There were antimicrobial methods available to the humaniform robots that could not work for ordinary humans, she had said. He had no idea how this could be. She discouraged further discussion, often deflecting him with passion. He had to admit that as a ploy this was completely effective.

She rolled her skin back into place, grimacing at the pain. She could shut off whole sections of her superficial nervous system, he knew, but kept a few strands alert as a diagnostic. The tabs self-sealed with pops and purrs.

“Let’s see.” She paused, feeling each wrist in turn. Two quick snaps. “They lock in fine.”

“Most people, you know, would find this sight quite unsettling.”

“That’s why I don’t do it on the way to work.”

“Very public spirited of you.”

They both knew she would be hounded down if there were any suspicion of her true nature. Robots of advanced capability had been illegal for millennia. Tiktoks were acceptable precisely because they were low-grade intelligences, rigorously held below the threshold of legally defined sentience. Violating those standards in manufacture was a capital crime, an Imperial violation, no exceptions. And strong, ancient emotions backed up the law: the Junin Sector riots had proved that.

Numerical simulations were similarly restricted. That was why the Voltaire and Joan sims, developed by the “New Renaissance” hotheads on Sark, had been carefully tailored to squeeze through algorithmic loopholes. Apparently that Marq fellow at Artifice Associates had souped up the Voltaire at the last minute. Since the sim was then erased, the violation had escaped detection.

Hari did not like having even a slight connection to crime, but he now realized that this was foolishness. Already his entire life revolved around Dors, a hidden pariah.

“I’m going to withdraw from the First Minister business,” he said decisively.

She blinked. “Me.”

She was always quick. “Yes.”

“We had agreed that the risk of increased scrutiny was worth gaining some power.”

“To protect psychohistory. But I expected very little of the spotlight to fall upon you. Now—”

“I am an embarrassment.”

“Coming in downstairs, there were a dozen 3D snouts pointing at me. They’re waiting for you.”

“I will stay here, then.”

“For how long?”

“The Specials can take me out through a new entrance. They’ve cut one and installed an agrav shaft.”

“You can’t avoid them forever, darling.”

She got up and embraced him. “Even if they find me out, I can go away.”

“If you’re lucky and escape. Even if you do, I can’t live without you. I won’t—”

“I could be transformed.”

“Another body?”

“A different one. Skin, corneas, some neural signatures changed.”

“File the serial numbers off and send you back?”

She stiffened in his arms. “Yes.”

“What can’t your…kind…do?”

“We cannot invent psychohistory.”

He whirled away from her in frustration and smacked his palm against a wall. “Damn it, nothing is as important as
us.
”

“I feel the same. But now I think it is even more important for you to remain a candidate for First Minister.”

“Why?” He paced around their living room, eyes darting.

“You are a player for very high stakes. Whoever wishes to assassinate you—”

“Lamurk, Cleon believes.”

“—will probably see that merely withdrawing your candidacy is no firm solution. The Emperor could reintroduce you into the game at any later time.”

“I don’t like being treated as a chess piece.”

“A knight?—yes, I can see you that way. Do not forget that there are other suspects, factions which may wish you out of the way.”

“Such as?”

“The Academic Potentate.”

“But she’s a scholar, like me!”

“
Was.
She is now a player on the chessboard.”

“Not the queen, I hope.”

Dors kissed him lightly. “I should mention that my ferret programs turned up a plausibility matrix for Lamurk’s behavior, based on his past. He has eliminated at least half a dozen rivals on his rise to the top. He is something of a traditionalist in method, as well.”

“My, that’s comforting.”

She gave him an odd, pensive glance. “His rivals were all knifed. The classic dispatch of historical intrigue.”

“I wouldn’t suspect Lamurk to have such an eye for our Imperial heritage.”

“He is a classicist. In his view, you are a pawn, one best swept from the board.”

“A rather bloodless way to put it.”

“I am taught—and built—to assess and act coolly.”

“How do you reconcile your ability—in fact, let’s not put too fine a point on it, your
relish
—at the prospect of killing a person in my defense?”

“The Zeroth Law.”

“Um.” He recited, “Humanity as a whole is placed above the fate of a single human.”

“I
do
feel pain from First Law interaction…”

“So the First Law, now modified, is, ‘A robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm, unless this would violate the Zeroth Law of Robotics’?”

“Exactly.”

“This is another game you play. With very tough rules.”

“It is a larger game.”

“And psychohistory is a potential new set of game plans?”

“In a way.” Her voice softened and she embraced him. “You should not trouble yourself so. What we have is a private paradise.”

“But the damned games, they always go on.”

“They must.”

He kissed her longingly, but something inside him seethed and spun, an armature whirring fruitlessly in surrounding darkness.

Yugo was waiting in his office the next morning. Face flushed, wide-eyed, he demanded, “What can you do?”

“Uh, about what?”

“The news! The Safeguards stormed the Bastion.”

“Uh, oh.” Hari vaguely recalled that a Dahlite faction had staged a minor revolt and holed up in a redoubt. Negotiations had dragged on. Yes, and Yugo had told him about it, several times. “It’s a local Trantorian issue, isn’t it?”

“That’s the way
we
kept it!” Yugo’s hands flew in elaborate gestures, like birds taking frenzied flight. “Then the Safeguards came in. No warning. Killed over four hundred. Blew ’em apart, blasters on full, no warning.”

“Astonishing,” Hari said in what he hoped was a sympathetic tone.

In fact he did not care a microgram for one side of this argument or the other—and did not know the arguments, anyway. He had never cared for the world’s day-to-day turbulence, which agitated the mind without teaching anything. The whole point of psychohistory, which emerged from his personality as much as his analytic ability, was to study climate and ignore weather.

“Can’t you
do
something?”

“What?”

“Protest to the Emperor!”

“He will ignore me. This is a Trantorian issue and—”

“This is an insult to you, too.”

“It can’t be.” To not appear totally out of it, he added, “I’ve deliberately kept well away from the issue—”

“But Lamurk did this!”

That startled him. “What? Lamurk has no power on Trantor. He’s an Imperial Regent.”

“C’mon, Hari, nobody believes that old separation of powers stuff. It broke down long ago.”

Hari almost said,
It did?,
but just in time realized that Yugo was right. He had simply not added up the
effects of the long, slow erosion in the Imperial structures. Those entered as factors on the right-hand side of the equations, but he never thought of the decay in solid, local terms. “So you think it’s a move to gain influence on the High Council?”

“Must be,” Yugo fumed. “Those Regents, they don’t like unruly folk livin’ near ’em. They want Trantor nice and orderly, even if people get trampled.”

Hari ventured, “The representation issue again, is it?”

“Damn right! We got Dahlites all over Muscle Shoals Sector. But can we get a representative? Hell, no! Got to beg and plead—”

“I…I will do what I can.” Hari held up his hands to cut off the tirade.

“The Emperor, he’ll straighten things out.”

Hari knew from direct observation that the Emperor would do no such thing. He cared nothing of how Trantor was run, as long as he could see no burning districts from the palace. Cleon had often remarked, “I am Emperor of a galaxy, not a city.”

Yugo left and Hari’s desk chimed. “Imperial Specials’ captain to see you, sir.”

“I told them to remain outside.”

“He requests audience, bearing a message.”

Hari sighed. He had meant to get some thinking done today.

The captain entered stiffly and refused a chair. “I am here to respectfully forward the recommendations of the Specials Board, Academician.”

“A letter would suffice. In fact, do that—send me a note. I have work to—”

“Sir, most respectfully, I must discuss this.”

Hari sank into his chair and waved permission. The man looked uncomfortable, standing stiffly as he said, “The board requests that the Academician’s wife not accompany him to state functions.”

“Ah, so someone has yielded to pressure.”

“It is further directed that your wife not be allowed into the palace at all.”

“What? That seems extreme.”

“I am sorry to bear such a message, sir. I was there and I told the board that the lady had good reason to become alarmed.”

“And to break the fellow’s arm.”

The captain almost allowed himself a smile. “Got to admit, she’s faster than anybody I’ve ever seen.”

And you’re wondering why, aren’t you?
“Who was the fellow?”

The captain’s brow furrowed. “Looks to be a Spiral Academician, one grade above you, sir. But some say he’s more a political type.”

Hari waited, but the man said no more, just looked as though he wanted to. “Allied with what faction?”

“Might be that Lamurk, sir.”

“Any evidence?”

“Nossir.”

Hari sighed. Politics was not only an inexact craft, it seldom had any reliable data, either. “Very well. Message received.”

The captain left quickly, with visible relief. Before Hari could wave his computer into life, a delegation from his own faculty showed up. They filed in silently, the portal crackling as it inspected each of them. Hari caught himself smiling at the procedure. If there was a profession least likely to yield an assassin, it had to be the mathists.

“We are here to submit our considered opinion,” a Professor Aangon said formally.

“Do so,” Hari said. Normally he would deploy his skimpy skills and do a bit of social mending; he had been neglecting university business lately, stealing time from bureaucratic chores to devote to equations.

Aangon said, “First, rumors of a ‘theory of history’ have brought scorn to our department. We—”

“There is no such theory. Only some descriptive analysis.”

An outright denial confused Aangon, but he plowed ahead. “Uh, second, we deplore the apparent choice of your assistant, Yugo Amaryl, as department head, should you resign. It is an affront to senior faculty—vastly senior—above a junior mathist of, shall we say, minimal social bearing.”

“Meaning?” Hari said ominously.

“We do not believe politics should enter into academic decisions. The insurrection of Dahlites, which Amaryl has vocally supported, and which has now been put down only through Imperial resolve, and actual armed force, makes him unsuitable—”

“Enough. Your third point.”

“There is the matter of the assault upon a member of our profession.”

“A member—oh, the fellow my wife…?”

“Indeed, an indignity without parallel, an outrage, by a member of your family. It makes your position here untenable.”

If someone had planned the incident, they were certainly getting their mileage out of it. “I reject that.”

Professor Aangon’s eyes became flinty. The other faculty had been shuffling around, uneasy, and now were bunched behind him. Hari had no doubts about who this group wanted to be the next chairman. “I should think that a vote of no confidence by the full faculty, in a formal meeting—”

“Don’t threaten me.”

“I am merely pointing out that while your attention is directed elsewhere—”

“The First Ministership.”

“—you can scarcely be expected to carry out your duties—”

“Skip it. To hold a formal meeting, the chairman must call one.”

The bunch of professors rustled, but nobody said anything.

“And I won’t.”

“You can’t go for long without carrying out business which requires our consent,” Aangon said shrewdly.

“I know. Let’s see how long that can be.”

“You really must reconsider. We—”

“Out.”

“What? You cannot—”

“Out. Go.”

They went.