Asimov’s Future History Volume 15

by Isaac Asimov

  “Is it absolutely necessary to kill Planchet?”

  Namarti frowned. “Why? Do you object to one killing and not to another? When Planchet recovers, do you wish him to tell the authorities all he knows about us? Besides, this is a family feud we are arranging. Don’t forget that Planchet is, in actual fact, Raych Seldon. It will look as though the two had fired simultaneously–or as though Seldon had given orders that if his son made any hostile move, he was to be shot down. We will see to it that the family angle will be given full publicity. It will be reminiscent of the bad old days of the Bloody Emperor Manowell. The people of Trantor will surely be repelled by the sheer wickedness of the deed. That, piled on top of all the inefficiencies and breakdowns they’ve been witnessing and living through, will raise the cry for a new government–and no one will be able to refuse them, least of all the Emperor. And then we’ll step in.”

  “Just like that?”

  “No, not just like that. I don’t live in a dream world. There is likely to be some interim government, but it will fail. We’ll see to it that it fails and we’ll come out in the open and revive the old Joranumite arguments that the Trantorians have never forgotten. And in time–in not too much time–I will be First Minister.”

  “And I?”

  “Will eventually be the Emperor.”

  Andorin said, “The chance of all this working is small.–This is arranged. That is arranged. The other thing is arranged. All of it has to come together and mesh perfectly or it will fail. Somewhere, someone is bound to mess up. It’s an unacceptable risk.”

  “Unacceptable? For whom? For you?”

  “Certainly. You expect me to make certain that Planchet will kill his father and you expect me to then kill Planchet. Why me? Aren’t there tools worth less than I who might more easily be risked?”

  “Yes, but to choose anyone else would make failure certain. Who but you has so much riding on this mission that there is no chance you will turn back in a fit of vapors at the last minute?”

  “The risk is enormous.”

  “Isn’t it worth it to you? You’re playing for the Imperial throne.”

  “And what risk are you taking, Chief? You will remain here, quite comfortable, and wait to hear the news.”

  Namarti’s lip curled. “What a fool you are, Andorin! What an Emperor you will make! Do you suppose I take no risk because I will be here? If the gambit fails, if the plot miscarries, if some of our people are taken, do you think they won’t tell everything they know? If you were somehow caught, would you face the tender treatment of the Imperial Guard without ever telling them about me?

  “And with a failed assassination attempt at hand, do you suppose they won’t comb Trantor to find me? Do you suppose that in the end they will fail to find me? And when they do find me, what do you suppose I will have to face at their hands?–Risk? I run a worse risk than any of you, just sitting here doing nothing. It boils down to this, Andorin. Do you or do you not wish to be Emperor?”

  Andorin said in a low voice, “I wish to be Emperor.” And so things were set in motion.

  22.

  RAYCH HAD NO trouble seeing that he was being treated with special care. The whole group of would-be gardeners was now quartered in one of the hotels in the Imperial Sector, although not one of the prime hotels, of course.

  The gardeners were an odd lot, from fifty different worlds, but Raych had little chance to speak to any of them. Andorin, without being too obvious about it, had managed to keep him apart from the others.

  Raych wondered why. It depressed him. In fact, he had been feeling somewhat depressed since he had left Wye. It interfered with his thinking process and he fought it–but not with entire success.

  Andorin was himself wearing rough clothes and was attempting to look like a workman. He would be playing the part of a gardener as a way of running the “show”–whatever the “show” might be.

  Raych felt ashamed that he had not been able to penetrate the nature of that “show.” They had closed in on him and prevented all communication, so he hadn’t even had the chance to warn his father. They might be doing this for every Trantorian who had been pushed into the group, for all he knew, just as an extreme precaution. Raych estimated that there might be a dozen Trantorians among them, all of them Namarti’s people, of course, men and women both.

  What puzzled him was that Andorin treated him with what was almost affection. He monopolized him, insisted on having all his meals with him, treated him quite differently from the way in which he treated anyone else.

  Could it be because they had shared Manella? Raych did not know enough about the mores of the Wye Sector to be able to tell whether there might not be a polyandrous touch to their society. If two men shared a woman, did that make them, in a way, fraternal? Did it create a bond?

  Raych had never heard of such a thing, but he knew better than to suppose he had a grasp of even a tiny fraction of the infinite subtleties of galactic societies–even of Trantorian societies.

  But now that his mind had brought him back to Manella, he dwelled on her for a while. He missed her terribly and it occurred to him that missing her might be the cause of his depression, though, to tell the truth, what he was feeling now, as he was finishing lunch with Andorin, was almost despair–though he could think of no cause for it.

  Manella!

  She had said she wanted to visit the Imperial Sector and presumably she could wheedle Andorin to her liking. He was desperate enough to ask a foolish question. “Mr. Andorin, I keep wondering if maybe you brought Miss Dubanqua along with you. Here, to the Imperial Sector.”

  Andorin looked utterly astonished. Then he laughed gently. “Manella? Do you see her doing any gardening? Or even pretending she could? No no, Manella is one of those women invented for our quiet moments. She has no function at all, otherwise.” Then “Why do you ask, Planchet?”

  Raych shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s sort of dull around here. I sort of thought–” His voice trailed away.

  Andorin watched him carefully. Finally he said, “Surely you’re not of the opinion that it matters much which woman you are involved with? I assure you it doesn’t matter to her which man she’s involved with. Once this is over, there will be other women. Plenty of them.”

  “When will this be over?”

  “Soon. And you’re going to be part of it in a very important way.” Andorin watched Raych narrowly.

  Raych said, “How important? Aren’t I gonna be just–a gardener?” His voice sounded hollow and he found himself unable to put a spark in it.

  “You’ll be more than that, Planchet. You’ll be going in with a blaster.”

  “With a what?”

  “A blaster.”

  “I never held a blaster. Not in my whole life.”

  “There’s nothing to it. You lift it. You point it. You close the contact and someone dies.”

  “I can’t kill anyone.”

  “I thought you were one of us, that you would do anything for the cause.”

  “I didn’t mean–kill.” Raych couldn’t seem to collect his thoughts. Why must he kill? What did they really have in mind for him? And how would he be able to alert the Imperial Guard before the killing would be carried out?

  Andorin’s face hardened suddenly, an instant conversion from friendly interest to stern decision. He said, “You must kill.”

  Raych gathered all his strength. “No. I ain’t gonna kill nobody. That’s final.”

  Andorin said, “Planchet, you will do as you are told.”

  “Not murder.”

  “Even murder.”

  “How you gonna make me?”

  “I shall simply tell you to.”

  Raych felt dizzy. What made Andorin so confident?

  He shook his head. “No.”

  Andorin said, “We’ve been feeding you, Planchet, ever since you left Wye. I made sure you ate with me. I supervised your diet. Especially the meal you just ate.”

  Raych felt the horror ris
e within him. He suddenly understood. “Desperance!”

  “Exactly,” said Andorin. “You’re a sharp devil, Planchet.”

  “It’s illegal.”

  “Yes, of course. So’s murder.”

  Raych knew about desperance. It was a chemical modification of a perfectly harmless tranquilizer. The modified form, however, did not produce tranquillity but despair. It had been outlawed because of its use in mind control, though there were persistent rumors that the Imperial Guard used it.

  Andorin said, as though it were not hard to read Raych’s mind, “It’s called desperance because that’s an old word meaning ‘hopelessness.’ I think you’re feeling hopeless.”

  “Never,” whispered Raych.

  “Very resolute of you, but you can’t fight the chemical. And the more hopeless you feel, the more effective the drug.”

  “No chance.”

  “Think about it, Planchet. Namarti recognized you at once, even without your mustache. He knows you are Raych Seldon and, at my direction, you are going to kill your father.”

  Raych muttered, “Not before I kill you.”

  He rose from his chair. There should be no problem at all in this. Andorin might be taller, but he was slender and clearly no athlete. Raych would break him in two with one arm–but he swayed as he rose. He shook his head, but it wouldn’t clear.

  Andorin rose, too, and backed away. He drew his right hand from where it had been resting within his left sleeve. He was holding a weapon.

  He said pleasantly, “I came prepared. I have been informed of your prowess as a Heliconian Twister and there will be no hand-to-hand combat.”

  He looked down at his weapon. “This is not a blaster,” he said. “I can’t afford to have you killed before you accomplish your task. It’s a neuronic whip. Much worse, in a way. I will aim at your left shoulder and, believe me, the pain will be so excruciating that the world’s greatest stoic would not be able to endure it.”

  Raych, who had been advancing slowly and grimly, stopped abruptly. He had been twelve years old when he had had a taste–a small one–of a neuronic whip. Once struck, no one ever forgets the pain, however long he lives, however full of incidents his life is.

  Andorin said, “Moreover, I will use full strength so that the nerves in your upper arms will be stimulated first into unbearable pain and then damaged into uselessness. You will never use your left arm again. I will spare the right so you can handle the blaster.–Now if you sit down and accept matters, as you must, you may keep both arms. Of course, you must eat again so your desperance level increases. Your situation will only worsen.”

  Raych felt the drug-induced despair settle over him and that despair served, in itself, to deepen the effect. His vision was turning double and he could think of nothing to say.

  Raych only knew that he would have to do what Andorin would tell him to do. He had played the game and he had lost.

  23.

  “NO!” HARI SELDON was almost violent. “I don’t want you out there, Dors.”

  Dors Venabili stared back at him with an expression as firm as his own. “Then I won’t let you go, either, Hari.”

  “I must be there.”

  “It is not your place. It is the Gardener First-Class who must greet these new people.”

  “So it is. But Gruber can’t do it. He’s a broken man.”

  “He must have an assistant of some sort. Or let the old Chief Gardener do it. He holds the office till the end of the year.”

  “The old Chief Gardener is too ill. Besides”–Seldon hesitated–” there are ringers among the gardeners. Trantorians. They’re here, for some reason. I have the names of every one of them.”

  “Have them taken into custody, then. Every last one of them. It’s simple. Why are you making it so complex?”

  “Because we don’t know why they’re here. Something’s up. I don’t see what twelve gardeners can do, but–No, let me rephrase that. I can see a dozen things they can do, but I don’t know which one of those things they’ve planned. We will, indeed, take them into custody, but I must know more about everything before it’s done.

  “We have to know enough to winkle out everyone in the conspiracy from top to bottom and we must know enough of what they’re doing to be able to make the proper punishment stick. I don’t want to get twelve men and women on what is essentially a misdemeanor charge. They’ll plead desperation, the need for a job. They’ll complain that it isn’t fair for Trantorians to be excluded. They’ll get plenty of sympathy and we’ll be left looking like fools. We must give them a chance to convict themselves of more than that. Besides–”

  There was a long pause and Dors said wrathfully, “Well, what’s the new ‘besides’?”

  Seldon’s voice lowered. “One of the twelve is Raych, using the alias Planchet.”

  “What?”

  “Why are you surprised? I sent him to Wye to infiltrate the Joranumite movement and he’s succeeded in infiltrating something. I have every faith in him. If he’s there, he knows why he’s there and he must have some sort of plan to put a spoke in the wheel. But I want to be there, too. I want to see him. I want to be in a position to help him if I can.”

  “If you want to help him, have fifty guards of the Palace standing shoulder to shoulder on either side of your gardeners.”

  “No. Again, we’ll end up with nothing. The Imperial Guard will be in place but not in evidence. The gardeners in question must think they have a clear hand to do whatever it is they plan to do. Before they can do so, but after they have made it quite plain what they intend–we’ll have them.”

  “That’s risky. It’s risky for Raych.”

  “Risks are something we have to take. There’s more riding on this than individual lives.”

  “That is a heartless thing to say.”

  “You think I have no heart? Even if it broke, my concern would have to be with psycho–”

  “Don’t say it.” She turned away, as if in pain.

  “I understand,” said Seldon, “but you mustn’t be there. Your presence would be so inappropriate that the conspirators will suspect we know too much and will abort their plan. I don’t want their plan aborted.”

  He paused, then said softly, “Dors, you say your job is to protect me. That comes before protecting Raych and you know that. I wouldn’t insist on it, but to protect me is to protect psychohistory and the entire human species. That must come first. What I have of psychohistory tells me that 1, in turn, must protect the center at all costs and that is what I am trying to do.–Do you understand?”

  Dors said, “I understand,” then turned away from him.

  Seldon thought: And I hope I’m right.

  If he weren’t, she would never forgive him. Far worse, he would never forgive himself-psychohistory or not.

  24.

  THEY WERE LINED up beautifully, feet spread apart, hands behind their hacks, every one in a natty green uniform, loosely fitted and with wide pockets. There was very little gender differential and one could only guess that some of the shorter ones were women. The hoods covered whatever hair they had, but then, gardeners were supposed to clip their hair quite short–either sex–and there could be no facial hair.

  Why that should be, one couldn’t say. The word “tradition” covered it all, as it covered so many things, some useful, some foolish.

  Facing them was Mandell Gruber, flanked on either side by an assistant. Gruber was trembling, his wide-opened eyes glazed.

  Hari Seldon’s lips tightened. If Gruber could but manage to say, “The Emperor’s gardeners greet you all,” that would be enough. Seldon himself would then take over.

  His eyes swept over the new contingent and he located Raych.

  His heart jumped a bit. It was the mustacheless Raych in the front row, standing more rigid than the rest, staring straight ahead. His eyes did not move to meet Seldon’s; he showed no sign of recognition, however subtle.

  Good, thought Seldon. He’s not supposed to. He’s g
iving nothing away.

  Gruber muttered a weak welcome and Seldon jumped in.

  He advanced with an easy stride, putting himself immediately before Gruber, and said, “Thank you, Gardener First-Class. Men and women, gardeners of the Emperor, you are to undertake an important task. You will be responsible for the beauty and health of the only open land on our great world of Trantor, capital of the Galactic Empire. You will see to it that if we don’t have the endless vistas of open undomed worlds, we will have a small jewel here that will outshine anything else in the Empire.

  “You will all be under Mandell Gruber, who will shortly become Chief Gardener. He will report to me, when necessary, and I will report to the Emperor. This means, as you can all see, that you will be only three levels removed from the Imperial presence and you will always be under his benign watch. I am certain that even now he is surveying us from the Small Palace, his personal home, which is the building you see to the right–the one with the opal-layered dome–and that he is pleased with what he sees.

  “Before you start work, of course, you will all undertake a course of training that will make you entirely familiar with the grounds and its needs. You will–” “

  He had, by this time, moved, almost stealthily, to a point directly in front of Raych, who still remained motionless, unblinking.

  Seldon tried not to look unnaturally benign and then a slight frown crossed his face. The person directly behind Raych looked familiar. He might have gone unrecognized if Seldon had not studied his hologram. Wasn’t that Gleb Andorin of Wye? Raych’s patron in Wye, in fact? What was he doing here?

  Andorin must have noticed Seldon’s sudden regard, for he muttered something between scarcely opened lips and Raych’s right arm, moving forward from behind his back, plucked a blaster out of the wide pocket of his green doublet. So did Andorin.

  Seldon felt himself going into near-shock. How could blasters have been allowed onto the grounds? Confused, he barely heard the cries of “‘Treason!” and the sudden noise of running and shouting.

  All that really occupied Seldon’s mind was Raych’s blaster pointing directly at him and Raych looking at him without any sign of recognition. Seldon’s mind filled with horror as he realized that his son was going to shoot and that he himself was only seconds from death.