Asimov’s Future History Volume 16

by Isaac Asimov

  Despite all that effort to get rid of them, a few duplicates remained “stuck” in the real world. Though she took precautions to keep this one isolated, Dors felt unavoidable sympathy for Joan. Anyway, the approaching rendezvous with Lodovic created an overwhelming need to talk to somebody.

  Maybe it’s from all those years when I could tell everything to Hari. The one man in the cosmos who knew all about robots and considered us his closest friends. For a few brief decades I got used to the idea of consulting with a human. It felt natural and right.

  I know Joan is no more human than I am. But she feels and acts so much like one! So filled with conflicts, yet so tempestuously sure of her opinions.

  Dors admitted that part of her attraction might come from envy. Joan had no body, no physical sensation. No power in the real world. Still, she would always consider herself a passionate, authentic woman.

  “I face a quandary of duty,” Dors finally told the sim. “An enemy has invited me to a meeting.”

  “Ah. “Joan nodded. “A parley-of-war. And you fear it is a trap?”

  “I know it’s a trap. He’s offered me a ‘gift.’ One that I know has to be dangerous. Lodovic wants to snare me in some way.”

  “A test of faith! “Joan clapped her hands. “Of course, I am familiar with such. My years entwined with Voltaire exposed me to many.

  “In that case, the answer to your question is obvious, Dors.”

  “But you haven’t heard any details!”

  “I don’t have to. You must confront this challenge. Set forth and prevail over your doubts.

  “Go, sweet angel, and trust your faith in God.”

  Dors shook her head.

  “I told you before –”

  But the sim raised a hand before Dors could finish, cutting her off.

  “Yes, of course. The God I worship is only a superstition.

  “In that case, dear robot... go forth and trust your faith in the Zeroth Law of Robotics.”

  5.

  HARI CHOSE TO avoid the Shoufeen groves during their next outing. Instead, he let Kers Kantun guide him to one of the many ornate areas of the imperial gardens that lay open to visitors – a generous concession by the new figurehead on the throne, Emperor Semrin, lately installed by the Commission for Public Safety.

  Normally, five small corners of the palace grounds, just a few thousand acres each, were set aside for use by each social caste – citizens, eccentrics, bureaucrats, meritocrats, and gentry – but Semrin had used his limited authority to open more than half the vast tract, currying public favor by letting in folk from every class.

  Of course, most Trantor natives would rather have their eyelashes yanked out than go sniffing flowers beneath a naked sun. They preferred their warm steel caverns. But the planet also had an immense transitory population consisting of merchants, diplomats, cultural emissaries, and tourists – plus a veritable army of Greys, young members of the bureaucratic order, briefly assigned to the capital-world for training and intense clerical service. Most of them came from planets where clouds still moved across open skies, and rain rolled down green-swathed mountains to a sea. They were the ones most grateful for Semrin’s largesse. Each day, hundreds of miles of paths thronged with visitors, at first nervously agog at the richly manicured beauty, but then gradually making themselves at home.

  It’s a clever political move, but Semrin may pay for it, if he isn’t careful. What is given cannot easily be taken back.

  Of course such minor perturbations would hardly show up as blips in the psychohistorical equations. It hardly even mattered which monarch happened to reign. The fall of the empire had a ponderous momentum that could only be nudged a little, by those who knew exactly how. Everyone else was simply doomed to go along for the ride.

  For the most part, Hari enjoyed the open expanses and never-ending variety of the palace grounds. Alas, they also reminded him of poor Gruber – the gardener who had only wanted to tend his humble flower beds, yet found himself driven by desperation to become an imperial assassin.

  That was long ago, Hari thought. Gruber is now dust, along with Emperor Cleon.

  And I will join them soon.

  Rolling along a path they had never visited before, Hari and Kers abruptly confronted a fractal garden, where special variants of lichenlike shrubbery were programmed to grow and then retract with intricate, minutely branching abandon. It was an old art form, but he had seldom seen it so well executed. Color hues varied subtly, depending on sun angle and the shape of nearby shadows. The resulting maze of twisting gyre-configurations was a tumult of labyrinthine convolution, never the same from moment to moment.

  Most passersby appreciated the display with uncomprehending awe, before strolling on to the next imperial wonder. But Hari signaled Kers to stop there while his eyes darted left and right, drawn by an inherent challenge. This complexity was nothing like the riotous chaos of the Shoufeen Woods. Hari quickly recognized the basic pattern-generating system. This organic pseudolichen was programmed to react according to fractional derivatives based on a sequence of Fiquarnn-Julia transforms. That much a child could see. But it only told part of the story. Squinting, Hari soon realized that holes kept appearing in the pattern, causing retreat and recession at semirandom intervals.

  Predation, he realized. There must be a virus or some other parasite at work, assigned to degrade the lichen under certain conditions. This not only creates interesting secondary patterns. It’s necessary for the system’s overall health for it to experience die-back and renewal!

  Soon, Hari saw that more than one kind of predator had to be at work. In fact, a microecosystem must be involved... all formatted for the purpose of art.

  His head began to fill. swiftly tracing algorithms used by the virtuoso gardener. Oh, it wasn’t genius-level math. By any means. Nevertheless, to combine it with organic engineering in this way showed not only grace and originality. but a sense of humor as well. Hari nearly chuckled...

  Until he noticed them.

  Holes that endured.

  Here. And over there. And several more places. Patches of open space where lichens never ventured. for no apparent reason. There was light. and a fine nutrient mist. Tendrils kept probing toward the empty spots... then just happened to turn away. toward some other opportunity. each and every time.

  Nor was that the only apparent strangeness. Over there! A place where living matter writhed and twisted. but always returned to the same shade of deep blue, every eight seconds or so. Soon, Hari counted at least a dozen anomalies that he could not explain. They fit no clear mathematical profile. And yet, they persisted.

  He breathed a sigh of recognition. This was a familiar quandary – one that had dogged him nearly all of his professional life.

  At tractor states.

  They also appear in the psychohistorical equations and history books. I’ve managed to explain most of them. But there remain a few. Specters that flit through the models, damping down forces that should tear all our fine theoretical paradigms apart.

  Each time I get close... they vanish from my grasp.

  It was an old frustration, brought to mind by a silly work of garden topiary, filling his mouth with the taste of failure, unbidden, and much to his surprise, tears welled in Hari’s eyes. Their liquid refraction spread across the gaudy floral display, causing it to blur and smear out ward, spreading into a profusion of flickering rays...

  “Why, can it be? Well, well, it is Professor Seldon! Blessings upon the goddess of synchronicity, that our paths should cross in this way!”

  Hari felt Kers Kantun grow tense behind the wheelchair, as a man-shaped figure stepped into view, bobbing and bowing with excitement. That was all Hari could make out for a moment, until he drew a kerchief from his sleeve and wiped his eyes. Meanwhile, the newcomer kept babbling, as if unable to believe his good fortune.

  “This is such an honor, sir! Especially since I wrote to you, not more than two days ago! Of course I cannot presume that you woul
d have personally read my letter by now. You must surely have layers and layers of intermediaries who filter your mail.”

  Hari shook his head, finally making out the gray uniform of a galactic bureaucrat – a short, rather portly individual, with a balding pate that blushed from unaccustomed exposure to the sun.

  “No, I read my own mail these days.”

  The rotund man blinked – his eyelids were puffy, as if from allergies.

  “Truly? How marvelous! Then might I presume to ask if you recall my letter? I am Horis Antic, mid-senior imperial lector, at your service. I wrote to you concerning certain exceptional similarities between your own work – which I am barely worthy to comment on! – and profiles that have been observed in galactic molecular flows...”

  Hari nodded, raising a hand to slow the cascading words. “Yes, I recall. Your insights were –” He sought the right phrasing. “They were innovative.”

  It wasn’t the most diplomatic term to use. These days, many imperial citizens would find the expression insulting. But Hari could already tell that this bureaucrat had the soul of an eccentric, and would not be offended.

  “Truly?” Horis Antic’s chest seemed to expand by several centimeters. “Then might I presume further to give you a copy of my data set? I just happen to have one with me. You might – at your leisure, of course! – compare it to your marvelous models and see if my crude correlation has any real merit.”

  The plump man began reaching into his robe. Hari heard a low rumble from his attendant, but he restrained Kers with a subtle finger flick. After all, his own era of intrigue was done. Who nowadays would have a reason to assassinate old Hari Seldon?

  While the nervous man fumbled, Hari noted that the gray uniform was well tailored for his puffy build. From rank insignia, it appeared that Horis Antic was rather senior in his Order. He might be a Vice Minister on some provincial world, or even a fifth-or sixth-level official in the Trantorian hierarchy. Not an august personage, to be sure. (Greys seldom were.) But someone who had made himself indispensable to quite a few nobles and meritocrats, through quiet and effective competence. A thoroughbred among a class of drab administrators.

  Perhaps even with a few brain cells left over, Hari thought, feeling a strange liking for the odd little man. Enough to cry out for a hobby. Something interesting to do, before he dies.

  “Ah, here it is!” Antic cried eagerly, drawing forth a standard data wafer and thrusting it toward Hari.

  With graceful speed, Kers snatched the wafer before Hari could raise a hand. The servant tucked it into his own pocket, for careful inspection later, before Hari would be allowed to touch it.

  After blinking for a confused moment, the bureaucrat accepted this arrangement with a nod. “Well, well. I know this invasion of your solitude has been outrageously presumptuous, but there it is. Please find enough forbearance in your heart to forgive. And please do contact me if you have any questions... at my home number, of course. You’ll understand that my analysis is not – well, work-related. So it’s best if my coworkers and superiors –”

  Hari nodded, with a soft smile.

  “Of course. But in that case, tell me – what is your normal work? The emblem on your collar... I’m not familiar with it.”

  Now the blush on Antic’s cheek went beyond mere sunburn. Hari detected embarrassment, as if the man wished this topic had never come up.

  “Ah, well... since you ask, Professor Seldon.” He stood up straighter, with chin slightly upthrust. “I am a Zonal Inspector for the Imperial Soil Service. But that’s all in my manuscript. And I am sure you’ll see that it does correlate! All will become clear if –”

  “Yes, surely.” Hari raised one hand, in a standard gesture to signal the interview was over. He kept smiling though, because Horis Antic had amused and lightened his spirit. “Your ideas will receive the attention they deserve, Zonal Inspector. On this, you have my word of honor.”

  As soon as the man departed beyond earshot, Kers grumbled aloud.

  “That meeting was no accident.”

  Hari barked a laugh. “Of course not! But we needn’t get paranoid. The fellow’s middling-high in the bureaucracy. He probably called in a favor from someone in the security services. Maybe he snooped the surveillance tapes of Linge Chen’s goon squad, in order to find out where I’d be today. So what?”

  Hari turned to catch his servant’s eye. “I don’t want you bothering Dornick or Wanda with this, do you understand, Kers? They might sic Chen’s Specials on that poor fellow, and they’d make a real mess of him.”

  There was a long pause while Kers Kantun pushed Hari toward the transit station. Finally, the attendant murmured, “Yes, Professor.”

  Hari chuckled again, feeling invigorated for a change. This minuscule drama – a tiny, harmless hint of skullduggery and intrigue – seemed to bring back a scent of the old days, even if the perpetrator was just a poignant little amateur, trying to find some color in a long, gray life while the organs of empire slowly atrophied around him.

  If one abiding truth about old age never seemed to change, it was insomnia. Sleep was like an old friend who often forgot to visit, or a grandchild who dropped by rarely, only to flee again, leaving you wide-eyed and alone at night.

  He could manage a few steps without help, and so Hari did not bother summoning Kers as he shuffled on frail stick-legs from bed to his desk. The suspensor chair accepted him, adjusting sensuously. In a civilization that creaks with age, some technologies still thrive, he pondered gratefully.

  Unfortunately, sleeplessness was not the same thing as alertness. So, for some time he just sat there, thoughts drifting back to the other end of his life, remembering.

  There had been a teacher once... at the boarding school on Helicon... back when his mathematical genius was beginning to stretch its wings. Seven decades later, he still recalled her unwavering kindness. Something reliable and steady during a childhood that had rocked with sudden traumas and petty oppressions. People can be predictable, she had taught young Hari. If you work out their needs and desires. Under her guidance, logic became his foundation, his support against a universe filled with uncertainty. If you understand the forces that drive people, you will never be taken by surprise.

  That teacher had been dark, plump, and matronly. Yet, for some reason she merged in recollection with the other important love of his life – Dors.

  Sleek and tall. Skin like kyrt-silk, even when she had to “age” outwardly in order to keep up public appearances as his wife. Always ready with hearty laughter, and yet defending his creative time as if it were more precious than diamonds. Guarding his happiness more fiercely than her own life.

  Hari’s fingers stretched, out of habit, starting to reach for her hand. It had always been there. Always...

  He sighed, letting both arms sag onto his lap. Well, how many men get to have a wife who was designed from scratch, just for him? Knowing that he had been luckier than multitudes helped take away some of the sting of loneliness. A little.

  There had been a promise. He would see her again. Or was that just something he had dreamed?

  Finally, Hari had enough of self-pity. Work. That would be the best balm. His subconscious must have been busy during this evening’s brief slumber. He could tell because something itched just beneath his scalp, in a place that only mathematics had ever been able to reach. Perhaps it had to do with that clever lichen-artwork in the gardens today.

  “Display on,” he said, and watched the computer spread a gorgeous panorama across one side of the room.

  The galaxy

  “Ah,” he said. He must have been working on the techflow problem before going to bed – a nagging little detail that the Plan still lacked, having to do with which zones and stellar clusters might keep residual scientific capabilities during the coming dark age, after the empire fell. These locales might become trouble spots when the Foundation’s expansion approached the galactic midpoint.

  Of course, that’s more than five
hundred years from now. Wanda and Stettin and the Fifty think our plan will still be operational by then, but I don’t.

  Hari rubbed his eyes and leaned a little forward, tracing patterns that only roughly followed the arcs of well-known spiral arms. This particular image seemed wrong somehow. Familiar, and yet...

  With a gasp, he suddenly remembered. This wasn’t the tech-flow problem! Before going to bed, he had slipped in the data wafer given him by the little bureaucrat, that Antic fellow, intending to make a comment or two before sending it back with a note of encouragement.

  Probably give him the thrill of his life, Hari had thought, just before his chin fell to his chest. He vaguely recalled Kers putting him to bed after that.

  Now he stared again at the display, scanning the indicated flow patterns and symbolic references. The closer he looked, the more he realized two things.

  First, Horis Antic was no undiscovered savant. The math was pedestrian, and most of it blatantly cribbed from a few popularized accounts of Hari’s early work.

  Second, the patterns were eerily like something he had seen just the other day

  “Computer!” he shouted. “Call up the galaxy-wide chart of chaos worlds!”

  Next to Antic’s simplistic model, there suddenly appeared a vastly more sophisticated rendering. A depiction that showed the location and intensity of dangerous social disruptions during the last couple of centuries. Chaos outbreaks used to be rare, back in the old days of the empire. But in recent generations they had been growing ever more severe. The so-called Seldon Law, enacted during his tenure as First Minister, helped keep the lid on things for a while, maintaining galaxy-wide peace. But increasing numbers of chaos worlds offered just one more symptom that civilization could no longer hold. Things were falling apart.

  Habitually, his eyes touched several past disasters of particular note.

  Sark, where conceited “experts” once revived the Joan and Voltaire sims from an ancient, half-burned archive, bragging about the wonders that their brave new society would reveal... until it collapsed around them.