She lifted her head and looked at him, eyelessly, but with a piercing stare.
“Why are you so sure of that?” she asked gently.
“You think I could be mistaken, knowing you as I do? But I’m not Frankenstein . . . you say my creation’s flawless. Then what—”
“Could you ever duplicate this body?” she asked.
Maltzer glanced down at his shaking hands. “I don’t know. I doubt it. I—”
“Could anyone else?”
He was silent. Deirdre answered for him. “I don’t believe anyone could. I think I was an accident. A sort of mutation, halfway between flesh and metal. Something accidental and . . . and unnatural, turning off on a wrong course of evolution that never reaches a dead end. Another brain in a body like this might die or go mad, as you thought I would. The synapses are too delicate. You were – call it lucky – with me. From what I know now, I don’t think a . . . a baroque like me could happen again.” She paused a moment. “What you did was kindle the fire for the Phoenix, in a way. And the Phoenix rises perfect and renewed from its own ashes. Do you remember why it had to reproduce itself that way?”
Maltzer shook his head?”
“I’ll tell you,” she said. “It was because there was only one Phoenix. Only one in the whole world.”
They looked at each other in silence. Then Deirdre shrugged a little.
“He always came out of the fire perfect, of course. I’m not weak, Maltzer. You needn’t let that thought bother you any more. I’m not vulnerable and helpless. I’m not sub-human.” She laughed dryly. “I suppose,” she said, “that I’m – superhuman.”
“But – not happy.”
“I’m afraid. It isn’t unhappiness, Maltzer – it’s fear. I don’t want to draw so far away from the human race. I wish I needn’t. That’s why I’m going back on the stage – to keep in touch with them while I can. But I wish there could be others like me. I’m . . . I’m lonely, Maltzer.”
Silence again. Then Maltzer said, in a voice as distant as when he had spoken to them through glass, over gulfs as deep as oblivion:
“Then I am Frankenstein, after all.”
“Perhaps you are,” Deirdre said very softly. “I don’t know. Perhaps you are.”
She turned away and moved smoothly, powerfully, down the room to the window. Now that Harris knew, he could almost hear the sheer power purring along her limbs as she walked. She leaned the golden forehead against the glass – it clinked faintly, with a musical sound – and looked down into the depths Maltzer had hung above. Her voice was reflective as she looked into those dizzy spaces which had offered oblivion to her creator.
“There’s one limit I can think of,” she said, almost inaudibly. “Only one. My brain will wear out in another forty years or so. Between now and then I’ll learn . . . I’ll change . . . I’ll know more than I can guess today. I’ll change. That’s frightening. I don’t like to think about that.” She laid a curved golden hand on the latch and pushed the window open a little, very easily. Wind whined around its edge. “I could put a stop to it now, if I wanted,” she said. “If I wanted. But I can’t, really. There’s so much still untried. My brain’s human, and no human brain could leave such possibilities untested. I wonder, though . . . I do wonder—”
Her voice was soft and familiar in Harris’ ears, the voice Deirdre had spoken and sung with, sweetly enough to enchant a world. But as preoccupation came over her a certain flatness crept into the sound. When she was not listening to her own voice, it did not keep quite to the pitch of trueness. It sounded as if she spoke in a room of brass, and echoes from the walls resounded in the tones that spoke there.
“I wonder,” she repeated, the distant taint of metal already in her voice.
THE BIG AND THE LITTLE
Isaac Asimov
1
TRADERS – . . . With psychohistoric inevitability, economic control of the Foundation grew. The traders grew rich; and with riches came power. . . .
It is sometimes forgotten that Hober Mallow began life as an ordinary trader. It is never forgotten that he ended it as the first of the Merchant Princes. . . .
ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA
Jorane Sutt put the tips of carefully-manicured fingers together and said, “It’s something of a puzzle. In fact – and this is in the strictest confidence – it may be another one of Hari Seldon’s crises.”
The man opposite felt in the pocket of his short Smyrnian jacket for a cigarette. “Don’t know about that, Sutt. As a general rule, politicians start shouting ‘Seldon crisis’ at every mayoralty campaign.”
Sutt smiled very faintly, “I’m not campaigning, Mallow. We’re facing atomic weapons, and we don’t know where they’re coming from.”
Hober Mallow of Smyrno, Master Trader, smoked quietly, almost indifferently. “Go on. If you have more to say get it out.” Mallow never made the mistake of being overpolite to a Foundation man. He might be an Outlander, but a man’s a man for a’ that.
Sutt indicated the trimensional star-map on the table. He adjusted the controls and a cluster of some half-dozen stellar systems blazed red.
“That,” he said quietly, “is the Korellian Republic.”
The trader nodded, “I’ve been there. Stinking rathole! I suppose you can call it a republic but it’s always someone out of the Argo family that gets elected Commdor each time. And if you ever don’t like it – things happen to you.” He twisted his lip and repeated, “I’ve been there.”
“But you’ve come back, which hasn’t always happened. Three trade ships, inviolate under the Conventions, have disappeared within the territory of the Republic in the last year. And those ships were armed with all the usual nuclear explosives and force-field defenses.”
“What was the last word heard from the ships?”
“Routine reports. Nothing else.”
“What did Korell say?”
Sutt’s eyes gleamed sardonically, “There was no way of asking. The Foundation’s greatest asset throughout the Periphery is its reputation of power. Do you think we can lose three ships and ask for them?”
“Well, then, suppose you tell me what you want with me.”
Jorane Sutt did not waste his time in the luxury of annoyance. As secretary to the mayor, he had held off opposition councilmen, jobseekers, reformers, and crackpots who claimed to have solved in its entirety the course of future history as worked out by Hari Seldon. With training like that, it took a good deal to disturb him.
He said methodically, “In a moment. You see, three ships lost in the same sector in the same year can’t be accident, and atomic power can be conquered only by more atomic power. The question automatically arises: if Korell has atomic weapons, where is it getting them?”
“And where does it?”
“Two alternatives. Either the Korellians have constructed them themselves—”
“Far-fetched!”
“Very! But the other possibility is that we are being afflicted with a case of treason.”
“You think so?” Mallow’s voice was cold.
The secretary said calmly, “There’s nothing miraculous about the possibility. Since the Four Kingdoms accepted the Foundation Convention, we have had to deal with considrable groups of dissident populations in each nation. Each former kingdom has its pretenders and its former noblemen, who can’t very well pretend to love the Foundation. Some of them are becoming active, perhaps.”
Mallow was a dull red. “I see. Is there anything you want to say to me? I’m a Smyrnian.”
“I know. You’re a Smyrnian – born in Smyrno, one of the former Four Kingdoms. You’re a Foundation man by education only. By birth, you’re an Outlander and a foreigner. No doubt your grandfather was a baron at the time of the wars with Anacreon and Loris, and no doubt your family estate were taken away when Sef Sermak redistributed the land.”
“No, by Black Space, no! My grandfather was a bloodpoor son-of-a-spacer who died heaving coal at starving wages before the Foun
dation. I owe nothing to the old regime. But I was born in Smyrno, and I’m not ashamed of either Smyrno or Smyrnians, by the Galaxy. Your sly little hints of treason aren’t going to panic me into licking Foundation spittle. And now you can either give your orders or make your accusations. I don’t care which.”
“My good Master Trader, I don’t care an electron whether your grandfather was King of Smyrno or the greatest pauper on the planet. I recited that rigmarole about your birth and ancestry to show you that I’m not interested in them. Evidently, you missed the point. Let’s go back now. You’re a Smyrnian. You know the Outlanders. Also, you’re a trader and one of the best. You’ve been to Korell and you know the Korellians. That’s where you’ve got to go.”
Mallow breathed deeply, “As a spy?”
“Not at all. As a trader – but with your eyes open. If you can find out where the power is coming from – I might remind you, since you’re a Symrnian, that two of those lost trade ships had Smyrnian crews.”
“When do I start?”
“When will your ship be ready?”
“In six days.”
“Then that’s when you start. You’ll have all the details at the Admiralty.”
“Right!” The trader rose, shook hands roughly, and strode out.
Sutt waited, spreading his fingers gingerly and rubbing out the pressure; then shrugged his shoulders and stepped into the mayor’s office.
The mayor deadened the visiplate and leaned back. “What do you make of it, Sutt?”
“He could be a good actor,” said Sutt, and stared thoughtfully ahead.
2
It was evening of the same day, and in Jorane Sutt’s bachelor apartment on the twenty-first floor of the Hardin Building, Publis Manlio was sipping wine slowly.
It was Publis Manlio in whose slight, aging body were fulfilled two great offices of the Foundation. He was Foreign Secretary in the mayor’s cabinet, and to all the outer suns, barring only the Foundation itself, he was, in addition, Primate of the Church, Purveyor of the Holy Food, Master of the Temples, and so forth almost indefinitely in confusing but sonorous syllables.
He was saying, “But he agreed to let you send out that trader. It is a point.”
“But such a small one,” said Sutt. “It gets us nothing immediately. The whole business is the crudest sort of stratagem, since we have no way of foreseeing it to the end. It is a mere paying out of rope on the chance that somewhere along the length of it will be a noose.”
“True. And this Mallow is a capable man. What if he is not an easy prey to dupery?”
“That is a chance that must be run. If there is treachery, it is the capable men that are implicated. If not, we need a capable man to detect the truth. And Mallow will be guarded. Your glass is empty.”
“No, thanks. I’ve had enough.”
Sutt filled his own glass and patiently endured the other’s uneasy reverie.
Of whatever the reverie consisted, it ended indecisively, for the primate said suddenly, almost explosively, “Sutt, what’s on your mind?”
“I’ll tell you, Manlio.” His thin lips parted, “We’re in the middle of a Seldon crisis.”
Manlio stared, then said softly, “How do you know? Has Seldon appeared in the Time Vault again?”
“That much, my friend, is not necessary. Look, reason it out. Since the Galactic Empire abandoned the Periphery, and threw us on our own, we have never had an opponent who possessed atomic power. Now, for the first time, we have one. That seems significant even if it stood by itself. And it doesn’t. For the first time in over seventy years, we are facing a major domestic political crisis. I should think the synchronization of the two crises, inner and outer, puts it beyond all doubt.”
Manlio’s eyes narrowed, “If that’s all, it’s not enough. There have been two Seldon crises so far, and both times the Foundation was in danger of extermination. Nothing can be a third crisis till that danger returns.”
Sutt never showed impatience, “That danger is coming. Any fool can tell a crisis when it arrives. The real service to the state is to direct it in embryo. Look, Manlio, we’re proceeding along a planned history. We know that Hari Seldon worked out the historical probabilities of the future. We know that some day we’re to rebuild the Galactic Empire. We know that it will take a thousand years or thereabouts. And we know that in that interval we will face certain definite crises.
“Now the first crisis came fifty years after the establishment of the Foundation, and the second, thirty years later than that. Almost seventy-five years have gone since. It’s time, Manlio, it’s time.”
Manlio rubbed his nose uncertainly, “And you’ve made your plans to meet this crisis?”
Sutt nodded.
“And I,” continued Manlio, “am to play a part in it?”
Sutt nodded again, “Before we can meet the foreign threat of atomic power, we’ve got to put our own house in order. These traders—”
“Ah!” The primate stiffened, and his eyes grew sharp.
“That’s right. These traders. They are useful, but they are too strong – and too uncontrolled. They are Outlanders, educated apart from religion. On the one hand, we put knowledge into their hands, and on the other, we remove our strongest hold upon them.”
“If we can prove treachery?”
“If we could, direct action would be simple and sufficient. But that doesn’t signify in the least. Even if treason among them did not exist, they would form an uncertain element in our society. They wouldn’t be bound to us by patriotism or common descent, or even by religious awe. Under their secular leadership, the outer provinces, which, since Hardin’s time, look to us as the Holy Planet, might break away.”
“I see all that, but the cure—”
“The cure must come quickly, before the Seldon Crisis becomes acute. If atomic weapons are without and disaffection within, the odds might be too great.” Sutt put down the empty glass he had been fingering, “This is obviously your job.”
“Mine?”
“I can’t do it. My office is appointive and has no legislative standing.”
“The mayor—”
“Impossible. His personality is entirely negative. He is energetic only in evading responsibility. But if an independent party arose that might endanger re-election, he might allow himself to be led.”
“But, Sutt, I lack the aptitude for practical politics.”
“Leave that to me. Who knows, Manlio? Since Salvor Hardin’s time, the primacy and the mayoralty have never been combined in a single person. But it might happen now – if your job were well done.”
3
And at the other end of town, in homelier surroundings, Hober Mallow kept a second appointment. He had listened long, and now he said cautiously, “Yes, I’ve heard of your campaigns to get direct trader representation in the council. But why me, Twer?”
Jaim Twer, who would remind you any time, asked or unasked, that he was in the first group of Outlanders to receive a lay education at the Foundation, beamed.
“I know what I’m doing,” he said. “Remember when I met you first, last year.”
“At the Traders’ Convention.”
“Right. You ran that meeting. You had those rednecked oxen planted in their seats, then put them in your shirtpocket and walked off with them. And you’re all right with the Foundation masses, too. You’ve got glamor – or, at any rate, solid adventure-publicity, which is the same thing.”
“Very good,” said Mallow, dryly. “But why now?”
“Because now’s our chance. Do you know that the Secretary of Education has handed in his resignation? It’s not out in the open yet, but it will be.”
“How do you know?”
“That – never mind—” He waved a disgusted hand. “It’s so. The Actionist party is splitting wide open, and we can murder it right now on a straight question of equal rights for traders; or, rather, democracy, pro- and anti-.”
Mallow lounged back in his chair and stared a
t his thick fingers, “Uh-uh. Sorry, Twer. I’m leaving next week on business. You’ll have to get someone else.”
Twer stared, “Business? What kind of business?”
“Very super-secret. Triple-A priority. All that, you know. Had a talk with the mayor’s own secretary.”
“Snake Sutt?” Jaim Twer grew excited. “A trick. The son-of-a-spacer is getting rid of you. Mallow—”
“Hold on!” Mallow’s hand fell on the other’s balled fist. “Don’t go into a blaze. If it’s a trick, I’ll be back some day for the reckoning. If it isn’t, your snake, Sutt, is playing into our hands. Listen, there’s a Seldon crisis coming up.”
Mallow waited for a reaction but it never came. Twer merely stared. “What’s a Seldon crisis?”
“Galaxy!” Mallow exploded angrily at the anticlimax. “What the blue blazes did you do when you went to school? What do you mean anyway by a fool question like that?”
The elder man frowned. “If you’ll explain—”
There was a long pause, then, “I’ll explain.” Mallow’s eyebrows lowered, and he spoke slowly. “When the Galactic Empire began to die at the edges, and when the ends of the Galaxy reverted to barbarism and dropped away, Hari Seldon and his band of psychologists planted a colony, the Foundation, out here in the middle of the mess, so that we could incubate art, science, and technology, and form the nucleus of the Second Empire.”
“Oh, yes, yes—”
“I’m not finished,” said the trader, coldly. “The future course of the Foundation was plotted according to the science of psychohistory, then highly developed, and conditions arranged so as to bring about a series of crises that will force us most rapidly along the route to future Empire. Each crisis, each Seldon crisis, marks an epoch in our history. We’re approaching one now – our third.”
“Of course!” Twer shrugged, “I should have remembered. But I’ve been out of school a long time – longer than you.”
The Mammoth Book of Golden Age SF Page 41