by David Brin
This time Hari straightened, his back growing erect. A fist tightened.
“Theonly hope? Now see here-”
He was interrupted by the sound of footsteps approaching along the pebbly walk. Hari turned to see Horis Antic draw near. The portly Grey bureaucrat wore a patina of dust on his once impeccable uniform, and Hari saw the fellow’s left hand quiver nervously as he popped another blue pill in his mouth. Antic was inherently anxious around robots, and events of the past two days had done nothing to settle his nerves. Fortunately, all of this would soon become a vague memory after they got him back to a Trantor sanitarium, where just the right cover story could be implanted in his mind. At least, that was Wanda’s plan. Hari knew there would be more to it than that.
“Gaal Dornick says I should tell you the ship is almost ready for takeoff. The Earthlings have agreed to take care of Sybyl and the other survivors from Ktlina. They’ll be kind. In time, the solipsism mania might ease enough to let them rejoin a simple society.
“I still can’t believe all I’ve learned,” Horis continued. “It was one thing to find out that brain fever is a purposefully designed infection, aimed at the brightest humans. But then to learn thatchaos is similar…”
Daneel interrupted. “Not similar at all. Brain fever is relatively gentle. It was designed and released in order to combat the earlier chaos plague, whose first virulent versions escaped Earth on the earliest starships.”
“Was chaos a weapon of war?” Horis asked, in muted tones.
“No one knows, though some accounts say it was. The first crude versions swept Earth before I was made, prompting citizens to fear robots, their own great inventions. Later waves smashed the late Terran renaissance, turning Earthlings into agoraphobes and Spacers into vicious paranoids. Everything that Giskard did here”-Daneel motioned at the radioactive waste-”and that I did in the following millennia, had its roots in this awful plague.”
“B-b-but-” Horis stuttered. “But what if there’s a cure? Wouldn’t that make everything right again? All this stuff I’ve heard-and I only understand a little-all this talk aboutsaving humanity from chaos. Most of it would be unnecessary if someone just found a cure!”
For the first time, Hari saw waves of irritation cross Daneel Olivaw’s face.
“Don’t you think that occurred to me, long ago? What do you imagine I was working on for the first six thousand years? In between having to fight a civil war against robots of the old religion, I devoted all my energies to finding some way of ripping out chaos by its roots! But it was too late. The virus had been cleverly designed to inveigle its way into human chromosomes, scattering and embedding itself in hundreds of crucial places. Even if I knew where they all were, it would takeanother deadly plague just to dig out every genetic site where chaos lay hidden. Trillions would die.
“That was when I realized that chaos could only be staved off if we prevented the conditions that triggered an outbreak. If ambition and individualism provoked the disease out of dormancy, then a conservative society offered the best hope. A Galactic Empire, providing gentle peace, justice, and serenity to a society that never changed.”
Horis Antic nodded. Naturally as a Grey Man, he shared an inclination toward orderliness, with everything classified and pigeonholed properly. “So there is no cure. But what about naturalimmunity? Didn’t I hear someone talk about that, at one point?”
“The disease has always been tragically most virulent among humanity’s brightest. Even so, some highly intelligent people proved immune to the temptations of raging egotism and solipsism. They can be individualists without denying the humanity of others. But alas, this immunity is spreading too slowly. If we had a thousand years, or two…”
Hari asked about something that had been bothering him. “Were both Maserd and Mors Planch immune?”
“Biron Maserd was protected against chaos by the noblesse oblige of his gentry class. As for Planch, you are right, Hari. His mind was startling. Almost unreadable with my mentalic powers. He had lived immersed in three different chaos-renaissances, yet remained completely agile. Flexible. Empathic, yet fierce.”
“Kers Kantun called himnormal.”
“Hmmm.” Daneel rubbed his chin briefly. “Kers had some unique ideas. He thought that today’s humanity is not the same one that made us. Truly natural humans would not be subject to chaos, Kers thought, nor would their minds be easily manipulated.”
Horis Antic took a step forward. The eagerness in his voice replaced his typical nervous tremor. “Do you still have the records from your search for a cure? There have been medical advances in the past few millennia, and millions of qualified workers might come up with ideas that you missed.”
Hari exhaled a sigh.
“Why do you bother, Horis? You know these memories will be washed away, or painted over, soon after we reach Trantor. You never struck me as the kind to chase curiosity for its own sake.”
At this, Horis reacted with a bitter frown. “Perhaps I am more than you realize, Seldon!”
Hari nodded. “Of that, I am quite sure. It only just occurred to me, last night, to review events since you and I first met, and look at them in a fresh light.”
Now, the Grey Man’s nervousness returned. He popped another blue pill. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. But right now I’ve taken too much of your time. There are preparations to make. I’ve got to help Gaal Dornick-”
“No.” Hari cut him off. “It’s time to have the truth, Horis.”
He turned to Daneel. “Have you ever tried to mindscan our young bureaucrat friend here?”
Horis gulped audibly at the mere thought of being mentalically probed.
Daneel responded, “I have a Second Law injunction to be courteous, Hari. I only invade human minds when some First or Zeroth Law need is apparent.”
“And so, you never felt compelled to scan Horis. Well, let me override the injunction now. Take a peek. I bet you’ll find it difficult.”
“No…please…” Antic lifted both hands, as if to ward off Daneel’s probing mentalic fingers.
“You are right, Hari. It is extraordinarily hard, but this man is no Mors Planch. He is achieving this through a combination of drugs and mental discipline, avoiding certain thoughts with scrupulous self-control.”
“Leave me alone!” Horis cried, trying desperately to make his body turn around and flee. But a gentle paralysis swarmed over him, and he instead slumped downward, seating himself on a nearby pile of rubble. Naturally, Daneel would not have let him be hurt in a fall.
“Let me see the recording device,” Hari said, holding out one hand.
New tremors rocked the bureaucrat, but he finally complied, reaching into a coat pocket for a small scanner. No doubt it was one of the best available to imperial operatives.
“You had no intention of reaching the sanitarium, did you? So long as everyone thought you meek and harmless, security would be lax. At Trantor, you would be in your element, able to tap a thousand different channels of communication…with a myriad of tricks that only a Grey Man might have access to. Locked doors would mysteriously open, and you’d be gone.”
Horis slumped, clearly seeing no further purpose in dissembling. When he spoke, his voice seemed different, at once both defeated, and yet stronger. With a note of rueful pride.
“I got off a partial report from Pengia. You can’t stop that part of it.”
Hari nodded. “You were the secret contact who informed Mors Planch, who wanted the Ktlinans to come. Why? You hate chaos as much as I do. Kers Kantun knew that, and I can see it in your character.”
Horis let out a sigh. “It was an experiment. It wasn’t enough just to do a reconnaissance. We had to create a crisis. A scene of conflict with the chaos forces on one side and your tiktok pals on the other. It proved an effective way to get you all talking, arguing, and justifying yourselves to each other. I hardly had to put in a word, here or there.”
“Your pose was impressive,” Hari said, a
nd Daneel added. “So is your mental discipline. Even without the drugs, I would have noticed nothing, until my attention was drawn fully toward you.”
The compliments drew only a snort.
“We are used to being underrated and derided by all the snooty gentry folk and self-important meritocrats. Even eccentrics and citizens dismiss us as if we are part of the background. Long ago, we learned to stop resenting it, to control it, even to foster this impression.”
Horis made a fist. “But tell me, whoruns this Galactic Empire? Even you, Seldon, with your mathematical insight, andyou, robot, who designed the Trantorian regime in the first place. You understand in theory, but you don’t really see.
“Who gets called when a sun flares, bumming half a continent on some provincial world? Who makes sure the navigational buoys all work? Who gets the children vaccinated, keeps the electricity flowing, and makes sure farmers tend the soil so their grandchildren will have something to plow? Who monitors the death rates, so health teams can be sent to some unknowing world before they even realize they’ve drifted into a space current that’s polluting their stratosphere with boron? Who sees to it that self-indulgent gentry and preening meritocrats don’t wreck everything with one egotistical scheme after another?”
Hari accepted this. “We know that the Grey Order does noble work. Can I assumeyou set the notion in Jeni Cuicet’s mind, and arranged for her to take advantage of Testing Day?”
Horis chuckled sardonically. “How do you think she got her job on the Orion elevator? We’ve been quietly spiriting away some of the Terminus exiles. A few lives spared from involuntary banishment and imprisonment, that they were sentenced to for no fault of their own!”
“You say this, even though you claim to understand the Seldon Plan?”
Another snort. “One lesson that we teach again and again in the Grey Academies-something thatyou preached long ago, in the guise of Ruellis-” Antic said this pointing at Daneel “-is thatends generally do not justify evil means. Anyway, grand rationalizations are for gentry and meritocrats. We Greys cannot afford them. When people’s rights are being violated, someone has todo something.”
He whirled toward Hari Seldon. “Oh, the bloodyarrogance of it all. You publish scientific papers about psychohistory for decades, then suddenly go silent and set up a secret cabal to control it! But aren’t you thereby assuming thatnobody on twenty-five million worlds paid attention during all the earlier years? That some nitpickers in the bureaucracy wouldn’t have seen your discovery as a possible tool to be explored…and perhaps used for better government?
“Oh, there are only a few of us that I know of, but we’ve been looking into psychohistory for more than a decade. Our respect for you, Dr. Seldon, matches anyone’s. But your Plan leaves us confused and filled with questions. Doubts we couldn’t approach you with openly.”
Hari understood. Mere bureaucrats would have been rebuffed, at best. Linge Chen and the Committee for Public Safety might arrest any clerks who knew too much. Then there were the rumors that Hari Seldon’s enemies often suffered inexplicable bouts of amnesia.
“So ask your questions now, Horis. I owe you that much.”
The small man took a deep breath, as if he had a lot to say. But at first, all he could utter was a single word.
“Why?”
He inhaled again.
“Why must the Galactic Empire topple? It doesn’t have to! True, things are loosening up. Some say falling apart. But the equations…your equations…show nothing we can’t handle with a lot of sweat and hard work. If technological competence is declining,give us resources to teach a better science curriculum! Unleash billions of bright youngsters. Stop rationing just a few measly slots at the technical schools!”
“We tried that once,” Hari started to answer. “On a planet called Madder Loss-”
But Horis cut him off, rushing forth words, mostly to Daneel.
“Even the chaos outbreaks might be controlled! Sure, they’re getting worse. But the sanitation service isalso getting better all the time. and they’ve never lost a patient yet. Would you really end the empire, which has kept a gentle peace for twelve thousand years, just to keep humanity distracted for a few more centuries? Why not keep the empire going until your new solution is prepared? Is it because the people of the galaxy must be brought low, to a miserable state, so they’ll eagerly accept whatever you offer?”
It was difficult for Hari to switch modes. For so long, he had treated Horis in a patronizing manner. He now saw the Grey Man in a new light, not only as a startlingly effective secret agent, but as a rough-hewn psychohistorian-like Yugo Amaryl at the beginning of their long collaboration. One who understood more than he had ever let on.
“Do you really think imperial institutions can handle more crises like Ktlina?” Hari shook his head. “That would be taking a terrible gamble. If even a single plague site burst free to infect the galaxy…”
“If! You’re talking aboutpeople, Seldon. Almost twelve quadrillion people. Must they all be thrown into a dark age, just because you don’t trust us to do our jobs?
“Besides what if one of those new renaissances actually made it. achieving the fabulousbreakthrough they all dream of. Reaching the mythicalother side, where intelligence and maturity overcome chaos. If we keep them all quarantined, the galaxy can stay relatively safe. Meanwhile, experiments can be run, one planet at a time!”
Hari stared at Horis Antic, astonished by the man’s courage.I could never take such chances. He obviously hates chaos with a passion greater than mine. But he loves the empire even more.
Shaking his head again, Hari answered, “But ultimately it isn’t chaos worlds that are forcing Daneel to bring down the empire.
“It’syou, Horis.”
Such was the look of stunned surprise on Antic’s face that Hari felt unable to speak. He looked to Daneel, silently asking his robot friend to explain, which he did in a voice like Ruellis of old.
“Do not forget, my dear young human, that I invented your Grey Order. I know its capabilities. I am aware how many millions sacrifice themselves while wearing that uniform, unthanked and despised by the other castes. You might even have managed, with resiliency and a little help from psychohistory, to keep the old empire sputtering along, until my new prize-my Galaxia-is ready to be born. But therein lies the rub.”
“You see, I also remember your ancestor-whose name was Antyok-back when humanity stumbled on an actual alien race that had been spared by the terraformers. Robots from allover the galaxy convened to discuss the matter. There were just a few thousand of the alien creatures, and humanity already numbered five quadrillion. Yet, we argued for a year about the danger these beings presented. Humans in every sector and province were agog with enthusiasm to help the nonhumans get on their feet. An excitement for diversity and new voices to talk to. Some robots worried about the potential for triggering chaos. Others projected that the aliens might become a threat to humans in just a couple of thousand years if allowed to spread among the stars. Meanwhile, some, such as the robot you knew as R. Gornon, pleaded that nonhumans merited protection under an expanded version of the Zeroth Law.”
“The point is that none of our robotic deliberations ultimately mattered. News reached our secret meeting ground that the aliens had escaped! They hijacked starships that came into their possession through a twisty chain of mysterious coincidences. Investigators found more than enough blame to pass around, but they assigned none of it to the individual who was actually responsible. Your ancestor, a humble bureaucrat who knew all the right levers for manipulating the system, for getting justice done while pretending to be an innocuous, faceless official.”
It was a different version of the story Horis had told aboard ship. But Hari felt chills hearing it confirmed.
He nodded. “Your very presence here, Horis, shows this resiliency hasn’t been lost. I was First Minister of the Empire, remember? I know the data files on Trantor are limitless. Nothing can be purged from them
completely. Anyone with enough skill can defeat the amnesia and find what they need to know about the human past…and now about itsfuture, as well. You are a living demonstration of the reason for it all, Horis.”
“Me? You mean the bureaucracy? We faceless drones? We dull bean counters and pencil pushers? You mean the empire has to fall because ofus?”
Hari nodded. “I never thought of it quite in that way before. But then again, I’m not the one doing the toppling.” He glanced toward Daneel. “This is all about human volition, isn’t it? It’s all about that day, in five centuries or so, when a choice must be made by a man who isnever wrong. When that day comes, there must not be a galactic bureaucracy anymore. No cubicles and dusty offices to burst forth with surprise meddlers, like Horis and his friends. No prim procedures to make sure every decision is deliberated openly.
“The Fall of Trantor isn’t really about chaos, is it, Daneel? It is about killing your own fine invention, the Grey Order, the only way itcan be killed, by total destruction of the filing cabinets, the computer memories, the men…”
This time, R. Daneel Olivaw didn’t answer. The expression on his face sufficed. If any human ever doubted that an immortal robot could feel pain, all question would be erased by looking at Daneel’s Promethean visage.
“So we’re doomed to keep fighting the darkness…for nothing. To die at our desks, never knowing the futility of it all.“
Hari put a hand on the younger man’s shoulder. “You must forget about this now. Go back to your paper folders and soil reports. The knowledge you fought so hard to acquire, with such ingenuity and courage, will only cause you pain. It’s time to let it go, Horis.”
Antic looked up at Hari bleakly. “You aren’t going to wait until Trantor?”
Hari looked to Daneel, appealing silently for a delay so that Horis might at least converse with them during the voyage back. But his robot friend answered with a terse shake of the head. Antic had proved too resourceful, too ready with fresh tricks up his sleeve.