While his garden comer began to thrive over the rest of the year, his studies gradually determined the remaining furniture. After tiring of a simple fiat work surface, he conjured up a big morphing desk that adjusted its size and cubbyholes to the size of the immediate project. When his life began to get complicated, he acquired a telesphere to keep his appointments and do his routine searches and take over the butler duties from his bland door. This was so much more fun than Asinia’s Faraway stoicism. In only months of settling in his needs outgrew his apartment’s functionality. Retiring the apartment’s best effort, he bought himself a real morphing desk that could save its old configuration and contents if he needed to backtrack.
The spare room stayed empty for a long time but then there was that conference, assembling from Splendid Wisdom’s sprawl of Lyceums a thousand students specializing in Observation Methodology. It was scheduled over a six-tyne of watches, and Eron foolishly contracted to put up ten students. The spare room quickly turned into a guest room, in his mother’s taste, that could morph all kinds of beds when they were needed. He overbudgeted on fancy linen. Konn graciously gave him a loan.
Mostly when he wasn’t working at Konn’s side, he studied alone, intensely, leaving his telesphere to keep track of time and to order him around when duty called. But he was also a social creature. Sometimes he took Magda out on excursions; she refused to go alone. Konn approved and encouraged the relationship because he never stopped worrying about her well-being. Sometimes Konn was so busy that he co-opted Eron as an emergency dog walker, and that was a request that Eron couldn’t refuse, no matter how busy or involved he was.
The private hunting maze was a preserve of the elite who could afford that kind of club. It brought Eron into contact with a class of people he had never met before though he had grown up with Agander’s aristocracy. Rhaver was very careful about the dogs to whom he introduced Eron. While he was out cavorting with a silken-haired lady, Eron relaxed on a bench with the lady’s master, the man in charge of the psychohistoric model of the Galaxy’s Omneity of Planetary Relations. If Rhaver wanted him to meet a dog too old for cavorting, Rhaver promenaded with the old fellow while Eron worked up a chat with the wife of the finance minister of the Lyceum Prefecture. Rhaver sorted out politicians by GoodSmell. At the lodge where they might end up for refreshment, Rhaver would pick a table and lie under it and Eron would be forced to take a seat and make polite company with those who were the equivalent of the Old Empire’s Lords. Konn’s dog liked to bring home a pheasant or two for Magda because she fed him foods that the Master didn’t allow, and she knew what sauces warmed a dog’s heart.
“IsSecret,” warned Rhaver.
Eron smiled. He had been doing work with secrets himself. His eccentric hobby—attempting to thread a psy-chohistorical link through eight hundred centuries of Rithian history—had led him into a nest of secret societies. Exploring their dynamics (in secret) had become a fruitful exercise. Recently he had been trying out multiple versions of the early history of Rome whose powerful pontifices and patricians had maintained their advantage over the plebeians by keeping secret the technical rules of legal procedure.
Only one of Eron’s crafted models had proved viable enough to flower into a resemblance of the historical Empire. Its vitality seemed to hinge on a critical event that took place 449 years after the founding of the village on the Tiber. A certain Gnaeus Flavius learned the details of the
mysterious procedures while serving as secretary to Appius Claudius Caecus, censor and later consul. He had the audacity to publish his findings, which became known as the Jus Flavianum. From this work the Roman people for the first time could learn the legis actiones, the verbal formulas required to maintain legal proceedings, and the dies fasti, the specified days on which proceedings could be instituted. His resulting popularity propelled him into public office as curule aedile over the protests of the patricians, who despised him because he had weakened their power and because he was lowborn, the son of a ffeedman.
It seemed peculiar to Eron that the Fellowship, so dependent upon secrecy for the survival of its power, had never done a systematic study of secrecy—being content to quote the Founder’s theorem on the subject as dogma. A very touchy matter. Eron fully intended to conduct his research in secret until he better understood its dynamics.
“Yes, a secret,” he said to Rhaver.
45
POLITICS AS USUAL, 14,810 GE
Isar Imakin: You have familiarized yourself with our efforts to rebalance the unpredicted perturbations in the Plan caused by the military adventures of Cfoun-the-Stubbom?
Smythos: Barker's analysis, and the recent Cvas update, yes.
imakin: Then you know the details of how the psychohistorical monitoring of the Plan has inadvertently been exposed to Faraway's eyes. Comment.
Smythos: (agitated) The exposure was unnecessary! We... (buzz) ...had the... (unintelligible)...
Imakin: Please confine yourself to the situation as is.
Smythos: (recovering his composure) Well, the Cfoun is dead and the Chancellors of Faraway seem to have remembered their lines after a little bit of prompting from the box. The Plan is already one third complete and apparently successful in spite of all the setbacks. So it’s not surprising that Berker’s elaborate summing confirms that the bounce-back has only reinforced the popular superstitious confidence in the Founder's Plan. The knowledge of monitors isn’t even widespread and, where appreciated, has only reinforced belief in the Plan’s inevitability. In particular the general populace will resist any effort to attack monitors of the Plan whether visible or invisible. Pissing on the gods has never been a popular pastime.
Imakin: And you have also worked through the Cvas Report?
Smythos: I didn’t want to believe a word of it. The devil is in the details. But it’s hard to argue back at the math. Cvas ran a tight committee—for sure he didn’t let his people leave any holes to wiggle out of.
Imakin: If you haven’t yourself found any flaws in the argument,
confine your comments to the Cvas conclusions.
Smythos: Yes, sir. The Cvas group has collected data on the small minority of Faraway citizens who feel threatened by the existence of a monitoring over which they have no control. They don’t see us as allies but as competition, to wit: Faraway sweats to dig the gold; we kibitz and in the endgame walk off with all the loot. This core group of doubters mixes a dangerous composition of attributes: (1) they belong to the old Faraway mentality that produced the Chancellery dictatorships—they don’t care what the general population thinks; they see themselves as intellectuals and scientists duty bound to act by themselves in Faraway’s interest on the basis of their superior knowledge; (2) they have access at least to five leverages to move the government; (3) they contain a critical mass of aligned opinion, therefore they will act; (4) action will bring this small group both power and riches.
Imakin: So how do you assess the mathematical consequences of allowing our exposure to persist?
Smythos: I have to concur with the main conclusion of the Cvas amendation. All the computed courses of action which I have personally checked indicate a rapid deterioration of the Plan because of internal conflict inside the Fellowship, either because: (1) the Overt Arm of the Fellowship, manifested by Faraway, finds and destroys its Covert Arm, manifested by us, or; (2) an open conflict arises between these two aspects of our Fellowship and destroys their current symbiosis. At the ninety-five percent confidence level, both of these alternate historical branches either lead to a Second Empire that repeats the cycle of the First, or to a return of the chaotic galactic conditions extant prior to the First Empire.
Imakin: How then may the original design be restored?
Smythos: Ah, the arguments I’ve been in lately! We have dozens of options, only one, I believe, with good probabilities attached. If all those who now resent the monitoring of their actions by Historical Science were led to believe that all mental meddlers with such po
wer had been destroyed, the galactic situation would restabilize around the parameters of the original Plan, leaving only minor alternations in the probabilities of success. The window of opportunity is short. The apparent destruction of us SuperDangerous Mentalists must occur within twenty-five years...
—From the transcript of the oral exam given by
First Rank Isar Imakin to student Tamic Smythos,
the 18th of Flowers, 12,440 GE
Sometimes those involved in a crisis seek communion with a successful ancestor. A worried Hahukum Konn was listening to a sampling of recordings made by legendary First Rank Imakin during the endgame of the Crisis of the Great Perturbation, fourth-century Founder’s Era—the kind of material seldom referenced even by scholars, but thought provoking. The buzzing soundtrack testified to a time only a century after the Sack when Splendid Wisdom was still in desperate shape and good equipment was not always available. In those dire days a psychohistorian’s options were limited.
Chimes announcing a visitor gently interrupted Konn’s melancholy meditation, then transformed into a voice which added softly, “Nejirt Kambu, by appointment.”
Konn shut off the archive replay and went out to meet Nejirt in the corridor. “So we got you out of bed, did we! I see you had time to dress.”
“What in Spacefire are we doing with a corpse? And what did that crazy Bama mean when he said you think our headless wonder was some kind of psychohistorian?” Kambu stood with feet apart, a little embarrassed that he had dressed so hurriedly in a formal black frock coat and unmatching silver striped zoot pants and was nowhere near a place where he could change.
The Admiral, in an unfashionable sky-purple jumpsuit of the sort that one might find on a naval mechanic, hardly noticed. “Have you had time for breakfast?”
“On a turned stomach? What’s happening? Our sainted Rector Hanis is going to be after your ass with a vengeance. Does he know about the corpse? This is just the excuse he’s been waiting for. And when you go down, we all go down.”
Konn steered his disciple toward the commissary. “You’ve been away. Lots has happened. Hanis has seized the initiative, but I’m still one move ahead of him. And no, he doesn’t know about our corpse yet. Calm down.”
“Messiah!” grumbled Nejirt, using an expression he had picked up on Rith, but he accepted the croissant and mug of steaming lift which Konn handed him after pushing him down into a seat.
“Has anyone told you about Eron Osa yet?”
Nejirt gazed up at the Admiral. “I see you’ve waited until I was seated before delivering the worst news. What could be worse than a corpse?”
Konn’s old eyes crinkled. “Where should I start?”
“Eron Osa, eh? That egotistical little ingrate. Has he been trying to get you into trouble with Hanis?”
“Worse. He got himself into trouble with Hanis, who is now poised to use Eron’s gaffe to dispose of me because I was his sponsor.”
“Ridiculous. Eron walked out on you five years ago.” “Major gaffes have an illuminating way of casting shadows.”
“What did he do?”
“Self-published his mathematical dabblings.”
“Big deal. The journals publish a lot of pimples on the Founder’s Nose.”
“You don’t understand. Eron published in the public archives.”
Nejirt choked on his croissant. “That’s illegal,” he said with awe.
Konn nodded negatively. “Not illegal. It’s just never been done. One doesn’t have to make the unthinkable an illegal act.”
“Eron never struck me as suicidal. What did he publish? Is it still up?”
“Hanis had it deleted within the watch.”
“Let me have a copy. I’m fascinated.”
“I’ve never seen a copy. Hanis had it destroyed. Entropy happens.”
Nejirt sipped on his drink. “So the little shit must be in prison. Would it be too dangerous for me to drop by and visit him? We could have a discreet chat—unobtrusive suppressors and all that. I’m curious.”
“Eron can tell you nothing. He’s free. Hanis also destroyed his fam.”
“Slow down! The Rector can’t legally do that without consulting you!”
“He did consult me; I was a judge at Eron’s trial.”
“And you agreed?” Nejirt was appalled. “I don’t think I like you anymore.”
“Afraid for your own fam, are you? Me, too. Recall my limits. Hanis is, after all, Rector. We mustn’t confuse morality with strategy. To take a grievous loss where one is weak may create a fallback position from which one can counterattack in force.”
“The Admiral of Platitudes strikes again.”
“Watch your tongue, boy. I have an immediate job for you requiring extreme diplomacy. While we go down to the lab where I can tell you more bad news, you can update me on astrology.”
They left the commissary, arguing, Nejirt’s mouth full of croissant, a mug of half-finished lift in his hand. “How can I tell you about astrology when you’ve just promoted our headless astrologer to the status of psychohistorical prognosticator?”
At the lab Konn showed his associate the recordings of some very strange signals. “I didn’t get my hands on these until the trial. Bama’s boys cleaned them up for me. I’ve got better samples than Hanis.”
“In code? Unbreakable?”
“Yes. But very economical.” The Admiral was thoughtful. “It can’t carry much information.”
“That’s a very short burst. It would be invisible inside all the other signals floating around. It looks to me like only a precoded receiver could pick it up. They are from Eron? He must have been under very close observation. He’s talking to who?”
“You’re ahead of my story. Right after the publication fiasco, the Lyceum Police, who happen to be directly under the command of the Rector, took Eron in for heavy questioning, then put him under house arrest and observation while Hanis decided what to do with him. Meanwhile this signal came flying out of Eron’s fam. He has been a low-power pulse broadcaster all the time we’ve known him.”
“Oh, shit!” Nejirt took a very intense second look at the recording.
“That’s what Hanis said. But before Hanis was informed, someone tried to contact Eron by Personal Capsule, obviously the person who received the burst. Eron never got the message. Hanis still doesn’t know about it. I intercepted the message; my police are better than the Lyceum Police—I haven’t been topping off Bama’s budget for the last twenty years for nothing.”
“You can read someone else’s Personal Capsule?” asked Nejirt in awe.
“No. Even Bama is not that good. But interception is another matter if you are looking in the right place. We’ll never know what it said because it self-destructed when it wasn’t delivered on time. But we got a lead on where it came from.”
“Our headless corpse?”
“Yeah. Bad luck there. I really need to get my hands on his fam. A fam can’t just walk away from a corpse.”
“How are you going to cross-examine a ghoul? All of its coding intermesh is in a dead man’s head. Bama’s apparatus is pretty slick but half of a terabyte of password is no password at all.”
“I’m interested in the fam’s make. First I want to compare it with Eron’s fam, which was a very unusual piece of hardware.” A tri-dim holo appeared above the desk. It could be sliced or peeled in a variety of ways. “Take a look at these nondestructive scans. I got these images from the trial evidence. He had this fam since he was about three-years-old.”
The specs were listed and Nejirt scrolled through them casually. “A Faraway design. Limited production. Recalled due to defects.”
“Very suspicious,” said the old paranoid. “The outfit who made them went out of business. I don’t have Faraway in my bad-boy book, but they were always producing talented maniacs, and Faraway was once the most deadly enemy of the Pscholars. Eron attended school there; Space alone knows what happened to him as a student. Look.” He pointed to some
faint spots. “I’m no fam techie but I’ve been briefed on this one by an expert. Those are ‘hooks,’ ten times more than normal. Eron’s fam was built to take upgrade add-ons, but the architecture is evidently totally nonstandard. You couldn’t find an upgrade that would work with it. Nevertheless it’s been custom upgraded.”
“Very immoral.”
“Nejirt, you prude; you started out life with a top-of-the-line fam, full featured. Some of our students aren’t so lucky. It’s not upgrade plug-ins that worry me, it’s surgery.”
“Any sign of surgery here?”
“Only indirectly. If we could see it, the fam would be crippled, and Eron was no cripple.”
“A transponder implies surgery,” Nejirt growled.
“Indeed it does.” The Admiral peeled away different layers of the image. “Nobody would have noticed it if we didn’t know what we were looking for. There it is. Tiny, eh? Minimalist design. Can’t be very powerful. It only taps into his eyes. It seems to have its own visual processor.” Konn did a zoom and a cube rose out of the image. He pointed by changing the color of whatever part he wanted to emphasize. “See that? The fam itself has no input into the transponder. Eron would not have been aware that it existed. He couldn’t have controlled it if he wanted to. Whoever put that transponder into his fam didn’t trust him. Of course, that way he would pass all of our loyalty tests; we can’t lie about what we don’t know, can we?”
“Do you think he was loyal?”
“Oh, absolutely. He was trying to warn me when we broke up.”
“About what?”
“Don’t I wish I knew. When you are as old as I am, you develop a very efficient filing system. Garbage bypasses throughput on the way out. I remember he was very excited. Manic. Students get that way when they have been brooding too long by themselves and an idea takes over their mind and pushes out all reason. He had—to use his words—discovered that we were in the middle of some vast psychohistorical crisis that only he and the little mnemoni-fier in his room knew about. I tried to bring him down to reason. But it didn’t matter that the whole of the star-spanning apparatus of psychohistorical machinery saw nothing. He saw.”
Psychohistorical Crisis Page 59