Psychohistorical Crisis

by Unknown Author

  Eron didn’t know whether it was possible to make a nonviolent transition between these two end states. However, there wasn’t any reason he couldn’t try out different methods of transition on the Fellowship’s gigantic psychohistorical model using current data. The Founder’s mathematics was restricted to the conditions which led to state (1), but Eron had made the generalizations necessary to allow psychohistory to operate in state (1) or (2) or any state in between.

  Since his revised model treated all the conditions leading up to state (1) in essentially the same way as did the Founder’s math, he expected that when he ran his revised model with real-life input he would get the same output as everyone else was getting: a stable Galaxy with minor problems needing corrective action, a long-term prognosis of continued stability with a slow tendency toward stagnation that wouldn’t become a critical problem for centuries, if ever. First Rank Hanis already had a solution for that in the works.

  What he got was something very discouraging: a Galaxy at the cusp point of a historical crisis that dropped off into a chaos with characteristics that looked very much like an Interregnum. That was impossible. That was in the category of predicting that the next time he saw Konn, the Admiral would have blue skin, four arms, and an elephant snout. The math must be wrong. What was there to say but to quote Planck: “Man errs as long as he strives.” Back to scratch. Again. What a downer!

  For a month after that he worked at dissecting his model to find the flaw. It couldn’t be the logic of the program, because the compiler was mercifully silent. The flaw must be in his assumptions, or in his iterative methods, or in some ballooning error he had missed. But he couldn’t find it. The dilemma was driving him crazy! He was too proud to take the mess to Konn. It was too embarrassing.

  Yorick gave him the answer, breaking a long silence. Where did his revamped model break down? Try the past!

  So, expecting the worst, he input the conditions of the last century into his model. It worked perfectly. Why should he be so stunned at that? A month ago he had expected it to work perfectly, had thought of his creation that it was the marvel of the millennium. With the utmost caution he stepped his simulacrum forward, a year at a time, simultaneously generating a report of the differences between his model and the standard model. They were minimal—except perhaps in Konn’s blue regions.

  But then, as he approached the present, the slopes of the singularity began to appear.

  And this time the reason was obvious. The wall of secrecy that the Pscholars had built around their methodology of prediction was breaking down. Bits and pieces of high-grade predicting were appearing here and there in the oddest of places. In spite of the general decline in mathematical scholarship under the Pscholars, the Pscholars were, occasionally, being counter-predicted! It was going to get worse. Much worse. Quickly.

  Nor was this outcome a future danger. Twenty percent of the indicators had already crossed the topozone. But because it was a topozone crossing, the error bars around the time determiners were large. Eron couldn’t predict the moment of eruption—but the marble was sitting at the top of the hill, and the slightest disturbance... Eron didn’t have time to tidy up his thesis. Urgency and tidiness don’t go together; he’d have to tell Konn right away.

  That very hour Eron vibro-cleaned his teeth, took the trouble to have his hair cut, put on a pair of socks, both black, had his manufacturum weave a brand-new businesslike outfit, donned it, and rushed back to the Lyceum to call on the Admiral. Thank Space he worked for the Pscholar who was certainly the greatest psychohistorian since the Founder and certainly the Galaxy’s finest trouble-sniffer.

  Hahukum Konn listened, with great patience, to his student’s babble. He studied the collection of unorganized papers Eron brought him and the hasty scratch work. He shared visuals with Eron as Eron put on an amazing display of apocalypse. Carefully the old Master prepared his reply, while pondering the documentation, saying nothing until Eron ran down and fell silent, waiting. “Hmmm. Here’s an error you’ll have to fix. A Boltok oversum can’t be diminutive in these particular circumstances. You’ll have to—”

  “I know; I know, but that doesn’t change anything. I—”

  “Eron, my son. You’ve been working too hard. Take a vacation. This is an interesting hypothesis”—meaning it was wrong—“but you’ve gone at it with a machete. I’d go back and take it from the point where you have, rather arbitrarily ..

  It occurred to Eron that the Admiral hadn’t followed his argument. He began again from the beginning. The Admiral continued to listen, this time not so patiently—he had a way of brushing the dust off his braid when he had gone beyond his boundary of tolerance. Eventually he stopped the exposition and began a ruthless deconstruction of Eron’s work. And Eron began to understand: the Admiral was committed to his own interpretation of the universe, and nothing else qualified as real. How many times in Eron’s life had he collided with that wall? He felt nine years old again, back in that stupid school on Agander with Professor... ? He was ready to sass the Admiral, get himself expelled from the Lyceum, maybe thrown off Splendid

  Wisdom. Old habits die hard. But new habits can come into play, too. He had zenoli training. Never attack an opponent’s strongest position.

  “Sir! I think you’ve given me enough pointers for a starter. I’ll do a thorough workover.” He had no intention of doing a workover. “The results were a little strange and maybe I got overexcited.” This was exactly what the Admiral had been hoping to hear; he smiled and nodded.

  Eron despaired at this agreement—that his teacher didn’t react to such a retreat, didn’t grab him and make him sit down again, didn’t beg him to continue his penetrating line of reasoning, was confirmation that he had scouted well past the stars of the Admiral’s farthest picket ship. Eron was fighting beyond the pale and the Admiral wasn’t bold enough to follow. It was a shock.

  They parted on good terms. Eron went home and slept right through three watches. He got up, trimmed his plants, wolfed down a huge supper, and paced. Of course the Galaxy was right on top of a major crisis if the greatest mind that the Pscholars had produced couldn’t tell his toes from the Founder’s Nose! Since the beginning of time men had been clobbered when they let themselves be blinded by an old false assumption that had been around so long it was the only comfortable way to think. Even the Admiral! Even the Admiral who never hesitated to twist his wit in the guts of a faint-hearted Pscholar! Eron felt strangely betrayed.

  Eventually he went drinking at the Teaser’s Bistro. Nothing else to do! It was early. Only a couple of students sat in the comer, cramming some course. Rigone came over and sat down, probably sensing Eron’s depression. Because Eron was depressed he began to mumble about mankind’s fidelity to outmoded ideas. That reminded Rigone of an ancient philosophy book he had been reading from pre-First Empire times whose metaphysics had propelled the Rismall-ians into two centuries of fatal warfare.

  In reply Eron glumly related a story from the Rithian mythology about how the folk hero Galileo Galilei took up a valiant crusade to enlist his Church in the reasoned creation of a new cosmology, knowing that his beloved Church would fall into oblivion without it, and how he had failed— his books burned, himself forced by the Inquisition to recant, on his knees, begging not to be tortured. “... and I held and still hold Ptolemy’s opinion—that the earth is motionless and that the sun moves... I abjure, curse, and detest the said errors and heresies... contrary to the Holy Church, and I swear that I will nevermore in future say or assert anything ... which will give rise to suspicion of... and if I know any heretic or anyone suspected of heresy, I will denounce him to this Holy Office.” It was with this certainty in a truth that need not be searched out, certainty that faith could be forced, and certainty that the threat of torture would make men holy that the Church launched the Thirty Years War to extinguish all dissent.

  Rigone listened. He added to the conversation a disparaging comment about the Mithraic Priesthood’s insistence on
loyalty to the king. It did not matter that he had the wrong religion. Eron didn’t bother to correct him; Rigone never would be able to tell the difference between any of the dead Rithian religions, whether they nailed their kings to a cross or ate hearts to propitiate the gods.

  Alone again, defiant, Eron stared at a tempting blank space on the tabletop between a love ditty and a witticism which suggested that it was good policy to love one’s enemies in case one’s friends turned out to be bastards. Eron took out his little metricator. With the beam on high he burned an Italian phrase into the available space: “Eppur si muove!” which in galactic translated to something like Nevertheless, it moves. Meaning Rith. Galileo Galilei may or may not have muttered that final judgment on the relevance of Catholic philosophy, but he certainly thought it for his remaining eight years of life under arrest in his villa at Arcetri.

  Staring at that phrase, Eron resolved to leave Hahukum Konn and to work for First Rank Jars Hanis on the Rector’s monumental project. A New Renaissance. Good. He could deal with that. And meanwhile he would polish his thesis until it gleamed so brightly that no psychohistorian, no matter how blockheaded, could deny its validity.

  He felt the pride of Kepler: “It is not eighteen months since the unveiled sun burst upon me. Nothing holds me; I will indulge my sacred joy!” And the quieter pride of Planck: “ .. at the end of all his criss-cross journeys, he at last accomplished at least one step which was conclusively nearer the truth ”

  47

  A HALF-REMEMBERED FRIEND LOADS OFF TWO HOT PROPERTIES, 14,810 GE

  At the time of the predatory Cainali Invasions after the Sack we Scavs were of no great force on Splendid Wisdom, being simple survivalist scavengers amid the ruins of a planet whose population had been decimated from five hundred billion down to a starving fifty billion. We lived by selling layabout wealth to off-planet merchants with a fleet of relic jumpships, none of which survived the final siege. Such havoc was done to our economic engine by the amalgamation of mercenaries hired by the Cainali Thronedom that a confederation of Scavs under Leoin Half nose...

  An alliance between Half nose and the beleaguered Pscholars of the still-functioning Imperial Lyceum proved fruitful. The Pscholars maintained, for their own secret purpose, remnant elements of the Light Imperial Couriers and were the only reliable source of information about political intrigue beyond the boundaries of Imperials. With this information and their strategic genius they were always able to ferret out the weaknesses of the Thronedom to the benefit of Scav survival.

  In turn we provided the Pscholars with rotating hideaways, a military guard, technical assistance, and a fount of scarce supply... The legacy of this alliance...

  Make no mistake: in these years of the Second Empire the Pscholars see us as petty criminals and tolerate us only because we...

  —From the 112th Report of the Cabal of the Brood of Halfnose

  After sleeping on his failed pursuit of the Frightfulperson. Eron Osa set out on the 17th watch of Fennel for the Corridor of the Olibanum, in search of the half-remembered

  Rigone.-He wandered a devious path, all the while struggling with the subvocal commands that made his antique map device obey him. The map proved to be primitive but adequate. It didn’t draw through walls or play with tri-dim images, understanding only addresses. But when properly assuaged, it became quite good at suggesting alternate routes. It painted arrows on his vision and properly labeled corridors and pod stations in large readable retinal type.

  He had donned his general-issue fam but, heeding Konn’s advice, left it inactive. He raged for the analytic powers of his destroyed fam at every wrong turn. He missed die ease of visual direction that came through the simplest of fams. He got lost and felt stupid. Once when staring up at a great heat pipe that rose through tiers of shops, a woman, thinking him demented, directed him to a free kitchen. He just laughed and thanked her. Hanis had honored him with Rank Seven status and then demoted him to this! But he knew he was recovering. For millions of years his wetware had been designed to walk around brain damage, and it was beginning to bypass the loops which had once gone through his fam—at* vastly reduced intellectual power.

  Though he had learned most of his map reader’s idiosyncrasies, he was never able to discover how to block its ebullient tourist commentaries. After the initial annoyance, he even came to enjoy the huckstering—too much of his life had been spent hurrying around the wealth of astonishments that lay all about him. He became again the child who longed for waterfalls that fell thirty stories through the wild crystalline shapes of an artist’s dreams. When the map suggested the Valley of Galactic Seas, and he found out that it was only a pod’s short ride from the Olibanum, he was tempted to take the detour... but business first.

  From a high-ceilinged pod station with ornate backlit windows that illustrated galactic wonders in all shades of cobalt blue, he walked out onto the Olibanum—and memories flooded his mind. Directly in front of him was the little cabaret where his confrères had solved the problems of the universe over lunch and maybe laid the odd minor love sorrow to rest, all in the long hours before the evening show began. Strange, he could remember the conversations and the passion but not what they were about. Perhaps such details he had left to his fam. The cabaret’s clientèle had changed— older now, some sightseers, a group of tourists. The students were gone, or maybe only tied up in class. The show this evening was titled “The Blue Tyrantiles of Singdom.”

  Up and down the corridor, bistros were scattered everywhere among the entertainment come ons and the marvels and the mausoleums of popular culture. He paused. Even with all the changes he knew exactly where the Teaser’s Bistro was: walk to the Deep Shaft and around its great promenade, and then, two blocks farther, was a little alley...

  Eron was sure that he placed a Rigone from his student years, a beefy man older than his student associates, a blatant Scav, tattooed on his face, a boisterous reveler who could dance with iron legs and flip himself through loops if the music touched him, a man who couldn’t be bought, who liked to cavort more than he liked to work. He’d turn down your most abject request with a grin—but if you were his friend he had miraculous ways of upgrading your fam.

  Rigone used parts that couldn’t have been built by any manufacturum; from where in space he got them, the Galaxy only knew. He could bypass protocols seamlessly. He could add thought processes to a fam that the best students vied for. He never pretended to be legal, yet the police were unwilling to touch him. An inconsistent devil, a cruel one if he thought you were imposing upon him, Rigone just laughed at you if you did him a favor expecting a return on your investment.

  But the man was so charismatic that Eron could not remember if he had only admired the man from a distance or been his personal friend. Rigone’s magnitude of character erased the content in which it lived.

  As much as this had been his element, Eron Osa felt out of place once he entered the Teaser’s. He kept to a table by himself, afraid to enter conversations without a fam that would give him instant access to a quip that would outwit his challenger. There were hand-signals by which a wall-spy would take his order, but he didn’t order and finally a lean waiter approached him tentatively.

  “Are you all right, sir?”

  “Thinking.” Eron smiled wanly. “Haven’t been here for a while. Do you still carry the Gorgizon?”

  “Gang-hu!” The waiter grinned, giving the Old Navy flathanded salute.

  Vivid memories came in spots. That had always been his order, Gorgizon. It was an obscure Imperial Navy drink, milky and thick, booting its imbiber into a long high-energy drive. The bastard civilianized version contained a dram of sweet liqueur. It had taken him through many an exam.

  But it was Rigone who appeared from a back room and picked up the drink from the bar. He held it as his own and talked his way down the row of tables, ruffling heads with his free hand, exchanging affectionate insults, staying conversations in midstream till he was past.

  He pa
used at Eron’s table, as if it were a simple visit on his rounds, plunked down the drink, and made himself comfortable. “Ah, the prodigy is back.”

  “I’m on vacation,” said Eron, staring at the tattooed face of the Scav in fascination.

  Rigone was grinning. “As if you ever took out time from your permanent vacation to work up a lather. Drink up.” He nudged the mug. “A special on the house.” His eyes glinted at the word “special” and locked onto Eron’s with a commanding insistence, waiting.

  Eron sipped a taste. The drink was milky white—but no Gorgizon—a different brew with a different kick. His instinct was to resist it. He hesitated but Rigone’s gaze did not falter until he took a good first gulp. Then Rigone’s stare relaxed.

  ‘‘Well—so you’re back.” It was a statement that demanded an answer.

  “Just cruising.” Eron was no longer comfortable. “Taking it easy.” The drink had a quick-acting knifelike urgency to it, moving his mind somewhere in a rush. Danger. “Cruising. Navigating without charts .” Did he really trust this man?

  “No, no,” said Rigone. “I detect the nervous shiftiness of a man on the make. There’s an aura of quiet desperation about you. You’re in a hurry for your good time.”

  Eron’s mental machinery was racing. Slow down. “I’m... not... in a hurry.”

  Rigone took his arm in an iron grip, squeezing, saying: You’re coming with me now. He let go in a gesture that added: but not by force. The wrinkles about his intense eyes told of an old friendship that was not going to give Eron any choice. “I know your tastes, aristo Osa. It is our business to know our clientèle. That allows us to make fast deals at the Teaser’s. It so happens that right now I have just the girl for you. She’s thirteen, new to the place and looking for adventure. A brash kid. You have just the level of maturity she needs to keep her under control. And she has just the right level of insouciance not to know that the world is a dangerous place—or she wouldn’t be upstairs right now, snoozing in my bedroom. I want you to meet her.” He stood up.