Psychohistorical Crisis

by Unknown Author

  At her father’s suggestion Petunia returned from an excursion to one of their caches with an astrologer’s jade ovoid. “Daddy’s compliments.” She handed it to Eron. He recog-

  nized the Coron’s Egg and, because motor memory was mostly a function of wetware, remembered the activation sequence. But it was Petunia who took his hand and proudly showed him how to access the new Predictor Level. “Every time I wanted to play with my Daddy, he was working on that,” she said somewhat petulantly.

  It was an unauthorized library of psychohistorical functions ... hidden in an astrologer’s piece of flim-flam. In that moment of profound epiphany Eron Osa realized that he had been right—the Fellowship’s methodical secrecy had created a counterculture of rebel psychohistorians working in self-enforced darkness. This would be only one manifestation. Theory said there would be several hundred out there around the stars, covering all ranges of aptitude.

  “Are you a psychohistorian?” he asked his ghoul.

  We call ourselves Smythosiansy after Tamic Smythos who was one of the fifty martyrs.

  “How many of these devices exist?”

  There are millions out there in the Galaxy, but the latest version which goes to the seventh level has only been in production for a few months. I don't know how many. I'm not in charge of distribution.

  “Your Smythosians have been pushing for a crisis?”

  Yes. Our extrapolation gives us seventy to eighty years to prepare.

  “You’re extrapolation is wrong. The psychohistorical crisis is happening right now. Splendid Wisdom has passed through a critical topozone boundary and the effect will shudder to the ends of the Galaxy within months. I think I studied under the Galaxy’s finest topozone analyst, but he was working with classical theory and missed this crisis by a league. It’s now,” Eron repeated.

  How do you know?

  That sounded like Murek Kapor’s old challenge to his know-it-all student. Eron laughed. “I was there. I saw this big huge rock standing on a tiny cup and I wondered why it didn’t fall over—so I touched it with my thumb. It fell over. Much to my chagrin. Actually, there are already two major groups here on Splendid Wisdom alone, both of whom know psychohistory very well and both of whom have been putting their weight behind different visions of mankind’s future, subtly opposing each other—so they will both fail. Rector Jars Hanis leads the largest faction, followed by the self-styled Admiral Hahukum Konn. I have talked with Konn once since Hanis so ruthlessly disposed of me, and it is my assessment that in the wake of my trial he no longer feels safe. Most of the lesser Pscholars aren’t even aware that the two major factions are, in effect, counter-predicting each other. In about a month they’ll be wishing that they lived in a simpler classical universe. They won’t be able to say that the Founder didn’t warn them. The classical universe, in essence, assumes the existence of only one psychohistorian. Yours is a third group. I predict hundreds of others.”

  That is impossible. So much counter-prediction would have destroyed the Fellowship long ago.

  Eron smiled. “How willing were you to stand behind a future for the Ulmat Constellation that went against the Master Plan?”

  We weren’t ready to be discovered.

  “You’re not ready now. You just suggested that you need seventy or eighty more years. The ability to predict is only half of the equation. The power to see your prediction to fruition is the other half. If my predictor is bigger than your predictor, I win.”

  And you? Do you see a future?

  “A topozone is a very dark place mathematically. A marble on a smooth hill can predict its future—as long as it isn’t sitting exactly at the top of the hill. I’m as blind as you, my friend. The old uncrippled me might have seen something.”

  Eron had not mentioned his coming rendezvous with the irregulars of the Regulation at an Orelian masked ball, but, since the ghoul in his fam would be coming along for the ride, it felt it only fair to tell Scogil. An upset Scogil promptly warned him against attending any such clandestine caucus. Kikaju Jama or his Regulation be damned! Involvement had already cost him his organic life and put his daughter in grave danger for no real chance of gain. In the fury following his warning Scogil laid out a detailed plan for escaping the planet with Petunia. There was a Fortress he had in mind which would be safe for Eron and where his talents would be useful. Murek Kapor again. His plan had all the sound of an order.

  It was a delicate situation. Scogil could not, of course, order him around. If it came to a clash of wills, Eron could simply stop communicating and permit his growing mind to overwrite Scogil’s. But the daughter was a different matter. Scogil’s fam carried illegal built-in devices which no one but a three-year-old (or a trusting husband) would accept. Eron was slaved to Petunia as much as if he were one of Cloun-the-Stubbom’s puppets.

  Diplomacy was in order.

  He had no way of knowing which course of action was best in terms of the greater politics. Neither did Scogil. Ironically the next step in this galactic saga would be determined entirely by trivial personal desires. Scogil was motivated by a need to protect his daughter. Eron was still fascinated by an encounter with the Frightfulperson who had saved his life’s work—and he fully intended to make contact with her again.

  Osa prudently investigated the Orelians of which he had no knowledge. Old when Imperialis was an unexplored border system, Orelia was ancient, its denizens of three airless worlds necessarily master builders of sprawling airtight cities. The latter-day Orelians of Splendid Wisdom weren’t really Orelians anymore; they were the descendants of an imported construction crew who had stayed on after the great rebuilding—nostalgic in their lingering memory of a distant home’s wild carnival. They were harmlessly apolitical and glad to let moneyed fun-loving non-Orelians join their masked revelry. The Regulation must be using them as a cover.

  By very subtly biasing Scogil’s conversations with Petunia he built up her confidence and simultaneously left her slightly antagonized by her father’s lack of faith in her ability to handle danger. She was an apprentice agent of the Oversee and had done very well on her own under fire and had saved her daddy’s ghoul, thank you. This was the adventure of her life. And so, much to Eron’s relief, this capricious daughter took sides against her father. Nevertheless for diplomacy’s sake, Eron humored every one of his ghoul’s exaggerated fears.

  He sent Petunia on a sleepover trip to pick up supplies from an arms cache known to her daddy—illegal weapons that didn’t trigger a police report when activated, very illegal slap-on explosives, plus some antique personal force-shields of a pirated Faraway design and other doodads. She also acquired an edition of the zenoli manuals for burst loading. Eron chose from them the martial utilities he thought he might need, but only the ones his organic mind had once practiced with diligence.

  Eron was eager to spread the message of his thesis, subver-sively if that was the only vehicle of expression that the Fellowship would allow. He was still angry at Jars. He and Petunia made the trip ten watches early and settled in at a local faceless hotel. That gave Eron enough time to case the locale, even die layout of the Orelians’ hall in the guise of a potential renter, and to appease Scogil by attending to all possible precautions.

  At the hour of the ball, Petunia was stationed at a safe distance, by Scogil’s insistence, her duty to monitor the movements of the Helmarian fam. If tilings went awry, she had her instructions and a ticket off planet arranged by one of Scogil’s fake identities. She was enjoying her role.

  Brazenly Eron arrived by pod at the front entrance, his illegal kick and explosives well hidden in his costume. Inside, the pillared hall of many chambers and stairwells was done in gold leaf and inlay. The disguises were everywhere. He found himself eagerly looking for that blue scaled mask with crocodile teeth and plumes—the unnamed Fright-fulperson he couldn’t resist even though she might place his life in danger.

  But first, in a nondescript mask of his own design, cognizant of his ghoul’s stem warni
ngs, he checked out the exits of three stories of the hall, forty in all, for possible newly installed obstructions. This was not a place meant to be easily guarded. That was good. The exits led from stairways or gardens, from an administrative corridor or a servant’s chute or a supply tunnel. He left unobtrusive shaped charges primed to open locked exits and hid sensors that had been his favorite tool of surprise during the wild zenoli military games at Asinia. He programmed his fam to optimize a retreat under any circumstance—Scogil being too slow and blind to be trusted with such an enterprise. A pod, illegally brainwashed by Petunia, sat waiting at a siding in charter mode.

  These precautions made him wonder at his daring, but Eron Osa was aware that vanity disparaged danger. He was vain. He was proud. Here were men interested in his psychohistorical research after years of working alone! He had become ebulliently enthusiastic for his old cause. Pleasing a luminary like Jars Hanis was no longer a priority. Scogil’s dire warnings did not dampen his zeal. He wriggled his nose at common sense.

  And love! At the bottom of a flared stairwell he spotted the crocodile teeth of his Frightfulperson in her simple gown. He turned immediately into an elegant comfort room to change into his black-furred, trihomed, red-eyed mask. Perhaps this time, with fam utilities to assist him, he wouldn’t make such a damn fool of himself in her delightful presence!

  Before he could descend the stairs, two gentle fingers and a thumb grasped his wrist. They belonged to a coiffured man of elaborate costume and ebony mechanical mask able to mock all human expressions grotesquely. “Ah, our esteemed speaker for the evening,” said a voice from out of a rhapsodic smile. “You mimic well the Orelian verve.”

  “Have we been introduced?”

  “No, it is in the nature of my associates to remain invisible, but my elegance betrays me as a Hyperlord. You may address me thus.”

  “I was to contact—”

  “No, I am your contact.” The gentle pull of his three-pointed grip steered Eron away from the stairs toward the banquet tables. “I have a special interest in your presence. The impetuous mermaid of the Calmer Sea can keep her salty juice in check. You are here by my invitation. But first, the food.”

  The tables were covered with exquisite bowls of delicacies, both imported and manufactured, steaming pots with lids and ladles, breads, flowering vines for decoration. A man beside Eron, defaced by a huge papier-mache nose, poured himself soup. They took their food to a dim raised alcove with a convenient teapoy that supplied hot drinks and a stand for their plates.

  While Eron kept an eye cocked for his Frightfiilperson, the Hyperlord ate with restrained gusto. “You’re—shall I say the word—a psychohistorian? A rebel on the run?” These were rhetorical questions because the Lord at once produced from his purse a jade ovoid with the five-fingered key pattern that Petunia favored. “This is a bauble I was sold—quite expensive. It casts stars and astrological charts and other such arcane drivel. I was told confidentially that it contains a complete working model of the Founder’s Prime Radiant. But my peddler disappeared with my credits before giving me the codes. Perhaps you have the codes? Or,” he added wryly, “perhaps you can tell me if I am a naive collector of psy-chohistorical memorabilia who has been grievously duped?”

  Eron took the ovoid in his left hand and let his mind spell out a rapid message to his blind companion. While he meditated upon the jade, he received his reply. You are talking to Hyperlord Kikaju Jama, He is a danger to you. Leave this place immediately, I was only able to work with one of his motley collection of mathists before the fracas with you interfered, He may be here. Cingal Svene. Avoid him. I was due to meet with Jama the same day the police took to my trail I’m sure the police made the connection. I repeat, assume that Jama is under police surveillance.

  Eron slipped the smooth ovoid back into the Hyperlord’s hand. “I'll give you a demonstration after my talk. It is a genuine Prime Radiant, but I warn you, it is a thing difficult even for a good mathematician to use and read.”

  The Hyperlord’s mechanical black mask twisted into a triumphant grimace. “I have the mathists who can use it once you show them how. They are all here to listen to your presentation.”

  Two hands took two of his three horns from behind. “We meet again,” said the familiar voice. When he looked up he saw the smile of broad lips beneath the crocodile teeth and plumes. The Frightfulperson of his dreams.

  Homed man and crocodile woman wandered back together toward the meeting chamber. His eyes were alert. A sloping floor. Two exits at the top. Two exits at the bottom on each side of the podium. A small holobeam room behind the podium. “Let’s walk while we wait for our audience. I’d like to thank you in private for salvaging my life’s work.” He found the wall behind the holobeam room and placed a wall-breaker without her knowing what he was doing. One could always distract the eyes with pleasant chitchat. A couple of sensor drops later, he wrapped a bejeweled belt around her waist. It was a personal forcefield generator built somewhere in the Thousand Suns Beyond the Helmar Rift, probably in imitation of an old Periphery design pioneered during the Interregnum, more elaborately disguised than the belt he wore to hold up the pants of his own costume. She didn’t have to know; he could activate her defenses at any time. “Thank you. And you don’t even know my name.”

  “Your Hyperlord friend called you a Mermaid of the Calmer Sea.”

  “I’m half fish, half fowl to him. You may call me Otaria.” “I wasn’t certain I’d be here. I’m not sure of your security.” That wasn’t true. Scogil wasn’t sure of the security. “If I suddenly decide to move fast, it will be for a good reason. Follow me instantly.”

  “Our security is the best. The Hyperlord has been in this business a long time.”

  “But you trusted me?”

  “You’re desperate, like we are,” she said.

  “I don’t understand your desperation.”

  She smiled and, in the lonely corridor, tipped up her crocodile teeth so that he could see her face. “It’s an intellectual desperation. That can be as terrible as not having a fam or a house or food or air. I notice you have a new fam.”

  “Black market. I like its math utilities.”

  “You’re more sure of yourself.”

  “Of course. I have a fam.”

  While they walked back to the meeting, his fam read the scattered sensors. Nothing. Scogil was probably sweating in his dungeon for naught. He sent a reassuring message through to his alter ego.

  Ushers were already at the entrances. Snooper dampers were in place. The black-masked Hyperlord brought the meeting to order and was enthusiastic in his sedition. He introduced Eron Osa as the prophet of a New Interregnum, the real one, the one that the Founder had delayed.

  It wasn’t that simple. But Eron spoke anyway. He dispensed with his trihomed mask. He was here as Eron Osa. His specialty was the historical forces that led to instability—and unpredictable events.

  He sketched for them the undulating topozones of historical phase space and how their multidimensional surfaces were calculated. He stressed the perturbations that elitist secrecy placed upon the topozone parameters. A topozone’s surface was the boundary between stability and chaos. While measurable social vectors remained inside their topozones, the sweep of the future could be foretold. But once these parameters moved across their abstract confines in any region of the Galaxy, the future became uncertain for that locale. Then, like wildfire, unchecked chaos could rage in a sudden conflagration, perhaps across the Galaxy—or die out for no apparent cause.

  Psychohistorians were like firefighters. They could hose down areas, set standards and regulations, insure that fire never started. But there was danger in never having a fire. Flammables accumulated; when they went, whole regions went with them in an inferno at the whim of the wind. Stasis was the danger. Deadwood accumulated during stasis. Stable topozones collapsed in upon stasis like a wet forest drying out under months of sun.

  Precise psychohistorical monitoring, with
a single future as the goal, a Plan, could drive the social parameters safely inward from the chaos-touching boundaries of the historical topozone, but like a single kind of weather, such a relentless sun might dry out the forest and set the stage for a topozone collapse, followed by a fire, a conflagration, an interregnum. Eron detailed why no monolithic organization with a single mind could easily plan a history to suit everyone. The unsatisfied gathered slowly in the byways, spiritually dying, finally to become tinder, finally to produce secretly their own psychohistorians in an attempt to control their own future.

  The Founder faced such a situation. The stasis of the First Empire had become so great that unpredictable historical chaos could be its only consequence. His best mathematics was blinded by turbulent visions of fire. He could not predict into the Interregnum. All he could do was find a distant firebreak, where the stars were thin, and set up a race of firemen who could build around themselves an expanding topozone of stability that slowly moved out to control the flames and replant the ashes. Inside that topozone the Founder could predict

  Now conditions were different. Psychohistorical monitoring, itself, in the absence of psychohistorical knowledge, was creating the stasis. Eron had difficulty explaining this thesis to an audience composed of illiterates who had been forbidden to learn the elements of social prediction lest chaos prevail. He had to fall back on analogy.

  Osa asked his masked group to consider a murderer swinging an ax at the head of his victim.

  The victim judges the trajectory of the ax and predicts that it will divide his skull. He ducks. This falsifies his prediction, thus proving that predicting is a waste of effort, right? Eron noted that his new methods of Arekean iteration converged on a future that was acceptable to all predictors, disadvantaging only those who refused to predict. No matter how many predictors there were, no predictor could wield an advantage over any other predictor. He characterized this kind of iteration as the mathematics of negotiation.