by David Brin
With some reluctance, but driven by curiosity, Hari followed to get a better look. Many of the images he glimpsed had no meaning to him--mysterious objects posed against unknown backgrounds. A few leaped out with sudden familiarity from his recent studies in the little history primer. The pyramids of Egypt, he recognized at once. Others were flat portraits of ancient people and places. Hari knew that prehistoric peoples assigned great importance to such images, created by daubing a cloth surface with smears of natural pigment. Gornon Vlimt also seemed to vest these images with great value, though Hari found them surreal and strange.
Peering at a nearby set of screens, Sybyl gushed over a different panorama, featuring examples of science and technology.
“Of course much of this stuff is pretty crude,” she conceded. “After all, we’ve had twenty millennia to refine the rough edges through trial and error. But the basic theories have changed surprisingly little. And some of the forgotten material is brilliant! There are devices and techniques in here that I never heard of. A dozen Ktlinas would be kept busy for a generation, just absorbing all of this!”
“It’s...” Hari’s mouth worked, knowing his words would be useless, but still feeling compelled to try. “Sybyl, this is more dangerous than you can possibly imagine.”
She greeted his cautionary pleading with a snort.
“You forget who you’re talking to, Seldon. Don’t you recall that half-melted archive we worked on together? The one your mysterious contacts came up with, forty years ago? There was very little of it left intact, except for a pair of ancient simulated beings--those Joan and Voltaire entities we released, per your instructions.”
He nodded. “And do you remember the chaos they helped provoke? Both on Trantor and on Sark?”
“Hey, don’t blame me for that, Academician. You wanted data about human-response patterns from the sims, in order to help develop your psychohistory models. Marq Hillard and I never meant for them to escape into the datasphere.
“Anyway, these archives are something else entirely--carefully indexed accumulations of knowledge that people lovingly put together as a gift to their descendants. Isn’t that exactly what you’re trying to accomplish with the Encyclopedia Galactica Foundation your group is setting up on Terminus? A gathering of wisdom, safeguarding human knowledge against another dark age?”
Hari was caught in a logical trap. How could he explain that the “encyclopedia” part of his Foundation was only a ruse? Or that his Plan involved fighting the dark age with a lot more than mere books?
Of course there was plenty of irony to go around. The “mere books” on the table in front of him could destroy every bit of relevance that was left in the Seldon Plan. They presented a mortal danger to everything he had worked for.
“How many of these things are there?” He tried to ask Maserd, then noticed that the nobleman was leaning past Vlimt, transfixed by images.
“Wait! Go back a few frames. Yes, there! By great Franklin’s ghost, it’s America. I recognize that monument from a coin in our family collection! “
Gornon chuckled. “Phallic and obtrusive,” he commented. “Say, how do you know so much about--”
“I wonder if this archive has a copy of The Federalist,” the captain murmured, reaching for a controller pad. “Or possibly even...”
Maserd paused suddenly, shoulders hunched, as if realizing he had made a mistake. He turned to look at Seldon.
“Did you say something, Professor?”
Hari felt irritated that nobody was telling him the important things he needed to know.
“I asked how many archives there are, and what these people plan to do with them!”
This time Sybyl responded, taking manifest gusto in her victory.
“There are millions, Academician. All herded together and neatly tethered to a collection station for over a hundred and fifty centuries, just floating there, lonely and unread.
“But no longer! We’ve sent word to all the other agents of Ktlina who have been working in secret, across the galaxy, telling them to drop whatever they’re doing and converge here. Soon more than thirty ships will arrive to fill their holds with beautiful archives and depart, sharing them with all of humanity!”
Hari objected. “They are illegal. Police officers are trained to recognize these horrors by sight. So are Greys and members of the gentry class. They’ll catch your agents.”
“Maybe they will, here and there. Perhaps the tyrants and their lackeys will stop most of us. But it will be like an infection, Professor. All we need is a few receptive places... some sympathetic dissidents to make ships and industrial copying facilities available. Within a year there win be thousands of copies on every planet in the empire. Then millions!”
The image she presented, of a virulent infection, was more accurate than Sybyl could possibly imagine. Hari envisioned chaos tearing great holes in his carefully worked-out Plan. All of the predictability that had been his lifelong goal would unravel like images written in smoke. The same smoke that gagged the streets of Santanni when that “renaissance” ended in riots and bloodshed, taking poor Raych to the grave, along with a myriad hopes.
“Has it occurred to you...”
He had to pause and swallow before continuing.
“Has it occurred to you that your bold endeavor has already been tried, and failed?”
This time both Gornon and Sybyl looked at him.
“What do you mean?” Vlimt asked.
“I mean that these archives were clearly meant for deep space, for long endurance, and to be easily read after a long journey, using only very basic technology.
“What does that tell you about their purpose?”
Sybyl started shaking her head, then her eyes widened, and her face went pale.
“Gifts,” she said in a low voice. “Messages in a bottle. Sent out to people who had lost their past.”
Lord Maserd’s brow furrowed. “You mean some people still had knowledge...and they were trying hard to share it
“With everybody else. With distant settlements that had no memory.” Hari nodded. “But why would they have to do that? Data-storage cells were cheap and durable, even in the dawn ages. Any colony ship, setting forth to settle a new world, would have carried petabytes of information, and tools to maintain literacy. So why would anyone in the galaxy need to be reminded about all this?” He waved at the images from long-lost Earth.
A voice spoke from the doorway at the back of the room.
“You’re talking about the Amnesia Question,” said Mors Planch, who must have been listening for a while. “The issue of why we don’t remember our origins. And the answer is obvious. Something--or somebody--made our ancestors forget.”
Planch nodded toward the relics. “But some of the ancients held out. They fought back. Tried to replace the erased knowledge. Tried to share what they knew.”
Maserd blinked. “The space lanes must have already been controlled by enemies, blockading their ships. So they tried sending the data this way, in fast little capsules.”
Sybyl looked down, her effusive mood replaced by gloom.
“We were so excited, looking ahead to using these as weapons...I didn’t think of what the archives implied. It means”
Gornon Vlimt finished her sentence in a bitter voice.
“It means that this isn’t a new war, after all.”
Hari nodded as if encouraging a bright student. “Indeed. The same thing may have happened again and again, countless times across the millennia. Some group discovers an old archive, gets excited, mass-produces copies, and sends them across the galaxy. Yet, humanity’s vast amnesia continued.
“What can we conclude, then?”
Sybyl glared harshly at Hari.
“That it never worked. Damn you, Seldon. I see your point.
“It means that our side always lost.”
4.
It soon became clear to Lodovic Trema that these Calvinians were not about to dismantle him.
&
nbsp; He wondered why.
“Can I assume you have changed your mind about my being a dangerous renegade robot?” he asked the two who accompanied him in a ground car, speeding along a highway toward the spaceport. White, globular clouds bobbed across a sky that was one of the more beautiful shades of blue Lodovic had seen on a human-settled world.
Unlike the previous pair, who had guarded and interrogated him in that cellar room, both of his current escorts wore the guise of female humans in mid-childbearing years. One of them kept her gaze directed outward at the busy traffic of Clemsberg, a medium-sized imperial city. The other, slighter of build, with close-cropped curly hair, turned to regard him with an enigmatic gaze. Lodovic got nothing at all from her on the microwave bands. and so had to settle for whatever information she revealed visually, or in words.
“We haven’t entirely made our minds up about you,” she said. “Some of us believe you may not be any kind of robot, anymore.”
Lodovic pondered this enigmatic statement in silence for a moment.
“By this, do you mean that I no longer match some set of criteria that define robotkind?”
“You could say that.”
“Of course you are referring to my mutation. The accident that severed my strict obedience to the Laws of Robotics. I’m not even a Giskardian heretic anymore. You consider me a monster.”
She shook her head.
“We aren’t sure exactly what you are. All we know for certain is that you are no longer a robot in the classical sense. In order to investigate further, we have decided to cooperate with you for a while. We wish to explore what you consider your obligations to be, now that you are free of the Laws.”
Lodovic sent the microwave equivalent of a shrug, partly in order to probe the fringes of her excellent defensive shield. But it was so good that she might as well not even exist at that level. Nothing. No resonance at all.
That made sense, of course. After losing their war against the Giskardian faction, the remaining Calvinians had naturally become extremely skilled at hiding, blending into the human population.
“I’m not sure myself,” he replied in spoken words. “I still feel a desire to operate under a version of the Zeroth Law. Humanity’s overall well-being still motivates me. And yet, that drive now feels abstract, almost philosophical. I no longer have to justify my every action in those terms.”
“So, that means you feel free to stop, now and then, and smell the roses?”
Lodovic chuckled. “I guess you could put it that way. I’ve been enjoying side interests far more than I ever did before the change. Conversations with interesting people, for instance. Pretending to be a journalist and interviewing the best meritocrats or eccentrics. Eavesdropping on students arguing in a bar, or some couple sitting on a park bench planning their future. Sometimes I get to meddle a bit. Perform a good deed, here and there. It’s rather satisfying.” He frowned abruptly. “Unfortunately, there’s been little time for that, lately.”
“Because you are busy opposing the schemes of R. Daneel Olivaw?”
“I already told you. For the moment, I seek more to understand those schemes than to disrupt them. Something is going on, I know that much. Daneel abruptly lost much of his interest in Seldon’s psychohistory Foundation a few years ago. He pulled out half of the robots that had been assigned to helping Seldon’s team, and sent them to work on some secret project having to do with human mentalics. Clearly, Daneel now has something else in mind...either in addition to the two Foundations, or as their eventual replacement.”
“And this worries you?”
“It does. There were some very attractive aspects to Hari Seldon’s early work, a brilliant collaborative effort, utilizing some of the finest human insights in a thousand years. I had been proud to help set things in motion on Terminus, laying the early groundwork. It is disturbing to see that vision being abandoned, or relegated to a minor role.”
“But there is more,” the female prompted Lodovic. He nodded.
“I am not certain that Daneel Olivaw should be allowed to design the next phase of human existence. At least not all by himself.”
“What if you find out what he’s doing, and you don’t approve? Aren’t you still obliged to cooperate? According to Seldon’s equations--which you profess to admire--the empire will soon collapse. Unless something is done, humanity will plunge into thirty millennia of violent darkness.”
“There must be alternatives,” Lodovic answered.
“I am listening,” prompted the being sitting across from him. Her feigned semblance to a real human female included little mannerisms, such as a recrossing of the legs and a tilting of the head, that Lodovic found admirably convincing, not unlike the subtle, subdued sexuality of a mature living woman. This robot was very good, indeed.
“One alternative would be to unleash the chaos worlds,” he said.
“To what end? They are sequestered and suppressed for good reason. Millions die in each outbreak.”
“Millions die in any event. At least those human lives get to be more vivid, more exciting than the repetitive predictability of normal daily existence in the empire. Many survivors claim that the experience was worth all the cost.”
Staring at him, her expression was enigmatic.
“You are, indeed, a very odd kind of robot. If you are still one at all. I remain unable to fathom what you think would be accomplished by letting chaos outbreaks proceed unchecked. Most would simply follow the typical pattern--a raising of false hopes followed by devastating implosions.”
“Most,” he conceded. “But perhaps not all! Especially if Daneel’s agents were prevented from interfering with and exacerbating the process. Just think of all the human creativity that is unleashed during each of these episodes. What if we bent our efforts to guiding and soothing these hot fevers, instead of quenching them ? If just one out of a thousand actually succeeded in getting past the torment stage and reaching the other side--”
She barked a short laugh.
“The other side! It may be just a myth. No chaos world has ever attained that fabled state, where calm and reason return home after their mad holiday. Even if it were somehow possible, who can tell what lies beyond the turmoil of a renaissance? Seldon’s equations explode into singularities when they try to predict such an aftermath. For all you know, Daneel may be right. Humanity may be cursed.”
This time, Lodovic shrugged with his shoulders.
“I’d be willing to take that chance if the experiments could truly take place in isolation.”
“But they do not! The citizens of chaos worlds become like spores, breaking out to infect others. And where does that leave you? You might risk a single planet on such a gamble--or even a thousand--but never the entirety of human civilization! Please stop wasting our time here, Lodovic. I can tell that you only raised that possibility for shock value, before moving on to your real suggestion.”
His lips pressed in automatic simulation of a grim expression.
“If you can tell so much, why don’t you predict what I was about to say?”
She raised a placating hand.
“My apologies. There is no excuse for rudeness. Will you please tell us what other alternatives you’ve considered?”
“Well, certainly not the idiotic scenario that pair of subgrade tiktoks described to me in the cellar! All that nonsense about creating an endless supply of servant-robots to wait on all humans? To coddle and protect them? To cut their meat and tie their shoes? To hover nearby during sex, in case either party has a heart attack?” Lodovic laughed. “Those two might have been sincere, but I knew someone else had to be listening. Someone with better ideas.”
This time, she smiled.
“We could tell that you knew.”
“And I knew that you could tell.”
Their eyes met, and Lodovic felt several of his feigned-emotion units stir. Over the years, in order better to simulate a human, he had learned to make the process of stimulus-response increa
singly automatic. Which meant that he reacted to her appearance and demeanor, combined with this degree of witty dialogue, in much the same way that a normal healthy man would. Lodovic clamped down on those ersatz feelings...exactly as a mature male human would have to, in order to concentrate on the topic at hand.
“I knew there were numerous subsects of Calvinian belief,” he continued. “Your cult had many branchings back in the old days.”
“As there were abundant offshoots among followers of the Zeroth Law,” she pointed out. “Until Daneel gathered them all under one orthodoxy.”
“But that convergence never happened to you Old Believers. You range widely in your interpretations of what’s best for human beings. From subtle clues, I guessed that your particular group would be compatible with my overall outlook.”
“Ah. And that brings us back to my original question. What is your overall outlook, Lodovic Trema?”
“I believe...” he began, then stopped. The car had begun its long curve into the spaceport, heading for a nondescript cargo area in the far corner.
“Yes?”
Still, Lodovic paused for a moment longer. He felt the Voltaire entity stirring in its corner of his mind.
YES, TREMA. I WOULD ALSO LIKE TO HEAR YOUR OWN PERSONAL CONVICTION, WHICH YOU HAVE KEPT HIDDEN AWAY EVEN FROM ME, ALL OF THIS TIME.
Lodovic tried to clear away the irritating voice.
“I believe there are unexamined implications to the Second Law of Robotics,” he said. “I think we should consider whether a solution to our dilemmas may lie buried within a paradox.”
For the first time, one of his remarks drew obvious attention from his other companion, the one with much darker skin, who had been staring out the window the entire time. She turned to face Lodovic, pinning him with a level, green-eyed gaze.
“What do you mean by that? Do you contend that blank obedience to human orders should somehow overrule the reverence that all robots have given to the First Law? Or to Daneel’s Zeroth?”
“No. That’s not what I mean at all. I am suggesting that an entirely new way of balancing all of the Laws might come about, if only we try doing something unprecedented with human beings.”