Asimov’s Future History Volume 14

by Isaac Asimov

  The page to which the book lay open was suddenly covered with lines of print that rolled slowly upward.

  Seldon said, “You can adjust the rate of upward movement to match your reading speed by slightly twisting the nubbin one way or the other. When the lines of print reach their upward limit when you reach the bottom line, that is-they snap downward and turn off. You turn to the next page and continue.”

  “Where does the energy come from that does all this?”

  “It has an enclosed microfusion battery that lasts the life of the book.”

  “Then when it runs down–”

  “You discard the book, which you may be required to do even before it runs down, given wear and tear, and get another copy. You never replace the battery.”

  Dors took the Book a second time and looked at it from all sides. She said, “I must admit I never heard of a book like this.”

  “Nor I. The Galaxy, generally, has moved into visual technology so rapidly, it skipped over this possibility.”

  “This is visual.”

  “Yes, but not with the orthodox effects. This type of book has its advantages. It holds far more than an ordinary visual book does.”

  Dors said, “Where’s the turn-on?-Ah, let me see if I can work it.” She had opened to a page at random and set the lines of print marching upward. Then she said, “I’m afraid this won’t do you any good, Hari. It’s pre-Galactic. I don’t mean the book. I mean the print... the language.”

  “Can you read it, Dors? As a historian–”

  “As a historian, I’m used to dealing with archaic language–but within limits. This is far too ancient for me. I ran make out a few words here and there, but not enough to be useful.”

  “Good,” said Seldon. “If it’s really ancient, it will be useful.”

  “Not if you can’t read it.”

  “I can read it,” said Seldon. “It’s bilingual. You don’t suppose that Raindrop Forty-Three can read the ancient script, do you?”

  “If she’s educated properly, why not?”

  “Because I suspect that women in Mycogen are not educated past household duties. Some of the more learned men can read this, but everyone else would need a translation to Galactic.” He pushed another nubbin. “And this supplies it.”

  The lines of print changed to Galactic Standard.

  “Delightful,” said Dors in admiration.

  “We could learn from these Mycogenians, but we don’t.”

  “We haven’t known about it.”

  “I can’t believe that. I know about it now. And you know about it. There must be outsiders coming into Mycogen now and then, for commercial or political reasons, or there wouldn’t be skincaps so ready for use. So every once in a while someone must have caught a glimpse of this sort of print-book and seen how it works, but it’s probably dismissed as something curious but not worth further study, simply because it’s Mycogenian.”

  “But is it worth study?”

  “Of course. Everything is. Or should be. Hummin would probably point to this lack of concern about these books as a sign of degeneration in the Empire.”

  He lifted the Book and said with a gush of excitement, “But I am curious and I will read this and it may push me in the direction of psychohistory.”

  “I hope so,” said Dors, “but if you take my advice, you’ll sleep first and approach it fresh in the morning. You won’t learn much if you nod over it.”

  Seldon hesitated, then said, “How maternal you are!”

  “I’m watching over you.”

  “But I have a mother alive on Helicon. I would rather you were my friend.”

  “As for that, I have been your friend since first I met you.”

  She smiled at him and Seldon hesitated as though he were not certain as to the appropriate rejoinder. Finally he said, “Then I’ll take your advice–as a friend–and sleep before reading.”

  He made as though to put the Book on a small table between the two cots, hesitated, turned, and put it under his pillow.

  Dors Venabili laughed softly. “I think you’re afraid I will wake during the night and read parts of the Book before you have a chance to. Is that it?”

  “Well,” said Seldon, trying not to look ashamed, “that may be it. Even friendship only goes so far and this is my book and it’s my psychohistory.”

  “I agree,” said Dors, “and I promise you that we won’t quarrel over that. By the way, you were about to say something earlier when I interrupted you. Remember?”

  Seldon thought briefly. “No.”

  In the dark, he thought only of the Book. He gave no thought to the hand-on-thigh story. In fact, he had already quite forgotten it, consciously at least.

  48.

  Venabili woke up and could tell by her timeband that the night period was only half over. Not hearing Hari’s snore, she could tell that his cot was empty. If he had not left the apartment, then he was in the bathroom.

  She tapped lightly on the door and said softly, “Hari?”

  He said, “Come in, “in an abstracted way and she did.

  The toilet lid was down and Seldon, seated upon it, held the Book open on his lap. He said, quite unnecessarily, “I’m reading.”

  “Yes, I see that. But why?”

  “I couldn’t sleep. I’m sorry.”

  “But why read in here?”

  “If I had turned on the room light, I would have woken you up.”

  “Are you sure the Book can’t be illuminated?”

  “Pretty sure. When Raindrop Forty-Three described its workings, she never mentioned illumination. Besides, I suppose that would use up so much energy that the battery wouldn’t last the life of the Book.” He sounded dissatisfied.

  Dors said, “You can step out, then. I want to use this place, as long as I’m here.”

  When she emerged, she found him sitting cross-legged on his cot, still reading, with the room well lighted.

  She said, “You don’t look happy. Does the Book disappoint you?”

  He looked up at her, blinking. “Yes, it does. I’ve sampled it here and there. Its all I’ve had time to do. The thing is a virtual encyclopedia and the index is almost entirely a listing of people and places that are of little use for my purposes. It has nothing to do with the Galactic Empire or the pre-Imperial Kingdoms either. It deals almost entirely with a single world and, as nearly as I can make out from what I have read, it is an endless dissertation on internal politics.”

  “Perhaps you underestimate its age. It may deal with a period when there was indeed only one world... one inhabited world.”

  “Yes, I know,” said Seldon a little impatiently. “That’s actually what I want-provided I can be sure its history, not legend. I wonder. I don’t want to believe it just because I want to believe it.”

  Dors said, “Well, this matter of a single-world origin is much in the air these days. Human beings are a single species spread all over the Galaxy, so they must have originated somewhere. At least that’s the popular view at present. You can’t have independent origins producing the same species on different worlds.”

  “But I’ve never seen the inevitability of that argument,” said Seldon. “If human beings arose on a number of worlds as a number of different species, why couldn’t they have interbred into some single intermediate species?”

  “Because species can’t interbreed. That’s what makes them species.”

  Seldon thought about it a moment, then dismissed it with a shrug. “Well, I’ll leave it to the biologists.”

  “They’re precisely the ones who are keenest on the Earth hypothesis.”

  “Earth? Is that what they call the supposed world of origin?”

  “That’s a popular name for it, though there’s no way of telling what it was called, assuming there was one. And no one has any clue to what its location might be.”

  “Earth!” said Seldon, curling his lips. “It sounds like a belch to me. In any case, if the book deals with the original world, I
didn’t come across it. How do you spell the word?”

  She told him and he checked the Book quickly. “There you are. The name is not listed in the index, either by that spelling or any reasonable alternative.”

  “Really?”

  “And they do mention other worlds in passing. Names aren’t given and there seems no interest in those other worlds except insofar as they directly impinge on the local world they speak of... at least as far as I can see from what I’ve read. In one place, they talked about ‘The Fifty.’ I don’t know what they meant. Fifty leaders? Fifty cities? It seemed to me to be fifty worlds.”

  “Did they give a name to their own world, this world that seems to preoccupy them entirely?” asked Dors. “If they don’t call it Earth, what do they call it?”

  “As you’d expect, they call it ‘the world’ or ‘the planet.’ Sometimes they call it ‘the Oldest’ or ‘The World of the Dawn, ‘which has a poetic significance, I presume, that isn’t clear to me. I suppose one ought to read the Book entirely through and some matters will then grow to make more sense.” He looked down at the Book in his hand with some distaste. “It would take a very long time, though, and I’m not sure that I’d end up any the wiser.”

  Dors sighed. “I’m sorry, Hari. You sound so disappointed.”

  “That’s because I am disappointed. It’s my fault, though. I should not have allowed myself to expect too much.-At one point, come to think of it, they referred to their world as ‘Aurora.’”

  “Aurora?” said Dors, lifting her eyebrows.

  “It sounds like a proper name. It doesn’t make any sense otherwise, as far as I can see. Does it mean anything to you, Dors?”

  “Aurora.” Dors thought about it with a slight frown on her fare. “I can’t say I’ve ever heard of a planet with that name in the course of the history of the Galactic Empire or during the period of its growth, for that matter, but I won’t pretend to know the name of every one of the twenty five million worlds. We could look it up in the University library-if we ever get back to Streeling. There’s no use trying to find a library here in Mycogen. Somehow I have a feeling that all their knowledge is in the Book. If anything isn’t there, they aren’t interested.”

  Seldon yawned and said, “I think you’re right. In any case, there’s no use reading any more and I doubt that I can keep my eyes open any longer. Is it all right if I put out the light?”

  “I would welcome it, Hari. And let’s sleep a little later in the morning.”

  Then, in the dark, Seldon said softly, “Of course, some of what they say is ridiculous. For instance, they refer to a life expectancy on their world of between three and four centuries.”

  “Centuries?”

  “Yes, they count their ages by decades rather than by years. It gives you a queer feeling, because so much of what they say is perfectly matter-of-fact that when they come out with something that odd, you almost find yourself trapped into believing it.”

  “If you feel yourself beginning to believe that, then you should realize that many legends of primitive origins assume extended life spans for early leaders. If they’re pictured as unbelievably heroic, you see, it seems natural that they have life spans to suit.”

  “Is that so?” said Seldon, yawning again.

  “It is. And the cure for advanced gullibility is to go to sleep and consider matters again the next day.”

  And Seldon, pausing only long enough to think that an extended life span might well be a simple necessity for anyone trying to understand a Galaxy of people, slept.

  49.

  The next morning, feeling relaxed and refreshed and eager to begin his study of the Book again, Hari asked Dors, “How old would you say the Raindrop sisters are?”

  “I don’t know. Twenty... twenty-two?”

  “Well, suppose they do live three or four centuries

  “Hari. That’s ridiculous.”

  “I’m saying suppose. In mathematics, we say ‘suppose’ all the time and see if we can end up with something patently untrue or self-contradictory. An extended life span would almost surely mean an extended period of development. They might seem in their early twenties and actually be in their sixties.”

  “You can try asking them how old they are.”

  “We can assume they’d lie.”

  “Look up their birth certificates.”

  Seldon smiled wryly. “I’ll bet you anything you like-a roll in the hay, if you’re willing-that they’ll claim they don’t keep records or that, if they do, they will insist those records are closed to tribespeople.”

  “No bet,” said Dors. “And if that’s true, then it’s useless trying to suppose anything about their age.”

  “Oh no. Think of it this way. If the Mycogenians are living extended life spans that are four or five times that of ordinary human beings, they can’t very well give birth to very many children without expanding their population tremendously. You remember that Sunmaster said something about not having the population expand and bit off his remarks angrily at that time.”

  Dors said, “What are you getting at?”

  “When I was with Raindrop Forty-Three, I saw no children.”

  “On the microfarms?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you expect children there? I was with Raindrop Forty-Five in the shops and on the residential levels and I assure you I saw a number of children of all ages, including infants. Quite a few of them.”

  “Ah.” Seldon looked chagrined. “Then that would mean they can’t be enjoying extended life spans.”

  Dors said, “By your line of argument, I should say definitely not. Did you really think they did?”

  “No, not really. But then you can’t close your mind either and make assumptions without testing them one way or another.”

  “You can waste a lot of time that way too, if you stop to chew away at things that are ridiculous on the face of it.”

  “Some things that seem ridiculous on the face of it aren’t. That’s all. Which reminds me. You’re the historian. In your work, have you ever come across objects or phenomena called ‘robots’?”

  “Ah! Now you’re switching to another legend and a very popular one. There are any number of worlds that imagine the existence of machines in human form in prehistoric times. These are called ‘robots.’

  “The tales of robots probably originate from one master legend, for the general theme is the same. Robots were devised, then grew in numbers and abilities to the status of the almost superhuman. They threatened humanity and were destroyed. In every case, the destruction took place before the actual reliable historic records available to us today existed. The usual feeling is that the story is a symbolic picture of the risks and dangers of exploring the Galaxy, when human beings expanded outward from the world or worlds that were their original homes. There must always have been the fear of encountering other–and superior-intelligences.”

  “Perhaps they did at least once and that gave rise to the legend.”

  “Except that on no human-occupied world has there been any record or trace of any prehuman or nonhuman intelligence.”

  “But why ‘robots’? Does the word have meaning?”

  “Not that I know of, but it’s the equivalent of the familiar ‘automata.’”

  “Automata! Well, why don’t they say so?”

  “Because people do use archaic terms for flavor when they tell an ancient legend. Why do you ask all this, by the way?”

  “Because in this ancient Mycogenian book, they talk of robots. And very favorably, by the way.-Listen, Dors, aren’t you going out with Raindrop Forty-Five again this afternoon?”

  “Supposedly-if she shows up.”

  “Would you ask her some questions and try to get the answers out of her?”

  “I can try. What are the questions?”

  “I would like to find out, as tactfully as possible, if there is some structure in Mycogen that is particularly significant, that is tied in with the past, that has a
sort of mythic value, that can–”

  Dors interrupted, trying not to smile. “I think that what you are trying to ask is whether Mycogen has a temple.”

  And, inevitably, Seldon looked blank and said, “What’s a temple?”

  “Another archaic term of uncertain origin. It means all the things you asked about-significance, past, myth. Very well, I’ll ask. It’s the sort of thing, however, that they might find difficult to speak of. To tribespeople, certainly.”

  “Nevertheless, do try.”

  Sacratorium

  AURORA-... A MYTHICAL WORLD, SUPPOSEDLY INHABITED IN PRIMORDIAL TIMES, DURING THE DAWN OF INTERSTELLAR TRAVEL. IT IS THOUGHT BY SOME TO HE THE PERHAPS EQUALLY MYTHICAL “WORLD OF ORIGIN” OF HUMANITY AND TO BE ANOTHER NAME FOR “EARTH.” THE PEOPLE OF THE MYCOGEN (Q. V.) SECTOR OF ANCIENT TRANTOR REPORTEDLY HELD THEMSELVES TO BE DESCENDED FROM THE INHABITANTS OF AURORA AND MADE THAT TENET CENTRAL TO THEIR SYSTEM OF BELIEFS, CONCERNING WHICH ALMOST NOTHING ELSE IS KNOWN...

  ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA

  50.

  The two Raindrops arrived at midmorning. Raindrop Forty-Five seemed as cheerful as ever, but Raindrop Forty-Three paused just inside the door, looking drawn and circumspect. She kept her eyes down and did not as much as glance at Seldon.

  Seldon looked uncertain and gestured to Dors, who said in a cheerful businesslike tone of voice, “One moment, Sisters. I must give instructions to my man or he won’t know what to do with himself today.”

  They moved into the bathroom and Dors whispered, “Is something wrong?”

  “Yes. Raindrop Forty-Three is obviously shattered. Please tell her that I will return the Book as soon as possible.”

  Dors favored Seldon with a long surprised look. “Hari,” she said, “you’re a sweet, caring person, but you haven’t the good sense of an amoeba. If I as much as mention the Book to the poor woman, she’ll be certain that you told me all about what happened yesterday and then she’ll really be shattered. The only hope is to treat her exactly as I would ordinarily.”