Foundations Fear

by Gregory Benford

Page 6

  “Appropriate to the occasion. I want to show that I’m still just a professor. ”

  She worked on the dress some more and finally said, “You know, some husbands would enjoy watching their wives do this. ”

  Hari looked up as she wriggled into the last of the clingy en­ semble in amber and blue. “Surely you don’t want to get me all excited and then have to endure the reception that way. ”

  She smiled impishly. “That’s exactly what I want. ”

  He lounged back in his airchair and sighed theatrically. “Math­

  ematics is a finer muse. Less demanding. ”

  She tossed a shoe at him, missing by a precise centimeter.

  Hari grinned. “Careful, or the Specials will rush to defend me. ”

  Dors began her finishing touches and then glanced at him, puzzled. “You are even more distracted than usual. ”

  “As always, I fit my research into the nooks and crannies of life. ”

  “The usual problem? What’s important in history?”

  “I’d prefer to know what’s not. ”

  “I agree that the customary mega-history approach, economics and politics and the rest, isn’t enough. ”

  Hari looked up from his pad. “There are some historians who think that the little rules of a society have to be counted, to under­ stand the big laws that make it work. ”

  “I know that research. ” Dors twisted her mouth doubtfully. “Small rules and big laws. How about simplifying? Maybe the laws are just all the rules, added up?”

  “Of course not. ”

  “Example,” she persisted.

  He wanted to think, but she would not be put off. She poked him in the ribs. “Example!”

  “All right. Here’s a rule: Whenever you find something you like, buy a lifetime supply, because they’re sure to stop making it. ”

  “That’s ridiculous. A joke. ”

  “Not much of a joke, but it’s true. ”

  “Well, do you follow this rule?”

  “Of course. ”

  “How?”

  “Remember the first time you looked in my closet?”

  She blinked. He grinned, recalling. She had been subtly snooping, and slid aside the large but feather-light door. In a rectangular grid of shelves were clothes sorted by type, then color. Dors had gasped. “Six blue suits. At least a dozen padshoes, all black. And shirts!—off-white, olive, a few red. At least fifty! So many, all alike. ”

  “And exactly what I like,” he had said. “This also solves the problem of choosing what to wear in the morning. I just reach in at random. ”

  “I thought you wore the same clothes day after day. ”

  He had raised his eyebrows, aghast. “The same? You mean, dirty clothes?”

  “Well, when they didn’t change…”

  “I change every day!” He chuckled, remembering, and said, “Then I usually put on the same outfit the next day, because I like it. And you will not find any of those available in the stores again. ”

  “I’ll say,” she said, fingering the weave on his shirts. “These are at least four seasons out of fashion. ”

  “See? The rule works. ”

  “To me, a week is twenty-one clothing opportunities. To you, it’s a chore. ”

  “You’re ignoring the rule. ”

  “How long did you dress that way?”

  “Since I noticed how much time I spent making decisions about what to wear. And that what I really liked to wear wasn’t in the stores very often. I generalized a solution to both problems. ”

  “You’re amazing. ”

  “I’m simply systematic. ”

  “You’re obsessional. ”

  “You’re judging, not diagnosing. ”

  “You’re a dear. Crazy, but a dear. Maybe they go together. ”

  “Is that a rule, too?”

  She kissed him. “Yes, professor. ”

  The inevitable Special screen formed about them the instant they left their apartment. By now he and Dors had trained the Specials to at least allow them the privacy of a single wedge in the drop tube.

  The grav drop was in fact no miracle of gravitational physics; it came from advanced electromagnetics. Each instant over a thousand electrostatic fields supported him through intricate charge imbal­ ances. He could feel them playing in his hair, small twinges skating across his skin, as the field configurations handed him off to each other, each lowering his mass infinitesimally down the chute.

  When they left the wedge, thirteen floors higher, Dors passed a charge-programmed comb through her hair. It crackled and snapped obediently into its style: “smart” hair.

  They entered a broad passageway lined with shops. Hari liked being in a place where he could see farther than a hundred meters.

  Movement was quick because there was no cross traffic for any conveyance. A slidewalk ran at the center, going their way, but they stayed near the shop windows and browsed as they ambled.

  To move laterally, one simply went up or down a level by elev­ ator or escalator, then stepped on a moving belt or entered a robopod. In the corridors to both sides the slideway ran opposite. With no left or right turns, traffic mishaps were rare. Most people walked wherever was practical, for the exercise and for the indefin­ able exhilaration of Trantor itself. People who came here wanted the constant stimulation of humanity, ideas, and cultures rubbing against each other in productive friction. Hari was not immune to it, though it lost some savor if overdone.

  People in the squares and park-hexagons wore fashions from the twenty-five million worlds. He saw self-shaping “leathers” from animals who could not possibly have resembled the mythical horse. A man sauntered by with leggings slit to his hip, exposing blue-striped skin that bunched and slid in a perpetual show. An angular woman sported a bodice of open-mouthed faces, each swallowing ivory-nippled breasts; he had to look twice to believe they weren’t real. Girls in outrageously cut pomp-vestments paraded noisily. A child—or was it a normal inhabitant of a strong-grav world?—played a photozither, strumming its laser beams.

  The Specials fanned out and their captain came trotting over. “We can’t cover you well here, Academician sir. ”

  “These are ordinary people, not assassins. They had no way of predicting that I’d be here. ”

  “Emperor says cover you, we cover you. ”

  Dors rapped back smartly, “I’ll handle the close-in threats. I’m able, I assure you. ”

  The captain’s mouth twisted sourly, but he gave himself a mo­ ment before saying, “I heard something about that. Still—”

  “Have your men use their range detectors vertically. A shaped charge on the layers below and above could catch us. ”

  “Uh, yes’m. ” He trotted off.

  They passed by the jigsaw walls of the Farhahal Quadrant. A wealthy ancient had become obsessed with the notion that as long as his estate was unfinished, he would not himself finish—that is, die. Whenever an addition neared completion, he ordered up more. Eventually the tangle of rooms, runways, vaults, bridges and gardens became an incoherent motley stuck into every cranny of the original, rather simple design. When Farhahal eventually did “finish,” a tower half built, bickering by his heirs and lawyerly plundering of the es­ tate for their fees brought the quadrant low. Now it was a fetid warren, visited only by the predatory and the unwary.

  The Specials pulled in tight and the captain urged them to get into a robo. Hari grudgingly agreed. Dors had the concentrated look that meant she was worried. They sped in silence through shadowy tunnels. There were two stops and in the brilliantly lit stations Hari saw rats scurrying for shelter as the pod eased to a halt. He silently pointed them out to Dors.

  “Brrrr,” she said. “One would think that at the very center of the Empire we could eliminate pests. ”

  “Not these days,” Hari said, though
he suspected the rats had thrived even at the height of Empire. Rodents cared little for grandeur.

  “I suppose they’ve been our eternal companions,” Dors said somberly. “No world is free of them. ”

  “In these tunnels, the long-distance pods fly so fast that occasion­ ally rats get sucked into the air-breathing engines. ”

  Dors said uneasily, “That could damage the engines, even crash the pods. ”

  “No holiday for the rat, either. ”

  They passed through a Sector whose citizens abhorred sunlight, even the wan splashes which came down through the layers by radiance tubes. Historically, Dors told him, this had arisen from fears of its ultraviolet component, but the phobia seemed to go deeper than a mere health issue.

  Their pod slowed and passed along a high ramp above open, swarming vaults. No natural light shafts brought illumination, only artificial phosphor glows. The Sector was officially named Kalan­ stromonia, but its citizens were known worldwide as Spooks. They seldom traveled, and their bleached faces stood out in crowds. Gazing down at them, they looked to Hari like swarms of grubs feeding on shadowy decay.

  The Imperial Zonal Reception was inside a dome in the Julieen Sector. He and Dors entered with the Specials, who then gave way to five men and women wearing utterly inconspicuous business dress. These nodded to Hari and then appeared to forget him, moving down a broad rampway and chatting with each other.

  A woman at the grand doorway made too much of his entrance. Music descended around him in a sound cloud, an arrangement of the Streeling Anthem blended subtly with the Helicon Symphony. This attracted attention from the crowds below—exactly what he did not want. A protocol team smoothly took the handoff from the door attendants, escorting him and Dors to a balcony. He was happy for the chance to look at the view.

  From the peak of the dome the vistas were startling. Spirals des­ cended to plateaus so distant he could barely make out a forest and paths. The ramparts and gardens there had drawn millennia of spectators, including, a guide told him, 999,987 suicides, all care­ fully tabulated through many centuries.

  Now that the number approached a million, the guide went on with relish, attempts occurred nearly every hour. A man had been stopped just short of leaping that very day, wearing a gaudy holosuit programmed to flash I MADE THE MILLION after he struck.

  “They seem so eager,” the guide concluded with what seemed to Hari a kind of pride.

  “Well,” Hari remarked, trying to get rid of the man, “suicide is the most sincere form of self-criticism. ”

  The guide nodded wisely, unperturbed, and added, “Also, it does give them something to contribute to. That must be a consolation. ”

  The protocol team had, all planned out for him, an orbit through the vast reception. Meet X, greet Y, bow to Z.

  “Say nothing about the Judena Zone crisis,” an aide insisted. This was easy, since he had never heard of it.

  The appetite-enhancers were excellent, the food that followed even better (or seemed so, which was the point of the enhancers), and he took a stim offered by a gorgeous woman.

  “You could get through this entire evening just nodding and smiling and agreeing with people,” Dors said after the first half hour.

  “It’s tempting to do just that,” Hari whispered as they followed the protocol lieutenant to the next bunch of Zonal figures. The air in the vast, foggy dome was freighted with negotiations advanced and bargains struck.

  The Emperor arrived with full pomp. He would pay the tradition­ al hour’s tribute, then by ancient custom leave before anyone else was permitted to. Hari wondered if the Emperor ever wanted to linger in the middle of an interesting conversation. Cleon was well schooled in emperorhood, though, so the issue probably never came up. Cleon greeted Hari effusively, kissed Dors’ hand, and then seemed to lose interest in them within two minutes, moving on with his entourage to another circle of expectant faces.

  Hari’s next group proved different. Not the usual mix of diplo­ mats, aristos, and anxious brownclad assistants, his lieutenant told him, but high figures. “People with punch,” the man whispered.

  A large, muscular man was holding forth at the center of a circle, a dozen faces raptly following his every word. The protocol lieuten­ ant tried to whisk them past, but Hari stopped her. “That’s…”

  “Betan Lamurk, sir. ”

  “Knows how to hold a crowd. ”

  “Indeed, sir. Would you like a formal introduction?”

  “No, just let me listen. ”