Foundation and Chaos

71.

Klia could feel the troops a few hundred meters above and behind them, intent on the search. Lodovik led them deeper beneath the warehouse district, until they came to a small round hatch almost completely blocked by debris from an ancient flood. Klia took hold of Brann’s arm and stepped back as Lodovik cleared the debris. Brann smiled down on her, barely visible in the dim light of the maintenance globes, pulled her hand loose, and went to help Lodovik. With a sigh, Klia also pitched in, and in less than a minute, they had the hatchway cleared.

Klia could not hear or otherwise sense anybody in the tunnel behind them, but she felt deeply uneasy nonetheless. The flood debris, the years of corrosion on the hatchway, the difficulty they had prying it open-it would not get any easier from this point on.

They were heading into the depths of the ancient hydraulic system for Trantor’s earliest cities. Beyond the hatchway, they could see even less-globes were spaced at thirty meter intervals, and seemed even dimmer. That they stayed illuminated at all was evidence of the skill of the early engineers and architects on Trantor, who realized that this deep infrastructure must be far more reliable, and persistent, than even the cities that would rise, be demolished, and rise again, far above.

“We go for about three kilometers this way,” Lodovik said, “then we start to climb again. There may be pedways, escalators, elevators-and there may not. Kallusin hasn’t explored these ways in decades.”

Klia said nothing, simply remained at Brann’s side as the robot led them deeper, until she could sense no humans whatsoever. She had never been this far from crowds. She wondered what it would be like, to have an entire planet to oneself, with no responsibilities, no guilt, no talents and no need for talents…

Lodovik’s footfalls ahead took them into murky darkness, and soon they were up to their ankles in stagnant water. From somewhere to their left came the sound of huge pumps, thumping into action, then cutting off with distant swallowing roars. Trantor’s heartbeat.

Brann looked down at her and helped her climb over a pile of eroded plastic parts, like blockage in an ancient artery.

“I can see fairly well now,” Lodovik said, “though I suspect you cannot. Please just stay close behind me. We’re much better off down here, following this route, than we would be up there.”

Klia suddenly felt something loud in her head, but very distant, like the report from a shell. She listened for it again as she walked beside Brann, and it came once more, more muddied, but she was ready for it, and she could almost taste its odd signature.

Vara Liso. Thousands of meters above and in front of them. Perhaps in the Palace.

“That woman,” Klia said to Brann.

“Yeah,” Brann said. “What’s she doing?”

“Feels like she’s exploding,” Klia said.

“Please stay close behind me,” Lodovik insisted. There was a lift shaft ahead, according to Kallusin-and soon he would have a chance to try his codes to gain entrance to the foundations of the Imperial Courts Building.