Foundation and Chaos

84.

“I would never have believed such a meeting would be possible,” Linge Chen said. “Had I believed it possible, I would have never believed it to be useful. Yet now we are here.”

R. Daneel Olivaw and the Chief Commissioner walked in the shadow of a huge unfinished hall in the eastern corner of the palace, filled with scaffolding and construction machinery. It was a day of rest for the workers; the hall was deserted. Though Chen spoke in low tones, to Daneel’s sensitive ears, his echoes came from all around them, befitting the words of the most pervasive and powerful human influence in the Galaxy.

They had met here because Chen knew that the hall had not yet had its contingent of spying devices installed. Clearly, the Commissioner did not want their meeting ever to be revealed.

Daneel waited for the Commissioner to continue. Daneel was the captive; it was Chen’s show.

“You would have sacrificed your life-let us say; your existence-for the sake of Hari Seldon. Why?” Chen asked.

“Professor Seldon is the key to reducing the thousands of years of chaos and misery that will follow the Empire’s collapse,” Daneel said.

Chen lifted an eyebrow and one corner of his mouth, nothing more. The Commissioner’s face was as impassive as any robot’s, yet he was entirely human-the extraordinary product of thousands of years of upbringing and inbreeding, suffused with subtle genetic tailoring and the ancient perquisites of wealth and power. “I have not made these extraordinary arrangements to trade puppet’s banter. I have felt your intervention, your strings of influence, time and again for decades, and never been quite sure…

“Now that I am sure, and stand with you, I wonder: Why am I still alive, Danee, Daneel, whatever your real name is-let me call you Demerzel for now-and still in power?”

Chen stopped walking, so Daneel stopped as well. There was no sense prevaricating. The Commissioner had arranged for complete and thorough physicals of all those captured in the Hall of Dispensation, or rounded up in the warehouse. Daneel’s secret had for the first time been revealed. “Because you have seen fit to accommodate yourself to the Project and not block it, during your time as de facto ruler of the Empire,” Daneel said.

Chen looked down at the dusty floor, gorgeous lapis-and-gold tile work still streaked with glue and grout, techniques as old as humanity and used now only by the wealthiest, or in the Palace. “I have often suspected as much. I have watched the comings and goings of these powers, behind the scenes. They have haunted my dreams, as they seem to have haunted the dreams and the biology of all humanity.”

“Resulting in the mentalics,” Daneel said. This interested Daneel; Chen was an acute observer, and to have Daneel’s own suspicions about mentalics confirmed…

“Yes,” Chen said. “They are here to help rid us of you. Do you understand? Robots stick in our craw.”

Daneel did not disagree.

“Vara Liso-given the right political position-something she certainly lacked here and now, this time-could have helped eliminate all of you. If, say, she had been in the employ of Cleon…fighting for his rule. Did Cleon know about you?”

Daneel nodded. “Cleon suspected, but he felt as you must feel, that the robots were part of his support, not his opposition.”

“Yet you let me bring him down and force him into exile,” Chen said. “Surely that is not loyalty?”

“I have no loyalty to the individual,” Daneel said.

“If I did not share your attitude, perhaps I would be chilled to the bone,” Chen said.

“I represent no threat to you,” Daneel said. “Even should I not have supported your efforts to create a Trantor on which Hari Seldon would flourish and be challenged to his greatest productions…You would have won. But your career, without Hari Seldon, will be much shorter.”

“Yes, he’s told me as much, during his trial. I was most upset to find myself believing him, though I told him otherwise.” Chen glanced wryly at Daneel. “Doubtless you know I have enough blood in me to retain certain vanities.”

Daneel nodded.

“You understand me, as a political presence, a force in history, don’t you? Well, I know something of you and yours, Demerzel. I respect what you have accomplished, though I am dismayed at the length of time it has taken you to accomplish it.”

Demerzel tilted his head, acknowledging this criticism’s accuracy. “There was much to overcome.”

“Robots against robots, am I right?”

“Yes. A very painful schism.”

“I have nothing to say about such things, for I am ignorant of the details,” Chen said.

“But you are curious,” Daneel said.

“Yes, of course.”

“I will not supply you with the facts.”

“I did not expect you would.”

For a moment the two figures stood in silence, observing each other.

“How many centuries?” Chen asked quietly. “Over two hundred centuries,” Daneel said.

Chen’s eyes widened. “The history you have seen!”

“It is not in my capacity to keep it all in primary storage,” Daneel said. “It is spread in safe stores all over the Galaxy, bits and pieces of my lives, of which I retain only synopses.”

“An Eternal!” Chen said. For the first time there was a touch of wonder in his voice.

“My time is done, almost,” Daneel said. “I have been in existence for far too long.”

“All the robots must move out of the way, now,” Chen concurred. “The signs are clear. Too much interference. These strong mentalics-they will occur again. The human skin wrinkles at your presence, and tries to throw you off.”

“They are a problem I did not foresee when I set Hari on his path.”

“You speak of him as a friend,” Chen observed, “with almost human affection.”

“He is a friend. As were many humans before him.”

“Well, I cannot be one of your friends. You terrify me, Demerzel. I know that I can never have complete control with you in existence, and yet if I destroy you, I will be dead within a year or two. Seldon’s psychohistory implies as much. I am in the peculiar position of having to believe the truth of a science I instinctively despise. Not a comfortable position.”

“No.”

“Do you have a solution for this problem of supermentalics? I gather that Hari Seldon sees their existence as a fatal blow to his work.”

“There is a solution,” Daneel said. “I must speak with Hari, in the presence of the girl, Klia Asgar, and her mate, Brann. And Lodovik Trema must be there as well.”

“Lodovik!” Chen tightened his jaw. “That is what I resent most. Of all the…people…I have relied on over the years, I confess only Lodovik Trema inspired affection in me, a weakness he never betrayed…until now.”

“He has betrayed nothing.”

“He betrayed you, if I am not wrong.”

“He betrayed nothing,” Daneel repeated. “He is part of the path, and he corrects where I have been blind.”

“So you want the young woman mentalic,” Chen said. “And you want her alive. I had planned to execute her. Her kind is as dangerous as vipers.”

“She is essential to reconstructing Hari Seldon’s Project,” Daneel said.

Another silence. Then, in the middle of the great unfinished hall, Chen said, “So it shall be. Then it is over. You must all leave. All but Seldon. As was agreed in the trial. And I will give into your care the things I do not wish to be responsible for-the artifacts. The remains of the other robots. The bodies of your enemies, Daneel.”

“They were never my enemies, sire.”

Chen regarded him with a queer expression. “You owe me nothing. I owe you nothing. Trantor is done with you, forever. This is realpolitik, Demerzel, of the kind you have engaged in for so many thousands of years, at the cost of so many human lives. You are no better than me, robot, in the end.”