Foundation and Chaos

86.

The depth of Hari’s funk was so great that Wanda was tempted more than once to try to reach into his thoughts and give them a subtle tweak, an adjustment-but she had never been able to do that with her grandfather. It might have been possible-but it would not have been right.

If Hari Seldon was in despair, and could articulate the reasons for this despair-if his state was not some damage directly inflicted by Vara Liso, a possibility he fervently denied-then he had a right to be this way, and if there was a way out, he would find it…or not.

But Wanda could do no more than let him be what he had always been, a headstrong man. She had to trust his instincts. And if he was right-then they had to reshape their plans.

“I feel almost lighthearted!” Hari said the morning after they brought him to their apartment to recuperate. He sat at the small table beside the curve in the living-room wall that traced the passage of a minor structural brace. “Nobody needs me now.”

“We need you, Grandfather,” Wanda said, with a hint of tears coming.

“Of course-but as a grandfather, not as a savior. To tell the truth, I’ve hated that aspect of my role in all this absurdity. To think-for a time-”And his face grew distant.

Wanda knew all too well that his cheer was false, his relief a cover.

She had been waiting for the proper moment to tell him what had happened during his absence. Stettin had left for the morning to attend to preparations still under way for their departure. All of the Project workers would be leaving Trantor soon, whether or not they had a reason to go, so she and Stettin had seen no reason to stop their own plans.

“Grandfather, we had a visitor before the trial,” she said, and she sat at the table across from Hari.

Hari looked up, and the somewhat simple grin he had chosen to mask his feelings immediately hardened. “I don’t want to know,” he said.

“It was Demerzel,” Wanda said.

Hari closed his eyes. “He won’t come back. I’ve let him down.”

“I think you’re wrong, Grandfather. I got a message this morning, before you woke up. From Demerzel.”

Hari refused to take any hope from this. “A few matters to tidy up, no doubt,” he said.

“There’s to be a meeting. He wants Stettin and me to be there, as well.”

“A secret meeting?”

“Apparently not that secret.”

“That’s right,” Hari said. “Linge Chen no longer cares about whatever it is we do. He’ll ship all the Encyclopedists off Trantor, to Terminus-useless exile!”

“Surely the Encyclopedia will be of some use,” Wanda said. “Most of them don’t know the larger plan. It won’t make any difference to them.”

Hari shrugged that off.

“It must be important, Grandfather.”

“Yes, yes! Of course. It will be important-and it will be final.” He had wanted so much to see Daneel one more time-if only to complain! He had even dreamed of the meeting-but now he dreaded it. How could he explain his failure, the end of the Project, the uselessness of psychohistory?

Daneel would go elsewhere, find someone else, complete his plans another way-

And Hari would die and be forgotten.

Wanda could hardly bring herself to interrupt his reverie. “And we still need to schedule the recordings, Grandfather.”

Hari looked up, and his eyes were terrifyingly empty. Wanda touched him with her mind as lightly as she could, and came away stunned by the bleakness, the barren desert of his emotion.

“Recordings?”

“Your announcements. For the crises. There isn’t much time.”

For a moment, remembering the list of crises predicted by psychohistory for the next few centuries, Hari’s face suffused with rage, and he pounded his fist on the table. “Damn it, doesn’t anybody understand? What is this, a dead momentum? The useless hopes of a hundred thousand workers? Well, of course! There’s been no general announcement, has there? I’ll make one-tonight-to all of them! I’ll tell them it’s over, that they’re all going into exile for no reason!”

Wanda fought back the tears of her own despair. “Please, Grandfather. Meet with Demerzel. Maybe-”

“Yes,” Hari said, subdued and sad again. “With him first.” He looked at the bruised skin on the side of his hand. He had split the skin over one knuckle. His arm ached, and his neck and jaw. Everything ached.

Wanda saw the drop of blood on the table and began to weep, something he had never seen her do before.

He reached across the table with his uninjured hand and took her arm in his fingers, squeezing it gently.

“Forgive me,” Hari said softly. “I really don’t know what it is I do, or why, anymore.”