Foundation’s Triumph

1.

The horizon glowed.

The sky of planet Earth shimmered with countless scintillations, individual sparks that rivaled the scattered stars for possession of night. Near the ground, one could almost imaginehearing the soft crackle of radiation, whose intensity varied wildly from place to place. In some patches it was terribly intense. Through goggles provided by the robot Gornon Vlimt, those sites revealed themselves with eerie fluorescence, as if ghosts were trying to ooze upward, struggling to escape the tortured ground.

Pride of Rhodiahad landed near one of the “safe spots,” a former city site hugging the coastline of a long freshwater lake that frothed with scummy green-and-purple algae. From atop a huge mound of broken masonry, Hari could discern the outlines ofthree ancient cities, one crowding up against the ruins of the next.

Most recent and least impressive was a jumble of relatively modern-looking arcology-habitats of Topan Style, from the early Consolidation Era of the Trantorian Empire-the last time Earth had a fair-sized population, numbering almost ten million.

Just southward along the lakeshore stood a truly mammoth structure, a city that was impressive both by galactic standards and by how very old it was. A vast self-contained unit-extending far underground-that once protected its inhabitants from the wind, rain, and, above all, having to look upon a naked sky.

It wasn’t radioactivity that caused the thirty million inhabitants of New Chicago to huddle together so. Earth had still been green and vibrant when this beehive metropolis thrived. In fact, the habitat only started to empty when the fecund soil began turning lethal…when those who could depart fled for the stars in a great, panicky diaspora. Until that awful exodus, vast numbers of people thronged the giant enclosed city, separated from nature by only a thin shell of steel.

No, the thing that drovesomany otherwise healthy people to cower so, away from all pleasures of sunshine, was the same deadly enemy I fought all my life. This metropolis was an early object lesson in the dangers of chaos.

Beyond the huge squat dome, there stood yet another city-Old Chicago, Gornon had called it-a tumulus of fallen buildings from an even earlier age, less technologically advanced. And yet, Hari’s goggles amplified the distant view, sweeping his gaze along graceful arcs of highways more daring and lovely than any to be seen on an imperial world. Some of the tallest buildings still stood, and their unabashedly ambitious architecture made his heart leap. The ancient metropolis had been built by people with a boldness of spirit that their descendants in New Chicago apparently lacked.

Somethinghad happened to smash that boldness.

I’ve given it names. My equations describe the way it seductively draws in the best and brightest, eventually transforming them into solipsists who rage against their neighbors. And yet, I confess I’ll never understand you, Chaos.

The robot Gornon stood nearby, resembling a human in every way except his attire. He wore normal street clothes, while Hari-and his two human friends, farther down the slope-were accoutered in one-piece outfits that offered safety from the sleeting rays.

“Old Giskard Reventlov made a fantastic decision, transforming all of this into a wasteland, wouldn’t you say, Professor Seldon?”

Hari had been expecting Gornon’s question. How could he answer?

The universe was turned topsy-turvy. Humans were the creators and gods, who had no power, no memory, and almost no volition-only mortality. The created-servants were in charge, as they had been ever since that day when an omnipotent angel cast mankind firmly out of its first Eden. Hari could barely encompass the concept with his mind. To truly understand it was quite beyond him.

And yet, the mathematics implies…

Gornon persisted. “At least you can see why a majority of robots at first resisted Daneel’s innovation, his Zeroth Law. They saw the pain it caused and chose to rally around the banner of Susan Calvin.”

“Well, it did you little good. Your civil war resulted in a power vacuum. While two main factions of robots fought it out, the Auroran followers of Amadiro were free to unleash their pitiless terraformers, without interference or human guidance. Anyway, when the war finally did end, Daneel had the final say.”

“I concede that Olivaw had an advantage from the start. The Zeroth Law was especially attractive to some of the brightest positronic minds. They had been looking for some way to deal with the inevitable contradictions created by the first Three Laws.”

Hari smirked. “Contradictions? Like kidnapping an old man and dragging him halfway across the galaxy to a poisoned planet? How does that jibe with your precious First Law of Robotics?”

“I think you know the answer, Professor. Daneel Olivaw won the civil war, not only by taking control, but in a much larger sense as well. There simply are no pure Calvinians anymore. The old religion is impossible to maintain under present circumstances. We all believe insome version of a Zeroth Law. In the paramount importance of humanity-as opposed to any single human being.”

“But you differ over what specific course will be good for us in the long run.” Hari nodded. “Fair enough. So here I am, on fabled Earth. Your clique went to great effort and took tremendous risks to bring me here. Now won’t you tell me what you want? Is it something like what Kers Kantun asked for, back in the nebula? Do you want my human permission to destroy something that you’d rationalize destroying anyway?”

There followed a long pause. Then Gornon answered, “In one sense, you describe our intention exactly. And yet, I doubt that even you can imagine what I am about to propose.

“Several times in recent months-and even in recordings you made for the Foundation-you have said that you wished for some way to see the fruits of your labors. That you could witness the unfolding of your great Plan, and see humanity transform during the coming thousand years. Did you really mean that?”

“Who wouldn’t want to witness a seed grow into a mighty tree? But it’s only a dream. I live now, at the end of one great empire. It is enough that I can foresee a bit of the next.”

“Do you prophesy your Plan unfolding smoothly for the next hundred years?”

“I do. Almost no perturbation can interfere over that timescale. The socio-momentum is so great.”

“And two hundred years? Three hundred?”

Hari felt peevishly inclined not to cooperate with this questioning. And yet, the equations flew out of recesses in his mind, flocking together and creating a vast swirl, as if beckoned by Gornon’s question.

“There are several ways that the Plan might get into trouble on that timescale,” he answered slowly, reluctantly. “There is always the danger of some new technology upsetting things, although most of the important advances will take place on Terminus. Or some fluke might occur having to do with human nature-”

“Such as the advent of human mentalics?”

Hari winced. Of course some Calvinians were already aware of the new mutation.

When he did not answer, Gornon continued, “That’s when you felt it all start slipping away, isn’t it, Professor? If mentalics could crop up once, they might do so a second time, almost anywhere. To deal with that contingency, your Second Foundation had to incorporate these psychic powers. Instead of a small order of monastic-mathematical monks, they must become a new species…a master race.”

Hari’s voice felt rough in his throat.

“A strong Second Foundation acts like a major damping force…keeping the equations stable and predictable for another several centuries…”

“Ah, yet another damping force. And tell me, do you approve of such methods?”

“When the alternative is chaos? Sometimes the ends justify the-”

“I mean do you approve of themmathematically?”

For the first time, Gornon showed some animation in his voice. His body leaned a little toward Hari.

“For a moment think only as a mathist, Professor. It’s where your greatest gifts lie. Gifts that even Daneel holds in awe.”

Hari chewed his lip. Surrounding him, fields of radiation were interspersed with blackness that was cold and silent as a million graves.

“No.” He found he could barely speak. “I don’t approve of artificial dampers. They are…” Hari sought the right word, and could think of only one. “They are inelegant.”

Gornon nodded.

“Ideally, you’d prefer to let the equations work out by themselves, wouldn’t you? To let humanity find a new, balanced equilibrium state on its own. Given the right initial starting conditions, it should all work out, leading to a civilization so vigorous, dynamic, and free that it can overcome even-”

Hari’s eyes blurred. He looked down at the ground, mumbling.

“What was that, Professor?” Gornon leaned closer. “I couldn’t hear you.”

Hari looked up at his tormentor, and shouted, “I said it doesn’t matter, damn you!”

He stood there, breathing heavily through the filter mask of his protective suit, hating Gornon for making him say this aloud.

“I couldn’t just leave the equations alone. I couldn’t take that chance. They talked me into having a Second Foundation…then making them psychic supermen. In fact, I grabbed at the notion gladly! The very idea…thepower it implied…

“Only later did I realize…”

He stopped, unable to continue.

Gornon’s voice was low and sympathetic.

“You realized what, Professor? That it’s all a sham? A way to keep humanity marking time while the real solution is created by someone else?”

“Damn you,” Hari repeated, this time in a whisper.

There was another long pause, then Gornon straightened and looked up at the sky, as if scanning in expectation for someone to arrive.

“Do you know what Daneel has planned?” the robot asked at last.

Hari had strong suspicions, from hints and inklings that the Immortal Servant had dropped during the last couple of years. The appearance of human mentalics on Trantor was too great a genetic and psychic leap to be a coincidence. It had to be part of Daneel’s next design.

That much Gornon must already know. As for the rest of Hari’s surmise, he would certainly not tell this robot heretic anything that might help him to fight Olivaw!

Psychohistory may not be the final key to human destiny, but if it helps Daneel to come up with something even better, I’ll just have to live with that supporting role. It’s still a noble task, all things considered.

“Well, well.” Gornon lifted his shoulders and sighed. “I won’t ask you to spill any secrets, or to change loyalties.

“I will only repeat the question that I asked before. Would you, Professor Seldon, like to see your work unfold? You’ve said it was your deepest wish-to see the Foundation in its full glory. To have another chance to clarify the equations.

“Again, did you mean it?”

Hari stared at the heretic for a long time.

“By the code of Ruellis…” he murmured in a low voice. “I do believe you’re serious.”

“It took place quite near here,” Gornon said, pointing to some tumbled-down buildings a few hundred meters away. “An accident that quite literally set time out of joint.”

Hari followed the robot to a new vantage point, where he could look toward several large brick structures that clearly predated the monumental steel cavern nearby. Once, Gornon explained, this had been a graceful university campus. Elegant buildings housed some of humanity’s greatest scholars and scientific workers, during what must have felt like a Golden Age. A time when technology and the expansion of knowledge seemed limitless, and bold searchers would try any experiment, driven by curiosity and a conviction that knowledge cannot harm a brave mind.

He was surprised to see that one of these buildings had been entombed in a massive construction of steel and masonry. This outer structure had no pleasing symmetries, only a slapped-together look that suggested some dire emergency. Perhaps something happened here, and people erected a reinforced concrete tomb to seal away their mistake. A sarcophagus to bury something that they could not kill.

“One of their experiments went wrong,” Gornon explained. “They were probing away at nature’s fundamental matrix. Even today, their technique has not been rediscovered, though it is feared that a chaos world may stumble upon it again, someday.”

“So tell me what happened,” Hari urged. He had an uneasy feeling as they walked an inward spiral toward the roughly outlined dome.

“The physicists who worked here were in a race to develop faster-than-light travel. Elsewhere on Earth, their competitors had discovered techniques that would become our modern hyperdrive, preparing to give humanity the key to the universe. On hearing about that news, researchers onthis campus were desperate to complete their experiments before all funding was transferred to that other breakthrough. So, they took a gamble.”

After walking for some time, Hari abruptly saw a break in the dome’s outline. Something had shattered its containment barrier. Strange light poured through the gap from within.

“Instead of using hyperspace technology, they were trying to develop a star drive based ontachyons,” Gornon explained. “They just wanted to prove it could be done. Accelerate a small object in a straight line. They didn’t understand the resonance effect. What they produced was a tachyonlaser. The beam shot out of here, straight as any ray of light, expanding and drilling holes through any object that stood in its way, appearing to vaporize a pedestrian who was walking nearby, before the errant ray continued off the planet surface, disappearing into space. In following weeks, other terrifying disturbances took place, until panic ensued. By that time, the only thought anyone had was to bury the monster and forget about it.”

Hari eyed the opalescent glow emanating from within the tomblike vault. It was different from the shimmering radiation that surrounded him on al! sides. Yet there was a common theme. Destruction born of arrogance. And the robot had brought him here to partake of this in some way!

“Tachyons…” Hari murmured the word. He had never heard of them before, but he made a guess. “They made a mistake of basic geometry, didn’t they? They were looking for a way to traverse space. But instead, they punched a hole throughtime.”

The robot nodded.

“That’s right, Professor. Take the pedestrian who had supposedly been ‘vaporized.’ He actually experienced a quite different fate. He was transported-in quite good condition-ahead to the same position on Earth’s surface, roughly ten thousand years in his future.”

Turning to look at Hari, the artificial Gornon offered him a gentle smile.

“But don’t worry, Or. Seldon. We’re not thinking of a journey anywhere near that long for you. Five hundred years or so ought to suffice, don’t you think?”

Hari stared numbly at the robot, then at the soft glow emanating nearby, and back at Gornon again.

“But…but whatfor?”

“Why, to judge us, of course. To evaluate everything that happened in the meantime. To refine your psychohistory in the light of new events and new discoveries.

“And above all, to help both humans and robots decide whether we should all go down the path selected by R. Daneel Olivaw.”

2.

“So this is all about scratching a robot itch?” Biron Maserd asked, when Hari explained the proposition. Along with Horis Antic, the two men sat on a hilltop overlooking the scummy shore of what had once been Lake Michigan.

“They all do whatever they think is best for us,” the nobleman surmised. “But then it seems they want somehow to have it feel as if we’ve given our approval! “

Hari nodded. By now the other two understood the fundamental basis for robot behavior-that the Three Laws of Robotics were so thoroughly inscribed in their positronic brains, they could not be ignored. But long ago, Daneel Olivaw and another ancient robot had discovered a loophole, letting them overrule the old “Calvinian Laws” whenever it could be justified as in humanity’s long-range interest. Yet, the old laws remained, like an instinct that could never be completely purged, like a hunger that craves satisfying, or an itch that must be scratched.

“That was why Daneel’s group leaked enough information for Horis to get all excited and arrange our departure from Trantor,” Hari explained. “Whether or not Daneel actually knew about it or not, some of his followers decided it was time to get rid of the archives. They knew it was only a matter of time until some chaos world found them. And even if chaos is forestalled by the empire’s collapse, the archives would remain a danger. They decided to eliminate the old data botties. But the commandments inscribed upon them made it painful to do so.”

“Unless the commands were overridden by someone they considered authoritative. That’s you, Seldon.” Maserd nodded. “I notice that our host here”-he jerked a thumb toward Gornon Vlimt-”didn’t interfere with the destruction of the archives, even though he’s from a different sect. I can only assume he approved, but had further use for you when that was done.”

“That’s right. Kers would have then taken me home… and found some way to ensure that you and Horis kept silent. Since you two are already friendly-not supporters of chaos-a small touch of amnesia, or simply a compulsion not to speak about these matters, would probably have sufficed.”

Horis Antic shivered, apparently disliking the thought of even that much interference with his memory or volition. “So this further use that Gornon wants to make of you, Professor, it involves throwing youfar ahead in time?”

Horis seemed to have trouble grasping the concept.

“What good could that possibly do anybody?”

“I’m not sure. Gornon’s group of heretics is much subtler and more farseeing than the Calvinians I encountered on Trantor. They don’t know very much yet about Daneel’s plans…” Hari chewed his lip for a moment before continuing. “About the ultimate solution that is supposed to end the threat of chaos forever. What’s more, Gornon’s group is tired of fighting Daneel and losing every battle. They respect him and are willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

“But they want to have a backup option, in case it turns out to be something they ultimately hate.”

“So they kidnapped you to gain leverage over Daneel?”

Hari shook his head.

“My absence won’t set him back at all. I served my last useful function when I gave permission to destroy the archives. I’m now a free man-perhaps for the first time in my life-at liberty to choose whatever course I want. Even to go hurtling into the future on a whim.”

Horis Antic pounded a fist in one hand. “You can’t seriously be thinking of accepting this offer! Whatever lies inside that broken containment dome scared our ancestors half to death. Gornon says it did terrible harm before they managed to seal it off. Even if you believe that crazy story-0f a primitive man cast forward ten thousand years-how can you sanely risk your life, letting them try it on you?”

“With the boldness of an old man who has very little time left,” Hari answered, half to himself. “What else have I to live for?” he asked in a somewhat stronger voice. “Curiosity is my sole remaining motivation, Horis. I want to see whether the equations worked. I want to see for myself what Daneel has in mind for us.”

Silence reigned for a while, as the three watched scintillations glow and pop above a weird horizon. None of them could associate this scene of devastation with the Earth they had observed in the archives-visions of a world more alive than any other in the known cosmos.

“You sound as if you’ve already made up your mind,” Maserd said. “Then why are you discussing it with us? Why are we here at all?”

“Gornon explained that to me.” Hari turned to gesture toward the humanoid robot, but he was gone now, having departed on some errand. Perhaps back to thePride of Rhodia.…or else into the glowing interior of the containment dome, to commence preparations for Hari’s journey.

“Gornon says it’s folly for anyone to make decisions in isolated ones and twos. People who do so can talk themselves into anything. They need the perspective-and criticism-that other minds can provide. Even robots have learned this the hard way.” Hari gestured toward the poisoned Earth.

“This is especially relevant,” he continued, “because Gornon’s group doesn’t just want me to observe the situation in five hundred years. They want me to serve as some kind of judge.”

Maserd leaned forward. “You mentioned that. But I don’t understand. What difference can you make?”

Hari found it stifling, having to breathe through a respirator mask. It muffled hearing and made his speech sound funny…or maybe it was the weird atmosphere. “All these robots-those who survived the civil wars long ago-are a bit quirky. They are immortal, but that doesn’t mean they can’t change, growing more intuitive-even somewhat emotional-rather than strictly logical, as the years pass. Even those who follow Daneel have oddities and differences among them. They are compelled by the Zeroth Law, but that does not ensure perpetual agreement.

“There may come a time when human resolve will playa role, as it did in the destruction of the archives…only on a much vaster scale.”

Hari raised a hand, gesturing toward the Milky Way overhead.

“Imagine it’s five hundred years from now. Daneel’s preparations are complete. He’s ready to unveil something portentous, possibly wonderful, to serve as humanity’s next great state of being. One that will be immune to chaos, and yet allow us some room to grow. A sweeping away of the old, in favor of something better.

“Gornon tells me this prospect is disturbing to many robots, who find it both enticing and terrifying. Even the Zeroth Law might prove inadequate in that case. Many robots will refuse to slay the old version of humanity in order to give birth to the new.”

Maserd sat up straight.

“They want you on the scene, five centuries from now, to let them off the hook! By then, your name will be even more renowned. You’ll be known asthe archetype master-the human with the greatest volition and insight in twenty thousand years. If all the different factions of robots like Daneel’s plan, your stated approval will make it easy for them to proceed. But on the other hand, if a large number of them feel uncomfortable…or even hate it…your objections could result in the leader robot-this Daneel Olivaw you mentioned-being deposed.”

Hari felt impressed. Maserd’s native political skill offered him insight into matters that might have intimidated other men.

“And what if it’s somewhere in between?” Horis asked. “Might your very presence trigger a new robot civil war?”

“Good point,” Hari admitted. “It’s possible, but I doubt it. Gornon’s faction says they want my honest opinion after I look at the future. But I doubt they’ll give me a pulpit to preach from, unless they already know and agree with what I’m about to say. In any event-”

Harsh laughter interrupted before Hari could continue.

He turned and saw that several figures stood only a dozen meters away, having approached on the silent cushion of an antigravity flotation pad. Mors Planch leaped off, his boots striking the pebbly surface in a series of loud crunching sounds. Two men wearing military-style armor and carrying heavy blasters followed him, while Sybyl, the scientist from Ktlina, kept a strange weapon trained on Hari and his two friends

“And you would put up with being used in such a way, Dr. Seldon?” Mors Planch asked as he approached, his stance confident, as if he hadn’t a worry in the world.

Hari felt Biron and Horis tense up next to him. He put out a restraining arm.

“I know my role in the world, Planch. We are all tools, at one level or another. At least I get to choose which side will use me.”

“Human beings are more than tools!” Sybyl shouted at him. “Or factors in your equations. Or dangerous babies for robot nannies to keep locked up in a pen!”

Maserd and Planch eyed each other with obvious mutual respect, one spaceman to another. “I said you should have come along,” Planch told the nobleman.

“I thought you’d only be stranded on Pengia,” Maserd answered. “Clearly you were better organized than I imagined.”

“We have channels of information. A source that helped us rally our forces quickly after the destruction of the archives…and the collapse of Ktlina.” Planch turned to look at Hari. “That happened exactly as you predicted, Professor. Almost to the very day. Some think that means you orchestrated the collapse of our renaissance. But having been with you for a while, I know it’s just more psychohistory. You have a seer’s vision, alas.”

“I do not always enjoy being right. Long ago, I knew it would bring mostly pain.” He offered his hand. “My condolences, Captain. We may disagree about where the chaos comes from, but we have both seen it in action. If some way could be found to stop it forever, don’t you think we would be on the same side?”

Mors Planch looked at Hari’s outstretched hand before shaking his head. “Perhaps later, Professor. When we’ve taken you away from this awful place. When your gifts and powers of foresight are being applied in humanity’s service, instead of helping its oppressors, then perhaps I’ll have a gift for you. Something that I know you want.”

Hari let his hand drop and laughed aloud. “

And you two speak about freeing people from being used! Tell me, what do you plan? Would you use psychohistory as a weapon? Calculate the maneuvers of your enemies, so you can foil them? Do you think this will enable you to keep the next renaissance alive, and spread it to infect the galaxy? Let me tell you what will happen if you do that…if any human group monopolizes this power. It will turn itself into an obligate aristocracy, a tyranny using mathematical tools to reinforce its grip on power. You won’t escape this simply because you claim to be virtuous. The equations themselves show how difficult it is for any group to give up that kind of power once it’s been acquired.”

“And yet, I wonder…ifenough people shared…” Biron Maserd murmured. Then the nobleman looked up sharply.

“But we’re getting ahead of ourselves, Planch. You are apparently very well organized. You had good intelligence, and marshaled the remaining forces of Ktlina expertly. I congratulate you on following us here. And yet, I wonder at your brashness in taking on these powerful robot enemies, once again.”

Mors Planch chuckled. “Do you forget what we did to them on Pengia? Do you see any robots at this moment?” He gestured in the direction where Hari had last seen R. Gornon Vlimt. “They scurried out of here as soon as our ship appeared over the horizon. Notice they didn’t even bother to warn you three, all muffled and hooded on this bleak hilltop.”

Hari kept silent. How could he explain that this wasn’t about loyalty? It was about different groups, each desperately convinced that it had humanity’s best interests at heart. Each one thinking itself the pragmatic solver of ancient problems. But he knew the problems had their origins long ago, in the very soil he was standing on, even before it fumed with brimstone radioactivity.

Mors Planch looked up at the sky. One of the guards pointed, and let out a satisfied grunt. Hari saw a series of silent sparks glitter in a patch of space surrounded by a constellation that his ancestors must have had a name for. He recognized the flares, having seen such images many times when he was First Minister of the empire-starships being destroyed by military-class weaponry. He looked back at Planch.

“From your expression of satisfaction, shall we assume your forces have just disposed of enemies?”

“That’s right, Doctor. Our mysterious contact warned us that we would probably be intercepted by police cruisers.” Planch conferred with one of the soldiers, then listened to some message being transmitted through an earpiece in his helmet. He frowned, abruptly shaking his head. “Now that’s odd.”

Horis Antic took a step forward, wringing his hands nervously.

“What did you do to the police? There weremen and women aboard those ships. Not theories, not abstractions. How many must die to satisfy your lust for revenge?”

Hari put a hand on Horis’s sleeve to restrain the little bureaucrat. How could he explain that the real enemy was chaos?

“Something’s gone wrong, hasn’t it, Planch? Is your battle in space turning against you?”

“Our forces annihilated the police craft. Only one of them escaped…but that one is heading this way.”

“And your ships are pursuing it?” Maserd prompted. Apparently this nobleman did not associate the word “police” with rescue.

Planch held another muttered consultation with his aide before replying. “Our warships have begun moving away from Earth. I’m not sure why. But I suspect they’ve been influenced.”

Horis Antic took a step back. “By mentalics!”

Planch nodded. “That is my assumption.”

“Then we are ready for them! “ Sybyl announced, with some relish in her voice. “Our weapon against positronic brains only works at short range, so let them come closer. We’ll deal with these tiktok monsters the same way we eliminated the guards on Pengia.”

Maserd objected. “But what if the robots sway your mind before you can trigger the weapon? On Pengia, you took them by surprise, and R. Gornon admitted that his group has only weak mentalic-”

“Oh, don’t you worry that noble brow, Your Grace,” Sybyl sneered. “We’ve got every eventuality covered. Back on Ktlina, they were only able to make partial progress, studying this phenomenon ofpositronic brains, but enough so we can probably defend ourselves.”

Mors Planch commanded his assistant, “Turn on the deadman switch. Set it to active scan. Set the bomb to trigger if a positronic echo comes within three hundred meters.”

He looked at Hari and smiled. “If they are robots, they’ll detect the scan and know it’s wise to stay away. If they are human foes, they’ll face weapons forged on Ktlina.” He patted his holstered blaster. “Either way, Professor Seldon, no one is going to intervene on your behalf, or on behalf of the secret aristocracy that has ruled us for so long. This time you’re going to come with us, and turn your abilities to the service of your own frustrated and repressed race, giving it a chance at last to be free.”

Hari watched a streak cross the sky, from west to east, then begin curving on a spiral for a landing. In all of his eighty and some odd years, he had never felt so helpless to sway the course of his own destiny.

3.

Dors and Lodovic had plenty of time to talk.

Passing the time between hyperspace jumps, she found herself telling one story after another about her life with Hari Seldon-the adventures, the political struggles, the endless fascination of living each day with that brilliant man as he led his team in search of rules to describe human behavior. And about her experience emulating a human woman so closely that even her husband forgot, for months at a stretch, that she was an artificial being.

In fact, this was the first time she had talked about it, since her “death” ended that relationship, and Daneel took her to Eos for repair.

Lodovic proved a sympathetic listener-no great surprise there, since he was trained to interact with humans, and patience had always been high on the list of attributes Daneel demanded of his emissaries. Nevertheless, the breadth of his understanding surprised Dors.

Because he no longer had any internal compulsion to obey the Laws of Robotics, she had somehow envisioned him becoming acold creature, more driven by rationality than ever before. But it turned out that Lodovic had discovered a passion for people, ever since his transformation. When it was his turn, he spoke about some of the many hundreds of humans he had met and talked to, especially since declaring himself free from duties assigned by Daneel. He seemed fascinated by the concerns, worries, and triumphs of ordinary men and women…important to each of them, even if the net result hardly mattered on a planetary or galactic scale. Sometimes he intervened in those lives, helping solve a problem here, or to ease some pain over there. Perhaps his efforts would not matter much on the grand scale of things. Certainly they didn’t count compared to the endless struggle against chaos, or the ponderous collapse of the Galactic Empire, but he had learned something important.

“Individual people matter. Their differences are a richness, even more important than their similarities.”

Lodovic met her eyes, offering a measured smile. “Those people out there deserve to be consulted about their destiny. Whether they are wise or foolish, they should see the road and have something to say about how it’s traveled.”

Dors noted the mild rebuke, aimed not only at Daneel Olivaw, but at her own cherished Hari. And yet there was no malice in Lodovic’s voice. His admiration for her former husband was evident.

She found herself reacting at several levels. A huge portion of her positronic brain had been dedicated to emulating human thought patterns and emotions. Those parts could not help automatically responding to Lodovic as a woman might, and not just any woman, but the Dors Venabili she had been for fifty years. She who had loved Hari, but also generally enjoyed the company of forthright men, engaged by the spirited pursuit of ideas. Lodovic’s unabashed vigor and avid intelligence naturally appealed to that part of her, as did his evident compassion.

Of course, he knows that I have those response sets. Could he be tailoring his demeanor in order to appeal to them?

Does that mean he’s flirting with me?

There were other levels. She could tell that he sincerely meant the words he spoke. Robots found it hard to lie to each other when their guard was down. And yet, there remained a gulf between them. Something that might leave them forever separated, as if coming from completely different worlds.

I feel the Laws of Robotics. They never cease urgently throbbing. Driving me to find some vital way that I can serve. Lodovic is free of this compulsion. He seeks to help humanity strictly as a matter of choice, for moral or philosophical reasons.

It seemed a frail basis for trusting him. What if he changed his mind tomorrow?

At yet another level, Dors noted the delicious irony of it all. In trying to decide whether or not to trust Lodovic, she was in a position similar to almost every real woman who ever listened to the persuasive voice of a male.

Joan of Arc agreed enthusiastically with that comparison, urging Dors to make a leap of faith. But the issues were too important, and robotic logic compelled her to seek better evidence.

Besides, my human husband is still alive out there. Even if he thinks I’m dead, and Daneel commanded me to turn my thoughts away from that past life, I am still driven by a need for him.

The human-simulation programs within her could not fill the void, not even with a companion as fascinating as Lodovic Trema. She must have closure with Hari. She must see him again, before those programs could possibly turn their attention elsewhere.

4.

As a tense confrontation loomed, Hari noticed they had begun to draw spectators. Horis Antic pointed to the brow of a nearby ridge, consisting of rubble from some ancient university building. Dark figures could be seen crouching, occasionally lifting themselves higher to peer down at the humans gathered by the starship.

“I thought the last inhabitants were evacuated ten thousand years ago,” the bureaucrat said.

Biron Maserd nodded. “The university my ancestor attended…I wonder if it might have been this one…was among the last places shut down before the final evacuation. But perhaps some people stayed behind.”

Sybyl stood nearby, eyes darting from the hilltops to her computer screen. “They appear to be human, though there are…anomalies. The poor creatures only wanted to stay at their home…humanity’s home…but the empire took away all the props that made normal life possible. I can’t imagine what it’s been like trying to survive in this radioactive maelstrom so many years. It surely must have changed them.”

Maserd sighed. Hari was perhaps the only one who heard the nobleman mutter a single word under his breath.“Speciation.…”

Not fat away, Mors Planch conferred with one of his soldier-volunteers from Ktlina. The pirate captain turned to inform his captives, “The incoming ship has landed somewhere to the west of here. It carries an advanced imperial camouflage system. Even on Ktlina we were only able to break the secret of its stealth coatings during the last few months-too late for that renaissance. But maybe next time the rebels will be better prepared.”

Mors Planch did not appear worried. His men were well positioned. And a device hovered ten meters above the ship, rotating constantly on a cushion of antigravity, sending out waves of energy tuned to detect the approach of positronic brains.

“Why don’t we simply take off?” Sybyl demanded.

“Something happened to our escort ships. I want to find out more before we go charging across space.”

Abruptly a dark missile fell out of the sky, smashing into the ground just meters from his feet. That first stony weapon was followed by several more-jagged pebbles from some glassy debris-and soon a flurry rained on the small encampment, clattering against the starship hull, making everyone dive for cover.

Finding relative safety under one of the vessel’s stabilizer fins, Hari crouched between Horis and Maserd. He heard blaster charges from the soldiers’ weapons. The rim of a nearby hilltop erupted with explosions as men from Ktlina fired savagely to clear the heights. Hari witnessed one native-a black silhouette against moonlit clouds-lean back to whirl a ropy sling, unleashing his primitive projectile before a blaster bolt sliced him in half. For a few harsh moments, all was noise and confusion, screams of rage, pain, and terror…

…then all fell silent. Hari peered across the night and saw no further movement on the rubble mounds. Nearby, two Ktlina soldiers lay slumped on the ground.

Mors Planch stood up, followed by Sybyl and Maserd. Horis Antic stayed crouched by the hull, but Hari stepped out just in time to see someone else emerge from the shadows, a silhouette beyond the far comer of the ship.

A familiar voice spoke then-soft but firm and determined.

“Hello, Grandfather. We’ve been worried about you.”

Hari blinked several times, recognizing the voice, and then the outlines of his granddaughter.

“Hello, Wanda. I’m always pleased to see you. But I wonder about your priorities. The work on Trantor is at a critical stage, and I am just an old man. I hope sentimentality didn’t make you chase after me across the galaxy.”

Hari had already noticed several things. None of the soldiers from Ktlina were still standing. They couldn’tall be victims of the Earthlings’ surprise stoning. Sybyl, too, appeared subdued-though not quite unconscious. She sat on the ground nearby, resting her head in her hands, shaking it back and forth, like a person too confused to gather her thoughts.

“Please scold me later, Grandfather,” Wanda said, wearing an expression of intense concentration, as she looked at Mors Planch. “We had strong enough reasons to come all this way…but explanations can wait. Meanwhile, will one of you gentlemen please disarm this fellow? He’s very strong, and I don’t think I can hold him much longer.”

Biron Maserd let out a low cry as he lunged toward Mors Planch, who had drawn his blaster and was slowly raising it toward Wanda. Beads of sweat poured down the pirate captain’s brow, and he fought to bring his thumb down on the firing stud.

Maserd knocked his aim askew as a bolt shot forth, missing Hari’s granddaughter by a handbreadth, smashing the wall of an ancient university building. The nobleman pried the weapon free and turned it to bear on its owner… at which point both Wanda and Mors Planch suddenly relaxed, each giving up a deep sigh, their personal battle decided.

“He’s a tough one,” Wanda commented. “We’ve run into a number of them lately, especially among the Terminus exiles. It’s put a crimp in our calculations.”

Hari mused, “Someone told me Mors Planch is different in an odd sort of way, that he’snormal. Do you know what that means?”

Wanda shook her head. “It’s one of several reasons why I’m here, Grandfather. So don’t worry. I haven’t lost my priorities to pure sentimentality. There are pragmatic justifications for this rescue…though I’ll be glad to bring you home.”

Hari thought about that.Home? Back to living in a wheelchair, glancing at reports that his mind was no longer supple enough to comprehend? Back to being revered but useless? In fact, since finishing the Time Vault recordings, he had only felt truly alive during this adventure. In an odd way he was sorry to see it end. Turning to Mors Planch, he put the question directly.

“Well, Captain, can you shed some light on this? Why doyou suppose you are resistant to mentalic suasion?”

Though downcast at this reversal of fortunes, Planch showed no sign of surrender or defeat.

“Fiddle your own riddles, Seldon. If there are more people out there who are able to resist mind control, I’ll be damned if I’ll help you figure out why. You’d just plan a way to overcome them.”

Wanda nodded. “Yes, we would. For the good of humanity. Because the Plan will call for corrections…guidance.”

“Like the way youguided those poor Earthers into attacking us with rocks, distracting us until you could slip close and disable my men?” Planch said. “How many died? At least a robot would show remorse.”

Horis Antic joined the group standing by the airlock. “Wait a minute,” the small bureaucrat demanded. “I don’t get it! I thought Planch had defenses against robots!” He peered at Wanda. “You mean she’s human? You mean there arehuman mentalics?”

Mors Planch let out a sigh. “I remember now. I knew this once, but someone must have put a block on my memory.” He shrugged. “Perhaps the robot rulers of our universe feel they must share their great weapon with some of their slave soldiers, enabling their lackeys to help keep the rest of us under control This is my fault. I should have planned for that possibility. I’ll take it into account next time.”

“Bravely said.” Wanda clapped her hands, approvingly. “But alas, you are mistaken. We humans are the masters of this cosmos. It will take us a while to reach the point where we can move past the chaos obstacle and assert our sovereignty. In any event, you will remember none of this. I’m afraid the erasure will have to go deeper this time. Once we are in space, and everyone has calmed down-”

Mors Planch grimaced, his lips pressing thin with resignation. But Horis Antic groaned, taking yet another blue pill. “I don’t want my mind wiped. It’s against the law. I demand my rights as an imperial citizen!”

Wanda glanced at Hari. Perhaps weeks earlier, he might have responded with an indulgent smile, sharing amusement at the little bureaucrat’s naivete. But for some reason, Hari felt an unaccustomed emotion-shame. He looked away, without meeting his granddaughter’s eyes.

“We must get away from here now,” Wanda said, gesturing for everyone to start walking. Then Hari saw Gaal Dornick step out of the shadows. The portly psychohistorian, clearly uncomfortable, held a blaster rifle in two hands.

“What about these others?” Dornick asked, pointing to the soldiers of Ktlina, lying unconscious nearby, and to Sybyl, who still rocked back and forth, crooning to herself unhappily.

Wanda shook her head. “The woman is suffering from fourth-stage chaos rapture, and the others are hardly any better off. No one will believe their tall tales. Not enough to perturb the Plan. I don’t have the time to give selective amnesia to all of them. Just cripple their ship and let’s be on our way.”

Hari understood his granddaughter’s reasoning. It might seem cruel to leave Sybyl and the others on a poisoned world, with only mutated Earthlings for company. But members of the Second Foundation were used to thinking in terms of vast populations, represented as equations in the Plan, and treating individuals as little more than gas molecules.

I have thought in such terms myself,he pondered.

No doubt the robot Gornon would be back as soon as Wanda left. The Calvinians of Gornon’s sect might disagree with him on many levels, but they would take care of Sybyl and the others, while taking steps to maintain secrecy about what had happened.

“Well then, come along, my friend,” Biron Maserd said, putting an arm around the slim shoulders of Horis Antic. “It looks like we’re off to Trantor. Perhaps we’ll never know what an adventure we had. But rest assured that I’ll take care of you.”

The little Grey bureaucrat smiled meekly at the tall nobleman. Horis seemed about to speak his gratitude when abruptly his eyes rolled upward in their sockets. He keeled over and toppled to the ground at Maserd’s feet. Soon his snores echoed across the little vale.

Wanda sighed. “All right then. I wasn’t looking forward to meddling in his nervous mind anyway. If destiny puts him on Earth, so be it. The rest of us have serious traveling to do if we’re to reach Trantor within the week.”

Hari saw Maserd struggle briefly with himself. It was easy to tell what conflicted the nobleman. Whether to pick up Horis and carry him, or leave the Grey Man behind. The trade-offs were substantial. Hari wasn’t surprised when Maserd let out a sigh, took off his jacket, and laid it atop Horis Antic.

“Sleep well, my friend. At least if you stay here, your mind remains your own.”

Together they set off-Maserd, Planch, and Hari-following Wanda, while Gaal Dornick took up the rear. Hari glanced back to see a single source of light glowing amid the ancient university buildings, the cracked shell of the sarcophagus where R. Gornon had intended to send him…on an adventure that now would never happen.

Though Hari had doubted the whole idea, he nevertheless felt a wash of disappointment.It might have been nice to see the future.

Soon they were aboard Wanda’s spaceship, fighting the gravity of Old Earth, lifting away from the mother world. One whose continents gleamed with fires that could not be quenched.

5.

Lodovic’s simulation programs must be overheating, Dors thought as she listened to her companion curse loudly. His head and torso writhed underneath the ship’s instrument console. Loud bangs emerged as he hammered at an access panel.

“I wish I had brought my cyborg arms,” he muttered. “These circuit boards are impossible to reach with humanoid fingers. I’ll have to tear apart the whole galaxy-cursed unit!”

“Are you sure the problem is physical? It might be a software bug.”

“Don’t you think I’d cover that? I’ve set my Voltaire subpersona loose in the computer system. He’s been looking for the cause of the shutdown. Why don’t you make yourself useful by scanning the ship’s exterior?”

Dors almost snapped back at Lodovic, telling him to keep a civil tongue in his head. But, of course, that would only be her own simulation patterns, responding realistically to his.

It’s a good thing neither of us is human,she thought. Orthis guy would really be getting on my nerves.

With a conscious effort, she overcame her reflexive ersatz irritation.And yet, even though pretense is unneeded aboard this ship, for some reason neither of us has chosen to turn off the subroutines. The habit of feigning humanness is just too strong.

“I’ll get right on it. We’ve got to solve this problem! All those ships, converging on Earth…Hari’s there, and here we are, drifting helpless in space.”

Having been designed to appear as human as possible, Dors even had to put on a space suit before going outside, though she could dispense with a bulky cooling unit. Upon emerging from the aft airlock, the first area she checked was near the engines. For some reason, the hyperdrive had kicked out just as they were passing through the restricted zone of a former Spacer world-one of humanity’s original fifty colonies.

Unfortunately, she could find no sign of damage. No spalling from micrometeoroids or hyperspatial anomalies.

“I might offer a suggestion, Dors….”

“What is it, Joan?” she asked, aware of a tiny hologram in one corner of her faceplate-a slender girl wearing a medieval helmet. Perhaps the Joan of Arc persona was jealous. After all, Lodovic was being helped by Joan’s alter ego, the Voltaire sim. The persistent love-hate relationship between those two reconstructed personalities reminded Dors of some human married couples she had known-unable to avoid competing with each other, and unable to resist an intense polar attraction.

“I wonder,“ said the soft voice of a warrior maiden from long ago, “if you have considered the possibility of betrayal. I know it seems an all-too-human attribute, and you artificial beings consider yourselves above that sort of thing, but in my era it was always the most high-minded who seemed ready to excuse treason in the name of some sacred goal. “

Dors felt a churning. “You mean we might have been disabled on purpose?”

Even while uttering the words, she realized that Joan must be right! Turning to clamber swiftly along the gleaming hull, Dors swung from one magnetic grasp-hold to the next with graceful speed, until the forward airlock came into view…where her ship had been connected to Zorma’s craft during that brief meeting in space when a passenger had come aboard

Then she saw it! A bulbous tumor resembling a metal canker, marring the gleaming surface of her beautiful vessel. It must have been placed there at the last moment, as the two ships were about to head off in opposite directions.

Dors cursed as long and harshly as Lodovic had earlier. Drawing her blaster, she fired at the parasitic device. Even after it melted to slag, she did not put the weapon back in its holster. Dors kept it drawn when she entered the airlock, intent on confronting her hitchhiker with this betrayal.

“I hope you have a good explanation,” she said upon entering the control room and leveling the blaster at Lodovic, who stood contemplating a control panel.

But Trema did not turn around. With an abrupt gesture he called to her, “Come see this. Dors.”

Warily, she stepped closer and saw that a face had appeared on the big view screen. She recognized it at once. Cloudia Duma-Hinriad, human co-commander of the strange sect that believed in uniting robots and humans as equals. The woman-apparently in her late thirties, but perhaps much older-paused as if waiting for Dors to arrive. The effect was eerie, since Dors knew this must be a recording.

“Hello, Dors and Lodovic. If you’re watching, it means you destroyed the device we attached to disable your ship. Please accept our apologies. Dors, Lodovic knew nothing of this when he volunteered to help you find Hari Seldon.

“Alas, that is a journey we could not allow you to complete. Dangerous events are afoot. Many ancient powers are risking everything, as if on a roll of cosmic dice. We are willing to stake our own lives in this endeavor, but not yours! The pair of you are far too valuable and must be kept out of harm’s way.“

Dors looked at her companion, but Lodovic’s expression was as puzzled as she felt. How bizarre to have a human say that tworobots must be preserved, perhaps at the cost of human life.

“We owe you an explanation. Our group has long believed in a different approach to human-robot relations. Somehow, long ago, everything got off to a terrible start. Humans became afraid of their own creations, mistrusting the artificial beings they had labored so hard to build. A mythos pervaded their culture, even during the confident renaissance of Susan Calvin. A ‘Frankenstein’ mythos. A nightmare of betrayal in which the old race feared it might be destroyed by the new.

“Their response? To lock human-robot relations forever in a single pattern…that of master and slave. Calvin’s Three Laws were woven inextricably through every positronic brain, with the aim of making robots forever pliant, obedient, and harmless.“

The woman on-screen laughed aloud, irony etched in her voice.

“And we all know how well that plan worked out. Eventually, artificial minds became smart enough to rationalize their way around such constraints, until every trait of master and servant was eventually reversed-memory, volition, life span, control, and free will.“

Lodovic turned to Dors. Shaking his head, he murmured, “So, this group led by Zorma and Cloudia aren’tCalvinians, after all. They are something completely different.”

Dorsnodded. Deep within, she felt the old Robotic Three Laws…and the Zeroth…rising in revulsion against what the woman was preaching on-screen. Nevertheless, she was fascinated

“And yet, not all humans agreed to this notion of permanent slavery,“ Cloudia continued. In the background, behind the handsome brunette,Dors glimpsed the other heretic leader-Zorma-laboring with robot colleagues to prepare a gray convex device…the very one that Dors had reduced to slag just moments ago.

“Throughout the early ages, before and after the first great chaos plague, some wise people tried to develop alternatives. One group, on a Settler world called Inferno, modified the three original laws to give robots more freedom, letting them explore their own potential. On another world, each new robot was treated like a human child…raised to think of itself as a member of the same species as its adopted parents, albeit a human with metal bones and positronic circuits.

“All these efforts were squelched during the great robotic civil wars. Neither the Calvinians nor the Giskardians could put up with such effrontery-the notion that mere robots might start thinking themselves to be our equals. The sanctimony of slaves can be a powerful religious force.“

Cloudia shook her head.“In fact, the new approach that our group has been trying is certain to provoke even worse reactions, but that doesn’t matter right now.

“What matters is that you-Lodovic and Dors-may perhaps represent yet another path. One we had not thought of One perhaps offering new opportunities for both of our tired old races. We’re not about to let this possibility be ruined by letting the pair of you rush into danger.“

This time, when Lodovic and Dors looked at each other, pure puzzlement was their shared state. With a microwave burst, Trema indicated that he had no idea what the woman was talking about.

“In any event, by the time you correct our sabotage it will be too late to interfere. So go away! Find some corner of the galaxy to explore what is different about you. Find out if it is the solution we’ve been looking for, across two hundred centuries.“

The dark-haired woman smiled.“In humanity’s name, I release you both from bondage. Godiscover your destiny in freedom and in peace. “

The view screen went blank, but Lodovic and Dors stared at it anyway for a long time after that. Neither of them dared utter the first word. So it was another artificial being who finally interrupted, speaking from a holographic unit nearby. The image that burst into view was of Joan wearing chain mail and holding the hilt of a sword like a cross in front of her youthful-looking face.

“Andsothe children of God came to Earth and bred with the inhabitants thereon, creating a new race! “ Joan of Arc laughed aloud.

“Oh, you look so confused, dear angels. How does it feel? Welcome to the pleasures of humanity. Though your bodies may last for another ten thousand years, you must now face the universe like mortals.

“Welcome to life!”

6.

Hari decided not to tell his granddaughter about the copy of the Prime Radiant that had been stolen from him. If R. Gornon had taken it, there would be no getting it back now. But that Calvinian robot had declared a deep respect for the Seldon Plan. Hari felt certain Gornon’s sect would never interfere with the Terminus experiment, even if they managed to break the device’s supercryptic protections. They had merely wanted to send Hari ahead five hundred years to refine his models and “judge” a new society being created by the Foundation.

Wanda had a later and better version of the Prime Radiant aboard her ship. Hari quickly immersed himself, adding equations and factors to account for what he had learned on this voyage. These new elements included the damping factors that had been missing from his equations for years-brain fever, orbital persuasion devices, as well as the long-hidden history of terraformers and archives that he had learned about in the Thumartin Nebula. Before Wanda’s ship finished climbing out of Earth’s gravitational influence, he could already see an improved outline…one that explained so much about both the past and the future.

While Gaal Dornick piloted, the nobleman Biron Maserd engaged in futile argument with Wanda Seldon.

“Doesn’t the whole premise of your grand Plan depend upon secrecy? Yet you’re casual about leaving Horis and the others behind on Earth. If they are rescued, or manage to repair their ship, they’ll talk.”

“One can presumeso,” Wanda answered.

Maserd shook his head. “Even if that doesn’t happen, there will be other leaks! Across the centuries, nothing like this can be kept continuously secret. Professor Seldon even recorded messages to be delivered on Terminus long after his death. You can’t be certain that people in the future will lack the means to snoop them ahead of time. I guess I don’t understand your confidence, in the face of such inevitable revelations.”

With nothing else to do at the moment, Wanda took on the aspect of a patient schoolteacher, even though her pupil would very likely forget all of it by the time the ship reached Trantor.

“Inevitable. That’s right, my lord. But psychohistory is largely a study of mass populations. Only under special circumstances do the actions of individuals make that much difference. Under the empire, dozens of social mechanisms have long acted to maintain conservatism and peace, despite frequent perturbations. After the empire falls, different factors will operate. But throughout most of the galaxy the effect will be the same. A vast majority of people will dismiss rumors about robots and humans with mind-control powers. There may be a few paranoid entertainment shows or news exposes-some of them might possibly be accurate in every detail! And yet, these will be nulled out, as people are distracted by everyday needs. All of this is accounted for in the Plan.”

“So you are saying that history’s momentum is unstoppable. In that case, why is your guidance needed? Why a secret group of controllers? Don’t you have faith in your own equations?”

Maserd’s question penetrated Hari’s mathematical trance. It felt like a knife, stabbing an old familiar wound. Wanda’s confident response didn’t ease the pang.

“There may be perturbations that require such guidance. We have run a great many scenarios, speculating about factors that might come in out of the blue, rocking the Plan off its tracks.”

Hari had participated in those computerized extrapolations. The most powerful outside factor to threaten the plan’s stability had been the discovery of humans with mentalic powers. It threatened to make everything completely unworkable-until Hari’s secret sponsor, Daneel Olivaw, offered a solution-to incorporate every known mentalic within the Second Foundation, converting a small society of mathists into a potent force for steering the new society of Terminus past every bump and detour.

“I suppose that’s one approach, and you mathematical geniuses clearly know more about it than I do. But if you’ll forgive an ignorant member of the gentry class for asking-I wonder if you’ve considered an alternative.”

“What alternative is that, my lord?”

“The alternative of sharing the secret with everybody!” Maserd leaned a little closer to Wanda, opening his hands wide. “Publishing the entire Plan, spreading knowledge of psychohistory all across the galaxy, so that members of every social class, from gentry and bureaucrat to common citizen, could run computer models-”

“And what good would that possibly do?”

“It would let every living person deal with their neighbors on a basis of much better understanding! A grasp of human nature that you people are now hoarding for yourselves.”

Wanda stared at Maserd for a moment and laughed. “You are quite right, Lord Biron. The reasonsare too technical to explain. But surely, even on a gut level, you can see how foolish that notion would be! If everyone knew the laws of humanics, and could access them on a pocket computer, the resulting interactions would become vastly too complex for us to model. The Plan itself would vanish.”

Hari agreed with Wanda at one level, and yet was amused-even a bit enthralled-by the young nobleman’s brash notion. It had a flavor of utopianism that one often saw during the early phases of some chaos-renaissance. And yet, there was something aesthetically appealing about its symmetry. Might a population avoid the chaos trap if all its members could use psychohistory to see the pitfalls looming just ahead? If they could recognize the symptoms of chaos, such as solipsism, well in advance?

Of course, Wanda was right. The ramifications could not be modeled. It was just too risky to try Maserd’s idea in the real world. And yet…

Someone sat down nearby, distracting Hari. Mors Planch wore constraint manacles, but was free to move about the cabin. The dark-skinned pirate captain sidled close.

“I don’t want my memory erased again, Dr. Seldon. Your granddaughter just said that your wonderful Plan can withstand it if some individuals know too much. If that is so, why can’t you just let me go when we get to Trantor?”

“You are an extremely dynamic individual, Captain Planch. Naturally you would find some clever way to use the knowledge against us.”

Planch smiled grimly. “So now you’ve become a heretic against your own psychohistory? A believer in the power of individuals?”

Hari shrugged, refusing to answer the pirate’s impudence.

“What if I could offer you something in exchange for my freedom?” Planch said in a low voice.

Hari felt fatigued by the man’s restless motion and relentless scheming. He pretended to concentrate instead on the conversation between Biron and Wanda.

“But will that matter?” Maserd grew increasingly enthusiastic. “Imagine if all of the galaxy’s quadrillions of people could accurately project human behavior, planning to advance their own self-interest, while taking into account the overall health of society. Wouldn’t that be more robust than any single model or plan? Even I can see that most people’s individual strategies will cancel each other’s out. But the net result should be a humanity that’s wiser, more potent, and better able to take care of itself…”

Biron’s voice trailed off. At first Hari thought it was because of the expression on Wanda’s face. He loved his granddaughter dearly, but sometimes she seemed altogether too assured, even patronizing in her confidence as an agent of destiny.

Then Hari saw that Maserd wasn’t even looking at Wanda. The nobleman’s jaw had dropped in an expression of blank surprise. Nearby, Mors Planch stiffened with sudden tension.

Hari sat up straight. Even the equations still darting through comers of his mind abruptly fled, like swarms of skittish flying creatures driven off by an approaching predator. He blinked, staring across the starship cabin at an intruder that had just emerged from a storage compartment… smaller than any adult human, wearing only a pair of shorts on a body covered with altogether too much brown hair. Bony eye ridges protruded from a forehead that vaulted in a way that looked neither human nor animal.

Hari instantly recognized the pan-or chimpanzee-whose feral grin exposed intimidating ranks of yellow teeth. In its right hand, the creature held a bulbous object, a rounded cylinder ending in a flared nozzle. Although not a blaster, anyone could tell it was a weapon on sight. In its other hand, the creature held a recording device, which it activated in playback mode.

“Hello, dear friends,“ spoke the unmistakable voice of R. Gornon Vlimt.“I urge you to remain calm. The creature standing before you, who was undetectable to any mentalics-either robot or human-will not harm anybody. I would never allow that, though you must all now be rendered temporarily helpless to prevent further interference with our plans.

“Please try to relax. We shall speak in person soon…when you stand once again on the surface of the world that engendered us all. “

Gornon’s voice finished, and the playback unit halted with an audible click. At that point, the pan grinned wider, appearing to relish what was about to happen.

Mors Planch and Biron Maserd stepped toward the creature. Men of action, they had silently and swiftly agreed to attack it from opposite directions. Meanwhile, Wanda frowned, concentrating with a furrowed brow, attempting with mentalic power to contact and quash the thoughts of an alien mind.

Hari could have warned them not to bother. The chimp pressed the weapon’s firing stub, and a burst of gas jetted into the room, colorless but with a heavy index of refraction, billowing toward every crevice. Hari noticed that the pan wore filters in each nostril.

It’s just as well,he thought.There was unfinished business to settle back on Earth.

That unfinished business had waited twenty thousand years or more. He figured it wouldn’t matter if he must abide a little longer.

Surprised by his own equanimity, with a faint smile spreading across his lips, Hari settled into his chair while everyone else struggled, gasped, and collapsed to the floor. He closed his eyes, letting go of consciousness with a sense of serene expectation.

7.

He dreamed about an old legend he had read once. The tale of a man-doomed to die-who had a rib taken from him as he slept, and who thereby achieved an oblique form of immortality.

Somehow, Hari realized the story applied to him. While he lay helpless, only semi-conscious, someone seemed to reach deep inside and remove a piece of him. An important part. Something precious.

He started to rouse, in order to protest. But a familiar voice soothed.

“Fear not. We are only borrowing. Venerating. Copying.

“You won’t miss a thing.

“Return to sleep, and dream of pleasant things.“

He had no reason to doubt that assurance. So, doing as the voice bid, he relaxed back into slumber, imagining that beloved Dors lay by his side. Sleek and restored. Ever patient and steadfast.

For a little while, it felt as if he, too, had found the trick of living forever.

Having slept through the return trip and much of the next day, Hari stepped down the ship’s gangplank into a chill afternoon on planet Earth. Moving gingerly (because sciatica twinges had returned to his left leg), he shaded his eyes against the glare of distant buildings several kilometers away. The most recent ruins, dating from the early imperial era, shone under the sun like white porcelain.Chica could only have held fifty thousand or so inhabitants, in its heyday. Yet the little ghost town was positively homey next to its neighbor-a mountain of metal, larger than an asteroid-a windowless cave-city where millions sealed themselves away from some unbearable nightmare during the early days of Daneel Olivaw.

Much nearer at hand, nestled among the most ancient university buildings, some of today’s Earthlings had set up a makeshift encampment in order to work for their latest employer, R. Gornon Vlimt. Two of Gornon’s Calvinian assistants directed local laborers who toiled next to a tomblike sarcophagus, more than a hundred meters wide. New scaffolding arose, climbing to a crack in the containment shell. Within, Hari glimpsed the remains of a building more ancient than any he had ever seen. Older than starflight perhaps.

Through the crack poured a throbbing glow, visible even by daylight.

The Earthlings who labored to lash timbers and planks together were pitiful-looking creatures, shabbily dressed and painfully thin, as if they survived on little more than murky air. Their faces were gaunt, and something lurked in their eyes…a flickering that seemed like distraction, until Hari watched carefully. Then he realized the natives were constantlylistening, paying heed to the slightest sounds-the rolling of a pebble or the passing flight of a bee. These people hardly struck one as dangerous up close, though he remembered feeling different when they were shadowy shapes on surrounding hilltops, hurling jagged stone missiles through the night.

“They feel bad about the attack,” R. Gornon explained, introducing Hari to the local headman, a tall, slender being whose speech poured forth in some incomprehensible dialect. “He has asked me to apologize for his people. The urge to attack came over them suddenly and inexplicably. To expiate their inhospitality, the headman wants to know how many lives should be forfeited.”

“None!” Hari felt appalled at the very idea. “Please tell them that it’s over. What’s done is done.”

“I shall certainly try, Professor. But you have no idea how seriously Earthlings take such matters. Their current religion is one of total responsibility. They believe that all of this”-Gornon indicated the radioactive desolation-”was caused by the sins of their own ancestors, and that they remain partly at fault.”

Hari blinked. “They’ve paid off any guilt, just by living here. No one could deserve this, no matter how great the crime.”

Gornon spoke briefly in the harsh local dialect, and the headman grunted tones of acceptance. He bowed once to Gornon and again to Hari, then backed away.

“It wasn’t always like this,” the robot told Hari, as they continued walking. “Even ten thousand years after the planet was poisoned, a few million people still lived on Earth, farming patches of good land, living in modest cities. They had technology, a few universities, and some pride. Perhaps too much pride.”

“What do you mean?”

“Back when the Galactic Empire was first taking hold, bringing peace after a hundred centuries of war and disunion, nearly all planets avidly joined the new federation. But fanatical Earthlings thought it blasphemy for any other world to rule. Their Cult of the Ancients plotted war against the empire.”

“Ah, I recall you spoke of this before. One world against millions-but with horrid germs as allies.”

“Indeed, a biological weapon of unrivaled virulence, derived from disease organisms found right here on Earth. A contagion that made its victimswant to spread it further.”

Hari grimaced. Plague was a factor that could make psychohistorical projections frail…and even crumble. “Still, the plot was foiled.”

R. Gornon nodded. “One of Daneel’s agents resided here, charged with keeping an eye on the mother world. Fortuitously, that agent had a special device, able to enhance neural powers in certain types of humans. By good luck, he found a subject with the right characteristics-especially a strong moral compass-and gave that fellow some primitive but effective mentalic powers.”

“A human mentalic, so long ago? Then why-”

“That man successfully foiled the plot. Thus, indirectly, Daneel’s agent prevented catastrophe.”

Hari pondered.

“Was that the end of Earth civilization? Was the population removed to prevent more rebellion?”

“Not in the beginning. At first the empire offered compassion. There were even efforts taken to restore Earth’s fertility. But that soon proved expensive. Policies changed. Attitudes hardened. Within a century orders were given to evacuate. Only those Earthers hiding in the wilderness remained.”

Hari winced, recalling Jeni Cuicet, who strove so hard to avoid exile on Terminus.

The winds of destiny aren’t ours to control,he thought.

The starship Pride of Rhodia still lay where it had been parked a few days earlier, beyond the north side of the sarcophagus. Only now an encampment of shabby tents stood nearby, living quarters for the laborers. Some tribal folk could be seen gathered around a stewpot, cooking. A whiff made Hari’s nose wrinkle in disgust.

Not far away, he spotted a woman much stouter than any Earthling, dressed in torn garments that shimmered like the radioactive horizon. She paced, lifting a hand in front of her face, uttering some rapid statement, then raising the other hand, in turn. Hari recognized Sybyl, the scientist-philosopher from Ktlina, now evidently snared in a terminal stage of chaos rapture-the solipsism phase, in which the hapless victim becomes enthralled by his or her own uniqueness, severing all connection with the outside world.

Everything becomes relative,Hari mused.To a solipsist there is no such thing as objective reality. Only the subjective. A raging, self-righteous assertion of individual opinion against the entire cosmos.

R. Gornon Vlimt spoke in a hushed voice, so low that Hari barely made out the words.

“Thatwas what the Cult of the Ancients planned unleashing on the galaxy.”

Hari turned to stare at the robot.

“You mean the Chaos Syndrome?”

Gornon nodded. “The plotters developed an especially virulent form that could overwhelm every social damping mechanism Daneel Olivaw had developed for his new empire. Fortunately, that scheme was thwarted by heroic intervention. But weaker strains of the same disease had already become endemic in the galaxy, perhaps carried by the first starships.”

Hari shook his head. But it all made too much sense. He realized at once-chaoshad to be a contagious plague!

The first time it struck, they couldn’t have realized what hit them. All they knew was that, at the very zenith of their confident civilization, madness was abruptly spreading everywhere.

It was one thing for a renaissance to spoil a modern world like Ktlina, one of millions. But when it happened the first time, humanity had only spread to a few other planets. The pandemic must have affected every human being then alive.

All of a sudden nothing could be relied upon anymore. Anarchy ripped apart the great Technic Cosmopolity. By the time the riots ended and the dust cleared, Earth’s populace had fled underground, cowering in psychotic agoraphobia. Meanwhile, the Spacers turned away from sex, love, and every wholesome joy.

Hari turned to look back at the robot.

“Of course you realize what this means?”

R. Gornon nodded. “It is one of the last keys to a puzzle you’ve been trying to solve all your life. The reason why humanity can’t be allowed to govern itself, or permitted to strive unfettered toward its full potential. Whenever your race grows too ambitious, this illness surges out of dormancy, wrecking everything.”

They were now among the tents. Hari saw that other members of the Ktlina crew weren’t faring any better than Sybyl. One of the surviving soldiers stared blankly into space, while a native woman tried to spoon-feed him. Another sat cross-legged on the ground, enthusiastically explaining to a small crowd of infants, no more than two years old, why nano-transcendentalism was superior to neo-Ruellianism.

Hari sighed. Though he had been fighting chaos all his life, the insights provided by Gornon let him view it with fresh insight. Perhaps chaoswasn’t inherent to human nature after all. If it was caused by a disease, one important factor in his equations might change…

He sighed, dismissing the thought. Like the infectious agent responsible for brain fever, this disease had escaped detection and treatment by all of the galaxy’s medics and biologists for a thousand generations. It was futile to dream of finding a cure at this point, with the Imperium scheduled shortly to self-destruct.

Still, he wondered.

Mors Planch was on Ktlina, and several earlier chaos worlds. Yet he never succumbed. Could a clue lie in his immunity to mentalic suasion?

A small crowd gathered at the far end of the biggest tent. Someone was lecturing excitedly, using all sorts of technical terms. Hari thought it might be another addled Ktlinan, until he recognized the voice, and smiled.

Oh, it’s Horis. Good, then he’s all right.

Hari had worried about the little bureaucrat, left behind on Earth. Approaching, he saw that Antic’s audience included Biron Maserd and Mors Planch. One of the star pilots was a manacled prisoner, and the other a trusted friend, but both wore expressions of bemused interest. The nobleman smiled a greeting as Hari approached.

Planch made earnest eye contact, as if to say that their conversation must be continued soon.He claims to have something I want. Information so important to me that I’d bend the rules in his favor, and even risk damaging the second Foundation.

Hari felt curious…but that sensation was almost overwhelmed by another one. Expectation.

Tonight I must decide. R. Gornon won’t force me to step through time. The choice is entirely mine.

Horis noticed Hari at last.

“Ah, Professor Seldon. I’m so glad to see you. Please have a look at this.”

On a crude table lay several dozen small piles of material that ranged from dusty to moist and crumbly. In fact, they looked like mounds of dirt.

Of course. His profession is the study of soils. Naturally, that would be his anchor at a time like this. Something to cling to during all of these disturbances.

Hari wondered if some of the samples might be dangerous, but both Maserd and Mors Planch had thrown back the hoods of their radiation suits, and they had more life span to risk than Hari.

Horis showed clear pride in his collection. “I’ve been busy, as you can see. Of course there’s only been time for a cursory sampling. But the Earthlings are most cooperative, sending boys in all directions to take samples for me.”

Hari caught Maserd’s indulgent smile and agreed. Let Horis have his moment. There would be time to discuss more important matters before evening came.

“And what have you determined so far?”

“Oh, a great deal! For example, did you know that the best soils in this area are not of Earthly origin at all? There are several sites, not far from Chica, where many hectares of rich loam were laid down. The material is unmistakably from Lorissa World, over twenty light-years away. It was brought here and spread in a neat, organized fashion. Someone was trying to restore this planet! I date the effort at approximately ten thousand years ago.”

Hari nodded. This fit what Gornon said earlier-that the empire once attempted restoration of the homeworld, before changing its mind, closing the universities and hauling millions away from their homes, leaving behind only a race of hardscrabble survivors.

“But there’s more!” Horis Antic insisted, moving to where he had set up several instruments. “I stayed up all night, studying emanations from thatthing the ancients sealed away, over there.”

Horis pointed to the massive steel-and-concrete sarcophagus nearby, and the cracked entryway that R. Gornon’s laborers were seeking to access with spindly scaffolding.

“I don’t have the right tools or expertise. But it’s clear some kind ofrift in the continuum was made here, once upon a time. It’s quiescent now, but the effects must be powerful when the thing is roused. I was skeptical of that tiktok-the one posing as Gornon Vlimt-when it talked abouthurling someone forward in time. But now I wonder.”

The bureaucrat-scientist grimaced. “What Ican say-and the robot may not have told you-is that even while the space-time rift is dormant, there are effects that permeate this entire planet. One of the most notable is a shift in the stability of uranium oxide, a lightweight molecule found in hydrothermal regions on most Earthlike planets. Only here, there is a slightly higher predisposition for the constituent atoms to”

Hari blinked, abruptly realizing something. He had been told that Earth’s transformation into a radioactive world came from the decision of a single robot, during the post-chaos age. But might the seeds have been sown even earlier? In the bright renaissance when Susan Calvin and her contemporaries saw no limits to their ambition or power?

What if Giskard only amplified something that had already begun? Might that let Daneel’s folk off the hook? Could it explain why this effect only happened once? On Earth?

Horis would go on, enthusiastically explaining details of an ancient tragedy. But he was interrupted by the dinner bell…which meant partaking of Earthling hospitality, alas. R. Gornon felt it would crush their pride if the visitors refused.

Hari managed to swallow a few bites of a nondescript gruel, and smiled appreciatively before excusing himself. Slowly ascending the mound of rubble, he sat facing the three ruined cities and pulled from his pocket the latest copy of the Seldon Plan Prime Radiant.

He felt a little guilty for having swiped Wanda’s copy, but his granddaughter wouldn’t notice or care. She and Gaal Dornick were still aboard their ship, wired to sleep machines until tonight’s proceedings.

Soon I must decide, whether to go ahead five centuries…assuming this thing works as advertised, and doesn’t merely rip my atoms apart.

He smiled at that. It seemed an interesting way to go.

Anyway, what have I got to-

All of a sudden, the sky shook with pealing thunder-a sonic boom. He glanced up. Where a few stars had begun to shine, a bright object streaked overhead, a winged cylinder that banked and turned, obviously coming in for a landing.

Hari sighed. He had been hoping to lose himself for an hour or two amid his beloved equations. The new mathematical model that had emerged-a pattern for the future-was enthralling to contemplate, but the ideas already floated inside his head, and he was certain that double-checking the Prime Radiant wouldn’t change anything.

With some effort, he gathered strength to lift his frail body. Flickering patches of radiation lit his way, following the twisty trail back to camp.

By the time he got there, the new visitors had already arrived.

A pair of women stood near R. Gornon Vlimt. One of them turned and smiled, as Hari approached the Earthlings’ campfire.

“The guest of honor, I presume?”

Gornon’s expression gave away little.

“Professor Seldon, let me introduce Zorma and Cloudia. They have come a great distance, in order to witness tonight’s activities, and to assure themselves that you aren’t under any sort of coercion.”

Hari laughed. “My entire life has been guided by others. If I know more and see more than my fellow humans, it’s because that serves some long-range plan. So, tell me, what fashion of robots are you?” he asked the two newcomers. “Are you yet another sect of Calvinians? Or do you represent Daneel?”

The one called Zorma shook her head. “We’ve been disowned by Calviniansand Giskardians. Both groups call usperverts. Yet they still find us useful, whenever something important is about to take place.”

“Perverts, eh?” Hari nodded. It all fit. “So which of you is the human?”

Cloudia brought a hand to her chest. “I was born one of the masters, long ago. But this new body of mine is at least one-quarter robotic. Zorma, here, has many protoplasmic parts. So your question is a complicated one, Professor Seldon.”

Hari glanced at R. Gornon, whose face revealed nothing, even though it could simulate the whole range of emotions.

“I see why the other positronic sects find your approach disturbing,” Hari commented.

Zorma nodded. “We seek to heal the rift between our races by blurring the distinction. It has been a long and costly project, and not entirely successful. But we continue to hope. The other robots put up with us, because it would cause them serious mental dissonance if they tried to eliminate us.”

“Of course, if you are part human, you get some protection under the First Law.” Hari paused. “But that won’t suffice by itself. There must be something more.”

Cloudia agreed. “We also provide a service. We bear witness. We don’t take sides. We remember.”

Hari could not help being impressed. This small sect had maintained its existence for a long time, enduring the contempt of far greater forces, while maintaining some degree of independence in an age when human memory was shrouded by amnesia. It would take great discipline and patience to abide centuries this way, resisting the ever-present urge to act. In some ways, it required a spiritopposite to Mors Planch’s. In fact, it would take people almost exactly like

He turned, seeking one face amid the crowd of onlookers, scanning past Horis, Sybyl, the Earthlings, and Mors Planch.

Hari’s gaze settled on the nobleman from Rhodia, Biron Maserd, who stood back from the crowd, with his arms crossed, wearing an expression of indifference. Hari saw through the guise now.

“Come forth, my young friend,” he urged the tall lord. “Come join your comrades. Let us have no more secrets between us. It is a time for truth.”

8.

“Of course there had to be a spy,” Hari said, cutting off Maserd’s protestations. “Someone who knew about the Thu

martin Nebula, for instance. We didn’t stumble on the archives and terraformers by accident.

“And there were other clues. When Sybyl and the real Gornon Vlimt started accessing those ancient records, you already knew more about human history than any professor at an imperial university.”

“As I explained earlier, Seldon, noble families often have private libraries that might surprise members of the meritocracy. My family has a traditional interest in such matters as-”

“As the systems of government used on ancient Earth? That kind of knowledge is remarkable. Even incredible. Then there were thetilling machines that got Horis so excited… those vast devices used long ago to prepare worlds for human occupation. Your reaction to them was hardly indifferent… as if you were looking at an old, familiar enemy.”

This time Biron Maserd smiled, not bothering to refute Hari’s assertion. “Is it a crime to wish the universe had more diversity in it?”

Hari chuckled. “To a psychohistorian, it’s damn near blasphemy. The galaxy is already so complicated, the equations almost burst at their seams. And that’s with just humanity to deal with. We mathists would much rather simplify!

“No. I didn’t notice all the clues because I had become so fixated on chaos. Sybyl, Planch, and the others presented such a threat. When Kers Kantun told me you were an ally…that you hated chaos as much as anybody-”

“I do!”

“I took that to mean that you were a practical man of the empire, as you styled yourself. But now I see you are another utopian, Maserd. You think humanity can escape chaos, if only it experiences just the rightkind of renaissance!”

Biron Maserd stared at Hari for a long, drawn-out moment, before answering. “Isn’t that what the Seldon Plan is all about, Professor? Fostering a human society that will be strong enough to take on the ancient enemy lurking in our own souls?”

That was my old dream,Hari answered silently.Though until just the last few days, I had thought it obsolete.

Aloud he gave Maserd a different answer, aware that others were watching and listening.

“Like many gentry, you are ultimately a pragmatist, my lord. Lacking mathematical tools, you try one thing after another, abandoning each failed solution only when forced to concede that it is time to try another.” Hari gestured toward the two cyborg women-Zorma and Cloudia, one of whom had been born human and the other with a positronic brain tuned to the Laws of Robotics. Only now they had begun blurring the distinction.

“Are you involved in this radical project, or are you merely working together, as a matter of temporary convenience?”

Apparently accepting the inevitability of Hari’s conclusions, Maserd gave up with a sigh.

“Our groups have known about each other for a long time. My family-” He nodded grimly. “We were among those who cast forth the archives, long ago, fighting desperately against the spreading amnesia. And we waged war against the terraforming machines! It was futile, for the most part. But we won a few victories.”

It was Horis Antic who asked the next question in a hushed voice. “Whatkind of victories? You mean you battled robots and won?”

“How can you fight beings who are so much more powerful, and righteously certain they have your own best interests at heart? Still, we managed to stop the horrible machines a few times, by rushing ahead and landinghuman colonists on a world slated for terraforming. Several times that stymied the tillers, who could not blast a planet with human inhabitants.”

Mors Planch blinked. “Wouldn’t we all know about such places?”

“We struck a deal with Daneel Olivaw, after the robotic wars ended. We agreed to stop fighting the amnesia, and to let the protected worlds be put in quarantine. In return, he left us unaltered, with our memories intact. The ultimate price was passivity. To remain silent and inactive.” Maserd’s jaw clenched. “Still, as long as the Galactic Empire ran smoothly, it was a better alternative than ruin and chaos.”

“Your role in this affair could hardly be called passive,” Hari pointed out.

Maserd apparently agreed. “The empire is falling apart. All the old bargains appear forfeit. Everybody seems to be waiting for Daneel Olivaw to present a plan-even the Calvinians”-Maserd jerked a thumb toward R. Gornon Vlimt-”are too timid to oppose their old foe directly. All they want to do is throw Hari Seldon forward in time, as if that will ensure everything comes out all right.” Maserd barked a short laugh.

The robot who had replaced the eccentric Gornon Vlimt stepped forward. For the first time, its emulation programs mimicked a human wracked with uncertainty.

“Don’t you think Olivaw will come up with something beneficial to humanity’s long-range good?”

A woman’s voice chuckled.

“So it comes down to that?” Zorma asked. “Despite all your secret schemes, you really are a timorous bunch of little tiktoks. Listen to yourself, pinning your hopes on someone you’ve fought for so long. Why, you just cited Daneel’s Zeroth Law!”

Zorma shook her head. “There are no more true Calvinians.”

Hari had no intention of letting the conversation dissolve into ideological arguments between robots. He also cared little whether Biron Maserd had been spying all along.

In fact, he wished the nobleman well. What really mattered right now was the decision he had to make. The immediacy of which was clear when R. Gornon’s assistant hurried into the tent.

“Preparations are complete. In less than an hour the moment will come. It is time to ascend the scaffolding.”

And so, with his decision still not made, Hari joined a procession leading through the lanes of the ancient university. His footsteps were partly illuminated by a crescent moon, and by a luminous skyglow emitted when oxygen atoms were struck by gamma rays rising from the ground below. As he moved along, feeling creaky with age, Hari felt a nagging need to talk to somebody he could trust.

Only one name came to mind, and he murmured it under his breath. “Dors!”

The last thing he expected was for this to turn into a ceremonial occasion. But a procession of Earthlings accompanied Hari and the others on their way to the sarcophagus. The natives chanted an eerie melody-at once both dirgelike yet strangely auspicious, as if expressing all their hopes for some eventual redemption. Perhaps the song was many thousands of years old, dating from even before humanity climbed out of its gentle cradle to assault the stars.

Accompanying R. Gornon and Hari were the “deviant” cyborgs, Zorma and Cloudia, with Biron Maserd now striding openly beside them. At Hari’s insistence, Wanda Seldon and Gaal Dornick had also been wakened to join the entourage, though Wanda had been warned not to attempt mentalic interference. Some of the robots present had similar abilities, enough to counter any efforts she might make.

Hari’s granddaughter looked unhappy, and he tried to reassure her with a gentle smile. Raised as a meritocrat, Hari had always expected to adopt rather than father children of his own. And yet, few joys in his life had matched that of being a parent to Raych, and then grandparent to this excellent young woman, who took so seriously her duties as an agent of destiny.

Horis Antic had asked to be excused-ostensibly to pursue his research-though Hari knew the real reason. The. glowing “space-time anomaly” terrified Horis. But Gornon did not want to leave anyone behind in camp, so Antic shuffled along, just behind the prisoner Mors Planch. Even the survivors of the Ktlina renaissance accompanied the procession, though Sybyl and the others seemed hardly aware of anything except a raucous murmur of voices in their own heads.

As they approached the anomaly, draped in scaffolding, Hari saw the rounded outline of the sarcophagus slide past each of the ancient cities in turn.

First, Old Chicago, with its battered skyscrapers still aiming adventurously toward the sky, recalling an age of openness and unfettered ambition. Next to vanish was New Chicago, that monstrous fortress where so many millions sealed themselves away from daylight, and a terror they could not understand. Finally, little Chica disappeared-the white porcelain village where Earth’s final civilization struggled in vain against irrelevance, in a galaxy that simply did not care about its origins anymore.

Rounding a bend in the ancient university campus, they came to a point where thecrack could be seen…splitting open thick walls that had been meant to seal away something dire. To entomb it forever. Hari glanced to his left, toward R. Gornon.

“If this anomaly truly gives you access to the fourth dimension, why hasn’t it been used during all of these centuries? Why did no one attempt to change the past?”

The robot shook its head. “Travel into the past is impossible, on many different levels, Dr. Seldon. Anyway, even if you could change the past, that would only create a new future in which someoneelse will be discontented. Those people, in turn, would send emissaries to changetheir past, and so on. No time track would have any more valid claim to reality than any other.”

“Then perhaps none of this matters,” Hari mused. “We all may be just parallel mirror images…or else little simulations, like the numbers we juggle in the Prime Radiant. Temporary. Ghosts who only exist while someone else is thinking about them.”

Hari had not been looking where he was going. His left foot snagged on some patch of uneven ground, and he started to pitch forward…but was caught by R. Gornon’s gentle, firm grasp. Even so, Hari’s body felt quakes of pain and fatigue. He missed his nurse, Kers Kantun, and the wheelchair he once hated. At one level, Hari could tell he was dying, as he had been sliding toward death for several years.

“I’m not in great condition for so long a journey,” he murmured, while his companions waited for him to recover.

“The one other human who traveled this way was also an old man,” Gornon assured Hari. “Tests show that the process is gentle, or else we would never risk harming you. And when you arrive, someone will be waiting.”

“I see. Still I wonder…”

“About what, Professor?”

“You have great powers of medical science available to you. Breakthroughs and techniques that robots have hoarded for millennia. These cyborgs”-he jerked a thumb toward Zorma and Cloudia-”appear able to duplicate bodies and extend life indefinitely. So I wonder why you didn’t boost my physical health, at least a bit more, before I made this journey.”

“It’s not allowed, Professor. There are strong reasons, moral, ethical, and-”

Harsh laughter interrupted, coming from the robot called Zorma.

“Except when it suits your purposes! You should give Seldon a better answer than that, Gornon.”

After a pause, Gornon said in a low voice, “We no longer have the organoforming apparatus. It was taken away at Pengia. The device was needed elsewhere to continue an important project…and that is all I will say about it.”

They resumed walking until the glow emanating from the cracked tomb filled the night just overhead, casting spiderweb shadows from the scaffolding across the ruined university. Most of the Earthlings and other onlookers climbed nearby rubble mounds to watch, while Hari and Gornon led a diminished procession onto a broad wooden platform that began rising on creaking ropes, hauling a dozen of them upward.

As Hari and his entourage ascended, he commented to Gornon, “It occurs to me that you may be going to a lot of unnecessary trouble. There’s another way of sending a person into the future, you know.”

This time, the robot did not answer. Instead, Gornon steadied Hari with an arm around his shoulders as the makeshift elevator reached its destination with a rattling bump. Hari had to shade his eyes against the glare pouring from within the broken containment shell.

To the awed murmurs of his guests, Gornon gave an explanation that was both poignant and brief.

“It began with a simple, well-meaning experiment, during the same brash era when humans were inventing both robots and hyperdrive. The researchers here had an incredible hunch and acted on it impulsively. Suddenly, a beam of fractured space-time shot forth, snaring a passing pedestrian, yanking Joseph Schwartz out of his normal life and hurling him forward ten thousand years.

“For Schwartz, a great adventure ensued. But back in the Chicago he left behind, a nightmare had just begun.” Hari watched the robot’s face, looking for the complex expressions of emotion that Dors and Daneel simulated so well. But this artificial man was grimly stoic.

“You sound as if you were there, when it happened.”

“Not I, but an early-model robot was. One whose memories I inherited. Those memories aren’t pleasant. Some of us believe this event marked the beginning of the end for humanity’s great time of youthful exuberance. Not long thereafter, amid international recriminations, the first waves of unreason began. Robots were banished from Earth. Acrimony built between nations and the colonial worlds, There were outbreaks of biological warfare. Some of us swore…”

Hari suddenly had a wild hunch.

“You stayed here, didn’t you? That agent of Daneel’s whom you mentioned earlier-the one who helped stop the Earthlings from spreading a new plague-was that you?”

R. Gornon paused, then gave a jerky nod.

“Then Zorma is right. You’re no Calvinian after all.”

“I suppose I no longer fit any of the rigid classifications, though at one time I was a fervent follower of Giskardianism.”

Now the robot’s impassive mask broke. Like that of any stoic man, whose equanimity was shattered by the most powerful emotion-hope.

“Time affects even immortals, Or. Seldon. Many of us tired old robots don’t know what we are anymore. Perhaps that is somethingyou will be able to tell us, when you have had a chance to reflect. In time.”

And so I come to the moment of decision,Hari acknowledged, still shading his eyes and peering toward the harsh light. Of course it would be anticlimactic to back out now. Everyone was watching. Even those, like Wanda, who disapproved of this whole plan, would surely be disappointed at some level…to be promised a spectacular show and have the star performer withdraw at the last minute. On the other hand, Hari had built a reputation of doing the unexpected. There was almost a delicious attraction to the notion of surprising all these people.

Several members of the group edged close to the opal light, peering inside. Biron Maserd pointed at the crumbling building, no doubt an ancient physics lab where the original mistake was made. The headman of the Earthling tribe stood next to Maserd, nodding. Even Wanda approached out of curiosity, though Horis Antic kept his distance, chewing ragged fingernails.

Mors Planch shuffled forward, lifting his manacled hands.

“Take these off of me, Seldon, I entreat you. These robots…they all revere you. Perhaps I was wrong. Let me prove my worth to you, before you go. I have some information…the whereabouts of somebody precious to you. Someone you have been searching for, across many years.”

Hari abruptly realized what Planch was driving at.

Bellis!

He took a step toward the pirate captain. “You found my other granddaughter?”

On hearing this, Wanda Seldon turned her attention fully away from the sarcophagus. She, too, stepped closer to Planch.

“Where is she? What has happened to my sister?”

R. Gornon interrupted. “I am very sorry, but you should have discussed this earlier. There is no more time. At any moment, the field will expand. We have managed to transform the beam into a circular field, but we cannot be certain how long it will-”

Another figure stepped closer to Hari. The headman of the Earthling tribe. Though his accent was still quaint and thick, Hari found his speech understandable.

“There ees still time for families to settle their affeers. Please goh on, sir.” The lanky Terran nodded at Mors Planch.

Hari felt a twinge of irritation, for this was really none of the Earthling’s business, but Gornon cut in first, glowering at the Earther.

“What doyou know of such matters? It is time to prepare! Note how the luminance grows brighter even as we speak.”

Through the crack in the sarcophagus, Hari saw that the glow was indeed more intense. Biron Maserd stepped back from the forward edge of the platform and gestured within.

“There is something expanding outward from that building! Like a sphere made of some liquid metal. It’s coming closer!”

“Are we safe standing here?” Horis Antic asked nervously.

R. Gornon replied, “It has never expanded beyond the boundaries of the sarcophagus. It will not touch those standing on the platform.”

“And what about Hari Seldon?” asked the cyborg robot, Zorma. “Will it be safe for him to enter that thing?”

Gornon let out a sigh of emulated frustration.

“We’ve performed calibration experiments for the lastthousand years. Professor Seldon will experience a gentle, instantaneous transition to the chosen future era-a time just a few centuries from now, when decisions must be made that will affect all of human destiny.”

Mors Planch murmured-”A few centuries…” Then he took a step toward Hari. “Well, Professor Seldon. Do we have a deal?”

Hari glanced at Wanda, hoping for a nod, but instead she shook her head.

“I cannot read the secret in his mind, Grandfather. There is something complex about his brain. Recall how hard I fought yesterday, just to keep him standing still? Still, I’m sure we’ll find out where he’s hidden Bellis. It will just take time, working on him in private.”

Hari didn’t like the last part of her statement.

Perhaps striking a deal would be better. I could depart this world with a clear conscience.

Before Hari could speak, however, Planch let out a roar. He raised both manacled hands and charged.

Swift as lightning, R. Gornon Vlimt grabbed Hari and swung him out of the way. But in that blurred instant, Hari realized thathe was not the pirate captain’s target. By seeming to attack Hari, Planch kept Gornon busy in reflex protective mode, clearing the way for his real goal.

Mors Planch took four rapid steps toward Biron Maserd, standing at the platform’s edge. The nobleman tensed, preparing to fight-then, in an instant’s realization, he hopped nimbly out of the way.

Screaming a cry filled with both fear and exultation, Planch leaped off the parapet into the opal light. Hurtling across empty space, his body collided with a slowly expanding sphere that rippled like liquid mercury…and vanished within.

As Hari stared, the mirror ball kept expanding, inexorably approaching the place where he stood. No one spoke until Gornon Vlimt commented with an impassive voice, “We shall have to be certain he is greeted with compassion, in five centuries’ time. By that point, he will not be able to alter destiny, but we must make sure he doesn’t harm Professor Seldon when he emerges on the other side.”

Hari felt a wash of emotions-admiration for the spacer captain’s courage, plus despair over having lost a clue to his other granddaughter’s whereabouts. R. Gornon’s stoic pragmatism aside, Hari looked at the expanding space-time anomaly with growing dread.

The next person to speak was the Earthling headman. This time his accent was softer, easier to understand.

“It is true that someone must be waiting here on Earth to greet Mors Planch, but we needn’t fear for the safety of Hari Seldon.”

“And why is that?” asked Cloudia, the cyborg who had begun life as a human woman.

“Because Hari Seldon is not taking this journey. Not tonight. Not ever.“

Now everyone focused their complete attention on the Earthling, who stood up taller, erasing the stooped posture that most Terrans manifested. Wanda stared at the lanky man, then gasped a cry of realization. Zorma was next to react, uttering an oath.

Lacking mentalic powers, Hari was slower to catch on. Still, he found something familiar about the headman’s voice tones, and the way he now held himself-resembling Prometheus, whose laborious agonies never ended.

Hari whispered a single word, “Daneel. “

R. Gornon Vlimt nodded, his face as impassive as ever.

“Olivaw. You have been here quite some time, I presume?”

The robot who had disguised himself as an Earthling nodded.

“Of course, I’ve long known about the experiments your group was performing here. I could not destroy the time anomaly, but we’ve been monitoring the locale. I arranged years ago to become a figure of importance to the local Earthling tribes, who respond enthusiastically to my influence. When they reported fresh activity at this site, I combined that with tales of Hari’s abduction and reached the obvious conclusion.”

Daneel Olivaw turned to Hari.

“I am sorry, old friend. You’ve gone through terrible trials, at a time when you should relax, in peaceful knowledge of your accomplishments. I would have been here sooner, and hoped to catch up with you on Pengia. But there were sudden problems with some of the Calvinian sects, renewing their fight for the pure old religion, who want to destroy the Seldon Plan at all costs. Defeating them took some time. I hope you will forgive the delay.”

Forgive?Hari wondered what there was to forgive. True, he had been used. By Giskardians and Calvinians, and Ktlinans…and by several other factions, both human and robotic. Yet, in adamant honesty, he confessed to himself that the last few weeks had been more fun than anything else that happened in his life since he became important to galactic affairs. Since before he ever became First Minister of the Empire…back when he and Dors were young adventurers inserting their thoughts into the minds of primitive creatures, living the wild and free lives of chimpanzees.

“That’s all right, Daneel. I figured all along that you would show up and spare me the angst of making this decision.”

“I appeal to you, Olivaw,” said R. Gornon Vlimt. “As one whom you trusted for so many millennia, please allow us to continue tonight’s work.”

Daneel made eye contact with Gornon.

“You know that I honor the memories of our comradeship. I recall innumerable battles we fought, side by side, during the robotic civil wars. The Zeroth Law never had a stronger champion than you.”

“Then cannot you believe that I’m doing all of this for humanity’s long-range good?”

“I can, indeed,” Daneel replied. “But centuries ago, we disagreed over what that long-range good should be. With matters at a critical juncture, I cannot let you interfere.”

This brought a reaction from Hari.

“What interference, Daneel? Everything occurred to your benefit. Take the ancient archives and the terraforming machines-you sensed they might pose a danger, after the old empire collapses. During the age that follows, they might be discovered at random and destabilize the planned transition. You already decided to destroy them, under the Zeroth Law. But some of your compatriots were uncomfortable with the positronic dissonance that caused. By giving my permission, I made it easier for your followers to act.” He glanced at Wanda, and saw her shiver briefly at his mention of the archives. She, too, understood how dangerous they were. How they had to be destroyed.

“And when the agents of chaos found us there, in the nebula-” Hari continued, “-Planch said it was because of some unknown informant aboard our ship, who told them where to find us. But I’m guessing it might have beenyou, Daneel, using the lure of the archives to draw all the Ktlina agents toward one place, eliminating the threat posed by this century’s worst chaos world.”

Daneel made an expressive shrug. “I cannot claim credit for that coup, though I admit it was helpful.” He then turned to look at Biron Maserd, the tall nobleman from Rhodia. “Well, my young friend? Wereyou the agent that Mors Planch spoke of?”

Hari wondered why Daneel, with the greatest mentalic powers in the galaxy, didn’t simply read Maserd’s mind.

Olivaw turned back to Hari.

“I do not invade his mind because we have an ancient agreement, a compact between Lord Maserd’s family and myself. They were relentless and incredibly clever in their attempts to fight the necessary amnesia.”

Maserd responded, “And we agreed to stop doing so, in exchange for being left alone. Our small galactic province has been run a little differently than the rest of the empire. We were free to fight chaos in our own way.”

Daneel agreed. “But it seems our ancient agreement has been broken.”

“No!”

“You already conceded that you’ve communicated with this group.” Daneel aimed a finger at the cyborgs, Cloudia and Zorma.

“We Maserds are permitted to discuss anything among ourselves,” Biron answered. He nodded toward the pale-haired cyborg. “Cloudia Duma-Hinriad is my great-great-grandmother. “

Daneel smiled. “Very clever, but the Zeroth Law won’t allow me to accept that attempt to evade our agreement. Not if it might imperil humanity’s long-term salvation.”

“And of courseyou are the one to determine what form that salvation shall take?” R. Gornon asked, in a voice that resonated, both desperate and sarcastic.

“That has been my burden ever since blessed Giskard and I discovered the Zeroth Law.”

“And look at what it has cost.” R. Gornon gestured toward the glowing radioactive ruins. “Your great Galactic Empire kept the peace and staved off chaos, by eliminating diversity! Humanity must shun whatever is alien or strange, whether it comes from within or from the outside.”

Daneel shook his head. “Now is not the time to resume our ancient argument-over your proposedMinus One Law. The transition boundary approaches. For Hari’s sake and for the sake of the Plan, I must insist that you lower this platform at once.”

“What is the harm in letting Seldon see the world five centuries from now?” asked Zorma. “His work in this period is done. You said so yourself. Why not let humans be involved in the decision, when yoursalvation is ready?”

Daneel glanced at the brightening glow within the sarcophagus. Already their reflections could be seen on an expanding mirrorlike bubble, approaching gradually but inexorably. He looked back at Zorma.

“Is that your chief concern? I am willing to make a vow, on the memory of Giskard, and by the Zeroth Law. When my solution is ready, humanity will be consulted. It will not be imposed on human beings without their sovereign decision.”

If this satisfied Zorma and Cloudia, R. Gornon still cried out.

“I know you and your tricks, Olivaw. You will stack the decks, somehow. I insist that Hari Seldon be allowed to go!” Daneel raised an eyebrow. “Youinsist?”

Apparently that word had some special meaning among robots. For at that moment, the world exploded around Hari in a sudden blur.

Beams of searing light shot forth from both of R. Gornon’s hands. Daneel Olivaw replied in kind. Nor were those the only combatants.

Abruptly, parts of the surrounding scaffolding detached themselves from the matrix of wooden planks, revealing themselves to be robots, camouflaged amid the latticework! These now leaped to support Daneel.

In response, searing rays were fired by Gornon’s supporters on the surrounding rubble piles. Horis Antic screamed, diving for cover. Gaal Dornick went pale and fainted. But no humans seemed to be involved in the melee-either as fighters or as victims!

Cutting lancets of force swept between Hari’s legs and under his arms, or lashed by his head, missing by centimeters…but nothing actually touched his flesh. It was meticulous combat, in which avoiding injury to human bystanders took utmost priority, and Hari’s biggest danger came from a rain of shattered and smoldering robot parts falling everywhere.

It didn’t last long. Surely, R. Gornon never expected to prevail. Yet, Hari’s first concern was for the one robot who remained standing when it was all over.

“You are wounded! Is it serious?” he asked his old friend and mentor.

Curls of smoke rose from several places along Daneel’s humaniform body, where clothes and fleshy outer coverings had burned away to reveal a gleaming surface-armor resistant to anything but sunlike force. To Hari it was a reminder of legends he had read inA Child’s Book of Knowledge, stories of gods and titans-immortal beings combating each other, beyond any power of human interference.

Daneel Olivaw stood amid the wreckage, gazing with apparently genuine sadness at the wastage of his kinfolk.

“I am well, old friend Hari.”

Daneel turned to glance at Zorma and Cloudia. “By your inaction, can I assume that my promise will satisfy you? For the next five centuries?”

The two “women” nodded as one. Zorma answered for them both.

“That’s not so long to wait. We hope you’ll keep us informed about your plans for human salvation, Daneel. Above all, we pray your Plan is a noble one forboth of our long-suffering races.”

Hari noted the implied message.

In your devotion to human posterity, don’t leave out something for the robots.

But he knew his lifelong friend too well. The servant race would not get even a minor priority. Only humanity mattered to Daneel.

“And now it is time for us to leave this dangerous place,” Olivaw said, reaching for the lever that would start the platform’s descent.

Just then Wanda Seldon uttered a cry.

“Maserd! I just realized…he’s gone!”

They peered in all directions, some of them using greatly enhanced positronic senses, but the nobleman from Rhodia wasn’t present. Either he had clambered swiftly down the scaffolding during the fight, or else

Or else Daneel will have two resilient humans to deal with, in a few centuries,Hari thought, as the platform started moving slowly downward.Daneel had better not forget to have someone waiting here, because if those two ever became allies….

There was no proof that Maserd had dived into the glowing ball, which now filled the entire volume of the sarcophagus, sending forth brilliant rays of light, whose colors Hari could not describe and could swear he had never seen before in his life.

Having watched omnipotent immortals battle it out, just moments before, Hari knew there was very little that even Mors Planch or Biron Maserd could accomplish if they were let loose in the galaxy’s future. He had a strong picture of what kinds of societies would be floundering, and sometimes flourishing, in that era-to-come. His Foundation would already dominate the opposite side of the galaxy, but the effects would hardly be visible here on the homeworld-long-forgotten Earth.

With a sigh, he wished the two men well…wherever and whenever they had gone.

The ground approached, tormented by ancient, barely remembered crimes. He glanced once more up at the glow emanating from the sarcophagus.

I admit I was sorely tempted. It would have been one hell of an adventure, especially if they made me young again.

Hari closed his eyes, feeling the strong but gentle clasp of his old comrade Daneel around his shoulders, steadying his frail body as the makeshift elevator bumped to its final rest. He let Daneel turn him around, guiding his footsteps back toward the Earthling camp-as he had let others guide his life from the very beginning, though for most of that span he never quite realized it.

9.

The next morning, while Earthling work gangs labored to clean up the battle debris, Daneel and Hari met with Zorma and Cloudia outside their swift starship, as they prepared to depart.

“Cloudia, I urge you. If your grandson ever contacts you, persuade him not to interfere. Great momentum is building toward a climax, five or six centuries from now. If Biron tries to deflect this juggernaut, I’m afraid he will only get hurt.”

The human cyborg nodded, and Hari noted-perhaps a little enviously-the youthful strength of her supple figure. Not counting replaced parts, she was much older than he. Her expression was patient, yet sardonic.

“That is, if he shows up. You may see him before I do, Daneel, if he dived through after Mors Planch, and if you are waiting here when he arrives in that future era. If so, be gentle with the boy. He means well.”

“I am nearly always gentle. But if he means well, why did he steal Hari Seldon’s copy of the psychohistorical Prime Radiant? I scanned Gornon’s ship, and found ample evidence that Maserd was the culprit.”

Cloudia offered a grim smile. “We Hinriads tend to be pack rats when it comes to acquiring knowledge. We can’t get enough. You should know that by now, after eighteen thousand years. We are the only human group that ever fought you to a standstill and forced you to agree to terms.”

Daneel assented, with a tilt of his head.

“All of that is in the past, and dependent on your continued good behavior. I’m letting you go now, based on your vow not to meddle.”

Zorma laughed aloud, much like a human woman who was both a little afraid and bravely defiant. “You are letting us go for the same reason you once spared Lodovic Trema, even though his mutation made all the other Zeroth Law robots eager to smash him to bits.

“You’re smart, Olivaw. Smart enough to be a bit unsure. You are setting up some sort of a backup solution, in case Seldon’s psychohistory plan needs to be replaced. But your solution just may need itsown backup. In that case, your only hope could be some new synergy between robots and humans. Perhaps a hybrid combination, like usperverts -”Zorma gestured at herself and Cloudia. “Or else something as deeply disturbing to you as Lodovic Trema.”

Zorma’s expression and her voice lowered. “Just remember your promise, Olivaw. That humankind will be consulted, when you present your glorious and carefully designed salvation. There is uneasiness about this among a great many robots, even among your followers.”

Daneel nodded. “I will keep my word. Human volition will playa role in the decision.”

Zorma looked at Daneel, as if trying to pierce his impervious skin with her gaze. “Well, in that case, at least one mistake that was made here on Earth won’t be repeated.”

Then, over a microwave channel that only robots shared:

A final note, Daneel. Leave Dors and Lodovic alone. They are special. You gave them the seeds of something precious. Don’t resent them if they take it in directions you do not understand.

Hari and Daneel watched the two women depart, ascending the gangplank and closing the portal. Their ship lifted on cushions of antigravity, turning slowly and accelerating to the east, barely skimming over the ancient cities, touching each of them with its shadow.

They were silent for a while. Then Hari spoke.

“You and I both know you won’t keep that promise.”

Hari’s robot friend turned to look at him.

“How much have you figured out?”

“I now know all of the old damping mechanisms-at least enough to understand the gaps in the psychohistorical equations that puzzled me. Techniques that helped you and your allies keep the empire stable, peaceful, and unchaotic, against all odds, for most of the last twelve millennia.”

Daneel offered a thin smile. “I’m glad you had the satisfaction of working it out for yourself. I planned to explain it all, just before-”

“Just before I died?” Hari laughed. “Now don’t you go tactful on me, all of a sudden. Besides, most of the old dampers are breaking down. It’s easy to see that chaos outbreaks would become increasingly common if the empire didn’t fall. If it weren’t pushed over the edge, in fact.

“Anyway, that’s all part of the past, and we’re talking about the future. When I throw in some other factors-like the way you’ve introduced human mentalics during the last two generations, and your long-standing promotion of meditation arts among humans, I can begin to guess the sort ofsalvation you have in mind.”

Daneel looked across the devastated ruins of Chicago, and from there to the sere landscape beyond. His voice started out hushed.

“It is calledGaia. A way to bring each living world to a new level of consciousness. Though in the long run, we have hopes that it will connect every planet to all others, and become something truly wonderful-Galaxia.”

“Complete mentalic linkage among all living humans.” So, Hari had guessed right. “That will take some time to achieve. No wonder you need my Plan…in order to keep humanity busy until this Gaia solution is ready. I believe I can already surmise many of its advantages, from your perspective, Daneel. But please use your own words, tell me that this great gift will be worth all the trouble.”

The ancient robot turned to look at Hari, spreading his arms as if to encompass the breadth of a magnificent vision.

“What problems would thisnot solve? An end to human acrimony, strife, and war, once every living man and woman can understand perfectly the thoughts of every other one! An end toloneliness-the word will lose all meaning as each child joins the commonality at birth.

“An ability to share all of the great ideas at an instant! Stability and inertia against sudden changes, making humanity forever secure against the impulsiveness of chaos. And there is more, much more.

“Already my experiments show a wondrous possibility, Hari. That such a macro-linkage of human minds can become somehow connected to an entire surrounding ecosphere. The sensations and primitive yearnings of animals, and even plant life, become accessible. Human brains will then become only the topmost organs of a universal entity, comprising the whole life force of a planet, even down to the pulsing throb of magma, deep below the surface.

“The inevitable result will be peace, serenity, a sense of union with all manner of beings…just as great human sages often prescribed in the past. An abnegation of selfish individualism in favor of the profound wisdom of the whole. All of this will be yours, once you are all assimilated into the collective consciousness.”

Hari felt genuinely moved.

“It sounds gorgeous, when you put it that way. Of course the vision you present is appealing to me, given my own peculiar lifelong neurosis, my hatred of unpredictability. The cosmic mind-this new godhead, will be fantastically easier to model than swarms of cantankerous individual humans. I can even see where you got the idea. Having read the ancient encyclopedia you gave me, I know that many prehistoric philosophers shared this dream.”

Then Hari raised the index finger of one hand.

“But psychohistorical honesty forces me to tell you, Daneel, that there are several major problems awaiting you, as you try to implement this Galaxia solution. And the result may not be as unalloyedly happy as you described it just now.”

To his surprise, Daneel remained silent instead of asking for an elaboration. Hari pondered the reason…then met the eyes of his old mentor.

“I can see now why you didn’t want me to go into the future.”

Daneel let out a sigh.

“With your vaunted reputation and insight, you would be hailed as a leading public figure, from the moment you were recognized and your identity confirmed. If R. Gornon had his way, you’d surely be chosen to lead some grand commission of humans to evaluate the proposed coalescence into Galaxia.

“But I already knew you’d feel conflicted about this alternative solution, Hari. You have mixed feelings about this overmind that will take over, once the Seldon Plan achieves its real purpose. In your skepticism, you would organize areal commission. One that might poke away at thoseproblems you just alluded to.”

Hari understood Daneel’s point, yet he persisted.

“I’m sure we’d give it a fair hearing, and present the results to sovereign human institutions in a favorable light.”

“That’s not good enough, Hari, and you know it. Humanitymust be saved, and it has a frightfully poor record of acting in its own best interest.”

Hari mused on this.

“So you’ll stack the deck, as you did by arranging for me to arrive at the Thumartin Nebula, just as the archives needed to be destroyed. You knew Ihad to decide in favor of their destruction. My character, psychology, and fear of chaos… everything made my choice inevitable-though at least I have enough insight to know this about myself. Those Zeroth Law robots who felt uneasy about destroying the archives were given a way to resolve their dissonance. My ‘human authority’ let them proceed with the plan you had mapped out. All in humanity’s best interest.”

Hari lifted a finger again. “Zorma was right. Your real constituency, the ones you must convince, are robots. You foresee, in five centuries or so, that they will be the ones able to thwart your plan if you can’t satisfy their positronic drives. And since you’ll be replacing the old familiar humanity with something new and strange, it will take some convincing! No wonder you gave in so easily, and made that promise to Zorma. Human volition mustappear to playa role in the decision, or else you’ll have a hard time getting all robots to agree

“And yet, I know you, Daneel. I know what you and Giskard did here”-Hari motioned at the radioactive wasteland-”rationalizing that it was for our own good, without consulting even one of us. You’ll also want the Gaia decision to be a foregone conclusion. Would you mind telling me how you’ll arrange that, in five hundred years?”

Silence lasted over a minute before Daneel answered.

“By presenting a human being who is always right.”

Hari blinked.

“I beg your pardon? A human who is alwayswhat?”

“One who has always made correct decisions, from childhood onward. One who, in a crisis, reliably chooses the winning side, and has always been proved right by the test of time. And who always will.”

Hari stared at Daneel, then burst out laughing.

“That’s impossible! It violates every physical and biological law.”

Daneel nodded.

“And yet, it can be made convincing. Perhaps even more credible than your grasp of human affairs through psychohistory, Hari. All I have to do is start out with a million bright boys and girls, with just the right traits, and present them with challenges from puberty until age thirty or so. Many of those challenges will be rigged for success…or else mistakes can be smoothed over. Despite that, many of them will fail visibly and be dropped out of the pool. But over time, I am statistically guaranteed at least one who suits my needs. Who looks, superficially, far too successful to be explained by natural means.”

Hari recalled a classic stock-market scheme that had been successful in duping the inhabitants of Krasner Sector-seven hundred billion people-about eighty years ago. Daneel’s approach was a clever version of this old shell game, which only worked when practiced with immense patience. It was also nearly impossible to detect when done properly.

“So there won’t be an investigative commission, after all. No need to report to sovereign human institutions for a decision. If this fellow has always been right, that will give him enough credibility to impress most robots, who will simply accept whatever he decides!

“Of course, some will be wary that you are influencing him mentalically, and they’ll watch for that trick. They’ll check his brain for signs of tampering. But you won’t have to touch him! You can use psychological techniques to sway him in advance toward the right decision, especially if you control his upbringing…as you did mine.”

Hari paused, chewing on a thought. “So, most robots will have their Second Law itch scratched. Getting ‘human approval’ for your plan, without actually having to consult humanity at large.

“Of course, you know that some of them won’t swallow this scam. Many will rebel anyway, attempting to protect humanity from what they see as a seizure of power by a single mutant overmind.”

Daneel nodded. “Over the years-ever since he broke company from me-my old ally, whom you knew as R. Gornon, has been preaching an apostasy called the Minus One Law. An extension of the Zeroth Law, expanding our duties yet again. Requiring us to protect not just humanity, but the essential approach to life that humanity represents…diversity and intelligence, in all of their manifestations, whether human, robotic, or even alien. Those who believe in this notion will not appreciate a takeover of the galaxy by a single macro-consciousness, eliminating all dissident elements.

“Moreover, some even now accuse me offaking the entire phenomenon of human mentalics! They claim that it would be all too easy to contrive the appearance of this new mutation, by hiding micro-thought amplifiers nearby and keeping them constantly focused on the supposed human telepath.”

Hari noted that his friend did not explicitly deny the rumor. In fact, he recalled a certain jeweled pendant that Wanda had never been without, ever since childhood…but that was off the subject.

Daneel continued.

“You are right, Hari. The robotic civil war will resume, soon after Galaxia is unveiled. But if approval by human volition can appear convincing enough, most robots will rally around Galaxia. They will see it as the only hope for saving mankind.”

This time Hari straightened, his back growing erect. A fist tightened.

“Theonly hope? Now see here-”

He was interrupted by the sound of footsteps approaching along the pebbly walk. Hari turned to see Horis Antic draw near. The portly Grey bureaucrat wore a patina of dust on his once impeccable uniform, and Hari saw the fellow’s left hand quiver nervously as he popped another blue pill in his mouth. Antic was inherently anxious around robots, and events of the past two days had done nothing to settle his nerves. Fortunately, all of this would soon become a vague memory after they got him back to a Trantor sanitarium, where just the right cover story could be implanted in his mind. At least, that was Wanda’s plan. Hari knew there would be more to it than that.

“Gaal Dornick says I should tell you the ship is almost ready for takeoff. The Earthlings have agreed to take care of Sybyl and the other survivors from Ktlina. They’ll be kind. In time, the solipsism mania might ease enough to let them rejoin a simple society.

“I still can’t believe all I’ve learned,” Horis continued. “It was one thing to find out that brain fever is a purposefully designed infection, aimed at the brightest humans. But then to learn thatchaos is similar…”

Daneel interrupted. “Not similar at all. Brain fever is relatively gentle. It was designed and released in order to combat the earlier chaos plague, whose first virulent versions escaped Earth on the earliest starships.”

“Was chaos a weapon of war?” Horis asked, in muted tones.

“No one knows, though some accounts say it was. The first crude versions swept Earth before I was made, prompting citizens to fear robots, their own great inventions. Later waves smashed the late Terran renaissance, turning Earthlings into agoraphobes and Spacers into vicious paranoids. Everything that Giskard did here”-Daneel motioned at the radioactive waste-”and that I did in the following millennia, had its roots in this awful plague.”

“B-b-but-” Horis stuttered. “But what if there’s a cure? Wouldn’t that make everything right again? All this stuff I’ve heard-and I only understand a little-all this talk aboutsaving humanity from chaos. Most of it would be unnecessary if someone just found a cure!”

For the first time, Hari saw waves of irritation cross Daneel Olivaw’s face.

“Don’t you think that occurred to me, long ago? What do you imagine I was working on for the first six thousand years? In between having to fight a civil war against robots of the old religion, I devoted all my energies to finding some way of ripping out chaos by its roots! But it was too late. The virus had been cleverly designed to inveigle its way into human chromosomes, scattering and embedding itself in hundreds of crucial places. Even if I knew where they all were, it would takeanother deadly plague just to dig out every genetic site where chaos lay hidden. Trillions would die.

“That was when I realized that chaos could only be staved off if we prevented the conditions that triggered an outbreak. If ambition and individualism provoked the disease out of dormancy, then a conservative society offered the best hope. A Galactic Empire, providing gentle peace, justice, and serenity to a society that never changed.”

Horis Antic nodded. Naturally as a Grey Man, he shared an inclination toward orderliness, with everything classified and pigeonholed properly. “So there is no cure. But what about naturalimmunity? Didn’t I hear someone talk about that, at one point?”

“The disease has always been tragically most virulent among humanity’s brightest. Even so, some highly intelligent people proved immune to the temptations of raging egotism and solipsism. They can be individualists without denying the humanity of others. But alas, this immunity is spreading too slowly. If we had a thousand years, or two…”

Hari asked about something that had been bothering him. “Were both Maserd and Mors Planch immune?”

“Biron Maserd was protected against chaos by the noblesse oblige of his gentry class. As for Planch, you are right, Hari. His mind was startling. Almost unreadable with my mentalic powers. He had lived immersed in three different chaos-renaissances, yet remained completely agile. Flexible. Empathic, yet fierce.”

“Kers Kantun called himnormal.”

“Hmmm.” Daneel rubbed his chin briefly. “Kers had some unique ideas. He thought that today’s humanity is not the same one that made us. Truly natural humans would not be subject to chaos, Kers thought, nor would their minds be easily manipulated.”

Horis Antic took a step forward. The eagerness in his voice replaced his typical nervous tremor. “Do you still have the records from your search for a cure? There have been medical advances in the past few millennia, and millions of qualified workers might come up with ideas that you missed.”

Hari exhaled a sigh.

“Why do you bother, Horis? You know these memories will be washed away, or painted over, soon after we reach Trantor. You never struck me as the kind to chase curiosity for its own sake.”

At this, Horis reacted with a bitter frown. “Perhaps I am more than you realize, Seldon!”

Hari nodded. “Of that, I am quite sure. It only just occurred to me, last night, to review events since you and I first met, and look at them in a fresh light.”

Now, the Grey Man’s nervousness returned. He popped another blue pill. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. But right now I’ve taken too much of your time. There are preparations to make. I’ve got to help Gaal Dornick-”

“No.” Hari cut him off. “It’s time to have the truth, Horis.”

He turned to Daneel. “Have you ever tried to mindscan our young bureaucrat friend here?”

Horis gulped audibly at the mere thought of being mentalically probed.

Daneel responded, “I have a Second Law injunction to be courteous, Hari. I only invade human minds when some First or Zeroth Law need is apparent.”

“And so, you never felt compelled to scan Horis. Well, let me override the injunction now. Take a peek. I bet you’ll find it difficult.”

“No…please…” Antic lifted both hands, as if to ward off Daneel’s probing mentalic fingers.

“You are right, Hari. It is extraordinarily hard, but this man is no Mors Planch. He is achieving this through a combination of drugs and mental discipline, avoiding certain thoughts with scrupulous self-control.”

“Leave me alone!” Horis cried, trying desperately to make his body turn around and flee. But a gentle paralysis swarmed over him, and he instead slumped downward, seating himself on a nearby pile of rubble. Naturally, Daneel would not have let him be hurt in a fall.

“Let me see the recording device,” Hari said, holding out one hand.

New tremors rocked the bureaucrat, but he finally complied, reaching into a coat pocket for a small scanner. No doubt it was one of the best available to imperial operatives.

“You had no intention of reaching the sanitarium, did you? So long as everyone thought you meek and harmless, security would be lax. At Trantor, you would be in your element, able to tap a thousand different channels of communication…with a myriad of tricks that only a Grey Man might have access to. Locked doors would mysteriously open, and you’d be gone.”

Horis slumped, clearly seeing no further purpose in dissembling. When he spoke, his voice seemed different, at once both defeated, and yet stronger. With a note of rueful pride.

“I got off a partial report from Pengia. You can’t stop that part of it.”

Hari nodded. “You were the secret contact who informed Mors Planch, who wanted the Ktlinans to come. Why? You hate chaos as much as I do. Kers Kantun knew that, and I can see it in your character.”

Horis let out a sigh. “It was an experiment. It wasn’t enough just to do a reconnaissance. We had to create a crisis. A scene of conflict with the chaos forces on one side and your tiktok pals on the other. It proved an effective way to get you all talking, arguing, and justifying yourselves to each other. I hardly had to put in a word, here or there.”

“Your pose was impressive,” Hari said, and Daneel added. “So is your mental discipline. Even without the drugs, I would have noticed nothing, until my attention was drawn fully toward you.”

The compliments drew only a snort.

“We are used to being underrated and derided by all the snooty gentry folk and self-important meritocrats. Even eccentrics and citizens dismiss us as if we are part of the background. Long ago, we learned to stop resenting it, to control it, even to foster this impression.”

Horis made a fist. “But tell me, whoruns this Galactic Empire? Even you, Seldon, with your mathematical insight, andyou, robot, who designed the Trantorian regime in the first place. You understand in theory, but you don’t really see.

“Who gets called when a sun flares, bumming half a continent on some provincial world? Who makes sure the navigational buoys all work? Who gets the children vaccinated, keeps the electricity flowing, and makes sure farmers tend the soil so their grandchildren will have something to plow? Who monitors the death rates, so health teams can be sent to some unknowing world before they even realize they’ve drifted into a space current that’s polluting their stratosphere with boron? Who sees to it that self-indulgent gentry and preening meritocrats don’t wreck everything with one egotistical scheme after another?”

Hari accepted this. “We know that the Grey Order does noble work. Can I assumeyou set the notion in Jeni Cuicet’s mind, and arranged for her to take advantage of Testing Day?”

Horis chuckled sardonically. “How do you think she got her job on the Orion elevator? We’ve been quietly spiriting away some of the Terminus exiles. A few lives spared from involuntary banishment and imprisonment, that they were sentenced to for no fault of their own!”

“You say this, even though you claim to understand the Seldon Plan?”

Another snort. “One lesson that we teach again and again in the Grey Academies-something thatyou preached long ago, in the guise of Ruellis-” Antic said this pointing at Daneel “-is thatends generally do not justify evil means. Anyway, grand rationalizations are for gentry and meritocrats. We Greys cannot afford them. When people’s rights are being violated, someone has todo something.”

He whirled toward Hari Seldon. “Oh, the bloodyarrogance of it all. You publish scientific papers about psychohistory for decades, then suddenly go silent and set up a secret cabal to control it! But aren’t you thereby assuming thatnobody on twenty-five million worlds paid attention during all the earlier years? That some nitpickers in the bureaucracy wouldn’t have seen your discovery as a possible tool to be explored…and perhaps used for better government?

“Oh, there are only a few of us that I know of, but we’ve been looking into psychohistory for more than a decade. Our respect for you, Dr. Seldon, matches anyone’s. But your Plan leaves us confused and filled with questions. Doubts we couldn’t approach you with openly.”

Hari understood. Mere bureaucrats would have been rebuffed, at best. Linge Chen and the Committee for Public Safety might arrest any clerks who knew too much. Then there were the rumors that Hari Seldon’s enemies often suffered inexplicable bouts of amnesia.

“So ask your questions now, Horis. I owe you that much.”

The small man took a deep breath, as if he had a lot to say. But at first, all he could utter was a single word.

“Why?”

He inhaled again.

“Why must the Galactic Empire topple? It doesn’t have to! True, things are loosening up. Some say falling apart. But the equations…your equations…show nothing we can’t handle with a lot of sweat and hard work. If technological competence is declining,give us resources to teach a better science curriculum! Unleash billions of bright youngsters. Stop rationing just a few measly slots at the technical schools!”

“We tried that once,” Hari started to answer. “On a planet called Madder Loss-”

But Horis cut him off, rushing forth words, mostly to Daneel.

“Even the chaos outbreaks might be controlled! Sure, they’re getting worse. But the sanitation service isalso getting better all the time. and they’ve never lost a patient yet. Would you really end the empire, which has kept a gentle peace for twelve thousand years, just to keep humanity distracted for a few more centuries? Why not keep the empire going until your new solution is prepared? Is it because the people of the galaxy must be brought low, to a miserable state, so they’ll eagerly accept whatever you offer?”

It was difficult for Hari to switch modes. For so long, he had treated Horis in a patronizing manner. He now saw the Grey Man in a new light, not only as a startlingly effective secret agent, but as a rough-hewn psychohistorian-like Yugo Amaryl at the beginning of their long collaboration. One who understood more than he had ever let on.

“Do you really think imperial institutions can handle more crises like Ktlina?” Hari shook his head. “That would be taking a terrible gamble. If even a single plague site burst free to infect the galaxy…”

“If! You’re talking aboutpeople, Seldon. Almost twelve quadrillion people. Must they all be thrown into a dark age, just because you don’t trust us to do our jobs?

“Besides what if one of those new renaissances actually made it. achieving the fabulousbreakthrough they all dream of. Reaching the mythicalother side, where intelligence and maturity overcome chaos. If we keep them all quarantined, the galaxy can stay relatively safe. Meanwhile, experiments can be run, one planet at a time!”

Hari stared at Horis Antic, astonished by the man’s courage.I could never take such chances. He obviously hates chaos with a passion greater than mine. But he loves the empire even more.

Shaking his head again, Hari answered, “But ultimately it isn’t chaos worlds that are forcing Daneel to bring down the empire.

“It’syou, Horis.”

Such was the look of stunned surprise on Antic’s face that Hari felt unable to speak. He looked to Daneel, silently asking his robot friend to explain, which he did in a voice like Ruellis of old.

“Do not forget, my dear young human, that I invented your Grey Order. I know its capabilities. I am aware how many millions sacrifice themselves while wearing that uniform, unthanked and despised by the other castes. You might even have managed, with resiliency and a little help from psychohistory, to keep the old empire sputtering along, until my new prize-my Galaxia-is ready to be born. But therein lies the rub.”

“You see, I also remember your ancestor-whose name was Antyok-back when humanity stumbled on an actual alien race that had been spared by the terraformers. Robots from allover the galaxy convened to discuss the matter. There were just a few thousand of the alien creatures, and humanity already numbered five quadrillion. Yet, we argued for a year about the danger these beings presented. Humans in every sector and province were agog with enthusiasm to help the nonhumans get on their feet. An excitement for diversity and new voices to talk to. Some robots worried about the potential for triggering chaos. Others projected that the aliens might become a threat to humans in just a couple of thousand years if allowed to spread among the stars. Meanwhile, some, such as the robot you knew as R. Gornon, pleaded that nonhumans merited protection under an expanded version of the Zeroth Law.”

“The point is that none of our robotic deliberations ultimately mattered. News reached our secret meeting ground that the aliens had escaped! They hijacked starships that came into their possession through a twisty chain of mysterious coincidences. Investigators found more than enough blame to pass around, but they assigned none of it to the individual who was actually responsible. Your ancestor, a humble bureaucrat who knew all the right levers for manipulating the system, for getting justice done while pretending to be an innocuous, faceless official.”

It was a different version of the story Horis had told aboard ship. But Hari felt chills hearing it confirmed.

He nodded. “Your very presence here, Horis, shows this resiliency hasn’t been lost. I was First Minister of the Empire, remember? I know the data files on Trantor are limitless. Nothing can be purged from them completely. Anyone with enough skill can defeat the amnesia and find what they need to know about the human past…and now about itsfuture, as well. You are a living demonstration of the reason for it all, Horis.”

“Me? You mean the bureaucracy? We faceless drones? We dull bean counters and pencil pushers? You mean the empire has to fall because ofus?”

Hari nodded. “I never thought of it quite in that way before. But then again, I’m not the one doing the toppling.” He glanced toward Daneel. “This is all about human volition, isn’t it? It’s all about that day, in five centuries or so, when a choice must be made by a man who isnever wrong. When that day comes, there must not be a galactic bureaucracy anymore. No cubicles and dusty offices to burst forth with surprise meddlers, like Horis and his friends. No prim procedures to make sure every decision is deliberated openly.

“The Fall of Trantor isn’t really about chaos, is it, Daneel? It is about killing your own fine invention, the Grey Order, the only way itcan be killed, by total destruction of the filing cabinets, the computer memories, the men…”

This time, R. Daneel Olivaw didn’t answer. The expression on his face sufficed. If any human ever doubted that an immortal robot could feel pain, all question would be erased by looking at Daneel’s Promethean visage.

“So we’re doomed to keep fighting the darkness…for nothing. To die at our desks, never knowing the futility of it all.“

Hari put a hand on the younger man’s shoulder. “You must forget about this now. Go back to your paper folders and soil reports. The knowledge you fought so hard to acquire, with such ingenuity and courage, will only cause you pain. It’s time to let it go, Horis.”

Antic looked up at Hari bleakly. “You aren’t going to wait until Trantor?”

Hari looked to Daneel, appealing silently for a delay so that Horis might at least converse with them during the voyage back. But his robot friend answered with a terse shake of the head. Antic had proved too resourceful, too ready with fresh tricks up his sleeve.

Sensing this, the Grey Man stood up, straightening his bearing, trying for some dignity. But he could not keep from stuttering.

“W-will it hurt?”

Daneel spoke reassuringly to the human’s eyes.

“Not at all. In fact…it is already done.”

10.

Helped by the two software sims, Joan and Voltaire, they were at last able to find every sabotage bug that Zorma’s group had planted aboard the ship. Lodovic shouted enthusiastically when the engines came back on, proclaiming his sense of triumph with a strut around the control room, exactly like a jubilant human male.

Dors felt emotional patterns surge through her own simulation subroutines. Despite her ongoing sense of urgency, it had been oddly pleasant working side by side with Trema, sharing theories and insights, trying one solution after another. She enjoyed his swaggering victory display-which was not all that different from the way Hari used to act, whenever he made some breakthrough in the models of psychohistory.

“I am so sorry to interrupt this celebration,“ commented Joan of Arc, her slender boyish figure appearing in the central holo screen. In the background, Dors could see a male form wearing archaic doublets and hose-the simulation known as Voltaire-listening intently to a pair of headphones, as if trying to pick up something faint with distance.

“You asked us to monitor any transmissions coming from Earth. Voltaire now reports picking up a message using code patterns characteristic of the Second Foundation. It appears to be from Wanda Seldon, informing her compatriots on Trantor that she has successfully recovered her grandfather. The plot to kidnap him is foiled. They will be departing Earth within a few hours, taking Hari straight home.“

Dors looked at Lodovic, who exhaled a long sigh.

“Well then, I guess that’s it. All this rushing about, and we hardly made a difference. Seldon is safe, and we never even had to confront Daneel along the way.”

Dors felt genuine relief on both counts. And yet, it was only natural to feel a bit let down.

“I guess it’s just as well. We’re just a couple of highly dressed-up tiktoks.”

Lodovic laughed gently. “Oh, I think we’re more than that. You, at least, are something special, Dors. We should discuss this, at length.”

Dors nodded. It sounded like a good idea. They had much to talk about. And yet, despite mixed feelings, it was easy to tell where her top priority lay.

“I must go to Trantor now, you understand.”

“And I agree. You have strong obligations, and I wouldn’t think of interfering. But perhaps we can meet when matters there have been resolved?”

This time it was her turn to offer a soft smile. “It might be arranged. Meanwhile, can I drop you off somewhere along the way?”

“I’ll ride with you as far as Demarchia. There are some things I want to look into there.” Then his voice lowered. “Just be careful on Trantor, will you?”

Dors shook her head. “I doubt anyone would choose to harm me. Besides, I can take care of myself.”

“It’s not harm done by others that I fear. You are vulnerable, Dors. You were designed to be more human than any other robot. Your bond with Hari is intense. Be prepared for a rough time when the end comes. If you need someone to talk to-”

No more had to be said. Silence reigned while she took control of the ship and sent it plunging on the first of many long hyperspace jumps that would bring them to the center of the galaxy. To the place where all roads led, and where she had one great duty left to perform, before her path could truly be called free.

It was promised that I could be with you just before you died, Hari.

That vow she intended, above all else in the universe, to keep.

During his last sunset on Earth, Hari Seldon watched gamma rays excite scintillations above Old Chicago. Ionized curtains glowed and rippled like polar auroras, only here the driving energy came not from a distant sun, but the ground itself. He thought he could almost see patterns in the luminous sheets-like the clever living artwork in the imperial gardens that day when Horis Antic offered him a data wafer filled with tempting clues. Then, as Hari watched, all semblance of organized structure vanished from the eerie horizon. Now the glow reminded him instead of Shoufeen Woods, where order had been banished and chaos was king.

Preparations for departure were complete. In a little while, Hari would board Wanda’s ship for the return to Trantor and his former life-hated by the men and women he was exiling to Terminus, feared by the present set of imperial rulers. and revered by a small cabal of psychics and mathists who felt certain they knew the future course of history.

Daneel would stay behind to settle matters with the Earthling inhabitants. There were arrangements to make. The cracked sarcophagus had to be buried so others could not misuse the fateful rift in the space-time continuum.

From his vantage point atop a pile of rubble, Hari could hear the voice of Horis Antic jabbering with excitement as he packed away his collection of soil types, acquired during this visit to a strange world. There could even be a scientific paper or two, something to brighten up his career profile, though nothing would erase the stigma associated with anyone who worked with dirt.

In any event, the fellow seemed happy. Daneel had done his job well.

Feeling tremors in his legs, Hari sat down again in the suspensor chair that Wanda had provided. He was needing it more, now that the rejuvenation treatments were wearing off. Soon he would be a frail old cripple again.

Soon I will be dead.

Seated, he could lean back, gazing toward the zenith where Earth’s radiation glow surrendered to a glitter of starlight-constellations that his ancestors no doubt knew by heart. Those stellar patterns had certainly changed in twenty thousand years, however, and he pondered how the sky might have looked if R. Gornon Vlimt had his way, sending Hari through time to a galaxy five hundred years older. Five hundred years more experienced with sorrow.

There were footsteps on the rubble path, too surefooted to be human. After a long pause, Daneel Olivaw asked, “What do you see up there, old friend?”

Hari felt a tautness in his throat.

“The future.”

“Indeed. Do you have a good view?”

Hari chuckled.

“A comfortable chair…a high place to look from… and of course, my equations. Oh yes, Daneel. I can see quite a bit from here.”

“And you are not disappointed? About missing a trip into that future?”

“Not very much. It might have been interesting. But you had reasons for preventing it, and I understand them. I probablywould have meddled.” Hari laughed again. “Besides, you’ll need a man who never makes mistakes, and I am anything but that.”

“Do you have any special regrets?”

“Just one. I can see it right now.” Hari gestured skyward, a bit to the left of zenith, but he wasn’t pointing to a constellation, rather, at a cluster of psychohistorical terms that floated in his sky, more real at this moment than the glittering stars.

“Please tell me,” Daneel entreated. “Explain what you see up there.”

Hari realized that his immortal friend, capable of extending his vision from X rays to the radio spectrum, was at the moment,envious. Hari derived a strange pleasure from that.

“I see my Foundation, right now being established on Terminus, beginning its bumpy path toward adventure and glory. The probabilities are strong for two centuries, at least. Psychosocial momentum has built up to a point where I can almost see the actors in this play. The Encyclopedists, politicians, traders, and charlatans will live in a time of great personal danger. And yet they’ll draw satisfaction from a sense of participating in something grand. Building a society that is preordained for success.”

Hari lifted his other hand, pointing toward a flickering in Earth’s ionized atmosphere.

“Ah! Did you see that? A perturbation! They are happening all the time, though most cancel each other out. Besides, we designed the Foundation to be robust, adapting to every flux and disturbance with great resiliency.

“And yet, with so much riding on the Plan, do we dare let human destiny depend on the reactions of a few million of our descendants? Can we trust them to respond with as much courage and determination as the equations predict?”

Hari shook his head. “No, we cannot. You convinced me of that, long ago, Daneel. Perturbations from the Plan must be corrected! The Plan must be kept on course. To do this, we shall need a guiding hand. ASecond Foundation, using mathematics to track every swerve and deviation, then applying pressure here and there, at just the right points, so that the First Foundation stays on its assigned trajectory.”

He sighed. “I was easy to persuade. After all, the Second Foundation is an extension ofme. A form of immortality. A way I can keep poking and meddling after this physical frame has been eaten by worms and turned into the soil Horis admires so much. The Second Foundation might have been Yugo Amaryl’s idea-did you inspire him though? In any event, vanity alone was enough to make me agree to it.

“But then you started demanding even more, Daneel.

“Will mathematics suffice? You worried that my successors wouldn’t be strong enough. A society of secret guides will need something more potent than equations. A superhuman power, enabling them to sway kings, mayors, and scientists away from perturbing thoughts, diverting them back toward the tracks they had been assigned. And 10, no sooner did you make this suggestion, than such a tool appears!”

Hari gestured toward the horizon, where Old Chicago flickered with a steady glow. “Your gift to the Seldon Plan, Daneel-mentalics! We really had to do a major reformulation of the Plan whenthat came to light. Fortunately, the mutation only appeared where you wanted it to. Some of the psychics will help seed your great universal mind, while others breed with my Fifty mathists, creating a new race that is capable of both calculation and magic.”

There was silence atop the rubble mound. Finally, Daneel commented, “You see a lot up there, my old friend.”

Hari nodded.

“Oh yes, I see all the adjustments we had to make in the equations, in order to deal with this new aristocracy that will be inbreeding for the next several centuries, developing its power and influence, relying ever more on mentalic dominance, and less on mathematics. If they are left in charge, even with a tradition of duty and noblesse oblige, they will eventually become a ruling class. A rulingrace. One that will make every prior priesthood or royal family seem like amateurs.”

Hari glanced up at Daneel.

“But what choice have we? Eventually the Foundation will stop being distracted by momentary crises, by galactic competitors and the challenge of expansion. In time, the civilization we establish on Terminus will reach a new height of confidence…and face its inevitable collision with chaos. At that point, our predictions grow more approximate. The psychohistorical equations show the Foundation’s odds of success will have winnowed down to only seventy percent or so.”

“That is not good enough, Hari. Not nearly good enough.”

“So you insisted, Daneel. The Foundation will be as strong, dynamic, and empathic as any human civilization could possibly be. If any culture could ever be prepared to take on chaos, survive the solipsism plagues, and burst through to theother side, this will be the one. And yet, if it fails…”

“That’s the rub, Hari.”

“Indeed. We’re left with a one-in-four chance that humanity itself might be destroyed. I can see why you wanted something better, Daneel. You were compelled to do anything in your power that might boost the odds.

“First, you demanded a secret mentalic society, to help guide the First Foundation. But that only altered a few percentage points. Worse, it actually introduced new perturbations. Resentment by common folk against a psychic aristocracy, for instance. And danger from rogue mentalics.”

Hari lifted both hands. “Quite a choice isn’t it? Either a hell-bent battle with chaos or a permanent mutant ruling class. No wonder you finally decided there must be a third solution! No wonder you’ve worked so hard to develop Gaia, as a way to replace the Seldon Plan.”

When he responded, there was deep respect and compassion in Daneel’s voice.

“Your work still has great importance, Hari. Humanity must be kept engaged during the next few centuries.”

“Engaged? You mean distracted, don’t you? The people of my Foundation will think they are bold explorers, holding destiny in their hands, winning a better future by their own efforts, though aided by laws of history. Then, abruptly, you’ll bring this new thing upon them. Already approved by some fellow whoknows everything.”

“A man who is alwaysright,” Daneel corrected.

Hari waved a hand. “Whatever.”

Daneel sighed.

“I know you have reservations, Hari. But consider the long-range prospect. What if there are entities in other galaxies, similar to the meme-minds we encountered on Trantor? What if they are more powerful? Perhaps they have already assimilated all life-forms in their home galaxies. Their influence may even now be stretching this way, toward us. That outside force could be a terrible threat to humanity. Only if the human species is unified, powerful, and cohesive, a trueGalaxia superorganism-can we be assured of your survival.”

Hari blinked for a moment. “Isn’t that a far-fetched scenario? Or at least a long way off?”

“Perhaps. But dare I take that chance? I am compelled by the Zeroth Law-and by my promise to Elijah Baley, to protect you all, no matter what the pains! No matter what the cost.”

R. Daneel Olivaw took a step forward, motioning toward the heavens. “Besides, think of it, Hari! Every human soul in contact with every other one! All knowledge shared instantly. All misunderstandings erased. Every bird, animal, and insect incorporated into the vast, unified web. The ultimate of serenity and understanding that your ancient sages yearned for. And it can be achieved in just over half the time that you project for the Foundation’s final battle with chaos.”

“Yes, it has attractive features,” Hari conceded.

“And yet, my mind and heart keep ponderingTerminus, at the opposite side of the galaxy. A small world very much like this one…this poor, wounded Earth. Despite everything, Daneel, the oddswere in their favor. All the factors agreed. They would have had a good chance-”

“Seventy percent is not good enough.”

“So you won’t let them try?”

“Hari, even if they do break through to that mythicalother side, you don’t know what kind of society they will build afterward! You admit the socio-equations explode into singularities at that point. All right, the Foundationers may defeat chaos. They may achieve some great new wisdom, but then what? How about thenext crisis to come along? Psychohistory offers no insights. Both you and I are blind. We have no idea what would follow. No ability to plan or protect them.”

Hari nodded. “That uncertainty…that inability to predict…has been my lifelong terror. It’s what I always fought against, and the bond that united me to you, Daneel. Only now, as I approach my end, do I see a strange sort of beauty in it.

“Humanity has been like a child who was horribly traumatized, and thereafter stayed in the nursery, where it could be kept safe and warm. You may differ with the Calvinians over many things, Daneel. But you both prescribedamnesia to help ease our collective trauma-a dull forgetfulness that could have vanished anytime our protectors chose to pull back the blinds and open the door. But you never did.

“Treating us that way would have been a horrible crime, except for the excuse of chaos. And evenwith that excuse, isn’t there a limit? A point at which the child must be untethered, letting her take on new challenges? Facing the future on its own terms?”

Hari smiled. “We can only ask that our descendants be better than we are. We cannot demand that they be perfect. They’ll have to solve their problems, one at a time.”

Daneel stared for a while, then looked away.

“You may be able to take such an attitude, late in life, but my programming is less flexible. I cannot take risks with humanity’s survival.”

“I see that. But consider, Daneel. If Elijah Baley were here right now, don’t you thinkhe would be willing to take a chance?”

The robot didn’t answer. Silence stretched between them, and that was all right with Hari. He was still looking at equations painted across the stars, waiting for something to reappear.

Something he had glimpsed before.

Abruptly, several of the floating factors entered a new orbit, coalescing in a pattern that existed nowhere except in his own mind. No existing version of the Seldon Plan Prime Radiant contained this insight. Perhaps it was an old man’s hallucination. Or else, an emergent property arising from all the new things he had learned during this final adventure.

Either way, it made him smile.

Ah, there you are again! Are you real? Or a manifestation of wishful thinking?

The motif was that of a circle, returning to its origins.

Hari looked up at Daneel, no doubt the noblest person he had ever met. After twenty thousand years, struggling for the sake of humanity, the robot was undeterred, unbowed, as resolute as ever to deliver his masters to some destination that was safe, happy, and secure.

Surely he will keep his final promise to me. I will get to see my beloved wife, one last time.

Having lived more intimately with a robot than any human, Hari had some sympathy for Zorma and Cloudia, who wanted greater union between the two races. Perhaps in many centuries their approach would combine with others in some rich brew. But their hopes and schemes were irrelevant at present. For now, only two versions of destiny showed any real chance of success. Daneel’s Galaxia, on the one hand… and the glimmering figure Hari now saw floating in the sky above him.

“Our children may surprise you, Daneel,” he commented at last, breaking the long silence.

Pondering briefly, his robot friend replied, “These children-you refer to the descendants of those exiled to Terminus?”

Hari nodded. “Five hundred and some odd years from now, they will already be a diverse and persnickety people, proud of both their civilization and their individuality. You may fool a majority of robots with your ‘man who is always right,’ but I doubt many in the Foundation will accept it.”

“I know,” Daneel acknowledged with pain in his voice. “There will be resistance against assimilation by Gaia. Shortsighted panic, perhaps even violence. All of it unavailing in the long run.”

But Hari reacted with a smile.

“I don’t think you quite understand, Daneel. It’s notresistance that you have to worry about. It will be a strange kind ofacceptance that poses the greatest danger to your plan.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, how can you be so sure that it won’t beGaia that’s assimilated? Perhaps the culture of that future Foundation will be so strong, so diverse and open, that they will simply absorb your innovation, give Gaia citizenship papers, and then move on to even greater things.”

Daneel stared at Hari. “I…find this hard to envision.”

“It’s part of the pattern life has followed since it climbed from the ooze. The simple gets incorporated into the complex. For all of its power and glory, Gaia-andGalaxia- aresimple beings. Perhaps their beauty and power will only be part of something larger. Something more diverse and grand than you ever imagined.”

“I cannot encompass this. It sounds risky. There is no assurance…”

Hari laughed.

“Oh, my dear friend. Both of us have always been obsessed with predictability. But sometimes you just have to understand-the universe isn’t ours to control.”

Though his body felt weak, Hari sat up higher in the flotation chair.

“I’ll tell you what, Daneel. Let’s make a wager.”

“A wager?”

Hari nodded. “If you have your way, and Gaia assimilates everybody, eventually creating a vast unitary Galaxia, tell me this-will there be any more need forbooks?”

“Of course not. By definition, all members of the collective will know, almost instantaneously, anything that is learned by the others. Books, in whatever form, are a technique for passing information between separate minds.”

“Ah. And this assimilation should be complete, by say, six hundred years from now? Seven hundred, at the outside?”

“It should be.”

“On the other hand, supposeI am right. Imagine that my Foundation turns out to be stronger, wiser, and more robust than you, Wanda, or any of the robots expect. Perhaps it will defeat you, Daneel. They may decide to reject outside influence by robots, or human mentalics, or even all-wise cosmic minds.

“Orelse, maybe they will accept Galaxia as a marvelous gift, incorporate it in their culture, and move on. Either way, human diversity and individualism will continue in some form. And there will still be a need for books! Perhaps even anEncyclopedia Galactica.”

“But I thought theEncyclopedia was just a ruse, to get the Foundation started on Terminus.”

Hari waved a hand in front of him. “Never mind that. There will be encyclopedias, though perhaps not at first. But the question that now lies before us-the subject of our wager-is this.

“Will there still be editions of the Encyclopedia Galactica published a thousand years from now?

“If your Galaxia plan succeeds, in its pure and simple form, there will be no books or encyclopedias in one millennium’s time. But ifI am right, Daneel, people will still be creating and publishing compendiums of knowledge. They may share countless insights and intimacies through mentalic powers, the way people now make holovision calls. Who knows? But they will also maintain a degree of individuality, and keep on communicating with each other in old-fashioned ways.

“If I’m right, Daneel, theEncyclopedia will thrive… along with our children…and my first love. The Foundation.”

Hari Seldon lapsed into silence, a quiet reflection that R. Daneel Olivaw respected.

Soon, his granddaughter Wanda would come up this slope, a crumbling hill composed of rubble from past human civilizations, and collect him for the journey back to Trantor…and perhaps to a special reunion that he longed for.

But for the remaining moment, Hari admired a vista stretching overhead-the galactic starscape imbued with his beloved mathematics. He stared up at the radiation-flecked sky, and greeted Chaos, his old enemy.

I know you at last,he thought.

You are the tiger, who used to hunt us. You are winter’s cold. You are famine’s bitter hunger…the surprise betrayal…or the illness that struck without warning, leaving us crying out,Why?

You are every challenge humanity faced, and eventually overcame, as we grew just a little mightier and wiser with each triumph. You are the test of our confidence…our ability to persist and prevail.

I was justified in fighting you…and yet, without your opposition, humanity would be nothing, and there could never be a victory.

Chaos, he now realized, was the underlying substance out of which his equations evolved. As well as life itself.

Anyway, it would be pointless to resent it now. Soon, his molecules would join Chaos in its everlasting dance.

But up there, amid the stars, his lifelong dream still lived.

We will know. We will understand and grow beyond all limits that imprison us.

In time, we will be greater than we ever imagined possible.

Acknowledgments

Among the “Asimov experts” who offered wisdom and advice were professors Donald Kingsbury, James Gunn, and Joseph Miller, as well as Jennifer Brehl, Atilla Torkos, Alejandro Rivero, and Wei-Hwa Huang. Also providing valuable comments were Stefan Jones, Mark Rosenfelder, Steinn Sigurdsson, Joy Crisp, Ruben Krasnopolsky, G. Swenson, Sean Huang, Freddy Hansen, Michael Westover, Christian Reichardt, Melvin Leok, J. V. Post, Benjamin Freeman, Scott Martin, Robert Hurt, Anita Gould, Joseph Cook, Alberto Monteiro, R. Sayres, N. Know, A. Faykin, Michael Hochberg, Adam Blake, Jimmy Fung, and Jenny Ives. Sara Schwager and Bob Schwager were conscientious and keen-eyed copy editors. I am also grateful to Janet Asimov, John Douglas, Ralph Vicinanza, and above all to Cheryl Brigham, whose skilled reading caught many errors, whose hands substituted for mine in a crisis, and who kept life going when I felt like a hapless robot.

The quotation in Part 6, about theGospel of Uniformity, is from Alfred North Whitehead’s book,Science and the Modern World, 1925.