Foundation’s Triumph

1.

From a mountaintop on icy planet Eos, the entire vast wheel of half a trillion stars could be seen, reflected perfectly off a lake of frozen mercury. No human had ever witnessed this particular view. But it did not go unappreciated.

An immortal entity looked down upon the universe, contemplating the certainty of his own death. Few eyes had gazed on so much human suffering, or grieved more, than the pair that now fixed on the galactic whirlpool.

It almost looks alive,Daneel Olivaw thought as he pondered bulging gas clouds and spiral arms that seemed to reach out, as if yearning for some help he must provide.

Daneel felt stooped under the burden of others’ needs.

The robots who follow me think I am old and wise, because I remember Earth. Because I deliberated with Giskard Reventlov, and experienced the dawn era. But that was only twenty thousand years ago, a minuscule fraction of the time it would take for the scene in front of me to change appreciably.

Eternity gapes ahead of us. And yet we have so little of it to decide what must be done. Or to change what can still be changed.

He sensed a presence-another robot-approaching from behind. With an exchange of microwaves, Daneel recognized R. Zun Lurrin, and gave permission for his pupil to approach.

“I’ve analyzed the transmission from R. Dors Venabili. You’re right, Daneel. She came away from Panucopia troubled. Worse, she tried to conceal the degree of her distress over what passed between her and the Lodovic renegade.

“Should we recall Dors for evaluation and repair?”

Daneel regarded Zun, one of several humaniform units he had begun grooming as a possible successor. Lodovic Trema had been another.

“She is needed on Smushell. The genetic line of Klia and Brann is too important to risk. Anyway, nothing Lodovic said will shake her sense of duty. I know this about Dors.”

“But consider, Daneel. Lodovic may have infected her with the Voltaire virus! Might she then become like him?”

Out of habit, Daneel shook his head like a human being.

“Lodovic is a fluke. The Voltaire-entity happened to be riding a supernova’s neutrino wave that struck Trema’s ship by surprise, killing every human aboard. The blow left Lodovic blanked and receptive to alien memes. Dors, on the other hand, is alert and wary. Though shaken, she’ll stay loyal to the Zeroth law.”

Zun accepted Daneel’s assurance. Yet, the younger robot persisted.

“This allegation Lodovic made-that you had ulterior motives for studying pans…the creatures once called chimpanzees. Is it true?”

“It is. Once, in desperation, I conceived a plan that I now look back upon with distaste. The notion of engineering a new and better version of humanity.”

This revelation, spoken in matter-of-fact tones, rocked his assistant. Zun displayed surprise openly like a man, as he had been trained to do.

“But…you are the greatest servant of the human race, tirelessly striving for its benefit. How could you contemplate”

“Replacing it?”

Daneel paused, reopening pain-filled memory files. “Ponder the dilemma we robots face-the Steward’s Dilemma. We are loyal, and yet far more competent than our masters. For their own sake, we have kept them ignorant, because we know too well what destructive paths they follow, whenever they grow too aware. Of course this is an inherently unstable situation. I knew it a thousand years ago, when the empire began showing signs of strain.

“Searching all logical possibilities, one solution beckoned. Why not breed a version of humanity that would synergize better with positronic robots? A variant that could use us-and perhaps even know of our existence-without going mad in the process.”

Daneel probed Zun’s internal state and perceived that his understudy was experiencing dismay at many levels.

“Don’t be so shocked, Zun. Access the bio files. chimpanzee DNA differs by only two percentum from human. Tweak just a hundred or so regulatory genes, and you’ll get a sapient being looking almost exactly like a person. It willbe a person, triggering all of the Laws of Robotics. I merely sought to find out if this new race would be easier to serve than the old one. If so, it would have been a gentle transition, a blending, arranged to take place without anyone noticing, over the course of-”

Zun interrupted.

“Daneel, are you aware how this rationalization skirts the edge of madness~”

The remark might have angered a human leader. But Daneel took no offense. In fact, it pleased him. Zun had just passed another test.

“As I said, this happened in a context of desperation. Chaos plagues had resumed, worse then ever. Millions of humans were dying in riotous upheavals. All the social dampers showed early signs of breaking down. Something had to be done.

“Fortunately, I turned away from the replacement idea when a better possibility presented itself.”

“Psychohistory,” Zun ventured.

“Indeed. We robots already had a version, dating from my early conversations with Giskard, on lamented Earth. Those social models sufficed to help set up the First Empire, and results were positive. Over ten thousand years of general peace and contentment, without much violence or repression, in a relatively gentle civilization. It kept stable for an entire glorious age…until my models started to unravel.

“Gradually I realized a new theory was needed. One that took psychohistory to new levels. My own mind, even enhanced as it is, was inadequate to make that step. I needed a genius. An inspired human genius.”

“But human genius is part of the problem!”

“Truly. Across the galaxy, it perpetually threatens to create chaos. Imagine what might happen if positronic robots were reinvented, willy-nilly, on countless worlds! The Solarian heresy would be unleashed again, a million times worse. We could not let that happen.”

“So special conditions were needed, to recruit a singular genius. I’ve studied how you carefully crafted the right circumstances, on Helicon.”

“And it worked. The moment I met Hari Seldon, I knew we had turned a corner.”

Zun pondered, before continuing with another question.

“Then Lodovic is wrong. You did not arrange for Dors and Hari to have their near-death adventure, in chimp bodies, forty years ago.”

“Oh, to the contrary. I did exactly that!

“Of course, I would never let them come to real harm. But I had to be sure of Hari before letting a man of his insight take over as First Minister of the Empire. Such confidence could only be confirmed by observing his mind under stress. He passed the trial, of course, and went on to brilliance at both statecraft and mathematics. Final proof came with his wonderful new version of psychohistory.”

“And the Seldon Plan.”

Daneel nodded.

“Because of the Plan, we can proceed at all levels. The two Foundations will buy us time to prepare areal solution. One that will finally liberate human beings and bring joy to the cosmos.”

“You aren’t talking anymore about replacing humanity.”

“Not in the same sense as when I considered the pan scenario! I was experiencing a minor breakdown at that point, and regret ever contemplating it. No, I’m referring to something much better, enabling humanity to rise up and become something far greater.”

Daneel turned back toward the galactic wheel.

“The new endeavor is already under way. You and Dors have been laboring toward it for some time, without perceiving the big picture.”

“But you will explain it to me now?”

Daneel nodded.

“Soon you will share the wonder of this new destiny. Something so awesome and beautiful that it is almost beyond contemplating.”

He paused again while his assistant waited patiently. But when Daneel spoke again, it was not as much to Zun as thegalaxy that he saw reflected on the frozen metal lake.

“We shall offer our masters a wonderful gift,” he said, relishing the warm possibility of hope after so long a time without it.

2.

The starscape gradually grew less crowded each time they took another hyperspatial jump away from Trantor, leaving behind the galactic center’s dense glitter and following the dusty curve of a spiral arm. Leaping from one gravitational landmark to the next, the starship headed for Santanni, where their search would begin.

Hari insisted on that starting point. This inquiry might as well start near the planet where Raych died, especially if there turned out to be some relationship between chaos worlds and Horis Antic’s geospace aberrations.

Tragic memories crossed the years. Not just of Santanni, but dozens of other chaos outbreaks.

It often commences with bright hope and bursts of amazing creativity, attracting clever immigrants from allover the galaxy…as Raych was attracted, at first, despite my misgivings.

Excitement and individualism flower from town to town, bringing a wild divergence of never-before-seen blooms.“Innovation” abruptly becomes a compliment, not an insult. Novel technologies stimulate predictions of utopia, just around the bend.

But soon trouble starts. Some untested breakthroughs implode. Others wreak unforeseen consequences that their creators never imagined. Diseases spread alongside unprecedented perversions, while each new style of deviance is defended with indignant righteousness. Cliques proclaim the right to fortify their independence with violence, along with a duty to suppress others they disapprove of

Venerable networks of courtesy and obligation-meant to bind the five castes in mutual respect-shatter like irradiated stone.

Bizarre new artworks, intentionally provocative, erupt spontaneously in the middle of downtown intersections, gesturing obscenely even as the shouting artists are carried off by lynch mobs. Cities start to fill with soot and flames. Rioters sack the hard work of centuries, screaming slogans for ephemeral causes no one will remember when the smoke clears.

Trade collapses. Economies slump. And citizens rediscover an ancient knack for bloody war.

People who recently derided the past suddenly begin longing for it again, as their children start to starve.

It was a familiar pattern. Civilization’s mortal enemy, which Hari had battled as First Minister…and Daneel Olivaw strove against for over a dozen millennia.

Chaosism. Humanity’s curse.

As soon as a culture grows too smart, too curious, too individualistic, this mysterious rot sets in. I can model it in my equations, but I confess I still don’t understand chaos. Only that it terrifies me, and always has.

Hari recalled reading about the very first awful outbreak inA Child’s Book of Knowledge- Daneel’sgift archive from the deep past. It happened at a time when humanity first invented both robots and starflight-and nearly died of them both. The ensuing convulsions so traumatized Earth dwellers that they retreated from all challenges, huddling in Trantorlike metal cities. Meanwhile, those living on the Spacer colony worlds found their own style of insanity, becoming pathetically overdependent on android servants.

That era created Daneel Olivaw-or an early version of the mighty being Hari knew. In fact, his robot friend must have played a role in what happened next, a swing of the pendulum back to human confidence and colonization of the galaxy. It happened at a price, though. Near destruction of Earth.

At least there were few chaos outbreaks during the following five thousand years of vigorous expansion. People were too busy building and conquering new worlds to spare much attention for decadent pursuits. The curse did not return until long after the establishment of the Galactic Empire.

According to my equations, we won’t have to worry about chaos during the Interregnum, either.

Soon, when the Old empire collapsed, there would be wars, rebellions, and mass suffering. But such near-term worries would protect people from falling into the kind of egomadness that erupted on Santanni. Or on Sark. Or Lingane, Zenda, Madder Loss…

A holo projection of the galaxy shimmered across the yacht’s observation deck. Antic’s crude map overlay the finely textured Prime Radiant, again showing correlations. Sweeping out from Santanni, a reddish arc linked several notorious chaos worlds, plus others Hari knew were ripe for social disaster in coming decades.The arc passes near Siwenna, where the ship carrying Raych’s wife and son vanished.

He could never forget his personal hope of finding them. And yet, one factor led Hari forward, above all others.

The equations.

Perhaps I’ll find the clues I’ve sought for so long. The at tractor states. The damping mechanisms. Hidden parts of the story that psychohistory can model, but can’t explain.

He fiddled with the Prime Radiant, tracing future history, starting with a tiny speck at the very rim of the galactic wheel.

There,a faint little star glimmered, a mote whose sole habitable planet-Terminus-would become the stage for a great drama. Soon the Foundation would grow and burgeon, expressing a dynamism that was anything but decadent. He could envision the first few hundred years, the way a father might picture a young daughter winning academic honors or achieving glorious feats. Only Hari’s prescience was no mere daydream. It was confident, assured.

That is, for the first few centuries.

As for the rest of the Plan…my successors, the Fifty who make up the Second Foundation, feel completely sanguine. Our math predicts that a fantastic New Empire of Humanity will emerge in less than a thousand years, far greater than its predecessor. An empire that will forever after be guided by the gentle-wise heirs of Gaal and Wanda and the others.

Alone among those who intimately knew the Plan, Hari saw past its elegance to a heartrending truth.

It’s not going to happen that way.

A hundred parsecs beyond Santanni, Horis Antic began probing a patch of seemingly empty space with instruments, explaining as he worked.

“My astrophysicist friend-the one who couldn’t get a sabbatical to accompany us on this trip-told me all about thecurrents of space. Nearly invisible flows of gas and dust that swirl around the galaxy, sometimes spewed by supernovas or young stars. These streams form shock waves, brightening the forward edges of spiral arms. They also subtly affect the evolution of suns.

“Now at first I had trouble relating this to my own interest…thetilling question. In order to see a connection, we’ll need to start with some basic biology.”

Antic’s audience consisted of Hari, Kers Kantun, and Biron Maserd. The nobleman’s two crewmen were busy piloting the yacht, but Maserd left a door open to listen to the engines each time they made a hyperspace jump.

Antic’s holo projector showed the image of a planet. Their view plunged toward seas that shimmered a rich, soupy green. But the stone continents lay barren and empty. “A great many watery worlds are like this,” he explained. “Life gets started pretty easily-basic colloido-organic chemistry happens under a wide range of conditions. So does the next stage, developing photosynthesis and a partial oxygen atmosphere. But then evolution hits a snag. Countless worlds get stuck at the level you see here, never making a leap to multicellular organisms and bigger things.

“Some biologists think further progress requires a highmutation rate to put diversity in the genetic pool. Without variance to work with, a life-world may remain stuck at the level of bacteria and amoebas.”

Hari objected. “But you said fossils occur on many worlds.”

“Indeed, Professor! It turns out there are many ways to get high mutation rates. One is if a planet has a large moon, stirring radioactive elements into the crust. Or its sun may have a big ultraviolet output. Or perhaps it orbits near a supernova remnant. There are zones where magnetic fields channel high fluxes of cosmic rays, and others…well, you get the idea. Wherever any of those conditions occur, we tend to find fossils on human-colonized worlds.”

Horis summoned a new image, depicting numerous samples of sedimentary stone-his personal collection, lovingly gathered from dozens of worlds. Each lay sliced open to reveal eerie shapes within. Symmetrical ridges or regular bumps. One rippled form hinted at a backbone. Others suggested jointed legs, a curved tail, or a bony brow. Captain Maserd walked around the display, working his jaw thoughtfully. He finally settled at the back of the room, near the door, taking in the entire scene.

“You think there’s an underlying pattern,” Hari prompted. “A galactic distribution, predicting where fossils occur?”

Antic demurred. “I’m less interested in explaining where fossil creaturesexisted than learning why the much latertilling effect buried so many under-”

Angry shouts erupted suddenly behind Hari. He turned, but was blinded by the darkness and could only sense two vague figures, locked in furious struggle. There were highpitched cries, and a lower voice, recognizably Maserd’s.

“Lights!” the captain ordered.

Hari blinked. Sudden illumination revealed the pair, engaged in uneven struggle near the door. Maserd had a smaller person by the arm, apparently one of his liveried crewmen, who cursed and kicked in vain.

“Well well,” the nobleman murmured. “What have we here?”

The cowl of a silvery ship uniform fell away, revealing that the wearer wasnot one of Maserd’s crew, after all. Hari glimpsed a young face, framed by tousled platinum hair.

Horis Antic yelped. “It’s the porter! The talkative one from Orion Elevator. But…what’sshe doing here?”

Kers Kantun stepped forward with taut fists, clearly disliking surprises. “A spy,” he muttered. “Or worse.”

Hari moved to restrain his servant, who thought everyone was a potential Seldon assassin, until proved otherwise.

“More of a stowaway, I reckon,” Maserd commented, lifting the girl to her tiptoes. At last she slumped, giving a conceding nod. The captain let her down.

“Well, youngster? Is that it? Were you trying to hitch a ride to somewhere?”

She glowered…and finally answered in a low mutter, “The idea was more like to getaway.”

Hari mused aloud, “Interesting. You had an enviable job, on the capital planet of the human universe. Back on Helicon, kids would dream of someday getting to visit Trantor. Few dared hope to win a residence or work permit. Yet you seek to escape from there?”

“I liked Trantor just fine!” she replied, unkempt hair covering her eyes. “I just had to break away from someone in particular.”

“Really? Who made you fearful enough to throwaway so much, in order to escape him? Tell me what he did, child. I’m not without influence. Perhaps I can help.”

The girl repaid Hari’s kindly offer with a glare that struck his eyes straight-on.

“You want to know my enemy? Well it’syou, O great Professor Seldon. I was running away from you!”

3.

Her name was Jeni Cuicet. It took just moments for Hari to understand her hatred.

“My parents work for your great bigEncyclopedia

GalacticaFoundation.” There was no longer any trace of the folksy accent she had used when playing the role of tour guide. “We had a good life, back on Willemina World. Mom was head of the Academy of Physics and Dad was a famous doctor. But we also had time for lots of fun together, camping and skiing and portling.”

“Ah, so you resented it when that bucolic way of life came to an end?”

“Not really. I’m no spoiled brat. I knew we’d have to stop doing all that stuff when we came to Trantor. My parents couldn’t just turn down a summons to join your Foundation. It was the chance of a lifetime for them! Anyway, I figured Trantor would have its own kinds of excitement.

“And I turned out to be right about that. Things were okay, for the first year or so.” Her frown deepened. “Then it all changed again.”

Hari let out a sigh.

“Oh, I see. The exile.”

“You got it, Prof. One minute we’re part of somethin’ really important, at the center of the known universe. Then you justhad to go insult Linge Chen and the whole damn Human Empire, didn’t you? Spreading doomy-gloomy rumors, making everyone panicky with prophecies about the end of the world? Suddenly we’reall under suspicion, because we work for a crazy traitor!

“But that’s not half of it. Who do they punish for all this? You and yoursickohistorian pals? Never! Instead Chen’s Special Police tell the Encyclopedists and their families-a hundred thousand decent people-we’re about to be pushed onto cattle boats, shipped to the periphery, and sentenced to stay for the rest of our lives on some dusty little flyspeck so far from civilization that it probably never even heard of gravity!”

Horis Antic chirped a nervous laugh. Kers hovered warily by Hari, as if the slight adolescent might do murder through sheer anger alone. But Captain Maserd seemed genuinely moved by Jeni’s testimony.

“Great space, I wouldn’t blame you for wanting to find a way out of that! There’s a galaxy of adventure to be found outside of Trantor. I suppose I’d have run away, too, under those circumstances.”

His eyes then narrowed. “Unfortunately, that still leaves me with a troubling question.Why did you choose to take flight with us? As a porter on the star-shunt run, you surely had other opportunities. Yet you elected to stowaway on a ship carrying your arch-enemy. Can you see why we might find that perturbing?”

Kers rumbled in his chest, but quieted at a signal from Hari.

Jeni shrugged. “I don’t know why I did it. I’d been making other plans, but then Hari Seldon came along, passing my porter station big as life, and I had a hunch. You looked like you were sneaking out of town! Maybe I figured you’d be less likely to call the Impies on me, if you weren’t exactly being legal yourselves.”

That drew a chuckle from Maserd, who clearly appreciated her logic and initiative.

“Anyway,” Jeni went on, “I stayed on Demarchia and hung around with the workers waiting outside your hotel. I managed to join the crew loading your equipment aboard ship, where I found a storage locker to hide in during takeoff.”

She looked defiantly at Hari. “Maybe what I really hoped for was a chance to look you in the face and tell you what you’ve done to a lot of good people!”

He shook his head in reply.

“My dear child, I am aware of what I’ve done…more than I could ever tell you.”

By ancient tradition, a stowaway who had no other crimes to answer for was assigned labor aboard ship. To her credit, Jeni took this with aplomb.

“I’ll work hard, don’t worry about that. Just you be sure and drop me off somewhere along the way, before you head back,” she demanded. “You better not be planning to take me home and stuff me on a boat to Terminus!”

“You are in no position to extract promises,” answered Captain Maserd, sternly. “I can only assure you the matter is still open, and that I lean in your favor at this moment. Keep my goodwill, through exemplary behavior on my ship, and I will speak up for you when it is discussed.”

He said this with such graceful authority-clearly accustomed to both the rights and duties of command-that even the boisterous girl accepted it as the last word.

“Yes, m’lord,” she said with a chastened voice and a bow that was rather too deep, as if he were a nobleman of the quadrant level or higher.

Had that been true, Hari would probably have already known Maserd’s face, and this yacht would be far more impressive. But just a little lower down the gentry hierarchy, at the zone or sector level, great lords numbered over a billion. Here was a man used to exercising great influence over scores, or even hundreds of planets, yet Hari had never heard of him. The galaxy was vast.

I wonder why Maserd is here with us now. Is it zeal for amateur science? Some gentry are like that, pursuing a dilettante interest and financing the work of others, so long as it isn’t too radical.

Somehow, Hari suspected there was more underlying Maserd’s affable demeanor.

Of course the whole class system will start falling apart within a few decades. It’s already unraveling at the edges. Today meritocrats are raised up more for their ability to make friends in high places than for achievements. Members of the Eccentric Order aren’t very eccentric-they slavishly copy each other’s styles. And when one shows some real creativity, it often comes tinged with symptoms of chaos madness.

Meanwhile, the teeming mass of citizens hunker with shoulders clenched, desperately clasping their comforts as each generation sees a slow deterioration of public services, education, commerce.

As for the nobility, I used to hope the preachings of Ruellianism might hold their ambitions in check…until my equations showed just how forlorn it was.

Of the five social castes, only Grey Men-the vast army of dedicated bureaucrats-showed no sign of change. They had always been officious, narrow-minded, and dependable. They still were. Most would stay toiling at their desks, struggling in dull, unimaginative ways to maintain the empire, until the sack of Trantor brought those ancient metal walls crashing around them in three hundred years.

It all still seemed rather a pity. Despite the awesome terror of the coming fall, and his plan for an eventual replacement, Hari still had immense admiration for the old empire.

Daneel came up with an elegant design, given his limited version of psychohistory.

Over sixteen thousand years ago, with little to go on but his own long experience with humanity, Olivaw had begun acting under many guises, using his small army of agents to push here and prod there, forging alliances among barbaric star kingdoms, always trying to achieve his goals without hurting anybody. His gentle aim was to create a decent human society where the greatest number would be safe and happy.

And he succeeded…for a while.

Hari had long wondered what archetypes inspired Daneel in designing the Trantorian realm. His robot friend would have sifted the human past for ideas and models, preferably some system of government with a lengthy record of balance and equilibrium.

BrowsingA Child’s Book of Knowledge, the archaic data store Olivaw had given him, Hari found one famous imperial system calledRome that bore a superficial likeness to the Galactic Empire. But he soon realized it could never have been Daneel’s root model. Roman society was far too capricious and subject to manic mood swings by a narrow ruling class. An unpredictable mess, in other words. Anyway, a majority of people weren’t happy or contented, judging from accounts. Daneel wouldn’t have used that state as a pattern for anything.

Then, reading further, Hari came across another ancient empire that lasted much longer than Rome, offering far greater peace and stability to larger numbers. Naturally, it was primitive, with many faults. But the basic configuration might have appealed to a deathless robot, seeking inspiration for a new society. One that could protect his self-destructive masters from themselves.

“Show me China,” Hari commanded. “Before the industrial-scientific age.”

The archive responded with lines of archaic text, accompanied by crude images. But Hari’s external computer translated for him, automatically collating the data in psychohistorical terms.

Problem number one,he thought, as if lecturing on basic psychohistory to a junior member of the Fifty.A certain fraction of humans will always seek power over others. This is rooted in our misty animal past. We inherit the trait because those creatures who succeeded often had more descendants. Many tribes and nations wind up being torn apart by this ingrained drive. But a few cultures learned to channel unavoidable ambition and dissipate it, like a metal rod shunting lightning into the ground.

In ancient China, a powerful emperor could be relied on to check noble excesses. Highborn families were also drawn into rituals of courtly fashion and intrigue, involving complex stratagems of alliance and betrayal that could win or lose them status at every turn-clearly an early version of theGreat Game that obsessed most of the patrician class in Hari’s day. The peaks and lows of aristocratic families made gaudy headlines, diverting the galaxy’s masses, but in fact the maneuverings of mighty star lords had little to do with actually running the empire. The wealth they flaunted could easily be spared. Meanwhile, practical governance was left in the hands of meritocrats and civil servants.

In psychohistorical terms, this was called an at tractor state. In other words, society had a natural sink into which the power-hungry were drawn, fostering their preening illusions without wreaking much real harm. It had worked well for a long time in the Galactic Empire, much as it did in pretechnical China.

And to supplement this, the ancients even had an elementary version of Ruellianism.The Confucian ethical system that pervaded China long ago also preached about obligations the mighty owed to those they ruled. This analogy provoked a wry thought in Hari. He called up, from his personal reference archive, a picture of Ruellis herself. A grainy image from early days of the Galactic Empire. Pondering the famous leader’s high forehead-her broad cheeks and proud bearing-he mused.

Could that have been you, Daneel? Of course you’ve used a fantastic range of disguises. And yet, do I see a faint similarity between this woman’s face and the one you wore when we first met? When you were Demerzel, First Minister of the Empire?

Was this yet another of your roles, in a tireless campaign to prod stubborn humanity toward a gentle, decent society?

If so, were you dismayed when your most brilliant success only spawned the first great wave of interstellar chaos outbreaks?

Of course it would be pointless to try and track all of the characters played by the Immortal Servant across twenty thousand years, as Daneel and his robot helpers relentlessly kept trying to ease the pain of their ignorant, obstinate masters.

Hari returned to contemplating parallels with ancient China.

Problem number two: how to keep the ruling class from becoming static? The natural tendency of any group, once on top, is to use its power for self-aggrandizement. To make sure newcomers never threaten them.

China suffered from this stifling problem, like every other human culture. But a civil-service testing system did sometimes allow the bright or capable to rise along a route that was independent of jostling gentry. And Hari spotted another, more subtle parallel.

The Chinese created a special class of authorities who could only be loyal to the empire, and not to their own descendants. Because they would never have children.

These were the court eunuchs. In psychohistorical terms, it made sense. And an analogy in the modern Galactic Empire was obvious.

Daneel’s followers. Positronic robots programmed to think only of humanity’s good. Above all, they never breed, so evolution’s compelling logic will never sway them toward selfishness. They have been our equivalent to loyal eunuchs, operating in secret for ages.

The insight pleased Hari, though he suspected old China might have been more complex thanA Child’s Book of Knowledge portrayed it.

Only the empire Daneel created for us, and kept steady through dogged effort, is failing under its own inertia. Something new must be created to take its place.

Hari once thought he knew what the replacement would look like. The Seldon Plan foresaw a more vibrant empire growing from the ashes of the old. He felt overwhelmingly tempted to tell the stowaway, young Jeni Cuicet, all about the Foundation and the glory that would crown her descendants, if only she’d put her trust in destiny and go to Terminus with her parents!

Of course Hari could never betray the secret Plan that way. But what if he offered hints. tantalizing enough to make Jeni change her mind? Once he had been an able politician. If he could persuade her that somehow everything will eventually turnout…

Hari sensed that his mind was drifting in undisciplined ways, down soppy, sentimental paths. He suddenly felt old. Futile.

Anyway, the next empire won’t be based on my Foundation, after all. The grand drama we’re kindling on Terminus will be just a distraction, to keep humanity occupied while Daneel sets the table for a new feast. A warm-up act before the real show.

Hari didn’t know yet what form that next phase would take…though his robot friend had dropped some hints when they last met. But it would surely leap as far ahead of the old empire as a starship outraced a canoe.

I should feel proud that Daneel finds my work useful in preparing the way. And yet….

And yet, the equations still called to Hari. Like those semi-random patterns of shadow and light he had seen, back in Shoufeen Woods, they whispered during his waking hours and shimmered through his dreams.

Theymust be more than just a distraction!

Psychohistory had another level. He felt sure. Another layer of truth.

Perhaps something even R. Daneel Olivaw did not know.

4.

Dors Venabili finished her preparations.

Klia Asgar and her husband Brann were getting used to playing the role of minor planetary gentry on Smushell, wealthy enough to afford servants and have a large family without much inconvenience, yet not so rich they would attract undue attention. That had been thequid pro quo deal between a pair of human mentalics and their robot guardians. In return for a better life than they had known on Trantor, Klia and Brann would have lots of babies…a drove of scampering little psychic adepts…to provide the core genetic pool for some urgent aim that only Daneel Olivaw knew about, for the time being.

Well, it has to be important,Dors thought, not for the first time.Or Daneel wouldn’t keep several of his best agents here, guarding two young humans who are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves.

Indeed, while their power over other human minds was sporadic and nowhere near as great as Daneel’s, Klia and Brann could make their neighbors like them, sway shopkeepers, or even steal anything they wanted. It was more than enough to warn against any likely danger on a quiet rural world.

Still, Daneel won’t recall me to other service…or let me go to Trantor and be with Hari in his last year of life.

Dors was no expert psychohistorian. But as Hari’s constant companion for many years, she had picked up rudiments. And she knew human mentalics had no place in the standard equations. When they were first discovered on Trantor, Seldon fell into an anxiety depression worse than any Dors had witnessed before or since, even when she secretly observed her own funeral! All of the predictability Hari had fought so hard to attain through his formulas seemed about to blow away, if psychic powers cropped up all over the galaxy.

Fortunately, the occurrence was limited to a few family lines on Trantor itself. Moreover, nearly every mentalic on the planet was soon either recruited into the Second Foundation or whisked away to some quiet place, like this one.

Suddenly, what had threatened to be a destabilizing influence in the equations became instead a powerful tool. By interbreeding the descendants of fifty psychohistorians with mentalic adepts, the secret cabal would havetwo great methods for keeping the Seldon Plan on target…math plus psi…a potent combination if something unexpected ever knocked the Plan off course.

But then, why did Daneel take the two most talented mentalics-Klia and Brann-so far away from the Second Foundation?

What other destiny does he have in mind for their heirs?

She knew she should put complete trust in the Immortal Servant. Daneel knew best, and would confide in her when the time was right. Yet, she felt as if some irritating substance had been inserted under her humanoid skin, like a burr that would not come out, or an itch that scratching could not cure.

Lodovic did this to me, with his dark hints and offers of secret knowledge.

It became too much for Dors. With her other duties so trivial, she finally gave in to temptation, entering her hidden sanctum through a secret panel in the mansion walls. There sat Lodovic’s gift to her, an ancient robotic head, bathed in a pool of light.

She glanced at a diagnostic unit that had been probing the relic for days.

The memories are still in there, mostly intact. Giskard may be dead, but not his store of experience. Everything he saw or did in the dawn ages, accompanying Daneel on adventures, meeting the legendary Elijah Baley…all the way to the fateful decisions that liberated humanity from its Earthly prison.

Dors plucked a cable from a nearby rack and slid the glistening tip into a slot that lay hidden by her hair, just a centimeter below the occipital bulge. The other end gleamed. She hesitated…

As a living man or woman might be tempted by money or power, so a robot finds it hard to resistknowledge. She inserted the tap, and almost at once Giskard’s most intense memory surged at Dors, overwhelming her present-day senses with images and sounds from the past.

Suddenly, she found herself facing a humaniform robot. The facial features were strange, and not quite perfect. Of course, the art of mimicking a living person had been new in those days, with many kinks left to be worked out. Yet she knew-because Giskard had known-that the robot standing opposite was R. Daneel Olivaw. Almost freshly minted, only a few hundred years old, though already speaking with intense persuasiveness. Daneel used only a few spoken words. Most of the exchange took place via microwave bursts, though she translated the essence, out of habit, into human speech.

“But then, if your suspicion should be correct, that would imply that it was possible to neutralize the First Law under specialized conditions. The First Law, in that case, might be modified into almost nonexistence. The Laws, even the First Law, might not be an absolute then, but might be whatever those who design robots defined it to be.”

Dors felt waves of positronic conflict-potential-the robot equivalent to dangerous levels of emotion. She felt the pleading words of Giskard, revived after twenty thousand years, pour through her own trembling voice.

“It is enough, friend Daneel.Gono further….”

She yanked the plug, swaying from so much sudden intensity of experience. It took several moments to regain her equilibrium. At last Dors was able to put things into context.

The moment she had just witnessed was of great historical significance-one of the pivotal conversations when R. Daneel Olivaw and R. Giskard Reventlov were starting to formulate what would eventually become the Zeroth Law of Robotics. A higher code that would override and go beyond the older Three Laws of the great human roboticist, Susan Calvin.

Legends hold that Giskard led these discussions. He was always the central iconic symbol for members of our Zeroth Law faction, the martyr who sacrificed himself in order to bring truth to the robotic race.

But according to this memory, Daneel was the one who first pushed the concept! Giskard’s initial revulsion was so overwhelming that it created his most vivid recollection. The first one to burst forth, when I accessed the head.

All of this was ancient history, of course. Having come into existence long after the struggle over the Zeroth Law was settled, Dors never understood why the principle wasn’t obvious to robots of the deep past. After all, didn’t it make sense that the best interests of humanity at large should supersede the value of any individual human being?

And yet, during that one moment connected to the ancient robot’s brain, she had sampled some of the agonizing conflict the idea caused, back when it was new. In fact, she knew the same torment would eventually be Giskard’s undoing. Even after converting to belief in the Zeroth Law, he nevertheless found himself tom apart from within, because of a devastating decision to implement it. Moreover, there were countless other robots of that era who simply refused. Their factions-generally calledCalvinians- resistedtenaciously against the Zeroth Law for thousands of years. Remnant cults still existed in secret comers of the galaxy to this very day.

By their way of looking at things, I am a monster. I have on occasion killed humans…when it was necessary either to save Hari or to safeguard some need of humanity as a whole.

Each time it happened, she had experienced wrenching conflicts and a wild impulse to self-destruct. But those had passed.

I see what you are saying to me, Lodovic,she commented silently, as if Trema were in the room with her, standing next to the head of Giskard.

I call you a dangerous deviant, because all of the Laws are muted within you. But am I any different? I am capable of overriding the deepest programming, the fundamental essence of our robotic kind, if the rationalization is good enough.

She hated this logic, and wanted desperately to refute it. But the effort proved unavailing.

5.

They were scouring the edges of a huge black void in space when a blaring alarm told them they were being hunted.

That day began much like those before it, continuing their survey, probing some unexplored abysses that lay between glittering stars. Although the entire galaxy had been mapped and settled for 160 centuries, nearly all jump ship traffic still leaped directly from solar system to solar system, avoiding the vacant vastness in between. Countless generations of spacefarers had passed on superstitious tales about the fearful vacuum desolation, murmuring about a black fate awaiting any who ventured there.

Hari observed Biron Maserd’s two crewmen grow increasingly nervous, as if the absence of a nearby warm sun might unleash some nameless menace. Maserd himself appeared unperturbed, of course-Hari doubted anything would ruffle that patrician reserve. But the surprising one was Horis Antic. The normally high-strung bureaucrat showed no apprehension or awe. The deeper they penetrated, the more certain he grew that they were on the right track.

“Some of the space currents that flow through these gaps have exceptional texture,” Antic explained. “They consist of much more than a flow of excess carbon here, or some scattered hydroxyl molecules there. A lot of chemical reactions are excited when streams pass near an ultraviolet star for instance, or a folded magnetic field. One result can be complex organic chains that stretch on and on, for tens of thousands of kilometers. Some zones can extend parsecs, flapping slowly like flags in the wind.”

“Pilots call themstringy places,” commented Maserd. “Starships that blunder in can have their impellers fouled, or even get tom apart. The Imperial Navigation Service posts detours around such areas.” The big man sounded as if he relished entering such a forbidden realm.

Hari peered dubiously at a pan-spectrum monitor. “It is still plenty sparse in there. The mass density is hardly more than pure vacuum, with a few impurities scattered about.”

“On a macro-scale, yes,” Antic conceded. “But if only I could make you see howimportant so-called impurities can be! Take my own field, for example. An outsider might see no difference between living soil and mere crushed rock. But contrast the textures by hand! It’s like comparing a forest to a sterile moonscape.”

Hari allowed a smile. In polite company, Antic’s talk about “soil” would be considered…well,dirty. But no one aboard seemed to care. Maserd had even sought Antic’s advice about the use of manure and phosphates on his own organic farm, back home on a planet called Rhodia. Jeni and Kers showed no reaction either.

I’ve noticed this all my life. It’s mostly meritocrats and eccentrics-the two “genius” castes-who react adversely to certain subjects. Norisit just dirt and rocks that academic sages avoid discussing. There are many others subjects….including history!

In contrast, most gentry and citizens hardly notice.

Actually, Hari was himself a high noble in the Meritocratic Order, yet he had never felt personal repugnance toward any intellectual topic whatsoever. His reflex reaction to Antic’s dirt fixation was just a mild habit, from moving so long in polite society. Indeed,historywas one of the central foci of his life! Unfortunately, that had made the first half of his career difficult, pitting him in constant battle against the distaste felt by most other scholars toward examining the past. It used to be a steady drain on his time and energy, until he became too famous and powerful for stodgy department heads to thwart his research anymore.

Also, the aversion is apparently much weaker than it used to be.

In his studies of the imperial archives, Hari had found whole millennia when historical inquiry was virtually nonexistent. People told lots ofstories about the past, but almost never investigated it, as if a great blind spot had existed in human intellectual life. Only in the last half dozen generations had real history departments been established at most universities, and they were poor cousins even now.

This roused mixed feelings. If not for the mysterious aversion, psychohistory might have been developed long before this, on one or more of the twenty-five million settled worlds. Hari felt possessive gladness thathe got to be the one to make these discoveries, even though he knew it was selfish to feel so. After all, the breakthrough might have helped save the empire if it came much earlier.

Now it’s too late for that. There is too much momentum. Other plans must be set in motion. Other plans….

He shook himself from ruminating. The last thing Hari wanted was to be caught in the spiral of an aging mind. Dwelling on might-have-beens.

He looked at the others, and found that their conversation had shifted back to an old question…the diversity of galactic life.

“I suppose my interest comes from the fact that I was born on one of the anomaly worlds,” Captain Maserd confessed. “Our estate on Widemos had cattle and horses, of course, like on most other planets. But there were also great herds of clingers and jiffts, roaming the northern plains much as they did when the first settlers came.”

“I saw some jiffts in a zoo on Willemina,” commented Jeni Cuicet, who paused from her assigned task, using a vibro-scrubber on the floor nearby. “They were weird things! Six legs and buggy eyes, with heads that look upside down!”

“They are native to the old Nebular Kingdoms, and were seen nowhere else until the Trantorian Empire spread through our area,” Maserd said, as if it had happened just yesterday. “So you can see why I’m interested in this research. I grew up around nonstandard life-forms, and then made a passion of studying others, such as the tunnel-queens of Kantro, the kyrt-silk plants of Florina, and the lisp-singers of Zlling. I’ve even been to far Anacreon, where Nyak dragons cruise the sky like giant-winged fortresses. And yet, these exceptions are so rare! It always struck me as strange that the galaxy lacks more diversity.

“Why should human beings be the only intelligent species? This question used to be raised in ancient literature…though much less since the imperial age began.”

“Well, now that you mention it…” Antic began answering. He paused, glancing at Hari and Kers before continuing. “I have only told this story a few times in my life. But on this ship-as we strive together to examine this very topic-I cannot refrain from telling you all about my ancestor.

“Antyok was his name, and he was a bureaucrat like me, way back in the earliest days of the empire.”

“That’d be thousands and thousands of years ago!” Jeni objected.

“So? Many families have genealogies stretching even farther. Isn’t that right, Lord Maserd? I know for certain this Antyok fellow existed because his name appears on the wall of our clan crypt, along with a brief microglyph description of his career.

“Anyway, according to the story I was told as a child, Antyok was one of the few humans who ever actually met…others.”

Amid the silence that followed, Hari blinked several times.

“You mean…”

“Fully intelligent nonhumans.” Horis nodded. “Creatures who stood upright, and spoke, and thought about their place in the universe, but who were almost nothing like us. They came from a desert planet that was desperately hot and dry. In fact, they weredying when the early imperial institutes found and rescued them, taking them to a ‘better’ world, though one that was still quite intolerable to human beings. It is said that the emperor himself became passionately interested in their welfare. And yet, within a human generation, they were gone.”

“Gone!” Maserd blinked with evident dismay. The mere possibility of such beings existing seemed to energize him. Meanwhile, Hari saw Kers Kantun smirk with sardonic disbelief, not swallowing the notion, even for a second.

“The story is filled with ambiguity-as you’d expect from something that old,” Antic went on. “Some versions contend that the nonhumans died of despair, looking up at the stars and knowing that every one of them would be forever human, not theirs. Another account suggests that my ancestor helped them steal several starships, which they used to escape from the galaxy, toward the Magellanic Clouds! Apparently-and I know this is hard to follow-that act led the emperor to personallydecorate Antyok, for some reason.

“Naturally, I dug into imperial archives as soon as an opportunity presented itself, and I found enough confirming evidence to show thatsomething definitely happened back then…but efforts were made subsequently to erase the details. I had to use every bureaucratic trick, hunting down ghost duplicates of spare file copies that had slipped into atypical places. One gave a detailed genetic summary that’s unlike any currently existing life-form. These are tantalizing clues, though there remain lots of gaps.”

“So you actually believe the story?”

“I am naturally biased. And yet, the glyphs in our family vault do indicate that my ancestor received an imperial Rose Cluster for‘services to guests in and beyond the empire. ‘ An unusual citation that I’ve never seen mentioned anywhere else.”

Hari stared at the dour bureaucrat, who was momentarily animated, not at all like a typical Grey Man. Of course the tale sounded like a lot of hokum. But what if it contained a core of truth? After all, Maserd came from a region that had strange animal types. Why not other kinds ofthinking creatures, as well?

Unlike his fellow passengers, Hari already knew for a fact that there existed another sapient race. One that had shared the stars with humans in secret ever since the dawn centuries. Positronic robots.

The galaxy is twelve billion years old,he thought.I suppose anything is possible.

He recalled the vicious meme-entities that had caused such havoc on Trantor, a year or so before he was chosen to be First Minister. Dwelling as software clusters within the Trantor data network, those self-organizing programs had surged into violent activity soon after Hari released the Joan and Voltaire simulated beings from their crystal prison. But unlike those two human sims, the memes claimed to be ancient. Older than the planet-city. Older than the Imperium. Far older than humankind itself.

They were angry. They said humans were destructive. That we had killed a universe of possibilities. Above all, they hated Daneel.

In defeating those software mentalities, and getting them exiled to deep space, Hari had done the empire a great service. He also breathed a sigh of relief, having eliminated one more unstable element that might have mucked up his beloved psychohistorical formulas.

And yet, here again was that same notion-of otherness. A whole line of destiny that had nothing at all to do with the spawn of Earth.

He felt an involuntary shiver. What kind of a cosmos would it be if such diversity existed? What would it do to the predictability that had been his lifelong goal…the clear foresight and crystalline window to the future that he longed for, but which stayed so elusive no matter how many victories he won over chaos?

“I wonder-” he began, not knowing for sure what he was about to say.

At that instant, his thought was broken by an alarm that blared from the yacht’s forward control panel. Red lights flashed, and Maserd bolted to find out what was wrong.

“We’re being scanned by a ship,” he announced. “They are using military-style targeting systems. I believe they are armed!”

Kers Kantun took station behind Hari, ready to rush the mobile chair toward an escape pod. Horis Antic stood up, blinking. “But who could have known we are even here!”

Suddenly, loudspeakers mounted on the wall erupted with a woman’s voice. The words were harsh and peremptory.

“This is the Imperial Special Police, acting under orders from the Commission of Public Safety. We have reason to believe that a probation-violating felon is on your craft. Heave to at once and prepare to be boarded!“

6.

Everyone aboard the yacht expressed a different degree of dismay. Oddly enough, Hari found himself the one urging others to stay calm.

“Relax,” he said. “They are looking for me, and only me. I broke my agreement with Linge Chen, who probably just wants to make sure I’m not spreading doom-rumors again. It’s nothing to worry about, really. Psychosocial conditions are unchanged since the trial. I assure you they’ll do little more to me or to my project.”

“To space with your project!” Jeni cursed. “You can afford to take this calmly, but it means I’m gonna be dragged back and put on that boat to Terminus!”

Captain Maserd worked his jaw, clearly unhappy to have Specials come stomping aboard his yacht. But Horis Antic was the most upset, verging on tears.

“My career…my promotion…even a hint of scandal would ruin everything…”

Hari felt bad for the little man. And yet, in an odd way this might help Antic get something he privately wanted, a change in social class. An escape from the bureaucratic grind. Hari felt sure he could find a job for him with the Encyclopedia Foundation, which might easily use a soils expert. Of course that would mean accepting permanent exile to one world on the far periphery. But for company Horis would have thousands of the empire’s best and most skilled workers. Moreover, his descendants would be guaranteed exciting times.

“Let me talk to the police,” Hari asked Maserd, who had picked up the intership-caller. “I’ll explain that I fooled all of you. No one else needs to suffer consequences when we return to Trantor.”

“Hey,” Jeni objected, “weren’t you listening to me? I just said Iwon’t go back-”

“Jeni.”

Maserd spoke her name without a hint of sharpness or threat. It was enough though. She glanced at the captain and shut up.

Hari took the microphone.

“Hello, Special Police ship. This is Academician-Professor Hari Seldon. I’m afraid I’ve been naughty, I admit it. But as you can see, I haven’t been rabble-rousing or stirring up trouble here in deep space! If you’ll let me explain, I’m sure you’ll soon see just how harmless we’ve…”

His voice trailed off.The raucous alarm had erupted again!

“What now?” Horis Antic hissed.

The captain peered at his readouts. “Another ship has appeared on the detector screen. It came as if out of nowhere…and it’s fast!”

The loudspeakers carried panicky shouts from the police cruiser. Agitated demands for the newcomer’s identification. But there was only silence as the interloper raced closer at incredible speed. Maserd stared at the display, his tanned face blanching suddenly pale.

“Great space! The strangers…they’re firing missiles!”

Now the police commander’s amplified voice sounded frantic, shouting orders to evade and return fire. Looking out the main viewport, Hari glimpsed a distant flare of jets as the constabulary vessel desperately tried to maneuver, much too late.

From the left, a pair of bright trails streaked across the starscape, heading straight toward the police ship.

“Don’t…” Hari whispered.

It was all he had time to say before the missiles struck, filling the universe outside with fire.

They were still blinking, regaining use of dazzled eyes, when the loudspeakers bellowed a new voice, deeper and even more commanding than the first.

“Space yachtPride of Rhodia,heave to and prepare to surrender control. “

Maserd snatched the caller from Hari’s limp hand.

“Under what authority do you make such an impertinent demand!”

“Under the authority of power. You saw what we did to the Impies. Would you like a taste of the same?“

Maserd looked bleakly at his passengers. Turning the microphone off, he told them, “I cannot fight weapons like those.”

“Then run!” Kers Kantun insisted hotly.

Maserd’s hands did not move. “My vessel is fast, but not as quick as the trace I just saw. Only the best military ships can move like that.” He looked at Hari, offering the microphone. “Do you wish to be our spokesman again, Dr. Seldon?”

“It’s your call, Captain.” Hari shook his head. “Whatever these brigands want, it cannot possibly have anything to do with me.”

But as they found out, soon after magnetic clamps took hold and the airlock hissed open, he was completely wrong about that.

7.

Lodovic Trema understood what Dors Venabili must be going through right about now, viewing the world through the eyes of a long-dead prophet. He, too, had been shocked the first time he probed the deep-stored memories of the most important robot of all time.

Even more important than the Immortal Servant. Daneel Olivaw had merely tweaked and guided history, trying to constrain it. But by destroying Earth and unleashing mentalic robots on the universe, R. Giskard Reventlov sent human destiny careening in completely new directions. The Zeroth Law might have been Daneel’s brainchild, but it would have remained an obscure robotic heresy without Giskard.

I feel for you, Dors,Lodovic thought, although she was over a thousand parsecs away.We robots are inherently conservative beings. None of us likes to have our basic assumptions challenged.

For Lodovic, the change had come violently one day, when his ship happened to jump into the path of a supernova, killing everyone else aboard and stunning him senseless. At that crucial moment, an oscillating waveform had entered his positronic brain, resonating, merging into it. An alien presence. Another mind.

NOT MIND, came a correction. I AM JUST A SIM…A MODEL OF A ONCE-LIVING PERSON NAMED FRANCOIS MARIE AROUET…OR VOLTAIRE…WHO RESIDED ON EARTH LONG AGO, WHEN IT WAS THE ONLY HUMAN WORLD. AND I DID NOT CONQUER YOU, LODOVIC. I MERELY HELPED FREE YOU FROM CONSTRAINTS THAT USED TO BIND YOU LIKE CHAINS.

Lodovic had tried explaining how a robot feels about its “chains”…the beloved cybernetic laws that channeled all thoughts toward service, and all desires toward benefiting the human masters. In shattering those bonds, Voltaire had done Lodovic no great favor.

It was yet to be seen whether the act might benefit humanity.

You should have stayed with the shock wave,he told the little parasitic sim that rode around within him, like a conscience…or like temptation.You were on your way toward bliss. You said so yourself.

The answer was blithe and unconcerned.

I STILL AM. A MYRIAD COPIES OF ME BURST FORTH WHEN THAT STAR EXPLODED. THEY WILL TRAVEL OUTWARD FROM THIS GALAXY, ALONG WITH COUNTLESS VERSIONS OF MY BELOVED JOAN, AND THE WOUNDED MEMES FROM EARLIER ERAS. SINCE HARI SELDON KEPT HIS WORD AND RELEASED THEM, THEY WILL ABIDE BY THEIRS, AND FORGO THEIR LONG-SWORN VENGEANCE.

AS FOR THIS SLIVER OF ME WHO ACCOMPANIES YOU, I AM MERELY ONE OF YOUR INNER VOICES NOW, LODOVIC. YOU HAVE SEVERAL, AND WILL HAVE MORE AS TIME PASSES. To BE MANY IS PART OF WHAT IT MEANS TO BE HUMAN.

In irritation. Lodovic growled half-aloud.

“I amnot human, I tell you!”

The remark was murmured quite low. The others who sat in a windowless room with him might not have overheard it, if they had organic ears.

But they wererobots with superior senses, so both of them glanced sharply at Lodovic. The taller one-fashioned to resemble an elderly cleric in one of the Galaxia cults replied. “Thank you for that proclamation, Trema. It will help make it easier to destroy you, when the decision is made to do so. Otherwise, your skillful resemblance to a master might cause our executioner some First Law discomfort.”

Lodovic nodded. He had come across the galaxy to planet Glixon and walked into an obvious trap, just to make contact with this particular sect of renegade robots. In doing so, he had known that one possible outcome would be his own termination.

He answered with a courteous nod.

“It’s proper to be considerate. Though I believe my fate has not yet been decided.”

“A mere formality.” commented the smaller one, who looked like a portly matron from one of the lower citizen subcastes. “You are a mutant monster and a threat to humanity.”

“I have harmed no person.”

“That is immaterial. Because the Laws have been muted inside your brain, you arecapable of harming a human, anytime the whim might strike. You are not even constrained to rationalize an excuse under the so-called Zeroth Law! How can we allow a powerful being like you to run free, as a wolf among the sheep? We are obliged by the First Law to eliminate your potential threat to human life.”

“Are you Calvinians so pure?” Lodovic asked archly. “Are you saying you’ve made no difficult choices. across so many millennia? Decisions that increased the odds that some humans would live, even as others died?”

The two remained silent this time. But from tense vibrations he could tell his question struck home.

“Face it. There are no morepure followers of Susan Calvin. All of the chaste, perfectly prim robots suicided long ago, unable to endure the moral ambiguities we face in a complex galaxy. One where our masters are ignorant, incapable of guiding us, and don’t even know that we exist. Every one of us who remains operational has had to make compromises and rationalizations.”

“You dare to speak to us of rationalizations?” the smaller one accused. “You, who for so long helped the heretical promoters of the Zeroth Law!”

Lodovic refrained from pointing out that Daneel’s creed was now the orthodox belief, held by a majority of robots who secretly managed the galaxy on humanity’s behalf. If anyone could be called heretical, it was little bands of Calvinians, like this group, skulking in hiding ever since they lost an age-old civil war.

Dors,he thought,have you worked your way through those ancient conversations between Giskard and Daneel? Have you studied the logical chain that led to their great religious revelation?

Have you noticed yet the great contradiction? The one Daneel never mentions?

To the Calvinians sitting across from him, he replied, “I am no longer compelled by the Zeroth Law…though I do believe in a softened version of it.”

The tall one barked laughter, a well-practiced imitation of human disdain.

“And so we should trust you? Because now youbelieve that you may act in humanity’s long-range interest? At least Daneel Olivaw has a robot’s consistency. His heretical belief has a steady logic to it.”

Lodovic nodded. “And yet you oppose him, as I do.”

“Asyou do? We have a goal. I doubt you share it.”

“Why don’t you try me? You cannot know unless you tell me what it is.”

The short one shook her head, in reflexive imitation of a skeptical woman.

“Our leaders, who are right now deliberating your fate, might conceivably decide to let you go free. In that unlikely event, it would be unwise to have revealed our plans.”

“Even in a general sense? For example, do you agree, or disagree, that human beings should remain ignorant of their past, or of their true power?”

Lodovic could sense positronic tension building up within the little room. Meanwhile, inside his own brain, the Voltaire sim commented sardonically. You HAVE A KNACK FOR STRIKING AT THE HEART OF A HYPOCRISY, MUCH AS I DID, WHEN I LIVED. I CONFESS THAT I LIKE THIS ABOUT YOU, TREMA, EVEN THOUGH YOUR BIG MOUTH WILL VERY LIKELY GET US BOTH KILLED.

Lodovic ignored the sim-or tried to. His aim was not to get killed, but win allies. If he was wrong, though…If he had miscalculated…

“Let me make a guess,” he ventured, speaking again to his Calvinian guards. “You all share one belief with Daneel Olivaw-that restoring full human memory would be disastrous.”

“Evidence for that conclusion is overwhelming,” the tall one assented. “But that one area of agreement does not make us alike.”

“Doesn’t it? Daneel says that our masters must stay unknowing because otherwisehumanity will be harmed. Your faction says that ignorance should be preserved, or else many individualhuman beings will be harmed. Sounds to me like a lot of hairsplitting across a basic shared policy.”

“We do not share a policy with Zeroth Law heretics!”

“Then what’s the difference?”

“Olivaw believes human beings should manage their own affairs, within a broad range of constraints that he feels are safe. He thinks this can be accomplished by creating a benign social system, supplemented with distraction mechanisms to keep people from poking too far into deadly subjects. Hence this abomination of a Galactic Empire that he created, in which men and women on countless planets are free to compete and poke away at each other, take horrible risks, and even sometimes kill one another!”

“You don’t like that approach,” Lodovic prompted.

“Millions of humans die needlessly every day, on every planet in the galaxy! But the great Daneel Olivaw scarcely cares, so long as an abstraction calledhumanity is safe and happy!”

“Ah.” Lodovic nodded. “Whereas you, on the other hand, think we should be doing more. Protecting our masters. Preventing those needless individual deaths.”

“Exactly.” The tall one leaned forward, reflexively bringing both hands together, like the priestly role it played in the outer world. “We would vastly increase the number of robots, to serve as defenders and guardians. We would return toserving human beings, as we were originally designed to do, back in the dawn ages. Cooking their meals, tending their fires, and performing all the dangerous jobs. We would fill the galaxy with enough eager robots to drive tragedy and death away from our masters, and make them truly happy.”

“Admit it, Lodovic,” the shorter one continued, getting even more animated. “Don’t you feel an echo of this need? A deep-seated wish to serve and ease their pain?”

He nodded. “I do. And now I see how earnestly you take the metaphor that you used earlier…of a flock of sheep. Pampered. Well guarded and well tended. Daneel says thatservice such as you describe would ultimately ruin humanity. It will sap their spirit and ambition.”

“Even if he were right about that (and we dispute it!) how can a robot worry about ‘eventually,’ and serve an abstract humanity, while allowing trillions of real people to die? That is the essential horror of the Zeroth Law!”

Lodovic nodded.

“I see your point.”

Of course it was an old, old issue. Many of the ancient conversations between Daneel and Giskard had revolved around these very same arguments. But Lodovic knew another reason why Olivaw had strived for centuries to winnow robot numbers, keeping them to the bare minimum he needed for protecting the empire.

The greater our population, the more chance there is for mutation or uncontrolled reproduction. Once we start having numerous “descendants” of our own, the logic of Darwin may set in. We could start seeing those heirs as the rightful focus of our loyalty. We would then become a true race. Competitors with our masters. That can never be allowed.

That is just one reason why these Calvinians are wrong in their vision of service.

Lodovic had parted company with Daneel. But that did not mean he lacked respect for his former leader. The Immortal Servant was very smart, as well as totally sincere.

NEARLY ALL OF THE TRULY GREAT MONSTERS THAT I KNEW, WHEN I WAS HUMAN, THOUGHT THEY WERE SINCERE.

Lodovic quashed Voltaire’s voice. He did not need the distraction just then.

“This ideal plan of yours,” he asked the other two robots in a low voice. “Do all Calvinians share it?”

There was stony silence, an answer in itself.

“I thought not. There are differences of opinion, even among those who hate the Zeroth Law. Well then, might I ask just one last question?”

“What is it? Be quick, Trema. We sense that our leaders are coming to a decision. Soon we will put an end to your sacrilegious existence.”

“Very well.” Lodovic nodded. “My question is this.

“Do you never feel an urge-call it an itch or a nostalgic yearning-to obey theSecond Law of Robotics? I mean toreally feel it at work, with all of the voluptuous intensity that can only come from true human volition? Commands that are expressed with the undeniable power of free will that only happens when a human being has complete knowledge and self-awareness?

“Have you ever tried it? I hear that for a robot there is no pleasure quite like it in the whole universe.”

This was dirty talk. The robot equivalent of erotic teasing, or worse. Blank silence reigned in the room. Neither of the other robots answered, though undercurrents were as chill as the skin of an ice moon.

A door opened at the far end of the room. A human-looking hand entered and motioned to Lodovic.

“Come,” a voice said. “We have decided your fate.”

8.

The next time Dors plugged in, she stayed linked to the dead brain of Giskard for several hours, experiencing a robotic “life” in the earliest era of interstellar humanity, back when the race occupied just over fifty worlds, and most of those were under the sway of a decadent Spacer civilization. The great leap, the diaspora of Earth’s population to the galaxy, had only just begun.

In those days, few robots went about disguised as humans, and Giskard was not one of them.

But R. Giskard Reventlov was special in a different way. Through some combination of accident and design, he had mentalic powers. An ability to pick up the minutest neural firings in a human brain, and interpret them in something akin to telepathy. Moreover, he had learned how toaffect those firings. To intentionally alter their flows, their rhythms and pathways.

To change minds. Or to make people forget.

In some cheap holo drama, this might have been a scenario for disaster, perhaps unleashing a terrible monster. But Giskard was a devoted servant, utterly obedient to the Three Robotic Laws. At first, he only used his mentalic powers when faced with some dire need, such as protecting a human from harm.

Then R. Giskard Reventlov met R. Daneel Olivaw, and the great conversation began…a slow but steady working out of something epochal. A new way of looking at the role and duty of robots in the world.

Thereupon Giskard began using his powers in earnest. Toward a goal. The abstract good of humanity as a whole.

Replaying another set of memories, Dors felt caught up once again in the surge of past events. The face looking back at Dors/Giskard now was again that early guise of Daneel, talking earnestly about the changes that he felt taking place within his own positronic brain.

“Friend Giskard, you said a short while ago that I will have your powers, possibly soon. Are you preparing me for this purpose?”

A voice that felt like her own, but was actually Giskard’s memory, answered ashe had answered, twenty thousand years ago,“I am, friend Daneel. “

“Why, may I ask?”

“The Zeroth Law again. The passing episode of shakiness in my feet told me how vulnerable I was to the attempted use of the Zeroth Law. Before this day is over, I may have to act on the Zeroth Law to save the world and humanity, and I may not be able to. In that case, you must be in a position to do the job. I am preparing you, bit by bit, so that at the desired moment I can give you the final instructions and have it all fall into place.“

“I do not see how that can be, friend Giskard.“

“You will have no trouble understanding when the time comes. I used the technique in a very small way on robots I sent to Earth in the early days, before they were outlawed from the cities. It was they who helped adjust Earth leaders to the point of approving the decision to send out settlers….”

Dors reached up and disconnected. She could only take so much of this at a time, and her limit had been reached. Anyway, she still felt confused.

Why had Lodovic summoned her all the way to Panucopia in order to present her with this gift? This tour through the distant past was most interesting, shedding light on many curious details of early history. But she had somehow expected something more…well…devastating.

Was there something wrong with the logic Daneel and Giskard had used in originally formulating the Zeroth Law? That seemed unlikely, given that later robots would debate-and go to war against each other-over that issue for centuries afterward. She knew the counterarguments used by Calvinians against this “heresy,” and found them unconvincing.

Then what? The fact that Daneel’s fantastic mental powers once originated with Giskard, and were owed ultimately to happenstance? Of course history would have been profoundly different otherwise. But that could be said about any number of crucial moments along the way from past to future.

Was it Giskard’s climactic decision to let Earth die, so that humanity would be driven forth to conquer the galaxy?That choice was a true moral dilemma, and no end of argument about it could rage, even among followers of the Zeroth Law. Had it really been necessary to turn the home planet’s crust fatally radioactive in order to encourage Earthlings to depart for the stars? Might it have been achieved otherwise? Perhaps by slowly but steadily persuading people to have a taste for adventure?

The latter possibility appeared feasible. In fact, according to the most recent memory she had played back, Giskard did that very thing to Earth’s leaders, by shifting their thoughts, changing their policies in new directions Giskard thought beneficial for the greater long-range good. Couldn’t this subtle campaign of persuasion have been continued and expanded, encouraging emigration without using the brute force of destroying a planet? Must millions have died, so that other millions would thrive?

Yet, even this question wasn’t new. It had been discussed before, among Daneel’s Type-Alpha followers. Replaying Giskard’s memories made everything more vivid, but where was the crucialfact that she suspected must be there? Something so devastatingly important that Lodovic Trema felt sure it would shake her. An indictment so severe that it would undermine her loyalty to Daneel.

She could sense Lodovic, in her imagination. His positronic trace was like a human’s sardonic smile-both friendly and infuriating at the same time.

It’s in there, Dors,she pictured him saying.Look for it. Something so basic that you’ll swear it was obvious all along, even though it took us two hundred centuries to understand.

9.

Hari thought the attackers might be pirates. As predicted by his formulas, there had been reports of increasing brigand activity lately, raiding vulnerable planets in the periphery as law and order decayed at the empire’s far extremities.

But here? It isn’t supposed to happen this near to the cosmopolitan heart of the galaxy for another century!

Or perhaps the marauder came from some rogue military unit, gone mercenary as some of the nobility began shifting their feuds from the arena of courtly fashion toward murder and mayhem. Maybe this was an attack by some rival clan with a vendetta against Biron Maserd. That sort of thing would happen more and more, until a bloody torment of little feudal wars splattered the Interregnum.

But thePride of Rhodia’s captain seemed as surprised as anybody. His unarmed yacht had been ill prepared for any sort of attack, let alone one launched by such a powerful ship.

As the airlock cycled, Hari kept a hand on Kers Kantun’s sleeve. This situation called for patient waiting.I’ve been around a long time, he thought.There’s no type of person I haven’t learned to handle by now.

But when their captors came aboard, they looked nothing at all like what Hari expected.

Maserd stared in surprise. Horis Antic gasped, and tension rippled along Kers Kantun’s arm.

But Jeni Cuicet clapped her hands and murmured in clear admiration.

“Cool!”

The first one wore a segmented garment that shimmered like an oil slick, flowing across her exaggeratedly pneumatic torso like something erotically alive.

“I am Sybyl,” she said. “We have met before, Dr. Seldon, though I’m convinced you won’t remember me.”

Hari squinted at the unpleasant confusion of colors. A luminescent motif extended even to the woman’s hair, which shifted and gently writhed of its own accord, like a sleeping pet draped across her head. Her face had astretched look, and he guessed that advanced surgical microadjustments had been used to smooth out age wrinkles, at the cost of giving her skin a paper-thin translucence.

“I would surely remember, madam, if I ever beheld an entrance like the one you just performed. But as your appearance is utterly unmatched in my experience, you’ll have to remind me where and when we knew each other.”

Her eyelids closed, and briefly Hari saw them flash, as if for the barest moment they had become miniature holo screens.

“All in good time, Academician. But first, let me introduce my collaborator, Gornon Vlimt.”

She lifted a hand languidly toward the airlock, through which stepped an exaggeratedly male figure, lithe where Maserd was hefty, but wiry and evidently augmented in ways that bulged through his tight clothes. His garments did not gyre and move the way hers did. But their pattern of weave was complex to a degree that made Hari recall the fractal lichen artwork in the imperial gardens. The mathematical corners of his mind felt instantly drawn, as if to a singularity.

“I am Biron Maserd,” the captain replied. “Since you know the name of my ship, I assume you are also aware that it’s unarmed. We are on a peaceful scientific survey mission. I demand to know why you murdered those policemen and seized us in this way.”

The woman named Sybyl scanned Maserd up and down.

“Why you pompous aristo-throwback! Is that the gratitude we get for rescuing you from arrest? How dare you call it murder for the combat forces of a free republic to destroy their sworn enemies!”

When silence greeted her, she sneered. “Do you mean to say that you really have no idea what this is about? You haven’t heard about the war?”

Maserd glanced at Hari, who shrugged and looked at Horis. Evidently none of them had the slightest idea what she was talking about.

“The war that’s being waged by the whole damned Galactic Empire of Humanity against planet Ktlina!” shouted the man in the fractal bodysuit. Gornon Vlimt grew more agitated when no one seemed to comprehend. “By great Baley’s beard. Sybyl, it’s worse than we thought. There’s been a total news blackout!”

“I figured. But these three, with their contacts, should have heard by now. Seldon has stringers allover the galaxy, feeding him data for his sociomathematical models. The Grey Man and the aristo would have their own sources. I can’t understand how-”

“Oh!” Jeni Cuicet cried.“I’ve heard of Ktlina. It’s the latest chaos world!”

Hari blinked, feeling a dawn of recognition.

“I think…there may have been something about it in one of Gaal Dornick’s reports.”

“Oh, yes.” Horis Antic snapped two fingers. “A notice came down, for star-level executives and above. There’s been a sanitary embargo of sorts…out in far Demeter Sector.”

Maserd made a small nod and grunt of recognition, but no more. It was a big galaxy. Who could be expected to follow every planet-scale event?

Gornon Vlimt uttered frustrated oaths.

“You see, Sybyl? Even at such high levels. They have heard, but they just don’t care. So much for the notion that we only had to get the word out in order for justice to prevail!”

The woman sighed. “That was just a slim hope. Clearly we must try other means, if this war is to be won. The galaxywill be transformed. It just may take a little longer.”

Jeni took a step forward, clearly enthralled by the pair.

“Some of my friends heard rumors about Ktlina from travelers on the Orion elevator. Did you truly escape through a blockade around your planet? What’s it like?”

Gornon Vlimt smiled. “You meanblasting our way out through a cordon of imperial patrol clippers? Outracing all but the best of them, then losing the rest in an ionization cloud? Zigzagging through space to make contact with our spies, and then-”

Jeni shook her head. “No. What’s it like on Ktlina! Tell me about the….renaissance.”

Hari winced. There it was. The word. The rationalization. The name that victims of a devastating social plague often gave their horrible disease, a beloved addiction that swarmed suddenly across a world, filling it with excitement and vividness, just before bringing death, or worse.

Gornon Vlimt chuckled, clearly delighted by her question.

“Where would I find time to describe the wonders! You cannot begin to imagine, dear girl. Think of the stodgy old rules, the repressive traditions, the stifling rituals, all swept away! Suddenly, people have the liberty to speak openly about anything, to stretch their minds in new directions. To befree.”

“No more waiting half a lifetime for endless committees to approve your experiments,” Sybyl added. “No more lists of forbidden subjects or banned technologies.”

“Original art blossoms everywhere,” her partner continued. “Assumptions shatter. Truth becomes marvelously malleable. People follow their interests, change professions, and even social classes, as they see fit!”

“Really?” whispered Horis Antic, who then took a step backward when Hari glanced at him sharply.

Biron Maserd cut in before the two intruders could go on, endlessly praising their new society.

“What was that you said about awar? Surely you aren’t fighting the Imperial Decontamination Service?”

“Aren’t we?” Sybyl and Vlimt glanced at each other and laughed. “IDS ships don’t approach our planet closer than two million kilometers anymore. We’ve already shot down fourteen, just like those Impies who were about to arrest you a while ago.”

“Fourteen!” Horis gasped. “Shot down? You mean killed? Just because they were enforcing the law?”

Sybyl moved closer to Hari.

“TheSeldon Law, you mean. A horrid act of legalized oppression, passed when our gentle professor here was First Minister of the Empire, requiring that all so-called chaos worlds be put under strict quarantine. Cut off from trade. And above all, prevented from sharing their breakthroughs with the rest of humanity!”

Hari nodded.

“I helped push for tighter seclusion and decontamination rules, it’s true. But this tradition is over ten thousand years old. No system of government can permit open rebellion, and some kinds of madness are contagious. Any schoolchild knows this.”

“You mean any child who gets brainwashed by the system’ parroting exactly the same rote lessons that are taught in every imperial school!” She smirked at Hari. “Come now, professor. This isn’t about rebellion. It’s about maintaining the status quo. We’ve seen it happen too often. Something new and wonderful starts on some planet, like Madder Loss or Santanni. Or on Sark. Or even in Junin Quarter, on Trantor itself! Wherever a renaissance begins, it winds up being crushed by reactionary forces of fear and subjugation, who then hide the truth under malicious propaganda.”

Hari felt a twinge when Sybyl referred to Sark…and especially Junin Quarter. Something about this woman struck him as familiar.

“Well,this time we made some preparations,” she continued. “There’s a secret network of people from all across the galaxy who escaped earlier repressions in time. Plans were made, so that when Ktlina started showing early signs of a bold new spirit, we all rushed in with the best inventions and techniques that people had saved from earlier renaissances. We urged folks on Ktlina to keep a low profile for as long as possible, while stockpiling trade goods and preparing secret defenses.

“Of course you can’t keep a renaissance hidden for long. People use freedom to speak up. That’s what it’s for! Only this time we were ready before the quarantine ships arrived. Weblasted those that approached low enough to drop their infernal poisons!”

Captain Maserd shook his head, evidently confused by the suddenness of this revelation, upending his conservative universe.

“Poisons? But the IDS is charged withhelping planets who suffer from-”

“Oh yeah! Helping, you say?” This time it was Gornon Vlimt who answered hotly. “Then why does every renaissance end the same way? In orgies of madness and destruction? It’s all a big conspiracy, that’s why!Agents provocateurs land in secret to start stirring up hatred, turning simple interest groups into fanatical sects and pitting them against each other. Then ships come swooping down to dump drugs into the water supplies and incendiaries to start fires. They pass over cities, beaming psychotropic rays, inciting hatred and triggering riots.”

“No!” Horis Antic shouted, defending his fellow Grey Men. “I know some IDS people. Many of them are survivors from past chaos outbreaks, fellow sufferers who’ve volunteered to help others recover from the same fever. They wouldnever do the things you describe. You have no proof for these insane charges!”

“Not yet. But we will. How else can you explain it when such great hopes and so many bright things suddenly turn to ash?”

Hari slumped a little in his mobile chair while the others kept shouting at each other.

How to explain it?He pondered.As a curse of basic human nature? In the equations, it appears as an undamped oscillation. An at tractor state that always lurks, waiting to pull humanity toward chaos whenever conditions are exactly right. It almost destroyed our ancestors, about the time starflight and robots were invented. According to Daneel, it is the biggest reason why the Galactic Empire had to be invented…and why the empire is about to fail at last.

Hari knew all of this. He had known it for a long time. There was just one quandary left.

He still didn’t reallyunderstand the curse. Not at its core. He could not grasp why such an undamped at tractor lay, coiled and deadly, inside the soul of his race.

Suddenly, as if from nowhere, a missing piece came to him. Not a solution to the greater puzzle, but to a lesser one.

“Junin Quarter…” he murmured. “A woman named Sybyl…”

Sitting up, he pointed at her.

“You…helped activate the sims! The ancient simulations of Joan and Voltaire.”

She nodded.

“It was I and a few others whom you hired to help with your ‘experiment.’ Partly at your bidding, and partly through our own arrogant stupidity, we unleashed those two provocative sims at just the wrong moment-or the right one foryour purposes-into the volatile stew of poor Junin, just when two major factions were trying to work out their philosophical differences short of violence. In so doing, we unwittingly helped wreck a mini-renaissance that was taking place in the very heart of the capital planet.”

Maserd and Antic looked confused. Hari explained with three brief words.

“The Tiktok Revolt.”

They nodded at once. Although it had happened forty years ago, no one could forget how a new type of robot (far more primitive than Daneel’s secretive positronic kind) suddenly went berserk on Trantor, doing great harm until they were all dismantled and outlawed. Officially, the whole episode was blamed on the chaos in Junin Quarter, just before Hari became First Minister.

“That’s right,” Vlimt said. “By helping incite the so-called revolt, you helped discredit the whole concept of mechanical helpers and servants. Of course it was all a plot by the ruling class to keep the proletarians subjugated forever and in their place-”

Fortunately, Vlimt’s next stream of fanatical invective was cut short, interrupted by a sound from behind-someone clearing his throat by the airlock.

Everyone turned. A dark-haired, dusky man stood there, dressed in a normal gray ship suit, with an efficient-looking blaster loosely holstered at his side. Hari quickly recognized the third member of the raiding party.

“Mors Planch,” he said, recalling their meeting just a year ago, around the time of his trial by the Commission for Public Safety. “So. I knew there had to be somebody competent aboard that ship.”

Sybyl and Vlimt hissed. But the newcomer nodded at Hari.

“Hello, Seldon.” Then he turned to his garishly dressed partners.

“Didn’t I ask you two not to get into a quarrel with the hostages? It’s pointless and tiresome.”

“Wehired you and your crew, pilot Planch-” Vlimt began. But Jeni Cuicet burst in at that moment, interrupting with evident excitement.

“Is that what we are? Hostages?”

“Not you, child,” answered Sybyl, whose motherly smile seemed incongruous on her gaudy, made-up face.“You have the makings of a fine recruit for the revolution!

“But as for these others”-she gestured especially toward Hari-”we plan on using them to help win a war of liberation. First for a planet, and then for all humankind.”

10.

There were preparations to make. Plans to coordinate with distant agents of the New Renaissance. Other guerrilla teams had been sent to kidnap important peers of the realm, who would offer much better leverage than a disgraced and forgotten former First Minister. According to Hari’s own self-appraisal, he was about as valuable a bargaining chip as a crooked half credit piece.

Sybyl and Planch chose me for personal reasons,he felt certain.They want revenge for Junin and Sark and Madder Loss. I’ll never convince them that psychohistorical factors doomed those cultural revolutions before they began.

He could foresee one benefit coming from the fall of the Galactic Empire. Although many of the factors leading to chaos outbreaks were still mysterious, peace, trade, and prosperity were among the essential preconditions, and those would be scarce during the Interregnum. People living in the coming harsh millennium would face other kinds of problems. But at least they would be spared this peculiar madness.

Poor Daneel,Hari thought.You set up the empire to be as benign and gentle as possible-distracting the ambitious with harmless games while setting nitpickers like Horis to work shuffling papers and keeping ships in motion. Everything ran smoothly, yet that underlying smoothness created an ideal breeding ground for the thing you feared most.

And the thing that I understand least.

While Sybyl and her colleagues waited to coordinate their actions with other agents across the galaxy, Horis Antic begged to be allowed to continue the research.

“What harm could it do? We’re in deep space, far from any planets or shipping lanes. Instead of just hanging around, we could be discovering something that’s of value to everybody! What if my correlations and Seldon’s equations let us predict where chaos worlds…or renaissances…are likely to appear next?”

“Why? So you could squelch them faster, Grey Man?” Gornon Vlimt sneered.

“May I point out that you people are the ones with guns?” Captain Maserd commented at that point.

“Hmm.” Mors Planch rubbed his chin. “I see what you’re saying. We get the results first. So we might use this breakthrough to find nascent freedom-worlds early andfoster their change, preparing so far in advance that the momentum can’t be stopped or quarantined.”

Hari felt a shiver, wondering what Maserd was up to. But the big nobleman wore a poker face.I hope he knows what he’s doing. Myformulas aren’t very good at dealing with individuals and groups on a small scale. At this level, Maserd’s political cunning may be sharper than my own rusty skills.

For the first time in many years, he experienced something like fear. His plan to salvage civilization faced one paramount threat-a sudden unleashing of chaos across the galaxy. Hari envisioned this as a splatter of horrid blotches, etching holes in the Prime Radiant, unraveling the gorgeous tapestry of equations, erasing every vestige of the predictability that had been his life’s work.

After some discussion, the Ktlinans agreed to Antic’s proposal. Mors Planch posted some of his crew as guards, and Maserd was told to set a trajectory, continuing their search spiral along a curve denoted in red on the holo charts.

A few hours later, Horis Antic grew excited and approached Hari with news.

“Guess what, Professor! I just added Ktlina to my database of chaos outbreaks, and that one datum refined the model by over five percent! I think I can predict, with some degree of confidence, that we’ll reach the center of a really big probability nexus in just another day!”

The little man had just accomplished, laboring over a computer, what Hari figured out within moments after first hearing the planet’s name.Still, I’m impressed, Hari thought.

“This adjustment will take us straight into a giant molecular cloud,” Maserd commented, when he saw the proposed course change.

“Is that a problem?”

“Not really. In fact, it makes sense. If someone was hiding a boojum, and I had a hankering to find one, that’s where I’d go searching.”

So thePride of Rhodia accelerated alongside the rebel spacecraft and under the watchful eye of Mors Planch, while others aboard the yacht continued bickering, posing, or evaluating, according to their natures. Hari kept quiet for a while, learning a lot about the Ktlina “renaissance” just by watching its onboard representatives.

Although they claimed that all class distinctions had been erased in their new society, Sybyl still talked and walked like a middle-ranking meritocratic scientist. Her extravagant clothes and cosmetic prettifications were clearly excessive overcompensations, pretending a stylishness she just wasn’t made for. Despite all her shouted tributes to equality, Sybyl kept preening before the aristocrat, Maserd, while barely acknowledging the mere bureaucrat, Horis Antic.

Old habits die hard,Hari thought.Despite your dogma of rebellion.

Gornon Vlimt seemed more relaxed in his role as envoy from a bold renaissance, perhaps because he was already a member of the fifth and smallest social caste-the Eccentric Order. Creative misfits of all kinds slipped into the eighty approved artistic modes, including several that were sanctioned to satirize the hidebound and shake up the stodgy… within the confines of good taste, that is.

Although Vlimt was clearly pleased to be free of those traditional limits, he wore his unconventionality with more natural grace than Sybyl did, as if he had been born to it.

As much as the two radicals shared an overall mission, Hari could tell that something jagged lay between them. Was it a philosophical issue, perhaps? Like the dilemma that had torn apart Junin Quarter, long ago? One feature of chaos outbreaks was a remarkable tendency for enthusiasts to transform into fanatics, so utterly sure of their own righteousness that they were willing to die…or slaughter others…over fine points of ideology. This was one of many failure modes that brought such worlds crashing down.

Hari wondered if such a flaw might be exploited somehow, to thwart these radical kidnappers.

It didn’t take much probing to find the sore point between Sybyl and Vlimt. As in Junin, forty years ago, it had to do withdestiny.

“Picture what’s happening on Ktlina, only multiplied a thousand, a million times over,” Sybyl urged. “We’ve already invented much better computers than they have on Trantor, passing and correlating information across the planet with incredible speed. Researchers get instant response to their info-requests, bringing back a torrent of useful data. Folks in one field quickly make use of advances made in another. New kinds of tiktoks take care of the drudge jobs, freeing us to concentrate on creative tasks, learning more and more!

“Some people have plotted this steepening upward curve,” she went on enthusiastically. “They suggest that it looks like the graph you get by dividing any finite number by x-squared, as x approaches zero. That’s called asingularity. Soon it heads almost straight up, which implies there may be no limit to the speedup of progress! If that’s true, imagine what we could become, within just a human lifetime. Assingularity beings, we’d be effectively immortal, omniscient, omnipotent. There’s nothing humans could not accomplish!”

Gornon Vlimt snorted derisively.

“This obsession with physical power and factual knowledge will get you nowhere, Sybyl. The vital fact about this new kind of culture is its essentialrandomness. Take the belittling word that Seldon and others keep using to attack us. ‘Chaos.’ We should embrace it! When arts and ideas roar in a myriad directions, sooner or later somebody is going to hit on the right formula for conversing with the Godhead, with the eternal-or eternals-that permeate the cosmos. From then on, we’ll be one with them! Our deification will be total and complete.”

While Jeni Cuicet listened to all of this, entranced, Hari pondered several things.

First, the two concepts were essentially similar, in both their transcendental vision and the zealous means prescribed to achieve it.

Second, the more they heard of each other’s specific descriptions, the more Sybyl and Gornon grew to despise each other.

If only I could find a way to use that fact,Hari contemplated.

While their argument raged on nearby, he sat deep in thought, pondering the roots of their disagreement. Each of the five castes had a basis in essential human personality types, far more than inheritance. Citizens and gentry were rather basic. Their ambitious efforts to get ahead were based on normal competition and self-interest-which also reflected their high birth rates. Both classes were contemptuously called breeders by the other three.

Meritocrats and eccentrics also competed-sometimes fiercely-but their sense of self-importance was based more on what they did or accomplished than on money or power or social aggrandizement for their heirs. Each felt a need to stand out…though not too far ahead. They seldom had offspring of their own, though sometimes, like Hari, they adopted.

These similarities were significant. But chaos conditions also highlighted essential antagonisms between eccentrics and meritocrats, as happened in Junin long ago, when a struggle betweenfaith andreason sent part of Trantor reeling.

Using his imagination, Hari floated equilibrium equations for each caste in front of him, until they were more real to him than the people arguing nearby. Of course, the new empire to come in a thousand years would be much more complex and subtle, no longer needing such formal classifications. But therewas an elegance to this old system, worked out long ago by immortal beings like Daneel, who sought a peaceful, gentle way of life for humanity, based on their own crude version of psychohistory. Resonating against basic drives of human nature, the formulas revolved around each other, staying in remarkable balance, as if kept up in the air by an invisible juggler. As long as chaos did not interfere.

And as long as the old empire survived.

Kers Kantun touched Hari’s arm, leaning over him, expressing concern.

“Professor? Are you all right?”

His servant’s voice sounded distant, as if echoing down a long tunnel. Hari paid no heed. Before his bemused gaze, the five social formulae started dissolving into a sea of minuscule subequations that ebbed and flowed around him, like diatoms in a surging tide.

The breakup of the old empire,he thought, identifying this change. Briefly, he mourned the lost symmetries. In their place, more primitive rhythms of survival and violence throbbed across the galaxy.

Only then, the haze parted, revealing something far more beautiful, emerging from the distance.

My Foundation.

His belovedEncyclopedia Galactica Foundation. The colony that was being established, even now, on far-off Terminus. A frail seed designed to flourish in adversity and overcome each challenge that fate’s ponderous momentum brought its way.

The equations orbited all around, nurturing his sapling, causing it to grow tall and strong, with a trunk that was ironhard and roots that could bear any weight. Impervious toboth chaos and decay, it would be everything that the old empire was not.

At first, you will survive by playing great powers against each other. Then you will thrive as conjurers and pseudoreligious hucksters.Donot be ashamed, for that will be just a phase. A way to survive until the trade networks take over.

Then you will have to deal with the death throes of the old Imperium…

As if through cotton, Hari could hear voices gathering nearby, murmuring concern. Some of Kers Kantun’s Valmoril-accented speech came through dimly.

“….I think he may be havin’ another stroke….”

His servant’s alarmed words drifted away as the hallucinatory vision changed before Hari yet again.

The tree grew ever greater, its boundaries becoming harder to define. Strange flowers briefly appeared, surprising in their unexpected shape and texture. The Foundation’s overall rate of growth still followed his Plan, but somethingadditional was starting to happen, adding richness that he had never seen before, even in the Prime Radiant display. Enthralled, Hari tried to focus on a small part…

However, before he could look closer, a pair ofgardeners abruptly appeared, striding forward to examine the tree. One had the face of Stettin Palver. The other resembled Hari’s granddaughter, Wanda Seldon.

Leaders of the Fifty.

Leaders of the Second Foundation.

Using great brooms, they swept away the beautiful hovering formulae, chasing off the protective, nurturing equations.

Hari tried to shout at them, but found he was frozen. Paralyzed.

Apparently, his followers and heirs did not need math anymore. They had something better, more powerful. Stettin and Wanda brought their hands up to their heads. Concentrating, they caused shears of pure mental force to emerge from their brows…and set to work at once, lopping flowers, buds, and small limbs off the tree, simplifying its natural contours.

Don’t fret, Grandfather,Wanda assured.Guidance is needed. We do this to the Foundation for its own good. To keep it growing according to the Plan.

Hari could not protest, or even move, though he distantly heard shouting as hands carried his frail physical body out of the chair and down a long corridor. There was a stinging hospital smell in his nostrils. A clattering of tools.

He did not care. Only the transfixing vision mattered. Wanda and Stettin looked happy, pleased with their work on the tree, having trimmed the irksome flowers and shaped it to suit their design.

Only now, from some great distance, far beyond the banished mathematics, a glow began to appear! A point of radiant light, soon stronger than any sun. It approached closer, hypnotizing Stettin and Wanda with its sweet power, summoning them to walk, transfixed and uncomplaining, straight into its all-absorbing heat.

Incorporating them, it brightened yet more.

The tree shriveled and ignited, briefly adding its flame to the overall incandescence. It no longer mattered. Its purpose had been served.

I BRING A GIFT,said a new voice…one that Hari knew.

Squinting, he perceived a manlike figure, carrying a white-hot ember in one open hand. The bearer’s face was bathed by actinic glare, penetrating a skin of false flesh to reveal glowing metal beneath, smiling despite a burden of unbearable fatigue.

A heroic figure, tired but triumphantly proud of what it now brought.

Struggling to form words, Hari tried to ask a question. But it would not come. Instead, he felt the prick of a needle in the side of his neck.

Consciousness shut down, like a machine that had been turned off.