Psychohistorical Crisis

43

CORPSE-29, 14,810 GE

Little is known of the first dynasty that led to the rise of Imperial Splendid Wisdom other than Kambal’s only book from which we date Galactic Era time. It was not a literate age. One hundred forty-eight centuries ago, under the coruscating sky of the teeming central star reaches, some 480 centuries after the Eta Cumingans led mankind’s hyperdrive expansion from the Sirius Sector into the far galactic wildernesses, Kambal appeared from nowhere over Splendid Wisdom with enough strength to establish an isolated home base on what were then the unpopulated islands of the Calmer Sea.

Perhaps Kambal was a young hyperfleet commander displaced from his home system by a defeat in war, forcing an alliance of convenience upon the vulnerable colonists of Splendid Wisdom. So say the references by Joradan to Kambal’s lost War Logs. In any event, Kambal never returned to combat. In deference to his new hosts, whom he needed as willing (rather than reluctant) allies, he gave up looting and took to stellar trading to supply his loyal armies.

Perhaps the soothing breezes of the Calmer Sea calmed Kambal’s fire-bred heart. During his long life he lost the desire to conquer. Old age brought him to a more serene philosophy, which has come down to us as his Oracles of Patience. In that ancient time of strife—in a Galaxy of myriad competing empires, all more powerful than Splendid Wisdom—who could have predicted that over the next ten millennia Kambal’s seed would gradually assimilate all rivals into a First Empire of thirty million stars that stretched to the galactic periphery? Or that Kambal’s spirit would have been able to hold such an immense organism together for another full two thousand years through the sheer power of a patient and tempered bureaucracy brought up on the Oracles?

Before the Fall, the Founder of Psychohistory had quoted Kambal's Ninth Oracle, Verse Seventeen, as the major inspiration of his youth:

It is minimum force, applied at a chosen moment in the arena of historical focus that paves the path to a distant vision. Abandon ail immediate goals that do not serve your furthest purpose. "

—Soiomoni’s Dynastic Histories, 5645th Edition, 14,809 GE

When Nejirt Kambu arrived at the Palace of the Police of the Lyceum Prefecture, the entrance chute to the waiting room shimmered, expanded, and he dropped gently through the damping-field. As he reached bottom there was no visible floor, only marine plants swaying below his feet. Brightly colored holographic fish circled the room curiously. It was disconcerting. Splendid bureaucrats were known to be eccentric, but some were certainly more eccentric than others. While he was making sure that he really wasn’t underwater, a sleek robofish image with luminous scales received him gracefully and led him to a side grotto with delicate tail swishes. “It won’t be long,” the image burbled, leaving him to wait.

Waiting never appealed to Nejirt, however long, and since he had the clearance, he downloaded the report on the dead man into his fam for review while he paced. The Case of the Police Killing. That did not please him. It was an exercise in farce to chase a petty con artist as if he were the Galaxy’s top criminal, comer him after twenty-eight watches of comedy, then by accident execute him in a clumsy pratfall. Splendid Wisdom should be a sacred example of dignity and order to the rest of the Galaxy. Konn had taught Nejirt perfection.

He didn’t have time for more than a cursory review before a uniformed receptionist (human) arrived to guide him around office mazes, thankfully free of the fish fetish, and down through forcefield-guarded bulkheads into a long lighted hall that led to the morgue dissectium. The headless man, identified as Corpse-29, lay like wax in a cylindrical stasis analyzer, ignored by the staff. Prefect Cal Bama was deferentially pleased to see Nejirt.

“Good of you to come so quickly, sir.”

Nejirt was not ready for easy camaraderie. “What have we got here, a headless corpse? The head was damaged?”

Bama bowed slightly in respect, his lace collar flopping too quickly. “Sir. It was necessary for us to dissect the head. We’ve been modeling the brain. While you were flying in we got a full simulation running.”

Nejirt smiled wryly with the wisdom of a mathematician who knows more than can be communicated to common people. He had a natural grasp of neural systems because much of the math overlapped the mathematical methodology of psychohistory. Simulation of a dead man’s brain was a technological triumph—but it wouldn’t do them much good.

“Have you learned anything?” asked Nejirt, already knowing the answer.

Prefect Cal Bama shrugged. “Not to be expected. But we have deduced many of Scogil’s motor skills. We know how he walks and”—the Prefect’s eyes twinkled—“we know the accent with which he spoke standard galactic.” They had the resonant cavities of Scogil’s skull. Talking was a motor-driven skill, and basic motor skills tended to survive quantum-state reconstruction. “Unfortunately he doesn’t talk sense.” Bama gestured and a holographic Corpse-29 began to speak a standard text. It was worse than bad acting. “Do you recognize the accent?”

“Turn off the visual. It gives him all the appeal of a zombie trying too hard.”

“Of course, sir.” A disembodied voice repeated the message with the same inflections. “How’s the accent?” implored Bama again.

“You mean, does it sound like someone from Coron’s Wisp?”

“Yeah.”

“It might and it might not. The Coronese are very idiomatic.” He could also be from Coron’s Wisp and not be Coronese. With resignation, Nejirt decided to humor this idiot. “Have you picked up any other motor skills?”

Prefect Bama laughed. “We thought we had something, but it turned out to be his ability to screw tops on bottles. The only unusual thing we’ve identified is his ability to balance a moving bicycle.”

“Bicycle?”

“A bicycle is a two-wheeled gyroscopic device. It might be useful for high-speeding down corridors and bouncing off pedestrians.”

“Wire frame? Wheels in-line? High seat? Muscle powered?”

“Yeah,” said Cal.

“On the planets of Coron’s Wisp they are called whizzies. Never saw one in my life before my last adventure. On Timdo they are almost ubiquitous. I was told they became popular during the Fall when power was short. There are whizzy trails in the forests and around mountains and all through the metropolises. Good for the body, they say, but I found them exasperating. I think decadence is now setting it; ten percent of the whizzies I saw were powered.”

“Ummm. We’ve determined that Corpse-29 had at least twenty years of experience on them.” He paused. “So this could really be a link to Coron’s Wisp?”

‘Timdo, most likely. Doesn’t he have a name?”

“The name would tell you nothing. False identity. Professionally done. When an identity is that well hidden, criminality is always involved. We may yet be able to trace him.”

Cal stripped off his lace collar, showing a hairy chest above his low neckline, and mopped his brow, then tossed his lace beside the corpse. ‘Timdo, eh?” he said with satisfaction. “Follow me. Second Rank Hahukum Konn wants me to show you something.” He summoned a subordinate to bring him the evidence.

Together they found an unused conference room with stuffed autopsies on the walls. The Prefect removed, from the carved ivory case he had been handed, a jade-pale ovoid with indented five-finger press points. Nejirt gasped. Such objects were legendary on the Wisp’s Timdo and common enough elsewhere in the Wisp Pentad. He had believed not a word surrounding this superstition—until the moment when such an ovoid cast its magic in the air of an old woman’s hovel—predicting nonsense, of course, but doing it beautifully. The hag whispered to him that he would live long enough to witness the Second Fall...and like all women of her breed, had refused to tell him how long that would be.

“From your expression I take it you recognize the object?”

“They are used on Timdo—but often hidden from strangers. I saw only one.”

“One!” exclaimed Bama. “Corpse-29 has been on Splendid Wisdom for months now selling thousands of these things to astrology buffs. They seem to be transshipped from Coron’s Wisp.”

“You’re sure your corpse wasn’t churning them out in his hotel room from some template he picked up in the Wisp?”

The Prefect was affronted that anyone would think the police so inept as to make such a mistake. He was a religious follower of Kambal’s Oracles of Patience, a common trait of conscientious bureaucrats that had hardly been touched by either Interregnum or Sack. “This isn’t jade, sir.” Jade was an object that could be manufactured in any household. “These ovoids are imported. A manufacturum hasn’t the resolution needed for replication. We’ve put a few through the lab and we cannot fabricate a template of a functional ovoid with our best copiers. Same problem we seem to have with Corpse-29’s brain.”

The policeman continued, bemused. ‘This ovoid we acquired during a recent raid authorized by Second Rank Konn. Beautiful, isn’t it? How in Space do they work? We’ve been reduced to tapping random code into die press points and intimidating ourselves when magic happens. We lack a fundamental picture of the device’s function or an operating manual. Konn tells me you’ve picked up some queer stuff about astrologers on your recent jaunt.”

Nejirt raised the ovoid, carefully fitting his fingers and thumb to the indentations. He meditated for a moment until his fam remembered the finger-code sequences that he had memorized by watching his Timdo charlatan. Darkness blossomed until even the face of Prefect Bama faded. Then—bedazzling stars. It was quite a piece of fakery, the best handheld galactarium Nejirt had ever witnessed. This version had been preadjusted to view the stars from the coordinates of Imperialis but that could be changed to any point in the Galaxy with deft finger pressure. He wasn’t sure he knew enough to do that—but he could try.

With amusement Psychohistorian Nejirt Kambu asked the ritual questions and from Cal Bama’s answers adjusted the sky to produce the Prefect’s chart. “Birth” stars appeared in blue, “danger” stars smoldered red, “decision” stars flared yellow, and “wildcard” stars turned green. All nonsense. Then an awesome program began to paint Bama’s personal constellations across this brilliant sky: a hero robot who guided man’s destiny; a gaggle of violated virgins, chain-ganged together in the sky to do penance for a guilty Emperor now suffering regrets about his lust; a sparkling stream of life to nourish all the fishes of the Galaxy; a fate-worse-than-death; a mooning joker; the knife that separates good from evil; a monster of the galactic deeps. Bama’s birth constellation turned out to be the Stone Well. His fate was easy to determine—providing one knew whether the Stone Well was draining or replenishing, a true astrologer’s touch. The constellations faded.

“Why did your people kill this man?” he asked when he was done with the clumsy reading and had returned the ovoid to its elaborate ivory box.

“We intended to take him alive.”

“Of course. Why did you kill him?”

Bama glanced over at the body ruefully. “We had, and have, a certain Hyperlord Kikaju Jama under surveillance for subversion. Back-traced from the raid which produced the ovoid. Psychohistorian Konn, as you know, has his reasons to be suspicious of antisocial activity in Coron’s Wisp and has been tracing commercial contacts while you were off doing the fieldwork. This Jama seems to advocate the antisocial purloining of state secrets and the methodical dismantling of the Empire. He even blasphemes the Founder by advocating the establishment of a thirty-thousand-year interregnum.”

Psychohistorian Nejirt Kambu smiled. “A common curse but hardly a crime .”

The Prefect huffed. “Sir, it is a crime if he is taking measures to put his theories into effect. If he is planting nuclear bombs to vaporize the Lyceum, that is indeed my business. We have every intention of cleaning out the Hyperlord’s group and in all probability would have done so already had the deceased not tripped our wires.”

“Go on. And the killing?”

“We determined that Hyperlord Jama has been purchasing his Wisp devices from Corpse-29. Since the Hyperlord’s motives are suspect, his supplier becomes suspect. That is how our investigation turned from the Hyperlord to the deceased. Konn”—he nodded deferentially—“ordered the raid on Corpse-29’s base of operations and the arrest of the deceased. Much to our surprise, we found ourselves chasing him for a full twenty-eight watches. He played the shell game, and blast him, every time we’d pounce on a shell, he’d be under the other one. Twenty-eight watches! Eventually we cornered the rat but by then we were conditioned to expect him to escape... so we got, shall we say, overenthusiastic, to use a lame euphemism. He did escape, too, wounded. And we didn’t get what we wanted. Shame! We were after his fam. And his dead body wasn’t wearing one! Space, what a shock that was! We’d been conned! We couldn’t imagine a man evading us for so long without the use of his fam! Galaxy knows where it is now. We’ve lost it.”

“Explain something to me,” said Nejirt. “Why am / here?” “Second Rank Hahukum Konn suggested that you would be invaluable in the analysis of events.”

“I’m not at all convinced that a minor ring of astrologers and charlatans is my business—unless I’m being demoted. Why am I here to view this astrologer’s corpse?”

“Astrologer? Didn’t Konn tell you? He suspects that Corpse-29 was a psychohistorian—and an able one. We have to get our hands on his fam as an important part of the evidence.”

What?

Nejirt walked over to the body inside its cylinder of instruments. His mind was racing in astonishment. All the data at Coron’s Wisp suddenly made sense. A rebel psychohistorian. Old and well-worn theorems of the Founder rose to the conscious awareness of his fam as their unassailable assumptions were being checked out in panic. It was impossible! This couldn’t...

He stopped.

He remembered what he had been thinking while Bama was explaining to him the hastily constructed quantum-state simulation of Scogil’s mind. About topozones, about the similarity between the mathematics of neural systems and the mathematics of psychohistory. Topozones were the boundaries between stability and chaos, laminar flow and turbulence. An escalating social crisis was explained with exactly the same mathematics as the panic and uncertainty and disbelief he was now feeling.

Ceaselessly the state-activity of an organic net flips back and forth across the boundaries twixt stability and chaos in the mind’s war between what it knows and what it needs to learn—this outpost ridge temporarily chaotic, that beachhead stable for the moment, the front flowing in battle flux across the net, victory converting the unknown into the known, defeat dissolving what was once known into contradictory, indefensible fragments, the changing synaptic strengths moving and transforming the topozone boundaries all across a fluid battlefield where stimulus attacks and response defends.

The battle never ends. Victory for one side is the only danger. If a brain lives only in the known, it begins to suffer

rigor mortis on the stable side of the topozones; if it lives only in the unknown, it becomes insane on the chaotic side of the topozones. The eternal war between good order and evil chaos.

Chaos and panic in his mind. It was a challenge. Were there really other psychohistorians out there?