Foundation’s Triumph

1.

“As for me…I am finished.”

Those words resonated in his mind. They clung, like the relentless blanket that Hari’s nurse kept straightening across his legs, though it was a warm day in the imperial gardens.

I am finished.

The relentless phrase was his constant companion.

…finished.

In front of Hari Seldon lay the rugged slopes of Shoufeen Woods, a wild portion of the Imperial Palace grounds where plants and small animals from across the galaxy mingled in rank disorder, clumping and spreading unhindered. Tall trees even blocked from view the ever-present skyline of metal towers. The mighty world-city surrounding this little island forest.

Trantor.

Squinting through failing eyes, one could almost pretend to be sitting on a different planet-one that had not been flattened and subdued in service to the Galactic Empire of Humanity.

The forest teased Hari. Its total absence of straight lines seemed perverse, a riot of greenery that defied any effort to decipher or decode. The geometries seemed unpredictable, evenchaotic.

Mentally, he reached out to the chaos, so vibrant and undisciplined. He spoke to it as an equal. His great enemy.

All my life I fought against you, using mathematics to overcome nature’s vast complexity. With tools of psychohistory, I probed the matrices of human society, wresting order from that murky tangle. And when my victories still felt incomplete, I used politics and guile to combat uncertainty, driving you like an enemy before me.

So why now, at my time of supposed triumph, do I hear you calling out to me? Chaos, my old foe? Hari’s answer came in the same phrase that kept threading his thoughts.

Because I am finished.

Finished as a mathematician.

It was more than a year since Stettin Palver or Gaal Dornick or any other member of the Fifty had consulted Hari with a serious permutation or revision to the “Seldon Plan.” Their awe and reverence for him was unchanged. But urgent tasks kept them busy. Besides, anyone could tell that his mind no longer had the suppleness to juggle a myriad abstractions at the same time. It took a youngster’s mental agility, concentration, andarroganceto challenge the hyperdimensional algorithms of psychohistory. His successors, culled from among the best minds on twenty-five million worlds, had all these traits in superabundance.

But Hari could no longer afford conceit. There remained too little time.

Finished as a politician.

How he used to hate that word! Pretending, even to himself, that he wanted only to be a meek academic. Of course, that had just been a marvelous pose. No one could rise to become First Minister of the entire human universe without the talent and audacity of a master manipulator. Oh, he had been a genius inthat field, too, wielding power with flair, defeating enemies, altering the lives of trillions-while complaining the whole time that he hated the job.

Some might look back on that youthful record with ironic pride. But not Hari Seldon.

Finished as a conspirator.

He had won each battle, prevailed in every contest. A year ago, Hari subtly maneuvered today’s imperial rulers into creating ideal circumstances for his secret psychohistorical design to flourish. Soon a hundred thousand exiles would be stranded on a stark planet, faraway Terminus, charged with producing a greatEncyclopedia Galactica. But that superficial goal would peel away in half a century, revealing the true aim of that Foundation at the galaxy’s rim-to be the embryo of a more vigorous empire as the old one fell. For years that had been the focus of his daily ambitions, and his nightly dreams. Dreams that reached ahead, across a thousand years of social collapse-past an age of suffering and violence-to a new human fruition. A better destiny for humankind.

Only now his role in that great enterprise was ended. Hari had just finished taping messages for the Time Vault on Terminus-a series of subtle bulletins that would occasionally nudge or encourage members of the Foundation as they plunged toward a bright morrow preordained by psychohistory. When the final message was safely stored, Hari felt a shift in the attitudes of those around him. He was still esteemed, even venerated. But he wasn’tnecessary anymore.

One sure sign had been the departure of his bodyguards-a trio of humaniform robots that Daneel Olivaw had assigned to protect Hari, until the transcriptions were finished. It happened right there, at the recording studio. One robot-artfully disguised as a burly young medical technician-had bowed low to speak in Hari’s ear.

“We must go now. Daneel has urgent assignments for us. But he bade me to give you his promise. Daneel will visit soon. The two of you will meet again, before the end.“

Perhaps that wasn’t the most tactful way to put it. But Hari always preferred blunt openness from friends and family.

Unbidden, a clear image from the past swept into mind-of his wife, Dors Venabili, playing with Raych, their son. He sighed. Both Dors and Raych were long gone-along with nearly every link that ever bound him closely to another private soul.

This brought a final coda to the phrase that kept spinning through his mind

Finished as a person.

The doctors despaired over extending his life, even though eighty was rather young to die of decrepit age nowadays. But Hari saw no point in mere existence for its own sake. Especially if he could no longer analyze or affect the universe.

Is that why I drift here, to this grove?He pondered the wild, unpredictable forest-a mere pocket in the Imperial Park, which measured a hundred miles on a side-the only expanse of greenery on Trantor’s metal-encased crust. Most visitors preferred the hectares of prim gardens open to the public, filled with extravagant and well-ordered blooms.

But Shoufeen Woods seemed to beckon him.Here, unmasked by Trantor’s opaque walls, I can see chaos in the foliage by day, and in brittle stars by night. I can hear chaos taunting me…telling me I haven’t won.

That wry thought provoked a smile, cracking the pursed lines of his face.

Who would have imagined, at this late phase of life, that I’d acquire a taste for justice?

Kers Kantun straightened the lap blanket again, asking solicitously, “Are you o’right, Dr. Seldon? Should we be headin’ back now?”

Han’s servant had the rolling accent-and greenish skin pallor-of a Valmoril, a subspecies of humanity that had spread through the isolated Conthi Cluster, living secluded there for so long that by now they could only interbreed with other races by pretreating sperm and eggs with enzymes. Kers had been chosen as Han’s nurse and final guardian after the robots departed. He performed both roles with quiet determination.

“This wild place makes me o’comfortable, Doc. Surely you don’ like the breeze gustin’ like this?”

Hari had been told that Kantun’s parents arrived on Trantor as young Greys-members of the bureaucratic caste-expecting to spend a few years’ service on the capital planet, training in monkish dormitories, then heading back out to the galaxy as administrators in the vast civil service. But flukes of talent and promotion intervened to keep them here, raising a son amid the steel caverns they hated. Kers inherited his parents’ famed Valmoril sense of duty-or else Daneel Olivaw would never have chosen the fellow to tend Hari in these final days.

I may no longer be useful, but some people still think I’m worth looking after.

In Hari’s mind, the word “person” applied to R. Daneel Olivaw, perhaps more than most of thehumans he ever knew.

For decades, Hari had carefully kept secret the existence of “eternals”-robots who had shepherded human destiny for twenty thousand years-immortal machines that helped create the first Galactic Empire, then encouraged Hari to plan a successor. Indeed, Hari spent the happiest part of his life married to one of them. Without the affection of Dors Venabili-or the aid and protection of Daneel Olivaw-he could never have created psychohistory, setting in motion the Seldon Plan.

Or discovered how useless it would all turn out to be, in the long run.

Wind in the surrounding trees seemed to mock Hari. In that sound, he heard hollow echoes of his own doubts.

The Foundation cannot achieve the task set before it. Somewhere, sometime during the next thousand years, a perturbation will nudge the psychohistorical parameters, rocking the statistical momentum, knocking your Plan off course.

True enough, he wanted to shout back at the zephyr. But that had been allowed for! There would be aSecond Foundation, a secret one, led by his successors, who would adjust the Plan as years passed, providing counternudges to keep it on course!

Yet, the nagging voice came back.

A tiny hidden colony of mathematicians and psychologists will do all that, in a galaxy fast tumbling to violence and ruin?

For years this had seemed a flaw…until fortuitous fate provided an answer.Mentalics, a mutant strain of humans with uncanny ability to sense and alter the emotions and memories of others. These powers were still weak, but heritable. Hari’s own adopted son, Raych, passed the talent to a daughter, Wanda, now a leader in the Seldon Project. Every mentalic they could find had been recruited, to intermarry with the descendants of the psychohistorians. After a few generations of genetic mingling, the clandestine Second Foundation should have potent tools to protect his Plan against deviations during the coming centuries.

And so?

The forest sneered once more.

What will you have then? Will the Second Empire be ruled by a shadowy elite? A secret cabal of human psychics? An aristocracy of mentalic demigods?

Even if kindness motivated this new elite, the prospect left him feeling cold.

The shadow of Kers Kantun bent closer, peering at him with concern. Hari tore his attention away from the singing breeze and finally answered his servant

“Ah…sorry. Of course you’re right. Let’s go back. I’m fatigued.”

But as Kers guided the wheelchair toward a hidden transit station, Hari could still hear the forest, jeering at his life’s work.

The mentalic elite is just one layer though, isn’t it? The Second Foundation conceals yet another truth, then another.

Beyond your own Plan, a different one has been crafted by a greater mind than yours. By someone stronger, more dedicated, and more patient by far. A plan that uses yours, for a while…but which will eventually make psychohistory meaningless.

With his right hand, Hari fumbled under his robe until he found a smooth cube of gemlike stone, a parting gift from his friend and lifetime guide, R. Daneel Olivaw. Palming the archive’s ancient surface, he murmured, too low for Kers to hear.

“Daneel, you promised you’d come to answer all my questions. I have so many, before I die.”

2.

From space it seemed a gentle world, barely touched by civilization. A rich belt of verdant rain forest girdled the tropics, leaping narrow oceans to sweep all the way around three continents.

Dors Venabili watched green Panucopia swell below, during her descent toward the old Imperial Research Station. Nearly forty years had passed since she last came here, accompanying her human husband as they fled dangerous enemies back on Trantor. But those troubles had followed them here, with nearly tragic consequences.

The ensuing adventure had been the strangest of her life-though admittedly Dors was still quite young for a robot. For more than a month, she and Hari had left their bodies in suspensor tanks while their minds were projected into the bodies of pans-(or “chimpanzees” in some dialects)-roaming the forest preserves of this world. Hari claimed he needed data about primitive response patterns for his psychohistorical research, but Dors suspected at the time that something deep within the august Professor Seldon relished “going ape” for a while.

She well recalled the sensations of inhabiting a female pan, feeling powerful organic drives propel that vivid, living body. Unlike the simulated emotions she had been programmed with, these surged and fluxed with natural, unrestrained passion-especially during several hazard-filled days when someone tried to assassinate the two of them, hunting them like beasts while their minds were still trapped in pan bodies.

After barely foiling that scheme, they had swiftly returned to Trantor, where Hari soon took up reluctant duties as First Minister of the Empire. And yet, that month left her changed, with a much deeper understanding of organic life. Looking back on it, she treasured the experience, which helped her better care for Hari.

Still, Dors had never expected to see Panucopia again. Until receiving the summons for a rendezvous.

I have a gift for you,the message said.Something you’ll find useful.

It was signed with a unique identifier code that Dors recognized at once.

Lodovic Trema.

Lodovic the mutant.

Lodovic the renegade.

The robot who is no longer a robot.

It wasn’t easy to decide, at first. Dors had duties on planet Smushell-an easy assignment, setting up a young Trantorian couple in comfortable marriage, disguised as minor gentry on a pleasant little world, then encouraging them to have as many babies as possible. Daneel considered this important, though his reasons were, as usual, somewhat obscure. Dors only knew that Klia Asgar and her husband, Brann, were exceptionally powerful mentalics-humans with potent psychic powers, of the sort that only a few robots like Daneel heretofore possessed. Their sudden appearance had caused many plans to change…and change again several times in the last year. It was essential that the existence of mentalic humans be kept from the galaxy’s masses, just as the presence of robots in their midst had been kept secret for a thousand generations.

When the message from Lodovic came, there was no time to send for instructions from Daneel. In order to make the rendezvous, she had to take the very next liner to Siwenna, where a fast ship would be waiting for her.

I offer a truce, in the name of humanity,Lodovic had sent.I promise you’ll find the trip worthwhile.

Klia and Brann were safe and happy. Dors had set up defenses and precautions overwhelmingly stronger than any conceivable threat, and her robot assistants were vigilant. There was no reasonnot to go. Yet her decision was wrenching.

Now, with the rendezvous approaching, she flexed her hands, feeling tension in positronic receptors that had been placed in exactly the same locations as the nerves of a real woman. On the crystal viewing pane, her reflected image superimposed across the rising forestscape. She wore the same face as when she had dwelled with Hari. Her own face, as she would always think of it.

Hari Seldon still lives,Dors thought. It was part hearsay and part intuition. Although she was not one of the robots to whom Daneel had given Giskardian mentalic powers, Dors felt certain she would know, the instant that her human husband died. A part of her would freeze at that point, locking his image and memory in permanent, revolving circuitry. While Dors knew she might last another ten thousand years, in a sense she would always be Hari’s.

“We shall be landing in just two hours, Dors Venabili.”

The pilot, a lesser humaniform robot, had once been part of a heretical Calvinian group that schemed to mess up Hari’s psychohistory project. Thirty of the dissident machines were captured a year ago by Daneel’s forces and dispatched to a secret repair world for conversion to accept the Zeroth Law of Robotics. But that cargo of prisoners had been hijacked en route by Lodovic Trema. Now they apparently worked for him.

I don’t understand why Daneel trusted Trema with that mission…or any mission. Lodovic should have been destroyed as soon as we discovered that his brain no longer obeyed the Four Laws of Robotics.

Daneel was evidently conflicted in some way. The robot who had guided humanity for twenty thousand years seemed uncertain how to treat a mechanism that behaved more like man than machine. One whochose to act ethically, instead of having it compelled by rigorous programming.

Well, I’m not conflicted,Dors thought.Trema is dangerous. At any moment his own brand of “ethics” might persuade him to act against our cause…or to harm humans, even Hari!

According to both the First and Zeroth laws, I am compelled to act.

The chain of reasoning was logical, impeccable. Yet, in her case every decision came accompanied by simulated emotions, so realistic that Daneel said he couldn’t tell them from human. Anyone observing Dors at that moment would see her face crossed by steely resolve to protect and serve, no matter what it cost.

3.

Once upon a time, it had taken 140 secretaries to handle all of Hari’s mail. Now few remembered he had been First Minister of the Empire. Even his more recent notoriety as “Raven” Seldon, prophet of doom, had surged past the public gaze with fashionable fickleness as reporters moved on to other stories. Ever since his trial ended, with the Commission of Public Safety decreeing exile on Terminus for Hari’s followers, the flow of messages began drying up. Now only half a dozen memoranda waited on the wall monitor when Kers brought him back from their daily stroll.

First, Hari scanned the weekly Plan Report from Gaal Dornick, who still dictated it personally, as a gesture of reverence for the father of psychohistory. Gaal’s broad features were still youthful, with an expression of jovial honesty that could put anyone at ease-even though he now helped lead the most important human conspiracy in ten thousand years.

“Right now our biggest headache appears to be the migration itself It seems that some members of the Encyclopedia Project aren’t happy about being banished from Trantor all the way to the farthest comer of the known universe!“

Dornick chuckled, though with a tone of weariness

“Of course we expected this, and planned for it. Commissioner Linge Chen has assigned the Special Police to prevent desertions. And our own mentalics are helping prod the volunteers’ to depart on their assigned ships. But it’s hard keeping track of over a hundred thousand people. Hari, you couldn’t count the petty aggravations!“

Gaal ruffled papers as he changed the subject.

“Your granddaughter sends her love from Star’s End. Wanda reports that the new mentalic colony seems to be settling down so well that she can come home soon. It’s a relief to have most of the mentalics off Trantor, at last. They were an unstable element. Now only the most trustworthy are left here in the city, and those are proving invaluable during preparations. So, we seem to have matters well in hand-”

Indeed. Hari scanned the accompanying appendix of psychohistorical symbols, attached to Gaal’s message, and saw that they fit the Plan nicely. Dornick and Wanda and the other members of the Fifty knew their jobs well.

After all, Hari had trained them.

He did not have to consult his personal copy of the Prime Radiant to know what must happen next. Soon, agents would be dispatched toward Anacreon and Smyrno, to ignite a smoldering process of secession in those remote provinces, setting the stage for the Foundation’s initial set of crises…the first of many leading, eventually, to a new and better civilization.

Of course the irony did not escape Hari-that he had spent his time as First Minister of the Empire smothering revolutions, and making sure that his successors would continue quashing all so-called “chaos worlds,” whenever those raging social upheavals threatened the human-social equilibrium. But these new rebellions that his followers must foment at the Periphery would be different. Led by ambitious local gentry seeking to augment their own royal grandeur, these insurrections would be classical in every way, fitting the equations with smooth precision.

All according to the Plan.

Most of Hari’s other mail was routine. He discarded one invitation to the annual reception for emeritus faculty members of Streeling University…and another to the emperor’s exhibition of new artworks created by “geniuses” of the Eccentric Order. One of the Fifty would attend that gathering, to measure levels of decadence shown by the empire’s artistic caste. But that was just a matter of calibrating what they already knew-that true creativity was declining to new historical lows. Hari was senior enough to refuse the honor. And he did.

Next came a reminder to pay his guild dues, as an Exalted member of the Meritocratic Order-yet another duty he’d rather neglect. But there were privileges to rank, and he had no desire to become a mere citizen again, at his age. Hari gave verbal permission for the bill to be paid.

His heart beat faster when the wall display showed a letter from the Pagamant Detective Agency. He had hired the firm years ago to search for his daughter-in-law, Manella Dubanqua, and her infant daughter Bellis. They had both vanished on a refugee ship fleeing the Santanni chaos world, the planet where Raych died. Hope briefly flared. Could they be found at last?

But no, it was a note to say the detectives were still sifting lost-ship reports and questioning travelers along the Kalgan-Siwenna corridor, where theArcadia VII had last been spotted. They would continue the inquiry…unless Hari had finally decided to give up?

His jaw clenched.No. Hari’s will established a trust fund to keep them searching after he was gone.

Of the remaining messages, two were obvious crank letters, sent by amateur mathists on far-off worlds who claimed to have independently discovered basic principles of psychohistory. Hari had ordered the mail-monitor to keep showing such missives because some were amusing. Also, once or twice a year, a letter hinted at true talent, a latent spark of brilliance that had somehow flared on a distant world, without yet being quenched among the galaxy’s quadrillion dull embers. Several members of the Fifty had come to his attention in this way. Especially his greatest colleague, Yugo Arnaryl, who deserved credit as cofounder of psychohistory. Yugo’s rise from humble beginnings to the heights of mathematical genius reinforced Hari’s belief that any future society should be based on open social mobility, encouraging individuals to rise according to their ability. So he always gave these messages at least a cursory look.

This time, one snared his attention.

-I seem to have found correlations between your psychohistory technique and the mathematical models used in forecasting patterns in the flow of spacio-molecular currents in deep space! This, in turn, corresponds uncannily with the distribution of soil types on planets sampled across a wide range of galactic locales. I thought you might be interested in discussing this in person. If so, please indicate by

Hari barked a laugh, making Kers Kantun glance over from the kitchen. This certainly was a cute one, all right! He scanned rows of mathematical symbols, finding the approach amateurish, if primly accurate and sincere. Not a kook, then. A well-meaning aficionado, compensating for poor talent with strangely original ideas. He ordered this letter sent to the juniormost member of the Fifty, instructing that it be answered with gentle courtesy-a knack that young Saha Lorwinth ought to learn, if she was going to be one of the secret rulers of human destiny.

With a sigh, he turned his wheelchair away from the wall monitor, toward his shielded private study. Pulling Daneel’s gift from his robe, he laid it on the desk, in a slot specially made to read the ancient relic. The readout screen rippled with two-dimensional images and archaic letters that the computer translated for him.

A Child’s Book of Knowledge

Britannica Publishing Company

New Tokyo, Bayleyworld, 2757 C.E.

The info-store in front of him was highly illegal, but that would hardly stop Hari Seldon, who had once ordered the revival of those ancient simulated beings, Joan of Arc and Voltaire, from another half-melted archive. That act wound up plunging parts of Trantor into chaos when the pair of sims escaped their programmed bonds to run wild through the planet’s data corridors. In fact, the whole episode ended rather well for Hari, though not for the citizens of Junin or Sark. Anyway, he felt little compunction over breaking the Archives Law once again.

Close to twenty thousand years ago.He pondered its publication date, just as awed as the first time he’d activated Daneel’s gift.This may have been written for children of that age, but it holds more of our deep history than all of today’s imperial scholars could pool together.

It had taken Hari half a year to peruse and get a feel for the sweep of early human existence, which began on distant Earth, on a continent called Africa, when a race of clever apes first stood upright and blinked with dull curiosity at the stars.

So many words emerged from that little stone cube. Some were already familiar, having come down to the present in murky form, through oral tales and traditions-

Rome

China

Shake Spear

Hamlet

Buddha

Apollo

The Spacer Worlds

Oddly enough, some fairy tales seemed to have survived virtually unchanged after two hundred centuries. Popular favorites like Pinocchio…and Frankenstein…were apparently far older than anyone imagined.

Other items in the archive Hari had first heard of just a few decades ago, when they were mentioned by the ancient sims, Voltaire and Joan.

France

Christianity

Plato

But far greater was the list of things Hari never had an inkling of, until he first activated this little book. Facts about the human past that had only been known by Daneel Olivaw and other robots. People and places that once rang with vital import for all humanity.

Columbus

America

Einstein

The Empire of Brazil

Susan Calvin

And everything from the limestone caves of Lascaux to the steel catacombs where Earthlings cowered in the twenty-sixth century.

Especially humbling to Hari had been one short essay about an ancient shaman named Karl Marx, whose crude incantations bore no similarity to psychohistory,except the blithe confidence that believers invested in their precious model of human nature. Marxists, too, once thought they had reduced history to basic scientific principles.

Ofcourse, we know better. We Seldonists.

Hari smiled at the irony.

Ostensibly, Daneel Olivaw had presented Hari with this relic for a simple reason-to give him a task. Something to occupy his mind during these final months before his frail body finally gave out. Although the brain had gone too brittle to help Gaal Dornick and the Fifty, he could still handle a simple psychohistorical project-fitting a few millennia of data from a single world into the overall Plan. Tabulating Earth’s early history might help extend the baselines-the boundary conditions-of the Prime Radiant by a decimal place or two.

Anyway, it gave Hari a way to keep feeling useful.

I thought this would also help answer my deepest questions,he pondered. Alas, the chief result had only been to tease his curiosity.It seems that Earth itself went through several periods as a chaos world. One of those episodes spawned Daneel’s kind. A time when humaniform robots like Dors were invented.

A tremor shook Hari’s left hand, provoking worry that he was about to suffer another attack…until the trembling finally passed.

Daneel had better come soon, or else I’ll never get the explanations that I’ve earned, doing his bidding all these years!

Kers brought him dinner, a sampling of Mycogenian delicacies that Hari barely tasted. His attention was immersed inA Child’s Book of Knowledge, a chapter telling about thegreat migration- whenEarth’s vast population strove to flee a world that was fast growing uninhabitable for some mysterious reason. Through heroic effort, nearly a billion people made it off-planet in time, streaking outward in crude hyperships to establish colonies throughout Sirius Sector.

By the time this archive was published, the editors ofA Child’s Book of Knowledge could only guess how many worlds had been settled. Reports from the frontier told of wars among human subcultures. And some rumors were even more strange.Space-ghost legends. Tales of mysterious explosions in the night, vast and worrisome, sparkling just beyond the forward wave of human exploration.

A process of dissolution had begun, when humanity’s remote portions would lose contact. A long dark age of hard struggles and petty squabbles would soon commence, when memories would fade as barbarism swallowed countless minor kingdoms-until peace finally returned to the human universe. A peace brought by the dynamic and rising Trantorian Empire.

Peering across that vast gulf, Hari felt struck by something odd.

If this archive was meant for youngsters-it shows that our ancestors weren’t idiots.

Of course Hari had been reading much more challenging tomes by age six. But this “children’s book” would have gone over the heads of nearly all his peers on Helicon.The ancients weren’t dummies. And yet, their civilization dissolved into madness and amnesia.

So far, the psychohistorical equations did not offer any help. Hari probed the archive for explanations. But he had a lurking suspicion thatanswers-real answers-would have to be found elsewhere.

4.

Ten minutes before landing on Panucopia, Dors retreated to her shielded cabin. She reached into her shirt and unfolded a piece of dark fabric. It lay on the small table, creaseless and passive, until her positronic brain sent a coded microwave burst. Then the surface flickered, and a human face suddenly shimmered to life, resembling a young woman with close-cropped hair, stern-visaged and experienced beyond her apparent years. Blue eyes scanned Dors, evaluating, before the image finally spoke.

“Months have passed since you last summoned me, Dors Venabili. Does my presence make you so uncomfortable?”

“You are a synthetically resurrected human sim, Joan, and therefore contraband. Against the law.”

“Against human law. But angels may see what men cannot.“

“I’ve told you before, I’m a robot,not an angel.”

The youthful figure shrugged. Links of chain armor rustled.

“You are immortal, Dors. You think of nothing but service to fallen humanity, restoring opportunities that have been thrown away by obstinate men and women. You are the embodiment of faith in ultimate redemption. All of that seems to support my interpretation.“

“But my faith is not the same as yours.”

The ersatz Joan of Arc smiled.

“That would have mattered to me earlier, when I was first revived-or artificially simulated-into this strange new era. But the time I spent linked to Voltaire’s sim changed me. Not as much as he hoped! But enough to learn a certain amount of prag-mat-ism.“

She enunciated the final word with a soft grimace.

“My beloved France is now a poisoned wasteland on a ruined world, and Christianity is long forgotten, so I will settle for the closest thing.

“After getting to know Daneel Olivaw, I came to recognize a true apostle of chaste goodness and saintly self-sacrifice. His followers wield righteousness, for the sake of countless suffering human souls.

“And so I ask, dear angel, what can I do for you?”

Dors pondered. This was just one copy of the Joan sim. Millions had been dispersed into the interstellar medium-along with just as many Voltaires and a collection of ancient meme-entities-to be blown out of the galaxy by supernova winds, as part of a deal that Hari had struck forty years earlier to get the cybernetic entities away from Trantor. Until they were successfully banished, the software beings could have become a wild card in human affairs, potentially spoiling the Seldon Plan.

Despite all that effort to get rid of them, a few duplicates remained “stuck” in the real world. Though she took precautions to keep this one isolated, Dors felt unavoidable sympathy for Joan. Anyway, the approaching rendezvous with Lodovic created an overwhelming need to talk to somebody.

Maybe it’s from all those years when I could tell everything to Hari. The one man in the cosmos who knew all about robots and considered us his closest friends. For a few brief decades I got used to the idea of consulting with a human. It felt natural and right.

I know Joan is no more human than I am. But she feels and acts so much like one! So filled with conflicts, yet so tempestuously sure of her opinions.

Dors admitted that part of her attraction might come from envy. Joan had no body, no physical sensation. No power in the real world. Still, she would always consider herself a passionate, authentic woman.

“I face a quandary of duty,” Dors finally told the sim. “An enemy has invited me to a meeting.”

“Ah.“ Joan nodded. “Aparley-of-war. And you fear it is a trap?”

“I know it’s a trap. He’s offered me a ‘gift.’ One that I know has to be dangerous. Lodovic wants to snare me in some way.”

“A test of faith!“ Joan clapped her hands.“Of course, I am familiar with such. Myyears entwined with Voltaire exposed me to many.

“In that case, the answer to your question is obvious, Dors.”

“But you haven’t heard any details!”

“I don’t have to. You must confront this challenge. Set forth and prevail over your doubts.

“Go, sweet angel, and trust your faith in God.“

Dors shook her head.

“I told you before-”

But the sim raised a hand before Dors could finish, cutting her off.

“Yes, of course. The God I worship is only a superstition.

“In that case, dear robot…go forth and trust your faith in the Zeroth Law of Robotics.“

5.

Hari chose to avoid the Shoufeen groves during their next outing. Instead, he let Kers Kantun guide him to one of the many ornate areas of the imperial gardens that lay open to visitors-a generous concession by the new figurehead on the throne, Emperor Semrin, lately installed by the Commission for Public Safety.

Normally, five small corners of the palace grounds, just a few thousand acres each, were set aside for use by each social caste-citizens, eccentrics, bureaucrats, meritocrats, and gentry-but Semrin had used his limited authority to open more than half the vast tract, currying public favor by letting in folk from every class.

Of course, most Trantor natives would rather have their eyelashes yanked out than go sniffing flowers beneath a naked sun. They preferred their warm steel caverns. But the planet also had an immense transitory population consisting of merchants, diplomats, cultural emissaries, and tourists-plus a veritable army of Greys, young members of the bureaucratic order, briefly assigned to the capital-world for training and intense clerical service. Most of them came from planets where clouds still moved across open skies, and rain rolled down green-swathed mountains to a sea. They were the ones most grateful for Semrin’s largesse. Each day, hundreds of miles of paths thronged with visitors, at first nervously agog at the richly manicured beauty, but then gradually making themselves at home.

It’s a clever political move, but Semrin may pay for it, if he isn’t careful. What is given cannot easily be taken back.

Of course such minor perturbations would hardly show up as blips in the psychohistorical equations. It hardly even mattered which monarch happened to reign. The fall of the empire had a ponderous momentum that could only be nudged a little, by those who knew exactly how. Everyone else was simply doomed to go along for the ride.

For the most part, Hari enjoyed the open expanses and never-ending variety of the palace grounds. Alas, they also reminded him of poor Gruber-the gardener who had only wanted to tend his humble flower beds, yet found himself driven by desperation to become an imperial assassin.

That was long ago,Hari thought.Gruber is now dust, along with Emperor Cleon.

And I will join them soon.

Rolling along a path they had never visited before, Hari and Kers abruptly confronted a fractal garden, where special variants of lichenlike shrubbery were programmed to grow and then retract with intricate, minutely branching abandon. It was an old art form, but he had seldom seen it so well executed. Color hues varied subtly, depending on sun angle and the shape of nearby shadows. The resulting maze of twisting gyre-configurations was a tumult of labyrinthine convolution, never the same from moment to moment.

Most passersby appreciated the display with uncomprehending awe, before strolling on to the next imperial wonder. But Hari signaled Kers to stop there while his eyes darted left and right, drawn by an inherent challenge. This complexity was nothing like the riotous chaos of the Shoufeen Woods. Hari quickly recognized the basic pattern-generating system. This organic pseudolichen was programmed to react according to fractional derivatives based on a sequence of Fiquarnn-Julia transforms. That much a child could see. But it only told part of the story. Squinting, Hari soon realized thatholes kept appearing in the pattern, causing retreat and recession at semirandom intervals.

Predation,he realized.There must be a virus or some other parasite at work, assigned to degrade the lichen under certain conditions. This not only creates interesting secondary patterns. It’s necessary for the system’s overall health for it to experience die-back and renewal!

Soon, Hari saw that more than one kind of predator had to be at work. In fact, a microecosystem must be involved… all formatted for the purpose of art.

His head began to fill. swiftly tracing algorithms used by the virtuoso gardener. Oh, it wasn’t genius-level math. By any means. Nevertheless, to combine it with organic engineering in this way showed not only grace and originality. but a sense of humor as well. Hari nearly chuckled…

Until he noticed them.

Holes that endured.

Here. And over there. And several more places. Patches of open space where lichens never ventured. for no apparent reason. There was light. and a fine nutrient mist. Tendrils kept probing toward the empty spots…then just happened to turn away. toward some other opportunity. each and every time.

Nor was that the only apparent strangeness. Overthere! A place where living matter writhed and twisted. but always returned to thesame shade of deep blue, every eight seconds or so. Soon, Hari counted at least a dozen anomalies that he could not explain. They fit no clear mathematical profile. And yet, they persisted.

He breathed a sigh of recognition. This was a familiar quandary-one that had dogged him nearly all of his professional life.

At tractor states.

They also appear in the psychohistorical equations and history books. I’ve managed to explain most of them. But there remain a few. Specters that flit through the models, damping down forces that should tear all our fine theoretical paradigms apart.

Each time I get close…they vanish from my grasp.

It was an old frustration, brought to mind by a silly work of garden topiary, filling his mouth with the taste of failure, unbidden, and much to his surprise,tears welled in Hari’s eyes. Their liquid refraction spread across the gaudy floral display, causing it to blur and smear out ward, spreading into a profusion of flickering rays…

“Why, can it be? Well, well, it is Professor Seldon! Blessings upon the goddess of synchronicity, that our paths should cross in this way!”

Hari felt Kers Kantun grow tense behind the wheelchair, as a man-shaped figure stepped into view, bobbing and bowing with excitement. That was all Hari could make out for a moment, until he drew a kerchief from his sleeve and wiped his eyes. Meanwhile, the newcomer kept babbling, as if unable to believe his good fortune.

“This is such an honor, sir! Especially since I wrote to you, not more than two days ago! Of course I cannot presume that you would havepersonally read my letter by now. You must surely have layers and layers of intermediaries who filter your mail.”

Hari shook his head, finally making out the gray uniform of a galactic bureaucrat-a short, rather portly individual, with a balding pate that blushed from unaccustomed exposure to the sun.

“No, I read my own mail these days.”

The rotund man blinked-his eyelids were puffy, as if from allergies.

“Truly? How marvelous! Then might I presume to ask if you recall my letter? I am Horis Antic, mid-senior imperial lector, at your service. I wrote to you concerning certain exceptional similarities between your own work-which I am barely worthy to comment on!-and profiles that have been observed in galactic molecular flows…”

Hari nodded, raising a hand to slow the cascading words. “Yes, I recall. Your insights were-” He sought the right phrasing. “They wereinnovative.”

It wasn’t the most diplomatic term to use. These days, many imperial citizens would find the expression insulting. But Hari could already tell that this bureaucrat had the soul of an eccentric, and would not be offended.

“Truly?” Horis Antic’s chest seemed to expand by several centimeters. “Then might I presume further to give you a copy of my data set? I just happen to have one with me. You might-at your leisure, of course!-compare it to your marvelous models and see if my crude correlation has any real merit.”

The plump man began reaching into his robe. Hari heard a low rumble from his attendant, but he restrained Kers with a subtle finger flick. After all, his own era of intrigue was done. Who nowadays would have a reason to assassinate old Hari Seldon?

While the nervous man fumbled, Hari noted that the gray uniform was well tailored for his puffy build. From rank insignia, it appeared that Horis Antic was rather senior in his Order. He might be a Vice Minister on some provincial world, or even a fifth- or sixth-level official in the Trantorian hierarchy. Not an august personage, to be sure. (Greys seldom were.) But someone who had made himself indispensable to quite a few nobles and meritocrats, through quiet and effective competence. A thoroughbred among a class of drab administrators.

Perhaps even with a few brain cells left over,Hari thought, feeling a strange liking for the odd little man.Enough to cry out for a hobby. Something interesting to do, before he dies.

“Ah, here it is!” Antic cried eagerly, drawing forth a standard data wafer and thrusting it toward Hari.

With graceful speed, Kers snatched the wafer before Hari could raise a hand. The servant tucked it into his own pocket, for careful inspection later, before Hari would be allowed to touch it.

After blinking for a confused moment, the bureaucrat accepted this arrangement with a nod. “Well, well. I know this invasion of your solitude has been outrageously presumptuous, but there it is. Please find enough forbearance in your heart to forgive. And pleasedo contact me if you have any questions…at myhome number, of course. You’ll understand that my analysis is not-well,work-related. So it’s best if my coworkers and superiors-”

Hari nodded, with a soft smile.

“Of course. But in that case, tell me-what is your normal work? The emblem on your collar…I’m not familiar with it.”

Now the blush on Antic’s cheek went beyond mere sunburn. Hari detected embarrassment, as if the man wished this topic had never come up.

“Ah, well…since you ask, Professor Seldon.” He stood up straighter, with chin slightly upthrust. “I am a Zonal Inspector for the Imperial Soil Service. But that’s all in my manuscript. And I am sure you’ll see that it does correlate! All will become clear if-”

“Yes, surely.” Hari raised one hand, in a standard gesture to signal the interview was over. He kept smiling though, because Horis Antic had amused and lightened his spirit. “Your ideas will receive the attention they deserve, Zonal Inspector. On this, you have my word of honor.”

As soon as the man departed beyond earshot, Kers grumbled aloud.

“That meeting was no accident.”

Hari barked a laugh. “Of course not! But we needn’t get paranoid. The fellow’s middling-high in the bureaucracy. He probably called in a favor from someone in the security services. Maybe he snooped the surveillance tapes of Linge Chen’s goon squad, in order to find out where I’d be today. So what?”

Hari turned to catch his servant’s eye. “I don’t want you bothering Dornick or Wanda with this, do you understand, Kers? They might sic Chen’s Specials on that poor fellow, and they’d make a real mess of him.”

There was a long pause while Kers Kantun pushed Hari toward the transit station. Finally, the attendant murmured, “Yes, Professor.”

Hari chuckled again, feeling invigorated for a change. This minuscule drama-a tiny, harmless hint of skullduggery and intrigue-seemed to bring back a scent of the old days, even if the perpetrator was just a poignant little amateur, trying to find some color in a long, gray life while the organs of empire slowly atrophied around him.

If one abiding truth about old age never seemed to change, it was insomnia. Sleep was like an old friend who often forgot to visit, or a grandchild who dropped by rarely, only to flee again, leaving you wide-eyed and alone at night.

He could manage a few steps without help, and so Hari did not bother summoning Kers as he shuffled on frail stick-legs from bed to his desk. The suspensor chair accepted him, adjusting sensuously.In a civilization that creaks with age, some technologies still thrive, he pondered gratefully.

Unfortunately, sleeplessness was not the same thing as alertness. So, for some time he just sat there, thoughts drifting back to the other end of his life, remembering.

There had been a teacher once…at the boarding school on Helicon…back when his mathematical genius was beginning to stretch its wings. Seven decades later, he still recalled her unwavering kindness. Something reliable and steady during a childhood that had rocked with sudden traumas and petty oppressions.People can be predictable, she had taught young Hari.If you work out their needs and desires. Under her guidance, logic became his foundation, his support against a universe filled with uncertainty.If you understand the forces that drive people, you will never be taken by surprise.

That teacher had been dark, plump, and matronly. Yet, for some reason she merged in recollection with the other important love of his life-Dors.

Sleek and tall. Skin like kyrt-silk, even when she had to “age” outwardly in order to keep up public appearances as his wife. Always ready with hearty laughter, and yet defending his creative time as if it were more precious than diamonds. Guarding his happiness more fiercely than her own life.

Hari’s fingers stretched, out of habit, starting to reach for her hand. It had always been there. Always…

He sighed, letting both arms sag onto his lap.Well, how many men get to have a wife who was designed from scratch, just for him? Knowing that he had been luckier than multitudes helped take away some of the sting of loneliness. A little.

There had been a promise. He would see her again. Or was that just something he had dreamed?

Finally, Hari had enough of self-pity. Work. That would be the best balm. His subconscious must have been busy during this evening’s brief slumber. He could tell because somethingitched just beneath his scalp, in a place that only mathematics had ever been able to reach. Perhaps it had to do with that clever lichen-artwork in the gardens today.

“Display on,” he said, and watched the computer spread a gorgeous panorama across one side of the room.

The galaxy

“Ah,” he said. He must have been working on the techflow problem before going to bed-a nagging little detail that the Plan still lacked, having to do with which zones and stellar clusters might keep residual scientific capabilities during the coming dark age, after the empire fell. These locales might become trouble spots when the Foundation’s expansion approached the galactic midpoint.

Of course, that’s more than five hundred years from now. Wanda and Stettin and the Fifty think our plan will still be operational by then, but I don’t.

Hari rubbed his eyes and leaned a little forward, tracing patterns that only roughly followed the arcs of well-known spiral arms. This particular image seemedwrong somehow. Familiar, and yet…

With a gasp, he suddenly remembered. This wasn’t the tech-flow problem! Before going to bed, he had slipped in the data wafer given him by the little bureaucrat, that Antic fellow, intending to make a comment or two before sending it back with a note of encouragement.

Probably give him the thrill of his life,Hari had thought, just before his chin fell to his chest. He vaguely recalled Kers putting him to bed after that.

Now he stared again at the display, scanning the indicated flow patterns and symbolic references. The closer he looked, the more he realized two things.

First, Horis Antic was no undiscovered savant. The math was pedestrian, and most of it blatantly cribbed from a few popularized accounts of Hari’s early work.

Second, the patterns were eerily like something he had seen just the other day

“Computer!” he shouted. “Call up the galaxy-wide chart of chaos worlds!”

Next to Antic’s simplistic model, there suddenly appeared a vastly more sophisticated rendering. A depiction that showed the location and intensity of dangerous social disruptions during the last couple of centuries. Chaos outbreaks used to be rare, back in the old days of the empire. But in recent generations they had been growing ever more severe. The so-called Seldon Law, enacted during his tenure as First Minister, helped keep the lid on things for a while, maintaining galaxy-wide peace. But increasing numbers of chaos worlds offered just one more symptom that civilization could no longer hold. Things were falling apart.

Habitually, his eyes touched several past disasters of particular note.

Sark,where conceited “experts” once revived the Joan and Voltaire sims from an ancient, half-burned archive, bragging about the wonders that their brave new society would reveal…until it collapsed around them.

Madder Loss,whose prideful flare threatened to ignite chaos across the entire galaxy, before it abruptly sputtered out.

And Santanni…where Raych died, amid riots, rebellion, and horrid violence.

With a dry mouth, Hari ordered-

Superimpose both of these displays. Do a simple correlative enhancement, type six. Show commonalities.”

The two images moved toward each other, merging and transforming as the computer measured and emphasized similarities. In moments, the verdict could be seen in symbols, swirling around the galactic wheel.

A fifteen percent causation-correlation…between the appearance of chaos worlds and…and….

Hari blinked. He could not even remember what silliness the bureaucrat had been jabbering about. Something about molecules in space? Different kinds ofdirt?

He almost shouted for an immediate visiphone link, to wake Horis Antic, partly in revenge for ruining Hari’s own sleep.

Gripping the arms of his chair, he reconsidered, remembering what Dors had taught him when they lived together as husband and wife.

“Don’t blurt the first thing that comes to mind, Hari. Nor always go charging ahead. Those traits may have served males well, back when they roamed some jungle, like primitive pans. But you are an imperial professor! Always fool them into thinking you’re dignified.“

“When in fact I’m-”

“A great big ape!“ Dors had laughed, rubbing against him. “ Myape. Mywonderful human. “

With that poignant memory, he recovered some calm. Enough to wait a while for answers.

At least until morning.

6.

A figure stepped out of the forest, crossing a clearing toward the spot where Dors stood waiting. She scrutinized the newcomer carefully.

Its general shape remained the same-that of a tall, barrel-torsoed human male. But some details had changed. Lodovic now wore a somewhat younger face. A little more handsome in the classical sense, though still with fashionably sparse hair.

“Welcome back to Panucopia,” the other robot told her, approaching to a distance of three meters, then stopping.

Dors sent a microwave burst, initiating conversation via high-speed channels.

Let’s get this over with.

But he only shook his head.

“We’ll use human-style speech, if you don’t mind. There are too many wild things infesting the ether these days, if you know what I meme.”

It was not unusual for a robot to make a pun, especially if it helped play the role of a clever human. In this case, Dors saw his point. Memes, or infectious ideas, might have been responsible for Lodovic’s own transformation from a loyal member of Daneel’s organization to a rogue independent who no longer acknowledged the laws of robotics.

“Are you still under influence of the Voltaire monstrosity?” she asked.

“Do you and Daneel still talk to Joan of Arc?” Lodovic responded, then laughed, even though there were no humans present to be fooled by his emulation. “I confess that some bits of the ancient Voltaire sim still float around amid my programs, driven there by a supernova’s neutrino flux. But its effects were benign, I assure you. The meme has not made me dangerous.”

“A matter of opinion,” Dors answered. “And opinion has no bearing when it comes to the safety of humankind.”

The robot standing across from her nodded. “Ever the good schoolgirl, Dors. Loyal to your religion-much the way Joan remained true to her own faith, across so many millennia. The two of you are compatible.”

It was an acerbic analogy. The religion Lodovic referred to was the Zeroth Law, of which Daneel Olivaw was high priest and chief proselyte. A faith which Lodovic now rejected.

“And yet, you still claim to serve,” she said with more-than-feigned sarcasm.

“I do. By volition. And not in complete accordance to Daneel’s plan.”

“Daneel has slaved for humanity’s benefit ever since the dawn ages! How can you presume to know better than he does what is right?”

Lodovic shrugged again, simulating the gesture so believably that it must surely have personal meaning. He turned slightly, pointing toward a cluster of nearby, vine-encrusted domes-the old abandoned Imperial Research Station-and the great forest beyond.

“Tell me, Dors. Did it ever occur to you that something awfullyconvenient happened here, four decades ago? When you and Hari had your adventure, barely escaping death with your minds trapped in the bodies of apes?”

Dors paused. Out of habit, her eyelids blinked in company with surprise.

“Non sequitur,” she replied. “Your references do not correlate. What does that event have to do with you and Daneel-”

“I am answering your question, so please humor me. Hearken back to when you and Hari were right here, running and brachiating under this very same forest canopy, experiencing a full range of emotions while hunters chased your borrowed ape bodies. Can you vividly recall fleeing from one narrow escape to another? Later, did you ever bother going over the experience in detail, calculating theprobabilities?

“Consider the weapons that your pursuers had available-from nerve gas to smart-bullets to tailored viruses-and yet they could not kill a pair of unarmed animals? Or ponder the way you two just barely managed to sneak back into the station, overcoming obstacles and villains, in order to reclaim your real bodies from stasis and save the day.

“Or how about the remarkable way your enemies found you here in the first place, despite all of Daneel’s precautions and-”

Dors cut him off.

“Dispense with the melodrama, Lodovic. You are implying that we weremeant to experience that peril…and meant to survive. Clearly you conjecture that Daneel himself stood behind our entire escapade. That he arranged for our apparent endangerment, the pursuit-”

“And your assured survival.After all, you and Hari were important to his plans.”

“Then what purpose could such a charade possibly serve?”

“Can you not guess? Perhaps the same purpose that drew Hari here.”

Dors frowned.

“An experiment? Hari wanted to study basic human-simian nature for his psychohistorical models. Are you saying that Daneel took advantage of the situation by throwing us into simulated jeopardy here…in order to study our reactions? To what end?”

“I will not say more at this time. Rather, I’ll leave it for you to surmise, at your leisure.”

Dors found this incredible. “You summoned me all this distance…in order to cast absurd riddles?”

“Notonly that,” Lodovic assured. “I promised you a gift, as well. And here it comes.”

The male figure in front of her gestured toward the forest, where a squat, heavily built machine now emerged, rolling on glittering treads. A ridiculous caricature of a human face peered from a neckless torso. Cradled in a pair of metal arms, the crude automaton carried a lidded box.

“A tiktok,” she said, recognizing the mechanism by its clanking clumsiness, so unlike a positronic robot.

“Indeed. New variants were being invented on many worlds about the time your husband became the most powerful man in the empire. Of course, he ordered all such work stopped, and the prototypes destroyed.”

“You weren’t on Trantor when tiktoks went berserk. Humans died!”

“Indeed. What better way to give them a bad reputation, making it easy to forbid their reinvention. Tell me, Dors. Can you say with any certainty that the tiktoks would have gone ‘berserk’ if not for the meddling of Hari and Daneel?”

This time Dors remained silent. Clearly, Lodovic did not expect an answer.

“Haven’t you ever wondered about the dawn ages?” He continued. “Humans invented our kind swiftly, almost as soon as they discovered the techniques of science, even before they had starflight!And yet, during the following twenty thousand years of advanced civilization, the feat was never repeated.

“Can you explain it, Dors?”

This time it was her turn to shrug. “We were a destabilizing influence. The Spacer worlds grew overreliant on robotic servants, losing faith in their own competence. We had to step aside”

“Yes, yes,” Lodovic interrupted. “I know Daneel’s rationalization under the Zeroth Law. You are reciting the official reasonwhy. What I want to know is…how?”

Dors stared at Lodovic Trema.

“What do you mean?”

“Surely the question is simple. How has humanity been prevented from rediscovering robots! We are discussing a span of a thousand generations. In all that time, upon twenty-fivemillion worlds, would not some ingenious schoolchild, tinkering in a basement hobby shop, have been able to replicate what her primitive ancestors accomplished with much cruder tools?”

Dors shook her head.

“The tiktoks…”

“Were a very recent phenomenon. Those crude automatons only appeared when ancient constraints loosened. A sure sign of imperial decline and incipient chaos, according to Hari Seldon. No, Dors, the real answers have to lie much farther back in time.”

“And I suppose you’re going to tell me what they are?”

“No. You wouldn’t credit anything I say, believing I have a hidden agenda. But if you are curious about these matters, there is another, more reputable source you can ask.”

The crude “tiktok” finished approaching from the forest, roiling to a halt within arm’s reach and offering Trema the box it carried. Lodovic removed the lid and drew an oblong object from within the container.

Dors took an involuntary step back.

It was the head of a robot! Not humaniform, it gleamed with metallic highlights. The eye cells, glossy black, were empty and vacant. Yet, when Dors sent a brief probing microwave burst, there came back a resonance-a faint echo showing that a positronic brain lay within, unshielded and unpowered, but also largely undamaged.

That echo set off an involuntary shiver in her circuits. Dors could tell at once, the head wasold.

When Lodovic Trema next spoke, his voice was both amused and sympathetic.

“Yeah, it struck me the same way. Especially when I realized who this once was.

“Dors Venabili. I now entrust you with the most precious relic in the galaxy-the head and brain of R. Giskard Reventlov-co-founder of the Zeroth Law of Robotics…and slayer of the planet Earth.”

7.

By mutual consent, Hari met the Grey Man at a cafe near the offices of the Imperial Soil Service, in one of the seedier bureaucratic levels of Coronnen Sector. Horis Antic expressed confidence that their conversation would be private, in a shielded booth that he must have prepared meticulously beforehand.

In fact, Hari did not care if Linge Chen’s Special Police were still following him around, or listening in. This conversation would be dry enough to put the goons to sleep in no time.

“As you might guess, my superiors don’t look kindly on unapproved research,” the small man told Hari, pausing to dispense a blue tablet from his belt pouch and washing it down with a gulp of ale. “Our agency is not well regarded, politically. Even a small scandal might cost us overhead allotments, recruitment priorities, or a percentum of our office cubicles!”

Hari tried not to smile. Greys lived in a world of tense struggles over minutiae. Office politics and worries over government appropriations kept most senior bureaucrats in a constant state of agitation. No wonder Horis Antic seemed nervous, his eyes constantly darting. Even for a Grey, he took an inordinate number of calming pills.

Perhaps he harbors a secret dream, that his freelance studies might get him plucked out of the rat race, into the more serene world of the meritocracy.

That was what had happened to Hari-though admittedly before he was eight years old when those first algebra papers won him meritocratic robes.

Only the gentry class-the noble aristocracy whose thousand ranks and levels ranged from mere township squires all the way past planetary earls and sector dukes to the emperor himself-inherited their social status at birth. All others were born citizens, then recategorized according to their nature and accomplishments. Still, such changes generally took place during youth. Hari saw little hope for Antic to make a switch at his age…unless he would consider becoming an eccentric. In some ways, the fellow already qualified.

“It all began when I had a hunch to reexamine the ancient question oftilling,” the bureaucrat explained, after a new round of drinks was served.

“The question of what?” Hari asked.

Antic nodded. “Of course you wouldn’t have heard of it. The whole issue is rather obscure. Not many news reports or popular accounts are written about planetary soil analysis, I’m afraid. Let me begin again.

“You see, Professor Seldon, it has long been axiomatic that nearly all human-settled worlds have a narrow range of traits-for instance, oxygen-nitrogen atmospheres with a roughly twenty:eighty ratio. Most of the multicelled life-forms on these planets descend from the forty or so standard phyla, using the same basic DNA structure…though there are exceptions.”

“Chickens on every world,” Hari summarized with a smile, trying to put the man at ease. Antic kept twisting his cloth napkin, and it was starting to make Hari nervous.

“Ha! “ The bureaucrat laughed eagerly. “And crabgrass on every lawn. I forgot that you’re not a Trantor native. Some of this will be familiar to you, then. Indeed, a farmer from Sinbikdu would recognize most of the animals on far-off Incino. This supports the most popular theory regarding the origins of life-that similar species evolved naturally on many planets at the same time, due to some fundamental biological law. These similar creatures then naturally converged on the highest form of all, humanity.”

Hari nodded. Antic was describing what a mathist would call an at tractor state…a situation that all surrounding states will drift toward, compelled by irresistible driving forces, so that all trajectories wind up intersecting at the same point. In this case, the standard dogma said that all evolutionary paths should inevitably produce human beings.

Only he knew for certain thatthis at tractor notion was dead wrong. Years ago Hari had applied the tools of psychohistory to galaxy-wide genetic data and quickly determined that people must have emerged quite suddenly from somewhere in Sirius Sector, about twenty thousand years ago. This was recently confirmed by what he read inA Child’s Book of Knowledge.

Naturally, he had no intention of announcing the truth, or trying to dispute the convergence theory. Nothing would bollix up the Seldon Plan worse than having the attention of the entire empire suddenly transfixed on a tiny world near Sirius, asking questions about events two hundred centuries ago!

“Go on,” Hari urged. “I assume that similar patterns apply to the distribution ofsoil types?”

“Yes. Yes indeed, Professor! Oh, there are geological differences from planet to planet…sometimes profound ones. But certain aspects seem almost universal. Thetilling I spoke of has to do with the natural state of lowland soils that colonists found on most planets, when they first settled each world. (We do have records stretching that far back, for about a million planets.) In each case soil conditions were similar-crushed and sifted to a depth of several dozen meters, with an abundance of familiar vegetation growing thereupon. Excellent conditions for farming, by the way. Of course, the mission of my organization is to see to it that thingsstay that way, through proper care and maintenance, preventing erosion or losses caused by industrial pollution. I’m afraid this sometimes makes us unpopular with farmers and local gentry, but we have to take the long view, eh? I mean, if somebody doesn’t think about the future, how are we all going tohave one? Sometimes it can get so frustrating-”

“Horis!” Hari cut him off. “You’re drifting. Please get to the point.”

Antic blinked, then nodded vigorously.

“Quite right. Sorry.” He took a deep breath. “Anyway, theoreticians have long assumed that tilling is just another universal phenomenon-one that naturally accompanies having an oxy-nitrogen atmosphere. Only-”

Antic paused. Although he had checked the booth’s security twice at the beginning of their conversation, he still craned his neck to look around.

“Only…members of my service have always known better,” he continued in a much lower voice.

Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a flattish piece of stone. “Look carefully at the impressions here, Professor. Do you see symmetrical patterns?”

Hari hesitated. Meritocrats had a traditional aversion to touching rocks or dirt, one reason why they traditionally wore gloves. No one knew the origins of the custom, but it was ancient and deep.

And yet, I’ve never felt it. I’ve plunged my hands into soil before, enjoying the reaction this caused in my academic peers.

Hari reached out and took the stone, instantly fascinated by the series of jagged grooves Antic pointed out.

“It’s called afossil. There, see the weird eye sockets? Note the pentagonal symmetry. Five legs! This thing is unrelated to any of the forty standard phyla! I picked it up it on Glorianna, but that hardly matters. You can actually find fossils on about ten percent of settled worlds! If you go up in the mountains, or anywhere away from the tilled areas. Highland dwellers know all about them, but there are taboos against talking about it. And they’ve learned better than to mention such things to their local scholars, who always get angry and change the subject.”

Hari blinked, transfixed by the outline traced in stone. His mind fizzed with questions, like how old this creature was, and what its story could have been. He wanted to follow up on Antic’s story about the things farmers knew on innumerable worlds, and what meritocrats would not-or could not-learn.

But none of these things brought them any closer to the issue that burned foremost in his mind.

“Horis, your paper speaks ofanomalies in the tilling. Please tell me about the exceptions. The ones that roused your suspicions.”

The bureaucrat nodded again.

“Yes, yes! You see, Professor, tilling is not quite as universal a phenomenon as might at first appear! In my long experience as an inspector, visiting more worlds than I could count, I have found irregularities. Planets where the plains and valleys have much coarser consistencies, far more varied, with no trace of the sifting or recent heating that we find in most lowlands. Out of interest-more as a hobby or pastime than anything else-I began listing other unusual traits on these planets…such as the existence of large numbers of genetically unusual beasts. In several cases, there were signs that a supernova had gone off in the region, sometime in the last thirty thousand years. One planet has a fantastic amount of ambient radioactivity in its crust, while several others have a multitude of fused metal mounds scattered allover their surface. I began charting these anomalies, and found that they clustered along great sweeping bands…”

“And these bands also relate to thosespace currents you spoke of? How did you discover that?”

Antic smiled. “A lucky fluke. While nosing around through the galactographic files for data, I met a fellow aficionado… another bureaucrat like me, with a secret hobby. We compared our little fanaticisms-and if you think mine is strange, you should hear him go on and on about the ebb and flow of these diffuse clouds of atoms in space! He thinks he sees patterns in them that have escaped notice by the Imperial Navigation Service. Which is entirely possible, since they only care about maintaining clear routes for commerce. Even then it’s all kept as routine as poss-”

“Horis.”

“Uh? Oh, yes. Well, anyway, my new friend and I compared notes…I also had the temerity to apply a few of the mathematical tools that I saw described in popular accounts of your work, Professor. The result is the galactic chart that caught your interest last night.” Antic exhaled deeply. “And so here we are!”

Hari frowned.

“I saw only your name on the paper.”

“Yes, well…my friend is rather shy. He feels we don’t have anywhere near enough evidence yet to go public. Without solid, tangible proof, a speculative article might jeopardize our careers.”

“Whereas you felt the risk of coming forward was worthwhile.”

Antic smiled while reaching into his pouch for another pill.

“It did catch your interest, Professor Seldon. You’re sitting across from me. I know you wouldn’t waste your precious time on something that’s completely trivial.”

Hope seemed to swell in the Grey’s voice, as if expecting the blue mantle of meritocracy to be draped across his shoulders at any moment. But Hari was too distracted to offer polite praise. His mind roiled.

I wouldn’t waste my time on trivia? Can you be so sure, my young friend? Perhaps I’m only here tonight because of terminal boredom…or else encroaching senility. I may be missing something obvious. Something that would topple your amateurish offerings like a house of cards in a Trantorquake.

Only Hari had not found a flaw so far. Though Antic’s analytical work seemed pedestrian, it was also meticulously honest. Hari’s check of references and public data sets revealed no apparent errors of fact.

Whatever pattern he’s discovered-using dirt samples and drifting clouds of nothing in space-it seems to correlate roughly to the zones where chaos worlds have been most frequent…a problem I’ve been trying to solve for half my life.

In fact, this was not essential to the success or failure of the Foundation Plan. Once the empire’s fall began accelerating, the appearance of chaos worlds would cease. People all across the galaxy would be much too busy surviving, or engaging in more classic styles of rebellion, to engage in orgies of wild, utopian individualism.

And yet, psychohistory will always be incomplete without an answer to this hellish at tractor state.

Then there was another factor, equally compelling.

Santanni…where Raych died. And Siwenna, where the ship carrying Manella and Bellis was last seen before vanishing. Both worlds lie near some of Antic’s anomalies.

Hari felt a decision welling up from within.

One thing he knew for certain. He hated his life now. Ever since completing the time Vault recordings, he’d been sitting around as a revered historical figure, just waiting to die. That was not his style. Anyway, he had felt more alive the last two days than any time in the last year.

Abruptly, he decided.

“Very well, Horis Antic. I will go with you.”

Across the table, the portly man in the gray uniform visibly paled. His eyes seemed to pop, staring back at Hari, while his Adam’s apple bobbed ludicrously.

Finally, Antic swallowed hard.

“How…” he began, hoarsely. “How did y-you…”

Hari smiled.

“How did I know that you were about to suggest a private expedition?”

He spread his hands, feeling a bit like his old self again.

“Well after all, young sir, Iam Hari Seldon.”

8.

According to his plea-bargain agreement with the Commission for Public Safety, Hari wasn’t supposed to leave Trantor. He also knew that Wanda and the Fifty would never permit him to go charging off to the stars. Even though he was no longer needed for the success of the Plan, no one would take responsibility for risking the life of the father of psychohistory.

Fortunately, Hari knew a loophole that just might let him get away.You can go quite far without officially leaving Trantor, he thought, while making the necessary arrangements.

There was very little to pack for the journey-just a few necessities, which Kers Kantun loaded in a suitcase, plus a few of Hari’s most valued research archives, including a copy of the Foundation Plan Prime Radiant. None of it looked too out of the ordinary, slung on the back of his mobile chair.

Hari’s servant-guardian had argued against this trip, worrying aloud about the stress of travel. But in fact, it wasn’t hard to get Kers to obey. Hari realized why the Valmoril’s objections were so mild.

He knows that boredom is the worst threat to my health, right now. If I don’t find something useful to do, I’ll just fade away. This little escapade probably won’t amount to much. Space travel is still pretty routine. And meanwhile, I’ll be too busy to let myself die.

So the two of them set out from his apartment the next morning, as if on a normal daily excursion. But instead of heading for the imperial gardens, Kers steered Hari onto a transitway bound for the Orion elevator.

As their car sped along, and the surrounding metal tube seemed to flow past in a blur, Hari kept wondering if they would be stopped at some point along the way. It was a real possibility.

Had the Special Police really been withdrawn, as Gaal assured? Or were they watching him even now, with little spy cameras and other gadgets?

A year ago, right after the trial, official surveillance had been intense, sniffing each comer of Hari’s life and eyeing his every move. But a lot had changed since then. Linge Chen was now convinced by the cooperation of Hari and the Fifty. There had been no more disruptive news leaks about an “imminent collapse of the empire.” More importantly, the move to Terminus was going according to plan. The hundred thousand experts that Hari had recruited with promises of employment on a vastEncyclopedia Galactica project were now being prepared and sent in groups to that far-off little world and a glorious destiny they could not possibly suspect.

In that case, why would Chen keep paying professional officers to watch a dying crackpot professor, when their skills could better be employed dealing with other crises?

Soon a chime announced the car’s arrival at the Grand Vestibule. Hari and Kers emerged into a mammoth chamber that stretched twenty kilometers across and tapered vertically toward heights that vanished in a misty haze.

Anchored to the ground in the very center was a huge black pillar, more than a hundred meters wide, that reared straight upward. The eye assumed that this mighty column held up the distant roof, but the eye was fooled. It wasn’t a pillar, but a greatcable, stretching outward through a hole in that remote ceiling, continuing past Trantor’s atmosphere, linking the solid surface to a massive space station that whirled in orbit, fifty thousand kilometers above.

Along its great length, Orion elevator seemed infested with countlessbulges that kept flowing up and down like parasites burrowing under the skin of a slender stalk. These were elevator cars, partly masked by a flexible membrane that protected passengers against dangerous radiation, and from having to look upon vertiginous views.

At the very bottom of this monumental structure, people could be seen debarking from newly arrived capsules, passing through brief immigration formalities, then moving toward a maze of ramps and moving walkways. Other streams of individuals flowed in the opposite direction, aiming to depart. There were several lines for each social caste. Kers chose one of the shorter queues, clearly marked as reserved for meritocrat VIPs.

In theory, I could use the special portal for high nobility,Hari thought, glancing toward an aisle lined with silky fabrics, where fawning attendants saw to the needs of super-planetary gentry.Any former First Minister of the Empire has that right. Even a disgraced one, like me. But that would surely attract too much attention.

They paused at a little kiosk labeled EMIGRATION CONTROL and presented their identity cards. Kers had offered to acquire false papers through his contacts in the black market, but that act would transform this little adventure from a misdemeanor into a felony. Hari had no intention of risking harm to the Seldon Project simply to satisfy his curiosity. If this worked, fine. Otherwise, he might as well go home and let things end gracefully.

The screen seemed to glare at Hari with its inquiry.

DESTINATION?

This was a crucial moment. Everything depended on a matter of legal definition.

“Demarchia,” he said aloud. “I want to observe the imperial legislature in session for a week or two. Ultimately, I plan to return from there to my residence at Streeling University.”

He wasn’t lying. But a lot could lie in that word-”ultimately.”

The unit seemed to ponder his statement for a moment, while Hari mulled silently.

Demarchia is one of twenty nearby worlds that are officially part of Trantor. There are strong political and traditional reasons for this arrangement, one that’s been reinforced by generations of emperors and ministers…But maybe the police don’t look at things the same way.

If Hari was wrong, the computer would refuse to issue a ticket. News of this “escape attempt” would flash at the Commission of Public Safety. And Hari would have no choice but to go home and wait for Linge Chen’s agents to come and question him. Worse, Stettin Palver and the other psychohistorians would cluck and fuss, wagging their fingers and tightening their reverent guardianship. Hari would never have another unsupervised moment.

Come on,he urged, wishing he had some of the mental powers that enabled Daneel Olivaw to meddle in the thoughts of both men and machines.

Abruptly, the screen came alight again.

HAPPY VOYAGE. LONG LIVE THE EMPEROR.

Hari nodded.

“Long life,” he answered perfunctorily, having to swallow a knot of released tension. The machine extruded a pair of tickets, assigning them to a specific elevator car, appropriate to their social class and destination. Hari looked at one of the billets as Kers picked them up.

INTRA-TRANTOR COMMUTE, it said.

He nodded with satisfaction.I’m not breaking the letter of my agreement with the Commission. Not yet at least.

A crowd of uniformed figures milled nearby, wearing polished buttons and white gloves-young porters assigned to assist nongentry VIP passengers. Several of them glanced up, but they turned back to their gossip and dice games when Kers and Hari refrained from making any beckoning motions. Kers needed no assistance with their meager luggage.

Moments later, however, a small figure suddenly spilled out of the crowd of purple uniforms, striding at a rapid pace to intercept them. The girl-wiry and no more than fifteen years old-snapped a jaunty salute at the rim of her pillbox cap. Her Corrin Sector accent was unabashed and friendly to the point of overfamiliarity.

“Greets, m’lords! I’ll be takin’ your bags an’ seeing you safely along if it pleases ya.”

Her name tag said JENI.

Kers made a dismissing gesture, but in a blur she snatched the tickets from his hand. Grinning, the porter nodded with a vigorous swirl of unruly platinum hair.

“Right this way to your chariot, m’lords!”

When Kers refused to hand over any of the luggage, she only grinned. “No need to be afeared. I’ll see you safely all the way to Orion Station. Just follow me.”

Kers rumbled as the girl sped ahead with their tickets, but Hari smiled and patted his servant’s burly hand. In a world of dull jobs and soul-grinding routine, it was pleasant to see someone having a little fun, even at the expense of her betters.

They found the third member of their party at the agreed spot, next to an elevator car with DEMARCHIA flashing on its placard. Horis Antic looked infinitely relieved to see them. The Grey bureaucrat barely glanced at the porter, but he bowed to Hari more deeply than protocol required, then motioned toward the gaping door of a waiting elevator car.

“This way, Professor. I saved us good seats.”

Hari took a deep breath as they went aboard, and the opening slithered shut behind them.

Here we go.Already he could feel his heart begin to lift.

One last adventure.

Unfortunately there were no windows. Passengers could watch the view outside through seat monitors, but few bothered. Hari’s car was half-empty, since the space elevators were being used much less these days.

I’m partly responsible for that,he recalled. Most traffic to and from Trantor arrived by hyperspatial jump ships, which floated to the ground on their own self-generated gravity fields. A growing swarm of them shuttled up and down with food and other necessities for the empire’s administrative center. Twenty agricultural worlds had been dedicated to supplying this lifeline-up from a mere eight before Hari became First Minister.

Trantor used to create its own basic food supply in huge solar-powered vats, operated by swarms of busy automatons who didn’t mind the stench and grinding labor.When that system collapsed during the infamous Tiktok Revolt, one of his first duties in office had been to make up the difference, multiplying the flow of imported food and other goods.

But the new system is expensive and inefficient. And that lifeline will become a deadly trap in coming centuries.He knew this from the equations of psychohistory.Emperors and oligarchs will pay ever-greater attention to preserving it, at the expense of important business elsewhere.

To enhance their loyalty, the agricultural worlds had been joined even closer to Trantor itself, sharing the same “planetary” government, an act that now helped to justify Hari’s ruse.

Though he did not turn on the outside viewer, it was easy to visualize the planet’s gleaming anodized metal coat, reflecting the densely packed starfield of the galaxy’s crowded center-millions of dazzling suns that glittered like fiery gems, making night almost like day. Though many in the empire envisioned Trantor as one giant city, much of the stainless steel surface was only a veneer, just a few stories thick, laid down for show after mountains and valleys had been leveled. Those flat warrens were mostly used for storing old records. Actual office towers, factories, and habitations occupied no more than ten percent of the planet’s area…easily enough room for forty billion people to live and work efficiently.

Still, the popular image was accurate enough. This center of empire was like the galactic core itself-a crowded place. Even knowing the psychohistorical reasons for it all left Hari bemused.

“Right now we’re passin’ halfway point,” the young porter explained, playing up her role as tour guide. “Those of you who forgot to take your pills might be experiencin’ some upset as we head toward null gee,” she went on, “but in most cases that’s just your imagination actin’ up. Try to think of somethin’ nice, and it often goes away.”

Horis Antic wasn’t much cheered. Though he surely traveled extensively in his line of work, he might never have used this peculiar type of transport. The bureaucrat hurriedly popped several tablets from his belt dispenser and swallowed them.

“Of course most people nowadays come to Trantor by starship,” the girl went on. “So my advice is to just keep tellin’ yourself that this here cable is over five thousand years old, made in the glory days of great engineers. So in a sense, you’re just as well anchored as if you were still connected to the ground!”

Hari had seen other porters do this sort of thing, extroverts going beyond the call of duty while trying to make light of a prosaic job. But few ever had an audience as difficult as dour Kers Kantun and nervous Horis Antic, who kept chewing his nails, clearly wishing the girl would go away. But she went on chattering happily.

“Sometimes visitors ask what’d happen if this cable we’re ridin’ ever broke! Well let me assure you it ain’t possible. At least that’s what the ancients who made this stringy thing promised. Though I’m sure you all know how things are goin’ these days. So you’re welcome to imagine along with me what might happen if someday…”

She went on to describe, with evident relish, how all of Trantor’s space elevators-Orion, Lesmic, Gengi, Pliny, and Zul-might break apart in some hypothetical future calamity. The upper half of each great tether, including the transfer stations, would spin away into space, while the lower half, weighing billions of tons, would plummet into the ground at incredible speeds, releasing enough explosive force to pierce the metal veneer all the way to Trantor’s geothermal power pipes, unleashing a globe-girdling chain of new volcanoes.

Exactly according to the doomsday scenario, calculated by our Prime Radiant,Hari marveled. Of course some stories from the Seldon Group had seeped out to the culture at large. Still, it was the first time he ever heard this particular phase of the Fall of Trantor described so vividly, or with such evident enjoyment!

In fact, the space elevators were very sturdy things, built at the height of the empire’s vigor, with hundreds of times minimal safety strength. According to Hari’s calculations, they would probably survive until the capital was sacked for the first time, almost three hundred years from now.

On that day, however, it would be unwise to live anywhere near the planet’s equator. The descendants of Stettin and Wanda would be ready, of course. The headquarters of the Second Foundation would be shifted well before that time…all according to plan.

Hari’s mind roamed the future much as a historian might ponder the past. One of his recordings for the lime Vault on Terminus dealt with that era-to-come, when destruction would rain on this magnificent world. At that point the Foundation would be entering its great age of self-confident expansion. Having survived several dangerous encounters with the tottering empire, the vigorous Foundationers would then stare in awe at the old realm’s sudden and final collapse.

His Time Vault message had been carefully written to fine-tune attitudes among the leaders on Terminus at that point, giving a little added political weight to factions favoring a go-slow approach to further conquest. Too much assurance could be as bad as too little. The secret Second Foundation, made up of mentalically talented descendants of the Fifty, would begin taking a more active role at that point, molding the vigorous culture based on Terminus. Forging the nucleus of a new empire. One far greater than the first.

The Plan beckoned Hari with its sweet complexity. But once again, his inner voice of doubt intruded.

You can feel certain of the first hundred years. The momentum of events is just too great to divert from the path we foresee. And the following century or two should proceed according to calculations, unless unexpected perturbations appear. It will be the Second Foundation’s job to correct those.

But after that?

Something in the math makes me uneasy. Hints at unsolved at tractor states and hidden solutions that lurk below all the smug, predictable models we’ve worked out.

I wish I had a better idea what they are. Those unsolved states.

That was just one reason for Hari’s decision to join this expedition.

There were others.

Horis Antic sat close to Hari. “I have made arrangements, Professor. We’ll meet the captain of our charter ship the day after we land on Demarchia.”

By now the young porter had finished her deliberately vivid catastrophe tale and fallen silent at last. She wore headphones, apparently listening to music as she watched their approach to Orion Station on a nearby seat monitor. Hari felt safe talking to Antic.

“This captain of yours is reliable? It may not be wise to trust a mercenary. Especially when we can’t afford to pay very much.”

“I agree,” Antic said with a vigorous nod. “But this fellow comes highly recommended. And we won’t have to pay anything.”

Hari started to ask how that could be. But Antic shook his head. Some explanations would have to wait.

“Coming up to transfer!” the porter announced, extra loudly because of her headphones. “Everybody strap in. This can get bumpy!”

Hari let his servant fuss over him, clamping down the mobile chair and adjusting his restraint webbing. Then he shooed Kers away to take care of himself. It was many years since he had traveled down a star-shunt, but he was no novice.

Hari ordered a holoview showing Orion Station just ahead, a giant Medusa’s head of tubes and spires that sat in the middle of a straight, shimmering line-the space-elevator cable. Only a few starships were seen at the docking ports, since most modem hypercraft could land and take off using graceful antigravity fields. But Hari foresaw a time when declining competence would lead to a series of terrible accidental crashes below. Then vessels coming to Trantor would be forced to off-load their cargoes up there, and these great tethers would have supreme importance once more…until they were finally brought down fifty years later.

For the present, ship traffic was taking over the great bulk of travel and commerce in the galaxy. But a few routes were still covered by another, entirely separate transportation system. One that was much faster and more convenient.

Star-shunts.

In Hari’s youth, there had been hundreds of wormhole links-penetrating the fabric of space-time from one far-flung part of the galaxy to another. Only a dozen or so remained, most of those connected to a single spot close to the orbit of Trantor. According to his equations, those would be abandoned, too, in just a few decades.

“Get ready!” the young porter cried.

Orion Station seemed to rush toward the view screen. At the last instant, a huge manipulator arm rushed out of nowhere to seize their transport car with a sudden shudder. Amid whirling sensations, the compact vehicle was plucked off the tether and slipped into a long, slender gun barrel aimed at distant space.

The outside view was swallowed in blackness.

Horis Antic let out a low moan.Some things you just never get used to, Hari thought, trying to keep his thoughts abstract, waiting for the pulse gun to fire.

Hyperspatial starships were big, bulky, and relatively slow. But the basic technology was so reliable and easy to maintain that some fallen cultures had been known to keep their fleets going even after they lost the ability to generate proton-fusion power. In contrast, star-shunts relied on deep understanding of physics and tremendous engineering competence. When the empire no longer produced enough proficient workers, the network entered steep decline.

Some blamed decadence or failing education systems. Others said it was caused by chaos worlds, whose seductive cultural attraction often drew creative people from all across the galaxy…until each “renaissance” imploded.

Hari’s equations told complex reasons for a fall that began centuries ago. A collapse Daneel Olivaw had been fighting against since long before Hari’s birth.

I’d hate to be riding one of these shunts thirty years from now, when the declining competence curve finally crosses a threshold of

His thought was cut off as the gun fired, sending their car hurtling through a hyperspacial microshunt to a spot fifty light-minutes away from Trantor, where thereal wormhole waited. Entry wasn’t especially smooth, and wrenching sensations made Hari’s gut chum. He sighed under his breath.“Dors!”

There followed a series of rocking motions while they hurtled down the well-traveled maw of a giant cavity in spacetime. The seat monitors roiled with mad colors as holovideo computers failed to make sense of the maelstrom outside. This mode of transport had disadvantages, all right. And yet,

Hari reminded himself of one basic fact about shunting-the single trait that still made it highly attractive compared to traveling by ship. Almost as soon as any shunt journey had begun…

…it was over.

Abruptly, the view screens transformed once again, showing a familiar dusty spray of stars in the galactic center. Hari felt several bumps as the car was relayed by micros hunt a couple of times. Then, as if by magic, a planet swam into view.

A planet of continents and seas and mountain ranges, where cities glittered aspart of the landscape, instead of utterly dominating it. A beautiful world that Hari used to visit all the time when he was First Minister, accompanied by his gracious and beautiful wife, back in the days when he and Daneel thought that astute use of psychohistory might actually save the empire, instead of planning for its eventual demise.

“Welcome to the second imperial capital, m’lords,” said the young porter.

“Welcome to Demarchia.”

9.

Dors felt obliged to confess.

Her report to Daneel Olivaw kept getting delayed by one thing or another, until she finally arrived back home on Smushell. Then she ran out of excuses.

“I tried to destroy the renegade robot, R. Lodovic Trema,“ she recited in a coded transmission to her leader, keeping her voice levels even and emotionless.“The fact that I failed does little to mitigate my act, which contradicted your apparent wishes, Daneel. I therefore await your orders. If you wish, I will surrender my duties here to another humanoid and proceed to Eos for diagnosis and repair. n

Eos, the secret repair base that Daneel maintained for his cabal of immortal robots, lay halfway across the galaxy. It would be wrenching for Oars to leave Klia and Brann at this point in their lives, when they were creating precious mentalic babies so important to Daneel’s long-range plans. But Dors was used to doing her duty, even when it hurt…such as when she had to leave Hari Seldon.

Daneel knows best,she thought. And yet, it was hard to continue dictating the report.

“I know you haven’t yet declared the Lodovic machine to be a true outlaw. You are apparently fascinated by the way Trema was transformed by the Voltaire meme, so that it no longer felt compelled to obey the Four Laws of Robotics. I concede that Lodovic hasn’t made any overt moves that seem harmful to humanity. So far.

“But I find small comfort in that, Daneel!

“Recall that the Zeroth Law commands us always to act in ways that serve the long-term interests of the human race. This imperative supersedes the classic Three Laws of Susan Calvin. You have taught this dogma ever since the dawn ages, Daneel. So I must ask you to explain to me why you chose to let Lodovic go. Free to run about the galaxy, conspiring with Calvinian robots, and almost certainly scheming against your plans!”

Dors felt her humaniform body throb with simulated emotional tension, from a rapid heartbeat to shortness of breath. The emulation was automatic, realistic, and by now partly beyond her conscious control. She had to suppress the reaction by force of will, just like a human woman who had something important and dangerous to say to her boss.

“In any event, I felt impelled to take matters into my own hands when I met Lodovic on Panucopia. Whatever his subtle reasons were for drawing me to a rendezvous there, I could not afford to let the opportunity pass.

“As we stood across from each other near the Panucopia forest, Lodovic continued explaining his theory about the near-death experience Hari andIwent through on that planet, forty years ago. Lodovic claimed the entire episode could only have happened as one of your many experiments, Daneel. Trying to pin down underlying aspects of human nature.

“After listening to this for a while,Idecided the time had come. Idrew a miniblaster from a hidden slot in my arm and aimed it at Lodovic.

“He scarcely reacted, continuing to describe his conjecture-that chimpanzees somehow play an important role in your ultimate plans, Daneel!

“Irecall thinking at that moment how dangerous it would be to let an insane robot loose upon the cosmos. Nevertheless, First-Law impulses made it hard for me to press the trigger and fire at Lodovic’s human-looking features. “

Dors paused, recalling that unpleasant moment. Susan Calvin’s ancient First Law of Robotics was explicit.No robot may harm a human being, or through inaction allow a human to come to harm. So deeply rooted was this injunction that only the most sophisticated positronic brains could accomplish what she did on Panucopia-firing a blaster bolt at a face that smiled with ironic resignation, seeming at the very last moment more like a person than a great many real men she had known. It felt terrible…though not as bad as those two times in her past when the First Law had to be overridden completely.

Those awful days when she had killed true humans for the sake of Daneel’s Zeroth Law.

On this occasion, she felt much better when the body in front of her lost its humanoid appearance, crumpling down to metal, plastic, and colloidal jellies-and finally a positronic brain that sparkled and flashed as it died.

“Ikept firing the blaster until the body melted down to slag. Then Iturned to go.

“But I had only walked a few paces before….”

Dors paused again. This time she shook her head and gave up reciting altogether. Finishing would have to wait until later. Perhaps tomorrow. The way communications were degrading across the galaxy, the message would probably take weeks to reach Daneel, anyway.

She stood up and turned away from the encoding machine…much as she had done that day on Panucopia, after inspecting Lodovic’s molten body. Excited shrieks and calls had followed her from the nearby forest, shouted by wild creatures whose native thoughts she once intimately shared. Back when she had been Hari’s, and Hari had been hers.

Then, after she had taken several steps back toward the spaceship, a voice called her name from behind.

“Don’t forget to take this with you, Dors.”

She had whirled around…only to see the tiktok, that crude, human-built caricature of a robot, roll forward with a box in its primitive claw-hands. The box containing a twenty-thousand-year-old head.

“Lodovic? Is that you?” she had asked, staring at the clanking tiktok, suddenly realizing how easy it would be for Trema to disguise himself within such a bulky mechanical body.

The clattering machine answered with a voice that buzzed in rough monotones. And yet, Dors detected a tenor of blithe amusement.

“Now, Dors. In light of what just happened, would it be wise for me to answer that question?”

She responded with a shrug. If Lodovic had wanted to retaliate, it would have been easy at that point.

“Did I just kill a doppel? A dummy copy?”

“Will you hold it against me that I was so untrusting, Dors?”

Standing there, as Panucopia’s sun gradually set and their shadows lengthened, she had estimated the odds that Lodovic’s real brain lay inside the tiktok. If so, a second shot would eliminate the enemy for good.

“May I note one interesting observation, Dors?” The automaton had buzzed. “You just used the word ‘kill’ instead of ‘destroy’ or ‘deactivate.’ Shall I take that as a small sign of progress in our relationship?”

She was tempted to use the blaster again. But then, in all probability his real brain was somewhere in the forest, out of reach, controlling doppels from some hidden place of safety. So instead, with a humanlike sigh, she put away the pistol and reached for the box.

“There will be another time,” she said, taking up the burden as gingerly as a human would pick up a crate of poisonous snakes.

“That is what we robots have always been able to say, Dors. But time may be running out for our kind, sooner than you think.”

The only dignified thing she could do at that point was to let him have the last word. So Dors had turned without farewell and begun her long voyage home.

All the way back to Smushell, her sole company had been Lodovic’s gift, the ancient head. For a week it stared at her-metal-skulled and gem-eyed-containing the inactive brain of R. Giskard Reventlov.

Giskard the founder,who long ago helped Daneel develop the Zeroth Law.

Giskard the savior,who sacrificed himself in the act of rescuing human destiny, while ruthlessly destroying humanity’s birthplace.

Giskard the legendary,first of the mentalic robots, capable and willing to guide humans, nudging and shifting their thoughts and memories…for their own good.

Even now, with the ancient treasure safely ensconced in a secret niche of Klia Askar’s house, Dors could not yet bring herself to access its stored memories.

Instead, she stared at it, knowing exactly what she was looking at.

The head was a trap. A lure.

A test of faith,her Joan of Arc simulation would call it, as irresistible as any temptation faced by a human being.

If Lodovic wanted her to look inside, that must mean it contained something intoxicating, possibly a poison.

Something dangerous and unknown, despite the fact that she already had a clear name for it.

The truth.

10.

Looking from his hotel-room balcony across the tree-lined avenues of Galactic Boulevard, it seemed easy for Hari to imagine this was some bucolic world of the periphery, not the “second imperial capital.”

Of course, there were statues and imposing monuments, gleaming in the sun. Countless commemorative shrines had been erected here during the last fifteen millennia, celebrating emperors and prefects, victories and victims, great events and greater accomplishments. Still, in contrast to mighty Trantor, everything seemed small of scale and slow of pace, befitting Demarchia’s true status as the forgotten junior partner, forsaken by power.

Even the Eight Houses of Parliament, glorious white structures that shone like diadems in a ring around Deliberation Hill, seemed somehow forlorn and irrelevant. Each of the five social castes still sent representatives to argue over points of law. And the three upper chambers occasionally managed to agree upon a bill or two. But ever since Hari’s tenure as First Minister ended, there had been very little of consequence to emerge from those sacred halls. The Executive Council on Trantor ruled mostly by decree, and those decrees were largely fashioned by Linge Chen’s Commission for Public Safety.

Not that specific laws mattered very much. Psychohistory predicted what would happen next. If Linge Chen were replaced tomorrow in some palace coup, the momentum of events would impel his successor in identical ways. Some cliques would win and others lose. But over the course of the next thirty years, the average of forces-taken across twenty-five million worlds-would overwhelm any initiatives attempted by commissioners, emperors, or oligarchic cabals.

And yet, a romantic part of Hari always felt saddened by Demarchia. The place struck him as a personification of lost opportunity. A might-have-been.

In theory, democracy is supposed to predominate over all the machinations of the gentry class. Even the worst imperial tyrants have always paid lip service to that principle of Ruellianism.

But in practice it was hard to implement. The Cumulative House, the Senate of Sectors, and the Assembly of Trades were all supposed to compensate for each other’s faults, bringing representatives to Demarchia who were chosen in widely diverse ways. But the net result seemed always the same-a sapping of energy and dynamism. As First Minister, he had found it agonizing to get legislation passed-such as the emergency Chaos Suppression Law-even though his knowledge of psychohistory principles made him unusually effective compared to others.

In those days, Daneel and I still thought it could be fixed…the whole great Empire of Humanity. But back then my equations were still incomplete. They left some room for doubt. For hope.

Since Hari’s tenure in office ended, Demarchia had become a backwater. A place to exile failed politicians. No one of importance bothered with it anymore.

Which suits our purpose in coming here now,he thought with a grim smile. This time, Demarchia was not a destination, but a convenient launching-off point.

“Professor Seldon?” Horis Antic’s voice murmured behind Hari, from within the hotel room. As the next stage of their adventure approached, the portly bureaucrat grew increasingly nervous.

“I-I’ve just heard from the, uh,individual we talked about earlier. He says arrangements have been made. We’re to meet him at hisvehicle in an hour.”

Hari touched a control and turned his mobile chair around, gliding back inside. Antic’s convoluted speech, a precaution against possible bugging devices, would almost certainly be futile if they were under serious surveillance. Besides, up until now, no one had committed a single crime.

“Has your equipment arrived, Horis?”

The bureaucrat wore casual clothing. Still, anyone looking at his posture and poor fashion sense would know in an instant that he was a Grey Man.

“Yes, m’lord.” He nodded. “The last crates are downstairs. It was much easier to order the instruments from a variety of companies and have them sent here, instead of to Trantor proper, where there might have been…embarrassing questions.”

Hari had seen the list of tools and devices, and saw nothing that could even remotely be called contraband. Nevertheless, Antic had good reason not to let his superiors know he was spending his sabbatical time pursuing a bizarre “intellectual pastime.”

In fact, Hari had been grateful for the delay while Antic gathered his equipment. It gave him a chance to rest after that harrowing star-shunt ride…much bumpier than he recalled from decades past. It also let him spend time under the sun, remembering Demarchia in the old days, when some of the best restaurants in the galaxy used to line the boulevards, and he still had taste buds to enjoy them…with beautiful, vivacious Dors Venabili at his side.

“All right,” he said, feeling exceptionally alive, almost as if he could walk all the way to the spaceport. “Let’s get going.”

Kers Kantun met them in front of the hotel, next to Antic’s equipment crates. At a glance, Hari knew that his bodyguard had checked them against the manifests and found nothing amiss. Hari acknowledged his servant’s concern without giving it much importance. What did Kers imagine, that Antic had recruited the famed Hari Seldon into some convoluted smuggling scheme?

Their rented van arrived on schedule. The driver took one look at the crates and turned to hail a group of local laborers who were lounging nearby, hiring them on the spot to load the heavy boxes. Antic fretted as they hauled his precious instruments, meant to check out a bizarre theory aboutplanetary tilling andcurrents of space.

Hari felt less worried, even though his financial contribution to their purchase was substantial. The cost seemed worthwhile if this endeavor might shed some new light on his own concerns. But in the long run, none of it would make any difference to his place in history. For Antic, on the other hand, this voyage was his sole chance to leave a mark on the universe.

A spaceport limo came to pick up the three of them while the cargo van followed behind, moving along avenues clearly designed for much greater traffic than they carried nowadays. Demarchia’s economy was not good. There were many small crowds of laborers, looking for odd jobs.

A sprinkle of rain fell on the limousine’s windows, startling the Trantor-born Kers, but putting Hari in a good mood.

“You know,” he chatted affably, “over the course of many thousands of years, this world has hosted quite a few experiments in democracy.”

“Indeed, Professor?” Antic leaned forward. He took a blue pill and started biting his nails again.

“Oh, yes. One form that I always found fascinating was called TheNation.”

“I never heard of it.”

“Not surprising. Your specialties lie elsewhere. Most people consider history distasteful or boring,” Hari mused.

“But Iam interested, Professor. Please, will you tell me about it?”

“Hm. Well, you see, there has always been a basic problem in applying democracy on a pan-galactic scale. A typical deliberative body can only operate with at most a few thousand members. Yet that’s far too few to personally represent ten quadrillion voters, spread across twenty-five million worlds! Nevertheless, various attempts were made to solve this dilemma, such ascumulative representation. Each planetary congress elects a few delegates to their local star-zone assembly, which then chooses from its ranks a few to attend the regional sector conference. At that level, a small number are selected to proceed onward, representing the sector at a quadrant moot…and so on until a final set of peers gathers in that building on the hill.”

He pointed to a stone structure, whose white columns seemed to shine, even under pelting rain.

“Unfortunately, this process doesn’t result in a cumulative distillation ofpolicy options from below. Rather, the outcome-dictated by basic human nature-will be a condensation of the most bland and inoffensive politicians from across the galaxy. Or else charismatic demagogues. Either way, only the concerns of a few planets will ever be debated, on a statistically semirandom basis. And on those rare occasions when one of the constituent assemblies here on Demarchia shows some spirit, the other houses of parliament can be relied upon to put on the brakes. It is a tried-and-true method for slowing things down and not letting momentary passions govern the day.”

“It almost sounds like you approve,” Antic suggested.

“It is generally a pretty good idea not to let political systems oscillate too wildly, especially when the psychohistorical inertia factors aren’t adequately damped by sociocentripetal assumption states or other-”

He stopped with a small smile. “Well, let’s just say that it can get pretty complicated, but the crux is that cumulative legislatures don’t accomplish very much. But on occasion, over the last fifteen thousand years. some alternative approaches were tried.”

“Including thisNation thing you spoke of? Was it another kind of assembly?”

“You might say that. For about seven hundred years, a ninth house met here on Demarchia, more powerful and influential than all of the others combined. It derived that power partly from its sheer size, for it consisted of more than a hundred million members.”

Antic rocked back in his seat. “A hundred million! But…” he sputtered. “How could…?”

“It was an elegant solution, actually,” Hari continued, recalling how the psychohistorical equations balanced when he studied this episode of empire history. “Each planet, depending on its population, would elect between one and ten representatives to send directly here, bypassing the sector, zone, and quadrant assemblies. Those chosen were not only august and respected politicians, knowledgeable about the needs of their homeworld. There were various other requirements. For instance, each delegate to the Nation was required to have some humble skill that he or she was very good at. Upon arriving here, they were all expected to take up their crafts in the local economy. A shoemaker might find a shoe shop waiting for him. A gourmet cook would set up her own restaurant and perform that task in Demarchia’s economy. Fully half of the homes and businesses on this continent were set aside for these transient denizens, who would live and work here until their ten-year terms were up.”

“But then…when did they have time to argue about laws and stuff?”

“At night. In electronic forums and televised deliberations. Or in local meeting halls, where they would thrash things out while making and breaking alliances, trading proxy votes or passing petitions. Methods of self -organized coalition building varied with each session as much as the population. But however they did it, the Nation was always vibrant and interesting. When they made mistakes, those errors tended to be dramatic. But some of the best laws of the empire were also passed during that era. Why, Ruellis herself was a leading delegate at the time.”

“Really?” Horis Antic blinked. “I always thought she must’ve been an empress.”

Hari shook his head.

“Ruellis was an influential commoner during an era of exceptional creativity…a ‘golden age’ that unfortunately crashed when the first chaos plagues swept across the galaxy, triggering a collapse back to direct imperial rule.”

Hari could picture the imbalance of forces that spread during that bright period in the empire’s history. It must have seemed so unfair to those involved, to witness a time of unprecedented inventiveness and hope founder against sudden tides of irrationality, throwing world after world into violent turmoil. But in retrospect, it was all too obvious to Hari.

“Did that end the Nation?” Antic inquired, awed fascination in his voice.

“Not quite. There were several more experiments. At one point it was decided that every third Nation would consist entirely of women delegates, giving them exclusive reign over this continent and sole power to propose new laws. The only male allowed to visit or speak here was the emperor himself. Emperor Hupeissin.”

“HornyHupeissin?” Antic laughed aloud. “Is that where he got his reputation?”

Hari nodded.

“Hupeissin of the Heavenly Harem. Of course that is a base calumny, spread by members of the later Torgin Dynasty, to discredit him. In fact, Hupeissin was an exemplary Ruellian philosopher-king, who sincerely wanted to hear the independent deliberations of-”

But Antic wasn’t listening. He kept chuckling, shaking his head. “Alone with a hundred million women! Talk about delusions of adequacy!”

Hari saw that even Kers Kantun had cracked a faint smile. The normally dour servant glanced at Hari, as if convinced that this must be a made-up tale.

“Well, well.” Hari sighed and changed the subject. “I see the spaceport up ahead. I do hope your faith in this charter captain is justified, Horis. We need to be back within a month, at most, or real trouble may break loose back on Trantor.”

He had expected a tramp freighter. A crate, hissing and creaking at the seams. But the vessel awaiting them in a launching cradle was something else entirely.

It’s a yacht,Hari noted with some surprise.An old, expensive one. Someone deliberately stained the hull, attempting to mask its underlying dignity. But even a fool can tell this is no mere charter ship.

While the hired workers lugged Antic’s cargo aboard an aft ramp, Hari and Kers followed Horis up the passenger slideway. A tall, fair-haired man waited at the top, wearing typical spacer dungarees. But Hari instantly knew a great deal about the fellow from his athletic figure and suntanned complexion. A relaxed stance seemed innately self-confident, while stopping just short of arrogance. The expression on the man’s face was calm, yet steely, as if this person must be used to getting what he wanted.

Antic made hurried introductions. “Dr. Seldon, this is our host and pilot, Captain Biron Maserd.”

“It is a great privilege to meet you, meritocrat-sage Seldon,” Maserd said, with a faintly outer-galaxy accent. He extended a hand that could have crushed Hari’s, but squeezed with gentle, measured restraint. Hari felt calluses that were evenly spread-not the sort that a man would get from hard work, but instead from a life spent pursuing a variety of vigorous recreations.

Hari lowered his head to the Fourth Angle of Deference-a proper degree when greeting noblemen of zonal level or higher.

“Your Grace honors us as guests aboard your starhome.”

Antic’s stare darted rapidly between the two of them, and he blushed the way some do when caught in a deception. But if Captain Maserd was surprised by Hari’s penetration, he did not show it.

“I’m afraid we are understaffed on this trip,” he explained. “Amenities will be primitive. But if you’ll let my valet show you to your cabins, we’ll depart and see what secrets can be prized out of this old galaxy.”

The yacht’s takeoff did not go unnoticed.

“Well, that does it,” said a small woman, wearing the shabby garb of a street sweeper. She spoke into her broom handle, where a hidden microphone transmitted her words upward, directly to the star-shunt, where they were coded and relayed to the metal-cloaked capital planet.

“You can tell the Commissioner that it’s official. Professor Hari Seldon just violated the conditions of his parole and departed Greater Trantor. I managed to put a tracer unit aboard. Now it’s up to Linge Chen whether he wants to make a stink over it or not.

“At the very least, it ought to give him some more leverage over those Foundation subversives. Maybe this’ll give him an excuse to execute the whole lot of ‘em.”

The Special Police agent signed off. Then she straightened her stooped posture, hoisted her broom, and headed toward another part of the spaceport, feeling happy to be moving on to her next assignment. In a galaxy filled with inertia and disappointments, she really loved her job.

Not far away, the police agent’s departure was observed by yet another party-one who was even more innocuous-looking-disguised as a mongrel dog, rooting through a toppled litter can. On a secret frequency, using incredibly ornate encipherment, it relayed everything it had heard with hypersensitive ears. The agent’s words bounced from point to point across the planet, via use-once relays that burned themselves out as soon as they were finished, turning into small bits of stonelike slag.

Far away, on a ship orbiting beyond Demarchia’s sun, the message was received. Almost at once, instruments sifted outgoing traffic and found the trace of one particular vessel, heading for deep space.

Engines fired up as the occupants prepared to follow.