Foundations Fear

Page 43

  “To us. Or rather, to our dominant program, the one we most identify with and present for show to the world. ”

  “Ah…” Events were moving rather too swiftly for Joan. Did this mean she needed more “time-steps”?

  A huge tiktok guard opened the door, grumbling. “Aux Deux Magots?” he said in response to Voltaire. “Went outta business years ago. ”

  Joan peered inside the warehouse, hoping to see Garçon.

  “They’re en route,” Voltaire said.

  To Joan’s surprise he sneezed. No one caught cold in these ab­ struse spaces. So he had kept some fragment of his body. But what an odd piece to retain.

  He said lamely, “My editing is imperfect, I gather. I did not omit sniffles, yet I cannot sustain an erection. ”

  Voltaire down-stepped them and external time (whatever that meant here) sped by. Without warning, Joan found herself peering at a tiktok. “Garçon ADM–213!” She embraced him.

  “A votre service, madam. May I recommend the cloud food?” The tiktok kissed his fingertips—all twenty at once.

  Joan looked at Voltaire, too moved to speak. “Merci,” she man­ aged to stammer at last. “To Voltaire, the Prince of Light, and to the Creator, from Whom all blessings flow. ”

  “The credit is entirely mine,” said Voltaire. “I have never shared a byline, even with deities. ”

  She asked nervously, “The…It…which nearly erased me?”

  He scowled. “I have felt that apparition—or rather, its lack of appearance, while manifesting a presence. It stalks us still, I fear. ”

  Garçon said, “Could it be the wolf-pack programs who seek criminal users of computational volume?”

  Voltaire raised an eyebrow. “You have become learned, Garçon? I have swept aside these bloodhounds. No, this It is…other. ”

  “We must defeat it!” Joan felt herself a warrior again.

  “Ummm, no doubt. We may need your angels, my sweet. And we must consider where we truly are. ”

  With a wave he blew away the roof, revealing the bowl of a vast sky. Not the sprinkling of lights she had known—though when she tried, she could in fact recall no specific constellations.

  Here the sky blazed with so many stars it hurt her eyes. He said this was because they were near the center of some territory named “Galaxy” and that stars liked to dwell here.

  The sight made her suck in her breath. On such a stage, what could they do?

  “If we stay in our apartment, don’t ever leave Streeling Univer­ sity—”

  “No,” R. Daneel Olivaw said sternly. “The situation is too grave. ”

  “Then where?”

  “Off Trantor. ”

  “I am less acquainted with other worlds. ”

  Olivaw waved away her point. “I have in mind a remark in your recent report. He is interested in the fundamental human drives. ”

  Dors frowned. “Yes, Hari keeps saying there are elements still missing. ”

  “Good. There is a world where he can explore this. Possibly he can find valuable component terms for his model equations. ”

  “A primitive planet? That would be dangerous. ”

  “This is a severely underpopulated place, with fewer threats. ”

  “You have been there?”

  “I have been everywhere. ”

  She realized that this could not be literally true. Quick calculation showed that even R. Daneel Olivaw would have had to visit several thousand worlds in each year of his life. His enduring presence stretched well beyond the twelve thousand years since the founding of the Kambal Dynasty on Trantor. Indeed, she had been told—though this was difficult to believe—that he came forth from the very Origin Eras of interstellar flight, over twenty thousand years ago.

  “Why don’t we both go with him—”

  “I must remain here. The simulations live on still in the Trantor Mesh. With the MacroMesh about to be connected, they could multiply themselves throughout the Galaxy. ”

  “Truly?” She had been concentrating on Hari; the simulations had seemed to be a small side issue.

  “I edited them, many millennia ago, to exclude knowledge I felt damaging for humans. But I should revisit that editing. ”

  “Editing out? Cutting away such information as, for example, Earth’s location?”

  “They know minor data, such as how Earth’s moon eclipses its star—an amazingly accurate fit. That could narrow the search. ”

  “I see. ” She had never been told this, and found strange emotions stirred by the knowing.

  “I have had to do many such revisitings before. Luckily, individual humans’ memories die with them. Simulations do not. ”

  She felt a dark, brooding sorrow in his words. More, she caught a glimmer of how he must view events, looking backward down a tunnel of long labor and grim sacrifice, stretching tens of millennia. She was comparatively young, less than two centuries old.

  Yet she understood that robots had to be immortal.

  This requirement arose because they had to remain ever-vigilant for humanity. Humans accomplished their cultural continuity by passing on to the next generation the essentials that bound them all together.

  But robots could not be allowed to regularly reproduce, even though the means were readily adopted from the basic organs of mankind. The robots knew their Darwin.

  To reproduce meant to evolve. Inevitably, error would creep into any method of reproduction. Most errors would cause death or subnormal performance, but some would alter the next generation of robots in subtle ways. Some of these would be unacceptable, as seen through the lens of the Four Laws.

  The most obvious selection principle, operating in all ordinarily self-reproducing organisms, was for self-interest. Evolution rewarded pressing forward in one’s own cause. Favoring the individual was the central force selecting for survivors.

  But the self-interest of a robot could conflict with the Four Laws. Inevitably, a robot would evolve which—despite outward appear­ ances, despite intricate interrogations—would favor itself over hu­ manity. Such a robot would not spring between a human and a speeding vehicle.

  Or between humanity and the threats that loomed out of the Galactic night…

  So R. Daneel Olivaw, of the Original Design, had to be immortal. Only special-use robots such as herself could be made fresh. The organiform variation had been arrived at over many centuries of secret research. It was allowed expressly to fill an unusual task at hand, such as forming a cocoon, both emotional and physical, around one Hari Seldon.

  “You wish to erase all the simulations, everywhere?”

  He said, “Ideally, yes. They might produce new robots, release ancient lore, they could even uncover…”

  “Why do you stop?”

  “There are historical facts you need not know. ”

  “But I am an historian. ”

  “You are closer to human than I. Some knowledge is best left to forms such as myself. Believe me. The Three Laws, plus the Zeroth, have deep implications, ones the Originators did not—could not—guess. Under the Zeroth Law, we robots have had to perform certain acts—” He caught himself, abruptly shook his head.

  “Very well,” she said reluctantly, fruitlessly studying his impassive face. “I accept that. And I will go with him to this place. ”

  “You will need technical aid. ”

  R. Daneel stripped away his shirt to reveal a completely convin-cing human skin. He put two stiff fingers carefully below one nipple and pushed in a pressure pattern. His chest opened longitudinally for perhaps five centimeters. He removed a jet-black cylinder the size of his little finger. “Instructions are encoded in the side for optical reading. ”

  “Advanced technology for a backward world?”

  He allowed himself a smile. “It should be safe, but precautions are in order. Always. Do not worry overly
much. I doubt that even the crafty Lamurk will be able to plant agents quickly on Panu­ copia. ”

  PART 5

  BIOGENESIS, HISTORY OF—…it was thus only natural that biologists would use entire planets as experimental preserves, testing on a large scale the central ideas about human evolu­ tion. Humanity’s origins remained shrouded, with the parent planet (“Earth”) itself unknown—though there were thousands of earnestly supported candidates. Some primates in the scattered Galactic Zoos clearly were germane to the argument. Early in the Post-Middle Period, whole worlds came to be devoted to exploration of these apparently primordial species. One such world made groundbreaking progress in our connec­ tions to the pans, though indicative, no firm conclusions could be reached; too much of the intervening millions of years between ourselves and even close relatives like the pans lay in shadow. During the decline of Imperial science, these ex­ periments were even turned into amusements for the gentry and meritocrats, in desperate attempts to remain self-support-ing as Imperial funding dried up…

  —ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA

  1.

  He didn’t fully relax until they were sitting on a verandah of the Excursion Station, some six thousand light years away from Trantor.

  Warily Dors gazed out at the view beyond the formidable walls. “We’re safe here from the animals?”

  “I imagine so. Those walls are high and there are guard canines. Wirehounds, I believe. ”

  “Good. ” She smiled in a way that he knew implied a secret was about to emerge. “I believe I have covered our tracks—to use an animal metaphor. I had records of our departure concealed. ”

  “I still think you are exaggerating—”

  “Exaggerating an attempted assassination?” She bit her lip in ill-concealed irritation. This was a well-frayed argument between them by now, but something about her protectiveness always sat poorly with him.

  “I only agreed to leave Trantor in order to study pans. ”

  He caught a flicker of emotion in her face and knew that she would now try to ease off. “Oh, that might be useful—or better still, fun. You need a rest. ”

  “At least I won’t have to deal with Lamurk. ”

  Cleon had instituted what he lightly termed “traditional measures” to track down the conspirators. Some had already wormholed away to the far reaches of the Galaxy. Others had committed suicide—or so it seemed.

  Lamurk was staying low, pretending shock and dismay at “this assault on the very fabric of our Imperium. ” But Lamurk still held enough votes in the High Council to block Cleon’s move to make Hari his First Minister, so the deadlock continued. Hari was numbed by the entire matter.

  “And you’re right,” Dors continued with a brittle brightness, ig­ noring his moody silence, “not everything is available on Trant-or—or even known about. My main consideration was that if you had stayed on Trantor you would be dead. ”

  He stopped looking at the striking scenery. “You think the Lamurk faction would persist…?”

  “They could, which is a better guide to action than trying to guess woulds. ”

  “I see. ” He didn’t, but he had learned to trust her judgment in matters of the world. Then, too, perhaps he did need a thoroughgo­ ing vacation.

  To be on a living, natural world—he had forgotten, in his years buried in Trantor, how vivid wild things could be. The greens and yellows leaped out, after decades amid matted steel, cycled air, and crystal glitter.

  Here the sky yawned impossibly deep, unmarked by the graffiti of aircraft, wholly alive to the flapping wonder of birds. Bluffs and ridges looked like they had been shaped hastily with a putty knife. Beyond the station walls he could see a sole tree thrashed by an angry wind. Its topknot finally blew off in a pocket of wind, fluttering and fraying over somber flats like a fragmenting bird. Distant, eroded mesas had yellow streaks down their shanks, which as they met the forest turned a burnt orange tinge that suggested the rot of rust. Across the valley, where the pans ranged, lay a dusky canopy hidden behind low gray clouds and raked by winds.

  A thin cold rain fell there, and Hari wondered what it was like to cower as an animal beneath those sheets of moisture, without hope of shelter or warmth. Perhaps Trantor’s utter predictability was better, but he wondered.

  He pointed to the distant forest. “We’re going there?” He liked this fresh place, though the forest was foreboding. It had been a long time since he had even worked with his hands, alongside his father, back on Helicon. To live in the open—

  “Don’t start judging. ”

  “I’m anticipating. ”

  She grinned. “You always have a longer word for it, no matter what I say. ”

  “The treks look a little, well—touristy. ”

  “Of course. We’re tourists. ”