Foundations Fear

Page 69

  “Where are your Specials?”

  “All around us, dressed much as you are. ”

  This made Daneel even more uneasy. Hari realized that this most advanced of robot forms suffered from some eternal human limita­ tions. With facial expressions activated, even a positronic brain could not separately control the subtleties of lips and eyes while experiencing disconnected emotions. And in public Daneel did not dare let his subprograms lapse and his face go blank.

  “They have a sonic wall up?”

  Hari nodded to the captain, who was pushing a broom nearby. Daneel’s words seemed to come through a blanket. “I do not like to expose us this way. ”

  Knots of Specials astutely deflected passersby so that none noticed the sonic bubble. Hari had to admire the masterly method; the Empire could still do some things expertly. “Matters are worse than even you imagine. ”

  “Your request, to provide moment-to-moment location data of Lamurk’s people—this could expose my agents inside the Lamurk network. ”

  “There’s no other way,” Hari said sharply. “I’ll leave to you tracking the right figures. ”

  “They must be incapacitated?”

  “For the rest of the crisis. ”

  “Which crisis?” Daneel’s face wrenched into a grimace—then went blank. He had cut the connections.

  “The tiktoks. Lamurk’s moves. A bit of blackmail, for spice. Sark. Take your pick. Oh, and aspects of the Mesh I’ll describe later. ”

  “You will force a predictable pattern on the Lamurk factions? How?”

  “With a maneuver. I imagine your agents will be able to predict positions of some principals, including Lamurk himself, at that time. ”

  “What maneuver?”

  “I will send a signal when it is about to transpire. ”

  “You jest with me,” Daneel said darkly. “And the other request, to eliminate Lamurk himself—”

  “Choose your method. I shall choose mine. ”

  “I can do that, true. An application of the Zeroth Law. ” Daneel paused, face slack, in high calculation mode. “My method will take five minutes of preparation at the site we choose, to bring off the effect. ”

  “Good enough. Just be sure your robots keep the leading Lamurkians well spotted, and the data flowing through Dors. ”

  “Tell me now!”

  “And spoil the anticipation?”

  “Hari, you must—”

  “Only if you can be absolutely sure there will be no leaks. ”

  “Nothing is utterly certain—”

  “Then we have free will, no? Or at least I do. ” Hari felt an unfa­ miliar zest. To act—that gave a kind of freedom, too.

  Though Daneel’s face showed nothing, his body language spoke of caution: his legs crossing, a hand touching his face. “I need some assurance that you fully understand the situation. ”

  Hari laughed. He had never done that in the solemn presence of Daneel. It felt like a liberation.

  11.

  Hari waited in the antechamber of the High Council. He could see the great bowl through transparent one-way walls.

  The delegates chattered anxiously. These men and women in their formal pantaloons were plainly worried. Yet they set the fates of trillions of lives, of stars and spiral arms.

  Even Trantor was baffling in its sheer size. Of course Trantor mirrored the entire Galaxy in its factions and ethnicities. Both the Empire and this planet had intricate connec­ tions, meaningless coincidences, random juxtapositions, sensitive dependencies. Both clearly extended beyond the Complexity Hori­ zon of any person or computer.

  People, confronting bewildering complexity, tend to find their saturation level. They master the easy connections, use local links and rules of thumb. These they push until they meet a wall of complexity too thick and high and hard to climb. So they stall. They go back to panlike modes. They gossip, consult, and finally, gamble.

  The High Council was abuzz, at a cusp point. A new attractor in the chaos could lure them into a new orbit. Now was the time to show that path. Or so said his intuition, sharpened on Panucopia.

  …And after that, he told himself, he would get back to the problem of modeling the Empire…

  “I do hope you know what you’re doing,” Cleon said, bustling in. His ceremonial cape enveloped him in scarlet and his plumed hat was a turquoise fountain. Hari suppressed a chuckle. He would never get used to high formal dress.

  “I am happy that I can at least appear in my academic robes, sire. ”

  “And damned lucky you are. Nervous?”

  Hari was surprised to find that he felt no tension at all, especially considering that at his previous appearance here, he had very nearly been assassinated. “No, sire. ”

  “I always contemplate a great, soothing work of art before such performances as this. ” Cleon waved his hand and an entire wall of the antechamber filled with light.

  It portrayed a classic theme of the Trantorian School: Fruit De­ voured, from the definitive Betti Uktonia sequence. It showed a tomato being eaten first by caterpillars. Then praying mantises feasting upon the caterpillars. Finally, tarantulas and frogs chewing the mantises. A later Uktonia work, Child Consumption, began with rats giving birth. The babies then were caught and eaten by various predators, some quite large.

  Hari knew the theory. All this had emerged from the growing conviction of Trantorians that the wild was an ugly place, violent and without meaning. Only in cities did order and true humanity prevail. Most Sectors had diets strong in disguised natural fodder. Now the tiktok rebellion made even that difficult.

  “We’ve had to go nearly entirely to synthetic foods,” Cleon said, distracted. “Trantor is now fed by twenty agriworlds, an improvised lifeline using hyperships. Imagine! Not that the palace is affected, of course. ”

  “Some Sectors are starving,” Hari said. He wanted to tell Cleon of the many intertwined threads, but the Imperial escort arrived.

  Faces, noise, lights, the vast curving bowl—

  Hari listened to the echoing formalities as he took in the sheer gravity of the place. Many millennia old, walls encrusted with his­ torical tablets, suffused with tradition and majesty…

  And then he was up and speaking, with no memory of getting to the high podium at all. The full force of their regard washed over him. Part of him recognized a Pan-deep sensation: the thrill of being paid attention to. And it was exhilarating. Political types were natural addicts of it. But not one Hari Seldon, luckily. He took a deep breath and began.

  “Let me address a thorn in our side: representation. This body favors less populous Sectors. Similarly, the Spiral Council favors less populous worlds. So the Dahlites, both here and in their Zones around the Galaxy, are discontented. Yet we must all pull together to confront the gathering crises: Sark, the tiktoks, unrest. ”

  He took a deep breath. “What can we do? All systems of repres­ entation contain biases. I submit to the Council a formal theorem, which I have proved, showing this fact. I recommend that you have it checked by mathists. ”

  He smiled dryly, remembering to sweep his gaze across all the audience. “Do not take a politician at his word, even if he knows a bit of math. ” The laughter was pleasantly reassuring. “Every voting system has undesirable consequences and fault lines. The question is not whether we should be democratic but how. An open, experi­ mental approach is entirely consistent with an unwavering commit­ ment to democracy. ”

  “The Dahlites aren’t!” someone shouted. Murmurs of agreement.

  “They are!” Hari countered immediately. “But we must bring them into our fold by listening to their grievances!”

  Cheers, boos. Time for a reflective passage, he judged. “Of course, those who benefit from a particular scheme wrap themselves in the mantle of Democracy, spelled with a big D. ”

  Grumbles came from a gentry factio
n—predictably. “So do their opponents! History teaches us—” He paused to let a small ripple spread through the crowd, upturned faces speculating—Was he going to at last speak of psychohistory?—only to dash their hopes by calmly continuing, “—that such mantles come in many fashions, and all have patches.

  “We have many minorities, many spread among Sectors large and small. And in the entire Galactic spiral, Zones of varying weight. Such groups are never well depicted in our politics if we elect representatives strictly by majority vote in each Sector or Zone. ”

  “Should be happy with what is!” cried a prominent member.

  “I respectfully disagree. We must change—history demands it!”

  Shouts, applause. Onward. “Therefore I propose a new rule. If a Sector has, say, six contested seats, then do not split the Sector into six districts. Instead, give each voter six votes. He or she can distribute votes among candidates—spreading them, or casting them all for one candidate. This way, a cohesive minority can capture a representative if they vote together. ”

  A curious silence. Hari gave weight to his last words. He had to get the time right here; Daneel had been clear. Though Hari still did not know just what was going to transpire.

  “This scheme makes no reference to ethnic or other biases. Groups can profit only if they are truly united. Their followers must vote that way in the privacy of the polls. No demagogue can control that.

  “If made First Minister, I shall impose this throughout the Great Spiral!”

  There—right on the button. (An odd, ancient saying—what was a button?) He left the podium to sudden, thundering applause.

  Hari had always felt that, as his mother always said, “If a man has any greatness in him, it comes to light not in a flamboyant hour but in the ledger of his daily work. ” This was usually intoned when Hari had neglected his daily chores in favor of a math book.

  Now he saw the reverse: greatness imposed from without.

  In the grand reception rooms he felt himself whisked from knot to knot of sharp-eyed delegates, each with a question. All assumed that he would parley with them for their votes.

  He deliberately did not. Instead, he spoke of the tiktoks, of Sark. And waited.

  Cleon had departed, as custom required. The factions gathered eagerly around Hari.

  “What policy for Sark?”

  “Quarantine. ”

  “But chaos reigns there now!”

  “It must burn out. ”

  “That is merciless! You pessimistically assume—”

  “Sir, ‘pessimist’ is a term invented by optimists to describe real­ ists. ”

  “You’re avoiding our Imperial duty, letting riot—”

  “I have just come from Sark. Have you?”

  By such flourishes he avoided most of the grubby business of soliciting votes. He continued to trail Lamurk, of course. Still, the High Council seemed to like his somewhat dispassionate Dahlite proposal more than Lamurk’s bombast.

  And his hard line on Sark provoked respect. This surprised some, who had taken him for a soft academic. Yet his voice carried real emotion about Sark; Hari hated disorder, and he knew what Sark would bring to the Galaxy.

  Of course, he was not so naïve as to believe that a new system of representation could alter the fate of the Empire. But it could alter his fate….

  Hari had assumed, despite mounting evidence to the contrary, that hard work and punishingly high standards are demanded of all grown men, that life is tough and unforgiving, that error and disgrace were irreparable. Imperial politics had seemed to be a counterexample, but he was beginning, as talk swirled all around him—

  Word came by Imperial messenger that Lamurk wished to speak with him.

  “Where?” Hari whispered.

  “Away, outside the palace. ”

  “Fine by me. ”

  And exactly what Daneel had predicted. Even Lamurk would not attempt a move again inside the palace, after the last one.

  12.

  On his way, he caught a comm-squirt.

  A wall decoration near the palace sent a blip of compressed data into his wrist-sponder. As Hari waited in a vestibule for Lamurk he opened it.

  Fifteen Lamurk aides and allies had been injured or killed. The images were immediate: a fall here, a lift crash there. All accumu­ lated over the last few hours, when the confluence of the High Council made their probable locations known.

  Hari thought about the lives lost. His responsibility, for he had assembled the components. The robots had targeted the victims without knowing what would follow. The moral weight fell…where?