Foundation and Chaos f-9 Page 38

  “I don’t know the details, but I thank you for your restraint,” Hari said. “It seems not to have been necessary, perhaps.” He braced himself, swallowed, and half turned toward the other woman. “We’ve met…here before, I think,” he said, and swallowed again. Then he turned to Daneel. “I must know. I must not be made to forget! You assigned me my love, my companion-Daneel, as my friend, as my mentor, is this Dors Venabili?”

  “I am,” Dors said, and stepping forward, she took Hari’s hand in hers, squeezing it ever so gently, as had been her habit years ago.

  She hasn’t forgotten! Hari held his free hand up to the ceiling, forming a fist, and his eyes filled with tears. He shook his fist at the ceiling as Brann and Klia watched in embarrassment, seeing such an old man exhibit his emotions so openly.

  Even Hari did not quite understand what his emotions were-rage, joy, frustration? He lowered his arm and in one motion reached out to embrace Dors, their hands still awkwardly clasped between them. Secret steel, gripping him so gently. “No dream,” he murmured into her shoulder, and Dors held him, feeling his aging body, so different from the mature Hari. She looked at Daneel then, and her eyes were filled with resentment, her own anger, for Hari was in pain, their presence was causing him pain, and she had been programmed above all other imperatives to prevent harm and pain coming to Hari Seldon.

  Daneel did not turn away from her stare. He had endured worse conflicts with his robotic conscience, though this was near the top of any list.

  But they were so close-and he would make it up to Hari.

  “I have brought Klia here to show you the future,” Daneel said. Klia sucked in her breath and shook her head, not understanding.

  Hari let go of Dors and drew himself up, his formerly stooped posture straightening. He gained fully three centimeters in height.

  “What can this young woman tell me?” he said. He gestured to the furniture. “I forget my manners,” he said stiffly. “Please, make yourselves comfortable. Robots need not sit if they do not wish to.”

  “I would love to sit here again, and relax with you,” Dors said, and lowered herself to the small chair beside him. “So many intense memories from this place. I have missed you so!” She could not take her eyes off him.

  Hari smiled down on her. “The worst part is, I was never able to thank you. You gave me so much, and I was never able to say farewell.” His hand patted her shoulder. No gesture, no words, seemed adequate to this occasion. “But then, had you been…organic, I would not have you back with me now, would I? However transitory the experience may be.”

  Suddenly, the deep anger built up for decades came to a head and Hari turned on Daneel, pointed a finger into his chest. “Get this done with! Be done with me! Do your work and make me forget, and leave me in peace! Do not torment me with your false flesh and steel bones and immortal thoughts! I am mortal, Daneel. I don’t have your strength or your vision!”

  “You see farther than any other in this room,” Daneel said.

  “No more! My seeing is over. I was wrong. I’m as blind as any of the quadrillion little points in the equations!”

  Klia backed away as far as she could from this old man with his deep, sharp eyes. Brann stood staring straight ahead, embarrassed, out of his class, out of his place. Klia reached for his hand and hugged his arm, to reassure him. Together they stood among the robots and the famous meritocrat, and Klia defied anyone to think them the least of those present.

  “You were not wrong,” Daneel said. “There is a balance. The Plan is made stronger, but it must take some devious routes. I think you will show us how, a few minutes from now.”

  “You overestimate me, Daneel. This young woman-and her companion-and Vara Liso, represent a powerful force I can’t fold into the equations. This upwelling of biology…”

  “How do you differ from Vara Liso?” Daneel asked Klia.

  Brann’s nostrils flared and his face darkened. “I’ll answer that,” he said. “They’re as different as night from day. There isn’t a hateful bone in Klia’s body-”

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” Klia said, but she was proud of his defense.

  “I mean it. Vara Liso was a monster!” Brann straightened his neck and thrust out his jaw belligerently, as if daring Daneel to contradict him.

  “Are you a monster, Klia Asgar?” Hari asked, focusing on her with those deep and discerning eyes.

  She did not turn away. Hari Seldon clearly did not think she was his inferior. There was something beyond respect in his gaze-there was a kind of intellectual terror.

  “I’m different,” she said.

  Hari smiled wolfishly and shook his head in admiring wonder. “Yes, indeed, you are that. I think Daneel will agree with me that we are done with robots for now, and you are proof of that?”

  “I’m very uncomfortable around these robots,” Klia confirmed.

  “Yet you worked with some-did you not? With Lodovik Trema?” Hari turned to Daneel. These suppositions and theories had been perking in his head, subconsciously, for days since the incident in the Hall of Dispensation. Daneel could stop the conscious access of memory, but he could not halt all the deep workings of Hari’s mind. “He was a robot, wasn’t he-Daneel?”

  “Yes,” Daneel said.

  “One of yours?”

  “Yes.”

  “But-something went wrong.”

  “Yes.”

  “He turned against you. Is he still against you?”

  “I am learning, Hari. He has taught me much. Now it is time for you to teach me…once more. Show me what must be done.” Daneel faced Hari.

  “What happened to Lodovik in space?” Hari asked. Daneel explained. then, told Hari all that had happened with the Calvinians, including the end of Plussix and the knowledge of Linge Chen.

  “No more secrecy,” Hari mused. “Those who need to know will know, all over the Galaxy. What can I tell you, Daneel? Your work is done.”

  “Not yet, Hari. Not until you find an answer to the problem.”

  Dors spoke now. “There is a solution, Hari. I know there is-within your equations.”

  “I am not an equation!” Klia shouted. “I am not an aberration or a monster! I just have certain abilities-and so does he!” She pointed to Daneel.

  Hari considered with chin in hand. The itch…So deeply buried, untraceable! He clutched Dors’ shoulder, as if to draw strength from her.

  “We shed the metal,” he said. “Time to take charge, for ourselves, isn’t it, Daneel? And the time will come when psychohistory’s equations will merge with the equations of all minds, all people. Every individual will be a general example of the whole progress of the people. They will blend.

  “Young woman, you are not a monster. You are the difficult future.”

  Klia stared in puzzlement at Hari.

  “You will have children, and they will have children…stronger than Wanda and Stettin, stronger than the mentalics we have working for us now. Something will happen, something unpredictable, that my equations can’t encompass-another and more successful mutation, a stronger Vara Liso. I can’t put that into my equations-it is an unknown variable, an individual point-tyranny, all control radiating from one individual!”

  Hari’s face had become almost luminous.

  “You…”He held his hand out to Klia. “Take this hand. Let me feel you.”

  She reluctantly reached out.

  “I need a little nudge, my young friend,” Hari said. “Show me what you are.”

  Almost without thinking, Klia reached into his mind, saw a brightness there obscured by dark nebulosities, and with a gentle breath of persuasion, another sign of her returning strength, she blew the clouds away.

  Hari gasped and closed his eyes. His head dropped to one shoulder. He was suddenly more than merely tired. He felt a great sense of release, and for the first time in decades, a knot in his mind, in his body as well, seemed to untie itself. The brightness in his thoughts was not a way around his errors and the fla
ws in the equations-it was a deeper understanding of his own irrelevance, in the long term.

  A thousand years from now, he would be a particle in the smooth flow once again, not his own kind of point-tyranny.

  Dors got up from her chair, taking hold of his arm to help him stay on his feet.

  His work would be forgotten. The Plan would serve its purpose and be swept away, merely one more hypothesis, guiding and shaping, but ultimately no more than another illusion among all the illusions of men-and robots.

  What he had learned in his time fighting Lamurk for the role of First Minister-that the human race was its own kind of mind, its own self-organizing system, with its own reserved knowledge and tendencies-

  Meant that it could also direct its own evolution. Philosophies and theories and truths were morphological appurtenances. Discarded when no longer needed…when the morphology changed.

  The robots had served their purpose. Now they would be rejected, shed, by humanity’s body social. Psychohistory would be shed as well, when its purpose had been served. And Hari Seldon.

  No man, no woman, no machine, no idea, could reign supreme forever.

  Hari opened his eyes. They were as large as a child’s now. He looked around the room, for a moment unable to distinguish people from furniture. Then his vision narrowed and focused.

  “Thank you,” Hari said. “Daneel was right.” He steadied himself against Dors and, with his other hand, braced himself on the back of the chair. It took him some time to order his thoughts. He stared straight at Klia Asgar, and at Brann beyond her.

  “My own ego stood before the solution. Your children will balance. Your genes and talents will spread. There will be resolution of conflict…and the Plan will continue. But not my Plan. The future will see how wrong I can be.

  “Your descendants, your many-times great-grandchildren, will correct me.”

  Klia had seen deeper into Hari than just the problem he faced. With a little shudder, she stepped forward, and with Dors, they lowered Hari into the chair. “I was never told the truth about you,” she said softly, reaching to touch his cheek. The skin was fine and dry and powdery-smooth, faintly resilient, with a ridge of hard bone beneath. Hari smelled clean and human, discipline overlying strength, if such things could be transferred by scent-and why not? How could one see that someone had these traits, and not smell them, as well? Old, and frail, and still quite beautiful and strong. “You really are a great man!” she whispered.

  “No, my dear,” Hari said. “I am nothing, really. And it is quite wonderful to be nothing, I assure you.”

  91.

  “Better late than never,” Gaal Dornick told the technician as they watched Professor Seldon settle into his chair in the recording booth.

  “He seems tired,” the technician said, and checked his gauges to make sure he had the proper settings for the voice of an old man.

  Hari consulted his papers, looking at the first point of major divergence within the equations. He hummed softly to himself, then looked up, waiting for the signal to begin. He was brightly illuminated; the studio beyond was dark, though he could see small lights twinkling in the recording booth.

  Three spherical lenses descended from above and hovered at a level with his chest. He adjusted the blanket on his legs. Four days ago, he had told his colleagues, and in particular Gaal Dornick, that he had had a small stroke, and lost an entire day’s recollections. They had bustled about him and insisted that he not strain himself. So he wore this blanket. He could hardly cough without being surrounded by concerned faces.

  It was a small enough lie. And he had mentioned to Gaal that with the stroke had come a calm and peace he had never known before…and a determination to finish his work before Death came finally.

  He suspected word would get back to Daneel. Somehow, his old friend and mentor would hear, and approve.

  Hari had felt the subtle workings of Daneel’s persuasion, at the conclusion of the meeting with Dors and Klia Asgar and Brann. For a moment, he had felt the memories fading, even as the group headed for the door, and Dors had looked back upon him with an almost bitter and passionate regret. And he had felt something else, bright and intense and impulsive, blocking Daneel’s effort without the robot knowing.

  It must have come from defiant Klia, stronger than Daneel, naturally resisting the manipulations of a robot, however well-meaning. And Hari was grateful. To remember clearly that meeting, and to know what would happen in a year or two…To remember Daneel’s promise, delivered in private in Hari’s bedroom, while the others waited outside, old friends having a final chat, that Dors would be with him when her work was done, when his life was nearing its close.

  She could not be with him now. He was too much in the public eye. The return of the Tiger Woman, or someone very like her, was not feasible.

  But there was something else at work here as well. Hari knew that the time of the robots had come to an end, must come to an end; and he knew that it was very likely Daneel would never completely let go of his task. The same eternal concern and devotion that Daneel felt for Hari, to so gift him with the return of his great love, would eventually move him to interfere again…

  So Daneel must be kept in ignorance of some things, a difficult proposition at best.

  Together, Wanda, Stet tin, Klia, and Brann would see to it, however. Together, they were strong enough and subtle enough.

  “Could you speak, please, Professor Seldon?” the technician asked from his position in the engineering booth. Gaal Dornick stood beside him, barely visible from where Hari sat.

  “I am Hari Seldon, old and full of years.”

  The technician flipped off the voice switch to the studio and looked up at Gaal with some concern. “I hope he’s a little more cheerful when we begin in earnest.”

  “You’re going to Terminus, aren’t you?” Gaal asked the man.

  “Of course. My family’s packed and ready to go. Do you think I’d be here if-”

  “Have you ever met Hari Seldon before now?”

  “Never had the privilege,” the man sniffed. “I’ve heard tales, of course.”

  “He knows quite well what he’s doing, and what kind of figure to play. Never underestimate him,” Gaal said, and though that was inadequate warning or description, he stopped there, and pointed to the Console.

  “Right,” the technician said, and focused on his equipment. “I’ll draw the curtain now and bring in the scramblers. Nobody will know what he’s saying besides himself.”

  Hari tapped his finger lightly on the chair arm. The lights on the spheres changed to amber, then to red. He pushed himself up from the chair and stared into the darkness beyond, imagining faces, people, men and women, anxious to learn their fates. Well, most of the time, for a few occasions at least, he would be able to help. The devil of it was, he did not know specifically when these little speeches would begin to be useless!

  He would record only one message that day, the rest over the next year and a half, as each necessary nudge became clear within the adjusted equations.

  With his most professorial air, quite confident and deliberate, Hari began to speak. He recorded a simple message to those of the Second Foundation, the psychologists and mathists, the mentalics who would train them and alter their germ lines: nothing very profound, merely a kind of pep talk. “To my true grandchildren,” he said, “I give my profoundest thanks and wish you luck. You will never need to hear of an impending Seldon Crisis from me…You will never need anything so dramatic, for you know…”

  He had spoken to Wanda the day before, telling her the final part of the puzzle of the Second Foundation. At first, she had been disappointed, vastly; she had so wanted to get away from Trantor, to start fresh on a new world, however barren. But she had held up remarkably well.

  And he had told her that Daneel must never learn of the true whereabouts of the Second Foundation, of the mentalics who could resist all the efforts of the Giskardian robots, should they ever return to take up
the reins of secret power.

  A few minutes and he was finished.

  He pulled aside the blankets and draped them on the edge of the chair, then stood to leave. The three lenses rose into the darkness above.

  Waiting for Gaal to join him, Hari wondered if Death would be a robot. How problematical for a robot it would be to bring both comfort and an end to a human master! He saw a large, smooth, black-skinned robot, infinitely cautious and caring, serving him and driving him to the last.

  The thought made him smile. Would that the universe could ever be so caring and so gentle.

  92.

  Dors embraced Klia and Brann, then turned to Lodovik.

  “I wish I could send a duplicate of myself with you,” she told him, “and experience what you will experience,” she said.

  Beyond their fenced platform, the small trading ship of Mors Planch, glittering with recent maintenance, rested in its cradle.

  “You would be most useful to us,” Lodovik said.

  Klia looked around the long aisle of ships in the spaceport terminal, and asked, “He isn’t coming to see us off?”

  “Hari?” Dors asked, unsure whom she meant.

  “Daneel,” Klia said.

  “I don’t know where he is, now,” Dors said. “He’s long had the habit of coming and going without telling anyone what he’s up to. His work is done.”

  “I find that hard to believe,” Klia said, and her face reddened. She did not wish to sound like a hypocrite. “I mean…”

  Brann nudged her gently with his forearm.

  Mors Planch stepped forward. Lodovik still made him uneasy. Well, they would be traveling a great distance together once more. And why should he worry especially about Lodovik, when their ship would carry some fifty humaniform robots, temporarily asleep, and the severed heads of many more? A wealth of fearful riches! And his ticket to freedom, as well. “I was told to confirm our route with you, in case there were last-minute changes.”