Greg Bear - Foundation and Chaos

Hari stepped back from the bench to join Gaal.

“Not you,” Chen said softly.

The Commission court bailiff followed Hari and Linge Chen into the consultation chamber behind the judge’s bench. Hari sat in a narrow chair before the Chief Commissioner’s small desk and watched Chen warily. Chen did not sit, but waited for his Laventian servant to help him out of his ceremonial robes. In a simple gray cassock, Chen reached up to the ceiling with hands clenched, cracked his knuckles, and turned to Seldon.

“You have enemies,” Chen said. “That is no surprise. What is surprising is that your enemies have been my enemies, much of the time. Does that interest you?”

Hari pursed his lips but said nothing.

Chen looked away as if supremely bored. “This exile will not, of course, extend to you,” he continued. “You will not leave Trantor. I will forbid it if you try.”

“I am too old and do not wish to leave, my lord,” Hari said. “There is still work to do here.”

“So much dedication,” Chen mused softly, rubbing one elbow with the palm of his opposite hand. “Should you survive, and finish your work, I will be interested to learn of the results.”

“We’ll all be dead,” Hari said, “before the results are proved or disproved.”

“Come, Dr. Seldon,” Chen said. “Speak with me frankly, as one old manipulator to another. I am told you have planned the results of this trial years in advance, through careful political arrangement-and with considerable political skill.”

“Not planned; foretold through mathematics,” Hari said.

“Whatever. Now, we are at last done with each other, to our mutual relief.”

“My lord, what about the Commission of General security?” Hari asked. “They might object to these results.”

“There is no longer such an agency,” Chen said. “The Emperor has withdrawn their charter. Perhaps that was foretold as well, by your mathematics.”

Hari folded his hands before him. “They don’t even show in the lattice of results, my lord,” he said, and realized his tone might be considered arrogant. Too late.

Chen accepted these words in silence, then spoke in a chilling monotone. “You have studied me, Professor Seldon, but you do not know me. If I have my way, you never will.” The Chief Commissioner curled his lip and stared up at the ceiling. “I despise your mathematics. It is nothing more than dressed-up superstition, tricked-out religion, and it smells of the same degeneration and decay you so enthusiastically embrace and promote. You are of a kind with those who hunt for God-like robots in every shadow. I let you go now because you are nothing to me, you no longer have any place in my designs.”

The Chief Commissioner waved his hand to the bailiff. “You are remanded to civil authority for release,” he said, and left the room with a small swirl of his cassock.

The Lavrentian servant glanced briefly and curiously at Hari, and departed after his master. Hari could have sworn the servant was trying to communicate a sense of relief.

“Professor Seldon,” the bailiff said, with an age-old air of professional courtesy, “follow me.”

Kallusin had finished the removal of Plussix’s head. He withdrew the cables which had provided temporary power to the robot as the most recent memories were fixed in permanent storage within the iridium-sponge backup, then he lifted the head from the plastic cradle, away from the slightly smoking neck, and lowered it into the archival metal box.

He could hear the commotion among Plussix’s wards as the troops moved through the warehouse. Through the window overlooking the warehouse interior, Kallusin could see Prothon’s troops herding the young mentalics-thirty in all-toward personnel carriers at street level. Whatever their persuasive skills, they did not seem able to escape.

He could do nothing for them now. He lifted the box, carried it to the end of the long chamber, and stopped as he heard boots beyond the door.

To Kallusin’s surprise, it was Prothon himself who entered, pushing the door open with a slight kick. Kallusin stood in place as the general walked into the chamber. Prothon surveyed the dilapidated equipment and the half dismantled robot in the harness a few meters away.

The general was unarmed, and his troops hung back behind the door. For a moment, nothing was said and neither moved.

“Are you human?” Prothon finally asked.

Kallusin did not reply.

“Robot, then. All my men down there are getting headaches-I’m just as glad you’re not one of the youngsters.” Prothon nodded at the box carrying Plussix’s head. “What’s that-a bomb?”

Kallusin said, “No.”

“No weapons, no means of defense-almost certainly a robot.” Prothon regarded him curiously. “In good condition, and very convincing. Very old, centuries?”

Kallusin did not even blink. There was nothing more he could do without harming Prothon or the troops before him, and he could not harm humans.

“I order you to identify yourself,” Prothon said, then, astonishingly, he added, “Owner identity may be excluded, but personal type and origin and serial number may not.”

“R. Kallusin Dass, S-13407-D-IO237.”

“Robot Kallusin Dass, Solaria, late model,” Prothon said quietly. “Pleased to make your acquaintance. I have instructions to take two robots into custody. One is R. Daneel or Danee, surname and ID unknown. The other is R. Lodovik Trema, ID also unknown. You are neither of these?”

Kallusin shook his head.

“What’s in the box, R. Kallusin? Mandatory, excluding information that may be of harm to your master or owner.”

Prothon knew the old forms of interrogation. Kallusin could have eluded a question that his programming could consider ambiguous or harmful to his owners-the human race. Plussix had reassigned ownership of his robots to the broader category a century before, foreseeing advantages to this workaround.

A restrained kind of Zeroth Law…Never necessary, until now.

Kallusin could not, on short notice, come up with any reason not to inform Prothon what was in the box. Their mission was over, at any rate.

“A robotic head,” Kallusin said. “Nonfunctional.”

“Are you the only robot remaining? We have reason to believe others have left this building already, before we arrived.”

“I am the only one remaining.”

“If I take you into custody, will you remain functional?”

“No,” Kallusin said. That would harm the cause, and possibly therefore harm his owner-the human race.

“If my men enter…you will not remain functional?”

“I will not,” Kallusin said

“A standoff, then. I have very little time, but I’m curious. What were you trying to do, here?”