Greg Bear - Foundation and Chaos

“You have free will, a convincing human form, and the ability to break through prior education and programming to reach a new and higher understanding. Though you have worked to destroy all my efforts, I cannot deactivate you, because you have, in my judgment centers, which I may not dispute, achieved the status of a human being. In your own way, you may be as valuable as Hari Seldon.”

Linge Chen stopped his exercising and stared at the informer in puzzled wonder. He had almost become used to the notion that mechanical men, holdovers from the distant past, had made such huge changes in human history; but to see them showing a philosophical flexibility lost to even the most brilliant of Trantor’s meritocrats…

For a moment, he was both envious and angry.

He settled in a cross-legged squat before the informer, prepared for almost anything, but not for the sudden sadness that descended upon him as the conversation in the cell continued.

“I am not a human being, R. Daneel,” Lodovik said. “I do not feel like one, and I have only mimicked their actions, never actually behaved with human motivations.”

“Yet you rebelled against my authority because you believed I was wrong.”

“I know about R. Giskard Reventlov. I know that you conspired with Giskard to allow Earth to be destroyed, across centuries, forcing human migration into space. And not once did you consult with a human being to determine whether your judgment was correct. The servants became the masters. Are you telling me now that robots should not have interfered in human history?”

“No,” Daneel said. “I do not doubt that what we did was correct, and necessary at the time. A complete understanding of the human situation so many millennia ago would be difficult to convey. Still, I am prepared to accept that our role is almost at an end. The human race is rejecting us again, in the most compelling and forceful way-by evolution, the deepest motives of their biology.”

“You refer to the mentalic Vara Liso,” Lodovik said.

“And Klia Asgar. When the mentalics began to appear, thousands of years ago, in very small numbers, and make their way into positions of social prominence, I knew they were an important trend. But they were not so frightfully strong then. Persuaders have always been selected against in the past because of adverse biological consequences-disrupted societies, unbalanced political dynamics. They have always led to chaos, to top-down tyrannical rule rather than growth from the widespread base. Charisma is but a special case of mentalic persuasion, and it has had disastrous consequences in all human ages.

“For the past few centuries, apparently, they have been selected for despite these possible disruptions, by mechanisms not yet clear to me-but clearly with the goal of removing the guidance of robots forever. Humanity seems willing to take the risk of ultimate tyranny, of unbridled charisma, for the benefit of being free.”

“Yet you are a persuader, albeit a mechanical one. Do you think your role has been detrimental?”

“It is not what I think that matters. I have accomplished my ends, very nearly. I was motivated by the examples of what an undirected humanity was capable of. Genocide among their kinds and…In circumstances even now not pleasant to speak of, when robots were forced to do their bidding and commit the greatest crimes in the history of the Galaxy. These events drove me to act, and expand my mandate as a Giskardian-and finally to make my way to Trantor, and hone the human tools of prediction.”

“Psychohistory. Hari Seldon.”

“Yes,” Daneel said. The conversation thus far had been carried on with no motion whatsoever, Daneel standing, Lodovik sitting on his bunk, arms at their sides, not even facing each other, for there was no need to maintain eye contact. But Lodovik now stood, and faced Daneel directly.

“The eye of a robot is no mirror to its soul,” Lodovik said. “Yet I have always known, observing you, witnessing the patterns of expression in your face and body, that you did not willfully engage in actions contrary to humanity’s best interests. I came to believe you were misdirected, misled, perhaps by R. Giskard Reventlov itself-”

“My personal motivations are not at issue,” Daneel said. “From this point on, our goals coincide. I need you, and I am about to remove the last vestige of robotic control over humanity. We have done what we could, all that we could; now, humanity must find its own way.”

“You foresee no more disasters, feel no more need to interfere to prevent those disasters?”

“There will be disasters,” Daneel said. “And we may yet act to balance them out-but only indirectly. Our solutions will be human ones.”

“But Hari Seldon is himself a tool of robots-his influence is but an extension of you.”

“That is not so. Psychohistory was posited by humans tens of thousands of years ago, independently of robots. Hari is merely its highest expression, through his own innate brilliance. I have directed, yes, but not created. The creation of psychohistory is a human accomplishment.”

Lodovik considered for a few seconds, and across his very un-robotic and supple face flickered emotions both complex and forthright. Daneel saw this, and marveled, for in his experience, no robot had ever exhibited facial expression but through direct and conscious effort, with the exception of Dors Venabili-and then only in the presence of Hari. What they could have made us! What a race we could have been!

But he subdued this old sad thought.

“You will not remove Hari Seldon and his influence?”

“I know you well enough to entrust you with my deepest thoughts and doubts, Lodovik-”

Here Daneel reached out with his Giskardian talents, but not toward Lodovik…

For two minutes, Linge Chen and all those others who eavesdropped on this meeting stared blankly at their informers, neither hearing nor seeing.

When they recovered, the robots were finished, and Daneel was leaving the cell. The guards escorted Lodovik Trema from the cell minutes later.

Within the hour, all the prisoners within the Special Security Detention Center had been released: troublemakers from Dahl, Streeling, and other Sectors; the humaniform robots, including Dors Venabili; and the young mentalics from Plussix’s warehouse.

Only the robots who looked like robots remained in custody, at Chen’s suggestion, since their hiding places were no longer secret. Later, they would be given over to Daneel to do with as he saw fit. Chen did not worry about their fate, so long as they were removed from Trantor and no longer interfered in the Empire.

Days later, Linge Chen would remember some of the words Daneel had spoken to Lodovik in the cell, telling of a vast and age-long secret, but clearly the conversation had gone in another direction at that point, for he could not remember what the secret had been.

Lodovik considered what he had been told. Daneel had left him free to make his own decision.

“Psychohistory is its own defeat,” Daneel said to Lodovik in the cell, before the release. “ Human history is a chaotic system. Where it is predictable, the prediction will shape the history-an inevitable circular system. And when the most important events occur-the biological upwelling of a Vara Liso or a Klia Asgar-such events are inherently unpredictable, and tend to work against any psychohistory. Psychohistory is a motivator for those who will create the First Foundation, a belief system of immense power and subtlety. And the First Foundation will prevail, in time; Hari Seldon’s science lets us see this far.

“But the distant future-when humanity outgrows all ancient systems of belief, all psychology and morphology, all of its yolk-sacs of culture and biology-the seeds of the Second Foundation… .”