Gregory Benford - Foundation’s Fear

“Then what makes us different from -those?” His finger jabbed at the alien mists.

“Look to yourself, my love,” she said softly.

Voltaire peered inward again and saw only chaos. Living chaos.

“Where did you learn that ?”

Hari smiled, shrugged. “Mathematicians aren’t all frosty intellect, y’know.”

Dors studied him with wild surmise. “Pan…?”

“In a way.” He collapsed into the welcoming sheets.

Their lovemaking was somehow different now. He was wise enough to not try putting a name and definition to it.

Going so far back into what it meant to be human had changed him. He could feel the effect in his energetic step, in an effervescent sense of living.

Dors said nothing more, just smiled. He thought that she did not understand. (Later, he saw that not speaking about it, keeping it beyond speech, showed that she did.)

After an aimless time of no thinking she said, “The Grey Men.”

“Uh. Oh. Yes…” He got up and threw on his usual interchangeable outfit. No reason to dress up for this state function. The whole point was to look ordinary. This he could achieve.

He reviewed his notes, scratched by hand on ordinary cellulose paper…and descended into one of the odd reveries he had experienced lately.

For a human-that is, an evolved pan-printed pages were better than computer screens, no matter how glitzy. Pages rely on surrounding light, what experts termed “subtractive color,” which gave adjustable character to appearance. With simple motions, a page could bend and tilt and move away or toward the eye. While reading, the old reptilian and mammal and primate parts of the brain took part in holding the book, scanning over the curved page, deciphering shadows and reflections.

He thought about this, experiencing the new perspective he had on himself as a contemplative animal. He had learned, after returning from Panucopia, that he had always hated computer screens.

Screens used additive color, providing their own light-hard and flat and unchanging. They were best read by holding a static posture. Only the upper, Homo Sapiens part of the brain fully engaged, while the lower fractions lay idle.

All through his life, working before screens, his voiceless body had protested. And had been ignored. After all, to the reasoning mind, screens seemed more alive, active, fast. They glowed with energy.

After a while, though, they were monotonous. The other fractions of his self got restless, bored, fidgety, all below conscious levels. Eventually, he felt that as fatigue.

Now, Hari could feel it directly. His body somehow spoke more fluidly.

Dressing, Dors said, “What’s made you so…”

“Spirited?”

“Strong.”

“The rub of the real.”

That was all he would say. They finished dressing. The Specials arrived and escorted them into another Sector. Hari immersed himself in the incessant business of being a candidate for First Minister.

Millennia ago a prosperous Zone sent to Trantor the Mountain of Majesty. It had to be tugged there, taking seven centuries by slowboat.

Emperor Krozlik the Crafty directed it set on the horizon of his palace, where it towered over the city. An entire alp, sculpted by the finest artists, it reigned as the most imposing creation of that age. Four millennia later, a youthful emperor of too much ambition had it knocked down for an even more grandiose project, now also gone.

Dors and Hari and their perimeter of Specials approached the sole remnant of the Mountain of Majesty beneath a great dome. Dors picked up signs of the inevitable secret escort.

“The tall woman to the left,” Dors whispered. “In red.”

“How come you can spot them and the Specials can’t?”

“I have technology they do not.”

“How’s that possible? The Imperial laboratories”

“The Empire is twelve millennia old. Many things are lost,” she said cryptically.

“Look, I’ve got to attend this.”

“As with the High Council last time?”

“I love you so much, even your sarcasm is appealing.

“Despite herself she chuckled. “Just because the Greys asked you-”

“The Greys Salutation is a handy pulpit at the right time.”

“And so you wore your worst clothes.”

“My standard garb, as the Greys require.”

“Off-white shirt, black slacks, black padshoes. Dull.”

“Modest,” he sniffed.

He nodded to the crowds grouped in quadrants about the decayed base of the mountain. Applause and catcalls rippled through the ranks of Greys, who stretched away in columns and files as formal as a geometric proof.

“And this?” Dors was alarmed.

“Also standard.”

Birds were common pets in Trantor, so it was inevitable that the obsessive Greys would come to excel in their management. In all Sectors one saw single darting bundles of color. Here flocks swarmed perpetually in the high-arched hexagonal spaces, wheeling and calling like living, rotating disks. Patented Smartfowl swarms made hover-visions of kaleidoscopic wonder. Such shows, in vast vertical auditoria, attracted hundreds of thousands.

“Here come the felines,” Dors said with distaste.

In some Sectors cats prowled in packs, their genes trimmed to make them courtly in manners and elegant in appearance. Here a lady escort sallied forth with the Closet of Greeting, attended by a thousand slickcoated blue cats of golden eyes. They flowed like a pool of water around her in elegant, measured procession. She wore a violent crimson and orange outfit, like a flame at the center of the cool cat-pond. Then she stripped with one elegant, sweeping gesture. She stood utterly nude, nonchalant behind her cat barrier.

He had been briefed, but still he gaped.

“Unsurprising,” Dors said wryly. “The cats are naked, too, in their way.”

Somehow the packs of dogs never attained that elegance while parading. In some Sectors they would do spontaneous acrobatics at the lift of a master’s eyebrow, fetch drinks, or croon wobbly songs in concert. Hari was glad the Grey Men had no canine-processions; he still winced at the thought of the wirehounds, racing forward on the attack against Ipan

He shook his head, banishing the memory.

“I’ve picked up three more of Lamurk’s.”

“I had no idea they were such fans of mine.”

“Were he sure of winning in the High Council, I would feel safer.”

“Because then he wouldn’t need to have me killed?”

“Exactly.” She spoke between the teeth of her public smile. “His agents here imply that he is not certain of the vote.”

“Or maybe someone else wishes me dead?”

“Always a possibility, especially the Academic Potentate.”

Hari kept his tone light, but his heart thumped quicker. Was he getting to enjoy the buzz of excitement from danger itself?

The nude woman advanced through her parting pool of cats and made the ritual gesture of welcome to Hari. He stepped forward, bowed, took a deep breath-and slid a thumb down the front of his shirt. Off it came, then the pants. He stood nude before several hundred thousand people, trying to look casual.

The cat woman led him through the pool, to a chorus of meowing. Behind them followed the Closet of Greeting. They approached the phalanx of Greys, who now also shucked their robes.

They escorted him up the ramps of the eroded mountain. Below he saw the legions of Greys also shed their clothes. Square klicks of bare flesh…

This ceremony was at least ten millennia old. It symbolized the training regimen which began with the entrance of young Grey Men and Women. Casting aside the clothes of their home worlds symbolized their devotion to the larger purposes of the Empire. Five years they trained on Trantor, five billion strong.