Gregory Benford - Foundation’s Fear

Now a fresh entering class was shedding its garments at the outer rim of the great basin. At the inner edge, Grey Men completing their five years were given their old clothes back. They donned them ritually, ready to go out in perpetual duty to the Imperium.

Their dress followed the fashion of the ancient Emperor Sven the Severe. Beneath extreme outer simplicity, the inner linings were elaborately decorated, all the tailor’s art and owner’s wealth expended in concealment. Some Grey Men had invested their families’ savings in a single filigree.

Dors marched beside him. “How much longer do you have to”

“Quiet! I’m showing my obedience to the Imperium.”

“You’re showing goose bumps.”

Next he had to gaze with proper respect at Scrabo Tower, where an emperor had thrown herself to a crowd below; at Greyabbey, a ruined monastery; at Greengraves, an ancient burying field, now a park; at the Giant’s Ring, said to be the spot where an early Imperial megaship had crashed, forming a crater a klick wide.

At last Hari passed under high, double-twisted arches and into the ceremonial rooms. The procession halted and the Closet of Greeting disgorged his clothes. Just in time-he was turning a decided blue.

Dors took the clothes while he shook hands with the principals. Then he hurried into the privacy of a low building and hastily put his simple garments back on, teeth chattering. They were neatly folded and encased in a ceremonial sleeve.

“What foolishness,” Dors said when he returned. “All so I can get a major medium,” he said.

Then the principals ushered him out before the grand crowd. Above and below, 3D snouts on miniflyers bobbed and weaved for a good shot.

The huge dome above seemed as big as a real sky. Of course, this limited his audience, since a majority of Trantorians could never endure such spaces. The Greys, though, could take it. Thus their ceremony had come to be the largest event on the entire planet.

Here was his chance. He had reeled away from the true, open sky on Sark, nauseated-and yet had zoomed through the infinite perspectives of the Galaxy. He had been afraid that this huge volume would again excite the odd phobias in him.

But no. Somehow the dome made the dwindling perspectives all right. Fears banished, Hari sucked in a deep breath and began.

The roar of applause penetrated even into the ceremonial rooms. Hari entered between flanking columns of Greys with the clamor storming at his back.

“Startling, sir!” a principal said eagerly to Hari. “To make detailed predictions about the Sark situation.”

“I feel people should ponder the possibilities.”

“Then the rumors are true? You do have a theory of events?”

“Not at all,” Hari said hastily. “I-”

“Come quickly,” Dors said at his elbow.

“But I’d like-”

“Come!”

Back out on the ramparts, he waved to the plain of people. A blare of applause answered. But Dors was leading him to the left, toward a crowd of official onlookers. They stood in exact rows and waved to him eagerly.

“The woman in red.” She pointed.

“Her? She’s in the official party. You said earlier she was a Lamurk-”

The tall woman burst into flame.

Vivid orange plumes enveloped her. She shrieked horribly. Her arms beat uselessly at the oily flames.

The crowd panicked and bolted. Imperials surrounded her. The screams became screeching pleas.

Someone turned a fire extinguisher on the woman.

White foam enveloped her. A sudden silence.

“Back inside,” Dors said.

“How did you…?”

“She just indicted herself.”

“Ignited, you mean.”

“That, too. I passed through that crowd at the end of your speech and left your clothes in a bundle behind her.”

“What? But I’ve got them on.”

“No, those I brought.” She grinned. “For once your predictable dress habits paid off.”

Hari and Dors walked down the flanking columns of Principals, Hari remembered to nod and smile as he whispered, “You stole my clothes?”

“After the Lamurk agents had planted microagents in them, yes. I had tucked an identical set from your closet into my handbag. As soon as I calculated the switch was done, I tested your original clothes and found the microagent phosphors, set to go off in forty-five minutes.”

“How did you know?”

“The best way to get close to you would come at this odd Grey Man event, with the clothes gambit. It was only logical.”

Hari blinked. “And you say I am calculating.”

“The woman won’t die. You would have, though, wrapped up in microagents when they ignited.”

“Thank goodness for that. I would hate-”

“My love, ‘goodness’ is not operating here. I wanted her alive so she could be questioned.”

“Oh,” Hari said, feeling suddenly quite naive.

Joan of Arc found in herself both bravery and fear.

She peered inside her Self, as Voltaire had. She turned to confront him-and plunged down through her own inward layers. She had simply intended to turn. Below that command, she saw that if she simply took a smaller step to make the turn, she would fall outward. Instead, unconscious portions of her mind knew to start the turn by making herself fall a bit toward the inside of the curve. Then these tiny subselves used “centrifugal force” {the term jumped into full definition and she understood it in a flash) to right herself for the next step…which required a further deft calculation.

Incredible! Her huge society of bone and muscle, joint and nerve, was a labyrinth of small selves, speaking to each other.

Such abundance! Clear evidence of a higher design.

“Now I see it! she cried. “The decomposition of us all?” Voltaire said forlornly.

“Be not sad! These myriad Selves are a joyous truth.”

“I find it sobering. Our minds did not evolve to do philosophy or science, alas. Rather, to find and eat, fight and flee, love and lose.”

“I have learned much from you, but not your melancholy.”

“Montaigne termed happiness ‘a singular incentive to mediocrity,’ and I can now see his reasoning.”

“But regard! The fogs around us betray the same intricate patterns. We can fathom them. And furthermy soul! It proves to be a pattern of thoughts and desires, intentions and woes, memories and bad jokes.”

“You take these inner workings as a spiritual metaphor?”

“Of course. Like me, my soul is an emergent process, embedded in the universe-whether a cosmos of atom or of number, does not matter, my good sir.”

“So when you die, your soul goes back into the abstract closet we plucked it forth from?”

“Not we. The Creator!”

“Dr. Johnson proved a stone was real by kicking it. We know that our minds are real because we experience them. So these other things around us-the strange fog, the Dittos-are entries in a smooth spectrum, leading from rocks to Self.”

“A deity is not on that spectrum.”

“Ah, I see-to you He is the Great Preserver in the Sky, where we are all ‘backed up,’ as the computer types say?”

“The Creator holds the true essence of ourselves.” She grinned maliciously. “Perhaps we are the backups, made new every jump of clock time.”

“Nasty thought.” He smiled despite himself. “You are becoming a logician, m’love.”

“I have been stealing parts of you.”

“Copying me into yourself? Why do I not feel outraged?”

“Because the desire to possess the other is… love.”

Voltaire enlarged himself, legs shooting down into the SysCity, smashing buildings. The fog roiled angrily. “This I can fathom. Artificial realms such as mathematics and theology are carefully built to be free of interesting inconsistency. But love is beautiful in its lack of logical restraint.”