Gregory Benford - Foundation’s Fear

Hari walked through these, seeing them through the lens of Panucopia. It was as though people announced through their choices their primeval origins. Was early humanity, like pans, more secure in marginal terrain-where vistas let them search for food while keeping an eye out for enemies? Frail, without claws or sharp teeth, they might have needed a quick retreat into trees or water.

Similarly, studies showed that some phobias were Galaxy-wide. People who had never seen the images nonetheless reacted with startled fear to holos of spiders, snakes, wolves, sharp drops, heavy masses overhead. None displayed phobias against more recent threats to their lives: knives, guns, electrical sockets, fast cars.

All this had to factor somehow into psychohistory.

“No tracers here, sir,” the Specials’ captain said. “Little hard to keep track, though.”

Hari smiled. The captain suffered from a common Trantorian malady: squashed perspectives. Here in the open, natives would mistake distant, large objects for nearby, small ones. Even Hari had a touch of it. On Panucopia, he at first mistook herds of grazers for rats close at hand.

By now Hari had learned to look through the pomp and glory of rich settings, the crowds of servants, the finery. He ruminated on his psychohistorical research as he followed the protocol officer and did not fully come back to the real world until he sat across from the Academic Potentate.

She spoke ornately, “Please do accept my humble offering,” accompanied delicate, translucent cups of steaming grasswater.

He remembered being irked by this woman and the high academics he met that evening. It all seemed so long ago.

“You will note the aroma is that of ripe oobalong fruit. This is my personal choice among the splendid grasswaters of the world Calafia. It reflects the high esteem in which I hold those who now grace my simple domicile with such illustrious presence.”

Hari had to lower his head in what he hoped was a respectful gesture, to hide his grin. There followed more high-flown phrases about the medical benefits of grasswater, ranging from relief of digestion problems to repair of basal cellular injuries.

Her chins quivered. “You must need succor in such trying times, Academician.”

“Mostly I need time to get my work done.”

“Perhaps you would favor a healthy portion of the black lichen meat? It is the finest, harvested from the flanks of the steep peaks of Ambrose.”

“Next time, certainly.”

“It is hoped fervently that this lowly personage had perhaps been of small service to a most worthy and revered figure of our time…one who perhaps is overstressed?”

A steely edge to her voice put him on guard.

“Could madam get to the point?”

“Very well. Your wife? She is a complex lady.”

He tried to show nothing in his face. “And?”

“I wonder how your prospects in the High Council would fare if I revealed her true nature?”

Hari’s heart sank. This he had not anticipated.

“Blackmail, is it?”

“Such a crude word!”

“Such a crude act.”

Hari sat and listened to her intricate analysis of how Dors’ identity as a robot would undermine his candidacy. All quite true

“And you speak for knowledge, for science?” he said bitterly.

“I am acting in the best interests of my constituents,” she said blandly. “You are a mathist, a theorist. You would be the first academic to reign as First Minister in many decades. We do not think you will rule well. Your failure will cast shadows upon us meritocrats, one and all.”

Hari bristled. “Who says?”

“Our considered opinion. You are impractical. Unwilling to make hard decisions. All our psychers agree with that diagnosis.”

“Psychers?” Hari snorted derisively. Despite calling his theory psychohistory, he knew there was no good model of the individual human personality.

“ I would make a far better candidate, just for exampie.”

“Some candidate. You’re not even loyal to your kind.”

“There you have it! You’re unable to rise above your origins.”

“And the Empire has become the war of all against all.”

Science and mathematics was a high achievement of Imperial civilization, but to Hari’s mind, it had few heroes. Most good science came from bright minds at play. From men and women able to turn an elegant insight, to find beguiling tricks in arcane matters, deft architects of prevailing opinion. Play, even intellectual play, was fun, and that was good in its own right. But Hari’s heroes were those who stuck it out against hard opposition, drove toward daunting goals, accepting pain and failure and keeping on anyway. Perhaps, like his father, they were testing their own character, as much as they were being part of the suave scientific culture.

And which type was he?

Time to raise the stakes.

He stood, brushing aside the bowls with a clatter. “You’ll have my reply soon.”

He stepped on a cup going out and shattered it.

Voltaire shouted proudly, “I spent much of my career exiled for speaking Truth to Power. I’ll admit to some flaws in judgment, as when I fawned over Frederick the Great. Necessity shapes manners, I’ll remind you. I was courageous, yes-but snobbish, too.”

[THOUGH A MATHEMATICAL REPRESENTATION]

[YOU SHARE THE ANIMAL SPIRITS OF YOUR KIND]

[STILL]

“Of course!” Joan shouted in his defense.

[YOUR KIND ARE THE WORST OF ALL VIVIFORMS]

“Living things?” Joan frowned. “But they are of holy origin.”

[YOUR KIND IS A PERNICIOUS BLEND]

[A TERRIBLE MARRIAGE OF MECHANISM]

[WITH YOUR BEAST URGE TO EXPAND]

“You can see our inner structures as surely as we.” Voltaire swelled, popping with energies. “Probably better, I’ll venture. You must know that for us, consciousness reigns; it does not govern.”

[PRIMITIVE AND AWKWARD]

[TRUE]

[BUT NOT THE CAUSE OF YOUR SIN]

She and Voltaire were giants now, self-ballooned to stride across the simulated landscape. The alien fogs clung to their ankles. A proud way of showing their courage, perhaps, a bit full of self. Still, she was glad she had thought of it. These fogs held humanity in contempt. A show of force was useful, as she had found against the vile English several times.

Voltaire said, “I held Power in contempt, usually, yet I’ll admit I was everlastingly hungry for it, too.”

[THE SIGNATURE OF YOUR KIND]

“So I am a contradiction! Humanity is a rope stretched between paradoxes.”

[WE DO NOT FIND YOUR HUMANITY MORAL]

“But we-they-are!” Joan shouted down at the fog. Though thin compared with them, the fogs clung like glue and filled the valleys with cottony gum.

[YOU DO NOT KNOW YOUR OWN HISTORY]

“We are of history! “ Voltaire boomed.

[THE RECORDS HERE IN THE MATHEMATICAL SPACES]

[ARE FALSE]

“One can never be sure of being read right, you know.”

Joan saw in Voltaire an anxiety barely concealed. Though their opponent used a voice cool and dispassionate, she too felt the insidious threat in its cast of words.

Voltaire went on, as if to please a king in court, “A bit of historical example. I once saw in a churchyard in England, there to hail the bright Newton, a headstone, thus:

of John McFarlane

Drown’d in the Water of Leith

So you see, there can be mistakes of translation.” He lifted his elaborate courtier’s hat and made a sweeping bow. The hat’s plumed feather danced in a fresh wind. Joan saw that he was distracting the fog while trying to subtly blow it away.

The fogs flashed orange lightning and swelled, enormous and purple. Thunderheads rose and towered above them.