David Brin - Foundation’s Triumph

“The Tiktok Revolt.”

They nodded at once. Although it had happened forty years ago, no one could forget how a new type of robot (far more primitive than Daneel’s secretive positronic kind) suddenly went berserk on Trantor, doing great harm until they were all dismantled and outlawed. Officially, the whole episode was blamed on the chaos in Junin Quarter, just before Hari became First Minister.

“That’s right,” Vlimt said. “By helping incite the so-called revolt, you helped discredit the whole concept of mechanical helpers and servants. Of course it was all a plot by the ruling class to keep the proletarians subjugated forever and in their place-”

Fortunately, Vlimt’s next stream of fanatical invective was cut short, interrupted by a sound from behind-someone clearing his throat by the airlock.

Everyone turned. A dark-haired, dusky man stood there, dressed in a normal gray ship suit, with an efficient-looking blaster loosely holstered at his side. Hari quickly recognized the third member of the raiding party.

“Mors Planch,” he said, recalling their meeting just a year ago, around the time of his trial by the Commission for Public Safety. “So. I knew there had to be somebody competent aboard that ship.”

Sybyl and Vlimt hissed. But the newcomer nodded at Hari.

“Hello, Seldon.” Then he turned to his garishly dressed partners.

“Didn’t I ask you two not to get into a quarrel with the hostages? It’s pointless and tiresome.”

“We hired you and your crew, pilot Planch-” Vlimt began. But Jeni Cuicet burst in at that moment, interrupting with evident excitement.

“Is that what we are? Hostages?”

“Not you, child,” answered Sybyl, whose motherly smile seemed incongruous on her gaudy, made-up face. “You have the makings of a fine recruit for the revolution!

“But as for these others”-she gestured especially toward Hari-”we plan on using them to help win a war of liberation. First for a planet, and then for all humankind.”

There were preparations to make. Plans to coordinate with distant agents of the New Renaissance. Other guerrilla teams had been sent to kidnap important peers of the realm, who would offer much better leverage than a disgraced and forgotten former First Minister. According to Hari’s own self-appraisal, he was about as valuable a bargaining chip as a crooked half credit piece.

Sybyl and Planch chose me for personal reasons, he felt certain. They want revenge for Junin and Sark and Madder Loss. I’ll never convince them that psychohistorical factors doomed those cultural revolutions before they began.

He could foresee one benefit coming from the fall of the Galactic Empire. Although many of the factors leading to chaos outbreaks were still mysterious, peace, trade, and prosperity were among the essential preconditions, and those would be scarce during the Interregnum. People living in the coming harsh millennium would face other kinds of problems. But at least they would be spared this peculiar madness.

Poor Daneel, Hari thought. You set up the empire to be as benign and gentle as possible-distracting the ambitious with harmless games while setting nitpickers like Horis to work shuffling papers and keeping ships in motion. Everything ran smoothly, yet that underlying smoothness created an ideal breeding ground for the thing you feared most.

And the thing that I understand least.

While Sybyl and her colleagues waited to coordinate their actions with other agents across the galaxy, Horis Antic begged to be allowed to continue the research.

“What harm could it do? We’re in deep space, far from any planets or shipping lanes. Instead of just hanging around, we could be discovering something that’s of value to everybody! What if my correlations and Seldon’s equations let us predict where chaos worlds…or renaissances…are likely to appear next?”

“Why? So you could squelch them faster, Grey Man?” Gornon Vlimt sneered.

“May I point out that you people are the ones with guns?” Captain Maserd commented at that point.

“Hmm.” Mors Planch rubbed his chin. “I see what you’re saying. We get the results first. So we might use this breakthrough to find nascent freedom-worlds early and foster their change, preparing so far in advance that the momentum can’t be stopped or quarantined.”

Hari felt a shiver, wondering what Maserd was up to. But the big nobleman wore a poker face. I hope he knows what he’s doing. My formulas aren’t very good at dealing with individuals and groups on a small scale. At this level, Maserd’s political cunning may be sharper than my own rusty skills.

For the first time in many years, he experienced something like fear. His plan to salvage civilization faced one paramount threat-a sudden unleashing of chaos across the galaxy. Hari envisioned this as a splatter of horrid blotches, etching holes in the Prime Radiant, unraveling the gorgeous tapestry of equations, erasing every vestige of the predictability that had been his life’s work.

After some discussion, the Ktlinans agreed to Antic’s proposal. Mors Planch posted some of his crew as guards, and Maserd was told to set a trajectory, continuing their search spiral along a curve denoted in red on the holo charts.

A few hours later, Horis Antic grew excited and approached Hari with news.

“Guess what, Professor! I just added Ktlina to my database of chaos outbreaks, and that one datum refined the model by over five percent! I think I can predict, with some degree of confidence, that we’ll reach the center of a really big probability nexus in just another day!”

The little man had just accomplished, laboring over a computer, what Hari figured out within moments after first hearing the planet’s name. Still, I’m impressed, Hari thought.

“This adjustment will take us straight into a giant molecular cloud,” Maserd commented, when he saw the proposed course change.

“Is that a problem?”

“Not really. In fact, it makes sense. If someone was hiding a boojum, and I had a hankering to find one, that’s where I’d go searching.”

So the Pride of Rhodia accelerated alongside the rebel spacecraft and under the watchful eye of Mors Planch, while others aboard the yacht continued bickering, posing, or evaluating, according to their natures. Hari kept quiet for a while, learning a lot about the Ktlina “renaissance” just by watching its onboard representatives.

Although they claimed that all class distinctions had been erased in their new society, Sybyl still talked and walked like a middle-ranking meritocratic scientist. Her extravagant clothes and cosmetic prettifications were clearly excessive overcompensations, pretending a stylishness she just wasn’t made for. Despite all her shouted tributes to equality, Sybyl kept preening before the aristocrat, Maserd, while barely acknowledging the mere bureaucrat, Horis Antic.

Old habits die hard, Hari thought. Despite your dogma of rebellion.

Gornon Vlimt seemed more relaxed in his role as envoy from a bold renaissance, perhaps because he was already a member of the fifth and smallest social caste-the Eccentric Order. Creative misfits of all kinds slipped into the eighty approved artistic modes, including several that were sanctioned to satirize the hidebound and shake up the stodgy… within the confines of good taste, that is.

Although Vlimt was clearly pleased to be free of those traditional limits, he wore his unconventionality with more natural grace than Sybyl did, as if he had been born to it.

As much as the two radicals shared an overall mission, Hari could tell that something jagged lay between them. Was it a philosophical issue, perhaps? Like the dilemma that had torn apart Junin Quarter, long ago? One feature of chaos outbreaks was a remarkable tendency for enthusiasts to transform into fanatics, so utterly sure of their own righteousness that they were willing to die…or slaughter others…over fine points of ideology. This was one of many failure modes that brought such worlds crashing down.