David Brin: Foundation’s Triumph

Now, with the rendezvous approaching, she flexed her hands, feeling tension in positronic receptors that had been placed in exactly the same locations as the nerves of a real woman. On the crystal viewing pane, her reflected image superimposed across the rising forestscape. She wore the same face as when she had dwelled with Hari. Her own face, as she would always think of it.

Hari Seldon still lives, Dors thought. It was part hearsay and part intuition. Although she was not one of the robots to whom Daneel had given Giskardian mentalic powers, Dors felt certain she would know, the instant that her human husband died. A part of her would freeze at that point, locking his image and memory in permanent, revolving circuitry. While Dors knew she might last another ten thousand years, in a sense she would always be Hari’s.

“We shall be landing in just two hours, Dors Venabili.”

The pilot, a lesser humaniform robot, had once been part of a heretical Calvinian group that schemed to mess up Hari’s psychohistory project. Thirty of the dissident machines were captured a year ago by Daneel’s forces and dispatched to a secret repair world for conversion to accept the Zeroth Law of Robotics. But that cargo of prisoners had been hijacked en route by Lodovic Trema. Now they apparently worked for him.

I don’t understand why Daneel trusted Trema with that mission…or any mission. Lodovic should have been destroyed as soon as we discovered that his brain no longer obeyed the Four Laws of Robotics.

Daneel was evidently conflicted in some way. The robot who had guided humanity for twenty thousand years seemed uncertain how to treat a mechanism that behaved more like man than machine. One who chose to act ethically, instead of having it compelled by rigorous programming.

Well, I’m not conflicted, Dors thought. Trema is dangerous. At any moment his own brand of “ethics” might persuade him to act against our cause…or to harm humans, even Hari!

According to both the First and Zeroth laws, I am compelled to act.

The chain of reasoning was logical, impeccable. Yet, in her case every decision came accompanied by simulated emotions, so realistic that Daneel said he couldn’t tell them from human. Anyone observing Dors at that moment would see her face crossed by steely resolve to protect and serve, no matter what it cost.

Once upon a time, it had taken 140 secretaries to handle all of Hari’s mail. Now few remembered he had been First Minister of the Empire. Even his more recent notoriety as “Raven” Seldon, prophet of doom, had surged past the public gaze with fashionable fickleness as reporters moved on to other stories. Ever since his trial ended, with the Commission of Public Safety decreeing exile on Terminus for Hari’s followers, the flow of messages began drying up. Now only half a dozen memoranda waited on the wall monitor when Kers brought him back from their daily stroll.

First, Hari scanned the weekly Plan Report from Gaal Dornick, who still dictated it personally, as a gesture of reverence for the father of psychohistory. Gaal’s broad features were still youthful, with an expression of jovial honesty that could put anyone at ease-even though he now helped lead the most important human conspiracy in ten thousand years.

“Right now our biggest headache appears to be the migration itself It seems that some members of the Encyclopedia Project aren’t happy about being banished from Trantor all the way to the farthest comer of the known universe! “

Dornick chuckled, though with a tone of weariness

“ Of course we expected this, and planned for it. Commissioner Linge Chen has assigned the Special Police to prevent desertions. And our own mentalics are helping prod the volunteers’ to depart on their assigned ships. But it’s hard keeping track of over a hundred thousand people. Hari, you couldn’t count the petty aggravations! “

Gaal ruffled papers as he changed the subject.

“Your granddaughter sends her love from Star’s End. Wanda reports that the new mentalic colony seems to be settling down so well that she can come home soon. It’s a relief to have most of the mentalics off Trantor, at last. They were an unstable element. Now only the most trustworthy are left here in the city, and those are proving invaluable during preparations. So, we seem to have matters well in hand-”

Indeed. Hari scanned the accompanying appendix of psychohistorical symbols, attached to Gaal’s message, and saw that they fit the Plan nicely. Dornick and Wanda and the other members of the Fifty knew their jobs well.

After all, Hari had trained them.

He did not have to consult his personal copy of the Prime Radiant to know what must happen next. Soon, agents would be dispatched toward Anacreon and Smyrno, to ignite a smoldering process of secession in those remote provinces, setting the stage for the Foundation’s initial set of crises…the first of many leading, eventually, to a new and better civilization.

Of course the irony did not escape Hari-that he had spent his time as First Minister of the Empire smothering revolutions, and making sure that his successors would continue quashing all so-called “chaos worlds,” whenever those raging social upheavals threatened the human-social equilibrium. But these new rebellions that his followers must foment at the Periphery would be different. Led by ambitious local gentry seeking to augment their own royal grandeur, these insurrections would be classical in every way, fitting the equations with smooth precision.

All according to the Plan.

Most of Hari’s other mail was routine. He discarded one invitation to the annual reception for emeritus faculty members of Streeling University…and another to the emperor’s exhibition of new artworks created by “geniuses” of the Eccentric Order. One of the Fifty would attend that gathering, to measure levels of decadence shown by the empire’s artistic caste. But that was just a matter of calibrating what they already knew-that true creativity was declining to new historical lows. Hari was senior enough to refuse the honor. And he did.

Next came a reminder to pay his guild dues, as an Exalted member of the Meritocratic Order-yet another duty he’d rather neglect. But there were privileges to rank, and he had no desire to become a mere citizen again, at his age. Hari gave verbal permission for the bill to be paid.

His heart beat faster when the wall display showed a letter from the Pagamant Detective Agency. He had hired the firm years ago to search for his daughter-in-law, Manella Dubanqua, and her infant daughter Bellis. They had both vanished on a refugee ship fleeing the Santanni chaos world, the planet where Raych died. Hope briefly flared. Could they be found at last?

But no, it was a note to say the detectives were still sifting lost-ship reports and questioning travelers along the Kalgan-Siwenna corridor, where the Arcadia VII had last been spotted. They would continue the inquiry…unless Hari had finally decided to give up?

His jaw clenched. No. Hari’s will established a trust fund to keep them searching after he was gone.

Of the remaining messages, two were obvious crank letters, sent by amateur mathists on far-off worlds who claimed to have independently discovered basic principles of psychohistory. Hari had ordered the mail-monitor to keep showing such missives because some were amusing. Also, once or twice a year, a letter hinted at true talent, a latent spark of brilliance that had somehow flared on a distant world, without yet being quenched among the galaxy’s quadrillion dull embers. Several members of the Fifty had come to his attention in this way. Especially his greatest colleague, Yugo Arnaryl, who deserved credit as cofounder of psychohistory. Yugo’s rise from humble beginnings to the heights of mathematical genius reinforced Hari’s belief that any future society should be based on open social mobility, encouraging individuals to rise according to their ability. So he always gave these messages at least a cursory look.