David Brin - Foundation’s Triumph

Well, here goes.

Hari ordered his left hand to move toward his face. It responded smoothly, rising as he opened his eyes a second time.

It was a bigger infirmary than the little unit aboard the Pride of Rhodia. They must have taken him onto the raider ship, then. The vessel from Ktlina.

Well, at least his memory was working. Hari’s fingers rubbed his face…and retracted in abrupt shock.

What in space?

He felt his cheek again. The flesh felt noticeably firmer, a bit less flaccid and jowly than he recalled.

This time his body acted on its own, out of an unwilled sense of volition. One hand grabbed the white coverlet and threw it back. The other one slid underneath his body, planted itself against the bed, and pushed. He sat up, so rapidly that he swayed and almost toppled to the other side, catching himself with a strong tensioning of his back muscles. A groan escaped his lips. Not from pain, but surprise!

“Well, hello there, Professor,” said a voice from his right. “I guess it’s good to see you’re back amongst us.”

He turned his head. Someone occupied another infirmary bed. Blinking, Hari saw it was the stowaway. The girl from Trantor who did not want to be exiled to Terminus. She wore a hospital gown and had a bowl of dark yellow soup before her on a tray.

That’s what I’ve been smelling, Hari thought. Despite all his other questions and concerns, the first thing on his mind was to ask for some.

She watched Hari, waiting for him to speak.

“Are…you okay, Jeni?” he asked.

Slowly, the girl responded with a grudging smile.

“The others were betting what your first words would be, when you woke. I’ll have to tell ‘em they were wrong about you…and maybe I was, too.” She shrugged. “Anyway, don’t worry about me. I’ve just got a touch of the fever. I t was already coming on for a week or two before I skipped away on Maserd’s boat.”

“Fever?” Hari asked.

“Brain fever, of course!” Jeni gave Hari a defensive glare. “What did you think? That I wasn’t smart enough to catch it? With parents like mine? I’m fifteen, so it’s about time for my turn.”

Hari nodded. Since the dawn ages, it had been a fact of life that nearly everyone with above-average intelligence experienced this childhood disease. He raised a placating hand.

“No insult intended, Jeni. Who could doubt that you’d get brain fever, especially after the way you fooled all of us on Demarchia? Welcome to adulthood.”

What Hari did not mention, and he had told no one but Dors, was the fact that he had never contracted the disease as a youth. Not even a touch, despite his renowned genius.

Jeni’s arch expression searched for any sign of patronizing or sarcasm in his voice. Finding none, she switched to a smile.

“Well I hope it’s a mild case. I want to get out of here! There’s been too much else going on.”

Hari nodded. “I…guess I gave everybody a scare. But apparently nothing much happened to me.”

This time the girl grinned.

“Is that right, Doc? Why don’t you look in a mirror?”

From the way she said it, Hari realized he had better do so at once.

He slid gingerly forward to rest his feet on the floor. Both legs felt fine…almost certainly good enough to shuffle over to the wall mirror, a few meters away.

Grab the bed railing and stand up carefully, so you’ll fall back onto the mattress if your senses are lying to you.

But rising erect went smoothly, with only a few creaks and twinges. He slid one foot forward, shifted his weight, and pushed the other.

Hari felt fine so far, though it did not help to hear Jeni behind him, chuckling with amusement and anticipation.

The next footstep lifted a bit from the ground, and the following one higher still. By the time he reached the mirror, Hari was walking with more confidence than he had felt in

He stared at the reflection, blinking rapidly as Jeni’s giggles turned into guffaws.

A deeper voice cut in suddenly from the doorway. “Professor!”

The shout came from Kers Kantun. Hari’s loyal servant ran forward to take his arm, but he shook the man off, still gaping at the image in the glass.

Five years…at least. They’ve taken at least five years off my age. Maybe ten. I don’t look much over seventy-five or so.

A low sound escaped his throat, and Hari felt so confused that he did not honestly know whether he was delighted, or offended by the effrontery of their act.

“This is just one of the marvels that have emerged so far, out of that wonderful event you so contemptuously call a chaos world, Seldon.”

Sybyl crooned happily as she finished Hari’s checkup and let him get dressed. “Ktlina has medical techniques that will be the envy of the empire, after we get the word out. It’s just one reason why we have confidence they won’t be able to keep our miracle bottled up, this time. Think of a quadrillion old folks, all across the galaxy, wishing they had access to a machine like this one.”

She patted a long, coffin-shaped mechanism covered with readouts and instruments. Hari figured he must have been put inside while advanced techniques reduced and even reversed some of the ravages afflicting his worn-out body.

“Of course this is only an early version,” she went on. “We can’t rejuvenate yet, only restore a bit of balance and strength to carry you along until the next treatment. Nevertheless, in theory there are no limits! In principle, we should even be able to create body duplicates, and infuse them with copies of our memories! Until then, consider what you have experienced to be a sampling. One of the practical benefits of a renaissance.”

Hari spoke carefully.

“My body and spirit thank you.”

She glanced back at him. A stylishly colored eyebrow raised.

“But not your intellect? You don’t approve of such innovations? Even when they could save so many lives?”

“You blithely speak of balance, as if you know what you’re talking about, Sybyl. But the human body is nowhere near as complex an organism as human society. If a mistake is made in treating a single person, that is merely tragic. One individual can be replaced by another. But we only have one civilization.”

“So you think we’re experimenting irresponsibly, without understanding what these methods will do to our patient in the long run.”

He nodded. “I’ve been studying human society all my life. Only lately have the parameters clarified enough to offer a reasonably lucid picture. But now you’d introduce exotic new factors that just happen to feel good in the short term, even though they may prove ultimately lethal. What arrogance! For instance, have you considered the implications of human immortality on fragile economies? Or on planetary ecosystems? Or on the ability of young people to have their own chance-”

Sybyl laughed.

“Whoa, Academician! You needn’t argue with me. I say that human creativity, when it’s truly unleashed, will find solutions to every problem. The ones you just mentioned, plus a quintillion others that nobody has yet thought of. But anyway, there’s no point in debating anymore.

“You see, the point is moot. It’s already settled. Our war is effectively over.”

Hari sighed.

“I expected this. I’m sorry your fond hopes had to end this way. Of course it was a fantasy to expect that just one planet might prevail against twenty-five million in the Human Consensus. But let me assure you that in the long run-”

He stopped. Sybyl was grinning.

“It may have been a fantasy, but that’s exactly what is about to happen. We’re going to win our war, Seldon. Within a few months-a year at most-the whole empire’s going to share the renaissance, like it or not. And we have you to thank for making it possible!”