David Brin - Foundation’s Triumph

That was the beginning of disillusionment. She recalled how inelegant this made the beautiful equations-forcing the ponderously graceful momentum of quadrillions to follow the will of a few dozen. And things went downhill from there. Observing the procession of outcasts, she knew their destiny wasn’t so bright after all. The First Foundation would be glorious, but its role was to help set the stage for something else. Terminus, in its own right, would be sterile.

A bit like me, I suppose. Hari and I nurtured civilizations and we raised foster children, but our creations were always secondhand.

It was tempting to go and visit her granddaughter, Wanda Seldon. But I’d better not. Wanda is mentalic and as sharp as a laser. I can’t let her sniff out what I’m up to.

“Have there been any further escape attempts?” she asked the Grey functionary.

Almost from the day Hari struck his deal with the Committee for Public Safety, some exiles had rebelled against the fate chosen for them. Their methods ranged from ingenious legal injunctions to feigned illnesses and attempts to merge into the population of Trantor. Two dozen even stole a spacecraft and made a break for it, seeking sanctuary on the “renaissance world” of Ktlina.

Smeet nodded, reluctantly. “Yes, but fewer since the Specials stiffened supervision. One girl-the daughter of two Encyclopedists-cleverly forged documents to get herself a job right here, at Orion elevator. She vanished twelve days ago.”

About the same time as Hari. Dors had already tapped the police database, noting their scant information on Seldon’s disappearance.

Making ready to depart from the Great Atrium, Dors scanned the queue of exiles one last time. Though some glowered at their banishment, and others seemed dejected to be cast from the heart of the old empire, she noticed that a majority were surprisingly upbeat. Those men and women engaged in vigorous conversations as the line moved forward. She caught snatches of discourse about science, the arts, drama, as well as excited speculations about what opportunities might even come from exile.

After several years cloistered together here on Trantor. even their linguistic patterns showed subtle, initial traces of a drift that had been predicted in the equations-toward an idiom destined in a hundred years to be called Terminus Dialect. an offshoot of Galactic Standard that would be inherently more skeptical and optimistic. while shaking off many of the old syntactical constraints. Of course some of the new jokes and slang phrasings had been introduced by the Fifty psychohistorians. as part of a continuing process-gently. imperceptibly preparing the exiles for their role. But her hypersensitive ears also sifted phrases that had not been part of the program. Clearly. the exiles were doing it mostly on their own.

Well, I shouldn’t be surprised. They are the best we could collect from twenty-five million worlds. The smartest, sanest, most vibrant…and the most dedicated to hard-nosed pragmatism. Ideal seed stock for something brave and new. If humanity was going to pull this off-achieving a miracle cure through its own efforts, these people and their heirs just might have managed it…aided by the Seldon equations.

Ah, well, that had been the dream.

Dors shook her head. No sense dwelling on those once-fond hopes. If she did-and if she had been human-it might make her cry.

Dors turned toward the bowels of Trantor with only one thought foremost in her mind. To find Hari.

“What do you mean, you lost track of him? I thought you had a trace on his ship!”

The robot standing opposite Dors remained expressionless, perhaps because facial grimaces were unnecessary between their positronic kind. or else because that was the way a human might look after allowing an embarrassing lapse of security, misplacing one of the most important people in the galaxy.

“It has been less than a week since the transponder went silent,” R. Pos Helsh responded. “We have a good idea which direction the space yacht went after they took off from Demarchia. Our contacts with the Committee for Public Safety tell of a Special Police cruiser disappearing violently a short while ago in the Thumartin Nebula-”

“That is disturbing news. Have you dispatched robots to the scene?”

“We prepared to do so. Then a message from Daneel overruled us.”

“What? Did he give a reason?”

The other robot transmitted a microwave equivalent of a shrug. “We are stretched thin here on Trantor,” he explained. “There are no trustworthy robot agents to spare, so further investigations have been left to the police. Besides…” The male robot paused, then continued in dry tones, “I have a strong impression that everything has transpired according to some plan of Daneel’s.”

Dors pondered.

Well, that wouldn’t surprise me. To make use of Hari, even in his dotage, when an old man should be left alone with the satisfaction of his accomplishments. If there were some service or function he could still perform, to further Daneel’s long-range strategy, I doubt the Immortal Servant would hesitate for an instant.

But that still left a mystery.

What could Hari possibly do at this point to help Daneel?

She didn’t have much time. Soon, word would reach Daneel’s agents that she was here entirely on her own volition, having abandoned her post on Smushell. Dors had no idea what Daneel might do about it. Olivaw had been remarkably tolerant when Lodovic Trema went rogue in a big way. At other times. Daneel had ordered robots dismantled if their behaviors ran contrary to his view of the greater good. And long ago, during the robotic civil wars, he had been an unstoppable force, capable of great ruthlessness…all toward humanity’s long-range benefit.

Dors decided to leave Trantor and head for Thumartin Nebula. But there was one more piece of business to perform.

Visiting an obscure section of the library at Streeling University, she linked herself to a hidden fiber-optic panel. Using secret software back doors, Dors avoided the traps that normally defended the Seldon Group’s most precious data site…the Prime Radiant. At last she succeeded in downloading the latest version of the Seldon Plan. Perhaps it would offer some clue about what Hari was up to. Why an elderly cripple in his last days would go charging off with an obscure bureaucrat and a dilettante nobleman. chasing tales of fossils and dust.

Streeling University was one of the rare sites on Trantor where some silver-ivory buildings lay open to a star-filled sky. Leaving the library, she avoided a windowless structure just meters away. where fifty psychohistorians gathered to continue refining the Plan, preparing for their long stewardship of destiny. As yet, only two of them possessed mentalic powers. The rest were mere mathists, like Gaal Dornick. But soon they would interbreed with gifted psychics, interweaving both abilities and laying the seeds for a powerful galactic ruling class. A Second Foundation to secretly direct the First.

Hari had tried to make a virtue of necessity. After all, mentalic powers did offer an excellent bludgeon for hammering out any kinks that might pop up, over the centuries. Still, it was an inelegant solution, crammed into the equations. He never really liked the concept of an elite corps of demigods.

Over time, it ate away at Hari.

Perhaps that was why he grew old so soon, she thought. Or else maybe he just missed me. Either way, she felt guilty for being away so long, however Daneel had rationalized the need.

Hurrying past the main university quad, Dors felt a familiar brush against the surface layers of her mind. She glanced north, her vision zooming toward a cluster of purple-robed academics-meritocrats of the seventh and eighth levels-strolling toward the Amaryl Building. One of them, a petite woman, abruptly stumbled in her footsteps, then started turning toward Dors.