David Brin - Foundation’s Triumph

The nobleman from Rhodia looked pained as the car resumed moving toward the spaceport, weaving through city traffic.

“I’m sorry, Jeni. But I am no longer in command of my own vessel. I don’t even know where we’re going next.”

Jeni turned to Gornon. “Well, then? How about it, robot? Where are you taking us?”

Gornon spoke in flat tones. “First, to a place where no sane citizen of the empire would choose to remain for very long. And then back to the capital of the human empire.”

Jeni looked down at her hands, dejected. She muttered under her breath, something about the gentry and their worthless promises. Biron Maserd flushed darkly and said nothing. When Hari turned toward the young woman and began to speak, she shot him a look of pure spite that cut off his words before he uttered them.

Everyone lapsed into silence.

As the car paused at a traffic light, Jeni suddenly let out a cry of jubilant realization. Before anyone could stop her, she jumped onto the seat, leaped out the back of the car, and started dashing across the street.

“Stop!” cried R. Gornon Vlimt. “You’ll be hurt!”

Hari caught his breath as she dodged traffic, barely escaping being crushed by a cargo lorry. Then she reached her destination, a multistory structure with gray banners hanging from its portico.

It took Gornon several minutes to negotiate a U-turn and park in a spot reserved for the gentry class. The four of them headed into the building, but were stopped by a man in a uniform similar to the one worn by Horis Antic.

“I’m afraid Government House is closed for business, today, sirs. The facilities are being used for the imperial civil service exam.”

Hari craned his neck to see Jeni Cuicet standing at the other end of the lobby, scribbling furiously on a clipboard, then handing over her universal ID bracelet to be scanned by another gray-clad clerk. A glass barrier parted before her, and Hari glimpsed a room beyond where over a hundred people were just settling themselves at desks. Most looked anxious, preparing to take a test that might be their sole hope for a ticket off of this backwater planet.

“She’s just recovered from an illness, and hasn’t studied,” commented Horis Antic. “Still, who can doubt she’ll pass with flying colors?” The little man turned to Hari. “It appears she has escaped the destiny others planned for her, Professor. No one may interfere with testing day, not even an emperor. And when she is a member of the Greys, you won’t be able to touch her. Not without filling out forms, in triplicate, for the rest of this eon.”

Hari glanced at the little man, surprised by his tone. Pride tinged Antic’s voice. Hari recognized a chip on the shoulder that members of the bureaucracy sometimes wore when they spoke to their betters in the Meritocratic Order.

Biron Maserd chuckled. “Well, well. Good for her. If she can stand that kind of life, at least she’ll get to travel.”

Hari sighed. Now the young woman would never learn what a fascinating adventure awaited at far-off Terminus… the one place she was desperate not to go.

The glass barrier slid back. From the other side, Jeni glanced at them with a smile. Then she turned to meet a destiny that was of her own choosing.

Dors found herself making excuses for Daneel’s actions, at the beginning of the galactic era.

“Maybe he and Giskard just couldn’t find any humans who could understand. Perhaps they tried to consult some of the masters, and discovered-”

“That they were insane? All of them? On Earth and on the Spacer worlds? They could not find any humans to confer with as they deliberated about the Zeroth Law and made plans to divert all of history?”

Dors pondered this for a few moments. Then she nodded.

“Think about it, Lodovic. On Earth, they were all huddled in steel catacombs, cowering away from the sun, traumatized and still quivering from some blow that had struck them generations before. The Spacers weren’t much better. On Solaria, they grew so fetishistically dependent on robots that husbands and wives could barely stand to touch each other. On Aurora, the most wholesome human instincts became matters of bad taste. Worse, people were willing to dehumanize a vast majority of their distant cousins, simply because they lived on Earth.” Dors shook her head. “It sounds to me like twin poles of the same madness.”

The starship shuddered as it made another automatic hyperspace jump. Dors reflexively downloaded a microwave burst from the navigation computer, to make sure all was well-that they were still on course, following the faint wake of another vessel.

Lodovic Trema sat in a swivel chair opposite her. Robots did not have the same physiological needs as humans. But those designed to imitate masters would habitually do so, even in private or among their own kind. In this case, Lodovic sprawled casually, looking just like a human male who suffered from an overdose of confidence-an effect that he must be radiating intentionally, though Dorscould not imagine why.

“Perhaps, Dors. But in my experience you can find mature and reliably sane humans under even the most radical or stressed conditions. I’ve met some on chaos worlds, for instance. Even on Trantor.”

“Then things must have been even worse back in the dawn era, more terrible than we can presently imagine.”

Dors knew her argument sounded weak. She had, after all, deserted Daneel’s cabal when she learned how little basis it had in human volition. She and Lodovic actually agreed far more than she yet wanted to concede.

Am I too proud to admit it? she wondered. His jaunty, confident manner was one that a human female might find infuriating. She suspected he was goading her into defending Daneel, on purpose.

The male robot shook his head.

“Even if I concede that all humans were insane at the time Daneel and Giskard came up with the Zeroth Law, don’t you think, in retrospect, that the medicine they prescribed was a bit harsh?”

Dors kept her face impassive. Records from that era were extremely sparse, even in the forbidden archives and underground encyclopedias that were prepared for centuries by those who resisted a spreading amnesia. But Dors had recently done the math.

When R. Giskard Reventlov triggered a machine to render Earth’s crust radioactive, the aim had been to drive the home planet’s population out of their metal caverns, sending them forth to conquer the galaxy. A laudable goal-but at what cost?

The starships of that era were primitive. Even if a herculean effort took away three million immigrants a year, it would have taken five thousand years to evacuate the planet, without taking into account natural replenishment. Yet the gradual increase in radioactivity probably rendered the soil poisonous within a century or so. The fatality rate, in any event, must have been appalling…and that only counted the human race, not a myriad other species that were doomed along with Earth.

No wonder Giskard committed suicide, despite having a Zeroth Law rationalization to sustain him. No robot could endure the burden of so many deaths. Just the thought of it would make any positronic brain quail. All robots would feel a powerful drive-whether they adhered to the new religion or the old one-to wipe away memory of this episode, erasing it for all time.

Contemplating this, she murmured at last, “Maybe humans weren’t the only ones marked by insanity.”

Across the small control room from her, Lodovic nodded. His voice was almost as subdued as hers.

“That is what I needed to hear you say, Dors.

“You see, I have come to realize that typical robotic humility can mask the very worst kind of arrogance-a conceit that we are fundamentally different from humans. Slaves often depict themselves as intrinsically more virtuous than their masters.