David Brin: Foundation’s Triumph

Daneel interrupted. “Not similar at all. Brain fever is relatively gentle. It was designed and released in order to combat the earlier chaos plague, whose first virulent versions escaped Earth on the earliest starships.”

“Was chaos a weapon of war?” Horis asked, in muted tones.

“No one knows, though some accounts say it was. The first crude versions swept Earth before I was made, prompting citizens to fear robots, their own great inventions. Later waves smashed the late Terran renaissance, turning Earthlings into agoraphobes and Spacers into vicious paranoids. Everything that Giskard did here”-Daneel motioned at the radioactive waste-”and that I did in the following millennia, had its roots in this awful plague.”

“B-b-but-” Horis stuttered. “But what if there’s a cure? Wouldn’t that make everything right again? All this stuff I’ve heard-and I only understand a little-all this talk about saving humanity from chaos. Most of it would be unnecessary if someone just found a cure!”

For the first time, Hari saw waves of irritation cross Daneel Olivaw’s face.

“Don’t you think that occurred to me, long ago? What do you imagine I was working on for the first six thousand years? In between having to fight a civil war against robots of the old religion, I devoted all my energies to finding some way of ripping out chaos by its roots! But it was too late. The virus had been cleverly designed to inveigle its way into human chromosomes, scattering and embedding itself in hundreds of crucial places. Even if I knew where they all were, it would take another deadly plague just to dig out every genetic site where chaos lay hidden. Trillions would die.

“That was when I realized that chaos could only be staved off if we prevented the conditions that triggered an outbreak. If ambition and individualism provoked the disease out of dormancy, then a conservative society offered the best hope. A Galactic Empire, providing gentle peace, justice, and serenity to a society that never changed.”

Horis Antic nodded. Naturally as a Grey Man, he shared an inclination toward orderliness, with everything classified and pigeonholed properly. “So there is no cure. But what about natural immunity? Didn’t I hear someone talk about that, at one point?”

“The disease has always been tragically most virulent among humanity’s brightest. Even so, some highly intelligent people proved immune to the temptations of raging egotism and solipsism. They can be individualists without denying the humanity of others. But alas, this immunity is spreading too slowly. If we had a thousand years, or two…”

Hari asked about something that had been bothering him. “Were both Maserd and Mors Planch immune?”

“Biron Maserd was protected against chaos by the noblesse oblige of his gentry class. As for Planch, you are right, Hari. His mind was startling. Almost unreadable with my mentalic powers. He had lived immersed in three different chaos-renaissances, yet remained completely agile. Flexible. Empathic, yet fierce.”

“Kers Kantun called him normal.”

“Hmmm.” Daneel rubbed his chin briefly. “Kers had some unique ideas. He thought that today’s humanity is not the same one that made us. Truly natural humans would not be subject to chaos, Kers thought, nor would their minds be easily manipulated.”

Horis Antic took a step forward. The eagerness in his voice replaced his typical nervous tremor. “Do you still have the records from your search for a cure? There have been medical advances in the past few millennia, and millions of qualified workers might come up with ideas that you missed.”

Hari exhaled a sigh.

“Why do you bother, Horis? You know these memories will be washed away, or painted over, soon after we reach Trantor. You never struck me as the kind to chase curiosity for its own sake.”

At this, Horis reacted with a bitter frown. “Perhaps I am more than you realize, Seldon!”

Hari nodded. “Of that, I am quite sure. It only just occurred to me, last night, to review events since you and I first met, and look at them in a fresh light.”

Now, the Grey Man’s nervousness returned. He popped another blue pill. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. But right now I’ve taken too much of your time. There are preparations to make. I’ve got to help Gaal Dornick-”

“No.” Hari cut him off. “It’s time to have the truth, Horis.”

He turned to Daneel. “Have you ever tried to mindscan our young bureaucrat friend here?”

Horis gulped audibly at the mere thought of being mentalically probed.

Daneel responded, “I have a Second Law injunction to be courteous, Hari. I only invade human minds when some First or Zeroth Law need is apparent.”

“And so, you never felt compelled to scan Horis. Well, let me override the injunction now. Take a peek. I bet you’ll find it difficult.”

“No…please…” Antic lifted both hands, as if to ward off Daneel’s probing mentalic fingers.

“You are right, Hari. It is extraordinarily hard, but this man is no Mors Planch. He is achieving this through a combination of drugs and mental discipline, avoiding certain thoughts with scrupulous self-control.”

“Leave me alone!” Horis cried, trying desperately to make his body turn around and flee. But a gentle paralysis swarmed over him, and he instead slumped downward, seating himself on a nearby pile of rubble. Naturally, Daneel would not have let him be hurt in a fall.

“Let me see the recording device,” Hari said, holding out one hand.

New tremors rocked the bureaucrat, but he finally complied, reaching into a coat pocket for a small scanner. No doubt it was one of the best available to imperial operatives.

“You had no intention of reaching the sanitarium, did you? So long as everyone thought you meek and harmless, security would be lax. At Trantor, you would be in your element, able to tap a thousand different channels of communication…with a myriad of tricks that only a Grey Man might have access to. Locked doors would mysteriously open, and you’d be gone.”

Horis slumped, clearly seeing no further purpose in dissembling. When he spoke, his voice seemed different, at once both defeated, and yet stronger. With a note of rueful pride.

“I got off a partial report from Pengia. You can’t stop that part of it.”

Hari nodded. “You were the secret contact who informed Mors Planch, who wanted the Ktlinans to come. Why? You hate chaos as much as I do. Kers Kantun knew that, and I can see it in your character.”

Horis let out a sigh. “It was an experiment. It wasn’t enough just to do a reconnaissance. We had to create a crisis. A scene of conflict with the chaos forces on one side and your tiktok pals on the other. It proved an effective way to get you all talking, arguing, and justifying yourselves to each other. I hardly had to put in a word, here or there.”

“Your pose was impressive,” Hari said, and Daneel added. “So is your mental discipline. Even without the drugs, I would have noticed nothing, until my attention was drawn fully toward you.”

The compliments drew only a snort.

“We are used to being underrated and derided by all the snooty gentry folk and self-important meritocrats. Even eccentrics and citizens dismiss us as if we are part of the background. Long ago, we learned to stop resenting it, to control it, even to foster this impression.”

Horis made a fist. “But tell me, who runs this Galactic Empire? Even you, Seldon, with your mathematical insight, and you, robot, who designed the Trantorian regime in the first place. You understand in theory, but you don’t really see.

“Who gets called when a sun flares, bumming half a continent on some provincial world? Who makes sure the navigational buoys all work? Who gets the children vaccinated, keeps the electricity flowing, and makes sure farmers tend the soil so their grandchildren will have something to plow? Who monitors the death rates, so health teams can be sent to some unknowing world before they even realize they’ve drifted into a space current that’s polluting their stratosphere with boron? Who sees to it that self-indulgent gentry and preening meritocrats don’t wreck everything with one egotistical scheme after another?”