David Brin: Foundation’s Triumph

“Yes, it has attractive features,” Hari conceded.

“And yet, my mind and heart keep pondering Terminus, at the opposite side of the galaxy. A small world very much like this one…this poor, wounded Earth. Despite everything, Daneel, the odds were in their favor. All the factors agreed. They would have had a good chance-”

“Seventy percent is not good enough.”

“So you won’t let them try?”

“Hari, even if they do break through to that mythical other side, you don’t know what kind of society they will build afterward! You admit the socio-equations explode into singularities at that point. All right, the Foundationers may defeat chaos. They may achieve some great new wisdom, but then what? How about the next crisis to come along? Psychohistory offers no insights. Both you and I are blind. We have no idea what would follow. No ability to plan or protect them.”

Hari nodded. “That uncertainty…that inability to predict…has been my lifelong terror. It’s what I always fought against, and the bond that united me to you, Daneel. Only now, as I approach my end, do I see a strange sort of beauty in it.

“Humanity has been like a child who was horribly traumatized, and thereafter stayed in the nursery, where it could be kept safe and warm. You may differ with the Calvinians over many things, Daneel. But you both prescribed amnesia to help ease our collective trauma-a dull forgetfulness that could have vanished anytime our protectors chose to pull back the blinds and open the door. But you never did.

“Treating us that way would have been a horrible crime, except for the excuse of chaos. And even with that excuse, isn’t there a limit? A point at which the child must be untethered, letting her take on new challenges? Facing the future on its own terms?”

Hari smiled. “We can only ask that our descendants be better than we are. We cannot demand that they be perfect. They’ll have to solve their problems, one at a time.”

Daneel stared for a while, then looked away.

“You may be able to take such an attitude, late in life, but my programming is less flexible. I cannot take risks with humanity’s survival.”

“I see that. But consider, Daneel. If Elijah Baley were here right now, don’t you think he would be willing to take a chance?”

The robot didn’t answer. Silence stretched between them, and that was all right with Hari. He was still looking at equations painted across the stars, waiting for something to reappear.

Something he had glimpsed before.

Abruptly, several of the floating factors entered a new orbit, coalescing in a pattern that existed nowhere except in his own mind. No existing version of the Seldon Plan Prime Radiant contained this insight. Perhaps it was an old man’s hallucination. Or else, an emergent property arising from all the new things he had learned during this final adventure.

Either way, it made him smile.

Ah, there you are again! Are you real? Or a manifestation of wishful thinking?

The motif was that of a circle, returning to its origins.

Hari looked up at Daneel, no doubt the noblest person he had ever met. After twenty thousand years, struggling for the sake of humanity, the robot was undeterred, unbowed, as resolute as ever to deliver his masters to some destination that was safe, happy, and secure.

Surely he will keep his final promise to me. I will get to see my beloved wife, one last time.

Having lived more intimately with a robot than any human, Hari had some sympathy for Zorma and Cloudia, who wanted greater union between the two races. Perhaps in many centuries their approach would combine with others in some rich brew. But their hopes and schemes were irrelevant at present. For now, only two versions of destiny showed any real chance of success. Daneel’s Galaxia, on the one hand… and the glimmering figure Hari now saw floating in the sky above him.

“Our children may surprise you, Daneel,” he commented at last, breaking the long silence.

Pondering briefly, his robot friend replied, “These children-you refer to the descendants of those exiled to Terminus?”

Hari nodded. “Five hundred and some odd years from now, they will already be a diverse and persnickety people, proud of both their civilization and their individuality. You may fool a majority of robots with your ‘man who is always right,’ but I doubt many in the Foundation will accept it.”

“I know,” Daneel acknowledged with pain in his voice. “There will be resistance against assimilation by Gaia. Shortsighted panic, perhaps even violence. All of it unavailing in the long run.”

But Hari reacted with a smile.

“I don’t think you quite understand, Daneel. It’s not resistance that you have to worry about. It will be a strange kind of acceptance that poses the greatest danger to your plan.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, how can you be so sure that it won’t be Gaia that’s assimilated? Perhaps the culture of that future Foundation will be so strong, so diverse and open, that they will simply absorb your innovation, give Gaia citizenship papers, and then move on to even greater things.”

Daneel stared at Hari. “I…find this hard to envision.”

“It’s part of the pattern life has followed since it climbed from the ooze. The simple gets incorporated into the complex. For all of its power and glory, Gaia-and Galaxia- aresimple beings. Perhaps their beauty and power will only be part of something larger. Something more diverse and grand than you ever imagined.”

“I cannot encompass this. It sounds risky. There is no assurance…”

Hari laughed.

“Oh, my dear friend. Both of us have always been obsessed with predictability. But sometimes you just have to understand-the universe isn’t ours to control.”

Though his body felt weak, Hari sat up higher in the flotation chair.

“I’ll tell you what, Daneel. Let’s make a wager.”

“A wager?”

Hari nodded. “If you have your way, and Gaia assimilates everybody, eventually creating a vast unitary Galaxia, tell me this-will there be any more need for books?”

“Of course not. By definition, all members of the collective will know, almost instantaneously, anything that is learned by the others. Books, in whatever form, are a technique for passing information between separate minds.”

“Ah. And this assimilation should be complete, by say, six hundred years from now? Seven hundred, at the outside?”

“It should be.”

“On the other hand, suppose I am right. Imagine that my Foundation turns out to be stronger, wiser, and more robust than you, Wanda, or any of the robots expect. Perhaps it will defeat you, Daneel. They may decide to reject outside influence by robots, or human mentalics, or even all-wise cosmic minds.

“Or else, maybe they will accept Galaxia as a marvelous gift, incorporate it in their culture, and move on. Either way, human diversity and individualism will continue in some form. And there will still be a need for books! Perhaps even an Encyclopedia Galactica.”

“But I thought the Encyclopedia was just a ruse, to get the Foundation started on Terminus.”

Hari waved a hand in front of him. “Never mind that. There will be encyclopedias, though perhaps not at first. But the question that now lies before us-the subject of our wager-is this.

“Will there still be editions of the Encyclopedia Galactica published a thousand years from now?

“If your Galaxia plan succeeds, in its pure and simple form, there will be no books or encyclopedias in one millennium’s time. But if I am right, Daneel, people will still be creating and publishing compendiums of knowledge. They may share countless insights and intimacies through mentalic powers, the way people now make holovision calls. Who knows? But they will also maintain a degree of individuality, and keep on communicating with each other in old-fashioned ways.