Asimov’s Future History Volume 13 Read online

  Asimov’s Future History

  Volume XIII

  All stories copyright Isaac Asimov and the Estate of Isaac Asimov, unless otherwise noted below.

  All other stories copyright by the respective authors listed below.

  Hope: Reunification of Mankind - By Harald Muecke. May, 2002

  The Stars, Like Dust - First published in 1951. Also published as a serial in Galaxy Science Fiction, January, February, March, 1951

  The Currents of Space -First published in 1952. Also published as a serial in Astounding Science Fiction, October, November, December, 1952

  Pebble in the Sky - First published in 1950

  This ePub edition v1.0 by Dead^Man March, 2011

  Layout and design by Dead^Man

  Cover art “Low Orbit 3” by AstroKevin of DeviantArt

  Future History inlay “Summer days” by Talros of DeviantArt

  Cover design by Dead^Man

  Chronology of events in Isaac Asimov’s positronic robot and Foundation stories, compiled by Johnny Pez.

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  3745 AD Hope: Reunification of Mankind

  Pre-Chapter

  Databank-Chapter One

  Databank-Chapter Two

  Databank-Chapter Three

  Databank-Chapter Four

  Databank-Chapter Five

  Databank-Chapter Six

  Databank-Chapter Seven

  Databank-Chapter Eight

  Databank-Chapter Nine

  Databank-Chapter Ten

  Databank-Chapter Eleven

  Databank-Chapter Twelve

  Databank-Chapter Thirteen

  Databank-Chapter Fourteen

  4850 AD The Stars, Like Dust

  One: The Bedroom Murmured

  Two: The Net Across Space

  Three: Chance and the Wrist Watch

  Four: Free?

  Five: Uneasy Lies the Head

  Six: That Wears a Crown

  Seven: Musician of the Mind

  Eight: A Lady’s Skirts

  Nine: And an Overlord’s Trousers

  Ten: Maybe!

  Eleven: And Maybe Not!

  Twelve: The Autarch Comes

  Thirteen: The Autarch Remains

  Fourteen: The Autarch Leaves

  Fifteen: The Hole in Space

  Sixteen: Hounds!

  Seventeen: And Hares!

  Eighteen: Out of the Jaws of Defeat!

  Nineteen: Defeat!

  Twenty: Where?

  Twenty-One: Here?

  Twenty-Two: There!

  11129 AD The Currents of Space

  Prolog: A Year Before

  One: The Foundling

  Two: The Townman

  Three: The Librarian

  Four: The Rebel

  Five: The Scientist

  Six: The Ambassador

  Seven: The Patroller

  Eight: The Lady

  Nine: The Squire

  Ten: The Fugitive

  Eleven: The Captain

  Twelve: The Detective

  Thirteen: The Yachtsman

  Fourteen: The Renegade

  Fifteen: The Captive

  Sixteen: The Accused

  Seventeen: The Accuser

  Eighteen: The Victors

  Epilog: A Year After

  827 GE Pebble in the Sky

  One: Between One Footstep and the Next

  Two: The Disposal of a Stranger

  Three: One World-Or Many?

  Four: The Royal Road

  Five: The Involuntary Volunteer

  Six: Apprehension in the Night

  Seven: Conversation with Madmen?

  Eight: Convergence at Chica

  Nine: Conflict at Chica

  Ten: Interpretation of Events

  Eleven: The Mind That Changed

  Twelve: The Mind That Killed

  Sources of Dates

  Hope: Reunification of Mankind

  3745 A.D

  The Supplementary Laws of Robotics

  Planetary Law

  A Robot must act according to the Supreme Laws valid on the Planet of its Existence

  as long as such Behavior does not conflict with the Laws of Robotics.

  Law of Robotic Units

  On a Planet where Settlers and Spacers live together, the Number of

  obots is restricted to a Maximum of one Robot per one thousand Human Beings.

  Law of Robotic Appearance

  On a Planet where Settlers and Spacers live together,

  no close Similarity between the Human and the Robotic Body is allowed.

  Law of Robotic Ownership

  On a Planet where Settlers and Spacers live together,

  no Human can own Robots.

  Law of Robotic Misuse

  On a Planet where Settlers and Spacers live together, the Misuse of Robots is a severe criminal

  Offense and will lead to the Expulsion of the responsible Persons from the Planet.

  Pre-Chapter

  ‘HOPE (STANDARD GALACTIC, N.) - GENERAL POSITIVE OUTLOOK REGARDING THE FULFILLMENT OF PROSPECTIVE FUTURE EVENTS OR SITUATIONS. OFTEN COMBINED WITH THE DESIRE TO CHANGE THE CIRCUMSTANCES AT HAND, I.E. A LONGING FOR PERSISTENT IMPROVEMENT OF A CURRENT SITUATION. SEE ALSO: AMBITION, ANTICIPATION, ASSUMPTION, BELIEF, CONFIDENCE, DESIRE, DREAM, EXPECTANCY, EXPECTATION, FAITH, LONGING.’

  THAT WAS TO BE FOUND IN THE ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA, THE MOST EXTENSIVE INFORMATION DATABASE OF MANKIND. WHETHER THE OFFICIALS HAD BEEN RIGHT IN CHOOSING THAT PARTICULAR NAME FOR THE FIRST PLANET TO BE COLONIZED BY BOTH SETTLERS AND SPACERS WAS STILL DOUBTED BY THE MAJORITY OF THE PUBLIC ON EITHER SIDE. GORDAN, FOR HIS PART, ALSO HAD THE IMPRESSION THAT IT WAS A CHOICE TOO TRIFLE. BUT THEN AGAIN, IT WAS JUST THE UNOFFICIAL NAME, THE WORKING TITLE OF THE PROJECT.

  Databank-Chapter One

  SETTLERS AND SPACERS. THIS WAS WHAT HUMANITY HAD FINALLY DEVELOPED INTO, MILLENNIA AFTER THE FIRST HUMAN BEINGS HAD LEFT THE MYSTICAL PLANET EARTH, THE PLACE PRESUMED TO BE HUMANITY’S COMMON ORIGIN.

  ACCORDING TO MORE RECENT TALES, THE ANCESTORS OF THE SPACERS, HAVING DISCOVERED THE POSSIBILITY OF LONG-DISTANCE SPACE TRAVEL, FOUND THEMSELVES FORCED TO FLEE FROM THEIR HOME PLANET. THE GROWING DANGERS OF OVERPOPULATION, THE MADNESS OF AMBIGUOUS POLITICAL MANEUVERS AND CONTINUOUS RIVALRIES BETWEEN VARIOUS GROUPS OF THE PLANETS’ INHABITANTS - SO-CALLED NATIONS - ALMOST RESULTED IN THE COMPLETE SELF-DESTRUCTION OF THE ENTIRE RACE.

  EXILED FROM THEIR HOME, THE SPACERS TRAVELED IN A HUGE ARMADA OF SPACECRAFTS THROUGH THE UNIVERSE TO FIND NEW WORLDS FOR COLONIZATION. WITH THEIR ADVANCED TECHNOLOGICAL CAPABILITIES THEY TERRAFORMED AS MANY AS FIFTY PLANETS IN THE NEARBY STELLAR SYSTEMS.

  THOSE LEFT BEHIND CONTINUED THEIR LIVES IN GIANT UNDERGROUND CITIES THAT PROTECTED THEM FROM THE ACUTE THREAT OF NUCLEAR ATTACKS FROM OTHER NATIONS. SUCH CITIES WERE INHABITED BY SEVERAL MILLION PEOPLE, SOMETIMES EVEN CONTAINING UP TO FIFTY MILLION HUMAN BEINGS.

  HUMANITY EVENTUALLY OVERCAME THIS FRIGHTENING PERIOD IN HISTORY, BUT ALTHOUGH THE FEARS OF NUCLEAR EXTERMINATION BECAME NON-EXISTENT, HUMANS REMAINED IN THEIR METAL CAVES AVOIDING THE EXTERIOR COMPLETELY. MORE THAN THAT, THEY DEVELOPED OVER TIME AN IRRATIONAL AVERSION TO WIDE OPEN SPACES IN GENERAL.

  ALSO, FOR CENTURIES AFTER THE SPACERS HAD LEFT THE PLANET, NONE BUT LITTLE PROGRESS IN TECHNOLOGY, PHILOSOPHIC ATTITUDES, AND SOCIAL DEMEANOR HAD BEEN ACCOMPLISHED. CIVILIZATION HAD COME TO A NEARLY COMPLETE STANDSTILL. MANY GENERATIONS PASSED BEFORE A TRANSITION IN MENTALITY FINALLY TOOK PLACE AND A MORE UNIVERSAL WAY OF THINKING BECAME POPULAR. LIKE SO OFTEN IN HUMAN HISTORY, IT HAD BEEN THE YOUNG WHO FINALLY REALIZED THAT CHANGE WAS APPROPRIATE. THE LATE SETTLERS’ ANCESTORS OVERCAME THEIR PHOBIA AND ONCE A
GAIN A FLEET OF STARSHIPS TOOK OFF INTO SPACE, SEEKING FAR-OFF WORLDS TO COLONIZE.

  MEANWHILE, THE SPACERS HAD ENTERED THEIR OWN PHASE OF UTTER STAGNATION. THEY HAD CREATED A CULTURE OF CONSIDERABLE ELEGANCE AND EXTRAVAGANT REFINEMENT, WHERE VIRTUALLY ALL WORK WAS LEFT TO ROBOTS, THEIR MECHANICAL SLAVES. THE SPACERS’ IDEAL BECAME A WORLD WHERE NOTHING EVER HAPPENED OR CHANGED AND WHOSE INHABITANTS THEMSELVES DID LITTLE MORE THAN ENJOY THEIR LIVES, ENABLED AND EASED BY A HUGE ROBOTIC WORKFORCE. ROBOTS ON THE SPACERS’ PLANETS OUTNUMBERED THEIR HUMAN CREATORS BY FAR, SO IT WAS NOT UNUSUAL FOR ONE SPACER TO DISPOSE OF SEVERAL HUNDREDS OF ROBOTS. NATURALLY, ALL OF THIS FORCED ANY KIND OF PROGRESS TO A COMPLETE STOP.

  SPACERS, TOO, BEGAN TO DENY THEIR COMMON ORIGIN WITH THE PEOPLES LEFT BEHIND ON THEIR FORMER HOME PLANET, WHOM THEY PERCEIVED AS PRIMITIVE, IGNORANT AND UNCIVILIZED UNDERGROUND DWELLERS. THEY EVEN DENIED THAT THERE HAD EVER BEEN ANYTHING LIKE A COMMON HOME PLANET AT ALL AND BELIEVED, QUITE CONVENIENT TO THEIR ATTITUDE TOWARDS LIFE, THAT EVERYTHING ALWAYS WAS AND WOULD BE AS IT WAS NOW.

  BUT TIME PASSED ON. THE SETTLERS EVENTUALLY SUCCEEDED IN DEVELOPING A TECHNOLOGY INCOMPARABLY SUPERIOR TO ANY OF THE AGING SPACER SYSTEMS AND COLONIZED MORE AND MORE WORLDS, FINALLY ENDANGERING THE SPACERS’ MENTALITY.

  IN THEIR COLONIZATION EFFORTS, SETTLERS NEVER USED ANY KIND OF ROBOTIC WORK. IN FACT, SETTLERS AT NO TIME IN HISTORY HAD EVER OR WOULD EVER USE ROBOTS. IT WAS THE ULTIMATE AND MOST VISIBLE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SPACERS AND SETTLERS, DERIVED FROM THE ANCIENT DAYS OF HAZARDOUS OVERPOPULATION AND ECONOMIC NEEDS ON THE HOME PLANET. PEOPLE IN THOSE DAYS WERE AFRAID THAT ROBOTS WOULD TAKE THEIR JOBS AND THE MEANS OF MAKING A LIVING FROM THEM AND HAD THEREFORE BANNED ROBOTS FROM THEIR WORLD.

  THIS ATTITUDE WAS TAKEN OVER BY FUTURE SETTLER GENERATIONS AND WAS ENFORCED THROUGH THEIR VIEW ON THE CONTINUOUS LETHARGY AND DECADENCE OF THE SPACER SOCIETIES. HERE, THEY SAW THAT ROBOTS WOULD APPARENTLY RELIEVE HUMANITY NOT ONLY OF ITS BURDENS, BUT ALSO OF ITS AMBITIONS, SPIRIT AND CHARACTER.

  BUT THEN, ALL OF A SUDDEN, AFTER DECADES OF MUTUAL DISREGARD, SETTLERS AND SPACERS WORKED TOGETHER TO SAVE INFERNO, ONE OF THE SPACERS’ PLANETS, WHICH WAS SEVERELY THREATENED BY A GLOBAL SHIFT IN ITS CLIMATIC CONDITIONS CAUSED BY COMPLEX CHANGES IN THE PATTERN OF THE ATMOSPHERE.

  DESPITE ALL CONFLICTS, WHICH OCCURRED COMMONLY DURING THIS OPERATION, THE WHOLE AFFAIR WAS JUDGED AS AN OUTSTANDING SUCCESS ON BOTH SIDES, AND NOT ONLY BECAUSE INFERNO WAS SAVED. AS A RESULT OF SEVERAL CONFERENCES THAT FOLLOWED, AN EXPERIMENT WAS AGREED UPON TO COLONIZE THE NEWLY TERRAFORMED PLANET JANUS BY BOTH SETTLERS AND SPACERS.

  THIS AGREEMENT ALONE WAS MORE THAN ANYONE POSSIBLY COULD HAVE HOPED FOR. IT SEEMED ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE THAT THE ONE REMAINING PROBLEM, THE QUESTION OF ROBOTS, COULD BE SOLVED AT ALL. NEITHER WOULD SPACERS DO WITHOUT, NOR WERE THE SETTLERS WILLING TO ACCEPT THEM ON THE PLANET. BUT THE UNIMAGINABLE HAPPENED: A SOLUTION WAS FINALLY FOUND. JANUS WAS CHOSEN TO BE THE PLACE OF HUMANITY’S REUNIFICATION ATTEMPT.

  Chapter One

  THE ‘BOREAS V,’ ONE of the few remaining spacecrafts of the Spacer starfleet, was just about ready to leave orbit and begin the necessary procedures for landing. Its destination was the starport of Janus Metropolis.

  It was one of the last flights from various Spacer worlds to Janus, bringing to the planet the rest of those Spacers who were determined to start a new life on a new planet. Altogether there would be approximately twenty million people living on Janus, most of them in or near the starport. Although it was quite obvious that a lot more humans could fit on the planet’s surface - and eventually billions of people would be living on Janus - it was decided to restrict the size of the population in the first generations in order to avoid any kind of social problems arising from the mere aspect of overpopulation. Janus had enough problems to deal with.

  Gordan knew thoroughly about this argument, thanks to broad and intense discussions in the papers and on the hypervision channels. Here, the official attitudes from the responsible authorities on both sides had been outlined. Still, it did not take too much imagination to figure out that the decision was an unnecessary one; officials were actually having a difficult time finding enough people who were willing to give up their secure and uncomplicated lives just to start all over again in a more-than-uncertain future. In the beginning, there evidently had not been many of such people, considering the massive efforts from the Janus Immigration Offices just to recruit the first eventual enlistments.

  In Gordan’s case, however, it was slightly different. As employee and representative of the Ministry of Law on Inferno, he had simply been ordered to Janus. His function as sheriff would certainly not be easy, owing to all the possible incidents which were likely to occur among the new citizens. It would be a truly difficult and troublesome task, though Gordan tried to think of it as a challenge. He had been sheriff of Hades, the biggest city on Inferno, for several years without finding himself in too many dilemmas. “Trust your abilities” was one of his preferred phrases, one he had mentally stated to himself too often in the last months to find any more comfort in.

  Gordan left the elevator tube and turned to his right to join the other passengers in the main observation deck. It seemed that nearly all of them were gathered here to view the spectacle of the ship crossing the planet’s atmosphere. Right now, the passengers could gaze through the window-like opening in the spaceship’s skull at the slight brown-reddish surface and the deep blue waters down on Janus. The planet grew slowly but steadily larger in size as the ship continuously closed in on it.

  The terraforming operations had been finished a couple of years ago. Before that, Janus, the third planet in the stellar system of Dionysus, surrounded by its two bright shining suns at a radius of approximately 230 million kilometers, had been nothing more than a gleaming globe of rock, a dead world without atmosphere, its surface red from the iron-filled grounds and swamped with countless craters of all sizes. Surprisingly, the Settler technology managed to convert the miserable desert into a living planet with a functioning biota containing a large variety of different species of plants and animals. A complete and excellent functioning ecological system was installed, a planet ready for colonization.

  Gordan found a place near one of the railings on the upper level and looked up. Space travel was, despite the Spacers’ origin and mainly because of their actual way of life, far from ordinary. This was Gordan’s first time on a spaceship and the feeling was still a very strange but exciting one. The panorama to be seen was simply fascinating.

  “What a view. What an absolutely unbelievable view. Never would I have thought it could look like this. All these stars, this bright blue and friendly brown glancing globe hanging in a sphere of perfect, black nothingness. This is by far more stunning than anything I have seen in the book-films. Absolutely marvelous.”

  Gordan, still fascinated, leaned forward, his arms resting on the parapet, which separated the two lookout platforms below the huge transparent dome.

  “True,” he said, “This is one of those times when you realize that even the best holographs will not and, well, can not give you all the impressions reality offers. Somehow, I guess there is always missing the feeling of being part of what you see.”

  “Yes. Maybe that is why.”

  Gordan found himself staring at the overwhelming scenery, completely ignoring the person who had addressed him. Several minutes must have passed before he finally managed to take a look to his right.

  “Oh, excuse me. I was… I mean…” He turned around and offered his hand with a smile. “My name is Gordan. Gordan Kresh.”

  The woman standing right beside him returned his smile and they shook hands. If Gordan was not totally mistaken, she was in her late twenties or at least in her early thirties. His impression was supported by her youthful appearance and stylish outfit. He found himself admiring her long, brown, curly hair.

  “Nice to meet you, Gordan. My name is Jeanne. Jeanne Farlow,” she said with a smile.

  “Well,” Gordan giggled slightly, “This is my
first journey through space. That is why I am a bit… eh… preoccupied. I have to apologize.”