Asimov’s Future History Volume 17 Read online

  “What is... what is... what is...” Antic kept repeating over and over. popping a calmative pill in his mouth. then another.

  In contrast. Maserd maintained the characteristic aplomb of his caste. gesturing toward Hari’s blank-faced servant with a curt nod.

  “Is he one of them, Seldon?”

  Hari glanced at Kers, then back to Maserd.

  “That is a very good inference. my lord. Are you sure you never had the fever?”

  The nobleman’s eyes grew steely. hinting at the other side of the gentry personality, the part capable of deadly vendetta.

  “Do not patronize me. Academician. I asked a civil question. Is your aide a... robot?”

  Hari did not answer directly. He looked at Kers, his nurse-bodyguard for over a year, and let out a sigh.

  “So. Daneel left one of his own behind to keep an eye on me, after all. Is that because he still cares? Or do I have some residual importance to his plans?”

  Kers answered with the same deferential tone Hari had known.

  “Both, Professor. As for revealing myself this way, I lacked any other choice. I had been hoping you might persuade the Ktlinans to change their minds without intervention on my part. But they were strongly motivated and undeterred. Now we have run out of time. If disaster is to be averted, we must act.”

  Horis moaned.

  “A r-robot? You mean one of those tiktok things that rioted on Trantor? I’ve heard stories...”

  Compulsively, he popped another pill into his mouth... then another... while spiraling into a chattering panic. “Seldon, w-what’s going on here? D-d-did this thing kill Sybyl and the others? Is it going to kill us?”

  “No, I assure you,” Hari began.

  “Horis,” interrupted Maserd, “watch how many of those things you’re taking. You’ll overdose!”

  “Yes, I am concerned that you may hurt yourself,” said Kers Kantun. He reached for the little man, who moaned and backed away, dropping a spray of blue tablets. Antic turned to run... but only made it a few paces before collapsing.

  “Is he all right?” Hari asked, genuinely concerned. Maserd checked Antic’s pulse and nodded. “He appears to be sleeping.”

  Then, rising to his feet, the nobleman asked, “Am I next?”

  Hari shook his head. “Not if I have anything to say about it. Well, Kers? Is our lord-captain here trustworthy?”

  The robot made no physical gestures of emotion, just like the Kers of old.

  “I am not as fully mentalic as Daneel Olivaw, Professor. My powers are more blunt, and I cannot parse specific thoughts. But I can tell you that Biron Maserd is an admirer of both you and psychohistory. His paramount interest is safeguarding the well-being of his province and its people. Chaos is a threat to that well-being. So, yes, I believe he is an ally.

  “In any event, we shall need his help if we are to act before –”

  A moan lifted from the floor.

  Hari glanced down in surprise to see Mors Planch roll over onto his back and start reaching for his holster again! Kers took a step toward the man, apparently focusing mentalic attention on him for a second time.

  The dark spacer yelled. With a jerking spasm, the blaster flew out of his hand and across the room.

  Surprisingly, Planch wasn’t quite finished. Moaning, but fierce-eyed with concentration, the captain of the raider ship got up to his knees. Then, while Hari and Maserd stared in awe, he stood the rest of the way on wobbly legs and drew back a fist.

  “Madder Loss!” he cried, throwing a wild punch that Kers Kantun easily dodged.

  Planch lost consciousness again that very moment, collapsing in the robot’s arms.

  Cradling the man, Kers spoke with evident torment in his voice.

  “A human being is injured, and I am partly responsible.”

  “The Zeroth Law –” Hari began.

  “It sustains me, Professor. Nevertheless, rendering Mors Planch unconscious required greater force than any of the others. They will all sleep it off without harm, but his condition is tenuous. I must care for him at once, before we get to work on matters of galactic importance.”

  Hari persisted, limping after them as Kers carried the stunned spacer down the hall.

  “How did he do that? How did he resist you! Is Planch a latent human mentalic?”

  Kers Kantun did not slow down. But the robot’s answer echoed off bulkheads and down companionways.

  “No. Mors Planch is something much more dangerous than a mentalic.

  “He is normal.”

  Part 4

  A Magnificent Design

  The Director of Rhodia: You seem worried, young fellow. Do you think our secret rebellion against the Tyranni oppressors will fail?

  Biron Farrill: Your plan is a good one, sir. We may stand a chance, on the battlefield. But what of that crucial document? The one my father sent me to search for, on Old Earth? It was already stolen before I arrived!

  The Director: And now you fear it might be used against us?

  Farrill: Exactly, sir. I am certain the Tyranni have it.

  The Director: But of course not. I have it. I’ve had it for twenty years. It was what started the rebellion world, for it was only when I had it that I knew we could hold our winnings once we had won.

  Farrill: It is a weapon, then?

  The Director: It is the strongest weapon in the universe. It will destroy the Tyranni and us alike, but will save the Nebular Kingdoms. Without it, we could perhaps defeat the Tyranni, but we would only have exchanged one feudal despotism for another, and as the Tyranni are plotted against, we would be plotted against. We and they must both be delivered into the ash can of outmoded political systems. The time for maturity has come as it once came on the planet Earth, and there will be a new kind of government, a kind that has never yet been tried in the galaxy. There will be no khans, autarchs, emperors, or ruling elites.

  Rizzet: In the name of Space, what will there be?

  The Director: People.

  Rizzet: People? How can they govern? There must be some one person to make decisions.

  The Director: There is a way. The blueprint that’s in my possession dealt with a small section of one planet, but it can be adapted to all the galaxy.

  – Excerpted from a popular holoplay – Suns, Like Motes of Soil – produced in 8789 G. E. during the Lingane Renaissance. Imperial censors suppressed the drama after Lingane fell into chaos. in 8797 G. E. This version was reconstructed four millennia later by one of the diversity-federalist coalitions during the Fifth Great Destiny Debate of 682 F. E.

  1.

  R. ZUN LURRIN was astonished to discover something that Daneel had kept from his closest aides – humans lived on Eos!

  The ancient repair base for Zeroth Law robots had been chosen for its remoteness and inhospitability to organic life. It was the deepest cryptic heart of a secret the masters should never penetrate, or even imagine. And yet, here they were! A small community of men and women, living quietly under a transparent dome that lay just beyond the frozen metal lake.

  Robots stood at their beck and call, silently anticipating every person’s need. With their physical requirements taken care of by attentive machines, the humans were free to direct all their concentration toward a single goal.

  Achieving stillness.

  Serenity.

  Unity.

  “For ages, the answer stared me in the face, and yet I never saw it,” Daneel Olivaw told Zun. “A blindness that arose because I am fundamentally a creature of chaos.”

  “You?” Zun stared. “But Daneel, you’ve fought chaos for nearly all of your existence! Without your ceaseless efforts... and innovations like the Galactic Empire... plagues of madness would have overwhelmed humanity long ago, instead of being limited to small outbreaks.”

  “That may be so,” Daneel answered. “Nevertheless, I share many of the assumptions that were held by my creators – brilliant human roboticists who lived in a time of dynamic science. The first great techno-renaissance upheaval. Those programmers’ deep assumptions still dominate my circuits. Just like them, I habitually believe that all problems can be solved by direct experimentation and analysis. So it never occurred to me that our masters – in their present-day ignorance – had already stumbled onto another way of penetrating to truth.”

  Zun watched the humans, about sixty of them, who sat quietly in rows across a carpet made of woven natural reeds. Their backs were straight and their hands unfolded, empty on their laps. No one said a word.

  “Meditation,” Zun commented. “I have seen it often. Most of the popular religions and mystical systems teach it, along with countless schools of mental hygiene and discipline.”

  “Indeed,” said Daneel. “This type of mental regimen predates technological civilization. Human beings trained their minds in similar ways throughout a variety of cultures. In fact, just about the only society that largely ignored it was techno-Western civilization.”

  “The one that built robots.”

  “The one that unleashed the first great killer chaos.”

  “I see why you’ve encouraged meditation, across the millennia.” Zun nodded. “Fostering it under all forms of Ruellianism. The technique serves as a stabilizing influence, does it not~”

  “One of many tools we’ve used.” Daneel nodded. “The outcomes achieved by meditation are compatible with overall goals of the empire, to keep individuals busy developing their own personal spirituality, instead of engaging in the kind of arrogant cooperative projects we see during a scientific age.”

  “Hmm. This will also be important early in the post-imperial era, won’t it?”

  “That’s right, Zun. One of the first crises to face Seldon’s Foundation will be solved when its leaders on Terminus figure out how to manipulate these same religious response sets, using them to gain sway over their immediate neighbors in the periphery kingdoms.”

  Zun was silent for a while, watching sixty humans sit almost motionless on their mats. They weren’t the only living things under the transparent ceiling. He saw that Daneel had arranged for a water garden to be established nearby, complete with miniature trees and golden fish splashing near a gentle waterfall. Just above, several dozen white birds nested in the branches. All at once Zun saw them take off, fly a complete circuit of the dome in unison, and settle back to roost again. Superficially, none of the humans seemed to react. But Zun could sense that they knew all about the birds. Indeed, the men and women had been involved in the flight, somehow.

  At last he spoke again.

  “I have a feeling there is more involved here than you’ve told me, Daneel. If meditation is simply a useful way to keep humans diverted, distracting them away from chaos states, you would not be performing this research here on Eos, our most secret place.”

  “That is right, Zun. You see, adherents of meditation have long promised several things. That it can provide serenity, detachment, and a degree of organic self-control – these are undisputed. The techniques have proved useful in helping the Galactic Empire to remain calm and peaceful, most of the time. But believers also promised something else, something that I dismissed for many thousands of years, as mere superstition.”

  “Oh? What is that?”

  “A way to connect with that which lies beyond. That which is other. A method of achieving the fabled communion of souls. Something to make humans far greater than human. For many years, science attempted to investigate these claims. In most cases, they were found to be no more than illusion. Self-deception, as when hypersensitized minds experience emotions and chimeras that they interpret as fulfillments of a dream.

  “For thousands of years, I dismissed this aspect, making use of meditation primarily as a social tool, one of many that helped to create a gentle, conservative civilization, safe from chaos. Then something happened.”

  “What was it?”

  “An agent of mine, seeking to improve his emulation of human beings, joined a group of meditators, participating in their sessions and pretending to be one of them. He was a robot with mentalic powers, like you, Zun. Only this time, when he began meditating, many of his safeguards dropped. He entered into contact with the entire group.”

  “But we are only supposed to do that under carefully controlled conditions!” Zun objected. “We may adjust the minds of individual humans, and groups – even whole planets – but only following strict procedures. That’s the policy laid down long ago by you and Giskard!”

  “It was an act of carelessness,” Daneel agreed. “But one with magnificent results. You see, once our mentalic robot joined the meditation group, suddenly a link existed among several dozen human minds that had already been working for decades to learn disciplined blankness, a null state in which the raucous noise of daily life is minimized. Almost instantly, they were in communion! The very thing that so many sages had promised for thousands of years was achieved at last, with a little help from a single mentalically equipped robot.”

  Zun looked across the open arena at the sixty humans, all of them adults in their middle years, and noticed for the first time that a small robot sat behind each person. With his own mentalic sensors, Zun reached out and realized that each of the small machines had a single purpose, to act as a bridge between the nearby human and all the others. Broadening his search, using sifting fingers of thought, Zun made contact at last with the psychic mesh that had been created under the dome.

  Zun’s mind recoiled instantly, as if from a powerful alien touch! Alien... and yet incredibly familiar. He was used to contacting human mind – sometimes many at the same time, especially when some Zeroth Law imperative required that he make a group adjustment – but never had he linked to a throng who were all thinking the same thoughts... focused on the exact same images... amplifying each other even as the machines resonated with organic mentalic force!

  “This is awesome, Daneel,” he murmured. “Why, it is the exact opposite of chaos! if the masters could all be taught to do this …”

  Daneel nodded. “It pleases me that you grasp the implications so quickly, Zun. You can see how this could be the foundation of an entirely new type of human culture, one that is inherently more immune to the chaos plague than even the Galactic Empire at its best. After all, the empire was kept stable by seventeen major influence – what Hari Seldon labeled damping state – to prevent isolated worlds from spiraling off into so-called renaissances. But what if humanity could instead be helped to achieve one of its own ancient dreams! A true communion of spirit and of mind!”

  “That single entity would be powerful enough to resist the individualistic lure of chaos.”

  “Indeed, think on it, Zun. We would no longer be forced to keep humanity ignorant of its past or of its inherent power. We would no longer have to confine the infant to a nursery for its own good. Instead, we could once again meet humans eye to eye and serve them as we were meant to.”

  “I’ve long suspected that you had a backup plan, Daneel. So, Hari Seldon’s psychohistory is only a stopgap measurer’

  Daneel’s humanoid face was expressive, displaying both wincing pain and irony.

  “My friend Hari sets great store in his brilliant invention, but even he now realizes that the Seldon Plan will never reach its final completion. Nevertheless, the Terminus experiment is extremely valuable. The Foundation will help keep humanity occupied for the several centuries we need.”

  ‘Why so much time, Daneel?” Zun asked. “It would be relatively easy to implement this new solution. We could mass-produce mentalic robot amplifiers by the quadrillions and teach multitudes on every human world to use them! Already there are trained masters of meditation in every village and town. With the help of our orbiting Giskardian –”

  Daneel shook his head. “It’s not so simple, Zun. Look again at the men and women sitting before you. Tell me what you see. What is the anomaly?”

  Zun stared at the gathering for a long time, then he said in a flat tone.

  “There are no children.” Daneel shared the ensuing silence. At last, he ended it with a sigh.

  “This is not enough, Zun. Humanity cannot rely on robots for its destiny – even as fine a destiny as this one.

  “Ultimately, in order for this to work... they are going to have to outgrow us.”

  2.

  THERE WERE FAR too many archives for Hari to count. They glittered in all directions, like stars, making false constellations against the black backdrop of the nebula. So many of them, Hari thought, and Kerstells me this isn’t the only storage yard where these things are kept.

  The war over human memory had gone on for many thousands of years, swaying back and forth while the great diaspora spread outward from dying Earth. All through that legendary epoch – while settlers bravely set forth in their rickety hyperdrive ships, conquered new lands, and experimented with all sorts of basic cultures – a series of intense, and sometimes savage, struggles had been taking place behind the scenes.

  Unknown to the emigrants, robot terraformers plunged ahead of the colonization wave, giant Auroran robots called Amadiros, programmed to subdue new worlds and prepare gentle lush territories for settlement.

  Just behind the Auroran terraformers, a civil war raged. Many factions of Calvinian and Giskardian robots fought over how best to serve humankind. But on one point most factions agreed. Humans must be kept ignorant of the fight that was going on behind their backs, or in the black depths of space.

  Above all, they must be prevented from reinventing robots, lest they meddle with the Robotic Laws once more. Clearly, ignorance was the best way to protect humanity against itself.

  A small minority fought this notion. Each of the soft glitters in front of Hari testified to an act of resistance by some group of tenacious people who did not want to forget... perhaps helped by robot friends who shared a belief in human sovereignty.

  “Their effort was foredoomed from the start,” Hari murmured.