“My, that’s comforting.”
She gave him an odd, pensive glance. “His rivals were all knifed. The classic dispatch of historical intrigue.”
“I wouldn’t suspect Lamurk to have such an eye for our Imperial heritage.”
“He is a classicist. In his view, you are a pawn, one best swept from the board.”
“A rather bloodless way to put it.”
“I am taught—and built—to assess and act coolly.”
“How do you reconcile your ability—in fact, let’s not put too
fine a point on it, your relish—at the prospect of killing a person in my defense?”
“The Zeroth Law.”
“Um.” He recited, “Humanity as a whole is placed above the fate of a single human.”
“I do feel pain from First Law interaction…”
“So the First Law, now modified, is, ‘A robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm, unless this would violate the Zeroth Law of Robotics’?”
“Exactly.”
“This is another game you play. With very tough rules.”
“It is a larger game.”
“And psychohistory is a potential new set of game plans?”
“In a way.” Her voice softened and she embraced him. “You should not trouble yourself so. What we have is a private paradise.”
“But the damned games, they always go on.”
“They must.”
He kissed her longingly, but something inside him seethed and spun, an armature whirring fruitlessly in surrounding darkness.
8.
Yugo was waiting in his office the next morning. Face flushed, wide-eyed, he demanded, “What can you do?”
“Uh, about what?”
“The news! The Safeguards stormed the Bastion.”
“Uh, oh.” Hari vaguely recalled that a Dahlite faction had staged a minor revolt and holed up in a redoubt. Negotiations had dragged on. Yes, and Yugo had told him about it, several times. “It’s a local Trantorian issue, isn’t it?”
“That’s the way we kept it!” Yugo’s hands flew in elaborate ges tures, like birds taking frenzied flight. “Then the Safeguards came in. No warning. Killed over four hundred. Blew ’em apart, blasters on full, no warning.”
“Astonishing,” Hari said in what he hoped was a sympathetic tone.
In fact he did not care a microgram for one side of this argument or the other—and did not know the arguments, anyway. He had never cared for the world’s day-to-day turbulence, which agitated the mind without teaching anything. The whole point of psychohis tory, which emerged from his personality as much as his analytic ability, was to study climate and ignore weather.
“Can’t you do something?”
“What?”
“Protest to the Emperor!”
“He will ignore me. This is a Trantorian issue and—”
“This is an insult to you, too.”
“It can’t be.” To not appear totally out of it, he added, “I’ve de liberately kept well away from the issue—”
“But Lamurk did this!”
That startled him. “What? Lamurk has no power on Trantor. He’s an Imperial Regent.”
“C’mon, Hari, nobody believes that old separation of powers stuff. It broke down long ago.”
Hari almost said, It did?, but just in time realized that Yugo was right. He had simply not added up the effects of the long, slow erosion in the Imperial structures. Those entered as factors on the right-hand side of the equations, but he never thought of the decay in solid, local terms. “So you think it’s a move to gain influence on the High Council?”
“Must be,” Yugo fumed. “Those Regents, they don’t like unruly folk livin’ near ’em. They want Trantor nice and orderly, even if people get trampled.”
Hari ventured, “The representation issue again, is it?”
“Damn right! We got Dahlites all over Muscle Shoals Sector. But can we get a representative? Hell, no! Got to beg and plead—”
“I…I will do what I can.” Hari held up his hands to cut off the tirade.
“The Emperor, he’ll straighten things out.”
Hari knew from direct observation that the Emperor would do no such thing. He cared nothing of how Trantor was run, as long as he could see no burning districts from the palace. Cleon had often remarked, “I am Emperor of a galaxy, not a city.”
Yugo left and Hari’s desk chimed. “Imperial Specials’ captain to see you, sir.”
“I told them to remain outside.”
“He requests audience, bearing a message.”
Hari sighed. He had meant to get some thinking done today.
The captain entered stiffly and refused a chair. “I am here to re spectfully forward the recommendations of the Specials Board, Academician.”
“A letter would suffice. In fact, do that—send me a note. I have work to—”
“Sir, most respectfully, I must discuss this.”
Hari sank into his chair and waved permission. The man looked uncomfortable, standing stiffly as he said, “The board requests that the Academician’s wife not accompany him to state functions.”
“Ah, so someone has yielded to pressure.”
“It is further directed that your wife not be allowed into the palace at all.”
“What? That seems extreme.”
“I am sorry to bear such a message, sir. I was there and I told the board that the lady had good reason to become alarmed.”
“And to break the fellow’s arm.”
The captain almost allowed himself a smile. “Got to admit, she’s faster than anybody I’ve ever seen.”
And you’re wondering why, aren’t you? “Who was the fellow?”
The captain’s brow furrowed. “Looks to be a Spiral Academician, one grade above you, sir. But some say he’s more a political type.”
Hari waited, but the man said no more, just looked as though he wanted to. “Allied with what faction?”
“Might be that Lamurk, sir.”
“Any evidence?”
“Nossir.”
Hari sighed. Politics was not only an inexact craft, it seldom had any reliable data, either. “Very well. Message received.”
The captain left quickly, with visible relief. Before Hari could wave his computer into life, a delegation from his own faculty showed up. They filed in silently, the portal crackling as it inspected each of them. Hari caught himself smiling at the procedure. If there was a profession least likely to yield an assassin, it had to be the mathists.
“We are here to submit our considered opinion,” a Professor Aangon said formally.
“Do so,” Hari said. Normally he would deploy his skimpy skills and do a bit of social mending; he had been neglecting university business lately, stealing time from bureaucratic chores to devote to equations.
Aangon said, “First, rumors of a ‘theory of history’ have brought scorn to our department. We—”
“There is no such theory. Only some descriptive analysis.”
An outright denial confused Aangon, but he plowed ahead. “Uh, second, we deplore the apparent choice of your assistant, Yugo Amaryl, as department head, should you resign. It is an affront to senior faculty—vastly senior—above a junior mathist of, shall we say, minimal social bearing.”
“Meaning?” Hari said ominously.
“We do not believe politics should enter into academic decisions. The insurrection of Dahlites, which Amaryl has vocally supported, and which has now been put down only through Imperial resolve, and actual armed force, makes him unsuitable—”
“Enough. Your third point.”
“There is the matter of the assault upon a member of our profes sion.”
“A member—oh, the fellow my wife…?”
“Indeed, an indignity without parallel, an outrage, by a member of your family. It makes your position here untenable.”
If someone had planned the incident, they were certainly getting their mileage out of it. “I reject that.”
Professor Aangon’s eyes became flinty. The other faculty had been shuffling around, uneasy, and now were bunched behind him. Hari had no doubts about who this group wanted to be the next chairman. “I should think that a vote of no confidence by the full faculty, in a formal meeting—”
“Don’t threaten me.”
“I am merely pointing out that while your attention is directed elsewhere—”
“The First Ministership.”
“—you can scarcely be expected to carry out your duties—”
“Skip it. To hold a formal meeting, the chairman must call one.”
The bunch of professors rustled, but nobody said anything.
“And I won’t.”
“You can’t go for long without carrying out business which re quires our consent,” Aangon said shrewdly.
“I know. Let’s see how long that can be.”
“You really must reconsider. We—”
“Out.”
“What? You cannot—”
“Out. Go.”
They went.
9.
It is never easy to deal with criticism, especially when there is every chance that it might be right.
Aside from the eternal maneuvering for position and status, Hari knew that his fellow meritocrats—from the Academic Potentate to the members of his own department, with legions in between—had deeply felt grounds for objecting to what he was doing.
They had caught a whiff of psychohistory, wafted by rumor. That alone put their hackles up, stiff and sensitive. They could not accept the possibility that humanity could not control its own future—that history was the result of forces acting beyond the horizons of mere mortal men. Could they already be sniffing at a truth Hari knew from elaborate, decades-long study—that the Empire had endured because of its higher, metanature, not the valiant acts of individuals, or even of worlds?
People of all stripes believed in human self-determination. Usually they started from a gut feeling that they acted on their own, that they had reached their opinions on the basis of internal reason-ing—that is, they argued from the premises of the paradigm itself. This was circular, of course, but that did not make such arguments wrong or even ineffectual. As persuasion, the feeling of being in control was powerful. Everyone wanted to believe they were masters of their own fate. Logic had nothing to do with it.
And who was he to say they were wrong?
“Hari?”
It was Yugo, looking a bit timid. “Come in, friend.”
“We got a funny request just a minute ago. Some research institute
I never heard of offerin’ us significant money.”
“For what?” Money was always handy.
“In return for the base file on those sims from Sark.”
“Voltaire and Joan? The answer is no. Who wants them?”
“Dunno. We got ’em, all filed away. The originals.”