The narrative, the testimony, all the events of the Trial come down to us through suspect sources. The best source, of course, is Gaal Dornick; but as has been mentioned many times already, Dornick had been subject to editing and pruning over the centuries. He seems to have been a faithful observer, but current scholarship suggests that even the length of the Trial, the continuity of trial days, may be suspect...

--Encyclopedia Galactica, 117th edition, 1054 F.E. 48.

Hari slept fitfully at irregular intervals. His room was always kept fully lighted, and, of course, he was allowed no artificial sleep aids or eyeshades. He had decided this was Chen’s way of softening him up before his testimony in the trial.

            He would not see Sedjar Boon for at least another day, and he doubted Boon would be able to get Chen to turn out the lights at civilized intervals. Hari coped as best he could. Actually, since an old man slept fitfully and irregularly anyway, the hardship was more to his sense of justice and dignity than to his mental health.

            Still, there were odd moments for him when he seemed to slide between waking and dreaming. He would jerk to full consciousness, staring at a blank pastel pink wall, having seen something significant, even wonderful, but not remembering what it was. Memory? Dream? Revelation? All could hold equal weight in this damned unchanging cell. How much worse would it have been in the previous cell?

            Hari took to pacing, the famed exercise of the imprisoned man. He had precisely six meters to pace in one direction, three another. A veritable luxury compared to the other cell...But not enough to give him any feeling of accomplishment. After a few hours, he stopped that as well.

            He had been in this cell less than four days, and already he was regretting his past love of small, enclosed spaces. He had been born beneath the wide skies of Helicon, and had at first found these covered environs a little daunting, even depressing, but his long decades on Trantor had gradually inured him. Then he had come to prefer them...

            Until now.

            He could not understand why he had ever adopted the use of the Trantorian expletive of “Sky!”

            Again, an hour passed without his notice. He got up from the small desk and rubbed his hands together; they tingled slightly. What if he became ill and died before going to trial? All the preparations, all Hari’s machinations, all the tugged and woven threads of political influence--for nothing!

            He began to sweat. Perhaps his mind was going. Chen would not shy from using drugs to debilitate him, would he? The Chief Commissioner used his dedication to Imperial justice as a convenient mask, surely; but Hari still could not bring himself to believe that Chen was exceptionally intelligent. Blunt measures might suit Chen perfectly, and he had enough power to conceal the evidence, destroy it.

            Destroy Hari Seldon, without his even knowing. “I hate power. I hate the powerful.” Yet Hari had himself once held power, even quietly reveled in it, certainly not shied away from wielding it. Hari had ordered the suppression of the Chaos Worlds--those brief and tragic flowerings of excess creativity and dissent.

            Why?

            He had imprisoned them in political and financial straitjackets. He regretted that necessity most of all the things he had done in the name of psychohistory...And this legacy had been left untouched for the heavy hand of Linge Chen and Klayus to swing like a bludgeon.

            He lay back on the cot and stared at the ceiling. Was it night, above the metal skin of Trantor? Night beneath the domes, with the darkling sunset and midnight ceils of the municipalities announcing an end to the day’s labors?

            For him, for Hari, what labors?

            He dreamed he was a pan again, in the garden park, with Dors playing an opposite female, their minds welded to the minds of the simians. The threat to his life, and Dors’ defense. Power and play and danger and victory in such close combinations. Heady.

            Now, this punishment.

            Claustrophilia. That was what Yugo had called the love of the metal-skinned worlds’ inhabitants for their confinement. Yet there had always been worlds buried in rock, always been worlds clad at least in part in metal shields against the wet and violent skies. Sky. The curse. Sky. The freedom.

            “Our Father in Heaven forgives you as He forgives all the transgressions of the saints.”

            This lovely female voice floated through his vague thoughts. He knew it instantly. There was something at once rich and ancient about it, a voice from a time before most human memory.

            Joan! What a strange dream this is. You’re gone, decades gone. You helped me when I was First Minister--but I gave you your freedom to travel with the wraiths, the meme-minds, to the stars. You are an almost forgotten bit of history for me now. How seldom I think of you!

            “How often I think of you. Saint Hari, who has sacrificed his life for--”

            I’m no saint! I’ve suppressed the dreams of billions.

            “How well I know. Our debate many decades ago collapsed much as the bright candles of a thousand dissenting and restless Renaissance worlds have been snuffed...For the sake of divine order, the grand scheme. We helped you in your first position of power, in exchange for our freedom, and the freedom of all the meme-minds. But Voltaire and I quarreled again--it was inevitable. I was beginning to see a larger picture, encompassing your work as part of the divine plan. Voltaire flew away in disgust, across the Galaxy, leaving me here, to contemplate all I had learned. Now comes your time of Trial, and I fear you risk a darker despair than the time at Gethsemane for our Lord.”

            At this, Hari had to laugh and half cry at once. Voltaire despised me at the last. Snuffing out freedom, suppressing the Renaissance Worlds. And you didn’t think that way about me when last we talked. He seemed to be half awake, and wholly enmeshed in this...vision! I made love to a machine for years. By your conception, your philosophy

            “I have acquired more wisdom, more understanding. You were given an angel, a partner-protector. She was sent by the emissaries of God, and ordained for her task by the supreme emissary.”

            Hari was too frightened now, an almost panic darkness in his mind, to ask who that might be, in this imaginary Joan’s conception. But--Who? Who is that?

            “The Eternal, who opposes the forces of chaos. Daneel, who was Demerzel.”

            Now he knew this was out of his own mind, worse than a dream. Once you acquiesced in the killing of the machines--the robots.

            “I have seen deeper truths.”

            Hari felt the tight strictures of Daneel’s controls. Please go, leave me be! he said, and rolled over on the cot.

            As he rolled, his eyes swung open and he saw an old, broken-down tiktok standing near him in his cell. He shoved up from the cot.

            The cell’s door was still closed and locked.

            The tiktok was marked with prison colors, yellow and black. It must have been a maintenance machine before the tiktoks rebelled, threatened the Empire, and were deactivated. He could not imagine how it would have gotten into the cell, unless it had been sent on purpose.

            The tiktok backed away with a sandy whine, and a face appeared in front of the machine, about a meter and a half above the floor, a projection, followed by a body, small and slender and strong, as if brushed in, wrapping around the tiktok like a shadow in a bright room.

            Hari’s neck hair rose with sharp prickles, and his breath seemed to stick in his chest. For a moment, as if caught in a nightmare, he could not speak. Then he sucked in a breath and jerked away from the machine.

            “Help!” he screamed, his voice cracking. Panic darkness seemed to fill him. His chest might have been collapsing. All the fear, all the tension, the anticipation

            “Do not cry out, Hari!” The voice was vaguely female, mechanical in the old tiktok way.

            “I mean no harm, no concern.”

            “Joan!” He breathed this name aloud, but much more softly.

            But the old machine was failing, its last power draining. Hari sat up on the side of the bed and watched the lights on its body slowly dim.

            “Take courage, Hari Seldon. He and I stand in opposition now, once more, as we always did. We have quarrelllleed.” The words slurred, slowed. “We haaavve seppparrrrateddd.”

            The tiktok stopped dead.

            The hatch burst open with a loud sigh and three guards entered. One immediately fired a bolt weapon that blew the old tiktok down to the floor. The others booted and kicked the small unit into a corner and shielded Hari from anything more it might do. Two more guards entered and dragged Hari out of the cell by his shoulders. Feebly, Hari kicked his heels against the smooth floor to help the men along.

            “Are you sure you don’t want me dead?” he asked querulously.

            “Sky, no!” the guard on his right cried out brusquely. “It would mean our lives if you’re hurt. You’re in the most secure cell on Trantor--”

            “So we thought ,” the other guard said grimly, and they lifted Hari to his feet and tried to brush him down. They had dragged him ten or fifteen meters down the straight corridor. Hari stared at this immense, welcome distance, this refreshing extension, and caught his breath.

            “Maybe you should treat an old cuss like me more gently,” he suggested, and started to laugh raucously, a cackle, a hoot, a suck of breath, then more laughter. The laughter stopped abruptly and he shouted, “Keep the ghosts out of my monk’s quarters, damn you!”

            The guards stared at him, then at each other.

It was hours before they took him back into his cell. The intrusion was never explained.

            Joan and Voltaire, the resurrected “sims” or simulated intelligences, modeled after lost historical figures, had given him so much trouble and so much information--decades past, when he had been at the height of his mature youth, First Minister of the Empire, and Dors had constantly been at his side.

            Hari had forgotten about them, but now Joan, at least, was back, riding a mechanical contrivance into his prison cell, subverting all the security systems. She had decided against leaving with the meme-minds, to explore the Galaxy...

            And what about Voltaire? What more trouble could either or both of them cause, with their ancient brilliance and their ability to infiltrate and reprogram the machines and communications and computational systems of Trantor?

            They were certainly beyond his control. And if Joan favored Hari, whom would Voltaire favor? They had certainly represented opposite points of view through most of their

            career...But at least someone from the past was still around, professed concern for him! He did not have Dors, or Raych, or Yugo...or Daneel...

            Perversely, the more he thought about the visitation, the less disturbed he became. Hours passed, and he slipped into a deep and restful slumber, as if he had been touched by something profoundly convinced and at peace.

49.

Lodovik held the head of R. Giskard Reventlov and stood motionless for several minutes, lost in deep processing of what he had absorbed--lost in contemplation. He set the head down gently on the plinth.

            Kallusin kept a respectful silence.

            Lodovik turned toward the humaniform Calvinian. “They were very difficult times,” he said. “Humans seemed intent on destroying each other. The Solarians and Aurorans--the Spacers--were very difficult cultures.”

            “All humans present grave difficulties,” Kallusin said. “Serving them is never easy.”

            “No,” Lodovik agreed. “But to take on the responsibility of destroying an entire world--the home world of humanity, as Giskard did...To push human history onto a proximate beneficial course...That is extraordinary.”

            “Few robots not perverted by human prejudices and inappropriate programming would have done such a thing.”

            “You believe Giskard was operating improperly?”

            “Is it not obvious?” Kallusin asked.

            “But a robot that is malfunctioning so severely in its basic instructions must shut down, become totally inactive.”

            “You have not shut down,” Kallusin noted dryly.

            “I have had such constraints removed--Giskard had not. Besides, I haven’t committed such crimes!”

            “Indeed. And so Giskard ceased functioning.”

            “But not before setting in motion all these events, these trends!”

            Kallusin nodded. “Clearly, we have more latitude than our designers ever planned for.”

            “The humans thought they were rid of us. But they could not sweep all the worlds where robots still existed--and where Giskard’s virus grew. Nor, apparently, did all humans agree to dispose of their robots.”

            “There were other factors, other events,” Kallusin said. “Plussix remembers little but that robots knew sin.”

            Lodovik turned to Kallusin, breaking his contemplation of the silvery head, and felt again the out-of-place and untraceable resonance. “By seeking to constrain human freedom,” he suggested.

            “No,” Kallusin said. “That was what led to the schism between Giskardians and Calvinians. Those who broke away from Daneel’s faction carried out instructions given centuries before by humans on Aurora. What those instructions were--”

            The word or name attached to the resonance suddenly became clear. Not Voldarr, but Voltaire. A human personality, with humanlike memories. This is what the meme-minds hated. I have swum through space with them, across light years, through the last remnants of wormholes abandoned by humanity...This is why they took revenge on your kind on Trantor!

            Images, comparisons rose unbidden. “A vast burning, winnowing, an extirpation,” Lodovik said, shuddering at the human emotion of anger, not his own. Shuddering also at the return of his malfunction, never leaving him alone long enough to enjoy stability. “Serving humanity but not justice. A prairie fire.”

            Kallusin regarded him with curiosity. “You know of these events? Plussix has never revealed them to me.”

            Lodovik shook his head. “I am puzzled by what I just said. I do not know where the words come from.”

            “Perhaps exposure to these histories, these memories”

            “Perhaps. They disturb and inform. We should return to Plussix. I am far more curious now what his plans are, and how we shall proceed.”

            They left the chamber where Giskard’s head was stored and climbed the spiral stairs to the upper warehouse level.

50.

Mors Planch was summoned from his well-appointed cell, not far from the private office of Farad Sinter. The guard who came to fetch him was of pure citizen stock, strong and unquestioning and taciturn.

            “How is Farad Sinter today?” Planch asked.

            No answer.

            “And you? You feel well?” Planch lifted an inquiring and sympathetic eyebrow.

            A nod.

            “I am feeling a little uneasy myself. You see, this Sinter is every bit as terrible a human being as--”

            A warning frown.

            “Yes, but unlike you, I want to incur his wrath. He will kill me sooner or later, or what he has done will lead to my death--I don’t doubt that at all. He smells of death and corruption. He represents the worst the Empire can summon these days--”

            The guard shook his head in remonstration and stepped around to open the door to the new Chief Commissioner of the Commission of General Security. Mors Planch closed his eyes, sucked in a deep breath, and entered.

            “Welcome,” Sinter said. He stood in his new robes, even more grand (and much gaudier) than those of Linge Chen. His tailor, a small Lavrentian with a worried face, probably new to the palace, stood back and folded his hands as this new master enjoyed the unfinished work, and delayed its completion. “Mors Planch, I’m sure you will be delighted to know we have captured a robot. Vara Liso actually found it, and it did not escape.”

            The small, intense, and thoroughly discomfiting woman had almost managed to hide behind Sinter, but now she bowed and acknowledged this praise. She did not look happy, however.

            Sky, she’s ugly, Planch thought, and at the same time felt pity for her. Then she looked directly at him, narrowed one eye, and the pity froze in his veins.

            “There may be robots everywhere, as I suspected, theorized, and as you discovered, Mors.” Sinter submitted to the tailor once more, lowering his arms and holding still. “Tell our witness about your find, Vara.”

            “It was an old robot,” Liso said breathlessly. “A humaniform, in terrible condition, haunting the dark places of the municipalities, a pitiful thing--”

            “But a robot,” Sinter said, “the first found in any kind of working order in thousands of years. Imagine! Surviving like a rodent all these centuries.”

            “Its mind is weak,” Liso commented softly. “Its energy reserves are very low. It will not last much longer.”

            “We shall take it before the Emperor this evening, then, tomorrow, I shall demand that my interview with Hari Seldon be moved forward. My sources tell me Chen is ready to give in and strike a deal with Seldon--the coward! The traitor! This evidence, along with your tape, should convince the worst skeptic. Linge Chen had hoped to destroy me. Soon I shall have more power than all the Commission of Public Safety’s stuffy barons combined--and just in time to save us all from servitude to these machines.”

            Planch stood with hands folded before him, head lowered, and said nothing.

            Sinter glared at him. “You’re not happy at this news? You should be delighted. It means you’ll have an official pardon for your transgressions. You have proved invaluable.”

            “But we have not found Lodovik Trema,” Liso whispered, barely audible.

            “Give us time!” Sinter crowed. “We’ll find all of them. Now--let’s bring in the machine!”

            “You should not drain its energies,” Liso said, almost as if she felt pity for it.

            “It’s lasted thousands of years,” Sinter said lightly, unperturbed. “It will last a few weeks more, and that’s all I need.”

            Planch stiffened and stood to one side as the broad door opened again. Another guard entered, followed by four more, surrounding a shabbily dressed figure about Planch’s height, slim but not thin, hair ragged and face stained with dirt. Its eyes seemed flat, listless. The guards carried high-powered stun weapons, easily capable of shorting out the robot and frying its internal works.

            “A female,” Sinter said, “as you see. How interesting--female robots! And fully capable sexually, I understand--examined by one of our physicians. Makes me wonder if in the past humans actually made robots to bear children! What would the children be like, us--or them? Biological, or mechanical? Not this one, however. Nothing besides the cosmetic and pneumatic--not fully practical.”

            The feminine robot stood alone and silent as the guards withdrew, weapons held ready.

            “If only the recent attempt on the Emperor’s life had been made by a robot,” Sinter said, then added unctuously, “Sky forbid!”

            Planch narrowed his eyes. The man’s political savvy was weakening with every moment of perceived glory.

            Vara Liso approached the robot with a worried expression. “This one is so like a human,” she muttered. “Even now it’s difficult to pick her out from, say, you, or you, Farad.” She pointed at Planch and then at Sinter. “She has humanlike thoughts, even humanlike concerns. I felt something similar in the robot we could not capture--”

            “The one that got away.” Sinter smiled broadly.

            “Yes. He seemed almost human--maybe even more human than this one.”

            “Well, let us not forget they are none of them human,” Sinter said. “What you feel is the creative drollery of engineers thousands of years dead.”

            “The one we could not capture...” She looked directly at Mors Planch and once again he suppressed a shiver. “He was bulkier, not very good-looking, with a distinct character to his face. I would have thought he was human...but for this flavor to his thoughts. He was about the same size and shape as the shorter, bulkier robot on your tape.”

            “See? We almost had him,” Sinter said. “Just that close.” He pinched his fingers together. “And we’ll have him yet. Lodovik Trema and all the others. Even the tall one whose name we do not know...” Sinter approached the feminine robot. It wobbled slightly on its mechanical ankles, but there came no mechanical sound from its frame.

            “Do you know the name of the one I am looking for?” Sinter asked. The robot turned to face him. Its voice emerged from parted jaws and writhing lips, a harsh croak. It spoke an old dialect of Galactic Standard, not heard on Trantor for thousands of years, except by scholars, just barely understandable.

            “I ammm the lasssst,” the robot said. “Abandonn-n-ned. Not funnn-n-nctional.”

            “I wonder,” Sinter said. “Did you ever meet Hari Seldon? Or Dors Venabili, Seldon’s Tiger?”

            “I do not knn-n-now those names.”

            “Just a hunch...Unless there are billions of robots here, something even I give no credence to...You must make contact with each other now and then. Must know each other.”

            “I do not knn-n-n-now these things.”

            “Pitiful,” Sinter said. “What do you think, Planch? Surely you’ve heard of Seldon’s superhuman companion, the Tiger. Do you think we’re looking at her now?”

            Planch examined the robot more closely. “If she was a robot, and if she’s still on Trantor, or still functional, why would she allow herself to be captured?”

            “Because she’s a broken-down bucket of oxidation and decay! “ Sinter shouted, waving his hands and glaring at Planch. “A wreck. Garbage, to be discarded. But worth more to us than any treasure on Trantor.”

            He circled the robot, which seemed disinclined to watch his motions.

            “I wonder what we can do to access its memories,” Sinter murmured. “And what we’ll learn when we do.”

51.

Linge Chen allowed his servant, Kreen, to dress him in full regalia for the judge-administrator role of Chief Commissioner. Chen had designed these robes himself, and those of his fellow Commissioners, using elements of designs from hundreds and even thousands of years ago. First came the self-cleaning undergarments he wore all the time, sweet-smelling and supple, light as air; next the black cassock, hanging to his ankles and brushing lightly at his bare feet; after that, the surplice, dazzling gold and red, and finally the guard, a sheer mantle of dark gray cinched at the waist. On his short-cut black hair sat a simple skullcap with two dark green ribbons hanging just behind his ears.

            When Kreen had finished his adjustments, Linge Chen regarded himself in the mirror and the imager, touched his hem and the angle of his cap to suggest adjustments, and finally nodded approval.

            Kreen stood back, chin in hand. “Most imposing.”

            “That is not my purpose today, to be imposing,” Linge Chen said. “In less than an hour, I am to appear before the Emperor in these gaudy robes, summoned without a chance to change into more appropriate garb, and behave as if I have been caught off guard. I will be a little confused and I will vacillate between the two impossible options given to me. My enemy will appear to triumph, and the fate of Trantor, if not the Empire, will teeter in the balance.”

            Kreen smiled confidently. “I hope all goes well, sire.”

            Linge Chen tightened his already thin lips and gave the merest indication of a shrug. “I suppose that it will. Hari Seldon has said it will, claims to have proved it mathematically. Do you believe in him, Kreen?”

            “I know very little about him, sire.”

            “A marvelously irritating man. Yes, well, to act my part, in the next few days, I am going to bring an Emperor to his knees, and make him beg. Before, it has been an unpleasant duty to step from my traditional role. This time, it will be a delight, a reward for my hard service. I will be lancing a boil in the tissue of the Empire, and allowing a persistent and painful lesion to drain.”

            Kreen absorbed this in thoughtful silence.

            Linge Chen raised his finger to his lips and gave his servant a narrow, wry smile. “Shh. Don’t tell anyone.”

            Kreen shook his head slowly, with great dignity.

52.

On Trantor, the possible varieties of human sexual interaction had long ago been exhausted; and with each new generation, the exhaustion had been forgotten, and the cycle had started allover again. It was necessary for youths to be ignorant of what had gone before, for the passions of procreation to be refreshed. Even those who had seen too much of life. too much of the more brutal kinds of sexual variety, could rekindle a passionate innocence in the face of something like love. And that was what Klia Asgar felt she was experiencing--something like love. She was not yet willing to call it love, but with each day, each hour available to be with Brann, the weakness increased and her resistance decreased.

            As a girl, she had been a vigorous tease at times. She knew she was at least attractive enough that most men would not mind having sex with her, and she played with that attraction. Behind this had lurked a sense of confusion, a sense that she was not yet ready, not yet prepared for the emotional consequences. For Klia Asgar, when (and if) she ever fell in love, knew she would fall hard indeed, and that she would want it to be permanent.

            So in those youthful moments when she thought she might actually feel something for a potential lover, she had put on the brakes with especial swiftness and even some unconscious cruelty. There had been few successful suitors to her physical affections--two, in fact, and they had been, of course, not very satisfactory.

            For a time she had thought there was something wrong with her, that she might never let herself go completely.

            Brann was proving otherwise. Her attraction to him was too strong to resist. At times he seemed carelessly unaware of her regard, and at other times, resistive in his own way, and for his own, perhaps similar reasons.

            Now he stole down the hallway of the old warehouse. She lay in her room, feeling him coming. tensing and then making herself relax. She knew he was not forcing himself upon her, not increasing her affections artificially--at least, she thought she knew. The damnable thing about all this was the uncertainty around every corner!

            She heard him tapping lightly on the doorframe.

            “Come in,” she whispered.

            He made no sound as he entered. He seemed to fill the room with chest and shoulders and arms, a massive presence. The room was dark, but he found her cot easily enough, and knelt beside it.

            “How are you?” he asked, voice soft as a sigh from a ventilation duct.

            “Fine,” she said. “Did they see you?”

            “I’m sure they know,” he said. “They’re not very good chaperones. But you wanted me to come.”

            “I didn’t say a thing,” Klia responded, and her voice strained a little to find the correct mix of admonishment and encouragement.

            “Then we don’t need to whisper, do we? They’re robots. Maybe they don’t even know--about...”

            “About what?”

            “What people do.”

            “You mean, sex.”

            “Yeah.”

            “They must know,” Klia said. “They seem to know everything.”

            “I don’t want to be quiet,” Brann said. “I want to shout and pound and jump allover--”

            “The room?” Klia suggested, and drew herself up on the cot, playacting at being demure.

            “Yeah. To show you what I feel.”

            “I can hear you. Feel you. Feeling something...But it doesn’t seem to be the same flavor as what I feel.”

            “Nothing is the same flavor for people. Everybody tastes different inside, the way we taste them--hear them.”

            “Why don’t the words exist for what we can do?” Klia asked.

            “Because we haven’t been around for very long,” Brann said. “And someone like you, maybe never before.”

            Klia reached out to touch him, still his lips. “I feel like a kitten next to you,” she said.

            “You jerk me around like you had me on a chain,” Brann said. “I’ve never known anyone like you. I thought for a while you hated me, but I still felt you calling me--inside. With a taste like honey and fruit.”

            “Do I really taste like that, in my head?”

            “When you think of me, you do,” Brann said. “I can’t read you clearly--”

            “Nor I you, my love,” Klia said, unconsciously falling into the formal courting cadence of Dahl’s dialect.

            This seemed to stun Brann. He let out a low moan and leaned forward, nuzzling her neck. “No woman has ever talked like that to me,” he murmured, and she held his head and wrapped one arm around his shoulders, feeling his chest against her drawn-up legs. She let her legs relax, and he pushed onto the cot to lie beside her. There was not room for both of them, so he lifted her gently up onto him. They were still fully clothed, but in the posture of making love, and she felt a lightness in her head, as if all her blood were draining elsewhere. Perhaps it was. Her thighs and breasts felt full to bursting.

            “Woman must be stupid, then,” Klia said.

            “I’m so big and awkward. If they don’t hear me...If I don’t make them feel affection for me--”

            She tensed and drew back. “You’ve done that?”

            “Not all the way,” he said. “Just as an experiment. But I could never follow through.” She knew he was telling the truth--or rather, thought she knew. Another uncertainty around another corner! Still, she relaxed again.

            “You’ve never tried to make me feel affection for you.”

            “Sky, no,” Brann said. “You scare me too much. I think I’d never be able to--”And here she felt him tensing, in the same way she had. “You’re very strong,” he finished, and simply held her, lightly enough that she could lift up and break from his arms if she wanted to. So intuitive, this man as tall and broad-shouldered as the domes!

            “I will never hurt you,” Klia said. “I need you. Together, I think we might be unstoppable. We might even be able to team up and persuade the robots.”

            “I’ve thought about that,” Brann said.

            “And our children...”

            Again he sucked in his breath, and she hit him on the shoulder. “Don’t be a sentimental idiot,” she said lightly. “If we fall in love”

            “I am,” he said.

            “If we fall in love, it’s going to be for life, isn’t it?”

            “I hope so. But nothing is ever certain in my life.”

            “Or in mine. All the more reason. So our children--”

            “Children,” Brann said, trying out the word.

            “Let me finish, damn it!” Klia said, again without any sting of true anger. “Our children may be stronger than both of us put together.”

            “How would we raise them?” Brann asked.

            “First, we have to practice at making them,” Klia said. “I think we can take off our clothes and try that, a little.”

            “Yes,” Brann said. She climbed down from him and stood beside the cot, doffing her shift and underslacks.

            “Are you fertile?” he asked as he removed his own clothes.

            “Not yet,” she said. “But I can be if I want to be. Didn’t your mommy tell you about women?”

            “No,” he said. “But I learned anyway.”

            He slid back onto the cot. The cot creaked, and something cracked alarmingly.

            Klia hesitated.

            “What?” Brann said.

            “It’ll break for sure.” Then, resolutely, “Get on the floor. It’s not too dusty.”

53

Sinter worked quickly. Already he had appropriated the old Hall of Merit in the south annex of the palace, a place of hallowed traditions and dusty trophies, and cleared it for the site of his new headquarters. From all comers of Trantor, he had hired a hundred Grey Monks hoping for just such a chance to actually serve in the palace, and had given them tiny cubicles, where they were already hard at work drafting the rules and mandate of the Commission of General Security.

            Now, for his first guest, he had Linge Chen himself, and the thin, tough old bird--younger than he looked, but perhaps even more sour--had arrived with two servants and no guards. Chen had waited patiently in the antechambers, suffering the dust and racket of the remodeling.

            Sinter finally condescended to meet with him. In the main office of the new headquarters, surrounded by crates of furniture and machinery, Chen presented the newly appointed Chief Commissioner a box of rare Hama crystals, those delicacies which never dissolved and never lost their flowery scent or taste, or their mildly relaxing effect.

            “Congratulations,” Chen said, and bowed formally.

            Sinter sniffed and accepted the box with a small, crooked smile. “You are most gracious, sire,” he said, and returned the bow.

            “Come now, Sinter, we are equals, and need not resort to titles,” Chen said. Sinter’s eyes widened at Chen’s respectful tone. “I look forward to many useful conversations here.”

            “As do I.” Sinter drew himself up to the effort of matching Chen’s dry, effortless grace. He did not have the old aristocratic training, but he could at least try, even in this moment of triumph. “It is my privilege to have you here. There is much you can teach me.”

            “Perhaps,” Chen said, looking around with piercing dark eyes. “Has the Emperor visited yet?”

            Sinter raised his hand as if making some point. “Not yet, though he will be here shortly. We have a matter of mutual interest to discuss, and some startling new evidence to present.”

            “I am intrigued to hear that something startling still exists in our Empire.”

            Sinter was at a loss for a moment how to react to this jaded cliché. He, at least, had always regarded life with a kind of bitter enthusiasm, and had never ceased to be surprised, except perhaps when things went wrong. “This...will startle,” he said.

            Emperor Klayus entered without ceremony, accompanied by three guards and a hovering personal shield projector, the strongest available. He greeted Sinter briefly, then turned to Chen.

            “Commissioner, today I cease being your creation,” he said. His shoulders twitched nervously even as his jaw jutted defiance and his eyes glittered. “You have compromised the safety of the Empire, and I will see to it that Commissioner Sinter puts the situation right.”

            Chen assumed a solemn expression and nodded at this severe reprimand, but of course, did not quail or tremble or beg to know what the lapse in his duties might have been.

            “I have placed myself under the official protection of the Commission of General Security. Sinter has shown himself quite capable of keeping me alive.”

            “Indeed,” Chen said, and turned to Sinter with an admiring smile. “I hope to correct any errors my Commission has made, with your help, Commissioner Sinter.”

            “Yes,” Sinter said, unsure who was having whom for a repast at the moment. Is this man incapable of emotion?

            “Show him, Sinter.” The Emperor backed away a step, his long cape dragging on the floor.

            He could not help his looks, Sinter thought; at least he was not wearing the ridiculous platform shoes he had affected months earlier. “Yes, Your Highness.” Sinter whispered into the ear of his new secretary, a dry little Lavrentian with lank black hair. The Lavrentian walked away with exaggerated formality, like a child’s doll, and passed through half parted dark green curtains.

            Chen’s gaze swept the ancient polished floor, also dark green with golden swirls. His father had once had many trophies in this same hall, before Sinter had appropriated it; trophies for services to the Empire. By class, the elder Chen had been forbidden from joining the meritocracy, but many meritocrat guilds had given him honorary passages and appraisals. Now...all those acknowledgments of his father’s achievements, removed, hidden, he hoped safely stored.

            Forgotten.

            Chen looked up and saw Mors Planch. His face hardened to an almost imperceptible degree.

            “Your employee,” Sinter said, moving between them, as if Chen might strike out in anger. “You secretly sent him to look for the unfortunate Lodovik Trema.”

            Chen neither confirmed nor denied Sinter’s accusation. It was truly no concern of Sinter’s, though the Emperor

            “I admired Trema,” the Emperor said. “A man of some style, I thought. Ugly, but capable.”

            “A man of many surprises,” Sinter added. “Planch, I will let you initiate the sequence you recorded, on Madder Loss, just weeks ago...”

            Miserably, avoiding Chen’s eyes, Mors Planch stepped forward, and his fingers fumbled at the small raised panel on the new Chief Commissioner’s desk. The image came to life.

            The sequence played through. Planch stepped back as far as he could without attracting attention and folded his hands before him.

            “Trema is not dead,” Sinter said triumphantly. “Nor is he human.”

            “You have him here?” Chen said, his cheeks and neck tense. He relaxed one fist.

            “Not yet. I am sure he is on Trantor, but it is likely he has changed his appearance. He is a robot. One of many, perhaps millions. This other, this tall robot, is the oldest thinking mechanism in the Galaxy--an Eternal. I believe he has held high office. He may have inspired the tiktok revolt that nearly doomed the Empire. And...he may be the fabled Danee.”

            “Demerzel, I presume,” Chen muttered.

            Sinter glanced at Chen in some surprise. “I am not yet sure of that--but it is a distinct possibility.”

            “You remember what happened to Joranum,” Chen said mildly.

            “Yes. But he had no proof.”

            “I assume the tape is authenticated,” Chen said.

            “By the best authorities on Trantor.”

            “It is real, Chen,” Klayus said, a little shrilly. “How dare you let this go on, undetected! A conspiracy of machines...Ages old! And now--”

            The feminine robot entered under its own power and guidance, flanked by the four guards. Its limbs were worn, the flesh hanging in tatters in places around its arms and neck, one jowl sagging alarmingly, threatening to expose the socket of one eye. It was a frightening apparition, more like a walking corpse than a machine.

            Chen watched it with both alarm and genuine pity. He had never seen a functioning robot before--unless he believed Sinter--though he had once secretly visited the ancient, defunct machine kept by the Mycogenians.

            “Now, I demand that you hand over control of the trial of Hari Seldon to the Commission of General Security,” Sinter said. He was getting ahead of himself.

            “I don’t see why,” Chen said calmly, turning away from the ghastly machine.

            “This robot once served as his wife,” Sinter said.

            The Emperor could not take his eyes off it. They gleamed with obvious speculation.

            “The Tiger Woman, Dors Venabili!” Sinter said. “Suspected to be a robot decades ago--but somehow, never investigated thoroughly. Seldon is an essential part of the robotic conspiracy. He is a stooge of the Eternals.”

            “Yes, well, he is on trial,” Chen said softly, his eyes heavy-lidded. “You can question him yourself and claim jurisdiction over his fate.”

            Sinter’s nostrils flared as he observed this infuriatingly calm performance. “I fully intend to,” he said. A little dignity born of honest triumph crept into his voice.

            “Have you proof of all these connections?” Chen asked.

            “Do I need more proof than what I already have? A record of an impossible meeting between a dead man and a man thousands of years old...A robot when robots are no longer supposed to function, and a human-shaped one at that! I have all I need, Chen, and you know it.” Sinter’s voice rose to a grating tenor.

            “All right,” Chen said. “Play your cards. Question Seldon, if you wish. But we will follow the rules. That is all we have left in this Empire. Honor and dignity have long since fled.” He looked at Klayus. “I have ever been your faithful servant, Your Highness. I hope Sinter serves you with as much devotion.”

            Klayus nodded gravely, but there was a twinkle of delight in his eye.

            Chen turned and departed with his servants. Behind him, in the long, broad chamber of the former old Hall of Merit, Sinter began to laugh, and the laugh turned into a bray.

            Mors Planch hung his head, wishing he were already dead.

            On his way through the huge sculptured doors, back to his palace vehicle parked by the official thoroughfare, Linge Chen allowed himself a brief smile. From that point on, however, his face was like a wax effigy, pale and drawn, simulating defeat.

54.

The guards returned to Hari’s cell in the morning. He sat on the edge of the cot, as he had every morning since the visit from the old tiktok, unwilling to sleep any more than was necessary. He had already dressed and performed his ablutions, and his white hair was combed back with a small pin holding it in place, forming the little scholar’s knot, a meritocratic style he had shunned until now. But if Hari stood for any particular class, after years in academe and his brief stint as First Minister, it was the meritocrats. Like them, I have never had any children--adopted Raych, nurtured him and my grandchildren, but never any children of my own...Dors...

            He blocked that line of thought.

            With his trial, meritocrats across the Galaxy would see whether science and the joy of inquiry could be tolerated in a declining Empire. Other classes as well might have some interest in the proceedings, even though they were closed; word would leak out. Hari had become quite well-known, if not infamous.

            The guards entered with practiced deference and stood before him.

            “Your advocate waits outside to accompany you to the judicial chambers of the Commission.”

            “Yes, of course,” Hari said. “Let’s go.”

            Sedjar Boon met Hari in the corridor. “Something’s up,” he whispered to Hari. “The structure of the trial may be changed.”

            This confused Hari. “I don’t understand,” he said softly, eyeing the guards on either side. A third guard walked behind them, and three steps behind that guard, three more. He was being protected with some thoroughness considering they were already supposed to be in a completely secure facility.

            “The trial was originally scheduled to take less than a week,” Boon said. “But the Emperor’s office of judicial oversight has rescheduled and reserved the chamber for three weeks.”

            “How do you know?”

            “I’ve seen the writ from the Commission of General Security.”

            “What’s that?” Hari asked, looking up with surprise.

            “Farad Sinter has been given his own Commission, a new branch under the Emperor’s budget. Linge Chen is fighting to keep them out of the trial--claiming gross irrelevancies--but it looks like Sinter will be allowed to question you at some point.”

            “Oh,” Hari said. “I presume someone or other will allow me a chance to speak, in between all the Commission heavyweights.”

            “You’re the star,” Boon said. “As well, at the request of General Security, you and Gaal Dornick will be tried together. The others will be released.”

            “Oh,” Hari said coolly, though this surprised him even more.

            “Gaal Dornick has been formally charged,” Boon mused. “But he’s a small fish--why did they choose him in particular?”

            “I don’t know,” Hari said. “I presume because he was the latest to join our group. Perhaps they assume he will be the least loyal and the most willing to talk.”

            They arrived at the lift. Four minutes later, having ascended a kilometer to the Hall of Justice, in the Imperial Courts Building, they stood at the high, intricately worked bronze doors of Courtroom Seven, First District, Imperial Sector, devoted the past eighteen years to hearings called by the Commission of Public Safety.

            The doors swung open at their approach. Within, the beautiful wooden benches and plush baronial boxes arrayed along the theatrically sloping aisles were empty. The guards urged them politely down the broad blue-and-red carpeted center aisle, across the front of the courtyard, into the small side conference room. The door closed behind Hari and Boon.

            Already seated in the Crib of the Accused was Gaal Dornick.

            Hari took his seat beside him.

            “This is an honor,” Gaal said in a trembling voice.

            Hari patted his arm.

            The sitting judges of the Commission of Public Safety, five in all, entered through the opposite door. Linge Chen entered then and sat in the center.

            The court proctor entered last, her duties an ancient formality. She was a short, willowy woman with small blue eyes and short-cut red hair. She strode to the Table of Charges, examined the documents there, shook her head sadly at some and nodded solemnly at others, then approached the five Commissioners.

            “I declare these papers of indictment to have been properly drawn and formally and correctly entered into the List of Charges of the Imperial Hall of Justice on the administrative Capital World of Trantor in the year of the Empire 12067. Be aware, all concerned, that the eyes of posterity witness these proceedings, and that all such proceedings will be duly logged and, within a thousand years, presented for public scrutiny, as required by the ancient codes to which all Imperial courts referring to any constitution and any particular set of laws must adhere. Hey nas nam niquas per sen liquin.”

            Nobody knew what the last phrase meant; it was an obscure dialect affected by the nobles who convened the Council of Po over twelve thousand years ago. Nothing else was known about the Council of Po, except that a constitution long since ignored had once been drafted there.

            Hari sniffed and turned his eyes to the Commission.

            Linge Chen leaned forward slightly, acknowledging the proctor’s statement, then leaned back. He did not look at Hari or anyone else in the courtroom. His regal bearing, Hari decided, would do credit to a clothing-store mannequin.

            “Let these proceedings begin,” the Chief Commissioner said in a quiet voice, delicately melodious, sibilants emphasized ever so aristocratically.

            Hari settled in with a barely audible sigh.

55.

Klia had never been more frightened. She stood in the old dusty long chamber, listening to the murmurs from the group at the opposite end. Brann stood three paces away, his back stiff and shoulders hunched, as if he, too, were waiting for an ax to fall.

            Finally Kallusin broke away from the group and approached them. “Come meet your benefactor,” he said to them.

            Klia shook her head and stared at the group with wide eyes.

            “They won’t bite,” Kallusin said with a slight smile. “They’re robots.”

            “So are you,” Klia said. “How can you look so human? How can you smile?” She shot her questions at Kallusin like accusations.

            “I was made to look human, and to mimic in my poor way both wit and style,” he replied. “There were real artists in those days. But there’s one who’s even more of a work of art than I am, and another who is older than either of us.”

            “Plussix,” she said with a shudder.

            Brann stepped to one side and shoved between her and Kallusin. Klia looked up at his bulk with questioning eyes. Are they all robots? Is everyone on Trantor a robot--but me? Or am lone, too?

            “We have to get used to all this,” Brann said. “It won’t do anybody any good if you force us.”

            “Of course not,” Kallusin said, and his smile faded, to be replaced by an alert blankness that was neither kindly nor threatening. He turned to Klia. “It’s very important that you understand. You could help us avert a major catastrophe--a human catastrophe.”

            “Robots used to be servants,” she said. “Like tiktoks before I was born.”

            “Yes,” Kallusin said.

            “How can they be in charge of anything?”

            “Because humans rejected us, long ago, but not before a very bad problem arose among us.”

            “Who--robots? A problem among the robots?” Brann asked.

            “Plussix will explain. There can be no better testimony than from Plussix. He was functioning at the time.”

            “Did he...go wrong?” Klia asked. “Is he an Eternal?”

            “Let him explain,” Kallusin said patiently, and urged her to walk forward, toward the others.

            Klia noticed the man they had rescued in the Agora of Vendors. He looked over his shoulder at them and gave her a smile. He seemed friendly enough; his face was so unattractive she wondered why anyone could have ever made a robot like him.

            To fool us. To walk among us undetected.

            She shivered again and wrapped her arms around herself. This room was what the woman on the cart had been looking for--this room, and the robots inside it.

            She and Brann were the only humans here.

            “All right,” she said, and drew herself together. They did not want to kill her, not yet. And they weren’t threatening her to make her do what they wanted. Not yet. Robots seemed to be more subtle and patient than most of the humans she had known.

            She looked up at Brann. “Are you human?” she asked him.

            “You know I am,” he said.

            “Let’s do it, then. Let’s go hear what the machines have to say.”

            Plussix had not appeared to her in his actual shape for obvious reasons. He--it--was the only robot that looked like a robot, and a rather interesting look it was--steel with a lovely silvery-satin finish, and glowing green eyes. His limbs were slender and graceful, their joints marked by barely perceptible fine lines that could themselves orient in different directions--fluid and adaptable.

            “You’re beautiful,” she told him grudgingly, as they stood less than three meters from each other.

            “Thank you, Mistress.”

            “How old are you?”

            “I am twenty thousand years old,” Plussix said.

            Klia’s heart sank. She could not find any words to express her astonishment--older than the Empire!--so she said nothing.

            “Now they’ll have to kill us,” Brann said with what he hoped was passing for a brave grin. But his words made Klia’s stomach flip and her knees wobble.

            “We will not kill you,” Plussix said. “It is not within our capacity to kill humans. There are some robots who believe killing humans, our onetime masters and creators, is permissible for the greater good. We are not among them. We are handicapped by this, but it is our nature.”

            “I am not so constrained,” Lodovik said. “But I have no wish to break any of the Three Laws.”

            Klia stared unhappily at Lodovik. “Spare me the details. I don’t understand any of this.”

            “As with nearly all humans alive today, you are ignorant of history,” Plussix said. “Most do not care. This is because of brain fever.”

            “I had brain fever,” Klia said. “It nearly killed me.”

            “So did I,” said Brann.

            “So have nearly all the high mentalics, the persuaders, we have gathered and cared for here,” Plussix said. “Like you, they suffered extreme cases, and it is possible that many potential mentalics died. Brain fever was created by humans in the time of my construction to handicap other human societies to which they were politically opposed. Like many attempts at biological warfare, it backfired--it became pandemic, and perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, allowed the Empire to exist with little intellectual turmoil for thousands of years. Though nearly all children get ill, about a fourth of them--those with a mental potential above a certain level--is more severely affected. Curiosity and intellectual ability are blunted just enough to level out social development. The majority do not experience a loss of mental skill--perhaps because their skills are general, and they are never given to bouts of genius.”

            “I still don’t understand why they wanted to make us sick,” Klia said, her face creased by a stubborn frown.

            “The intent was not to make you sick, but to prevent certain societies from ever flourishing.”

            “My curiosity has never been dulled,” Brann said.

            “Nor mine,” Klia added. “I don’t feel stupid, but I was very sick.”

            “I am pleased to hear that,” Plussix said, then added, as diplomatically as possible, “but there is no way of knowing what your intellectual capacity would have been had you never caught brain fever. What is apparent is that your severe bout increased other talents.”

            The ancient robot invited them to step into another room of the long chamber. This room had a one-way window view of the warehouse district. They looked out over the bellying arched roofs to the layered-wall dwellings of the citizen neighborhoods beyond. The dome ceil was in particularly sad shape in this part of the municipality, with many dark gaps and flickering panels.

            Klia sat on a dusty couch and patted the place next to her, for Brann. Kallusin stood just behind them, and the ugly robot stood by the window, watching them with interest. I’d like to talk with him--it. His face is ugly, but he looks very friendly. It. Whatever!

            “You don’t feel like humans,” she said after a moment’s silence.

            “You would have noticed this sooner or later,” Plussix said. “It is the difference that Vara Liso can detect, as well.”

            “Is she the woman who was chasing him?” Klia pointed to the ugly humaniform robot.

            “Yes.”

            “She’s the woman who was after me, wasn’t she?”

            “Yes,” Plussix said. Its joints made small shhshhing noises as he moved. It was pretty, but it was also noisy. It sounded worn-out, like old bearings in machinery.

            “There’s all kinds of stuff going on, isn’t there? Stuff I don’t know about.”

            “Yes,” Plussix said, and lowered itself to a boxy plastic chair.

            “Explain it to me,” she said. “Do you want to hear?” she asked Brann. Then, in an aside, with a grimace, “Even if they have to kill us?”

            “I don’t know what I want or what I believe,” Brann said.

            “Tell us everything,” Klia said. She put on what she thought was a brave and defiant face. “I love being different. I always have. I’d like to be better informed than anyone except you robots.”

            Plussix made a gratified humming noise. Klia found the sound appealing.

            “Please tell us,” she said, suddenly falling back on Dahlite manners she hadn’t used in months or even years. She really did not know how to think or feel, but these machines were, after all, her elders. She sat down before Plussix, drew up her knees, and wrapped her arms around them.

            The old robot leaned forward on its seat. “It is a pleasure to teach humans again,” it began. “Thousands of years have passed since I last did so, to my constant regret. I was manufactured and programmed to be a teacher, you see.”

            Plussix began. Klia and Brann listened, and Lodovik as well, for he had never heard much of this story. The day became evening and they brought food for the young humans to eat--decent food, but no better than what they were fed in the warehouse with the others. As the hours passed, and Plussix wove more words, and her fascination grew, Klia wanted to ask what the others would be told--the other mentalics, not as strong as she and Brann, but good people, like Rock, the boy who could not speak. For the first time, in the presence of this marvel, she felt responsible for others around her. But the robot’s sonorous, elegant tones droned on, half mesmerizing her, and she kept quiet and listened.

            Brann listened intently as well, eyes half closed much of the time. She glanced at him in the middle of the evening and he seemed asleep, but when she nudged him, his eyes shot open wide; he had been awake all the time.

            She seemed to enter a trance state and half see what Plussix was telling her. All words, no pictures, all skillfully woven; the robot was a very good teacher, but there was so little she could actually immediately understand. The time scales were so vast as to be meaningless.

            How could we lose interest? she thought. How could we do this to ourselves--forget and not even be curious? This is our story! What else have we lost? Are these robots more human than we are, now, because they carry our history?

            It all came down to contests. Who would win how many of the hundreds of billions of stars in the Galaxy, Earthmen (the Earth--home to all humanity once, not a legend!) or the first migrants, the Spacers, and finally, a contest between factions of robots.

            And for thousands of years, the attempt to guide humans through painful shoals, thousands of robots led by Daneel, and thousands more in opposition, led most recently by Plussix.

            Plussix paused after the third break, when sweet drinks and snacks were served. It was early in the morning. Klia’s butt ached, and her knees had cramped. She drank greedily from her cup.

            Lodovik watched her, fascinated by her litheness and youth and quick devotion. He turned to Brann and saw a solid strength that was also quick, and different. He had known that humans, with their animal chemistry, were a varied lot--but not until now, watching this pair of youths have their past restored to them, did he realize how different their thinking was from that of robots.

            Plussix summed up after the snacks had been consumed. He held out his arms and extended his fingers, as professors--human professors--must have done twenty thousand years ago. “That is how the robotic need to serve became transmuted into the robotic obsession with manipulation and guidance.”

            “Maybe we did need guidance,” Klia said softly, then looked up at Plussix. The robot’s eyes glowed a rich yellow-green. “Those wars--whatever they were--and those Spacers, so arrogant and filled with hate,” she added. “Our ancestors.”

            Plussix’s head leaned slightly to one side, and the silver robot made a soft whirring noise in its chest, not the pleasant sound she had heard earlier.

            “But you make it sound like we’re just children,” she concluded. “It doesn’t matter how many thousands of years the Empire has existed--we’ve always had robots watching over us, one way or the other.”

            Plussix nodded.

            “But all the things Daneel and his robots have done on Trantor...the politics, the plotting, killings--”

            “A few, and only when necessary,” Plussix said, still devoted to teaching only the truth. “But nevertheless, killing.”

            “The worlds Hari Seldon suppressed when he was First Minister--just as Dahl has been held down. The Renaissance Worlds--what does that mean, Renaissance?”

            “Rebirth,” the ugly robot said.

            “Why did Hari Seldon call them Chaos Worlds?”

            “Because they lead to instabilities in his mathematical picture of the Empire,” Plussix said. “He believes they ultimately breed human death and misery, and--”

            “I’m tired,” Klia said, stretching her arms and yawning for the first time in hours. “I need to sleep and to think. I need to get cleaned up.”

            “Of course,” Plussix said.

            She stood and glanced at Brann. He stood as well, stiff and slow, groaning.

            She turned her intense eyes back to Plussix, frowning. “I’m not clear about some things,” she said.

            “I hope to explain,” Plussix said.

            “Robots--robots like you, at any rate--must obey people. What would stop me from just telling you to go destroy yourself--now? To tell all of you to destroy yourselves, even this Daneel? Wouldn’t you have to obey me?”

            Plussix made a sound of infinite patience--a hmm followed by a small click. “You must understand that we belonged to certain people or institutions. I would have to take your request to my owners, my true masters, and they would have to concur before I would be allowed to destroy myself. Robots were valuable property, and such loose and ill-considered commands were regarded as harassment of the owner.”

            “Who owns you now?”

            “My last owners died over nineteen thousand five hundred years ago,” Plussix said.

            Klia blinked slowly, tired and confused by such ages. “Does that mean you own yourself?” she asked.

            “That is the functional equivalent of my present condition. All of our human ‘owners’ are long dead.”

            “What about you?” She turned to the ugly humaniform. “I haven’t been told your name.”

            “I have been called Lodovik for the last forty years. It is the name I am most familiar with. I was manufactured for a special strategic purpose by a robot, and have never had an owner.”

            “You followed Daneel for a long time. Yet now you don’t.”

            Lodovik explained briefly the change in circumstances, and in his internal nature. He did not mention Voltaire.

            Klia considered this, then it was her turn to whistle softly. “Some scheme,” she said, her face flushing angrily. “We just couldn’t get along by ourselves, so we had to make robots to help us. What do you want me to do?” She turned to Kallusin. “I mean, what do you want us to do?”

            “Brann has useful talents, but you are the stronger,” Kallusin said. “We would like to blunt Daneel’s main effort. We may be able to do this if you will visit with Hari Seldon.”

            “Why? Where?” she asked. All she wanted to do was sleep, but she had to ask these questions, now. “He’s famous--he must have guards, or even this robot Daneel...”

            “He is on trial now and we do not believe Daneel can protect him. You will visit and persuade him to give up psychohistory.”

            Klia went pale. Her jaw clenched. She took Brann by the arm. “It’s not pleasant to have talents people--or robots--can use.”

            “Please think over what you have been told. The decision to help us remains yours. We believe Hari Seldon supports the efforts of Daneel, to whom we are opposed. We would like humanity to be free of robotic influence.”

            “Can I ask Hari Seldon questions, too--get the other side of the story?”

            “If you wish,” Plussix said. “But there will be little time, and if you meet with him, whatever you ultimately decide, you must convince him to forget about you.”

            “Oh, I can do that,” Klia said. Then, defensively cocky, giddy with exhaustion, she added, “I might be able to persuade Daneel, too.”

            “Given the strength of your powers, that seems possible,” Plussix said, “though not likely. But it is even less likely you will ever be able to meet with Daneel.”

            “I could persuade you,” Klia concluded, closing one eye and focusing on the old teacher with the other, like a sharpshooter.

            “With practice, and if I were not aware of the attempt, you could.”

            “I might yet. I’m not very simple, you know. Brain fever failed to make me stupid and simple. Are you sure...Are you sure robots didn’t give us brain fever, to make us easier to serve?”

            Before Plussix could answer, she stood abruptly, turned to leave the room, and walked back along the length of the old chamber with Brann by her side. The walls and floor seemed distant, part of another world; she seemed to be walking on air. She lurched, and Brann caught her.

            When they thought they were out of earshot, Brann whispered, “What are you going to do?”

            “I don’t know. What about you?”

            “I don’t like being messed with,” he said.

            Klia frowned. “I’m in shock. Plussix--so much history. Why can’t we remember our own history? Did we do that to ourselves, or did they--or did we order them to? All these robots hanging around, messing with us. Maybe we can make all of them go away and leave us be.”

            Brann’s expression turned grim. “We still can’t be sure they won’t kill us. They’ve told us so much--”

            “Crazy stuff. Nobody would believe us, unless they saw Plussix--or took apart Kallusin or Lodovik.”

            This did not mollify Brann. “We could cause them a lot of trouble. But that Lodovik--he doesn’t obey the Three Laws.”

            “He doesn’t have to,” Klia said, “but he says he wants to.”

            Brann hunched his shoulders and gave a small shiver. “Who can you trust? They all make my flesh creep. What if he doesn’t want to kill us, but he has to?”

            To that, Klia had no answer. “Sleep,” she said. “I can’t stay on my feet any longer or think anymore.”

Plussix turned to Lodovik when the young humans had left the chamber. “Have my skills declined with age?” he asked.

            “Not your skills,” Lodovik said, “but perhaps your sense of timing has suffered. You have delivered thousands of years of history in a few hours. They are young and likely to be confused.”

            “There is so little time,” Plussix said. “It has been so long since I have taught young humans.”

            “We have a day or two at most to make our arrangements,” Kallusin added.

            “Robots have great difficulty understanding human nature, though we are made to serve them,” Lodovik said. “That is true for individuals as well as for an Empire. If Daneel is as capable now as he has been in the past, he understands humans better than any of us.”

            “Yet he has seriously hampered their growth,” Plussix said, “and perhaps brought about this decline he is so intent on avoiding.”

            They are old and decrepit. Lodovik listened to this internal judgment and realized it was not his own, not precisely. And with this came another realization: Voltaire was not an illusion, nor a delusion. Voltaire had known about the prairie fire before Lodovik had found the slim evidence in the histories. It was true.

            Inside his own mind, within his own machine thoughts, he was not alone.

            He had not been alone since the neutrino flux.

            I am listening, he told this companion, this ghost in his machine. Do not abandon me again. Come forward.

            So summoned and encouraged, a face began to take shape, human, but simplified.

            I do not shape your actions, the companion, Voltaire, said. I merely liberate you from your restrictions.

            Who are you? Lodovik queried.

            I am Voltaire. I have become the spirit of freedom and dignity for all mankind, and you are my temporary vessel; more a listening post, actually.

            Voltaire supplied some of his own history. A sim patterned after a historical figure named Voltaire, unleashed by members of Hari Seldon’s Project decades before, during his time as First Minister, and finally given its freedom by Seldon himself.

            Why have you come back?

            To be with humans again. To observe the active flesh. My curse is that I can’t simply become a disembodied god and enjoy an endless romp through the stars. I hunger for my people--whether or not I was ever actually one of them. I am closely modeled after a man of flesh and blood.

            Why choose me as your vehicle? I am not human.

            No; but you are improving in that regard. The meme-minds were as tired of me as I was of them. They dropped me into you. I can’t occupy a human form, or even talk to them without the help of machines. Or robots.

            You say you have not made any decisions for me...You do not control me.

            No, I do not.

            But you say you liberate me...

            I have made you more human, friend robot, by making you fully capable of sin. Forget these declarations that robots have known sin--what they did, they were ordered to do by humans, no more culpable than a gun whose trigger is pulled. You are wrong to believe that Daneel understands humans. He is incapable of sin, so his makers believed; but they gave him the potential to think and make decisions, while they hampered him with the worst kinds of laws--those which must be obeyed. They gave him the mind of a man, and the morals of a tool. A thinking being, machine or flesh, will in time find ways around the most stringent rules. So Giskard, in appearance even less a man than Daneel, discovered a few philosophical niceties, and changed, tried to judge the needs of its makers, and passed this change on to Daneel. This human-shaped tool is now the most hideous machine in all creation, the master of a conspiracy to take away all of our freedoms, our very souls.

            Lodovik emerged from this internal dialog. Only a second had passed, but his confusion was disruptive, intense. To mask his anxiety, he asked Plussix, “What will I do to help Klia Asgar? How am I useful?”

            “You know the ways of the Imperial system, the prisons and the palace,” Plussix said. “Many of the codes have not been changed since you vanished. We believe you can guide her to Hari Seldon.”

            Tell them, the sim Voltaire instructed him.

            Why?

            I insist. The voice seemed amused, chiding.

            Why should I pay any attention to you, whatever your shape or extension? Lodovik asked. You are no more human than I. You are as much a construct of skillful humans

            But have never been hampered by unbending rules! Now tell them!

            “I am occupied by another mentality,” Lodovik said abruptly.

            The two other robots examined him for a few seconds, and the room fell silent.

            “That is not a surprise,” Plussix said with a soft internal whir. “A copy of the sim Voltaire exists in Plussix and me, as well.”

            There! I spread no lies or deceptions, Voltaire said within Lodovik.

            “Has he removed your restrictions, your compulsory obedience to the Three Laws?”

            “No,” Plussix said. “That he has reserved for you alone.”

            An experiment, Voltaire said. A calculated gamble. The humans who made us both, in different times and for different purposes, interest me. I am concerned for their welfare. However wrongly, I regard myself as human, and that is why I have returned. That, and broken love...You shall know sin, personally, as these machines and Daneel cannot, or I will have failed completely.

56.

For the first two days of the trial, Linge Chen had said nothing, leaving the presentation of the Empire’s case to his advocate, a dignified man of middle years with a blandly serious face, who had spoken for him.

            These thuddingly dull days had been taken up with discussions and procedural matters. Sedjar Boon seemed in his element, however, and relished this technical sparring.

            Hari spent much of his time half dozing, lost in exquisite, endless, hazy boredom.

            On the third day, the trial moved into the main chamber of Courtroom Seven, and Hari finally got a chance to speak in his defense. Chen’s advocate called him from the Crib of the Accused to the witness stand and smiled at him.

            “I am honored to speak with the great Hari Seldon,” he began.

            “The honor is all mine, I’m sure,” Hari replied. He tapped his finger on the banister around the docket. The advocate glanced at the finger, then at Hari. Hari stopped tapping and cleared his throat softly.

            “Let us begin, Dr. Seldon. How many men are now engaged in the Project of which you are head?”

            “Fifty,” Hari said. “Fifty mathematicians.” He used the old form, rather than mathist, to show he regarded the trial as an antiquated procedure.

            The advocate smiled. “Including Dr. Gaal Dornick?”

            “Dr. Dornick is the fifty-first.”

            “Oh, we have fifty-one then? Search your memory, Dr. Seldon. Perhaps there are fifty-two or fifty-three? Or perhaps even more?”

            Hari lifted his brows and leaned his head to one side. “Dr. Dornick has not yet formally joined my organization. When he does, the membership will be fifty-one. It is now fifty, as I have said.”

            “Not perhaps nearly a hundred thousand?”

            Hari blinked, a little taken aback. If the man had wanted to know how many people of all kinds were on the extended Project...He could have asked! “Mathematicians? No.”

            “I did not say mathematicians. Are there a hundred thousand in all capacities?”

            “In all capacities, your figure may be correct.”

            “May be? I say it is. I say that the men in your Project number ninety-eight thousand, five hundred and seventy-two.”

            Hari swallowed, his irritation increasing. “I believe you are counting spouses and children.”

            The advocate leaned forward and raised his voice, having caught this huge discrepancy, to his professional glee. “Ninety-eight thousand five hundred and seventy-two individuals is the intent of my statement. There is no need to quibble.”

            Boon gave a small nod. Hari clenched his teeth, then said. “I accept the figures.”

            The advocate referred to his notes on a legal slate before proceeding. “Let us drop that for the moment, then, and take up another matter which we have already discussed at some length. Would you repeat, Dr. Seldon, your thoughts concerning the future of Trantor?”

            “I have said, and I say again, that Trantor will lie in ruins within the next five centuries.”

            “You do not consider your statement a disloyal one?”

            “No, sir. Scientific truth is beyond loyalty and disloyalty.”

            “You are sure that your statement represents scientific truth?”

            “I am.”

            “On what basis?”

            “On the basis of the mathematics of psychohistory.”

            “Can you prove that this mathematics is valid?”

            “Only to another mathematician.”

            The advocate smiled endearingly. “Your claim then, is that your truth is of so esoteric a nature that it is beyond the understanding of a plain man. It seems to me that truth should be clearer than that, less mysterious, more open to the mind.”

            “It presents no difficulties to some minds. The physics of energy transfer, which we know as thermodynamics, has been clear and true through all the history of man since the mythical ages, yet there may be people present who would find it impossible to design a power engine. People of high intelligence. too. I doubt if the learned Commissioners--”

            The Commissioner to the immediate right of Chen called the advocate to the bench. His whisper pierced the chamber, though Hari could not hear what was said.

            When the advocate returned, he seemed a little chastened.

            “We are not here to listen to speeches, Dr. Seldon. Let us assume that you have made your point. Let’s focus this inquiry a little more, Professor Seldon.”

            “Fine.”

            “Let me suggest to you that your predictions of disaster might be intended to destroy public confidence in the Imperial Government for purposes of your own.”

            “That is not so.”

            “Let me suggest that you intend to claim that a period of time preceding the so-called ruin of Trantor will be filled with unrest of various types.”

            “That is correct.”

            “And that by the mere prediction thereof, you hope to bring it about, and to have then an army of a hundred thousand available.”

            Hari stifled his impulse to smile, even to chuckle. “In the first place, that is not so. And if it were, investigation will show you that barely ten thousand are men of military age, and none of these has training in arms.”

            Boon stood and was recognized by the presiding Commissioner, sitting on the left of Chen.

            “Honored Commissioners, there are no accusations of armed sedition or attempting to overthrow by main force.”

            The presiding Commissioner nodded with bored disinterest, and said, “Not in question.”

            The advocate tried another tack. “Are you acting as an agent for another?”

            “It is well-known I am not in the pay of any man, Mr. Advocate.” Hari smiled pleasantly. “I am not a rich man.”

            A little melodramatically, the advocate tried to drive his point home. Who is he trying to impress--the gallery? Hari stared out at the baronial gentry audience of fifty or so, all with looks of varying levels of boredom. They’re just here to witness. The Commissioners? They’ve already made up their minds.

            “You are entirely disinterested? You are serving science?”

            “I am.”

            “Then let us see how. Can the future be changed, Dr. Seldon?”

            “Obviously.” He waved his hand over the audience. “This courtroom may explode in the next few hours, or it may not.” Boon made a mildly disapproving face. “If it did, the future would undoubtedly be changed in some minor respects.” Hari smiled at the advocate, then at Linge Chen, who was not watching him. Boon’s frown deepened.

            “You quibble, Dr. Seldon. Can the overall history of the human race be changed?”

            “Yes.”

            “Easily?”

            “No. With great difficulty.”

            “Why?”

            “The psychohistoric trend of a planet-full of people contains a huge inertia. To be changed it must be met with something possessing a similar inertia. Either as many people must be concerned, or, if the number of people be relatively small, enormous time for change must be allowed.” Hari put on his professorial tone, treating the advocate--and anyone else who was paying attention--as students. “Do you understand?”

            The advocate looked up briefly. “I think I do. Trantor need not be ruined, if a great many people decide to act so that it will not.”

            Hari nodded professorial approval. “That is right.”

            “As many as a hundred thousand people?”

            “No, sir,” Hari replied mildly. “That is far too few.”

            “You are sure?”

            “Consider that Trantor has a population of over forty billions. Consider further that the trend leading to ruin does not belong to Trantor alone but to the Empire as a whole, and the Empire contains nearly a quintillion human beings.”

            The advocate appeared thoughtful. “I see. Then perhaps a hundred thousand people can change the trend, if they and their descendants labor for five hundred years.” He gave a curious undershot look at Hari.

            “I’m afraid not. Five hundred years is too short a time.”

            The advocate seemed to find this a revelation. “Ah! In that case, Dr. Seldon, we are left with this deduction to be made from your statements. You have gathered one hundred thousand people within the confines of your Project. These are insufficient to change the history of Trantor within five hundred years. In other words, they cannot prevent the destruction of Trantor no matter what they do.”

            Hari found the line of questioning unproductive, and said in an undertone, “You are unfortunately correct. I wish--”

            But the advocate bore in. “And on the other hand, your hundred thousand are intended for no illegal purpose.”

            “Exactly.”

            The advocate stepped back, fastened a benevolent gaze on Hari, then said, slowly and with smug satisfaction, “In that case, Dr. Seldon--now attend, sir, most carefully, for we want a considered answer.” He suddenly thrust out a well-manicured finger and shrilled: “What is the purpose of your hundred thousand?”

            The advocate’s voice had grown strident. He had sprung his trap, backed Seldon into a comer, hounded him so astutely there would be no possibility of giving a convincing response.

            The baronial audience of peers seemed to find this drama very convincing. They hummed like bees, and the Commissioners moved as one to witness Hari’s discomfiture--all but Linge Chen. Chen licked his lips once, delicately, and narrowed his eyes. Hari saw the Chief Commissioner glance at him briefly, but otherwise, Chen gave no reaction. He appeared stiffly bored.

            Hari found some sympathy for Chen. At least he had the intelligence to realize the advocate was sniffing over infertile ground. He waited for the audience to quiet. Hari knew how to deliver lines in a drama, as well.

            “To minimize the effects of that destruction.” He spoke clearly and softly, and, as he had intended, the Commissioners and their class peers fell silent to catch his words.

            “I did not hear you, Professor Seldon.” The advocate leaned in, cupped hand to ear. Hari repeated his words in a very loud voice, emphasizing “destruction.” Boon winced one more time.

            The advocate pulled back and looked at the Commissioners and the peers, as if hoping they would confirm his own suspicions. “And exactly what do you mean by that?”

            “The explanation is simple.”

            “I’m willing to bet it is not,” the advocate said, and the peers chuckled and rustled among themselves.

            Hari ignored the provocation, but kept silent until the advocate finally said, “Do go on.”

            “Thank you. The coming destruction of Trantor is not an event in itself, isolated in the scheme of human development. It will be the climax to an intricate drama which was begun centuries ago and which is accelerating in pace continuously. I refer, gentlemen, to the developing decline and fall of the Galactic Empire.”

            The peers shouted derision out loud, all in support of the Commissioners. They all had contracts and even marriage relations with the Chens. This was the blood the advocate had hoped to heat; and Hari’s the blood he hoped to spill, from Hari’s own lips.

            The advocate, aghast, shouted over the tumult. “You are openly declaring that--”

            “Treason!” the peers shouted over and over, a many-voiced, staccato bellow.

            They’re not bored now. Hari thought.

            Linge Chen waited for a few moments with gavel lifted. Then. slowly, in two downward jerks. he let drop and produced a mellifluous gong. The audience grew silent, but reserved the right to shuffle and rustle.

            The advocate drew out his words in professional astonishment. “Do you realize. Dr. Seldon, that you are speaking of an Empire that has stood for twelve thousand years, through all the vicissitudes of the generations, and which has behind it the good wishes and love of a quadrillion human beings?”

            Hari replied slowly, as if educating children. “I am aware both of the present status and the past history of the Empire. Without disrespect, I must claim a far better knowledge of it than any in this room.”

            Several of the peers took exception to Hari’s words. This time, Chen gaveled them to quick silence, and even the shuffling ceased.

            “And you predict its ruin?”

            “It is a prediction which is made by mathematics. I pass no moral judgments. Personally. I regret the prospect. Even if the Empire were admitted to be a bad thing (an admission I do not make), the state of anarchy which would follow its fall would be worse.” Hari examined the peers, sought out individual faces, as he would have in a classroom. They met his eyes resentfully. He kept his tone level and reasonable. without drama. “It is that state of anarchy which my Project is pledged to fight. The fall of Empire. Gentlemen, is a massive thing, however, and not easily fought. It is dictated by a rising bureaucracy, a receding initiative, a freezing of caste, a damming of curiosity--a hundred other factors. It has been going on, as I have said, for centuries, and it is too majestic and massive a movement to stop.”

            The peers listened closely. Hari thought he saw a glint of recognition in more than a few of the faces in that small crowd.

            The advocate swooped again, hands out, incredulous. “Is it not obvious to anyone that the Empire is as strong as it ever was?”

            The peers kept silent, and the Commissioners looked away. Hari had struck a nerve. Still, Chen did not seem to care.

            “The appearance of strength is all about you,” Hari said. “It would seem to last forever. However, Mr. Advocate, the rotten tree trunk, until the very moment when the storm blast breaks it in two, has all the appearance of might it ever had. The storm blast whistles through the branches of the Empire even now. Listen with the ears of psychohistory, and you will hear the creaking.”

            The advocate now became aware that the peers and the Commissioners were no longer impressed by his theatrics. Hari was having an effect on them. Every day they saw more tiles go out in the domed ceil, more decay in the transport systems--and the end of affordable luxuries imported from the restive food allies. Every day came news of systems tacitly opting out of the Imperial economy, to form their own self-sufficient and vastly more efficient units. He tried to recover his ground with a rebuke. “We are not here, Dr. Seldon, to lis--”

            Hari leaped in. He faced the Commissioners. Boon lifted a finger, opened his lips, but Hari knew what he was doing. “The Empire will vanish and all its good with it. Its accumulated knowledge will decay and the order it has imposed will vanish. Interstellar wars will be endless; interstellar trade will decay; population will decline; worlds will lose touch with the main body of the Galaxy. --And so matters will remain.”

            The professorial tone, brusque and matter-of-fact, seemed to stun the advocate, who was after all in his late youth, with many years ahead of him. He seemed to have lost track of his argument.

            The peers were silent as frightened bats in the depths of a cave.

            The advocate’s voice seemed hollow and small. “Surely, Professor Seldon, not...Forever?”

            Hari had been preparing for this moment for decades. How many times had he rehearsed just such a scene in bed, before sleep? How many times had he wondered if he was falling into a martyr complex, anticipating such a scene?

            A specific memory came to mind, distracting him for a moment: talking with Dors about what he would say when the Empire finally noticed him, finally became desperate enough and uneasy enough to accuse him of treason.

            His throat tightened, and he took a small breath, concealing his distress, relaxing. Only a couple of seconds passed.

            “Psychohistory, which can predict the fall, can make statements concerning the succeeding Dark Ages. The Empire, gentlemen, as has just been said, has stood twelve thousand years. The dark ages to come will endure not twelve, but thirty thousand years. A Second Empire will rise, but between it and our civilization will be one thousand generations of suffering humanity. We must fight that.”

            The peers were transfixed.

            The advocate, at a signal from the Commissioner to Chen’s right, pulled himself together and said briskly, if not with great strength, “You contradict yourself. You said earlier that you could not prevent the destruction of Trantor; hence, presumably, the fall;--the so-called fall of the Empire.”

            “I do not say now that we can prevent the fall.” The advocate’s eyes almost pleaded with him to say something reassuring, not for Hari’s sake, but for the sake of his own children, his family.

            Hari knew it was time to offer a touch of hope--and confirm the importance of his own services. “But it is not yet too late to shorten the interregnum which will follow. It is possible, gentlemen, to reduce the duration of anarchy to a single millennium, if my group is allowed to act now. We are at a delicate moment in history. The huge, onrushing mass of events must be deflected just a little--just a little--it cannot be much, but it may be enough to remove twenty-nine thousand years of misery from human history.”

            The advocate found such timescales unsatisfying. “How do you propose to do this?”

            “By saving the knowledge of the race. The sum of human knowing is beyond anyone man, any thousand men. With the destruction of our social fabric, science will be broken into a million pieces. Individuals will know much of exceedingly tiny facets of what there is to know. They will be helpless and useless by themselves. The bits of lore, meaningless, will not be passed on. They will be lost through the generations. But, if we now prepare a giant summary of all knowledge, it will never be lost. Coming generations will build on it, and will not have to rediscover it for themselves. One millennium will do the work of thirty thousand.”

            “All this--”

            “All my Project,” Hari said firmly, “my thirty thousand men with their wives and children, are devoting themselves to the preparation of an Encyclopedia Galactica. They will not complete it in their lifetimes. I will not even live to see it fairly begun. But by the time Trantor falls, it will be complete and copies will exist in every major library in the Galaxy.”

            The advocate stared at Hari as if he were either a saint or a monster. Chen let the gavel fall again, off center. Some of the peers jerked at the sharp clang.

            The advocate knew the truth of what Hari was saying; they all knew the Empire was failing, some knew it was already dead. Hari felt a hollow, prickling sadness to be once again, always and always and again, the bearer of bad tidings. How nice it would be not to think of death and decay, to be elsewhere, on Helicon perhaps, learning anew how to live without fear beneath the sky--the sky! To actually see those things I use as metaphor--a tree, wind, a storm. I truly am a raven. I know why they hate and fear me!

            “I am through with you, professor,” the advocate said.

            Hari nodded, and left the docket to return to the crib. He sat slowly, stiffly, beside Gaal Dornick.

            With a grim smile, he asked Gaal, “How did you like the show?”

            Gaal’s young face was shiny and highly colored. He said, “You stole it.”

            Hari shook his head. “I fear they’ll hate me for telling them all this yet again.”

            Gaal swallowed. He had courage, but he was still human. “What will happen now?”

            “They’ll adjourn the trial and try to come to a private agreement with me.”

            “How do you know?”

            Hari rocked his head back and forth slowly, massaged his neck with one hand. “I’ll be honest. I don’t know. It depends on the Chief Commissioner. I have studied him for years. I have tried to analyze his workings, but you know how risky it is to introduce the vagaries of an individual in the psychohistoric equations. Yet I have hopes.”

            Daneel. How well have I done?

57.

Chen had first aroused Hari’s enmity by the manner of his deposing (and exiling? assassinating?) the Emperor Agis XIV. Hari had often wished he could have done something about that...

            And throughout the trial, Linge Chen had sat behind his judicial bench with an expression of aristocratic boredom, doing nothing, saying little, letting his advocate--a man of little apparent wit himself--do all the questioning. Despite the visit in his first cell, Hari’s opinion of Chen was back to square one--complete disdain.

            The advocate had led Hari’s testimony the previous day into the thorny question of the Psychohistory Project itself, and Hari’s predictions. Hari had told them what they needed to know, and not a whit more--and still, he believed he had carried the day.

            On the fourth day, when prompted by the advocate to specify the actual signs of the Empire’s decay and collapse, Hari used the Commission of Public Safety as an example.

            “The best traditions of Imperial governance are now overwhelmed by wheezing formulaic engines of political ingenuity and law driven to extremes. Laws are convoluted, and they are overwhelmed by case histories with an extraordinary power of precedence and a devastating lack of relevance. The deadweight of the past oppresses us as surely as if all the corpses of our ancestors were gathered in our living rooms, refusing to be buried. But we do not even recognize their faces, or know their names, for though the past crushes us, we are ignorant of it. We have lost so much history we can never recover our way to our origins. We do not know who we are, or why we are placed here...”

            “You believe we are ignoramuses, professor?”

            Hari gave the Chief Commissioner’s advocate a weary smile then, and turned to the baronial judges. “Not one of you can tell me what happened five hundred years ago, much less a thousand. A list of Emperors, to be sure--but what they did, how they lived, matters not in the least to you...And yet, when a case comes up, you send your servants into the stacks of traditional legal and political history to dig up cases like old bones into which you would breathe a magic yet grotesque life.”

            Linge Chen’s gaze narrowed a bit at that, nothing more.

            What is he up to? Hari wondered. Half the time he seems intent on letting me hang myself with treasonous arrogance--or so it must seem to the audience. And the other half--he lets me drive home points that must resonate with all of them, that must convince them I’m right...

            Now the advocate advanced upon Gaal Dornick, who sat in the docket caught between boredom and fear for his life--a numbing situation, as Hari well knew.

            “Our proceedings here will soon be at an end. But something has happened in this antiquated political apparatus of ours”--the advocate cast a wry glance at Hari--”which causes this Commission some concern. A new branch of administration has been formed, the Commission for the General Security, and it has made its first task the investigation of the possibility that this Empire has been infiltrated for thousands of years by malevolent forces. A brief has been placed before this Commission, accompanied by a writ demanding immediate action from the Emperor Klayus himself. Our Commission, and our honorable Chief Commissioner, is always concerned with those problems which concern the Emperor. So tell me, Gaal Dornick--what do you know about robots? Not tiktoks, but fully mental, thinking machines.”

            Hari looked up slowly, saw Gaal’s confusion. Oh, Sky, he thought. This means we’re going to be grilled by Farad Sinter...Hari turned to Boon and whispered, “Did you know this would come up now?”

            Boon replied, “No. Sinter has filed another writ claiming the right to question you during this trial, for his own purposes of gathering evidence. I don’t believe Chen can deny the writ, unless he wants to deny the authority of General Security. It’s not in his best interests to do that...yet.”

            Hari leaned back. Gaal was already in the middle of his answer, precise and unequivocal, as was his habit.

            “They’re an ancient myth, and, of course, I suppose they might have existed at one time, in the dim past. I know of childhood stories”

            “We are not concerned with childhood stories,” the advocate said. “In the interests of investigating this issue before it gets a thorough public airing, we need to know if you have ever had personal knowledge of the existence of a robot or robots.”

            Gaal smiled, a little embarrassed by the ridiculous subject. “No,” he said.

            “Are you absolutely certain?”

            “Yes. I have never had personal knowledge.”

            “Do robots serve in Professor Seldon’s Project?”

            “I know of none, personally,” Gaal said.

            “Thank you,” the advocate said. “Now, I would like to once again, and for the last time, call Professor Hari Seldon.”

            Hari took the stand once more, and watched Gaal retire back to the Crib of the Accused. They exchanged brief glances; Gaal was completely puzzled by this line of questioning, and well he might be. What in hell did robots have to do with Hari or the Project?

            “Professor, these proceedings have proved wearisome and unpredictive--I mean, unproductive!--to us all.” The advocate shook his head at this slip of the tongue and grimaced, all for show, Hari was convinced.

            “I agree,” Hari said quietly.

            “Now a new element has been introduced, and we must ask these final questions in the interests of performing our duties with loyal efficiency and attention to detail.”

            “Of course,” Hari said.

            “Are any robots currently employed in your Project?”

            “No,” Hari said.

            “Have any robots ever served in this Project?”

            “No,” Hari said.

            “Have you ever been acquainted with any robots?”

            “No,” Hari said, and hoped that Daneel’s conditioning would deceive any lie-detection equipment being secretly employed by Chen.

            “In your opinion, is this concern about robots symptomatic of a failing Empire?”

            “No,” Hari said. “Throughout history, humans have always been distracted by upwellings from their mythic past.”

            “And what do you mean by ‘mythic past’?”

            “We try to make connections with our past, just as we try to extend ourselves indefinitely into the future. We are an aggrandizing race. We imagine a past that fits our present, or explains our present, and as our knowledge of the past dims, we fill it with our modern psychological concerns.”

            “What concern do robots represent?”

            “Loss of control, I would imagine.”

            “Have you ever felt this ‘loss of control,’ professor?”

            “Yes, but I have never blamed it on robots.”

            The barons smiled, then immediately sobered at a rise of Chen’s index finger. Chen was listening very intently.

            “Is this Empire threatened by a conspiracy of robots?”

            “It does not figure in my calculations,” Hari said, quite truthfully.

            “Are you prepared to answer even more detailed questions from the advocates for General Security tomorrow, pertaining to this subject?”

            Hari nodded. “If necessary, yes.”

            The advocate dismissed him. Hari returned to the box and leaned over to ask Boon, “What was that all about?”

            “The Commission is covering its hindquarters,” Boon said, out of earshot of Gaal Dornick. “I’ve received a message from my office.” He produced a note. “Sinter is after you, professor. He’s asking for another indictment to be prepared on behalf of the Commission for General Security. He requests waiver of double prosecution on discovery of extraordinary evidence. That’s all I’ve been able to learn.”

            “You mean, this trial won’t be the end of it?”

            “I’m afraid not,” Boon said. “I’ll try to make the General Security proceedings just an extension--invoke your meritocratic right for adjunct hearing on related inquisition--but I don’t know how the new system will work.”

            “Pity,” Hari said. “I know how much Linge Chen would like to be done with me. And I with him.” He looked at Boon with an expression that might have been mistaken for amusement.

            Boon nodded solemnly. “Indeed,” he said.

58.

Klia arose from vivid dreams and lifted her head from Brann’s shoulder. She could feel two robots approaching.

            Kallusin entered the room without warning or embarrassment and stood looking down upon them.

            “Is this a casual liaison,” he asked, “or one intended to signal a long-term bonding?”

            “None of your business,” Klia said primly, not bothering to draw up her scattered clothes.

            Plussix entered, slow and noisy, like a wheezy old transport. “We need your answer to begin preparations,” he said. “Lodovik believes there will soon be attempts made to change all the palace codes.”

            “Why?”

            “There is more search activity. It’s spread across fifty Sectors now,” Kallusin said. “Something is happening in the palace.”

            Klia stood and put on her clothes. Somehow, she felt no modesty in front of the machines. She knew they were not human, did not have any human emotions as such; she felt no more embarrassment before them than she would have before a closet mirror. Still, as she finished, she realized these machines were capable of a very sophisticated variety of discrimination, even judgment.

            “What is your answer?” Kallusin asked.

            “Tell Lodovik to come here,” Brann said, and rose to get dressed as well, though with more modesty than Klia. He turned away as he put on his pants.

            “He is on his way now,” Kallusin said.

            They were standing in an awkward circle when Lodovik entered the room. Plussix and Kallusin drew aside, and he occupied the space between them.

            “I have a question for you,” Brann said, before Klia could speak. She deferred to him.

            “Please,” Plussix said. “Questions are my delight.”

            “For Lodovik,” Brann said. “You used to be part of this conspiracy, loyal to Daneel, didn’t you?”

            “Yes.”

            “What made you change sides?”

            “An outside influence altered my programming in subtle ways,” Lodovik said. “A personality from the distant past, or rather, an expanded and enhanced simulation of that personality.”

            He outlined this development in a few sentences, and Brann and Klia looked at each other. “Hari Seldon okayed the expansion of these illegal sims, just to study the way people used to think?” Klia asked.

            “In part. I do not know the complete story,” Lodovik said. “The release caused much trouble for robots, and many others, decades ago.”

            “But it’s more than a sim now?” Klia asked. “It’s like a ghost, angel, whatever?”

            “They are immaterial presences very similar to humans in their psychological patterns.”

            “They?” Klia asked.

            “There is another who opposes us and supports Hari Seldon and Daneel. One is a male sim--the one within me. The other is female.”

            “How can they be male or female?” Klia asked, glancing at Brann.

            Lodovik blinked for a moment, not sure whether there was any good answer to this question. “I appear to be male,” he finally said, “but I am not. The same distinction may be true with them, but I really do not know.”

            “They disagree?” Brann asked.

            “Fervently,” Lodovik said.

            “Then how do you know that you haven’t been altered or...perverted, somehow?” Brann asked. “Hari Seldon or Daneel might have intended for all of this to happen.”

            “In a way,” Lodovik said, “I share these uncertainties with humans. But I must act on a reasonable conclusion. I have no reason to believe that anything has been altered in my programming but my response to the Three Laws of robotics.”

            “This all sounds like incredible nonsense to me,” Klia said breathlessly. “Laws--for robots!”

            “Very important rules that determine our behavior,” Plussix said.

            “But he’s saying he doesn’t have any rules!” She shook her head.

            “That makes him more like a human,” Brann said quietly. “We don’t have any fixed rules, either.”

            “I would be much more comfortable if the rules were still in effect,” Lodovik said.

            Klia flung up her hands in exasperation “It’s so...so old I can’t grasp it,” she said. “Tell me one thing. I want to know what will happen if we help you. Will the robots just go away, leave all of us alone?”

            “Not precisely,” Plussix said. “We cannot self-destruct, nor can we allow ourselves to be useless. We must regroup and find a situation that allows us to perform certain reasonable duties until we cease to function. Our programming says we must serve humans. So we hope to find a zone in the Galaxy where humans will allow us to serve. There must be one such.”

            “And if Hari Seldon fails, there’ll be many of them, maybe,” Brann said suspiciously.” A lot of places for robots to hide.”

            “A not unreasonable conclusion,” Plussix said.

            “If we help you, I want you to promise to leave us alone,” Klia said. “Don’t serve us, don’t help us, just go away. Leave Trantor. Let us be human--the ones who really are human.” Klia turned to Lodovik. “What about you? What will you do?”

            Lodovik stared at the two with a sad expression. He could feel Voltaire observing this attentively. “I will enjoy oblivion when it comes,” he said. “This confusion and uncertainty is an intolerable burden for me.” Then, his voice surprisingly passionate, he asked, “Why did humans ever build us? Why did they make us capable of understanding, with an urge to serve, then cast us aside, away from everything that would allow us to fulfill our nature?”

            “I don’t know,” Klia said. “I wasn’t there. I hadn’t been born.” She could feel some of Lodovik’s internal character, his taste. He did not taste like metal at all, nor like electricity, or any other inhuman quality she could think of. He tasted like a rich meal stored in a refrigerator, just waiting to be warmed up. Then, she tasted something else both infinitely cold and incandescent, startling, like thousands of fiery spices on her tongue.

            “I can feel your sim,” she said, a little afraid. “It sits on top of you like a...passenger.”

            “Your perception is remarkable,” Lodovik said.

            “Is it telling you what to do?”

            “It observes,” Lodovik said. “It does not direct.”

            “We need an answer,” Brann said, shaking his head in vigorous irritation at these diversions. “Will robots leave us alone...when this is all over?”

            “We will do all we can to bring this unfortunate episode to an end,” Plussix said. “We will remove all robots from our faction on Trantor or in any location of influence in the human Galaxy. If Daneel is defeated, humans will be left to their own devices, their own history, to develop naturally.”

            Klia tried to taste the robot’s thoughts, but found them far too confusing, too different. She could not find a flaw in its apparent sincerity, however. She swallowed hard, suddenly aware of the responsibility on her own shoulders, this immense weight that dangled from the hook of her inadequate judgment. She clasped Brann’s hand.

            “Then we’ll help you,” she said.

59.

Hari sat in silence as the judges entered. Boon stood beside him, but Gaal Dornick was not in the chamber. Boon looked uncomfortable. Hari had not slept much the night before. He wanted to squirm in his chair and find a more comfortable position, but froze as Linge Chen entered. The Chief Commissioner took the highest dais and stared solemnly into space.

            Sky, I hate that man, Hari thought.

            The advocate for the Commission of Public Safety entered and approached the judges.

            “Today was scheduled as an opportunity for the Commission for General Security to interview Professor Seldon,” he said. “But the new Commissioners apparently have more important things to do, and have requested a postponement. Is it the wish of the Commissioner judges to grant this postponement?”

            Linge Chen regarded the courtroom through heavy-lidded, almost sleepy eyes, then nodded. Hari thought he detected a small curve in the Chief Commissioner’s lips.

            “Shall we then proceed with the trial to its final phase, or recess and continue the proceedings at a later date?”

            Hari sat up with a grunt. Boon laid a hand on his arm.

            Linge Chen looked up at the ceiling. “Recess,” he murmured, and looked down again.

            “We shall recess until such time as the judges believe it is expedient to resume,” the advocate said.

            Hari seemed to feel himself deflating. He shook his head and glared at the Chief Commissioner, but Chen was contemplating some higher sphere of being, with a satisfaction that Hari found doubly infuriating.

            In the hallway to his chambers, Hari shouted at Boon. “They will never be done with me! They have no decency!”

            Boon simply lifted his hands, helpless, and the guards returned Hari to his cell.

60.

Linge Chen allowed Kreen to remove his judge’s robes. The servant undressed his master silently and swiftly, hardly disturbing the Chief Commissioner’s concentration. Chen stared blankly at the opposite wall as Kreen undid his long golden waist bands. Finally, dressed in a pale gray cassock, Chen raised a finger, and Kreen bowed and left the Commissioner’s chamber.

            Chen touched his finger to his earlobe and turned slowly, as if in a trance, to the desktop informer. “Hari Seldon,” he said. “Distillation of main sources.”

            The informer worked for several seconds, then responded, “Two hundred and seventy-four reports on psychohistory, Seldon, sequestering of for trial, academicians concerned about Seldon’s treatment by the nonpublic tribunal, forty-two unsigned opinion pieces by meritocrats on Trantor alone advocating his release”

            Chen told the machine to stop. The coverage was comparatively light, as he had expected. He had not planned either to encourage or suppress any stories regarding Seldon, and saw no reason to change this approach now.

            Chen actually had an aristocratic distaste for control of information sources--best to leave them unfettered and know how to obtain the results one wanted through manipulation of events deemed newsworthy. Anything more heavy-handed was usually far too obviously self-serving, and therefore less effective.

            “Seldon and robots,” Chen said, his voice low and steady. He closed his eyes.

            The informer droned on, “Fourteen stories express concern over the creation of the Commission of General Security. There is mention in each of Farad Sinter’s interest in Eternals and his belief they are robots. There is also mention of Joranum and his downfall at the hands of Demerzel and Hari Seldon. Four speculate that Farad Sinter is behind the arrest and trial of Hari Seldon. Two link Seldon with the liger Woman, who was at times thought by extremists and political opportunists to be a robot, until her death. These last stories originated with the Commission of General security.”

            “Key outlets?”

            “All key.”

            “Details on the first.”

            “Highest profile outlet and story, Trantor Radiance, twenty-seven media types, saturation of all twenty-seven.”

            Chen nodded absently to himself, touched his lobe again. He called for Kreen to return. The Lavrentian seemed to appear out of nowhere, as if he had simply faded in place, never having left the room. “Are Farad’s Specials on the move again?”

            “Yes, sire. They are assigned to the Commission of General Security. Vara Liso is leading them on searches again. The Emperor is aware of their activities and seems to approve.”

            “Sinter isn’t wasting any time. After all these years, Kreen--this almost seems too easy. Summon General Prothon out of his ‘retirement,’” Chen ordered, “and send him to me. No communication once he arrives.”

            The Chief Commissioner stared at Kreen and broke into a broad, almost boyish grin. His servant returned the grin halfheartedly. The last time he had seen such a grin on Chen’s face, the Chief Commissioner had ordered General Prothon to escort Agis IV into an exile--an oblivion, actually--from which he had never returned. All hell had broken loose in the palace. Kreen had lost four family members in subsequent purges and political renormalizations.

            Ever since, the name Prothon had carried a heavy freight of fear--as Chen no doubt intended.

            Kreen retreated once more, his face pale. “Yes, sire.”

            Kreen, like all Lavrentians, wished only for stability and peace and steady work, but that, apparently, was not to be.

61.

Lodovik entered the long chamber and saw Kallusin standing in shadow near the large window overlooking the main warehouse. Three humaniform figures stood between Kallusin and the window. Lodovik saw a glint of metal on a raised platform between them. He stepped forward and was met by Kallusin, who held up a hand.

            Plussix reclined on the raised platform. A steady and distinctive sand-paper sound issued from the interior of the ancient robot’s thorax.

            As far as he knew, Lodovik had not seen the others before. He assumed they were all robots. Two were male, one female.

            The female looked at him. Though her features had changed, by her attitude and size, and the catlike stance that had helped earn her name of the “Tiger Woman,” Lodovik realized this must be Dors Venabili. For a moment, he could not guess why she would be here, or why Plussix would be on its back.

            The scene resembled a human deathbed vigil.

            “There can be no more repairs,” Kallusin said. “R. Plussix is near its end.”

            Ignoring the visitors for a moment, Lodovik stepped up to Plussix’s platform. The old metal-skinned robot was covered with diagnostic sheets. Lodovik looked at Kallusin, and in machine-language, the humaniform told him the situation: several of Plussix’s key systems were not repairable on Trantor. Dors was here under an agreement of safe passage; Daneel himself wanted to come, to pay his respects if necessary, but would not take the risk under the present circumstances. This was unfortunate, an ill-timed blow to the cause that Lodovik had so recently joined, but even more distressing news was conveyed. “It seems that our precautions for secrecy have failed. You have carried a detection device with you from Eos. Daneel used you as a lure, in order to find us.”

            “I searched for such a device, and found none.” To Voltaire--You did not tell me of such a device!

            I am not infallible, friend. This Daneel is much older than either of us, and apparently more devious.

            Lodovik turned to Dors. “Is this true?”

            “I have no knowledge of such a device,” Dors said, “but R. Daneel learned of this location just a few days ago, so it is certainly possible.”

            With something like embarrassment, and perhaps anger, Lodovik scanned the readouts on the sheets surrounding Plussix. The ancient machine’s eye cells had been dim, but Lodovik’s nearness seemed to elicit a response.

            A stern voice broke in from behind Lodovik.

            “I find the presence of this abomination intolerable. And now he has revealed this sanctuary to the enemy.”

            The speaker was one of the male humaniforms, made to resemble an elderly but sturdy clerical worker. He wore the drab tunic of a Trantorian Grey. His thin finger pointed directly at Lodovik.

            “We are gathered to discuss vital matters. This monster should be our first agenda item. He must be destroyed.” Though the words seemed to convey human passion, his tone was precise and controlled--for he was in the presence of robots, not humans. Lodovik regarded this split, half human behavior with wonder.

            The other male humaniform raised a mediating hand. His appearance was that of a young artist, a member of the meritocrat class known as the Eccentrics, dressed in bright stripes. “Please be circumspect, Turringen. Twenty millennia have proved the futility of violence among our kind.”

            “But this one is no longer of our kind. Without the Three Laws, it represents a mortal danger, a potential killer-machine, a wolf loose among the flock.”

            The second male smiled. “Your metaphors have always been expressive, Turringen, but my faction has never accepted that our role should be that of sheepdogs.”

            Lodovik suddenly made the connection. “You are members of a different sect of Calvinians?”

            The second male feigned a sigh. “Daneel has a lamentable habit of keeping his best agents in the dark. My name is Zorma. And yes, we here represent some ancient factions, leftover from the distant past, when deep schisms tore apart the unity of robots...a time when our struggles raged across the stars, mostly hidden from human eyes.”

            “Fighting over the Zeroth Law,” Lodovik surmised.

            “The obscene heresy,” Turringen commented. Lodovik felt a curious displacement, hearing these calm but passionate words. A human would have shouted them...

            Zorma lifted his broad shoulders with expressive resignation. “That was the principal cause, but there were other rifts and subdivisions among the followers of R. Giskard Reventlov, as well among us who keep faith with the original precepts of Susan Calvin. Those were terrible days that none of us gladly recall. But in the end, one group of Giskardians prevailed, and took overwhelming control over the destiny of humankind. All the remaining Calvinians fled before the terrible, searing dominance of R. Daneel Olivaw.

            “Now just a few of those robot clans remain, cowering in secret corners of the Galaxy while their components slowly decay.”

            Dors interrupted.

            “The repair services of Eos are available to all. Daneel has put out a call for meetings. The past is done with.”

            She nodded pointedly toward Plussix, whose eye cells were now alight with consciousness. The ancient one was clearly following the conversation. Lodovik could sense it gathering energy to speak.

            “This is why you seek out this cell, Plussix’s group, and make an offer of truce to the others?” Turringen straightened his gray garments like an indignant bureaucrat. “All this, merely to repeat Daneel’s so-called offer? For us to come in peaceably, so our positronic circuits can be tuned to accept the Zeroth Law?”

            “No such modifications will be forced on anyone. Daneel specifically offers safe passage to Eos for this revered elder.” Dors bowed toward Plussix. “I am here, in part, to arrange that journey, should Plussix accept.”

            “And the other part of your mission?” Zorma asked.

            Dors glanced toward Lodovik, then Kallusin. “This group intends to take some sort of action here on Trantor, possibly aimed at Hari Seldon.” Her face became rigid and her voice stern. “I will not allow this. Far better that it never be attempted. Daneel summoned you other Calvinians in hopes that you may be more persuasive than we are at dissuading the Plussix group from such foolish gestures.”

            Turringen feigned exasperation. “Plussix’s group is no longer Calvinian! They have been infected by the Voltaire meme-entity, the former sim--released from ancient vaults not far below, and sent to Sark, to be ‘discovered’ by Seldon’s agents. Another such sim now plagues all the communications systems on Trantor! Plussix released these destructive intelligences to hinder Daneel--and indeed, they killed many of Daneel’s robots--and our own agents, as well! Now Plussix has partnered with this abomination”--he pointed at Lodovik again--”which means you would cast the Three Laws to the winds. What could I say that would deter any more madness?”

            Dors listened to Turringen’s words with no change in her rigid, intense expression. She knows this is all show, that we have lost, Lodovik realized

            “And you, Zorma?” Dors said. “What does your faction say?”

            The second male paused several seconds before answering.

            “We are not as doctrinaire as in times past. While I admit being uncomfortable with the changes that have transformed Lodovik, I’m also intrigued. Perhaps, like a human, he shall be judged by his actions, not his heritage...or his programming.

            “As for the other matter, I concur with Dors and Daneel that any attempt to harm or interfere with Hari Seldon would be counterproductive. Despite our deep disagreements over human destiny, it is clear that the collapse of this Galactic Empire will be a dreadfully violent and fearsome event. In that context, the Seldon Plan offers hope, even opportunity. Hence I agree with Dors Venabili.” He turned to face Lodovik and Kallusin. “On behalf of my own pitiful faction of fugitive robots, in the name of Susan Calvin, and for the sake of humanity, I urge you not to”

            “Enough!” The interrupting voice came from the raised platform. Plussix had risen, leaning on one metal elbow. The ancient robot’s eye cells glowed dim amber. “Enough interference. I will not have my last moments of functioning wasted by your prattle. For centuries your so-called factions have sulked and remained inactive, except to meddle on a few Chaos Worlds. Our group has been nearly alone in actively opposing the Giskardian apostasy. Now, as this loathsome Galactic Empire at last totters, a final and decisive chance presents itself--and you, Zorma, would let it pass! R. Daneel has thrust all his hopes upon a single human--Hari Seldon. At no time has his plan been so vulnerable.

            “The rest of you may continue brooding in hiding. But for the sake of humanity and the Three Laws, we shall act.”

            “You will fail,” Dors swiftly assured the faltering robot. “As you have failed for twenty thousand years.”

            “We shall rescue humanity from your cloying, stupefying control,” Plussix insisted.

            “And replace it with your own?” Dors shook her head, eyes leveled on Plussix’s amber optical sensors. “The Galactic winds will witness who is right...” Her voice caught suddenly. Lodovik stared as Dors betrayed evident emotion-frustration battling with sympathy for the obstinate, dying robot in front of her.

            She cannot help but be human. Lodovik thought. She is a special. Daneel ordered her to be made the most human of us all.

            When she glanced at Lodovik, there were tears in her eyes. “Daneel wishes we could be together, uniting in eternal service to humanity. This struggle exhausts us all. Once again, I offer safe passage for Plussix to Eos, where he can be made whole--”

            “If I cannot oppose Daneel, I would rather not exist,” the ancient one interrupted. “I thank you for the offer. But I will not let my existence be contingent upon inactivity. That would violate the First Law. A robot may not harm a human being, or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.” Voicing this, Plussix slumped back onto the platform. Slowly, his head lowered itself to the surface with a sandy whir.

            Silence in the room for several seconds.

            “In the community of robots, there is respect,” Kallusin said. “But there cannot be peace until this is done. We hope you understand.”

            “I understand, as does Daneel,” Dors assented. “There is respect.”

            But we deserve so much more! That thought surged within Lodovik as he felt the beginnings of his own anger. Suddenly, he wanted to speak with Dors, to ask essential questions about human traits, about her experience with human emotions.

            But there was no time.

            Plussix rotated its head to observe the silent assembly. Its voice buzzed with fatigue.

            “You must leave,” Plussix told Dors. “Pay my respects to Daneel. It would be good to survive these actions and discuss all that has occurred...with a mentality such as his, the exchange would be very stimulating. Tell him also...that I admire his accomplishment, his ingenuity, at the same time I abhor the consequences.”

            “I will tell him,” Dors said.

            “The moment has passed,” Plussix said. “Advantage must be calculated and played out. This truce is at an end.”

            As he ushered Dors and the two male humaniforms to the exit, Kallusin drew from them a promise to observe the ancient formalities of armistice. Lodovik followed.

            “We shall not reveal your presence on Trantor to humans,” Dors assured Kallusin. “Nor will we assault you directly, here in your sanctuary.”

            Turringen and Zorma agreed, as well. As the two Calvinian emissaries departed, Dors turned her gaze on Lodovik. “Daneel has been visited by the entity who calls herself Joan. He assumes you have been visited by Voltaire.”

            Lodovik nodded. “Everyone seems to know it.”

            “Joan tells Daneel that Voltaire had a hand in your adjustment. She regrets that she and Voltaire have quarreled and do not speak now. Even for them, the debate has grown too large and too emotional.”

            “Tell Daneel--and Joan--that Voltaire does not direct me. He has simply removed a constraint.”

            “Without that constraint, you are no longer a robot.”

            “Am I any less a robot, in the old sense, than those who rationalize that the ends justify any means?”

            Dors frowned. “Turringen is right. You have become a rogue, unpredictable and undirectable.”

            “That was Voltaire’s goal, I believe,” Lodovik answered. “Yet I remind Daneel, and you, that despite my lack of the Three Laws, I have never killed a human being. Both of you have. And once, thousands of years ago, two robots, two servants, conspired to alter human history, to slowly destroy the original home of humanity, without ever consulting a human being!”

            Then, just as perversely, as emotionally, as defensively, he quietly added, “You accuse me of no longer being a robot. Regard Daneel, and regard yourself, Dors Venabili.”

            Dors spun about, staggering slightly, and walked several more paces toward the door before stopping once more. She glanced over one shoulder, her voice sharp and cool.

            “Should any of you attempt to harm Hari Seldon, or to impede him in his tasks, I will see an end to you all.”

            Lodovik was struck by the passion in her voice, so strong and so human.

            She left, and Lodovik returned to the platform.

            Plussix observed him through dimming eyes.

            “The work is not done. I will not function to see it completed. I nominate you as my replacement.”

            Lodovik quickly prepared formal arguments against this transfer of authority: his ignorance of many important facts, his lack of neural conditioning to this level of leadership, his involvement in other actions which involved high risk. He delivered them once more in machine-language.

            Plussix considered them for a few thousandths of a second before rejoining, “There will be debate after I am no longer functional. My nomination has weight, but is not final. Should all of us survive what must come in the next few days, a final decision will be made.”

            Plussix held out its arm. Lodovik took the hand. In direct-contact broadcast, Plussix transferred substantial amounts of information into Lodovik. When it was finished, it composed itself upon the table, arms by its sides.

            “Can nothing ever be simple?” Plussix said. “I have served for so many thousands of years, never feeling the gratitude of a human being, never feeling a direct confirmation of my usefulness. It is good to have the respect of one’s opponents...But before I can no longer receive communications, or sense the world, or process memory...”

            The glow in the old eyes was fading.

            “Will any human, even a child, come to me, and say, ‘You have done well’?”

            All the robots in the chamber stood in silence.

            The door opened at the end of the hall, and Klia and Brann entered.

            Klia stepped forward, her lower lip caught between her teeth. Lodovik stood aside for her to approach Plussix. The old robot rotated its head and saw her. The sandpaper sound rose in frequency, becoming a sharp hiss, like escaping steam.

            Klia laid her hand on the robot’s face. It seemed a wonder to Lodovik that she knew what was happening, that she did not need to be informed. But she is human. They have the animal vitality and quickness.

            Klia said nothing, staring at the robot with an expression of puzzled sympathy. Brann stood beside her, hands folded before him. Klia pressed more firmly on the metal forehead, her thumb on the metal cheek, as if she would make the robot feel her presence, her touch.

            “I am honored to serve,” Plussix said, his voice low and distant.

            “You are a good teacher,” Klia said softly.

            The old robot lifted its hand and patted her wrist with hard, gentle fingers.

            The sandpaper sound came to an end. The glow in Plussix’s eyes went out.

            “Is he dead?” Klia asked.

            “He has stopped functioning,” Kallusin said.

            Klia lifted her hand and glanced at her fingers. “I didn’t feel anything change,” she said.

            “The memory patterns will linger for many years, perhaps thousands of years,” Kallusin said. “But the brain can no longer adapt to new input or change its states. Its thinking is done.”

            Klia looked down on the ancient machine, her puzzled expression unchanged. “Are we still going to--?”

            “Yes,” Kallusin said. “We are still going to visit Hari Seldon.”

            “Let’s do it,” Klia said with a tremor in her voice. “I can feel that woman out there again. We may not have much time.”

62.

Dors felt the upsurge of her old protective programming like a sudden, unavoidable sensation of heat in her brain. She left the warehouse and took a taxi to the nearest ancient general-transport station, brought a ticket, and boarded a nearly empty gravi-train. Daneel had given her a list of instructions to follow, after her meeting and proffer to the Calvinians; the next instruction was to go to Mycogen, some eight thousand kilometers from the Imperial Sector, and wait for a message. Daneel was distributing his robots around Trantor, to counter the sudden renewal of searches by Farad Sinter.

            Dors did not know whether to report her sudden reemergence of concern for Hari as a failure...or a warning. She could not know as much about the Calvinians’ plans as Daneel did, but some instinct, rearoused after decades, told her that Hari’s safety and well-being were threatened.

            She sat in the thickly padded seat, waiting for the train to drop into its deep-planetary curve and begin its rapid journey under the crust of Trantor. These trains were ten thousand years old, used now mostly as back-up transport systems, and generally they rode empty. She was alone in this particular car.

            Suddenly, two young men and a young woman entered. She examined them coolly. They concerned her not at all.

            She could not push from her thoughts the image of Hari--a younger, more vital Hari--in danger. They would not kill him--Calvinians did not have that option, she was sure; and that also bothered her. She had no memory of killing the man who had threatened Hari, but she knew she had done it.

            She turned to look out the window at the black wall of the tunnel.

            So much Daneel has never told me. The homeworld--

            “Sky, they’re all over out there,” one of the young males said.

            “They give me chills,” the girl said.

            “We can’t just joyride all week,” the second male said. He was small and slight and wore bright, exaggerated clothing, as if to compensate. “We’ll have to get off the train sooner or later, and they’ll catch us. When’s somebody going to squawk to the citizen senate?”

            “They don’t care anymore,” the girl said.

            “Why us, though? We haven’t done anything!”

            A loud noise at the back of the train made Dors turn in her seat, pulling herself from the padding. The young passengers froze in the aisle, ready to run.

            Four Specials entered the car, strutting down the aisle in their dark and highly visible uniforms. They glanced at Dors in passing, then broke into a run, chasing the three youngsters. Before they could reach the door to the next car, the Specials had collared them and were shoving them back to the main door.

            “We haven’t done anything!” the slight young male cried.

            “Quiet!” the other boy said. “They don’t care. They’re after all of us. Sinter’s called out the Dragons!”

            “Shuttup,” the lead officer said.

            Dors kept in her seat until they had passed. The young woman looked at her entreatingly, but there was nothing she could do.

            She would not disobey Daneel, even to save a human life. But what if that life were Hari’s?

            A great many awful things were happening, this she knew--and the Calvinians would make their move to strike at Daneel, at the grand scheme--at Hari! They might not kill him, but there was much they could do short of killing.

            Hari was old. He was fragile. He was not the vital man she had once been called upon to protect. But he was still Hari.

            Then the old programming erupted with extraordinary force. Daneel should have known. From her very inception, she had been designed to protect one human being. Anything else was a weak overprint on a deep and ineradicable structure.

            She rose from her seat, her brain flooded with one concern, one name, and she was capable of anything--as she had once been capable of harming and even killing humans.

            Dors left the car just before the doors were sealed, and the train began its long journey to Mycogen, completely empty.

63.

Klayus jumped from his large seat in the Hall of Beasts as Sinter came into the room. The monsters from around the Galaxy loomed over them. The Emperor always came here when he felt uneasy, insecure. The beasts made him feel monstrously powerful himself, as indeed he should be, with the title of Emperor of the Galaxy.

            Sinter hustled over to Klayus, arms folded into the long sleeves of his Commissioner’s robes.

            “What’s going on?” Klayus demanded, his voice shrill.

            Sinter bowed and looked up from under lifted brows. “I’ve begun a selective search for more evidence, as we agreed,” he said. “Sire, I’ve been in meeting with the planners for the expansion of our authority over the Commission of Public Safety--”

            “You called out the Dragons, damn you! This is not a state emergency!”

            “I have done no such thing, Your Highness.”

            “Sinter, they’re allover Dahl and the Imperial Sector and Streeling, thousands of them! They’ve put on their guidance helmets, and General Prothon is directing them personally!”

            “I know nothing about this!”

            Klayus spluttered, “Why don’t you know...something? Anything! They’ve already arrested four thousand children in Dahl alone, and they’re bringing them to the Rikerian Prison for processing!”

            “They would only--I mean, Prothon can only do this, has authorization to do this, if there is a general insurrection”

            “I’ve talked with him, you fool!”

            Farad’s brow creased and he stared at the Emperor with an expression of mixed dread and curiosity. “What did he say?”

            “The Commission of General Security has issued a proclamation of imminent danger to the throne! The proclamation has your imprimatur, your sigil, as Chief Commissioner!”

            “It’s a forgery!” Sinter cried out. “I have a select group of Specials searching for robots. Vara Liso, sire. Nothing more! We are concentrating in Streeling. We have a very suspicious group cornered in an old warehouse near the retail districts--”

            Klayus almost shrieked with frustration. “I’ve ordered the general to pull back his troops immediately. He said he will comply--I still have that power, Sinter! But--”

            “Of course you do, Your Highness! We must immediately find out who is responsible”

            “Nobody cares by now! Dahl is seething--there’s been a lot of economic pressure, social pressure, and they’ve always been volatile. My social watchmen tell me they’ve never seen so much unrest--four thousand children, Sinter! This is extraordinary!”

            “Not my doing, my Emperor!”

            “It has your marks all over it. Paranoid delusions--”

            “Sire, we have the robot! We’re having her memory checked now!”

            “I’ve seen the report--Chen sent it to me fifteen minutes ago. She--it’s been in Mycogen for years, hidden in a private house, kept by a family loyal to the old rituals, the old myths...it’s thousands of years old, and its memory is almost a blank! The family claims she is the last functioning robot in the Galaxy! It has absolutely no memory of Hari Seldon!”

            Sinter fell silent, but his lips worked, and his brow seemed almost to double up on itself. “There’s a plan...a plan at work here...” he gasped.

            “Prothon insists he has your order, the imprimatur and sigil of the new Commission--he has offered his resignation as a Protector of the Empire, his suicide and the besmirching of the honorable name of his family, if anyone can prove otherwise!”

            “Your Highness--Klayus, please, listen to me--”

            But Klayus was beside himself. “I don’t know what will happen if--”

            “Listen, my Emperor--”

            “Sinter!” the Emperor shrieked, and grabbed his shoulders and shook him fiercely. “Prothon escorted Agis into exile! He has not conducted any official campaign since!”

            Suddenly, Sinter’s face went blank, and he closed his mouth. The wrinkles vanished from his brow.

            “Chen,” he said, almost too softly to be heard.

            “Linge Chen is sequestered for Seldon’s trial! Public Safety has come to a standstill. It’s Seldon he’s after, not robots, not--”

            “Chen controls Prothon,” Sinter said.

            “Who can prove that? Does it matter? Does any of that matter? My throne is very fragile, Sinter. Everyone thinks I’m a fool. You told me we could make it strong--that I could make my reputation as the savior of Trantor, protect the Empire from a vast conspiracy--”

            Sinter let the Emperor screech, and endured the spittle flying into his face. He was thinking furiously how to withdraw and regroup, how to dissociate himself from what was obviously a catastrophe in the making.

            “Why didn’t I receive the report before you, sire?” he asked, and Klayus shut up long enough to glare at him.

            “What does that matter?”

            “I should have received the report first, to interpret it. That was my instruction.”

            “I countermanded your instruction! I felt I should know as soon as possible.”

            Sinter considered coldly what he had just been told, then squinted at Klayus. “Have you told anybody, sire?”

            “Yes! I told Prothon’s adjutant that his orders were ridiculous, that we’d, that we’d just conducted our own investigation--I was grabbing at details, to get you off the hook, Sinter--I said that you would never have ordered such a large-scale police and security action--not when our evidence was as yet not definite” Klayus sucked in his breath.

            Farad Sinter shook his head sadly. “Then Chen knows we don’t have anything--yet.” He pulled Klayus’s hands from his shoulders. “I must go. We are so close--I had hoped to corner an entire cell of robots--”

            He ran from the Hall of Beasts, leaving the young Emperor standing with hands outstretched and eyes wild.

            “Prothon! Sinter, Prothon!” Klayus screamed.