4.

  ZUN LURRIN OBSERVED Daneel’s ship streak away from Eos, briefly illuminating the lake of frozen mercury with its actinic flare. He watched until the speedy vessel made its first hyperspace jump, swooping toward the galaxy’s shimmering wheel. Without having to navigate dust lanes or fight the gravity eddies of ten billion stars, the craft should make excellent time streaking toward its destination.

  A message from one of Daneel’s agents had provoked the leader of all Zeroth Law robots into a blur of activity, rushing through preflight operations and departing with only a few words of instructions for Zun.

  “I’m leaving you in charge,” the Immortal Servant had said. “Here are access codes to my personal data files, in case I don’t return at the expected time.”

  “Is the situation truly so dire?” Zun had asked, with concern.

  “Several forces are at work, some of which are not easily factored into my calculations. I would guess there is a small but significant chance that I will fail.

  “Even if I do, however, the plan we have been discussing here must not! The ultimate hope for human happiness lies within our grasp. But it is, as yet, a slender prospect. There will be many crises before our masters finally unify, coalesce, achieve their true potential, and take command once again.”

  Only an hour later, Zun watched with eyes that were capable of detecting even the backwash ripples of Daneel’s hyperspatial wake. He now shared the same vision, the same determination, as his leader.

  “I will not let you down,” he murmured with a mentalic benediction. “But do not fail to return, Daneel. Yours is not a burden that I would carry easily.”

  5.

  TO PASS THEIR third and final day, Hari asked for an excursion through Pengia Town. He wanted one last look at normal galactic society – where the old empire still functioned smoothly – hoping to check out a notion or two about psychohistory. R. Gornon Vlimt personally accompanied Hari, piloting an open touring car of the kind favored by minor planetary gentry.

  It wasn’t much of a municipality, less than a million, with most of that dispersed in cozy little cantons, each one somewhat self-contained. Although Pengia’s economy was primarily agrarian, there were a few factories, to produce the machines that made life comfortable – from cooler units to home amusement centers – designs that had changed only incrementally across hundreds or even thousands of years. After ages of gradual refinement, most of the tools people used were outstandingly durable, taking centuries to wear out. Buying a replacement was unusual, perhaps even a little shameful, like not taking proper care of a family heirloom. Hence, only a few sophisticated factories were needed to supply the planet’s needs.

  Nondurable goods were another matter. Everything from pottery to furniture to clothing was produced by guilds, controlled by master craftsmen whose authority over their journeymen and apprentices went unquestioned. Most of the galaxy’s ten quadrillion people lived in much the same way.

  Hari recognized the trademarks and rhythms of a deeply traditional, semi-pastoral society, needing only a few real engineers, and even fewer scientists. No wonder he had been forced to cast a wide net to recruit the hundred thousand first-rate experts who would make their new home on Terminus. Even the energy systems on Pengia were based largely on renewable sources – solar, tide, and wind – with just a single proton-fusion power plant serving as a supplement. And there was talk of giving up that sophisticated “atomic” unit – replacing it with a deuterium-based model, less efficient but far simpler to maintain.

  Hari mentally juggled psychohistorical formulae, noting the elegant damping mechanisms that Daneel and his colleagues had included when they designed a Galactic Empire for humanity, fifteen thousand years ago. Having read A Child’s Book of Knowledge, Hari marveled how many of the same techniques existed back in ancient China, long before the first technological renaissance on Earth.

  That prehistoric imperium had a system called bao jin – also called gonin-gumi in a nearby culture – that seemed quite similar to today’s tradition of communal accountability. An entire village or canton was responsible for training its young people in proper rituals and behavior... and the whole community was shamed if any member committed a crime. Any youth who chafed under this conformist system had but one hope – to win transfer over to the Meritocratic or Eccentric orders, because most common citizens had little use for individualists in their midst.

  As an added touch, meritocrats and eccentrics are subtly encouraged not to reproduce. That helps curb genetic drift. Daneel didn’t miss a trick.

  In the main civic center, Hari and R. Gornon saw gray pennants hanging from a boxy office building.

  “The banners signify it is testing week,” the robot explained. “Civil service exams are being held –”

  “I know what the banners mean,” Hari snapped. He had been waiting to ask the Calvinian some questions. This seemed as good a time as any.

  “Back aboard the space station, you laid a trap for my servant, Kers Kantun. I assume you arranged for him to be decapitated quickly, in order to prevent him from detecting any danger with his mentalic powers?”

  R. Gornon wasn’t nonplussed by the sudden change in subject.

  “Correct, Professor. While Kantun’s powers did not match Daneel’s, they were formidable. We couldn’t afford to take chances.”

  “And the chimp? The one who ran off with Kers’s head?”

  “That creature was a descendant of genetic experiments Daneel abandoned a century ago. My group recruited a few because mentalic robots cannot read or detect chimp minds. The pan could observe Kers and trigger our ambush, so we did not have to use electronic or positronic devices.”

  “And what do you plan on doing with the head of my servant?”

  Gornon demurred.

  “I’m sorry, Professor. I cannot elaborate. Whether you decide to accept our proposition, and proceed on an exciting new adventure, or instead choose to return to Trantor, we have no intention of meddling with your mind. So we are better off simply not telling you certain things.”

  Hari contemplated what he’d just learned. At their next stop he would be offered a choice. A fateful one. Yet, Gornon’s words were reassuring. These robo-heretics were more respectful than the group that tried to alter his brain two years ago.

  “Won’t you say more about our destination?” he asked.

  “Only that we will take you to a place where many dramas began... in order to influence how they end.”

  They drove in silence after that, observing the placid pace of life under Daneel’s gentle empire. If Trantor had been designed to consist of steel caves, as one method of resisting chaos, worlds like Pengia also had multi-layered defenses against tumbling into a disastrous renaissance.

  Still, Hari felt something was missing. Even when he included brain fever in his calculations, it wasn’t enough to explain how twenty-five million human-settled worlds could remain comfortably static for so many thousands of years, content to stay ignorant of their past, and for children to lead identical lives to their parents’. Since robots had been developed in the very earliest technological age, why weren’t they being reinvented daily by bright tinkerers and students in a billion little basement labs, all over the galaxy? There had to be something more. Some powerful force helping to damp out the oscillations and deviations inherent in basic human nature.

  They were on their way back to the rented villa, when Hari thought of another question.

  “I recall, back in the nebula, that Kers Kantun had a hard time mentalically subduing Mors Planch. When I asked about it, Kers said something that puzzled me. He said Planch is difficult to control because he’s normal. Do you know what Kers meant by that?”

  The robot Gornon shrugged.

  “Calvinians tend to be less eager to use mentalic powers. Our particular sect finds it distasteful to interfere with human minds. Still, I might hazard a guess. Perhaps Kers was talking about a fundamental change that occurred in the human condition, way back –”

  Gornon stopped, mid-sentence, as the car pulled into the villa’s driveway. Hari abruptly noticed that the gate was flung open... and a body lay sprawled nearby.

  Braking hard, Gornon leaped from the driver’s seat with uncanny agility to kneel by the prostrate form. It was one of the other robots who shared guard duty at the villa. Hari saw dark fluid leaking from its cranium in several places.

  Gornon ran a hand back and forth above the body without ever touching it. A low moan escaped his lips.

  “My compatriot is dead. Some force caused an implosion of his brain.”

  Hari felt sure he knew the explanation.

  Daneel has arrived!

  Gornon looked deeply concerned. He closed his eyes, and Hari knew he must be seeking to commune by radio with his other partners.

  “There are further casualties,” Gornon said ominously, and started walking toward the big house. “I must make certain that none of them are human beings!”

  Hari followed, a bit numbly. Though he was no longer confined to a wheelchair, his gait was slow and unsteady – that of an old man.

  On entering the villa they found Gornon’s other assistant sprawled at the foot of the stairs, propped against the wall by Horis Antic and Biron Maserd. Only the wounded robot’s eyes weren’t paralyzed. The two men glanced at Hari. Horis started blurting at once.

  “Mors Planch used some kind of b-b-bomb to knock out these tiktoks. He made a clean getaway!”

  Maserd was calmer. With a nobleman’s aplomb. he explained, “Planch rigged a device from seemingly innocuous parts. How he got them is beyond me. After setting it off, he offered us a chance to leave as well. Sybyl went along, but we decided to stay.”

  While Gornon bent over the crippled robot at the foot of the stairs, Horis Antic chewed his nails.

  “Is he... it gonna be all right?”

  Gornon communed with his colleague. Without breaking eye contact, he explained.

  “Planch must have been studying robots for some time. Perhaps using the new laboratories on Ktlina. Somehow, he came up with a weapon that directly affects our positronic brains. It is ingenious. We shall have to dissect my friend here, determine how it was done, and come up with a defense.”

  As the humans digested that chilling image, Gornon stood up and informed them, “There is no point in looking for Sybyl and Planch. We must move up our departure. Please fetch your things. We leave at once.”

  As the four of them departed in the touring car, Hari insisted, “We’ll stop for Jeni, of course.”

  Gornon seemed about to refuse, when Maserd interjected.

  “Planch and Sybyl will probably go underground until they can contact their partisans. I don’t expect they’d go public with their story. But what if they do?”

  “Isn’t that unlikely?” Antic stammered. “I mean, I wouldn’t blab, if I were in their shoes. What’s to gain except admission to a psychiatric ward?” He frowned. “On the other hand, I’m not a creature of chaos.”

  “Exactly. They operate on a different plane of logic.”

  “Please clarify,” R. Gornon asked. “How does any of this apply to Jeni Cuicet?”

  Maserd answered: “Sybyl, especially, has grown more erratic with each passing day. She may go to the media... and try using Jeni to corroborate her story.”

  Hari figured Gornon was more afraid of Daneel’s forces than of fantastic tales circulating briefly in the local human media. But to his surprise, Maserd’s logic seemed to convince the robot. Gornon turned the car toward the city hospital.

  Biron and Horis went inside and found Jeni already dressed, storming around her room as formidable as ever, making life hard for the doctors who wanted her to rest. She expressed gladness to see Maserd and Antic, and welcomed a chance to depart with them. But her attitude chilled upon spying Hari and Gornon waiting in the car.

  “We still got a deal, don’t we, m’lord?” she asked Maserd. “You drop me off somewhere interesting along the way, before anyone goes back to Trantor?”

  The nobleman from Rhodia looked pained as the car resumed moving toward the spaceport, weaving through city traffic.

  “I’m sorry, Jeni. But I am no longer in command of my own vessel. I don’t even know where we’re going next.”

  Jeni turned to Gornon. “Well, then? How about it, robot? Where are you taking us?”

  Gornon spoke in flat tones. “First, to a place where no sane citizen of the empire would choose to remain for very long. And then back to the capital of the human empire.”

  Jeni looked down at her hands, dejected. She muttered under her breath, something about the gentry and their worthless promises. Biron Maserd flushed darkly and said nothing. When Hari turned toward the young woman and began to speak, she shot him a look of pure spite that cut off his words before he uttered them.

  Everyone lapsed into silence.

  As the car paused at a traffic light, Jeni suddenly let out a cry of jubilant realization. Before anyone could stop her, she jumped onto the seat, leaped out the back of the car, and started dashing across the street.

  “Stop!” cried R. Gornon Vlimt. “You’ll be hurt!”

  Hari caught his breath as she dodged traffic, barely escaping being crushed by a cargo lorry. Then she reached her destination, a multistory structure with gray banners hanging from its portico.

  It took Gornon several minutes to negotiate a U-turn and park in a spot reserved for the gentry class. The four of them headed into the building, but were stopped by a man in a uniform similar to the one worn by Horis Antic.

  “I’m afraid Government House is closed for business, today, sirs. The facilities are being used for the imperial civil service exam.”

  Hari craned his neck to see Jeni Cuicet standing at the other end of the lobby, scribbling furiously on a clipboard, then handing over her universal ID bracelet to be scanned by another gray-clad clerk. A glass barrier parted before her, and Hari glimpsed a room beyond where over a hundred people were just settling themselves at desks. Most looked anxious, preparing to take a test that might be their sole hope for a ticket off of this backwater planet.

  “She’s just recovered from an illness, and hasn’t studied,” commented Horis Antic. “Still, who can doubt she’ll pass with flying colors?” The little man turned to Hari. “It appears she has escaped the destiny others planned for her, Professor. No one may interfere with testing day, not even an emperor. And when she is a member of the Greys, you won’t be able to touch her. Not without filling out forms, in triplicate, for the rest of this eon.”

  Hari glanced at the little man, surprised by his tone. Pride tinged Antic’s voice. Hari recognized a chip on the shoulder that members of the bureaucracy sometimes wore when they spoke to their betters in the Meritocratic Order.

  Biron Maserd chuckled. “Well, well. Good for her. If she can stand that kind of life, at least she’ll get to travel.”

  Hari sighed. Now the young woman would never learn what a fascinating adventure awaited at far-off Terminus... the one place she was desperate not to go.

  The glass barrier slid back. From the other side, Jeni glanced at them with a smile. Then she turned to meet a destiny that was of her own choosing.

  6.

  DORS FOUND HERSELF making excuses for Daneel’s actions, at the beginning of the galactic era.

  “Maybe he and Giskard just couldn’t find any humans who could understand. Perhaps they tried to consult some of the masters, and discovered –”

  “That they were insane? All of them? On Earth and on the Spacer worlds? They could not find any humans to confer with as they deliberated about the Zeroth Law and made plans to divert all of history?”

  Dors pondered this for a few moments. Then she nodded.

  “Think about it, Lodovic. On Earth, they were all huddled in steel catacombs, cowering away from the sun, traumatized and still quivering from some blow that had struck them generations before. The Spacers weren’t much better. On Solaria, they grew so fetishistically dependent on robots that husbands and wives could barely stand to touch each other. On Aurora, the most wholesome human instincts became matters of bad taste. Worse, people were willing to dehumanize a vast majority of their distant cousins, simply because they lived on Earth.” Dors shook her head. “It sounds to me like twin poles of the same madness.”

  The starship shuddered as it made another automatic hyperspace jump. Dors reflexively downloaded a microwave burst from the navigation computer, to make sure all was well – that they were still on course, following the faint wake of another vessel.

  Lodovic Trema sat in a swivel chair opposite her. Robots did not have the same physiological needs as humans. But those designed to imitate masters would habitually do so, even in private or among their own kind. In this case, Lodovic sprawled casually, looking just like a human male who suffered from an overdose of confidence – an effect that he must be radiating intentionally, though Dors could not imagine why.

  “Perhaps, Dors. But in my experience you can find mature and reliably sane humans under even the most radical or stressed conditions. I’ve met some on chaos worlds, for instance. Even on Trantor.”

  “Then things must have been even worse back in the dawn era, more terrible than we can presently imagine.”

  Dors knew her argument sounded weak. She had, after all, deserted Daneel’s cabal when she learned how little basis it had in human volition. She and Lodovic actually agreed far more than she yet wanted to concede.

  Am I too proud to admit it? she wondered. His jaunty, confident manner was one that a human female might find infuriating. She suspected he was goading her into defending Daneel, on purpose.

  The male robot shook his head.

  “Even if I concede that all humans were insane at the time Daneel and Giskard came up with the Zeroth Law, don’t you think, in retrospect, that the medicine they prescribed was a bit harsh?”

  Dors kept her face impassive. Records from that era were extremely sparse, even in the forbidden archives and underground encyclopedias that were prepared for centuries by those who resisted a spreading amnesia. But Dors had recently done the math.