“Yes?”
Major Namm, very blond and compact, was not used to private audiences at this social level, and in the Palace, as well. “Second report on the search for Klia Asgar, daughter of Sonden and Bethel Asgar. Survey of the father’s apartment.”
“What else did you learn?”
“Her early intelligence tests were normal, not exceptional. After the age of ten, however, those tests showed extraordinary jumps-then, by the age of twelve, they revealed that she was an idiot.”
“Standard Imperial aptitude tests, I assume?”
“Yes, sir, adjusted for Dahlite…ah…needs.”
Sinter walked across the room and poured himself a drink. He did not offer any to the major, who wouldn’t have known what to do with fine wine anyway. No doubt his tastes were limited to the cruder forms of stimulk, or even the more direct stims favored in the military and police services. “There are no records of childhood illness, I presume,” Sinter said.
“Two possible explanations for that, sir,” the blond major said.
“Yes?”
“Hospitals in Dahl typically record only exceptional illnesses. And in those cases, if the exceptions might reflect badly on the hospital, they report nothing at all.”
“So perhaps she never had brain fever at all…as a child, when almost everyone of any intelligence contracts brain fever.”
“It’s possible, sir, though unlikely. Only one out of a hundred normal children escape brain fever. Only idiots escape completely, sir. She may have avoided it for that reason.”
Sinter smiled. The officer was stepping outside his expertise; the number was actually closer to one in thirty million normals, though many claimed they had never had it. And that claim in itself was evocative, as if escaping conferred some added status.
“Major, are you at all curious about the Sectors you do not patrol?”
“No, sir. Why should I be?”
“Do you know the tallest structure on Trantor, above sea level, I mean?”
“No, sir.”
“The most populated Sector?”
“No, sir.”
“The largest planet in the known Galaxy?”
“No.” The major frowned as if he were being mocked.
“Most people are ignorant of these things. They don’t care to know; tell them and they forget. The larger vision is lost in the day-to-day minutiae, which they know well enough to get along. What about the basic principles of hyperdrive travel?”
“Sky, no…Pardon me. No sir.”
“I’m ignorant of that myself. No curiosity at all about such things.” He smiled pleasantly. “Have you ever wondered why Trantor seems so run-down nowadays?”
“Sometimes, sir. It is a nuisance.”
“Have you thought to complain to your neighborhood council?”
“Not my place. There’s so much to complain about, where to begin?”
“Of course. Yet you’re known as a competent and perhaps even an exceptional officer.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Sinter looked down at the polished copperstone floor. “Are you curious why I am so interested in this woman, this girl?”
“No, sir.” But the major thought it worth a small, conspiratorial wink.
Sinter’s eyes widened. “You believe I’m interested in her sexually?”
The major straightened abruptly. “No sir, not my place to think anything of the sort.”
“I would be frightened even to be in her presence for long, Major Namm.”
“Yes, sir.”
“She never had brain fever.”
“We don’t know that, sir. No records.”
Sinter dismissed that with a shake of his head. “I know that she never had brain fever, or any other childhood disease. And not because she was an idiot. She was more than merely immune, Major.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And her powers can be extraordinary. And do you know how I know that? Because of Vara Liso. She first detected this girl in a Dahlite market a week ago. A prime candidate, she thought. I should send Vara Liso with you on your rounds now, just to refine the hunt.”
The major said nothing, merely stood at parade rest, eyes fixed on the opposite wall. His Adam’s apple bobbed. Sinter could read the man well enough without seeing into his mind; the major did not much believe all this, and knew little or nothing of Vara Liso.
“Can you find her for me, without Vara Liso’s aid?”
“With sufficient numbers of officers, we can find her in two or three days. My small crew, by itself, would probably take two or three weeks. Dahl is not in a cooperative mood right now, sir.”
“No, I suppose not. Well, find her, but do not attempt to arrest her or attract her attention in any way. You would fail, as her kind has made so many others fail…”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tell me what she does, whom she sees. When I give you the order, you will shoot her with a large-bore kinetic-energy gun, from a distance, in the head. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
“As you have so faithfully done before.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then you will bring her body to me. Not to the criminalists, but to me, my private chambers. Enough, Major.”
“Sir.” Major Namm departed.
Sinter did not much trust the competence of any police, in any Sector. They could be bribed easily enough, yet Sinter’s extended police patrols had not yet managed to bring down one robot; all of their targeted individuals had been humans, after all. The robots had deceived them very cleverly.
But Klia Asgar…a young girl, in form at least. How did a robot manage to appear to grow? There were so many mysteries Sinter looked forward to solving.
Brain fever’s effect on curiosity, and on civilization in general, was not the most interesting of those mysteries, not at all. No mystery at all. Sinter strongly suspected that robots had created the disease, perhaps millennia before, after their banishment from the worlds of humans-their goal to subtly reduce intellectual capacity, creating an Empire that so seldom rebelled against the Center…
His mind whirled at the implications. So many suspicions, so many theories!
With a small, intent smile, Sinter lost himself in speculation for several minutes, then went to the desktop informer to look up the name of the largest world in the Galaxy.
Sinter had never had brain fever, himself; had somehow escaped it, despite having an above-normal intelligence. He was eternally curious.
And completely human. Farad Sinter had x-ray images taken at least twice a year to prove that fact to himself.
The largest inhabited world in the Galaxy was Nak, a gas giant circling a star in the Hallidon Province. It was four million kilometers wide.
Now he had other matters to consider. He stood before his desk-he never sat while working-and scrolled through the briefs supplied to him by the informer. There was a stink rising over reassignment of ships to Sarossa, following the probable loss of the Spear of Glory. He could almost smell Linge Chen behind the growing public indignation. Yet that had actually been Klayus’s doing, almost entirely. Sinter had gone along to allow the boy some sense of purpose.
Chen was a very intelligent man.
Sinter wondered if Chen had ever had brain fever…
Lost in thought, he sat for five minutes as the briefs filed past, ignoring them. He had more than enough time to deal with Commissioner Chen.
9.
Mors Planch, in his fifty years of service to the Empire (and to his own ends), had watched things go from bad to worse with grim calm. Not much upset him, on the surface; he was quiet and soft-spoken and used to carrying out extraordinary missions, but he never thought he would be called upon-by Linge Chen, no less-to do something so mundane as go looking for a lost starship. And a survey vessel, at that!
He stood on the steel balcony suspended above the Central Trantor spaceport docks, looking down the long rows of bullet-shaped bronze-and-ivory Imperial ships, all gleaming and brightly polished on the surface, and all run by crews who performed their duties more and more by ritual and rote, not even beginning to understand the mechanics and electronics, much less the physics, behind their miraculous Jumps from one end of the Galaxy to the other.