He had neglected business and had one obligatory role left before he could escape. Even here at Streeling he could not avoid every Imperial duty.
A delegation of Greys filed in. They respectfully presented their arguments regarding candidacy examinations for Empire positions. Test scores had been declining for several centuries, but some argued that this was because the pool of candidates was broadening. They did not mention that the High Council had widened the pool because it appeared to be drying up-that is, fewer wished Imperial positions.
Others claimed that the tests were biased. Those from large planets said their higher gravity made them slower. Those from lighter gravities had a reverse argument, with diagrams and sheets of facts.
Also, the myriad ethnic and religious groups had congealed into an Action Front which ferreted out biases against them in the examinations. Hari could not fathom a conspiracy behind the examination questions. How could one simultaneously discriminate against several hundred, or even a thousand, ethnic strains?
“It seems an immense job to me,” he ventured, “discriminating against so many factions.”
Vehemently a Grey Woman, handsome and forceful, told him that the prejudice was for a sort of Imperial norm, a common set of vocabularies, assumptions, and class purposes. All these would “shoulder others aside.”
To compensate, the Action Front wanted the usual set of preferences installed, with slight shadings between each ethnicity to compensate for their lower performance on examinations.
This was ordinary and Hari ruled it out without having to think about it very much; this allowed him to mull over the psychohistory equations a while. Then a new note caught his attention.
To dispel the common “misperception” that scores were being undermined by some ethnic worlds’ increased participation, the Action Front petitioned him to “re-norm” the examination itself. Set the average score at 1000, though in fact it had drifted downward over the last two centuries to 873.
“This will permit comparison of candidates between years, without having to look up each year’s average,” the burly woman pointed out.
“This will give a symmetric distribution?” Hari asked absently.
“Yes, and will stop the invidious comparison of one year with the next.”
“Won’t such a shift of the mean lose discriminatory power at the upper end of the distribution?” He narrowed his eyes.
“That is regrettable, but yes.”
“It’s a wonderful idea,” Hari said.
She seemed surprised. “Well, we think so.”
“We can do the same for the holoball averages.”
“What? I don’t-”
“Set the statistics so that the average hitter strikes 500, rather than the hard-to-remember 446 of the present. “
“But I don’t think a principle of social justice-”
“And the intelligence scores. Those need to be renormed as well, I can see that. Agreed?”
“Well, I’m not sure, First Minister. We only intended-”
“No no, this is a big idea. I want a thorough look at all possible re-norming agendas. You have to think big!”
“We aren’t prepared-”
“Then get prepared! I want a report. Not a skimpy one, either. A fat, full report. Two thousand pages, at least.”
“That would take-”
“Hang the expense. And the time. This is too important to relegate to the Imperial Examinations. Let me have that report.”
“It would take years, decades-”
“Then there’s no time to waste!”
The Action Front delegation left in confusion. Hari hoped they would make it a very big report, indeed, so that he was no longer First Minister when it arrived.
Part of maintaining the Empire involved using its own inertia against itself. Some aspects of this job, he thought, could be actually enjoyable.
He reached Voltaire before leaving the office. “Here’s your list of impersonations.”
“I must say I am having trouble handling all the factions,” Voltaire said. He presented as a swain in elegant velvet. “But the chance to venture out, to be a presence-it is like acting! And I was always one for the stage, as you know.”
Hari didn’t, but he said, “That’s democracy for you-show business with daggers. A mongrel breed of government. Even if it is a big stable at tractor in the fitness landscape.”
“Rational thinkers deplore the excesses of democracy; it abuses the individual and elevates the mob.” Voltaire’s mouth flattened into a disapproving line. “The death of Socrates was its finest fruit.”
“Afraid I don’t go back that far,” Hari said, signing off. “Enjoy the work.”
18.
He and Dors watched the great luminous spiral turn beneath them in its eternal night.
“I do appreciate such perks,” she said dreamily. They stood alone before the spectacle. Worlds and lives and stars, all like crushed diamonds thrown against eternal blackness.
“Getting into the palace just to look at the Emperor’s display rooms?” He had ordered all the halls cleared.
“Getting away from snoopers and eavesdroppers.”
“You…you haven’t heard from-?”
She shook her head. “Daneel pulled nearly all the rest of us off Trantor. He says little to me.”
“I’m pretty damn sure the alien minds won’t strike again. They’re afraid of robots. It took me a while to see that lay behind their talk about revenge.”
“Mingled hate and fear. Very human.”
“Still, I think they’ve had their revenge. They say the Galaxy was lush with life before we came. There are cycles of barren eras, then luxuriant ones. Don’t know why. Apparently that’s happened several times before, at intervals of a third of a billion years-great diebacks of intelligent life, leaving only spores. Now they’ve come to our Mesh and become digital fossils.”
“Fossils don’t kill,” she said sardonically.
“Not as well as we do, apparently.”
“Not you-us.”
“They do hate you robots. Not that they have any love of humans-after all, we made you, long ago. We’re to blame.”
“They are so strange…”
He nodded. “I believe they’ll stay in their digital preserve until Marq and Sybyl can get them transported into their ancient spore state. They once lived that way for longer than the Galaxy takes to make a rotation.”
“Your ‘pretty damn sure’ isn’t good enough for Daneel,” she said. “He wants them exterminated.”
“It’s a standoff. If Daneel goes after them, he’ll have to pull the plug on Trantor’s Mesh. That will wound the Empire. So he’s stuck, fuming but impotent.”
“I hope you have estimated the balance properly,” she said.
A glimmering, gossamer thought flitted across his mind. The tiktok attacks upon the Lamurk faction had discredited them in public opinion. Now they would be suppressed throughout the Galaxy. And in time, the meme-minds would leave Trantor.
Hari frowned. Daneel surely wanted both these outcomes.
He had undoubtedly suspected that the mememinds had survived, perhaps that they were in action on Trantor. So could Hari’s amateur maneuverings, including the Lamurk murders, have been deftly conjured up by Daneel? Could a robot so accurately predict what he, Hari, would do?
A chill ran through him. Such ability would be breathtaking. Superhuman.
With tiktoks now soon to be suppressed, Trantor would have trouble producing its own food. Tasks once done by men would have to be re-learned, taking generations to establish such laborers as a socially valued group again. Meanwhile, dozens of other worlds would have to send Trantor food, a lifeline slender and vulnerable. Did Daneel intend that, too? To what end?
Hari felt uneasy. He sensed social forces at work, just beyond his view.