It’s in there, Dors,she pictured him saying.Look for it. Something so basic that you’ll swear it was obvious all along, even though it took us two hundred centuries to understand.
9.
Hari thought the attackers might be pirates. As predicted by his formulas, there had been reports of increasing brigand activity lately, raiding vulnerable planets in the periphery as law and order decayed at the empire’s far extremities.
But here? It isn’t supposed to happen this near to the cosmopolitan heart of the galaxy for another century!
Or perhaps the marauder came from some rogue military unit, gone mercenary as some of the nobility began shifting their feuds from the arena of courtly fashion toward murder and mayhem. Maybe this was an attack by some rival clan with a vendetta against Biron Maserd. That sort of thing would happen more and more, until a bloody torment of little feudal wars splattered the Interregnum.
But thePride of Rhodia’s captain seemed as surprised as anybody. His unarmed yacht had been ill prepared for any sort of attack, let alone one launched by such a powerful ship.
As the airlock cycled, Hari kept a hand on Kers Kantun’s sleeve. This situation called for patient waiting.I’ve been around a long time, he thought.There’s no type of person I haven’t learned to handle by now.
But when their captors came aboard, they looked nothing at all like what Hari expected.
Maserd stared in surprise. Horis Antic gasped, and tension rippled along Kers Kantun’s arm.
But Jeni Cuicet clapped her hands and murmured in clear admiration.
“Cool!”
The first one wore a segmented garment that shimmered like an oil slick, flowing across her exaggeratedly pneumatic torso like something erotically alive.
“I am Sybyl,” she said. “We have met before, Dr. Seldon, though I’m convinced you won’t remember me.”
Hari squinted at the unpleasant confusion of colors. A luminescent motif extended even to the woman’s hair, which shifted and gently writhed of its own accord, like a sleeping pet draped across her head. Her face had astretched look, and he guessed that advanced surgical microadjustments had been used to smooth out age wrinkles, at the cost of giving her skin a paper-thin translucence.
“I would surely remember, madam, if I ever beheld an entrance like the one you just performed. But as your appearance is utterly unmatched in my experience, you’ll have to remind me where and when we knew each other.”
Her eyelids closed, and briefly Hari saw them flash, as if for the barest moment they had become miniature holo screens.
“All in good time, Academician. But first, let me introduce my collaborator, Gornon Vlimt.”
She lifted a hand languidly toward the airlock, through which stepped an exaggeratedly male figure, lithe where Maserd was hefty, but wiry and evidently augmented in ways that bulged through his tight clothes. His garments did not gyre and move the way hers did. But their pattern of weave was complex to a degree that made Hari recall the fractal lichen artwork in the imperial gardens. The mathematical corners of his mind felt instantly drawn, as if to a singularity.
“I am Biron Maserd,” the captain replied. “Since you know the name of my ship, I assume you are also aware that it’s unarmed. We are on a peaceful scientific survey mission. I demand to know why you murdered those policemen and seized us in this way.”
The woman named Sybyl scanned Maserd up and down.
“Why you pompous aristo-throwback! Is that the gratitude we get for rescuing you from arrest? How dare you call it murder for the combat forces of a free republic to destroy their sworn enemies!”
When silence greeted her, she sneered. “Do you mean to say that you really have no idea what this is about? You haven’t heard about the war?”
Maserd glanced at Hari, who shrugged and looked at Horis. Evidently none of them had the slightest idea what she was talking about.
“The war that’s being waged by the whole damned Galactic Empire of Humanity against planet Ktlina!” shouted the man in the fractal bodysuit. Gornon Vlimt grew more agitated when no one seemed to comprehend. “By great Baley’s beard. Sybyl, it’s worse than we thought. There’s been a total news blackout!”
“I figured. But these three, with their contacts, should have heard by now. Seldon has stringers allover the galaxy, feeding him data for his sociomathematical models. The Grey Man and the aristo would have their own sources. I can’t understand how-”
“Oh!” Jeni Cuicet cried.“I’ve heard of Ktlina. It’s the latest chaos world!”
Hari blinked, feeling a dawn of recognition.
“I think…there may have been something about it in one of Gaal Dornick’s reports.”
“Oh, yes.” Horis Antic snapped two fingers. “A notice came down, for star-level executives and above. There’s been a sanitary embargo of sorts…out in far Demeter Sector.”
Maserd made a small nod and grunt of recognition, but no more. It was a big galaxy. Who could be expected to follow every planet-scale event?
Gornon Vlimt uttered frustrated oaths.
“You see, Sybyl? Even at such high levels. They have heard, but they just don’t care. So much for the notion that we only had to get the word out in order for justice to prevail!”
The woman sighed. “That was just a slim hope. Clearly we must try other means, if this war is to be won. The galaxywill be transformed. It just may take a little longer.”
Jeni took a step forward, clearly enthralled by the pair.
“Some of my friends heard rumors about Ktlina from travelers on the Orion elevator. Did you truly escape through a blockade around your planet? What’s it like?”
Gornon Vlimt smiled. “You meanblasting our way out through a cordon of imperial patrol clippers? Outracing all but the best of them, then losing the rest in an ionization cloud? Zigzagging through space to make contact with our spies, and then-”
Jeni shook her head. “No. What’s it like on Ktlina! Tell me about the….renaissance.”
Hari winced. There it was. The word. The rationalization. The name that victims of a devastating social plague often gave their horrible disease, a beloved addiction that swarmed suddenly across a world, filling it with excitement and vividness, just before bringing death, or worse.
Gornon Vlimt chuckled, clearly delighted by her question.
“Where would I find time to describe the wonders! You cannot begin to imagine, dear girl. Think of the stodgy old rules, the repressive traditions, the stifling rituals, all swept away! Suddenly, people have the liberty to speak openly about anything, to stretch their minds in new directions. To befree.”
“No more waiting half a lifetime for endless committees to approve your experiments,” Sybyl added. “No more lists of forbidden subjects or banned technologies.”
“Original art blossoms everywhere,” her partner continued. “Assumptions shatter. Truth becomes marvelously malleable. People follow their interests, change professions, and even social classes, as they see fit!”
“Really?” whispered Horis Antic, who then took a step backward when Hari glanced at him sharply.
Biron Maserd cut in before the two intruders could go on, endlessly praising their new society.
“What was that you said about awar? Surely you aren’t fighting the Imperial Decontamination Service?”
“Aren’t we?” Sybyl and Vlimt glanced at each other and laughed. “IDS ships don’t approach our planet closer than two million kilometers anymore. We’ve already shot down fourteen, just like those Impies who were about to arrest you a while ago.”
“Fourteen!” Horis gasped. “Shot down? You mean killed? Just because they were enforcing the law?”
Sybyl moved closer to Hari.
“TheSeldon Law, you mean. A horrid act of legalized oppression, passed when our gentle professor here was First Minister of the Empire, requiring that all so-called chaos worlds be put under strict quarantine. Cut off from trade. And above all, prevented from sharing their breakthroughs with the rest of humanity!”