Hari nodded.
“I helped push for tighter seclusion and decontamination rules, it’s true. But this tradition is over ten thousand years old. No system of government can permit open rebellion, and some kinds of madness are contagious. Any schoolchild knows this.”
“You mean any child who gets brainwashed by the system’ parroting exactly the same rote lessons that are taught in every imperial school!” She smirked at Hari. “Come now, professor. This isn’t about rebellion. It’s about maintaining the status quo. We’ve seen it happen too often. Something new and wonderful starts on some planet, like Madder Loss or Santanni. Or on Sark. Or even in Junin Quarter, on Trantor itself! Wherever a renaissance begins, it winds up being crushed by reactionary forces of fear and subjugation, who then hide the truth under malicious propaganda.”
Hari felt a twinge when Sybyl referred to Sark…and especially Junin Quarter. Something about this woman struck him as familiar.
“Well,this time we made some preparations,” she continued. “There’s a secret network of people from all across the galaxy who escaped earlier repressions in time. Plans were made, so that when Ktlina started showing early signs of a bold new spirit, we all rushed in with the best inventions and techniques that people had saved from earlier renaissances. We urged folks on Ktlina to keep a low profile for as long as possible, while stockpiling trade goods and preparing secret defenses.
“Of course you can’t keep a renaissance hidden for long. People use freedom to speak up. That’s what it’s for! Only this time we were ready before the quarantine ships arrived. Weblasted those that approached low enough to drop their infernal poisons!”
Captain Maserd shook his head, evidently confused by the suddenness of this revelation, upending his conservative universe.
“Poisons? But the IDS is charged withhelping planets who suffer from-”
“Oh yeah! Helping, you say?” This time it was Gornon Vlimt who answered hotly. “Then why does every renaissance end the same way? In orgies of madness and destruction? It’s all a big conspiracy, that’s why!Agents provocateurs land in secret to start stirring up hatred, turning simple interest groups into fanatical sects and pitting them against each other. Then ships come swooping down to dump drugs into the water supplies and incendiaries to start fires. They pass over cities, beaming psychotropic rays, inciting hatred and triggering riots.”
“No!” Horis Antic shouted, defending his fellow Grey Men. “I know some IDS people. Many of them are survivors from past chaos outbreaks, fellow sufferers who’ve volunteered to help others recover from the same fever. They wouldnever do the things you describe. You have no proof for these insane charges!”
“Not yet. But we will. How else can you explain it when such great hopes and so many bright things suddenly turn to ash?”
Hari slumped a little in his mobile chair while the others kept shouting at each other.
How to explain it?He pondered.As a curse of basic human nature? In the equations, it appears as an undamped oscillation. An at tractor state that always lurks, waiting to pull humanity toward chaos whenever conditions are exactly right. It almost destroyed our ancestors, about the time starflight and robots were invented. According to Daneel, it is the biggest reason why the Galactic Empire had to be invented…and why the empire is about to fail at last.
Hari knew all of this. He had known it for a long time. There was just one quandary left.
He still didn’t reallyunderstand the curse. Not at its core. He could not grasp why such an undamped at tractor lay, coiled and deadly, inside the soul of his race.
Suddenly, as if from nowhere, a missing piece came to him. Not a solution to the greater puzzle, but to a lesser one.
“Junin Quarter…” he murmured. “A woman named Sybyl…”
Sitting up, he pointed at her.
“You…helped activate the sims! The ancient simulations of Joan and Voltaire.”
She nodded.
“It was I and a few others whom you hired to help with your ‘experiment.’ Partly at your bidding, and partly through our own arrogant stupidity, we unleashed those two provocative sims at just the wrong moment-or the right one foryour purposes-into the volatile stew of poor Junin, just when two major factions were trying to work out their philosophical differences short of violence. In so doing, we unwittingly helped wreck a mini-renaissance that was taking place in the very heart of the capital planet.”
Maserd and Antic looked confused. Hari explained with three brief words.
“The Tiktok Revolt.”
They nodded at once. Although it had happened forty years ago, no one could forget how a new type of robot (far more primitive than Daneel’s secretive positronic kind) suddenly went berserk on Trantor, doing great harm until they were all dismantled and outlawed. Officially, the whole episode was blamed on the chaos in Junin Quarter, just before Hari became First Minister.
“That’s right,” Vlimt said. “By helping incite the so-called revolt, you helped discredit the whole concept of mechanical helpers and servants. Of course it was all a plot by the ruling class to keep the proletarians subjugated forever and in their place-”
Fortunately, Vlimt’s next stream of fanatical invective was cut short, interrupted by a sound from behind-someone clearing his throat by the airlock.
Everyone turned. A dark-haired, dusky man stood there, dressed in a normal gray ship suit, with an efficient-looking blaster loosely holstered at his side. Hari quickly recognized the third member of the raiding party.
“Mors Planch,” he said, recalling their meeting just a year ago, around the time of his trial by the Commission for Public Safety. “So. I knew there had to be somebody competent aboard that ship.”
Sybyl and Vlimt hissed. But the newcomer nodded at Hari.
“Hello, Seldon.” Then he turned to his garishly dressed partners.
“Didn’t I ask you two not to get into a quarrel with the hostages? It’s pointless and tiresome.”
“Wehired you and your crew, pilot Planch-” Vlimt began. But Jeni Cuicet burst in at that moment, interrupting with evident excitement.
“Is that what we are? Hostages?”
“Not you, child,” answered Sybyl, whose motherly smile seemed incongruous on her gaudy, made-up face.“You have the makings of a fine recruit for the revolution!
“But as for these others”-she gestured especially toward Hari-”we plan on using them to help win a war of liberation. First for a planet, and then for all humankind.”
10.
There were preparations to make. Plans to coordinate with distant agents of the New Renaissance. Other guerrilla teams had been sent to kidnap important peers of the realm, who would offer much better leverage than a disgraced and forgotten former First Minister. According to Hari’s own self-appraisal, he was about as valuable a bargaining chip as a crooked half credit piece.
Sybyl and Planch chose me for personal reasons,he felt certain.They want revenge for Junin and Sark and Madder Loss. I’ll never convince them that psychohistorical factors doomed those cultural revolutions before they began.
He could foresee one benefit coming from the fall of the Galactic Empire. Although many of the factors leading to chaos outbreaks were still mysterious, peace, trade, and prosperity were among the essential preconditions, and those would be scarce during the Interregnum. People living in the coming harsh millennium would face other kinds of problems. But at least they would be spared this peculiar madness.