These similarities were significant. But chaos conditions also highlighted essential antagonisms between eccentrics and meritocrats, as happened in Junin long ago, when a struggle betweenfaith andreason sent part of Trantor reeling.
Using his imagination, Hari floated equilibrium equations for each caste in front of him, until they were more real to him than the people arguing nearby. Of course, the new empire to come in a thousand years would be much more complex and subtle, no longer needing such formal classifications. But therewas an elegance to this old system, worked out long ago by immortal beings like Daneel, who sought a peaceful, gentle way of life for humanity, based on their own crude version of psychohistory. Resonating against basic drives of human nature, the formulas revolved around each other, staying in remarkable balance, as if kept up in the air by an invisible juggler. As long as chaos did not interfere.
And as long as the old empire survived.
Kers Kantun touched Hari’s arm, leaning over him, expressing concern.
“Professor? Are you all right?”
His servant’s voice sounded distant, as if echoing down a long tunnel. Hari paid no heed. Before his bemused gaze, the five social formulae started dissolving into a sea of minuscule subequations that ebbed and flowed around him, like diatoms in a surging tide.
The breakup of the old empire,he thought, identifying this change. Briefly, he mourned the lost symmetries. In their place, more primitive rhythms of survival and violence throbbed across the galaxy.
Only then, the haze parted, revealing something far more beautiful, emerging from the distance.
My Foundation.
His belovedEncyclopedia Galactica Foundation. The colony that was being established, even now, on far-off Terminus. A frail seed designed to flourish in adversity and overcome each challenge that fate’s ponderous momentum brought its way.
The equations orbited all around, nurturing his sapling, causing it to grow tall and strong, with a trunk that was ironhard and roots that could bear any weight. Impervious toboth chaos and decay, it would be everything that the old empire was not.
At first, you will survive by playing great powers against each other. Then you will thrive as conjurers and pseudoreligious hucksters.Donot be ashamed, for that will be just a phase. A way to survive until the trade networks take over.
Then you will have to deal with the death throes of the old Imperium…
As if through cotton, Hari could hear voices gathering nearby, murmuring concern. Some of Kers Kantun’s Valmoril-accented speech came through dimly.
“….I think he may be havin’ another stroke….”
His servant’s alarmed words drifted away as the hallucinatory vision changed before Hari yet again.
The tree grew ever greater, its boundaries becoming harder to define. Strange flowers briefly appeared, surprising in their unexpected shape and texture. The Foundation’s overall rate of growth still followed his Plan, but somethingadditional was starting to happen, adding richness that he had never seen before, even in the Prime Radiant display. Enthralled, Hari tried to focus on a small part…
However, before he could look closer, a pair ofgardeners abruptly appeared, striding forward to examine the tree. One had the face of Stettin Palver. The other resembled Hari’s granddaughter, Wanda Seldon.
Leaders of the Fifty.
Leaders of the Second Foundation.
Using great brooms, they swept away the beautiful hovering formulae, chasing off the protective, nurturing equations.
Hari tried to shout at them, but found he was frozen. Paralyzed.
Apparently, his followers and heirs did not need math anymore. They had something better, more powerful. Stettin and Wanda brought their hands up to their heads. Concentrating, they caused shears of pure mental force to emerge from their brows…and set to work at once, lopping flowers, buds, and small limbs off the tree, simplifying its natural contours.
Don’t fret, Grandfather,Wanda assured.Guidance is needed. We do this to the Foundation for its own good. To keep it growing according to the Plan.
Hari could not protest, or even move, though he distantly heard shouting as hands carried his frail physical body out of the chair and down a long corridor. There was a stinging hospital smell in his nostrils. A clattering of tools.
He did not care. Only the transfixing vision mattered. Wanda and Stettin looked happy, pleased with their work on the tree, having trimmed the irksome flowers and shaped it to suit their design.
Only now, from some great distance, far beyond the banished mathematics, a glow began to appear! A point of radiant light, soon stronger than any sun. It approached closer, hypnotizing Stettin and Wanda with its sweet power, summoning them to walk, transfixed and uncomplaining, straight into its all-absorbing heat.
Incorporating them, it brightened yet more.
The tree shriveled and ignited, briefly adding its flame to the overall incandescence. It no longer mattered. Its purpose had been served.
I BRING A GIFT,said a new voice…one that Hari knew.
Squinting, he perceived a manlike figure, carrying a white-hot ember in one open hand. The bearer’s face was bathed by actinic glare, penetrating a skin of false flesh to reveal glowing metal beneath, smiling despite a burden of unbearable fatigue.
A heroic figure, tired but triumphantly proud of what it now brought.
Struggling to form words, Hari tried to ask a question. But it would not come. Instead, he felt the prick of a needle in the side of his neck.
Consciousness shut down, like a machine that had been turned off.
Part 3. Secret crimes
Every year in the galaxy, more than 2,000 suns enter late-phase in their fusion-burning cycles, expanding their surfaces and becoming much hotter than before. Another twenty stars per year go nova… .
Taking into account the millions of stars that have habitable planets, this means that on average two human-settled worlds become untenable or uninhabitable each year…Throughout the early dark ages, before the Galactic Empire, numerous tragic natural disasters cost billions of lives. Isolated worlds often had nowhere to turn for help when a sun went unstable, or something disrupted a planetary ecosphere.
During the Imperium such threats were handled on a routine basis by the Grey bureaucracy, which efficiently surveyed stellar conditions, predicted solar changes in advance, and maintained resettlement fleets on standby to deal with emergencies. So dedicated was this effort that remnants still existed late in the empire’s decline, arriving to help evacuate Trantor when the capital planet was sacked.
Thereafter, during the Interregnum, such assistance was unavailable. Scattered accounts tell of numerous small worlds that went abruptly silent during that long, violent era, owing to natural or man-made calamities. Often no one bothered to go learn what happened to their populations until it was too late…
Even after the rise of the Foundation, it took some time before a combination of psychohistorical factors made possible the investment of substantial resources to build an infrastructure of compassion… .
1.
R. Zun Lurrin had a question for his leader.
“Daneel, I’ve been reading ancient records, dating back to before humanity burst out from a small corner of the galaxy. I find that throughout history, most societies tried to protect their people against exposure todangerous ideas. On every continent of Old Earth, in almost every era, priests and kings strove to keep out concepts that might disturb the population at large, fearing that alien notions could take root and cause sin or madness, or worse.