“Where does this speculation of yours come from?” Daneel responded, coolly.
“Call it a hunch. Perhaps I find it hard to believe Calvin and her peers would cling so hard to their dream, unless there was at least some factual support for the notion of human maturity! Were they really too obstinate to recognize the evidence before their eyes?”
Daneel shook his head, a habit of human-emulation that was by now second nature.
“The proper words are not ‘stupidity’ or ‘obstinacy.’ I attribute it to something more basic, calledhope.
“You see, Zun, they were indeed very smart people. Perhaps the best minds to emerge from their tormented race. Many of them understood at a gut level what it would mean if they turned out to be wrong about human maturity. If the great mass of citizens could not be trained to handle all ideas sanely, then it implied one thing-that humanity is deeply and permanently flawed. Inherently limited. Cursed forever to be denied the greatness humans seem capable of.”
Zun stared at Daneel.
“I feel…uncomfortable…hearing our masters described this way. And yet, you make compelling sense, Daneel. I have tried empathizing with how Calvin and her compatriots must have felt, as their bright aspirations crashed all around them, toppling under waves of unreason. I can sense how frantic they would be to avoid the very same conclusion you just expressed. As believers in the unlimited potential of individuality, they would hate being mere factors in Hari Seldon’s equations, for instance…randomly caroming about like gas molecules, canceling each other’s idiosyncrasies in a vast calculation of momentum and inevitability.
“Tell me, Daneel. Could this realization have been the last straw? The underlying trauma that collapsed their era of bold confidence? Were all the other events just symptoms of this deeper trauma?”
The senior robot nodded.
“The problem grew so bad that some of us robots worried that humanity might lose the will to go on. Fortunately, by then they had invented us. And we learned ways to divert them down pathways that were both interesting and safe, for a very long time.”
“Until now, that is,” Zun pointed out. “With decay lurking on one side, and chaos on the other, your solution of a benign Galactic Empire doesn’t work anymore. Hence your support of the Seldon Plan?”
Daneel shook his head again, this time with a smile.
“Hence something much better! It is the reason that I summoned you here, Zun. To share exciting news. A breakthrough that I’ve been hoping to find all through the last twenty thousand years. And now, at last, it is feasible to begin. If things go as expected, a mere five hundred years will suffice to make it happen.”
“Make what happen, Daneel?”
A low, microwave murmur wafted upward from the Immortal Servant, rising toward the galaxy like a sigh…or a prayer. When Daneel Olivaw spoke again, his voice sounded different, almost contented.
“A way to help ease humanity around its mortal flaws, and achieve greater heights than they ever dreamed.”
2.
Odors became noticeable before thoughts were.
For many years, only unpleasant smells had enough strength to penetrate Hari’s age-dulled senses. But now, as if coming home from a long sulk, there returned a mix of aromas, both heady and familiar at the same time, stroking his sinus cavities with sensuous pleasure.
Jasmine. Ginger. Curry.
Salivary glands flowed, and his stomach reacted with an eagerness that felt positively eerie. His appetite had been almost nonexistent since Dors died. Now its sudden resurgence was the chief thing prodding Seldon awake.
His eyes opened cautiously, only to glimpse the self-sterilizing walls of a ship’s infirmary. He deliberately shut them again.
It must have been a dream. Those wonderful smells.
I remember overhearing…somebody saying I had another stroke.
Hari yearned for a return to unconscious oblivion, rather than discover that another portion of his brain had died. He did not want to face the aftermath-another harsh setback on the long slide toward personal extinction.
And yet…those delicious smells still floated through his nostrils.
Is this a symptom? Like the “phantom limb” that amputees sometimes feel, after losing a part of themselves forever?
Hari felt no pain. In fact, his body throbbed with a desire to move. But the sense of well-being might be an illusion. When he actually tried to set himself in motion, the real truth might hammer down. Total paralysis perhaps? The doctors on Trantor had warned it could happen at any moment, shortly before the end.
Well, here goes.
Hari ordered his left hand to move toward his face. It responded smoothly, rising as he opened his eyes a second time.
It was a bigger infirmary than the little unit aboard thePride of Rhodia. They must have taken him onto the raider ship, then. The vessel from Ktlina.
Well, at least his memory was working. Hari’s fingers rubbed his face…and retracted in abrupt shock.
What in space?
He felt his cheek again. The flesh felt noticeably firmer, a bit less flaccid and jowly than he recalled.
This time his body acted on its own, out of an unwilled sense of volition. One hand grabbed the white coverlet and threw it back. The other one slid underneath his body, planted itself against the bed, and pushed. He sat up, so rapidly that he swayed and almost toppled to the other side, catching himself with a strong tensioning of his back muscles. A groan escaped his lips. Not from pain, but surprise!
“Well, hello there, Professor,” said a voice from his right. “I guess it’s good to see you’re back amongst us.”
He turned his head. Someone occupied another infirmary bed. Blinking, Hari saw it was the stowaway. The girl from Trantor who did not want to be exiled to Terminus. She wore a hospital gown and had a bowl of dark yellow soup before her on a tray.
That’s what I’ve been smelling,Hari thought. Despite all his other questions and concerns, the first thing on his mind was to ask for some.
She watched Hari, waiting for him to speak.
“Are…you okay, Jeni?” he asked.
Slowly, the girl responded with a grudging smile.
“The others were betting what your first words would be, when you woke. I’ll have to tell ‘em they were wrong about you…and maybe I was, too.” She shrugged. “Anyway, don’t worry about me. I’ve just got a touch of the fever. I t was already coming on for a week or two before I skipped away on Maserd’s boat.”
“Fever?” Hari asked.
“Brain fever, of course!” Jeni gave Hari a defensive glare. “What did you think? That I wasn’t smart enough to catch it? With parents like mine? I’m fifteen, so it’s about time for my turn.”
Hari nodded. Since the dawn ages, it had been a fact of life that nearly everyone with above-average intelligence experienced this childhood disease. He raised a placating hand.
“No insult intended, Jeni. Who could doubt that you’d get brain fever, especially after the way you fooled all of us on Demarchia? Welcome to adulthood.”
What Hari did not mention, and he had told no one but Dors, was the fact thathe had never contracted the disease as a youth. Not even a touch, despite his renowned genius.
Jeni’s arch expression searched for any sign of patronizing or sarcasm in his voice. Finding none, she switched to a smile.
“Well I hope it’s a mild case. I want to get out of here! There’s been too much else going on.”
Hari nodded. “I…guess I gave everybody a scare. But apparently nothing much happened to me.”
This time the girl grinned.
“Is that right, Doc? Why don’t you look in a mirror?”
From the way she said it, Hari realized he had better do so at once.
He slid gingerly forward to rest his feet on the floor. Both legs felt fine…almost certainly good enough to shuffle over to the wall mirror, a few meters away.