Grab the bed railing and stand up carefully, so you’ll fall back onto the mattress if your senses are lying to you.
But rising erect went smoothly, with only a few creaks and twinges. He slid one foot forward, shifted his weight, and pushed the other.
Hari felt fine so far, though it did not help to hear Jeni behind him, chuckling with amusement and anticipation.
The next footstep lifted a bit from the ground, and the following one higher still. By the time he reached the mirror, Hari was walking with more confidence than he had felt in
He stared at the reflection, blinking rapidly as Jeni’s giggles turned into guffaws.
A deeper voice cut in suddenly from the doorway. “Professor!”
The shout came from Kers Kantun. Hari’s loyal servant ran forward to take his arm, but he shook the man off, still gaping at the image in the glass.
Five years…at least. They’ve taken at least five years off my age. Maybe ten. I don’t look much over seventy-five or so.
A low sound escaped his throat, and Hari felt so confused that he did not honestly know whether he was delighted, or offended by the effrontery of their act.
“This is just one of the marvels that have emerged so far, out of that wonderful event you so contemptuously call a chaos world, Seldon.”
Sybyl crooned happily as she finished Hari’s checkup and let him get dressed. “Ktlina has medical techniques that will be the envy of the empire, after we get the word out. It’s just one reason why we have confidence they won’t be able to keep our miracle bottled up, this time. Think of aquadrillion old folks, all across the galaxy, wishing they had access to a machine like this one.”
She patted a long, coffin-shaped mechanism covered with readouts and instruments. Hari figured he must have been put inside while advanced techniques reduced and even reversed some of the ravages afflicting his worn-out body.
“Of course this is only an early version,” she went on. “We can’t rejuvenate yet, only restore a bit of balance and strength to carry you along until the next treatment. Nevertheless, in theory there are no limits! In principle, we should even be able to create body duplicates, and infuse them with copies of our memories! Until then, consider what you have experienced to be a sampling. One of the practical benefits of a renaissance.”
Hari spoke carefully.
“My body and spirit thank you.”
She glanced back at him. A stylishly colored eyebrow raised.
“But not your intellect? You don’t approve of such innovations? Even when they could save so many lives?”
“You blithely speak of balance, as if you know what you’re talking about, Sybyl. But the human body is nowhere near as complex an organism as humansociety. If a mistake is made in treating a single person, that is merely tragic. One individual can be replaced by another. But we only have one civilization.”
“So you think we’re experimenting irresponsibly, without understanding what these methods will do to our patient in the long run.”
He nodded. “I’ve been studying human society all my life. Only lately have the parameters clarified enough to offer a reasonably lucid picture. But now you’d introduce exotic new factors that just happen to feel good in the short term, even though they may prove ultimately lethal. What arrogance! For instance, have you considered the implications of human immortality on fragile economies? Or on planetary ecosystems? Or on the ability of young people to have their own chance-”
Sybyl laughed.
“Whoa, Academician! You needn’t argue with me. I say that human creativity, when it’s truly unleashed, will find solutions to every problem. The ones you just mentioned, plus a quintillion others that nobody has yet thought of. But anyway, there’s no point in debating anymore.
“You see, the point is moot. It’s already settled. Our war is effectively over.”
Hari sighed.
“I expected this. I’m sorry your fond hopes had to end this way. Of course it was a fantasy to expect that just one planet might prevail against twenty-five million in the Human Consensus. But let me assure you that in the long run-”
He stopped. Sybyl was grinning.
“It may have been a fantasy, but that’s exactly what is about to happen. We’re going towin our war, Seldon. Within a few months-a year at most-the whole empire’s going to share the renaissance, like it or not. And we have you to thank for making it possible!”
“What’s that? But…” Hari’s voice trailed off. He felt weak in the knees.
Sybyl took his elbow.
“Would you like to see our new weapon? Come along, Academician. See where your search has brought you across the vast desert of space. Then let me show you the tool you’ve provided. One that will bring total victory for our so-called chaos.”
3.
No starlight penetrated the murky haze.
Tens of thousands of huge, dusty molecular clouds speckled the galaxy’s spiral arms. Such places were often turbulent hothouses for newborn suns, but this one had been static and sterile for at least a million years-a barren tide pool with the color of a bottomless pit.
And yet, probing sensors from thePride of Rhodia had caught something lurking in its depths. A swarm of contacts showed up first on gravity meters and then deep radar. Later, searchlights set off glittering reflections, so near that some photons returned in mere seconds.
Hari had been unconscious during the discovery. Now he strove to catch up, peering into the surrounding gloom with eyes that felt especially acute after the dimness of recent years. As the starship slowly rotated, he saw that rows of individual pinpoints lay ahead, each one illuminated by a small laser beam from thePride of Rhodia.
Soon he realized.There are hundreds of objects…possibly thousands.
The sparkling reflections shimmered in neat rows. A few were even close enough to reveal details without magnification-strange oblong shapes with jutting projections that looked mechanical, and yet were unlike any starship he had ever seen.
Glancing at a nearby view screen, Hari saw one of the targets revealed as a jumble of stark bright surfaces and pitch-black shadows. At first he felt a shiver, wondering if the craft might bealien in origin, a thought that echoed the strange story Horis Antic had told about his ancestor. Hari’s worry grew more ominous upon reading the on-screen scale figures. The machine depicted was vast. Bigger than even the greatest imperial starliners.
Then some reassuring details came through. He saw the vessel’s array of hyperdrive units, spread across a spindly support structure, and recognized their pattern from illustrations he had seen inA Child’s Book of Knowledge, showing the crude starships of that bygone era.
With some amazement, Hari realized the truth.
This thing is huge…but primitive! Modern ships don’t need so many motivator sections, for instance. Our jump drives are more compact, after millennia of trial-and-error improvements.
He was looking at something archaic, then. Perhaps many centuries older than the Galactic Empire of Man.
“Yes, they are antiques,” commented Biron Maserd, when Hari shared this observation. “But have you noticed something else peculiar about them?”
“Well, the shape seems all wrong. There are hugeprojector devices of some sort, arrayed on long gantries, as if meant to deploy immense amounts of power. But what could they possibly have been for?”
“Hm.” Maserd rubbed his chin. “Our friend the Grey Man has a theory about that. But it is so bizarre that no one else aboard will admit to believing him. In fact, the consensus is that poor Horis has gone around his last corridor and hit bedrock, if you know what I mean.”
The Trantorian slang phrase was used when someone had become more than a bit crazy. Although the news wasn’t entirely unexpected, it saddened Hari, who liked the little bureaucrat.