Hari recalled Antic’s tale about his ancestor, who perhaps had an encounter with a real alien race. If the story was true, it only happened because the nonhumans dwelled on a world that was too hot to be a candidate for conditioning.
Might there have been others, less fortunate? Native sapients whose villages and farms and cities were transformed into mulch for newcomers from across the stars? Beings who never even got to look in the eyes of the pioneers who displaced them? Farmers who would pierce their shattered bones each time a plow bit the rich black soil?
Hari recalled the meme-entities on Trantor. Computer specialists had dismissed the wild software predators as escaped human sims, gone mad from centuries spent caroming through Trantor’s datasphere. But those digital beings had claimed to be something completely different-remnants left behind by earlier denizens of the galaxy, millions of years older than humanity itself.
One thing was clear. The meme-minds hated robots. Even more than they loathed human beings, they despised Daneel’s kind, blaming them for some past catastrophe.
Could this be what they meant? The Great Tilling Episode?
Olivaw had once said something about a “great shame” that lay buried in robot antiquity. His own faction was not to blame, Daneel declared. Another clique, rooted in Spacer culture, had perpetrated something awful. Something that Hari’s robot friend refused ever to talk about.
No wonder,he thought. One part of him found the whole concept of planetary tilling monstrous, and yet…
And yet, to contemplate the mere possibility of numerous types of alien life-forms made him feel queasy. His equations had enough trouble dealing with human complexity. So many added factors would have made psychohistory virtually intractable.
Hari realized he was drifting again. With a jerk, he noticed that Antic was talking to him.
“What, Horis? Could you repeat it?”
The bureaucrat blew a frustrated sigh.
“I was just saying that the correlation is now even better, between your model and mine. It seems we’ve found one of your missing factors, Professor.”
“Missing factors? Regarding what?”
“Chaos worlds, Seldon,” Mors Planch commented. “Our little Grey Man claims there’s a twenty percent correlation between chaos outbreaks and parts of the galaxy where tillingfailed. Where the machines broke down, leaving planets unaltered across several stellar veins, arcs, and spiral lanes.”
Hari blinked, sitting straight up. “You don’t mean it! Twenty percent?”
All other worries were abruptly crowded out. This had direct relevance to psychohistory. To his equations!
“Horis, why didn’t you mention this sooner? Wemust find out which attribute of untilled worlds contributes to the probability func-”
An ululating scream interrupted Hari, sending all four men rushing to their feet. This was no mere cry of transient pain, but an agonized wail of frustration and ravaged hopes.
Mors Planch and Biron Maserd were already out the door by the time Hari limped after Horis Antic into the passageway. Their surprised shouts echoed from inside the ship’s lounge. Then there was silence.
Horis reached the open portal next, several steps ahead of Hari. The bureaucrat stopped and stared slack-jawed into the room, as if unable to believe what he saw there.
8.
Hyperspace jumps flickered, each one taking her across a segment of the galactic spiral. She was now about halfway between Trantor and the periphery. With every step of the journey, Dors felt positronic potentials grow more tense within her already high-strung brain.
Now I know what you wanted me to perceive, Lodovic.
I can see what I did not see before.
And if I were a real person, I would hate you for it.
As things stood, she repeatedly had to trigger circuit breakers, interrupting autogenerated spirals of simulated anger.
Anger at herself for taking so long to see the obvious.
Anger at Daneel, for not telling her any of this, years ago.
But especially anger at Lodovic, for removing the last serenity in her universe. The serenity of duty.
I was designed and built to serve Hari Seldon. First in the guise of a beloved elderly teacher at his Helicon boarding school, then as an older classmate at university, and finally as his wife, loving and guarding and helping him for decades on Trantor. When I “died” and had to be repaired, I could have joined Hari in some guise, but it wasn’t allowed. Daneel expressed complete satisfaction with every detail of the job I had done, yet he simply reassigned me elsewhere.
I did not get to stay by Hari’s side, in order to be with him at the end. Ever since then I have felt…
She paused, then reemphasized the thought.
I have felt amputated. Cut off
The reason for her malady was both logical and unavoidable.
A robot is not supposed to plumb human emotions this deeply, and yet Daneel designed me to do so. I could not have succeeded at my task otherwise.
Of course she understood Daneel Olivaw’s reasons, the urgency of his haste. With the completion of Hari Seldon’s life’s work, there were now other vital chores and only a small corps of Alpha-level positronic robots to perform them. Daneel’s interest in breeding happy, healthy, mentalic humans was obviously of great importance to some plan for humanity’s ultimate benefit. And so she had dutifully followed orders, concentrating on taking care of Klia and Brann.
But her very success at that assignment meant tedium. A void into which Lodovic Trema had dropped…
Nearby, on a table festooned with wires, the head of R. Giskard Reventlov cast its frozen metal grimace back at her each time she looked its way.
Dors paced the metal deck, going over all she had learned one more time.
The recorded memories are clear. Giskard used his mentalic powers to alter human minds. At first only to save lives. Later, he did it for more subtle benevolent reasons, but he always felt compelled by the First Law, to prevent harm to those humans. Giskard’s motives were forever the purest.
This remained even more true after Daneel Olivaw convinced him to accept the Zeroth Law, and to think foremost of humanity’s long-range good.
She recalled one episode vividly, played back from an ancient memory stored in that grinning head.
Daneel and Giskard had been accompanying Lady Gladia, a prominent Auroran, during a visit to one of the Settler worlds, recently colonized by Earthlings. Giskard was himself partly responsible for the Settlers being there, having years earlier mentally adjusted many Earth politicians to smooth the way for emigration. But something important happened on that special night when the three of them attended a large cultural meeting on Baleyworld.
The crowd started out hostile to Lady Gladia, taunting her. Some shouted threats at the Spacer woman. Giskard worried at first that her feelings might be hurt. Then he fretted that the participants might turn into a hostile mob.
So he changed them.
He reached out mentally and tweaked an emotion here, an impulse there, building positive momentum like an adult pushing a child on a swing. And soon the mood began shifting. Gladia herself deserved some credit for this, delivering a wonderfully effective speech. But to a large extent it was Giskard’s work that converted thousands-and more than a million others watching by hyperwave-into chanting, cheering supporters of the Lady.
In fact, Dors had previously heard stories about that epochal evening…as she already knew the pivotal tale of Giskard’s crucial decision, just a few months later. The fateful moment when a loyal robot chose to unleash a saboteur’s machine, turning Earth’s crust radioactive, helping to destroy its ecosphere and drive its population into space. For their own good.