The robot didn’t answer. Silence stretched between them, and that was all right with Hari. He was still looking at equations painted across the stars, waiting for something to reappear.
Something he had glimpsed before.
Abruptly, several of the floating factors entered a new orbit, coalescing in a pattern that existed nowhere except in his own mind. No existing version of the Seldon Plan Prime Radiant contained this insight. Perhaps it was an old man’s hallucination. Or else, an emergent property arising from all the new things he had learned during this final adventure.
Either way, it made him smile.
Ah, there you are again! Are you real? Or a manifestation of wishful thinking?
The motif was that of a circle, returning to its origins.
Hari looked up at Daneel, no doubt the noblest person he had ever met. After twenty thousand years, struggling for the sake of humanity, the robot was undeterred, unbowed, as resolute as ever to deliver his masters to some destination that was safe, happy, and secure.
Surely he will keep his final promise to me. I will get to see my beloved wife, one last time.
Having lived more intimately with a robot than any human, Hari had some sympathy for Zorma and Cloudia, who wanted greater union between the two races. Perhaps in many centuries their approach would combine with others in some rich brew. But their hopes and schemes were irrelevant at present. For now, only two versions of destiny showed any real chance of success. Daneel’s Galaxia, on the one hand… and the glimmering figure Hari now saw floating in the sky above him.
“Our children may surprise you, Daneel,” he commented at last, breaking the long silence.
Pondering briefly, his robot friend replied, “These children-you refer to the descendants of those exiled to Terminus?”
Hari nodded. “Five hundred and some odd years from now, they will already be a diverse and persnickety people, proud of both their civilization and their individuality. You may fool a majority of robots with your ‘man who is always right,’ but I doubt many in the Foundation will accept it.”
“I know,” Daneel acknowledged with pain in his voice. “There will be resistance against assimilation by Gaia. Shortsighted panic, perhaps even violence. All of it unavailing in the long run.”
But Hari reacted with a smile.
“I don’t think you quite understand, Daneel. It’s notresistance that you have to worry about. It will be a strange kind ofacceptance that poses the greatest danger to your plan.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, how can you be so sure that it won’t beGaia that’s assimilated? Perhaps the culture of that future Foundation will be so strong, so diverse and open, that they will simply absorb your innovation, give Gaia citizenship papers, and then move on to even greater things.”
Daneel stared at Hari. “I…find this hard to envision.”
“It’s part of the pattern life has followed since it climbed from the ooze. The simple gets incorporated into the complex. For all of its power and glory, Gaia-andGalaxia- aresimple beings. Perhaps their beauty and power will only be part of something larger. Something more diverse and grand than you ever imagined.”
“I cannot encompass this. It sounds risky. There is no assurance…”
Hari laughed.
“Oh, my dear friend. Both of us have always been obsessed with predictability. But sometimes you just have to understand-the universe isn’t ours to control.”
Though his body felt weak, Hari sat up higher in the flotation chair.
“I’ll tell you what, Daneel. Let’s make a wager.”
“A wager?”
Hari nodded. “If you have your way, and Gaia assimilates everybody, eventually creating a vast unitary Galaxia, tell me this-will there be any more need forbooks?”
“Of course not. By definition, all members of the collective will know, almost instantaneously, anything that is learned by the others. Books, in whatever form, are a technique for passing information between separate minds.”
“Ah. And this assimilation should be complete, by say, six hundred years from now? Seven hundred, at the outside?”
“It should be.”
“On the other hand, supposeI am right. Imagine that my Foundation turns out to be stronger, wiser, and more robust than you, Wanda, or any of the robots expect. Perhaps it will defeat you, Daneel. They may decide to reject outside influence by robots, or human mentalics, or even all-wise cosmic minds.
“Orelse, maybe they will accept Galaxia as a marvelous gift, incorporate it in their culture, and move on. Either way, human diversity and individualism will continue in some form. And there will still be a need for books! Perhaps even anEncyclopedia Galactica.”
“But I thought theEncyclopedia was just a ruse, to get the Foundation started on Terminus.”
Hari waved a hand in front of him. “Never mind that. There will be encyclopedias, though perhaps not at first. But the question that now lies before us-the subject of our wager-is this.
“Will there still be editions of the Encyclopedia Galactica published a thousand years from now?
“If your Galaxia plan succeeds, in its pure and simple form, there will be no books or encyclopedias in one millennium’s time. But ifI am right, Daneel, people will still be creating and publishing compendiums of knowledge. They may share countless insights and intimacies through mentalic powers, the way people now make holovision calls. Who knows? But they will also maintain a degree of individuality, and keep on communicating with each other in old-fashioned ways.
“If I’m right, Daneel, theEncyclopedia will thrive… along with our children…and my first love. The Foundation.”
Hari Seldon lapsed into silence, a quiet reflection that R. Daneel Olivaw respected.
Soon, his granddaughter Wanda would come up this slope, a crumbling hill composed of rubble from past human civilizations, and collect him for the journey back to Trantor…and perhaps to a special reunion that he longed for.
But for the remaining moment, Hari admired a vista stretching overhead-the galactic starscape imbued with his beloved mathematics. He stared up at the radiation-flecked sky, and greeted Chaos, his old enemy.
I know you at last,he thought.
You are the tiger, who used to hunt us. You are winter’s cold. You are famine’s bitter hunger…the surprise betrayal…or the illness that struck without warning, leaving us crying out,Why?
You are every challenge humanity faced, and eventually overcame, as we grew just a little mightier and wiser with each triumph. You are the test of our confidence…our ability to persist and prevail.
I was justified in fighting you…and yet, without your opposition, humanity would be nothing, and there could never be a victory.
Chaos, he now realized, was the underlying substance out of which his equations evolved. As well as life itself.
Anyway, it would be pointless to resent it now. Soon, his molecules would join Chaos in its everlasting dance.
But up there, amid the stars, his lifelong dream still lived.
We will know. We will understand and grow beyond all limits that imprison us.
In time, we will be greater than we ever imagined possible.
Acknowledgments
Among the “Asimov experts” who offered wisdom and advice were professors Donald Kingsbury, James Gunn, and Joseph Miller, as well as Jennifer Brehl, Atilla Torkos, Alejandro Rivero, and Wei-Hwa Huang. Also providing valuable comments were Stefan Jones, Mark Rosenfelder, Steinn Sigurdsson, Joy Crisp, Ruben Krasnopolsky, G. Swenson, Sean Huang, Freddy Hansen, Michael Westover, Christian Reichardt, Melvin Leok, J. V. Post, Benjamin Freeman, Scott Martin, Robert Hurt, Anita Gould, Joseph Cook, Alberto Monteiro, R. Sayres, N. Know, A. Faykin, Michael Hochberg, Adam Blake, Jimmy Fung, and Jenny Ives. Sara Schwager and Bob Schwager were conscientious and keen-eyed copy editors. I am also grateful to Janet Asimov, John Douglas, Ralph Vicinanza, and above all to Cheryl Brigham, whose skilled reading caught many errors, whose hands substituted for mine in a crisis, and who kept life going when I felt like a hapless robot.