“But you differ over what specific course will be good for us in the long run.” Hari nodded. “Fair enough. So here I am, on fabled Earth. Your clique went to great effort and took tremendous risks to bring me here. Now won’t you tell me what you want? Is it something like what Kers Kantun asked for, back in the nebula? Do you want my human permission to destroy something that you’d rationalize destroying anyway?”
There followed a long pause. Then Gornon answered, “In one sense, you describe our intention exactly. And yet, I doubt that even you can imagine what I am about to propose.
“Several times in recent months-and even in recordings you made for the Foundation-you have said that you wished for some way to see the fruits of your labors. That you could witness the unfolding of your great Plan, and see humanity transform during the coming thousand years. Did you really mean that?”
“Who wouldn’t want to witness a seed grow into a mighty tree? But it’s only a dream. I live now, at the end of one great empire. It is enough that I can foresee a bit of the next.”
“Do you prophesy your Plan unfolding smoothly for the next hundred years?”
“I do. Almost no perturbation can interfere over that timescale. The socio-momentum is so great.”
“And two hundred years? Three hundred?”
Hari felt peevishly inclined not to cooperate with this questioning. And yet, the equations flew out of recesses in his mind, flocking together and creating a vast swirl, as if beckoned by Gornon’s question.
“There are several ways that the Plan might get into trouble on that timescale,” he answered slowly, reluctantly. “There is always the danger of some new technology upsetting things, although most of the important advances will take place on Terminus. Or some fluke might occur having to do with human nature-”
“Such as the advent of human mentalics?”
Hari winced. Of course some Calvinians were already aware of the new mutation.
When he did not answer, Gornon continued, “That’s when you felt it all start slipping away, isn’t it, Professor? If mentalics could crop up once, they might do so a second time, almost anywhere. To deal with that contingency, your Second Foundation had to incorporate these psychic powers. Instead of a small order of monastic-mathematical monks, they must become a new species…a master race.”
Hari’s voice felt rough in his throat.
“A strong Second Foundation acts like a major damping force…keeping the equations stable and predictable for another several centuries…”
“Ah, yet another damping force. And tell me, do you approve of such methods?”
“When the alternative is chaos? Sometimes the ends justify the-”
“I mean do you approve of themmathematically?”
For the first time, Gornon showed some animation in his voice. His body leaned a little toward Hari.
“For a moment think only as a mathist, Professor. It’s where your greatest gifts lie. Gifts that even Daneel holds in awe.”
Hari chewed his lip. Surrounding him, fields of radiation were interspersed with blackness that was cold and silent as a million graves.
“No.” He found he could barely speak. “I don’t approve of artificial dampers. They are…” Hari sought the right word, and could think of only one. “They are inelegant.”
Gornon nodded.
“Ideally, you’d prefer to let the equations work out by themselves, wouldn’t you? To let humanity find a new, balanced equilibrium state on its own. Given the right initial starting conditions, it should all work out, leading to a civilization so vigorous, dynamic, and free that it can overcome even-”
Hari’s eyes blurred. He looked down at the ground, mumbling.
“What was that, Professor?” Gornon leaned closer. “I couldn’t hear you.”
Hari looked up at his tormentor, and shouted, “I said it doesn’t matter, damn you!”
He stood there, breathing heavily through the filter mask of his protective suit, hating Gornon for making him say this aloud.
“I couldn’t just leave the equations alone. I couldn’t take that chance. They talked me into having a Second Foundation…then making them psychic supermen. In fact, I grabbed at the notion gladly! The very idea…thepower it implied…
“Only later did I realize…”
He stopped, unable to continue.
Gornon’s voice was low and sympathetic.
“You realized what, Professor? That it’s all a sham? A way to keep humanity marking time while the real solution is created by someone else?”
“Damn you,” Hari repeated, this time in a whisper.
There was another long pause, then Gornon straightened and looked up at the sky, as if scanning in expectation for someone to arrive.
“Do you know what Daneel has planned?” the robot asked at last.
Hari had strong suspicions, from hints and inklings that the Immortal Servant had dropped during the last couple of years. The appearance of human mentalics on Trantor was too great a genetic and psychic leap to be a coincidence. It had to be part of Daneel’s next design.
That much Gornon must already know. As for the rest of Hari’s surmise, he would certainly not tell this robot heretic anything that might help him to fight Olivaw!
Psychohistory may not be the final key to human destiny, but if it helps Daneel to come up with something even better, I’ll just have to live with that supporting role. It’s still a noble task, all things considered.
“Well, well.” Gornon lifted his shoulders and sighed. “I won’t ask you to spill any secrets, or to change loyalties.
“I will only repeat the question that I asked before. Would you, Professor Seldon, like to see your work unfold? You’ve said it was your deepest wish-to see the Foundation in its full glory. To have another chance to clarify the equations.
“Again, did you mean it?”
Hari stared at the heretic for a long time.
“By the code of Ruellis…” he murmured in a low voice. “I do believe you’re serious.”
“It took place quite near here,” Gornon said, pointing to some tumbled-down buildings a few hundred meters away. “An accident that quite literally set time out of joint.”
Hari followed the robot to a new vantage point, where he could look toward several large brick structures that clearly predated the monumental steel cavern nearby. Once, Gornon explained, this had been a graceful university campus. Elegant buildings housed some of humanity’s greatest scholars and scientific workers, during what must have felt like a Golden Age. A time when technology and the expansion of knowledge seemed limitless, and bold searchers would try any experiment, driven by curiosity and a conviction that knowledge cannot harm a brave mind.
He was surprised to see that one of these buildings had been entombed in a massive construction of steel and masonry. This outer structure had no pleasing symmetries, only a slapped-together look that suggested some dire emergency. Perhaps something happened here, and people erected a reinforced concrete tomb to seal away their mistake. A sarcophagus to bury something that they could not kill.
“One of their experiments went wrong,” Gornon explained. “They were probing away at nature’s fundamental matrix. Even today, their technique has not been rediscovered, though it is feared that a chaos world may stumble upon it again, someday.”
“So tell me what happened,” Hari urged. He had an uneasy feeling as they walked an inward spiral toward the roughly outlined dome.
“The physicists who worked here were in a race to develop faster-than-light travel. Elsewhere on Earth, their competitors had discovered techniques that would become our modern hyperdrive, preparing to give humanity the key to the universe. On hearing about that news, researchers onthis campus were desperate to complete their experiments before all funding was transferred to that other breakthrough. So, they took a gamble.”