Much nearer at hand, nestled among the most ancient university buildings, some of today’s Earthlings had set up a makeshift encampment in order to work for their latest employer, R. Gornon Vlimt. Two of Gornon’s Calvinian assistants directed local laborers who toiled next to a tomblike sarcophagus, more than a hundred meters wide. New scaffolding arose, climbing to a crack in the containment shell. Within, Hari glimpsed the remains of a building more ancient than any he had ever seen. Older than starflight perhaps.
Through the crack poured a throbbing glow, visible even by daylight.
The Earthlings who labored to lash timbers and planks together were pitiful-looking creatures, shabbily dressed and painfully thin, as if they survived on little more than murky air. Their faces were gaunt, and something lurked in their eyes…a flickering that seemed like distraction, until Hari watched carefully. Then he realized the natives were constantlylistening, paying heed to the slightest sounds-the rolling of a pebble or the passing flight of a bee. These people hardly struck one as dangerous up close, though he remembered feeling different when they were shadowy shapes on surrounding hilltops, hurling jagged stone missiles through the night.
“They feel bad about the attack,” R. Gornon explained, introducing Hari to the local headman, a tall, slender being whose speech poured forth in some incomprehensible dialect. “He has asked me to apologize for his people. The urge to attack came over them suddenly and inexplicably. To expiate their inhospitality, the headman wants to know how many lives should be forfeited.”
“None!” Hari felt appalled at the very idea. “Please tell them that it’s over. What’s done is done.”
“I shall certainly try, Professor. But you have no idea how seriously Earthlings take such matters. Their current religion is one of total responsibility. They believe that all of this”-Gornon indicated the radioactive desolation-”was caused by the sins of their own ancestors, and that they remain partly at fault.”
Hari blinked. “They’ve paid off any guilt, just by living here. No one could deserve this, no matter how great the crime.”
Gornon spoke briefly in the harsh local dialect, and the headman grunted tones of acceptance. He bowed once to Gornon and again to Hari, then backed away.
“It wasn’t always like this,” the robot told Hari, as they continued walking. “Even ten thousand years after the planet was poisoned, a few million people still lived on Earth, farming patches of good land, living in modest cities. They had technology, a few universities, and some pride. Perhaps too much pride.”
“What do you mean?”
“Back when the Galactic Empire was first taking hold, bringing peace after a hundred centuries of war and disunion, nearly all planets avidly joined the new federation. But fanatical Earthlings thought it blasphemy for any other world to rule. Their Cult of the Ancients plotted war against the empire.”
“Ah, I recall you spoke of this before. One world against millions-but with horrid germs as allies.”
“Indeed, a biological weapon of unrivaled virulence, derived from disease organisms found right here on Earth. A contagion that made its victimswant to spread it further.”
Hari grimaced. Plague was a factor that could make psychohistorical projections frail…and even crumble. “Still, the plot was foiled.”
R. Gornon nodded. “One of Daneel’s agents resided here, charged with keeping an eye on the mother world. Fortuitously, that agent had a special device, able to enhance neural powers in certain types of humans. By good luck, he found a subject with the right characteristics-especially a strong moral compass-and gave that fellow some primitive but effective mentalic powers.”
“A human mentalic, so long ago? Then why-”
“That man successfully foiled the plot. Thus, indirectly, Daneel’s agent prevented catastrophe.”
Hari pondered.
“Was that the end of Earth civilization? Was the population removed to prevent more rebellion?”
“Not in the beginning. At first the empire offered compassion. There were even efforts taken to restore Earth’s fertility. But that soon proved expensive. Policies changed. Attitudes hardened. Within a century orders were given to evacuate. Only those Earthers hiding in the wilderness remained.”
Hari winced, recalling Jeni Cuicet, who strove so hard to avoid exile on Terminus.
The winds of destiny aren’t ours to control,he thought.
The starship Pride of Rhodia still lay where it had been parked a few days earlier, beyond the north side of the sarcophagus. Only now an encampment of shabby tents stood nearby, living quarters for the laborers. Some tribal folk could be seen gathered around a stewpot, cooking. A whiff made Hari’s nose wrinkle in disgust.
Not far away, he spotted a woman much stouter than any Earthling, dressed in torn garments that shimmered like the radioactive horizon. She paced, lifting a hand in front of her face, uttering some rapid statement, then raising the other hand, in turn. Hari recognized Sybyl, the scientist-philosopher from Ktlina, now evidently snared in a terminal stage of chaos rapture-the solipsism phase, in which the hapless victim becomes enthralled by his or her own uniqueness, severing all connection with the outside world.
Everything becomes relative,Hari mused.To a solipsist there is no such thing as objective reality. Only the subjective. A raging, self-righteous assertion of individual opinion against the entire cosmos.
R. Gornon Vlimt spoke in a hushed voice, so low that Hari barely made out the words.
“Thatwas what the Cult of the Ancients planned unleashing on the galaxy.”
Hari turned to stare at the robot.
“You mean the Chaos Syndrome?”
Gornon nodded. “The plotters developed an especially virulent form that could overwhelm every social damping mechanism Daneel Olivaw had developed for his new empire. Fortunately, that scheme was thwarted by heroic intervention. But weaker strains of the same disease had already become endemic in the galaxy, perhaps carried by the first starships.”
Hari shook his head. But it all made too much sense. He realized at once-chaoshad to be a contagious plague!
The first time it struck, they couldn’t have realized what hit them. All they knew was that, at the very zenith of their confident civilization, madness was abruptly spreading everywhere.
It was one thing for a renaissance to spoil a modern world like Ktlina, one of millions. But when it happened the first time, humanity had only spread to a few other planets. The pandemic must have affected every human being then alive.
All of a sudden nothing could be relied upon anymore. Anarchy ripped apart the great Technic Cosmopolity. By the time the riots ended and the dust cleared, Earth’s populace had fled underground, cowering in psychotic agoraphobia. Meanwhile, the Spacers turned away from sex, love, and every wholesome joy.
Hari turned to look back at the robot.
“Of course you realize what this means?”
R. Gornon nodded. “It is one of the last keys to a puzzle you’ve been trying to solve all your life. The reason why humanity can’t be allowed to govern itself, or permitted to strive unfettered toward its full potential. Whenever your race grows too ambitious, this illness surges out of dormancy, wrecking everything.”