“We run good government. Our methodology doesn’t speak to individuals,” he admonished.
“If either of those statements were true,” she flared, “I wouldn’t be here in your comfortable prison and you wouldn’t be the illegitimate Rector of the Galaxy!”
“And when the astrology doesn’t work?”
“What’s then to stop a failed astrologer from moving on to psychohistory? You? With your secret hoard of knowledge in your guarded Lyceum archives?”
Magda called them to dinner. She was always a calming influence. Osa-Scogil arrived at the table in a good mood, seeming to have settled his internal dissension. There were no further discussions of politics or psychohistory. Magda’s rule.
Later, over sips of Armazin in the study suite, the Admiral confided in Eron the real reason for his visit. “Hanis goes on trial on the 38th watch of Salt. That’s a bit early, too soon to get all of the evidence together properly, a bit of a kangaroo court, but the hard-core Hanis faction is beginning to react and reorganize, and I can’t afford that. Press the attack while the enemy is in disarray. From the view up here at the top I can see that I have nowhere to go but down, fast. I must dispose of Hanis quickly. I need you as my prime witness.” “Oh?”
The Admiral thumped Eron’s dissertation. “The charge is treason. As good as any other trumped-up charge. He has been willfully—and for personal gain—suppressing from his colleagues all knowledge of a coming psychohistorical crisis. That’s as deadly a sin as we can scrape up from the bottom of the bin. You are to testify that you warned him.” “I think he panicked,” said Eron.
To that the Admiral replied with spoofing humor. “You take pride in yourself as an alarming scarecrow, do you, straw brains and all?” He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. No one will believe he panicked. Hanis is seen to be a charming man with a calculated purpose behind his every action. All you have to do is testify that when you warned him of crisis, his response was to erase the messenger. We have the proof.” He thumped the thesis again. “And Hyperlord Jama’s group is in irons. We’ve had to manufacture evidence that Hanis knew about them. Since I’m making the rules, I don’t have to be fair. And we have this.” He produced another Coron’s Egg from his bluecoat. “Every juror will be taken to a secret room to see the Founder’s equations scrolling across the heavens. That will make them shit in their pants, like I did in mine. Then we tell them that a million such Eggs have already been scattered to Star’s End. After which they can complete their evacuation by pissing in their pants, like I did in mine. What do you say? I’m calculating here. I suspect that you don’t harbor any love for Hanis but—more than that—you want an audience for your thesis. I’ll give you a roomful of audience. I want to nail Hanis in the upside-down position, Roman style. An old grudge. You pass me the nails. Is it a deal?”
“You’ll back me up? You’ll say there’s a real crisis?”
“Of course.”
“So you’ve finally come to believe what I’ve written?” This time the Admiral banged on the dissertation angrily. “That? Are you asking me to sign my name to the bottom of that rubbish paper of yours? It is utter nonsense. I told you that years ago. But if it helps me to cut Hanis’ throat, I’ll swear the situation is ten times worse than you say it is and with candles on top—while my fingers are crossed.”
“You want me to lie to a court of law?” Eron’s sense of moral outrage was growing.
“No, no. You won’t be lying. You believe every word you’ve written. I want your sincerity to shine through in the courtroom. I want tears in their eyes when they hear your story. I’ll be the one who is lying to save my skin.”
“What will you do with Hanis if he is convicted?”
“Boil him in oil. But I think you’ve earned first priority on that. What would you do with him?”
“He has interesting dreams. I remember being caught up in his dreams. He won’t give them up easily.”
“Tell that to your fam.” The Admiral touched his own; had Hanis’ methods scared him to act?
Eron had a suggestion. “Ship him off to a distant cluster he has picked out as one of his renaissance foci. He could teach the laymen there psychohistory and if they liked his dream they’d then have the power to make it real without asking permission of Splendid Wisdom—and Hanis could die happy.”
“Have you lost your fam? Teach laymen psychohistory? Never. You know the equations for that scene. I’d rather boil Hanis in oil! Have some more Armazin.” He took Osa-Scogil’s delicate goblet and poured a refill. “Well. Are you going to testify? We have to make a deal right now. I won’t force you. I can forge fake witnesses if I have to.”
Eron stared at the blue light dancing over the etched scene on his goblet while he twisted it in his fingers, conversing in silence with Scogil. A thousand mock battles played themselves out in the goblet’s shimmering while the argument raged between man and ghoul, ending finally in accord. “We agree to testify—if afterward we get to play two versions of this hundred-year simulated war, the initial conditions those of the Galaxy as they stand today as determined by the Fellowship—but some of the initial conditions, by necessity, must be arbitrary, since we have already crossed the topo-zone and psychohistory will be unable to predict when and where the Eggs are first used. We can roll dice on that, so to speak. The first war is to be governed by the Founder’s classical rules, the second war by my Arekean modifications.” “The first is enough. A future viewed by your strange rules is a fantasy spun by a youthful dreamer of the impossible.” “I must insist on both simulations. It is necessary that these two possible futures be contrasted.”
“The flaws in your method will be exposed.”
“All the better. I must have your word of honor.”
“Two wars then. Conceded.”
“As well, Scogil would like to point out that, since he is not a command center and never was, errors will be introduced.” The Admiral was grumbling. “Error resolution can drag out the calculations interminably. May I suggest that each simulated year be limited to three or four watches? That should give us acceptable accuracy. At the end of that time we assume the outcomes with the highest probability and move on to the next year. If a hundred-year war were to last more than three or four months, my patience would be tried.”
Eron nodded. “Scogil has asked me to remind you that in an enterprise of this complexity, we will need at least thirty of your best students as staff for our side if the game is to have any meaning at all. The galactic model handles predictions well, but with the introduction of so many new prediction nodes.. .”
Konn did not let him finish. “Obviously you will need help. Thirty won’t save you. Conceded.” Eron did not mention that this would give him thirty students to train in the Arekean methodology of distributed iteration, thirty more than he had right now. The Admiral smiled, anticipating victory in all galactic theaters as a foregone conclusion of any such “war”—as if his opposition were mere rowdy deckhands to be brought to order by a little fatherly discipline. He called on Magda to bring out another decanter of Armazin. It was a deal.
Eron also smiled softly. There was no way he could tell the Admiral what a predicament he faced. Hahukum Konn was brazen enough to think that he was a superior strategist even against an army of amateur psychohistorians. That was true. At present, the main tactic of Scogil’s mysterious people was to pump, from as many spigots as they could, the technical literature of psychohistory. That wasn’t enough. Neither Scogil nor the Admiral understood the long-term implications. The Founder had understood. Which was why he so adamantly insisted on secrecy.