Foundation’s Triumph

“Some of the space currents that flow through these gaps have exceptional texture,” Antic explained. “They consist of much more than a flow of excess carbon here, or some scattered hydroxyl molecules there. A lot of chemical reactions are excited when streams pass near an ultraviolet star for instance, or a folded magnetic field. One result can be complex organic chains that stretch on and on, for tens of thousands of kilometers. Some zones can extend parsecs, flapping slowly like flags in the wind.”

“Pilots call themstringy places,” commented Maserd. “Starships that blunder in can have their impellers fouled, or even get tom apart. The Imperial Navigation Service posts detours around such areas.” The big man sounded as if he relished entering such a forbidden realm.

Hari peered dubiously at a pan-spectrum monitor. “It is still plenty sparse in there. The mass density is hardly more than pure vacuum, with a few impurities scattered about.”

“On a macro-scale, yes,” Antic conceded. “But if only I could make you see howimportant so-called impurities can be! Take my own field, for example. An outsider might see no difference between living soil and mere crushed rock. But contrast the textures by hand! It’s like comparing a forest to a sterile moonscape.”

Hari allowed a smile. In polite company, Antic’s talk about “soil” would be considered…well,dirty. But no one aboard seemed to care. Maserd had even sought Antic’s advice about the use of manure and phosphates on his own organic farm, back home on a planet called Rhodia. Jeni and Kers showed no reaction either.

I’ve noticed this all my life. It’s mostly meritocrats and eccentrics-the two “genius” castes-who react adversely to certain subjects. Norisit just dirt and rocks that academic sages avoid discussing. There are many others subjects….including history!

In contrast, most gentry and citizens hardly notice.

Actually, Hari was himself a high noble in the Meritocratic Order, yet he had never felt personal repugnance toward any intellectual topic whatsoever. His reflex reaction to Antic’s dirt fixation was just a mild habit, from moving so long in polite society. Indeed,historywas one of the central foci of his life! Unfortunately, that had made the first half of his career difficult, pitting him in constant battle against the distaste felt by most other scholars toward examining the past. It used to be a steady drain on his time and energy, until he became too famous and powerful for stodgy department heads to thwart his research anymore.

Also, the aversion is apparently much weaker than it used to be.

In his studies of the imperial archives, Hari had found whole mille

This roused mixed feelings. If not for the mysterious aversion, psychohistory might have been developed long before this, on one or more of the twenty-five million settled worlds. Hari felt possessive gladness thathe got to be the one to make these discoveries, even though he knew it was selfish to feel so. After all, the breakthrough might have helped save the empire if it came much earlier.

Now it’s too late for that. There is too much momentum. Other plans must be set in motion. Other plans….

He shook himself from ruminating. The last thing Hari wanted was to be caught in the spiral of an aging mind. Dwelling on might-have-beens.

He looked at the others, and found that their conversation had shifted back to an old question…the diversity of galactic life.

“I suppose my interest comes from the fact that I was born on one of the anomaly worlds,” Captain Maserd confessed. “Our estate on Widemos had cattle and horses, of course, like on most other planets. But there were also great herds of clingers and jiffts, roaming the northern plains much as they did when the first settlers came.”

“I saw some jiffts in a zoo on Willemina,” commented Jeni Cuicet, who paused from her assigned task, using a vibro-scrubber on the floor nearby. “They were weird things! Six legs and buggy eyes, with heads that look upside down!”

“They are native to the old Nebular Kingdoms, and were seen nowhere else until the Trantorian Empire spread through our area,” Maserd said, as if it had happened just yesterday. “So you can see why I’m interested in this research. I grew up around nonstandard life-forms, and then made a passion of studying others, such as the tu

“Why should human beings be the only intelligent species? This question used to be raised in ancient literature…though much less since the imperial age began.”

“Well, now that you mention it…” Antic began answering. He paused, glancing at Hari and Kers before continuing. “I have only told this story a few times in my life. But on this ship-as we strive together to examine this very topic-I ca

“Antyok was his name, and he was a bureaucrat like me, way back in the earliest days of the empire.”

“That’d be thousands and thousands of years ago!” Jeni objected.

“So? Many families have genealogies stretching even farther. Isn’t that right, Lord Maserd? I know for certain this Antyok fellow existed because his name appears on the wall of our clan crypt, along with a brief microglyph description of his career.

“Anyway, according to the story I was told as a child, Antyok was one of the few humans who ever actually met…others.”

Amid the silence that followed, Hari blinked several times.

“You mean…”

“Fully intelligent nonhumans.” Horis nodded. “Creatures who stood upright, and spoke, and thought about their place in the universe, but who were almost nothing like us. They came from a desert planet that was desperately hot and dry. In fact, they weredying when the early imperial institutes found and rescued them, taking them to a ‘better’ world, though one that was still quite intolerable to human beings. It is said that the emperor himself became passionately interested in their welfare. And yet, within a human generation, they were gone.”

“Gone!” Maserd blinked with evident dismay. The mere possibility of such beings existing seemed to energize him. Meanwhile, Hari saw Kers Kantun smirk with sardonic disbelief, not swallowing the notion, even for a second.

“The story is filled with ambiguity-as you’d expect from something that old,” Antic went on. “Some versions contend that the nonhumans died of despair, looking up at the stars and knowing that every one of them would be forever human, not theirs. Another account suggests that my ancestor helped them steal several starships, which they used to escape from the galaxy, toward the Magellanic Clouds! Apparently-and I know this is hard to follow-that act led the emperor to personallydecorate Antyok, for some reason.

“Naturally, I dug into imperial archives as soon as an opportunity presented itself, and I found enough confirming evidence to show thatsomething definitely happened back then…but efforts were made subsequently to erase the details. I had to use every bureaucratic trick, hunting down ghost duplicates of spare file copies that had slipped into atypical places. One gave a detailed genetic summary that’s unlike any currently existing life-form. These are tantalizing clues, though there remain lots of gaps.”