Foundation’s Triumph

Struggling to form words, Hari tried to ask a question. But it would not come. Instead, he felt the prick of a needle in the side of his neck.

Consciousness shut down, like a machine that had been turned off.

Part 3. Secret crimes

Every year in the galaxy, more than 2,000 suns enter late-phase in their fusion-burning cycles, expanding their surfaces and becoming much hotter than before. Another twenty stars per year go nova… .

Taking into account the millions of stars that have habitable planets, this means that on average two human-settled worlds become untenable or uninhabitable each year…Throughout the early dark ages, before the Galactic Empire, numerous tragic natural disasters cost billions of lives. Isolated worlds often had nowhere to turn for help when a sun went unstable, or something disrupted a planetary ecosphere.

During the Imperium such threats were handled on a routine basis by the Grey bureaucracy, which efficiently surveyed stellar conditions, predicted solar changes in advance, and maintained resettlement fleets on standby to deal with emergencies. So dedicated was this effort that remnants still existed late in the empire’s decline, arriving to help evacuate Trantor when the capital planet was sacked.

Thereafter, during the Interregnum, such assistance was unavailable. Scattered accounts tell of numerous small worlds that went abruptly silent during that long, violent era, owing to natural or man-made calamities. Often no one bothered to go learn what happened to their populations until it was too late…

Even after the rise of the Foundation, it took some time before a combination of psychohistorical factors made possible the investment of substantial resources to build an infrastructure of compassion… .

1.

R. Zun Lurrin had a question for his leader.

“Daneel, I’ve been reading ancient records, dating back to before humanity burst out from a small corner of the galaxy. I find that throughout history, most societies tried to protect their people against exposure todangerous ideas. On every continent of Old Earth, in almost every era, priests and kings strove to keep out concepts that might disturb the population at large, fearing that alien notions could take root and cause sin or madness, or worse.

“And yet, the most brilliant culture of all, the one that inventedus, seems to have rejected this entire way of looking at the world.”

Daneel Olivaw stood again at the highest balcony of Eos Base, atop a towering cliff, from which a bright galactic pinwheel could be seen, both overhead and reflected off the perfectly smooth surface of a frozen metal lake. The twin images were so exact that it could be hard to distinguish illusion from reality. As if it mattered.

“You are referring to the Transition Age,” he answered. “When people like Susan Calvin and Revere Wu created the first robots, starships, and many other wonders. It was an era of unprecedented ingenuity, Zun. And yes, they came up with a completely different way of viewing the issue of information-as-poison.

“Some called their approach the Maturity Principle. A belief that children can be brought up with just the right combination of trust and skepticism-a mix of tolerance and healthy suspicion-so that any new or foreign idea could then be evaluated on its own merits. The bad parts rejected. The good parts safely incorporated into ever-growing wisdom. Truth might then be won, not by dogma, but by remaining open to a wide universe of possibilities.”

“Fascinating, Daneel. If such a method ever proved valid, it would have staggering implications. There would be no inherent limit to the exploration or growth of human souls.”

Zun paused for a moment. “So tell me. Did the sages of that era seriously believe that vast numbers of individual human beings could reliably accomplish this trick?”

“They did, and even based their education methods on it. Indeed, the approach apparently worked for a while, by correcting each other’s mistakes in a give-and-take of cheerful debate. The period you refer to is said to have been marvelous. I regret having been assembled too late to meet Susan Calvin and other great ones of that era.”

“Alas, Daneel, no operational robot dates from that far back. You are among the oldest. Yet your fabrication came two hundred years after the Golden Age collapsed amid riots, terrorism, and despair.”

Daneel turned to look at Zun. Despite the hard vacuum and radioactivity of their surroundings, his understudy appeared much like a rugged young human, a member of the gentry class, outfitted for a camping trip on some bucolic imperial world.

“Even that description understates the situation, Zun. At the time I was created, Earthlings had already retreated from chaos into hideously cramped metal cities, cowering away from the light. And their Spacer cousins were hardly any more sane, falling into an unstoppable spiral of decadence and decay. It must have taken enormous traumas to bring about such a radical change in attitude from Susan Calvin’s era of expansive optimism.”

“Was there still some acceptance of the Maturity Principle, during the period when you worked with the human detective, Elijah Baley?”

Daneel indicatedno with a tilt of his head.

“That belief had fallen into disrepute, except among a minority of nonconformists and philosophers. For the rest, uniformity and distrust became central themes. One strong similarity between Spacer and Earth cultures was their rejection of the ope

“They became convinced-as we are today-that human brains are vulnerable hosts, often subject to invasion by parasitic concepts…like the way a virus takes over a living cell.”

“How ironic. Both cultures were more alike than they realized.”

“Correct, Zun. Yet, because of that shared suspicion, they nearly a

“It took some drastic measures to get them moving again. But once the diaspora began in earnest, humans filled the galaxy more quickly than we ever expected! During that time of rapid expansion they created so many subcultures…and to our dismay soon these started rubbing against each other, fighting brutal little wars. You can see why the only solution, from a Zeroth Law perspective, was to create a new, uniform galactic culture that might bring an age of peace. Tolerance became much easier, once everyone was alike.”

“But sameness wasn’t the whole answer!” Zun commented. “You also had to invent new techniques for keeping a lid on things.”

Daneel agreed.

“We incorporated methods that Hari Seldon would later calldamping systems, to keep galactic society from spi

Zun accepted this with a nod. But he wanted to return to the topic of dangerous ideas.