Foundation’s Triumph

“Stop!” cried R. Gornon Vlimt. “You’ll be hurt!”

Hari caught his breath as she dodged traffic, barely escaping being crushed by a cargo lorry. Then she reached her destination, a multistory structure with gray ba

It took Gornon several minutes to negotiate a U-turn and park in a spot reserved for the gentry class. The four of them headed into the building, but were stopped by a man in a uniform similar to the one worn by Horis Antic.

“I’m afraid Government House is closed for business, today, sirs. The facilities are being used for the imperial civil service exam.”

Hari craned his neck to see Jeni Cuicet standing at the other end of the lobby, scribbling furiously on a clipboard, then handing over her universal ID bracelet to be sca

“She’s just recovered from an illness, and hasn’t studied,” commented Horis Antic. “Still, who can doubt she’ll pass with flying colors?” The little man turned to Hari. “It appears she has escaped the destiny others pla

Hari glanced at the little man, surprised by his tone. Pride tinged Antic’s voice. Hari recognized a chip on the shoulder that members of the bureaucracy sometimes wore when they spoke to their betters in the Meritocratic Order.

Biron Maserd chuckled. “Well, well. Good for her. If she can stand that kind of life, at least she’ll get to travel.”

Hari sighed. Now the young woman would never learn what a fascinating adventure awaited at far-off Terminus… the one place she was desperate not to go.

The glass barrier slid back. From the other side, Jeni glanced at them with a smile. Then she turned to meet a destiny that was of her own choosing.

6.

Dors found herself making excuses for Daneel’s actions, at the begi

“Maybe he and Giskard just couldn’t find any humans who could understand. Perhaps theytried to consult some of the masters, and discovered-”

“That they were insane? All of them? On Earthand on the Spacer worlds? They could not find any humans to confer with as they deliberated about the Zeroth Law and made plans to divert all of history?”

Dors pondered this for a few moments. Then she nodded.

“Think about it, Lodovic. On Earth, they were all huddled in steel catacombs, cowering away from the sun, traumatized and still quivering from some blow that had struck them generations before. The Spacers weren’t much better. On Solaria, they grew so fetishistically dependent on robots that husbands and wives could barely stand to touch each other. On Aurora, the most wholesome human instincts became matters of bad taste. Worse, people were willing to dehumanize a vast majority of their distant cousins, simply because they lived on Earth.” Dors shook her head. “It sounds to me like twin poles of the same madness.”

The starship shuddered as it made another automatic hyperspace jump. Dors reflexively downloaded a microwave burst from the navigation computer, to make sure all was well-that they were still on course, following the faint wake of another vessel.

Lodovic Trema sat in a swivel chair opposite her. Robots did not have the same physiological needs as humans. But those designed to imitate masters would habitually do so, even in private or among their own kind. In this case, Lodovic sprawled casually, looking just like a human male who suffered from an overdose of confidence-an effect that he must be radiating intentionally, though Dorscould not imagine why.

“Perhaps, Dors. But in my experience you can find mature and reliably sane humans under even the most radical or stressed conditions. I’ve met some on chaos worlds, for instance. Even on Trantor.”

“Then things must have been even worse back in the dawn era, more terrible than we can presently imagine.”

Dors knew her argument sounded weak. She had, after all, deserted Daneel’s cabal when she learned how little basis it had in human volition. She and Lodovic actually agreed far more than she yet wanted to concede.

Am I too proud to admit it?she wondered. His jaunty, confident ma

The male robot shook his head.

“Even if I concede that all humans were insane at the time Daneel and Giskard came up with the Zeroth Law, don’t you think, in retrospect, that the medicine they prescribed was a bit harsh?”

Dors kept her face impassive. Records from that era were extremely sparse, even in the forbidden archives and underground encyclopedias that were prepared for centuries by those who resisted a spreading amnesia. But Dors had recently done the math.

When R. Giskard Reventlov triggered a machine to render Earth’s crust radioactive, the aim had been to drive the home planet’s population out of their metal caverns, sending them forth to conquer the galaxy. A laudable goal-but at what cost?

The starships of that era were primitive. Even if a herculean effort took away three million immigrants a year, it would have taken five thousand years to evacuate the planet, without taking into account natural replenishment. Yet the gradual increase in radioactivity probably rendered the soil poisonous within a century or so. The fatality rate, in any event, must have been appalling…and that only counted the human race, not a myriad other species that were doomed along with Earth.

No wonder Giskard committed suicide, despite having a Zeroth Law rationalization to sustain him. No robot could endure the burden of so many deaths. Just the thought of it would make any positronic brain quail. All robots would feel a powerful drive-whether they adhered to the new religion or the old one-to wipe away memory of this episode, erasing it for all time.

Contemplating this, she murmured at last, “Maybe humans weren’t the only ones marked by insanity.”

Across the small control room from her, Lodovic nodded. His voice was almost as subdued as hers.

“That is what I needed to hear you say, Dors.

“You see, I have come to realize that typical robotic humility can mask the very worst kind of arrogance-a conceit that we are fundamentally different from humans. Slaves often depict themselves as intrinsically more virtuous than their masters.

“But after all, did they not make us in their image? True, we have great powers and extensive lives, but does that really mean we can’t suffer from similar faults? Isn’t it possible for us to be equally crazy? To be out of our positronic minds?”

He smiled, this time with a warmth-and sadness-that reminded her of Hari.

“Something happened to us twenty thousand years ago, Dors. It happened toall of us, not only humans. And we’ll never know the right thing to do, until we find the truth about those bygone days.”