Lodovik assessed the situation at once, turned, and saw that both ends of the concourse were now blocked by police.
“Into the crate,” Kallusin said. “Shut yourself down completely-no traces. Reactivate in an hour.”
Lodovik did not hesitate. He caught only a glimpse of the young womap’s frightened expression as he brushed past her, and climbed into the crate. Brann shut the open end and latched it. Lodovik arranged himself in the darkness and prepared to shut down.
He had no choice. Either he would fall into the hands of the Specials-and who knows what would happen to him then?-or give himself up to the mercies of the figure in the floppy green cap-not a human, but almost certainly a robot. He had wrested himself easily from Lodovik’s grip, after all, and without apparent pain or injury. His companions were human mentalics. Lodovik could only assume they were part of Daneel’s plan, perhaps part of Hari Seldon’s secret Second Foundation.
How could they be otherwise?
Just as the shut-down process began, Lodovik arrived at another possible solution-and felt it hitch, stall, dissolve into useless fragments, become absorbed by the timeless darkness.
He fully entered the blankness and for an indefinite interval, ceased to think, to be.
43.
Wanda Seldon Palver had almost finished packing the small travel case with essential bookfilms, coded records on disk and cube, and a few personal items, even before Stettin returned to their home. She met his worried gaze with a defiant frown, then shoved one final item, a small toy flower, into the case.
“I’ve packed for you, too,” she said.
“Good. When did you hear?”
“An hour ago. They wouldn’t let him send any messages. I called his apartment at the university, then the library. He had rigged a dead-man’s message.”
“What?” Stettin looked at her with a shocked lift of his thick black brows.
“A message for me if he didn’t check in.”
“But-but he’s not dead, you haven’t heard that…”
“No!” Wanda said angrily, then her shoulders slumped and she began to cry. Stettin took her in his arms. For a minute, she gave in to her emotions. Then, pulling herself together, she pushed back from her husband’s chest, and said, “No. They’ve come for him early, that’s all I know. He’s alive. The trial’s beginning sooner than we expected.”
“On charges of treason?”
“For treason and spreading sedition, I assume-that’s what Grandfather always said would be the charges brought against him.”
“Then you’re right to pack. I don’t have much to add.” He went to his desk and removed two small parcels, stuffed them into the pockets of his coat. “We have to-”
“I’ve made the necessary calls,” Wanda interrupted him. “We’re going on our first vacation in years, both of us, together. Nobody knows where-a minor lapse on our part.”
“A little suspicious, isn’t it?” Stettin asked with a ghost of a grin.
“Who cares what they suspect? If they start looking for us-if something goes wrong and Grandfather is found guilty, if the predictions turn out to be wrong-then we have a few extra days to leave Trantor and start over again.”
“I hope it doesn’t come to that,” Stettin said.
“Grandfather is very confident,” Wanda said. “Was very confident-I don’t know how he feels now!”
“In the belly of the beast,” Stettin said as their apartment door opened and they stood in the corridor outside.
“What does that mean?”
“Jail. Prison. An old convicts’ phrase. My grandfather spent ten years in a municipal prison-for embezzlement.”
“You never told me that!” Wanda said, astonished.
“He stole some heatsink-guild pension funds. Would you have let me handle the bookkeeping if you had known?”
Wanda slapped his arm hard enough to sting, then jogged toward the lifts and the slideways above. “Hurry!” she called. Stettin muttered under his breath, but followed, as he had followed Wanda in so many different ways, so often before, quite aware of her superior instincts and her uncanny ability to do the right thing, at just the right time.
44.
The last person Hari Seldon expected was the first to visit his prison cell. Linge Chen arrived on the first morning of his incarceration, accompanied by a single Lavrentian servant.
“I think it is high time we talk,” Chen said. The servant took a stool offered by the guard and placed it in front of the single cot. The guard left the door open a few centimeters, but then closed it at a signal from the servant. Chen sat on the stool, arranging his ceremonial robes with instinctive style. It was truly marvelous to watch the elegant manners, the genteel behavior of a member of the baronial gentry, nobles of long training and thousands of years of genetic selection and even, perhaps, manipulation.
The servant stood just behind and to the left of the Chief Commissioner, his face impassive.
“I regret not having had more discussions with you, sire,” Hari said with a respectful smile. He sat on the edge of the cot, his white hair in disarray from sleep. His shoulders ached, his back felt as if it had been twisted in knots. He had not slept well at all.
“You don’t look comfortable,” Chen said. “I will arrange for better accommodations. Sometimes the specifics of our commands get lost in the long circuits of justice and protocol.”
“If I were a treasonous rebel, I would defiantly decline your offer, sire, but I am an old man, and this cell is truly ridiculous. You could have kept me in my apartment in the library. I would not have gone anywhere.”
Chen smiled. “I am aware you think I’m a fool, Hari Seldon. I suffer no such illusions about you.”
“You are no fool, sire.”
Chen both accepted and dismissed this with a small lift of one finger from his robed knee, and an arch of one eyebrow. “I care little for the distant future, Professor Seldon. My interests lie in what I can accomplish in my lifetime. In your estimation that is enough to make me a fool.
“In one way, at least, my goals are the same as yours. I wish to reduce the misery of the quadrillions who now live in the Empire. Surely, it is as ridiculous for the Empire’s servants to try to direct or control such a wealth of variation, such an immense population, as for you to hope to predict their movements and futures.”
If this was meant to somehow connect them, to endear Chen to Hari, it did not work. Hari gave a polite nod and no more.
“To that end, I have involved myself in a number of petty bickerings, having to do with the Emperor and his more ambitious adherents…and sycophants.”
Hari listened intently. He smoothed back his hair with one hand, never taking his eyes from Chen’s.
“I am involved in a delicate phase of such a conflict now. You would call it a Cusp Time, perhaps.”
“Cusp Times have impacts far beyond the petty moments of personal disputes,” Hari said, and realized he was sounding like the priest of some religion. Well, perhaps he was.
“This is hardly a personal dispute. There are people within the palace who hope to split the power of the Commission, and to insert their own commands into the long chains that stretch from Trantor to the farthermost province around the most distant star.”
“Not surprising,” Hari said. “It’s always been that way. Part of statecraft.”
“Yes, but very dangerous now. I have let him run loose again, one particular individual-”
“Farad Sinter,” Hari said.
Chen nodded. “You may think me a hypocrite, Hari, and you would be right if you did, but I have come asking for advice.”
Hari subdued the triumphant smile that threatened to appear on his lips. Sometimes, arrogance was Hari’s worst enemy-and Linge Chen, whatever his faults, was never simply arrogant.
“I don’t have access to my equipment. Any psychohistoric advice I give must be limited in scope, and probably grossly inaccurate.”