And what did he desire? To comprehend all of that humanity, its deepest impulses, its shadowy mechanisms, its past, present, and future. He wanted to know the vagrant species that had managed to scoop up this disk, and to make it a plaything.
So maybe one single human mind could indeed grasp the disk, by going one level higher-and fathoming the collective effects, hidden in the intricacies of the Equations.
Describing Trantor, in this proportion, was child’s play. For the Empire, he needed a far grander comprehension.
Mathematics might rule the galaxy. Invisible, gossamer symbols could govern.
So a single man or woman could matter.
Maybe. He shook his head. A single human head.
Getting a little ahead of ourselves, aren’t we? Dreams of godhood….
Back to work.
Only he couldn’t work. He had to wait. To his relief, the Imperial Specials arrived and escorted him across Streeling University. By now he was used to the gawkers, the embarrassment of plowing through the crowds which now accumulated everywhere, it seemed, that he might frequent.
“Busy today,” he said to the Specials captain.
“Got to expect it, sir.”
“You get extra duty pay for this, I hope.”
“Yessir. ‘Digs,’ we call them.”
“For extra risk, correct? Dangerous duty.”
The captain looked flustered. “Well, yessir…”
“If someone starts shooting, what are your orders?”
“Uh, if they can penetrate the engaging perimeter, we’re to get between them and you. Sir.”
“And you’d do that? Take a gauss pulse or a flechette?”
He seemed surprised. “Of course.”
“Truly?”
“Our duty, y’know.”
Hari was humbled by the man’s simple loyalty. Not to Hari Seldon, but to the idea of Empire. Order. Civilization.
And Hari realized that he, too, was devoted to that idea. The Empire had to be saved, or at least its decline mitigated. Only by fathoming its deep structure could he do that.
Which was why he disliked the First Minister business. It robbed him of time, concentration.
In the Specials’ armored pods he salved his discontent by pulling out his tablet and working on some equations. The captain had to remind him when they reached the palace grounds. Hari got out and there was the usual security ritual, the Specials spreading out and airborne sensors going aloft to sniff out the far perimeter. They reminded him of golden bees, buzzing with vigilance.
He walked by a wall leading into the palace gardens and a tan, round sheet the size of his fingernail popped off the wall. It stuck to his neck. He reached up and plucked it off.
He recognized it as a promotional trinket, a slap-on patch which gave you a pleasant rush by diffusing endorphins into your bloodstream. It also subtly predisposed you to coherent signals in corridor advertisements.
He pitched it aside. A Special grabbed at the patch and suddenly there was shouting and movement all around him. The Special turned to throw the patch away.
An orange spike shot through the guard’s hand, hissing hot, flaring and gone in a second. The man cried, “Ah!” and another Special grabbed him and pushed him down. Then five Specials blocked Hari from all sides and he saw no more.
The Special screamed horribly. Something cut off the wail of pain. The captain shouted, “Move!” and Hari had to trot with the Specials around him into the gardens and down several lanes.
It took a while to straighten out the incident. The patch was untraceable, of course, and there was no way of knowing for sure whether it was targeted on Hari at all.
“Could be part of some Palace plot,” the captain said. “Just waiting for the next’ passerby with a scent-signature like yours.”
“Not aimed for me at all?”
“Could be. That tab took couple extra seconds tryin’ to figure out if it wanted you or not.”
“And it did.”
“Body odor, skin smells-they’re not exact, sir.”
“I’ll have to start wearing perfume.”
The captain grinned. “That won’t stop a smart tab.”
Other protection specialists rushed in and there was evidence to measure and opinions and a lot of talk. Hari insisted on walking back to see the Special who had taken the tab. He was gone, already off to emergency care; they said he would lose his hand. No, sorry, Hari could not see him. Security, y’know.
Quite quickly Hari became bored with the aftermath. He had come early to get a stroll through the gardens and though he knew he was being irrational, his regret at missing the walk loomed larger than the assassination attempt.
Hari took a long, still moment and moved the incident aside. He visualized a displacement operator, an icy blue vector frame. It listed the snarled, angry red knot and pushed it out of view. Later, he would deal with it later.
He cut off the endless talk and ordered the Specials to fall in behind him. Shouted protests came, of course, which he ignored. Then he ambled across the gardens, relishing the open air. He inhaled eagerly. The blinding speed of the attack had erased its importance to him. For now.
The palace towers loomed like webwork of a giant spider. Between their bulks weaved airy walkways. Spires were veiled in silvery mist and aripple, apulse, shimmering with a silent, steady beat like a great unseen heart. He had been so long in the foreshortened views of Trantor’s corridors, his eyes did not quickly grasp the puzzling perspectives.
An upward rush caught his attention as he passed through a flowers cape. From the immense Imperial aviary, flocks of birds in the thousands oscillated in the vertical drafts. Their artful, ever-shifting patterns had a diaphanous, billowy quality, an immense, wispy dance.
Yet these had been shaped many millennia ago by bioengineering their genome. They formed drifts and billows like clouds, or even airy mountains, feasting on upwelling gnats, released from below by the gardeners. But a side draft could dissolve all their ornate sculptures, blow them away.
Like the Empire, he mused. Beautiful in its order, stable for fifteen millennia, yet now toppling. Cracking up like a slow-motion pod wreck. Or in spasms like the Junin riots.
Why? Even among Imperial loveliness, his mathist mind returned to the problem.
Entering the palace, he passed a delegation of children on their way to some audience with a lesser Imperial figure. With a sudden pang he missed his adopted son, Raych. He and Dors had decided to secretly send the boy away to school, after Yugo had his leg broken. “Deprive them of targets,” Dors had said.
Among the meritocracy, only those adults with commitment, stability, and talent could have children. Gentry or plain citizens could whelp brats by the shovelful.
Parents were like artists-special people with a special gift, given respect and privileges, left free to create happy and competent humans. It was noble work, well paid. Hari had been honored to be approved.
In immediate contrast, three oddly shaped courtiers ambled by him.
By biotech means people could turn their children into spindly towers, into flowerlike footbound dwarves, into green giants or pink pygmies. From throughout the Galaxy they were sent here to amuse the Imperial court, where novelty was always in vogue.
But such variants seldom lasted. There was a species norm. And stretching it was just as deeply ingrained. Hari had to admit that he would forever be among the unsophisticated, for he found such folk repulsive.
Someone had designed the reception room to look like anything but a room for receiving people. It resembled a lumpy pocket in molten glass, crisscrossed by polished shafts of ceramo-steel. These shafts in turn dripped into smooth lumps which-since there was nothing else in the room-must have been intended to be chairs and tables.