“I feel the same. But now I think it is even more important for you to remain a candidate for First Minister.”
“Why?” He paced around their living room, eyes darting.
“You are a player for very high stakes. Whoever wishes to assassinate you-”
“Lamurk, Cleon believes.”
“-will probably see that merely withdrawing your candidacy is no firm solution. The Emperor could reintroduce you into the game at any later time.”
“I don’t like being treated as a chess piece.”
“A knight?-yes, I can see you that way. Do not forget that there are other suspects, factions which may wish you out of the way.”
“Such as?’’
“The Academic Potentate.”
“But she’s a scholar, like me!”
“ Was.She is now a player on the chessboard.”
“Not the queen, I hope.”
Dors kissed him lightly. “I should mention that my ferret programs turned up a plausibility matrix for Lamurk’s behavior, based on his past. He has eliminated at least half a dozen rivals on his rise to the top. He is something of a traditionalist in method, as well.”
“My, that’s comforting.”
She gave him an odd, pensive glance. “His rivals were all knifed. The classic dispatch of historical intrigue.”
“I wouldn’t suspect Lamurk to have such an eye for our Imperial heritage.”
“He is a classicist. In his view, you are a pawn, one best swept from the board.”
“A rather bloodless way to put it.”
“I am taught-and built-to assess and act coolly.”
“How do you reconcile your ability-in fact, let’s not put too fine a point on it, your relish-at the prospect of killing a person in my defense?”
“The Zeroth Law. “
“Um.” He recited, “Humanity as a whole is placed above the fate of a single human.”
“I do feel pain from First Law interaction…”
“So the First Law, now modified, is,, A robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm, unless this would violate the Zeroth Law of Robotics’?”
“Exactly. “
“This is another game you play. With very tough rules.”
“It is a larger game.”
“And psychohistory is a potential new set of game plans?”
“In a way.” Her voice softened and she embraced him. “You should not trouble yourself so. What we have is a private paradise.”
“But the damned games, they always go on.”
“They must.”
He kissed her longingly, but something inside him seethed and spun, an armature whirring fruitlessly in surrounding darkness.
8.
Yugo was waiting in his office the next morning. Face flushed, wide-eyed, he demanded, “What can you do?”
“Uh, about what?”
“The news! The Safeguards stormed the Bastion.”
“Uh, oh.” Hari vaguely recalled that a Dahlite faction had staged a minor revolt and holed up in a redoubt. Negotiations had dragged on. Yes, and Yugo had told him about it, several times. “It’s a local Trantorian issue, isn’t it?”
“That’s the way we kept it!” Yugo’s hands flew in elaborate gestures, like birds taking frenzied flight. “Then the Safeguards came in. No warning. Killed over four hundred. Blew ‘em apart, blasters on full, no warning.”
“Astonishing,” Hari said in what he hoped was a sympathetic tone.
In fact he did not care a microgram for one side of this argument or the other-and did not know the arguments, anyway. He had never cared for the world’s day-to-day turbulence, which agitated the mind without teaching anything. The whole point of psychohistory, which emerged from his personality as much as his analytic ability, was to study climate and ignore weather.
“Can’t you do something?”
“What?”
“Protest to the Emperor!”
“He will ignore me. This is a Trantorian issue and-”
“This is an insult to you, too.”
“It can’t be.” To not appear totally out of it, he added, “I’ve deliberately kept well away from the issue-”
“But Lamurk did this!”
That startled him. “What? Lamurk has no power on Trantor. He’s an Imperial Regent.”
“C’mon, Hari, nobody believes that old separation of powers stuff. It broke down long ago.”
Hari almost said, It did?, but just in time realized that Yugo was right. He had simply not added up the effects of the long, slow erosion in the Imperial structures. Those entered as factors on the right-hand side of the equations, but he never thought of the decay in solid, local terms. “So you think it’s a move to gain influence on the High Council?”
“Must be,” Yugo fumed. “Those Regents, they don’t like unruly folk livin’ near ‘em. They want Trantor nice and orderly, even if people get trampled.”
Hari ventured, “The representation issue again, is it?”
“Damn right! We got Dahlites all over Muscle Shoals Sector. But can we get a representative? Hell, no! Got to beg and plead-”
“I…I will do what I can.” Hari held up his hands to cut off the tirade.
“The Emperor, he’ll straighten things out.”
Hari knew from direct observation that the Emperor would do no such thing. He cared nothing of how Trantor was run, as long as he could see no burning districts from the palace. Cleon had often remarked, “I am Emperor of a galaxy, not a city.”
Yugo left and Hari’s desk chimed. “Imperial Specials’ captain to see you, sir.”
“I told them to remain outside.”
“He requests audience, bearing a message.”
Hari sighed. He had meant to get some thinking done today.
The captain entered stiffly and refused a chair. “I am here to respectfully forward the recommendations of the Specials Board, Academician.”
“A letter would suffice. In fact, do that-send me a note. I have work to-”
“Sir, most respectfully, I must discuss this.”
Hari sank into his chair and waved permission. The man looked uncomfortable, standing stiffly as he said, “The board requests that the Academician’s wife not accompany him to state functions.”
“Ah, so someone has yielded to pressure.”
“It is further directed that your wife not be allowed into the palace at all.”
“What? That seems extreme.”
“I am sorry to bear such a message, sir. I was there and I told the board that the lady had good reason to become alarmed.”
“And to break the fellow’s arm.”
The captain almost allowed himself a smile. “Got to admit, she’s faster than anybody I’ve ever seen.”
And you’re wondering why, aren’t you?“Who was the fellow?”
The captain’s brow furrowed. “Looks to be a Spiral Academician, one grade above you, sir. But some say he’s more a political type.”
Hari waited, but the man said no more, just looked as though he wanted to. “Allied with what faction?”
“Might be that Lamurk, sir.”
“Any evidence?”
“Nossir.”
Hari sighed. Politics was not only an inexact craft, it seldom had any reliable data, either. “Very well. Message received.”
The captain left quickly, with visible relief. Before Hari could wave his computer into life, a delegation from his own faculty showed up. They filed in silently, the portal crackling as it inspected each of them. Hari caught himself smiling at the procedure. If there was a profession least likely to yield an assassin, it had to be the mathists.
“We are here to submit our considered opinion,” a Professor Aangon said formally.
“Do so,” Hari said. Normally he would deploy his skimpy skills and do a bit of social mending; he had been neglecting university business lately, stealing time from bureaucratic chores to devote to equations.
Aangon said, “First, rumors of a ‘theory of history’ have brought scorn to our department. We-”