The room’s entrance shutter, behind Eron, silently admitted a second man. Eron remained unaware of the arrival until fingers at his neck were removing his newly adjusted fam. He turned, ready to grab it back. One of the judges. What now? Hope given and hope withdrawn? With a curt phrase the old Pscholar dismissed the technician. He did not elaborate beyond his dismissal, his eyes fixed on the woman until she was out of sight behind the wall’s sound barrier. Even then he waited. He turned to Eron. It was a sluggish moment before Eron identified the judge who had made the feeble protest attempt on the rostrum.
“Well, boy, are you able to recognize me? I have to make this visit a quick one. We won’t have time to get reacquainted.”
“Your face is very familiar. I’m sure we’ve met”
The grizzled Pscholar snorted. “You were a student of mine when you were in your arrogant twenties—and a good one. You probably can’t even remember why you should be sorry you left my protection. I regret that I have been in no position to help you. Even my heaviest guns don’t have that kind of range. Let me introduce myself. Hahukum Konn.”
The name, and the fierce expression, triggered organic memories that he hadn’t been able to access without the mediation of his quantronic fam. “The Admiral-Engineer?” It was a weird memory that couldn ft be real but one so vivid he couldn’t let it go. It was a dream from the dawn of science. Konn wore the blue uniform and thirteen-starred tricorn of an Admiral of Ultimate Sam’s Amazing Air Fangs—mercenary fighters of ancient Rith? “I remember—maybe a dream—together we were flying over Girmani in a roaring winged battleship of our own make. You were grinning like a maniac all the way. I can still hear the roar—it went on for hours. When we landed there were cheering crowds of ugly sapiens waving swastikas. I remember the dancing.”
“You remember that, do you?” Silently he took out of his pockets some flat photos, shuffled through them, and handed Eron a picture of the two of them beside a preposterous but half-familiar riveted battleship. “Do you remember yourself calling me the Crazy Admiral, not to my face, of course?” “You had a cook. Magda. She died here on Splendid Wisdom. I remember you reading poetry to your cook.”
The Pscholar snorted again. “I sincerely hope you are never going to be able to remember all the stories you used to know about me!” he exclaimed while glancing around to check, again, that they were alone. He opened his robe to poke with his finger at a spy beam suppressor on his belt. “I want no record of our chat. In the meantime are you able to understand me?”
“I admit to a bad case of...” Eron searched for the right word. “... disorientation.”
“Indeed we may have trouble conversing. Ninety-five percent of your vocabulary is gone. However, what’s left of it probably covers ninety-five percent of the words used in ordinary speech. If anything I say draws a blank, speak up.” Then he put a hand over the utility fam, which he had returned to its position upon the white table. “A warning. This bit of diabolical machinery is poison. Accept it gracefully to avoid suspicion—but don’t use it!” Konn paused, then repeated himself for emphasis. “Don’t use it!”
“I’m supposed to spend the rest of my death famless?”* Eron’s obtuse recalcitrance annoyed the old psychohistorian. “You were once a very impetuous young man and had little respect for my excellent advice—mainly because you didn’t have the experience to understand it. I needed you and you failed me. You aren’t in any position to understand my advice now-—but take it! There are standard memories in that government-issue fam. It holds behaviors that will aid you in building a new life for yourself on Splendid Wisdom. But they’ll lead you along a comfortable trail that the old Eron Osa would not have wanted you to take.”
“I’ve got to have a fam, even if it is standard issue.” “Stubborn to the core! You only need one because you are addicted to a test rating in the thousands. Why are you so sure you can’t function without? Because everyone else has one? Because you’ve never been smart enough to disconnect from your fam and exercise your naked brain to keep it animal-sharp? Do you need a fam? It depends upon where you have to function. If you travel in space, you need a spacesuit—but your body can stay alive quite nicely without a spacesuit if you confine yourself to the surface of a habitable planet That late model of body you inhabit has almost two hundred thousand years of testing built into it; your organic parts have been tested to destruction billions of times and refined for millions of years, many for hundreds of millions of years.
“Now look at this fam thing. It was only invented, in its first crude form, during the Dark Interregnum. Men just as incompetent and as confused as you are right now were able to build the First Galactic Empire over a period of ten millennia and, for another two, hold it together under a government that spanned the spiral aims. What makes you think you’ve got to have a fam?”
“I’m a psychohistorian,” Eron whispered.
A flicker between pity and anger crossed Hahukum” s eyes. “Eron Osa. Understand this. You are through as a psychohistorian. Through Build a new career. As artist As street clown. Your genius was part of the fam you grew attached to as a child. It was a symbiosis. It’s gone. Your organic brain is probably one of the finest mathematical talents in the Galaxy—certainly the equal of our Founder’s—but, famless, it probably has only three to five percent of the capacity it wielded only a few watches ago. And yes, the Founder was a famless psychohistorian,” Konn added, enjoying his back-handed put down of a .man they all revered. It was Komi’s pointed way of emphasizing how far psychohistory had come since its pauper beginnings.
Eron wasn’t ready to let another fam get out of his grasp; his arm almost twitched as he prepared to sneak it to a less visible place. Hahukum noticed and gripped Eron’s hand, easing it away from temptation. “Don’t even think about it, boy. All fams aren’t the same. Would you marry your parole officer? Bide your time. A good fam is worth waiting for. Meanwhile search out some of the old mental disciplines. You need a bout of mental calisthenics. From what I can deduce of your past month’s performance, your organic brain has gone shockingly flabby—or you would never have permitted yourself this mess.”
“What was my crime?” asked Eron, desperate to know.
Again the Admiral ripped out his snort. I'll never tell you. I’m just as afraid as Hanis that you’ll do it all over again—even minus your quantronic thumbs. Information in a fam-neural system is distributed in some ways like a hologram, and so an enormous amount of that which was stored in your fam will have degraded representations in your organic brain. You’ll regain pieces of it—and tantalizing hints of the rest. My certainty is that you’ll never be able to recreate all that you were. Too much is missing... I hope.”
It was infuriating to be condemned yet not allowed the knowledge to repent! What had he done! Again rage staggered Eron, even as he knew rage was unlike his normal self. “Kill me then! Kill me like you killed my fam!”
The blast of emotion caused the Admiral’s defenses to trigger his personal force-shield; he had to smile while deactivating it. “But killing you wouldn’t help”—he sighed— “any more than vaporizing your fam has helped. Jars Hanis is as wrong as a man can be. Psychohistorical crises aren’t precipitated by the actions of one man. This historical crisis began in the quiet of the interstellar night long before you were bom. It does not depend upon you to proceed. Jars is a creature of the suns. My nightly vision sees the ghosts of future events centuries beyond his range.” Scorn. “If you’d worked with me, you would have been part of the solution.” Regret. “You wanted to be part of the problem.” Anger. “It’s too late now for either. You’re out of the game.” Resignation. “And damn it, I could have used you. In my futile fantasies I travel back in time and discover you when you were a twelve-year-old hothead and offer you a fabulous scholarship—under my guidance.”