Foundation's Triumph - David Brin

THE SECOND

FOUNDATION TRILOGY

Foundation’s Triumph

David Brin

To Isaac Asimov,

who added an entire course to our endless dinner-tale conversation about destiny.

Contents

Part 1: A Foretold Destiny

Part 2: An Ancient Plague

Part 3: Secret Crimes

Part 4: A Magnificent Design

Part 5: A Recurring Rendesvous

Part 6: Full Circle

Acknowledgments

Aferword

Timeline for the Robots and Foundation Universe

Part 1

A FORETOLD

DESTINY

Little is known about the final days of Hari Seldon, though many romanticized accounts exist, some of them

purportedly by his own hand. None has any proved validity.

What appears evident, however, is that Seldon spent his last months uneventfully, no doubt

enjoying satisfaction in his life’s work. For with his gift of mathematical insight, and the powers of

psychohistory at his command, he must surely have seen the panorama of history stretching before him,

confirming the great path of destiny that he had already mapped out.

Although death would soon claim him, no other mortal ever knew with such confidence and

certainty the bright promise that the future would hold in store.

--Encyclopedia Galactica,

--117th Edition, 1054 F.E.

1.

“As for me...I am finished.”

Those words resonated in his mind. They clung, like the relentless blanket that Hari’s nurse kept

straightening across his legs, though it was a warm day in the imperial gardens.

I am finished.

The relentless phrase was his constant companion.

...finished.

In front of Hari Seldon lay the rugged slopes of Shoufeen Woods, a wild portion of the Imperial

Palace grounds where plants and small animals from across the galaxy mingled in rank disorder, clumping

and spreading unhindered. Tall trees even blocked from view the ever-present skyline of metal towers. The

mighty world-city surrounding this little island forest.

Trantor.

Squinting through failing eyes, one could almost pretend to be sitting on a different planet--one

that had not been flattened and subdued in service to the Galactic Empire of Humanity.

The forest teased Hari. Its total absence of straight lines seemed perverse, a riot of greenery that

defied any effort to decipher or decode. The geometries seemed unpredictable, even chaotic.

Mentally, he reached out to the chaos, so vibrant and undisciplined. He spoke to it as an equal. His

great enemy.

All my life I fought against you, using mathematics to overcome nature’s vast complexity. With

tools of psychohistory, I probed the matrices of human society, wresting order from that murky tangle. And

when my victories still felt incomplete, I used politics and guile to combat uncertainty, driving you like an

enemy before me.

So why now, at my time of supposed triumph, do I hear you calling out to me? Chaos, my old foe?

Hari’s answer came in the same phrase that kept threading his thoughts.

Because I am finished.

Finished as a mathematician.

It was more than a year since Stettin Palver or Gaal Dornick or any other member of the Fifty had

consulted Hari with a serious permutation or revision to the “Seldon Plan.” Their awe and reverence for

him was unchanged. But urgent tasks kept them busy. Besides, anyone could tell that his mind no longer

had the suppleness to juggle a myriad abstractions at the same time. It took a youngster’s mental agility,

concentration, and arrogance to challenge the hyperdimensional algorithms of psychohistory. His

successors, culled from among the best minds on twenty-five million worlds, had all these traits in

superabundance.

But Hari could no longer afford conceit. There remained too little time.

Finished as a politician.

How he used to hate that word! Pretending, even to himself, that he wanted only to be a meek

academic. Of course, that had just been a marvelous pose. No one could rise to become First Minister of the

entire human universe without the talent and audacity of a master manipulator. Oh, he had been a genius in

that field, too, wielding power with flair, defeating enemies, altering the lives of trillions--while

complaining the whole time that he hated the job.

Some might look back on that youthful record with ironic pride. But not Hari Seldon.

Finished as a conspirator.

He had won each battle, prevailed in every contest. A year ago, Hari subtly maneuvered today’s

imperial rulers into creating ideal circumstances for his secret psychohistorical design to flourish. Soon a

hundred thousand exiles would be stranded on a stark planet, faraway Terminus, charged with producing a

great Encyclopedia Galactica. But that superficial goal would peel away in half a century, revealing the

true aim of that Foundation at the galaxy’s rim--to be the embryo of a more vigorous empire as the old one

fell. For years that had been the focus of his daily ambitions, and his nightly dreams. Dreams that reached

ahead, across a thousand years of social collapse--past an age of suffering and violence--to a new human

fruition. A better destiny for humankind.

Only now his role in that great enterprise was ended. Hari had just finished taping messages for

the Time Vault on Terminus--a series of subtle bulletins that would occasionally nudge or encourage

members of the Foundation as they plunged toward a bright morrow preordained by psychohistory. When

the final message was safely stored, Hari felt a shift in the attitudes of those around him. He was still

esteemed, even venerated. But he wasn’t necessary anymore.

One sure sign had been the departure of his bodyguards--a trio of humaniform robots that Daneel

Olivaw had assigned to protect Hari, until the transcriptions were finished. It happened right there, at the

recording studio. One robot--artfully disguised as a burly young medical technician--had bowed low to

speak in Hari’s ear.

“We must go now. Daneel has urgent assignments for us. But he bade me to give you his promise.

Daneel will visit soon. The two of you will meet again, before the end. “

Perhaps that wasn’t the most tactful way to put it. But Hari always preferred blunt openness from

friends and family.

Unbidden, a clear image from the past swept into mind--of his wife, Dors Venabili, playing with

Raych, their son. He sighed. Both Dors and Raych were long gone--along with nearly every link that ever

bound him closely to another private soul.

This brought a final coda to the phrase that kept spinning through his mind

Finished as a person.

The doctors despaired over extending his life, even though eighty was rather young to die of

decrepit age nowadays. But Hari saw no point in mere existence for its own sake. Especially if he could no

longer analyze or affect the universe.

Is that why I drift here, to this grove? He pondered the wild, unpredictable forest--a mere pocket

in the Imperial Park, which measured a hundred miles on a side--the only expanse of greenery on Trantor’s

metal-encased crust. Most visitors preferred the hectares of prim gardens open to the public, filled with

extravagant and well-ordered blooms.

But Shoufeen Woods seemed to beckon him. Here, unmasked by Trantor’s opaque walls, I can

see chaos in the foliage by day, and in brittle stars by night. I can hear chaos taunting me...telling me I

haven’t won.

That wry thought provoked a smile, cracking the pursed lines of his face.

Who would have imagined, at this late phase of life, that I’d acquire a taste for justice?

Kers Kantun straightened the lap blanket again, asking solicitously, “Are you o’right, Dr. Seldon?

Should we be headin’ back now?”

Han’s servant had the rolling accent--and greenish skin pallor--of a Valmoril, a subspecies of

humanity that had spread through the isolated Conthi Cluster, living secluded there for so long that by now

they could only interbreed with other races by pretreating sperm and eggs with enzymes. Kers had been

chosen as Han’s nurse and final guardian after the robots departed. He performed both roles with quiet

determination.

“This wild place makes me o’comfortable, Doc. Surely you don’ like the breeze gustin’ like this?”

Hari had been told that Kantun’s parents arrived on Trantor as young Greys--members of the

bureaucratic caste--expecting to spend a few years’ service on the capital planet, training in monkish

dormitories, then heading back out to the galaxy as administrators in the vast civil service. But flukes of

talent and promotion intervened to keep them here, raising a son amid the steel caverns they hated. Kers

inherited his parents’ famed Valmoril sense of duty--or else Daneel Olivaw would never have chosen the

fellow to tend Hari in these final days.

I may no longer be useful, but some people still think I’m worth looking after.

In Hari’s mind, the word “person” applied to R. Daneel Olivaw, perhaps more than most of the

humans he ever knew.

For decades, Hari had carefully kept secret the existence of “eternals”--robots who had shepherded

human destiny for twenty thousand years--immortal machines that helped create the first Galactic Empire,

then encouraged Hari to plan a successor. Indeed, Hari spent the happiest part of his life married to one of

them. Without the affection of Dors Venabili--or the aid and protection of Daneel Olivaw--he could never

have created psychohistory, setting in motion the Seldon Plan.

Or discovered how useless it would all turn out to be, in the long run.

Wind in the surrounding trees seemed to mock Hari. In that sound, he heard hollow echoes of his

own doubts.

The Foundation cannot achieve the task set before it. Somewhere, sometime during the next

thousand years, a perturbation will nudge the psychohistorical parameters, rocking the statistical

momentum, knocking your Plan off course.

True enough, he wanted to shout back at the zephyr. But that had been allowed for! There would

be a Second Foundation, a secret one, led by his successors, who would adjust the Plan as years passed,

providing counternudges to keep it on course!

Yet, the nagging voice came back.

A tiny hidden colony of mathematicians and psychologists will do all that, in a galaxy fast

tumbling to violence and ruin?

For years this had seemed a flaw...until fortuitous fate provided an answer. Mentalics, a mutant

strain of humans with uncanny ability to sense and alter the emotions and memories of others. These

powers were still weak, but heritable. Hari’s own adopted son, Raych, passed the talent to a daughter,

Wanda, now a leader in the Seldon Project. Every mentalic they could find had been recruited, to

intermarry with the descendants of the psychohistorians. After a few generations of genetic mingling, the

clandestine Second Foundation should have potent tools to protect his Plan against deviations during the

coming centuries.

And so?

The forest sneered once more.

What will you have then? Will the Second Empire be ruled by a shadowy elite? A secret cabal of

human psychics? An aristocracy of mentalic demigods?

Even if kindness motivated this new elite, the prospect left him feeling cold.

The shadow of Kers Kantun bent closer, peering at him with concern. Hari tore his attention away

from the singing breeze and finally answered his servant

“Ah...sorry. Of course you’re right. Let’s go back. I’m fatigued.”

But as Kers guided the wheelchair toward a hidden transit station, Hari could still hear the forest,

jeering at his life’s work.

The mentalic elite is just one layer though, isn’t it? The Second Foundation conceals yet another

truth, then another.

Beyond your own Plan, a different one has been crafted by a greater mind than yours. By someone

stronger, more dedicated, and more patient by far. A plan that uses yours, for a while...but which will

eventually make psychohistory meaningless.

With his right hand, Hari fumbled under his robe until he found a smooth cube of gemlike stone, a

parting gift from his friend and lifetime guide, R. Daneel Olivaw. Palming the archive’s ancient surface, he

murmured, too low for Kers to hear.

“Daneel, you promised you’d come to answer all my questions. I have so many, before I die.”

2.

From space it seemed a gentle world, barely touched by civilization. A rich belt of verdant rain

forest girdled the tropics, leaping narrow oceans to sweep all the way around three continents.

Dors Venabili watched green Panucopia swell below, during her descent toward the old Imperial

Research Station. Nearly forty years had passed since she last came here, accompanying her human

husband as they fled dangerous enemies back on Trantor. But those troubles had followed them here, with

nearly tragic consequences.

The ensuing adventure had been the strangest of her life--though admittedly Dors was still quite

young for a robot. For more than a month, she and Hari had left their bodies in suspensor tanks while their

minds were projected into the bodies of pans--(or “chimpanzees” in some dialects)--roaming the forest

preserves of this world. Hari claimed he needed data about primitive response patterns for his

psychohistorical research, but Dors suspected at the time that something deep within the august Professor

Seldon relished “going ape” for a while.

She well recalled the sensations of inhabiting a female pan, feeling powerful organic drives propel

that vivid, living body. Unlike the simulated emotions she had been programmed with, these surged and

fluxed with natural, unrestrained passion--especially during several hazard-filled days when someone tried

to assassinate the two of them, hunting them like beasts while their minds were still trapped in pan bodies.

After barely foiling that scheme, they had swiftly returned to Trantor, where Hari soon took up

reluctant duties as First Minister of the Empire. And yet, that month left her changed, with a much deeper

understanding of organic life. Looking back on it, she treasured the experience, which helped her better

care for Hari.

Still, Dors had never expected to see Panucopia again. Until receiving the summons for a

rendezvous.

I have a gift for you, the message said. Something you’ll find useful.

It was signed with a unique identifier code that Dors recognized at once.

Lodovic Trema.

Lodovic the mutant.

Lodovic the renegade.

The robot who is no longer a robot.

It wasn’t easy to decide, at first. Dors had duties on planet Smushell--an easy assignment, setting

up a young Trantorian couple in comfortable marriage, disguised as minor gentry on a pleasant little

world, then encouraging them to have as many babies as possible. Daneel considered this important,

though his reasons were, as usual, somewhat obscure. Dors only knew that Klia Asgar and her husband,

Brann, were exceptionally powerful mentalics--humans with potent psychic powers, of the sort that only a

few robots like Daneel heretofore possessed. Their sudden appearance had caused many plans to

change...and change again several times in the last year. It was essential that the existence of mentalic

humans be kept from the galaxy’s masses, just as the presence of robots in their midst had been kept secret

for a thousand generations.

When the message from Lodovic came, there was no time to send for instructions from Daneel. In

order to make the rendezvous, she had to take the very next liner to Siwenna, where a fast ship would be

waiting for her.

I offer a truce, in the name of humanity, Lodovic had sent. I promise you’ll find the trip

worthwhile.

Klia and Brann were safe and happy. Dors had set up defenses and precautions overwhelmingly

stronger than any conceivable threat, and her robot assistants were vigilant. There was no reason not to go.

Yet her decision was wrenching.

Now, with the rendezvous approaching, she flexed her hands, feeling tension in positronic

receptors that had been placed in exactly the same locations as the nerves of a real woman. On the crystal

viewing pane, her reflected image superimposed across the rising forestscape. She wore the same face as

when she had dwelled with Hari. Her own face, as she would always think of it.

Hari Seldon still lives, Dors thought. It was part hearsay and part intuition. Although she was not

one of the robots to whom Daneel had given Giskardian mentalic powers, Dors felt certain she would

know, the instant that her human husband died. A part of her would freeze at that point, locking his image

and memory in permanent, revolving circuitry. While Dors knew she might last another ten thousand years,

in a sense she would always be Hari’s.

“We shall be landing in just two hours, Dors Venabili.”

The pilot, a lesser humaniform robot, had once been part of a heretical Calvinian group that

schemed to mess up Hari’s psychohistory project. Thirty of the dissident machines were captured a year

ago by Daneel’s forces and dispatched to a secret repair world for conversion to accept the Zeroth Law of

Robotics. But that cargo of prisoners had been hijacked en route by Lodovic Trema. Now they apparently

worked for him.

I don’t understand why Daneel trusted Trema with that mission...or any mission. Lodovic should

have been destroyed as soon as we discovered that his brain no longer obeyed the Four Laws of Robotics.

Daneel was evidently conflicted in some way. The robot who had guided humanity for twenty

thousand years seemed uncertain how to treat a mechanism that behaved more like man than machine. One

who chose to act ethically, instead of having it compelled by rigorous programming.

Well, I’m not conflicted, Dors thought. Trema is dangerous. At any moment his own brand of

“ethics” might persuade him to act against our cause...or to harm humans, even Hari!

According to both the First and Zeroth laws, I am compelled to act.

The chain of reasoning was logical, impeccable. Yet, in her case every decision came

accompanied by simulated emotions, so realistic that Daneel said he couldn’t tell them from human.

Anyone observing Dors at that moment would see her face crossed by steely resolve to protect and serve,

no matter what it cost.

3.

Once upon a time, it had taken 140 secretaries to handle all of Hari’s mail. Now few remembered

he had been First Minister of the Empire. Even his more recent notoriety as “Raven” Seldon, prophet of

doom, had surged past the public gaze with fashionable fickleness as reporters moved on to other stories.

Ever since his trial ended, with the Commission of Public Safety decreeing exile on Terminus for Hari’s

followers, the flow of messages began drying up. Now only half a dozen memoranda waited on the wall

monitor when Kers brought him back from their daily stroll.

First, Hari scanned the weekly Plan Report from Gaal Dornick, who still dictated it personally, as

a gesture of reverence for the father of psychohistory. Gaal’s broad features were still youthful, with an

expression of jovial honesty that could put anyone at ease--even though he now helped lead the most

important human conspiracy in ten thousand years.

“Right now our biggest headache appears to be the migration itself It seems that some members of

the Encyclopedia Project aren’t happy about being banished from Trantor all the way to the farthest comer

of the known universe! “

Dornick chuckled, though with a tone of weariness

“Of course we expected this, and planned for it. Commissioner Linge Chen has assigned the

Special Police to prevent desertions. And our own mentalics are helping prod the volunteers’ to depart on

their assigned ships. But it’s hard keeping track of over a hundred thousand people. Hari, you couldn’t

count the petty aggravations! “

Gaal ruffled papers as he changed the subject.

“Your granddaughter sends her love from Star’s End. Wanda reports that the new mentalic colony

seems to be settling down so well that she can come home soon. It’s a relief to have most of the mentalics

off Trantor, at last. They were an unstable element. Now only the most trustworthy are left here in the city,

and those are proving invaluable during preparations. So, we seem to have matters well in hand--”

Indeed. Hari scanned the accompanying appendix of psychohistorical symbols, attached to Gaal’s

message, and saw that they fit the Plan nicely. Dornick and Wanda and the other members of the Fifty

knew their jobs well.

After all, Hari had trained them.

He did not have to consult his personal copy of the Prime Radiant to know what must happen next.

Soon, agents would be dispatched toward Anacreon and Smyrno, to ignite a smoldering process of

secession in those remote provinces, setting the stage for the Foundation’s initial set of crises...the first of

many leading, eventually, to a new and better civilization.

Of course the irony did not escape Hari--that he had spent his time as First Minister of the Empire

smothering revolutions, and making sure that his successors would continue quashing all so-called “chaos

worlds,” whenever those raging social upheavals threatened the human-social equilibrium. But these new

rebellions that his followers must foment at the Periphery would be different. Led by ambitious local gentry

seeking to augment their own royal grandeur, these insurrections would be classical in every way, fitting

the equations with smooth precision.

All according to the Plan.

Most of Hari’s other mail was routine. He discarded one invitation to the annual reception for

emeritus faculty members of Streeling University...and another to the emperor’s exhibition of new artworks

created by “geniuses” of the Eccentric Order. One of the Fifty would attend that gathering, to measure

levels of decadence shown by the empire’s artistic caste. But that was just a matter of calibrating what they

already knew--that true creativity was declining to new historical lows. Hari was senior enough to refuse

the honor. And he did.

Next came a reminder to pay his guild dues, as an Exalted member of the Meritocratic Order--yet

another duty he’d rather neglect. But there were privileges to rank, and he had no desire to become a mere

citizen again, at his age. Hari gave verbal permission for the bill to be paid.

His heart beat faster when the wall display showed a letter from the Pagamant Detective Agency.

He had hired the firm years ago to search for his daughter-in-law, Manella Dubanqua, and her infant

daughter Bellis. They had both vanished on a refugee ship fleeing the Santanni chaos world, the planet

where Raych died. Hope briefly flared. Could they be found at last?

But no, it was a note to say the detectives were still sifting lost-ship reports and questioning

travelers along the Kalgan-Siwenna corridor, where the Arcadia VII had last been spotted. They would

continue the inquiry...unless Hari had finally decided to give up?

His jaw clenched. No. Hari’s will established a trust fund to keep them searching after he was

gone.

Of the remaining messages, two were obvious crank letters, sent by amateur mathists on far-off

worlds who claimed to have independently discovered basic principles of psychohistory. Hari had ordered

the mail-monitor to keep showing such missives because some were amusing. Also, once or twice a year, a

letter hinted at true talent, a latent spark of brilliance that had somehow flared on a distant world, without

yet being quenched among the galaxy’s quadrillion dull embers. Several members of the Fifty had come to

his attention in this way. Especially his greatest colleague, Yugo Arnaryl, who deserved credit as cofounder

of psychohistory. Yugo’s rise from humble beginnings to the heights of mathematical genius reinforced

Hari’s belief that any future society should be based on open social mobility, encouraging individuals to

rise according to their ability. So he always gave these messages at least a cursory look.

This time, one snared his attention.

--I seem to have found correlations between your psychohistory technique and the mathematical

models used in forecasting patterns in the flow of spacio-molecular currents in deep space! This, in turn,

corresponds uncannily with the distribution of soil types on planets sampled across a wide range of

galactic locales. I thought you might be interested in discussing this in person. If so, please indicate by

Hari barked a laugh, making Kers Kantun glance over from the kitchen. This certainly was a cute

one, all right! He scanned rows of mathematical symbols, finding the approach amateurish, if primly

accurate and sincere. Not a kook, then. A well-meaning aficionado, compensating for poor talent with

strangely original ideas. He ordered this letter sent to the juniormost member of the Fifty, instructing that it

be answered with gentle courtesy--a knack that young Saha Lorwinth ought to learn, if she was going to be

one of the secret rulers of human destiny.

With a sigh, he turned his wheelchair away from the wall monitor, toward his shielded private

study. Pulling Daneel’s gift from his robe, he laid it on the desk, in a slot specially made to read the ancient

relic. The readout screen rippled with two-dimensional images and archaic letters that the computer

translated for him.

A Child’s Book of Knowledge

Britannica Publishing Company

New Tokyo, Bayleyworld, 2757 C.E.

The info-store in front of him was highly illegal, but that would hardly stop Hari Seldon, who had

once ordered the revival of those ancient simulated beings, Joan of Arc and Voltaire, from another half-

melted archive. That act wound up plunging parts of Trantor into chaos when the pair of sims escaped their

programmed bonds to run wild through the planet’s data corridors. In fact, the whole episode ended rather

well for Hari, though not for the citizens of Junin or Sark. Anyway, he felt little compunction over breaking

the Archives Law once again.

Close to twenty thousand years ago. He pondered its publication date, just as awed as the first time

he’d activated Daneel’s gift. This may have been written for children of that age, but it holds more of our

deep history than all of today’s imperial scholars could pool together.

It had taken Hari half a year to peruse and get a feel for the sweep of early human existence, which

began on distant Earth, on a continent called Africa, when a race of clever apes first stood upright and

blinked with dull curiosity at the stars.

So many words emerged from that little stone cube. Some were already familiar, having come

Foundation's Triumph - David Brin

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