Bear, Greg - 2nd Foundation Trilogy 2 - Foundation and Chaos

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Foundation and Chaos by Greg Bear

Foundation's Triumph by David Brin

By Isaac Asimov

Gold: The Final Science Fiction Collection Magic: The Final Fantasy

Collection

Isaac Asimov's History of l-Botics

Isaac Asimov's I-Bots: Time Was by Steve Perry and Gary A. Braun-

beck

THE SECOND FOUNDATION TRILOGY

Foundation and Chaos

GREG BEAR

Published by Harper Prism

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man, wise man, sad man who charted the course of the human future in

the old Empire. But revisionist views prosper, and cannot always be easily

dismissed. To understand Seldon, we are sometimes tempted to refer to

apocrypha, myths, even fairy tales from those distant times. We are frus-

trated by the contradictions of incomplete documents and what amount to

hagiographies.

This we know without reference to the revisionists: that Seldon was bril-

liant, Seldon was key. But Seldon was neither saint nor divinely inspired

prophet, and of course, he did not act alone. The most pervasive myths

involve...

—Encyclopedia Galactica, 117th Edition, 1054 RE.

Hari Seldon stood in slippered feet and a thick green scholar's robe on

the enclosed parapet of an upperside maintenance tower, looking from an

altitude of two hundred meters over the dark aluminum and steel surface of

Trantor. The sky was quite clear over this Sector tonight, only a few vague

clouds scudding before nacreous billows and sheets of stars like ghostly

fire.

Beneath this spectacle, and beyond the ranks of gently curving domes,

obscured and softened by night, lay a naked ocean, its floating aluminum

covers pulled aside across hundreds of thousands of hectares. The re-

temperature beyond the plastic window registered at two degrees, a chill he

would well remember from his one misadventure upperside, decades be-

fore.

He had spent so much of his life enclosed, insulated from the chill as

well as the freshness, the newness, much as the numbers and equations of

psychohistory insulated him from the harsh reality of individual lives. How

can the surgeon work efficiently and still feel the pain of the carved flesh?

In a real sense, the patient was already dead. Trantor, the political cen-

ter of the Galaxy, had died decades, perhaps centuries before, and was

only now obviously falling to rot. While Hari's brief personal flame of self

would flicker out long before the Empire's embers powdered to ash,

through the equations of the Project he could see clearly the rigor of mor-

bidity, the stiffening face of the Empire's corpse.

This awful vision had made him perversely famous, and his theories

known throughout Trantor, and in many parts of the Galaxy. He was called

"Raven" Seldon, harbinger of nightmare doom.

The rot would last five more centuries, a simple and rapid deflation on

the time-scales of Hari's broadest equations... Social skin collapsing, then

melting away over the steel bones of Trantor's Sectors and municipalities...

How many human tales would fill that collapse! An empire, unlike a

corpse, continues to feel pain after death. On the scale of the most minute

than the Empire, and he was close to success... according to the equa-

tions.

Yet still his most frequent emotion these days was cold regret. To live in

a bright and youthful period, the Empire at its most glorious, stable and

prosperous—that would be worth all his eminence and accomplishment!

To have returned to him the company of his adopted son Raych, and

Dors, mysterious and lovely Dors Venabili, who harbored within tailored

flesh and secret steel the passion and devotion of any ten heroes... For

their return alone he would multiply geometrically the signs of his own de-

cay, aching limbs and balky bowels and blurred eyesight.

This night, however, Hari was close to peace. His bones did not ache

much. He did not feel the worms of grief so sharply. He could actually relax

and look forward to an end to this labor.

The pressures pushing him were coming to a hard center. His trial

would begin within a month. He knew its outcome with reasonable cer-

tainty. This was the Cusp Time. All that he had lived and worked for would

be realized soon, his plans moving on to their next step—and to his exit.

Conclusions within growth, stops within the flow.

He had an appointment soon to meet with young Gaal Dornick, a signifi-

cant figure in his plans. Mathematically, Dor-nick was far from being a

stranger; yet they had not met before.

never speak the complete truth about Dors, the true tale of the odd and

virtually perfect relationship he had had with a woman who was not a

woman, not even human, yet friend and lover.

Hari, in his weariness, resisted but could not suppress a sentimental

sadness. Age was tainted and the old were haunted by the loss of lovers

and friends. How grand it would be if he could visit with Daneel again! Easy

to see, in his mind's eye, how that visit would go: after the joy of reunion,

Hari would vent some of his anger at the restrictions and demands Daneel

had placed upon him. The best of friends, the most compelling of task-

masters.

Hari blinked and focused on the view beyond the window. He was far

too prone these days to drift off into reverie.

The ocean's beautiful glow was itself decay; a riot of biolu-minescent al-

gae run rampant for almost four years now, killing off the crops of the oxy-

gen farms, making the air slightly stale even in the chill of upperside. No

threat of suffocation yet, but for how much longer?

The Emperor's adjutants and protectors and spokesmen had an-

nounced imminent victory over the beautiful plague of algae only a few

days before, seeding the ocean with tailored phages to control the bloom.

The ocean did seem darker tonight, but perhaps the uncharacteristically

clear sky dimmed it by comparison.

on their missions, which might take them away from civilized ports for

months. Their officers and captain, more often than not from the baronial

aristocratic families, chose from a variety of less populist bookfilms.

Lodovik Trema in appearance was forty or forty-five, stout but not cor-

pulent, with a pleasantly ugly face and great strong sausage-fingered

hands. One eye seemed fixed skyward, and his large lips turned down as if

he were perpetually inclined toward pessimism or at best bland neutrality.

Where he had hair, he wore it in a short, even cut; his forehead was high

and innocent of wrinkles, which gave his face a younger aspect belied by

the lines around his mouth and eyes.

Though Lodovik represented the highest Imperial authority, he had

come to be well liked by the captain and crew; his dry statements of pur-

pose or fact seemed to conceal a gentle and observant wit, and he never

said too much, though sometimes he could be accused of saying too little.

Outside the ship's hull, the geometric fistula of hyperspace through

which the ship navigated during its Jumps was beyond complete visualiza-

tion, even for the ship's computers. Both humans and machines, slaves of

status space-time, simply bided their personal times until the pre-set emer-

gence.

Lodovik had always preferred the quicker—though sometimes no less

harrowing—networks of wormholes, but those connections had been ne-

Sarossans. Lodovik glanced over his shoulder and nodded a greeting.

"Two more hours, after our last Jump, " Captain Tolk said. "We should be

on schedule. "

"Good, " said Lodovik. "I'm eager to get to work. Where will we land?"

"At Sarossa Major, the capital. That's where the records you seek are

stored. Then, as ordered, we remove as many favored families on the Em-

peror's list as we can. The ship will be very crowded. " "I can imagine. "

"We have perhaps seven days before the shock front hits the outskirts

of the system. Then, only eight hours before it engulfs Sarossa. "

"Too close for comfort. "

"The close shave of Imperial incompetence and misdirection, " Tolk

said, with no attempt to conceal his bitterness. "Imperial scientists knew

that the Kale's star was coring two years ago. "

"The information provided by Sarossan scientists was far from accurate,

" Lodovik said.

Tolk shrugged; no sense denying it. Blame enough for all to share.

Kale's star had gone supernova last year; its explosion had been observed

by telepresence nine months later, and in the time since... Much politicking,

reallocation of scant resources, then, this pitifully inadequate mission.

The captain had the misfortune of being sent to watch his planet die,

saving little but Imperial records and a few privileged families.

been sympathetic and honest and, above all, efficient. Quite different from

the usual in the Commission offices. The crew regards you as a friend

among scoundrels. "

Lodovik shook his head in warning. "Even simple complaints against the

Empire can be dangerous, " he said. "Best not to trust me too much. "

The ship shuddered slightly and a small bell rang in the room. Tolk

closed his eyes and gripped the back of the chair automatically. Lodovik

simply faced forward.

The last Jump, " the captain said. He looked at Lodovik. "I trust you well

enough, councilor, but I trust my skills more. Neither the Emperor nor Linge

Chen can afford to lose men of my qualifications. I still know how to repair

parts of our drives should they fail. Few captains on any ship can boast of

that now. "

Lodovik nodded; simple truth, but not very good armor. "The craft of

best using and not abusing essential human resources may also be a lost

art, Captain. Fair warning. "

Tolk made a wry face. "Point taken. " He turned to leave, then heard

something unusual. He glanced over his shoulder at Lodovik. "Did you feel

something?"

The ship suddenly vibrated again, this time with a high-pitched tensile

grind that set their teeth on edge. Lodovik frowned. "I felt that. What was

to study our options now anyway. Triage, Captain Tolk. Maximization of

what we

can take with us, compared to what can be stored in underground

vaults. "

Tolk's face darkened, and he lowered his eyes. "My own family library,

at Alos Quad, is—"

The ship's alarms blared like huge animals in pain. Tolk raised his arms

in instinctive self-protection, covering his face—

Lodovik dropped to the floor and doubled himself up with amazing dex-

terity—

The ship spun like a top in a fractional dimension it was never meant to

navigate—

And with a sickening blur of distressed momenta and a sound like a dy-

ing behemoth, it made an unscheduled and asymmetric Jump.

The ship reappeared in the empty vastness of status geometry—normal,

unstretched space. Ship's gravity failed simultaneously.

Tolk floated a few centimeters above the floor. Lodovik uncurled and

grabbed for an arm of the couch he had occupied just a few moments be-

fore. "We're out of hyperspace, " he said.

"No question, " Tolk said. "But in the name of procreation, where?"

Lodovik knew in an instant what the captain could not. They were being

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FoundationandChaosbyGregBearFoundation'sTriumphbyDavidBrinByIsaacAsimovGold:TheFinalScienceFictionCollectionMagic:TheFinalFantasyCollectionIsaacAsimov'sHistoryofl-BoticsIsaacAsimov'sI-Bots:TimeWasbyStevePerryandGaryA.Braun-beckTHESECONDFOUNDATIONTRILOGYFoundationandChaosGREGBEARPublishedbyHarperPris...

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Bear, Greg - 2nd Foundation Trilogy 2 - Foundation and Chaos

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