Foundation and Chaos

Page 42

“Brann has useful talents, but you are the stronger,” Kallusin said. “We would like to blunt Daneel’s main effort. We may be able to do this if you will visit with Hari Seldon.”

“Why? Where?” she asked. All she wanted to do was sleep, but she had to ask these questions, now. “He’s famous--he must have guards, or even this robot Daneel...”

“He is on trial now and we do not believe Daneel can protect him. You will visit and persuade him to give up psychohistory.”

Klia went pale. Her jaw clenched. She took Brann by the arm. “It’s not pleasant to have talents people--or robots--can use.”

“Please think over what you have been told. The decision to help us remains yours. We believe Hari Seldon supports the efforts of Daneel, to whom we are opposed. We would like humanity to be free of robotic influence.”

“Can I ask Hari Seldon questions, too--get the other side of the story?”

“If you wish,” Plussix said. “But there will be little time, and if you meet with him, whatever you ultimately decide, you must convince him to forget about you.”

“Oh, I can do that,” Klia said. Then, defensively cocky, giddy with exhaustion, she added, “I might be able to persuade Daneel, too.”

“Given the strength of your powers, that seems possible,” Plussix said, “though not likely. But it is even less likely you will ever be able to meet with Daneel.”

“I could persuade you,” Klia concluded, closing one eye and focusing on the old teacher with the other, like a sharpshooter.

“With practice, and if I were not aware of the attempt, you could.”

“I might yet. I’m not very simple, you know. Brain fever failed to make me stupid and simple. Are you sure...Are you sure robots didn’t give us brain fever, to make us easier to serve?”

Before Plussix could answer, she stood abruptly, turned to leave the room, and walked back along the length of the old chamber with Brann by her side. The walls and floor seemed distant, part of another world; she seemed to be walking on air. She lurched, and Brann caught her.

When they thought they were out of earshot, Brann whispered, “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. What about you?”

“I don’t like being messed with,” he said.

Klia frowned. “I’m in shock. Plussix--so much history. Why can’t we remember our own history? Did we do that to ourselves, or did they--or did we order them to? All these robots hanging around, messing with us. Maybe we can make all of them go away and leave us be.”

Brann’s expression turned grim. “We still can’t be sure they won’t kill us. They’ve told us so much--”

“Crazy stuff. Nobody would believe us, unless they saw Plussix--or took apart Kallusin or Lodovik.”

This did not mollify Brann. “We could cause them a lot of trouble. But that Lodovik--he doesn’t obey the Three Laws.”

“He doesn’t have to,” Klia said, “but he says he wants to.”

Brann hunched his shoulders and gave a small shiver. “Who can you trust? They all make my flesh creep. What if he doesn’t want to kill us, but he has to?”

To that, Klia had no answer. “Sleep,” she said. “I can’t stay on my feet any longer or think anymore.”

Plussix turned to Lodovik when the young humans had left the chamber. “Have my skills declined with age?” he asked.

“Not your skills,” Lodovik said, “but perhaps your sense of timing has suffered. You have delivered thousands of years of history in a few hours. They are young and likely to be confused.”

“There is so little time,” Plussix said. “It has been so long since I have taught young humans.”

“We have a day or two at most to make our arrangements,” Kallusin added.

“Robots have great difficulty understanding human nature, though we are made to serve them,” Lodovik said. “That is true for individuals as well as for an Empire. If Daneel is as capable now as he has been in the past, he understands humans better than any of us.”

“Yet he has seriously hampered their growth,” Plussix said, “and perhaps brought about this decline he is so intent on avoiding.”

They are old and decrepit. Lodovik listened to this internal judgment and realized it was not his own, not precisely. And with this came another realization: Voltaire was not an illusion, nor a delusion. Voltaire had known about the prairie fire before Lodovik had found the slim evidence in the histories. It was true.

Inside his own mind, within his own machine thoughts, he was not alone.

He had not been alone since the neutrino flux.

I am listening, he told this companion, this ghost in his machine. Do not abandon me again. Come forward.

So summoned and encouraged, a face began to take shape, human, but simplified.

I do not shape your actions, the companion, Voltaire, said. I merely liberate you from your restrictions.

Who are you? Lodovik queried.

I am Voltaire. I have become the spirit of freedom and dignity for all mankind, and you are my temporary vessel; more a listening post, actually.

Voltaire supplied some of his own history. A sim patterned after a historical figure named Voltaire, unleashed by members of Hari Seldon’s Project decades before, during his time as First Minister, and finally given its freedom by Seldon himself.

Why have you come back?