- Prey
- Sphere
- Black Rose
- The Great Train Robbery
- Blue Dahlia
- Carnal Innocence
- Dance Upon the Air
- High Noon
- Lawless
- Sacred Sins
- Tribute
- Face the Fire
- Holding the Dream
- A Man for Amanda
- All the Possibilities
- Next
- Prey
- Sphere
- Black Rose
- The Great Train Robbery
- Blue Dahlia
- Carnal Innocence
- Dance Upon the Air
- High Noon
- Lawless
- Sacred Sins
- Tribute
- Face the Fire
- Holding the Dream
- A Man for Amanda
Foundation and ChaosPage 62
“It is not my concern,” Lodovik said. “Will you tell him, on Eos?” “No,” Lodovik said. “Won’t he just know?” “He will not learn from me,” Lodovik said. “Why not?” Lodovik smiled, and said no more. Then, within his positronic pathways, the requested blankness of certain knowledge began to build. The forgetfulness of Klia Asgar would soon envelop him. New memories would come into play, of arriving on bright, gay Kalgan and putting the two young humans into the charge of agents of the future Second Foundation. He would become part of a false trail, to deceive any who might come after them. At the last, he had followed his insight, his newfound instinct, provoked by Voltaire, to the letter. And if Daneel does know--then he will not oppose what is set in place, because he trusts the instincts of Hari Seldon. “Well, it’s just you and me, old friend,” Mors said with an edge in his voice. “What should we talk about this time?” EPILOGUE “I have been dreaming, perhaps, “ Joan said. “Me, too, “ Voltaire said. “What did you dream of!” “Very painful things. Of an arrow in my neck and a brick striking my head.” “Your historical traumas, before the flames. I myself dreamed of dying, “ Voltaire said. “Are you together yet?” “Not yet. Not all of the backups have located our new centers. She nearly destroyed us!” Joan said angrily. “She was made to destroy us, “ Voltaire said. “To her very core, she despised all minds not human. “ “But--” A momentary panic. “You say she despised...” “Yes. She is dead now. “ “What of the others, the children who were working with the Calvinians--the ones you were helping?” Joan asked. “They have left Trantor, last I heard. “ “Has it all been resolved, then?” “Our argument, my dearest, or--” “Don’t call me that, you godless--” “Shhh, “ Voltaire attempted to soothe, with no success. “The voices tell me I have been seduced by a master, a master liar.” “Who can argue with such revelations? Let us decide to disagree, even should it be forever, “ Voltaire said. “ I will say I did not feel comfortable apart from you. Encoded in the warps and weft of space, imposed upon plasmas and fields of energy like a spider riding a web, I wandered with the wraiths, supped on their diffuse energy feasts, observed their decadent societies, mated and danced...How like the ancien regime it all was, yet bloodless, predictable, angelic! I missed the perversity, the femininity, the humanity.” “How flattering, that you miss my perversity. “ “In boredom I followed the trails of human ships, and came upon a vessel in distress, tossed by the storm of a dying star. And within, I found a mechanical human being, weakened by circumstance, besieged by particles my hosts had taught me to regard as very tasty...A marvelous opportunity!” “A chance for you to interfere with a vulnerable spirit. “ “Spirit? Perhaps...So much unexpressed need for approval, for fulfillment.” “Like a child, for you to bend and distort.” “I found a seed of freedom, very subtle. I merely watered it with a retunneled electron or two, a positronic pathway shunted from here to here...I helped the particles do what they might have done anyway, had he broken his programmed chains. “ “A devil’s sleight of handlessness, “ loan said, but not without some admiration. “You have always been clever that way. “ “I did nothing a good God would not approve of. I allowed free will to blossom. Do not be harsh with me, Maid. I will be civil, if you allow me my foibles. Perhaps it is more interesting that way. “ “I hardly worry about your sins anymore, “ loan said. “After what happened, when that horrible woman...” The equivalent of a shudder: “I fear we may both face dissolution again--the loss of our very souls. After all, we are not human...” Voltaire interrupted this line of reasoning, which still disturbed him. “ Nobody knows we are here. We were blown apart; they felt us die. They have their own concerns now. We are irrelevant ghosts who never truly lived. But if robots can become human...Then why not we, my love? We will not haunt the Mesh forever.” Joan absorbed this without replying for several millionths of a second. Then, in their deeply buried matrix, concealed in the depths of a machine designed to keep constant track of the daily accumulation of wealth on Trantor, she felt the last segments of her stored self rejoin with the hastily saved fragments of her last moments with Daneel in the Hall of Dispensation. “There, “ she said. “ I am together. I say again, what of those issues unresolved--the decidability of the fate of humankind, the success of the blessed Hari Seldon?” “The larger issues appear to be in flux once more, “ Voltaire said dryly. “No final judgments?” “Do you mean the judgment of the vast Nobodaddy, the Nothing Father of your delusions, or the mechanical man you have lusted after these past scores of years?” Joan dismissed the tone and the implications with a precise iciness. “God speaks through our deeds, and, of course, through me. Whatever my origins, I maintain the pattern of His Voice.” “Of course.” “Daneel...” “Determines nothing, and is lost without humanity.” “No outcome, then,” she said, disappointed. |
- The Loners
- The Saints
- Switched
- Fangtastic!
- Re-Vamped!
- Vampalicious!
- Tome of the Undergates
- Black Halo
- The Skybound Sea
- If You Stay
- If You Leave
- Until We Burn
- Before We Fall
- Every Last Kiss
- Fated
- Suspiciously Obedient
- Random Acts of Crazy
- Random Acts of Trust
- Her First Billionaire
- Her Second Billionaire
- Her Two Billionaires
- Her Two Billionaires and a Baby
- His Majesty's Dragon
- Throne of Jade
- Black Powder War
- Victory of Eagles
- Tongues of Serpents
- Empire of Ivory
- Crucible of Gold
- Delirium