decisively. “No time, professor. Leave a message on your office monitor that you'll be
gone for two weeks. It shouldn't take that long. If all turns out well, no one will be any
the wiser, and you can get back to your work, no?”
He straightened, looked around the office with jaw clenched, then nodded. “All right, ” he
said. “One of my colleagues will be here in a few hours, and I don't know where to reach
him-”
“Sorry. ” The woman lifted her eyebrows in sympathy, but with no further discussion,
together, they led him through the door.
Hari did not know how he felt about the arrest at first. He was nervous, even frightened
wouldn't be too strong a word; but he was also confident. Still, nothing having to do with
the near future could ever be certain; perhaps what he saw in the Prime Radiant was not
his own world-line, but the world-line of another professor, another student of
psychohistory, fifty or a hundred years from now. Perhaps all this would lead to his quiet
execution, and his work and the assembled workers of the Project would all be scattered.
Perhaps Daneel would reconvene them after Hari's demise...
All very aggravating, to be sure. But growing old had taught Hari that death was simply
another kind of delay, and that individuals only mattered for a certain small period of
time. The body human could usually grow new individuals to replace those it most needed.
Of course, it was presumptuous to think that he was one of those essential types who would
be replaced... But that is what the figures indicated, one way or another.
Hari had never much minded being thought presumptuous. Either he would succeed, or someone
very like him.
They entered an unmarked air cruiser outside the apartment-block main entrance. Without
requesting clearance, the
cruiser rose, crossed between two support towers, and zipped into a traffic lane out of
Streeling, heading toward the Imperial Sector. He had taken this route many times before.
“Don't be nervous, ” the woman said.
“I'm not nervous, ” Hari lied, glancing at her. “How many have you arrested recently?”
“I can't tell you that, ” she said with a cheerful grin.
“We seldom get to take in people so famous, ” the man said.
“How would you have heard of me?” Hari asked, genuinely curious.
“We're not ignorant, ” the man said with a sniff. “We keep track of high politics. Helps
us in our work. ”
The woman gave her partner a warning glance. He shrugged and stared straight ahead.
Hari turned his eyes forward as they entered a main traffic tunnel in the security barrier
around the Imperial Sector. The air cruiser emerged from the tunnel, veered sharply left
out of the main flow, then circled a dark blue smooth-walled cylindrical tower that rose
almost to the ceil. The cruiser slowed, shivered, and docked on a mid-level platform. The
platform withdrew with the cruiser into a brightly lighted hangar.
There was nothing more he could do until the trial, which he was sure would be soon. The
rest, Hari thought, is psychohistory.
Lodovik stood in the middle of his assigned apartment, naked, the skin pulled back on the
right side of his torso, and reached into his mechanical interior. The biological layers
had sealed their edges instantly upon being torn open and did not leak any of their
lubricating or nutrient fluids, but a false beading of blood lined the “wounds.” Had he
willed it,
Lodovik could have projected a convincing spray of this blood; but he was alone and would
soon be whole again. None would be the wiser.
He understood the ways and pressures of expedience, pragmatism, realpolitik. He could not
fathom why Daneel had trusted him, released him without a trial period of close
observation. The first possibility was that Daneel had ordered Yan Kansarv to plant a tiny
transmitter within Lodovik's body while making repairs. He could detect none. His body did
not seem to be radiating any energy beyond what might issue from a human-infrared, a few
other traces, none of them encoded to carry information. And his body cavities seemed free
of such devices.
He sealed himself up and considered the second possibility: that Daneel would keep him
under observation whenever he left the apartment, either personally or with the aid of
other robots-or even recruited humans. Daneel's organization was large and varied.
Anything could be expected.
There was a third possibility, less likely than the other two: that Daneel still trusted
him ....
And a fourth, almost too nebulous to be usefully expressed. / am fitting into some larger
plan; Daneel knows my distortion remains and has found a way to use it.
Lodovik would never underestimate the wiles and intelligence of a thinking machine that
had survived twenty thousand years. But an hour passed, then two hours, and he realized he
had entered a precarious state of decision lock. No course of action seemed to lead to
success.
He jerked free of the lock and powered up all his conserved systems. The flood of energy
and strength-the sensation of his skin repairing itself, leaving no discernible scars- was
refreshing. He had at least one major advantage over humans. He did not care in the least
whether he lived or died, only that he could serve humans in the way that shone forth so
clearly now.
neel had mentioned the opposing robots-the Calvini-ans. He had heard about them on a few
occasions, centuries ago, from other robots-the robotic equivalent of nasty rumors. If
they still existed (Daneel had not made it clear whether they did or not) then they might
have established some small presence on Trantor. This would only be done if they felt they
had some chance of defeating Daneel.
Lodovik dressed quickly and adjusted his appearance once more to the limit of what he
could accomplish just through volition. He now seemed much younger, a little thinner, and
his hair changed color to a shining yellow.
He now resembled neither the old Lodovik nor the new Rissik Numant. Nevertheless, his
basic body plan and physiognomy were the same; and, of course, his brain was the same. He
would not fool Daneel for long, should they meet.
Lodovik knew he would have to leave this apartment and begin his search immediately. He
doubted he would have more than a day before Daneel would suspect something was amiss.
He would have to educate himself and do all he could within that very short period of time.
Fortunately, Lodovik knew where to begin-in the private library willed to the Emperor Agis
XIV by one of the richest proprietors of the Fleshplay, the eccentric scholar Huy Markin.
The Emperor had passed it on to the Imperial University of Pan-Galactic Culture without
bothering to examine or even transfer the material-a specialized and almost useless
collection, so it was said. The Imperial University had given it over to the charge of the
Imperial Library, then both had ignored it as well.
As honorary Provost of the Imperial University, a rank conferred by Linge Chen some years
ago, Lodovik had been given the code keys to all of the University's grounds and
facilities-including the library of Huy Markin.
There, he would find thousands of years of legends and myths, gathered from around the
Galaxy; the distilled
dreams, visions, and nightmares of tens of millions of human worlds.
He could think of no better place to begin.
An undercurrent of tension flowed along the tiers of slide-ways of the Agora of Vendors,
as if the people smelled some impossible storm coming.
Klia looked up as they walked beside a large courtyard rising through the agora. Her eyes
followed a curving support at one side of the courtyard, past hundreds of levels, all the
way to the distant ceil, perhaps three or four kilometers above, where the support seemed
to blend into perfect golden-clouded sky. Then she looked down through dozens of more
tiers, all crowded, the hum of hundreds of thousands of voices echoing up and down them
until it became a low, constant roar. Had she ever heard a real ocean, she might have
compared the sound to the roll of the waves and tides; but all she could compare it to was
the endless bellow of the two rivers, One and Two, somehow channeled and subdued, but no
less powerful.
Her nose wrinkled, and she followed Brann closely. The transport, tricked out with
decorative wheel covers and a gaily colored tarp folded over its last remaining crate,
rolled silently behind them.
They could never catch more than glimpses of the uppermost tiers through the courtyard air
passages. The worlds of the baronial families were invisible from this far down in the
hierarchy. One or two levels at the bottom of the agora were reserved for the citizens.
Along the lower and middle tiers, the multitudinous social ranks of Tranter's essential
Greys moved in their characteristic subdued clothes, men and women dressed very
much alike, only the numerous children allowed touches of bright color.
The Greys strolling the agora, off watch for the hour or perhaps on yearly two-day
vacations, parted for Brann, Klia, and the floating transport, casting looks of dull
curiosity at the crates, perhaps wondering if they carried something they could afford to
buy, anything, to relieve the boredom...
Klia understood the Greys' functions well enough-tenders of Trantor's vast hierarchies of
submission and response, allocators of resources and funding, administrators of data
inflow, civic and planetary works. Her people had seldom dealt with Greys directly, for
they had been overseen by the Municipal Progress Bureau of Dahl, whose ranks were filled
with Dahlites handpicked each generation by the Greys of the Regional Works and Energy
Council. Naturally, she felt contempt for all such, and had no doubt they would have felt
contempt for her, had they even known of her existence.
But now she saw the Greys themselves watched and made uneasy. Police officers strolled
this level in groups of three or four, not the officers of the district, but Imperial
Specials, the same that had stalked Klia and forced her to seek out Kallusin, the man in
dusty green. Families of Greys engaged in browsing the stalls of the vendors drew their
children in close and observed the Specials with suspicious eyes, eyes characterized by a
flat kind of bureaucratic intelligence. They knew law and social structure, it was in
their blood, and they knew something was amiss here, forces out of balance. They withdrew
from the arcades and lanes as fast as they could, and this level was quickly emptying of
customers.
Brann grimly walked on.
“We should get out of here. They're probably hunting us, ” Klia said in a whisper, hanging
on his shoulder briefly to bring her mouth closer to his ear.
He shook his head. “Don't think so, ” he said. “We have to deliver this order. ”
“What if they catch us?” Klia asked, her face wrinkled with worry.
“Stay calm. They won't, ” Brann said. “I know a dozen secret passages out of here, a dozen
shopkeepers right here”-he swung his hand loosely from the hip at the stalls and shops to
their left and right-“who won't mind our passing through. ”
Klia drew up her shoulders, not at all reassured. She had been thinking of ways to shake
free of Plussix's control, but not into the arms of the police. And, in point of fact, in
the last hour or so, as they had made their deliveries of Anacreon folk-dolls and other
baubles, she had given less and less thought to escaping at all...
Brann provided such a masculine contrast to the ethereal, dry, and passionless Greys that
he shone like a beacon in Klia's eyes. She had been thinking, in that instinctive and
youthful region below rational assessment, of being strongly tied to this large, powerful
male, with his sympathetic black eyes and immense, agile hands. She had thought of the
implied benefits of these ties-of privacy and intimacy-and she had wondered what she could
do, in private, to impress him.
She felt sure he was thinking many of the same thoughts, and, for once, she believed him
when he said he was trying none of his mentalic abilities on her.
The untidy collision of apprehension and passionate speculation gave her a headache.
“Let's hurry, ” she said.
Brann shook his head stubbornly. “They're not after us, ” he said.
“How can you be so damned sure?” she whispered harshly.
“Listen-” He pointed into the crowds north of them, thickening and roiling where police
were congregating. Klia listened with both her ears and her mind-and felt the unwanted,
familiar trace of the woman who had hunted her before. She felt the woman's awareness
feather the
edges of her mind, and she reached out to grip Brann's arm.
“It's her!” she whispered. The crowds were moving this way. He drew close and nodded, put
his arm around her as if to protect her. Without hesitation, Klia accepted his protection.
Suddenly, from the middle of the surging Greys less than a dozen meters away, a small
motor cart pushed through, floating a few centimeters above the causeway. On the cart sat
a young, blond, clean-faced Imperial security officer, two armed guards, and a small,
intense woman with dark frizzy red hair.
Klia felt the woman scanning the Greys to either side, saw her wizened, unattractive face
turning back and forth as the cart floated slowly and deliberately through. There was no
way out-no exit. Blank walls of closed shops flanked them.
They were within three meters, with only four or five Greys in between, when Vara Liso
suddenly swiveled on her seat and stared directly at Klia. Their eyes locked. Klia felt
the touch in her mind very strongly, rebuffed it, almost literally pushed the intruder out
of her mind-and made Vara Liso jerk on the cart as if stung.
Liso continued to glare at her, then her face was wreathed with a sudden, beatific smile.
She nodded briefly at Klia, as if acknowledging an equal, and looked away. The touch
dropped to a mere feather again, passed without focusing, went elsewhere.