Sinter stared at her. “Please, ” he said softly. He sensed her distress but could not know
its cause. “They're melting down our robot. Seldon is being released. I'm trying to reach
the Emperor now. This is very important. ”
“Nobody will see us, ” she said, her finger stirring the candies in the tray.
“It isn't that bad, ” Sinter insisted, his face pale. “How did you get in?” The major-her
major-had been released by
Prothon to inform Sinter of the situation. He had then been posted in the anteroom to keep
her out. So much was obvious without even tasting their thoughts.
She had never been able to read thoughts directly; at best she could taste emotions, pick
up flashes of vision, sound, but never detail. Humans were not alike, deep inside. Minds
developed differently.
Vara knew that all humans were aliens to each other, but her own alienation was of a
different order.
“Miss Liso, you need to leave now, ” the advocate said, and walked toward her. “I'll
contact you later about representation in the Imperial courts-”
He stumbled and his face turned up and he started to stutter and drool. Farad looked on
him with dawning alarm. “Vara, are you doing that?” he demanded.
She let the advocate go. “You lied, ” she said to Sinter.
“What are you talking about?”
“I'll get Seldon myself, ” she said. “You stay here, and we'll leave together. ”
“No!” Sinter cried. “Stop this stupidity! We have to-”
For a moment, Vara Liso went blank. The room turned black and swam, then seemed to flash
into existence again. Sinter clutched his desk and stared at her with very round eyes. He
looked down at his chest, at his knees twitching, legs folding beneath him. Then he looked
up at her again. His advisors had already fallen to their knees, arms straight by their
sides, fists clenched. They keeled over in opposite directions, and one hit his head on
the edge of the desk.
Farad's heart slowed. Vara did not know if she was doing this thing or not. She did not
believe she was so strong, had never done such a thing before, but no matter.
She turned away from the man she would have married, in all her best dreams and hopes, and
said, “Now I am undeniably a monster. ” The word sounded delicious, free, very final.
She left the office and walked with a lovely lightness
through the anteroom past the major, still gasping, then paused-but only for an
instant-and grimaced.
Farad was dying. She could feel the emptiness and silence in his chest. She touched her
cheek.
Now he was dead.
She picked up the major's neural whip and continued on.
There were endless documents to sign, releases to be obtained from offices and levels
within the Commission of Public Safety and dozens of judicial bureaus to notify; it would
take Hari longer to leave the courts than it had ever taken him to enter. Gaal Dornick was
in a separate area, and Boon had departed three hours ago to take care of various
entanglements.
Hari sat alone within the cavernous Hall of Dispensation, looking up at the ancient vault
and skylights overhead, with their many-colored windows of pieced glass. He had been told
to sit there until the jailer returned with the warden and issued his final documents.
Hari was not sure how he felt. A little disbelieving, that was certain; he had passed
through the belly of the Imperial courts as yet undigested. The moment toward which,
knowingly or in ignorance, he had worked all his life, had passed.
Now there were the first few records to be made-he would notify Wanda and Stettin of their
final and, he suspected, surprising assignment, that the psychologists and mentalics of
the Second Foundation would be staying on Trantor-and he would make the preparations to
transfer his powers to Gaal and the others who would leave for Terminus.
The long twilight of the Empire would darkle. He would not live much longer to see it, nor
did he want to. Seeing the glow of the overhead domes through the vault windows, per-
haps fifty meters above him, made him think of what a real skyglow through real stained
glass would look like, on Helicon.
Stillness. Completion is near, yet I feel no real sense of satisfaction; where is my
personal reward? What if I have saved humanity from thousands of years of chaos; what have
I accomplished for myself? Unworthy thoughts for a prophet or a hero. I have a
granddaughter, not really my own flesh; the continuity is broken biologically, if not
philosophically. I have a few new friends around me, but the old are either gone, dead, or
inaccessible.
He thought of standing on the upperside maintenance tower, just a few weeks ago, and of
the gloom that had enveloped him then. / cannot leave Trantor; Chen will not let me. I am
still dangerous and best kept bottled. But where would I most like to go now, where would
I most like to be, in my last days?
Helicon. In the sun, outside, away from these enclosing ceiled cities, away from the metal
skin of Trantor. To see a night sky that was not simulated and to be unafraid of the
expanse, the thousands of stars, a small glimpse of the Empire for which he had labored
and which he had tried to understand.
To stand in the open, in the rain and the weather and the cold, and not be afraid; to be
with old friends and family-
The obsessive thoughts that filled so many of his nights. He sighed and sat up, listening
to the sounds of boots marching down the northern hallway.
Three guards and the warden entered and approached Hari.
“There's been a disturbance in the new Commission building, near the palace and not too
far from here, ” the warden said. “We've been told to lock down until the disturbance has
been explained. ”
“What sort of disturbance?” Hari asked.
“I don't know, ” the warden said. “Nothing to worry about. We're fine here. We've been
given instructions to protect you at any cost-”
Hari heard a sound from the eastern entrance of the hall. He turned and saw a woman
standing there and gave a gasp-in the light, at this distance, her stance, her bearing-
the dream-
Dors Venabili had kept her own list of codes and passages in the palace buildings, and
remarkably, most of them still worked. No doubt the codes that let people out of the
buildings were changed more frequently than those that let them in. When Hari had been
arrested and charged with assault, decades before, she had made plans to break into the
Courts Building and release him, and the work she had done then served her well now.
It also possible that Joan had helped her... But how she had come here ultimately did not
matter. She would have battered down walls to do so.
She was the first to enter the Hall of Dispensation. She saw Hari and three men, standing
near the center, lit by the diffuse glow of the skylight. She halted for a moment. The men
were not threatening Hari. Quite the contrary; she judged they were there to protect him.
Hari turned and looked in her direction. His mouth opened and she heard his intake of
breath echo in the hall. The three men turned, and the eldest, a large, stocky fellow
wearing the uniform of an Imperial warden, called out to her:
“Who are you? What are you doing here?”
From the northern entrance came a sizzle and a flash of light. Dors knew that sound very
well: a neural whip, fired from several dozen meters. The three men around Hari jerked
and danced for a moment, then fell to the floor, moaning.
Hari stood untouched.
Dors ran as fast as she could toward the small, intense-looking woman standing near the
northern entrance. This woman still held the neural whip, and seemed to have eyes only for
Hari. In less than four seconds, Dors moved to within less than two meters of her.
Vara Liso cried out with the effort of her persuasion. The hall seemed to fill with
voices, ugly demanding voices. Hari clutched his hands over his ears and winced, and the
men on the floor twitched even more violently, but the main force of the mentalic bolt
went toward Dors.
Dors had never felt such a blast, had never known humans were capable of such discharges.
She had felt Daneel's subtle persuasive abilities during her training period on Eos,
nothing more.
It seemed perfectly natural, in mid-stride, on her way to incapacitating and if necessary
killing this woman who threatened Hari, simply to pull up her legs and attempt to fly. Her
body of metal and synthetic flesh curled into a ball and she glanced off the woman's upper
shoulder, knocking her to one side.
Dors caromed from the opposite wall and fell to the floor in a tangle. She could not move;
she did not want to move, not at that moment, perhaps not ever again.
Daneel left the taxi at the Greys' Entrance on the east side of the Imperial Courts
Building, then stood by the small double metal doors. He wore the uniform of a lifetime
bureaucrat, native to Trantor and not a student or pilgrim; he had reserved this identity
decades ago, among many others, and if queried by any security guards, there would be
files in the
personnel computers to explain him and his duties, his right to be here.
The doors were ornately inscribed with the general rules of public service. The first rule
was Do no harm to your Emperor or his subjects.
Even in the taxi, Daneel had felt the mentalic explosions, from the general vicinity of
the palace, but did not know what they signified, if anything. It was easy to imagine his
plans unraveling, now that they were almost complete. He had juggled for so long, keeping
literally tens of millions of balls in the air at once...
He shifted the small bureaucratic valise under his arm and entered a specific and reserved
code for entry by a gray administrative officer.
It was refused. The codes had all been changed; there was an emergency within the Courts
Building, perhaps within the palace itself.
Here. My Other is within the building. Joan, split into many Joans, many meme-minds,
worked from both sides.
The left-hand door opened, and he entered the building.
It took him longer than he expected to make his way through the secure facilities, even
with Joan's help.
On the last door, when he knew he was within two doors of joining Hari in the beautiful,
high-ceilinged Hall of Dispensation, Joan distracted a human guard by sending him revised
watch instructions.
Daneel smelled electricity in the next segment of hallway. A neural whip had been
discharged here in the last few minutes-
Hari faced Vara Liso across the Hall of Dispensation. She stood for a moment with hands
held out, fingers wriggling, as if she fought to keep her balance. Her head swayed from
side to side. The woman who had entered before her-who had reminded him so much of
Dors-lay in a heap, rolled up against the door, still, as if dead.
Hari did not feel afraid; things had happened too quickly for that emotion to take hold.
Everything seemed out of place, most of all himself; he did not belong there, and they did
not belong there.
The hall had been peaceful-now it smelled of electricity, of urine leaking from the pants
of the three men supine on the floor around him.
“I'm saving you... ” Vara Liso said from across the hall. She took a step toward him,
lowering her arms. “For last. ”
“Who are you?” Hari asked. He was concerned about the woman on the floor. He wanted above
all else to make sure she was all right; tremors spread in his mind, memories, triggered
responses, confusing and rich and evoking a sense both of intense promise and of horror,
for he was sure that this woman was Dors. She's come back. She wanted to protect me. The
way she moved... like a springing tiger!
And now she's down like a squashed insect.
This small, thin woman... an aberration. A monster!
Hari then knew who the woman was. Wanda had mentioned her weeks ago, the woman who had not
agreed to join the mentalics, who had allied instead with Farad Sinter.
“You're Vara Liso, ” he said, and started to move toward her.
“Good, ” the woman said, her voice trembling. “I want you to know who I am. You're the one
to blame. ”
“Blame for what?” Hari asked.
“You work with the robots. ” Her expression twisted until it seemed her face might become
a knot. “You're their lackey, and they think they've won!”
Lodovik invoked the last of the codes he knew, and the door to the transfer corridor from
the Courts Building still refused to open. He worked the code around again on the finger
pad beside the doorframe, and the tiny simplified face in the display proclaimed once
again that the code was incomplete. It would be so like the palace security detail to add
a few numbers, but not change the beginning numbers.
/ am working, Voltaire told him. There must be many security measures being triggered
now-multiple intrusions, perhaps!
The girl and the large young man behind him shifted from foot to foot.
“It won't be good to stay here, ” Brann said. “Something feels very bad. ” :
Voltaire's features appeared in the display, simplified to cartoon detail. The mechanical
voice now said, “Additional numbers are required under the revised security procedures. ”
The new face winked at Lodovik. “Test procedure fifteen A for verification, ” the voice
added. “You may enter code for personal use only during this test period. Upon completion
of test period, a formal entry code or new password must be established and fixed. ”
Lodovik glanced over his shoulder at Klia as he entered seven new numbers. She stared at
the display with furrowed brow.
“Who is that?” she asked.
“The sim, ” Lodovik said.
The door opened. Lodovik beckoned for them to pass through first.
“Is Hari Seldon near?” Klia asked.
He is very near, Voltaire said. And he is in imminent danger.