And he had told her that Daneel must never learn of the true whereabouts of the Second
Foundation, of the mentalics who could resist all the efforts of the Giskardian robots,
should they ever return to take up the reins of secret power.
A few minutes and he was finished.
He pulled aside the blankets and draped them on the edge of the chair, then stood to
leave. The three lenses rose into the darkness above.
Waiting for Gaal to join him, Hari wondered if Death would be a robot. How problematical
for a robot it would be to bring both comfort and an end to a human master! He saw a
large, smooth, black-skinned robot, infinitely cautious and caring, serving him and
driving him to the last.
The thought made him smile. Would that the universe could ever be so caring and so gentle.
Dors embraced Klia and Brann, then turned to Lodovik.
“I wish I could send a duplicate of myself with you, ” she told him, “and experience what
you will experience, ” she said.
Beyond their fenced platform, the small trading ship of Mors Planch, glittering with
recent maintenance, rested in its cradle.
“You would be most useful to us, ” Lodovik said.
Klia looked around the long aisle of ships in the spaceport terminal, and asked, “He isn't
coming to see us off?”
“Hari?” Dors asked, unsure whom she meant.
“Daneel, ” Klia said.
“I don't know where he is, now, ” Dors said. “He's long had the habit of coming and going
without telling anyone what he's up to. His work is done. ”
“I find that hard to believe, ” Klia said, and her face reddened. She did not wish to
sound like a hypocrite. “I mean... ”
Brann nudged her gently with his forearm.
Mors Planch stepped forward. Lodovik still made him uneasy. Well, they would be traveling
a great distance together once more. And why should he worry especially about Lodovik,
when their ship would cany some fifty humaniform robots, temporarily asleep, and the
severed heads of many more? A wealth of fearful riches! And his ticket to freedom, as
well. “I was told to confirm our route with you, in case there were last-minute changes. ”
He took out a pocket informer and displayed the route to Dors. Four Jumps, over 10, 000
light-years, to Kalgan, a world of pleasure and entertainment for the Galaxy's elite,
where they (so the informer said) would drop off Klia and Brann. Then, thirty-seven
individual Jumps, 60, 000 light-years to Eos, where Lodovik would disembark with the
robots and the head of Giskard.
Dors studied the travel chart briefly. “Still correct, ” she said.
Lodovik asked, “Will you be going to Terminus?”
“No, ” Dors said. “Nor to Star's End, wherever that might be. ”
“You're staying here, ” Lodovik surmised.
“I am. ”
Klia said, “I've read about the Tiger Woman. So hard to believe that was really you.
You're staying-for Hari?”
“I will be here for him at the end. It is my highest and best purpose. I would not be much
good for anything else. ”
“Will Daneel let him remember, this time?” Klia asked, and bit her lower lip, nervous at
such presumption.
“So it has been promised, ” Dors said. “I will have my time with him. ”
“And until that time?” Lodovik asked, perfectly aware that for humans, this would be a
rude and intrusive question.
“That will be for me to decide, ” Dors said.
“Not for Daneel?”
Dors regarded him directly, intently.
“Do you believe Daneel is finished?”
“No, ” Dors said quietly.
“I cannot believe he is finished, either, or that he is done with you. ”
“You have your opinions, of course. As any human should. ”
Lodovik caught the implication, the edge of resentment. “Daneel regards you as human, ”
Lodovik said. “Does he not?”
“He does. Is that an honor, or a curse?”
Without waiting for an answer, she turned to go.
Minutes later, from the observation deck looking out over the spaceport, she heard the low
rumble and roar of the departing hypership, and looked up briefly to watch its course.
Wanda was none too happy at first to be escorting the young woman and her large mate from
the spaceport terminal. Nor was she comfortable about this elaborate deception-who, after
all, was Grandfather expecting to watch them? Demerzel?
Nothing had turned out as she hoped, and now to be nursemaid for a potential monster! But
Stettin took it all stoically enough, and was well along on striking up a friendship with
Brann.
Klia Asgar was another matter. Wanda thought her entirely too moody; but then, so much had
changed in the young woman's life in the past week, so many situations had been reversed,
and she had taken charge in such a fortuitous and insightful way...
Perhaps there was something essential and useful in Hari's last-minute insight and change
of plan. To abandon Star's End and the wonderful difficulties of being pioneers-for the
inglorious task of hiding out for centuries, and watching the Empire collapse into
ruins-riding out the Fall of Trantor, the bitter decades; for their children and
grandchildren to endure not only endless discipline and training, but the meanest and most
horrible centuries in history...
Had Grandfather decided all this at the last minute, or had he known all along? Hari
Seldon had depths and stratagems it was best not to think about, she decided. Would he
manipulate his own granddaughter, keep her in the dark-surprise and dismay her?
Obviously...
“I don't know how to thank you, ” Klia said to Wanda as they climbed into the chartered
taxi. She adjusted her concealing hood, then attended to Brann's.
“For what?” Wanda asked.
“For putting up with an out-of-control little brat, ” Klia said.
Wanda could not help but laugh. “Are you reading my mind, dear?” she asked, not sure
herself what tone she intended.
“No, ” Klia said. “I wouldn't do that. I'm learning. ”
“Aren't we all, ” Stettin said, and Wanda looked to her husband with a chastened respect.
He had stayed so quiet during her private rants, then had gently and reasonably explained
Hari's intricate new Plan.
“I think we'll... learn to rely on each other, very closely, ” Wanda said.
“I'd love that, ” Klia said. Her eyes glittered under the hood, and Wanda realized that
they were filled with tears. She could feel the wash of need from the young woman-still
little more than a girl, actually!
And how would that be-to have this mentalic female start regarding her as a mother]
She reached out and took Klia's hand. “Not that it will be easy, ” she said. “But... we'll
win, in the end. ”
“Of course, ” Klia said, her voice trembling. “That's what Hari-what Professor Seldon
plans. I look forward so much to learning from you. ”
Their children and grandchildren would twine their genes, and the psychologists of the
Second Foundation could study and come to understand persuasion-could utilize it more
efficiently. By breeding and by research, they would be creating a race that would
withstand centuries of adversity, and rise to conquer... secretly, quietly.
An anodyne against unexpected mutations, hidden far from the First Foundation, and away
from the robots.
And how in sky would she explain this to the psychologists, the mathists, who had already
fought against the inclusion of the mentalics?
They will help keep us secret during the hard times to come. Well, maybe she was up to the
task of reconciling all these disparate talents. She had better be.
If Grandfather was right, the two most important human beings in the Galaxy were now in
Wanda's care. Wanda turned away from Klia, her own eyes moist, and caught a look from
Brann in the seat opposite. Slow, large, with secret depths, the burly Dahlite nodded
solemnly and peered out the semisilvered window.
“I'm very confused, ” Mors Planch said as the acceleration eased and the ship's artificial
gravity came into play. "Who's
deceiving whom? How can you believe Daneel won't find out? How do you know he didn't plan
for the youngsters to stay here all along?"
“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 Cafainians-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 l have been seduced by a master, a master Ear. ”
“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, ” Joan 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, ” Joan 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.
“Are you afraid of how it will all turn out, my dear?” Voltaire asked.
“I am afraid of not being there when it is resolved. These strong-minded children... If
they learned of us, they would hate us, perhaps strive to destroy us for good!”
“They have other concerns, and will never know about us, ” Voltaire said. “They have a
great deception to play. I have been investigating while you yet knitted your selves
together. ”