Walking through the Imperial Gardens, Hari wished Dors was with him. He recalled her
wariness over his coming again to the attention of Cleon.
“They're crazy, often,” she had said in a dispassionate voice. “The gentry are eccentric,
which allows emperors to be bizarre.”
“You exaggerate,” he had responded.
“Dadrian the Frugal always urinated in the Imperial Gardens,” she had answered. “He would
leave state functions to do it, saying that it saved his subjects a needless expense in
water.”
Hari had to suppress a laugh; palace staff were undoubtedly studying him. He regained his
sober manner by admiring the ornate, towering trees, sculpted in the Spindlerian style of
three millennia before. He felt the tug of such natural beauty, despite his years buried
in Trantor. Here, verdant wealth stretched up toward the blazing sun like outstretched
arms. This was the only open spot on the planet, and it reminded him of Helicon, where he
had begun.
He had been a rather dreamy boy in a laboring district of Helicon. The work in fields and
factories was easy enough that he could think his own shifting, abstract musings while he
did it. Before the Civil Service exams changed his life, he had worked out a few simple
theorems in number theory and later was crushed to find that they were already known. He
lay in bed at night thinking of planes and vectors and trying to envision dimensions
larger than three, listening to the distant bleat of the puff-dragons who came drifting
down the mountain sides in search of prey. Bioengineered for some ancient purpose,
probably hunting, they were revered beasts. He had not seen one for many years ...
Helicon, the wild -- that was what he longed for. But his destiny seemed submerged in
Trantor's steel.
Hari glanced back and his Specials, thinking they were summoned, trotted forward. “No,” he
said, his hands pushing air toward them -- a gesture he was making all the time these
days, he reflected. Even in the Imperial Gardens they acted as though every gardener was a
potential assassin.
He had come this way, rather than simply emerge from the grav lifter inside the palace,
because he liked the gardens above all else. In the distant haze a wall of trees towered,
coaxed upward by genetic engineering until they obscured the ramparts of Trantor. Only
here, on all the planet, was it possible to experience something resembling the out of
doors.
What an arrogant term! Hari thought. To define all of creation by its lying outside the
doorways of humanity.
His formal shoes crunched against gravel as he left the sheltered walkways and mounted the
formal ramp. Beyond the forested perimeter rose a plume of black smoke. He slowed and
estimated distance, perhaps ten klicks. Some major incident, surely.
Striding between tall, neopantheonic columns, he felt a weight descend. Attendants dashed
out to welcome him, his Specials tightened up behind, and they made a little procession
through the long corridors leading to the Vault of Audience. Here the accumulated great
artworks of millennia crowded each other, as if seeking a constituency in the present to
give them life.
The heavy hand of the Imperium lay upon most official art. The Empire was essentially
about the past, its solidity, and so expressed its taste with a preference for the pretty.
Emperors favored the clean straight lines of ascending slabs, the exact parabolas of
arcing purple water fountains, classical columns and buttresses and arches. Heroic
sculpture abounded. Noble brows eyed infinite prospects. Colossal battles stood frozen at
climactic moments, shaped in glowing stone and holoid crystal.
All were entirely proper and devoid of embarrassing challenge. No alarming art here, thank
you. Nothing “disturbing” was even allowed in public places on Trantor which the Emperor
might visit. By exporting to the periphs all hint of the unpleasantness and smell of human
lives, the Imperium achieved its final state, the terminally bland.
Yet to Hari, the reaction against blandness was worse. Among the galaxy's twenty-five
million inhabited planets endless variations appeared, but there simmered beneath the
Imperial blanket a style based solely on rejection.
Particularly among those Hari termed “chaos worlds,” a smug avant-garde fumbled for the
sublime by substituting for beauty a love of terror, shock, and the sickeningly grotesque.
They used enormous scale, or acute disproportion, or scatology, or discord and irrational
disjunction. Both approaches were boring. Neither had any airy joy.
A wall dissolved, crackling, and they entered the Vault of Audience. Attendants vanished,
his Specials fell behind. Abruptly Hari was alone. He padded over the cushiony floor.
Baroque excess leered at him from every raised cornice, upjutting ornament, and elaborate
wainscoting.
Silence. The Emperor was never waiting for anyone, of course. The gloomy chamber gave back
no echoes, as though the walls absorbed everything.
Indeed, they probably did. No doubt every Imperial conversation went into several ears.
There might be eavesdroppers halfway across the Galaxy.
A light, moving. Down a crackling grav column came Cleon. “Hari! So happy you could come.”
Since refusing a summons by the Emperor was traditionally grounds for execution, Hari
could barely suppress a wry smile. “My honor to serve, sire.”
“Come, sit.”
Cleon moved heavily. Rumor had it that his appetite, already legendary, had begun to
exceed even the skills of his cooks and physicians. “We have much to discuss.”
The Emperor's constant attendant glow served to subtly enhance him with its nimbus. The
contrast was mild, serving to draw him out from a comparative surrounding gloom. The
room's embedded intelligences tracked his eyes and shed added light where his gaze fell,
again with delicate emphasis, subtly applied. The soft touch of his regard yielded a
radiance which guests scarcely noticed, but which acted subconsciously, adding to their
awe. Hari knew this, yet the effect still worked; Cleon looked masterful, regal.
“I fear we have hit a snag,” Cleon said.
“Nothing you cannot master, I am sure, sire.”
Cleon shook his head wearily. “Now don't you, too, go on about my prodigious powers. Some
... elements -- ” he drew the word out with dry disdain “ -- object to your appointment.”
“I see.” Hari kept his face blank, but his heart leaped.
“Do not be glum! I do want you for my First Minister.”
“Yes, sire.”
“But I am not, despite commonplace assumption, utterly free to act.”
“I realize that many others are better qualified -- ”
“In their own eyes, surely.”
“ -- and better trained, and -- ”
“And know nothing of psychohistory.”
“Demerzel exaggerated the utility of psychohistory.”
“Nonsense. He suggested your name to me.”
“You know as well as I that he was exhausted, not in his best frame of -- ”
“His judgment was impeccable for decades.” Cleon eyed Hari. “One would almost think you
were trying to avoid appointment as First Minister.”
“No, sire, but -- ”
“Men -- and women, for that matter -- have killed for far less.”
“And been killed once they got it.”
Cleon chuckled. “True enough. Some First Ministers do get self-important, begin to scheme
against their Emperor -- but let us not dwell upon the few failures of our system.”
Hari recalled Demerzel saying, “The succession of crises has reached the point where the
consideration of the Three Laws of Robotics paralyzes me.” Demerzel had been unable to
make choices because there were no good ones left. Every possible move hurt someone,
badly. So Demerzel, a supreme intelligence, a clandestine humaniform robot, had suddenly
left the scene. What chance did Hari have?
“I will assume the position, of course,” Hari said quietly, “if necessary.”
“Oh, it's necessary. If possible, you mean. Factions on the High Council oppose you. They
demand a full discussion.”
Hari blinked, alarmed. “Will I have to debate?”
“ -- and then a vote.”
“I had no idea the Council could intervene.”
“Read the Codes. They do have that power. Typically they do not use it, bowing to the
superior wisdom of the Emperor.” A dry little laugh. “Not this time.”
“If it would make it easier for you, I could absent myself while the discussion -- ”
“Nonsense! I want to use you to counter them.”
“I haven't any ideas how to -- ”
“I'll scent out the issues; you advise me on answers. Division of labor, nothing could be
simpler.”
“Um.” Demerzel had said confidently, “If he believes you have the psychohistorical answer,
he will follow you eagerly and that will make you a good First Minister.” Here, in such
august surroundings, that seemed quite unlikely.
“We will have to evade these opponents, maneuver against them.”
“I have no idea how to do that.”
“Of course you do not! I do. But you see the Empire and all its history as one unfurling
scroll. You have the theory.”
Cleon relished ruling. Hari felt in his bones that he did not. As First Minister, his word
could determine the fate of millions. That had daunted even Demerzel.
“There is still the Zeroth Law,” Demerzel had said just before they parted for the last
time. It placed the well-being of humanity as a whole above that of any single human. The
First Law then read, A robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction, allow a
human being to come to harm, unless this would violate the Zeroth Law. Fair enough, but
how was Hari to carry out a job which not even Demerzel could do? Hari realized that he
had been silent for too long, and that Cleon was waiting. What could he say?
“Um, who opposes me?”
“Several factions united behind Betan Lamurk.”
“What's his objection?”
To his surprise, the Emperor laughed heartily. “That you aren't Betan Lamurk.”
“You can't simply -- ”
“Overrule the Council? Offer Lamurk a deal? Buy him off?”
“I didn't mean to imply, sire, that you would stoop to -- ”
“Of course I would 'stoop,' as you put it. The difficulty lies with Lamurk himself. His
price to allow you in as First Minister would be too high.”
“Some high position?”
“That, and some estates, perhaps an entire Zone.”
Turning an entire Zone of the Galaxy over to a single man ... “High stakes.”
Cleon sighed. “We are not as rich, these days. In the reign of Fletch the Furious, he
bartered whole Zones simply for seats on the Council.”
“Your supporters, the Royalists, they can't outmaneuver Lamurk?”
“You really must study current politics more, Seldon. Though I suppose you're so steeped
in history, all this seems a bit trivial?”
Actually, Hari thought, he was steeped in mathematics.
Dors supplied the history he needed, or Yugo. “I will do so. So the Royalists -- ”
“Have lost the Dahlites, so they cannot muster a majority coalition.”
“The Dahlites are that powerful?”
“They have an argument popular with a broad audience, plus a large population.”
“I did not know they were so strong. My own close assistant, Yugo -- ”
“I know, a Dahlite. Watch him.”
Hari blinked. “Yugo is a strong Dahlite, true. But he is loyal, a fine, intuitive mathist.
But how did you -- ”
“Background check.” Cleon waved his hand in airy dismissal. “One must know a few things
about a First Minister.”
Hari disliked being under an Imperial microscope, but he kept his face blank. “Yugo is
loyal to me.”
“I know the story, how you uplifted him from hard labor, bypassing the Civil Service
filters. Very noble of you. But I cannot overlook the fact that the Dahlites have a ready
audience for their fevered outpourings. They threaten to alter the representation of
Sectors in the High Council, even in the Lower Council. So -- ” Cleon jabbed a finger “ --
watch him.”
“Yes, sire.” Cleon was getting steamed up about nothing, as far as Yugo was concerned, but
no point in arguing.
“You will have to be as circumspect as the Emperor's wife during this, ah, transitional
period.”
Hari recalled the ancient saying, that above all the Emperor's wife (or wives, depending
upon the era) must keep her skirts clean, no matter what muck she walks above. The analogy
was used even when the Emperor proved to be homosexual, or even when a woman held the
Imperial Palace. “Yes, sire. Uh, 'transitional' ... ?”
Cleon looked off in a distracted way at the towering, shadowy art forms looming around
them. By now Hari understood that this pointed to the crux of why he had been summoned.
“Your appointment will take a while, as the High Council fidgets. So I shall seek your
advice ... ”
''Without giving me the power."
“Well, yes.”
Hari felt no disappointment. “So I can stay in my office at Streeling?”
“I suppose it would seem forward if you came here.”
“Good. Now, about those Specials -- ”
“They must remain with you. Trantor is more dangerous than a professor knows.”
Hari sighed. “Yes, sire.”
Cleon lounged back, his airchair folding itself about him elaborately. “Now I would like
your advice on this Renegatum matter.”
“Renegatum?”
For the first time, Hari saw Cleon show surprise. “You have not followed the case? It is
everywhere!”
“I am a bit out of the main stream, sire.”
“The Renegatum -- the Society of Renegades. They kill and destroy.”
“For what?”
“For the pleasure of destruction!” Cleon slapped his chair angrily and it responded by
massaging him, apparently a standard answer. “The latest of their members to 'demonstrate
their contempt for society' is a woman named Kutonin. She invaded the Imperial Galleries,
torch-melted art many millennia old, and killed two guards. Then she peacefully turned
herself over to the officers who arrived.”
“You shall have her executed?”