How things had changed.
It had begun twenty years earlier with his own doodlings on his second-rate Heliconian computer. It was then that the first hint of what was to become parachaotic math came to him in a cloudy fashion.
Then there were the years at Streeling University, when he and Yugo Amaryl, working together, attempted to renormalize the equations, get rid of the inconvenient3 infinities4, and find a way around the worst of the chaotic2 effects. They made very little progress, indeed.
But now, after ten years as First Minister, he had a whole floor of the latest computers and a whole staff of people working on a large variety of problems.
Of necessity, none of his staff-except for Yugo and himself, of course-could really know much more than the immediate5 problem they were dealing6 with. Each of them worked with only a small ravine or outcropping on the gigantic mountain range of psychohistory that only Seldon and Amaryl could see as a mountain range-and even they could see it only dimly, its peaks hidden in clouds, its slopes veiled by mist.
Dors Venabili was right, of course. He would have to begin initiating7 his people into the entire mystery. The technique was getting well beyond what only two men could handle. And Seldon was aging. Even if he could look forward to some additional decades, the years of his most fruitful breakthroughs were surely behind him.
Even Amaryl would be thirty-nine within a month and, though that was still young, it was perhaps not overly young for a mathematician-and he had been working on the problem almost as long as Seldon himself. His capacity for new and tangential8 thinking might be dwindling9, too.
Amaryl had seen him enter and was now approaching. Seldon watched him fondly. Amaryl was as much a Dahlite as Seldon's foster son, Raych, was, and yet Amaryl, despite his muscular physique and short stature10, did not seem Dahlite at all. He lacked the mustache, he lacked the accent, he lacked, it would seem, Dahlite consciousness of any kind. He had even been impervious11 to the lure12 of Jo-Jo Joranum, who had appealed so thoroughly13 to the people of Dahl.
It was as though Amaryl recognized no sectoral14 patriotism15, no planetary patriotism, not even Imperial patriotism. He belonged-completely and entirely16-to psychohistory.
Seldon felt a twinge of insufficiency. He himself remained conscious of his first two decades on Helicon and there was no way he could keep from thinking of himself as a Heliconian. He wondered if that consciousness was not sure to betray him by causing him to skew his thinking about psychohistory. Ideally, to use psychohistory properly, one should be above worlds and sectors17 and deal only with humanity in the faceless abstract-and this was what Amaryl did.
And Seldon didn't, he admitted to himself, sighing silently.
Amaryl said, "We are making progress, Hari, I suppose."
"You suppose, Yugo? Merely suppose?"
"I don't want to jump into outer space without a suit." He said this quite seriously (he did not have much of a sense of humor, Seldon knew) and they moved into their private office. It was small, but it was also well shielded.
Amaryl sat down and crossed his legs. He said, "Your latest scheme for getting around chaos18 may be working in part-at the cost of sharpness, of course."
"Of course. What we gain in the straightaway, we lose in the roundabouts. That's the way the Universe works. We've just got to fool it somehow."
"We've fooled it a little bit. It's like looking through frosted glass."
"Better than the years we spent trying to look through lead."
Amaryl muttered something to himself, then said, "We can catch glimmers19 of light and dark."
"Explain!"
"I can't, but I have the Prime Radiant, which I've been working on like a-a-"
"Try lamec. That's an animal-a beast of burden-we have on Helicon. It doesn't exist on Trantor."
"If the lamec works hard, then that is what my work on the Prime Radiant has been like."
He pressed the security keypad on his desk and a drawer unsealed and slid open noiselessly. He took out a dark opaque20 cube that Seldon scrutinized21 with interest. Seldon himself had worked out the Prime Radiant抯 circuitry, but Amaryl had put it together-a clever man with his hands was Amaryl.
The room darkened and equations and relationships shimmered22 in the air. Numbers spread out beneath them, hovering23 just above the desk surface, as if suspended by invisible marionette24 strings25.
Seldon said, "Wonderful. Someday, if we live long enough, we'll have the Prime Radiant produce a river of mathematical symbolism that will chart past and future history. In it we can find currents and rivulets26 and work out ways of changing them in order to make them follow other currents and rivulets that we would prefer."
"Yes," said Amaryl dryly, "if we can manage to live with the knowledge that the actions we take, which we will mean for the best, may turn out to be for the worst."
"Believe me, Yugo, I never go to bed at night without that particular thought gnawing27 at me. Still, we haven't come to it yet. All we have is this -which, as you say, is no more than seeing light and dark fuzzily through frosted glass."
"True enough."
"And what is it you think you see, Yugo?" Seldon watched Amaryl closely, a little grimly. He was gaining weight, getting just a bit pudgy. He spent too much time bent28 over the computers (and now over the Prime Radiant)-and not enough in physical activity. And, though he saw a woman now and then, Seldon knew, he had never married. A mistake! Even a workaholic is forced to take time off to satisfy a mate, to take care of the needs of children.
Seldon thought of his own still-trim figure and of the manner in which Dors strove to make him keep it that way.
Amaryl said, "What do I see? The Empire is in trouble."
"The Empire is always in trouble."
"Yes, but it's more specific. There's a possibility that we may have trouble at the center."
"At Trantor?"
"I presume. Or at the Periphery29. Either there will be a bad situation here-perhaps civil war-or the outlying Outer Worlds will begin to break away."
"Surely it doesn't take psychohistory to point out these possibilities."
"The interesting thing is that there seems a mutual30 exclusivity. One or the other. The likelihood of both together is very small. Here! Look! It's your own mathematics. Observe!"
They bent over the Prime Radiant display for a long time.
Seldon said finally, "I fail to see why the two should be mutually exclusive."
"So do I, Hari, but where's the value of psychohistory if it shows us only what we would see anyway? This is showing us something we wouldn't see. What it doesn't show us is, first, which alternative is better, and second, what to do to make the better come to pass and depress the possibility of the worse."
Seldon pursed his lips, then said slowly, "I can tell you which alternative is preferable. Let the Periphery go and keep Trantor."
"Really?"
"No question. We must keep Trantor stable, if for no other reason than that we're here."
"Surely our own comfort isn't the decisive point."
"No, but psychohistory is. What good will it do us to keep the Periphery intact if conditions on Trantor force us to stop work on psychohistory? I don't say that we'll be killed, but we may be unable to work. The development of psychohistory is on what our fate will depend. As for the Empire, if the Periphery secedes31 it will only begin a disintegration32 that may take a long time to reach the core."
"Even if you're right, Hari, what do we do to keep Trantor stable?"
"To begin with, we have to think about it."
A silence fell between them and then Seldon said, "Thinking doesn't make me happy. What if the Empire is altogether on the wrong track and has been for all its history? I think of that every time I talk to Gruber."
"Who's Gruber?"
"Mandell Gruber. A gardener."
"Oh. The one who came running up with the rake to rescue you at the time of the assassination33 attempt?"
"Yes. I've always been grateful to him for that. He had only a rake against possibly other conspirators34 with blasters. That's loyalty35. Anyhow, talking to him is like a breath of fresh air. I can't spend all my time talking to court officials and to psychohistorians."
"Thank you."
"Come! You know what I mean. Gruber likes the open. He wants the wind and the rain and the biting cold and everything else that raw weather can bring to him. I miss it myself sometimes."
"I don't. I wouldn't care if I never go out there."
"You were brought up under the dome-but suppose the Empire consisted of simple unindustrialized worlds, living by herding36 and farming, with thin populations and empty spaces. Wouldn't we all be better off?"
"It sounds horrible to me."
"I found some spare time to check it as best I could. It seems to me it's a case of unstable37 equilibrium38. A thinly populated world of the type I describe either grows moribund39 and impoverished40, falling off into an uncultured near-animal level-or it industrializes. It is standing41 on a narrow point and topples over in either direction and, as it just so happens, almost every world in the Galaxy42 has fallen over into industrialization."
"Because that's better."
"Maybe. But it can't continue forever. We're watching the results of the overtoppling now. The Empire cannot exist for much longer because it has-it has overheated. I can't think of any other expression. What will Follow we don't know. If, through psychohistory, we manage to prevent the Fall or, more likely, force a recovery after the Fall, is that merely to ensure another period of overheating? Is that the only future humanity has, to push the boulder43, like Sisyphus, up to the top of a hill, only to see it roll to the bottom again?"
"Who's Sisyphus?"
"A character in a primitive44 myth. Yugo, you must do more reading."
Amaryl shrugged45. "So I can learn about Sisyphus? Not important. Perhaps psychohistory will show us a path to an entirely new society, one altogether different from anything we have seen, one that would be stable and desirable."
"I hope so," sighed Seldon. "I hope so, but there's no sign of it yet. For the near future, we will just have to labor1 to let the Periphery go. That will mark the beginning of the Fall of the Galactic Empire."
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1
labor
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| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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2
chaotic
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| adj.混沌的，一片混乱的，一团糟的 | |
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inconvenient
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| adj.不方便的，令人感到麻烦的 | |
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4
infinities
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| n.无穷大( infinity的名词复数 )；无限远的点；无法计算的量；无限大的量 | |
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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dealing
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| n.经商方法，待人态度 | |
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initiating
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| v.开始( initiate的现在分词 )；传授；发起；接纳新成员 | |
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tangential
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| adj.离题的，切线的 | |
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dwindling
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| adj.逐渐减少的v.逐渐变少或变小( dwindle的现在分词 ) | |
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stature
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| n.（高度）水平，（高度）境界，身高，身材 | |
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impervious
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| adj.不能渗透的，不能穿过的，不易伤害的 | |
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lure
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| n.吸引人的东西，诱惑物；vt.引诱，吸引 | |
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13
thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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14
sectoral
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| adj.扇形的 | |
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patriotism
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| n.爱国精神，爱国心，爱国主义 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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sectors
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| n.部门( sector的名词复数 )；领域；防御地区；扇形 | |
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18
chaos
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| n.混乱，无秩序 | |
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glimmers
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| n.微光，闪光( glimmer的名词复数 )v.发闪光，发微光( glimmer的第三人称单数 ) | |
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opaque
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| adj.不透光的；不反光的，不传导的；晦涩的 | |
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scrutinized
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| v.仔细检查，详审( scrutinize的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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shimmered
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| v.闪闪发光，发微光( shimmer的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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23
hovering
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| 鸟( hover的现在分词 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫 | |
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marionette
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| n.木偶 | |
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strings
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| n.弦 | |
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rivulets
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| n.小河，小溪( rivulet的名词复数 ) | |
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gnawing
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| a.痛苦的，折磨人的 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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periphery
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| n.(圆体的)外面；周围 | |
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30
mutual
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| adj.相互的，彼此的；共同的，共有的 | |
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secedes
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| v.脱离，退出( secede的第三人称单数 ) | |
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32
disintegration
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| n.分散，解体 | |
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33
assassination
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| n.暗杀；暗杀事件 | |
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conspirators
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| n.共谋者，阴谋家( conspirator的名词复数 ) | |
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35
loyalty
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| n.忠诚，忠心 | |
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36
herding
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| 中畜群 | |
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unstable
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| adj.不稳定的，易变的 | |
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equilibrium
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| n.平衡，均衡，相称，均势，平静 | |
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39
moribund
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| adj.即将结束的，垂死的 | |
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impoverished
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| adj.穷困的，无力的，用尽了的v.使（某人）贫穷( impoverish的过去式和过去分词 )；使（某物）贫瘠或恶化 | |
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41
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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galaxy
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| n.星系；银河系；一群(杰出或著名的人物) | |
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43
boulder
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| n.巨砾；卵石，圆石 | |
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44
primitive
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| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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45
shrugged
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| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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